Bobbing Around
Volume Twelve, Number One
August, 2012
bobswriting.com/ anxietyanddepression-help.com/ mudsmith.net/ other issues
Bobbing AroundVolume Twelve, Number One
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Texas Judge Rules The Sky Belongs To Everyone by David Morris
Demonstration in Hong Kong by Sarah Vrba
"Texas judge rules atmosphere, air is a public trust," reads the headline in the Boston Globe. A tiny breakthrough but with big potential consequences.
And as we continue to suffer from one of the most extended heat waves in US history, as major crops have withered and fires raged in a dozen states, we need all the tiny breakthroughs we can get.
The "public trust" doctrine is a legal principle derived from English Common Law. Traditionally it has applied to water resources. The waters of the state are deemed a public resource owned by and available to all citizens equally for the purposes of navigation, fishing, recreation, and other uses. The owner cannot use that resource in a way that interferes with the public's use and interest. The public trustee, usually the state, must act to maintain and enhance the trust's resources for the benefit of future generations.
Back in 2001, Peter Barnes, a co-founder of Working Assets (now CREDO) and On the Commons as well as one of the most creative environmentalists around, proposed the atmosphere be treated as a public trust in his pathbreaking book, Who Owns the Sky: Our Common Assets and the Future of Capitalism (Island Press).
In 2007, in a law review article University of Oregon Professor Mary Christina Wood elaborated on similar idea of a Nature's Trust. "With every trust there is a core duty of protection," she wrote. "The trustee must defend the trust against injury. Where it has been damaged, the trustee must restore the property in the trust."
She noted that the idea itself is not new. In 1892 "when private enterprise threatened the shoreline of Lake Michigan, the Supreme Court said, 'It would not be listened to that the control and management of [Lake Michigan] -- a subject of concern to the whole people of the state -- should... be placed elsewhere than in the state itself.' You can practically hear those same Justices saying today that '[i]t would not be listened to' that government would let our atmosphere be dangerously warmed in the name of individual, private property rights."
In 2010 Wood, along with Julia Olson, Executive Director of Our Children's Trust "had the vision to organize a coordinated international campaign of attorneys, youth, and media around the idea that the climate crisis could be addressed as a whole system," Peter Barnes observes, replacing a situation in which "legal solutions were fragmented, focused on closing down a particular power plant or seeking justice for a particular endangered species, threatened neighborhood or body of water impacted by our fossil fuel abuse."
On behalf of the youth of America, Our Children's Trust, Kids Versus Global Warming and others began filing suits around the country, arguing the atmosphere is a public trust. So far cases have been filed in 13 states.
In Texas, after a petition to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to institute proceedings to reduce greenhouse gases was dismissed, the Texas Environmental Law Center sued on behalf of a group of children and young adults. The Center asserted the State of Texas had a fiduciary duty to reduce emissions as the common law trustee of a "public trust" responsible for the air and atmosphere.
The lawsuit argued, "The atmosphere, including the air, is one of the most crucial assets of our public trust….Global climate change threatens to dry up most of these waters, turning them from gorgeous, life-giving springs into dangerous flash-flooding drainages when the rare, heavy rains do come. The outdoors will be inhospitable and the children will have few places to recreate in nature as the climate changes. They will be living in a world of drought, water shortages and restrictions, and desertification."
The TCEQ argued the public trust doctrine applies only to water. Judge Gisela Triana, of the Travis County District Court disagreed. Her letter decision, issued on July 12, 2012 stated, "[t]he doctrine includes all natural resources of the State." The court went further to argue that the public trust doctrine "is not simply a common law doctrine" but is incorporated into the Texas Constitution, which (1) protects "the conservation and development of all the resources of the State," (2) declares conservation of those resources "public rights and duties," and (3) directs the Legislature to pass appropriate laws to protect these resources.
The immediate impact of the case is limited. Noting that a number of climate change cases were wending their way up the judicial ladder, Judge Triana upheld the TCEQ decision not to exercise its authority.
But a few days after Judge Triana's ruling, Judge Sarah Singleton of the New Mexico District Court denied the state's motion to dismiss a similar case. That will now move forward.
The Texas court is the first to support the possibility that the "public trust" doctrine may justify the creation of an atmospheric trust. One Houston law firm advised its clients the decision "may represent a 'shot heard 'round the world' in climate change litigation…Given the stakes involved in such cases, clients should monitor these suits carefully -- and perhaps participate as amicus curiae to support the state's attorneys' arguments."
What a delicious irony if future generations could look back to Texas as the catalyst that ultimately afforded legal protection to the sky.
David Morris is co-founder and vice president of theInstitute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, Minnesota and directs its Public Good Initiative. His books include "The New City-States" and "We Must Make Haste Slowly: The Process of Revolution in Chile."
