Michael Tobias and the Club of Budapest

My long time friend, collaborator, and mentor, Michael Tobias was invited last year into the small, very prestigious circle of global citizens known as the Club of Budapest.  The members of this distinguished collective include Jane Goodall, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, Mohammed Yunus, and the Dalai Lama.

Michael Tobias and friend

I have been privileged to work with Michael Tobias for nearly 25 years. I have never known a more knowledgeable, decent, and compassionate person.  That he should be invited into this very rare circle of global citizens is an enduring testament to his truly exceptional life.

Here is a link to Michael Tobias' presentation at the January 2015 meeting of the Club of Budapest in Hungary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0V6SPfuSz0

Save the Planet - Eat Less or No Meat

According to one estimate, humans kill and eat one hundred fifty billion animals every year.   Farmed livestock, animals like chickens, cattle, hogs,  have been reduced from living creatures to industrial commodities. With rare exceptions, these living creatures are propagated, raised, and ultimately slaughtered with only one thing in mind; minimize costs, maximize profit, the suffering of the animals be damned.

The public indifference to this brutal brand of industrial efficiency diminishes us all. Too often, compassion only extends to other humans, and that is only some of the time.  For too many people, a slab of meat is just something for sale in a supermarket.  Like I said, that attitude diminishes us all.

The article below is from the Huffington Post. It offers the conclusions of a study that puts sobering perspective on the cost of our heavily meat dependent eating habits. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture  organization, about 18 percent of all greenhouse gases contributing to climate change come from the billions of large animals raised industrially for human consumption.  That's nearly a fifth of the total. 

A conclusion that's easy to draw is that eating less meat will reduce the production of greenhouse gases. It's a simple step that every thoughtful person can take.  Not only is  reducing meat consumption good for one's health, it's also a very good thing for the planet. 

Eat less meat. Without question, it is an act of compassion Good for your health, good for the planet, good for your soul. 

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A new study on the environmental burdens of beef, pork, chicken, eggs, dairy and plant products finds that beef is by far the worst offender.

According to the study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a prominent scientific journal, beef production releases five times the amount of greenhouse gas emissions as the average of other meats and animal products. Nor is that all: Beef requires 28 times more land, 11 times more water, and six times as much reactive nitrogen as the average of the other categories, according to the study.

To calculate the impact of different animal products, the study's authors looked at the environmental effects of producing feed for animals, taking into account land use, water consumption and the potential for nitrogen pollution from fertilizers. (When excess nitrogen leaches into a body of water, it can cause algal blooms that deplete local levels of oxygen and cause harm to other marine organisms.) The researchers also calculated the amount of greenhouse gas given off by the animals themselves, including methane from manure. Ultimately, for each meat or animal product, the researchers were able to determine the amount of resources used to produce one calorie of that product.

When asked about the easiest and most effective way to make one's diet more sustainable, Gidon Eshel, a research professor at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and the study's lead author, told The Huffington Post: "Really, there's no question about it. Reduce beef whenever possible."
Past research has shown that meat production contributes to global warming at a much higher rate than the cultivation of grains and vegetables. A recent study in the U.K. analyzed the diets of 55,000 people and found that the meat-eaters had twice the carbon footprint of the vegans. But if you're not ready to give up meat entirely, Eshel's study shows that you can have a big impact by just forgoing beef.

The no-beef lifestyle has its high-profile proponents. Earlier this month, business mogul Richard Branson wrote a blog post about his decision to cut beef out of his diet, noting that it was surprisingly easy to accomplish and has made him feel healthier. "I never feel like I'm missing out on anything," Branson wrote.

Eshel told HuffPost that despite a wealth of research into the benefits of a plant-based diet, "people seem unfazed by that in their consumption." Actually, though, meat consumption, and beef consumption in particular, have been on the decline in the United States in recent years. The USDA is projecting that this year, consumption of beef will be the lowest per capita since the 1950s. Whether that's because of rising meat costs, health considerations or growing pro-environment sentiment is difficult to say.

Eshel told HuffPost that maintaining an environmentally friendly diet is harder than marketers often make it seem.

