Donna Eden and Energy Medicine

One of the most comprehensive books on the subject of energy medicine is, in my opinion, the book entitled "Energy Medicine", by Donna Eden.

Donna Eden has been able to see colors around people since she was a child, and didn't realize that this was a rather unique ability until she was in her early twenties - she had believed until then that everyone could see the colors that she could see. Her ability to see colors helped her to develop the many techniques that are described in her book. She had a private energy medicine healing practice for many years and worked with thousands of people during that time. She also used her own techniques to overcome a number of her own health problems. More recently, she founded a school with a two-year programme for becoming certified as a practitioner of her methods (which, if I win the lottery, I will immediately sign up for).

Because I find it easier to learn by seeing someone do something vs. reading about it in a book, I recently ordered the 3-DVD "Energy Medicine - The Essential Techniques", described as "A Companion to the Book Energy Medicine or an Independent Program to Optimize Your Health", from her website. The quality of the videos is very good (although the user interface to them could be better), and Donna Eden is a delightful presenter. The videos contain six hours of Donna Eden demonstrating the exercises and techniques described in her book, including how to work with the meridians of Chinese medicine and the chakras, and her own unique exercises for improving the flow of energy within the body for better health, such as her Five-Minute Daily Energy Routine.

Whereas the videos are demonstrations of all of the many techniques described in the book, the book provides more background information and includes selected accounts of experiences with people Donna Eden worked with in her many years of private practice. She also touches on subjects such as the colors and meaning of the chakras. Since she is able to sense energetically and to see so much when she works with a person, everything she describes about the chakras is coming from her own personal experience and is sometimes very different from the explanations or interpretations of them that one finds in most other sources. For example, she is very definite that the first chakra, the root chakra, governs sex (in most other texts, this is assigned to the second chakra). She also says very firmly that, while the standard colors do serve as a guide, she sees many other colors in every chakra - that the various chakras in a person are frequently other than the colors assigned to them in the standard literature and that they often contain multiple colors.

I highly recommend her book!

Wiener Schnitzel!

Tonight I made Wiener Schnitzel for dinner. It is so good when it's homemade, and so easy! Basically, you need rather thin slices of pork which you should then hammer with a mallet on each side until about 1/8 inch thick or even a little thinner. Salt and pepper the first side before turning over to hammer the second side, then salt and pepper the second side after hammering it. Dip the hammered meat first into flour so that it’s dusted all over, then into beaten egg until completely coated, then into fine (like coarse sand) bread crumbs. The breaded meat should be fried in a flat skillet with about ¾ of an inch of heated peanut oil. Fry on each side until the breading is a nice deep golden brown. Remove to a plate with paper towels to absorb the excess oil. It must be served with lemon wedges - squeeze the lemon over it before eating.

You can use chicken breast instead of pork, but you need to then hammer it a little more gently, because chicken breast is a much more delicate meat. When chicken is prepared this way, it is called “Huehnerschnitzel” in German.

As an accompaniment, I cut some broccoli into florets, peeled some brussel sprouts, added a fair amount of virgin olive oil and some salt, mixed it all up well with a slotted spoon, then put the mixture on an oven tray and roasted it at about 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) until a bit brown (about 10 minutes).

20 minutes on the bus...

Since the beginning of November last year, I have been working towards becoming a Quantum-Touch® Certified Practitioner. One of the requirements is 60 hours of practice sessions, of which I have completed 53.5 hours, so I hope to achieve Certified Practitioner status by the end of April. Since late January, I have been giving free (since I am still an apprentice) QT sessions to people at work during my lunch hour in order to accrue the 60 hours. A part of me feels like this energy work is kind of like "hocus pocus", especially since none of the people I have worked on so far have reported any long lasting effects from their sessions with me, although most do report feeling relaxed, refreshed, and that their energy seems to be flowing better at the end of a session. I know that I feel energized at the end of a session or whenever I work with the breathing and imaginative techniques.

