Clouds Over

clouds over
ridge with redwoods ~
quiet morning















...

{http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2009/07/clouds-over.html ~ July 31, 2009}

Trumpeter Swan: Nontheist Friends, EDUCATIONAL FREEWARE, World University & School

Nontheist Friends,


EDUCATIONAL FREEWARE ~

Here, at World University & School, is a growing list of Educational Freeware: worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_Software -
it has some really good, free software, and, of course, as an open wiki (editable web pages), we can all add to this list, well into the future. You could see WUaS both as very ethical, potentially helpful and subversive at the same time, as well.


Nontheist Friends might find all of World University & School interesting - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com. It's like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware (1900 courses are already online), where anyone can teach or learn, either interactively or to their web cam. It's potentially in all languages, nation states, subjects and at all
levels. WUaS focuses on great Universities' content around the world for an academic side, as well on One Laptop per Child countries and these languages as they come online, but in its (nontheistically) Friendly side, it's open to new teaching or content, as you are so moved.

As the main developer thus far, I see World University & School very much in a Quakerly light; I've blogged about this aspect in some detail here - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com (e.g. search on the labels 'global university,' 'Quaker', 'nontheist friend'). And as an University and School, I see WUaS as privileging learning as conversation (based on reason - so, nontheistically). And like Quaker, unprogrammed, silent meeting, we can all share - teach and learn - in the ways we want at WUaS - perhaps expressions of respect for others. Like silent meeting and Quaker process, too, the internet is very distributed and non-hierarchical, and World University and School builds on these aspects.

If you want, teach something here, or add teaching content you find great - about any subject, and/ or learn. And please and let friends know (and join the Facebook group -
facebook.com/group.php?gid=48753608141 if you have a FB page). There are already a lot! of resources on this site if you start to explore the links. Enjoy.

World University & School is a far-reaching vision and opportunity to share ideas in ways that are very person to person, and potentially very helpful to people.


With friendly greetings,
Scott


http://scottmacleod.com
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com

{http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com July 30, 2009}

Jamaican Coraltree: Defend the Truth, World University & School, Jamaica

In the Jamaica-based "Students Expressing Truth - S.E.T" Facebook group, whose executive director is Kevin Wallen, whom I met at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society's 10th Anniversary (started by Harvard Professors' Charles Nesson and Jonathan Zittrain), I recently received this video, "Defend the Truth," in my Facebook inbox:
youtube.com/watch?v=lFmT-B-nibI&feature=channel



In reply, I wrote on the group's Facebook wall
{facebook.com/group.php?gid=40096435039}:

Thanks very much for your great DEFEND THE TRUTH video.

Check out also worlduniversity.wikia.com - where people can start teaching what they know in Second Life interactively, or to their web cams, or learning - in Jamaica, around the world, in Jamaican, about Jamaica, and about ideas. Invite students to start teaching.


*

World University and School is a wiki (editable web pages) which makes it possible to teach and learn freely around the world.

Let's make conversations about the truth wide spread through WUaS.

Wild Cherry Blossoms: CONSTRUING Loving Bliss, Research on Happiness & How to Have More Self-Discipline, Practices for This

How might we articulate loving bliss, and these approaches to happiness & how to have more self-discipline below?


*

Here's a recent blog entry on happiness & how to have more self-discipline from Penelope Trunk. She draws on great academic research about the subject.

Sonja Lyumbomirsky, a professor and researcher studying happiness, for example, suggests that the way we construe life significantly influences how we are happy. She's published "The How of Happiness." So, mindfulness and awareness can shape our happiness.

I'm curious how we might engage some of these insights, gained through scientific research about happiness to questions of loving bliss, especially vis-a-vis ecstasy (MDMA).

**

blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/07/08/how-to-have-more-self-discipline


How to have more self-discipline
by Penelope Trunk
July 8th, 2009

For a while I have been fascinated by the research about happiness. Some of my favorite research is from Sonja Lyumbomirsky, psychology professor at University of California Riverside. (She's great at listing really small things you can do to impact your happiness.) And from Dan Gilbert’s Hedonic Psychology Lab at Harvard. (I follow PhD students from that lab like other people follow favorite quarterbacks.)

But something I’ve noticed in the last year is that most of our happiness is actually dependent on our self-discipline. For example, we are happier if we exercise, but the barriers to getting to the gym are so high that it takes a lot more than missives from the Hedonic Psychology Lab to get us there. Also, Roy Baumeister, professor of psychology at Florida State University, has studied self-esteem for decades, and finds that when it comes to success, self-discipline is much more important than self-esteem.

So I have started tracking my own self-discipline rather than my happiness. And I think that the process is making me happier, because I am teaching myself how to bounce back quickly when my self-discipline falls apart. Here’s what I’ve learned:


Self-discipline is about small things paving the way for very big things.

My favorite piece of research from all the happiness research I’ve read is that self-discipline snowballs. That is, if you can work hard to have self-discipline in one, small area, you create self-discipline almost effortlessly in other areas. The most famous study about this phenomena is from Baumeister, who found that students who walked with a book on their head to fix their posture ended up eating better, studying harder, and sleeping more. Without even noticing they were making those changes.

(One of the more recent things to come from the Hedonic Psychology Lab is an iPhone application by Matthew Killingsworth that lets you add your own happiness data to the lab’s research. Ironically, the data entry for this application requires a level of self-discipline that will surely qualify as the type that snowballs into other areas of your life and increases your level of happiness. So maybe we should all participate.)


The key to self-discipline is finding an easy re-entry point.

I used to tell myself that if I would just get back on my daily workout schedule, the rest of my self-disciplined life would fall back into place. This is true. But it’s too hard. When everything has fallen apart for me in the self-discipline arena it usually looks like this: I am eating poorly, behind in answering emails, and I’m biting my nails. Then I start hiding from people because I feel too discombobulated to connect.

Fixing any one of those problems is big for me. So I go to something easier: push-ups in the morning, noon and night. I do it on the floor – any floor — and it takes 30 seconds because I only do five so that I won’t dread doing them. The act of doing the push-ups is like wearing a book on my head. It restarts my self-discipline after just a few days.


You need to give up perfectionism in order to get anywhere.

Perfection is the enemy of self-discipline. If you are aiming for perfection, you are never going to get yourself to do what you need to do. No one is perfect, and if you tell yourself you need to be perfect, then everything is too hard to start. Here’s a self-discipline issue I have: I want to keep up with my reading pile and not let it get so high on the kitchen counter that it falls over.

This goal requires me to read things immediately, as they pass in front of me. I’m great at doing this online, but not offline. I realized, though, that the trick is to read fast and if I can’t, I throw it out. There is no harm in doing a bad job of going through a reading pile, and there is more harm in setting the goal—to keep the pile low – and not meeting it.


Self-discipline is mental, but only because it's about believing in yourself.

Take, for example, the person who stops going to the gym for a month. A person who thinks of himself as someone who goes to the gym is more likely to start going again than someone who thinks of himself as a non-gym type. And this is true in a more broad sense: If you think of yourself as someone with high self-discipline then when you are not having self-discipline, you expect to start having it again, and you do. Also, self-discipline is like a muscle so you need to practice to get stronger with it, and part of practicing is talking with yourself about who you are: a person who has self-control.