"I really appreciate the good intentions of many individuals who strive in their personal choices to lessen their environmental impact," he said. "I would just caution ... against adhering to canned solutions that are purported to make matters better with little or no evidence that they in fact do."
Just because the meat in your meal is "grass-fed" or "local" doesn't necessarily mean it's good for the planet, said Eshel. More important are details like: Where was the animal raised? What was the climate of that area? What were the specific farming methods used? Someimes, Esehl said, "grass-feeding" can be even worse for the environment than the traditional corn-fed approach.
If the idea of swearing off meat turns your stomach, you can try the "vegan till 6" plan favored by New York Times food writer Mark Bittman. Or you can experiment with the popular Meatless Mondays. One thing's for sure: With animal agriculture responsible for about one-fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, there's a lot of room for improvement.

Sea Turtle Saved By Diver

I really enjoy stories that showcase  humans asserting themselves in acts of kindness toward other living creatures.  This story just appeared on the net. It's a diver in the ocean. He comes across a sea turtle that has a large piece of fishing net wrapped tightly around its left front flipper.  The turtle doesn't struggle or try to get away. It remains quiet and unmoving as the diver cuts away the net. When the turtle is free, it doesn't flee. It swims toward the diver and eyes him face to face.

Turtles can't talk or express emotion, unless of course they are the teenage ninja species of turtle. But, in this instance, the sea turtle's behavior seems to reflect a connection with the diver, a calm appreciation for the kindness extended to it.

Anyway, if you appreciate acts of kindness, this video will give you a lift. Here's the link to the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSCbpcpjJl4

Hope on Earth

Hope on Earth, is a highly engaging dialogue between two  remarkable human beings,  Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, President of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology,  and global ecologist/author/anthropologist/filmmaker Michael Tobias.   Ehrlich is best known for The Population Bomb, a book co-written with his wife Anne more than four decades ago.  I should mention that I was a young man when I read the Ehrlich’s book back when it first came out.  Chilling as its message was, then and now, that book had a profound impact on my understanding of the world.  Dr. Tobias’ work is also well known to me. He is the author of more than fifty books, including World War III – Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium and, with his colleague, partner, and wife, Jane Gray Morrison,  Sanctuary – Global Oasis of Innocence. Tobias has also had a distinguished career as a film maker – more than 150 productions - on subjects (mostly non-fiction, but some fiction) related to animal rights’, biodiversity, and humanity’s tenuous relationship with the environment.  Tobias is also the long-time President of The Dancing Star Foundation, a global animal protection, biodiversity conservation, and environmental education non-profit.

 

 

 

Both men have spent much of  their lives investigating and reporting on the massively expanded pressure on our biosphere caused by human population growth.  To put this in perspective, the number of people on Earth when The Population Bomb was first published in 1968 was 3.5 billion. In all of human history, it took till then to get to 3.5 billion. In the 46 years since that time, the population has more than doubled to 7.25 billion. This massive human expansion is not sustainable. The Earth’s resources are finite. We humans are pushing our freshwater, our farmland, our forests, our marine resources rapidly  to exhaustion. Our dependence on fossil fuels like oil and coal is pumping billions of tons of pollutants into the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a planetary warming that puts the very livability of our tiny dot in the galaxy at great risk. Human exploitation is pushing unprecedented numbers of plant and animal species to the point of extinction.  In fact, the consensus seems to be, for humanity to live within the planet’s long term ability to provide sustenance for most sentient beings, including Homo Sapiens,  the human population should no more than about one to two billion.  The current condition for humanity is one of extreme overreach.  Can we turn it around? Can we change our ways sufficiently to roll back  human demand so it does not exceed the planet’s ability to provide?   

Ehrlich and Tobias are skeptical. Despite that, they remain hopeful. They have both  been aggressively sounding a warning for decades. They both clearly detest the general state of public indifference, and even hostility in some cases,  despite the powerful warning signals we are getting from nature; signals like the melting of our glaciers and the collapse of the polar icecaps, the increasing incidents of extreme draught, wildfire, floods, and massive and highly destructive weather events like Hurricane Sandy and Super Typhoon Haiyan. 

In Hope on Earth, Ehrlich warns, “The past is over. We’re here now, and we’d better damn well make our ethical decisions.”  He goes on to say, “If we don’t solve the issues of population growth and consumption, all the rest of these issues won’t stand a chance of being remedied.”

