Only two categories today: protest and economy. And as we know, they’re related! BTW: do read the post I put up today, the Rise of the New Economy. It’s exciting!

OCCUPY PROTEST

Here are a few early overviews. Plus stories and testimonials from the vets who held a moving public ceremony to throw away their medals — for the first time since the Vietnam War.

• alternet.org: Protest Roars to Life at Chicago NATO Summit in Face of Violent Police Crackdowns

• truthout.org: Thousands March With Veterans for Peace at Chicago NATO Summit; Police Respond With Brute Force

• dailymail.co.uk: Dozens of vets throw away their ‘shameful’ medals in anti-war protest at NATO summit

• abclocal.go.com/wls/video?id=8669857&syndicate=syndicate&section

• www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8ZSyfrUNkU

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This weekend’s Chicago protests have put a much more public face on NATO. Here’s a background piece for NATO. One thing that surprised me: NATO’s decisions are made by consensus! So if one country doesn’t go along with a decision, it can’t happen! No wonder the U.S. started to feature unilateral-wars-with-”allies.”

• globalresearch.ca: NATO Reality Check: Protestors in Chicago Can Fatally Fracture NATO

_____

Though Chicago took center stage, New York OWS was hard at work: 

• alternet.org: 1000 Protesters Show Up at Geithner’s House to Demand Wall Street Accountability

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NEW ECONOMY

In hard times, the underground or shadow economy takes root. Trades, barter, just plain, open-hearted generosity —  all starts to gain currency. Life simplifies as costly distractions are replaced by human community, by necessity: we either start to depend on one another, or we try to hoard and hide away.

• the nation.com: Where are the Missing Five Million Workers?

____

This isn’t totally related, but maybe it is! You read the story about how Philadelphia is having to downsizing its school system because of “austerity“? Well, maybe that’s a good thing! If you have time, watch this video presentation of one woman’s experience with “unschooling” — that’s where we trust kids to have natural curiosity, and to follow their natures into work and life that’s interesting to them, and therefore most likely productive for society as well. Astra Taylor and her siblings are all very successful in “real world” terms. Plus, she says on the video, ivy league colleges clamor for unschooled kids, since they are self-motivated. Flaunting that fact is, to me, both wonderful and weird. Wonderful, in that it shows how unschooling fosters real education (“educate” from “edu-care”: “to pull out from within”); weird, in that it also cow-tows to the traditional elitist mind-controlling “educational” system. 

• www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwIyy1Fi-4Q

Are you tempted to find out everything you can about what’s right with America? About the real news from everywhere that the 1%-owned corporate media never touches? Then read on. And  you might want to google the urls of each of the features and examples detailed in this compendium. That will take you a while. Researching them all will take you at least a semester, maybe a year. Voila! You’ve just earned yourself, not an MBA (with lots of debt), but actual mastery of how “the new economy” can work, is working — and increasingly, will be settle in as obviously common sense, once the 1% gives up its scared, greedy isolation — by and for the 100%: Earth, humans, and other earthlings.

The Rise of the New Economy Movement

Activists, theorists, organizations and ordinary citizens are rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up.

May 20, 2012  |

by Guy Alperovitz

alternet.org

As our political system sputters, a wave of innovative thinking and bold experimentation is quietly sweeping away outmoded economic models. In ‘New Economic Visions’, a special five-part AlterNet series edited by Economics Editor Lynn Parramore in partnership with political economist Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, creative thinkers come together to explore the exciting ideas and projects that are shaping the philosophical and political vision of the movement that could take our economy back.

Just beneath the surface of traditional media attention, something vital has been gathering force and is about to explode into public consciousness. The “New Economy Movement” is a far-ranging coming together of organizations, projects, activists, theorists and ordinary citizens committed to rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up.

The broad goal is democratized ownership of the economy for the “99 percent” in an ecologically sustainable and participatory community-building fashion. The name of the game is practical work in the here and now—and a hands-on process that is also informed by big picture theory and in-depth knowledge.

Thousands of real world projects — from solar-powered businesses to worker-owned cooperatives and state-owned banks — are underway across the country. Many are self-consciously understood as attempts to develop working prototypes in state and local “laboratories of democracy” that may be applied at regional and national scale when the right political moment occurs.