The moment of regaining self-discipline feels triumphant.

I have not blogged in more than a week. For most people, it wouldn’t matter that much. But blogging is a job for me. So I really need to be doing it. Also, blogging keeps the rest of my life on track – I feel connected to a community, I think in a more critical way, and when I write a good blog post, I have self-confidence that I will do other things well, too.

So I am telling you that the moment today, when I finally sat down to write, and I could feel that I’d start blogging again, felt so good, and so secure, that I hope it will remind you to put aside an hour today to do the thing you have wanted to do for weeks, or months, to get yourself back on track. It won’t just change that hour, or that day, it will change your life.


blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/07/08/how-to-have-more-self-discipline


***

How to richly construe loving bliss? Here are some beginnings:

~
scottmacleod.com/LovingBlissPractices.htm

~
scottmacleod.com/GuidelinesPracticingLovingBlissvavMusicalInstrument.htm


(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com - July 29, 2009)

MMmmm ...

Yellowstone Stream: Introducing Worlduniversity.wikia.com at Second Life Convention Th. Aug 13, 2009 in SF, with Streaming

I'm introducing worlduniversity.wikia.com @ 3:30 Th, Aug 13, 2009 in San Francisco at the Second Life Community Convention ~ SLCC Education Track schedule: www.slconvention.org/schedule/education-track


*

I hope to stream it into Second Life as well as to the web, and post this to my web site as well - scottmacleod.com/papers.htm

Lion Cubs: Contact Improv, Openness to Touch, Culture

Contact Improvisational Dance Jams ...


*

I'm amazed by, and enjoy, the gentleness and the openness to touch that contact improv folks explore ...


**

It's a culture which isn't that widespread ... yet could be ...


***

And the movement is such good exercise.

Chimps & Water: Watsu & Eliciting Bliss, Hippies & Value, "Chimps: So Like Us"

At breakfast in the Harbin Restaurant this morning after another drop-in Watsu class which is wonderfully easing and attuning, I asked my friends for their ideas about how one might engage Watsu explicitly to elicit the neurophysiology of loving bliss. For me, Watsu is enjoyable, but it doesn't elicit the kinds of bliss with which I'm familiar, and which, for example, music like ragas, some of Mozart's arias, and contra dance music do. {I contextualize this question vis-a-vis evolutionary biology, and with ecstasy (MDMA), naturally, as a reference experience}.


One friend at breakfast suggested just embodying love ... just go there ... makes sense. (I wondered how this might work vis-a-vis words, ideas and symbols).


**

Traveling is liberating ... heading to Harbin (yesterday) - the travel part - is so welcome.


***

Hippies find value in curious objects ... old collections of this, ... or that junk ... so much value in the unusual, the seemingly valueless ... {an old, dilapidated hot springs like Harbin Hot Springs in the early 1970s}. Counterculture offers a fascinating re-writing of questions of value.


****

At Harbin, I saw Jane Goodall's "Chimps: So Like Us" (1990). She suggests unambiguously that we and chimps are very alike. The only difference, she says, is that humans can talk.

But as a remarkable primatologist who has primarily, and path-breakingly, chronicled three generations of chimps (Pan troglodyte) in the Gombe forest, in the field, Jane Goodall engages certain British narratives (kingly narratives to explain male status, as well as male challenging behavior) without critical examination of such narratives in this film (her tome called "The Chimps of Gombe" is comprehensive and may engage different explicatory practices), as well as seemed to suggest that common chimps (Pan troglodytes), which is the species she studies, are the only species of chimp. I'd like to see a parallel film about Bonobo chimps (Pan paniscus) by as experienced a primatologist, like Frans de Waal or Sue Savage Rumbaugh (but her work is primarily in the lab).


*****

I'm a monkey, a primate, as I think humans are. Jane Goodall begins her "Chimps: So Like Us" with this same observation, as well, observing, too, that from chimps' perspectives, she is just different.


******

I'm curious to find out what the primate / chimp / gorilla / orangutan academic and scientific literature has recorded about these primates and water, springs, and hot pools, as well as the relaxation response.


{http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com - July 26, 2009}

MMmmmm ...

Moving Water: Sleep, Exploration of Imaginaries, Fantasy

Click on the title above {Facebook friends who read this: in my blog - scott-macleod.blogspot.com (July 25, 2009) - artistsindevon.com/water/water_1.htm}, and scroll over the image for amazing digital water.


*

Sleep {nine to eleven hours regularly}, as well as the relaxation response, vis-a-vis modernity can ameliorate its stresses wonderfully ... but making money in the modern world to pay the bills also takes time, and can create stress.


**

And the 1960s richly expanded possibilities for exploration of imaginaries - a hippie imaginary, for one - fantasy, characters from fiction (e.g. Alice in Wonderland), psychedelics, travel ...


***

To the Harbin pools soon ...

Ivory Gull: Recollections of Radical 1960s, 60s & 70s in Switzerland?, Viva Harbin

Friends of a (French) Swiss friend of mine visited the San Francisco Bay Area recently. Here's a letter in reply to a documentary about the 1960s which my friend just saw (below) in Switzerland.



Marc,

Sev and Steph {sevsteph.uniterre.com - there's a picture of Steph and myself here - Publié à 06:06, le 23/7/2009, San Francisco - sevsteph.uniterre.com/95551} jokingly made a few more video clips, with some quotes from MacBeth {Marc and I enacted MacBeth's Act 5, Scene 5, in 1999, which you can see at the bottom of this web page: scottmacleod.com/papers.htm}, which you'll probably see. When you visit the states again, perhaps we can do it, and another act from Shakespeare, again. :)


About the 60s

From my age 8-12 years old vantage point on the late 60s, and early 70s, from the east coast (New Haven, CT, and Washington DC - I remember newscasts on TV of the landing on the moon, of Robert Kennedy's assassination, much about the Vietnam War, and the President Nixon Watergate wiretapping, impeachment trials [that president was impeached, of course], the Pentagon Papers, - much reported by Walter Cronkite, who just died, as a key news presence), and as a teenager in the 70s, from Pittsburgh and Cuttyhunk Island, I see that time differently than your documentary. I'm curious about a possible parallel European experience to my own.

(I also lived in Geneva, Switzerland with my younger brother and parents from Oct. 1, 1972 - March 31, 1973, I think - 15 Avenue de Mirmont, and my brother and I went to the Ecole Internationale. I don't recall seeing anything of counterculture on the street in Geneva then. Switzerland can be very orderly, but I think it saw some of the 1960s and 70s, as well - where? Perhaps I can talk with your father about this, Marc.

Before and after living in Geneva, Switzerland, my family and I were living in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington D.C. area, on West Park Hill Drive near Rock Creek Park, the Naval Hospital at NIH, and a girls' school. My brother and I attended Green Acres School, an open classroom school in Rockville, MD, which began in the 1930s emerging from John Dewey's writings on education, as well as progressive thinking. My teachers, Betsy ...., and Mitch Berliner, both probably in the late 20s at the time, were both pretty affected by the freedom of those times, and were hippie-ish. Although there were massive protest marches in Washington DC during these years, I was young and didn't go to many. We moved to Pittsburgh in 1974, and I remember going to Peace Marches in Washington D.C. in 1975 and 1976, departing from in front of the Pittsburgh Quaker Meeting House, which I occasionally attended.