Posted at On the Commons Magazine
David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis, Minnesota and directs its Public Good Initiative. His books include The New City-States and We Must Make Haste Slowly: The Process of Revolution in Chile.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the street on Sunday 1st July in Hong Kong. They gathered to commemorate the 15 years since Hong Kong was integrated into Chinese rule. Before 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony.
The many protesters wound their way around the city's streets for more than four hours before dispersing. Reports vary on how many people participated in the massive march on Sunday. Authorities claim that only about 55,000 joined in the demonstration. Organizers claim at least 400,000.
Citizens of Hong Kong still have wider access to democracy, civil rights and commercial activities than citizens on the Chinese mainland. The very fact that such a large gathering of protesters was allowed in the city of Hong Kong illustrates this dichotomy. Still, demonstrators at Sunday's proceedings expressed concern about the waning democracy in Hong Kong.
Sunday not only marks 15 years of Chinese rule but also the swearing in of Hong Kong's new leader, a businessman named CY Leung. He was sworn in by Chinese president Hu Jintao. Many citizens feel that Leung was chosen based on political interests in Beijing. The BBC points out that a college of 1,200 business leaders elect the officials of state for Hong Kong, and most of those businessmen have extremely close ties to the power structures in Beijing.
Before the march on Sunday, CY Leung was sworn in before of an audience of about 2,300. One heckler called on Mr. Hu to end one-party rule in China and condemned the 1989 massacre and military crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Other demonstrators burned portraits of Mr. Leung in retaliation of the debunked voting system.
The crowd was most likely bolstered by newly released reports that revealed Leung, a noted real estate investor, had built a number of illegal structures on his property. He has maintained ignorance in the case but has also made a public apology, NPR reports.
The Hong Kong government has denied any wrongdoing in the face of so much worry on the part of citizens. The New York Times quotes a statement issued by the government:
The Government will uphold the core values of Hong Kong and protect the freedom and rights of the people... The chief executive and his team will honor their pledge to hold themselves accountable to the people. They will go to the districts to listen to people's views and aspirations and work together with them to address the deep-rooted problems in a pragmatic manner, improve people's livelihood and promote harmony and stability in society.
Despite the clear tensions at Mr. Leung's swearing-in, the march continued on in full force. A wide variety of groups were represented at the march, including a number of pro-democracy political parties shouting slogans. They were joined by singers, dancers and citizens holding up bold banners.
One vivid posterboard showed a large hand displaying the middle finger telling Beijing to go away, in so many words. Even a spiritual group called Falun Gong, which is banned on the mainland, made an appearance at the march. NPR reports that many citizens in Hong Kong do not align their national identity with China, but rather call themselves citizens of Hong Kong.
From Care2.com.
GMO myths and truths Michael Antoniou, Claire Robinson & John Fagan
Reusing grey water: a balanced assessment by Carl Seville
Grand Canyon under Antarctic ice by David Gabel
This is an important and scientifically very competently done review, available at http://earthopensource.org/files/pdfs/GMO_Myths_and_Truths/GMO_Myths_and_Truths_1.1.pdf. Here is the start of the executive summary:
Genetically modified (GM) crops are promoted on the basis of a range of far-reaching claims from the GM crop industry and its supporters. They say that GM crops:
However, a large and growing body of scientific and other authoritative evidence shows that these claims are not true. On the contrary, evidence presented in this report indicates that GM crops:
Based on the evidence presented in this report, there is no need to take risks with GM crops when effective, readily available, and sustainable solutions to the problems that GM technology is claimed to address already exist. Conventional plant breeding, in some cases helped by safe modern technologies like gene mapping and marker assisted selection, continues to outperform GM in producing high-yield, drought-tolerant, and pest- and disease-resistant crops that can meet our present and future food needs.
Most of us realize that water is a scarce resource and are looking for ways to use less of it in our homes. We need water to drink, for cooking, cleaning, flushing toilets, and (unless we are into xeriscaping) irrigation. We can save water by using more efficient fixtures, taking shorter showers, fixing leaks, and being more careful about how we use it. We can reuse water by capturing both rainwater, and gray water -- the stuff that goes down the drains in our bathroom sinks, showers, tubs, and washing machines.
It is possible to clean and filter gray water and then reuse it, both inside our homes and for irrigation, but it takes effort to do it right and it comes with challenges. First, we need to distinguish gray water from black water, which is the waste from kitchen sinks, dishwashers, and toilets. Black water can't be reused in our homes until it is fully treated and sanitized in a sewage treatment plant, something that most of us don't have in our backyards. Gray water is easier to prepare for reuse, most commonly in indoor storage tanks designed just for this purpose.
