I was so happy to see national protests yesterday against Monsanto. One of the Senate's latest insults to Americans this week was to PROHIBIT states from legislating labeling of
GMO food. Hows that for contempt? Not even bothering to hide the fact that Monsanto controls the Senate? Here's a video of yesterday's protests against Monsanto drawing a reported 2 million in 400 cities worldwide to the streets:
Congress passed a bill in March that gave Monsanto special exceptions
to proceed with GMOs even if such crops were thought to be dangerous (the so called "Monsanto Protection Act")
This week the Senate refused by a 27-71 vote the Bernie Sanders Amendment
to the Farm Bill that would have permitted states to pass bills
requiring GMO labeling, effectively FORBIDDING STATES from labeling GMO engineered foods . In essence telling the American public that this corporate entity can do whatever it wants without determining first what will be the environmental impact, and, the American people will not be allowed to know that they are eating GMO foods. There is a Change.org petition to Obama to repeal the "Monsanto Protection Act", but I doubt it will do any good now
that the Senate has explicitly voted to prohibit labeling of GMOs for
States.http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-president-obama-to-repeal-the-monsanto-protection-act-repeal-the-monsanto-protection-act A few weeks back I posted a TED Talk by Lawrence Lessingabout, in essence, corporate ownership of our government, which was once a democracy. And the Multi-National Corporate State is doing a very bad job of governing, since, with climate change, destruction of the oceans, fracking what's left of the underground water tables............need I go on?...................their profits are going to be very bad in the not too distant future, because there won't be many people left to "consume" what little is left.
And there is no Corporation more powerful, or scary, than Monsanto, a corporate entity that is busy playing God/dess with absolute impunity. I posted previously about the "Monsanto Protection Act" that was just passed, and feel, in good conscience, that I need to post further for the benefit of any who may not know about why people have been marching this week against Monsanto. Below is the documentary "The World According to Monsanto". Having watched it, I BELIEVE EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE THIS FILM. This is truly monumental, and frightening, whether we're hearing a French scientist report that the universally used weedkiller Roundup "provokes the cell division leading to the formation of cancer", to the almost complete loss of independent farms and biodiversity in Uruguay.
In India farmers are being driven to suicide because they can no longer, due the fact that Monsanto completely controls the cotton seed market, afford to plant their traditional crops (Monsanto and the Seeds of Suicide). As a result, they are falling deeper and deeper into debt, losing their lands, and being displaced from traditional homelands.
Indiana farmer Troy Rouse talks, in the film (below) about being sued by Monsanto. (If you grow organic or conventional, and your neighbor grows Monsanto,
the two will likely cross, making you legally liable to be
sued by Monsanto when they field test your
seeds.) Further, seed crops are being designed to be sterile, so that future planting must be purchased anew from the corporation****. This means that essential food crops could be controlled by a corporate entity demanding a tax which it can determine
at will. And what will happen if modified seeds escape into the gene pool, now that Monsanto has carte blanche to proceed without appropriate controls or even visibility to consumers?
In 2011 when I went to the Glastonbury Symposium, I was blown away by learning about the work of Sam Semir Osmanagic, the visionary amateur archeologist who is attempting to excavate what he believes is a pyramid complex in Bosnia. I admire Dr. Osmanagic's dedication and vision, and have been rather disgusted by the way, as so often happens, he has been pooh-poohed and called a fraud, although in all fairness, there are many who support him, including the President of Malaysia who visited the site. I love Wikipedia, but their dismissal of his work is very disappointing and I think reflects a prejudice. The fact is, if he's right, this is the highest pyramid in the world, and the
complex is 10,000 + years old. Such a discovery would re-write what we
think we know about the ancient world, and what we know about ancient
Europe.
One of the developments I've been following (oh, to be young, and go volunteer to dig for a summer! What fun that would be!) is the discovery of what may very well be a concrete/cement that was used to construct the (as yet unproven) pyramids. This could mean that not only were the ancients creating intentional geomantic environments that were sacred landscapes***, but they had building technologies some 10,000 years ago that included making cement.
