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Tami Simon: You're listening to "Insights at the Edge." Today, my guest is Lewis Mehl-Madrona. Lewis is certified in family practice, geriatrics, and psychiatry, and has worked for years in rural emergency medicine. He is the author of several books on what native culture can offer the modern world, including Narrative Medicine and Coyote Healing. Lewis has worked in collaboration with Sounds True to create the audio learning series, The Spirit of Healing, and also a new program on Native American Healing Meditations.
In this episode of "Insights at the Edge," Lewis and I spoke about what native wisdom can offer modern medicine. We also talked about the value of relational, storied, and ceremonial culture, and the role of spirit beings in the healing process. Here's my conversation with Lewis Mehl-Madrona.
Lewis, you have a very impressive set of credentials: an MD from Stanford, you're a board-certified family physician, a psychiatrist, a geriatrician, and you also hold a PhD in clinical psychology. First of all, you've dedicated quite a bit of your life to formal, academic training in medicine, and at the same time, you have roots in the world of indigenous healing, and have created a program with Sounds True called The Spirit of Healing. I'm curious: When you put all of this together-your academic training and your respect for the indigenous healing traditions-what comes out of all of those inputs in terms of how you view healing today? I know that's a big, broad question, but how do you view healing?
Lewis Mehl-Madrona: Well, I think probably one of the most important things that I've learned is that modern medicine needs indigenous ideas in order to be healing. Without those ideas, we can fix a few things-we're pretty good at trauma and putting people back together who get broken-but when it comes to making people whole again, we're not really good at that. We're not really very good at chronic disease, we're not good at end-of-life care, we're not good at mental health. We need to recover a storied culture. We need the input of cultures of story and cultures of relationship and cultures of meaning in order to really help people.
I think my sense is that medicine took a wrong turn with the Flexner Report in 1905, in this drive to be purely technical and to turn its back on the humanities and relationships. Luckily, indigenous cultures have preserved that. We've probably tried to beat it out of them, but luckily cultures exist that still focus on story and relationship and ceremony and interconnectedness. And so now in medicine, we can look to those cultures and say, "Hey, we need you guys! We need to get this back, this stuff that we've lost, that we thought was unimportant, that turns out to mean everything, so come help us out."
TS: Now, I think I have a sense of what you might mean by a "relational culture," but I'm not sure what you mean by a "storied culture." What is it that we're missing that Native American cultures and other indigenous cultures could help us with in terms of being a storied culture?
LM: In most indigenous cultures, there is a recognition that all human knowledge is in the form of a story. There's actually some neuroscientists at Northwestern and Yale that write the same thing-Abelson and Schank are their names. The idea is that anything that's important gets stored in the brain as a story. Indigenous cultures have mostly known this for thousands of years, and Western cultures have forgotten it and are just rediscovering the power of story. By a "storied culture," I mean a culture that listens to people in a mindful way telling what happened to them, and telling their story about their lives.
By an "unstoried culture," I mean something like what psychiatrists do with the DSM manual, which is to ask a series of checklist questions. So I'll say, "Are you sad more often than not? How's your concentration? How's your energy level? How's your appetite? How's your sleep? How's your libido?" And I'm making checks in boxes, and if you get six out of eight, then I call you "major depressive disorder." That's a nonstoried approach.
In a storied approach, I'd say, "Tell me about the last time you felt happy, and tell me what happened to make you so sad." I'm saying that we really need to recover that respect for the stories people have for how they got sick and how they think they could get well, and what the illness or health means in their lives. Well, people are writing about these things now in greater and greater detail, like Arthur Kleinman, who's a Harvard anthropologist, talking about how badly medicine needs these things.
TS: As a healer, when you listen to someone's story, you ask them certain questions. I'm curious, first of all, which questions you find are the most productive. Let's say if somebody comes to you with some kind of life-threatening illness and they want to work with you. Which questions bring out the stories? And then when you're listening, what are you listening for as you listen to the story?
LM: I think probably the first question I usually ask is, "How do you think that you came to be the way that you are? How do you think that you became ill? What do you think happened? What do you think went into creating this?" In a sense, that means every illness has a creation story. Probably everything in the world has a creation story.
It's so important to know why people think they're sick, because if we don't, if what I propose to do doesn't make sense within the story of why they think they're sick, they're not going to do it, or they're not going to do it with enthusiasm. When we doctors forget to ask people that, we lose cooperation. So the first thing I need to know is, why do you think you're sick?
I remember recently a woman with cancer saying, "I've got cancer because all of the men in my life betrayed me."
I thought, "Wow! I didn't know that was a cause of cancer!" And I said to myself, "I know people who've been terribly betrayed by men who don't have cancer." You know? So this is her story, this is not necessarily anyone else's story. And so I said, "Really? How does that work?"
She told me a story of how with each betrayal, her immune system had gotten more and more worn down, until finally cancer emerged. This was a personal story that she'd put together from her own readings about immunity and cancer and psychoneuroimmunology.
It didn't necessarily serve her to heal, because we couldn't really reverse the betrayals, so my next question was, "How do you think that you could get better?"
She said, "I would have to find true love." And she said, "Plus I would have to avoid all bad chemicals and toxins in the environment and eat completely organic, natural, raw food, and stay away from drugs and chemicals."
Now the story is getting even more complicated: one, because she might not be able to find true love within the time frame needed for her to recover, and second, I don't really like the "true love" story, anyway. I think probably "good enough love" is a better story. Since few of us are perfect and rarely do we find the perfect mate, I'd definitely settle for a good enough mate, you know?
And it turned out, as we listened to the story further, that her life was really miserable because she had invented all of these rules about how to get well, and any chemical exposure would make her more sick. She lived in New York City, and you can't actually walk around New York City without some chemical exposure! Any food that wasn't raw and clean and organic would make her sick, and that's hard to do! And so the poor woman was tortured.
My first intervention as a healer was to say, "You know, maybe it's not this hard." Or another way of thinking about it: "What if you're wrong? What if there's a certain random element to getting cancer or getting well? Or what if how you get cancer doesn't matter for how you get well? What if getting well is out of our hands, and we just have to, in a sense, apply to the spirits? And sometimes we get it, and sometimes we don't, and winning the Olympics isn't actually necessary?" That was a really difficult dialogue.
As a result of our interaction, she allowed herself to eat one yummy, delicious, chocolate chip cookie from her favorite bakery somewhere in midtown Manhattan, and it was the greatest pleasure she'd had in months. I thought that was a success of sorts.
Hopefully that gives you a sense of the importance of getting people's stories about why they think they're sick and what will make them better.
TS: It seems to me that an important aspect is how you're listening to the story and how you're helping the person potentially reframe it or see it differently. I mean, a lot of times people will report, "I've been in therapy for gosh knows how many years, and I'm so sick of my story! I keep saying the same story. I don't seem to be changing!" I mean, something has to happen in the interaction with the healer that generates some kind of new perspective. Would you say that's true?
LM: Absolutely. Together, we coauthor a new story. Another way of saying it is that we make new meaning together. I think a therapy in which the therapist lets someone repeat the same story for years is a bad therapy. I know when I hear someone-there are people who are stuck in telling a story about how victimized they are, and how terrible life has been for them, and how nothing can get better, and therefore that's what happens.
As a person who's listening, I don't ask the question, "What's true?" I ask the question, "Now how does this work in this person's life? What's the effect of living this story?" If it's clear to me that the effect is to make you miserable or to keep things the same, then I need to point that out in some way. I need to say, "Gee, it seems like the more you-you're like a car tire in the snow that's spinning, spinning, spinning, and going nowhere. Maybe we need to put a piece of wood underneath you so that you can actually get out of the rut, or maybe we need to pour some sand onto this snow. Something has to change!"
Really that was my response to the woman I was telling you about, that when I listened to her story, it was clear that the way that it manifested in her life, the way that she was living, was miserable! I think all stories are true for the people that tell them, where they tell them, but some stories work better than others. Her story wasn't working very well for someone who was living in midtown Manhattan. Maybe it could have worked in Fiji, where there's maybe fewer chemicals and more raw food-although who knows? Chemicals are everywhere! But it wasn't life promoting in Manhattan.
TS: Yes. Now Lewis, you mentioned that what indigenous cultures can give to Western medicine, at least part of what they can give, is this relational focus, a storied culture, and a ceremonial culture. I know you work with ceremony and healing, and I'm wondering if you can speak some to that. What kind of ceremonies help people in the healing process?
