Ashley Judd on Women’s Bodies

Posted on June 7, 2012 by marcia

The Conversation

Posted on April 10, 2012

The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.

As an actor and woman who, at times, avails herself of the media, I am painfully aware of both the conversation about women’s bodies, and it frequently migrates to my own body. I know this, even though my personal practice is to ignore what is written about me. I do not, for example, read interviews I do with news outlets. I hold that it is none of my business what people think of me. I arrived at this belief after first, when I began working as an actor eighteen years ago, reading everything. I evolved into selecting only the “good” pieces to read. Over time, I matured into the understanding that good and bad are equally fanciful interpretations. I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself. I thus abstain from all media about myself. The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator. Of course, it’s wonderful to be held in esteem and fond regard by family, friends, and community, but a central part of my spiritual practice is letting go of otheration. And casting one’s lot with the public is dangerous and self-destructive, and I value myself too much to do that.

However, the recent speculation and accusations about the unusual fullness of my face in March, 2012, feels different., and my colleagues and friends encouraged me to know what was being said. Consequently, I choose to address it because the conversation was pointedly nasty, gendered and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day, in ways both outrageous and subtle. The assault on our body image, the hyper-sexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality as we walk through the decades, and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.

A brief analysis demonstrates that the following “conclusions” were all made on the exact same day, March 20, 2012, about the exact same woman (me), looking the exact same way, based on the exact same television appearance. The following examples are real, and come from a variety of (so-called!) legitimate news outlets (such as HuffPo, MSNBC, etc), tabloid press, and social media:

One: When I am sick for a over a month and on medication (multiple rounds of steroids), the accusation is that because my face looks puffy, I have “clearly had work done,” with otherwise credible reporters with great bravo “identifying” precisely the procedures I allegedly have had done.

Two: When my skin is nearly flawless, and at age 43, I do not yet have visible wrinkles that can be seen on television, I have had “work done,” with media outlets bolstered by consulting with plastic surgeons I have never met who “conclude” what procedures I have “clearly” had. (Notice that this is a “back-handed compliment,” too – I look so good! It simply cannot possibly be real!)

Three: When my 2012 face looks different than it did when I filmed “Double Jeopardy” in 1998, I am accused of having “messed up” my face (polite language here, the “F” word is being used more often), with a passionate lament that “Ashley has lost her familiar beauty audiences loved her for.”

Four: When I have gained weight, going from my usual size two/four to a six/eight after a lazy six months of not exercising, and that weight gain shows in my face and arms, I am a “cow” and a “pig” and I “better watch out” because my husband “is looking for his second wife.” (Did you catch how this one engenders competition and fear between women? And suggests that my husband values me based only my physical appearance? Classic sexism. We won’t even address how extraordinary it is that a size eight would be heckled as “fat.”)

Five: In perhaps the coup de grace, when I am acting in a dramatic scene in “Missing, the plot stating I am emotionally distressed, have been awake and on the run for days, viewers remarks ranged from “What the f*&^ did she do to her face?” to cautionary gloating, “Ladies, look at the work!” Footage from “Missing” obviously dates prior to March 2012, and the remarks about how I look while playing a character powerfully illustrate the contagious and vicious nature of the conversation. The accusations and lies, introduced to the public, now apply to me as a woman across space and time; to me as any woman and to me as every woman.

That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times – I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to indentify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.

A case on point is that this conversation was initially promulgated largely by women; a sad and disturbing fact. (That they are professional friends of mine, and know my character and values, is an additional betrayal.)

News outlets with whom I do serious work, such as publishing Op-Eds about preventing HIV, empowering poor youth worldwide, and conflict mineral mining in Democratic Republic of Congo, all ran this “story” without checking with my office first for verification, or offering me the dignity of the opportunity to comment. It’s an indictment of them, that they would even consider the content printable, and that they, too, without using time honored journalistic standards, would perpetuate with un-edifying delight such blatantly gendered, ageists, and mean-spirited content.

I hope the sharing of my thoughts can generate a new conversation: Why was a puffy face cause for such a conversation in the first place? How, and why, did people participate? If not in the conversation about me, in parallel ones about women in your sphere? What is the gloating about? What is the condemnation about? What is the self-righteous alleged “all knowing” stance of the media about? How does this symbolize constraints on girls and women, and encroach on our right to be simply as we are, at any given moment? How can we as individuals in our private lives make adjustments that support us in shedding unconscious actions, internalized beliefs, and fears about our worthiness, that perpetuate such meanness? What can we do as families, as groups of friends? Is what girls and women can do different from what boys and men can do? What does this have to do with how women are treated in the workplace?

I ask especially how we can leverage strong female to female alliances to confront and change that there is no winning here as women. It doesn’t actually matter if we are aging naturally, or resorting to surgical assistance. We experience brutal criticism. The dialogue is constructed so that our bodies are a source of speculation, ridicule, and invalidation, as if they belong to others – and in my case, to the actual public. (I am also aware that inevitably some will comment that because I am a creative person, I have abdicated my right to a distinction between my public and private selves, an additional, albeit related, track of highly distorted thinking that will have to be addressed at another time).

If this conversation about me is going to be had, I will do my part to insist that is a feminist one, because it has been misogynist from the start. Who makes the fantastic leap from being sick, or gaining some weight over the winter, to a conclusion of plastic surgery? Our culture, that’s who. The insanity has to stop, because as focused on me as it appears to have been, it is about all girls and women. In fact, it’s about boys and men, too, who are equally objectified and ridiculed, according to hetereonormative definitions of masculinity that deny the full and dynamic range of their personhood. It affects each and every one of us, in multiple and nefarious ways: our self image, how we show up our relationships and at work, our sense of our worth, value, and potential as human beings. Join in – and help change – The Conversation.

N.B.: I would like to thank the many family members and mentors who read my essay, provided their passionate and unqualified support, and in some instances, made valuable suggestions to the text. They include my spiritual sister, Nikki Myers, who sat with me in my “office” under a red bud tree where this writing came to me; Naomi Judd and Larry Strickland; Michael Ciminella and Mollie Whitelaw; Reverend Mark Judd; Marina Franchitti, Carla Franchitti McFarlane. I thank Carol Lee Flinders, PhD, who taught me to mediate and who continually reinforces my organic understanding that pursuit of equality is fundamentally spiritual. I thank my life coach; Ted Klontz, PhD, whose unfailing presence in my life helps me become increasingly empowered and clear. I thank my colleagues Trena Keating, Michelle Bohan, Cara Trippichio, and Annett Wolf, whom I met in Hollywood yet who not only never flinch when I take a stand, stand resolutely with me. I thank Gloria Steinem for a simple yet powerful nudge toward full ownership of my reality; Dr Carol Jordan of the University of Kentucky for a lovely bit of inspired language. I am grateful for Angela McCracken, Esq., who in the age of unrestricted media frenzies supports legal rights where one still has them and helps my husband and me stand up to slander, defamation and lies. I give thanks to my extraordinary professor of “Gender Violence: Law and Social Justice” at Harvard Law, who not only teaches brilliantly but attracts to her classroom the most incredible people. My classmates, Rebecca Leventhal, Brittany Rogers, and Brittanie Hall, contributed, respectively, the reminder of the need for a clean, lucid opening paragraph, an additional infusion of steely, principled, feminist social justice values, and the insight that my body was being dissected as if it belonged to the public. Lastly, I thank BR for the soulful validation that what I had to say was beautiful and necessary. It was she who said, “you have to publish this as an Op Ed.”