Installing a gray water system in your house requires two sets of drain lines, one for the gray water and one for the black water. All the black water goes into the sewer or septic tank, and rest goes into the gray water tank. This tank, usually in the basement or crawlspace, filters, treats and stores the gray water until it is reused. Filters take out the big yucky stuff -- hair, lint, etc.
Treatment is necessary to keep the water from getting toxic, and is done with chlorine, ultraviolet light, or a combination of these and other methods. Treated gray water can be used to flush toilets and for irrigation, under certain conditions. If you want to use it to flush toilets, you need to have supply lines to each toilet that are separate from the regular water in the house -- easy if you're building a new house, more work on an existing home. Gray water can be used for underground or soaker hoses, but it shouldn't be used to supply sprinkler heads because it can spray nasty stuff in the air, in a process referred to as "aerosolizing," that you could breathe in and make you sick.
If you decide to put a gray water system in your house, make sure you understand exactly how much maintenance it needs, and what chemicals or other treatment the water needs. If you're not the kind of person who likes to take care of things, think hard before you give it a try. Filters can get clogged, pumps can break, chemicals can go out of balance -- there are lots of complicated things that can go wrong with a gray water system.
Although they are allowed in many places (for instance, Arizona laws make it fairly easy for Phoenix plumbers to install gray water systems), many plumbing professionals are not big fans of gray water systems because of the maintenance and health issues involved in using them. If you want simple, safe ways to save water, install high efficiency fixtures, take shorter showers, don't run water unnecessarily, and put in drought resistant plants. If you want to collect water, stick a few rain barrels on your downspouts. They are cheaper, will collect a lot of water, and you can use it for irrigation and even flushing toilets if you want, without the complicated treatment gray water requires.
Posted on Networx
Carl Seville is a green builder, educator, and consultant on sustainability to the residential construction industry. You can find out more about him and read his other excellent, useful articles at http://www.networx.com/author/carl-seville
Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey have discovered a rift valley that is one mile deep. The valley is hidden deep below the Ferrigno Ice Stream in West Antarctica, an extremely remote region seen only once previously by human eyes in 1961. They found that this rift basin is connected to the ocean, allowing the ocean to penetrate into the continent. The Southern Sea impacting the ice has a warming effect, despite its cold temperatures. This has tremendous implications, as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is melting at a faster rate than any other part of the continent.
The lead author for the study, Dr. Robert Bingham, glaciologist at the University of Aberdeen, discovered the rift valley while doing fieldwork in 2010. He set out to find out why some melting on the coastline was occurring more rapidly in some areas than others. It was essential to assess the conditions not only in the atmosphere and ocean, but beneath the ice surface.
His team gathered data using ice-penetrating radar driven by skidoos over a distance of 1,500 miles. By way of comparison, this distance is greater than the distance between London and Athens, or between Los Angeles and Houston.
The radar picked up an extremely large rift, sinking a mile below the surrounding land. "If you stripped away all of the ice here today, you’d see a feature every bit as dramatic as the huge rift valleys you see in Africa and in size as significant as the Grand Canyon," said Binham. "This is at odds with the flat ice surface that we were driving across -- without these measurements we would never have known that it was there."
The most amazing part of the discovery is that the valley aligns perfectly with records of ice-surface lowering caused by melting observed via satellites over the last two decades. This incredible finding will help scientists predict the patterns of ice loss in Western Antarctica in the years to come.
The study has been published in the journal, Nature.
From ENN.com.
Urban Agriculture in Detroit by Beth Buczynski
The Motor City may soon be known better for it's tomatoes than its cars. Urban farming initiatives have been popping up all over Detroit as a way to utilize the city's plethora of vacant lots and provide fresh food for local residents.
Now, Michigan State University has announced it will build a major urban agriculture research campus within the city that will position the city as a future world center for urban food systems technology and development. The agreement, signed in late June by Mayor Dave Bing and MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon outlines a program dubbed the MetroFoodPlus Innovation Cluster @ Detroit.
"Michigan State is committed to making this a community-centered, collaborative program focusing both on developing Detroit's vast potential and demonstrating the concept's applicability to a rapidly urbanizing world," Simon said. "By 2050, food production will need to double -- using less water and energy than today. We see great opportunity to do good locally and connect globally."
The partnership will begin with a series of discussion with community stakeholders and prospective partners. Over the next three years, the school will initially invest $500,000 to create research-oriented innovation center where cutting-edge technologies in land-based and indoor growing systems can be developed. Ultimately, researchers hope to discover new ways idle properties could be repurposed for production of high-value vegetables and nonfood crops such as biofuel plants.