What keeps me going is the hope that this kind of energy work really does have a positive effect. I have heard and read about various results from QT work such as the realignment of bones and quick relief of pain, but I have yet to actually see or experience anything very exciting. The most amazing tale I have heard so far was related by a participant in one of the Quantum Touch workshops that I attended. She described the unexpected and remarkable healing of her father who had been hospitalized and had not been expected to pull through. The man, more than 70 years old, became very ill and no one knew what was wrong with him. He was rushed to hospital by ambulance and had been in hospital for nearly a week and was not expected to live. She called her friend, a Quantum Touch practitioner, and asked that he do some distance healing for her father. While he was on the bus, he did the distance healing for twenty minutes for her father. That evening, her father started vomiting violently. This went on off and on through the night. The next day, he started to improve, and he was discharged from the hospital two days later.

Some inspiring blogs...

I started this blog because of reading something in a book that I disagreed with so strongly that I wanted to express my opinion in such a way that more people than those with whom I live would read it. I really still feel very strongly that life on earth is random and that, while there may be a universal power or being, there is no universal power or being micromanaging everything that goes on here.

When I started this blog, I never expected that I would ever post as much as I have, since I really am a person of few words. Also, prior to starting this blog, I had only ever visited a handful of blogs, most of them political. Once I joined blogspot myself and had access to my own personal dashboard and its "Blogs of Note" page, a whole new world of really beautiful blogs written and assembled by very thoughtful and creative people was revealed to me, and my interest in my own little insignificant and unremarkable piece of cyberspace faded. I'm finding it more fun to keep up with what other people are writing and posting than to add much to my own blog, plus there is so much going on in my life right now and I don't have a lot of extra time to write. I do feel inspired by these other beautiful blogs, though, and maybe someday, if I ever get any extra time, I will try to make my blog a little more beautiful, or at least a little more interesting with photos or something.

If you look at my Profile, you can see all of the blogs I've been following. All of them are interesting in some way. Of all of them, three of my favorites are:

Merisi's Vienna For Beginners : Such wonderful, colorful, magical photos!
Strawberry Fields : More beautiful photos by Merisi!
Miradas Cantabricas : Amazing close-up photos of birds!

Everyone can be an artist...

"Are not painting and color inspired by love? Is not painting merely the reflection of our inner self, whereby even one's skill with a brush is surpassed? It has nothing to do with it. Color with its lines contains your character and your message. If all life moves inevitably toward its end, we should during ours paint it with our colors of love and hope. In this love lies the social logic of life and the essential part of each religion." -- Marc Chagall

I love this quote from Marc Chagall, because he seems to be saying that it doesn't matter if you can draw or not - that every person can express their own unique character and message through color. I think everyone can be an artist and should try putting color on paper or canvas. I don't have time in my life right now, but someday I hope to find time to do this.

My Chicken Bryan

I really enjoy cooking and eating good food, and have collected many good recipes over the years. I've been thinking I might morph this blog into a recipe blog with photos, but I just haven't gotten myself organized yet.

One of the most amazing dishes I have ever had at any restaurant is the "Chicken Bryan" at Carrabba's. I found a copycat recipe from a Google search, but I think that it has way too much butter in it (nearly one cup!). Here is my variation. I'll try to remember to take a photo next time I make it, but that might be awhile, since BBQ weather is not exactly around the corner!

Marain's Chicken Bryan
Serve with steamed broccoli or spinach and a dry white wine
Serves 6

* * * * * Sauce * * * * *
1/2 cup dry white wine (110 ml)
1 small onion, minced
4 cloves garlic, crushed
4 Tablespoons butter (55 grams)
4 Tablespoons Chavroux (mild goat's cheese) (55 grams)
2 Tablespoons lemon juice (or to taste)
at least 1/2 cup cream (more or less - to taste) (110 ml)
ground black pepper
* * * * * Grilled Chicken * * * * *
6 chicken breasts, skinned
olive oil
salt
black pepper, ground
* * * * * Topping * * * * *
fresh basil leaves
10 ounces sun-dried tomatoes (in olive oil), drained (285 grams)
11 ounces Chavroux (mild goat's cheese) (300 grams)

Directions:

1) Sprinkle each chicken piece with salt and pepper and rub each piece with olive oil. Grill the chicken pieces on the BBQ for about 20 minutes.

2) While the chicken is being grilled, put the white wine into a small saucepan on medium heat and put in the chopped onion and the crushed garlic. Simmer the mixture, stirring occasionally, until the wine is nearly gone.

