abolish the dealth penalty now...

(contribution by Judy Molland)

October 10 was World Day Against The Death Penalty.

Or we could re-name it, “Two-Thirds Of The World Is Against The Death Penalty Day.” (But not the United States, along with such great company as China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen.)

More Than Two-Thirds Of Countries Have Abolished The Death Penalty.

From The Economist:

More than two-thirds of countries have done away with it either in law or in practice. The latest is Benin. In August the west African country committed itself to abolishing capital punishment permanently. The number of countries that carry out judicial killings fell from 41 in 1995 to 23 in 2010, according to Amnesty International, a pressure group. China(chiefly), Iran, North Korea, and Yemen accounted for most of the executions. Votes against the death penalty at the UN General Assembly have passed with big and growing majorities since 2007. Capital punishment has virtually gone in Europe (only Belarus still uses it, most recently in July). This year China whittled down its list of crimes punishable by death.

But Two-Thirds Of The States In The U.S. Still Have The Death Penalty.

And then there’s the United States, where two-thirds of the states still have the death penalty.

Reasons To End The Death Penalty summarized:

* Capital punishment is more costly than life without parole

* Life without parole is just as effective as capital punishment in preventing recidivism

* Capital punishment does not deter others from committing crimes

* Capital punishment runs counter to a “culture of life”

When all other justifications are debunked, the only one left is vengeance.
In the end, we waste money and promote killing just to make us feel good about exacting some revenge.

Let’s look at the most recent, shameful example:

Troy Davis was sent to his death 2 months ago despite a mass of evidence that left his 1991 conviction in doubt, including recantations from seven of the nine key witnesses at his trial for the murder of a police officer.

Is The Troy Davis Case A Wake-Up Call To U.S. Politicians?

The only positive to emerge from the execution of Mr. Davis is the enormous outpouring of protests in Georgia, at the Supreme Court, in cities throughout the United States and indeed around the world.

From The Guardian:

Brian Evans of Amnesty, which led the campaign to spare Davis’ life, said that there was a groundswell in America of people “who are tired of a justice system that is inhumane and inflexible and allows executions where there is clear doubt about guilt.” He predicted the debate would now be conducted with renewed energy.

Let’s hope that Mr. Evans is right. The United States stands virtually alone in the western world in continuing to uphold this cruel punishment.

It is high time that the United States left the company of China, Iran, North Korea and Yemen and decided to abolish capital punishment forever.

heads up!

guru on the move...

heading to the big apple to OWS with sign in tow. ;-)

stay tuned!

the wisdom of steve jobs...

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.

I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it.

Don't settle.

a profound opinion piece re: 9-11, for your contemplative noshing...

one of the more thoughtful opinion editorials on 9/11

...followed by an interesting column recommended by
Chris Hedges from the other side of the political spectrum...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A Decade After 9/11: We Are What We Loathe

by Chris Hedges

posted on Sep 10, 2011
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/nationalism_in_the_aftermath_of_9_11_20110910/

I arrived in Times Square around 9:30 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. A large crowd was transfixed by the huge Jumbotron screens. Billows of smoke could be seen on the screens above us, pouring out of the two World Trade towers. Two planes, I was told by people in the crowd, had plowed into the towers. I walked quickly into the New York Times newsroom at 229 W. 43rd St., grabbed a handful of reporter's notebooks, slipped my NYPD press card, which would let me through police roadblocks, around my neck, and started down the West Side Highway to the World Trade Center. The highway was closed to traffic. I walked through knots of emergency workers, police and firemen. Fire trucks, emergency vehicles, ambulances, police cars and rescue trucks idled on the asphalt.

The south tower went down around 10 a.m. with a guttural roar. Huge rolling gray clouds of noxious smoke, dust, gas, pulverized concrete, gypsum and the grit of human remains enveloped lower Manhattan. The sun was obscured. The north tower collapsed about 30 minutes later. The dust hung like a shroud over Manhattan.

I headed toward the spot where the towers once stood, passing dazed, ashen and speechless groups of police officers and firefighters. I would pull out a notebook to ask questions and no sounds would come out of their mouths. They forlornly shook their heads and warded me away gently with their hands. By the time I arrived at Ground Zero it was a moonscape; whole floors of the towers had collapsed like an accordion. I pulled out pieces of paper from one floor, and a few feet below were papers from 30 floors away. Small bits of human bodies--a foot in a woman's shoe, a bit of a leg, part of a torso--lay scattered amid the wreckage.

Scores of people, perhaps more than 200, pushed through the smoke and heat to jump to their deaths from windows that had broken or they had smashed. Sometimes they did this alone, sometimes in pairs. But it seems they took turns, one body cascading downward followed by another. The last acts of individuality. They fell for about 10 seconds, many flailing or replicating the motion of swimmers, reaching 150 miles an hour. Their clothes and, in a few cases, their improvised parachutes made from drapes or tablecloths shredded. They smashed into the pavement with unnerving, sickening thuds. Thump. Thump. Thump. Those who witnessed it were particularly shaken by the sounds the bodies made on impact.

The images of the "jumpers" proved too gruesome for the TV networks. Even before the towers collapsed, the falling men and women were censored from live broadcasts. Isolated pictures appeared the next day in papers, including The New York Times, and then were banished. The mass suicide, one of the most pivotal and important elements in the narrative of 9/11, was expunged. It remains expunged from public consciousness.

The "jumpers" did not fit into the myth the nation demanded. The fate of the "jumpers" said something so profound, so disturbing, about our own fate, smallness in the universe and fragility that it had to be banned. The "jumpers" illustrated that there are thresholds of suffering that elicit a willing embrace of death. The "jumpers" reminded us that there will come, to all of us, final moments when the only choice will be, at best, how we will choose to die, not how we are going to live. And we can die before we physically expire.