Prior to attending Green Acres School in the DC area, I attended Ridge Hill Elementary School (which might have been 'Middle School' then) around 1970-72 for 5th and 6th grade, I think, in Hamden, Connecticut. It was also an open classroom school, and its main building was built around this concept - architecture reflecting the ideas in the air in the early 1970s. Is it still an open classroom experimental school? I was in the Apollo section, I think ...).

The 60s emerged out of the civil rights movement and in response to the Vietnam war, in a time of U.S. prosperity, mostly given original form by white, middle class youth who had time on their hands to think and protest these societal wrongs, and from strands in American society (Beatniks, folk movement, radicals, long hairs, hobos etc.) which predate the 60s by at least many decades. The youth movement, hippies, the 60s, and the societal re-envisionings were very widespread, starting all kinds of new institutions and organizations (which I examine in this blog).

Creative individualism and radical revolution (political, social, sexual, spiritual, environmental, natural foods, musical, psychedelic, back to the land, communitarianism, peace movement ... ) were also very much in people's minds. And while students and hippies were the most visible aspects, almost all aspects of society including the Pentagon, for example, were changed (mortality from war for Americans has dropped dramatically since Vietnam). Change was 'in the air,' counterculturally, and anti-establishment radicalism (against authority, government, and everything), in the name of pretty far-reaching utopian visions, and ideas for a better society, in part, (and with a lot of music, partying and drugs - 'sex, drugs and rock and roll') were widespread. There were major protests in every western capital (not just U.S.) against governmental and societal wrongdoings. It was a VERY wild time (not very Swiss, perhaps, although I'm curious to study this time in Switzerland).

It just kind of dissipated - probably, loosely, because many people grew up and had to make a living. But, also, new movements developed including environmentalism, the women's movement, Gay liberation, and the peace movement. But it's also still around in many, many ways. It's a fascinating time and reference experience (a socio cultural milieu) which was profoundly transformative of American society and people at the time. And its ripples come through time, - which interest me a lot.

Very nice to meet Sev and Steph, and travel a little together.

Happy sailing and L'Alliaz! Off to Harbin very soon :)

Regards,
Scott


*

From Marc:

Scott the Brave!

It was so great seeing the MacBeth video again! Definitely, let's revisit it again (or another shakespearean play) on our hopefully not too distant next encounter!

I saw an interesting show on the hippie movement tonight, what a great, much awaited revolution it was, a good kick in the comfort of bourgeoisie, with lots of fun and love! As it settled into the "new norm", it was hit by the hard drugs and AIDS and was discredited, and (almost) everyone returned to the rat race...how can one brake the pattern again, and have fun and experience loving bliss! I do understand, support, and endorse your search...

Viva harbin! i'm off sailing for a week and then in l'alliaz, talk to you soon!
And yes, sev is jolie...thanks again!

Big hug, my brave!


**

Pagophila eburnea (Phipps, 1774)


eol.org/pages/1049625


Ivory Gull

Yellow Billed Cuckoo: Hot Contact Improv, Exercise From This, Emerging In the Milieu of the 60s & 70s

Dancing at a contact jam in the SF Bay Area was so great, and hot, recently.


*

And the exercise from it offers so many benefits, too.


**

And with, and to, live improvisational music adds and complements.


***

So much which is great began, found an opening, or was codified, in the milieu of the 1960s and early 1970s.



For example,

Contact Improv (1972)

Relaxation Response (1972)

Hampshire College (1970)

Harbin Hot Springs (1972)

Whipel: Evolutionary Biology, Symbolizing & Human Freedom Experiences, Dreamtime Gathering

Evolutionary biology, symbolizing, & wonderful, past, human, freedom experiences are seeds for continuing cultivation of bodymind freedom ~ in the now.


*

A friend was recently facilitating a self love workshop at a Dreamtime Gathering in New Mexico ...


**

Loving bliss workshops :)

MMmmmm ...

Yosemite: Traveling, $80 INTERAGENCY PASS for All National Parks Plus, Free Couchsurfing.Org

Traveling through Yosemite recently {scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2009/07/eared-grebe-yosemite-road-from-east.html}, I found that the INTERAGENCY PASS was available for sale at its gates - $80 for all national parks, federal lands, and more, for a year, - for 4 people in the car. I had heard about this a long time ago, I think, but picking one up at Yosemite's east gate was so convenient ... :) nps.gov/fees_passes.htm


*

Here's a list of some places you can stay {just the U.S.'s incredible National Parks}:

National Parks of the U.S.

As of 2006, there are 58 officially-designated National Parks in the United States and its dependent areas.

Acadia National Park -Maine
National Park of American Samoa -American Samoa
Arches National Park -Utah
Badlands National Park -South Dakota
Big Bend National Park -Texas
Biscayne National Park -Florida
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park -Colorado
Bryce Canyon National Park -Utah
Canyonlands National Park -Utah
Capitol Reef National Park -Utah
Carlsbad Caverns National Park -New Mexico
Channel Islands National Park -California
Congaree National Park -South Carolina
Crater Lake National Park -Oregon
Cuyahoga Valley National Park -Ohio
Death Valley National Park -California, Nevada
Denali National Park and Preserve -Alaska
Dry Tortugas National Park -Florida
Everglades National Park -Florida
Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve -Alaska
Glacier National Park (part of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park) -Montana
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve -Alaska
Grand Canyon National Park -Arizona
Grand Teton National Park -Wyoming
Great Basin National Park -Nevada
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve -Colorado
Great Smoky Mountains National Park -North Carolina, Tennessee
Guadalupe Mountains National Park -Texas
Haleakala National Park -Hawaii
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park -Hawaii
Hot Springs National Park -Arkansas
Isle Royale National Park -Michigan
Joshua Tree National Park -California
Katmai National Park and Preserve -Alaska
Kenai Fjords National Park -Alaska
Kings Canyon National Park -California
Kobuk Valley National Park -Alaska
Lake Clark National Park and Preserve -Alaska
Lassen Volcanic National Park -California
Mammoth Cave National Park -Kentucky
Mesa Verde National Park -Colorado
Mount Rainier National Park -Washington
North Cascades National Park -Washington
Olympic National Park -Washington
Petrified Forest National Park -Arizona
Redwood National and State Parks -California
Rocky Mountain National Park -Colorado
Saguaro National Park -Arizona
Sequoia National Park -California
Shenandoah National Park -Virginia
Theodore Roosevelt National Park -North Dakota
Virgin Islands National Park -U.S. Virgin Islands
Voyageurs National Park -Minnesota
Wind Cave National Park -South Dakota
Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve -Alaska
Yellowstone National Park -Idaho, Montana, Wyoming
Yosemite National Park -California
Zion National Park -Utah


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_areas_in_the_United_States_National_Park_System


**

And while not necessarily camping in the beautiful outdoors, I've heard great things about couchsurfing.org, where you can sleep on someone's couch for free by getting in contact with them through this web site.


scott-macleod.blogspot.com (July 21, 2009)


These are great opportunities ...


MMmmmm...