LM: I think that ceremony is a way for us to engage the supernatural world, the spiritual world, in dialogue. We need, in a sense, to open a portal to that world in order to communicate with it. Ceremony allows us to do that. In ceremony, we create the space for spirit beings to come into the ordinary world and interact with us, and we also create for us, in a very limited sense, [a way] to step out of the ordinary world into the spirit world and interact with them. Through that, change can happen in our lives. Change can happen in the physical world.
I've been trying to understand one of the questions that we talked about earlier: "Where am I on the edge of my studies of healing?" My edge is reading Henry Stapp, who's a physicist who writes in the Journal of Consciousness Studies about how this comes about, that it's kind of a quantum-measurement effect where we focus and direct our attention on a possible outcome in such a way that it becomes real. The math is heady; it's difficult reading, and that's really my edge. But I think, whether or not one can understand it in an intellectual way, cultures have known for centuries that ceremony is a way to get the spiritual forces working on our behalf.
TS: Now, I'm not sure I completely followed you, Lewis, when you were talking about kind of quantum realities and how that might relate to ceremony and spirit beings.
LM: Well, there's something called the Quantum Zeno Effect. It was discovered in 1977 in Austin, Texas. It's being used a lot by people in consciousness studies to explain how mind, which is nonphysical, changes brain, which is physical.
The idea of the Quantum Zeno Effect is that if you observe something frequently enough, you prevent it from changing; you keep it locked in the same state. Statistically, things should change all the time, but if you make frequent enough measurements of a system that should be changing, it won't change. People who are writing about consciousness are talking about how, when we focus our minds or our attention on a particular possibility or state of being, we fix it in place. It's really an intriguing idea that, actually, Buddha already thought of a long time ago, which is that where your attention goes is where you go, that where we focus our attention is everything about where we take ourselves in our lives.
The idea of ceremony is that as a group we're coherently focusing our attention on praying, on asking, on requesting a certain positive outcome in a humble way, saying, "If it's not too much trouble, and if it's possible, would you spirits please help us out in this way?" For instance, "Our friend Michael has Parkinson's disease, and he's shaking and it's hard for him to walk. Would it be OK, if you could, to make it a little easier for him to walk?" So we're all focusing on that possibility, that Michael could walk a little easier. And if our minds are focused on it, if the spirits' minds are focused on it, then maybe it gets locked into place in this particular physical-coordinate system that we live in.
That's the quantum tie-in: the way that in the quantum world, everything exists all at once, simultaneously, and that when we query it, something gets locked into place in the physical world, in our world, so that we see one outcome from all those many, many possible outcomes. I think that ceremony is a little bit like querying the quantum spiritual world in such a way that we can lock a particular outcome into place in the physical world, which is the outcome that the person improves, or that you're healthier, or that life is happier, or whatever it is that we're asking for.
TS: I'm curious: If someone's listening and they have a health challenge in their life, is there a ceremony you could recommend? I mean, I know it's a little bit generic, since you don't really know what's going on with the person, but are there some basic principles of ceremony that anyone could use?
LM: Well, yes, and one really simple idea that I think is relatively easy to use is that whenever you look at the clock, take one or two minutes to imagine being well, to just playfully, lovingly, laughingly, compassionately toward yourself, imagine being as healthy as you want to be-not in a demanding way, you know, but in just a playful way. "Wouldn't it be lovely to be well?" Just imagine it as if it's true in this moment, right now. And then after a minute or two, just let it go. Walk away.
In that way, I think we begin to move forward, potentially. I say "playfully," because we little people never know if we can get well or not. It's really out of our hands. The answers to those questions are at much different levels of existence than we can access, but we can put our intention that we sure would like to be well.
That's a really simple ceremony that people can do right away, right now. It reduces anxiety, because a lot of the time when people are sick, they're worrying about "What if I get sicker?" "What if I die?" "What if I don't get well?" And it's a simple antidote to just take a minute or two, periodically throughout the day, to visualize wellness. Athletes do the same thing to visualize a superb performance, and it's been shown to be very effective, this particular technique/ceremony, for athletes. Why not for sick people?
I think the other part of that is that we can all do something to focus our attention on feeling peaceful and feeling connected with nature and with everyone else, feeling whole, feeling in balance. That's got to make a difference, and people do it in all kinds of different ways. For me, if I could, I would burn a little sage, because the smell reminds me to let go of the things that I don't need to hold onto. When I'm in places where you can't burn, I like to bring a little sage spray, a spray bottle of sage oil, and I can spray it in the air and I can smell that same aroma, and that just reminds me to let go of the burdens and the worries and the things that I don't need that I'm carrying, and to focus on what it is that I'd rather be thinking about, you know?
Feeling connected to the tree outside the window, feeling at one with the birds that are flying in the sky, feeling like I'm a part of nature-nature is an amazing healer. If you've ever watched nature heal a forest after a fire, it's very fast. It happens really quickly, so much quicker than one could imagine! I've seen nature take over a strip mine, and completely cover it in an amazingly small amount of time. So if I focus on nature as the healer just a little bit, then that's got to be good for me.
TS: Now Lewis, as part of the idea of ceremony, you mentioned that we're opening up a communication with spirit beings. Here you have your MD from Stanford and so on, and I'm curious how you view spirit beings. Have you had personal experiences that confirmed for you, "Yes. These are spirit beings. They're talking to me"?
LM: You know, I have. I think that it's not necessary to be a materialist to be a scientist. I know many scientists who are deeply spiritual and believe in a spirit world and have encountered angels. In the vision quest, for instance, which I try to do every year, we see spirits. I've seen spirits; I grew up with grandparents who saw spirits, and it just seemed like an ordinary thing to me. It didn't seem special. It wasn't actually until I got to Stanford Medical School that I found out that, officially, spirits don't exist. As far as I knew until then, everyone thought spirits were real. I had Christian friends, I had Buddhist friends, I had Jewish friends. Everyone thought that the supernatural world was real.
I remember one of the most deeply spiritual teachers that I had in college was Sir John Eccles, who got the Nobel Prize for discovering neurotransmitters. He led a seminar that I took as an undergraduate that was on the neurophysiology of the soul, and how our physical bodies connect with our spiritual bodies, and then connect with the spirit world. I got three credits for that at Indiana University!
TS: Now, could you tell me a little bit about what experiences you've had from vision quest experiences? And then I'd also be curious to know, in addition to your personal experiences, what you see as the role spirit beings might play in healing, and maybe if you might have an example of that.
LM: Yes. Let me say that some of the most powerful spirit sightings that I've had are available to pretty much anyone without even going on a vision quest, and they've been in Hispanic wooden churches at Christmas Eve, in Arizona, in Mexico, in New Mexico. There's something about the Hispanic Catholic culture in the American Southwest that's deeply and amazingly spiritual.
And I remember one midnight mass outside of Tucson in a little Catholic church, in which I was just overwhelmed with the visitation of an angel. I know that everyone there pulled this being in. It was just so wonderful, because I realized that we can only hold that field for a very short time, or our nervous systems would burn out. It was just a marvelous sense. I saw and felt this amazing winged being who just broadcast pure love and compassion, and that for this being, everything we did, even things that we would consider bad things, were loving, were loved, were appreciated.
It was one of the most profound, transformative experiences for me, because I was trying to come to terms with somewhat of a negative Christian upbringing from my German stepfather who hated my Cherokee grandparents. It was this awareness that it's all one, that in the spirit world there's no religious wars. Nobody's fighting! It's all roads leading to the same joy and compassion.
How does that translate into my work? When I'm working conventionally-and I do, I see people in a medical setting who have congestive heart failure and hypertension, I see people in medical settings who have bipolar disorder and want medication. I think that one of the things that I can do in that setting is to hold the space for my soul and their soul to connect, and for the spirits who hang out with me or around me, from time to time, to be present and connect with their spirits, so that healing happens on many layers.
Even if we don't talk about it, I can try to hold a mindful, spiritual space for that medical encounter. I can do everything I can to feel love and compassion for that person and their suffering. I can give them a smile, give them a loving touch while I'm listening to their heart with a stethoscope. I can take their blood pressure with joy. As a spiritual person, there's little things that I can do that enlighten, in a sense, that make the medical encounter better.
Outside of my conventional-medicine world, sometimes people come to me for doctoring-"doctoring" in the sense of energy medicine or spiritually-oriented healing. And in those contexts, my feeling is that it's the spirits that are working through me, that there are these spirits that I've met in vision quests and other ceremonies, who when I pray and ask spirits to come and help me, they come and they help these people.
I don't feel like I do very much. I just cultivate these relationships with spiritual beings who come and work on people who need work, and do what they can. They can't always make people better either, but they have greater powers than I do. In that sort of energy medicine, doctoring kind of activity, we're calling on beings with greater powers than we have to come and help us. I think it makes a difference.
