Harmonic Convergence

Harmonic Convergence is a globally synchronized meditation for peace.  Adherents believe that signs indicated a “major energy shift” was about to occur, a turning point in Earth’s collective karma and dharma, and that this energy was powerful enough to change the global perspective of man from one of conflict to one of co-operation. Lets try again…

http://www.zenmoments.org/on-the-toss-of-a-coin/

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Steve Jobs delivered an inspiring commencement speech to Stanford University in 2005.   Here is the link and a few of my favorite parts.

http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die.html

No one wants to die.  Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.  Death is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by Dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

We all know this, but, do we really do this?  We hear advice such as “stick to your own guns”,  “paddle your own canoe”, “find your passion”,   “a job worth doing is worth doing well”  You can’t seem to find your destiny or passion or calling? It must be understood that a job is not a life it is simply how we pay for a life. We are dust rolling around and collecting into what we become.  No dots may get connected and yet a life can be enjoyed .

Hospitals can be humbling.  A 34 year old patient lost her life to cervical cancer.  No pain, no nausea, just quietly and quickly slipped away.  She gave $60 to a friend to go get her sister out of jail.  The sister made it to her bedside before she died.  Did they choose this life?  Was it a fun carefree life or an irresponsible life that somehow became tragic?

Steve Jobs said, that he dropped out of school in order to take the courses that he wanted rather than the ones he was required to take.   Without a degree in something many of us might flounder or find ourselves unable to feed our children. Education is wonderful if you don’t know how to make computers in your garage. Nurses, doctors, scientists, teachers, some of our favorite people are the result of a good education.

Others live a carefree life and they share the fish they catch.  Living a carefree life can be great as long as it isn’t irresponsible.  Then again living a structured life can be great as long as there is  gentleness and spontaneity thrown in.  Living a life surrounded with people  love.  If there are no dots to connect and no passions to pursue than just live a life worth living.

“Peace does not come through prayer, we human beings must create peace.” — Dalai Lama

An email being passed around included a photo of a white man on a motorcycle  and his thoughts.

he rambles on in the e-mail about being white, conservative, tax-paying, gun-owning, and patriotic.  He also states that America is for him and those like him and the rest of us need to shut up or leave.

so I wished him well and went on to read another e-mail.

The beautiful small town of Eureka Springs Arkansas celebrated another weekend of hugs and love.   This photo was included…

See the guy with the Rebel Flag? He is protesting the diversity weekend celebrated in Eureka Springs, Arkansas three or four times per year. Some attendees are gay and this guy thinks they are against God’s rules and rebel rules and the north should never have infiltrated the south. Not sure really what his message is but he is allowed to peacefully sit among the happy hugging and sign carrying revelers to present it.   No one is telling him he needs to go live somewhere else.  Although a few kids were creeped out when he “pet them”.

Many conversations involving politics in America end with someone telling someone to go live in a different country; which is an unacceptable response for one American to propose to another American. Loving this country involves a respect for what our founding fathers created and the subsequent Amendments that uphold their ideals. Our freedoms are for all people of all ethnic backgrounds and religions, including but not limited to Christian white men.

When people disagree with your love of the planet and each other–> wish them well and go on your way.

If they keeping taking from the middle class the American dream will cease to exist.

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We’ll exile ourselves to places like  Costa Rica, Italy, Germany and Norway for the same reasons our forefathers came to America.  Us worker bees will leave the tyrannical hedge fund managers and their big oil buddies to play with their –  own 401k’s.

It might be a good thing — no one left to fight their wars.  Perhaps they’ll stop booting out the illegal aliens;  who may be needed to clean their mansions and perform CPR on their stressed out hearts?