3) Add the butter, about a tablespoon at a time, stirring after each addition while the butter melts. Add the 4 Tablespoons of goat's cheese. Add the lemon juice and cream, but add it gradually and taste the sauce while you do this and add more lemon juice or cream, according to your taste. Later add some ground black pepper.

4) Rinse the sun-dried tomatoes under cold water. Just squeeze the tomatoes to remove excess water, then chop them into strips.

5) Just before the chicken is done cooking on the grill, preheat oven to highest temperature using grill setting.

6) When the chicken pieces have been cooked through on the BBQ, put them in an oven-proof dish large enough to hold all the pieces and the sauce.

7) Cover each piece completely with basil leaves, then cover the basil leaves with drained sun-dried tomatoes, then put about 3 tablespoons of sauce over each piece. If there is sauce left over and it will fit into the dish, put the extra sauce around the chicken pieces, then top each piece of chicken with a couple of scoops of the goat's cheese.

8) Put the dish into the oven (the rack should be at the highest setting that the dish still fits under the grill).

9) Grill for approximately 8 minutes (or until the the sauce around the chicken is real bubbly).

a long-dead horse...

I've been a little under the weather, but also at a loss as far as what to write about, since what has captured much of my free mental space for the last eight years has shifted. In 2000, after the (still) unbelievable success of legal arguments not to count votes, I joined the ACLU. After 9/11, I started studying Arabic as a kind of rebellion against the demonization of Arabic-speaking people by the neocons and religious right. I wanted to be able to read their magazines and newspapers, and to have conversations with real people, and not just get the Western opinion and propaganda (this has since become a very long-term goal, as Arabic is unbelievably difficult). In 2003, I hoped and prayed that diplomacy would be chosen - that the inspectors would be allowed to finish their work - only to despair. In 2004, I found the book "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11" by Dr. David Ray Griffin, suggesting in a very convincing manner other explanations than the official story and I became and will remain interested in this issue until a proper investigation is undertaken. The 2004 election result was a shock, since it was not in line with the exit polls or with polls in the run-up to the election. Further research produced information that electronic result flipping had likely occurred. I agonized nearly every day for approximately eight years about the erosion of democracy in America and, time after time, I watched Democrats in Congress cave in to every demand of the "administration" - it seemed inexplicable, as though the resident had some magic potion that turned everyone into obedient zombies.

I didn't follow everything in detail. It was all so much - too much - the warrantless wiretapping, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary renditions, Guantanemo, authorities no longer needing court oversight, probable cause, knowledge or permission of residents to conduct warrantless searches of private residences, the threat of indefinite incarceration at the whim of some goverment official. Even within the last weeks before the inauguration, further icky things were approved, like the dumping of millions of gallons of toxic waste from cruise ships one mile offshore of the eastern USA coastline.

Fortunately, about half way through these long dark years, I found some websites that became my daily dose of sanity: Glenn Greenwald, The Brad Blog, and The Existentialist Cowboy. Glenn Greenwald has the ability to explain legal matters in a way that is captivating and understandable and spoke eloquently and forcefully against the legal arguments used by Bush&Co to justify their lawbreaking. He is still speaking out about legal issues in a very understandable way, and it is worth subscribing to Salon to read his column without all the ads. Brad Friedman has been working tirelessly to inform public officials and anyone who will listen of the dangers inherent in the use of electronic voting machines - a true modern day hero of democracy who will go down in history as such. And Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy, raging against all of the atrocities, not only of the last eight years, but also of more distant times, showing connections between so many seemingly unrelated persons and events, and frequently putting into words frustrations that I had felt but could not voice - like a good thunderstorm to clear the air, he cleared my mind and helped me to see so many things.

I'm glad for and relieved about the regime change and believe that at least the intentions are more in line now with what the founding fathers had in mind, but I'm kind of wondering what Obama thinks about bipartisanship now that ALL of the Republicans and 11 Democrats in the House voted against his economic recovery package. Bipartisanship died even before Bill Clinton. The only "bipartisanship" has been Democrats going to the dark side. I wonder if he will somehow be able to revive this long-dead horse.

beautiful birds...