Bird Stream: OLPC: Wanted: Enterprise Content Management for Education, World University & School, Whom to Contact at OLPC?

Hallo Christoph,

I just read your piece "Wanted: Enterprise Content Management for Education" in OLPC news - olpcnews.com/content/education/wanted_enterprise_content_management_for_education.html - and wanted to bring World University & School to your attention - worlduniversity.wikia.com, like Wikipedia with MIT OCW - in all languages, subjects, nation states and at all levels. It's an open, free university and school (with degree and credit granting potentially far in the future). I'd like to communicate more with OLPC folks, as their on the ground experience will articulate nicely with the 3000-8000 languages in the world. Perhaps OLPC people on the ground could show how this wiki works, and how people in OLPC countries might teach to their web cams to each other. Whom would you suggest I contact at OLPC?

Best,
Scott

http://scottmacleod.com


http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/ - July 21, 2009

Singing Finch: Introducing World University & School to Second Life Community, Join WUaS in FB, Great, Free Software, Teach Online at Free, Open WUaS

I'm introducing World University and School ~ worlduniversity.wikia.com ~ to Second Life at the Second Life Convention in San Francisco on Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 3:30 PDT at the Westin St. Francis.

I hope to stream this presentation into Second Life and to the internet.


*

Join the World University & School FaceBook group to teach & learn, as well as for updates on great, FREE EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE - worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_Software - and much else :) facebook.com/group.php?gid=48753608141

Add what you'd like to teach or content to worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects

Oregon Bird: Drop~in Watsu, Robin Williams' "Live at the Met," Visiting Harbin Changes Things

At Harbin Hot Springs today, I saw listed on the events' calendar a drop-in Watsu {water shiatsu} class in the heart shaped pool on Sunday morning at 8:15. I hadn't seen this before, so, having arrived yesterday afternoon (in the heat of the summer Lake County day), I went this morning and was delighted.

Inika Sati Spence taught the class. About 14 people showed up, and some others sat around and watched. Everyone was naked.

Watsu instruction like this isn't so readily accessible at Harbin, so this was a good idea. Only 6 couples, though, can do Watsu in the small-ish heart shape pool at the same time.

We started just moving in the warm water, and feeling this. We then found a partner, and, each with a wide leg stance, one person held the other person's wrists, as we explored coming into sync with each others' breathing, floating up softly and more buoyantly with our inhales, and descending in the water a little with our exhales. We did this with about 3 different people. It's like the relaxation response in water, and together. And it brought us richly in tune with one another. MMmmmm.

Inika next gave a demonstration of giving Watsu to a partner, where she put floats around the legs of one volunteer, just below this demonstratee's knees. She then showed us how she holds the partner's head at the occiput - the bone at the back of the skull - in the crook of her elbow, and then receives them into a floating position in her arm. With her other hand under her volunteer's sacrum, Inika floated her model back and forth. Her volunteers ears rested naturally just under the water (use ear plugs if desired). When Inika was ready to support her leg, she drew her volunteer's head and body away through the water to find her leg in front of Inika, which she then supported, and began to explore movement more fully in the water. Inika received her partner's other leg similarly when she was ready, and explored shaping figure eights on the pool floor with her tailbone, which rippled through into the Watsu.

To end giving a Watsu, Inika then showed how she brings a person to the wall of the pool, and, cradling the person, first puts her sacrum to the wall, then rests the back of the head at the pools edge, then supports the person there with a hand to their heart.

We then gave and received a Watsu with a partner.

The process is so lovely, and Inika provided us with a structure, or approach, for doing Watus, from which a lot of Watsu explorations and movements can then flower.

Thank you, Inika.

{It's possible for couples visiting Harbin to get Watsu instruction from someone on Harbin's staff, or simply to receive a Watsu for yourself. MMmmmm:}.


*

Robin Williams' "Live at the Met" (1986) was a virtuosic, hilarious and (almost trippy) video I saw at Harbin over the weekend. As a very skillful actor, Robin successfully represents so many aspects of different individuals, as well cartoon characters, in a stellar tour de force, via subtle and quick portrayals, with a lot of sexual insight. The way Williams moves in and out of characters in wild and spellbinding to behold.


**

Visiting Harbin changes things.


Ah, the pools at Harbin ... MMmmmm .... :)

Pontederia Marsh: People Generate Code, Loving Bliss Code, Physician's Code, Culture

People generate code. We write and speak. The way we engage the world or not (John Money's adhibition, inhibition, explication (1988)), are expressions of code generation. Taken as a whole, I think people as individual bodyminds can be seen as unique code generators. Reduction to a word of what this code is seems impossible because people are complex, multifaceted and generate a lot of words and symbols in the course their lives, but patterns emerge. And subjectivity, as in anthropology too, might make an objective characterization of what code a particular individual generates challenging.

Yet if someone, for example, generates 'loving code,' or 'loving bliss code,' or 'medical doctor code,' or 'physicist's code,' (these latter can be tested, for example) and a group of people agree that this is the case, and possibly reciprocate, I think specific kinds of code generation are occurring {e.g. in communities, subcultures, discourses). Is this 'culture' in the reciprocation, particularly? Code generation, for me, includes symbol generation, but I'm more interested in conceiving of code generation as a whole vis-a-vis individuals.


*

To Harbin today ... :)

Cuckoo: How a Country Censors Internet Information and Why Google Reader Wasn't Filtered in China

Here's how a country can censor internet information, and why one country didn't censor Google Reader.





Why Google Reader survived the 2nd June ban of GFW and what can you learn from it


GFW (Great Firewall of China) is the national firewall implemented in backbone Internet of China. It has four types of block:

* URL block: ie. if twitter.com is blocked, any HTTP request that has a twitter.com string appears between GET and rnrn is blocked. GFW will try RST to both you and the server many times.
* DNS pollution. All UDP port 53 are censored in China. Your domain will resolve to fake IPs if polluted. Currently known fake IPs include:

202.106.1.2, 211.95.129.161, 211.94.66.147, 220.250.64.23, 216.234.179.13, 4.36.66.178

* IP ban.
* content filter. All unencrypted TCP/UDP data are monitored. You might trigger a shit load of keywords during your daily surfing without knowing anything. Like URL block, GFW will try RST to both you and the server many times if your keywords matches a certain level and quantity. And your IP & client info will be logged for further investigation if needed.

During the great ban of 2009-06-02, *.live.com, bing.com, twitter.com, flickr.com, hotmail.com, along with previous banned youtube,com and *.blogspot.com, are no longer accessible within China directly. But Google Reader, one of the main anti-☭ propaganda source, survived. Why?

Let's look at one of the typical Google Reader HTTP request:

https://www.google.com/reader/api/0/stream/contents/user%2F1338082....
| | |
| +-----+------+
| |
| +--- DNS pollution and IP ban are unlikely,
| unless GFW totally bans all www.google.com
|
+--- https, means data transfer between your IP
and www.google.com IP (64.233.189.99) are encrypted,
thus URL block and content filter are useless,
except GFW implements some sort of MITM attack which is too costly

So what can we learn from it?