Most especially, I thank my husband, Dario Franchitti, as it was his outrage that began this dialogue in our home. Over a period of days, his indignation helped me grasp the “damned if I do, damned if I don’t” double bind that inheres in The Conversation about both men and women in the public space, for which my puffy face was merely an example. Because of him, this piece became inevitable and essentially wrote itself. Dario’s thoughtful reading and astute feedback elevated its quality and breadth.

from: http://ashleyjudd.com/2012/04/10/the-conversation/

Earthquake Outside Tokyo

Posted on June 5, 2012 by marcia

Strong earthquake close to Tokyo.

Last update: June 5, 2012 at 9:48 pm by By Ashish Khanal

Strong earthquake at a safe distance from Tokyo.
A 6.3Mw (Japan Meteorological Agency) earthquake struck 158km away from Tokyo, altough it was strong the distance and the depth (20km) only made a Max. felt intensity of 3 on a scale of 7, we at earthquake report consider a 5+ scale as dangerous. The earthquake was probably felt by many people on the region.

from: http://earthquake-report.com/2012/06/05/major-earthquakes-list-june-5-2012/

Kryon on Dark & Light

Posted on June 4, 2012 by marcia

The Recalibration of Dark and Light

a message from Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll

Greetings, dear ones, I am Kryon of Magnetic Service. I speak to those who have an elegance of wisdom. You may not think of this as you, for there are those here who are literally only feeling this for the first time, but there’s an elegance in this room. The elegance of discernment is here, and this is placed upon you so that you would discern what is true and what is not – including this very message.

There is a dispensation of wisdom occurring on this planet. For all those who would question themselves or what has happened this day [The Kryon seminar] or wonder if they were manipulated with knowledge or energy, they should go inside and feel that raw, pure energy of the love of God. Raw, in that it is not clouded with a filter; you can see it for what it is. The appropriateness of all things reveals itself, including your place on the earth, living the way you’re living with those you live with, with everything you’ve learned. Your wisdom will tell you that it is all correct and proper, and you haven’t made any mistakes. You are wiser than you think.

The room is filled with old souls. Very, very few of you here are not. An old soul is one who has been on the planet more than 100 times or more. My partner has spent the last hour teaching about the past and giving you an option to see the planet as it develops in a way nobody expected. Humans become fearful when there seems to be no predictions about what takes place, for the predictions of doom did not happen. However, they’re just not looking in the right place, for what is taking place now is what many of the ancients told you could happen.

Old souls make a difference on this planet. They carry energetic weight with their wisdom. You are those old souls, dear Humans. But do not put a time on this change, for neither Spirit nor Gaia will react to your clock. Instead, put the compassion of God on the change. See that which is appropriate for your life for now, and then stand back and create it. Listen to it. See it happening. Take a trip to the future where it is happening. Feel it upon your lives.

Blessed is the Human Being who knows they are a part of the plan and the system, for these are the Humans who will plant the seeds for peace on Earth.

The Energy of Recalibration

We wish to continue the series that we are calling, “The Recalibration of All Things”. We have given you information in the past about the recalibration of the planet, of humanity and even of the Universe. Now we speak of the recalibration of dark and light and what it means to you.

So before I begin, I must define what I mean by dark and light and then I will also define what I mean by the new 2012 energy. When I speak about dark and light to you, what do you think about? I’ll tell you what many are trained to think about: They’re trained to think about evil and good and bad. They’re trying to put these things in the appropriate boxes where they were taught they belong using linear thinking. They will turn to the mythology that taught them about an entity with a tail trying to capture your soul and other mysterious entities around that work for that main evil entity.

So I will tell you again: The entity that is after your soul is mythology, dear ones. It doesn’t exist in your reality. But you might say, “Wait a minute, Kryon. Are you telling me evil doesn’t exist?” No, dear ones, I didn’t say that. What I’m telling you is that all the darkness on this planet has come from Human Beings. You don’t need to assign energy to a mythological creature to have evil on the earth. The darkest of the dark can be created by the Humans if they choose to do that. Dark power can be created because Humans are powerful and can manifest it. Darkness is not that hard to manifest.

However, we have told you before that the light/dark balance of the planet is what is at hand. Those who carry light in the dark room will not have darkness around them, for the definition of darkness is the absence of light. But if there are only a few who carry the match, there’s going to be a lot of darkness. So you are subject to that, for you will walk around in whatever light balance is created by humanity.

You might call it a system. All of life is affected – all of it – by the light and dark balance of where humanity decides to place this balance. The definition of dark and light has to do with the Human consciousness balance, since it is the Human Being who creates dark and light for the planet. It’s a concept. So this is the subject of this message: What is the new balance of the earth energy going to mean to you, personally, today?

Second definition: The 2012 energy is a marker, a seeming perception of a time frame that you have now passed and are well into, which gives a confluence of energy permission to change reality. The earth, being Gaia, begins to shift with you and for you, and the energy of the planet moves into areas that it never has before.

The Movement of the Kundalini on Earth

I gave a channel in the area you call Peru. We talked about the prophecy of the ancients, which was called the movement of the feathered serpent. This has also been called the centering of wisdom on the planet. Some have called it the movement of the Kundalini. The Kundalini is an energy that is always associated with movement. It is also often associated with procreation, and the metaphor is therefore dealing with the rebirth of humanity.

Civilization itself is at stake within this movement, and you’ve passed the marker – an alignment that many said would never happen. This is the fifth time you’ve been through this opportunity and now, dear ones, you’re headed for the potential of peace on Earth.

Twenty-three years ago, we told you this could happen and that the potentials were strong for it. Now, all that is around you is struggling with it, for the shift is here. I’ll say this over and over: The old energy of darkness dies hard, screaming and struggling to keep what it has had, and it struggles with its own demise. So that is the energy we speak of now, and the subject is the Human consciousness balance between dark and light. Many have called this duality.

How does this new balance affect you?

Let’s start with the personal, then we’ll go to something bigger and then something even bigger. We’ll end with a prediction we’ve never given before – a potential that has arisen only recently.

Dear ones, I am Kryon. I give you information of love about the planet and your own energy. I never give you information that has not already been generated by the potential of Human consciousness. Quite often the predictions are given and then they happen. When they do, you consider that fortune telling. It is not. It is energy in that random, chaotic place you called quantum, weighing the potentials of what could happen regarding your lives and the earth. So the future is driven by the potentials that you have created with your own consciousness as a civilization on the planet – not fortune telling, but a measurement of what you are creating.

Twenty-three years ago, we saw the potentials of today, for you were starting to develop these very things and the seeds were being planted for what you are seeing now. It’s beautiful and difficult at the same time. Change is always accompanied with difficulty. Even the most well-balanced Human will say, “I have found my balance and I’m pleased with this balance.” Then someone comes along and says, “Well, we’re going to change things.” That’s when that well-balanced Human yells, “No! I’m balanced. Don’t change anything!” For change means you’re going to put a weight on one side of that balance scale and you’re going to have to learn to shift so that you center again. That’s always unpleasant and a lot of work. But that’s not what you’re going to be doing this time. This time it’s even harder! We call it recalibration.