You know, some of my colleagues think this is all metaphor. And I say, "Well, that's fine, because you can get a lot of places with metaphor." I think believing it makes it more powerful, but I also know that metaphor is really powerful, too. As a word in Greek, it means basically, "a cart to carry something from one place to another." If you're ever in the Athens airport, those trolleys that you put your luggage on, they're called metaphora. That was what really struck me about that word: it's just something that we use to carry our baggage from one place to another. For people who see all of this as metaphorical, well, that's fine! It can still help them, but I think faith probably ramps it up a notch.
TS: When you're doing energy medicine "doctoring," as you say, and you have this sense that spirit beings are working through you, what is happening such that you feel that it's a being that's separate from you, that's sort of working through your body, versus a higher aspect of your own energetic capacities to have healing energy flow through?
LM: I think that either one is a good story about what's going on, and probably the story that I pick is cultural. You know, it's the one that I grew up in. I could see that someone else, who grew up in a different worldview, would pick that other story. They make equal sense within the context that they're being told.
I don't have any way to say that the way that I see it is right and that other way is not right. I think they both sound great. Maybe they're both true. You know, "explanatory pluralism" is the idea that things can be true on many levels, and the levels don't have to be readily translatable into each other. So yes, maybe that's true.
I'm primed by the culture in which I grew up to see things in a certain way, so in the way that I was raised, when I feel something that I recognize as not ordinary me, and it seems to have its own ontological status, and sometimes it announces itself and says, "Hey! I'm this dude over here from the nineteenth century, and I'm happy to come help you!"
And I think, "Cool! Yes! Go for it! I'm really happy you dropped in! Go to work! Take care of things."
Someone else could have this same perceptual, phenomenological experience, and see it as their higher self or their soul or their angelic connection. I can think of many labels that one could use. You know, whatever works seems good to me!
I'm staying at a Carmelite retreat center in Australia as we talk, and "Holy Ghost" sounds really good right here. The Virgin Mary trumps everything here, and who couldn't love the Virgin Mary? What's not to love about the Virgin Mary?
TS: I love this! I love this phrase, "explanatory pluralism." It could be a new tagline for Sounds True!
LM: Hey! There you go! I can't remember who coined it, but some postmodernist made it up. And it sort of works, that there's so many layers, and they don't translate readily, but they can all be true!
TS: Now I'm curious, Lewis. Someone comes to you, and they're suffering from some kind of diagnosis, and they're terribly concerned about it. They're suffering from some kind of life-threatening illness. Do you have any sense, even just in your first meeting with people, which people you think will really get better, physically, and which people won't? I mean, are there certain qualities that you sense in someone, and you think, "OK. This person, they've got what it takes for the healing process to happen. This other person, I don't know. It's not looking so great"?
LM: I can sense qualities that are associated with not healing. I can't sense who will heal. I have some sense for who might not heal because, I think, healing is what's called an "emergent property." It comes out of the relationships that we all form together with each other and with the spirits that are involved and with nature, and we can't produce it on demand or control it.
What I can say I think definitely doesn't work is when somebody is really rigidly focused on "There's only one way to get well, and by God, that's what I'm going to do." [And that's] because I think we're called to be flexible, and I think we're called to humility, and I think we're called to acknowledge that we might not get well, even though we want to. We're called to acknowledge our smallness in the nature of the universe.
There's a Lakota concept that I love, which is the concept that we're thrown into a world of forces that are so much more powerful than us, that buffet us around and toss us around and almost literally play soccer with us as the ball. And that the first step is to recognize our pitiful nature and our insignificance and smallness, and then to stand up and to ask for help, and to proceed to make meaning and purpose anyway. You know, it's a really transformative and powerful concept.
And so I think hubris is probably not a good idea if you're really sick and you want to get well-or the sense that you know how to do it, or that you can do it without help, or that anyone knows how to do it, for that matter. I worry when I meet someone who's really rigid and inflexible and insistent that they know the only way to get well, or people that come in with this sort of notion that I've heard bandied about in some popular cultural arenas, that people come in and they say, "I made myself sick! Now I'm going to make myself well!" That seems to me so oversimplistic as to be dangerous to think.
There are so many forces that play into our health and disease, and if we're healthy, we should just be so grateful for that health! If we're sick, we should realize that we don't have the power, necessarily, to make ourselves sick. It's so much bigger than us, and the help that we need is so much bigger than us, and it involves other people and spiritual realms. We just have to humbly request it, in a good way, in a way of supplication and humility and faith and devotion, and hope for the best. In the end, we get what we get, and I can't predict.
I remember I had a colleague, a neurosurgeon in Tucson. He had a formula for predicting how patients who came to see him for neurosurgical problems would do. He said, "In the first appointment, the more people they bring with them and the more hugs I get, the better they're going to do." I thought that was a pretty good formula! I liked that! He called it "Hamilton's Rule."
TS: Now you mentioned the word, "faith," and I'm curious: What's your faith, as a practitioner, your faith in the healing process?
LM: Well, I have faith that all of these things-healing, caring-happen at higher levels. I'm going to say "higher." I'm not sure that that's the best metaphor, but they happen at more profoundly complex and rich spiritual levels than we operate at. It's my faith that there are these spiritual beings who love us and care for us, and they want the best for us, and if they can work it out, they will. My sense is that there are also purposes and meanings that we can't fathom, that may help explain why some people get sick, or why children come into the world and die. It's so much more complicated than we can ever imagine. My faith works into this by my saying: In the end, we just have to trust in the powers of the universe, the forces of nature.
It's something that Soren Kierkegaard wrote about. I love his writings, because he's the guy that coined the term, "leap of faith." He said, "In the end, there is nothing more that I can do to prove this, so therefore I just have to take the leap of faith and believe in the things that are invisible, that I can't prove to anyone else, because they seem real to me."
That's where my faith plays in. I believe in these forces and powers, and I also know that I don't command them, and I don't control them, and I'm not smart enough to know what the right answer is. That's why we pray for the highest good instead of being specific and telling them what to do. I just think that the more time we spend cultivating our relationships with these higher powers, the happier we'll be. It's interesting, because the Carmelite nuns apparently agree with me!
TS: Meaning are you getting nods and signs of approval from the group that you're with?
LM: Right. Yes, they have the same idea: that one of the purposes of our life is to cultivate our relationships with the spiritual world in the same way as you would cultivate a garden, to spend the time that you would spend in a garden-that in a sense, the spiritual life is like a garden, and you have to put in the time to have a really good garden.
TS: I'm wondering here, at the end of our conversation, Lewis, if you'd be willing, as a gift for our listeners, to take us through a short meditation, a short prayer, where we're actually able to cultivate that garden together and invoke healing, whatever our situation might be.
LM: Sure! Of course! What I'd like to invite people to do-and I learned from the last time that I was in Colorado with Sounds True, to talk to you, the individual, because each of us are individuals listening-I'd like to invite you to take a moment and to close your eyes, and to just appreciate how joyful it is to breathe, what a wonderful thing it is to take a breath. Some of you have had asthma, or have had colds or bronchitis, and you know how that feels. It's so wonderful when we can stop thinking about breathing. It's so wonderful to just be able to breathe without thinking about it. That's why it's so marvelous to just step back and say, "Wow! Isn't it just amazing that I'm breathing today?" It's just so wonderful to be able to breathe, to breathe in this wonderful, fresh air, to breathe in all of the fragrances of nature.
I'm in a beautiful garden spot in the summer, and I'd just like to invite you to imagine the smells of the tea tree, the flowers, and to hear the sound of the birds, of the kookaburra bird singing overhead, and to take just a moment, wherever you are, to recognize that you're surrounded by nature. Even in the heart of New York City, nature surrounds you, that the buildings rest upon grass and rock and dirt, and birds are everywhere. Squirrels are in the trees. Wherever we go, we are a part of nature, because we're physical. Nature is us. We are nature.
It's marvelous to just take a moment and to feel connected to the earth, to put one's feet on the ground, on the floor, and to just notice that underneath us is a whole planet, and it's really large! You can feel the love of Mother Earth: it's called "gravity." It's what she uses to pull us to her bosom, so we always know her love, because we're always working with gravity.
And you can feel connected to the sky, because it's always around us, protecting us from the radiation belts, protecting us from solar flares. That ozone layer, that sky, is our protector, and it's always there, always taking care of us. It's so marvelous to be shielded by the sky!
And it's so fabulous to feel the birds! Wherever people are, there's always birds. In Tokyo, in Chicago, birds are everywhere. Maybe not so many kangaroos everywhere, but birds everywhere. We can feel the beauty of their wings outstretched, catching the wind and lifting them up. It's so marvelous to think about how those updrafts of warm air can help an eagle to rise effortlessly hundreds of meters into the air, way high into the sky, without ever even beating their wings. They just ride these thermal updrafts and glide-forever, it seems like-around and around and around. We're connected to that!
