Set Up Is Key

When you think of an event what is the first thing that comes to mind? The people, sounds, activities, and sights. What gets overlooked is the work to make an event successful. Whether the event is a backyard cookout with friends, a stage show or even a festival, planning is key.
Success or failure can be determined by factors beyond your control. Weather, timing, economic factors, current fads, and even location all impact outcomes. You might represent an excellent company making the finest ice cubes, in Alaska you'll have trouble trying to make the same sales you would in Arizona. You might sell heavy cloaks like hotcakes in the North only to find folks down South have little use for them. You could be a talented juggling unicycle rider vying with five other juggling unicycle riders on the same street. Perhaps you make lovely hand woven baskets, but at the event you paid to sell your wares at, there's an importer with ridiculously low prices with a better booth location. You spend your day watching shoddy imported baskets go by, listening to patrons tell you your pieces are expensive.
Don't take it personal. Look at what you can do to succeed despite the weather, location, timing and economy. Connect with the people who have open minds or an eye for quality. Educate others when you can, perhaps you'll help them learn the right questions.
If an event isn't supportive of the businesses and people who make it happen, look for one that is. If it's a life situation, same goes. Assess. Don't fall in the trap of overgeneralization. All patrons aren't cheap or rude. All events aren't poorly organized. Find the good ones. You have the power to make choices, the best choice you can make for success is in your set up. Do your research. Figure out what you need. Don't accept a glowing assurance, ask for detail-what makes that assurance more than a platitude? It's up to you to represent yourself wisely or you'll get taken advantage of. Over and over.
Set yourself up for success. Climb the tree, get the proverbial coconuts.

Pay Attention to the Fine Print

Excited, he opened the package of theatrical lenses. Pulled out the contacts. The petite folded instructions and warning fell like a discarded dirty napkin on the counter. "So I can just use water to put these in?"
I stared at the fine print trying hard not to be noticed on the counter.
Thirty years of wearing prescription lenses kicked in.
First. You wash your hands. He opened his mouth. My eyebrows went up. The edge of a razor sharp scowl threatened. He scooted. "With soap." He nodded.
He came back and presented hands. His mother never saw hands that clean.
Second. Never water. Saline is not water. Verbally reviewed the fine print. His eyes glazed. Paraphrased. Showed him the bottle of solution I carry and shared because lenses are daily for me.
Taught him how to put them in. Let him know about eye irritation and when you had best take them out. From experience.

Thought about the encounter.
How frequently people offer us the fine print we need to move forward but we glaze or hear the tone instead of the message or a defense mechanism dismisses it.
Fine print should be block capital large print, neon flashing red. Not quiet and tucked on the back page where the lawyer or the car dealer or the loan officer winked as they showed it to you dismissively. That's there for someone else or you know, legal purposes, har har wink wink.
Sadly, those little words could save us a lot of hurt. They could, prevent injury, frustration, misunderstanding. They are there as a shield and a ladder- but go ahead and recklessly race into and up the side of that precarious brick wall without checking to see if the mortar is good. Perhaps the seventh or eighth time look for someone to blame.
The little words in fine print softly say "I tried to tell you." Sadly say, "Will you listen now?"  How many nudges and repeated suggestions do you need from good friends and well meaning strangers? Out of curiosity, have you ever read the fine print on household chemicals?
The next time you step into a mire or an unfamiliar situation check: do you look for fine print or a knowledgeable source or do you wing it- or worse yet turn to the person next to you who also has no experience or clue?

Climbing Waterfalls

On a crisp sunny desert day I found myself on a desert ride with friends. We wandered windy roads in a truck that seemed mountain goats designed. It clung to treacherous mountain roads and carried us onto the truly beaten wild roads that tame cars shudder to think about and mufflers clench.

View of Apache Lake and Mountains from Apache Trail

We eventually settled on the more sedate Apache Trail past Canyon Lake and through Fish Creek Canyon. Those who've driven that road know the irony of using sedate in it's description. Generously it is a lane and a half of winding dirt mountain roads with railings that seem to be made from pizza boxes. Rusting wrecks on the side of the mountain inspire caution as you navigate the washboard and washout areas. There is the ever present wonder if you will come around a corner to find someone coming the other way too fast. Somehow you make it through. It is worth it. The views are of vast distances where geology shows off it's capacity for artistic beauty. Mountains molded by water and wind, shaded by the minerals within them. We parked at the bottom, at Fish Creek Canyon. I love hiking there when the water level is low. I love seeing the slender waterfalls dropping hundreds of feet on days like this one. Three waterfalls over hundreds of feet in height brought recent rainfall from the tops of the mountains down to the plants waiting here.