Ehrlich and Tobias agree that humanity must find a path to achieving critical mass in awareness, and beyond that, a thoughtful, ethical approach to the unprecedented global-scale challenges that have emerged. The course we are on is a dead end.

I really enjoyed reading Hope on Earth. In the end, it is a dialogue about ethics. I loved being a fly on the wall, absorbing this great conversation between two exceptional minds, who understand and care deeply about the ugly turn human history has taken. Their prescription: Wake up and embrace a life-affirming cultural paradigm built on a foundation of compassion, and commitment to planetary stewardship. Do it now, before it is too late.

I give five stars to Hope on Earth. Highest recommendation.

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A Hen and her Little Boy Friend

I love this video.  It's a little boy opening his arms to a chicken, and it comes to him and accepts a warm hug.  Pretty amazing, and a beautiful thing to see. How lucky this hen is. Poultry rarely gets anything close to kindness from humans   How many billions of these docile birds are killed and turned into McNuggets and drumsticks every year.  They have been reduced to commodities on a balance sheet, and their lives are an endless, horrific cruelty in the name of cost savings and profit.

H.G. Wells wrote a book called, The Time Machine. In it, a 19th century man created a machine that carried him into a distant future, where he found humans living a seemingly idyllic life. Only later did he learn the dominant species were a grotesque deviation of humanoid called Morlocks, who raised humans to live only long enough to mature, whereupon they were killed and eaten.  At least in that instance, the Morlocks  allowed their human food stock a few years of cruelty-free existence.  Animals raised for human consumption these days get nothing like that. Chickens are jammed in cages from the time they hatch. Their feet become infected from standing on wire mesh all day, every day. Their beaks are cut off to prevent them from pecking each other, thus damaging their commoditized flesh.  It diminishes us as humans to treat other creatures this way.

The boy in this video has been taught to express empathy to his feathered friends, and they in turn have learned to trust him. Yes, it's idealistic, but kindness is always a wonderful thing to witness.

Here is the video of a hen accepting some love from a little boy...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxo1mZeY68&feature=youtu.be

Wild Dolphin Asks for Help

A group of scuba divers off the coast of Hawaii were surprised by a dolphin that approached them underwater. The animal had a fishing line and hook caught in its pectoral fin and wrapped around the fin, restricting its motion. The dolphin was looking for help. One of the divers cut away the line trapping the fin.  The interaction between the divers and the dolphin is beautiful. Compassion is a wonderful thing to witness.

Here is the video link to a wild dolphin asking for help... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL9I4BxuryY

Jackson Katz on Gender Bias and Violence

I never heard of this guy, but I like what he says.  I found a link to his TED talk on Facebook.  Turns out his work is focused on training men in the military, on sports teams, in business, and in other venues to become leaders in standing up to gender bias and violence. His paradigm is simple, but also formidable.  He wants men in positions of power and influence to take the lead in calling out instances where women, or any other ethnic or gender category persons, are subjected to verbal abuse or violent behavior. 

Acting like a clueless prick doesn't take balls. The courage lies with those who stand up to that brand of mindless misanthropy. Let's face it, some women are jerks, but most jerks are male, and those jerks need to be called out when the step over the line. That's how the line gets redrawn.

Jackson Katz

Here is Jackson Katz's TED talk on gender bias and violence... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvSfeCRxe8

Lucky

A video to warm the heart.  In Fresno, California, firefighter, Cory Kalanick enters a smoke filled house with a GoPro video camera mounted on his helmet. Searching for survivors, he finds a kitten lying unconscious. Enough said.  Check out the video.  The kitten, who survived,  was given the name, 'Lucky'.

Here is the video of  'Lucky' being rescued and bought back form the brink...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjB_oVeq8Lo

Wisdom from an Atomic Icon

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a very smart human person.  He is known mostly for his physical theories of how the world works. We have  atomic bombs and nuclear power because of Einstein, though neither of these things were part of any intention he had for his work.

Einstein was also known for his wisdom, which often revealed his kind and compassionate nature.  I found the Einstein quote below in Threshold, a book by Thom Hartmann,  who, like Einstein, is a man of great wisdom.