The movement includes young and old, “Occupy” people, student activists, and what one older participant describes as thousands of “people in their 60s from the ’60s” rolling up their sleeves to apply some of the lessons of an earlier movement.

Explosion of Energy

A powerful trend of hands-on activity includes a range of economic models that change both ownership and ecological outcomes. Co-ops, for instance, are very much on target—especially those which emphasize participation and green concerns. The Evergreen Cooperatives in a desperately poor, predominantly black neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio are a leading example. They include a worker-owned solar installation and weatherization co-op; a state-of-the-art, industrial-scale commercial laundry in a LEED-Gold certified building that uses—and therefore has to heat—only around a third of the water of other laundries; and a soon-to-open large scale hydroponic greenhouse capable of producing three million head of lettuce and 300,000 pounds of herbs a year. Hospitals and universities in the area have agreed to use the co-ops’ services, and several cities—including Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Washington, DC and Amarillo, Texas are now exploring similar efforts.

Other models fit into what author Marjorie Kelly calls the “generative economy”–efforts that inherently nurture the community and respect the natural environment. Organic Valley is a cooperative dairy producer in based in Wisconsin with more than $700 million in revenue and nearly 1,700 farmer-owners. Upstream 21 Corporation is a “socially responsible” holding company that purchases and expands sustainable small businesses. Greyston Bakery is a Yonkers, New York “B-Corporation” (a new type of corporation designed to benefit the public) that was initially founded to provide jobs for neighborhood residents. Today, Greystone generates around $6.5 million in annual sales.

Recently, the United Steelworkers union broke modern labor movement tradition and entered into a historic agreement with the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center to help build worker-owned cooperatives in the United States along the lines of a new “union-co-op” model.

The movement is also serious about building on earlier models. More than 130 million Americans, in fact, already belong to one or another form of cooperative—and especially the most widely known form: the credit union. Similarly, there are some 2,000 municipally owned utilities, a number of which are ecological leaders. (Twenty-five percent of American electricity is provided by co-ops and public utilities.) Upwards of 10 million Americans now also work at some 11,000 employee-owned firms (ESOP companies).

More than 200 communities also operate or are establishing community land trusts that take land and housing out of the market and preserve it for the community. And hundreds of “social enterprises” use profits for social or community serving goals. Beyond these efforts, roughly 4,500 Community Development Corporations and 1.5 million non-profit organizations currently operate in every state in the nation.

The movement is also represented by the “Move Your Money” and “bank transfer day” campaigns, widespread efforts to shift millions of dollars from corporate giants like Bank of America to one or another form of democratic or community-benefiting institution. Related to this are other “new banking” strategies. Since 2010, 17 states, for instance, have considered legislation to set up public banks along the lines of the long-standing Bank of North Dakota.

Several cities—including Los Angeles and Kansas City— have passed “responsible banking” ordinances that require banks to reveal their impact on the community and/or require city officials to only do business with banks that are responsive to community needs. Other cities, like San Jose and Portland, are developing efforts to move their money out of Wall Street banks and into other commercial banks, community banks or credit unions. Politicians and activists in San Francisco have taken this a step further and proposed the creation of a publicly owned municipal bank.

There are also a number of innovative non-public, non-co-op banks—including the New Resource Bank in San Francisco, founded in 2006 “with a vision of bringing new resources to sustainable businesses and ultimately creating more sustainable communities.” Similarly, One PacificCoast Bank, an Oakland-based certified community development financial institution, grew out of the desire to “create a sustainable, meaningful community development bank and a supporting nonprofit organization.” And One United Bank—the largest black-owned bank in the country with offices in Los Angeles, Boston and Miami—has financed more than $1 billion in loans, most in low-income neighborhoods.

Ex-JP Morgan managing director John Fullerton has added legitimacy and force to the debate about new directions in finance at the ecologically oriented Capital Institute. And in several parts of the country, alternative currencies have long been used to help local community building—notably “BerkShares” in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and “Ithaca Hours” in Ithaca, New York.

Active protest efforts are also underway. The Occupy movement, along with many others, has increasingly used direct action in support of new banking directions—and in clear opposition to old. On April 24, 2012 over 1,000 people protested bank practices at the Wells Fargo shareholder meeting in San Francisco. Similar actions, some involving physical “occupations” of bank branches, have been occurring in many parts of the country since the Occupy movement started in 2011. Large-scale demonstrations occurred at the Bank of America’s annual shareholder meeting in May 2012.