"We salute the urban food work already being carried out by so many highly committed Detroiters and community-based organizations. The opportunity ahead is to address our current critical development needs through expanding the urban food agenda in Detroit, connecting our work to other major cities around the world and positioning the city to be a leader in new food growing technologies for the future," MSU's MetroFoodPlus program co-director Rick Foster said.
From Care2.com.
How to live in hell with peace in your heart
Recently, I've had the honour of talking for an hour to about 50 men, who are the male half of the Probus Club of Healesville. Oh, they have women too, but apparently boys and girls play separately.
I chose to tell them about the geniuses at survival, and what we can learn from them. These are people who have lived serial hell, and emerged at the other end free from bitterness, hate, resentment, self-pity. While those who shared their fate suffered serious psychological damage, these exceptional people returned to serenity and contentment as soon as they emerged into normal existence.
We can learn from such people. I told my audience how. If you want to learn the lesson too, read two books:
Some of the lessons are:
I then used a case study on how to do it: me. My hell is that I am aware of the evidence that strongly indicates a major global cataclysm within the next few years. At the same time, I am a professional grandfather, and want the kids I love to have a good life.
When I remember to use the tools I described here, I have peace in my heart. When I don't, I suffer.
Whatever your hell, you can do the same. And also, you can join me in working to improve the situation. For example, follow up the next article by Andrew Gaines.
I have a powerpoint slide show of my talk. Email me if you want a copy.
Our global civilisation runs on fossil fuel energy, and the expectation of cheap energy is woven into virtually every aspect of our lives. And indeed, through our collective addiction to excess consumption, we demand that it be so. And yet, this will kill us.
I think that those of us who care should ask: What will it take to WIN? What will it take to actually become ecologically sustainable for the long haul?
Since we live in an interconnected system, where economics, consumerism, personal psychology and government regulations all tend to increase industrial production and its associated environmental damage, I think that our proper aspiration is to do whatever is necessary to become ecologically sustainable. The needed changes are so profound, encompassing, and good-hearted that we may speak of whole system change, or a whole system transformation. Success will involve mobilising sufficient outreach and thought leadership that a critical mass of people get this.
I am catalysing such a grassroots educational initiative here in Australia. Several years of development have gone into it, including two three-day think tanks with members of influential NGOs.
Whole system change boils down to just two operating principles. A viable society will be ecologically sustainable of course. And because of the close coupling between values and behaviour, it will operate on goodwilled partnership/respect values rather than self-serving aggressive domination/control values. Of course, there is a lot to unpack underneath these high-level concepts.
With warm regards,
Andrew is the initiator of a movement I am proud to be a member of: Transform Australia. Wherever on the planet you live, you can become a better person, and work to save something for the next generation, by looking around our web site. And if you are an Australian, please consider joining us.
Why did I place this article under "Deeper Issues?" Because it focuses on one of Andrew's two points: greed, selfishness, self-indulgence. You don't need stuff that costs the earth, however cheap it may be in purchase price. Read my essay and the transcript of a speech I made a few years ago to understand the damage the consumerist myth does.
Considering buying those cute 2 for $25 jeans from Old Navy, or those fabulous new pumps at DSW for the steal price of just $15? Think again. Cheap goods equal a not so cheap global footprint. Even though you're probably not thinking so rationally while being bombarded with club-thumping music and eye-catching merchandize, try and restrain yourself; the planet will thank you.
A new book by Elizabeth Cline entitled Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion critiques the mindless, shopaholic culture permeating modern day society and takes the reader on an eye-opening journey behind the name brands and store shelves and into the depths of the economics, resources and labor required to make your clothes.
Cline explains that the clothing industry is able to maintain such incredibly low prices due to sheer volume of production. In order to further cut costs, clothing companies have resorted to cheaper materials and, as a result, an overall loss in quality. Have you ever noticed that those new jeans from H&M didn't last very long? Perhaps holes in the knees developed sooner than you'd prefer, or maybe that shirt from Target felt thinner and lighter in quality than you'd like?
This business model is by no means accidental and it's bad news for human rights and the environment as most high volume, low price clothing stores employ cheap labor and promote extreme turnover and waste. In fact, we throw away "68 pounds of textiles per person per year," according to Cline, which leads to overflowing closets and thrift stores now bursting with low-quality items. It's a vicious cycle, particularly for those who can't afford anything better.
With respect to market extremes of super low prices (think big box stores) versus super high prices (think Madison Avenue), Clines states that "There are very few middle-market brands and retailers and everything has become very cheap or irrationally expensive on the other end." Leaving little room for quality products that don't cost a fortune, most of us fall victim to clothing items we know aren't the best sourced, yet we buy them anyway. There's often simply no other financial choice and going naked obviously isn't an option.