The shock of 9/11, however, demanded images and stories of resilience, redemption, heroism, courage, self-sacrifice and generosity, not collective suicide in the face of overwhelming hopelessness and despair.

Reporters in moments of crisis become clinicians. They collect data, facts, descriptions, basic information, and carry out interviews as swiftly as possible. We make these facts fit into familiar narratives. We do not create facts but we manipulate them. We make facts conform to our perceptions of ourselves as Americans and human beings. We work within the confines of national myth. We make journalism and history a refuge from memory. The pretense that mass murder and suicide can be transformed into a tribute to the victory of the human spirit was the lie we all told to the public that day and have been telling ever since. We make sense of the present only through the lens of the past, as the French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs pointed out, recognizing that "our conceptions of the past are affected by the mental images we employ to solve present problems, so that collective memory is essentially a reconstruction of the past in the light of the present. ... Memory needs continuous feeding from collective sources and is sustained by social and moral props."

I returned that night to the newsroom hacking from the fumes released by the burning asbestos, jet fuel, lead, mercury, cellulose and construction debris. I sat at my computer, my thin paper mask still hanging from my neck, trying to write and catch my breath. All who had been at the site that day were noticeable in the newsroom because they were struggling for air. Most of us were convulsed by shock and grief.

There would soon, however, be another reaction. Those of us who were close to the epicenters of the 9/11 attacks would primarily grieve and mourn. Those who had some distance would indulge in the growing nationalist cant and calls for blood that would soon triumph over reason and sanity. Nationalism was a disease I knew intimately as a war correspondent. It is anti-thought. It is primarily about self-exaltation. The flip side of nationalism is always racism, the dehumanization of the enemy and all who appear to question the cause. The plague of nationalism began almost immediately. My son, who was 11, asked me what the difference was between cars flying small American flags and cars flying large American flags.

"The people with the really big flags are the really big assholes," I told him.

The dead in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania were used to sanctify the state's lust for war. To question the rush to war became to dishonor our martyrs. Those of us who knew that the attacks were rooted in the long night of humiliation and suffering inflicted by Israel on the Palestinians, the imposition of our military bases in the Middle East and in the brutal Arab dictatorships that we funded and supported became apostates. We became defenders of the indefensible. We were apologists, as Christopher Hitchens shouted at me on a stage in Berkeley, "for suicide bombers."

Because few cared to examine our activities in the Muslim world, the attacks became certified as incomprehensible by the state and its lap dogs, the press. Those who carried out the attacks were branded as rising out of a culture and religion that was at best primitive and probably evil. The Quran--although it forbids suicide as well as the murder of women and children--was painted as a manual for fanaticism and terror. The attackers embodied the titanic clash of civilizations, the cosmic battle under way between good and evil, the forces of light and darkness. Images of the planes crashing into the towers and heroic rescuers emerging from the rubble were played and replayed. We were deluged with painful stories of the survivors and victims. The deaths and falling towers became iconographic. The ceremonies of remembrance were skillfully hijacked by the purveyors of war and hatred. They became vehicles to justify doing to others what had been done to us. And as innocents died here, soon other innocents began to die in the Muslim world. A life for a life. Murder for murder. Death for death. Terror for terror.

What was played out in the weeks after the attacks was the old, familiar battle between force and human imagination, between the crude instruments of violence and the capacity for empathy and understanding. Human imagination lost. Coldblooded reason, which does not speak the language of the imagination, won. We began to speak and think in the empty, mindless nationalist clichés about terror that the state handed to us. We became what we abhorred. The deaths were used to justify pre-emptive war, invasion, Shock and Awe, prolonged occupation, targeted assassinations, torture, offshore penal colonies, gunning down families at checkpoints, massive aerial bombardments, drone attacks, missile strikes and the killing of dozens and soon hundreds and then thousands and later tens of thousands and finally hundreds of thousands of innocent people. We produced piles of corpses in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and extended the reach of our killing machine to Yemen and Somalia. And by beatifying our dead, by cementing into the national psyche fear and the imperative of permanent war, and by stoking our collective humiliation, the state carried out crimes, atrocities and killings that dwarfed anything carried out against us on 9/11. The best that force can do is impose order. It can never elicit harmony. And force was justified, and is still justified, by the first dead. Ten years later these dead haunt us like Banquo's ghost.

"It is the first death which infects everyone with the feelings of being threatened," wrote Elias Canetti. "It is impossible to overrate the part played by the first dead man in the kindling of wars. Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim. It needs not be anyone of particular importance, and can even be someone quite unknown. Nothing matters except his death; and it must be believed that the enemy is responsible for this. Every possible cause of his death is suppressed except one: his membership of the group to which one belongs oneself."

We were unable to accept the reality of this anonymous slaughter. We were unable because it exposed the awful truth that we live in a morally neutral universe where human life, including our life, can be snuffed out in senseless and random violence. It showed us that there is no protection, not from God, fate, luck, omens or the state.

We have still not woken up to whom we have become, to the fatal erosion of domestic and international law and the senseless waste of lives, resources and trillions of dollars to wage wars that ultimately we can never win. We do not see that our own faces have become as contorted as the faces of the demented hijackers who seized the three commercial jetliners a decade ago. We do not grasp that Osama bin Laden's twisted vision of a world of indiscriminate violence and terror has triumphed. The attacks turned us into monsters, grotesque ghouls, sadists and killers who drop bombs on village children and waterboard those we kidnap, strip of their rights and hold for years without due process. We acted before we were able to think. And it is the satanic lust of violence that has us locked in its grip.

As Wordsworth wrote:

Action is transitory--a step, a blow,
The motion of a muscle--this way or that--
'Tis done; and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed:
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
And has the nature of infinity.