Within moments of parking, my friend Elan and I found a waterfall we could hike up. We could go in any direction. We both were drawn like magnets to the shining, gurgling water. We danced over rocks and water, weaving back and forth like human needles making our way from the pooling short falls at the bottom up around to where we could stand within feet of water coming straight down the mountain over a hundred feet before working its way down to the stream it would join below.

Standing in the remote wilderness, crouched under a thorn tree within inches of ice cold mountain water I realized something. I am the kind of person who climbs waterfalls. There are people who do all sorts of things. It takes all kinds. I love climbing waterfalls. Getting behind them, beneath them, standing in them. The sound, the feel, the beauty. It can be dangerous. It can be foolish. What kind of nitwit seeks out wet, potentially slippery rock and says "climbing that is a great idea!" I am one of those nitwits. Now, I am not going to go up a break neck two hundred feet free climb up a waterfall. But I am going to boulder hop my way to the top or to hidden areas of twisty ones with terrain that practically begs me to climb it.  It is always worth it. I could have walked to the creek. I could have looked at the view down the canyon. Others did. Many did. I went to the first thing that caught my mind. The waterfall I could reach. The waterfall I could climb, in climbing I would see more of the waterfall and more of the vista. Two of us were drawn that way. Danny watched from the road until we went out of view, his face showed that he wanted to feel less exhausted- he wanted to see what was up there too.

Days of paperwork, beaurocracy declaring in it's way the necessity of paperwork in generating meaningless jobs of communication and miscommunication. Of people being numbers and categorized, shelved and stamped. Through each page and meeting it was hard to hear, hard to focus because part of me is still there watching the water fall and listening to the song of it playing on the rocks.

Days of being different fictions, concentrating on each separate experience then discarding it to create and complete the next. Another journey next week, eight more people to be. Danny faces his next surgery, his heart is strong but they have to get the electric working right. It is frustrating to find out your house is beautiful but the electric needs work to work right. It's more complicated than just changing a circuit. It is flesh and blood, cells and genes that the electrophysiologist has to use to work on the electrical system within us. Hopefully after this surgery everything will heal right. Hopefully in a month we will go back and climb to that spot together.



We all face different challenges. The funny thing is that we externalize them. The barriers to our happiness we identify are outside of us. The reality is inside of us. The monsters in our own heads, assumptions and inaccuracies that our own personalities and beliefs arise from. The worst are ones that other people feed without knowing about. It is daunting to sit down and say to a friend that their words or feedback they've given to other ears that made it back around to you hit a sore spot. It is easier to slip away to the sound of birds and water, where the monsters have no footing and no one's actions or words to use against you. Eventually you can let it go or you face the tedious monsters in your head again, fighting each other with logic accepting it's painful assessments or disproving them. When life is going your way, it is easy to stay up. When challenges come up or you feel down it is easier for the monsters to take center stage. It is hard to smile past their non-stop unfiltered assessment of you; it can be hard to even hear or see what those around you are really saying or doing and they never see or hear the enemies they don't even know you're fighting.

I've learned to use meditation, to take time to myself to refocus. To reach out to friends who've made it past the walls and know the shape of the fiends. It is amazing how quickly one well placed quip or even the sound of a beloved friend's voice can turn the tide. These monsters, they aren't fought with violence. They are fought with patience, love and communication. I know as I tell you this that every day, in your head you face your own. I just want to you know, I understand. We are the most powerful weapons in the fight against these monsters. Giving each other time, respect, kindness, trust, a chance to communicate and destroy dangerous assumptions. Are you up for climbing waterfalls? Navigating past the tears and through the challenges of healing?

Brittlebrush Flowers Brighten the Winter Desert 

Being Human Means Choices

This weekend is an exciting start of a wonderful festival I've been looking forward to entertaining at.

Sitting in a room full of monitors holding my significant other's hand, everything I'm hearing is "you can't go now." Reason says you have to, work adds money we need to our coffers. We support each other. The heart says hell no. Instead of letting either decide, while these angels and devils argued I asked my boss for advice and let her in on what's going on. Choices. Stay, go or attempt the herculean task of trying to commute 900 miles for the first few weeks of a show.

Fear paced the floor with me and a thousand negative what ifs. It didn't take long for her to respond. Her response brought tears to my eyes and relief to my heart. Stay. Take care of your significant other, come when everything is resolved. I can't put my words together well enough to say how grateful I am.
So many friends, so much love. I'm looking forward to the day this health situation is resolved, I'm looking forward to getting out my paints, putting on my hat and sharing out the profound love in my heart, paying it forward in magic moments at Bristol.

I read a post on Facebook that asked "Would you give up a thousand dollars to stay with someone you love if they developed a serious health concern?"