* The bigger your website are, the sooner your website get unblocked. If your little known sites get blocked, who cares?
* Don't use HTTP GET since it's very easily URL-blocked. This also helps reduce XSS & XSRF
* Make your URL jumping httpS compatible. Even static files.
* Use RFC 2068 compatible CDNs like squid. So you can route all your other nodes' traffic to a node where your clients could access(ie. youtube could be accessed within China if your proxy all your www.youtube.com/* requests to www.google.cn IP). But you have to make sure your CDN can deliver content accross GFW.
* Use as few as subdomains as possible. This reduce DNS pollution damage if you just have dozens to recover instead of thousands. If Google Reader's URL is something like reader.google.com, it's very possible to get banned years ago.


initiative.yo2.cn/archives/640553

Painted Turtle: Bliss Shaped by Code, Various Bliss Codes, Ways to Cultivate Loving Bliss

When I experience bliss, I often find that it's shaped by code. For example, music as specific code can bring me to blissful and lovingly blissful neurophysiology. Contra dance music {and especially contra-dancing}, some of Mozart's arias, ragas, and Alan Lomax's "The Belleville A Cappella Choir," and "Sweet Honey in the Rock" are all examples.

I think we can choose the codes we like to elicit bliss.


*

Are falling in love, or being in love, or, indeed, ecstasy {mdma}, kinds of code? I think so, but not symbolic ones, although effects of these may be expressed in symbols. Each of these can lead to affective euphoria and loving bliss in unique ways, and with various qualities.


**

Code, symbols or signs, serial information in tones, or meaningful words, as bliss eliciting software, are fascinating ways to conceive of approaches to cultivating eliciting loving bliss.


MMMmmmm ...

Gorgeted Puffleg: Specific Practices to Elicit Loving Bliss Neurophysiology Daily?, Music, Thoughts?

What specific practices might we do to elicit loving bliss neurophysiology, daily, similarly to eliciting the relaxation response {which I enjoy doing daily}?

And how to elicit this kind of neurophsyiology in ways that rock out, vis-a-vis MDMA, naturally?


*

Listening to music which moves you profoundly, after practicing the relaxation response?


**

Thoughts?


***

A new hummingbird species! (not yet listed in the "Encyclopedia of Life"):

Eriocnemis Isabellaea

farm1.static.flickr.com/215/499961489_09e1d00087.jpg?v=0

Gorgeted Puffleg

Sunshine: World University & School, Goals, Simplicity in Wikis

The sun shines in Berkeley today


*

S: Goals and a pragmatic business plan vis-a-vis the World University & School foundation will help a lot ...

A number of people on the board for my grant competition entry from last year have said they'd like to participate again, about which I'm glad - they're all great ...

I'd love to continue to talk with you about your thoughts about this WUaS process as it unfolds, as well.


B: happy to talk, but i think you know the general outlines of my POV--that you should scale back to something much simpler and more practical in the short term


S: makes much sense ... Wikipedia perhaps defines such parameters for me at this time, in terms of wikis and group knowledge production ...

I have a general, nascent list of possible language moderators (~25 out of 3000), donors, etc. ...

building community vis-a-vis Wikipedia is next ...

a good general manager who has much focus and is very organized would be helpful

*

...

White-faced Ibis: What's Blissware Now Digitally Mediated? Ah Blissware ~

What's blissware?

Empathy as connectedness, and now digitally mediated ~

and with loving bliss, in the form of software - tinyurl.com/ld5kc2


ah, blissware ~


*

Plegadis chihi (Vieillot, 1817)

eol.org/pages/1048016

ejphoto.com/images_AZ/AZ_WhiteFacedIbis04.jpg

suttoncenter.org/images/White-facedIbisSmith2.jpg


White-faced Ibis

Yakima River: Settling at Home, Living Close to the Land, Contentment

I have a friend who, after years of travel around the world, decided to settle at home, with contentment, on the west coast of the U.S.

She would say settling down worked. And I agree.

She's living close to the land, with a beautiful garden, which is very productive, and which has many native plants, and with chickens and goats, on a paradisical little farmlet {a hamlet?}, with a sauna. Her place is kind of a little organic farm. She has as much access to the internet (I think we still have network neutrality in this country, at least) as she wants. She's learning to play the xylophone in a group, which she enjoys. And she still travels a little, with enjoyment.

And she's content ... simply through deciding she was going to settle downa nd doing so ...

that is, through practicing contentment, in a way. :)

Nuttalls Woodpecker: Seeking Selections from Literatures on Loving Bliss

I'm seeking selections from the scientific and academic literatures on bliss & loving bliss ...


Key analyses, discussions, findings, re-formulations, writings ....


*

Picoides nuttallii (Gambel, 1843)

eol.org/pages/912560


goldrushcam.com/images/2007/LG/birds/1.jpg

Nuttalls woodpecker

Eared Grebe: Yosemite Road From the East Into the Valley

Yosemite Road From the East Into the Valley


The Yosemite road

from the east

into the valley

is a trip ~

it's trippy.


The land is so clean,

so clear, so beautiful,

so pure, and so natural.

Oh, the beautiful Ponderosa

and Jeffrey pines,

from the rolling road,

with wondrous view after view

of forest, meadows,

granite, water and light.

Being here

brings me home, ~

heightening awareness,

yes, high.


This way brings me home

into the present.



I hiked here long ago

on the Pacific Crest Trail

for 4 months one year.

I walked the

John Muir trail then,

my first time ever

in California -

{and I hiked another 1 1/2 months

2 years later through the north Cascades}.

And, as a through-hiker,

I stopped at the little

post office here

in Tuolumne Meadows

for a food box.



I understand John Muir's

love for this place.

He represented

Yosemite so well,

and now there are

so many people coming here,

in this well-managed park.


There's freedom here

in California,

in the mind.


And as I travel

along this road, -

eliciting kinds

of loving bliss

just happens,

vis-a-vis Yosemite's

beauty here.

How?


Yosemite is a trip.

*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-necked_grebe

...

Red-necked Phalarope: Near the Town of Lee Vining Close to Tioga Pass ~ Music

Near the Town of Lee Vining Close to Tioga Pass


Near the town of Lee Vining
close to Tioga Pass
in the eastern Sierra
a bluegrass music group
played in the evening
for many, on Thursday.

What a surprise to come upon this.
Most of the people,
eating good food there,
were young, rock climbing oriented -
this being close to Yosemite -
and many were living outside,
for the summer.

A lot of us
were just hanging out,
California-wise,
and dancing in the evening.

Sarah, with a Scottish
last name and I,
flirted and danced.
She's a Ph.D. student,
studying beetles.

I slept nearby that evening,
heading for Yosemite the next day.

In the morning,
I went up to the nearby vista,
overlooking Mono Lake,
and at around 7 am,
I came upon musicians -
one playing an upright base,
and two playing guitars -
in the parking lot,
playing near their cars,
with other folks on the road,
hanging out, listening.

This freedom
and beauty
in California
are great,
and the sun is
so bright here.

*

...

Phalaropus lobatus (Linnaeus, 1758)


eol.org/pages/1049565


Red-necked Phalarope

Washoe Jeffery Pine: World University & School as a Rainbow Gathering of 'All Ways Free' Ideas & Software?

World University & School as a Rainbow Gathering of 'All Ways Free' ideas & software?