Let me tell you what it means by giving you a short review of a message [channelling] I gave recently. In an older energy, you went about protecting yourselves from darkness. If you were a healer, you protected yourselves from those who might have imbalance, psychological problems, even disease in their bodies. Then you often did a number of things to make sure you were protected. There was a process, a procedure for that. So I’m telling you right now that this is gone.

This is a review. If you’re constantly creating light, then darkness does not have a chance. We’ve said this over and over and now it comes full circle to you personally: Wherever you go, darkness can’t touch you. Are you listening to me? It can’t touch you. The essence of your light is the love of God and you are broadcasting it, Lightworker – broadcasting it! There’s no dark thing that can get in there as long as you’re broadcasting light!

Now let me tell you a guaranteed way where you can stop broadcasting light and open yourselves up to go backwards instead of forward. It’s by saying, “I can’t do it. Who am I? I’m not worthy.” There will be many spiritual leaders who will tell you you’re not worthy. They will tell you that you were born dirty and unworthy to even talk to God. They will tell you that you have to suffer to get the attention and approval of God. However, God is in you, and even the master of love told you that. Therefore, you are not born dirty, but born magnificent! If God is in you, then light is in you.

We move on to point two: Drama, anger, frustration. There’s a lot of it. So when you leave this room, how much of that are you going to participate in? It depends upon the duality, doesn’t it? If you are a Lightworker, a lighthouse on this planet that changes the balance of light everywhere you walk, then you’re going to be given immediate power over anger, frustration and drama. Power over it! Now, you can’t change the people around you. You just can’t. They will flail and do whatever they want to and they may go into anger and drama. They may even try to push your buttons. I think you know who I’m talking about. I know who’s here and who is reading. They’ll do it in order to get control over you, and if they can affect you, you’ve fallen for it, haven’t you?

If a person can get dramatic, if they can get angry enough, if they can push your buttons, then they just won the light/dark battle. For years, this has been a struggle because the balance of dark and light has always teetered in the middle of balance, but so often favored the dark. The dark was easy and blind. During these years, the Lightworkers had to work hard to gain the upper hand for themselves, so they would not be affected by the other. I hope you understand what I’m saying. It has been an upstream swim for the Lightworker!

Now, however, energy is being delivered to you as this earth shifts, which is going to make it far easier for you, the Lightworker, to be in control of emotions, no matter what is around you. Then you can stand there with all the angels on your side, while others try all they want to affect you, but you won’t need to react. I challenge you to do this, for there’ll be those of you who walk into the workplace in a couple of days and may have a challenge. It is the way of it. The old balance will still be there trying to assert itself in an old way, not being aware that you’ve changed. So what will your reaction be? Can you begin to take your power?

What happens when one person takes the high road? Eventually, that road is where the other person will want to be also! It’s well lighted and attractive. You don’t just change yourself by creating light. What you do on this planet is seen by all. Every single, small victory at home or at work will help you walk in a peaceful way where you didn’t before. That victory is seen by everybody, and you seem better balanced.

All of us on this side know what you have done! Listen to our applause when you walk from a place and know you did it: You didn’t fall for it this time, and you are not affected anymore. Some of you know of what I speak. Anger, frustration, drama – it doesn’t have to be in your life at all.

Perhaps you’ve decided, as you walk from place to place, that you may have to get out of town, get out of a relationship, get out of a job, for things to settle for you. Now I want you to rethink that idea for a moment. What happens if things start to change for you personally and the things that bothered you before now don’t? That changes the conditions, doesn’t it? Now you can be in the same situations you always were, and yet it’s completely different. You’re not frustrated anymore. You don’t get angry anymore, even as those around you continue to spin in drama and unrest. You actually have more wisdom due to it and can manifest better.

I’ll tell you what may eventually happen. Those spinners will see you, and eventually some are going to come to you in private and say, “How do you do it? I wish I didn’t have to spin as much. I see that you’ve changed. For some reason, you’re not bothered anymore. For some reason, you have a smile and I can see the peace of God in you and I want it. You don’t gossip. You don’t make other people wrong. You have an honoring for all people when you open your mouth and speak. I can hear it. Something changed in you and I’d love to know what it is.” Then, my dear Human Being, and only then, should you open up and say, “I’ve found something that I never thought existed. I found the peace of God inside me.” That’s powerful, and your actions prove it.

Number three: Are you aware of how your body is shifting? It’s allowing for you not only to heal yourself, but to feel better as you do it. This creates a cellular communication where you don’t age as much. Your body will stay younger when the chemistry doesn’t have to deal with anxiety.

The Planetary Balance

A summary: On this planet, the balance of what has happened, what Humans have done through the ages, stays here. It is recorded quantumly in what is called The Crystalline Grid. Everything that takes place on the planet, which Humans create, stays here as energy. Every situation where energy is created stays in The Crystalline Grid. If there’s a dark energy created by Humans, The Crystalline Grid emanates darkness. If there’s a light energy, it emanates light.

For 23 years and the last 18, in particular, you have changed the dark/light balance of Gaia. In the process, your DNA starts to shift. It is quantumly tuned to The Crystalline Grid. That is to say, it then starts to shift not only in you but also in every baby that’s born. You might say that the Human DNA field “looks around” at birth and picks up the energy that is given to it by The Crystalline Grid. That, then, is the starting energy it will have for life. Therefore, what you do now affects the energy of the earth and even the consciousness of humanity to come. Think about it. For eons, nothing has changed. Human nature was always the same and, therefore, you never saw anything but war and frustration. This is now starting to change, and the Lightworkers on the planet have created it.

The children are changing. They’re different. Some of them are taking on quantum attributes. Many adults laugh at this concept, as they sit and enjoy a better earth, not even acknowledging the considerable change before them, since they are in their own box of reality. But that’s what’s going on, and it’s because the dark and light balance of the earth is affecting newborn DNA. History is not repeating itself, and instead of the planet’s population continuing to separate and split itself apart, it is attempting slowly to put itself together. But it happens over generations, so it’s not as obvious as something that happens on a week-to-week basis, which Humans would rather look at in their impatience and intellectual pursuit of a fast-moving reality.

However, what this means is that you can stay here longer, no matter what you’ve been told. Longer life is in your grasp – a lot longer. I’m talking to somebody who needed to hear that. We’ve given instructions on creating pure intent. We’ve told you that if you start a process of belief, where you literally go inside and become one with that which is your innate [innate is the quantum intelligence of biology], then you are starting a process where you are beginning to move into a more multidimensional Human, the true reality of all the matter in the Universe. Being 3D is not a normal reality. It’s the reality of a closed system of thinking and begets only what it knows instead of moving into what it can imagine.

Innate intelligence? Why would you use kinesiology unless you wanted to know something you don’t know? Innate is the energy that you contact when you do muscle testing. Innate is the key. The dark and light balance of the planet is starting to move into a lighter balance, and then it becomes easier for you to contact your own cellular structure and start a process that will operate by itself, as long as you continue to desire light in your life.

Stop Assigning Power to an Outside Force

It’s time for you to stop giving credit to the almighty outside and give credit to the almighty inside, as the masters did. What if the true divinity and power on the planet is hidden in Human Beings instead of angels in the sky or big buildings with impressive facades? Humans love to give away their power to others, both Human and not, since most Humans don’t trust themselves. But what if balanced health could be yours and you could stop the aging process? Dear ones, you should live 200 years, at least! You rejuvenate! This is your design, but this design is not operating at full efficiency due to the dark/light balance that has been on the planet for eons. Now it is changing.

