"The Ode to Joy".........

 On certain days, I wake up humming the Ode to Joy.  Or I find myself humming it in the course of the day.  For me it's a reminder from the Powers That Be to remember, remember the great resonant joy of life and being that underlies everything, and try to re-connect.  Sometimes that thread of song does the trick, reconnects me.  No one really knows what Beethoven felt when he composed this beloved work, but what a gift he left us.

In the movie "Immortal Beloved" there is a wonderful  scene where the  Composer is remembering himself as a child as the Ode to Joy plays, escaping the brutality of his drunken father through a window, the young boy runs faster and faster through a darkened  wood.  Finally he leaps into  a pool of water, illuminated by the moon and the stars.   There the boy  floats on his back  gazing up at that vast starry sky, and  it seems that the stars themselves come down to join him, and he is ever expanding with them, vast, and free, and one of them.

I could  never forget that image...............the stars within the music, ever expanding in a great ripple. 


PS:  I just noticed that this is the 777 post in my blog.  That's got to be a good omen!


I was delighted to visit Bill Moyers article about "Ode to Joy" flash mobs around the world:

http://billmoyers.com/2013/11/14/beethoven%E2%80%99s-flash-mobs/

Here's one of them:  

 Hong Kong Festival Orchestra Flash Mob 2013: Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" 

 

Margo Adler: "Vampires are Us"

I was greatly saddened this summer to learn of the death of Margo Adler, a long time spokeswoman for the Pagan movement, Priestess and well known NPR correspondant.  Her book DRAWING DOWN THE MOON has been so important for helping to understand the growth of the Pagan movement. 

Last summer it was my pleasure to have breakfast with Margo at the Sirius Rising Festival in New York, to hear her speak to those gathered about her new book Vampires Are Us: Understanding Our Love Affair with the Immortal Dark Side (Weiser Books), and her questions about why Vampires are so important in contemporary storytelling, why people are so fascinated with the Vampire, and how vampires have changed from their earlier origins.  The reluctant vampires of Angel and Twilight are not the same as the monsters of  Bela Lugosi's time.

I pondered on this blog the work of  Joe Slate and his  research on  Psychic Vampires and Judith Orloff's comments on Energy Theft , but Margo Adler takes the conversation about Vampires into a whole new place.   

On a personal note, I wish Margo was still with us for many reasons,  and I imagine she would have something to say about the disturbing rise of movies and books about Zombies now. I'll leave that one alone for now, although I sometimes have my concerns...............the walking dead?  Oh............

"As Adler, a longtime NPR correspondent and question asker, sat vigil at her dying husband's bedside, she found herself newly drawn to vampire novels and their explorations of mortality. Over the next four years--by now she has read more than 270 vampire novels, from teen to adult, from gothic to modern, from detective to comic--she began to see just how each era creates the vampires it needs. She explores the issues of power, politics, morality, identity, and even the fate of the planet that show up in vampire novels today. Perhaps, as Adler suggests, our blood is oil, perhaps our prey is the planet. Perhaps vampires are us. "

Directed by Andrew Bennett
Produced by Jay Schweid
an Ephelants Production

http://youtu.be/1BHYg6Ksf0w

Ancestral Visitations.........a Samhain Portfolio

Getting ready for my annual Feast of Samhain, I found some old photos that were irresistable in their mystery and their pathos.  Wanted to remember, especially, the unknown Grandmothers who brought me here.  

Just a few "snapshots from the other side of Forever".............................

 http://www.slideshare.net/laurenraine/ancestral-visitations-a-samhain-portfolio-40168014

Thank you.  Thank you all for bringing me here.

Goodbye to Democracy and your Tax Money: "The Monster Lurking Inside the TPP"

   "And when states lose, the fines can be enormous: the report notes that 2012 saw the highest monetary award in the history of investor-state dispute resolution: $1.77 billion to Occidental, in a dispute with Ecuador." 