We could have gone another route. We could have built on the profound sympathy and empathy that swept through the world following the attacks. The revulsion over the crimes that took place 10 years ago, including in the Muslim world, where I was working in the weeks and months after 9/11, was nearly universal. The attacks, if we had turned them over to intelligence agencies and diplomats, might have opened possibilities not of war and death but ultimately reconciliation and communication, of redressing the wrongs that we commit in the Middle East and that are committed by Israel with our blessing. It was a moment we squandered. Our brutality and triumphalism, the byproducts of nationalism and our infantile pride, revived the jihadist movement. We became the radical Islamist movement's most effective recruiting tool. We descended to its barbarity. We became terrorists too. The sad legacy of 9/11 is that the assholes, on each side, won.
***************************************************************************
Ten Years After 9/11: Have We Become the Enemy of Freedom?
by John W. Whitehead

September 8, 2011

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men...to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities."--Edward R. Murrow (March 9, 1954)

When the World Trade Center crumbled to the ground on September 11, 2001, it took with it any illusions Americans might have harbored about the nation's invincibility, leaving many feeling vulnerable, scared and angry. Yet in that moment of weakness, while most of us were still reeling from the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of some 3,000 Americans, we managed to draw strength from and comfort each other.

Suddenly, the news was full of stories of strangers helping strangers and communities pulling together. Even the politicians put aside their partisan pride and bickering and held hands on the steps of the Capitol, singing "God Bless America." The rest of the world was not immune to our suffering, acknowledging the fraternity of nations against all those who take innocent lives in a campaign of violence. United against a common enemy, inconceivable hope rising out of the ashes of despair, we seemed determined to work toward a better world.

Sadly, that hope was short-lived.

Long before the bodies buried under the rubble were recovered, the Bush administration was hard at work hatching plans that would push America down a path of destruction marked by ill-fated foreign policies, corporate primacy, a draconian security regime and an emerging surveillance state. With no clear plan except to oust the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda affiliates, Bush haphazardly invaded Afghanistan. The rush to invade Afghanistan, a country that most Americans knew nothing about, would signify the beginning of the longest war in American history.

It would not be long before the Bush administration turned its sights on Iraq (in fact, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill alleged that discussions about occupying Iraq began as early as January and February 2001). Congress marched in lockstep with Bush and his cronies and approved the Iraq War overwhelmingly. Despite the fact that Saddam Hussein had no connection to the 9/11 attacks and Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction, the American war machine went into overdrive in an effort to incite American allies and the United Nations to wage war against Iraq.

Meanwhile, just a month after the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed the nefarious USA Patriot Act, which gutted the Bill of Rights. The Patriot Act gave the President unprecedented and unconstitutional powers to spy on, monitor and police American citizens. A clever title, public fear, and congressional ineptitude made the Patriot Act a shoo-in. And it was passed without debate and without our so-called representatives even having read the legislation. In this way, through so-called democratic measures, America began a terrible antidemocratic decade.

A new but dangerous era was dawning in America, bringing with it death and destruction for American soldiers and Iraqi and Afghani civilians. It would be an era of corporate domination at the expense of social services and working class citizens. It would be an era of pat-downs, SWAT team raids, unlawful imprisonment and torture. Yet blinded by hatred, choked with fear and grief, Americans closed their eyes to the emerging threat posed by their own government.

Desperate for certainty in a world that was anything but, most Americans fell in line with the president's leadership, leaving those who questioned the president's authority to be subdued and labeled unpatriotic. The media, having long since abdicated its role as a watchdog, quickly became the mouthpiece of the war machine.

Under cover of its "war on terrorism" and in blatant violation of constitutional and international law, the Bush Administration opened the door to a host of shadowy dealings involving extraordinary renditions, unlawful imprisonment and torture. Meanwhile, the U.S. established penal colonies in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib in Iraq where prisoners not charged with any crime nor brought before any court could be kept in isolation, save for the attentions of certain depraved and sociopathic members of the intelligence agencies and armed forces who delighted in subjecting their detainees to all manner of torture. These atrocities further damaged America's already tarnished reputation and deepened anti-American sentiment worldwide.

Ten years after 9/11, we have failed miserably in our attempts to bring about justice for our countrymen who died that day. Even Osama bin Laden's demise offers little consolation when compared to the injustices we have been forced to endure by our own government. Moreover, by eschewing international law and the core values contained within the Bill of Rights, America has, in many regards, become the enemy of freedom.

Indeed, whatever success America has had in routing out terrorists over the past decade has been overshadowed by the new society in which we live. Suspicion, fear and ignorance are the new norms. We have made enemies of one another. We allow government agents to pat-down our children when we want to ride in an airplane. We stand by when transit authorities shut off cell phone service in order to disrupt protests. The news fails to report the thousands of SWAT team raids that take place every year, endangering and sometimes murdering people for victimless crimes. We turn the people we don't agree with or understand--be they Muslim or Christian, Republican or Democrat--into fictitious boogeymen who want to destroy our livelihood.

Ten years after the world as we knew it came to a sudden end, we find ourselves charting hostile territory. While we were distracted by military carnage overseas and color-coded terror alert systems here at home, the economy has crumbled at the hands of corporate oligarchs, reckless bankers and a national debt escalating due to the costs of endless wars, pork-barrel spending and a lack of fiscal restraint. Corporations continue to rake in profits and benefit from taxpayer-funded bailouts, while middle- and working-class Americans struggle to make ends meet. Our government leaders, gridlocked by partisan politics and the endless quest to get re-elected, have altogether failed in their duty to represent us and our vital interests. Our military, tasked with policing America's global military empire, has been stretched to the breaking point. The police presence in America has exploded, with unconstitutional and brutal police tactics increasingly condoned by the courts. The right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects in a surveillance state. And the right to travel has been subjected to draconian security measures that fail to make us safer.

I highly doubt this is the America that the victims of 9/11 would have wanted to live in.

Fifty years ago, in his farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the American people to beware of the military-industrial complex which threatened to bankrupt our economy and destroy society. We failed to heed his warning.