You’re going to start seeing something in the next generation and the one after that: extended life without science. It’s going to start happening automatically, and it will be a puzzle for the biologists. Why would Humans start living so much longer? They will say, “Maybe it’s nutrition. Maybe it’s this and maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s the lack of disease because we’re curing them.” They’ll have all number of reasons and none of them will be accurate, because they don’t know the energy of what you’ve done and how it’s affecting the DNA. Counter-intuitive to all the pollution you are pumping into the environment, Humans will start to have extended lifetimes.

Governments

Let me talk about governments, because you’re going to see some change. First, look at history: For years, even in your lifetime and those of your grandparents, the leadership of countries has decided to conquer one another simply because they could! There was an unspoken barbaric attitude that, “If we are more powerful, then we deserve to conquer the weak and take their land.” This is history and wasn’t all that long ago.

Let me remind you, 30,000 years of your past history is filled with this. It’s literally the history of humanity. Whoever had the most power invaded the one who did not, did you notice? The strong one didn’t have to have a reason, either. If a country had no army, then they eventually had no country! Today, that is no longer in your consciousness, or that of most current governments. But sometimes it still happens, and when you see it, even on a small scale, it disgusts you, does it not? That entire attitude doesn’t seem to be accurate anymore, and it’s shocking when you see it. There’s now more respect for sovereignty and the idea of conquering is something from the past.

Governments change. Attitudes change. So you might say, “Well, we licked that one. We’ve gone someplace.” And you’d be right, for the planet really has changed in that regard. So, what about the next one? What is next for government that is vastly different from the “norm” that you grew up in? You’re going to start seeing a change in the way government conducts itself. Believe it or not, you’re going to start seeing that which has more integrity! There will be those who demand it and those who will shrink from it and there is where the battles will be.

You may even see in your lifetime the end to name-calling during elections! Now, wouldn’t that be something, where one candidate stands up and says, “I don’t agree with my opponent, but he’s a patriot and I can see that he loves his country as I do. I don’t agree with him, and here is why and what I stand for”? This is more than taking the high road. It’s a new paradigm of thinking.

Right now, you are more prone to say, “My opponent is a bad guy. Look at what he’s done and look at the mistakes he’s made and look at his personal ways of dishonesty and mischief.” That’s an old paradigm, dear ones. I want you to watch for this change. The first one who does it on a main political stage will create a breath of fresh air in your politics, and the system will never be the same. A new paradigm will be seen as “viable” by those who study these things. When you start seeing it in that arena, you’ll know it’s real. You’re headed for an election year [this channelling was in February 2012]. Don’t expect much change in the ways things work, because the old energy is strong. It may take four more years for you to see a difference, perhaps even four more after that. But along will come someone who sets a standard that will be so different that everyone will know it’s something that really works.

When the Indigos run for office, there will be a shift in the way they run and in the integrity that they have. They are conceptual and they can see the reaction of consciousness on those they talk to, and the older ones right now can’t. So we tell you that the dark and light balance is then going to change what? It eventually will change who you elect! And it’s about time. Don’t look for it immediately, but it’s going to be there. Watch for more conceptual common sense campaigning, leaving the old style behind that you have had for 200 years.

Financial

This is a summary on this subject: You have attacked your own financial systems in the last five years to try and make them fair and to clean out as much of the greed as possible. Historians alive today will tell you that this would have been seen as an impossible situation, since big money was seen as untouchable. Yet you have disturbed the nest and started planting the seeds of a better system. This recession you’re in is a recalibration of big money. You called them on it, and we told you it was coming almost a year before it happened. We even told you what would fall first [insurance] and that it would be one of the largest insurance companies on the planet [and it was].

So think about this for a moment. We could see it coming because energy is like that. It creates slow, strong potentials that can be predicted. It’s not over either, since the old system has to recreate itself. Your bankers are confused, if you’ve noticed. It doesn’t matter what the government says they are allowed to do, or how much money they are being given to do it. They’re not doing it! They are frozen in the headlights of a new paradigm and don’t know how to operate. That should tell you how new and uncertain this change is – like nothing you have seen.

Now that, my dear Human Being, is a shift of dark and light. Do you see this? Integrity won out over abundance and power, and the system gets altered. It may get altered again, but there’ll come a day when the ones who have the money to loan must create win-win situations, instead of greed-based systems. You haven’t even seen these systems yet, but you will. You won’t believe some of the ideas that the Indigos will think of for banking where everybody wins, and there won’t be those left behind, scratching their heads and asking, “What happened to my house?” New systems are coming, and they won’t be ones that are in your economic textbooks.

The Planet’s Economy

There’ll come a time on the planet when there’ll probably be no more than five currencies. Unity is the way of all things; it is the structure that creates succinctness in integrity, power of trade, and ease of working. Entire continents will band together as a trading group, and there will be far fewer rules and details to wade through and, therefore, it will be efficient and involve fewer money changers. This also helps to eliminate the very poor, since they will now be involved more in what happens in their own lands. That is what the earth is awakening to. It may take two generations before this has really been realized and seen accurately, but you’ll wake up one day and realize what you’ve done. You are putting things together instead of tearing them apart. That’s counter-intuitive to the old Human process!

In the next two decades, somebody will awaken and say, “Hey, we didn’t have a world war. Isn’t that something? And we’re not going to, either, because everybody is trading with everybody. We may have found a balance that works!” Perhaps someone will even rename the “doomsday clock” something else, since it seems to be running backwards.

It’s the Pollyanna approach, isn’t it? Many think so and feel it’s foolish. There will always be those who would argue and say, “Kryon, it’s not accurate and it’s naïve. It’s only a matter of time before we wipe ourselves out and have the Armageddon. After all, that’s what Humans do.” Well, dear ones, that’s what Humans used to do! It’s up to you whether you listen to those representing “the way it was” or not. They’ll say, “The earth is coming to an end.” There will be those who even will hang on to the last possible moment to say that December 21 [the year of this channel, 2012] is the end of the earth.

So I have something for you to do for them. On December 22, 2012, just call them and remind them that their drama is over and the earth is still here. Now perhaps they can join you in planting seeds for peace on Earth, instead of wallowing in that which creates attention, fear and anxiety. Some of them may just do it. Others will miss the drama and continue to look for something else to fear. There will always be conspiracists and doomsayers aplenty. They won’t like the Kryon message.

Prediction

And now for a prediction: I would not give you the following information if it were not in the works. I cannot give you a timeframe of this prediction because Spirit has no clock. We don’t know what time it is. Time is a three-dimensional construct of your own creation. It serves you for your survival, and it has to be there. In 3D, you can’t get from A to B unless you have a clock. In a quantum state, there is no A to B. In a quantum state, you’re always in both places, so clocks do not exist. God has no clock. That is why when you get information from Sprit about doing something in your life, you must wait for synchronicity instead of rushing out and trying to do it now. Spiritual revelations do not carry an implication to go do it now. Instead, these are messages of the revelation of potentials that you will then experience on your own time through those you meet and the synchronicity you create.

You have something inappropriate in your country. It’s big and it has to do with big money, and it’s going to fall. Perhaps in an unusual way, it will fall. I cannot tell you when, but I will tell you it’s ripe with potential failure. Years ago, I told you when everybody can talk to everybody, there can be no more conspiracies. You got to see this same attribute years ago in another industry you call tobacco, where they were very big business. But under the hood, as you might say, the integrity was not there, for they were addicting young people to the product they were selling and it was making an entire population unhealthy and even setting up early death.

