Explanations

 “Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.”

Paulo Coelho

I have a whole lot to say on this, but I'm not going to waste my time with explanations lol! 

Cheers

Jeanne

Putting this one out because I'm so frustrated with trying to explain that I will be in line for the Covid Vaccine when it becomes available. To me the priority is to be concerned about vulnerable people. I try to recognize that we choose who and what we listen to with our own filter, but if that filter does not include looking out for the greater good of all people and the earth, both natural and spirit world, then it is self limiting and well keep us always in protectionist victim mode and we will always live in fear someone else will treat us as we treat them. 

And this is not personal... the earth is like the Giving Tree by Paulo Coelho; she is giving her all, we are destroying her with our taking but she will give until her last breath is taken. 

Walk to Freedom

 

"I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended."

Nelson Mandela

If we want something we need to make it happen. One step at a time, one hill at a time, one obstacle at a time. Rome was not built in a day and nothing is going to be easy. Taking responsibility for ourselves and our dreams is not easy, it is really hard in fact, but when we do the hard thing the rewards are immense and progressive steps become more rewarding. 

It is not magic that some people jump out of the crowd, Goethe's quote below explains how magic works and miracles happen... this is not the difficult part, the most difficult part is to go deep inside and decide what we really want. That doesn't show up in a dream, it becomes honed and tuned as we walk. Nelson Mandela did not know what he was going to become when he took his first step. We can't go anywhere if we don't take a step out of our comfort zone.

Cheers

Jeanne

"Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Tombstone wisdom

 Doc Holliday: "What did you ever want?"

Wyatt Earp: "Just to live a normal life."

Doc Holliday: "There’s no normal life, Wyatt, it’s just life. Get on with it."

Wit and wisdom from the movie Tombstone

There is a lot of wishful thinking in the world these days. As if we think wishing hard enough will make things go back to "normal". In my opinion Doc's down to earth answer should be posted on billboards everywhere.

I've not watched Tombstone.. but I've grown fond of Doc Holiday's character reading his quotes so I'm putting it on my list of movies that I had never considered but now have a reason to watch.

Cheers

Jeanne

 Bonus quote to illustrate why this seems like it will be an entertaining movie.

“It appears he missed an excellent chance to keep his mouth shut.” — Doc Holliday, Tombstone

Response for growth and happiness

 "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies your freedom and power to choose your response. In those responses lie your growth and your happiness."

Author Unknown (attributed at times to Victor Frankl and at times to Steven Covey)

Responses be messy, awkward and uncomfortable but it leads somewhere. I think I get stuck sometimes in thinking that my response has to be the right one. But if I wait until I know the "right" response I will stay in one place forever (what? doesn't the world revolve around me?? aren't I owed happiness served to me on a plate???) 

This dance of life is about making mistakes and taking chances. I am learning that doing what scares me, doing what I think I can't do, challenging myself to shift out of the need to "know" and into embracing what comes as opportunities to learn, grow and serve is bringing energy into my life. Being Bored and Stuck are choices I do not want to be making. Living life waiting for things to get better is not living. 

I know this because I've been waiting for things more times than I care to admit to myself ... and every time it deepens my knowing that things just don't happen that way. I like to think that my responses are coming faster as time goes on and I know that I'm mistaking all over the place, but crazily enough, doing the hard thing is becoming easier than doing the easy thing, doing nothing or waiting. Paradoxes all over the place!!

Living is Messy and Messy opens up worlds

Cheers

Jeanne

From Lord of the Rings - wisdom to ponder today

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

this too shall pass...what comes next is uncertain, but we can be assured that this too shall pass

time is fleeting but seems endless when change brings discomfort and inconvenience (for some, hunger and suffering for many others) 

Yet life is for living, not waiting for things we don't like to pass and what life was like in our memories can never be recreated.

Let us go forward with courage my friends and ease our fingers loose from the death grip on our past. Let's take a step into creating our future (we can plug our nose and close our eyes as we step into thin air, the exhilaration alone is worth the step, then we can trust that our imagination is ready with a parachute, it always does! This means to let go of striving for the illusion of security to follow a path that makes us grow)

If one needs a starting point we can never go wrong by being grateful for whatever we have, no matter how insignificant it seems, and starting there ...

Check out this 5 minute youtube of some examples...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaqZVBFsum8

... more wisdom from Tolkien ... we are all part of the same world and what affects some of us affects us all.