Many years ago, during the last winter I spent in the Pacific Northwest before I moved to Europe, I had the good fortune to experience the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count, an annual event that has been going on for more than 100 years where volunteers from all over the United States go out into the cold winter weather to count birds. The volunteers that year were organized by the husband of a friend of mine who had been an Audubon Society member for many years and who had a good many Christmas Bird Counts already under his belt.

Our task was simple: Go outdoors with our binoculars, notebook, and pen or pencil, look for birds, make note of their types and numbers. Ultimately, our data was sent to a central Audubon Society office where it was tabulated and used for creating a census of birds in the entire country for that year.

It was wonderful trudging through the snow, scouting for birds, finding and watching them through the binoculars for a whole day. When I returned to the warmth of my house at the end of the day, I remember having a feeling a peacefulness that I have never felt since.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing about this is that the Blog of Note from 21 January 2009 was Miradas Cantábricas and consists of some of the most beautiful photos of birds that I have ever seen. Except for not being outside, looking at these photos of the birds is as good as the Christmas Bird Count and makes me want to venture out into the cold this weekend to see what birds I might be able to find. Check it out! It's in Spanish, but you don't need to be able to read the words to enjoy the photos, although it's useful to know that if you click on the words "Entradas antiguas" at the bottom right of the page, you will get a new page with more photos from earlier blog posts.

Energy Medicine

One of my interests is energy medicine. I have explored various approaches. The ones I currently find most interesting are Zdenko Domancic Bioenergy Therapy and the work of Donna Eden which is based on Touch For Health which has procedures for testing and balancing the 14 primary Chinese medicine (TCM) meridians.

This morning, I was looking at a book called "Vibrational Medicine: The #1 Handbook of Subtle-Energy Therapies", by Richard Gerber, MD. There is a chapter in this book about scientific studies that have been done with persons who describe themselves as spiritual healers. These studies show that, even from a distance, such persons can have a positive effect on plants, animals, and water, and that, in general, the effects are always towards life, health, and improvement, and away from entropy. One of the studies suggested that anyone could learn to do this kind of work and that effectiveness seemed to improve with practice.

by their fruits you will know them…

What I don't get about Christian fundamentalists, apart from their inability (unwillingness?) to see that much of the Bible is metaphorical (Jesus himself is famous for his metaphorical stories - the parables), is that they pay so much attention to quotations from the Old Testament (to be discussed in some future post maybe) and to what the apostles, his imperfect followers, had to say. In my view, the most important and only entirely essential information required by a Christian is to be found in the gospels.

Although the apostles were delegated by Jesus to carry on his work, they were still fallible and made mistakes. They were different from you and me only in that some of them knew him personally, but that wouldn't automatically make them great teachers themselves. I have known at least one great teacher in my life, and I can tell you that neither I nor any of the other students who learned from him could ever presume to convey more than an imperfect remembrance of only a very small portion of all of the things that he said and did during the time that we knew him. Great teachers speak truth from a place of inner certainty and knowing. Jesus spoke from his own inner awareness and certainty of the fact of his divinity and of ours (from the Christian viewpoint, logic dictates that if God is our father, we are his children, and therefore also divine – another future post, maybe). When Jesus said "follow me - I am the way", he was instructing his followers to BE like him.

It is my opinion that the writings of the apostles in books other than the gospels could be compared to this or any other blog post where someone writes about what they think about some subject, and such writings may or may not be of any value in terms of ultimate truth. I think one must really consider and decide for themselves whether or not to accept as truth anything that is written, no matter where it is written or who the author might be.

Some of the breadcrumbs of Jesus' thought processes, however, which could be useful for someone who wanted to emulate him, remain in the few things that he is alleged in the gospels to have said and done, although likely not everything was recorded accurately or completely. Nevertheless, it seems to me that what Jesus had to say, and his reported behaviour as recorded in the gospels should provide the definitive behavioural guidelines for anyone wanting to be Christ-like, and while there are some inconsistencies, mostly the messages are pretty consistently:

- "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"
- "forgive others"
- "do not judge others"
- "feed the hungry"
- "visit the sick"
- "give to the poor"
- "be merciful"
- "love one another"

and, moreover,

- "love your enemies"

I have wondered, since many supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, how Christian fundamentalists reconcile with their supposed faith and "saved" status the dropping of bombs on anyone, since Jesus admonished "love your enemies", and taught such things as "Blessed are the merciful", and "Blessed are the peacemakers", and "whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of judgment", and "for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil", and "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not him that is evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also". I can't find anything in any of the recorded words or deeds of Jesus that would justify dropping bombs on anyone.