What to do about large-scale enterprise in a “new economy” is also on the agenda. A number of advocates, like Boston College professor Charles Derber, contemplate putting worker, consumer, environmental, or community representatives of “stakeholder” groups on corporate boards. Others point to the Alaska Permanent Fund which invests a significant portion of the state’s mineral revenues and returns dividends to citizens as a matter of right. Still others, like David Schweickart and Richard Wolff, propose system-wide change that emphasizes one or another form of worker ownership and management. (In the Schweickart version, smaller firms would be essentially directly managed by workers; large-scale national firms would be nationalized but also managed by workers.) A broad and fast-growing group seeks to end “corporate personhood,” and still others urge a reinvigoration of anti-trust efforts to reduce corporate power. (Breaking up banks deemed too big to fail is one element of this.)

In March 2012, the Left Forum held in New York also heard many calls for a return to nationalization. And even among “Small is Beautiful” followers of the late E. F. Schumacher, a number recall this historic build-from-the-bottom-up advocate’s argument that “[w]hen we come to large-scale enterprises, the idea of private ownership becomes an absurdity.” (Schumacher continuously searched for national models that were as supportive of community values as local forms.)

Theory and Action

A range of new theorists have also increasingly given intellectual muscle to the movement. Some, like Richard Heinberg, stress the radical implications of ending economic growth. Former presidential adviser James Gustav Speth calls for restructuring the entire system as the only way to deal with ecological problems in general and growth in particular. David Korten has offered an agenda for a new economy which stresses small Main Street business and building from the bottom up. (Korten also co-chairs a “New Economy Working Group” with John Cavanagh at the Institute of Policy Studies.) Juliet Schor has proposed a vision of “Plentitude” oriented in significant part around medium-scale high tech industry. My own work on a Pluralist Commonwealth emphasizes a community-building system characterized by a mix of democratized forms of ownership ranging from small co-ops all the way up to public/worker-owned firms where large scale cannot be avoided.

Writers like Herman Daly and David Bollier have also helped establish theoretical foundations for fundamental challenges to endless economic growth, on the one hand, and the need to transcend privatized economics in favor of a “commons” understanding, on the other. The awarding in 2009 of the Nobel Prize to Elinor Ostrom for work on commons-based development underlined recognition at still another level of some of the critical themes of the movement.

Around the country, thinkers are clamoring to meet and discuss new ideas. The New Economy Institute, led primarily by ecologists and ecological economists, hoped to attract a few hundred participants to a gathering to be held at Bard College in June 2012. The event sold out almost two months in advance! An apologetic email went out turning away hundreds who could not be accommodated with the promise of much bigger venue the next year.

And that’s just one example. From April to May 2012, the Social Venture Network held its annual gathering in Stevenson, Washington. The Public Banking Institute gathered in Philadelphia. The National Center for Employee Ownership met in Minneapolis—also to record-breaking attendance. And the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) held a major conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Other events planned for 2012 include the Consumer Cooperative Management Association’s meeting in Philadelphia; the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives’ gathering in Boston; a Farmer Cooperatives conference organized by the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives; and meetings of the National Community Land Trust Network and the Bioneers. The American Sustainable Business Council, a network of 100,000 businesses and 300,000 individuals, has been holding ongoing events and activities throughout 2012.

Daunting Challenges

The New Economy Movement is already energetically involved in an extraordinary range of activities, but it faces large-scale, daunting challenges. The first of these derives from the task it has set for itself—nothing less than changing and democratizing the very essence of the American economic system’s institutional structure.

Even viewed as a long-range goal, the movement obviously confronts the enormous entrenched power of an American political economic system dominated by very large banking and corporate interests—and bolstered by a politics heavily dependent on the financial muscle of elites at the top. (One recent calculation is that
400 individuals at the top now own more wealth than the bottom 160 million.)

A second fundamental challenge derives from the increasingly widespread new economy judgment that economic growth must ultimately be reduced, indeed, even possibly ended if the dangers presented by climate change are to be avoided—and if resource and other environmental limits are to be responsibly dealt with.

