Dad's life stories 4-30-10

If you have an older relative ask them to tell you the story of their lives. I think you will be amazed at what happened to them if they start reminiscing about their history.

These are the stories my father told me of his life from 1916 until 1985. Since I was born in 1948 I began hearing these stories as a little child. The flavor of them is unmistakable. You can feel the carry over from the wild west cowboy days quite a bit in them as even when I was born in 1948 there was a wildness in many places in California and throughout the Western states even then. Often when my parents took me to places in Eastern California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico it wasn't hard at all to imagine the wild west because we met many people when I was a child that were born around the time of the Civil War and after. People who were born in the 1860s were in their 90s in the 1950s when I grew up. So even my grandparents were all born in the 1880s and knew life before cars, trucks and airplanes. So people like this were just very different in how they saw life than now in every way.

I was enthralled by the stories of my elders as a child. I think this is one reason why I always tended to be more grown up in my thinking than a lot of my peers even at 4 to 6 years of age.

This is the beginning of my father's life:

He was born in 1916 in Morenci, Arizona. At that time Morenci was an open pit copper mine and likely  still is. His father (my grandfather) was an Electrical Contractor that was wiring up the homes being built for the workers of the mine and hired by the mining company to do this. So that people could come from all over the world to work there at the copper mine.

When my father was about 2 years old his older brother Bob (My Dad's name was Fred like me). Now Bob was 4 years older and so that would have made him about 6 years old kept either a wild fox kit or a coyote kit. I think likely it was a coyote kit in a cage and fed it. Well, one day it got loose after getting grown up enough and got out and bit a chunk out of my father's side. Bob was chasing his coyote and the family dog helped protect my 2 year old father so he didn't die. When they got Dad to a doctor, the nearest doctor was miles and miles away so it was sometime in the first few days after a chunk was bit out of my father's side, the doctor told my grandparents that the coyote had come within 1/100 of an inch of biting into my father's kidney which likely would have been fatal because of the distances to doctors and hospitals in those days. Bob had many infected bites from the coyote but it was luckily not rabid so the boys didn't die. Doesn't this sound like a completely different world than you now live in?

So, even though my father got pneumonia soon after that he didn't die from infection which could have been a problem because there were no antibiotics then.

When Bob was about 10 years old they moved to Breckenridge, Texas because my grandmother I believe was from Texas. She had two sisters. One owned a gold mine in Gila Bend, and I think she lived in Flagstaff as an adult and was married and lived there with her husband. When my father turned 18 he went to help with her gold mine for 6 months or a year in 1934 in Gila Bend. He loved Arizona because it seldom rained there and because he mostly grew up in Seattle after he was 12 to 15 years old when his Dad bought a home there.(Seattle rains a lot but is beautiful).

So when the went to Breckenridge, Texas Bob was getting beat up by a bully every day he walked home from school and was very upset about being the new kid. So he asked his Dad what to do. His Dad said, (Now remember this is likely 1920 and a completely different time than now). "Son. You have got to get this guy to stop beating you up. If you can't defeat him in a fair fight then get a big stick and wait around a corner and then hit him in the head with it and knock him out. He won't bother you again."

So that is what Bob did he got a big stick like a piece of lumber and waited for the boy and then knocked him out with the stick. The boy never bothered Bob again. You can see this is not like now at all. Since the law (sherriffs, Marshals and the like were few and far between) one had to defend oneself most of the time in the western states back then. This would have been normal behavior in many areas back then in 1920.

Even during World War II Grandpa was raising a Victory Garden in Wenatchee, Washington and went to get his gas coupons to bring his crop to the market to sell and they told him that the season ended last week and they wouldn't give him gas coupons. So he got his shotgun and brought it in and laid it on the counter and said he needed his gas coupons to bring his Victory Garden to market. They gave him his gas coupons. One would not get away with this now but this was just how things were done in the late 1800s and early 1900s. You defended your rights personally. And even during World War II everyone knew enough people like this so they understood. Just like in the movie "Secondhand Lions" my grandfather was just like the guys in this movie the way he dealt with people. This seems impossible to people today in 2010 but everything was done differently back then.

Another true story about my Grandfather was that he had a mining Claim of several thousand acres near Elk City, Idaho. The mining laws were changed around 1960 so that unless you showed you were taking out a certain amount of gold, Silver, or whatever you were taking out of the ground you couldn't keep a claim that big and live on it anymore. So, when a Forest Ranger came to tell him to move off his land, Grandpa shot the man's hat off with his 30 odd 6 rifle from World War I. To show you just how different things were in 1960 than now the forest service left him alone and waited until Grandpa died to return the mining claim to the forest service and to make it a part of the National Forest in Idaho. Grandpa lived Spring, Summer and Fall in Idaho in his cabin on his mining Claim and spent late Fall, Winter and spring until the snow melted in Idaho with his wife in Seattle at their home there. Grandpa was born in the 1880s in Kansas and was a baseball pitcher that was Nicknamed "Pinky" because of his red hair when he was young before becoming an Electrical Contractor and marrying my Grandmother.

Dad told me many stories about growing up in Coos Bay, Oregon and Seattle, Washington. I think this next story was in Coos Bay, Oregon. My Dad was 6 years old and his brother Tommy was 4 and his older brother Bob would have been 10. Grandpa gave Bob a small shotgun, my Dad at 6 a .22 rifle and his brother Tommy at 4 a .22 pistol and told them to go hunt doves for dinner. So off they went on their first hunting adventure without an adult present. (Even when I was growing up my Grandmother gave me my first .22 rifle at age 8) so to her this was pretty late to start using a rifle for hunting. Since boys in this era were expected to emotionally be like adults by age 4 to 6 we were capable of this kind of thing without accidents. Children were expected forced to grow up in many ways very quickly before the Viet Nam War in the Western States and throughout the world for that matter.

So, as a child there were always two worlds. The serious adult world and the child's world and adults always let you know which one you were in. So you would hear. "Now you be safe with that gun or I'll beat you within an inch of your life." And since adults meant this when they said it you knew you had to be adult in your behavior no matter how you felt or thought at the time. Your life depended on it.

So, there was always the child playful world and the adult completely terrifying world. So in this way boys especially were trained for warfare and to die if necessary in an instant defending themselves and their families and friends even if they were 4 to 6 years old. We were conditioned that way to be ready for anything at any time. It had been this way for thousands of years. We didn't like it but we all understood it perfectly. So, children (especially boys) were much different then than they are now because this kind of thinking now is considered abusive in polite society in the U.S. and Europe. However, none of us know if or when it will be absolutely necessary once again for the survival of our nation or world.

Dad said one day "The Old Man" bought a German Luger pistol. At that time it was the finest regular pistol in the world. It was like a Glock 9 mm pistol of today. It had I believe a 10 round clip that fit snug into the handle like a Glock and many other semi automatic pistols of today.  Well. My father at 13 or 14 and his two brothers snuck the pistol out without their Dad knowing it and were firing it into the dense forest around Lake Forest Park. After firing off a bunch of rounds into the forest they put it back and thought that all was well with no one the wiser. However, the next week they found out that one of the rounds fired into the dense forest had made it over a mile away and went through a lady's house while she was playing the piano and went over her head and lodged itself into the front door behind her. Though they all knew they had accidentally done this by being kids and thinking no rounds would hurt anyone. But since they were all kids no one every knew who had done this not even their Dad.

Another time Dad and his older Brother, Bob, had been trained by their father to blow up stumps with Dynamite. (Basically, you just dig under a stump and put the right amount of dynamite and then pack in the dirt and the stump blows right up into the air and out of the ground. The danger is putting too much dynamite or too little under the stump. Too little dynamite will not lift the stump out of the ground and too much might lift it so high it lands on top of a car or truck or house or barn or a person standing too close. So it was an is both an art and a science much like when you see buildings blown up to reuse the property for something else.

Well. Bob was a senior in High School and he and Dad wanted to impress their girlfriends and friends. So Bob got about 50 sticks of dynamite on a Friday night after School at about 9 pm in Seattle out in the country and put these 50 sticks of dynamite on top of a high 6 foot tall stump of an old growth forest tree stump. They lit a 30 minute fuse and took all their friends to a hill nearby to watch the fireworks. When it finally went off it was very impressive indeed and shot flame straight up into the sky over 100 feet. But they were probably the only ones who saw it flash that high. However, the problem was that the concussion was so loud it killed all the chicks in the eggs for 25 miles in diameter because the blast was just so incredibly loud. And the newspaper the next day talked about the Mysterious Blast. A week later the newspaper said, "Mysterious Blast Still Mysterious".  When Dad and Bob checked what it did to the top of the stump it just sort of put a crater in the top because almost all the force went straight up so it did almost no damage at all to the stump.