The result was that your country stopped purchasing the product en mass, and today the industry survives by selling to those countries that are not yet aware of what you found out. What took place was the power of integrity over money. Yet again, we bring you this to show you what may very well happen again, for this is the prediction. Big pharma [the drug companies of America] are going to have to change very soon or collapse. When you have an industry that keeps people sick for money, it cannot survive in the new consciousness.

The big money that is involved in this closed circle is immense, and the lack of integrity is going to be revealed, slowly. The lives “lost for profit” will be counted, and there are going to be embarrassed faces, and even a suicide or two. To think of an industry that’s supposed to cure people, keeping them sick on purpose will be a wound in the very fabric of what is correct and for humanity.

So they will fall and you’ll know their names and they’re going to have to scramble to keep up with the rest of the world who may not have the proclivities for greed that made these fall. This may also change the perception of what countries have the best health inventions and solutions, and many in this country may turn to overseas answers for their health needs.

That’s the prediction. When it starts to happen, dear one, and perhaps the movie starts it [the one that’s in the works that is a secret], I want you to remember where you heard it first. Perhaps this information, given in advance, will solidify that this is real – that the channelling you hear today comes from the source that we say it does, the one inside you.

When you’re not here, you’re with me. I know your face and I know who you really are. I know your real name, not the one you’ve got right now. That is the truth of the day. Recalibration is upon you in so many ways. We’ll continue this information, this cycle of revelation, and many more things will be revealed. It’s time. That’s the energy of 2012.

And so it is.

Kryon

The information is free and available for you to print out, copy and distribute as you wish. Its Copyright, however, prohibits its sale in any form except by the publisher.

Lee Carroll

from: http://spiritlibrary.com/kryon/channelings/the-recalibration-of-dark-and-light

Small and Varied Houses

Posted on June 4, 2012 by marcia

6 Ideas for Sensible Homes

Small, supportive, affordable, recycled—and you can build your own.

: Photo by Dawn Jenkins.

Sensible Home #1: It’s Small

Ella Jenkins is building the home of her dreams. It has pine floors and a yellow front door. And it’s 130 square feet, mobile, and currently sitting in her parents’ yard.

Jenkins, 23, is building her little house with the help of her stepdad after years living in college dorm rooms and couch surfing while she studied music in Scotland. She knew her degree in Scottish harp music and Gaelic singing would not be especially marketable, and she found Southern California rent to be “staggeringly high.” “I could not support myself doing what I want to do when I need to pay rent,” she says.

Family and friends weren’t initially sure about her building her own house. Her parents were worried. Her sister thought she was nuts. “I’ve never built anything in my life,” Jenkins says.

But her stepdad, Rick Lanes, has been helping out since she began construction in September, lending his tools and helping her frame her house while she lives with Lanes and her mother in Frazier Park, outside Bakersfield.

Though she’s faced constant challenges in home construction, and “near-death” experiences with ladders, she hopes to be finished with her home this summer. And she hopes it will be an end to the constant moving that comes with young adulthood and earning money as a street musician. “Right now everything’s totally up in the air,” Jenkins said. “What I love about the tiny house is it doesn’t change, it’s your house.”

Photo Essay:
Follow Ella as she builds.

Along the way, she has found ways to cut costs. In addition to borrowing her stepdad’s tools and experience as a carpenter, she has found fixtures inexpensively on the Internet, and her neighbor has helped with electricity and plumbing. Recently, she found a manzanita branch to use as her front porch post.

On top of gaining a home for herself, Jenkins developed a strengthened bond with her stepdad. “It’s been such a fun year. I’m going to be really sad when I have to leave.”

Though it may not be everyone’s dream house, it’s just what Jenkins wants.“I just feel this wonderful feeling of peace,” she says of her house. “I just walk in and feel it’s huge.”—Lynsi Burton

Sensible Home #2: It’s Not Owned By a Bank

: Ameen’s president Ajaz Khan at the co-op office. His own house is pictured second row, far left.

Photo by Paul Dunn for YES! Magazine.

Six years ago, Ajaz Khan, an engineer in Santa Clara, Calif., was trying to figure out how to buy a home without violating the Islamic law prohibiting usury, which effectively rules out conventional mortgages. How do you buy a home without a mortgage, especially in pricey Silicon Valley?

He turned to Ameen Housing Co-op, the nation’s first Islamic real estate investment trust. Ameen purchases primary residences with money from other homeowners and investors within the Muslim community. A typical homebuyer puts down 30 percent and then rents the home from the co-op based on local fair-market rents. Part of the rent goes to pay the investors and part goes to buy back shares of the house. All that mortgage interest that would have gone to a bank—one of the largest budget items for middle-class households—becomes, instead, modest quarterly dividends for investors, keeping the money within the community. After the final shares have been bought back from the co-op—this has taken as little as three years and as many as 11—the house is appraised, and the gain or loss in value is shared.

So far, 15 homes have become fully owned by members since Ameen began in 1996, and 25 more are in process. Ameen currently funds only four houses per year. Khan is now the volunteer president of Ameen and works with homeowners when they have financial difficulties. “The whole intent is to help provide homes. The goal is not about profit or loss,” he said.

The idea of communities stepping in where mortgage banks have failed seems to be catching on. Khan has had recent inquiries from Muslim and non-Muslim groups about how to set up similar cooperatives. “Any group of people can do this, especially if they can put helping each other above profit.”

Sensible Home #3: It’s Built With Reused Materials

Video: Recycled Houses
Raid the dump, not the lumber aisle.

Dan Phillips is a rare hero of the built world. He combines artistry, eco-thinking, and social justice in his company Phoenix Commotion of Huntsville, Texas, which builds— crafts, actually—one-of-a-kind homes made 80 percent from construction site cast-offs and landfill-bound materials. He builds them specifically for low-income families and requires clients to help him build the house. His ultimate goal is to challenge the building industry. Freed from the “tyranny of the two-by-four and four-by-eight,” he says, we can build a house out of anything. And he’s proved it.

Sensible Home #4: It’s Not Full of Stuff

Theologist Dave Bruno wrote the book on minimalist living. The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul documents his family’s rejection of consumerism and its quest to get unstuck from all the stuff they had accumulated by paring down to 100 things. “For years I lived with stuff instead of contentment.” Through the book and his guynameddave.com blog, he is guiding thousands of people through “The 100 Thing Challenge,” directing earnest discussions such as “does each fork count as one thing, or is silverware one thing?” He gets a lot of questions about what stuff to get rid of, so YES! Magazine asked him what he decided to keep among his 100 Things. His answer: Books. “Our lives are such wonderful stories. There is nothing like a physical book at home.” Also, comfortable furniture, for family and friends to tuck into for a long conversation. He knows some minimalists who have only a couple of chairs and a bed. “If we’re going to invite people into our lives and tell them that they are more important than stuff, we should be able to offer them a place to comfortably hear about it.”