Honestly. I would give up more than that. Society pushes and pressures, insinuating that everything falls apart without money. Allegedly primitive cultures do not allow money to be the determining factor in support or life choices, so why should we? I can't put a dollar value on being able to feel the warm, live flesh of my significant other or to hear his voice calm and happy. I refuse to. I will do whatever jobs I need to to get by, whether it's gardening, cleaning, cooking, counseling, tutoring, or entertaining. For the next couple of weeks I'm focusing on my partner's health. Then I'm looking forward to entertaining and sharing the magic and love that surround me from friends across the country.

If you aren't happy, look at the choices you make. Is the duty or social pressure to have money or possessions driving you away from your happiness? Are you struggling to get money for happiness? Did you notice yet, money doesn't lead to happiness- it leads to more stress, conflict, and more wants- it is the most harmful drug ever invented that you don't snort, inject, inhale or swallow. Just the sight of it has led people to fight and kill. We give it more power than any God- every church bows to it, using it for influence and thriving on it.

Perhaps the primitives aren't so primitive?

It's all in how we rationalize it. It's all in our choices and our priorities. Listen to your heart more and your wallet less. Take time today to just appreciate life, friends, flowers, music, stories, art and the sunset. When was the last time you gazed at the stars?

Out of Control: Life

We like to assume that we have control of the events in our lives. We like to think we pull all of our own strings. Accidents, genetics, luck, chance, and random malicious people remind us on occasion how wrong we are. No matter how cautious, regardless of how vigilant, there will always be infinite options we haven't anticipated and may not be able to change. We're always on the road to El Dorado, as human beings it is our nature to seek the fantastic. We never like to think that one day our quest could be disrupted with tubes going in and out of various parts of our bodies. We don't like to think how frail we really are.

This is the slowest three hours I've lived in years. The slowest time since I was treated for cervical cancer. It is amazing how fast time goes when you are in the shower. It's horrendous how slowly it congeals when you wait for word on a loved one's medical conditions.

One of those days where you have no idea what will come, only hopes in the skill of a medical team and odds. It's a day where you don't want a loved one to be an exception.

No matter how much love or prayer is out there, what will be is what will be. We learned that heartbreaking lesson when Rumor died last fall. Hundreds sent prayers, love, light and vibes yet he was cold and stiff and gone when we found him. The love of our friends surrounded us, and gave solace yet there will always be an emptiness. Loss is an emptiness that is impossible to fill, it has to heal and it will never be the same. The subconscious craves completion, strives to find something to fill the void of loss, something to take away the ache from drugs to food or shopping or work- anything to shut down the unbearable pain of not having.

Three hours have passed. Chance, skill, luck, genetics, technology and love perhaps wound together for a good outcome. No amount of money is worth more than holding the warm, live hand of a loved one.

Today, take a moment to tell the people you love that you love them. Tell the ones you appreciate how you feel. Let go of petty preoccupations.

Make good memories, remember life is not always in our control. Do not assume what you always have will always be, savor it while it's there. in the end our experiences are all we have.

I almost drowned once. I was a teenager. I remember the silky elusive footing in the pond. I remember the pain and black in my vision. I remember being alone and letting go. My feet found the solid bottom of the pond and primal survival instinct kicked. I ended up at the shore vomiting and coughing, water running out of my nostrils like twin faucets someone forgot to turn off. In that last moment of awareness before everything went black: memories not posessions and the frustration that there weren't many and that there really weren't many worth having.

I've chosen a hard, beautiful path in life. When that moment comes again I can say the memories I've been making are worth having with people I'm honored to love.

How we choose to perceive our lives, how we choose to interact with each other- these things are critical. No one should need a hand up, we should always have our hands out for each other. This world could use more sharing, caring, and giving and less greed, apathy, and intolerance. In the end, we only have each other. Statistics demonstrate that lives start and end constantly around the world. No one has an expiration date stamped on their wrist, we all have the choice to live or live life like it's a waiting room. I can't force you to choose to live, only you can open the door to life just as you are the only one who can choose to click the the lock and exist on autopilot.

Live!

Life Is What You Make of it

Yesterday was a national holiday. Many people sported red, white and blue. Events and fireworks were advertised across the country. What to do?

We decided to go to the events in Nederland Colorado. They started with a parade and listed a variety of fun activities and music throughout the day. The sky was full of fluffy, light gray clouds. We took water, chairs, blankets and rain gear. Colorado weather changes quickly, given a few minutes you could have freezing rain and sweltering heat competing to see how extreme they can be.

Nederland is not a large metropolitan area, it's a small mountain community accented with pine trees, Espresso shops, and friendly locals.

We arrived, suprised by low attendance. There was a variety of great summer activities available to try. Life sized connect four, a giant inflatable to climb around on, life sized Jenga, and human foos ball. People had ramps for radio controlled cars to play on. A master wood carver worked to detail a sculpture of two eagles.

