Why they do what they do

From the Artist as Family blog

2. No matter how a person tries to frame or revise our culture there's no getting away from it – wealth delivers pollution.

3. Researchers tell us that the level of happiness peaks just above the poverty line, but we already knew this. Any accumulation of wealth after this point disables the adequate distribution of resources in order for local populations and ecologies to self-renew.

4. 32,000 people were treated last year in Australian hospitals for self-harming. The mental health of the country is flailing. An increasingly toxic food supply system is in part responsible. For a culture whose dominant ideology is based on a growth profit-pollution paradigm, figures like this will only increase.

read the full post Why we do what we do

Plan for hundreds of kilometres of new freeways

More roads??? Gee what a good solution! Why don't we make one each while we are at it so we dont have to see each other on our long ways of constantly going somewhere in our beautiful petrol fuelled cars...

A spokeswoman for the road authority, Rebecca Thistleton, would say only that VicRoads was always ''considering long-term speculative transport planning solutions for Melbourne's growing population''.
Read article here

I say we need to at least halve the amount of roads and turn them into greenways, food forests, bike lanes and walking tracks, and what about a public transport system that was actually efficient??

Do we really need high speed blenders?

Blending foods, in particular greens breaks down the cell wall of the plant and makes the nutrient more "bioavailable." The reason you would buy an expensive high powered blender is to make things silky smooth and for the durability of the machine.
How else can you access the nutrition? Chewing! Why don't we chew suffiencently? Because we are too busy running around doing other "important" things, we are too hyperactive and existing in too many places at the same time. Maybe didn't learn to chew. Beyond blending there are bigger questions. Why are we too busy to eat and digest properly? What are we doing? How do we learn to chew? What would we do if there was no more electricity? The first thing to go would be everyones inefficent iPhones. This blog would become obsolete. Maybe I should make a zine? Or hold a weekly soapbox. But what exactly is it that I have to say that is apparently important?

Being present and connected to who you are,
Consciously choosing in the moment.
We are here together treading earth in a new way, positive, proactive, localised and simple.

David Suzuki

Today David Suzuki popped into my head and I thought about finding one of his books I have somewhere and trying to read it again... then I discovered that he is in australia at the moment and I can go and hear him speak! Its super exciting and I hope I can get a ticket. For full list of australian tour dates 

THE LEGACY
David Suzuki

A distillation of the wisdom and experience of David Suzuki’s long and passionate love affair with Planet Earth and his legacy for generations to come.

If David Suzuki had to sum up all that he has learned in a life packed with scientific and environmental research and activism, what would he say? Here in a classic of its kind, one of the planet’s preeminent elders explains how we arrived where we are today, and presents his vision for a better future. The Legacy is a gift of his accumulated wisdom, a snapshot of the most important messages formulated throughout his life.

Monday 18 October – Melbourne 6 – 7.30pm
The Wheeler Centre with the Melbourne International Arts Festival event. Tickets available through the Wheeler Centre
***Note, this is already sold out. Im disappointed I didnt know about it earlier... if only I had more funds and leisure time I would go to another city, maybe you can and tell me about it.

Buy nothing new in October

A proposal:
Salvos Stores is laying down the challenge to not buy anything new for the whole month October to show your support for your hip pocket and the environment.
Buying nothing new doesn’t mean going without. Make a Buy Nothing New Month pledge and you can beg, buy, barter and swap for whatever you need, as long as it is pre-loved, but with the exceptions of necessities (including food, drink, medications and hygiene products) you can’t buy anything new.
An inititive of the Salvos, of course there is always a vested interest, buy nothing new just buy from the Salvo's? It seems to be one of the most overpriced op-shops around, and are they still a charity? They don't seem to give discounts if you don't have enough money to buy a jumper and you are cold, like on the good old op-shop days. And funnily enough if you participate you go into the draw to win $5,000, to buy new things? Read more and find out about taking the challenge. I think it's definately a great idea with a lot of merit. But perhaps buy nothing at all would be a more interesting challenge, find ways of reusing everything you already have and having free garage sales and swap meets to find new homes for things you aren't using. Props to anything that makes me think and re-engage with these ideas.

I suggest investigating in The Sharehood, Transition Towns, bartering, local garden produce swaps. And making your own pledges and experiments that are relevant to you. Turn off all electricity in your house for one month?

More thoughts

The taxi driver who picked me up from out the front of the hospital was gentle and present, in a way it was so normal but after the bright lights and drama of the hospital I was surprised, by his present normalacy. He spoke about how everyone he picks up from the hospital is sad. And I said that one of the big problems of western medicine is that it doesn't recognize that emotional and spiritual health are directly related to the health of the physical body. Everyone in the waiting room is stressed because they are unwell and feel abandoned waiting for an undefinable amount of time in order to be seen by a holy grail doctor, who can only help you if you fit into the right box or simple equation; body + pathogen = handy name brand drug or body + injury / open wound = bandage. I know that is of course a generic and simplistic statement to make and of course there is a huge amount of validity and importance in what the medical profession does and I do not wish to undercut it at all but I think that we need radical new ways of thinking and more education and support to develop our own inner doctors rather than always outsourcing our healthcare. To develop awareness of our innate intelligence. All we need we already have. Presence and participation in our own lives, as performer, creator, instigator of who we really are. All injuries bring new dances. Every moment offers an opportunity to learn something about ourselves, to test our condition, to see where the material of life meets us, where we meet it.

In Transition

FILM & DISCUSSION: "IN TRANSITION: FROM OIL DEPENDENCE TO LOCAL RESILIENCE"
Thur 30 Sept, 6.45pm How do we reduce our dependence on oil? Find out! This is the first ever movie all about the Transition Towns movement.
Guest speaker Adam Grubb from Permablitz!
Preston Council Chambers, 350 High Street, Preston.
RSVP to Tony 0419 853 686 or email verseandvoice@gmail.com

Find out more about the movie and see the preview here.

Your beautiful parched, holy mouth

A poet is someone
Who can pour Light into a spoon,
Then raise it
To nourish
Your beautiful parched, holy mouth

-- Hafiz (English rendering by Daniel Ladinsky)

What are you made of?
Where did it come from?

Don't look to science to help you.
The physicists have all become mystics.

you can only be lost
if you are trying to get somewhere

-- Ram Tzu

Botanical Cuisine

"Recently I announced my new raw food culinary vision - Botanical Cuisine - which seeks to use only seasonal, organic, fresh produce, almost no nuts and seeds, and no dehydrating techniques in order to create simple and artful raw dishes. This new philosophy is based on the idea that raw food cuisine should ideally be created using only raw food, instead of making raw food “copies” of cooked food recipes such as quiche, pizza, ice cream etc. In other words, if we still mimic our past habits with what we used to consider comfort food, then we are not truly embracing the raw food philosophy."
-- 0mid Jaffari
Shitake Blog

Omid Jaffari and Kate Quinn will be giving some incredible looking living raw food workshops in October, have a look at Botanical Cuisine Tour

Running

Perhaps the genius of ultra running is its supreme lack of utility. It makes no sense in a world of space ships and supercomputers to run vast distances on foot. There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the approval of peers. But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense. The ultra runners know this instinctively. And they know something else that is lost on the sedentary. They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort. In running such long and taxing distances they answer a call from the deepest realms of their being -- a call that asks who they are.
-- David Blaikie, Ultramarathon Canada from here