“The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot for ever fence it out.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Cheers

Jeanne

Arnold S and Lady G and Zeno of Citium

"Man conquers the world by conquering himself."
Zeno of Citium

"You can have results or excuses. Not both"
"When people said "We never want to look like you" Arnold replied "Don't worry, you never will"
"The worst thing I could be is the same as everybody else. I would hate that"
Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Well, that's your opinion, isn't it? And I'm not about to waste my time trying to change it.”
“Don't you ever let a soul in the world tell you that you can't be exactly who you are.”
“I am the excuse to explore your identity. To be exactly who you are and to feel unafraid. To not judge yourself, to not hate yourself.”
Lady Gaga

There is no beginning and no end. We never 'arrive' at a peak where the struggle is over. To live loud is to continually challenge ourselves to be better. To 'conquer' ourselves is to consciously go into the wilderness of our fears and face them. 

Strength is not nesting in a comfortable cave where we fight to retain these comforts at the expense of the rest of the world. We are hanging on desperately to the paradigm that this comfortable cave is our birthright. We have no birthright, our lives are a gift not something we earned. Everyone of us is a gift. 

Those who have done the work to live their passion and stay focused on their dreams are living examples of Zeno's quote. This is how we live in gratitude for the gift of life, how we honour it and ourselves and conquer the world.

2nd week of isolation March 2020

March 23rd

Monday morning; winter again! Silent except the spring birds who don't seem to mind the change in weather

I am on the farm still, trying to decide what next. Dad died in January and I am slowly getting used to life without him. This winter I've been relatively contented with dreaming about vegetable garden, starting seeds, experimenting with sourdough baking and other hobbies with occasional bouts of social consciousness.

Last Thursday morning here she is!!

Morgan drove home from Texas last week and is self isolating in her trailer and the downstairs apartment here. We are still communicating by phone mostly although we've conversed at a distance outside a few times... it is too cold for extended conversations outside.


I was supposed to be hiking the Bruce Trail from March 14th to 27th on the first segment of an End to End fundraiser for the Bruce Trail Conservancy. We got 4 days and 90 kilometers in before the BTC cancelled all events and organized hikes, our included. This is only a postponement for us, hopefully we'll be able to continue soon and finish this summer.

This global pandemic which is causing us to contract our physical mobility is making me think about all the people I know farther away and that I have not connected with in a long time.

Words and talk

"Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs."

Pearl Strachan Hurd  (1930's British politician)

"Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club" by Megan Gail Coles 

Just finished reading this haunting, heartbreaking book. I chose today's quote because words can be weapons that are manipulated by cowards to victimize and abuse people. Words are many times over more insidiously and overtly dangerous than weapons, yet we use them carelessly; tossing them out without thought of where and how they might land. And if we are called out for this we justify ourselves with more words. Like: people are too sensitive ...the "sensitive" ones are to blame for being hurt by our words. Yup, and the more we "desensitize" ourselves by blaming the target the more words we can use because hey, its not our fault if someone gets hurt, we are entitled to free speech too. Humbug! Free speech is a privilege to be used wisely, not an entitlement to carelessly utter without a care to the impact. The old saying "sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me" is bullshit. We can make ourselves numb to words, we can hide our hurt so often it becomes a habit, we can drown out everyone else with our own words, but the pain is still there and it takes more courage to face and acknowledge it than it does to be a coward who blusters our way by using our words to belittle anyone or anything that is different or thinks differently than ourselves. Respecting other people no matter how different they are and allowing them the dignity to be themselves is the only way we can deserve that respect and dignity we feel should be ours. That does not mean accepting abuse or victimization, it means understanding that those are symptoms and focusing on the symptoms without addressing the causes is perpetuating the weaponizing of words that are creating widening chasms between people. Time for change and change starts within all of us. Courage my friends!!

“Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows.” 

Native American Proverb  

Sharper Wits = Magic

“The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

Eden Phillpotts  

So if the magical things are there waiting for us to discover them and all we have to do is sharpen our wits to make these discoveries why do we live each day stuck in the sloggy, mucky, murky puddle of what we believed was possible yesterday? Our wits are weighed down like boots clomping in clay getting heavier each step, as our familiar convictions get stronger and crush any budding idea that may challenge what we think we know until we are so deeply entrenched we can't even imagine a way out of our hole let alone see the magic.

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/180918110017354076/

Here's a quote I've shared before from Lewis Carrol's book about Alice in Wonderland. I think the world would be a very different place with a lot more magic if we all did this exercise every day. 

"There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."  