There were around forty people. The clouds might have looked an innocent gray but they rumbled like an aggressive dog. Icy rain and hail pelted us. We dodged under shelter. I realized why attendance was sparse. I feared it would dwindle with repeated bouts of cold, rude rain and jagged stabbing bolts of lightening.

I was delighted when few left. Everyone there was having fun and smiling. We all raced out, milking each rain free moment to play games. Human foos ball was excellent! It was comedic to play and break and play and break. Like playing red light green light with the weather calling the shots.

The power went out throughout the town. Nederland determination turned up a generator, the music played on. No one complained about the weather, we all ignored it together. In a drizzle I played jenga with two amazing kids. Brayden and Kayisha, whose names I've probably mispelled, wore smiles and went from game to game in high spirits.

The fireworks came with smoke, bright explosions above Barker Reservoir and large crowds that seemed to come from nowhere. The display was great, not the largest I've seen but among my favorites because of the whole day. The spirit of the locals, the smiles and positive attitudes. Few people I saw were chained to a smartphone inches from their faces, most danced, talked, played games, enjoyed the food or watched family and friends play games.

Seriously, if you ever get the chance to get out of the big crowd, to go somewhere like Nederland and enjoy a holiday- DO IT! The musicians were great and played despite the weather. The kids and adults made great memories that will last a lifetime- that's worth more than just going to a high budget huge display. I just wish I could have gotten there early enough to cheer on the folks in the pie eating contest.

Life is What you make of it. Yesterday forty plus people chose to make their holiday a great one, they chose not to use unpleasant weather as an excuse to be miserable. They didn't choose to stay home. I was among them and we had a marvelous time. Next time you find yourself glooming, instead consider what you can do to spin things around and bloom. Folks in Nederland Colorado do!

What is Freedom in a Country made of Ad Campaigns?

The Fourth of July started with a beautiful sunrise, cornflower blue sky and wild strawberries ripening in the lawn. A baby rabbit runs out to sneak a taste of succulent grass then races away as the puppy chases it.

You can't put a price tag on it.

Today is a celebration of freedom. The freedom to express beliefs and opinions. People in other countries do not necessarily have that. We have the choice to be active in shaping politics, communities and in the directions we walk in life. Some choose to tune out, to follow money and things, pursuing the pabulum claimed to be news of celebrities instead of actual news. Money's tight right now and I have traveling to do this week. I found a bright pink printed $20,000 bill from a game in the dirt. I thought about how little separates it from real money and how worthless money is when you stare at a sunset or watch a meteor shower.

I think about how we seem to need to buy things, always buy things to demonstrate what we stand for or to feel better or to chase away boredom. It's a hollow pursuit.

I spent a week helping friends move. Vast collections of things, family members deciding what to take and what to yard sale or donate. The mindset of having four or five in different color schemes as necessity makes me cringe, knowing one day that frivolous impulse will result in another overfilled landfill blemish.

What do we do when someone is sad? We feed them, pour them drinks, or buy them something. No wonder so many people feel depressed, disconnected and lost. What happened to listening and being there? Why have we forgotten the true value of real emotional support?

What do we do to celebrate? We eat, drink, and buy more things. What happened to just enjoying the moment? When did the value of a compliment get reduced to clearance prices?

When was the last time you spent the day with someone, just enjoying the time rather than shopping, buying things you don't need? When was the last time you actually talked and put the internet down for a while?

Here's an idea. Empty your pockets. Leave your wallet at home. Go to a shopping center and walk through it, notice how the ads and packaging are all designed to target specific interest groups, how they seem to buddy up or present products as if they are the penultimate thing you never knew you had to have. Study the vast, oversupply of things encouraging shallow, narcissistic egocentrism.

Now picture it all in a landfill. Think of how soon it'll break or the fad will end and the items will be discarded- the cheap possession high long faded and lost with a crumpled receipt on the floor.

Walk the aisles visualizing that.

Now, think of someone you love. What is the most valued memory you have? I think of my great grandmother Alice, sitting and having tea with me. I remember touching the lines on her hands and asking her if I had to have lines like hers when I got old. Her wrinkled perfect smile, the violets we tended in her garden. My grandfather rolling his glass eye to mess with people. The ridiculous and obnoxious antics he did to amuse himself. My other grandfather singing ditties and bouncing the youngest grandchildren on his lap to calm them when they were distressed.

I cannot find these things on a shelf, no sales flyer offers them, and no matter what I buy it is not these moments.

I hope that on Independence Day you choose to liberate yourself from materialism.

Merrill, a friend, always said "that which we enslave, enslaves us." He is correct. Things do not lead to happiness. Living, connecting, caring and accepting that maybe the world isn't less of a priority than self interest. Our society reminds me of undergraduate biology lab. A Petri dish with only so much nutrient in it, yet bacteria will consume it all until they have nothing left. They die. Emptyness around them and within them. I'm humbled that instead of rising above the limited self focused drive of a single cell organism, we instead demonstrate ourselves as fancier, more complicated, self destructive organisms with the same short sighted selfish choices of single cell organisms. I'd like to see us choose more wisely. 