Just take a moment to feel, to play with the idea, to feel with me that these things-the sky, the earth, the clouds-that they might be consciously aware of us, that they might be noticing us, too. That the trees, the animals, they may be aware of us, that we may be all feeling connected, that the clouds can be sensing our suffering, our pain. One doesn't get through life without a bit of suffering and pain, and I think it's so helpful to share it with the earth, and with the rocks, and with the sky, and with the clouds, and the water.
Sometimes there's nothing more healing than to walk beside a beautiful brook, a stream, and to sit down at the edge of that stream, and to just watch the water flowing downstream, to watch the water just tumbling down, and to just imagine that we could let go of some of that pain and some of that suffering. We could just let it go into the water, and just let the water carry it away and take it down to the ocean, wherever the ocean is. Wherever you are, eventually that water will get to the ocean-some of that water evaporates and goes into the clouds, but some of it gets to the sea, and can take our troubles down to the sea and take them away.
You know, we can finish this by also feeling how deeply beneficial it is to feel each other, to feel each other's hearts and minds. Wherever we are, there's usually other people that we can feel connected to. Wherever we are, others are around us who care for us and care about us. We can connect to all of these other people, just as we can connect to animals. You know, some of the most loving relationships people have are with their dogs or cats.
I want to close with the thought that a fellow left me with the other day, which I think is so marvelous: He said, "I'm working so hard to become the person that my dog already thinks I am!" And so we could just imagine, to finish, that we're all in this together, and that my joy is your joy, your suffering is my suffering. And that the more we share it all around, the better it is for all of us, and to just feel that for a moment. And then to let it go, and to get on with whatever it is that we have to do next in our lives. And to just walk a little lighter, breathe a little easier, lose a tiny bit of those weights that we carry on our shoulders, and just be a little happier. That's all.
TS: Wonderful. Thank you so much!
LM: Thank you.
TS: That was very generous of you, and peace evoking.
I've been speaking with Lewis Mehl-Madrona. He's in Australia right now, joining us for "Insights at the Edge," and he's the author of two programs from Sounds True. One is on Native American Healing Meditations, and the other is a new, six-session, audio learning course on The Spirit of Healing.
Lewis, thank you so much for taking the time, and for speaking so heartfully, sweetly, and intelligently.
LM: Thank you. I've got to at least try to say, "G'day, mate!" from down under!
TS: Yes, good job! Good job!
LM: [Laughs.] Yes, I've been practicing!
TS: Thanks everyone, for listening. SoundsTrue.com. Many voices, one journey.


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Monday, 21 June 2010
Whitethroat in motion (Naas Lane, Lydney)
9 comments:
Nice captures Bob. They really are lovely birds.ReplyDelete
I enlarged the photos to see the wings and they are just gorgeous. Love that green caterpillar in his bill too!ReplyDelete
Stunning photos! Congratulations:)ReplyDelete
Thanks Keith, aren't they wonderful.ReplyDelete
Good, wing shape is very good, but not the whole thing, Kelly.
Your reply is beautiful, Joo.
Beatiful!!!It's like a dancer...ReplyDelete
That's right, Silvia. while her chicks are waiting.ReplyDelete
Great sequence Bob. I am still trying for a decent shot of one.ReplyDelete
Perfect pictures, it seams like a dance for you!!! Mastershots!!!ReplyDelete
In your honour and in the honour of wall the Photographers, I published an ilustration.ReplyDelete
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Image via Wikipedia
I first laid eyes on MSC Poesia at night in Quebec City. She looked very attractive with her gleaming white sides well illuminated. I was later to find that the inside was just as clean being constantly scrubbed and polished by an army of cleaners. They, like the stewards aboard, seemed to be always smiling and happy to greet passengers. I'm not certain if all of them spoke five languages but communication with passengers from all over the world didn't seem to be a problem.
Check-in at the Quebec terminal was quite painless. Since I lacked baggage tags, I was pointed to the baggage room. Before arriving there, a lady with tags in hand asked me to write my cabin number in large print and place my bags near the container for transport on board. Security did a quick check of my boarding pass (printed on line) and I was off to the check-in area. A health form was quickly completed and I was shown to the check-in line. With only two folks ahead of me, the wait was short and my photo was taken and my card was issued. There is also a small UNICEF collection requested from passengers. I was happy to participate. The card, as is common these days, is both charge card and cabin key. It also has the dining assignment on the face and your cabin number is coded as well which is not the best idea in case of a lost card. Most folks can figure out the simple code and charge things to your account so keep a close eye on its location.
MSC has an additional use for the card. When you enter the cabin, there is a receptacle on the wall with red lights on either side. You insert the card and it enables the main cabin light and lights a "Do Not Disturb" light outside so the cabin stewards know the room is occupied. The red lights go out so you know you have inserted the card. A clever system but don't forget to pick up your card on the way out!
I later found out removing the card turns off the heat and air conditioning. The HVAC in the cabins is a quiet, gentle system – but slow. If it is quite hot or cool, it will take some time to adjust the cabin temperature when the passengers re-enter the cabin and insert the cards. Some were so upset by this, they inserted other cards (business or credit) when they went out to keep the system working. This requires informing the stewards to ignore the "Do Not Disturb" light and knock before entering. Another example of programmers/designers trying to do too much with the technology!
My cabin stewardess and her assistant were smiling, happy and very friendly. Actually, this goes for the vast majority of staff encountered. The maitre d' was very co-operative and did a table switch for me as I like to dine alone. My dining steward, from Indonesia, was charming and very efficient. Most stewards appeared to be from Indonesia or the Philippines and were excellent. I hope MSC doesn't lose them with the new gratuity (service charge) they are starting. A charge or $12 a day will be requested from passengers. This would be fine if it went to the stewards but, like other companies, this will be split among cleaners, laundry staff, and other staff members, reducing the amount to the stewards and saving MSC some wages for the other departments. I was not able to find out who else is included in the pool. So far, there is no sign of unhappy stewards. Hope it continues that way as it is certainly a happy ship at present. I did find out stewards expect to lose a large piece of their incomes and so I decided to look after my own stewards instead of supporting the new $12 "service charge".
Food was excellent, whether in the dining room or up at the buffet. Most nights, the menu is three menus in one – Stars and Stripes, Italian and International. Passengers may choose items from any of the three menus (mix and match). It seems to work quite well and the three menus are provided in four languages. On "gala" nights (formal), there is a single menu. Suggest you bring your own malt vinegar if you like it on fries or fish & chips. They offered me balsamic when I requested it. I suggest you make use of the soft ice cream machine at the lunch buffets and the ice cream desserts at dinner. It is a shame that the wonderful ice cream created by the Italian pastry chefs is sold instead of provided at the ice cream bar. I hate to see the addition of charges for food. Included food was always a selling point of early cruises and charging for ice cream, coffee, etc. simply drops the appeal of the product.
The ship sails well. We experienced a following sea of about force 7 with winds to 50 mph and she barely moved. There is a clear image of the view from the bridge across the bow on the TV. I find it pleasant to turn the sound off and leave it on most of the time. Suggestion to MSC, please raise the camera a little. About 1/3 of the screen is taken up by the deck and the spare anchor. Raising the camera a bit would give a better view of the land ahead. There is also another channel with a live chart and navigational information. The clarity isn't as good but it can be very interesting.
Don't miss the buffet in Villa Pompeiana, deck 13. Not only is the food good and the service great but there are floor to ceiling frame-less windows which give a fantastic view, even from tables on the interior. Besides the usual array of hot dogs, hamburgers, salads and pizzas there is a daily carvery with roast beef, ham, turkey etc carved right before your eyes.
Boat drill was fairly short. I suppose it had to be with all instructions repeated in four languages. Not sure if it had to do with the nationality of the passengers but the drill was loud and not taken very seriously. One woman was laughing very loudly through it all and we noticed she was on her cell phone. There are disadvantages of trying to do everything in many languages.
The casino staff is very pleasant and friendly. They realize their rules are not the best but there is little they can do about it. Blackjack players should exercise caution with what they call European Dealing. The dealer takes the last card so there is no checking for a hidden blackjack. If the dealer comes up with a blackjack, all bets are taken including doubles and splits which gives the house a huge advantage. Players should avoid any actions such as splits or doubles when the dealer shows a ten-card or an ace. This seriously reduces the odds for a player to do well.
Most other games have the usual rules and your odds are reasonable. Obviously, greed rears its head with the use of the more-profitable American roulette layout in an Italian casino. That doubles the house advantage.