Jesus also allegedly said some pretty amazing things like

- "greater things than these shall ye do"
- "if you had the faith of a grain of mustard seed, you could move a mountain"

I don't see any Christian fundamentalists trying to move mountains or perform miracles, or even trying to convince anyone else that this is possible, and I bet if anyone started moving mountains or performing miracles, there would be a huge outcry that the miracle worker/mountain mover is the anti-Christ. If Jesus came back again, would he be recognized? Would the fundamentalists accept him or call him the anti-Christ? How would they know it was him and not some impostor?

These long dark past eight years, I have wondered how those who think of themselves as being Christians could continue to support and defend an administration that, among all the other terrible things it has presided over, so obviously cares nothing for the poor and has done everything possible to facilitate further filling the already over-full coffers of the very rich.

Jesus is also reported to have said "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits". A lot of bad fruit has come out of the Bush administration - we now have a 10 trillion dollar deficit (this seems like minus fruit to me), there is a huge financial crisis with more and more people losing their investments, their retirement funds, their jobs and their homes with each passing day, more than 1.3 million Iraqi people are dead because of an illegal war undertaken on the basis of known lies - these are but a few examples of all the bad fruit. Bush and his minions are at least false prophets and Bush is himself possibly the anti-Christ, except he will be gone in a few days and hopefully won't feel inspired to push the button as his last dastardly deed before we see the backside of him. I hope that the next time we must endure the frontside of him, he will be sitting in a court of law where he will be made to answer for his many crimes. He claims to be born again, but his fruit says otherwise - a bad tree (my apologies to all trees, but please blame the Lord for the analogy) who won't be gone soon enough for me.

my favorite luxury...

I like a lot of different kinds of music, but mostly I prefer silence. If any music that I know or like is going on, I can become totally distracted from whatever task is at hand. Music can take over my mind completely, so that anything requiring careful or analytical thought becomes impossible. Even worse, listening to just about any music can have the effect of it repeating endlessly in my mind for days or even weeks afterwards, which can be especially annoying if the songs are ones I don't particularly like, or thought I liked very much but after hearing them for the five thousandth time in my head I don't like them so much anymore. I suppose on the plus side, this capability that I seem to have of being able to replay any song in my head repeatedly can be convenient because I don't need an iPod or a CD player when I want to listen to my favorite songs, but I feel happier when there are no songs playing in my head and there is only silence.

I sometimes enjoy listening to lively, energetic, "up" music when cleaning house - I can get a boost in my energy level from such music, with the knock-on effect that the work seems easier. Sad music, on the other hand, can leave me with a feeling of melancholy for days, and since I do tend to find the sadder songs more beautiful, I have to be careful not to listen to them too much since I prefer to be in a good mood.

Any kind of interesting, complex, or beautiful music can space me out to the point that it's dangerous if I happen to be driving at the time. I once nearly caused an accident while listening to such music in my car, but fortunately other drivers were paying attention. I rarely listen to music in my car anymore.

I purposely never play music in the car when other people are with me, as I prefer having conversations with people when I am driving. Maybe other people can talk when music is playing, but I don't seem to have this ability. Music takes over my mind and I find it very difficult to carry on a conversation. My children have never been very happy that I never play music in the car while driving them to school and back, but we have had many interesting conversations over the years and I am certain that the silence allowed these conversations to happen.

Before the days of radio and other modern audio devices, most people only ever listened to music at church, concerts, and special events, unless they were musicians and could play an instrument or sing for themselves. I think that the modern world suffers from an unfortunate gluttony of sound. Nearly every public place plays some kind of music, as if silence is some sort of negative state that must be avoided at all costs.

For me, music is a type of noise, not always unpleasant, but always distracting from what's going on inside me. Silence allows me to hear my inner voice and to have control over what thoughts I think and what feelings I feel. Silence helps me to know what I feel and to deal with how I feel. I prefer silence whenever possible. It is my favorite and most valued luxury.

see this picture...