  Having said in my previous post that there are times one must stop reading the news, I find myself thinking about exactly that this morning.   As many interests in Congress try now to fast track the TPP, most Americans are barely aware of it if at all.  But the repercussions could be terrifying,  continuing to widen the gap between super wealthy and poor, and locking in a government that is virtually controlled by multi-national profiteering.  We used to have labor unions, anti-trust laws, industry and jobs.  What is evoving is a corporate "aristocracy" - which is ironic, considering the beginning of this country.  Among other things, this "partnership" will enable corporate entities to sue a state, or the country, for "lost income", such as, for example, labeling of foods that are genetically modified. 

  In other words, pretty soon, you may not have the right to know what you are eating.  Because this law will give entities like Monsanto the right to sue for billions of your tax dollars because of "lost profit".  Think it can't happen?  Read - Mexican citizens had to pay millions to Coca Cola because they wanted the sugar content changed.  Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant, is currently suing Canada for $100,000 because Canada won't give them a new patent yet.   And how about $1.77 billion dollars to the Occidental corporation from Equador?  How much could that could that country  do to help its citizens with $1.77 billion?

It's bad enough that the military absorbs 60% of all our money.  If this law passes, and corporate greed is given total control in this way.........what's left for humanity and the environment is going to be very little.

  Under the pending, secret #TPP “free trade” deal you would be in trouble for sharing internet content, while big foreign corporations could sue your government for any domestic law that compromises their expected future profits.Get the facts and take action at: www.ExposeTheTPP.org.

 Investor-State Dispute Resolution: The Monster Lurking Inside Free Trade Agreements : from the be-very-afraid dept

  by Glyn Moody

"Unfortunately, against a background of almost total lack of awareness by the public that supra-national structures are being put in place that allow their governments to be overruled, and their laws to be ignored, it is highly unlikely we will get that debate."

 We wrote recently about how multilateral trade agreements have become a convenient way to circumvent democratic decision making. One of the important features of such treaties is the inclusion of an investor-state dispute resolution mechanism, which Techdirt discussed last year. The Huffington Post has a great article about how this measure is almost certain to be part of the imminent TAFTA negotiations, as it already is for TPP, and why that is deeply problematic:

Investor-state resolution has been a common component of U.S.-negotiated pacts with individual nations since the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. But such resolution is not currently permitted in disputes with the U.S. and EU, which are governed by the WTO. All trade deals feature some kind of international resolution for disputes, but the direct empowerment of corporations to unilaterally bring trade cases against sovereign countries is not part of WTO treaties. Under WTO rules, a company must persuade a sovereign nation that it has been wronged, leaving the decision to bring a trade case before the WTO in the hands of elected governments.

Traditionally, this proposed political empowerment for corporations has been defended as a way to protect companies from arbitrary governments or weakened court systems in developing countries. But the expansion of the practice to first-world relations exposes that rationale as disingenuous. Rule of law in the U.S. and EU is considered strong; the court systems are among the most sophisticated and expert in the world. Most cases brought against the United States under NAFTA have been dismissed or abandoned before an international court issued a ruling.

As this rightly points out, investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms were brought in for agreements with countries where the rule of law could not be depended upon. That makes no sense in the case of the US and EU, both of whose legal systems are highly developed (some might say overly so.) The Huffington Post article quotes Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, who explains what she thinks is really going on here:

"The dirty little secret about [the negotiation] is that it is not mainly about trade, but rather would target for elimination the strongest consumer, health, safety, privacy, environmental and other public interest policies on either side of the Atlantic," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "The starkest evidence ... is the plan for it to include the infamous investor-state system that empowers individual corporations and investors to skirt domestic courts and laws and drag signatory governments to foreign tribunals."