"Results released by the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy of
chemical and diffractometry laboratory analysis done on sandstone and
conglomerate blocks taken from the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun show that
the samples are an inert material with a binding, similar to that found
in ancient Roman concrete. These results were confirmed by analysis on
the samples done at the University of Zenica,Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Stone terrace made from sandstone plates on top of the Bosnian "Pyramid of the Moon", September 2008
More photos: http://www.bosnianpyramidofthesun.com/
In a separate independent test, Professor Joseph Davidovits, member of the International Association of
Egyptologists and author confirms this claim. “I performed electron
microscopic analysis of the sample and I propose the geopolymer
chemistry that was used to make this is ancient concrete,”http://www.davidovits.info/34/the-pyramids-in-bosnia-europe-perhaps-in-roman-concrete
He further adds that the sample is composed of “a
calcium/potassium-based geopolymer cement and that although he cannot
date the sample, he can discern that it is not modern concrete, but more
like the technique used by the Egyptians 3500 years ago.” In his
book "The Pyramids: an Enigma Solved" ,Davidovits proposes that Egyptian
pyramids were constructed using agglomerated stone (limestone cast like
concrete)."
Outside walls of the Bosnian "Pyramid of the Sun" made of the concrete conglomerate blocks, Northern side, July 2008
Christopher Dunn, author of The Giza Power Plant (1996) writes that the pyramids were "ancient energy
machines" or power sources that channelled geo-magnetic energy, which is currently a popular theory among researchers. The pyramids of
Bosnia have the same elements that define
the structure of an ancient "power generator system."
***A great Blog that follows the Bosnian Pyramids excavation, as well as discussion on related themes is Old Europe (http://bpblognews.blogspot.com/). Here I've copied from an article:
"In ancient times architecture was considered not only a creation of form
to limit or define space, but also inherently a sacred form that
concentrated beneficial earth and cosmic energies and dispersed harmful
earth and cosmic energies. The subtle energies of earth and cosmos were taken very seriously in the
spiritually advanced societies of the past. The ancients were conscious
that certain architectural features transformed invisible energetic
fields that exercise subtle but predictable influences on the human body
and on the environment.
In spite of our scientific progress in the modern day, we still know
very little, in comparison to the ancients, about the relation of forms
both natural and artificial to subtle and invisible but potent energies
from earth and sky. Since 2006, researchers from many different disciplines have visited the
Bosnian Pyramid Valley. These researchers have made pioneering
discoveries that have allowed us to dramatically expand our modern
understanding of the nature and purpose of the Bosnian pyramids and
pyramid structures across the planet. A two-year study performed by biologist Dr. Sulejman Redžić
from the Faculty for Natural Sciences at the University of Sarajevo,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, has shown that the soil temperature on the Bosnian
pyramids and nearby areas is 5 degrees Celsius warmer than elsewhere in
Bosnia.
Astonishingly, Dr. Redžić was able to identify several plant species on
the pyramids that are typical of warmer Mediterranean climate zones.
This means that these ancient pyramid structures create an artificial microclimate in the Visoko Valley. U.K. scientist Dr. Harry Oldfield
developed a photographic method similar to Kirlian photography that
captures the "shapes" of electromagnetic energy in a two-dimensional
photograph.
Images: rising energy fields of the Bosnian pyramids
Dr. Oldfield's photos of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun showed that the
electromagnetic fields above the pyramids are oriented toward the
vertical rather than the horizontal. This is unusual because the
electromagnetic patterns above natural features such as hills and
mountains are normally vertically oriented. Vertically oriented
electromagnetic fields are characteristic of artificial (manmade)
structures. In addition, Dr. Oldfield recorded more activity than
expected, with strong electromagnetic fields above the Bosnian Pyramid
of The Sun.
Corroborating Dr. Oldfield's findings, Dr. Slobodan Mizdrak,
a physicist from Zagreb, Croatia, led a team of experts who measured
both electromagnetic radiation in the Bosnian pyramid complex in 2010
and 2012. The team also measured an unusual 28 kHz ultrasound phenomenon
exiting the top of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun. A two-day experiment
in April 2012 demonstrated that the source of the ultrasound "energy
beam" is beneath the pyramid at a depth of 2440 metres (1.86 miles).
Analysis of collected data has shown that a metallic plate located deep
under the pyramid in combination with underground water flows and
unexpectedly high concentrations of negative ions generates electric
power of more than 10 kilowatts.
