Sounding Circle

The best place to be for subsistence....

Sat, 2 Apr 2011 01:00:03 GMT

"Probably the best place to be in this situation [economic collapse precipitated by peak oil and a changing climate] would be on a subsistence farm in a village in Sub-Saharan Africa or someplace that's not much effected by what happens in the rest of the world. I think most people don't realize how vulnerable we are. For example, the food supply in the average city in the United States, if it's not daily renewed, would run out in about 3 days. There's not much of a buffer there. The system can come apart pretty fast."

-Lester Brown, "The Planet's Scarcest Resource is Time," March 22, 2011.
OrganicConsumers.org

Flute solo, Ocean, performed by Jonathan McCuen

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 01:23:37 GMT

This is a Native American flute solo I did in July 2009 for Jonathan McCuen.
I don't believe it was ever released. So let's call it a collectors item. :)

Vacation/Retreat Summer Special Ojai, CA

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:13:10 GMT

Hello friends,

What an incredible summer it has been thus far at Calliote Canyon. All of our
guests have been awed by the beauty here and several are already booking their
returns.

We are offering a special summer rate, though most of July is already booked.
Check this out:
End of Summer Special
July-August
10% off 2-3 nights
$990 night (reg. $1100) 2-12 people/ 13+ $108 pp/pn
15% off 4+ nights
$935 night (reg. $1100) 2-12 people/ 13+ $102 pp/pn
plus 8% tax
$150 cleaning fee
children under 7 years stay free
$300-600 refundable damage deposit

Send me an email at: info@calliotecanyon if you have any questions or want to
inquire about specific dates

In Peace,
Raymond
http://calliotecanyon.com

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:21:33 GMT

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Barcelona

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.

It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.

The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.

The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.

It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World Conservation Congress.

Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue. more >

Steve Reich Program in Ojai, CA June 5-8

Sat, 7 Jun 2008 07:48:12 GMT

First I want to thank Tyler, founder of ojaipost.com, for posting the opportunity and Gina Gutierrez, the Marketing Director of the Ojai Music Festival, for allowing me to attend last nights concert at Libbey Bowl.

For me, particularly, it was a peak moment to listen to the music and meet the composer, Steve Reich, (Reich bio: http://ojaifestival.org/festival/bios/reich.htm) who has been an enduring force in my life for thirty years. It was his brilliance, his approach to rhythm and harmony that inspired and influenced me to go to conservatory and get degrees in voice and composition.

Last night Steve Reich returned to Ojai with his signature minimalist works of past and present; His new Daniel Variations, a tribute to the late American reporter Daniel Pearl, was paired with his earlier known pieces Eight Lines, Nagoya Marimbas and his unconventional Four Organs.

We were treated to the remarkable talent of the Signal Contemporary Ensemble conducted by Brad Lubman. (Quite fun that Libbey Bowl borders Signal Street) Lubman founded Signal along with cellist and co-artistic director Lauren Radnofsky. These young musicians, mostly between the ages of 27-33, brought to life Reichs music and infused it with their own vigor and enthusiasm. They are a force to be reckoned with. I highly recommend you get yourself to Libbey Bowl sometime this weekend and immerse yourself in this transcendent program of magnificent music and musicianship.

When I say Reich's music transcends something for me, I'm implying that his design and structure of sound affects our brain chemistry and can take us into non-ordinary states of consciousness. I experience deep meditative states listening to the repetitive, percolating rhythms as they shift and change. This has always been the case for me with Reich's music. more >

His, Her, Our Love Story

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 03:21:15 GMT

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Simple Brilliance.

From a dialogue on relationships

How do you explain the unexplainable, the mysteries of the heart taking us by surprise?

I have a very scientific mind and sometimes all I can do is throw my hands up in the air and acquiesce that most of my existence is a great mystery. I trust in Life, in the Universe and am very clear that we co-create, sometimes procreate with it.

There is always an opportunity for us to awaken, to heal. In essence I know you know we are all One; that separation is an illusion; that human-kind is a singular organism similar to a beehive and individuation psychologically is necessary to function in physical reality. When it comes to Oneness, we have simply forgotten. Yet, here in physical reality, if we choose to ignore the nature of the multi-verse, our his/herstories get pushed to the forefront as our personalities try to stay in control in an uncontrollable reality. We are a reflection of chaos self-organizing itself. My fears, your fears (based on our stories, our past experience, and the conclusions we have drawn and worldviews we have adopted from our fear based lives) are what keep us from knowing Love. What are we afraid of? Being alone, vanishing in the immensity that Love is, losing our sense of self, taking responsibility for the truth that we can never possess or control another, the realization that when we try we to control others we also wound ourselves as well. For many people, once this is realized there is no turning back, from Truth that is, from the knowing that freedom is found when we understand, accept and embrace our fears. We were born as ecstatic, joyful entities. Joy has never left us. We have simply distracted ourselves by believing in our story and believing we are powerless to change it.
more >

How the Food Industry is Deceiving You

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 19:01:46 GMT

This terrific online five-part video series by Peter Jennings explores how the food industry spends billions of dollars to sabotage your health.