There is controversy over the Author: Eden Philpotts relationship with his daughter. Here I have to check in on myself because I usually choose not to use a quote from a source if I read there is public information about abuse they may have committed. I will never condone it, but there is nothing black and white about anything and relationships especially. I don't know if any of us is absolved from abuse and responsibility lies with a society that barely cloaks its own abuse and covers it up or justifies it with religion or colonization or politics or economics. Bullying breeds bullying. 

Dancing and Insanity

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

This quote is often attributed to Fredrich Nietzsche although it is not proven and there are others. George Carlin included, he used this saying in his book "Brain Droppings" (a potential resource for other quotes)

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears the beat of a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

Henry David Thoreau

It takes really deep listening to hear our own music, our own personal drummer. When we are busy judging everyone we can't hear anything else, and our own music fades into a whisper that gets fainter and fainter with each judgement we make. When we judge others (and ourselves), we understand that we are being judged. Judging is "ubiquitous". We hear people judging (our parents, our society, our politicians, our history books, our teachers, our friends...) and it is addictive because it means we don't have to do anything other than call something bad or good and by merely doing that we belong to our tribe that sees right and wrong the same way. We don't have to think for ourselves and we learn to quell our curiousity and questions. The act of making a judgment is our action and this action becomes a habit and also spreads because people like to be part of a group and it is more acceptable to agree than to buck the norm. Judgement is like a novel virus, with its insidious contagion and spread, that has caused its own global pandemic that will keep us at war forever.

A judgement is not an opinion. It says something is right or wrong. It doesn't say "That's weird, I'm curious about why someone would do something like that?" or  "wow, I don't understand but that must have taken a lot of courage" or "Hmmm, interesting dance! Here's an opportunity for me to learn something" or "That is cruel and innocent people are getting hurt how can we change the underlying system that is causing this?" or "What kind of pain and fear is someone dealing with to need to be a bully to survive?" or  "this is scary, I am afraid of what's happening! There must be other people who feel like I do maybe if I speak someone will hear the music I am dancing to" or an infinite other possible ways to learn and do something about what we care about.

A judgement is an absolute shutdown of anything other than "black" or "white" and absolves us of responsibility of looking for the issue (of which we may be a part), absolves us from having empathy, from learning and expanding our outlook, from doing the work of soul searching to find what we really believe, and from doing any other hard thing that might challenge us to change, grow and face our fears.

Maybe we could stop judging and start listening and having conversations that allow us to learn and cooperatively innovate and create and build acceptance that what we don't understand and what we fear is our biggest opportunity to dance with life ... 

Judging is distracting from real issues and is creating deeper fissures in our society and provides no answers because it allows no questions.

An Example from this week's news 

"Justin Trudeau was wrong to join the protesters in a pandemic when he is supposed to be the example of staying out of crowds". 

Yet if he did not join them what is the message from our Prime Minister and government about murder by the system designed to uphold our laws, about racism and about the complicity of silence in perpetuating racism and suppression of people because of the colour of their skin?

In my opinion, this would be a very difficult decision for someone to make. Knowing he was going to be judged no matter what he did.

Well what if he was wrong or what if he right?? How does this affect you and me?? 

We can and are contorting ourselves analyzing Mr. Trudeau's actions but basically we are stuck in our habit of judging and if we are looking for something to make a person wrong about we will find it, and if we are looking for something to make people right about we will find it... 

And who are we to judge someone following their own drummer?

There are opinions about everything these days, a cacophony of conflicting messages. If we were watching the dances what would we see??

The Jerk: Jerky, contorting, twisting 

The Serpent: Sinuous, slithering around, under and over 

The Robot: Repetitious, limited movements 

The Dreamer: Freeflowing and graceful, ephemeral. Like dust in the wind 

The Dictator: Power hand pumping, elbow jabs and deep squat steps knocking over anything in its way

The Thinker:

The Empath:

The Lemur: Photo by Shannon Wild

https://www.catersnews.com/stories/animals/i-like-to-move-it-move-it-lemur-shows-off-dance-moves-to-photographer/

“Greatness is hearing your truth and speaking it no matter how your voice shakes.” Mel Robbins

Fear Fences

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt  

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of courage. And courage is not doing something because you're fearless. Courage is doing something because you may be afraid and you do it anyway."

Col. Dede Halfhill

A BIG Thank You to all those in the Arena right now, risking your physical and mental health, and then being judged and slammed by the very people you are trying to help. I may not always agree with what you are doing, that is okay. There seems to be no circumstance and resulting action that everyone will ever agree on and if we all waited to find the perfect answer before taking any action this world would be unfit to live in so thank you for doing what you can for all of us in spite of all the criticism from the sidelines, What you are doing counts and I admire and appreciate your courage. 

