Hello!  I'm using the Q&R to reach as many of you as possible, to let you know that Danita came through her spinal fusion surgery OK today!  She is fine!  --or as fine as a person with a newly fused lumbar section of the spine can be. 

I am SO grateful, and SO relieved!  She was talking, knows where she is and what's what, and she's now healing, rather than surviving!

Who knows?  Maybe next time you see us you'll be able to note that she's about 10" taller than me! 

Of course, my wish for December, 2008 is that Danita continues to heal and grow stronger, smoothly, simply, and miraculously, and that she really feels the deep respect and love that everyone who knows her feels for her as an exceptional and inspiring woman! 

(The picture is a pencil drawing by Viestarts Aistars.)

For some reason I've found people's answers to today's question fascinating.  I've noticed that several people say that keeping promises to themselves is challenging, because it's easy to let things slide, and nobody else will know.  And I can certainly agree with that.  That's one area where "dieting" actually taught me a positive lesson at a relatively young age, because I realized that I can intend to do something, but that doesn't mean that I will actually do it.  The positive side of that lesson is that I don't make "promises" to myself.  Instead, I work from my values.  I don't want to compromise my values, so I weigh what I am going to do in response to particular situations, but I don't make blanket "promises" to myself that I will do or not do things. 

For me, the difficult promise is "for better or worse, in sickness and in health."  What, exactly, do these two phrases mean?  Certainly there are boundaries to these statements.  As an extreme example, nobody would expect someone to continue with a partner who is dishonest and abusive.  But many relationships are moored somewhere in a gray area--not even gray by intention, neglect or incompetence, but gray by virtue of time, luck, changes of the wind and sea.  In my case, he is unable to remember making these vows, and still we stay the course.  In any case, things would be completely different now than they were 25 years ago.  This is a really difficult thing to learn about, and I'm grateful for the lessons.

Home is a good place to go when you're tired. 

Have you ever been caught some place where you couldn't go to at least even a rented room and catch some sleep?  It's so achey and bone-tired to have to keep sitting up and moving around when you want to lay down and snuggle up somewhere safe.

So many people in this world have to make a little corner somewhere into that place for themselves to sleep, and just trust that they will be safe somehow until they wake up.

Photo from hobotraveler.com

Openness, flexibility, candidness

Nonjudgmentalism, kindness

an uncensored love of chocolate and sensuous dining

Empathy

Creativity and a sense of fun

Iconoclasty

Silliness and strength

Vision

Compassion

A positive attitude that says YES! to life

We think that we feel what we feel and do what we do because it's from us.

What if we were actually like a kind of Swiss cheese, and permeable, and we were doing what we do because of EVERYTHING?

Like the ebbs and flows of universal tides, energy fields, the gravity of stars, mass consciousness and psychology, the seasons, microbes, what's in the air, and mind interconnectedness that we aren't conscious of?

I got here in the summer of 2006, and I was SO in love with this place.  It was just like when I started my Ph.D. program, and wanted to learn EVERYTHING.  I'd even read the bulletin boards.  My God!  I lusted after this place and that place.  There were thngs I needed to learn and connections that needed to be made.

Today I've come to see my graduate school environment in lots of other perspectives, and I've also come to be somewhat ambivalent about Gaia.  Mainly, it's a black hole in terms of my time, which sometimes I feel could be better spent elsewhere.

During one of my elsewhere journeys, at the Barack Obama site, in order to work more effectively, I found I needed a facebook profile, so I went there and made one.  And to my utter surprise, I found about 16 other Gaiasters there.  Really close people, some of whom I have met.  And there's stuff going on there, too!  Now what to do?  Am I now in two places at once?  And what about my favorite blog here, the one I read every day even if I read no other?  Sometimes I just don't understand that blog any more, and I think, Why am I doing this?  And the answer is always --because of a true and pure affection. 

So, if this is my home, I would miss everyone here too much if I left.  I will always keep a presence here, but there is a good chance I won't be here as often.  The universal tides are pulling me elsewhere.  Please know that I love you true.  This is a place where I've learned some very important lessons about love, kindness, and being in a community.  I might see you tomorrow or in a few days, but I'll always be around.