Sensible Home #5: It’s a Hub

In Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood, busy markets and concert halls are just minutes away by foot. Ferries, light rail, and buses are, too. It’s not surprising that housing in Belltown generally comes with a big price tag, but the Apex Belltown Co-op offers affordable, communal home ownership. Apex emerged from the efforts of a group of artists looking to create low-cost housing. With loans from the city of Seattle and the National Consumer Cooperative Bank, they purchased and converted the 1909 Apex Hotel into a cooperative home with 21 living units and shared bathrooms and kitchens. Current members range in age from 19 to 50, and they share all aspects of building ownership. After a refundable “buy-in” share price of $2,472, members pay a rent-like sum between $259 and $583 per month. The fee goes toward whatever members agree upon as a group, from utilities to a party and event budget to toilet paper. Members share lives, too. “Outside the day-to-day organizational things like meetings that bring people together, we have potlucks, play games and do crafts together, or go to a neighborhood bar,” says Aaron Long, a current member. “You see your neighbors all the time.” — Shannan Stoll

Sensible Home #6: It’s Supportive

: Carmel Sullivan and her son.

Confronted with post-divorce anxieties about living alone, Carmel Sullivan started connecting with other single moms. In addition to a shared sense of loneliness, Sullivan learned of the harsh living arrangements many single mothers were in. She felt there should be a reliable resource to help single mothers connect with one another for shared living. Enter CoAbode.org, whose mission is to provide support and services that connect women raising children alone. Through partnerships with organizations around the country, CoAbode connects single mothers with affordable housing, support groups, educational scholarships, and community outreach. The online membership application is free. Once a good housing match has been made, mothers either move into a new living space or into one of their existing homes. They pool finances and resources to improve living conditions for themselves and their children; they share meals, household chores, and parenting responsibilities. According to Sullivan, “The difference between what we are helping to facilitate and just ‘renting a room’ is that our clients really do end up sharing lives. They are not just roommates—they become blended families.” —Heidi Bruce

from: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/making-it-home/6-ideas-for-sensible-homes

Big Bird on The Sun

Posted on June 4, 2012 by marcia

‘Big Bird’ On Sun? NASA Spies Coronal Hole That Looks Like ‘Sesame Street’ Fave (PHOTOS)

Posted: 06/04/2012 8:48 am Updated: 06/04/2012 10:19 am

This photo from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft, snapped on June 1, 2012, captures what looks like Big Bird on the surface of the sun. The feature is actually a coronal hole, a dark area of the sun’s upper atmosphere.

By: Mike Wall
Published: 06/01/2012 03:59 PM EDT on SPACE.com

A new photo from a NASA sun-watching spacecraft highlights a huge solar feature that looks a lot like the beloved Big Bird from the children’s television show “Sesame Street.”

The image, snapped today (June 1) by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) probe, actually shows a so-called coronal hole — an area where the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, is dark. But the resemblance to Big Bird, or one of his feathered kin anyway, is uncanny.

“I can’t get over how much this looks like Big Bird — but it is a coronal hole on the sun,” reads a Twitter post today by Camilla Corona SDO, the spacecraft’s rubber chicken mascot.

big bird sun

The rubber chicken’s Twitter feed is part of NASA’s social media outreach efforts. Officials pasted a picture of the “Sesame Street” character next to the ‘Big Bird’ coronal hole for comparison.

The image of Big Bird on the sun is an example of pareidolia, which is the tendency of the human brain to recognize animals or other prominent shapes in vague or random images. This view of an elephant’s head on Mars is another example.

Coronal holes are associated with “open” magnetic field lines, which extend out into interplanetary space rather than arc back to the solar surface. Coronal holes are often found near the sun’s poles, Camilla added, and the high-speed solar wind — a stream of charged particles flowing from the sun’s upper atmosphere — is known to originate in them.

The super-speedy solar wind from the ‘Big Bird’ coronal hole will reach Earth between June 5 and June 7, Camilla said.

After remaining relatively quiet for several years, the sun has entered an active phase of its 11-year solar cycle, firing off a number of strong flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — huge clouds of solar plasma — in the past several months.

CMEs that hit Earth inject large amounts of energy into the planet’s magnetic field, spawning potentially devastating geomagnetic storms that can disrupt GPS signals, radio communications and power grids for days, researchers say. These storms can also super-charge the northern and southern lights, generating brilliant shows for skywatchers at high latitudes.

Experts think the current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, will peak in 2013.

The $850 million SDO spacecraft launched in February 2010. The probe’s five-year mission is the cornerstone of a NASA science program called Living with a Star, which aims to help researchers better understand aspects of the sun-Earth system that affect our lives and society.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/big-bird-sun-solar-feature-nasa-sesame-street_n_1567381.html?ref=science

NM Fire Spotted by Satellite

Posted on June 4, 2012 by marcia

NASA PHOTO: New Mexico Wildfire Over Gila National Forest Spotted By Satellite

Posted: 06/04/2012 6:16 pm Updated: 06/04/2012 6:16 pm

May 30, 2012, a wildfire burning in Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico had burned more of the landscape than any other fire in the state’s history.

By OurAmazingPlanet Staff

A NASA Earth-observing satellite has snapped a photo of the huge wildfire chewing up vast swathes of southwestern New Mexico.

The Whitewater-Baldy fire, which was sparked by a lightning strike on May 16, has burned roughly 377 square miles (976 square kilometers) as of today (June 4), making it the largest wildfire in New Mexico history. NASA’s Aqua spacecraft captured a view of the conflagration from space, showing vast plumes of smoke billowing over the rugged Gila National Forest near the borders with Arizona and Mexico.

Aqua took the photo on May 29 with its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument, NASA officials said.

More than 1,000 firefighters have been battling the blaze, which remains less than 20 percent contained. The area’s rugged terrain has hampered progress, as have strong winds.

Though Whitewater-Baldy is big, it currently pales in comparison to some other wildfires that have torched the continental United States. For example, last year’s Wallow Fire— which spread from an unattended campfire in eastern Arizona — burned 841 square miles (2,178 square km).

The great Yellowstone fire of 1988 burned nearly three times that much land, scorching roughly 2,340 square miles (6,060 square km) across Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, including much of Yellowstone National Park. And a 1910 blaze in Idaho and Montana covered about 4,700 square miles (12,173 square km), killing nearly 90 people in the process.

Before Whitewater-Baldy grew so large, New Mexico’s biggest wildfire had been the Las Conchas blaze, which burned 244 square miles (632 square km) in 2011 in the northern part of the state.

from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/nasa-photo-new-mexico-wildfire-gila-forest_n_1569281.html?ref=green

Build Your Own Solar Oven

Posted on June 4, 2012 by marcia

How to Build Your Own Cheap, Simple Solar Oven

The “Minimum” Solar Box Cooker is a solar oven that you can built quickly from two cardboard boxes.

The “Minimum” Solar Box Cooker is a simple box cooker that can be built in a few hours for very little money. When this cooker was designed, it was named it the “Minimum Solar Box Cooker” because, at the time, it represented the simplest design we could devise. What we didn’t communicate with that name was that this is a full-power cooker that works very well, and is in no way minimum as far as its cooking power goes.

What You Will Need

– Two cardboard boxes. We would suggest that you use an inner box that is at least 15 inch x 15 inch (38 cm x 38 cm), but bigger is better. The outer box should be larger than the small box all around, but it doesn’t matter how much bigger, as long as there is a half inch (1.5cm) or more of an airspace between the two boxes. The distance between the two boxes does not have to be equal all the way around. Also, keep in mind that it is very easy to adjust the size of a cardboard box by cutting and gluing it.

– One sheet of cardboard to make the lid. This piece must be approximately 2 to 3 inch (4 to 8 cm) larger all the way around than the top of the finished cooker (the outer box).