Great, free software:

worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_Software

The Rainbow Gathering is fascinating and beautiful ...

Red-throated Loon: Rainbow Organization, Anti-militarism at Rainbow, Universal Health Care in California?

Rainbow is fascinating for its organization. It's very loose, and has worked out over the years, pretty organically. I think a number of people stay in touch during the year, especially those who made the kitchens go the previous year, and organize around this. In some years, Rainbow prints something, occasionally not.


*

And the Rainbow Gathering now is multi-generational. Kids of folks who attended Rainbow in the 1970s are coming to the Gathering these days. I haven't heard of grandkids coming yet.

I met Ian at this Gathering in a little camp at some distance from the main meadow, near where I was camping. His mother had come to Rainbow in the early 70s when she was 16. Around age 18 himself, he was wondering whether to go into the military or not. His mother had encouraged him to come to this Gathering, because she had loved it decades ago.

In a way, he observed, the Rainbow Gathering is the opposite of the military. He had smoked a lot of pot in high school, and was kind of at loose ends now with what to do with his life. At his parent's home in Sante Fe, there was a whole wall of photographs of relatives who had gone into the military, particularly the navy. He wondered whether he should apply. He had stopped smoking pot a few weeks ago, so, as he observed, he was actively thinking about it. But, despite the attractions of structure, an avenue away from his current life washing dishes, a decent income, and rich, educational opportunities after 4 years of service, his friends in the service already had all warned him against going into the service. Still, he was actively considering it.

I mentioned Quakers and Friends' historic peace testimony, as well as conscientious objection, as an alternative for Ian. Quakers have long looked for, and created opportunities for, an alternative to militarism. Friends these days are very concerned about youth and militarism issues, - see the AFSC's website, for example. I encouraged Ian to call the American Friends' Service Committee in Sante Fe. Perhaps they knew of ways to earn as good money as in the military, but not in war-related ways. I also mentioned how the nature of war may have fundamentally changed as a consequence of information technology (see Manuel Castells' arguments - ). Mortality for American soldiers has dropped dramatically since Vietnam, for example. As we talked, I also asked Ian why he didn't consider going into the Air Force instead of the Navy, because it has the reputation of having the best culture of the services, and culture here in the services can have radical effects on people (shaping roles which have life and death consequences), so why not pick the armed service with the best reputation, if he's going to go into the military. Lastly, I observed that the military has a history of killing its own soldiers by putting them into atrocious war situations, that it's a system which doesn't really care about its soldiers, once they're in the system, and that in a way he might be signing up to be cannon fodder. (This may have changed since the American public saw so many body bags of soldiers on TV - information technology which had a dramatic transformative effect - during the Vietnam war, and public sentiment came to change Pentagon policies). The culture of war is devastating especially to soldiers, when it's happening. {Moving to Canada to avoid the out-of-control Vietnam war and related draft system/culture which was killing U.S. citizens was one key way to save your own life in the late 1960s and early 1970s}. Why not listen to your friends, I asked, as we parted.


**

Universal health care in the U.S.? ... Paralleling Massachusetts, let's make this happen in California, and expand from there, state by state ... There are still over 40 million people uninsured in this country.


***

Gavia stellata (Pontoppidan, 1763)

eol.org/pages/1047332


sdakotabirds.com/species/photos/red_throated_loon.jpg

Red-throated Loon

Near Taos: Rainbow Gathering in New Mexico, Dipping in & out of Bliss, Blissware

Rainbows Gathering in New Mexico {2009}


Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow's Gathering,

it's the people,
and this national forest land,
and the freedom
to be who you are,
and, for some,
to be beautiful,
funky, and natural.

Rainbow is all ways free.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.


People twirl
balancing sticks,
and good musicians -
this marimba player,
mmmmm, she plays so well -
play in the meadow,
near the center pole,
and near the circles,
and all around -
at the center of
this Rainbow Gathering.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.

People are the center
of this Rainbow Gathering.

Not anthropological poetry,
here is a little record
of dipping in and out of bliss
and at Rainbow.


This year the rains
fell a lot and
people celebrated
and got dirtier and dirtier,
but rain keeps things clean.

Not a major Indian festival
in India,
people come together,
get dirty,
but get cleaner.
A kind of purification occurs,
and a celebration of identity,
hippie identity, at the Gathering.
38 years after the first gathering,
Rainbow is still around, a survivor,
especially vis-a-vis law enforcement.
Rainbows know how to navigate in the woods.


Mud people,
in the main meadow,
play and play.
You take off your clothes
and people throw mud at you
until you are completely covered.
People run and slide,
and our numbers grow,
as the drummers drum.
Kids have so much fun.
It's fun to take off
your clothes
and slide in the mud.
What lovely rain.

One love, and
karma-burning at Rainbow, ~
this is like a
major festival in India
but it's in New Mexico, ~
and it's hippie.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.


Lots of men
(and women)
bring their dogs here.
There are a lot
of hippies, and
people living
on the edge, around, -
and Rainbow is a
tip of a
countercultural iceberg.
Much isn't forgotten,
over 40 years,
and we all gather here
to celebrate this earth vision.
Is this religion?

There's more nudity
than last year
in Wyoming, and a lot of
different stuff too,
but Rainbow hippie
patterns come through time,
steady-like, -
this cultural stuff
is freeing.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.


Women are freer,
and happier, here,
than in Babylon,
I see.


On Friday, I'm standing
in line for dinner
at the Magic Bowl kitchen camp,
and Holly with her son
and friends walk by.
It's so nice to see
an old friend
from college,
to visit and talk,
and meet her
extended family,
learn their language -
quite familiar,
yet slightly unfamiliar.

On July 4th, independence day,
yesterday, people danced freely.

It's indirect freedom,
connectedness,
shared intuitions,
and visions of what life can be,
that I find wild,
wondrous, and fascinating here.

Much freedom
emerged in the 1960s
in response to
Babylon, within Babylon.
People are alive,
and living, here now.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.


On arrival, there are
little risks,
little doubts,
in a gathering of
possibly 7,000 people.
Hippies, earth people,
wanderers, hobos and bums
find philosophy here ~
Rainbow Hippy.
But many people here live
on the edge of life,
without resources.
Hippies can thwart
and feel thwarted
in Babylon -
this is karma -
from which we learn.

Yet Rainbow generates
great, fascinating energy,
in all.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.


Signs are on trees,
in camps,
and along the way.
There are many,
and they inform Rainbow.

{New photos this year here soon}.

Drumming happens a lot here,
all the time, -
it's powerful and beautiful.

Africa necklaces, flags
and dreads are around a lot.
One love.

I talked with someone
tripping, as real rainbows
came out in the sky
after a rain.
Surreal and delightful.

Rainbows ~ In one group of folks
singing near a fire ~
there were really rocking -
and one women was
erupting vocally with
Janis Joplin energy. Cool.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.


Is this Tao near Taos
near the Taos national forest ~
can't say.



Sunday, July 5, 2009

Friends' kids
had fun
in Kids' Village.

Music is on the trails,
Music on the paths.

Hawaiian music is in the air,
and beautiful.

Harmony is, too.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.


But there's some
little discord here, too,
vis-a-vis harmony.
And people have their
stashes and drink,
which they share,
but rockily sometimes.