We toxify our world and justify our destruction through rationalization or allow ourselves to tune out by looking away from the damage we do. Time has come to accept responsibility. Freedom has a price. Striving to reach beyond the limitations of our own self absorbed psyches, to evolve, we have to let go of the things we do not need. Our ancestors let go of the tree branches. They stood, uncomfortable at first; they struggled and made tools. It had to be rough, some chose not to stand, some went extinct. That's change. 

Today as you watch fireworks, think of the choices you have. How you spend your time, how you care and interact with others, how active and aware you are of the lives of the folks around you. Do you know your neighbors?

We can choose to enhance each others lives through relearning healthy social support behaviors. Eye contact, putting down the smartphone and conversing with the living beings around you, giving a hand, an ear- who isn't worth a little effort? Maybe if we stop trying to feed and pay off the emptiness within ourselves we can finally connect enough to heal. 

Independence Day, so I hope you choose to use that freedom wisely.

Quantum Highway Leap to Heaven

As a child I watched Michael Landon travel the country, working random jobs to enhance the lives of others in a rustic style. As I grew older I watched Quantum Leap, Scott Bakula shifted bodies like a woman deciding which dress to wear on a first date. Dean Stockwell gave him hints and direction, the two worked to help heal the people they touched. I'm not religious, I have morals and a drive to connect and heal. No labels, it's what I do and am its not out of fear of a fictitious hell or for approval. 

Here I am, almost forty traveling the country storytelling, cleaning, selling, listening, teaching, healing, sharing and doing my best to offer what I can to improve the lives of those I reach and meet. Some days I feel like a Brownie from the old stories, cleaning at night to make houses into beautiful homes. Other days I am cooking delicious Mexican food with Sylvia in the kitchen, two laughing women making tantalizing tamales. Yet other days I might be teaching archery, how to use apps, or giving direction. I might sneak a few minutes to type out inspiration or acknowledgment of a friend's life situation. Sometimes just being there is the best thing I can do, no judgement just an ear or sounding board.

I've been told if I settled in one place I could set foundations to be a recognized and respected storyteller. My feet tell me to keep moving, my spirit says there's more to do and see, my heart accepts the price of not being top of my field because I value those sudden magical moments where I get to witness the positive impact of love that I give. You can't put a price tag on it, it's worth wandering, it is more valuable than fickle fame or notoriety.

I'm living up to my childhood heroes, slipping into and out of places where and when there's need. I let the wind move me where I'm needed next, sometimes there's an idea or goal in mind while other times it's free flight and it can feel like freefall just like the times Scott shifted bodies in dramatic situations.

I don't always know what hat I'm going to wear next, I just hope that I fill the role well enough that the magic happens as it chooses.

Some days I squint in the hot sun wondering if you can have deja vu from a fictional character's experience, feeling like Michael Landon wondering about the latest story unfolding around me while other days I look in the mirror and wonder about the person there, that my happiness is woven tightly to the peace and care I have the chance to do and give. Handing a stranger nutritious food or a new coat, entertaining a family who doesn't have a dime to give a tip with but has appreciation in waves larger and more beautiful than the oceans.

Who inspired you? When I come wandering through, will you know what I'm up to?

Happiness is not the same as disguised desperation.

In this country we have the right to pursue happiness, but what is it?

People post they are happy so long as they close their eyes to things that bring them down. Think positive. Pizza, material goods, travel, family, coupons, gifts, entertainment bring happiness. Humor, whether the jokes are universal or universally inappropriate, bring happiness to others.

But are we using the right word? Awesome is supposed to be used to describe something incredible, awe inspiring yet we use it for things that are everyday and average.

Douglas Adams noted Eskimos have many words to describe rain. Perhaps there should be different words for transitory, situational, and deep happiness?

Perhaps instead of running from the shadows of things that make our hearts cry, we stand. We cry. We face and bring ight to the shadows. We become the stars changing the night from bleak to beautiful. We grant wishes through actions. We connect with each other without grudging religion, politics, color, or belief. We choose the reshape the world to prioritize people and the environment. We prioritize the real, living world - without a healthy one, it doesn't matter how nice the digital ones we create are.

Instead of escapism, choose something you can do to empower yourself. To reshape the cold apathy of our society into light, warm affection.

I think real deep happiness comes when we heal ourselves, when we accept responsibility for who and what we are and we stop choosing resentments, bias and hurtful behavior.

A good friend said he can't believe people still kill each other. Violence begets violence. Healing begets growth. It can be scary, painful and unpleasant at times but that's part of the process. If you have a broken leg it will hurt to set it properly so it can heal but if you avoid that pain you will only end up with worse pain and loss of function. Emotions have functions, more subtle than the physical body but just as important.