Another time during High School they made Potato Vodka in a bathtub for their friends party. However, because they didn't really know exactly what they were doing it made all the kids at the party go unconscious because the alcohol level was just too high to be completely safe. However, everyone survived so they all had a good high school story to tell.

Another time Bob took apart the stearing mechnism on his car and put it back backwards, so when you turned the steering wheel left the car went right and vice versa. But Bob had a party to go to and tried to drive the car anyhow. He made it about a mile before he put it in a ditch.

Another time during World War II during gas rationing Dad and some friends wanted to drive to Yellowstone National Park. Since they weren't allowed to buy that much gas because of the war they converted and old  1929 Duesenberg touring car to fuel oil the kind used in heating homes which wasn't being rationed at that time. They tied 2- 50 gallon drums of heating oil on the back of the Duesenberg and drove all the way to Yellowstone from Seattle and back. At the time Bob and Fred were electrician's building Liberty Ships in Seattle Harbor and had already served time in the Marines before World War II began. They had been Marine gunners on Hellcats, a biplane gunship that carried two. So, when they were given time enough off they went to Yellowstone on vacation with their friends in their converted Duesenberg. They said it blew blue smoke rings of smoke all the way to Yellowstone and back.

See full size image 

The above is a 1929 Duesenberg similar to the one my Dad and his brother converted to run on Heating Fuel oil so they could visit Yellowstone when gas was being rationed during world war II.


Everything about all these stories tells you that this was a completely different era than now. But understanding what life was like back then helped me a lot to understand my father, Grandfather, and uncles and other family members. As you can see my Dad's family was very colorful in their lives. And I can tell you that living around them they all were larger than life. It was a lot like living around a real bunch of real life John Waynes all the time. But I must say it got at times to be a bit much. I loved them all a lot but they all were pretty scary too. They had to be scary enough to survive the times they lived in.

What is Useful? 4-30-10

This is an important question to ask oneself because of the extreme times we live in. I would say that the most useful thing that anyone can do for life on earth right now is to find ways to stay centered and calm. Because the stress on the Earth itself and all life upon it right now is extreme. So anytime you meditate, pray or take a walk or run in the forest, desert or ocean to relieve stress and to center yourselves for whatever might come is a very good thing.

Since many people are just keeling over in one way or another with all the stress it is important that you don't fall and just lose it as well. Take care of yourself, exercise, meditate, eat healthy (organic if possible) and stay away from drugs and alcohol whenever possible so that you become a positive in a world that seems increasingly negative.

I believe we are in a worldwide cycle that we haven't seen the worst of yet(possibly won't be over for 2 to 10 years). So I believe that my father's and grandfather's bywords are the best to live by, "Prepare for the worst and hope for the best". In this way you invoke the pioneer spirit that kept our ancestors alive through anything both in the U.S. and around the world down through history. Now you might say "This isn't optimistic enough for me." Okay. I get this my wife is an optimist too. However, unless you have at least one person in the group (usually a male but not always) saying "Prepare for the worst but hope for the best" often everything comes to a severe end for the group or family group because they weren't sufficiently prepared for Anything.

So to repeat "What is Useful?"  Stay centered and healthy mentally and physically so you will be ready for Anything just like our ancestors who actually survived everything that has come before.

Asteroids might have originally brought earth's water

NASA: Asteroids might have brought water to Earth

Click "NASA" above to read news article on this.

As an intuitive I remember the asteroids being a planet that humans of earth came from. I remember the planet being blown up by a surface thermonuclear war. The space lifeboats that carried the families of the ruling countries of that planet survived and eventually colonized earth after the large dinosaurs were wiped out by pieces of that planet blowing up hitting earth. Then the colonist survivors from that planet that became the asteroid belt began new cultures on earth. Many if not most of them soon died because they were not suited to this planet. However, some genetic engineers took earth based dna and combined it with the Asteroid planet dna and we are the result.

When the old Soviet Union sent a probe to the Asteroid Belt in the 1970s it was found that it had been a planet destroyed by a surface thermonuclear war. The scientific intelligentsia of the old Soviet Union knew about this from Isvestia and Pravda two Moscow newspapers at that time.  A Catholic Priest who could read in 20 languages told me about reading this article during the 1970s but also said it had been suppressed in the Western world because it would create conflicts in the Catholic church as well as the rest of the Christian world much like Galileo's ideas did when he was alive.

However, since the scientific establishment of the Soviet Union knew the truth and since the church wasn't powerful in the Soviet Union then it led directly to the collapse of the Soviet Union within 10 to 15 years because they didn't want to see an asteroid belt made of Earth.

Miraculous Medals 4-29-10

Since I grew up mostly after age 21 wearing something around my neck like Radraksha prayer beads from about age 21 here on the California coast that were blessed by one Guru or another. And even though by the late 1970s and 1980s I still wore prayer beads often just under my shirt rather than out in the open like in the late 60s and early 70s, I was used to having beads to do mantras or prayers with a lot of the time.

So, when my new wife to be in 1995 bought me a Miraculous Mary Medal from St. Catherine in France I found that when I wore it it brought me incredible good luck. In a previous article I spoke of Mary appearing to me at the beginning of a very difficult divorce in 1994. The miraculous Medal of Mary struck by St. Catherine in France because of a visitation by Mary (I think this was around 1830) in Paris.

So for the last 15 years I have worn this medal. Then last fall my wife and daughters wanted to go to Paris, France. So we did last October. I found us staying at the Hotel De Suede near the Ministry of Defense there. We had an excellent Travel Agent that had lived in France and knew exactly where we should stay and within walking distance of the Louvre and the River Seine and within walking distance of the bus tours and boat tours of the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. However, after we had been there almost a week and had already taken a bus tour to Versailles and to the Eiffel Tower and had walked to the Louvre and the Seine River we realized we also were in walking distance of St. Catherine's Chapel where she saw Mary and where Mary had appeared to Saint Catherine.

So we walked there and knew it was on the Rue de Bac but weren't sure exactly where so we asked many people on the way and one or two knew where it was.

When I walked into the "Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal" on 140 Rue Du Bac, 75007 Paris at telephone 01 49 54 78 78 I was completely amazed.

Because I am a natural intuitive I have seen angels all my life. But seeing them and having them come right up and talk to you is amazing. When I walked up they spoke with me and told me how to behave to be respectful in this amazing place. One was aware of being in the presence of spiritual royalty. And I have never experienced anything like this anywhere in the Western World. I felt my life forever changed by this experience.

After Beatification, St. Catherine's body was dug up after having been buried in 1876 in 1933. Her body was intact(it had not decomposed) and you can witness it there in a glass case to the right of the altar in the Chapel.

I have suggested to many relatives and friends over the years that they wear a Miraculous medal like my wife and I do. I wear it in place of a wedding ring because I can't wear rings anymore 24 hours a day because my hands swell up at night and my ring finger would turn purple if I wore a ring at night. But I can still wear my gold Miraculous Medal of Mary and struck by Saint Catherine 24 hours a day.

My Uncle Tommy

I was working as a fire lookout  in 1985 in August. I had a 2 way radio and a telephone in my lookout tower and was about 10 miles from the nearest human being. My uncle Tommy had passed on in a plane crash in 1942 when he was 24. He had appeared to me in 1969 and 1970 to help me get through a time when I was suicidal around age 21 to 23. So there in 1985 I hadn't had much contact with him for several years. Well. This day I saw him walk through the fire Lookout. I said, "Tommy. I haven't seen you in a long time. What are you doing here?" He didn't say anything but I realized that he was telling me he was coming for his brother, my Dad. So I called my Dad who was slowly dying up on Yucca Mesa with my Mom and said, "Dad. I saw Tommy. I think he's coming to get you, Dad." Dad said, "I don't feel very well, son. My stomach really hurts. I can't talk now, son." I said, "Dad. Look for Tommy." My Dad said, "I need to get off the phone son. Good night."

Five hours later my mother told me my Dad had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Though I cried on the phone with Mom I felt reassured that my Uncle Tommy had come to tell me he was coming for my Dad, his Brother.

Later I witnessed my father's cremation. My Dad's blue eyes were flat from dehydration. But I was able to witness that it was my father there that was actually cremated. I did the same for my mother in Fall 2008. I kissed her frozen corpse on the head and pushed her into the furnace and turned it on. Because it was very loud I went outside with my wife and watched her go up the one foot diameter chimney as  smoke. A year later we put her ashes in the ocean nearby where John Denver crashed his plane with a rented sailboat with the rest of my family.

It makes it a lot easier in some ways to deal with death when you are an intuitive like me. Because I have always been able to talk to friends and relatives after they died. Usually, for most folks the transition of the first few months can be tough on the other side until they get used to being there once again. But once they get used to it most people are fine.

Though I miss all my dead friends and relatives if I allow myself I realize that they are all there helping me and my family here on earth still and will welcome us all when it is our time to join them.