– One small roll of aluminum foil.

– One can of flat-black spray paint (look for the words “non-toxic when dry”) or one small jar of black tempera paint. Some people have reported making their own paint out of soot mixed with wheat paste.

– At least 8 ounces (250 g) of white glue or wheat paste.

– One Reynolds Oven Cooking Bag®. These are available in almost all supermarkets in the U.S. and they can be mail-ordered from Solar Cookers International. They are rated for 400 °F (204 °C) so they are perfect for solar cooking. They are not UV-resistant; thus they will become more brittle and opaque over time and may need to be replaced periodically. A sheet of glass can also be used, but this is more expensive and fragile, and doesn’t offer that much better cooking except on windy days.

Building the Base

Fold the top flaps closed on the outer box and set the inner box on top and trace a line around it onto the top of the outer box, Remove the inner box and cut along this line to form a hole in the top of the outer box (Figure 1).

Decide how deep you want your oven to be. It should be about 1 inch (2.5 cm) deeper than your largest pot and about 1″ shorter than the outer box so that there will be a space between the bottoms of the boxes once the cooker is assembled. Using a knife, slit the corners of the inner box down to that height. Fold each side down forming extended flaps (Figure 2). Folding is smoother if you first draw a firm line from the end of one cut to the other where the folds are to go.

Glue aluminum foil to the inside of both boxes and also to the inside of the remaining top flaps of the outer box. Don’t bother being neat on the outer box, since it will never be seen, nor will it experience any wear. The inner box will be visible even after assembly, so if it matters to you, you might want to take more time here. Glue the top flaps closed on the outer box.

Place some wads of crumpled newspaper into the outer box so that when you set the inner box down inside the hole in the outer box, the flaps on the inner box just touch the top of the outer box (Figure 3). Glue these flaps onto the top of the outer box. Trim the excess flap length to be even with the perimeter of the outer box.

Finally, to make the drip pan, cut a piece of cardboard, the same size as the bottom of the interior of the oven and apply foil to one side. Paint this foiled side black and allow it to dry. Put this in the oven so that it rests on the bottom of the inner box (black side up), and place your pots on it when cooking. The base is now finished.

Building the Removable Lid

Take the large sheet of cardboard and lay it on top of the base. Trace its outline and then cut and fold down the edges to form a lip of about 3″ (7.5cm). Fold the corner flaps around and glue to the side lid flaps. (Figure 4). Orient the corrugations so that they go from left to right as you face the oven so that later the prop may be inserted into the corrugations (Figure 6). One trick you can use to make the lid fit well is to lay the pencil or pen against the side of the box when marking (Figure 5). Don’t glue this lid to the box; you’ll need to remove it to move pots in and out of the oven.

To make the reflector flap, draw a line on the lid, forming a rectangle the same size as the oven opening. Cut around three sides and fold the resulting flap up forming the reflector (Figure 6). Foil this flap on the inside.

To make a prop bend a 12″ (30cm) piece of hanger wire as indicated in Figure 6. This can then be inserted into the corrugations as shown.

Next, turn the lid upside-down and glue the oven bag (or other glazing material) in place. We have had great success using the turkey size oven bag (19″ x 23 1/2″, 47.5cm x 58.5cm) applied as is, i.e., without opening it up. This makes a double layer of plastic. The two layers tend to separate from each other to form an airspace as the oven cooks. When using this method, it is important to also glue the bag closed on its open end. This stops water vapor from entering the bag and condensing. Alternately you can cut any size oven bag open to form a flat sheet large enough to cover the oven opening.

Improving Efficiency

The oven you have built should cook fine during most of the solar season. If you would like to improve the efficiency to be able to cook on more marginal days, you can modify your oven in any or all of the following ways:

Make pieces of foiled cardboard the same size as the oven sides and place these in the wall spaces.
Make a new reflector the size of the entire lid (see photo above).
Make the drip pan using sheet metal, such as aluminum flashing. Paint this black and elevate this off the bottom of the oven slightly with small cardboard strips.

Cooking Directions

Put food in dark pots. Use with dark, tight-fitting lids.

Choose a cooking location. Set the cooker on a dry, level surface in direct sunshine away from potential shadows. For best results, solar cooking requires continuous, direct sunshine throughout the cooking period.

Put the pots in the cooker and replace the lid. Put the pots in cooker. If you’re cooking multiple dishes, quicker-cooking items should be placed toward the front of the cooker (opposite the reflector) and slower-cooking items toward the back, where access to sunlight is best. Place the lid on cooker.

Orient the cooker. Orient the cooker according to the details below. Once oriented, the cooker doesn’t need to be moved again during three to four hours of cooking. For longer cooking, or for large quantities of food, reorienting the cooker every couple of hours speeds cooking a little. Food cooks fastest when the shadow created by the cooker is directly behind it.
To cook a noontime meal orient the cooker so that the front side (opposite the reflector) faces easterly, or approximately where the sun will be midmorning. In general, it is good to get the food in early and not worry about it until mealtime. For most dishes you should start cooking by 9 or 10 am.
To cook an evening meal orient the cooker so that the front side faces westerly, or approximately where the sun will be midafternoon. For most dishes, it’s best to start cooking by 1 or 2 pm.
For all-day cooking orient the cooker toward where sun will be at noon or early afternoon. The food will be ready and waiting for the evening meal.

Adjust the reflector. With the adjustable prop, angle the reflector so that maximum sunlight shines on the pots.

Leave the food to cook for several hours or until done. There is no need to stir the food while it is cooking.

Remove the pots. Using pot holders, remove the pots from the cooker. (CAUTION: Pots get very hot.) If you won’t be eating for a couple of hours, you may want to leave the pots in the cooker and close the lid. The insulative properties of the cooker will keep the food warm for a while.

Enjoy!

from: http://wakeup-world.com/2011/07/06/how-to-build-your-own-cheap-simple-solar-oven/

June 3-9

Posted on June 4, 2012 by marcia

Overall Color for the Week: Chrome Green

This is a week for catching up on a lot of things. Once it becomes known on all levels, especially energetically, that you are doing this, many things can come to the fore. Take a look at them for what they are at this time, in the present moment and do not dwell on what they were then. The shifts and vagaries of the energies are such that nostalgia and attempts to reinvent the past will be met with frustration, even physical issues. What has passed was there for you to experience. The choices you made were right at the time. There was learning going on, perspective forming. Now it is time to put it all together. And there will be ample opportunity for that this week as all sorts of stuff just happens. You might feel as though someone had pushed the fast forward button. Do not try to hold onto what is going on, let it go. The important thing at this time is the overall pattern, the minutiae, well, it just does not mean that much right now. Continue reading →

Coronal Hole

Posted on June 1, 2012 by marcia

CORONAL HOLE: Spewing solar wind, a yawning dark fissure in the sun’s atmosphere is turning toward Earth. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the “coronal hole” during the early hours of June 1st:

Coronal holes are places where the sun’s magnetic field opens up and allows the solar wind to escape. A stream of solar wind flowing from this coronal hole will reach Earth on June 5th – 7th, possibly stirring geomagnetic storms. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras

from: space weather.com

Questionable Imported Foods – Best option – Buy Local

Posted on June 1, 2012 by marcia

Disease Outbreaks Tied to Imported Foods Increasing according to the CDC

By Dr. Mercola

The more steps your food goes through before it reaches your plate, the greater your chances of contamination becomes.