Complicating all this is the fact that most labor unions—the core institution of the traditional progressive alliance—are committed to growth as absolutely essential (as the economy is now organized) to maintaining jobs.

History dramatizes the implacable power of the existing institutions—until, somehow, that power gives way to the force of social movements. Most of those in the New Economy movement understand the challenge as both immediate and long-term: how to put an end to the most egregious social and economically destructive practices in the near term; how to lay foundations for a possible transformation in the longer term.

And driving the movement’s steady build up, day by day, year by year, is the growing economic and social pain millions of Americans now experience in their own lives—and a sense that something fundamental is wrong. The New Economy Movement speaks to this reality, and just possibly, despite all the obstacles—as with the civil rights, feminist, environmental and so many other earlier historic movements—it, too, will overcome. If so, the integrity of its goals and the practicality of its developmental work may allow it to help establish foundations for the next great progressive era of American history. It is already adding positive vision and practical change to everyday life.

Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, is a Founding Principal of The Democracy Collaborative, as well as historian, political economist, and writer.

I couldn’t agree with this more. If life as we know it has not been stirred up, drug up for review, and increasingly, subject to instantaneous reversal and renewal, then we are not awake and alive to the volatility and promise of these turbulent times.

I read (no, skim) the sweetness and light and heaven-is-just-around-the-corner “new age” stuff. And I read (skim) the all-hell’s-breaking-loose, world’s-about-to-end, dig-in -and-pack-a gun-paranoid stuff. I read the galactic and angelic and other channelled stuff and I read the feet-on-the-ground permaculture stuff. And I try to see where and how and why any of it meets with my reality, my experience.

Honoring my experience, my genuine, authentic, living and breathing body/mind/spirit self in relation to the world within and around me,  I point my nose in the direction of regeneration, moment by moment by moment, as, all around us, the old world decorporatizes even as it tries to take total control.

Never, ever, underestimate the power of the life force. The life force inside Earth. The life force inside us. The universe is an infinite, ever-replenishing ocean, flooding our hearts, fueling our action, birthing worlds within worlds within worlds.

Or it can be. And will be. Once we wake up.

Thanks to Pamela, for the pointer.

Wake Up and Live

May 21, 2012

by Abdi Assadi

huffpost.com

In this moment, if our inner or outer life is not or has not been turned upside down, we are sleepwalking. We are just imitating some lame spiritual practice that is keeping our status quo. Self-hypnosis and denial can and do take many forms, including spirituality. In matters of Self, culture is not our friend. Its only interest is its own propagation, which involves keeping us asleep. Friends that do not challenge us are not true friends. The new age movement is certainly not our friend, rather a wolf in sheep’s clothing, lulling us to a cozy sleep. Despite the teachings in vogue, we cannot become aware of the depths of our being without disturbing the routines of our comfortable lifestyle. Beware of false prophets interested (and taking billions!) in profits.

Meanwhile, the day before I had begun sporadic internet research on “Alcyone,” its symbolic import, given that Alcyone would be directly hooked up to the Earth/Moon/Sun straight line that the eclipse would present.

I also read lots of channelings on what that hook-up with Alcyone and the Pleiades meant, but, as usual, most of them “went right over my head.” Not that I’m stupid. I just couldn’t absorb them. They weren’t for me.

A few months ago I read a book by John Lash, Quest for the Zodiac: the Cosmic Code Beyond Astrology, and it affected me deeply. I have been a student and practioner of astrology since the mid-70s, and though I was “interested” in the larger sky beyond our solar system, and since childhood have experienced times when I literally whoosh into the cosmos on particularly starry nights, I hadn’t really paid much attention to the larger sky as a sky map.  John Lash was also interested in that larger sky, and his interest propelled him to look at astrology from this larger viewpoint. As a comparative mythologist, he assumes that larger archetypal patterns are being re-enacted, over and over again, and that if we could really “read” the heavens, we might understand those patterns and incorporate this understanding into our evolving collective psyche.

However, I didn’t get much from that book on how to actually read the heavens! And I wasn’t getting much yesterday and the day before on how to read “Alcyone.”