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
                                                                                                     Albert Einstein

Getting Naked for PETA

So here's the latest work from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - PETA - in their no holds barred campaign to make people think about eating meat, wearing fur, and being, in general, indifferent to the suffering and abuse of the wild and domestic animals with whom we share planet Earth.

PETA, led by a force of nature named Ingrid Newkirk, is engaged in a full on assault on the public consciousness. For the average person, the path of least resistance is to take an 'out of sight, out of mind'  attitude toward the meat they eat and the animal products they buy.  PETA's approach is to find ways to deliver stark 'wake-up calls' that reach the average person's soul.

The PETA  I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur campaign has aggressively and skillfully combined advertising technique and celebrity support to discredit the fur industry.  They have made it unfashionable, even socially unacceptable, to wear fur coats or any kind of clothing made from animal skins.

 

 

 

PETA produces public service videos that extol the benefits of a vegetarian diet, while showing the gut wrenching cruelty inflicted on millions of chickens, cattle,  pigs, fish, and other animal species killed every day to feed our need for burgers, fillets, cutlets, and other types of cooked animal flesh.

Here's a fact. It takes about ten pounds of grain and a lot of water to produce one pound of meat.  History shows that humans can be very healthy eating lower on the food chain.  Not everyone is going to become a vegetarian. I get that. But, everyone can consume less meat,  much less meat.  This step embraced by humanity would take us very far down the road to a future that is compatible with nature. It is a step that would save every one of us money. It is an essential way to keep life as we know it going over the long term.

Compassion is a way of being worthy of our species. Kindness is the quality I admire most in people.  Such people try to avoid causing pain or suffering.  They are certainly not indifferent  to it, when they are fully aware of it.

PETA is using sex to get the public's attention.  Good for them.  I have developed projects that do the same thing.  

In the case of the In Your Own Skin' print ads and video,  PETA features beautiful young women to lure in viewers, then they reveal 'in your face' clips of human brutality to animals. You are confronted with the ugly reality PETA wants you to see.  If you look, and you are a compassionate person,  you cannot be indifferent.

Here is a link to the PETA website ... http://www.peta.org/

Here is a link to  the  In Your Own Skin video  PSA that features four gorgeous beauty queens getting naked for PETA.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/13/miss-usa-winners-peta-pose-naked_n_3436503.html#slide=2184928

Tickling a Hedgehog

Hedgehogs are funny little creatures. They appear to be some kind of rodent that has armored fur covering much of its body.   In fact they are not rodents. They belong in a mammalian family known as Erinaceidae.  If you want to know more than that, click on this link.

Despite their prickly armor,  some people seem to like having Hedgehogs as pets.  It's not hard to understand when you see the sweet interaction between this little 'Hedgie' and its human tickle giver.

Here is a link to tickling a hedgehog...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIEdetUheyI

The Right Way of Being

I have thought a lot about the right way of being. All my years, I have thought about it. My ideas have evolved  over time. As I sit here now, having made the transition onto the down slope of life,   my sense of right and wrong has become pretty clear. It seems there are some basic characteristics of being that are good and decent and should be embraced by pretty much everyone. I'm thinking of personal traits like  kindness, compassion, honesty, humility, and tolerance. I'm thinking of an appreciation for the natural world, and a sense of personal obligation to tread lightly and protect the biosphere for future generations. I'm thinking of a decided preference for non-violence and reasonable accommodation over confrontation and bluster.

Unfortunately, too much of what happens here on planet Earth  is driven by greed, intolerance, and self-absorbed sociopathy.  That's really nothing new.  Human history has been a constant struggle between good and evil. Sociopathy is about seeking the path of least resistance, no matter who or how many you have to step on to get where you're going. Many of the biggest, most infamous, leaders in history got to the top of the mountain by stepping on the bodies of countless others.

The same thing is happening now. Look at the behavior of the biggest share of those people that dominate the news and influence the direction of society.  The blog entry just before this one is a perfect example. The leaders of two of the biggest industrial chemical producers are paying out millions in influence money to lobbyists and elected officials to protect their profits on a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids.  These men - virtually of all of them are men -  have risen to the top of their corporate mountains precisely because they focus on profit to the exclusion of all else. As a consequence, their neonicotinoid chemicals kill not just pest insects but massive numbers of songbirds and honeybees.  As I said earlier,  this unsavory brand of  singlemindedness has always been a prominent part of the historical landscape. The human chronology, in my estimation, is roughly a reflection of a simple, 'two steps forward, one step back' paradigm. 