One recent example of the kind of thing that might become increasingly common if investor-state dispute resolution is included in TAFTA and TPP is provided by Eli Lilly and Company. As Techdirt reported earlier this year, the pharma giant is demanding $100 million as compensation for what it calls "expropriation" by Canada, simply because the latter's courts refused to grant Eli Lilly a drug patent on the grounds that it didn't satisfy the conditions set down in law for doing so. A new report (pdf) from the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), pointed out to us by IP Watch, reveals just how widespread the use of investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms has already become:

The Issues Note reveals that 62 new cases were initiated in 2012, which constitutes the highest number of known ISDS [investor-state dispute settlement] claims ever filed in one year and confirms that foreign investors are increasingly resorting to investor-State arbitration.
…

By the end of 2012, the total number of known cases reached 518, and the total number of countries that have responded to one or more ISDS claims increased to 95. The overall number of concluded cases reached 244. Out of these, approximately 42 per cent were decided in favour of the State and 31 per cent in favour of the investor. Approximately 27 per cent of the cases were settled.

Although that suggests that states are winning more often than investors, the cost of doing so is a drain on public finances, and ignores cases that never come to arbitration because governments simply give in. And when states lose, the fines can be enormous: the report notes that 2012 saw the highest monetary award in the history of investor-state dispute resolution: $1.77 billion to Occidental, in a dispute with Ecuador. As an accompanying press release from UNCTAD points out, this growing recourse to international arbitration

amplif[ies] the need for public debate about the efficacy of the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism and ways to reform it

Unfortunately, against a background of almost total lack of awareness by the public that supra-national structures are being put in place that allow their governments to be overruled, and their laws to be ignored, it is highly unlikely we will get that debate.

  Follow Glyn Moody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

   https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130411/09574122678/investor-state-dispute-resolution-sleeping-monster-inside-free-trade-agreements-begins-to-stir.shtml

How Wolves Change Rivers ...........Wonderful!

 

 When These Wolves Were Brought Into The Park, No One Expected This To Be The Result.
Back in 1995, wolves were finally reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park, which is mainly located in Wyoming, yet also goes into Idaho and Montana. Prior to that, they weren't in the park for at least 70 years.

Upon their reintroduction, the park completely transformed. The populations of many other species increased, as did the health of the park, overall. While wolves are often considered to be harmful species, they can actually transform the world around them, as they did in Yellowstone National Park, where they greatly increased the biodiversity in this treasured ecosystem.

 http://sustainableman.org/blog/2014/02/17/how-wolves-change-rivers/

http://www.wimp.com/wolvesresult/

New Website: "Masks and Myth"

I recently created a new website for my saleable masks  which I'm proud of: 

"Mask and Myth"

 ( http://www.maskandmyth.com/)

 

For anyone seeking a handmade, one of a kind mask for any occasion I have quite an assortment.  I also enjoyed having a chance to remember very fondly my days at the Renaissance Faires, and pause to be grateful for those nomadic, mythic  days!  

Weavers................

"Weavers" (2014)

 

Stories are not abstractions from life but how we engage with it.  We make stories and those stories make us human.  We awaken into stories as we awaken into language, which is there before and after us.  The question is not so much "What do I learn from stories" as "What stories do I want to live?"   Insofar as I'm non-dual with my narratives, that question is just as much, 

"What stories want to come to life through me?"

David R. Loy, "The World is Made of Stories" 

Sometimes I become overwhelmed with the events of the world, and have to refuse to watch the news, even the worthy information that colleagues send me.  At such a crucial time in the evolution of humanity,  such a long awaited and brief window, the old and ugly stories of war, of greed, of old patriarchal tribal war gods endlessly demanding blood and supremacy, and endless consumer economies that can lead only to collapse........... and both leading to the end of hope.   No, you can't live with that.  So I stop, and walk into the garden, and remember the stories that are sacred, the myths that renew and sustain.  

  

It seems to me that we are every day planting and weaving the World Stories as tell our own stories in so many ways.  And, whether we realize it or not, we are doing so in collaboration with many others.  As  the generative  incubation of  winter quietly approaches, may we remember how important our task really is, how little time we really have:  to  plant seeds for the future that ever grow,  ever green, into  stories of the Sacred Earth and our true community with All Beings. 

"Midwives" (2014)