There is no scale to heroic action... anything we do to face a fear and help someone else is heroic and has a ripple effect that cannot be measured. No act is too small to count!!

May those ripples inspire more of us to recognize that hiding from our fear gives fear the power and give us the strength to face and break through the cages fear puts us in. 

Today's paradox: in not standing up to our fears we end up a bully to ourselves trying to hide it. 

(yes I've used the Theodore Roosevelt quote before, I intend to make a copy for my wall framed in barbed wire to remind me everyday of how want to live and the exhilaration of breaking past fear's restraints)

https://ideas.ted.com/why-barbed-wire-yes-barbed-wire-was-as-transformative-as-the-telephone/

Acknowledgement: both of today's quotes were sourced from Brene Brown from this link:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brene-brown-cope-coronavirus-pandemic-covid-19-60-minutes-2020-03-29/  

Cheers

Jeanne

Oaks and Turtles

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. 

Greek proverb  

Everyday we are planting seeds that will grow well beyond our lifetime. We can choose the seeds we want to plant... lots of people are planting trees and by their actions our children may end up with a forest remaining here and there. 

It would be nice to have some people planting mighty oaks ... an acorn takes a very long time to grow and is subject to many perils, yet it can provide shade for centuries if it is allowed to mature.

We all have acorns inside us, its those darn perils that seem so daunting our hard shells never even crack let alone germinate. 

Great opportunity now - the times they are a changing - some are sprouting. For the sake of the future I hope they are prolific enough that a few survive the minefields, the plastic wastelands and toxic air to grow strong and free. 

(reminds me of turtle hatch-lings trying to cross the beach to the relative safety of water through the gantlet of  predators that scoop them up and gulp them down for an instant's gratification -  the few that pass this hurdle have a chance to swim into a new world and face new predators - and the few that make it there have a chance to grow and face new predators.... it's a miracle there are any grown turtles.

Yet everyone one of these turtles could not do it any other way... hiding in the bushes or under a stone is not an option nor is attacking back or growing a harder more encompassing shell  to protect their vulnerability)

Anishinaabe artist designs Twitter Turtle Island emoji for Indigenous History Month

A special edition Turtle Island emoji can be activated on Twitter by using certain hashtags during the month of June.

The emoji, designed by Anishinaabe artist Nancy King who goes by the name Chief Lady Bird, was created in honour of Indigenous History Month. (June 2018)

Cheers

Jeanne

Who wants Easier?

“There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier?”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One  

“Have I lived enough?
Have I loved enough?
Have I considered Right Action enough, have I
come to any conclusion?
Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?
Have I endured loneliness with grace? 

- A Thousand Mornings, Mary Oliver

What does it mean to be alive? How do we awake to a life that fills us in the way we long for?

I think that the world is telling us to Wake Up and find the courage to be who we need to be to break away from the chains of being a superior human and thinking the world was created for us. It is calling for us to take our humble place in this world; we are no more and no less important than the tiniest and simplest of creatures, and when we cherish all we cherish ourselves. 

Go forth and cherish

Jeanne

About Mary Oliver

https://maryoliver.beacon.org/aboutmary/index.html  

Summer, 1964. Photo by Molly Malone Cook, from Our World (Beacon Press, 2007).

A private person by nature, Mary Oliver has given very few interviews over the years. Instead, she prefers to let her work speak for itself. And speak it has, for the past five decades, to countless readers. The New York Times recently acknowledged Mary Oliver as “far and away, this country’s best-selling poet.” Born in a small town in Ohio, Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28; No Voyage and Other Poems, originally printed in the UK by Dent Press, was reissued in the United States in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. Oliver has since published many works of poetry and prose (the complete list appears below).

As a young woman, Oliver studied at Ohio State University and Vassar College, but took no degree. She lived for several years at the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay in upper New York state, companion to the poet’s sister Norma Millay. It was there, in the late ’50s, that she met photographer Molly Malone Cook. For more than forty years, Cook and Oliver made their home together, largely in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where they lived until Cook’s death in 2005.

Over the course of her long and illustrious career, Oliver has received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She has also received the Shelley Memorial Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship; an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Achievement Award; the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for House of Light; the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems; a Lannan Foundation Literary Award; and the New England Booksellers Association Award for Literary Excellence.

Oliver’s essays have appeared in Best American Essays 1996, 1998, 2001; the Anchor Essay Annual 1998, as well as Orion, Onearth and other periodicals. Oliver was editor of Best American Essays 2009.