No question, human civilization has made great strides since we evolved from living in caves,  but the journey from then to now has been marked by fits and starts caused by human greed and sociopathy. If it weren't for Kaiser Wilhelm, would we have had World War One?  If it weren't for Hitler and Tojo, would we  have had World War Two?  If it weren't for Stalin and Mao, would we have had a three decade long 'cold' war.  If it weren't for Cheney, Bush, and their cabal of neocons, would their have been a second war in Iraq? 

What's different about now is the amount of damage and destruction that can be unleashed by a small number of people who are indifferent to the consequences of their actions. In our times, never have so few been responsible for so much damage, suffering, and destruction.  Cheney and Bush for example; they lied our country into a war with Saddam that has cost thousands of American lives, perhaps a million or more Iraqi lives, and trillions of taxpayer dollars squandered in a bloody conflict that never should have happened.

An awful lot of what passes for leadership these days is spawned from a decidedly sociopathic world view.  That appears to be happening because, like in so any generations before,  people with that ethically unhinged mindset have an advantage because they are willing to to do 'whatever it takes' to get to the top. 

The world we live in is evolving very fast. The technologies we depend on are becoming ever more complex. Democracy requires that its citizens be capable of making good decisions when it comes to choosing who will lead us into the future. My way of being is skeptical about the motives of leaders who foster greed, intolerance, and self-interest. It's not that hard to spot them. They are naturally attracted to the limelight. They aggressively push fear, intolerance, and divisiveness.

I am not suggesting there is only one right way of being. But, the character traits I mentioned early on in this piece are common to what I regard as right ways of being. People who are part of the solution to the grand challenges we face together see the world inclusively rather than exclusively.  They are generous rather than selfish, kind and empathetic rather than indifferent, and are able to consider unfamiliar ideas thoughtfully, without prejudice.  Moreover, they value the biosphere and recognize its limits. They see themselves as stewards of the natural world. They reject violence and mindless exploitation.  This to me is not only the right way of being, its also very much the smartest and best way of being.

Norman Rockwell

Illustrator or artist? That was the big question about Norman Rockwell. 

When I was growing up, there was a weekly magazine called The Saturday Evening Post.  The Post, which is still puiblished as a bi-monthly, has a long history. It actually published it's first edition in  1728, and was once owned by Benjamin Franklin. 

Norman Rockwell was famous in part for the cover art he created for the Post.

Rockwell's work is photo-realistic. Brilliantly so.  His art reflected America, in some cases at least, perhaps more as we wished it to be than it actually was.  Rockwell's paintings were about values like goodness, and decency, and kindness, and courage, and virtue.

Thanksgiving - Rockwell style

Norman Rockwell's work also often reflected more than a little whimsy and fun, as is amply shown in his 'Country Doctor' below.

 

 

I  have a lot of books. The biggest of all is a cumbersome coffee table volume that includes Rockwell's best known works.  It's really fun to flip through its pages occasionally and be reminded of Rockwell's genius.

 

  

Norman Rockwell - Self-Portrait

So, again, the big question about Rockwell: was he merely a talented illustrator or was he an artist?   I don't think there's any question. Illustration is about technical virtuosity. Rockwell was a consummate illustrator of humanity.  His paintings grew out of his imagination.  He imagined first, then painted what he imagined, and made it real.  That made him a uniquely gifted artist and visual communicator, who deserves a place historically alongside the greatest masters.

Here is a link to the Norman Rockwell Museum located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the artist's home town... http://www.nrm.org/

Gratitude

A while back (5/14/12), I wrote about kindness.  Of all the character traits we humans can possess, kindness is the one I value and admire the most in a person.  Gratitude is an attitude reflected by a kind heart. The article pasted in below appears to confirm that... 


A Grateful State: Gratitude is vital to well-being, research shows
November 22nd, 2012 in Psychology & Psychiatry


Before we eat Thanksgiving dinner at my house, along with saying grace, each of the 20 or so people at the table takes a turn lighting a candle and expressing gratitude. The appreciation can be lighthearted - for mashed potatoes or a day off from school. Or the thankfulness may be accompanied by a heavy heart - for the memories of a loved one recently passed.