Today they are all here wishing me Happy Birthday!

Mary Appeared to Me

The year was the summer of 1994. I was spending the night with my 5 year old daughter in her treehouse at a ranch we were renting while her mother and her new boyfriend were in the ranch house. We weren't divorced yet as I hadn't filed for it.

That night Mary, the mother of Jesus appeared to me and said, "Fred. You need to not get too upset and do anything rash. All this will work out and everything will be fine. You just have to find a way to stay calm through all of it. I promise."

I took this to heart and Mary kept her promise. Though it took some time her miracles came to be in my life and my life changed for the better. Even when I thought I was dying in fall 1998 her angels surrounded me and yelled at me in unison, "Your life will get better now. You aren't dying!" There were about 9 angels in a circle around me trying to convince me that I wasn't dying. I know it was Mary's angels there to reassure me now. Even when I called my son to come drive me to the hospital I found that the only way for me to talk to the doctors and nurses that was useful for me was to share about the angels. I think they have to listen to a lot of people talking like this who think they are dying or close to it. However, somehow I survived my undiagnosed Heart virus for 7 months when everyone else I heard about died from it. So after 7 months My Heart Specialist Doctor said, "We finally realized through the process of elimination that you had a heart virus. Heart Virus' are not easily diagnosed so it took us this long. But now we know your heart has rebuilt itself and is strong once again. You could still live a long life. Your heart virus is over. You aren't going to die from your heart problems. They are over for now.

So now I know that Mary sent those angels to convince me I wasn't supposed to die yet. So I stayed alive to witness all these kinds of amazing things to you. Real Life is Awesome! Thank you God!

There are no problems only opportunities

This saying saved my life around 1994 and 1995. I was very stressed and my marriage then of 15 years was ending and I was lost.

However, thinking that problems didn't exist and that every situation I encountered was an opportunity saved my life and my sanity and I was able to recover. By 1999 I had more than recovered even though in 1998 doctors thought I was going to die for 7 months. By fall of 1999 I had physically recovered enough to take my then 10 year old daughter and my mother to Scotland to visit the towns her parents had grown up in (near Glasgow) and to meet my then 25 year old son in Munich who was traveling through Europe with a friend on a Eurail pass. The two of them had already been to at least 5 European countries by the time my daughter and mother and I flew into Munich to rent a motor home there.

Even though it is true that my 40s likely were one of the worst times in my life, it is also true that by taking to heart "There are no problems only opportunities" and praying a lot saved my life. So that even though I was divorced  I remarried in late 1995, almost died in 1998. And recovered and went to Europe with my Mom and 10 year old and had another daughter with my new wife in 1996.

And because I took on this new opportunistic way of seeing life the last 10 years have been some of the very best in my life. Yes. I'm 62 now but the last ten years were better than I ever could have expected or imagined at any time in my life. My life is a miracle. But I believe even if your life is difficult now if you take this saying to heart it can save your life too. Forcing yourself to view your life as a series of opportunities rather than problems will give you hope and allow you to think clearly and to solve anything that comes up. Attitude is everything!

Compassion

If I were to speak of two qualities that are why civilization has succeeded as well as it has the two qualities have to be compassion and truth. These two qualities are why we have civilization today.

Compassion comes first because without compassion truth has no meaning at all. Without compassion truth might as well not even exist. However, once there is compassion then truth begins to become useful as long as we can agree on what truth is. If we can't agree on truth we must then move back upon compassion and through this compassion discuss what truths we Can agree on. For all civilization is based upon this. Without compassion there would only be war and violence. And where people lack compassion and kindness for each other war exists all the time. Sometimes this is caused by a lack of resources or by the misappropriation of resources but in the end it always goes back to compassion towards oneself and all beings around oneself and feelings of compassion for all life in the universe.

If we can find ways to forgive ourselves then we can find ways to forgive others. This is the pathway towards infinite compassion for self and ALL others. Through this pathway we all find redemption.

Mary

Periodically Mary, the mother of Jesus has appeared to me in one form or another throughout my life. My mother read to me a book called, "Blessed Among Women" that became how I viewed Mother Mary throughout my life. I was about 8 or 9 years old at the time.

Last night the moon was shining through a stained glass window in our bedroom and on the shelf of that small window sits two statues of Mary. The Madonna and child is about 8 inches high and then the other side of the window shelf sits the standing Mary with a Halo at about 14 inches tall and in front of her is a little child praying.

As the moon shone through this window Mary spoke to me as I was going to sleep. She said, "Write about Compassion. You need to write about Compassion." I said I would and realized she was right and drifted off to sleep.

When I was growing up I worshiped truth. Truth in science and truth between people everywhere. As I grew up I realized the problem with this. The problem is that everyone has a different version of truth and no one ever agrees exactly what truth is. And most wars are actually arguments over different versions of truth. So even though I still worship the truth I also realize that if everyone doesn't have the same version of truth there is likely to be bloodshed somewhere somewhen.

So eventually as I grew up and felt very confused by all this fundamental problem with truth and began to understand compassion. So in understanding compassion I came to see the truth as a two edged sword. And that if one is moving towards all life in compassion for the suffering all life including oneself is going through one is much less likely to start a war or cause a problem or even an argument that could be fatal to someone or many people.

So, I embarked upon a path of compassion after I found out that "Truth Kills!" And that truth kills especially in the hands of any kind of fundamentalist. The fundamentalist can be in any religion or any extremist philosophy or even government or scientific persuasion. The fundamentalist can even be an atheist and cause great harm to everyone through this fundamentalism of "Truth" as they see it.

So even though I still worship truth I also understand that truth kills. And that unless truth is only applied in the most compassionate right mindful way in all cases that no matter how well meaning you might be Your Truth Might Kill directly or result in the deaths indirectly of one or many people.

So even though one has to be very wise to apply all this correctly "It is a matter of life and death that everyone begins to understand this powerful truth, that compassionate truth is the only kind that can give life. However, truth applied without compassion only Kills!

So because I am an intuitive I usually write one or more articles every day that I'm not traveling or busy doing something else. However, then I intuit what the reactions to my articles are. And if the truth in my articles seems to cause more harm than good then I delete them as soon as I am aware of whether it does more good or more harm. I have found that lately I'm deleting a lot of really good articles because they aren't received in the way I wrote them to be received. So  because I have this agreement with God that I watch intuitively if my article does good then if the article takes things in a non-useful direction then I simply delete the article.

I have found this very frustrating lately. It simply tells me of just how intolerant people are becoming worldwide of anything intelligent and of anything useful. I find this is sort of sad and more about the suffering worldwide than anything else.

Though some individuals will become saints and enlightened in every way it appears that hard times just make most people pretty crazy and not quite functional.

So today I'm writing about compassion even though I want to write about truth because of the horrific times we are living in. But it appears that almost no one can handle the truth because they just can't deal with it on top of the suffering of their everyday lives.

So I write about compassion out of respect to Mary, the Mother of Jesus and out of respect to the suffering masses of mankind. Compassion not truth will save your soul. The truth may lead you to compassion but in the end if you are moving towards becoming and enlightened saint you will become a Heart Mind. The heart of compassion towards yourself and all mankind and all beings on earth will save your soul and everyone else's. Become a Heart Mind. Become a compassionate saint and save mankind. Without you we all may become extinct.

Volatility

As an intuitive and even just as an observer of the news I have never seen the level of volatility that is growing worldwide. And unfortunately, the anger appears to just be growing about almost all aspects of life on earth.

There was a saying that was normal when I grew up, "If you can't say something good don't say anything at all." Though many people would consider this saying laughable today there was a reason for it. The reason is that when people are going through really hard times it becomes necessary for people not just to go off and explode over the next ridiculous thing the next person says or writes. I think unfortunately we are entering a time on earth where things are just so bad so many places that it might just to be better to do whatever you can and talk less about stuff. However, I don't think this is going to happen and people are just going to have to cope with things the way the are one way or the other.

There are real problems and there are perceived problems and they are not always the same. Maybe we have to go back to how our ancestors dealt with it, which was, "Do I have enough food, shelter and clothes to survive for now?" If the answer was 'yes' you lived and if you didn't you starved and died. Unfortunately, de facto we may be moving in this direction once again where people take care of themselves but that's about it. Though we may not want to watch the outcome on television this appears to be what is happening more and more worldwide through this deleveraging process internationally worldwide. Good Luck to all of us.