Just a few years earlier, the renowned television journalist Edward R. Murrow had warned Americans not to buy into the government's campaign of fear-mongering by turning on each other. Although in the short term some seemed to listen, it was not long before, in our complacency and intolerance, we failed to heed the warning.

Ten years ago, we found ourselves being warned once again. In a stirring speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the resolution to wage war against Afghanistan, urged caution and diligence in deciding how to approach the issue of international terrorism. Quoting a clergy member who spoke at a 9/11 memorial service she said, "As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore."
Thus, as we approach this anniversary, we owe it to those who lost their lives on 9/11 and in the war-filled years since to do more than offer up amorphous patriotic tributes to their courage. Rather, let this anniversary be a wake-up call to a sleeping nation to rouse ourselves from a spirit of complacency and take our government leaders to task. The politicians will not act unless they are pushed. Thus, it will be up to us to confront the abuses of our government. Let us dismantle our military empire. Let us take care of our poor, our downtrodden. Let us push back against the surveillance state. Let us put human dignity above corporate profits.
If not now, then when?

things that make you go hmmm...

"It has been observed that if the last 50,000 years of human existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately 62 years each, there have been about 800 such lifetimes.

Of these 800, fully 650 were spent in caves. Only during the last 70 lifetimes has it been possible to communicate effectively from one lifetime to another-as writing made it possible to do. Only during the last six lifetimes did masses of people ever see a printed word. Only during the last four has it been possible to measure time with any precision.

Only in the last two has anyone anywhere used an electric motor. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in daily life today have been developed within the present, the 800th lifetime."

- A. Toffler, Future Shock, 1970.

what exactly is your intention???

Having an intention is enough to accomplish a result. When properly focused – which means easily and without strain – awareness has the ability to carry out quite specific commands.

An intention doesn’t have to be a verbally expressed thought; in fact, our deepest intentions are body-centered. Our most fundamental needs – for love, understanding, encouragement, support – permeate every cell.

The desires that arise in your mind are often clouded by ego motives, which are not true needs; people get caught up in the pursuit of money, career goals, and political ambitions in ways that are disconnected from the fundamental need for comfort and well-being that every healthy organism must fulfill.

Many of us are so alienated from our basic needs, so programmed to run after what the ego wants, that we have to relearn the basic mechanics of how attention and intention actually work.

There are many ways to get fulfillment besides the outward-oriented ones our culture teaches us. The most valuable lesson in this regard is that intentions automatically seek their fulfillment through joy, beauty, love, and appreciation.

This is hard to realize when the mind sets up its own separate agenda for fulfilling other kinds of desires, ones that are loveless, without joy or satisfaction. Yet millions of people have programmed themselves to reach only such goals.

Adapted from Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, by Deepak Chopra

walking your talk...how do YOU treat the waitress?

We had a TV series in London. One of our fellow TV presenters seriously upset the camera crew when they arrived at his house. He was rude and dismissive, essentially putting himself on a pedestal and treating them like lowly workers. Minutes later, when the camera was turned on, he became the perfectly smiling spiritual icon he was publicly known to be. But, as the crew told us later, he had already shown them that he did not walk his talk.

In contrast, Ed was meeting with Jo, our TV producer, in a small London cafe where the tables were situated very close together. Two well-dressed African men sat down next to them, which effectively meant they were sharing the same table. Ed asked them where they were from and one said South Africa. His name was Jacob Zuma, then president of the ANC and now president of South Africa. Ed gave him a book that we had written with contributions from President Gorbachev, the Dalai Lama, and President Vaclav Havel. Jacob said the book would be in the hands of Nelson Mandela the following evening, someone who supports Jacob’s presidency.

Usually, if you sit next to someone in a big city cafe, they do not even make eye contact, let alone conversation. Jacob had never met Ed before but he treated him in a very friendly and gracious way. He could have been distant and polite, and he certainly did not have to talk, let alone maintain communication, which he did over the following few years. He even hugged him! In this way, he displayed no sense of discrimination or elitism.

How we walk our talk shows far more than just our public behavior. Rather, it highlights how we view the world and our place in it. A few days ago a friend was telling us that a business agreement she had been nurturing for over three years had abruptly come to an end. “He wanted to exclude me from part of the discussion with one of my contacts, which I said was absolutely not agreeable. So he said that was it and he got up and left.” But instead of being shattered after losing all the years of work, she felt a huge relief. He had shown her his true colors. As she said, “He had shown me how he treats the waitress.”

Many years ago we met with the Dalai Lama at his residence in India. While we waited for the meeting Ed was standing on the veranda, enjoying the beauty of the mountains stretching in front of him, when he saw a monk at the far end of the veranda trying to get his attention by beckoning us to come. We thought he would bring us to our meeting but as we came closer to the monk we realized that he was the Dalai Lama. In traditional Buddhist custom, we immediately began to prostrate but he took our hands and lifted us up, saying, “No, no, we are all equal here.”

That teaching stayed with us. As Deb first thought, ‘Oh sure! You are the great Dalai Lama, spiritual leader to millions. How can we possibly be equal?’ But over the following months I felt his words in the core of my being and experienced the true equality he was referring to: the equality of our shared humanness and, simultaneously, our shared heart.

The Dalai Lama showed us how he treats a waitress – with the consideration and respect that he treats all beings. No matter who we are, whether a street cleaner or a president, we are all here together as one human family.

** special thanks to ed and deb shapiro for this insightful entry.

Post-Testimonial from Matthew Hope

I can't put a price on my recent trip to Norway. Whether I was visiting
museums, communing with nature, or just spending time with my good friend, I was always having an enjoyable time.

None of this, however, would have been possible without the help of well-travelled guru. As a person who lives with a disability, I was dependent on assistance navigating airports, and transitioning from flight to flight. Having an assistant waiting for me the moment I stepped off the plane made me feel safe and secure. Despite my disability and the average busyness of an
airport, I was given the freedom to meet my own needs such as finding an accessible bathroom or locating a place to eat while waiting for the next flight. Both my departure and return trips were as smooth as clockwork.

