Hummingbird

Care

Telephone wire baskets

Poetry

Roald Dahl

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out... more


An entomologists last love letter



Green building

Nice collection of green walls.

Social networking

The privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network.



Current news

Blog covering the BP oil disaster

Nashville floods

Rents in the fabric of democracy



Economy

Economic consolidation.

Don't leave, squat.

California marijuana legalization

Brief history of corporate whining

Evidence of declining living standards in USA



Environment and Energy

Opposition to new wave of uranium mining and exploration.

Cleaning the Pacific garbage patch

Detoxing from city life

Proposed airship powered by seaweed

Stored windpower



Native America

Amusing and tragic essay on Indian Education

Incident at Oglala



Health

Attachment from A to Z

Legalize raw milk

Sex adds years to your life

Court rules against Monsanto



History

Life savers. The power of one.

* Sun Myung Moon Fortunately, I was too young when I met their recruiters in Berkeley. They took me to their outreach office and fed me a sandwich. They were slick but careful. They did not accept 16 year olds into their community without parental permission.
* Rainbow Gatherings Tai Chi Bob and I built the first Love-n-Oven kitchen, now a Rainbow institution, and I was the baker. I made thousands of sourdough specials (big whole wheat sourdough peanut butter apple cinnamon rolls) and several giant Challah loaves.
* Quebec I went to a commune south of Montreal and had the best dandelion wine ever. The trick is to make it dry, not sweet.
* Christ Brotherhood They had a communal house in Eugene, Oregon where they translated and published The Gospel. They offered free meals and I made several friends in the community. Here's a snapshot:

After they let me out in Eugene I spent the afternoon hanging in downtown Eugene’s traffic free mall reading. I stayed there all afternoon until the offices started leaking people and the atmosphere took on a tone of supper. I knew a place I could go to eat, the Christ Brotherhood house. They served good food prepared with love and food for the spirit too. I was meditating on a few things I had learned the last time I was there, “Worry not what you should eat or wear as the butterflies are clothed in the most beautiful raiment without giving it a moment’s notice” and “Ask and ye shall receive.” I took that to mean ask God not man so instead of walking over to the Christ house, I sat on a bench with my head down on my backpack in front of me, the hawk feather in my fingers catching the wind.

I sat there with my head down for twenty minutes feeling the absence of all the motion around me in the light of spirit within me. Hungry but not wanting, knowing my needs to be wholly satisfied in the moment. When I lifted my head and opened my eyes, a bicycle screeched to a stop in front of me. It was a sister from the brotherhood. She immediately said, “Dale, I didn’t see you sitting there. Why don’t you come over for supper?” I asked for that invitation without asking or at all wanting an answer and I found the universe to be operating in synchronicity with the flow of the wind upon the feather in my fingers.

* Hare Krishna Visited a Krishna temple in Miami.
* Whitewolf's Ranch This was a commune North of Tuscon with a community kitchen and an assortment of structures including trailers, live in vehicles, and shacks. I stayed there for more than a month taking care of the chickens and helping in the kitchen.

* U-N-I Ranch This was a commune near Camdenton, Missouri. At one time it had 100s of members but was almost abandoned when I found them. Stayed there the winter of 84-85
* Parados Another abandoned commune in Missouri. Stayed a month and learned to milk goats.
* Ithaca, New York Visited a couple different communities here.
* Rainbow Farm This is the old commune of lore near Drain, Oregon. I stayed there for almost a month.

* West Augusta, Virginia I spent several seasons here. It was a small community with a main house and several small sleeping rooms scattered through the woods. DR reminds me of this one because we used the sawdust and compost method for night soils.

* Floyd County, Virginia There are several communities here. Abundant Dawn was just forming when I left the area but there were several others. More communes per capita than anywhere. I had my own place but attended potlucks regularly at all the different communities.

"People getting together, and sharing and realizing that they can do what they dream, or that they can be freer of the expectations that have been put on them." from Uncompromising Ecological Architecture. I need that life. I've climbed the mountain, developed my skills, and gave of myself to my community helping the homeless. Now I am ready to build a natural house, garden extensively, and share my skills and exuberance.

The Four Noble Truths

1. "The noble truth that is suffering" Suffering here should be translated as disquietude or unease. It is that feeling of disequilibrium resulting from the flux of material reality. Things wear out and change and this is perfectly illustrated by aging.
2. "The noble truth that is the arising of suffering" In the beauty or the anguish of it all, people become attached to and crave certain states of existence, positive and negative. This desire engenders suffering.
3. "The noble truth that is the end of suffering" By decreasing reliance on desire you will experience less turmoil.
4. "The noble truth that is the way leading to the end of suffering" This refers to the noble eightfold path. The eightfold path provides a strategy to minimize suffering.

For some very interesting discussions of Buddhism, listen to the podcasts of B. Alan Wallace

The Dell tower was clean, quiet, had a gig of RAM, and a 60 gig hard drive. It took the install but would not reboot after installation. It seemed quite hopeless at that point but I continued anyway. I still had the old Gateway to experiment with.

The Gateway had been retired due to an excessively noisy power supply fan. Well, I stuck in the hard drive and the optical drive and fired it up. It sounded like a Jet Engine! But it took the install and rebooted fine. So I powered her down, unplugged the cords and swapped out the power supplies too.

The hard drive is formated now to the new ext4 file system and has a single boot install of Kubuntu Karmic Koala. It's fast and lean and the kids love it.