A few passengers wanted to play Texas Hold 'Em or craps but they couldn't find enough to get either game going the first week. Both were active the second week with the appearance of more American passengers. Dealers were very pleasant and efficient.
The ship is unusual in design with the mid-ship cabins set in from the edge of the hull about the width of the lifeboats. The bow and stern ends stick out. It seems very strange not to see the bridge or bridge wings from a mid-ship balcony. If the ship is not moving, the only way to see which is forward is to check for the front of the lifeboats. View forward and aft is a bit restricted with this design. Another unusual feature is a lack of clocks. They are usually found all over passenger ships but I noticed only two between lifeboats! I wonder if this had anything to do with staying on ship's time in Canadian ports rather than adjusting to local time!
Cabins are clean and well laid out with ample storage. Beds are comfortable and there is a desk and small sofa. The shower works well and the TV is quite clear. Unlike some ships, the thermostat actually changes the temperature!
In summary
Ship is kept very clean inside and out. This includes the customary seamen scrubbing portholes and hull in port with 20-30 foot brushes when in ports and an external balcony cleaning with notice given to passengers.
Special mention – Mandi, a young lady from the front desk, is from South Africa and did a super job of controlling a group of 100 back-to-back passengers off the ship, through customs, back into the terminal and then back on board in New York. "Waiting is what we do!" she said many times to keep us laughing. She deserves a raise!
Negatives –
1. – If there is a lounge to sit and look over the bow, I couldn't find it. Like many lines, this prime viewing area is assigned to the spa/beauty salons so you can peddle in front of a window. If you want the view, you will have to pay extra for it. Don't even think about checking out the view from the spa. Those little ladies are very protective!
2. – Mid-ship balconies are set back into the hull restricting view forward and aft. I'd prefer the cabins nearer the stern. The ones at the bow would also be fine except they are such a long walk to the food – both restaurants and the buffet.
3. – I guess it's common now but I really don't appreciate being charged for food in a cruise ship.
4. – Casino needs to change blackjack dealing style to match North America and remove the unfair house advantage which kept me off the tables for 12 out of 14 days.
5. – Not sure if I appreciate a notice about EMERGENCY DRILL in New York. "We inform all guests that a General Emergency Exercise will be held today at around 4:30pm. You are not required to participate". Yes, the drill is really just standing around while everything is repeated in many languages and I had already done it in Quebec but it felt very strange to not be out there in that fresh, fresh air!
6. – I really think they are overdoing it with so many languages. I would expect that the vast majority of passengers would understand English, French, or Spanish.
7. – In my view, MSC is really sailing into danger replacing gratuities with the $12 a day service charge. Yes, they'll save a buck or two on the salaries of the cleaners, laundry workers, and everyone else who gets on the list of people who share BUT the dining and cabin stewards will get about a 50% drop in pay and I'm afraid you'll lose some of these excellent workers as another line found out!
8. Listening to other passengers brought out a common thread, communication and organization are weaknesses in their eyes. Passengers rated shore excursions very highly for value and content but the organization as poor because the desk often could not pin down departure times – even morning or afternoons! Some complained about difficulty being understood when talking to stewards. It should be noted I had no such difficulty and noticed none from my vantage point in the dining room. Actually, the stewards communicated better than many of the supervisors!
I'd rate this product very highly. The negatives are few and the positives are many. If anyone is nervous of motion sickness, this is the ship for them since she barely moved in gale winds from several different directions.
Fred Cherney,
Master Cruise Counsellor


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Lowe Alpine Peak Attack 35:45
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Visit Lowe Alpine's Peak Attack 35:45 page.
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The Lowe Alpine Peak Attack 35 Backpack breaks down so you can carry exactly what you need on your next ascent without an extra ounce. We all know lighter is better, but Lowe Alpine is able to accomplish this without sacrificing pack durability. That means performance and reliability.
- Backcountry.com
Lowe Alpine Peak Attack 35:45 The Peak Attack is a favourite that has been updated using the latest technology and ideas The result is a very modern pack that like its lighter brother the Alpine Attack ticks all the requirement boxes for the modern alpinist. Key Features and Benefits: * Patented Headlocker axe attachment system that will cope with virtually any axe on the market * New easier to handle WebCatcher system for fastening axes, skis and poles * Stowable adaptive fit hipbelt * Adaptive fit harness and hipbelt ensuring the best individualised fit for maximum carrying comfort Additional Features: Tuck-away climbing-compatible hipbelt, with gear loops; Headlock buckle for ice tools; Ski carry system; Comfortable Air-Mesh back; Removable lid, frame-sheet etc for lightweight ascents. Load zone: 13-18Kg / 29-40lb
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text:
I saw this story and wondered whether young people are still under Barack Obama's spell:
At a meeting to promote the health care law at the White House on Wednesday, Obama told a group of young people, "I'm not allowed for security reasons to have an iPhone." <source>
WOW, Obama!! Now that American youth know that you would have an iPhone if only you were allowed, they're going to log right in to HealthCare.gov, register their personal information, and start paying for health insurance that they DO NOT WANT!!
You are BRILLIANT!
"I'm really one of you," you seem to be saying, and further that you are subject to the same "authority" that limits some of their freedoms too!
Way to identify with them, man. You are so hip it's amazing.
Just one thing though: these kids understand technology, you see, and the word is out on your monstrosity known as Obamacare…
The enrollment records for a significant portion of the Americans who have chosen health plans through the online federal insurance marketplace contain errors — generated by the computer system — that mean they might not get the coverage they're expecting next month.
The errors cumulatively have affected roughly one-third of the people who have signed up for health plans since Oct. 1, according to two government and health-care industry officials. The White House disputed the figure but declined to provide its own. <source: Washington Post, Health-care enrollment on web plagued by bugs>
And they also know about this…
"When you develop a website, you develop it with security in mind. And it doesn't appear to have happened this time," said David Kennedy, a so-called "white hat" hacker who tests online security by breaching websites. He testified on Capitol Hill about the flaws of HealthCare.gov last week. "It's really hard to go back and fix the security around it because security wasn't built into it," said Kennedy, chief executive of TrustedSec. <source>
So you see, Barack, the fact that you are "not allowed to have an iPhone" but that you would have one if you could, is a pathetic joke of rhetoric that today's youth see right through.
Or do they?
Well, at least we can say this for sure: today's youth are not so blinded by their love for your fraudulent regime that they will expose their medical data on a website that was built with security as an afterthought.
They will not use your Hindenburg known as Obamacare willingly.
How far will you go to make them comply?
PS: I want to thank you for inadvertently teaching American youth that the federal government is hopelessly inept and not to be trusted with complex systems. You are doing more to defeat your Communist ideology than any of us seem to be able to do.


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Manila - Capital of the Philippines and Triving Metro Area
Mania, the thriving capital of the Philippines, is moving forward into the 21st century as a mega-hub of business and commerce. The Philippines today, seems to be moving very quickly as a developing country heading toward first world status. Manila, is at the center of that growth in just about every aspect.
As you look at the Metro Manila skyline of today you'll see a many new skyscrapers projects reaching the heavens, numerous integrated work/shop/live communities taking shape and some of the largest shopping malls in Asia. It's easy to see a bright economic and social future for this city.
Metro Manila, also known as the National Capital Region (NCR). This consists of sixteen legislative districts (municipalities) and encompasses a population of approximately 12 million people as of the 2010 census. With a land size of only 9,524 acres, making this thriving and diverse metro area the most densely populated city in the entire world.
Many visitors to Metro Manila find the dense population, traffic, hot weather and air quality intimidating at first. But those brave souls willing to give Manila a few days or more will quickly fall in love with the people, food, cultural diversity and unlimited things to do while visiting.
Mall of Asia – If you enjoy shopping, then the Mall of Asia, otherwise known as MOA, will be a required destination for you. Dubbed the largest mall in Asia, you can spend the entire weekend at MOA and still not see and do everything. Some standout features include a huge bowling alley, ice skating ring, multiplex theater to unlimited shopping, fine and fast food restaurants and coffee shops. If you are making a trip to Manila, then you simply cannot miss this shopper's haven.
Green Hills Shopping Center – Bargain hunters will want to be sure they make a trip to the Green Hills Shopping Center located in the city of San Juan (part of Metro Manila) just north of Manila proper. Here you'll find an incredible array of bargains at over 2,000 vendors and storefronts. Vendors and shoppers alike from all over Southeast Asia meet here for a celebration of shopping and fantastic deals.
Green Hills features an indoor-outdoor theme and is contained in a spread-out array of buildings having different appearance and some separated by main arterial roadways. The good thing is all the buildings are connected via bridges and other pathway connectors.