I would recommend well-travelled guru, without hesitation, to anyone with special needs.

Matthew Hope, once again, is a talented musician who resides in the Twin Cities, MN, United States. Thank you, and we're glad you enjoyed your trip!

where do your charitable donations REALLY go???

As you & I continue to open our pockets for this disaster, that crisis,
or the next whatever catastrophe, please keep these facts in mind: 

 

The American Red Cross

President and CEO - Marsha J. Evans
salary for the year 2010 was $651,957, plus all personal, medical,
& pension expenses.

Less than 10 cents of your donated dollar
actually goes to the cause.

The United Way

President - Brian Gallagher receives a
$375,000 base salary, along with numerous personal & family
expense benefits.

Less than 12 cents of your donated dollar
actually goes to the cause.

UNICEF

CEO - Caryl M. Stern receives

$1.2 Million per year (100k per month)

plus all living & housing expenses, including a ROLLS ROYCE.

Less than 15 cents of your donated dollar
actually goes to the cause.

The Salvation Army

Commissioner - Todd Bassett receives a
salary of only $13,000 per year (plus housing)

for managing this $2 billion dollar organization.

96 cents of all donated dollars go to the cause.

Boys & Girls Town

$0.93 of every dollar goes directly to the children.

Father Steven Boes does not draw a salary.

NOW YOU KNOW, SO PLEASE CHOOSE WISELY IN THE FUTURE!

happy 4th of july! we are free from whom, now?

The Boston Tea Party. Bombs bursting in air. The midnight ride of Paul Revere. There are a lot of historical moments for our country tied up in Independence Day, but sadly, for a large number of people, there’s quite a bit of ignorance, too.
Via Think Progress, a new poll out states that over a quarter of those questioned couldn’t name what country the United States Declared Independence from during the American Revolution. Only 74 percent of those asked could actually name Great Britain as the country we fought, with 20 percent saying they were unsure, and 6 percent actually naming a different country. The number of those who couldn’t give the correct answer went up to 32 percent in the south.

Maybe we need year-round school — or at least some year round history classes.

(today's entry compliments of care2 causes)

thank you lilly mae outlaw for this shrewd advice...

there's so much good in the worst of us
and so much bad in the best of us,
that it doesn't behoove any of us,
to talk about the rest of us.
                                      

salsa dancing dog...

if this dog can dance salsa, what's YOUR excuse???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo706x4T2AA

now get out there and try something new, it's time!

love,

the well-travelled guru

just one touch...

kiley had ventured outside her home country only
once in her 18 years. so when she had the chance
to go to Kenya to help with a medical mission, she
was thrilled—and a little uneasy. after all, she didn’t have
any real medical experience.
as she provided basic medical care in a remote
village, she met a woman with elephantiasis. it’s a
horrible but treatable disease caused by parasitic worms.
elephantiasis causes grotesque swelling in the lower half
of the body. prevention includes simply wearing shoes.
but in poverty-stricken Africa, many villagers have little or
no access to such basic needs.

kiley was repulsed by the woman’s distorted leg, but
she proceeded to clean and bandage it. the woman
began crying. startled, kiley asked if she was hurting
her. “no,” she replied. “it’s the first time in 9 years that
anyone has touched my leg.”

in touching a lonely woman’s diseased leg, kiley was imitating fearless,
taboo-breaking love. it was one tiny touch, but it made all the difference.

 what difference will you make today?

(a special thanks to tim gustafson for this beautiful story)

Post-Testimonial from Eve Smith

Our dear Eve Smith, senior instructor at the University of Macau, sent us these words of praise after her day trip to Paris, France.

Dear Guru and Sherpa:

The Paris hotel you booked me was wonderful. I loved staying there. I loved that it was quaint. Honestly, that's probably all the amount of space one really needs. :) I ate loads, made it to an amazing church just further up the street from the hotel, the Moulin Rouge, and the Arc de Triomphe…all in less than 24 hours. Thanks again, dynamic duo!

We're very glad that you enjoyed your trip, Eve, and hope you plan to do more traveling with us!

Heaven Would Be A Lot Better Than This Earth?

Sherpa Don shares his thoughts on the ending of this world:

“I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this Earth,” said Mr Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver, who took the week off work for the voyage.

I woke up this morning to my usual schedule before work: saying This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad, as I start up the coffee pot; find out what flavor toaster pastry I want to eat today; and opened up the computer to read the news. The first article I read was BBC's ‘Rapture’ Believers Perplexed After Prediction Fails, and the first thing that caught my eye was Mr. Bauer's quotation.

At first, I felt startled, and a bit confused, as I repeated his words and brushed my teeth at the same time—which, much to my chagrin, left my mouth and chin rather rabid-dog-looking. It was enough confusion that I halted my usual morning plans, deftly stole the stole of spiritual guidance from the Well-Travelled Guru, put it on, and thought about what I thought needed to be said about those words.

Mr. Bauer's attitude is an interesting one, because it is a statement that came from an ordinary man; but it's also a statement that, I feel, is said by so many in our current world: “My world, my reality, is terrible; and I wish something—anything—would happen to end it, because this world will always be broken, and there's nothing that I can do to get out.”

I can only imagine the disappointment of all the people who felt the world was ending; and to all who were hoping for some change—any change—to a world that never seems to change I give my deepest, most sincere sympathies.

But, my mind goes back to one of my particularly favorite ladies of philosophy:

I will say that never before has the world been clamoring so desperately for answers to crucial problems—and never before has the world been so frantically committed to the belief that no answers are possible.

