Funnier: No prob, there’s tomorrow.
Whales: Good news, all around…
First – the blue whales – they’re back!!!!!
California blue whales, the largest animals on Earth once driven to near extinction by whaling, have made a remarkable comeback to near historic, 19th-century levels, according to a University of Washington study released on Friday.
The recovery makes California blue whales – which study authors say now number about 2,200, or 97 percent of historical levels – the only population of blue whales known to have recovered from whaling.
“The recovery of California blue whales from whaling demonstrates the ability of blue whale populations to rebuild under careful management and conservation measures,” said Cole Monnahan, a University of Washington doctoral student and lead author of the study.
There’s a new killer whale calf in the Salish Sea….
Looks like the welcome news is…the baby looks healthy! The numbers of the Southern Resident Killers Whales (SRKW) have dropped to around 78 (they were in the high nineties around twenty years ago), and have been assigned to the US Endangered Species list.
This past week, several whale watch operators (I think Jim Maya was the first) reported an apparent calf – see the peach-coloured spot in the picture? That’s customary for newborns.
The new orca’s mom is from L pod – L86 – and has been given the number L120. It’s L86’s second calf, which is good, as the first calf often is the weakest of the kids any given killer whale mother produces. That wasn’t the case with L86’s first calf – hers died because of human activity.
L86’s first calf (named Victoria or Sooke, L112) died two years ago from some sort of percussive force (here’s the 2012 story in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, and the more detailed and better writeup by Monika Wieland, when it happened).
Grim stuff.
Here’s more about the new calf with the Pacific Whale Watch Association, and the Center for Whale Research.
A couple of weeks ago: Killer whales bothered by humpbacks (that’s backwards!)
Here’s video of an extremely rare happening – humpbacks apparently bugging orcas, down near Monterey off the California coast in the States. Click here to see the videos.
Thoughts: Randall’s desert island….
Whenever someone says, “Wow! There’s such a calm evening! Nothing going on!” looking over the ocean, I tend to think of Randall Munroe‘s reminder:
Writings: One year. Cool ’nuff. Carry on….
Well, you’ve been with me for a while now, so you know the story.
I love it, a year after getting “The World According to Brother Ian” going, that somewhere between 250-400 people check into this blog each day. Some of you write me, occasionally you comment beneath each posting, sometimes you hit “like” on Facebook, and most days I just post it & you just read it. That seems to be the usual rhythm.
I feel lucky.
There are three pastors, one priest, five nuns, and at least one monk who troll this blog for sermon ideas, essay ideas, and (one said) jokes.
One of my songs ended up being used at a peace rally, another for a lullaby by a traveling band with a baby, and another has been played at seven different weddings that I know of. I love the idea of everyone singing along.
One teacher friend of mine said she occasionally uses ideas she gets here for story prompts in her language arts class.
Sometimes people write to me and tell me something that’s posted made them cry. Others laugh, think, react, and occasionally drop me a note that I am barking up the wrong tree.
But at the end of the day, it feels good to have this little place that you & I can meet and swap stories. You inspire me day by day with the words and pictures we share.
Thanks for being there… and let’s keep this thing going.
Thank you for your love and support, and as it says in the Ten Most Important Things, thanks for working with me to heal & share.
Blessings, dear heart –
Brother Ian
ENC: It was wheat after all…not just gluten. Dr. Davis calls it a perfect, chronic poison
The “Emperor’s New Clothes” part of this blog offers a look at things that most people see & say, “Rubbish.” My hope is that we look at things a bit more closely than that…in this case, to see what a well-educated doctor has discovered & is taking some risks to share. It would be easy to understand why people – and wheat farmers – don’t want to listen to this. Here’s more, from Underground Health:
The world’s most popular grain is also the deadliest for the human metabolism. Modern wheat isn’t really wheat at all and is a “perfect, chronic poison,” according to Dr. William Davis, a cardiologist, author and leading expert on wheat.
Approximately 700 million tons of wheat are now cultivated worldwide making it the second most-produced grain after maize. It is grown on more land area than any other commercial crop and is considered a staple food for humans.
Writings: Thanissaro Bhikkhu: As one world falls apart, you create another one and go there…
“Samsara literally means “wandering-on.”
Many people think of it as the Buddhist name for the place where we currently live — the place we leave when we go to nibbana.
But in the early Buddhist texts, it’s the answer – not to the question, “Where are we?” but to the question, “What are we doing?” Instead of a place, it’s a process: the tendency to keep creating worlds and then moving into them. As one world falls apart, you create another one and go there.
At the same time, you bump into other people who are creating their own worlds, too.
~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Poetry: Harryette Mullen, From Tanka Diary
From Tanka Diary
Harryette Mullen
The botanical garden is just as I remember,
although it is certain that everything
has changed since my last visit.