So how can we balance the need for affordable clothing with labor rights, a local designer economy and a healthier environment? Cline reiterates the need for more independent fashion designers who use and promote sustainable products. Check out Fashioningchange.com if you want to learn more about sustainable comparable clothing alternatives. Also, and most importantly, be sure to choose quality over quantity when given the choice. Although initial sticker shock might dissuade you, the handmade dress that lasts for 10 years is worth much more in the long-run than five t-shirts that will last a summer.
Read more: Care2.com
I hate my grandmother
I am a peace loving and quiet person with love for all -- nature, humans, animals, everything except this one person. I hate her. She happens to be my grandmom. My father died when I was two and my mother moved in with her parents. I have grown up with my maternal grandparents. My grandfather was a nice person. But my grandmom always wanted to control the situation and dictate everything about me: when I should wake up, when I should eat, when I should study. She is a dictator. Others have managed to accept her authority. I was a rebel. So 10 years back, after my graduation (I was 21 then) I moved to Delhi for my higher studies. I am not the academic kind, yet to move away from home I have got so far as to be doing my PhD. Even now whenever I visit home, my grandmom's nagging behaviour puts me off. I feel like strangling her to death.
I have done several kinds of meditation. When I am away from her I can work through my emotions but when I am at home she drives me mad.
I never get angry with anyone except this wretched lady. She is not even dying even though she is 85. My mom is trapped with her. And I too get trapped when I visit home.
I want to let go of this hate. How to do it?
Preta
Dear Preta,
Because you have the benefit of the wonderful Indian culture, I can give you an answer I might hesitate about if it was for a western person. You, I assume, understand the concept of karma. Karma literally means "seed," though I can't remember in what language. When I do something, good or bad, it will be a seed that germinates into events in my future, good or bad.
In order to achieve our karma, we have teachers in our lives. They don't know they are teaching us. Often, it's two ways. I teach you and you teach me, different lessons.
So, think of it this way. Before you were born, you decided you needed a person to teach you one or more specific lessons. You chose your grandmother, exactly the way she is. And she chose you, exactly the way you are.
You then have free will, either taking the opportunity of learning the lesson, or choosing not to. If you choose not to, then the problem that is a stimulus for growth stays, and usually, gets worse and worse. Some people go through life and face the same choice over and over, and always make the wrong choice and suffer. Then they will probably set up the next life in a way that will address the same lesson.
Others keep repeating the bad choice, until one day they do it differently. Then, they grow, and life becomes better in one or more ways.
Ask yourself. Suppose this is true, what Lesson is my grandmother meant to teach me? Assuming she will not change her ways, how can I change so this source of irritation disappears from my life? How can I become a better person by having a grandmother like her?
Hi, my name is Richard, and I'm facing a mental illness that's threatening to wreck my future. I've been struggling with it for 2 years. I am unable to concentrate on anything, like when reading a book or sitting in the classroom and the teacher is talking. I will not able to concentrate, a lot of thoughts distract my focus like every time I am thinking about my cell phone, whether it is in my pocket or not, I am thinking about my wallet whether it is in my pocket or not, or if my ID card is, so all these thing distract my focus while I'm in a classroom or anywhere else. Kindly help me out of this problem.
Richard, you are not suffering from a mental illness, just from a habit that you want to get rid of.
There is a solution. It is simple, but difficult because it means learning a new habit.
These distractions keep persisting because you are fighting them. When you want something to go away, you are paying it attention, and attention is energy. By being upset with yourself for having these irrelevant thoughts, you are giving them energy.
Suppose I tell you not to think of an elephant. What will be in your mind? And the more you tell yourself "I must not think of an elephant," the more you will do so. Same is true of your wallet, ID card or whatever.
So, you need to take energy away from these distracting thoughts, not giving them energy by fighting them and disapproving of having them there.
You did not ask to think of your wallet. The thought just came. You are not responsible for having the thought. There is nothing wrong with the thought. It is allowed to be there, BUT YOU DO NOT NEED TO GIVE IT ANY ATTENTION.
The way to learn this skill is mindfulness meditation. I don't know where you live, but it should easy to find a meditation teacher. Within a few weeks, you will be skilled at choosing a focus (for example what the teacher is saying); attending to that focus; when other thoughts come along, you do not fight them, merely gently return your attention to your focus.
Practice doing this daily. Not only will it improve your concentration, but also it will give you regular holidays with peace in your heart.
Hi, I've been with my man for four years and I have a problem I've been dealing with he not an affectionate person at all and it hurts me a lot. We barely have sex but he watches porn all the time but tells me he just doesn't like having sex. I don't think we ever made love and we stay together. He tells me all the time that it has nothing to do with me it's just him. It's so bad: I know he's been watching porn or should I say jagged off.