My friends, what I want to ask is, “Is the world as terrible and broken as you think it is?” Yes, reading current events nowadays has the potential of paralyzing the soul because of all the disasters that happen all around us. Yes, sometimes more bad things happen than the good things. Yes, sometimes I spend too much time in my pajamas writing instead of going to work. But is reality so terrible, and life so broken, that you choose to drown it in whiskey, to smother it in ice cream and Titanic (my own personal vice on bad days), and to scream to the heavens and to the LORD himself your request for the world to end? Frankly, the only time I'd scream the latter is if I wake up wearing a toga, equipped with wings and a halo, and realize at that moment that the rest of my life is spent on a cloud.

Life is too precious, and too big, to drown in whiskey, or ice cream, or screams for death, or any other vices or obsessions one might use to escape from reality. Despite its hardships, life is too wonderful to keep one's eyes closed to all it's splendor and terror. And, despite our naturally-fallible and naturally-imperfect faculties of cognition, life is too valuable to say, “It can't be helped,” or “There's nothing I can do,” or ”What's the point?” or ”What if I try to live life, and try to show others that life is good, but nothing comes of it?” , then do nothing about the terrors that we all see.

If one concentrates on Heaven, one forgets that the LORD made life here on earth, and said that it was good. If one concentrates on escaping the world, one forgets that this world is real. My life is precious, your life is precious, the lives of all that are suffering in today's world are precious. Instead of proclaiming the end of the world, and shouting it can't be helped; perhaps, today, everyone should meditate over these words, “You are loved, and [equally as you] so are they.” Ponder what that means, and reconsider, for a moment, what life would be like if we all stood up and acted in the love we have for ourselves and for others.

The message that “We are all (and I mean everyone in the world) the LORD's children” in the world he made and declared good is a far more comforting and hopeful message than the world's destruction, eh? Let's remember, today, what that means to be the child of the LORD, and what dignity, respect, and love the LORD equally has for all of us. Think about the gifts of cognition, of volition, of thinking we all have, and think about the unique talents and abilities we all have, and ask yourself “What can I do for the LORD's creation?”

After that thinking, go sit down somewhere, watch the sunset, and ask again, “Is heaven really that much better?” I hope your answer will be, “No. This world is worth trying to save.”

sacred spaces...

atorii is a traditional japanese gate typically painted brilliant red and found at the entrance of shinto shrines and japanese buddhist temples devoted to particular gods. adherents to those religions believe it marks the point where one leaves the secular world and enters the holy. a large and famous torii stands off the shore of miyajima island in the hiroshima prefecture of japan. visitors are informed it’s “sacred” space.

sacred sites are common in most religions. hindus trek to varanasi, located on the banks of the ganges river; muslims make their pilgrimage to mecca, neopagans to stonehenge. a sacred space is where God, gods, or spiritual power is thought to be unusually present.

to the greeks of athens, the apostle paul(of the new testament) stood on sacred ground as he spoke to them on the areopagus(mars hill). with its links to the gods mars and ares, the hill also stands a stone’s throw away from the parthenon—the temple of the goddess athena. among a plethora of gods, paul had seized an opportunity to talk about another “unknown” God. this God, paul explained, was Creator and Lord of the whole world—rather than parts of it, like the greek gods. greece’s gods had limited powers, but this God knew the destiny of each individual on the planet. greece’s gods had limited spheres of influence, but this God was literally everywhere.

if indeed paul’s message is true, if there is one true God that is present everywhere, then it follows that anywhere can be a sacred space. therefore, we all have the power to create our own version of this space and christen it Holy; be it our workplace, campus, and/or home.

(special thanks to sheridan voysey for contributing to today's blog)

guru tips for dealing with jet-lag...

*  skip the big meal and get to sleep if it's bedtime at your destination
*  forgo the alcoholic beverages; they're dehydrating, and you'll get drunk
   faster in the air
*  use an eye mask, ear plugs, soothing music, or sleep aids to help

you're welcome. :-)

Testimonial from Eve Smith

As a Senior Instructor at the University of Macau, and someone who occasionally does consulting work for the U.S. State Department, my schedule keeps me too busy to properly attend to the details of researching accommodations and other travel deals. However, as I am not a trust fund baby, and budgets are tightening everywhere, I've been having to look harder for deals.

I recently booked a trip to the Ukraine, requiring a one night stop-over in Paris. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the BUDGET accommodations in Paris were running around 200 EUR per night! For a week, maybe; but a night?! After a moment of barely contained panic, I consulted “the well-travelled guru” to find an amount that would fit into the per diem with which I was working.

Lorna Rockey assured me she could work within my budget. I was utterly astonished when she found me a place commensurate to the standards I have come to expect in a hotel, informed me it was in a great area for cafés and sight-seeing, and would only cost me a little over 50 EUR per night.

Thank you Lorna! I will definitely be consulting the Guru with future travel plans. :)

Eve Smith, as she mentioned, is a senior instructor at the University of Macau.

remembering my precious mother...

i love you mama, and miss you so very much. happy mother's day.

One lamp - thy mother's love - amid the stars
Shall lift its pure flame changeless, and before
The throne of God, burn through eternity -
Holy - as it was lit and lent thee here.