If you are able to get your food locally, directly from the field or after harvest, such as directly from a farmer or farmer’s market, you knock out numerous routes that could expose your food to contamination.

So it is not surprising that new research released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that foodborne disease outbreaks linked to imported foods are on the rise.

As Food Imports Rise, so do Foodborne Disease Outbreaks

Foodborne disease outbreaks linked to imported foods rose in both 2009 and 2010 (data for 2011 is still being analyzed).

In all, 39 outbreaks and 2,348 illnesses were linked to imported foods from 15 countries.

However, nearly half of the outbreaks occurred in 2009 and 2010 …

Most of the outbreaks were due to fish (17 outbreaks) and spices (particularly fresh or dried peppers), which are also among the most commonly imported foods.

For instance, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Economic Research Service (ERS) reveals that 85 percent of seafood eaten by Americans is imported! As rates of food imports rise (ERS data shows that U.S. food import has nearly doubled from 1998 to 2007), it’s likely that disease outbreaks will become increasingly common. As it is, the numbers are thought to be a serious underestimate, as food-borne disease outbreaks are commonly under-reported.

Nearly Half of the Tainted Foods Came From This Region …

The data shows that more types of food, from more different countries, are being linked to disease outbreaks. However, one region still takes the “prize” for the most tainted food … Nearly 45 percent of the foods linked to outbreaks came from Asia.

This may be because this region is also a major exporter to the United States, so the sheer numbers of imports would increase the chances. China is the largest exporter of seafood to the United States. (They’re also the largest U.S. supplier of canned vegetables, fruit juices, honey, and other processed foods.) Wal-Mart, in particular, is one of China’s largest trading partners. However, there are problems with food quality in the region as well.

According to a 2008 Congressional testimony by Don Kraemer, deputy director of the Office of Food Safety at the FDA:ⁱ

“In the past, [the] FDA has encountered compliance problems with several Chinese food exports, including lead and cadmium in ceramicware used to store and ship food, and staphylococcal contamination of canned mushrooms. While improvements have been made in these products, the safety of food and other products from China remains a concern for [the] FDA, Congress, and American consumers.”

Since that testimony, a variety of Chinese exports have come under fire for being dangerously contaminated with one poison or another, and in some cases with deadly consequences. This includes:

Pet food ingredients laced with toxic melamine

Imported livestock quarantined for disease and banned chemical contaminants

Catfish filets from Chinese aquatic farms tainted with bacteria and heavy metals

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides

Another Asian country, Taiwan, has also made headlines because of the contamination of numerous foods and beverages withplasticizer chemicals like DEHP. More than 1 million sports drinks, fruit jams, instant noodles containing sesame oil packets, cookies and other food products were taken off shelves due to the toxin. It appears that the chemical was added to foods as a substitute for more expensive ingredients like palm oil, and it’s unclear how long this had going on or whether most manufacturers were aware of the contamination.

Our global food system makes it so Asian foods (and those from many other regions) are easily obtainable at your local supermarket … but when food is produced and distributed on such a massive scale, contamination often occurs on a massive scale as well.

Food Infections Common from U.S. Foods Too

An estimated one in six Americans gets infected every year from consuming contaminated food. Sometimes this results in a 24-hour bout of diarrhea and vomiting that clears up on its own, but in other cases foodborne pathogens can lead to organ failure, paralysis, neurological impairment, blindness, stillbirths and even death.

Over 100,000 people are hospitalized from foodborne illnesses each year in the United States, and 3,000 die. This is not only from imported foods, but from those produced right here in the United States.

You see, just because a food is manufactured on U.S. soil does not guarantee its safety. Most of the meat sold in U.S. grocery stores and restaurants come from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which can house tens of thousands of animals (and in the case of chickens, 100,000) under one roof, in nightmarish, unsanitary, disease-ridden conditions. It’s under these conditions that foodborne pathogens flourish, and indeed studies have shown that the larger the farm, the greater the chances of contamination.

In one study, more than 23 percent of CAFOs with caged hens tested positive for Salmonella, while just over 4 percent of organic flocks tested positive. The highest prevalence of Salmonella occurred in the largest flocks (30,000 birds or more), which contained over four times the average level of salmonella found in smaller flocks.Organic flocks are typically much smaller than the massive commercial flocks where bacteria flourish, which is part of the reason why eggs (and other products, like meat) from truly organic, free-range sources are FAR less likely to contain dangerous bacteria such as Salmonella.

If you still buy your meat at your supermarket, even if it’s U.S. raised, you should know that you are directly supporting a food system that typically promotes widespread contamination.

And you can bet that as long as there are people willing to buy cheap, contaminated meat, the industry will continue to produce it.Consumer Reports tests indicated that 83 percent of fresh, whole broiler chickens bought at supermarkets nationwide harbor Campylobacter or Salmonella.ⁱⁱThis is clearly unacceptable, and if you start to demand more — meat that is raised in a healthy, humane way, free from toxins and disease — producers will have no choice but to listen.

Buying Local is One of the Best Ways to Avoid Food Poisoning

I encourage you to support the small family farms in your area, particularly organic farms that respect the laws of nature and use the relationships between animals, plants, insects, soil, water and habitat to create synergistic, self-supporting, non-polluting, GMO-free ecosystems.

If you value food safety, you’ll want to get your meat, chickens and eggs from smaller community farms with free-ranging animals, organically fed and locally marketed. This is the way food has been raised and distributed for centuries …

If you opt for imported foods, or those from U.S. CAFOs, your food will go through upwards of 9 steps before it reaches your dinner plate. Public health agencies like the FDA use the term “field-to-fork continuum” to describe the path any given food takes on the way to your plate, and during any of the following steps, contamination is possible:

Open field production

Harvesting

Field packing

Greenhouse production

Packinghouse or field packing

Repacking and other distribution operations

Fresh-cut/value-added processing

Food service and retail

Consumer

I personally purchase my whole chickens from a health food store that gets them from a local farmer and they are grown organically and humanely. They cost a bit more but they are worth it — and when you consider that most of us only spend around 10% of our income on food, it is a bargain to get high-quality food. In most countries and in previous generations in the US, up to 25% of income was spent on food.

If you are able to get your food directly from the farmer, you knock out five potential operations that could expose your food to contamination. The closer you are to the source of your food, the fewer hands it has to pass through and the less time it will sit in storage — so the better, and likely safer, it will be for you and your family. Plus, when you know the person who grows your food, you can ask questions about its growing conditions — an impossibility when you buy food from CAFOs or other countries. If eating locally is new to you, rest assured that you can find a source near you, regardless of whether you’re in a remote or rural area or a big city.

Here’s a list of helpful resources:

For a listing of national farmer’s markets, see this link.

Another great web site is www.localharvest.org. There you can find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.

Subscribe to a community supported agriculture program (CSA). Some are seasonal while others are year round programs. Once you subscribe, many will drop affordable, high quality locally-grown produce right at your door step. To find a CSA near you, go to the USDA’s website where you can search by city, state, or zip code.

Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, and hotels, and online outlets in the United States and Canada.

Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.

FoodRoutes. Their “Find Good Food” map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSA’s, and markets near you.

For an even more comprehensive list of CSA’s and a host of other sustainable agriculture programs, check out this link to mySustainable Agriculture page.

from: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/04/04/food-borne-disease-outbreaks.aspx?e_cid=20120404_DNL_art_2