So, in late morning, I wrote my final post on the upcoming eclipse by simply identifying Alycone as the star in the sky that the arrow of the Earth/Moon/Sun line-up would be pointing to, and noted that the name “Alcyone” is feminine, and that the etymology of the word is significant. I also indicated, by the use of the word “matrix,” that Alcyone lies beyond the tension field of human conditioning that we have been subjected to all these centuries via, in part, by the cabal’s use of astrological configurations of the planets to trigger or amplify pre-planned events.

Actually, have I ever said that directly? I really don’t know if I figured that out myself. I might have. It seems to me that all of a sudden that kind of overall understanding just plopped into place!  The recent post by Nick Fiorenza hints in the same direction. 

Over lunch yesterday I read a sheaf of papers I had printed out that were selections from Barbara Hand Clow’s The Pleiadian Agenda, which I had read eons ago, and at the time considered incredibly “far out.” Not that I didn’t “believe” what she said; again, I just couldn’t open to her level of complexity and dimensionality. So there I was, yesterday, reading through material from this book again, and I realized that I have apparently mutated or evolved somewhat from when I first read that book.

I am reminded of when I first read psychiatrist Ronald D. Laing, his The Divided Self, back in the middle ’60s. The first time I read this book I dismissed it as simple-minded and stupid. One year later, I read it again, and this time I was stunned to recognize it as the simple truth!

In between those two readings, via a near-death experience, I had awakened to my own essence, or self, or soul, and was no longer identified with my persona or mask. The difference between these two “selves,” the authentic, original, real-me and the socialized, conditioned, brain-washed pretend-me, felt drastic. How would I learn to get along in the world of pretend-selves, now that I had flipped out of it?

My experience of reading selections from The Pleiadian Agenda yesterday felt similar, in that about 60% of it I could now not only recognize, but identify with as my own experience. The other 40% still escapes me, but hey, I’m still learning! And who knows,  that book was written in 1995. And reality shifts. Who knows how Barbara would alter what she said, or channeled, there now.

Late yesterday afternoon I went to the hospital to see a friend of mine whose life has been periodically interrupted by a hereditary illness that leaves her devastated. In speaking with her, I felt deeply moved by the sense of her strength as a mother, her mothering energy, her deeply caring nature.

I thought of Alcyone, whose name means “calm,” and the seven days of the year when the winds were calmed, the halcyon days, when she laid her eggs . . .

But all this is prelude.

So. I had determined that I would do ceremony at the time of the eclipse. And that I would start probably around 8:30 p.m. (EDT) and go for about an hour. I planned to do the New Moon ceremony that I have done for many years, that I did with my husband Jeff when he was alive. This involves sitting in meditation for awhile, writing down what I “got” in meditation, if anything (or, when he was alive, telling each other), then consulting different oracles, including tarot, runes, and some animal cards. Though I haven’t done these ceremonies regularly for awhile, I knew it would be good to do one this time, with special emphasis, given that it was also an eclipse, with a global meditation. The May 5th Full Moon Global Meditation, for me, had been extremely significant.

Here is the story of my May 5th meditation experience.

But when the time came to go into ceremony last night, I rebelled. I didn’t want to get out the little rug that I got in Peru and place upon it my special crystals. I didn’t want to light a candle in the center and call in the four directions. I didn’t want to gather my oracle tools, and my journal, for writing down what went on during my meditation. No, what I wanted to do was simply sit. And, it turns out, walk, then sit again, and yet again, each time in a different spot. Here’s what went on.

The first time was actually prelude. Around 8:15 p.m., I was out on my screened in front porch, half lying, half sitting on chaise lounge there, reading.

And happened to close my eyes. And I felt the whole earth humming . . . humming with energy, as if tremendously, ferociously alive. This feeling was instantaneous and shocking in its intensity.

And not just Earth, but her atmosphere. And not just her atmosphere, but all of space, all of the cosmos, all and everything, a vast field of energy humming, globules of light  dancing burbling birthing . . .

I’ve known about this field of possibilities, this zero point field, the presence of Being, the plenum within which forms arise and fall — and I’ve sensed it experientially for years. But never before did I feel I was vibrating with Earth from inside her, rather like being inside one of the hot  springs in Yellowstone, a sense of energy onrushing up, boiling over, but coming from everywhere,  an effervescent bath of birthing beauty.