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

Voltaire

Senate Republicans pledge that their first crack at repealing The Affordable Care Act (ACA) won’t be their last.  Some refer to it as Obama’s Health Care Law or Obamacare.  The ACA is about Freedom.  Some factions are adamantly drilling in the idea that the ACA is taking away our freedom to not have insurance.  They push the idea that the government is trying to control your body and kill your grandma. When our presidents wife suggests we grow our own food and get more exercise she is compared to Stalin.  It is OK for a child to grow up and die in a war to protect our freedom to not have health insurance?  Please read the truth…

Today, employers can begin submitting applications for the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program. Created by the Affordable Care Act, this program provides $5 billion in financial assistance to employers, unions and state and local governments to help them maintain coverage for early retirees age 55 and older who are not yet eligible for Medicare.

For too long insurance company bureaucrats have stood between Americans and their doctors. On Tuesday, President Obama announced new regulations that will crack down on unfair practices by insurers and change the balance of power back in favor of consumers – putting consumers back in charge of their health coverage and care.

Secretary Sebelius marks the three month anniversary of the Affordable Care Act with a live webchat where she will answer your questions.

Today, HHS announced new investments under the Affordable Care Act to support prevention activities and develop the nation’s public health infrastructure which will improve health and enhance health care quality.

To read more facts go to…

Most Americans without insurance don’t have insurance because they can’t afford it not because they don’t want it.  The gentleman who owns the small restaurant had to let his family plan go to keep the business afloat and ignored his chest pains.  The waitress let her private plan go after rates increased due to her kidney stones in order to pay for her condo she paid too much for in 2005.  Most emergency rooms are full of “self-pays”  because self-pays use ER’s as their only source of health care.  Preventative care does not exist for the average self-pay American.
Most restaurants and small businesses can’t afford to offer insurance plans and private plans are expensive, with high deductibles.  There are a those not yet experiencing problems with their health, but they have rent and weddings and cell phone plans to pay for and insurance premiums just don’t fit in to the budget.

The ACA will enhance our freedom — freedom from worry about accidents and sickness, freedom from worrying that if you use your insurance the rates will go up or worse yet you’ll no longer be covered, free from discrimination, free to provide insurance for our adult children, and free preventive care for seniors.

My favorite freedom is the freedom to have your own business because you are no longer forced to work in the corporate world to provide insurance for your family.  Many corporations don’t want us to have that kind of freedom and are backing politicians who convince us to keep things just as they are.

Just be careful what you wish for.

“…The health care law is little different from Social Security. The court unanimously recognized  in 1982 that it would be “difficult, if not impossible” to maintain the financial soundness of a Social Security system from which people could opt out. The same analysis holds here: by restricting certain economic choices of individuals, we ensure the vitality of a regulatory regime clearly within Congress’s power to establish. The justices aren’t likely to be misled by the reasoning that prompted two of the four federal courts that have ruled on this legislation to invalidate it on the theory that Congress is entitled to regulate only economic “activity,” not “inactivity,” like the decision not to purchase insurance. This distinction is illusory. Individuals who don’t purchase insurance they can afford have made a choice to take a free ride on the health care system. They know that if they need emergency-room care that they can’t pay for, the public will pick up the tab. This conscious choice carries serious economic consequences for the national health care market, which makes it a proper subject for federal regulation.

By LAURENCE H. TRIBE

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I feel that an individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune that one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace – anxiety, doubt, disappointment – these are definitely less.

Dalai Lama

Did you know that Monsanto (the same company that brought us agent orange) together with Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer controls almost all agriculture in the World?  They are like drug suppliers except they are in the seed business.  Ever wonder why the fruits and vegetables at grocery stores are so big and plump and colorful compared to the fruits and veggies at farmers markets?  Monsanto adds stuff, pesticides and they have created hybrid seeds that the farmers have to buy.  They have a contract. Small farmers have been successfully sued by Monsanto when they violate any terms of the contract.  Drug suppliers send out heavies that break your arms and Monsanto sends out heavies in the form of lawyers that break your family.

Independently owned farms are actually corporate farms as long as they use Monsanto seeds.  This is a fact of life in the US and we have grown accustomed to our giant red and yellow produce. Literature tells us to eat colorful food to be healthy.  Many Americans are wising up and going to farmers markets and food co-ops to avoid the pesticides and antibiotics and fungicides like Thiram that are added to Monsanto seeds to make stuff look better.  We have hospitals full of antibiotic resistant diseases and cancer.  Do you think there is any relation?