I feel an obligation to write something about 9/11 because I am convinced that the the twin towers and WTC7 were brought down by controlled demolitions, and as the tragedy recedes further into the past, I fear that finding out what really happened will become less and less important to people. I think it is very important to find out what really happened that day and to find and prosecute the true perpetrators.

I know that there are those who have never entertained the possibility of any other explanation than the official conspiracy theory, and it is frightening to think that something so horrific could be perpetrated by anyone, let alone by persons who might have been US nationals themselves. Most people are more comfortable with the idea that it was definitely carried out by foreign nationals. However, it is convenient, don't you think, that those who were blamed were from the Middle East where the richest oil reserves exist, situated in Afghanistan where the Taliban had been refusing to allow the building of an oil pipeline. I do not know who was behind 9/11, but I think it is useful to consider who might have benefitted and there is a well-researched article about this at the following link:

Cui Bono, Who Benefits from 9/11

If anyone thinks that the official version is true, I would urge them to view the video 911 Mysteries. You can see it online at the official 911 Mysteries website where you can also order copies of the DVD for a very nominal fee. The 911 Mysteries video presents the facts in a very sane and non-emotional way and when you take all the points together that are made in this film, it's hard not to see the official story as being itself a conspiracy theory - one that's filled with so many holes that you wonder how it got sold in the first place.

What has angered me more than anything since September 2001 is that the official story of 9/11 was used unashamedly to drive the policies of those in power. To me, using as an excuse this horrific crime, while knowing that the real perpetrators were not those of the official account, to disassemble the Constitution, to start an illegal war, to destroy our privacy, to defy the Geneva Convention, and on and on is beyond criminal and treasonous - it is pure evil. I just wish enough people could see this picture that I see.

GOP cyber-security expert explains how Ohio was stolen in 2004

"I don't care if my candidate wins as much as I care about being in a democracy. Either I am or I am not in a country that elects its leaders - that's what I want - and if my party is elected, great - and if my party is not elected, great - I still live in a democracy." - Stephen Spoonamore, Cyber-Security Expert and Republican - from Fifty ways to steal an election

Wow! YES! A cyber-security expert who is a Republican and speaking out about the threat to democracy posed by electronic voting! My hero!

In the Fifty ways to steal an election video, Stephen Spoonamore talks about how, while it is true that individual machines can be hacked, greater vulnerabilities exist when tabulated results from individual princincts are transferred over networks to centralized tabulating machines.

Since November of 2004, I have been trying to tell just about anyone who would listen that the 2004 election had been stolen. I was certain of this because I had been following the polls closely, had expected a Kerry win, and the exit polls did not agree with the final outcome. Many people I spoke with were surprised that GWB had been re-elected, but had not questioned the result (most people don't ever use USA and banana republic in the same sentence), accepting that this must have been what most Americans wanted. At every opportunity I would express my strong view that the result was not a real one - that the election had been stolen by electronic tampering - but this view was usually met with what I perceived as a kind of quiet skepticism, and only rarely did anyone immediately agree with me or appear to want to discuss the issue further.

I really believe that electronic voting machines pose the greatest threat to democracy everywhere. You can bet that if these machines do finally become accepted throughout the USA, the rest of the world will be the next frontier for the voting machine companies.

If you have any doubts about the dangers of electronic voting, listen to Stephen Spoonamore. He is a cyber-security expert and knows what he is talking about and, what's more, he is a Republican, so why would he lie? Did I really just say that? What I mean to say is, he is a Republican, so he has not got any kind of liberal or leftist agenda.

There are actually a number of Stephen Spoonamore videos that can be found at Velvet Revolution (page down about a third of the way to "Featured Video - GOP Cyber Expert - 2008 Will Be Stolen - Voting Machines Are National Security Threat"). The sound quality is not so great, but what he has to say is truly riveting. It is a rather long video, but underneath the main video there are additional links to the highlights from it, my favorite of which were:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyByZx5GEaw
It’s a network, people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YadsHqxid8I
Electronic voting machines are a national security threat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOHkY7sJ4ZI
Fifty ways to steal an election.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJHmuG8d2bQ
The Rapp Family: Ohio election cover-up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z7DK3LgiOA
Evangelicals and voting machines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WTe8ppEIic
Paper ballots please.