We make the choices on what the rules are, what is bought and sold, how, as well as how we are treated and how we treat each other.

It is time for us to all be all colors, to recognize love is important, to value our differences and honor our different stories.

When we do this, happiness is there. Real, true and lasting. It is not about closing our eyes. It is about opening them so we can take the wheel and drive.

An example in real life is Colorado Gators. In the 1970s they started as a fish farm, and got gators to feed dead fish to, a sort of natural recycling. They blossomed into a sanctuary for rescued reptilian pets as well as being a fish farm. Now they have Gators of all sizes and ages, several rattlesnakes, monitor lizards, bias, pythons, fronts, turtles and even other animals. Most of their animals are rescues, they even have horses, emu, and ostriches, as well as ducks, chickens and geese. It was a beautiful farm, rich with real farm scents of living healthy animals. Those folks change the world every day, teaching and tending animals that were taken out of the wild only to become more than their owners could manage. They have an impact. Their happiness was not a fleeting thing, like the happiness of eating a delicious pizza but instead it was a deeper bliss that ripples out into the lives of all that stop by and bravely hold the baby gator and mug for a photo.

One example among thousands. Eyes open, it is your choice.

Disposable Society

Welcome to a disposable world. Friends come as easy as a button click on Facebook, they go just as easily. Bedding the wrong color? Need to match the blender and the microwave? Does your child need every new plastic toy that comes along? Can you focus on anything for longer than five minutes without getting restless? Do you feel powerless, depressed and driven to want things as if things could make that feeling flee?

Welcome to a disposable world, where we are disposable people. We feel we are worth more than we are paid, we feel we need the money, we need the debts, we need what?

I spent yesterday afternoon appreciating the beauty of Oak Flats Campground. According to Resolution Mining Company the ground there will be stable for maybe ten to twenty years. They intend the ground to be stable at Apache Leap, but they are being trusted to monitor that themselves. Mines that regulate themselves contaminate and destroy water supplies, history has a long list of examples. Go ahead, drink tap water in Bisbee. I dare you. Laugh and call me an alarmist, just keep drinking that tap water so I can sing your eulogy.

It's alright, I know escapism is more important to you. It's someone else's responsibility, right? Since we're on a downward spiral, why does it matter? It will only matter when we realize we've gone past the point of no return. Our garbage lines streets in India, ocean fish populations are pillaged and not nurtured to be maintained or protected. We live in a world where it's about me and today. Egocentric, narcissistic and without any meaningful value.

What can we do to change?

Stop listening to the ads. Stop supporting marketing campaigns. Stop buying things you do not need. Instead of spending time playing games and running away from reality, face it.

Teach your children to be responsible. Teach them to value what they need rather than become addicted to wanting. Start going without wants, focus on recognizing needs and meeting the real needs you have. Chart your own course, take responsibility for your role in this world. Don't like your job? Change jobs. Don't like how you are treated, start communicating better and acknowledge your own role in where you are at.

Reach out to others who are choosing freedom and reality. The time for games is over, it is time for us all to grow up. We are not as important as we think we are.

What we leave as a legacy are our children and the world. When we destroy mountains, wipe out species through the drive for shallow and temporary profits, we demonstrate that we are a pathetic and short sighted species that can do no better than destroy ourselves, fight each other over differences in intangible philosophies, and justify our own deprivation.

When I look at the beautiful places, undisturbed by man I wrestle, wanting to explore but wanting to leave those places untouched for nature to continue as always has been without interruption. My desire to be there is not as important as the lives that unfold there.

We really need to get over the idea that we are all special. We are not all princesses and princes. We are a bunch of whiny, irresponsible, inconsiderate, hypocritical, weak children dressed like adults. Willpower? Ability to resist impulses?

We can start by doing our own research. Eating healthy and exercising, planning your life to address your long term goals. What goals do you have? How do you want to be remembered? What legacy will you leave, beyond reaching a fictitious skill level in a fabricated game?

I support saving Oak Flat Campground and Devil's Canyon. I support preserving Apache Leap.

I support the Clean Water Campaign.

I value the world, the future enough to say it is past time to stop sitting and tuning out the warning cries of a world being roughly raped and pillaged. It is past time for us to realize that we're on antidepressant medication to take the edge off, because we've let things go to far. We've given up our power to corrupt, wealthy politicians and corporations. They shape our lives. Why?

Escapism and "being free in your head" are the answers a child would give living in an abusive environment. It alarms me how many people live as adults that way. I've always been the one that stands to take the hit and strike back. I will call it as I see it. I accept responsibility for my words, actions, choices. I gave up games. I'm playing at a higher level, and I'm playing for a free future in a healthy world.