Image: artistic reconstruction of the Central Fire
The presence of high concentrations of negative ions has also been
detected also in other locations of the valley, namely inside Ravne
tunnel labyrinth. Different measurements performed during the past six
years have shown a tremendous increase in negative ions inside the
tunnel system, reaching levels of up to 40,000 ions per cubic centimeter
200 meters inside the tunnel system. Negative ions are atoms or
molecules that have more electrons than protons in their nuclei. Series
of analyses in the last 120 years have proven that negative ions clean
the air of dust, spores, mold and pollen and provide numerous health
benefits to human beings. Thousands of people who have visited the
underground tunnel labyrinth during the past six years have been able to
experience the healing power of this negative ion-rich location.
Janez Pelko,
a Slovenia researcher who studied the effects on the human aura of a
short stay in Ravne tunnel labyrinth, demonstrated that the human aura
increases and reconstitutes itself significantly in almost 80% of cases
among people after a one-hour stay inside the tunnel labyrinth. Janez
Pelko's research is mainly inspired by the work of Prof. Konstantin G. Korotkov,
a renown Russian scientist who invented the Gas Discharge Visualization
technique (GDV), which represents a breakthrough beyond Kirlian
photography, allowing direct, real-time viewing of human energy fields.
Thus we come to the conclusion that ancient cultures had developed an
understanding of the subtle effects of various invisible life energies
and created structures to both generate and magnify them."
There are times when I'm amazed at how human beings can turn reality on its ears. It is illegal to kiss in public in Tunisia, where fundamentalists are becoming prominent (ever notice how so many governments, in various flavors, always seem to attract people who love guns and hate love in any form?)
The good news for Tunisia is that after
a couple was arrested for kissing hundreds of young people defiantly turned out en masse for a kiss-in on
Bourguiba Avenue, under the slogan, "Let them arrest all the lovers in
Tunisia". Bravo! There's hope yet!
"What is in my mind is a sort of Chautauqua
- like the traveling tent-show Chautauqua’s that used to move across
America, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and
entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the
ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by
faster -paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was
not entirely an improvement.
Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness
moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. In
this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of
consciousness but simply to dig deeper into old ones that have become
silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale, and platitudes too
often repeated.
There
are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been
too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever
happened, and “best” was a matter of dogma, but that is not the
situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be
obliterating its own banks, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and
isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the
wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for."
Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
Robert Pirsig wrote the above in the 60's, long before the internet. I wonder what he would say about that over-flowing river now.
I began this blog in June of 2007, when I went to Midland, Michigan on a Fellowship from the Alden Dow Creativity Center to pursue my project "Spider Woman's Hands". It's hard to believe almost 6 years have passed, and reviewing those early posts, I try now to see who I was, where these trails have lead me. I saved the quote above almost from the beginning of this blog, because I have spent many years in Chautauqua County, New York, and because I felt my creative journey was not just a "personal vision quest", but, in creating a blog and having a show, also my own "kind of a Chautaqua". It arose from a desire to share my discoveries in the course of my wanderings. I see that I wrote in August of 2007,
"But this
has, now that I think about it, been a Chautauqua for me. Bringing
forth what I know and have to share to a new community. It hasn't been
easy, and one leaves not knowing what I've left behind. You
have to let it go, and not concern yourself with how many people care
about what what you're doing, not care about how much money you make or
don't make, not care about what any institution or magazine or even
colleague thinks art "is". Ultimately, it has to become your spiritual
path, your meditation, but also your voice in the Conversation, your
thread that seeks to weave you you into harmony and gathering
depth."
I have always disliked the cliche about art "You do it for yourself". That's a convenient way to dismiss artists, along with other cliches I've heard a million times. And a convenient way to justify the laziness and disrespect of the general public for innovative arts, which often treats artists as somewhere between cute, useless, great for real estate agencies that want to gentrify neighborhoods, and vaguely unpatriotic. Artists don't get multiple degrees, make economic and other enduring sacrifices, and dedicate their lives to the pursuit of expression just to "do it for themselves". They don't congregate in art districts (which are increasingly diminished, thanks to all those real estate agencies who monitor arts districts for profit) because they just want to be isolated. They congregate for creative discourse, and innovative art districts of the past, and places like the "West Banke" to Soho to the Haight Ashbury were seminal points of cultural transformation and dissemination, engines of creativity on the cutting edge of culture that reflect and germinate seeds that become an emerging paradigm 20, 30, or 50 years hence. Artists make art because they want to communicate. With their inner life, spirit, their communities, their nations, the world. It's a discourse continually seeking response and enlivenment. So why am I having this rant? Well, I don't exactly know, except that 6 years down the road from my fellowship about the Great Weaver, Spider Woman, I find that I myself am increasingly "dis-connected", without the desire I once had to talk about my art or show it. I don't know if all places are as indifferent as Tucson seems to be, but it's time to cut loose and head for Chautauqua County, to see what the fertile "burned over lands"*** can germinate in my spirit again, to hang with the mediums at Lilydale, sit around a bonfire at the Pagan Festivals in Brushwood, hear a concerto at the Institute, walk once again in magical Leolyn Grove, and find the Chautaqua spirit again. And, come July, that's exactly what I will be doing, Goddess willing!