I had my own garden many years ago when I was pregnant with my son.  We had the good fortune of renting a little Wisconsin farmette that had been abandoned for many years after the owners died.  We washed the house and painted it.  We took the 10 year old cow crap that was in the barn and put a little clump at the bottom of every hole and put seeds and starter plants in the bottom.  It was a small town and people took pride in their gardens.  This garden was my first and my neighbors were full of wonderful advice.  I wrapped my tomato plants with newspaper to prevent pests, I picked off the little sucker growths, and I planted as they advised to make sure the tallness of the corn didn’t block out the sunlight to the lower plants.  We had a pear tree, an apple tree, and a concord grape vine.

I had a basement full of potatoes, giant red tomatos, squash, peppers, melon and everything was huge and colorful.  My take on all of this is we buy the cow poop from organic ranchers and pay Wisconsin farm wives to teach us how to grow stuff.   Then we won’t need seeds with scary additives.

Meantime, I was reading an article in “Yes” magazine…

Monsanto has donated to Haiti some of their hybrid corn seeds.  These seeds are treated with the fungicide Maxim XO, and the calypso tomato seeds are treated with thiram. [ The EPA determined that EBDC-treated plants are so dangerous to agricultural workers that they must wear special protective clothing when handling them. The EPA also ruled that pesticides containing thiram must contain a special warning label. The EPA also barred marketing of the chemicals for many home garden products, based on the assumption that most gardeners do not have adequately protective clothing. Dress like an astronaut to do your gardening?

Vía Campesina, the world’s largest confederation of farmers with member organizations in more than 60 countries, has called Monsanto one of the “principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples.” [In the United States –>The Center for Food Safety has led a four-year legal challenge against Monsanto that has just made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. After successful litigation against Monsanto and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for illegal promotion of Roundup Ready Alfalfa, the court heard the Center for Food Safety’s case on April 27. A decision on this first-ever Supreme Court case about GMOs is now pending. [14]

Go to

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/beverly-bell-in-haiti/haitian-farmers-refuse-monsanto-hybrid-seeds

and

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/food-rebellions-7-steps-to-solving-the-food-crisis

if you’d like to read the entire article and others like it.

No one would have followed Martin Luther King if he had said “I have a nightmare”, as mentioned by energy secretary Ed Miliband.

We need to unite in being good to this earth.  It has been so good to all of us.  I am  hopeful that the decision makers representing the world in Copenhagen are uniting in the dream — and not denying the nightmare.

We all know the nightmare –> So many pictures of people riding bikes in China through polluted air with face masks.  Stories of asthmatic children in the Bronx breathing diesel fumes.  Photos of decapitated mountains in West Virginia and the subsequent coal muck escaping in to small towns.  Growth was so big and so fast that sewage spilled in to drinking water in Florida.  Many fists pound many tables when you suggest that economic gains can be achieved through sustainable living that preserves this rare jewel we call Earth.

Polluters love muddling the facts, and making fun of the nightmarish scenarios.  Some scientists  actually feed the machine that is profiting currently.  The collaborative machine of industry, shipping, air flights, hospitals, manufacturers, and on and on are horrified by the idea of changing energy production and usage. We have evolved to need cheap stuff, more than we need liberty, freedom, water, food, shelter and coffee.

 

 

 

 

 

So lets describe the dream… Andrew Gilligan wrote an article for the telegraph.co.uk…“ Copenhagen is a city filled entirely with bicycles, stuffed with retrofitted, energy-efficient old buildings, and seems to embody the civilized pleasures of low-carbon living without any of the puritanism”.

