 |
New Civilization News: Snowtree |
Category: Peace 10 comments 21 Apr 2005 @ 11:58 by swan : From Vermont,I have been on an intimate path with people who were strangers two weeks ago. It is kind of like going to camp. The rest of the world disappears and all that you have is a small community of people. This artist residency happens in a small town in Vermont in a valley between the mountains and almost all the buildings in the town are own by the colony so it becomes even more intimate. Last night was open studio where we got to see what everyone has been working on. It rained for the first time since I arrived two weeks ago, so the people passing by in my world were all carrying black umbrellas and spirits filled with art. 21 Apr 2005 @ 13:20 by sprtskr : car wash As the rain washed down the rest of the seed casings from the tree I happened to be parked under it was covered. If you ever had this happen you know you need to wash it right away as the sap sticks to the car. So off I went to do one of the things I love to do, the car wash. I don't go through the automatic part I love to wash it by hand. Several people had gathered around one large car talking and watching the guy towel down his car. I became curious and drove my car into the stall closest to the action. Usually I would stay far away from such happenings and sort of hide from view. Not this time I put myself where they can observe me as well. Not much was said from the group of people standing there but I did feel as though I had joined them. Strangers aren't so strange after all. 21 Apr 2005 @ 13:22 by gea : Gandhi quote Makes me think... "There is no path to peace; peace is the path." (Gandhi). 22 Apr 2005 @ 04:59 by koravya : Clear Night Swan, you are in the valley where miracles are born. Spiritseeker, I like to sit out in the area where the vending machines are in a room full of cafeteria style tables where prople come and go and sit for a while. Gea, I remember those words from the late 60s and early 70s, and I haven't been hearing them as much as then except in my memory. I never knew what their source was. It sounded like one of those eternally true phrases, which it is. Like, The People United, Will Never be Defeated. *-_*> Warm spring evening, Thursday the twenty-first; no breeze, moonlight in the sky, some planet nearby, whatever; Bill crossed out the word Tomorrow in his dictionary today. He crossed out the whole definition, and at the end, in parentheses, he wrote, See Today. Later on, with Neal, he crossed out the word Meeting. This is his dictionary, Webster or no Webster. Morning class in Group Dynamics with a group of ten whom I know well, for Ive had them all before in one or two classes. They are an attentive group, and almost all rather quiet and soft-spoken, save for one fellow whose spontaneous and entirely good natured and relevant goings-on in their circle can seem overwhelming; he is compatible and respectful in nature and amenable to the quieter approach. He challenges the others and they challenge him in their ways of approaching problem solving discussions. They are all now entering the final week before their mid-term presentations, so the focus is on minimizing distractions. Belinda comes by shortly before noon to explain yesterdays absence from economics. Her grandmother at home is not well, and needs someone to always be there, and Belinda shares this responsibility. So Belinda makes up her two quizzes, and of course she can make up her presentation when the class reconvenes. A little later early on in the afternoon, Andrea comes by to make up the quiz she missed on Wednesday, yesterday. So both of these young women are doing their best to keep up with this stuff, Ill give them credit for that. So Im ten minutes late for the faculty meeting, and it doesnt sound or look like I missed much. Just a breakdown into departmental conversations, and I am pretty much a department of one at this time with a loose, potential affiliation with the business department, and then again with the on-line gen-ed program. One of their miscellaneous teachers who has been around here for a little while, so he must be good for something. Tanya is back from her visit to San Antonio last week, and she is going to give me a run through with the on-lines programs programs for a couple of hours next week. This is all one day at a time. Bill crossed out the word Tomorrow. Remember? It was later on, after the meeting, that he crossed out the word Meeting. *>-_* 22 Apr 2005 @ 13:16 by swan : Miracles is right! Last night three of us went out to see if we could see a moose. Amy had been looking for one all month and hadn't seen one. I was sure we were going to see one because I could feel the energy. Just as darkness was falling we were coming around a curve in the mountain road and standing at the marsh were TWO moose eating. We were able to stand and watch and take pictures for about 15 minutes before they walked slowly away. They were so graceful as they walked that it looked like they were walking on the moon. So moose walked in to my world and we are no longer strangers. 