Green Hills had its beginnings in the early1960s as one of the first-of-its-kind in all of Asia integrated community. The project was planned as a first class development with the shopping center at as the main hub of the project. The ahead of its time master planned concept included a supermarket, a movie house, variety stores, bowling alley, service shops and restaurants. Due to this master plan concept, the San Juan area drew a highly diverse and generally well-to-do residents. There are even churches incorporated into the mall with Roman Catholic and Muslim chapels in the same general area.
Almost no one pays retail or asking price at Green Hills. You are expected to deal and haggle with the vendors for the best price. You have to be careful though, many of the items are of questionable authenticity and may be counterfeits. While these type of goods may be acceptable in the Philippines, if you travel back to the states or other developed countries, you may find yourself either relinquishing the fake items or worse.
PAGCOR Entertainment City – The Las Vegas of Asia is being built and is currently open for business in the Philippines capital city of Manila. A massive 15 billion dollar project, known internationally as Entertainment City or in the Philippines as Bagong Nayong Pilipino is being constructed on newly reclaimed land on Manila Bay. Just south of the Mall of Asia, Entertainment City launches the Philippine into the 21st century in style. This project's scope is enormous with literally thousands of hotel rooms and numerous mega casinos with elaborate gaming areas, showrooms, movie theaters, arcades and integrated high-end shopping facilities at each facility.
Resorts World – This complex may take you a couple days to traverse and features an entertainment complex consisting of more than you could hope for at an integrated complex of incredible, opulent extravagance. This single facility, in all its grandeur, includes the Maxims Hotel, Remington Hotel, Marriott Hotel Manila, Newport Mall, the Newport Performing Arts Theater, high-end cinemas and the Philippines largest casino. Resorts World Manila takes your palate on a journey of a lifetime with food for high-end tastes. Food and its preparation are held to a higher standard at this resort. International cuisine from all corners of the world is served by world-class culinary experts and celebrity chefs. If you are looking for the best steak in town, authentic Cantonese, fantastic Japanese-Korean fusion or local Filipino favorites, you'll find it here in the best of form. There are too many fine dining restaurants, bars, coffee shops and fast food places to name. One thing is for sure, you'll always be able to find your heart's desire at this amazing complex.
Solaire Resort Casino – Walk into this casino and witness 1,200 of the most modern slots and 300 gaming tables staring you in the face. This is a 1.2 billion dollar investment in big-dollar, high stakes, maximum fun casino action and hotel accommodations. At the Solaire Casino, luxury knows no bounds. The high limit areas, private gaming salons & an outdoor-themed casino & entertainment bar provide non-stop gaming action. Even with all of this elegance and high dollars, there are still games of chance for every level and budget. The hotel is rated 5 star with a total of 488 rooms to suit the finest of taste.
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School, work, friends, guys, teachers, leaders, parents, family, homework, projects, exams, graduation.... it just goes on. Life is such a chaos majority of time. Either sibling games at the fields or driving to college every other day or to hanging clothes at the GAP.. it just seems I don't seem to catch a break. & when I do , I immediately just want to crawl in bed & snooze all day. See, life is busy. that is just the truth I have learned. Don't get me wrong, I am SO very thankful to God for the opportunities & people he has placed me with currently. God never promised we wouldn't feel as if we could pull all of our hair out from the things piling up. As I grow older & continue to progress through the journey, things WILL continue happening. The stress will grow as I continue my education. As I work, the tasks will get greater & longer. Eventually, I will be on my own. ( scary I know ) It wont magically get easier. Recently I have felt like I don't have enough time to breathe much less actually be a productive human being when I am not actively somewhere else like school, church, or work. When I get home or am not "scheduled", I feel burned out. Irritated to say the least. Ya know when you feel like you are being targeted in all angles so youre the deer in headlights just kinda stunned to a stop in the road. yeah, I feel like that deer paralyzed by the headlights coming. The choice I am realizing is how I am going to deal with it. AM I going to let irriatation invade my heart like it has been ? Or am I going to put my priorities in the hands of my father in heaven? Tonight I really dug into the word more than I have in several weeks because I have gotten in the terrible habit as I said of just crashing when I get home. The thing is.. I feel SO much better after I read truth & have the living word of God flowing into my heart. In the she reads truth devo today, they took a look at Luke 10: 38-42. I LOVE THIS STORY & LESSON Jesus teaches in these few verses.
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"
41 "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
I am so Martha right now.. I am tossing through college flyers.. flying through hundreds of emails.. working like crazy.. homework piling up for finals.. I am trying to prepare my table as the she reads truth devo connected it to this story. I just want it planned & ready. I need it perfect so I can pursue my dream & passion.. which is for God. But.. I keep squeezing him out of it while I set the table. This really made me sit back & just say goodness this is Jesus speaking to my troubled busy soul right now.. QUIET. Kalyn, just sit before the Lord & listen. Listen to his word. Listen to his goodness & grace. Embrace yourself in his presence. Be more like Mary who sat at the Father's feet before she attempted to figure it all out. That's my prayer & foundation for this week, that I will make more time for God & put him FIRST before I try to have the feast all sorted out. Without God, I will never know what he wants & where he will lead me. The only way to my full purpose & calling in God's story is through the writer. Allow him to be the writer today before you run off to edit it. God's love will endure forever. His love & grace will not be taken away. He will never leave nor forsake us. Thank you for reading, hope this encouraged you in some way :)
Much love


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so as fishy and myself were casually talking about the dinner i had with the beloved seaweeds, fishy said she misses Mellben too and Weixian said he has never tried. How could he have not tried? and den we realised that Irene and Crystal also have not tried so we made a date to have Mellben for lunch!
fried spinach with mushrooms...
the spinach was good.
fried buns...
expensive salted egg prawns!
expensive coz while they were nice, they cost around $22!
butter crab...
pretty good!
but my favourite is still their bee hoon and that soup! super good!
we had a delightful lunch!


text:
Hello friends! I can't believe it has been almost a month since I've posted! Sorry about that! Things have been pretty busy around here and I've got a big project in the works. If it all works out, I'll be posting about it soon...
In the meantime, a few weeks ago I had the privilege of making a birthday cake for a friend of mine. Happy Birthday Matt! I was given a little guidance in the design, which I always like, but was given some creative license, too. So this one was a lot of fun!
Here it is!
This was my first time attempting a square cake. I think it turned out pretty well, though the fondant gave me some fits. Perhaps I need to tweak my recipe. In any case, I really like how it turned out in the end! I really love the combination of colors on this one! Very simple, but elegant and masculine. Perfect for a 40th birthday party.
The decorations are all made of modeling chocolate, which is so nice to work with! It cuts beautifully, holds up very well, and tastes delicious. You can also fix little imperfections by simply rubbing them out with a finger. The warmth of your finger will melt the chocolate just enough to fix the flaw or join a seam.
The hardest part of this design was the argyle pattern on the bottom tier. I thought it would be simple math, especially on the flat side of a square cake, but it ended up being surprisingly difficult to get the diamonds to line up properly. After about the third try, though, I managed to nail it! Ahhhh....learning is never simple, is it? And learning was never so tasty either!
The dashes are made from royal icing that I piped on by hand. To keep them straight, I marked out the lines first using toothpicks and a ruler.
I am usually the one taking pictures of my cakes, but my friend insisted I be in one with the cake this time. I guess it's kind of nice to be in a picture with one of my creations!
This cake was also so, so tasty. One of the best combinations: chocolate cake with coffee buttercream filling, covered with chocolate ganache. I have never been so thankful for cake scraps and leftover icing!
One of these days, I should have a cake scrap party and, when I'm finished with a cake, invite friends over to sip coffee (or wine) and eat the cake scraps with the leftover icing. Who's in?? :)
Thanks for stopping by!


text:
Story #1: We had a greenhouse visitor. A couple days ago, I checked inside our little greenhouse to see how my plants were doing. Out of the corner of my eye, I say something brown and fuzzy. I thought it was a mouse, but turns out it was a little dark-eyed junco.
Story #2: The older chickens are not my friends right now. My awesome chicken proof fence around my garden is still awesome, but totally not chicken proof anymore. They figured out how to fly over it and have done some serious damage to my stuff.
* Onions - 1/2 of them gone, the other half, trampled
* Peas - half totally trampled and buried
* Green beans - seeds ripped out of the ground
* Kale - one row trampled/eaten
What the hell. I'm so mad. Now I can never let them free roam again unless under someone's direct supervision, or get (meaning buy, most likely,) a taller fence. The part that we made out of sticks is working well, it's the other real fence that they're able to jump over. I just don't think we have enough sticks to replace it. I guess to Home Depot we must go.