The Lean Start-Up

Unboxed: The Rise of the Fleet-Footed Start-Up

To read the New York Times article on the "the lean start up" click "Unboxed:" above

The term “lean start-up” was coined by Mr. Ries, 31, an engineer, entrepreneur and blogger. His inspiration, he says, was the lean manufacturing process, fine-tuned in Japanese factories decades ago and focused on eliminating any work or investment that doesn’t produce value for customers.
“This is lean manufacturing for start-ups,” explains Mr. Blank, 56, a serial entrepreneur.
Since 1978, he has been a founder or early employee in eight start-ups, both winners and losers. To cite a couple, Rocket Science Games, a once-promising video game maker, founded in 1993, cratered amid losses a few years later, while Epiphany, a business software company, founded in 1997, was acquired by a larger corporation for $329 million in 2005 — “one my grandchildren will be grateful for,” Mr. Blank notes.
Today, he advises start-up companies and teaches at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley.
end quote.

Since I was someone who joined Briarpatch an honest business group that started out of UC Berkeley in the late 60s and early 70s I completely advocate the idea of lean start-ups. The idea of a cottage industry starting in your garage just like Stephen Jobs and Steve Wozniak when the founded Apple and to some degree Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer  who founded Microsoft is still a good one. Starting lean as a business even if it is a part time one where you begin in your garage or a rented room somewhere is a good idea.  Failure is usually necessary to succeed eventually in a business. So not giving up if one venture doesn't go the way you planned is necessary. So if you put too much money into a venture that fails you cannot recover. So it is important to start something very lean so if it fails you can recover but still have learned all the amazing things you did in your failure. This often leads to success in the future of any business. Usually a person starting up needs to be 25 to 30 years old minimum to be successful at any business. However, if you have a successful business mentor that you can trust I suppose a person could start a successful business at almost any age over 12. However, to become successful alone without help usually age 25 to 30 is the minimum one can reasonably expect a likely outcome of success. The reason for this is that one must develop the ability to wear many hats(the ability to be product designer, product maker, salesman, delivery person, secretary, and quality control etc.) Without all these abilities and more the business has no chance at all of succeeding. But once one has enough experience and ability mobilized there is no limit to the success one can achieve in business.

Almost Like Seattle

Since I was born in Seattle and my Mom and Dad grew up there mostly, I know a little about Seattle weather. So even though I have lived mostly in California, New Mexico and Hawaii ever since I still remember Seattle weather and just how beautiful it is because of all the rain whenever it is sunny which isn't very often. However, having lived in California mostly since 1952 when I was 4 I don't expect to have Seattle Weather in the San Francisco Bay region. However, sometimes during big El Nino years it is much more like Seattle weather and much less like Northern California typical weather. This was one of those years when even Southern California got quite a bit of rain. The good news is that there are no brush or forest fires out of control in California. The bad news is that when we get this much rain the wild oats and every other wild plant and weed under the sun gets big even flowers that only bloom once in 5 or 10 years during an El Nino year, we get really awful fires usually starting sometime between June and August. So, once again the good news is most places got enough water to take them out of any drought conditions and most of the lakes and reservoirs are full or close to it. So water is less of a problem then many years. However, the fires can be so expensive and the state likely doesn't have money to fight them. However, I suppose we should just count our blessings and deal with all the rain which comes at least once a week now. I know all of you from places where it is cloudy most of the time might be jealous. However, where I live on the coast this time (February to May) and September through early November is usually our sunny season. However, this year there hasn't been much sun and by June the fog comes in whenever the temperatures go above about 80 to 85 Fahrenheit and bring the temperatures down to the 50s through the 70s. Though this keeps the pine and redwood forests alive for thousands of years it also can be a very dreary summer. So basically wherever you live I guess you have to take the bad with the good. The good news is that I live on the Northern California Coast where the air is very clear and fresh right off the ocean most of the time after traveling over 5 thousand miles across the Pacific Ocean. So I never get tired of the oxygenated pure air here and the starry starry night when the clouds leave because there are almost no city lights and we can see the whole galaxy on a clear night while sitting in our hot tub outside in our backyard year around.

Hulu

When I was visiting my son in Ontario he was streaming a British Program he wanted to watch on his Macbook called "Doc Martin" from netflix. But then he noticed Netflix had some episodes but not others. So he watched some of the Doc Martin episodes on Hulu. Though I had heard of Hulu it was usually in passing and I just thought maybe it was another torrent site. But tonight I read that I believe it said in an article I read online that it was created by NBC, Disney and Fox as a new way to distribute content long term. And for now it has advertisements like Youtube.com does for many movies and things. I was amazed when I looked at the content of Hulu and realized it would be worth watching their content even if I had to watch the 30 second or under commercials because both their movie and tv content was outstanding and their pixel level was really great too. So I found a 1st run movie to watch tonight. What fun!

By the way if you are interested in Hulu I think next month some of the content is going to start being under a 10 dollar a month subscription fee to receive everything. However, since it has some really great content it is probably worth it.

The consciousness of life on earth

Have you ever noticed how it is difficult to have a normal Monday? It always feels like everyone is having a manic Monday. And have you noticed that on Friday there is this feeling of relief in the air and right around the time that kids are going to get out of school for the summer there is this great feeling of relief in the air?

I've always noticed this all my life but when I was young I thought it was just me. However, even after I retired about 10 years ago I kept on feeling these same things right on schedule. I began to realize that this is just "in the air". What I mean by that is that to a greater or lesser degree all humans are affected by all the consciousness of those feelings that most people are having on earth of cycles of going to work or going to school, of manic Mondays when most people start their work cycle for the week. I always found that although Monday was the strangest trying to reintegrate oneself back into the grind that Tuesday and Wednesday I found to be the most difficult and by Thursday I had some hope that it soon would be over within 24 hours and the weekend would begin once again. Thank God!

If you have understood anything I have been writing about then you might understand that someone who is an intuitive like myself not only experiences all that but also experiences earthquakes, volcanoes, storms, trees, animals etc. like this as well. Though you might say, "Well. I wouldn't want to have to experience all that." But the other side of it is: If you know what is going on you are much less likely to be killed or harmed by any of it and as a result both you and your children and friends likely will all live much longer lives as well. Even though what I'm saying is theoretical I have also found it to be true as well.

One of the changes I have noticed to the general consciousness of humans and animals is that they are in a different kind of distress than they have ever been since I have been alive. It is an entirely different kind of stress that is new that comes from higher temperatures and from the distress that all animals and humans and trees and plants and fish and birds are experiencing every day.

In some way it is an advantage to be a younger person (under 21) because you haven't experienced all the varieties of what it was like to be on earth say since 1948 like me. So I know just how very different life on earth is now that it used to be. You may tell me that a lot of things are better but I'm not so sure that is true. What it is mainly to me is just different and not necessarily better. But I will say it is more interesting in some ways because of all the heightened overstimulation all the time. In the past we had much more time to get bored and scared and had more a sense of wonder than now. Part of the joy of the past was just not knowing a whole lot that we pretend to know now. Because most of the time a lot of stuff is just made up anyway and will eventually be proved to be wrong. I miss thinking for ourselves both individually and collectively more. But times change. Anyway, it is no surprise to anyone that the Consciousness of the earth and all upon it is changing. That is a given.

Time Travel and Stephen Hawking

When I was a young man and didn't have much fear of anything like many young people I learned to soul travel and went to the center of the galaxy. Now most of you might not believe it is possible. But I would like to share with you that it is possible. After I saw my own soul I found I could travel around the earth and when I got bored of earth I went to Venus and into the Sun. From the sun it was easy (you don't burn up because you are in your soul and not physical when you travel to the sun this way) to get to the center of the Galaxy. When I asked the millions of years old beings there some of the same questions that Stephen Hawkings was asking they told me that their species created Galaxies. They said that before their species created galaxies there weren't any galaxies at all. Before there were galaxies these creatures(Creators I named them because they Create galaxies) lived different sorts of lives and had less children before they started to create galaxies. Their legend says that one day one of their species was trying to impress his girlfriend (sort of a part of a mating ritual) and accidentally created a nebula or galaxy. It was sort of a happy accident because since this type of being feeds on energy as it changes from matter energy to antimatter energy and back again(and on and on and on) this turned out well for them and they could have more kids and still feed them. So the superior Creators that were actually capable of doing it created each a galaxy and used the nebulaes and galaxies they formed to feed all their progeny. I don't necessarily expect you to believe me because you didn't have this experience. However, this is what they told me.

I asked them about "The Big Bang" and they said that time didn't work like that. They explained at that time just like Stephen Hawking did on his program tonight that time is affected by large masses. Any large mass or weight like the earth, the sun, the solar system, the galaxy slows down time. So I was thinking that actually where time must move the quickest is in between galaxies where there is relatively nothing. However, they were telling me that this relative nothing or "Dark Matter" can be excited into becoming another galaxy. They said that galaxies are actually created from the nothing in between Galaxies by oscillations which act like a big rock thrown into a pond. If the oscillations are maintained long enough at the right rate it creates chain reactions that continue for billions of years or more and a temporary effect of what we call a galaxy is the effect. (temporary as in billions of years or more).