Jennings also takes a critical look at our government's agricultural subsidy programs, and their unintended consequences on your nutritional choices and health. For example, sugar and fat receive 20 times more government farming subsidies than fruits and vegetables. Does this oversupply of fats and sugars, compared to fruits and vegetables, affect your food choices?

Some statistics, implicating both the food industry and the government as co-creating factors in the obesity epidemic, include:

* In 2002, consumers spent $174 billion on processed foods.
* 90 percent of foods marketed each year are processed foods.
* Last year, 2,800 new candies, desserts, ice-cream, and snacks were introduced to the marketplace, compared to 230 new fruits or vegetable products.
* The food industry spends $34 billion per year marketing their products.
* $12 billion is spent marketing to children.

The food industry is quick to point out that the choice is always yours -- they're not making you buy something you don't want. They also want to blame the obesity problem on people's unwillingness to exercise.

BUilding Straw Houses from flax to hemp

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 22:17:58 GMT

Building straw houses; From flax to hemp, researchers tout merits of bio-construction

By Jennifer Pritchett
The Whig-Standard - Kingston, ON, Canada
August 17, 2007

Local News - Fuelled by a growing demand for environmentally friendly buildings, hemp, wheat, flax and other grains are now being touted as emerging raw materials in the construction industry.

The merits of these so-called "biofibres" and their applications in Canada, the United Kingdom and other parts of the world was the basis of an international symposium that wrapped up in Kingston yesterday.

Shelagh McDonald, executive director of the Eastern Lake Ontario Regional Innovation Network, which organized the event, said the symposium brought together the researchers and industry leaders who are using biofibres to foster new developments.

"I know there are going to be some collaborations that will spark as a result of bringing people together," she told the Whig-Standard.

The Eastern Lake Ontario Innovation Network, partially funded by the province, promotes the bioproduct, biomedical and bioenergy industries.

The symposium attracted about 100 participants from Canada, the United States, Africa and the United Kingdom.

Participants in the symposium toured a hemp experimental farm near Belleville on Wednesday.

Over the two-day conference, a handful of guest speakers tackled topics such as using biofibres in the construction industry and combusting the material to turn it into green energy.

CONTINUE READING more >

Ultimate green machine: a car made of hemp

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 15:07:57 GMT

From The Sunday London Times

July 15, 2007

Ultimate green machine: a car made of hemp

Jonathan Leake Environment Editor

CAR buyers who suspect they have parted with money for old rope may soon be right. Ministers are to spend more than 500,000 in an attempt to develop the worlds first recyclable vehicle made from hemp.

A deal between Defra, the environment department, Ford, the car manufacturer, and Hemcore, which grows plants closely related to the ones that produce cannabis, could see hemp being used as the basis for a wide range of components.

The fibrous qualities of their stalks means they can be used to make clothes, paper and ropes.

Defras funding is being used to create new materials based on fibres from hemp and other plants such as flax and willow, to replace metals and oil-based plastics. The fibres are blended with polypropylene and the resulting mixture can then be moulded into whatever shape is required.

The hope is to make car manufacture more sustainable. Such materials would be easy to recycle for use in successive generations of vehicles.

We hope this could become a sustainable way of replacing metals, glass fibre and plastic in making new cars, said Robert West of Qinetiq, the technology development firm that is overseeing the project.

The most likely first use for hemp-based components is as a replacement for internal components such as mouldings and plastics. Wests team has already designed a pedal assembly that could replace the traditional metal accelerator, brake and clutch pedals. As the technology advances it could also be used to replace body panels and larger components.

Natural fibres offer many technical and environmental attractions, said a Defra spokesman. They have high strength and stiffness, low raw material and energy costs and the potential for very low environmental impact.

Growing hemp is strictly controlled because of the association with drug use. However, Hemcore now has licences for 3,000 hectares of industrial hemp, a plant with minimal drug content, from which the fibres will be extracted. It processes the plants at its factory in Essex.

Early estimates suggest that hemp-based materials could replace up to 100kg of other plastics, metals and resins within the average car. Since hemp produces about two tonnes of fibre per hectare, each hectare could grow enough for 20 cars.

CONTINUE READING
more >

South Dakota Farmer Struggles To Grow Hemp

Mon, 2 Jul 2007 19:45:00 GMT

S.D. Farmer Struggles To Grow Hemp
By Chet Brokaw, Associated Press Writer
Press & Dakotan - Yankton, SD

July 2, 2007

MANDERSON -- Alex White Plume hoped his extended family could make a good living growing hemp when he first planted seeds on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwest South Dakota, but years of fighting with federal drug officials have left him in financial trouble.

The White Plume family planted hemp for three years from 2000 through 2002, but they never harvested a crop. Federal agents conducted raids and cut down the plants each year because U.S. law considers hemp, a cousin of marijuana, to be a drug even though it contains only a trace of the drug in marijuana.

"We had all these plans of grandeur and independence, to lead the way with industrial hemp," White Plume said. "None of it worked out."

White Plume plans to sell much of his ranching operation this fall. He said he probably can keep his house and at least some of his buffalo that graze among the pine-dotted ridges that give the reservation its name. His horses, a truck with license plates reading "HEMP," and other equipment likely will be sold to pay off some of his debts.

The Alex White Plume story & pictorial

READ ON and click here to finish this article more >