You knew it! We're in deep trouble. In about a day and a half, we'll be without food. Is this a desperate message from an Australian walkabout? It could be a message from where we always are--at home, at work, and at play in our urban living grounds.

Our local and national economies rest upon a constant, and unacknowledged, state of emergency. We live in urban areas where we are literally stranded among millions of others and dependent upon people from somewhere else to stock our grocery shelves. If the trucks stop rolling, people in cities will run out of fresh food in about 48 hours. Ours is an artificial economy which is guaranteed to, at some point, fail. It is not sustainable. The Emperor, our tired and tawdry structure of production and markets, has no clothes. Lots of glad rags are being produced for the clothing racks, but little of the real clothing of a sound economic structure.

My parents and grandparents lived through the Great Depression because they raised their own food. Why can't we redevelop our dangerous and depressing urban neighborhoods to produce food (locally grown food) for people who live nearby? The urban gardens movement holds one of the keys to true sustainability. We would also reap a bounty of ancillary benefits, the best example of which I've already witnessed. In an urban garden in Mesa, Arizona, children from a local elementary school help to grow vegetables and flowers. To do this, they must learn where food comes from, how to plant and how to harvest. They develop a relationship with the earth they live upon. And someone tells them, if they don't figure it out on their own, that they must not trample the plants in their rows.

I'm not saying that we should do away with anything that we already have. Let's just add in the structures that need to be rebuilt. It's as if we have attacked our own economy over the years, saying "Oh, we don't need the foundation beams. They're so basic. Let them fall away." Growing food in the soil around us is a human activity so basic, it's at the very root of the meaning of "culture," which comes from the same root as "cultivate." To create a way of life that sustains our bodies and spirits, communities, and economy, let's bring back the neighborhood gardens. Lots of them!

(The photo is one I took of the edge of a sidewalk in New Orleans.  I was awestruck by the little plant growing into that space...)

Perhaps it would be best---certainly more elegant---to leave the two videos up without comment.  But I decided not to resist the impulse to explain.  This is about Michael's take on the ongoing changes in the world (and the quote below is an excerpt from a larger discussion)... 

"It is as a result of so many of these alternative thread developments coming to fruition, in the last few months,  that I believe the TIME has arrived when I need to pull them ALL together and focus, focus, focus on EVER SIMPLISTIC explanations of NO THING. As will always be the case, however, for them that understand no explanation is necessary and for them that DON'T (in more ways than NONE) no explanation will suffice. IT IS indeed the difference between the one that intuitively decides not to board the aircraft that crashes, and those that do."

My take on "nothing" is that it refers to nothing at all.  So therefore, nothing does not actually exist.  It's only a relative concept.  As in, "I don't have any money on me, so I can't buy lunch."  It exists only in contrast to something that could be there.  It "exists" relative only to some type of potentiality, wish, etc. 

You see, now I'm doing something that Michael would think perhaps less than necessary, in that I'm trying to explain the unexplainable.  Well, I know I can't actually do that, but it is useful to call attention to this subject, because the concept of


may hit the news rather prominently, not to mention unfortunately hitting the personal lives of many.  And how we think about this concept of all the things we don't have that we wish we had is tremendously important.  Take advertising and the market economy as the obvious example of that. 

And the other comment I'm not resisting making is, Could anyone possibly be any cuter than Billy Preston with that hair?

While I'm adding stuff to this blog, here's one more video about the use of the concept "nothing."  This was posted by a boy who made it in collaboration with his little sister.  I don't know which is cooler: that they found a glitch in the game to exploit, or that a brother and sister actually collaborated.