Together, thousands of us can change things. We boycott buying unnecessary goods. We start gardens, farms and community support. We meet our neighbors. We accept that technology is fostering complacency and apathy in us. We choose to change. We set goals and we relearn healthy habits and choices.

Needs: food, shelter, water.
Wants: plastic doodads, cartoon themed sets, accessories, how many digital devices do you need?

Getting what you want doesn't fill the void inside you, only learning to listen and love yourself as is can fill that void. Stop perpetuating an abusive society rife with shallow self delusion. Accept responsibility, start prioritizing and take the wheel. If you squander this life you do not get another one.

Or, go ahead, disregard my words and be a disposable person in a society of disposable people.

Enable versus Empower Healthy Change for 2015

Our society boasts of what we do for our children. We take the fangs and claws from the world and present a fuzzy pink version with anime eyes. We structure their time. We teach them to take tests. We teach them to follow the rules. We do for them. We wonder why they tune us out, why we can't seem to connect. We wonder why they don't respect anything or anyone. Popular mainstream songs suggest sex as a new religion since religion says everyone starts out flawed. Why not start the year by starting to empower our children rather than enable them. Let's teach them to be responsible, let's teach them to strive toward bettering the world. Why gloss over the struggles other children face and focus our children on being self centered and  absorbed on how they look and what they absolutely have to buy. Why not teach them to have substance, to problem solve, to have empathy? Empowering is offering someone the chance to do for themselves, they may succeed or not. Support them, offer them open ended questions and let them work it out. Stop cutting the crusts off the bread. Stop scheduling their days down to the minute. How will they ever learn to appreciate time, goal set and create their own schedules? When you schedule someone to the hilt, what they learn is to live in a routine. They learn to squander free time as if it was just time to wait. It is absurd that people could choose to live life as if it is a waiting room. A beautiful world with more than a million potential REAL experiences, instead we sit and kill time matching shapes or pushing buttons mindlessly on video games. Nothing gained, but time lost that could have been spent appreciating a gorgeous day, a loved one's laugh, learning a new skill or having a meaningful conversation. How do you teach your child to be conscious of the world? What responsibilities do you give your child to foster growth rather than a perpetual child that becomes an adult in age but not maturity? Why is college the new high school? Why doesn't that sound absurd?

Parenting Tips to Stop Enabling Kids - More4kids
Too Much Structure Can Harm Your Child - Dr. Jenn Berman

Did you know that Monarch Butterflies may join the endangered species list? We just have to kill off milkweed with pesticides, as we are more important than the environment. Can't have a few milkweed plants on the farm, fuck some stupid bug? It's not a big deal? There are millions of insects. I happen to think of them as a symbol of life. They are a living work of art. The species has it in their genes to migrate, it takes generations of them to make the migration. Did you think that a monarch butterfly in New York really wings it all the way to Mexico? It may take three or more generations as they make the transition. When I was a child I was taught that monarchs stay in their cocoons all winter. The same teacher told us the next day that it was going to be a harsh, cold winter. I went home and gathered up my mother's empty cardboard jewelry boxes with cotton in them. I went out with my wagon to the milkweed patches. I carefully gathered the cocoons and put one in each box. I put the boxes under my bed where they would be undisturbed and unnoticed. Two weeks later, my mother got home from work and opened the door to over thirty monarch butterflies that burst out into the autumn breeze like orange and black confetti. She never knew why. I was furious because I found that one wasn't strong enough to knock the lid off the box. I would not have left the lids on had I known it would only take two weeks rather than four months for the butterflies to emerge from the cocoon. I went back and confronted the teacher about being wrong. She had the gall to tell me that I was just a kid and didn't know what I was talking about. Come on teachers, research what you teach and don't condescend. Accept that when you say it, kids are going to test it, and they might just prove you wrong or misinformed. Teach them! Empower them. The answer should not be C or all of the above, or pick the longest one as it is usually right. Sadly, I joke about this but my classmates in public and private school found these tactics to work for an average to better than average test score. Did they learn anything or just learn to take tests? I learned from monarch butterflies that part of learning is experience, that you can't always find the answers you are searching for and the best intentions can be the worst choices. Putting the cocoons away for safe keeping against the cold winter was enabling and in the end cost one fragile life. Empowering would have been leaving them on the plants where they belonged. I cared so much I wanted them all to live and by smothering them I failed at the very goal I strove to succeed at. Good lesson for every child to learn, good lesson for every adult to learn. What are monarch butterflies to you? What can you do to help rebuild the populations- empowering a species survival? In Mexico, stop deforestation of habitat there, in the United States stop treating milkweed as a weed. Plant it in your gardens, protect it as a species as it goes hand in hand with the survival of the monarch butterflies. I want to be remembered as someone who chose to improve the world, not as someone who defiled it and turned a blind eye to the abuses others in my species perpetuate on it. 2015, a new year and a new chance to stand up.