Dear Sandra,
He is right. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with him. If you looked like a film star and made love like a Houri in 7th Heaven, he would still be engaging in the same behavior.
I hear that you hate this situation. He is not going to change, unless he finds some very strong reason for changing. If he decides that there is a problem, he could seek psychotherapy and cure himself of this addiction. However, like most addicts, he is in denial. He chooses not to know that there is a problem. Therefore, he is not going to fix it.
So, my suggestion to you is to find a way of motivating him. What does he value so much that he is willing to change his addiction rather than lose this thing? Is it your company? If so, you could consider "tough love:" "Either you seek help for this problem, or we are splitting."
Porn addiction is no different from addiction to chemical substances such as alcohol. Go to Al Anon and read their very useful brochures on how people living with an addict can change what they do in order to stop enabling the addictive behavior.
My name is Barita 25yrs old.
I got married last year. my husband works in UK. So I came here last month. I am finding very difficulty in English. I am not able to understand what here the people speak because of this I'm feeling very depressed. When I will go out with my husband shopping any where if anybody speaks with me I am not able to understand what they speak. So because of this my relationship going bad and I want to do job here I am post graduate (MCA). I am not able to find which kind of job I can do because of this. Please help me how can I improve myself in 1 month.. I am listening radio, watching English movies for this. Please I want help to come out from this difficulty otherwise it worsen my life. Will be waiting for your reply.
Thanks & regards
Dear Barita,
You have only been in the UK for one month. If you do the things I suggest, you will be thinking in English within six months.
When I came to Australia as a teenager, I couldn't even read the street signs. I had to go to school, but didn't understand a word of anything. By the end of the first half year, I passed every subject.
How? I simply refused to speak my native language with anyone, did my best to only speak English.
I also worked hard at studying a dictionary, asking questions if I didn't understand something. My aim was to understand and speak English as well as the locals.
Tell yourself that you can do it too. At home, with your husband, with anyone you meet, try to say it in English. Immerse yourself in the local culture. It will feel difficult at first, and for quite a long time, you will occasionally have trouble. For example, I found that even after a few years, I could keep up with a conversation when only one person was speaking, but got lost if it was several.
You can also attend formal courses in English as a second language. You will find them a very good start, but it does not replace what I suggest.
A Technique to Overcome Addictions Deepak Chopra
Addiction is the no. 1 disease of civilization, and it's directly and indirectly related to all other diseases. Besides physical addictions, such as the addiction to food, tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, there are psychological addictions, such as the addiction to work, to sex, to television, to shopping, to appearing young, to control, to suffering, to anxiety, to melodrama, to perfection.
Why are we addicted to all these things? We are addicted because we are not living from source; we have our connection to our soul. The use of food, alcohol or drugs is essentially a material response to a need that is not really physical at its foundation. What we are looking for is pure joy rather than mere sensation. Self-destructive behavior is unrecognized spiritual craving. All addictions are really a search for the exultation of spirit, and this search has to do with the expansion of consciousness, the intoxication of love, which is pure consciousness.
Over and over, people have tried to overcome their addictions through psychological and behavioral methods or through medication. None of these offers a permanent cure. The only cure for addiction is spiritual. We hunger for the ecstatic experience, which is a need as basic as the need for food, water, or shelter. Ecstasy literally means stepping out. True ecstasy is stepping out of the bondage of the time-bound, space-bound world of materialism. We long to step out of the limitations of the body. We long to be free of fear and limitation. We hunger for the oblivion of our ego so that we can experience our infinite being.
Start today to transcend your addictive behaviors by observing them without judgement. Wake every day with a prayer: "Thank you God, for making me just as I am," and then observe yourself. Be a witness to your thoughts, your moods, your reactions, your behaviors. They represent your memories of the past, and by witnessing them in the present, you liberate yourself of the past.
By observing your addictive behaviors, you observe your conditioning. And when you observe your conditioning, you are free of it, because you are not your conditioning; you are the observer of your conditioning.
Adapted from Power, Freedom, and Grace, by Deepak Chopra (Amber-Allen Publishing 2006).
From Care2.com.
Well, Alfredo Zotti and I have been saying so for years, based on a large body of evidence, but people keep reinventing the wheel. A recent issue of Schizophrenia Bulletin contains a meta-analysis (statistical combination of findings from many studies) that should establish the fact for good. Professor Richard Bentall of the University of Liverpool's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society and colleagues combined data from 36 published studies, involving approximately 80,000 people overall. Some of their findings:
The best way to make my profession obsolete would be to treat our children with love, respect and decency.
The birth of Australia's carbon price legislation is predictably being heralded by the chorus of criticism that has accompanied its gestation, despite the early distribution of handouts as the government attempts to buy its way through the noise.