It doesn't seem like the results of the 2008 Presidential election (not sure about Senate and House races) were tampered with electronically in a significant way, although vote flipping was reported to have occurred in some precincts, and recounting of the same batch of ballots produced different results with each recounting in at least one place (see The Brad Blog for a lot of good information about these 2008 issues, as well as a wealth of other info about the dangers of electronic voting). However, even though the 2008 Presidential election does not appear to have been fiddled with, the threat of electronic tampering still exists and must be eliminated if true democracy is to survive. If you care about democracy, urge all public officials to get rid of electronic voting and return to paper ballots that can be recounted and audited if there are any questions about the results.

Spitball...

I have never been very fond of dogs, mainly because of their smell, but also because most seem inclined to jump up on me unexpectedly while slobbering. Having said this, I once had the good fortune to get to know a dog named 'Spitball', and ever since, well, if my life was such that I could have a dog, I would try to find one like Spitball.

Spitball was the dog of my daughter's husband who had played baseball avidly as a youngster and named his dog after a special kind of baseball throw. My daughter married into their relationship, along with her cat, and while the cat never really adjusted to her new circumstances, Spitball was quite happy to have another human being in his life, another animal to hang out with, and extra (cat)food sometimes when no one was paying attention.

I first met him shortly before my daughter's wedding. He was well-behaved - not the kind of dog who jumped up or slobbered on me - which made it easy to like him, and I found him very nice looking in spite of him being somewhat overweight. We didn't really spend too much time together, though, and I felt content to appreciate him from a distance. The most memorable event during my visit was that, while we were all out at a pre-wedding dinner, he found and ate a box and a half of the chocolates that I had brought from Europe as a gift for my younger sister. She was so mad, but I thought it was kind of funny, especially since parts of the cardboard chocolate boxes and plastic wrapping had also disappeared, never to be seen again. I later heard that chocolate is poisonous for dogs, but he was not affected in the least, and lived for many more years.

I didn't see him again until some years later when my daughter was about to give birth to her first child. He had lost a lot of weight since our first meeting, and was noticably older, but still of good cheer and as hungry as ever. Because of my daughter's condition, I helped out by going on daily walks with him. I'm not a very active person by nature, so at first this was a little hard for me, but I soon grew to look forward to our daily outings and really enjoyed spending time with him in this way.

We could not always take him with us when we would all go out together somewhere. On those occasions, they would put him in a special cage until we returned home (this because he had, in the past, done unforgiveable things like getting into the garbage, eating things he shouldn't have eaten, and doing other things that should not be mentioned). Whenever he was put into this cage, he would howl and howl until he was let out again, and I found this heartbreaking.

On a few occasions when I was at home alone with him and had to go out for something, I would take him with me because I just could not bear to put him into the cage. He became my pal - my buddy - totally accepting going out with me, a relative stranger. He was always very quiet, but excited in a subdued sort of way that he was going somewhere. Once, I took him with me to a friend's house. My friend also had a dog, and three ferrets that were allowed to run free, and a small pond with fish, and several cats. Spitball had such a great time hunting the ferrets, chasing the cats, drinking water from the fish pond, and hanging out with the other dog, and I felt glad that I had brought him with me to enjoy this different world.

Spitball had very kind eyes and such a pure heart that I could not help but love him. He taught me that non-human creatures are innocent and have no badness in them. Even though he is no longer here, I sometimes feel like he is with me, and I will always feel thankful to have known him and to have experienced his goodness for a little while.

we are so small...

This beautiful image of the Cartwheel Galaxy, one of the billions of galaxies in the universe, is from the galaxies section of http://www.astronomy-pictures.net/ where you can download space images for free.

action is important...