Story #3: Did you know the sun has been coming out lately? I guess you'd have to live in cave to not notice that. To me, sun means happiness, warmth, flowers blossoming, and being able to dry my clothes outside! YES. I love knowing that I'm using a completely renewable and free source of energy to dry my clothes.
|Being able to do this makes me very happy.
* Turn your darker clothes inside out. I'm always a little afraid that the sun will bleach them, so turning them inside out helps prevent that a little.
* Make sure your underwear is hidden in between large things like towels and t-shirts. (We have a grumpy neighbor who might complain if she had to see our unmentionables.)
* If you don't want your towels to be super stiff, take them down just before they get completely dry and give them 5 minutes in the dryer.
Lastly, a picture of a magnolia flower. It blossomed so late this year I forgot I even had a magnolia tree in my backyard.
|Look at all those stamens!


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You can reserve a spot on a guided walk at Ano Nuevo State Reserve, north of Santa Cruz, during Elephant Seal breeding season to get up close and personal with the action. Without a guide you're not allowed in. The only opening we could find was early this Saturday so we went! It's near the end of the season, so there wasn't too much "action" happening, which was just fine with me :)
The abandoned lighthouse keeper's house in the background is on an island that has broken away from the coast only in the past few hundred years. Now it's infested with seals and sea lions.
This "weaner" was checking us out between yawns and belches. These babies are left behind by the adults to grow big enough to head out to sea on their own.
Some others were testing out their swimming skills in a pond in the dunes, and we even saw one little guy push another little guy into a ditch where they both floundered for a while before climbing out. That was really funny.
Here's a harem with a big male (check out his snout!) in the middle and some females feeding their babies. The lucky lady on the left has a GPS device glued to the top of her head and a number died into her fur (they say it's Clairol). You can see both if you zoom in on the photo.
We also caught a quick glimpse of two big males facing off. Scary! We had seen a similar scene further south, closer to San Simeon another year at some random beach beside Route 1. Ano Nuevo is much better protected from people and has facilities and information.
The walk was fun and interesting - I'd definitely recommend it if you can get a reservation. Our docent knew quite a lot and clearly cared a lot about these cool creatures.
Monday, March 1, 2010
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11/11, birthday candles, and shooting stars -opportunities to Make a Wish.
Even though most of our childhood wishes of owning a pony or being a princess do not often come to fruition, the folks at The Make a Wish Foundation are making these dreams a reality for children with life threatening illnesses.
The Make a Wish Foundation has expanded the designated times our society has "allowed" for wish making. For them, wishes should be made and can be granted any time.
Ranging from police station visits to Disneyland holidays, the exhilaration is apparent. As "a source of inspiration for children undergoing difficult medical treatments and a positive force that helps them overcome their obstacles [, a] wish experience is often more than a dream come true: It's the catalyst that rekindles their belief in themselves and the promise of their future."
Shuttling between doctor appointments and medical procedures, it is often hard even for the most optimistic to remain positive.
Sometimes they just need an escape, a brief fantasy.
So in swoops the Make a Wish Fairy.
While 40% of Make a Wish wishes involve a visit to Disney in some way, Christopher James Greicius' wish in 1980, which ultimately started the foundation, involved a visit to the police station. Dreaming of becoming a police officer when he got older, 7 year old Chris was indeed part of the police force for one day. Clad in a custom made police officer uniform accompanied by a motorcade, Chris forgot about suffering from leukemia for that day.
At that moment, his wish was a normal part of his world and his routine.
With some help from "NBC Magazine," Chris' wish making story became the norm for sick children around the world. Since its humble beginnings in 1980 to its worldwide success today, 198,004 wishes have been granted, that's one wish every 40 minutes.
While so many of us are caught up in our daily routines, often frustrated by life's insignificant trials and tribulations, there are unique souls, albeit physically sick ones, who have not given up on their dreams. In fact, they have found a way to achieve them.
For them, impossible does not exist.
Please visit wish.org for more information.
(The Make a Wish Foundation gives strength and joy to ill children around the world through wish-granting work.)


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Garfield, the fat, lazy, lasagna lover, has everything a cat could want. But when Jon, in an effort to impress the Liz – the vet and an old high-school crush – adopts a dog named Odie and brings him home, Garfield gets the one thing he doesn't want. Competition.
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©2014 By Bob Litton
No, I can't hear. Hear what?
The wind yonder among those rocks,
how it bends them with sound
so like a single strum on a guitar —
lightly, yet strong.
Its will will not be thwarted;
it will force the rocks to sing.
The Encompassing Panorama
The cliffs here create a canyon
that meanders like a dry river.
Through valleys and canyons amid the mountains
our highway winds; cliffs beside
and precipices beside
dictate our path.
The view taunts, humiliates, our vision's periphery,
now enlarging, now enclosing at each bend in the road.
So far the valleys extend this way and that,
a cliff only crowds us.
What vista looms at our back?
Why can't we encompass the sight?
It sticks out so at each end,
like an unwieldy box we try to wrap.
Nothing to frame the scene:
No moulding, no cornice to contain a wild gone wild.
Eternality of the Rocks
How can one love a rock?
Why call a pile of frozen lava "beautiful"?
Forever resides in the rock: the dead lies eternal.
So, is that its pull?
That the rock was here millennia before us
and will remain millennia after?
Its silence is contemptuous.
Yet, I almost want to hug it.
My soul yearns for the rocks,
and as much for the trees.
The sunlight gives such form to the stone!
Without that highlighting
there is no scenery!
We give these rocks names
as a way to control the rocks
or to direct ourselves.
We must know where we are:
Being lost is a dizziness we can't tolerate!
The other side is hidden unless we walk around;
and then this is hidden, unpossessed.
A total view might make the rocks immortal,
do you suppose?
Mysticality, Reverence and Awe
Aeroplanes penetrate the red and blue heaven —
high above, leaving their white vapor trails.
Such tiny planes and their puny effort to invade heaven,
too miniscule even for a laugh.
Cacti and juniper cling to the mountainsides,
leaving their own shadow trails.
There's no gauging the distance one from another:
They might as well be two-dimensional
since they have no real sizes.
And to right and left
the cacti and junipers continue on
without a comma even.
It is an expanse of green and brown and gray-blue
holding dominion over our eyes
which we cannot rescue.
Is the sublime divine?
It makes my heart ache with reverence
and quake with fear —
Was I here when the boulders were bubbles of flow?
Somehow? Any how?
They ridicule me with their dumbness.
Fragility and Mortality of Man
They make me fall away, fall back upon myself —
Looking outward so far
forces me to look inward too deep —
Are these the only choices?
Outward into a vast desolation,
inward into a vast desolation?
I am not a rock: I move, I love, I die.
My mortality is always apparent; not so the rocks'.
I know rain wears the rocks away: I've been told.
But each day's shaving shows me a fissuring face:
I can see my slow death; not the rocks'.


text:
Buena vista?
I've been running Windows Vista in the excellent Parallels. I don't have enough virtual power for the Aero interface (maybe in a new release of Parallels), but apart from that it runs well. I'm underwhelmed by Vista. I'm not sure why. There are a couple of possibilities:
- I've been waiting and reading about it for such a long time, so nothing seems new or exciting.
- It doesn't do anything I can't already do in Tiger or most Linux distros
Or it could be that I've not spent enough time with it. In some ways I'd be happier if I'd had a stronger reaction. I don't love it, but I certainly don't hate it. The fact that Visual Studio 2003 isn't supported is a notable negative – but, overall, it's OK. Right now, it feels like a missed opportunity. I'm not excited.


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Kesko divests Estonia and Latvian properties
Kesko has divested seven store sites used by Kesko Senukai in Estonia and Latvia to UAB Baltic Retail Properties.
At the same time, Kesko has acquired a 10% shareholding in the property investment company.
UAB Baltic Retail Properties' main shareholder is CPA:17 - Global, a property investment fund managed by the US based W. P. Carey Inc., with a 70% ownership interest. The three owners of the property investment company remain in the company as minor shareholders with a total shareholding of 20%.
UAB Baltic Retail Properties has already earlier been an important lessor to Kesko Senukai in Lithuania. In connection with the arrangement, Kesko Senukai has once again leased store sites, which the investment company had already previously owned, as well as new store sites, which have now been transferred to the investment company for its use on 15-year leases with extension options.
The entire deal is valued at approximately €174 million. The selling price of the properties owned by Kesko was €64 million, generating a profit of €50 million on the divestment. Kesko Group's net cash inflow from the arrangement before tax is approximately €58 million.