I think it is really great that the Discovery Channel is doing all these Stephen Hawking programs like the one on "aliens" and the one on "Time Travel". It is nice to have a sound theoretical scientific basis to one's thoughts. It allows us all to better contemplate the universe we all live in.

Kick Ass: The Movie Rated R

If you haven't read about it it is a very strange movie but also strangely entertaining. If you combined Superbad, the 40 year old virgin, Knocked up with Kill Bill with an 11 year old little girl that kills everyone to the point where you just have to laugh at all the blood and mayhem then this is the movie for you. It is very strange so be ready for strange. However, for me, the strangest person is not the little girl but the little girl's father Nicholas Cage. He plays this really strange dude incredibly well. He really gets these strange parts down I've noticed. The little girl is just being loyal to her very different Dad and trying to please him. But if this sounds interesting to you then go for it. It is really quite entertaining once you get past just how twisted the whole thing is.

The one really redeeming charactor is "Dave" the guy that is "Kick Ass". He really is the average fairly good high school student that likes comic books and is very idealistic to the point where you wonder if he will survive his teens? But the movie is very well crafted and if you are old enough not to be completely twisted by the movie it plays out just like many comic books do and doesn't fail to entertain in a very new way.

Kids 4-25-10

If you have kids it doesn't really matter what age they are you tend to worry about them. I think it's because you saw them be born (likely) and watched them poop their pants and upchuck on your face or mother-in-law and break the favorite thing you own or kick you in your face with their heel on the top of your nose while you are asleep after they had a bad dream and demanded to come sleep with you and your wife. So even if they are 35 you worry about them. Yesterday my son told me that since he is living in his wife's parents house he has the best bed and the biggest bedroom there. Since his wife is trying to finish her degree too, she has a separate bedroom because they are both A and B students. So last night my son said his wife wanted to change bedrooms but my son said, "Why don't I just give you my bed and I'll sleep on the floor next to you?" My son said, "It's less lonely sleeping in the same room with my wife."(They study all hours and don't sleep on the same schedule).

I happened to mention this to my wife and God daughter who was visiting and they both had an extreme reaction of just how important it was for my son not to be sleeping on the floor next to his wife. This just confused me because I don't think at all like a woman does. I was just trying to share how happy my son was that I took the time to drive down and help him move there to save money from the room he was renting in Claremont and helping him get a storage room for all his stuff so he didn't throw away or sell something he was going to need the next 6 months. My wife and God daughter were all about female power politics and I was taken aback not being ready for that point of view at all.

Then this morning I was dealing with my own abandonment issues. My grandmother (Nana) (my mother's mother) had her husband (my wife's father) take off and never come back after being married about 30 years so she always had major abandonment issues as she never dated or remarried. (it just wasn't her style because she was born in 1888 and lived until 1978(90 years). However, she was the one that basically raised me as my parents were always very busy while I was under 12 years old and so she lived with us and indirectly instilled this feeling of abandonment in me. It took me years to figure out where I got this from. So, anyway, I woke up this morning and realized I felt abandoned by my 14 year old daughter and it was really freaking me out and I knew I was kind of in trouble. (Also, too many relatives and friends have died in the last 10 years and this was only increasing the problem including my mother, 3 of my aunts, my female cousin, 2 male cousins, one of my best friends and my best friend from High School no longer knows who I am because of Premature dementia from Alzheimers. He is only 63 but I think the Viet Nam War shortened his life(mentally at least).

So, I was in trouble and was afraid this morning. Then we all went to see "Kick Ass" the movie which by the way is like a Kill Bill for 11 year olds which seems sort of like a "WTF?" And it appears to be sort of like "Superbad" and "The 40 year old Virgin" and "Knocked UP". It is sort of in this kind of genre but it is also very strange a little like "Kill Bill".

So after going to the movie I really needed to talk to my daughter. I said, "If you tell me you don't like me and you want me to go away that doesn't really leave our relationship anywhere to go!" And her response was "I don't want to talk to you right now". Which sort of left me feeling even more hopeless in this situation. Later in the day after I told her I was dealing with major abandonment issues she eventually got that I was suffering and finally said, "I love you, Dad. I just don't like you." I said, "Well. At 14 I didn't like my father either. "We sort of had a love hate relationship because he didn't like me listening to rock and roll and always turned it off whenever I turned on the car radio to listen to the latest top 40 hits. So I finally bought a little transistor radio with a little earphone so I could listen to KFWB and KRLA which were the two AM rock and roll stations in the 1960s in Los Angeles, California in the area where I grew up mostly.

But Dad and I got much closer as I began to grow up and into my late teens and 20s and beyond until he passed on when I was 35. It sort of ruined my life when Dad died. It took me until I almost died at 50 to fully recover from that and a divorce as well. I guess I was just too young in the way I saw life and was completely unprepared for how deeply one changes when they lose someone they are close to. After I learned what death does to a person when you lose someone close it was very very sobering.

Anyway, when my daughter told me she loved me it was enough to know that she would outgrow being 14 and partly nuts the way most 14 year olds are to a greater or lesser degree. Remember when you were 14?

The Struggle for sanity in a crazy world

To put your mind at ease life on Earth has always been crazy and it probably always will be. That is a given. So don't expect sanity within any human culture. However, we all have to survive here too. So developing a strategy for survival within an irrational framework is necessary for long term survival for all of us.

I remember a Priest Friend now passed away who was counseling a suicidal young man between 17 and 25 years of age. The priest who was a very intuitive soul said to the young man, "You know everyone is crazy don't you?" When the priest said this to the young man he stopped wanting to commit suicide. It was exactly the right thing to say. Because no human is completely sane. You cannot be completely sane and live on planet earth. Even the very act of survival can at times be considered insane from a logical point of view. So, in the end we only have one choice, "To Be or Not To Be". That is the only real choice we have as beings here. The next choice would be, "Will I be kind or will I be cruel?" The answer usually depends upon how you perceive others have treated you while you were growing up. However, I have found that life goes much smoother if one is kind to all those around one. This kindness adds to the possibility of your happy long term survival.

If your whole life becomes about revenge for what happened to you growing up then it tends to greatly shorten your life. Because in reality "What goes around comes around" or "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".

Survival is rarely about physical confrontation and in the long run mostly about wise right mindful kindness towards all beings. Once one learns this one can then survive quite well in this really crazy world.

a Galaxy of Galaxies

Library of Hubble Space images

here.

I found an amazing library of Hubble Space images taken over the last 20 years. Though I had seen many of them, there were also many I hadn't seen before. Once you get there you can click on them I think at least twice to enlarge them to see them up closer. Just click on the stand alone word button "here" above to the left.

Rock People 4-24-10

It was around the time I did my vision quest so it was around 1983 when I first learned about the "Rock People". At the time I wasn't sure what was going on. But later after I had had this experience I was told by a Native American medicine man that his tribe had communicated with the "Rock People" for hundreds of years or longer. My personal experience happened while I was depressed on day near Garripata down the coast on Hiway one near Big Sur. All of a sudden the rocks in the cliff overlooking the ocean began to communicate with me which had never happened before.

Because I have always been an intuitive telepathic conversations with, animals, birds, trees, the earth itself, porpoises and whales had always been normal for me. In fact sometimes I would pick up the mind of a whale and get in my car and drive to where it was calling me and the whale would be there waiting for me like a friend. You may not believe in all this but I can't deny it because I have experienced it all my life.

But this was the first time the Rocks talked to me and I found it strange because I wasn't used to this kind of conversation. Imagine something that has been alive or in this case many many somethings alive for millions of years and that remember the forming of the earth. So to it we humans are sort of like birds, very temporary as individual beings in bodies at least. So they sort of view us as their children. Trees are a little like this too because they live so long. Often a wise old tree will view us humans like their children in somewhat the way the rock people do to.

For a time after this experience I felt a little overwhelmed by it because it was so very different for me. However, the men in my family all have had this sense about cars and trucks and mechanical things where they could fix them and also know when they were going to break down so they wouldn't ever be hurt in an accident or anything like that. So, in that cars are mostly melted and processed rocks it sort of made sense that I could talk to where cars and trucks and planes originally came from. So, often I had a relationship with my cars where they would tell me before a tire went flat or something would break down so I would have a warning and be safe. Maybe it's something my family transferred over from Horses and wagons and those days somehow.

Anyway, within a few months of the rocks there on the ocean talking to me I asked a medicine man that I was sweating with in a sweat lodge about the rock people. He mentioned the rocks brought in from the fire that were red in the pit in front of us before he poured a bucket of water on them and the steam rose. He said, "These are some of the rock people and they are here to help us heal ourselves and get right with mother Earth." After that sweat round I went out to the river next to us in the mountains and lay on the rocks by the side of the river and spoke with these rocks to. And here is what they said, "The Rocks, your bones,
the River, your blood,
Your breath, the Sky"

I don't know about you but I felt this with every fiber of my being and it brought tears to my eyes from the deep truth of it.