~Nathaniel Parker Willis~

de-planed for NO good reason...

in the words of the 60's rock group the Youngbloods,

"Come on people now, smile on your brother. Everybody get together try to love one another right now."

is it really that difficult? apparently. :-(

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/05/07/muslims.kicked.off.plane/index.html?hpt=T2

15 items or less...

i had something happen today that i allowed to disturb my peace. i say "allowed" because everything that happens in life sets up a series of personal choices as to how we will react.
the day had already started out stressed. i didn't get a lot of sleep, and had to be up early for the closing talk at a seminar i had attended all week on "building a better future". as i left my house, i noticed little snowflakes falling.
it's May 1st, could winter just finally be over in Minnesota please?
anyway, the seminar ended in an uplifting way(putting me in a somewhat better mood), so i decided to stop and get some groceries on my way home.

at the store, i grabbed a few items and headed for the check-out.
the lines were long, so i went to the "15 items or less" line. there was only one woman ahead of me, who had about 30 items that she was already putting on the conveyor.

i politely said, "you do realize this line is for people who have 15 items or less, right?" i was at least expecting a sheepish apology, but no such luck. she began to berate me and tell me to shut up several times.

i was like, "WHAT? oh no you didn't!".

she began pontificating about how i didn't know how to be a human being or treat one, at which point i sardonically said, "well at least i can read."

it only digressed further south from there. :-(

SHE WENT OFF! she was going on and on, and with each insult her resolve in doing the WRONG thing only grew stronger.
what surprised me even more, is that i felt like kitty genovese(if you don't know the story, just wikipedia it). there were at least 3 cashiers listening to her entire diatribe, but NO ONE would say a thing. all sorts of shoppers saw her hurl insults too, but none of them chose to do anything either.
when she finally left, i asked the cashier why she hadn't said anything. she responded, "i did say something to her." i asked, "what did you say?", at which point shockingly she said, "i told her to go ahead and come through because my line wasn't busy." flabbergasted i said, "then why didn't you tell me that or say something to her so that that entire scene didn't have to go down?"
she just laughed. however, i didn't find it remotely amusing.

as i left the store, i thought about several things:

first, i knew that there were MUCH bigger battles to fight, and realized i had just wasted my time and energy on the wrong one.

second, i wondered what would cause the woman to be so knee-jerkingly reactionary. i realized she was wearing a hijab(islamic headscarf) and was african. i wondered if she's been discriminated against a lot in Nordic minnesota, and therefore just goes around on the offensive feeling the need to defend herself. that made me sad, because i put so much effort into bridging cross-cultural communication.
lol, she would probably never believe that!

third, i was reminded of how our culture has slipped into a coma when it comes to doing the right thing. no one ever wants to get involved, and that's really tragic(again, reference the kitty genovese story).

then i brought the it home. i thought about how when any of us do the wrong thing(and we KNOW it's the wrong thing), then, like a trial lawyer we aggressively defend it even if it hurts others. i've been guilty of it, but when i was the recipient today, i realized how awful rationalization really is.

so i said a little prayer asking God to help me to stop excusing anything i know is wrong, and to aid me in trying to always quest after THE Truth, not my truth.

progress, not perfection.

Testimonial from Our Own Sherpa Don

I was a little overwhelmed, at first, to go on a trip to Las Vegas. “Sin City” isn't exactly the cheapest place to travel—especially if you don't know where to eat or stay. Nevertheless, I put my total trust in the Guru, and tagged along into uncharted waters.

My allotment of spending money wasn't much; actually it was just enough to hopefully eat modestly, buy a few small trinkets as souvenirs for my co-workers, and dabble in some gambling. Hope for the best, expect the worse (my motto not only in travel, but life in general).

In the end, I was astonished at how the Guru's Vegas tips aided me in successfully subsisting on my meager budget! Though I didn't win much gambling, I won enough to keep me afloat, and got all my drinks for free. This meant even more money for me to use on tasty, economical food on the Strip (yes, all of our meals were eaten on the Strip); and for better souvenirs to acquire for my friends back home.

When all was said and done, I spent a mere 150 US$ on all food and other necessities while in Vegas, even though my expected expenditure was far, far higher! Couple that with the unbelievably cheap airfare and accommodations that the Guru found (and a free Cirque du Soleil show to boot), a trip that should've totaled well over 1,000 US$ only cost me 550 US$.

‘Wow!’ is all I can say to that.

Sherpa Don, as you know, tags along with the Well-Travelled Guru; and he resides in Saint Paul, MN, United States.

Testimonial from Kathryn Nelson

I love to travel, but as a barista, I didn't know how I was going to be able to afford a trip to Egypt. The airline ticket alone would have cost me a fortune, and I didn't have time to search for flights.

Amazingly, Lorna found a ticket price that I couldn't believe! It allowed me to come home from Egypt with money in my pocket. Who can ever say that after an international trip? Thank you, Well-Travelled Guru! :)

Kathryn Nelson is a barista and a humanitarian from Minneapolis, MN, United States.

Testimonial from Matthew Hope

I was in a bind. I wanted to visit my friend in Norway, but couldn't see any way that I could afford it. That's when Well-Travelled Guru came to my rescue.

Although every airline gave me a minimum price of $1600 from Minneapolis to Oslo and back, Lorna Rockey promised me that she would find me a round trip ticket for under $1400. And so she did. Thanks to Well-Travelled Guru I will be able to visit my friend at peak travel season for only $1300 and some change! That's far less than any other travel agency could offer me.

I also live with a physical disability. Lorna Rockey took that into consideration when making my travel accommodations, and went the extra mile by setting up necessary assistance and special seating on all my flights. It's reassuring not to have to be concerned about getting my needs met as I travel from Minneapolis to Oslo with a white cane.

Whether you're a seasoned traveler, or just looking for a bargain priced new experience, Well-Travelled Guru is well worth checking out.

Matthew Hope is a talented musician who resides in the Twin Cities, MN, United States.

this JUST in...

sherpa don is all abuzz framing our inaugural 10 pataca note, from our very FIRST well-travelled guru happy customer living in Macau. ;-)

OBAMA born in USA, period.

another public service announcement brought to you by the guru...

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/04/25/birthers.obama.hawaii/index.html?hpt=C2

so please give it a rest folks.

Easter meditation...

Jesus, probably THE most enlightened Being ever to walk planet Earth,
chose to die. whoa.
in this world of "it's all about ME", He was born understanding that it's really all about "WE".
personally i am SO grateful for Christ's supreme example of selflessness; as it's such a rare commodity to behold in all it's Glory.
the beauty of Easter is the sacrifice made in death, so that ultimately we all can LIVE.
thanks JC, i owe you(at least) one.