As it happens, this expression is not an empty exercise. And if we developed the discipline to be consciously grateful on a regular basis, year-round, research shows we'd be happier and suffer less depression and stress. We'd sleep better and be better able to face our problems.

There's evidence that gratitude is uniquely important to well-being. Long embraced by religion as a "manifestation of virtue," it's one of the few things that "can measurably change people's lives," says Robert Emmons, a University of California-Davis professor who has been studying it since 1998 and is the author of the book "Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier."
"Gratitude implies humility - a recognition that we could not be who we are or where we are in life without the contributions of others," Emmons writes.

At a time when Thanksgiving is the starting gun for a race to the mall, Jeffrey Froh has some insight as well.

"We know there's a negative relationship between materialism and gratitude. That's pretty powerful right there," says Froh, a professor at Hofstra University on New York's Long Island. His research with more than 1,000 high school students showed that grateful teenagers were also less likely to be depressed, more likely to want to give back to their communities and more likely to have higher grade-point averages, among other traits.

But despite the benefits, Emmons says, gratitude is in trouble.

"Outside of happiness, gratitude's benefits are rarely discussed these days. Indeed, in contemporary American society, we've come to overlook, dismiss or even disparage the significance of gratitude as a virtue," he says. "We have become entitled, resentful, ungrateful and forgetful."

Not all of us.

Gratitude, says Susan Swan, is an important component of yoga - something she's taught since 1991.
Almost three years ago, she had a stroke during a class. But when she tells the story, she focuses on her good fortune. Her students called 911, help came quickly and she was given an experimental drug that worked wonders. She has children, grandchildren and friends. Swan knows she doesn't look like she's had a stroke. At 68, she's tall and wrinkle free, with straight, shiny blond hair. Her speech is good, her aphasia not overwhelming. She's gone back to teaching yoga, which she credits for her ability to feel gratitude rather than anger. It's important, she says early one evening over tea in her tiny kitchen, to "come into the now. Lose your mind and find your senses. Right now, I am fine."

Swan, who also has survived breast and colon cancer, gives meaning to Emmons' statement that gratitude "is morally and intellectually demanding." He doesn't suggest forgetting the negative.
"If you have something that life serves up, you have a choice to say, 'Hey, there is a blessing in here,'" Swan said. "'How is it going to serve me and not impede me?'"

Judy Vaughan is a St. Joseph of Carondelet nun who "has real trouble with the institutional church" but a rock-solid belief in a God who is "a loving spirit who has my back," and a doctorate in social ethics from the University of Chicago.

"I learned from my mom the importance of saying thanks," Vaughan says. "She was born in 1916 and came from the school that said when you got gifts, you wrote notes." She founded and has lived since 1996 at Alexandria House, which actually is two lovely Mid-Wilshire homes offering transitional housing and support to homeless women and their children.

"Gratitude gives an opening to the universe to give more good things. Gratitude is opening to receive more good things from the universe," says Vaughan.  She tries to be grateful every day, even now, when Alexandria House faces falling state and private funding.

"Gratitude really is a perspective. It is one that needs to be cultivated," Vaughan says. "It is a gift from God in my life that I like almost everyone I meet. I'm not naive, but I really work at seeing the positive in people."

Gratitude could save the planet, says filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg. "If you can really absorb the beauty of a flower or a landscape, can you really bear to see it destroyed?" he asks. "Gratitude touches your heart. And we need the heart to create a shift in consciousness."

Schwartzberg, who has been shooting time-lapse photography of flowers for more than three decades, showed his "Gratitude" film at a TedX Talk; it's among the most-watched presentations.
In it, author, lecturer and Benedictine brother David Steindl-Rast speaks: "You think this is just another day in your life. It's not just another day. It's the one day that is given to you, today. ... It's the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness. ... If you learn to respond as if it were the first day in your life and the very last day, then you will have spent this day very well."