Oliver’s books on the craft of poetry, A Poetry Handbook and Rules for the Dance, are used widely in writing programs. She is an acclaimed reader and has read in practically every state as well as other countries. She has led workshops at various colleges and universities, and held residencies at Case Western Reserve University, Bucknell University, University of Cincinnati, and Sweet Briar College. From 1995, for five years, she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College. She has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from The Art Institute of Boston (1998), Dartmouth College (2007) and Tufts University (2008). Oliver currently lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the inspiration for much of her work. (Mary Oliver died January 17th, 2019)

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees 

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

     love what it loves.                         

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Cheers

Jeanne

Possibility

"Don't be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done."

Paul Hawken

Thoughts for a Thursday morning in the sixth week of the COVID 19 Pandemic Stay Home Save Lives world: 

What if we respond to a suggestion or idea put forward by a friend, our children, anyone ... with; let's see what's good about this and a genuine interest and detached ego, rather than shooting it down with all the impediments that come to mind? 

Hey, what if we stopped trying to have all the answers and let some of our questions lead us to curious and exploratory places and embrace not knowing so we can find out more and not limit ourselves to what we believe we know. 

What if Interest, Curiousity and Learning could be come our natural state?? 

What if we didn't have to judge everything as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair and we let empathy and respect for all guide our thoughts and actions ... 

Hey guys, what if we could change the world because we stopped telling ourselves we can't??

Cheers

Jeanne

Paul Hawken

http://www.paulhawken.com/biography/  

 Paul Hawken is an environmental entrepreneur, author and activist who has dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. He is one of the environmental movement’s leading voices, and a pioneering architect of corporate reform with respect to ecological practices. His work includes founding successful, ecologically conscious businesses, writing about the impacts of commerce on living systems, and consulting with heads of state and CEOs on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. Paul is Founder of Project Drawdown, a non-profit dedicated to researching when and how global warming can be reversed. The organization maps and models the scaling of one hundred substantive technological, social, and ecological solutions to global warming. 

Paul has appeared in numerous media including the Today Show, Bill Maher, Larry King, Talk of the Nation, Charlie Rose, and has been profiled or featured in hundreds of articles including the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Washington Post, Business Week, Esquire, and US News and World Report. His writings have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Resurgence, New Statesman, Inc, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, Orion, Libération, and other publications. 

Paul authors articles, op-eds, and peer-reviewed papers, and has written eight books including five national bestsellers: The Next Economy (Ballantine 1983), Growing a Business (Simon & Schuster 1987), and The Ecology of Commerce (HarperCollins 1993) Blessed Unrest (Viking, 2007), and Drawdown, The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (Penguin). The Ecology of Commerce was voted as the #1 college text on business and the environment by professors in 67 business schools. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Little Brown, September 1999) co-authored with Amory Lovins, has been read and referred to by several heads of state including President Bill Clinton who called it one of the five most important books in the world during his tenure as President. His books have been published in over 50 countries in 30 languages. Growing a Business became the basis of a 17-part PBS series, which he hosted and produced. The program, which explored the challenges and pitfalls of starting and operating socially responsive companies, was shown on television in 115 countries and reached more than 100 million people. Paul co-authored and edited Drawdown in collaboration with its extraordinary research team. He is currently writing Carbon, The Business of Life, to be published by Penguin RandomHouse. 

Paul has founded several companies, starting in the 1960s with Erewhon, one of the first natural food companies in the U.S. that relied solely on sustainable agricultural methods. He went on in 1979 to co-found Smith & Hawken, the retail and catalog garden company. In 2009 Paul founded OneSun, an energy company focused on ultra low-cost solar based on green chemistry and biomimicry that is now known as Energy Everywhere.

In 1965, Paul worked with Martin Luther King Jr.’s staff in Selma, Alabama prior to the historic March on Montgomery. As press coordinator, Paul registered members of the press, issued credentials, gave updates and interviews on national radio, and acted as a marshal for the final march. That same year, he worked in New Orleans as a staff photographer for the Congress of Racial Equality, focusing on voter registration drives in Bogalusa, Louisiana and the panhandle of Florida, and photographing the Ku Klux Klan in Meridian, Mississippi, after three civil rights workers were tortured and killed. In Meridian, he was assaulted and seized by Klan members, but escaped due to FBI surveillance and intervention. Paul has spoken, conducted research, and traveled extensively throughout the world, undertaking journeys into insurgent-held territories of Burma to research tropical teak deforestation, as well as a 1999 humanitarian/photojournalistic trek to war-torn Kosovo .