For anyone not familiar with the term Chautauqua was an adult education movement popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I think the word, which is native American, means something like "place where the fish are". The first gatherings, and the title of the Chautauqua Institute which is still very active, were named after beautiful Chautauqua Lake. Chautauqua assemblies spread
throughout rural America until the mid-1920s, and from rural Pennsylvania to Colorado town had their Chautauqua tents raised close by the railroad stations. The Chautauqua brought
entertainment and culture, from violin concertos to storytellers like Mark Twain, for the whole community, with speakers,
teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers and specialists of the day. President Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that Chautauqua is "the most American thing in America." And I think it was............the Chautauqua embodied that a generosity that is one of the very good things about America, a desire to share and disseminate that is in the American character.
And somehow I think it's important, as our world becomes both more frenetically "connected" and also more strangely isolated ...to remember the Chautauqua. Both our personal "Chautauquas", as well as the generosity and enthusiasm of Chautauquas of another era.
***The "Burned Over Land" refers to the area of Western New York where Chautauqua County is where for the past 200 years all kinds of Utopian experiments and communities, spiritualist and religious movements have come and gone. In the 19th century the "burned-over land," in upstate New York saw the strange origins of the Mormons**, Seventh Day Adventists, the Shiloh Community, as well as the beginnings of American Spiritualism and Lilydale Assembly, and of course the Chautauqua Institute. The past century saw the first encampments for the Suffragettes, and many of the underground railroads for escaped slaves as well. Continuing in the tradition of exploration, it's also the home of the Brushwood Folklore Center.
"Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, the predominant branch of which is Mormonism. At age twenty-four, Smith published the Book of Mormon,
and in the next fourteen years he attracted thousands of followers,
established cities and temples, and created a lasting religious culture.
Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont, and by 1817 had moved with his family to an area in western New York later called the burned-over district because it was repeatedly swept by religious revivals during the Second Great Awakening. The Smith family was not united in their religious views, but they believed in visions and prophecies, and participated in folk religious practices typical of the era. According to Smith, beginning in the early 1820s he had visions, in one of which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization."
One of the "revelations" of Smith concerned the appearance of Christ among the native Americans just before the coming of the white men, and of course the famous Golden Plates. What most people do not know is that 1) the Burned Over zone was ripe with prophets and vision in that era,
2) there was a pervasive religious motif and legend among the native peoples, including the Seneca and the Iroquois, of "Peace Maker", a great spiritual leader who came, like White Buffalo Woman among the Lakota, to unify the tribes and teach the ethical codes. No doubt Smith interpreted this existing legend to mean Jesus.
And 3) throughout the Mississippian, as well as more northerly tribes, there was high religious status associated with copper objects, including sacred copper and brass plates, which were probably derived from early contact with Spaniards or French explorers. Native tribes had not yet developed metallurgy (although there is some evidence of copper axes found among the mound builders), so copper and brass plates would have been highly prized, even considered magical. Smith, being surrounded by earlier native American lore, would have been aware of the importance of "sacred brass plates" in tribal lore. (http://www.academia.edu/823368/The_North-South_Copper_Axis)
Homicide, battering, and rape statistics overwhelminglhy demonstrate that women and girls suffer great violence in this country, and thoughout the world. But apparently these patriarchs don't think it's worth passing a bill to protect them, or even make a passing comment on the problem. But the good news is that the bill passed. The bad news is that these people are still in Washington.