Ice melting causes changes in weight distribution on earth

Is the Earth striking back?

I found the above news article at cnn.com
The following is a quote from it:


Both Iceland and the United States exalt democracy as a social achievement worthy of lasting an eternity. Yet the latter's unprecedented strength has derived not just from enlightened government, but from the release of its own hot clouds: exhaust from its vast industries, fleets and mechanized agriculture.
As we have learned, these gases form an invisible barrier that, like a greenhouse's glass ceiling, keeps reflected heat of the sun from escaping our atmosphere. The denser that gaseous barrier grows, the hotter things get and the faster glaciers melt.
As they flow off the land, we are warned, seas rise. Yet something else is lately worrying geologists: the likelihood that the Earth's crust, relieved of so much formidable weight of ice borne for many thousands of years, has begun to stretch and rebound.
As it does, a volcano awakens in Iceland (with another, larger and adjacent to still-erupting Eyjafjallajokull, threatening to detonate next). The Earth shudders in Haiti. Then Chile. Then western China. Mexicali-Calexico. The Solomon Islands. Spain. New Guinea. And those are just the big ones, 6+ on the Richter scale, and just in 2010. And it's only April.
It's looking like this may be a long decade. And if we don't pull carbon out of the way we energize our lives soon, a small clump of our not-too-distant surviving descendants may find themselves, as Gaia scientist James Lovelock has direly predicted, like the first Icelanders: gathered on some near-barren hunk of rock near one of the still-habitable poles, trying yet anew to eke out a plan for human civilization. end quote.

There are two sentences   in there that really struck me.  They are:
"As they flow off the land, we are warned, seas rise. Yet something else is lately worrying geologists: the likelihood that the Earth's crust, relieved of so much formidable weight of ice borne for many thousands of years, has begun to stretch and rebound."

I too, have been worried that with the added weight no longer at the poles but dispersed throughout the oceans, clouds, lakes, snow rivers etc. it completely changed the dynamics of the weight distribution of earth. It is no surprise to me that the crusts would change like they are. It is just like if you took a foot square of ice and put it in a swimming pool. Within a short time on a sunny day that ice turns to water and could be anywhere in the pool at all along with all the new weight in different locations. So when the ice caps melts the entire balance of earth changes just as if you whittled off some of the wood on top of a spinning top and glued it other places on the spinning top. It would change the characteristics of the spin of Earth but it would also alter how the crust and the plates relate to each other because of the changing weight displacement. It will be even more extreme in the changes when all the ice melts off the north and the south pole alternately during the coming many seasons.

Octopus steals underwater camera while it's running

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93610?fp=1

embedded at the above location is a yahoo video of an Octopus stealing a man's camera while it is on. You get an entirely different feeling about all the Octopuses after this playful experience. If you were on land with a monkey you might have a similar experience playing keep away. I think this video demonstrates just how intelligent and potentially playful some Octopuses are.

Veiled Memories 2

When I write what you might think of as Science Fiction either here or stored at my archive site at dragonofcompassion.com you might think I'm only writing science fiction. However, this is not the case. Often I'm writing about veiled memories of the past, present, or future or I'm writing about real experiences I have lived in this lifetime. So what I'm actually trying to do when you think I'm writing science fiction is to prepare the human race for what I have actually found to be the way the galaxy works through my present day experiences as a human and through being a life long intuitive.

Most people run away from veiled memories inside of themselves but as a natural intuitive all my life I sometimes run towards veiled memories because I want to know everything. Since I am an intuitive genius and don't consider myself to be an intellectual genius I have an incredible advantage, I tend to be fearless by nature. So I can often go where others would be to terrified to venture. However, by being a natural intuitive genius I'm always safe if I sense that I will be. It just goes with the territory of knowing things before they happen as an intuitive. So if I don't feel strong and clear and capable that day I just don't do certain things. For example, every motorcycle I've owned I never have gotten on since I was about 15 unless I intuited that I was in the right frame of mind and health to be riding it that day and at that time and at that moment. I have tended to live this way and as a result my life might be considered magical to many of you. However, I still suffer in my life. My friends and relatives still die from old age and accidents when I'm not shown how to save them. But generally, my life would be considered magical to most of you. However, to me, I'm just being obedient to God as much as I can in every moment. So, "I go with the flow". And this puts me where I need to be with people or alone or whatever. Like I said it isn't always easy to live this life of mine but I would have to agree it is lived only by God's Grace.

Veiled Memories

I realized first that I may be using a different definition of the word than is often used today. This blog article is not about women who wear veils but about memories that everyone has that they often can't get to because either they are too painful, too confusing, happened to young, caused a person to lose consciousness or have amnesia. So what I'm writing about is not about veiled women but about the veiled memories that everyone has that their minds try to protect them from and that sometimes people try to protect themselves from.

What I'm here to write about is that I believe absolutely everyone has veiled memories of one sort or another and that these memories have an important purpose in our lives even if we wish to forget them. Because what we run away from while conscious we still have to face in our dreams. It's just the way humans are built. Sooner or later everything gets dealt with one way or another. So in finding an adult way to approach what is really bothering us completes the cycle and we can then move on.

What we run from in consciousness only comes back to haunt us until we deal with it. So, finding an adult way to deal with these memories ends the cycle or makes it livable to deal with whatever it is ongoing.

Often just talking out your feelings about whatever is bothering you will liberate the problem and if you can name the problem often it just resolves itself and goes away, especially if it is something that happened in the past and really has no significant usefulness in the present except in your memories and nightmares.

Other times hidden memories allow us to process what has happened to us as children and why we think and behave the way we do. Sometimes in freeing oneself from hidden memories we are able to go on with our lives and psychologically be reborn.

One of the techniques I have used is the Human Potential movement where men's groups and women's groups help  their group overcome past problems especially problems that began while children growing up. By dealing with those problems that were left unresolved in one's mind and emotions in an adult way one is then free to live their life as a better more fully functional and complete adult. In other words, "Be all that you can Be" in your life ongoing. In this way true happiness might be found for you and your loved ones.

My Favorite Tree

In my backyard. This winter was a difficult one storm wise for this area on the Northern California Coast. Usually at least once a winter or more we get 60 to 100 mile per hour winds off the ocean that knock down many trees (sometimes on top of houses or vehicles or people) and this El Nino Winter was no exception to this regular winter and early spring occurance.

However, this winter was sort of sad for me because a volunteer pine tree that I had nurtured since it was about 4 inches high was now 15 to 20 feet high and because it grew up next to an ornamental Japanese maple tree didn't put out limbs on that side of it so it could grow faster. Kind of the thinking of a teenager who is all into going fast and not planning for the future much. So when the winds hit on the no limb side one day the tree went down and I was sad. So I had two choices, either cut the tree off completely or top it and winch it back up so it would still be about 10 feet tall and be able to live or cut it down completely and haul it away. I didn't have the heart to kill the little tree I had nurtured and watched grow from my hut tub right next to it since it was 4 inches tall so I topped it and winched it back up and tied it to the trunk of the Japanese maple right next to it. I left the rope there these last 4 months hoping that the little pine  would throw out a new root system on the torn root side and thrive.

So, the other day while sitting in the hot tub the trees let me know they were done with the rope pulling on both of them and wanted to be free. So I got out my Braveheart replica Claymore and tried to cut the rope with it but since it is an ornamental claymore battle sword and not a sharpened one this didn't work. So I got out my 4 1/2 inch blade locking dragon knife built on the model of the most common Buck knife and made in China and since the blade is very sharp this one did the trick. And any fantasies I had of cutting a 3/4 inch diameter rope  with my Braveheart Claymore ornamental unsharpened sword were now long gone.

But to my amazement the little tree that I topped 4 months ago stood strong and must have replaced the roots torn off with new ones. I felt both trees breathe a sigh of relief.

By the way if you want an ornamental Braveheart Sword from the movie like the one Mel Gibson used too they sell them at Scottish Games events nationwide or online. In fact you might find one to buy online if you key in scottish games in the U.S. or elsewhere.

For around the last 10 years since they started making things like this in Pakistan as working with stainless steel well became more common, I was able to get a Braveheart Claymore Sword with an over the shoulder scabbord for under 125 dollars. I had priced them at Renaissance Faires and Scottish Games before but they were about 500 dollars previously. At 125 dollars I could actually rationalize the expenditure.

So, I'm very happy my little tree survived and the top limbs left are rising higher and growing longer and you don't notice so much now that the tree has been topped. And it is less likely to be blown down in future storms.