How many hilarious questions these fuzzy
fiddleheads are inquiring of spring
will be answered as green ferns unfurl?
Walking the path, I stop to pick up
bleached bark from a tree, curled into
a scroll of ancient wisdom I am unable to read.
Even in my dreams I’m hiking
these mountain trails expecting to find a rock
that nature has shaped to remind me of a heart.
++++++++++++++++
About This Poem
“The spirit of tanka interests me more than following rigid conventions. As I understand it, the tradition allows a variety of approaches, from simple description and heartfelt expression to classical allusion and evocative wordplay. Succeeding generations rediscover and renew the form so that it retains its vitality.”
—Harryette Mullen
Harryette Mullen is the author of Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary (Graywolf Press, 2013). She teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she also lives.
Intuitives: Remember, in that other life time?
Those of you who have been following me know I’ve explored a number of ways the world works (and sometimes doesn’t work, the way we expect), and know that I’ve had past life regression sessions off & on since 1984.
So, it was exciting to run into Jane Jackson (here’s her website). Besides offering reiki (she worked with me to loosen up a hand/muscle problem…it was good!) and a host of other services, she also conducts sessions so that folks can review events in lives past. So I called her up. I hope you get a chance to do this, sometime.
This session was especially helpful for me, as it showed a group of folks I was with 150 years ago that includes family members and friends now. This has thrown a new (and positive) light on my connections with them then, and gives me ideas for connections this time around, including laughing about “you’re still doing THAT?” with a person who may have been a soul-mate (not in the usual present-day romantic sense, but in the traveling companion sense.)
The biggest difference between this and other sessions I’ve had was the depth of prior experience, and how I could feel it & know it. I’ll be interested to hear your experiences, too…in this session, when I would see or be around a person (from back then), I knew the whole backstory.
What I mean by that is I didn’t just feel, “Oh, that’s Bob,” but more, like looking at pictures in your school yearbook. So I would see and recognize Bob, but have all those memories and feelings and experiences with Bob, as well (which is why we keep those yearbooks, right?) The result was a deeper experience in the session, as I could feel why I was sad or glad to see someone, and what the story was, behind those feelings. It was pretty amazing, and I’m pretty sure the way Jane conducts the session contributes to that.
Jane’s work focuses on personal growth (which often means addressing old pains) and personal renewal and energy release, which comes from sorting out what’s plugging things up. Take a peek at what she offers and give her a call – I’m pretty sure you’ll be glad you did!
– Brother Ian
You can find out more about Jane Jackson on her website at Lightwork Energy, and can contact her for a free pre-consultation through the site. Besides past life regressions, she offers core cellular transformation, distance healing sessions, reiki sessions, workshops and energy circles, and group work.
Writings: Find the shampoo
The drug store on the corner just changed owners & its name.
I was glad to see they kept most of the workers from before the change.
Really needed some shampoo. Went & asked the woman who was stocking the shelves (who I believe has the biggest smile in the place )where it was, now.
“Oh, we moved it!” And she walked me over to the dish detergent.
“Oh, it must be over here.” Looked at another place, not there.
We walked kind of all over, and then she asked someone else. “Over there,” he pointed, and so it was.
“You must be sorry you asked me,” she laughed.
“No…you make it more fun to look for stuff. Glad I asked you.” And we both left it there.
That’s the way it is, sometimes, hey – it’s really not that important that we hang out with people who know it all. It makes for a better trip (I think) if they care as much as we do about looking for the goal (or whatever we’re striving for), but isn’t it great to have someone along who makes you wish the trip was longer?
We’re all gonna get there, eventually. Even better if we get there together, still smiling.
Love you, and glad we’re on this trip –
Brother Ian
Starpeople: Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, with looking outside of self & looking within
The other day I was daydreaming (when I was supposed to be meditating – what do you do?) about the time when I was six years old and my good parents took me to church one Sunday, with my brothers & sisters.
For some magical reason, the sermon that Sunday was about the first bit of the Gospel according to St. Matthew’s seventh chapter, about “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”
Of course, I thought it was clear: My grade one bully-friends at school needed to stop being mean to me, calling me stuff & telling me how lame I was. And it kinda grew from there.
After a few years & then decades, I came to feel it wasn’t about them, but about me & what I do. That little phrasing took anchor, and I love the ways it echoes, day after day, as I try it on in different sizes, with different results & different takes on it, that set up the next day’s run at sorting it out.
Then I ran into Lao Tzu, who said, If you keep your mind from judging, and aren’t led by the senses, your heart will find peace.”
And then, there’s Edgar Cayce, whose guides suggested: “Speak gently, speak kindly to those who falter. Ye know not their own temptation, nor the littleness of their understanding. Judge not as to this or that activity of another; rather pray that the light may shine even in their lives as it has in thine.