23 Apr 2005 @ 03:03 by koravya : Gray Light Swan,Two moose in the marsh as darkness is falling, and you are the Swan. */_/^-* Through descending gray into darkness on a quiet Friday evening. Three hours to monitor the library this morning before my afternoon group dynamics. This is a very cohesive group of nine who know each other from other classes and I know all but one from before. Ive separated them into groups of four and five for their first project, and will have them all put together a second project. Five men and four women, a diversity of cultural backgrounds, a broad range of age perspective, all emanating a sense of respect for one another and what is going on amongst us. Dolly and Claudia and Anita, and Jerilyn and David and William and Joe and Barry and Jim. Held the door open for Angela this morning. Had a slice of pizza with Phil at the crossroads around noon. Picked up some pages from Christis printer and had a hearty welcoming hello with Anna in the lobby where she was waiting to see a rep about coming back for her Bachelors. What a joy it was to have her youthfully mature, enthusiastic and attentive and determined and inquiring Spanish face in my classes! Heartfelt greeting with a good spirit. Gave a quiz to Blas in the library this morning. Talked to Chance about what he needs to do for his next project. Talked to Tony over in the other hallway. Now that hes over his sickness, perhaps he can get a few things done. Popcorn in the coffee room. Gray light fading into night. *^/-_*/ 25 Apr 2005 @ 17:46 by koravya : White door Sunday morning. Just dont know where that classroom is that Im supposed to be teaching in this morning. First they (somebody) rearranges the instructors room to the point where I cant find my desk; then once Ive found my desk, made almost inaccessible by the jumble of disorganized furniture around it, I cant find all the materials of paper that I need to take to the classroom, and then after finally settling on the textbook and one accompanying folder, I go out into the hall and soon discover that I cannot remember where my classroom for this class is. Walking up and down the hallway, hoping Ill remember, and the hallways morph into my gradeschool hallway, and Im walking down to the end where the first grade rooms are at, but those are not them either, so I continue my search for the forgotten classroom, and finally come across Stan, a senior educator at this school, and ask him if he can help me find the way to my classroom, so he takes me over to a freestanding iron rung ladder reaching very far up into the darkness. As I am climbing this ladder, and Stan is coming along with just behind me, we come to this large metallic barrier. There is a small, doorway, round in shape, white, with a latch and doorknob on one side, wide enough for a persons shoulders, and whatever is on the other side of this doorway is a complete mystery, a different kind of space, a different way of living. Whether the doorway is into a capsule or another dimension or another room or another place on the planet, it is the doorway through something, whatever this climb up the iron rung ladder has brought me to. *-_/*^-/_ 25 Apr 2005 @ 17:47 by koravya : White door 2 Monday morning, April twenty-fifth; yesterday was an early afternoon drive with Rod to the Laughing Lizard in the Jemez for a homemade three cheese pizza and coffee before driving up to the Caldera for an image of whiteout extending above the foreground of the receding snowfield with brown grass. Then a visit to the creek, now rushing downhill at ten times its normal flow. Ground damp from melting snow. Half mile visit to where the water has drowned the trail between the great rocks. Around from over the top of one big rock comes Wes and his dog Leica, named after the first dog the Russians put up into orbit in the late fifties. Wes has been coming down and walking the trails of the Jemez every Sunday of every year for the past how many years, so he knows how they go in their turnings through the canyons and over crests and alongside streamlets. Leica is a small Aleut husky not yet three years old who listens well to Wes, dips her feet into the quiet water at the bank and ventures not further into the current. Periods of snowfall and torrential rain bursts punctuate the seventy mile drive across the flat leading away from the city to the foothills and then the rocky ancient volcanic gorges that lead to the gentle plain of the old caldera, the ancient cone now covered with winters melting accumulation under a white sky enveloping the horizon. *^-_/.