Every once in awhile, my son, Max, brings home a movie and then asks me if I'll watch it with him.  He's already seen it, but he likes to view videos multiple times, which I don't understand, but made he and his sister very easy to entertain as little kids.  There's some videos that he wants to share with me, to see what I think about them and maybe talk about them or whatever.  This is one of those.  It really is good!  In an awful way.  One of those movies that really is so bad that it's very good.  The deep story theme is about the Atonement.  It's also about growing toward true individuation in a Jungian sense.  The characters are sooooo crazy, one wonders how this movie could possibly be about such big themes.  But it actually, really is better than it should be.  If you're looking for a holiday movie to curl up and watch, this could be one...

I'm thinking of all of you, and of all the souls in this world, connected and cherished in this Life experience.  I'm wishing for all    peace. 

Peace is not an easy home, peace is a journey. 

Peace involves the creation of balance, and the mindful valuing of that balance as it withstands all kinds of pressures and passions. 

Together, we can help each other, and the world, remember to choose peace, nonviolence and our own integrity. 

This year, and at all times, we can give each other the gift of our strength and our faith. 

May you all have a beautiful holiday season.

More hope than ever before.

               More faith than I had yesterday.

                               A deep appreciation for all that is, the way it is.

                                                Willingness to share myself and my love with you.

Two things today.  First is that Margo is Finally Here!!!  So, you might want to go visit her and check out her profile page.  You may remember Margo from a previous blog, in which I posted one of the only pictures of Mike and me together, which was taken by Margo, and I was saying that I missed her.  Well, she's moved BACK from Michigan to Pheonix YAY!!! and she's also decided to go ahead and do a profile on Gaia.  So then she sent me a message, saying, "Hi Martha, OK, I did a profile, NOW what do we do here?"  So, you might send her a suggestion...  maybe a group to check out or something? 

Also, I'm reading The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, by Daniel J. Levitin.  Levitin is a musicologist, historian, music lover, student of psychology, philosopher, and other things.  He might even be a sociologist.  He has written a couple of similar books, which I haven't read, but it seems that he is creating a life-work on this subject, and those types of books usually get better as the author goes along, so I'm not too worried about not reading his earliers.  He says that after years of research in history, culture, and music, that he has decided there are six basic types of songs the world over, and that one's preferences relative to them can tell him a lot about a person--from culture to psychology to spirituality. 

Levitin's six song types are:  songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love.  ...Interesting list, I thought.   One of them I could relate to right away.  Maybe someday I'll come up with my six personal prototypes of all of these, but right away I gravitate to "songs of joy" the most, and what comes to mind is a big, BIG favorite of mine, which is, to me, like MINDLESS joy!!!  Words just won't express how I feel about this song, so I thought I'd share it with you, and then ask YOU...  do you love a song about joy, or about any of the other of Levitin's categories?

Looks like the blogs have a new limit.  I can squeeze only 3 pictures into it.  Phoenix celebrated its first day of Light Rail service yesterday, and I can pick only 3 of my pictures.  Which ones?  I had this whole photo-journal thing planned out.  Oh well. 

The photo above is of the big intersection closest to our house.  Or, of a sign above the intersection, really.  While I was taking the picture, I was also listening to these two guys make fun of our neighborhood free shuttle.  The one person said, "Tempe has this "orbit" system.  You know, different circles.  And they're named, like, Earth and Venus and Mars and Jupiter.  We're waiting for Jupiter."

"That's stupid!" said the second guy.  "And it sort of begs the question..."

"Yeah! I know!" laughed the first guy.  "Do they have Uranus???"

"NO!  YOUR anus, man!"

"NO!  YOUR anus!"

"Shut up, man!"

"NO!, YOU shut up!"

and so forth.

I guess I'll need a picture of the actual light rail, of which I didn't get many, because I was too busy actually riding it, with 90,000 other of my favorite fellow citizens.  It was totally packed!  But it was also good.  People chatted with one another and behaved very well.  I loved it that people of all walks of life participated. 


Then, as my 3rd picture,  I kinda like this one.  It's of the wooden walkway they built around the partially finished parking garage for the park n' ride in my neighborhood.  The building is too creepy.  I call it "the Nazi wet dream," and I'll probably add a picture of it in sometime, but not today. 
OK, that seemed to work.  Maybe I could have added some of the other pictures, but this is okay for now.