“These are the manners in which the sons and daughters of men may know His way. In this mundane sphere there comes to all that period when doubts and fears arise, even to doubting thine own self. These may easily be cast aside by knowing that He is in His holy temple and all is well.”
Lately, I’ve been getting to know (via YouTube & her websites & Facebook posts) a modern mystic named Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, whose celebration of the sacred feminine & the dance of spirit are key parts of her writing (as well as her observations on the way. starpeople are interacting with this planet.)
I’m honoured to re-post one of her essays here, expanding the discussion about this business of us judging others & ourselves. See what you think (and thanks, Laura Magdelene!):
It isn’t fair to gossip or bash people publicly or behind their back because we have our own unique relationship to individuals that we come across. It can contaminate the way people see each other, before they have a chance to even know for themselves.
The way people relate, and what they experience together, is not going to be the same for everyone — there may be past life karma that is unresolved, hidden memories that repel or attract, and any range of unconscious elements involved that influence how an interaction or dynamic plays out. There are things we activate in others and things that they activate in us, as well as things we don’t fully understand.
We are all different mixes of energies connecting in different ways.
Click here for the rest of the story….
Read more “Starpeople: Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, with looking outside of self & looking within”
Thoughts: A little note from Rumi…
Your face is a beautiful sunny day;
More beautiful than the brightness of the day.
Brighter than the day.
Wine is good, but the cupbearer
Is better than the wine.
Every hidden thing opens today.
The heart reaches endless wishes.
Like a falcon catching a pigeon.
Every lover gets his deserved
Blessing from the Beloved.
Everyone who is thirsty
Sits by the side of Kevser.
Every moment, the Beloved offers
A new glass and says,
“Today our assembly is open,
Give this to the lovers.”
It is such a thin glass that
It appears as if the wine has become the glass.
Rumi
Whales: Hurting & killing whales, with sonar
You’ve heard about it – the US & Canadian Navies have conducted exercises in both oceans surrounding the countries that include ear-splitting, trauma-to-whales inducing sonar, and the efforts to bring injunctions to halt the procedure & policy & practice (they all tie together.)
Here’s a report from this week’s Earth Talk.
Writings: A moment with Derek – Smart people don’t think others are stupid
Long ago, in my first year of teaching high school in New Orleans, I can still remember writhing with angst (that’s the way I talked then, too) when the kids would ask me something I didn’t know. They would ask, “Well, what year WAS it that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet?” or “Did they make YOU study grammar like this?” or “Why do we drive on the parkway & park on the driveway?”
Once they found out how this made me suffer (I HAD to have an answer! I was The Teacher!), the questions came fast & furious.
Then, in February a week before Mardi Gras, a junior asked something, and I said, “I don’t know.”
It was the most liberating thing that ever happened to me up to that point. Wow. Shook loose from the ego-wrap of “gotta know.” Use it all the time now: I don’t know!
Then I started noticing how folks who said someone was stupid or dumb or worse…usually weren’t all that smart themselves. When I read Derek’s take on this, earlier this year, I thought, as I often do with the stuff he writes – yeah.
Here goes:
The woman seemed to be making some pretty good points, until she stopped with, “Ugh! Those (people she disagrees with) are just so stupid!!”
She could have said Southerners, Northerners, Republicans, Democrats, Indians, or Americans. It doesn’t matter. She had just proven that she wasn’t being smart.
There are no smart people or stupid people, just people being smart or being stupid.
(And things are often not as they seem, so people who seem to be doing something smart or stupid, may not be. There’s always more information, more context, and more to the story.)
Being smart means thinking things through – trying to find the real answer, not the first answer.
Being stupid means avoiding thinking by jumping to conclusions. Jumping to a conclusion is like quitting a game : you lose by default.
That’s why saying “I don’t know” is usually smart, because it’s refusing to jump to a conclusion.
So when someone says “They are so stupid!” – it means they’ve stopped thinking. They say it to feel finished with that subject, because there’s nothing they can do about that. It’s appealing and satisfying to jump to that conclusion.
So if you decide someone is stupid, it means you’re not thinking, which is not being smart.
Therefore: smart people don’t think others are stupid.
Whales: Heart joins BNL & Willie in boycotting SeaWorld…
It was in the news a week ago that The Bare Naked Ladies and Willie Nelson have cancelled scheduled shows at Sea World…now Ann & Nancy Wilson (of Heart) have dropped theirs, as well.
Here’s more.
Meanwhile, Joan Jett has told SeaWorld to quit playing her songs – here’s the story.
About Brother Ian
Over the centuries, Brother Ian has been collecting stories & information & discourses for the purpose of elevating the human condition as needed, dissecting it when necessary, and building the case for hope.
In the spirit of noting that organized crime, organized baseball, organized labour, and organized religion tend to engender controversy & occasional discord, I promise to be neither organized or critical of those who are.