While the #cashforyou compensation might muffle some of the clamour, it certainly can't be countered by the mysterious silence about what the carbon price is for and what it will do, other than line the pockets of Australians.
The decision by the government to label the carbon price package the 'clean energy future' represents a pragmatic reading of the political mood, as well as the need for a positive 'frame' with which to 'sell' it, but there remains an ongoing failure to describe the point of the legislation -- or what it can deliver.
There is however an untold story of good news associated with this, the beginnings of our national emissions reduction strategy, which has been completely overlooked in government communications and in other commentary -- and that is the improvements in public health and economic savings that accompany emissions reductions.
While there may be environmental and climate benefits implied by the term 'clean energy future', the words 'climate change' have been conspicuously absent from the conversation about the carbon price, and that's a shame, given that it is (presumably) the motivation for taking action in the first place.
For while there will indeed be climate benefits, they are far off in the future and will only be realised by a considerable ramping up of emissions reductions, far beyond a 5% by 2020 target or a $23/tonne carbon price.
The health benefits however are available much sooner than that. Health economists have evaluated the health benefits associated with emissions reductions in Europe, China, India and the UK, and the findings suggest improvements for health are available immediately -- and can amount to billions of dollars saved annually from avoided ill health, and productivity gains. For example, in 2010 it was predicted that cleaner air from an emissions reduction target of 30% by 2020 in the European Union would deliver savings worth 80 billion Euros a year due to reductions in the incidence of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases (associated with air pollution from burning fossil fuels).
So, contrary to the popular myth in Australia, emissions reductions can actually offer a win-win-win -- that is, improvements in population health as well as economic savings as well as a reduction in climate risk.
Much of the conversation to date about emissions reductions however has focused on 'cutting carbon pollution', for which the benefits appear to many people to be mainly available for future generations, and therefore possibly less urgent, not realising that there are substantial and important benefits available immediately for public health -- that will also deliver considerable economic savings.
The European and US modeling on the health benefits of emissions reductions (from which we must extrapolate potential benefits for Australia since this work has not been done here yet) suggests that the savings from avoided ill health can substantially offset the costs associated with cutting emissions -- and may even exceed them. For example, studies of the adverse impacts on the community's health from the coal industry in the United States suggests that industry's impost on human health outweighs the national economic benefits of the sector -- in other words, coal is costing the US more than it earns due to the illnesses and deaths caused by the harmful mix of particulates, chemicals and carcinogens produced by the processes of coal mining, transportation and combustion. Who would choose to continue to support such an industry?
The costs to Australia from the coal industry are clear enough in the communities that live and work in proximity to coal mines and coal fired power stations. Respiratory diseases, intellectual development delays in children, and lung cancer are all implicated. Again, we lack the thorough studies to understand the full extent of the harm being caused to Australia and Australians from this industry; a human impost the NSW, Victorian, Qld and WA governments appear all to willing ignore in the face of lucrative royalties paid to those governments from industry.
It is clear however that moving to cleaner, safer, healthier energy sources would bring significant gains for public health in Australia. This applies to the transport sector as well, where the air pollution created by the use of fossil fuels is also causing considerable harm. A (too) little known fact is that air pollution kills more people in Australia each year than the road toll -- the combustion of petrol and diesel causing harmful pollutants such ground level ozone and carbon monoxide as well as tiny particulates which not only cause respiratory disease but also enter the blood stream, causing heart attacks and stroke.
But where are our national campaigns for cleaner air?
The good news from all of this is of course that the direction in which we are tentatively moving, with our tiny step towards a low carbon future, is that it's not just about the climate -- it's about us and how we can protect the environment and ourselves by adopting low carbon lifestyles, energy options and transport choices. This is an opportunity to achieve better health for ourselves, for the community, by taking advantage of our existing natural advantages of the sun and the wind, and supporting technologies and industries that are clearly in the national interest, not only in the interests of mining shareholders.
Fiona Armstrong is the founder and convenor of the national coalition of health care stakeholders, the Climate and Health Alliance www.caha.org.au
Keeping on track: the use of a plot
There are two ways to construct a story:
1. Create some characters. Put them in a setting, and let them do what they want.
2. Construct a detailed plot, and expand it into a story in a set of well-defined steps.
I think a story written intuitively, with only the vaguest idea of where it is going until it gets there, produces better writing. If you have this attitude, you're pretty well guaranteed to present everything from the point of view (POV) of people in the book. After all, the author's job is to bring the characters to life -- then get off the stage.
But...
But you need heaps of experience to do this well. I have edited many books that are full of author intrusions (which interrupt the reality of the story and should be cut out with scissors), and wander all over the place with no unity or connectedness, and are full of bits of subplot that go nowhere and are never brought to a conclusion. Even the whole book sometimes fails to reach a conclusion.