Costa Rica produces 99% of its energy from renewable sources, reversed deforestation and is aiming to become a carbon-neutral country by 2021 by combining its ministries of energy and environment, and abolishing its army. Abolishing armies will probably never happen world wide, there will always be bad guys to fight.  We can dream though.  Other small island nations such as the Dominican Republic and Jamaica are also fairing well in levels of health and a very low footprint.

Nana Ruth taught me to write letters.  Many years ago she encouraged me to write to companies after enjoying a product or a stay or an encounter;  more so than when I was disenchanted.  It makes you look for good, inquire of names,  and jot things down.  When your looking for good you find it.  I’ve enjoyed this lesson and have received free loaves of bread, smiles, and plain ole good karma.  I’m so glad she taught me to write letters.

We stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Naples Florida  for my birthday last year.  I felt like everyone who worked there was only interested in me enjoying my birthday.  I made a point of remembering the names of staff members who wished me a happy birthday greeting as we passed in the halls, or as we played ping pong provided more coffee, or brought us another towel by the pool.  They knew my name?!    I felt like a celebrity.

There was a beastly woman with an older man by the pool. She was loud and rude to the pool attendant, who continued to accommodate her until she finally quieted down and settled into a spot that suited her.   I would have snatched the towel out from under her repugnant self and wrapped it around her neck, but, he remained kind and accommodating.  I wrote a letter and included his name and the names of other exceptional staff members, and received a printed response with a little hand written personal note stating that a copy of my letter had been given to each named staff member personally.

The Ritz made it very easy for me to do this.  In our room there was a stamped envelope with their address on it.  During my drive home I wrote the letter and filled out their form and mailed it back.  Of course there is an online version as well, but, I like the handwritten option.

Congressman Boozeman always writes me back a personal note in his own writing with a blue pen at the bottom of a pre-scripted printed page.  I don’t always agree with him, and that is usually what I am telling him, but I am impressed that he includes a personal note explaining his thinking. I bring it to work and share it so others can see his handwritten note and that it does make a difference to “write your congressman”.  Senators Lincoln and Pryor respond via e-mail — sometimes.

Dan and Chip Heath wrote… In America alone, there are about 2.7 million call-center employees who are standing by ready to soothe you. That’s roughly the population of Kansas. But what if you’ve got joy in your heart? Good luck finding someone who cares.

That’s a tragedy on multiple levels, first for the employees who never receive your warm fuzzies. Pick any non-customer-service employee at random from your company. When was the last time that person received positive feedback directly from a customer? If the answer is “never,” that’s as cruel as an unwatered plant.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/129/made-to-stick-i-love-you-now-what.html

I have worked as a travel nurse in various hospitals for several years.  One hospital in Boca Raton Florida stands out in my mind because patients wrote letters to the hospital telling them how wonderful we were.  Sometimes my name was included with the names of others and we each received a personal copy.  I saved them.  I was only there for six months, but, collected more letters of appreciation than all the other places combined.  I don’t think I was a better nurse there.   What is it about Boca Hospital that makes people write letters of appreciation?  Did the hospital make it easier for the patients to write compliments?  Were they given a stamped envelope?

Companies should pave the way to praise.  Maybe you appreciate the extra-deep cup holder in your Toyota, which holds your venti latte snugly. Where do you send the thank-you note?

One last little story.  Seth was working at an airline counter at Miami International Airport.  I had just arrived from Dallas after missing my flight to Ft Myers due to weather.  It was very important for me to be in Ft Myers that night because my son had been in a motorcycle accident and was on life support with multiple injuries including brain injury.  It was the worst 22 hours of my life just trying to get to him in a February snow storm.

Airline personnel just fell into a category of cold and uncaring that night, the more I cried, the more they didn’t care.  I’m sure they have listened to many sob stories and they weren’t moved by mine–> then I met Seth.  He was in their ranks until I quietly explained my situation without tears.   Seth arranged for a van to drive me to Ft Myers since no flights were leaving until the next morning.  During the ride over I wrote the airlines and told them what a Godsend Seth had been.  I don’t remember, now, what airline Seth worked for, they never responded; but,  I will always remember Seth.