So that’s why I didn’t get out the Peruvian blanket and the crystals! I decided to go with my experience instead.

I decided to sit again, this time in a big red chair with my spine erect.

Again, the same experience, though not quite so powerful, as it was inside the house, rather than surrounded by Nature on the porch.

The energy of Earth was calling me. I got my puppy Shadow’s leash and we took a ten minute walk around the neighborhood, with me absorbed in the greenery, the flowers, the sounds of birds and insects, the colors of the sky. At one point I saw a chem trail — or was it a contrail? — very heavy and fluffy, taking up about 15 degrees of the western sky, and in the middle of that was a blank space that looked circular, blue like the sky, but slightly different color of blue that did make it look circular. Odd. A cloaked craft? A few minutes later the con (chem) trail had disappeared, and with it, that blue circle.

All the while, very aware of my body moving through space, breathing in and out, alive and in love with the soft breezes caressing my face, neck, arms, legs . . .

Then I came back home and decided to go into the GANG garden and sit there for awhile, near the pond. Again, with spine straight.

This time, not only did I feel Earth’s aliveness, I could feel a thrumming, strumming coming up through my legs, really strong. As if the water was magnifying the original experience of Her aliveness. Really strong now. Stunningly strong.

Since I am a chi kung/taichi practitioner, I am quite accustomed to chi energy coming from above and below, down and up through my body as transmitter and transformer of the universal energy. And of course I could feel the energy bathing from above in my meditation as well. But the energy from below!   Oh.    My.    Goddess!!

And finally, once it was dark, I went and sat, facing the house, with my back to the tulip tree in my front yard. I could feel his young vibrancy, his pride of accomplishment.  His job, he said, was to hold the front yard in place. How was he doing?

Still the thrumming, the aliveness, the burbling beauty of Nature’s stunning strength. But now an individual connection, with this young tree. This adolescent male’s warrior/servant energy. I told him he was doing a fine job.

Here he is again, with the street behind him. He’s shot up to about three stories high. When I first got here, nine years ago, he was the size of the more recently planted little trees, in front of him.

And that’s it folks! My experience of, it turns out, Earth’s turn-on during yesterday’s annular eclipse.

This is one video among no doubt thousands of others taken on that historic day. Which ones shall become iconic? Which to burn in memory? Which will drive us onward?

How many views that we remember, and cherish, will be peaceful, how many not? How to decide what to remember? How to be grateful for all that is, all of it, including the thunderstorms that blessed Bloomington, four hours south of Chicago, a few hours later, too?

On this momentous day, it felt very significant to come across a wonderful article and video on beforeitsnews.com, “How Life Recovers from Devastation” that shows, from NASA satellite views, how Mt. St. Helens has been transforming since it erupted in 1980. Of course, the article made my heart sing.

And yet I couldn’t help think about radiation, and Fukushima, and the increasing alarm about long term devastation for Japan, the Pacific Ocean, the northern hemisphere, the entire globe! What kind of recovery is possible from such massive radiation? — or do we have to count on the Galactics to clean it up. I know a lot of “light workers” are begging for this kind of savior drama to rescue us, but I’d rather think that Gaia and  Gaians can clean up after ourselves, thank you!

Shortly after the Fukushima disaster, I stumbled upon an article by Paul Stametz, re: the possibility of remediation its radiation with mushrooms, and posted it to this blog.

Today, googling “radiation and mushrooms,” I discovered a remarkable 2008 article about Chernobyl, how not only does everything in the area seem to be thriving, but mushrooms, found inside the doomed reactor, appear to be not just neutralizing radiation, but utilizing it to fuel growth, turning it into other forms of energy. [my emphasis — A.K.]

Let us never, ever, underestimate the capacity of the life force to regenerate. And that goes not just for Earth, but for our own individual natures as well. Even when we feel most alone, most victimized, most down-and-out, there’s always something surprising just ahead if we allow it.

How do we allow it? 

Open!

How do we open?

By cultivating gratitude.

Silent spring

Credit: Nigel Buchanan

Related articles

• Cleaning up depleted uranium with fungi
• Eight creatures that live on the edge
• Fungi can transfer chromosomes
• Natural bleach-job: why hair turns grey
• Contamination scenarios from Fukushima

TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO, on 26 April 1986, reactor No 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in Ukraine, blew apart, spewing radioactive dust and debris far and wide.