Look, really look, at a cloud, a stream, a strawberry, Schwartzberg urges. "Instead of gobbling it while you're reading the paper, say, 'Oh, my God,'" and take the time to be in awe of it.
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KEEPING A 'GRATITUDE' JOURNAL

The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California-Berkeley is making it easy to try out a "gratitude" journal, with an interactive online project launched this month that's shareable on social media. At www.Thnx4.org, anyone can sign up for a two-week journal plan that includes prompts to get your grateful thoughts flowing.

It also includes a survey so researchers can mine the data to look at the effects of gratitude in many specific ways, Emilian Simon-Thomas, who, with Robert Emmons of the University of California-Davis and others, developed the $5.6 million project, said Thursday. At Thnx4.org, participants take a survey of 78 questions, then get a little nudge for two weeks to write in their journal, perhaps sharing their grateful states on Facebook or other sites. At the end, after another survey, they'll get a report on their own changes - and be invited to stick around and continue to express gratitude, perhaps less frequently.

Of course, you can express gratitude on your own, and here are some of Emmons' suggestions:
Occasional "gratitude journaling," one to three times a week, is more effective than writing every day.

Journal writing is more effective if you make the conscious decision to become happier, more grateful, more positive.

Gratitude in depth is more important than "gratitude by the numbers." In other words, elaborating on a particular benefit in detail is more beneficial than listing several benefits more superficially.
Another recommendation is to focus on "mental subtraction" of good things from your life: Consider, for example, what life would be like if you had never met your spouse, rather than how grateful you are for that spouse.

(c)2012 Los Angeles Times
Distributed by MCT Information Services

Diver Saves Puffer Fish from Hook

This is a story of compassion and courage. Somehow, this diver came cross this puffer fish with a very large hook stuck in its mouth.   For several minutes, the diver gingerly works to calm the fish and grip it so he can remove the hook.  The diver is barehanded, a very dicey proposition considering that puffer fish flesh contains a poison called tetrodotoxin that is 1200 times more powerful than cyanide. One fish has enough toxin to kill thirty humans, and there is no known antidote.

Here is the link to the story....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYJBm-AcpHk

A Quirky Professor Talks about Passion

Larry Smith is an Economics Professor at the Unversity of Waterloo in Canada. 

He has a funny and thoroughly engaging way of laying out the cold facts about success and failure in life.

Here is the link to Larry Smith's  TED presentation...

http://www.ted.com/talks/larry_smith_why_you_will_fail_to_have_a_great_career.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2012-05-19&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

Kindness - The Best Virtue

I remember hearing that simple aphorism when I was a young child. Kindness is the best virtue. Over and over, in so many ways, I heard it. I have never been close to being a paragon of virtue, but I do have kindness close to the core of my being.  It  makes me happy.  I feel good when I see another person act kindly. I feel even better when I've behaved that way myself.   That's not to say I always get things right, but I feel no arrogance or shame in saying,... no principle beyond kindness runs deeper in my soul.

Often, acts of kindness deliver no tangible reward. Unfortunately, that fact turns a minority of  hearts to stone.  I feel sad for people like that. They miss the fact that kindness is its own reward.

All good qualities spin off nicely when you start with genuine kindness. 

"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness"
                                               Dalai Lama, Tibetan Spiritual Leader

PETA

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. aka PETA,  is an organization dedicated to protecting living creatures and assuring they are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.  The folks at PETA are warriors. They don't play nice when dealing with people or businesses that abuse defenseless animals.  Ingrid Newkirk, the leader of PETA, is  very tough. She and her associates don't care if some people are offended by their often hard-hitting strategies for exposing the terrible way animals are mis-treated in our society.

Literally billions of chickens, hogs, and cattle are brought into the world annually, and treated as commodities rather living beings that are just as vulnerable to pain and stress as humans. These creatures are subjected to every kind of abuse as they are raised then slaughtered, with only one thing in mind, maximum profit.  PETA shines a harsh light on the unsavory and largely hidden cultural practices that turn living, feeling creatures into cheeseburgers and McNuggets. Regretably, in our society, children are raised to recognize the food they eat as nothing more than edible tidings one buys at the store. 

PETA is not the only non-profit fighting back against animal abuse, but they are definitely one of the most aggressive. They operate fearlessly.  I admire Ingrid Newkirk and her band of change agents.  They are a force to be reckoned with, and their cause could not be more noble and decent.

Here is a link to the PETA website...

http://www.peta.org/