Re-Gain

I am inspired how all things somehow work together.  To constantly remember my oneness or how the unifying spider web of all things fills me with profound joy.  I term this re-joy where I touch a miraculous heart and meaning experience.  These mystical inter-relationships recharge me with greater luminosity.  Since all things are transient and so is my greater self.  We all are tied to the collective connection of materials created by the earth, air, water, energy and other sources.  These elements both allow me to enjoy the sacredness of all things and to live.  I find liberation in our finite oneness. Here I find an unlimited treasure of joy and grace. When I look up to the star filled night sky this experience unites me beyond what words may describe.  Beyond my personal issues I lessen my sense of separation. For example when I get distracted about selfish silly wants I disconnect from hub or source of oneness. Less joy then results. Rememberi...

Awaken With Enthusiasm - AWE  When I open my eyes to the divine my heart radiates with starlight.  My freedom comes when I go within and tap this enthusiasm of life’s wonder.  Thoreau exemplified this by stating; Direct your eye inward, and you'll find / A thousand regions in your mind / Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be / Expert in home-cosmography. Every new day I rejoice the sunrise as a “morning star” heralding new awe to come.  Cultivating virtue I embraced inter/inner ways to connect with the divine. Awaken With Enthusiasm - AWE.  May I celebrate in 2022 the following values; - How may I help not harm so to unite not divide? - How may I benefit by giving and sharing? - What’s more awesome words or deeds? - Does awe and enthusiasm Increase my gratitude?  May 2022 be filled with much light, joy and wonder! Cultivate AWE — Awaken With Enthusiasm.  

One of life’s greatest wonders are trees. For over 27 years I have been fortunate living in the woods backing to the George Washington National Forest outside Edinburg, Virginia. Enjoying splendid forest cover I have developed a profound appreciation for trees. According to legend the first settlers thought they had found the “garden of Eden” and it was first called “Edenburg”. Years ago it was the home of this country’s first Civilian Conservation Corps in the center of the Shenandoah Valley. 85 years ago Franklin Roosevelt kick off one of his greatest New Deal programs here. Two million men were employed and planted almost three billion trees.  Camp Roosevelt was were this Depression era revitalization program ( http://www.ccclegacy.org/ Camp_Roosevelt_68B9.php ) . Further west from where I live is where the seventh CCC camp was built in Wolf Gap. It has been estimated that about 5 billion acres of forest landscapes have been degraded. The annual economic benefits of ...

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those you not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have help changed. We don't need magic to transform our world; we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already; we have the power to imagine better.  - JK Rowling Vices today trump the values this country is blessed with.  Our President has been broadcasting unprecedented d angerous vices and failing to be the great deal maker.   Greater division in income reveals that 1% of the people are getting 82% of today’s wealth.    We have gone from being a world leader to a one of an unhinged bully.  True leaders e...

Back when I worked for Earth Day '80 a colleague  and  I did a satire called, "Earth Decay."  Unfortunately there are some who still believe in the benefits of environmental destruction. Earth Decay (DK) Celebrate the the 3 D's, Degrade, Destroy,  and Decay.   The Earth will take care of itself however mankind can benefit by the 3 D's creating new growth, jobs and dollars!!! * Degrade so to stimulate new economic development * Destroy because clean-up employment results        * Decay furthers adds more dollars into our economy CONSUME, CONSUME AND CONSUME Do not be stupid and conserve.  More waste, more people and more trash fosters commerce!  The more we can degrade our air, water and land the greater our clean up industry will thrive!  More people helps create more wars, shortages, violence, prison and cheap labor.  Increase climate change new opportunities for economic growth due to hurrican...

One year ago I buried my Dad. I spent 5 years taking him to doctors and lessening excess costs and procedures.  Years ago, the Post referred to him as “the unobtrusive shaper of law.” For over 37 years he wrote major healthcare legislation as a Congressional Research Service branch head and a staff member on the House Ways and Means Committee helping with all forms of healthcare legislation.  Today our system is careless. America's medical care system is complex.  U.S. total healthcare expenditure is $2.7 trillion or 18 percent of GDP.  It is forecast to reach 34 percent of GDP by 2040.  In 2010 Americans spent $1.3 trillion on healthcare. Multiple chronic illness cases that are just one percent of healthcare expenditure consume 21 percent of this total amount.  The last tier of 50 percent of patients accounted for 2.8 percent of spending last year.  Contrary to popular opinion only 10 percent of healthcare dollars are spent in the last year of life....

Denial around the seriousness of addressing mental health problems impacts all facets of America.   Investing in the front end of the health care network could save valuable tax dollars by both preventative and proactive measures.  The mind is very tied to our body.  When one fails the other usually is not too far behind.  Today the United States spends 5.6 percent of the national healthcare spending, or $113 billion, on mental health treatment.  Most of this goes toward prescription drugs and outpatient treatment. Our country had 156,300 mental health counselors in 2010, and access to mental healthcare is pathetic compared to other types of medical services. Healthcare spending is forecast to account for nearly 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), or one-fifth of the U.S. economy, by  2021.  It’s been estimated that wasteful spending may account for between one-third and one-half of all U.S. healthcare spending.  The largest area ...