Contact improv
at Rainbow this year, -
was most fun.
Contact jamming outside,
I saw the
forest's ridge line,
and heard the drumming
from the other direction.
Jamming.
So much drumming -
and drumming which rocks.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.


Bare feet are everywhere …
people live closely
with nature at Rainbow.

Hippie earth people are here.


Circling at dinner,
so many gather,
and the food moves
around the circle,
dished into expectant bowls,
our bliss ware.


A magic hat goes around,
Do any monies
go into his pocket?
Did I hear last year
that he pockets this?


Rainbow meets at 9000 feet,
and the air is thin.
People walk slowly,
get winded easily
and feel the elevation.
It's clean this high.

Wandering around aimlessly,
learning … there's so much
to learn and write here ...

Back to native ways,
among all the backpacking tents,
yet with bleach
in the water
for hand washing,
to keep people healthy.

Since 1972, things change only a little.

Kitchen camps … Kids' Village
was big this year,
and served a lot of food.
So did Crucial Kitchen.
How does Rainbow keep energy good
in this anarchic hippieness? -
'I love you' and 'please
wash your hands' all the time …
experience gleaned over 38 years?
The food is great.

Getting volunteers easily,
hippie-wise isn't easy …
many don't work,
yet things get done,
food gets served,
latrines get dug,
and people have a good time.
And people shit in the forest.
How does Rainbow work?


No om circle on Saturday,
but a great cheer welled up
after the Saturday all-morning,
welcome silence.


There's such colorfulness
in the main meadow.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.


I gave the kids
of my friends little gifts.

Playfulness absurdity,
and whimsy
abound here.
It's surreally surreal.
Fellini-esque-ness.
Carnivalesque.

Dipping in and out of bliss
at Rainbow.


Hippies get close
to the earth quickly ...
Lots of pot and smoke here …

And a connectedness -
coming home - occurs
for many.

A lot of people
at this gathering come
from New Mexico
and the states around
the Sante Fe National Forest,
and some come from all over
the United States.



Monday, July 6, 2009

The days are so full.

I arose with daybreak
and walked to four corners,
a place on this years
Rainbow map
I hadn't visited before.
One woman was sleeping
by the fire, head in the dirt,
with gray pants and a red top -
it had been a long night.
It was around 5:30 am
and 3 drummers were
singing out their music there.
One man was playing
an unique string instrument.
Around 7 others of us
were just hanging out,
listening to the drumming.
One woman, 60-ish, sweet,
hippie, colorfully-clad,
and personally together,
pointed out the color in the clouds.
Yes, how beautiful! She started
dancing outside the circle;
I was already moving
to the music
in the circle.

People play Hackysack {Fussball),
musicians roam
(but no one is paid at Rainbow -
All Ways Free),
with guitars, harps and diggeridoos -
so many guitars -
people are creative and free.

I met a friend along a path -
French is his name -
and he gave me a book
which he wrote
on the Gaia hypothesis, healing
and medicinal herbs as allies,
- so sweet, so generous.
Thank you, French,
for the gift of this book
which I'm reading.


The last night in the meadow,
dinner in the circle
was bean chili
with soy seitan in it,
with fresh, herbed India thin bread -
it was so good,
and the food
was abundant.



As people cooked
in kids' village,
people played music
near this kitchen -
so good;
Rainbow is a dream.

Cuddle parties happen.

The days are so full,
and rich, in this
alternative life vision,
this dream of Rainbow, -
so much to write about.

I slept a lot at Rainbow.

There's anger among hippies,
and hippies can be flighty;
the Rainbow medical camp
is called 'CALM.'

Hippie clothes and hair
are natural and dread
{French – so many}
but there were more T-shirts
this year, and less hemp clothing.
Same and different are
curious in the hippie world.


I, an observer,
inside, outside … just here,
akin, yet apart … and writing.

The vision circle –
people speak here
of their love for Rainbow,
of what's on their minds –
there's space for this –
and this echoes of
Native American processes.
When people hold the feather
they can speak for a long time,
creating shifts in time.
Time is different at Rainbow.

In the circle, I was going
to let Rainbows know
'bout World University & School
but I got cold,
before the feather got to me.

David Alexander, a spokesperson
in this vision circle –
shares his visions of goodness,
of hippies and goodness.
While many hippies can be good –
peace and love -
there's a resistance
to the norms of goodness, as well,
among hippies -
Babylon? -
and among some people
on the edge, at Rainbow.
So some at Rainbow
do what they want,
and are compelled to do,
yet people come together -
Rainbow thinking is very
integrating, and this
helps, and brings people back
year after year.



Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Woke at dawn – 5

I elicited
the relaxation response
in my tent.
How to go to the vision
council at noon,
and get my stuff
out of this national forest
on my way to Sante Fe, and Holly's?
From now to Babylon time?

Flax seed oil (for Omega-3
fatty acids, and a multivitamin)
every day. MMmmmm.

The day is so beautiful,
in this little, open spot
where my tent is,
in this forest,
hearing drumming again
in the early morning.
Hippies are alive in the night.

I walk up to the road …
are there spaces for another vehicle now,
among the mish-mash of cars? Yes.

Back to my tent to write,
on a low battery …

Get the car, if I can get
a ride back 7 miles
at this time in the morning …
then come back to vision council?

But I decide to leave
before the last days
vision council at noon,
and pick up hitchhiking Yoko,
a 17 year old young guy
with serenity, sweetness,
philosophy and spirituality ~
so much wholeness came
from the East in the '60s ~
who plays Hawaiian music,
and we drive to
Sante Fe.

Entering back into the
world with serenity ~
the transition is smooth.


Yoko meditates ~
at the Gathering
and in the car ~
and I see his
serenity grow
as he does -
so sweet, he's sweet,
while I elicit the
relaxation response, ~
MMmmmm, sweet, too.

Ah, blissware.

* 

...

(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2009/07/near-taos-rainbow-gathering-in-new.html - July 7, 2009)

Canyon Lands: No Internet Access at the Rainbow Gathering, Beautiful National Parks, Welcome Home

Don't think I'll have internet access at the Rainbow Gathering ~

thundercloudstudio.com/Travel/ramblin_west_2008/four_corners_too/images/canyonlands_clouds.jpg

~

Om circle tomorrow at noon ...

~

Vision council on Tuesday at 1 at close of Gathering ...

~


*

The 38th Annual Rainbow Gathering of the Tribes is at
Parque Venado in the Santa Fe National Forest.
24 miles from of Cuba, New Mexico.

The site is beautiful, altitude is 8,500 - 9,000 feet.
Nice gentle terrain with long meadows and great forest.
Be prepared for cold nights (low 40's to 50 degrees)
Warm days in the mid 80's and sunny.
1/2 hour afternoon thunderstorms most days, which are downpours,
bring good rain gear.


Directions:
From Cuba, New Mexico take State Road 126 East for 13 + miles to
FS Road 103 on left, go 2 miles to FS Road 69 on left then drive
9 miles to where FS Road 69 meets FS Road 70
Welcome Home!!

This is what you need to know as you drive to the site from Cuba, NM.

There are two junctions/ intersections . Where 69 turns into ? 103 .
and where you turn from 103 to 126.