Learn about Monarch Butterflies

  Scanning through pins and tweets this morning I noticed that any pictures showing women had once sentence bites about how women have to look their best, and men better like beer and tits. I was saddened that only one article and picture had substance. I was depressed by the substance there.

Oriental cultures do not seem to grasp the importance of valuing species and not trying to exploit endangered species. Japan stop hunting dolphins and whales. Seriously. There is research that demonstrates dolphins have their own language. How do we rate as a species, when we choose to tolerate the callous murder and abuse of another intelligent species? Today, I read about Chinese farms where tigers are raised to turn into pelts and a bone wine that allegedly gives people the feeling that they've temporarily relieved arthritis symptoms. No research to support it, and it is illegal to kill tigers or sell the bone wine; interest was flagging as it was considered terrible. Social pressure decreased sales. Then the farms cropped up and pushed to make sales, they fostered interest. Poachers got back to work in India and other countries to supply bone wine so a few people could claim a little relief, I wonder what miracles would befall them if they tried a dose of ibuprofen or cider vinegar? There are options that do not involve destroying a beautiful species out of self centered, egocentric thinking. We really need to break out of the mold of considering ourselves the only and most important creatures in the world. In a world without diversity, there is no survival or sustaining population. Don't believe me, get a petri dish. Colonize it with one type of singular celled organism. They consume all of the resources there and eventually die out. Life needs life.


Japan Is Back in the Hunt for Whales - NYTimes.com

Learn more about tiger farming

I picked on the orient, but how about a little home introspection? Many of you have heard me gripe loudly against fox and coyote penning. You think America is above abhorrent hobbies? Think again. Fox and coyote penning involves having fenced in areas that usually have electric wire on the top and bottom to keep the prey in, then hunters set packs of dogs loose in the cage. They bet on which dog will rip the fox or coyote up. They watch. They pay people to do this on private land in a lot of eastern states. You thought your local hunting club only went out on British style free release fox hunts? Think again. They justify it claiming it is humane and that they are hunting pest animals, but it's okay because they were raised on farms. These sound logical to you? Stop supporting them. Stop supporting farming animals for their pelts, that doesn't make it any better. You don't look sexy wearing a fox or coyote tail, or putting a fox face skin mask on your head. Support a face painter, get a painting of a fox instead or a mask. Many artists do lifelike masks that don't leave me thinking of Leatherface when I see them. It just advertises your willingness to endorse apathy to another species. The older I get, the less tolerant I become. I choose to purchase meat and eggs from local farms that use responsible practices. I don't support mistreatment of animals. Dog fights and the culture that fosters them still perpetuates abuse of animals. We can choose to pressure people to stop. We can choose to support legislation to punish abusive animal owners instead of just slapping them on the wrist with a little fine. We can change this, it is absurd that we have not. Let's start 2015 right. Let's start by changing how we respect other species.

Fox Penning : The Humane Society of the United States
Coyote & Fox Penning - Project Coyote

I don't support abuse toward humans either. I picked up the paper to read an article on South Korea. While you are all hating on the ruler in North Korea, did you know that South Korea has a BIG problem with slavery? No? I didn't until this morning. There was a story about a homeless man offered a job and a place to stay. He jumped at it, only to find it was slave labor at a salt mine. He was not paid. The man who turned him in was paid $700 for him. Living accommodations were appalling. He and others tried to escape and were returned by community members who were corrupt and supported the slave owner. They were beaten. They did not consent to being slave labor in salt mines. The local police were paid off to look the other way and help return escaping slaves. The story ended on the happy note of the man getting a letter out to his mother one of the times he tried to escape. His mother went to the authorities in Seoul, who went undercover and caught the slave owner. The problem is, he wasn't the only one. There are more who do it, and they offer money to turn a blind eye. Before we scowl at Korea, don't we let lobbyists pay our legislators to shape legislation with regard to who has the money versus the wellbeing of constituents? How absurd it is that we haven't pressured changes to legislation to stop lobbyists? Did you know that most Congressmen retire to become lobbyists and get three times the pay they got in Congress? Did you know that, when these one time legislators were interviewed they all said they get more accomplished now as lobbyists than they did as Congress? Maybe we should be picking our lobbyists instead of wondering at the ineptitude of elected officials who are being paid by private interests to be inept! New year, new start. We have to be honest with ourselves if we want to make real, positive change. If we want a better year to be more than just a yearly lip service we do as a ritual without really attending to it.

The Facts – The CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day …

Let's set some goals for the year, choose to treat our own bodies with respect. Choose to respect the world as something other than a resource to use. We are not ticks and leeches, let's demonstrate that. Let's teach our children to be capable, mature adults. Let's empower them and each other, let's stop enabling.