Creating a more efficient government is a win/win situation. A new form of saving in our decision making will return us to a more ingenious nation. Creating a better American way requires us to explore optimal resource management. Simple economic and environmental conditions leads me to such a conclusion. Increased people, prices and problems necessitates frugal and wise actions. Government productivity and performance comes down to its output over input.  Once the public sector best accounts for what we use and where it goes then this life cycle tracking will stimulate new prosperity.  Critical to such a national policy will be a public and private campaign to sustain efficiency. Increasing productivity can result when such a change is reached. Our output and inputs must be balance with increased financial, environmental and social considerations as we improve busi...

As our planet heats up being cool or conserving helps you find a peace of mind due to this climate craziness. Increased population, pollution, resource loss (water, soil, trees, etc) and other forms of depletion do have a serious consequences. For example, according to a major study in the journal, Nature, Greenland since 1900 has lost 9,103 gigaton of ice (a gigaton is a billion metric tons). More alarming is that this loss doubled from 2003-2010, compared with the loss from previous years. Such information can fever the mind. Keeping cool is about mindful resource use of using more with less. We as humans will pay a greater price if we do it respond to this accelerated environmental damage. The more we prevent the greater we profit. Increased emissions is not just a national but an international security issue. The better we mimic our natural cycles the greater we invest in our future prospects. If one looks at how carbon dioxide (CO2) impacts our eco-system then the...

Woman's leadership role on this planet is vital to balancing today's resource, economic and environmental demands. The female voice in this planet's future before has been modest. Woman's environmental leadership has in the past been ignored, neglected and discouraged even though they are on the front lines in dealing with water, agriculture, energy and natural resource management. Also it is woman who bring new life to this planet. However the times are changing from just what is happening here in the United States. In July, Melinda Gates donated $4.3 billion dollars for those 120 million woman who want but can not afford contraception. This is one great example of investing in a better quality of life for future generations. Woman in the U.S. have an enormous economic presence. In the U.S., women control $11 trillion dollars of wealth or close to 40% of the total personal wealth. This is projected to rise almost 60% by 2020. Nearly two-thirds of women are...

In Paris this week once again the international community attempted to developed cooperative measures to better this planet. Almost every week there are new findings proving human's impact upon our climate. Add to this our polarized Congress and it safe to assume things are heating up on many fronts. People’s passions, fears, despairs and frustrations are running high. Fittingly change is needed to temper our climate situation. These weather changes are highly correlated with temperature rises. All these factors are connected. Global warming is leading to increased biomass factors that adds to more melting of ice changing surface of ocean impacting major circulation patterns. 8,000 years ago-humans’ first impacted this planet with great deforestation. European heat wave used to be 1 in every 500 year event, now there is the potential for this to happen every other year. The rapid rate of climate change threatens not just our energy and food but our very quality of life....

A knowing farmer, who, Midas like, can convert everything he touches into manure, as the first transmutation towards gold. For 45 years George Washington was the master of Mount Vernon, and he viewed his occupation as farmer very seriously. Beginning as a tobacco planter like his father and older brother before him, Washington devoted himself to producing bounteous crops of the weed for export to England. He realized early on, however, that this plant was ruinous to the fertility of his soil. Therefore, he soon stopped growing tobacco and took up the cultivation of wheat as his primary money maker, complemented by corn and a variety of lesser crops aimed at sustaining his family and slaves. The quest to improve his yields led Washington to explore a wide range of agricultural experiments, including composting as a means of restoring soil nutrients. In 1794 Washington sadly noted in his diary that, "Unless some practice prevails, my fields will be growing worse every year, until th...

No greater threat to this planet than more humans.   Not only has our population more than doubled since, 1990 our collective planetary impact is exponential.  Everyday 220,000 people are born while 45,000 just die from starvation.   Steven Hawkins estimated if the population continues every 40 years to double by 2600 there will be only standing room here. Just in the United States births increased in 2014 (1 percent) for first time since 2007.  In the next few decades we are expected to reach 9 billion. Since 2000, humans have cut down more than 2.3 million km2 of primary forest.  Also we have converted one-third of the ice-free and desert-free land surface of the planet to pasture and cropland.  In southeast Asia, almost half of the natural habitat has been converted. In 2008 Jared Diamond noted that people consume resources  like  oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North Amer...

How we build is a both a sign of our affluence and effluence.   Spending on U.S. construction projects rose in August to the highest point in more than seven years, fueled by home building and government projects.  It rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.09 trillion, the highest level since May 2008.  Construction has a significant impact on the environment, accounting for one of sixth of the world’s freshwater withdrawal, one-quarter of its wood harvest, and two-fifths of its materials and energy flow. These structures also impact areas beyond their immediate location, affecting watersheds, air quality and transportation patterns of communities. [2] Green Building is being embraced by the construction industry because of simple economic and environmental reasons. Also more sustainable building practices are evolving more effective design and operations because of competition and new performance requirements. An estimated 136 million metric tons of bu...

Food, water, agriculture and energy are interconnected. Each of these factors needs to be addressed if this planet is going sustain a world population expected to surpass 10 billion in years to come. For years I have studied food waste and food conservation, as well as having worked with numerous organizations attempting to start composting enterprises.  Conserving food requires lessening waste and better management in every link of this nutrient chain.  From the farm, factory, store and home; the US wastes enough food to feed Canada. Every year, consumers in industrialized countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons). The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that Americans waste 133 billion pounds of food every year, or 31 percent of their overall food supply.  In the USA, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills, which are the largest source of methane emissions...