Although you will be driving straight . The road that you were, on
bears right. The LEOs want to see some left turn signal action , OR
ELSE!




Directions from Albuquerque: Take I-25 north to U.S. Highway 550. Go north on U.S. Highway 550 approximately 65 miles to State Highway 126 (Cuba, NM). From Cuba, NM take State Road 126 East for 13 + miles to FS Road 103 on left, go 2 miles to FS Road 69 on left then drive 9 miles to where FS Road 69 meets FS Road 70. Welcome Home!!*. A link to the map to Parque Venado.


welcomehere.org/gathering_of_the_tribes/annual/


welcomehome.org/



~

* 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canyonlands_National_Park

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Canyonlands_National_Park

... 

Navajo Land: Leonard, Navajo Today, World University for Native People

When I woke up this morning around 7 am, camping on the side of a quiet road near a major highway, near Lupton, Arizona, someone walked by my vehicle, and asked if I could give him a ride. He wanted to go to Gallup, New Mexico, about 20 miles away. He said he was hitching to work, which began at 10. "I don't steal, or anything," he said. He might have been between 35 and 60 years old.


I said I didn't have much space, but I cleared a spot for him, and we rode together. His name was Leonard.


As we rode, he said he was a full-blooded Navajo. I asked how things are for Navajo people today. He said not bad. I asked him what Navajo people are doing these days. He mentioned traditional crafts like weaving and silversmithing, and construction. The mother of his kids works in a hotel, he said. I asked him about a vision for the Navajo people, and cultural processes like vision quests. He didn't say a lot about a contemporary (positive) vision for Navajo, and he said vision quests occurred. He was a little quiet in general, and Native-white ways of relating were a little in the air from the beginning of our interaction.


He asked me where I was heading. And I told him the canyon lands in northwestern New Mexico, and then mentioned "Cuba, NM." He asked what I was going to do there, and I eventually told him I was going to the Rainbow Gathering. He said "What's that?" I wondered how to characterize it to someone who hadn't heard of it, but might be sympathetic. I said it was kind of a gathering of hippies, - a little like a pow wow, maybe. After a while, he said "like Woodstock?" I said yea. And we laughed out loud together.


We talked a little about the Navajo. He said there are around 265,000 - 300,000 Navajo. Navajo have a president these days. It's Joe Shirley now - opvp.org. The Navajo presidency is modeled after the U.S. presidency. Presidents hold office for 4 years, and are elected. The four corners area (Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah) is a center of the Navajo world, and there are some Navajo in Mexico, but I got a sense that he was answering a kind of white (sociological) view. I was interested in his views, but wasn't sure how to elicit them.


He said where I camped was on reservation-land. Having arrived where I camped after dark, the views of Arizona around my camping spot were beautiful, I saw, as we started to drive.


He asked if I had gone to the "Gathering of the Nations," a native gathering which happened last year near Lupton, AZ. He said native peoples had come from as far as Canada. I said I hadn't gone but that I did go to a Sundance last year in northern California, in the Sierra Valley, and there were First Nations people there from Canada, too.


He asked me what I do, and I said I'm a college teacher, with an interest in the information technology and their social effects, that I'm writing a anthropological book about a place in northern California - Harbin Hot Springs - and that I'm developing World University & School {http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University}, which is like Wikipedia, where we can all teach and learn.

He asked if anthropologists study the Anasazi, and I said archaeologists do this. Anthropologists study the current social fabric of life. (I was a little hesitant to say anthropologists study groups of people, and historically have studied native peoples). He said Navajo ancestors were supposed to have come from Alaska. And I said this happened all pretty recently, in a sense, and that North America - Turtle Island - wasn't inhabited by people before 16,000-20,000 years ago.

I asked him if the Navajo were pretty integrated into the modern world these days, and he said "yea." I asked him if he thought this was good, and he replied affirmatively. He told me about a radio station in the Navajo language - 660 on the AM dial. I turned this station on, and we listened to the Navajo language. I asked him if he spoke Navajo. I wasn't sure what he said, but he told me the radio announcers were talking about the weather. I let him out in Gallup, and he said "Do you have any change I can have?" I said I don't have any change, but I thought later to have asked him whether he had any change I can have. The Navajo radio station was still on, and I heard an advertisement from an Apache lawyer for legal services. The station next played country music, and the Navajo announcer mentioend the English title of the song, speaking otherwise in Navajo.


*

Leonard mentioned Arizona State University pretty positively in passing, and it made me think that World University & School would potentially help a lot of native people, too.
,
{Getting in touch with Keith Basso, an anthropologist who wrote the fascinating anthropological book "Wisdom Sits in Places" is sensible vis-a-vis WUaS}.


**

I'm writing this blog entry from Rick's Cybercafe in Gallup, New Mexico.

Two partners started it 3 months ago, and they look as if they have Native American background. I hear someone nearby talking excitedly about current Firewire and USB (universal serial bus) technologies, and that his daughter is going to school in the fall.


... life today in Navajo land


~ to the Rainbow Gathering ...

Haiku-ish ~ !The Windmills near Tehachapi, California

The windmills near Tehachapi, California

along the ridge lines! ~

I almost stopped to hear them sing.

~















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2009/07/haiku-ish-windmills-near-tehachapi.html - July 2, 2009)

The Windmills near Tehachapi, California

The Windmills near Tehachapi, California


The windmills near

Tehachapi, California,

along the ridge lines,

beckon and wave.

They are turning a lot.


On my way to the

Rainbow Gathering,

I almost stopped

to hear them sing,

but they were too silent.


There are so many,

and are so beautiful,

on these dry, brown,

California hills.


And all are

generating energy ~

what an abundance.


People are thinking, ~

generating energy.




~

* 

...

(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2009/07/windmills-near-tehachapi-california.html - July 2, 2010)

Caucasus: Catalogue of Life, Information Resource Abundance, World University's Great iTune's Us

In addition to the Encyclopedia of Life {eol.org}, I just found another amazing information resource - "The Catalogue of Life" - catalogueoflife.org.


MMMmmmm.


*

The internet makes so many incredible resources, like Wikipedia, possible, and free.


There is indeed an abundance of great, free, open information on the web.


**

World University & School ~ worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University ~ extends these possibilities that the internet opens.

Here are a number of great iTunes U Universities at World University & School: worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses, many of which I added recently:

Columbia University's iTunes U - itunes.columbia.edu

LMU Munich - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München iTunes U - deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/lmu.de

MIT's iTunes U - web.mit.edu/itunesu

Oxford University's iTunes U - itunes.ox.ac.uk

Stanford University's iTunes U - itunes.stanford.edu

UC Berkeley's iTunes U - itunes.berkeley.edu

University of Chicago's iTunes U - itunes.uchicago.edu

University of Michigan's iTunes U - itunesu.umich.edu

University of Pennsylvania's iTunes U - upenn.edu/itunes

Yale University's iTunes U - itunes.yale.edu

I invite you to add great content when you find it to World University & School {worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects} ~ by clicking on 'edit this page' there. Or teach something in Second Life or to your web camera, and link it to WUaS.



***

Such a welcome and wonderful information abundance ...


****

The Caucasus mountains (click on title above for photo), and spiders there, have among the most complex ecosystems.