Sheryl WuDunn, co-author of "Half the Sky", which became a powerful documentary aired on PBS last year, said that gender violence and discrimination is the "Injustice of our century", and I believe she is absolutely right. So deeply embedded in our culture is the oppression of women, that it was some 70 years after freed black male slaves were given the vote that women were allowed to also vote in the U.S. - and only because courageous women made that possible through great sacrifice. We have a Martin Luthor King Day, but there is no day devoted to the Suffragettes, to Susan B. Anthony or Lucy Burns, or Margaret Sanger, who first made birth control available to women, or innumerable others who worked to give to women the same rights over their lives, finances, and bodies that men took for granted. Nor is the work over.
I love TED talks, and was delighted to hear this one by Jackson Katz, Ph.D., who points out that addressing gender based violence is not "just a women's issue", but a profound human issue. I think all boys and men should hear him.
"If we don’t become aware of both our personal myths and the cultural
myths that act upon us like gravitational forces, we risk being wholly
overpowered and controlled by them. As the maverick philosopher Sam
Keen has written in Your Mythic Journey, ‘We need to reinvent them from
time to time. . . . The stories we tell of ourselves determine who we
become, who we are, what we believe."
Phil Cousineau was a colleague of Joseph Campbell, and I recently re-discovered this article in my files, which I haven't read since 2001 (time to go through my files again). It's important, especially now, for artists (and everyone) to remember that they are Myth Makers, people who imagine the templates for each new era. It's work that matters.
I was raised on the knee of Homer, which is an Old World way to describe growing up on stories as old as stone and timeless as dreams. So I see myth everywhere, probably because I am looking for what my American Indian friends call “the long story,” the timeless aspect of everything I encounter. I know the usual places to look for it, such as in the splendor of classic literature or the wisdom stories of primal people.
Valerie James as "Sophia"
I want to explore the aspect of myth that most fascinates me: its ‘once and future’ nature. Myths are stories that evoke the eternal because they explore the timeless concerns of human beings—birth, death, time, good and evil, creativity and destruction. Myth resembles the god Proteus in the Odyssey, a shape-shifting creature who knows the secret that the lost Greek sailors long to hear—the way home. But they must learn how to get a grip on him, if only for one slippery moment, so he might surrender his hidden wisdom.
This is what I call ‘mythic vision.’ The colorful and soulful images that pervade myth allow us to step back from our experience so that we might look closer at our personal situations and see if we can catch a glimpse of the bigger picture, the human condition.
" The new myth coming into being through the triple influence of quantum physics,depth psychology and ecology suggests that we are participants in a great cosmic web of life, each one of us indissolubly connected with all others through that invisible field.It is the most insidious of illusions to think that we can achieve a position of dominance in relation to nature, life or each other. In our essence, we are one."
Anne Baring
But this takes practice, much like a poet or a painter must commit to a life of deep attention and even reverence for the multitude of meaning around us. An artist friend of mine calls this ‘pulling the moment,’ a way of looking deeper into experiences that inspire him. In the writing classes I teach, I refer to this mystery as the difference between the ‘overstory,’ which is the visible plot, and the ‘understory,’ which is the invisible movement of the soul of the main characters. In this sense myth is a living force, like the telluric powers that stream through the Earth. It is this mythic vision, looking for the ‘long story,’ the timeless tale, that helps us approach the deep mysteries because it insists there is always the stories we really live by, rather than the one we like to think we are living, and moreover, decide if our myths are working for or against us.
If we don’t become aware of both our personal myths and the cultural myths that act upon us like gravitational forces, we risk being wholly overpowered and controlled by them. As the maverick philosopher Sam Keen has written in Your Mythic Journey, ‘We need to reinvent them from time to time. . . . The stories we tell of ourselves determine who we become, who we are, what we believe.’
"What is the new mythology to be, the mythology of this unified earth as of one harmonious being?"
Indiana farmer Troy Rouse talks, in the film (below) about being sued by Monsanto. (If you grow organic or conventional, and your neighbor grows Monsanto,
the two will likely cross, making you legally liable to be
sued by Monsanto when they field test your
seeds.) Further, seed crops are being designed to be sterile, so that future planting must be purchased anew from the corporation****. This means that essential food crops could be controlled by a corporate entity demanding a tax which it can determine
at will. And what will happen if modified seeds escape into the gene pool, now that Monsanto has carte blanche to proceed without appropriate controls or even visibility to consumers? 