As a speaker, Paul has given keynote addresses to the Liberal Party of Canada, the King of Sweden at his inaugural Environmental Seminar, American Bookseller’s Association, Urban Land Institute, SRI International, Harvard University, Stanford University, the Wharton School, Cornell University, Prime Minister of New Zealand’s Conference on Natural Capitalism, U.S. Department of Commerce, Australian Business Council, Yale University and Yale University Commencement, University of California, Berkeley Commencement, France’s Ministry of Agriculture, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Prince of Wales Conference on Business and the Environment—Cambridge University, Commonwealth Club, Herman Miller, National Wildlife Federation, State of Washington, American Society of Landscape Architects, American Institute of Architects, American Institute of Graphic Arts, American Solar Energy Association, Apple, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Cleveland City Club, Conference Board, U.S. Forest Service, Ontario Hydro, Environment Canada, EPA, and several hundred others. PBS named his 2009 commencement speech at the University of Portland the best commencement speech of the year.

Paul has served on the board of many environmental organizations including Point Foundation (publisher of the Whole Earth Catalogs), Center for Plant Conservation, Conservation International, Trust for Public Land, Friends of the Earth, and National Audubon Society. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including: Green Cross Millennium Award for Individual Environmental Leadership presented by Mikhail Gorbachev in 2003; World Council for Corporate Governance in 2002; Small Business Administration “Entrepreneur of the Year” in 1990; Utne “One Hundred Visionaries who could Change our Lives” in 1995; Western Publications Association “Maggie” award for “Natural Capitalism” as the best Signed Editorial/Essay” in 1997; Creative Visionary Award by the International Society of Industrial Design; Design in Business Award for environmental responsibility by the American Center for Design; Council on Economic Priorities’ 1990 Corporate Conscience Award; Metropolitan Magazine Editorial Award for the 100 best people, products and ideas that shape our lives; the Cine Golden Eagle award in video for the PBS program “Marketing” from Growing a Business; California Institute of Integral Studies Award “For Ongoing Humanitarian Contributions to the Bay Area Communities”; Esquire Magazine award for the best 100 People of a Generation (1984). In 2014 he was named one of the three Pioneers of Sustainability along with Professors Peter Senge and Michael Porter. Paul has received six honorary doctorates. In 2019, the National Council for Science and the Environment granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award on Science, Service, and Leadership.

We don't get where we are going by waking up one morning and "voila", there we are. We get there by one step at a time increments and we know the first step is the hardest because we can talk ourselves out of almost anything; too hard, I don't have the brains for it, don't have the strength for it, don't have time for it, a thousand other rationals... but one step here and one step there can get us places we didn't know we could go... Life's a journey take a step ... everything is impossible until we take a step!

John Prine got it right

  "I found it easier to make up songs than to learn other people's songs."
John Prine

"And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away "

John Prine - Paradise

"Sam Stone came home
To his wife and family
After serving in the conflict overseas
And the time that he served
Had shattered all his nerves
And left a little shrapnel in his knees
But the morphine eased the pain
And the grass grew round his brain
And gave him all the confidence he lacked
With a purple heart and a monkey on his back "

John Prine - Sam Stone

"We lost Davy in the Korean war
And I still don't know what for, don't matter anymore 

You know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello"  

So if you're walking down the street sometime
And spot some hollow ancient eyes
Please don't just pass 'em by and stare
As if you didn't care, say, "Hello in there, hello" 

John Prine - Hello in There

Yup, John Prine got lot's of things right... and I honour this man for sharing his way of looking at the world with us. 

We can learn a lot listening to these songs:

look around, look behind the scenes, look with compassion, 

look with eyes that see beyond the oversize domes we've built around our own little lives 

and see that the hollow eyes and burnt out shells of the people whose dreams have faded are the reflections of our own eyes

Morphine is not a cure

Building a fortress to hide in is not a cure

The cure is to write your own songs, the ones in your heart

No one can take away our freedom, we give away the freedom that is meaningful 

When we fight for the freedom to profit from each chunk of coal carried away on Mister Peabody's train

As if we can buy paradise by building monuments to our egos

And our dream, like paradise is squandered bit by bit for a little hits of pleasure that leave us wanting more

And the filters on our eyes block the suffering of others

And we end up on our islands of all encompassing self importance

Waiting for someone to say hello in there, hello

So let's take a break from struggling to make the world fit in to what we want it to be and

Listen to John Prine or any music that makes you feel and

live a little, love a little, dance a little, cry a little, sing a little, be a little ... just let go a little

Cheers

Jeanne

http://performingsongwriter.com/john-prine-songs/  

"Noise-maker, noise-maker
You have no complaint
You are what your are and you ain't what you ain't
So listen up buster, and listen up good
Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood"

John Prine - Dear Abby 

Absurdly right vs Rigidly easy

“Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.” 