-_* 5 May 2005 @ 02:16 by koravya : Sea Breeze Wednesday evening, Cinqo de Mayo, After a morning class in Economics, a few late presentations: Fernando, very good, he is coming around after what I was seeing as a very lethargic first half of the course. Tony on his own describing the business of a company that contracts to ocean-going vessels in the harbors of New York or Los Angeles to remove barnacles and otherwise clean ship hulls while in port. Good old Anthony: quiet, often late but reliable for quality. Then Joel and Mike, two smart guys who could do a lot better if one could inspire them to inspire themselves to higher standards. Then a go-round explaining some basic macroeconomic fiscal policy concepts. Then another briefing on their upcoming projects to research and report on the economics of some foreign country of choice. The tempo of the building slowly, gradually, increasingly opens into preparation for the mega-job-fair our school is hosting this afternoon between three and seven. All kinds of representatives from all kinds of companies, lots of students dressed up, graduates whom I have known, and any number of miscellaneous other visitors, and the faculty and staff get a chance to mix it up a little with each other and with the students in an out-of-the-routine paradigm. Looking for those connections, whatever form they might take. Back there in Cuddalore, I worked for the Saravanabhava Cooperative Supermarket. There was a crew. Downstairs the sections of merchandise; upstairs the bookkeepers and accountant and assistant manager and manager. In the one story annex building, the textile department. Fabulous. The largest store of its kind in town, and a visual immersion into silken color. Near to every day for two years, and then a bicycle ride along the long narrow ribbon of asphalt through the darkness in moonlight falling across rice fields and through palms to the old building by the sea. *(-_\*./ 8 May 2005 @ 04:37 by koravya : White door 3 Saturday evening, May seventh, There is a labyrinth that is centered, sensible, and centering, from the exterior circle to the interior circle, and return from the exterior through expanding circles to the exterior and exit. The gateway to the center is the gateway to the exit. The white door opens both ways. Here is the doorway between universe one and universe two. Here is the doorway between the planet before the event and the planet after the event. The sky is now a gentle shade of violet, while clouds will sometimes carry an equally gentle shade of apricot orange, dust glittering in the light of the sun at our horizon. Yes indeed, there appeared to be some promise during the ascent of that particular strand of DNA, promise that this planet would transcend its gestation into participation with the greater life of the universe, but there was a screw loose in the program and it blew itself up. There are perhaps a few hundred thousand or a few million left scattered around the globe, most of us as isolated as we have always been from the machine age. Gotta be careful of does-tings. People get lost in their creations, and that there machine was like a labyrinth without a center, and ironically, once entered, without a center, there was no exit. They fell into a hole and they couldnt get out, and now here we are, those who are left beneath the violet sky. I hear say it once looked like something they called Blue. *-^/\-_* Other entries in Peace 31 Jan 2016 @ 10:00: PRIDHVEEM SHANTIH-EARTH REGION -FIRSTTIER-PEACE 13 Jul 2010 @ 02:25: WAR RUMBLINGS IN KOREA ARE A DUD! 20 Jun 2010 @ 08:36: Canadian Premise 12 Apr 2010 @ 15:12: Learning (expanded) Non-violent Communication via Skywork 8 Apr 2010 @ 05:25: A QUIET REVOLUTION by YOKO ONO 9 Mar 2010 @ 07:35: Quotations about Kindness 4 Dec 2008 @ 09:27: PAKISTAN’S CREATION, AFGHAN OPIUM: BRITISH TRADE LINKS 28 Nov 2008 @ 14:04: "Change Is Coming" 19 Nov 2008 @ 03:06: WILL ZAIBATSU OFFENSIVE BE ACCOMPANIED BY NEW JAPANESE MILITARISM? 11 Jun 2007 @ 15:57: Playing Our Part: Enacting World Peace
|
21 Apr 2005 @ 04:57, by John Ashbaugh