Kesko Group leases a total of 19 store sites from the property investment company and as a result of the arrangement, lease liabilities increased by approximately €124 million. The arrangement will not have any significant impact on profit.
Kesko Senukai is the Kesko Group company responsible for building and home improvement trade operations in the Baltics and Belarus. Kesko Senukai is the clear market leader in the in the region with 54 stores. In 2016, Kesko Senukai's sales were close to €600 million.
Source: Company Press Release


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- You know when you are trawling the internet, and you happen across something amazing, and you just want to tell someone about it?, but, chances are, you are sat, on your own smiling a little smile to yourself about how awesome said thing is.
-Well I'm going to show you my stumblings!
- I recently discovered a project by Leandro Erlich . (He's from Argentina - 'nuff said)
Pictures can be found here
Leandro Erlich 1999
- The idea is that he creates the illusion of a real swimming pool, with all the fixtures, but then there appear to be people under the water, where secretly they are in the basement. . . blows my mind!
- I just love the whole concept of this. . . imagine you're viewing a house
"oh look it has a pool" - *trots outside*
"what the heck?!"
- It would be class! . . and I still have the mental capacity of a 12 year old! ah well, simple things ey?!
- The whole construction is pretty seamless, and that's what makes it so awesome. Having said that. I'm a swimmer at heart, I'd take a real pool over this anyday!
- Definitely check out some of his other projects on his website. I won't get into an argument on "what is art" because whilst I don't believe this is traditional art, I think it's something fun to look at.
- Any ho-down, I hope you enjoyed as much as I did, If you ever have anything crazy-random that you discover on the internet, share it with me! Always interested!


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I want to talk about Africa as an African. I've heard so much about the continent since I was a small child and now Africa figures prominently in debates as I pursue my studies in the United States. As you all know, Africa and its people have been used and exploited for centuries. Historians often say that history repeats itself. I agree that this is true when we look at how Africa has been treated for the past 200 years. Foreign interest in Africa started with explorations to discover Africa. Now, there is another way of using Africa to get better opportunities which serve the self rather than the developing country of interest. The work becomes trendy, something to flaunt to get internships and acclaim stateside. Many privileged young people come with the mentality that they want to "initiate" something, or "do something" to help Africa or change Africa.
Many people publish books about Africa, as if they have the fortunate position of articulating the continent from a Western perspective, something the locals don't have the affluence or space to do. They have good luck, and these books make them rich. These people are thus helping themselves in the name of helping Africa, feeding their own fantasies rather than the reality of the country. Some people even go so far as to collect money giving talks about Africa. After publishing their articles, and still making more money, these foreigners are invited into schools and colleges to give talks. If schools and colleges need someone to talk about Africa, I would encourage them to invite an African to talk about his/her experience in Africa. There is no way someone who visited Africa for less than a month will be able to start giving complex and accurate talks about Africa. Furthermore, Africa is not a country as many people think. There are many countries in Africa. Let the Africans speak about Africa, the many African experiences, as Africa is the most diverse continent in the world.
Africa for Africans is what I'd like to advocate, a phrase used by Marcus Garvey, a man who died fighting for the liberty of African people. African problems will never be solved as long as many advantaged young people from the western world think that they can save the world through starting organizations or volunteering in Africa without a deep engagement or understanding of the community they seek to improve. Without understanding, volunteers take advantage of community and community takes advantage of volunteers for a quick fix, a tiny drop of money. This is not challenging the community to engage, and this is not challenging volunteers. Money alone does nothing, and volunteering alone the same. I always want to cry when these short-sighted organizers talk about Africa, and how they are going to solve our problems.
The answer is that most of those people are using Africa, they don't want to help Africa. They come to Africa thinking that they can save the world but instead, Africa is changing them. They come back to the Western world, get good jobs and use their African experience for their greedy purposes. While they are getting better jobs and positions the poor needy Africans keep on suffering. The reality is, no single one of us, especially an outsider is going to be responsible for solving the deep problems of a country.
I'll say again, they don't have answer for the Africa's problems. Africans can and must solve their own problems. These solutions can be arrived at if Africans are given access to partnerships and the resources that were taken long time ago and are still being taken from Africa. Africans also want the same media attention that the rich young westerns enjoy when they come back to their home country while the locals are not mentioned. I'm tired of seeing young privileged youth from the top universities given attention while the small people in the heart of Africa who are doing great change on the ground are not mentioned.
I speak from my own experiences. I worked in Kibera slums for more than ten years. I was used by people from outside, who didn't want me to see anything good from Kibera. They wanted to continue exotifying poverty but real sense they didn't care. They came with their own ideas of how they could save Kibera and I turned a blind eye to them. I know, money cannot solve Kibera's problems. I know a few organizations working in Kibera but based in America. They waste their resources by paying outsiders to come and run their organizations in the slums. They have good network that help them to exploit the people on the ground who never read their glossy brochures. This kind of organization will never help indigenous organizations. They are threatened by the indigenous organizations, the people moving mountains without piles of money behind them. The rich western organizations only help by organizing sports tournament for those in the slum. This perpetuates the idea that slum people are only capable of kicking around a soccer ball, but are incapable and undeserving of a serious education. Instead of spending thousands on "community building exercises" like soccer tournaments or discussions build schools. Build hospitals that are actually accessible (unlike the ones that pretend to be open to everyone, but secretly raise the prices when the foreign donors get back on their planes).
I'm writing from my own pain as a slum boy. We all know education is the only way out but they denied us education. They don't want to engage the community, they don't want the communities share their thoughts with them. I know they build hospitals in the slums but all are expensive. Their health centers are more expensive than the local unqualified health centers in Kibera. I felt that I was being used because I was poor. I founded a community organization in Kibera and some existing western organizations in Kibera refused to cooperate with my organization. Even though many were not willing to work with, but there are few organization that believed in partnersing with the communities to achieve their goals for example AFK that exposed me internationally. If other organizations can be like that, then a lot can be done in Africa. There is no change without involving the community. How can you help Kiberans and yet you don't want to work with them? I say this because some organizations make ideas in Western world and pretend that those are Kibera people's ideas. The fact is that some western organizations working in Africa always pretend that the organization is run by the locals as a way to entice donors, when this is rarely the case! But in real sense these kinds of projects will not last for long. You can fool the locals for a moment, but you can't fool them forever and one day they will stand up for their rights. They will stand with good friends of humanity all over the world who want to spear head the change from the ground level. I still emphasize that as a say goes; " no man is an iland." We need each other but in a positive and in a partnering manner with the locals.
No one can save Africa without working with Africans. They can't save them if they keep seeing Africans as primitive. Any privileged person who wants to work for the poor must first respect them and treat them as equal partners. And they must know that poor people know their problem better than any outsiders. I've been helped by great friends from America and Europe, they supported me because they belived in me. They help me to develop my own ideas and I'm still working with my woderful people especially in America who always made my dream come true.
I would urge people to try and restain from word "changing the world" as no one can change the world, the world is such a big place. But I know we can all do something together that brings a positive impact to the society piece by piece.
When I say partnership, I mean real partnership. I've seen many organizations using Africans who are less educated as their partners to sing songs and stand as symbols of suffering. These same Africans are denied agency of power in that organization. They are just being used in name in order for the organizations to get some grants. We want real partnership—50-50 power sharing.
I founded Shining Hope For the Communities with my partner Jessica Posner. We are both equal, both bring different insights and experiences to our work. Our partnership in life and in our organization brings something new to our work. I bring my experience living in Kibera for twenty-three years while Jessica brings her detail oriented, managerial skills… Our projects are also being prepared from the ground, where I grew up, and our work in America is to find the resources to help implement the projects that the community has decided on. Our work is also not possible without the guidance, advice and support from our board members and partners who bring positive aptitude to the organization.


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New Delhi, May 25: Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umari, Ameer (National President) of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, has strongly condemned the deadly terror attack in Manchester Arena, Manchester on Monday. Ameer-e Jamaat expressed grief at the death of innocent young people and offered condolences to their families.
"We strongly condemn the killing of innocent young people of Manchester. There cannot be any justification for such barbarity. This is clearly inhuman and deserves absolute and unequivocal denunciation. The perpetrators must be brought to book and awarded the harshest punishment," said Ameer-e Jamaat.
"Islam prohibits wrongful murder of even one person leaves aside the mass murder of innocent citizens. Islam calls for protection of human life. The cruelty shown at the Manchester Arena or killing of innocents anywhere in the world is utterly deplorable and highly condemnable" said Maulana Umari.
On 22 May 2017, a suicide bombing was carried out at Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. The explosion killed 23 people, including the suicide bomber and injured at least 120 others.
Media Department
Jamaat-e-Islami Hind