Avatar 4-24-10

My wife bought a Sony DVD player that will play Blue Ray and regular DVDs so I connected it up last night. I watched a little of it but then my wife wanted to watch instead last night a blue ray copy of "Independence Day". But this morning my daughter got up early and wanted to watch "Avatar" once again and for the first time on our 52 inch flatscreen in Blue Ray. As I watched it my wife and I picked up things we hadn't noticed before like Natiri's 4 fingers instead of 5. I guess all the Na'vi only have four fingers like cartoons have had since the 1930s or before. And my wife hadn't noticed that the horse type of creatures have 6 legs instead of 4 and breathe through their gills in their chest. So, as you watch these kinds of things more you pick up new things. Also, when speaking about the Lemurs it was said something like "they are relatively harmless" or something like that. I found it funny because of the connection between the name Lemurs and possibly Lemuria.


The movie is very archetypal which is why, I believe it has already made 2.7 Billion dollars worldwide and now sure to make even more through DVD and TV and net streaming worldwide.


I was thinking about the primal conflict between the old ways of Earth(or Pandora) and their ongoing conflict with the new (corporate and business ways) which in the end only have to do with money and power and not really long term survival ever. There has to be a way for mankind to go back to the old ways to keep the human race alive while still increasing the quality of life for everyone possible. Though eventually population control of some sort would have to be managed in a useful way to make this all work so we could move out of the sort of chaotic "law of the jungle" that humans in reality still live in with "pockets" of actual survivable "civilization" here and there on earth.


How can mankind benefit the most from a movie like this? They can benefit by seeing what we have lost as a species and what we have gained. But in watching this movie we have presently lost more than we have gained if anyone looks carefully. So, one potential future would be to find a way to keep our wildness alive like the Na'vi have in the movie while encouraging non-invasive technology like solar wind and water power. In other words finding a way to not cut down as many trees or bulldozing everything. Because like it or not all of us are interdependent upon all life on earth just as much as we ever were. Whenever we cut down a tree for no good reason and drive a species extinct we might as well be cutting off one or more fingers off of the hands of all future generations. So Eywa is alive on earth as Mother Earth and until we learn to better respect the Earth as our mother we will continue to suffer more as the climate and life on earth degrades. We came out of the trees originally and we are still connected to them still. Without them we cease to be humans and become something else entirely.


Without trees and animals we may become cyborgs(human and machine) but we also cease in being entirely human, at least as human as our ancestors were.

Painful Times in the Western World

I'm not sure the average person understands how economies actually work. And I'm not sure what to call what is happening in the western world. For lack of a better term maybe deleveraging might be the best one I've heard of so far.

The best way I can describe what is happening globally to the western world would be to say that Europe and North America and many other parts of the Western World have had unprecedented growth and affluence beginning with the end of World War II. Even though the actual peak of this affluence was in the 1960s and 1970s in real terms, the benefits of this affluence North America and Europe continued to share until now. However, now everyone has gotten used to all the social programs and retirement programs and social welfare programs etc. And countries can't really afford socially to let those programs go because it could cause a breakdown in law and order in those countries. However, to continue all the retirement benefits and social welfare programs and everything else may cause the complete bankruptcy of many if not all western nations one by one. And the more socialist the nation the quicker it will tend to go bankrupt. Since the United States is one of the least Socialist it might be one of the last to lose all its social programs. I hope it all doesn't happen this way and that there is some alternative to this but right now I don't see it.

However, we may be entering simaltaneously a new type of economy that I might call a worldwide green economy. Now this might be as revolutionary as the industrial revolution over the next 25 years or so and change everything so dramatically that Europe and North America will right themselves. This is a distinct possibility. For example, technologies like the Solar Impulse airplane that is planning to fly two people on solar power alone around the world might revolutionize not only flying but change people's minds on what solar power can actually do for everyone. For myself, actually watching this Swiss plane take off and fly for I think it was an hour or more on just solar power and then land with two pilots on board was just as mind bending as it must have been for those who saw Wilbur and Orvile Wright first take off at Kitty Hawk. So everything is changing and it might be very difficult to see exactly where it all will end up. But remember there is always hope and the only way to actually lose is to give up.

Government Bailout losses as low as 85 Billion

Administration trims bailout cost estimate to $87B

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is telling Congress that the administration believes the final cost of the government's heavily criticized financial bailout effort could be as low as $87 billion.
Geithner made the new estimate in a letter Friday to congressional leaders that was obtained by The Associated Press.
A year ago, officials were estimating the bailout could cost as much as $500 billion.
The new estimate said the biggest losses will occur from the government's support of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That loss was put at $85 billion followed by a loss of $49 billion from providing help to homeowners facing the threat of losing their homes through foreclosures.

end quote.

This is actually very good news because 500 Billion was what was expected but because so many companies that have been bailed out have been able to pay the bailout back that really only Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have left the taxpayers high and dry and owing about 85 to 87 billion Dollars. Considering just how bad it could have been this is very good news indeed.

Greece

Because the insurance (credit default swaps provided by hedge funds) on Greece's Bonds are now running over 600,000 dollars per year per 10,000,000 dollars in bonds it is starting to panic europe in  regard to both Greek bonds and the ongoing value of the euro. In the short run I think things will even out with the Greek bail out by the European Union. However, in the long run I wonder if the Euro will survive if one more country goes this route like Portugal or Spain. If another country has problems like Greece I think Germany might switch to the Swiss Franc eventually or bring back German Marks again. The British and Swiss might have been right about the Euro after all. We'll have to wait and see if the Euro weathers this present storm over the next 5 years or so.

Much more lava much less ash

Though the Iceland volcano is pushing up much more lava with chunks going hundreds of feet into the air the size of school buses  and cars there isn't the lava against glacier action as much that caused the steam mixed with lava explosions that created the steam ash clouds that were dampening air travel in Europe. So the volcano isn't stopping or slowing down it is actually getting more intense but more local in its effect.

Iceland Volcano Katla Threatens to Blow - Katla Volcano 10 Times Bigger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1BVyfxEjws&feature=player_embedded

 

Amazing Grace in Cherokee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvYIjFtPQEk&feature=related

I listened for the first time to the song "Amazing Grace" in Cherokee. It has special meaning to me because an old very accurate very intuitive friend is part Cherokee and because often during my own vision Quest on the Trinity River in Northern California which was 4 days and nights of praying with no water or food of any kind. During this vision quest one of the songs I sang was "Amazing Grace" as it has special meaning to me on a variety of levels. So listening to this song I thought of my good friend getting older now who is part Cherokee. I thought of my vision quest back in 1983 and how much it changed my life and path. And I am grateful that it brought me here to you.

To Die with your Boots on

When I watched "Secondhand Lions" and the way they chose to go out I thought, "Far Out. That's the way to go out in style." I immediately thought of my father and grandfather who were a lot like the two characters in the movie, especially my grandfather was almost exactly like them both, guns and all.

Now of course that movie is just sort of an idyllic exit for two guys that have really lived and traveled the world and who chose how to end their lives as men. My wife knows how I feel that I intend to keep having adventures around the world until one day I'll be gone. Though I'm only 62 and likely have 10 to 20 to 30 or more years still left within me, still having almost died three times in my life from illnesses so far and countless times from near misses, still I often contemplate how I want to choose to exit my life. Many women choose to go to a retirement home but that will never be my choice. I will always try to find another way with my very last breath. However, I once saw a movie called "Windwalker" that I believe was a Sioux story from before there were white men. It is from whatever tribe or tribes practices "sky burial" where they build platforms of wood so wolves and bears don't eat them and only birds can eat the corpse. In this story and old  native American Indian of the tribe is placed upon his sky burial place but then is awakened and has a fight with a bear and realizes that his family needs him to protect them still. So he comes back to life to protect them and after that prepares for that once again.

windwalker

Windwalker

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7lHKEyehpQ

This story was very touching and the above sections of the movie are three different ones even though the first two  are named the same and   are at youtube.com
The final battle scene is the one that ends ehpQ

I checked netflix and they don't have the movie on DVD so that might mean it was only on VHS tape but you might be able to get a full copy of it somewhere.

Anyway, to die with your boots on is an ideal way to go out. However, we all know we don't live in an ideal world and we all will do whatever we have to for our closest loved ones. But if there is a useful choice I will also die with my boots on when and (if)  that day ever comes.

In my family the men all thought they were immortal until they all died but me and my wife and children.

Beyond Cloud Computing

When my son was on the phone raving about cloud computing on the beta I spoke about at silveos.com which has a beta cloud computing program that you can test for free. I wrote about this in a previous article:

www.silveos.com and cloud computing Betas

So if you want to read that article click the above word button.

Here I wanted to share an idea that my son said, "Was the next step beyond Cloud Computing". Though to some degree servers in Silicon Valley and other places already do this, if you had a giant super fast computer doing this in your area or county or city or country it could greatly speed up access to everything.