JK Rowling

"We have to choose between what is right, and what is easy.”   

JK Rowling

(These were not quoted together, and I'm going to share my context on them which may not be what JK Rowling meant... sorry JK hope this isn't maligning your words.)

As much as I try to empathize and see things through someone else's perspective the only person I can ever get deep inside of is me (even that requires a lot of work). And the inside me is not limited by convention and is often absurd, and I like that, but it sometimes I belittle and shut it down with the outside me; my outside voice. The outside me that tries to fit in to the constructs of our society and its expectations. The outside me that is serious, impossibly rigid and hard to live up to.  That outside voice is critical and far less compassionate and empathetic to the inside me than it is to other people which is also absurd. Paradoxically that critical outside voice is the voice of "easy". It is "easy" because it does not challenge society, the so called "values" that we are conditioned to conform to. "Right" we feel inside, but if we choose based on that we have to face being different, being ostracized, sometimes bullied and ridiculed. If we choose "Right" we have to be prepared to stand strong because society is going to throw everything it can at us to protect its homogeneous values and conformity which it thinks makes it secure. 

This is why the Harry Potter books and JK Rowling's experience are such a welcome joy to read.  She exposes the inside and outside worlds of her characters and the stories hinge on choices made between what is right and what is easy. There are hard fought battles between the two  and then when right wins the victory is sweet, liberating and the easy is exposed as a hole that, like quicksand, sucks its victims deeper into the darkness of the isolation of the individual losing their imagination and absurd-ability each time it is chosen.

The choice between what is right and what is easy translates into the choice between what our inside says and what the outside expects. 

And it is really hard to trust that voice inside because sometimes it seems ridiculously incongruous with the outside world and I would like to say that I think the world needs us to be a little more absurd and not take ourselves quite so seriously!!

Cheers

Jeanne

life tool

I am the most powerful tool in my life and I will use me wisely 

from Instagram tagged as Life Meme.  

Into the second month of staying at home except for essentials and there is little to reassure us that the COVID19 virus pandemic will be under control enough in another month to lift any of the restrictions we currently living under.  There is a link below for self isolation advice from Chris Hadfield. 

I've being taking Steve Martin's Masterclass on comedy, and one of my big takeaways is that we (people) are "thought machines" and material is everywhere! I can't imagine Chris Hadfield or Steve Martin being bored in isolation. I think that using me wisely means choosing what it is that I want in the moment, in the day, the month, my life and focusing on those. What an opportunity right now to use this powerful tool that is me! 

https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/self-isolation-advice-from-chris-hadfield-1.4864592  

Cheers

Jeanne

Science as the answer to go forward

“And what happens when you stop innovating? Everyone else catches up, your jobs go overseas, and then you cry foul: Ooohh, they’re paying them less over there, and the playing field is not level. Well, stop whining and start innovating.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson , Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier  

And what happens when you focus on what is gone... you stop wondering what is possible and how to learn from events and experiment with something new. I think scientists have a lot to offer... not only are they going to save people physically by discovering vaccines and cures, they are modelling a mindset that looks for solutions and new ways instead of clinging in desperation to the status quo and what we had. 

I see empathy as the number one way to move on, this is not about me or you or my country or your country, this is about the collective us which includes all things on this planet.

Cheers Jeanne

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/04/01/coronavirus-neil-degrasse-tyson-ann-druyan-science-way-out-opinion/5100848002/ 

On coronavirus crisis, science is the way out: Q&A with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ann Druyan

 Can science save us from the new coronavirus? With the internet awash in both sound science and pseudoscience, how can people know what to believe? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ann Druyan, creator of the “Cosmos” series now airing on the National Geographic channel, discussed these and other issues with the USA TODAY Editorial Board. Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity:

Q. How can science and history help people navigate this difficult and scary time?

Druyan: We are 50 years into a period when scientists have been sounding the alarm … telling us that if we don't stop living the way we're living and doing what we're doing, we are dooming our civilization. And nothing, during all that time, has been able to awaken us from our sleepwalking until now. These are the days the Earth stood still. This is the first time when our whole civilization has suddenly realized that nature will not be deceived, that we can have leaders who manipulate us and deceive us, but nature will not be lied to. And so, at this moment, everyone is turning to the scientists, looking for a vaccine, looking for a remedy. Knowing science and history is the only way out of this, because if there is going to be a remedy, it will come from science.