Ever since, a 30 km ‘exclusion zone’ has existed around the contaminated site, accessible to those with special clearance only. It’s quite easy, then, to conjure an apocalyptic vision of the area; to imagine an eerily deserted wasteland, utterly devoid of life.

But the truth is quite the opposite. The exclusion zone is teeming with wildlife of all shapes and sizes, flourishing unhindered by human interference and seemingly unfazed by the ever-present radiation. Most remarkable, however, is not the life buzzing around the site, but what’s blooming inside the perilous depths of the reactor.

Sitting at the centre of the exclusion zone, the damaged reactor unit is encased in a steel and cement sarcophagus. It’s a deathly tomb that plays host to about 200 tonnes of melted radioactive fuel, and is swarming with radioactive dust.

BUT IT’S ALSO THE ABODE of some very hardy fungi which researchers believe aren’t just tolerating the severe radiation, but actually harnessing its energy to thrive.

“Our findings suggest that [the fungi] can capture the energy from radiation and transform it into other forms of energy that can be used for growth,” said microbiologist Arturo Casadevall from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York, USA.

Fungi are weird, yes. They chow down on everything from decaying plant matter to the more exotic fare of asbestos and jet fuel. But being able to produce their own energy, independent of an actual food source, and use dangerous ionising radiation to boot? That’s very new and very exciting, Casadevall says.

In 1999, a robot sent to map the inside of the reactor returned with samples of a particularly black fungi, indicating an abundance of the biological pigment melanin, which also colours your skin.

Though melanin is typically associated with ‘protective’ properties – absorbing and safely transforming different electromagnetic wavelengths, such as DNA-damaging ultraviolet light – the researchers had an inkling that a more extraordinary phenomenon was allowing the fungi to prosper; something still involving the combination of melanin and radiation, but beyond the bounds of radioactive protection.

After all, even without melanin, many fungi are intrinsically radiation-resistant.

123Continued on next page

Please pay attention to the Nick Fiorenza post, re: this evening’s annular solar eclipse, planetary configurations, and earthquakes.

Let us recognize that our bodies are antennas for the Earth body.

Let us imagine earthquakes as Earth (and our own bodies) quaking (waking up) to align with the larger awareness that bathes and vivifies the body.

Let us imagine earthquakes as sudden major shifts within our body/mind/soul that break us free of limiting patterns, our break through to communion with the cosmos.

Please remember to meditate during this eclipse event — in whatever way speaks to you.

I personally, am going to do a New Moon ceremony, visioning the line-up of the three bodies — Earth, Moon, Sun — as a sharp arrow that pierces the membrane of the matrix of our tiny solar system and flies straight, true, and unerring, into Alcyone, the heart of the Pleiades.

“Alcyone,” from askdefine.com:

“One of the Pleiades; daughter of Aeolus and wife of Ceyx. When her husband died in a shipwreck, Alcyone threw herself into the sea whereupon the gods transformed them both into halcyonbirds (kingfishers). When Alcyone made her nest on the beach, waves threatened to destroy it. Aeolus restrained his winds and made the waves be calm during seven days in each year, so she could lay her eggs. These became known as the “halcyon days“, when storms never occur. [My emphasis — A.K.]

Alcyone, mother goddess, implacable, calm serenely embracing all her eggs, all her children.

And we are all children, naive and innocent. No matter how much we think we know, compared to what we don’t know, our ignorance is infinite.

Open, open, open.

Together, we shift emergency into emergence.

A Victory for All of Us

Thanks to huffpost.com.

NATO Summit 2012: Protesters Charged With Terror Conspiracy

I appreciate this Laura Bruno post that honors the darkness in us all, and likens it to compost in which new life germinates. In my own life, since my 40s I have been consciously eating (and enjoying) my own shadow — the parts of me that lurk in the darkness of the unconscious, the parts that are “ugly” or “bad,”  the parts that my ego does not want to see. Yet how else, in a 3D world, do I become whole? In the world of duality, every strong light throws a shadow, and the stronger the light the stronger the shadow. Absorb and integrate!

You might want to work this kind of understanding into your meditation during tomorrow’s eclipse. 

Thanks to shiftfrequency.com.