This is my idea. If you have a supercomputer with almost unlimited memory that would be in your city or area, then it could access the sites most accessed in your area 24 hours a day and download all the information that is updated to that site every day during the fastest times of access. The computer could be programmed for this. So this way, when most people go online (whatever time that might be which would be different for home or office) all the information could be there for them lightning fast without having to wait for it forever. As new sites were accessed by local computers these sites too could be loaded on that supercomputer with unlimited memory as needed. This speeds up access for everyone in your area. Then cloud computing on top of that would speed it up to lightspeed so everyone in your area would be happier with their computing results. One of the ways to create a computer like this would be to stack 10 or more Pentium chips in a series. The way this was done would have to have specialized programming that would be specifically taylored to your areas needs. However, it would be possible for a programmer to program something like this so that each area could plug in their specific needs into the program. I have seen many programs written in this way. So this program could be specifically designed to carry out all the needs of your area and thereby speed up access considerably.

The main problem with this idea is that if the big companies like Comcast or others got wind of this kind of programming they would want to buy it to keep control of their areas. So the programmers would still make the money but I'm not sure the big companies could see a way to make this profitable for them.

So we are still dealing with the needs of the consumer versus the needs of companies to make a profit. And only where these two needs intersect will anyone be close to happy in this kind of situation. However, this does not stop areas, municipalities or universities to move down this kind of road to help their students and citizens be better served in the long run. When it is done in this way often big internet companies see the usefulness of such programs and then advertise the benefits of what they are doing and then everyone is happy with the lightning fast internet outcome.

Ballbot: One is Enough

"One is Enough!"

I found this great PDF that can be reached on the Ballbot from Carnegie Mellon University research. It is a single ball drive instead of multi-wheel robot. I think this might be the future of office robotics since it can move in any direction at any time at any moment. If it needs to ride an elevator it could also do that, and if it needs to stand still it simply puts down a tripod. Great idea!

Intuitive Genius 4-23-10

intuitive fred888: The Beauty of Intuitive Genius

 

intuitive fred888: Intuitive Genius January 11th

I found first the top article I wrote by Googling the keywords "intuitive genius". It was a happy surprise to find two of my own blog articles on this same subject. So if you click on "Beauty" for the first article and "January 11th" for the second you can read them. I thought I might share these with any of you interested. I thought the article I wrote called "The Beauty of Intuitive Genius" was especially well written in an intuitive way. It was written before the economic crash in 2007 when things hadn't got so crazy for everyone yet and before my mother and my wife's father died so I found a lot of clarity in this article I wrote in late 2007.  I still believe that allowing the Intuitive genius in all of us to manifest is the way for the greatest good for all mankind both now and in the future.

 

1 inch more separation per year

I was listening to NBC news tonight with Brian Williams on TV. The reporter mentioned that the fault between the North American Plate and the European Plate was opening up about 1 inch per year and that there likely isn't anywhere on earth that the magma is closer to the surface or can more easily reach the surface on earth than iceland. I think this is why the "Journey to the Center of the Earth" movies take place going into the earth in Iceland also. So it is easy to understand why no place seems to be quite like Iceland as far as extreme volcanic pyrotechnics are concerned.   One must take all these volcanic events very seriously especially when you consider that during either the 1780s eruptions or the 1821 eruptions the eruptions actually killed off 1/4 of the entire population of Iceland at that time.

www.silveos.com and cloud computing Betas

I'm probably not enough of a techie to go to this site and make any of my computers a beta cloud computer. First of all, my son says you need to be running IE8 (internet explorer 8) and after he downloaded the new cloud computing beta from silveos.com he was absolutely amazed by what he found. He said the internet and games ran twice as fast as any computer he had ever been on ever. So what he was saying is your little 200 dollar or 300 dollar computer would run as fast as a 3000 dollar one with this beta application. He says that it is like a browser within a browser. The reason it is so fast is that your computer is only like a command giver and the execution of those commands happens on other computers than your own. So I wouldn't recommend this for anything you want to do where you want privacy or security of any kind. However, for general internet stuff or for playing games he said that it screams it is so fast, the fastest he has ever seen on a PC anywhere.

I'm editing this through the silveOS operating system and yes it is very fast. I'm running a macbook Pro at 100 feet from my wifi transceiver location and using Firefox as a browser location and I've never seen it run as fast as it is right now. My son thought you couldn't run it on a Mac but I am so it actually is pretty easy.  You can go in as a guest into the operating system and it opens up in your browser as a browser within a browser. So remember to use the new browser forward and back buttons and not IE or Firefox or whatever browser you are presently using. Just experiment with stuff until you get it to work.

I clicked internet browser once I was in silveOS as a guest. Then I clicked on the rectangle to open up the 4 or 5 inch square into a larger window and I was on my way. I found that Google operates slightly differently in this beta cloud computing format and I wasn't able to make online videos work but as long as I was just surfing the internet reading stuff it was lightning fast for me on this cloud computing beta. However, videos work fine if you click on the youtube.com Icon in the first window.

Note: just to add to this all this is just an experiment for me. Hopefully if you try cloud computing you should do it while it is still free. Eventually, my son says that companies are going to  make people pay for this super fast service and that eventually all high end searches and videos and gaming likely will be done through this super fast cloud computing method.

In 1969

When I think back of being 21 years old in 1969 and of the long hair not only in women but in men in my generation, I think of the reason for it. Yes. It did start with the Beatles and all those musical groups but what it came to mean to us all was, "Why are you killing my high school and college classmates in Viet Nam?" and "Why did you draft them and send them over to Viet Nam to die in that War that no one declared and when no one attacked us here in the U.S. ?" So, many of my classmates and friends in high school and college(especially the ones that dropped out of college for any reason) were killed, maimed or driven insane or all three both in the U.S. and and in Viet Nam and in Canada or whatever country they went to.

So when you see poor men, rich men, or people who have a profession where they can grow their hair or beards and those men are over 40 or 50 please think about what they are saying to you with this hair statement. They are likely saying to you, "So many of us died and went insane back then. Don't ever let this kind of thing happen ever again unless the U.S. mainland is attacked!"

Of course in 9-11 we were attacked by Osama Bin Laden. But even then Osama Bin Laden was a CIA operative undercover agent in the 1980s in Afghanistan. So, even now can we believe what we are told about all this? I don't really know the answer to that. However, we were attacked. This is clear. Who we were attacked by is less clear.

Ballbot: Carnegie Mellon University

Ballbot: Carnegie Mellon University

Following quote from above wikipedia article under heading "robotics":

• Ballbot: Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new type of mobile robot that balances on a ball instead of legs or wheels. "Ballbot" is a self-contained, battery-operated, omnidirectional robot that balances dynamically on a single urethane-coated metal sphere. It weighs 95 pounds and is the approximate height and width of a person. Because of its long, thin shape and ability to maneuver in tight spaces, it has the potential to function better than current robots can in environments with people.^[28]
• ^{end quote}
• ^{It is interesting to me the concept of having a robot on a ball that is basically the size of human beings. Even though the balancing on a ball might take up a lot of the processing of the CPU, if there was more than one cpu this wouldn't matter. Since such a robotic vehicle could navigate on any one floor of a building and even theoretically get on an elevator and travel to other floors in a building, such a robotic vehicle could work in a variety of ways within any building with an elevator and function on multiple floors quite easily. It think it's a great idea!}

Video of the sun

Multiple Simaltaneous incarnation or (reincarnatio...

If you click on the above blog article I wrote at the very bottom of it is a button containing a news broadcast video which gives amazing closeups of the sun like you may have never seen before. They are taken from a specially designed robotic spacecraft and are able to take multiple types of photos and videos of the sun with specially designed cameras long term. Solar Physicists and scientists of NASA are amazed at the results so far.

Traveling on the Web

I'm sure this might have happened to you as well. I started with my blog article "Flying Robots" about the fact that most passenger planes can be taken off, flown and landed by remote control and that pilots tend to be more like flying robot managers than anything else. I'm not sure I totally like the idea but it is the way things are these days. In fact when I drilled down from some of the word buttons from my quote from wikipedia keyword "robotics" I found amazing note pages that took me to a Boeing site about how the first landing a new passenger Boeing jet tends to be a robotic landing about 200 miles outside of Seattle by test pilots. From there I visited other sites that were related at first to flying and robotics and found something called the "Sticky Gecko robot" I believe that is made at Stanford and climbs glass panes and has special feet that hang onto glass like a real gecko does. This was somewhere out at Youtube.com

From there I found myself looking at other hybrid bicycles and tricycles from all over the world including a human hybrid that encloses the human rider inside a two wheels the same size (about 6 feet high) and runs on pedal power and solar cells to a battery and electrical motor. The two wheels can turn in opposite directions for turning. I found myself then looking at various 2 or more wheeled experiemental hybrids (mostly 3 wheeled) made all around the world by inventors. It's amazing just how interesting it all can be. However, since what I really needed to do was go to sleep because I was really tired, now I actually need to just go to sleep. Sweet Dreams!