R.I.P. tim hetherington and chris hondros...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/tim-hetherington-chris-hondros-killed-libya_n_851558.html

i was really grieved when i read these young and amazing war photographers/journalists were killed yesterday in the same incident, in misrata, libya.
2 men who fearlessly gave their all, to provide us a safe yet front-row seat into the wars that rage.
i applaud all who have the courage to make a difference, putting their very lives on the line
so that we can become more "awake"; for there are far too many armchair spectators among us.
today i dedicate jack london's credo to tim and chris:

"I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out
in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom
of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to LIVE, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time."

and what a beautiful example of LIVING you both were.
your impact made was immeasureable, and will forever live on.

the scam behind the rise of oil and food prices...

"Phil Davis runs a website and widely read newsletter to monitor stocks and options trades. He's a professional's professional, whose grandfather taught him to buy stocks when he was just ten years old.
His website is Phil's Stock World, and stocks are his world.
He's subtitled the site: "High Finance for Real People.""

this is what phil is vexed about these days...

"It's a scam folks. it's nothing but a huge scam and it's destroying the US economy as well as the entire global economy but no one complains because they are 'only' stealing about $1.50 per gallon from each individual person in the industrialised world.
It's the top 0.01 per cent robbing the next 39.99 per cent – the bottom 60 per cent can't afford cars anyway (they just starve quietly to death, as food prices climb on fuel costs). If someone breaks into your car and steals a $500 stereo, you go to the police, but if someone charges you an extra $30 every time you fill up your tank 50 times a year ($1,500) you shut up and pay your bill. Great system, right?"

whoa. i think phil's on to something folks! read the entire article here:

http://aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/04/2011415143212280315.html

change your words, change your world...

a simple yet relevant concept.

if we are frustrated that we don't seem to be getting our message across, maybe it's not the message or even the messenger that's at fault, but the way we are expressing it that needs to change.

remember: we see the world as WE are, not as it is.

possibly a different approach is needed?

http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=KLW6WGNX

update on what's going on in the Arab world...

'great article that sums up what's happening right now. the guru's just trying to keep ya'll informed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/opinion/13friedman.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

man kills 1, injures 3...

http://www.wsfa.com/Global/story.asp?S=14398749&hpt=T1
what would cause a "normal" person to finally one day just "lose it" and go on a shooting spree? just what is it that tips us over that edge, the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back?
i mean, let's get real here...
we've ALL gotten upset with someone who we feel has done us wrong and/or betrayed us, right?
but what was different the fateful morning this guy got up? just when did he decide to throw ALL reason, logic, AND his future to the dogs?
oddly, he turned himself in after he committed the crimes. can he even comprehend what he's facing now?
as a prison outreach volunteer, i meet these guys face to face often. one guy i know is in FOR LIFE, 'went in when he was 26, and is now 46. he's not the same guy that went in there 2 decades ago, but the law doesn't care much about that.
honestly though, there are so many that should be in prison, but are lucky that they've never been caught. there are the cheaters, philanderers, prevaricators, imposters, embezzlers, users, abusers, addicts, and tax evaders among us(maybe even YOU), who somehow seem to fall between the cracks, never found out and/or prosecuted.
ahhh, but...
"in the Universe there are neither punishments nor rewards, only consequences"

the next time you feel the need to sit in judgment over your neighbor(or that crazy guy who lost his mind and went ballistic), just remember:

 as you're pointing your finger at them...there are 3 pointing back at you.

we are ALL Eman al-Obeidy...

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/04/06/libya.rape.case/index.html?hpt=T2
if you've been following the news of libya, you know her name.
she is the post-graduate law student who was kidnapped @ a libyan checkpoint, held for days, and brutally raped repeatedly by moammer gadhafi's brigades.
can you imagine what that was like, to be sodomized with rifles and have a legion of strange men take their turn beating and raping you for days on end?

nope, me neither. :-(

how does one possibly recover from such heinous inhumanity?

and yet, Eman had the raw courage to go to the hotel where foreign reporters were staying and tell her story; risking her very life to do so.

wow, now THAT'S a hero!
an ordinary human accomplishing an extraordinary feat.

i think about the young relative of khaled said in egypt, that started the ENTIRE revolution(and eventual overthrow of a long-time dictator) just by ONE powerful statement on facebook:

"WE ARE ALL KHALED SAID"

indeed.

aren't we also all Eman al-Obeidy?
doesn't the diminishment of any other diminish us all?

when all is said and done, there is no "us and them", only us.

let's try and live to make that the only reality.

back home and recovering...

sherpa don is ALMOST sober and has decided to let the cat out of the bag...

sherpa don says, "WE WERE IN VIVA LAS VEGAS PEOPLE!!!"

yes we were, and a good time was had by all. ;-)

now we are to the task of planning a bon jour for a client heading to paris soon.
ahhh, paris in the springtime - douce!

more later...

andiamo!

namaste!

i'm the well travelled guru. how well travelled you ask? well, i've been to all 7 continents(yes, i know antarctica is a continent, and yes, i've been there), and to over 90 countries and obscure islands. i dive too, and even have a "shark diving specialist" certification earned abroad in tahiti. (i think that card even trumps a platinum VISA). i've been told by many that my travel expertise should no longer be kept a secret, so now i've decided to pass on all my travel savvy to YOU! it's good karma, and we're all for broadening your horizons. our blog targets those of us who have a “fiji h20 taste, but a tap water budget”. can i get an AMEN?

let's face it…if you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up too much room, right?

and for any of us who have travelled, we know all too well that…

“the world is a book, and those who do not
travel read only a page!” true dat.

so come along with me and my loyal and trusted sherpa don.

you just never know where you'll find us next.

hint: tomorrow, this spiritual dynamic duo is heading out to “sin city” ('capes are packed).

luck be a lady tomorrow!

(don says, “luck? we don't need no stinkin' luck!”).

okay then.