"The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy. Daily prayers are delivered on the lips of breaking waves, the whisperings of grasses, the shimmering of leaves." - Terry Tempest Williams

I was raised as a Catholic, went to parochial schools until I was sixteen, learned that only Catholics could get into heaven, and even wanted to be a nun at one point. In spite of all this, I abandoned the idea of hell in my early teens when, for about three years, I spent most of my waking hours outside. Confronted daily with the incredible beauty of cloud formations, sunsets, flowers, trees, coral reefs, and star-filled night skies, I could no longer believe that the Creator of these wonders would ever banish its creations to hell for all eternity. I rejected what I had been taught about eternal damnation without any reservations and without ever feeling a need to seek reassurance from anyone - it was my secret heresy and I enjoyed thinking about it secretly. When I was about seventeen, my Mom started talking to me about reincarnation and karma as possible explanations for the meaning of life and we had many discussions that ultimately had the effect of opening my mind to the possibility that the Catholic Church did not hold a monopoly on the truth. These discussions with her marked the beginning for me of a long and still-ongoing search for whatever truths there may be to be found in this world.

In the early days of this journey, I encountered for the first time some born-again Christians who seemed very similar to the Catholics I had grown up with. They were sure that they had found the absolute truth and that only other people who believed exactly as they believed could be "saved". Annoyingly, their approach to any new person was to ask "Are you saved?" Not being so distant from the Catholic Church at that point in my life, my reaction was "Well, of course I'm saved - I've been baptized as a Catholic!" Even now, though, after so many years, whenever I am asked this spiritually arrogant question, I find it really hard to react in a polite way.

In my opinion, being "saved" (if such a thing exists at all) is not something that would happen to me at some fixed point in time - as in some moment's grand revelation - but is rather an ongoing process of the choices I make - choosing to be kind or not, helpful or not, understanding or not, to do my best or not, day after day. Of course I am not perfect and do not always succeed, and sometimes I am even an opportunity for someone else to practice patience or not, but I will keep trying - I will to keep trying. I think intention and effort matter more than consistent outcome, and that even one totally failed effort to be loving is worth more than a lifetime's worth of revelations not followed up by action.

imagining color for peace of mind...

The original of the above image can be found at: http://4colorvision.com/dynamics/mechanism.htm

I changed it slightly, because the original image had a funny greyish dot in the middle of the white, so I put a little bit of white over it. I like using this image stretched out as my computer desktop image.

Anyway, the reason I looked for such an image was to help me with something that's relatively new in my life - a kind of walking meditation I do on my way to and from lunch at work or whenever I have a chance to walk somewhere. It is a way to clear my mind of any negativity for awhile and makes me feel very energized and positive. I imagine the purest colors possible in the following order: red, orange, yellow, green, sky blue, indigo, violet. These colors correspond to the seven chakras, so I also imagine them in the places of the chakras as I go along. For the heart chakra, which is green, I also imagine a beautiful warm rose pink color, like a flower, and sometimes I imagine gold after violet.

It occurred to me to try doing this after reading about color meditation in a book. The book described a sitting meditation, but since I really hate sitting in one place for any length of time unless I'm forced to do so (e.g., long airplane, bus or train trip), it occurred to me one day to try doing color meditation while walking.

I like it that I can do this imagining while I'm going somewhere and that the effects have been only positive - I feel better, and people I pass often smile at and/or stop to talk to me.

In the process of looking for a color image to help me with this exercise, I learned that color blindness is more common in men, that most human beings have trichromatic color vision (meaning they perceive color in three channels), and that about ten percent of women have an extra channel for perceiving color giving them tetrachromatic color vision. For more info on tetrachromaticity, see:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06256/721190-114.stm

life is random...

I started reading a book by a "New Age" writer - actually more like just flipping through it and reading random passages. Towards the end, the author started talking about the "dark night of the soul" and that supposedly a person doesn't experience this until they are "ready". I think this is just such a load of rubbish! I think, living in the world, we are all subject to random bad stuff that can happen and just happens, and that there's not any meaning in it and we are not being punished or tested or whatever. I don't believe in karma, except for the karma that we all share by entering this world again and subjecting ourselves to the randomness of the bad stuff that can happen by virtue of being alive (plus we all die someday - we can't avoid that). There's also all the random good stuff that happens to enjoy. The only things we have any control over are our state of mind, our actions, and our reactions. I think it's important to try to learn from what happens and to try to love and help and not judge the people around us - it's important to try to be a positive influence in the world.