This makes a story no fun to read. It is unpublishable. I invariably advise the author to treat this book, however promising it may be, as raw material for writing the second attempt, rather than something that can be fixed.
Until they develop an automatic rudder through experience, they should follow the second path of detailed plotting.
Here is my advice to a recent client, whose book was written in wonderful, lyrical language, and had fascinating content:
Please read through once, studying my suggestions. Then I suggest you put the book aside for a couple of months to let it go "cold," then do an entire rewrite.
When you resume, start by constructing a plot, like this:
1. Describe the entire story in one sentence. This is the tag line.
2. Expand this into a 200 word blurb.
3. Go into more detail, writing a synopsis of 500 to 1000 words.
4. Now construct a bulleted list of points that gives all the steps in the development of the story.
5. Expand each bulleted point into a chapter summary. Each of these will be between 100 and say 500 words.
6. Expand the brief description of a chapter (its entry in the chapter summary) into a series of scenes. Each scene has a location, a witness from whose point of view it is presented, usually other characters, action taking place, and a justification regarding how it advances the story.
7. Finally, write each scene. The first paragraph will give the witness's name, and some immediate inner event like a bodily sensation, a thought, perception or the like. It will also immediately locate the scene with very brief snippets of description woven in.
This means that the story hangs together in a logical way. It contains nothing that fails to advance the plot. Everything is written from the point of view of a character.
One of the benefits of constructing a plot like this will be to remove the jerkiness in the narrative. Everything should have a logical connection. This is not to say you can't have subplots, but that they are woven in smoothly.
Menergy -- Victorian Men's Gathering
From Friday 2nd to Monday 5th November You are invited to the first Menergy -- a gathering of men of all ages from Victoria and beyond. Menergy exists for men to support men. It's an opportunity to get back in touch with what it means to be a man and share what we find in a safe and non-judgemental environment. It's a time to be real, learn, share stories and feel grounded.
The weekend will offer a wide range of workshops as well as time to explore the conference theme, Men, Mateship & Meaning. Come and make new friends, catch up with those you know, participate in group activities and workshops, and share in a unique experience. There is lots of time for connection and learning planned, but you choose how your weekend looks and there is plenty of bushland on the property to get away from the crowd.
Whether you're a newcomer to men's gatherings or have been involved for years, head along and invite your friends. We ask that you bring your life experience, knowledge, wisdom and abilities -- in short, just bring you. With 2012 our first year, you will be a part of shaping Menergy and determining its distinctive flavour.
Our intention is that Menergy helps you engage with other men, creates opportunities to learn and grow, and provides Menergy to take back to your relationships, families and communities!
Why Should I Go?
Carolyn Howard-Johnson's poem This Grave at Ypres was accepted for the August issue of Cyclamen and Swords, a literary journal. The August edition is themed "Unforgettable."
This online journal finds the best among poets and short story writers and shares their work freely on their Web site. The editor, Johnmichael Simon is also an editor at Voices Israel.
Howard-Johnson's selected poem touches on the theme many of her poems do, that of tolerance, acceptance, understanding. She describes the graves the Belgians tend fervently with these lines from the poem:
Skies the color
Howard-Johnson studied poetry at UCLA with Suzanne Lummis, editor of Speechless the Magazine, which featured her chapbook Tracings (Finishing Line Press). That chapbook also won Military Writers Society of America's Award of Excellence.
Learn more about the at Cyclamens and Swords.
Learn more about at Carolyn Howard-Johnson's poetry and literary fiction.
Support Materials available on request.
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Create a new society! by Andrew Gaines
Cheap Clothing Costs A Lot More Than You Think by Tara Holmes
How to live in hell with peace in your heart
Create a new society!
by Andrew Gaines
Andrew Gaines
Cheap Clothing Costs A Lot More Than You Think
by Tara Holmes
Psychology
I have can't concentrate disorder
I am in a non-relationship
I can't understand them
I hate my grandmother
I have can't concentrate disorder
I am in a non-relationship
I can't understand them
Health
Childhood abuse increases risk of mental illness
The untold story: health benefits of the carbon price by Fiona Armstrong
A Technique to Overcome Addictions
Deepak Chopra
Childhood abuse increases risk of mental illness
The untold story: health benefits of the carbon price
by Fiona Armstrong
Writing
Keeping on track: the use of a plot
What my friends want you to know
Carolyn's poem published
Menergy -- Victorian Men's Gathering
(Melbourne Cup Weekend)
Grantville Lodge (near Phillip Island)
Carolyn's poem published
of dry-docked ships. Spade-turned trenches,
loam joins monument to monument,
tenuous plants tamped to greet
spring, not an unkempt clot or rock
in sight.
About Bobbing Around
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