Q. Are we in some sort of giant scientific experiment?

Tyson: The power of science is unique in our culture because of its capacity to predict future events, not only based on rhythms of the past, as ancients have done, but also our modern understandings of how nature works and what our interaction with nature is. And you run these models, you get the best understanding available, and we make a prediction. Do people put their head in the sand? Do they say, I choose not to believe that, not realizing, as Ann just said, that nature is the ultimate judge, jury and executioner of your ideas? So, yeah, we're in an experiment (in whether the world will listen to scientists). And when we come out on the other side, we may be better off for it, but it's quite costly to have gotten there.

Q. How can the average person distinguish between the real science and the pseudo science that they see on the internet?

Tyson: It's hard. What does the internet do? It gives you access to information unfiltered. Before the internet, there were these gates: editorial boards at newspapers, editors at publishing houses. There were these gateways. And yes, occasionally, crap would get through, but basically you could pass judgment on the likelihood of something being correct based on the editorial traditions of the entity that you were referencing. That's gone. So much more of that burden, because it is a burden, is now on the shoulders of the individual, and so this is why science is more than just how much you know. Science is a toolkit for how to query information. Science literacy is a way of thinking, a way of engaging the act and the art of asking questions.

Druyan: I completely agree with what you said, Neil. Science is a way of seeing absolutely everything. It's that baloney detection kit that (my late husband) Carl (Sagan) wrote about.

Q. Scientists who make great efforts at public education and communication sometimes get dismissed by their peers as popularizers or generalists. So doesn’t the scientific community bear some of the responsibility here?

Druyan: Yes, that has been true in the past. Carl was a full-time scientist who authored or coauthored 600 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and yet he got blackballed from the National Academy of Sciences. Why? Because of this bias that we have against sharing this knowledge, the bias of the priesthood, that wants its arcane jargon to be the secret language of the lucky few.

Tyson: There’s blame enough to go around, but we're still talking about people who are in charge who are denying science. They're the ones with the actual power. Scientists don't wield the power that politicians do or that the electorate does. To imply that we might have a rise of flat-earthers because scientists historically were prevented from communicating with the public — there are other forces going on out there that require all of our collective effort, media as well, to try to fight.

Q. Are human beings bad at rational risk assessment?

Tyson: That's something that is just ignored in school. When my wife and I had our kids, I got a hold of a book that assessed all the causes of death at every age of your life, ranked by highest risk to lowest risk at every age. And you can watch things transform as you get older. Certain causes of death go away, others rise up. My wife and I coordinated to reduce the risks that were maximum according to the statistics, not that we ignored what our feelings were about a risk. That still matters, because that's why we're all living human beings.

Q. Is it hard to persuade "young invincibles" to stay home during the coronavirus pandemic?

Tyson: That message took a while, because the bars were all filled with the 20-somethings for so long, but they all have a grandparent (who could get infected). I think that's what ultimately did it. Otherwise, in a free country, if the risk you take only affects you, then the most you can do is communicate to that person what those risks are, and then they make their own decisions. But it's no longer a free country if that person taking risk with their own life puts your life at risk. That's an important message to communicate.

Q. Now that a lot of parents are home-schooling, how can they try to get their kids interested in science?

Tyson: Anyone who's had kids knows that they're born into this world curious. They're curious about everything. Their curiosity operates on a level where at a young enough age that curiosity can actually kill them. But what parents often do is constrain that curiosity to the point where the curiosity is viewed as something bad. Managed curiosity is something that you don't have to instill within children. Since they're born with it, you just have to, sort of, not get in their way.

Q. Is the pandemic likely to lead to more focus on the life sciences and more people studying these sciences in medical school?

Tyson: Often, the greatest investments that we make are the “I don't want to die" investments: I fear that I have an enemy, so let me have money flow like rivers. It turns out, a virus is an enemy. It's an enemy that's attacking everyone. … That virus doesn't carry a passport. It can move across borders at will. So in a sense, it is a war, and people behave differently when they fear death than any other way that I know. Will this prompt more people to go into biology? Most certainly.

Q. Will this crisis bridge the gap between scientists and people who are skeptical about scientific pronouncements?

Druyan: I think this is a moment, a singular moment in my lifetime. … Maybe we'll emerge from this with a greater respect for what the scientists are saying. But it's a two-way street. The scientists have to speak with a kind of openness and reality and humility that is compelling.