Václav Havel - A Man Who Lived, Wrote, and Governed for Humanity Has Died.

From playwright and poet,

the last President of Czechoslovakia to the first President of the Czech Republic

Chair of the International Council of the Human Rights Foundation 

International Advisory Council member of Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. 

A man compared to Gandhi who believed and worked for world peace and human rights. Amnesty International gave him their Ambassador of Conscience Award.

May we remember his activism and his written word. 

This is the Flag of the President of the Czech Republic.

Flag source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_president_of_the_Czech_Republic.svg

  

Click here to go to Wikipedia on Václav Havel   

 

 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APam%C4%9Btn%C3%AD_deska_v_Hr%C4%8Dav%C4%9B.jpg

 

Photo by Ondřej Žváček on 3 July 2009 

For Other Photos of Ondřej Žváček Click Here. 

Česky: Pamětní deska na základní a mateřské škole v Hrčavě, připomínající návštěvu prvního prezidenta České republiky Václava Havla (Moravskoslezský kraj, Česko).

 

English: Memorial plaque on the primary school and kindergarten in Hrčava, commemorating visit of the first president of the Czech Republic Václav Havel (Moravian-Silesian Region, Czech Republic).

 

Polski: Tablica pamiątkowa na budynku szkoły podstawowej i przedszkola w Herczawie, upamiętniająca wizytę pierwszego prezydenta Republiki Czeskiej Václava Havla (Zaolzie, Kraj morawsko-śląski, Czechy).

 

With Respect for My Polish Heritage.

Pray It Forward. Be Blessed with Healing as You Pray It Forward.

When you are healed that is what you do.

Photo taken by Daderot May 2006 at the Richard H. Driehaus Gallery of Stained Glass, on the Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois, USA of \Two Angels - Tiffany Studios, c. 1910. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Two_Angels_-_Tiffany_Studios,_c._1910.JPG

I believe in angels.

When we are  troubled... and think ourselves most overwhelmed it is then when angels carry us so softly we do not realize they are there...

Footprints

My precious, precious child,
I love you and
I would never leave you.

During your times of
trial and suffering,
when you see only
one set of footprints,

It was then that I carried you.

Be blessed with healing as you Pray It Forward.

What is your choice for a book for book club if there was only one last book you could read?

Let me ask which books have helped keep you sane while craziness abounds?  I have reached a tipping point where the reality of life challenges my rationality.
What is your choice for a book for book club if there was only one last book to read?

All my life has been devoted to rationality. Like choices for book club. Reading a book should help you understand life. I want to learn some guiding principle from reading a book for book club. Like why do people suffer? Poverty. Bankruptcy. Pain. Sickness. Wounded Warriors. Why is there war WITHIN ourselves and OUTSIDE in the world?

I keep wanting to make sense of the the stuff that happens in life.Is there a book that helps build sanity when insanity abounds?

I used to say go to a playground when life exceeds its tipping point. Now I know life has made me dizzy with repeated tipping toward the unfairness, the insanity and life exceeds its tipping point too often for many people.

Whether it is fiction, poetry, or non-fiction as a book club choice can book club members find in a book how to deal with the irrationality of life? 

By reading, just as by writing, are processes whereby I seek to understand the complexities of my life. Sometimes I reach a tipping point where I need that special book to put a heavy rock on my side of the teeter-tooter and lean me towards sanity.

What is your choice for a book for book club if there was only one last book you could read?

.

Illustration from the book 'Ten Days in the Mad-House', 1887, Library of Penn UNiversity

Illustration from the book 'Ten Days in the Mad-House', 1887, Library of Penn UNiversity

What is the Higher Power's timeline? Does God have a 'To Do' List?

Does God, a Higher Power, or what name who you think influences life or death have a 'To Do' list with a timeline? Do you know the timeline of the rate of recovery from illness?

Suppose you are a "To Do" list type of person with 'timelines' of your own... How much influence do individuals have over their recovery? Why do I need to know the timeline of the Higher Power's "To Do" list?

Why do we need timelines anyway? What is the purpose of a timeline? It may provide normative comparative data. Also, timelines imply a sense of control. A sense of orderliness.

Illness is not orderly.

Who is in control of life's timeline? Being in control, if such control exists, implies a grand plan. What is the grand plan? I ask:

What is the Higher Power's timeline?

Does God have a 'To Do' list?

Meantime... 

Recovery timelines are silent except for...

Bandar Lego's Chrono-list_Icon http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrono-list_icon.svg
 Иконка для временных линий и хронологических списков

the steady sound of the ticking of the clock.

If you want to hear what I hear, the ticking of a hospital clock, go to:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LA2_kitchen_clock.ogg

Oh, God, what despair a wounded warrior must feel... and hear endless ticking of the clock.


I am not wounded. I am just waiting for the wounded.
I am not living it myself.
Writing helps the process.

My brother had a stroke. One of his healing hands will not move. The utter terror of not being able to feel...

My heart just doesn't know. My brain is numb like my brother's left arm and left leg. It is hard for me to understand how a doctor with healing hands [he is a chiropractor] now cannot move one side of his body.

How could this happen? Yes, he had tremendous stress. Financial and personal. Yes, the clock ticks fast.Yes, expectations were high. No, he does not have medical insurance for himself. He couldn't afford it. Staff to pay, rent to pay... so many migrant farm workers and people who were injured while at work... he treated them long term regardless if they could pay or not. Though he helped relieve pain, he was never free from financial pain himself.

Now my brother is in intensive care. I shudder to think how his mind is racing about in half a numb body that will not respond...What all this means--Will he recover? What happens to his healing dream? All he initially said when he was bought in "Give me some blood pressure medication and let me go home!"

If he survives intensive care he cannot go home. He lost his home to the bank. A hospital bed won't fit in his furnished studio apartment. Later at the hospital he was garbling something like  "No county! No county!" The 'county' nursing home where the uninsured and poor go.

Somehow when the stock market spiraled down 600 points today, a black Monday, August 8, 2011, it seems a marker of the times. Our mother was born on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, when the stock market crashed during the Great Depression. Dreams crash hard. They bleed in your brain...

My brother's 'significant' stroke is the size of a half-a-dollar coin and is near his hypothalamus--indicated by the red arrow.  Image from wikipedia file:hypothalamus.jpg

Other links:

picture of Jill Bolte Taylor holding a human brain from wikipedia by Steve Jurvetson taken 2-27-08 http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124348109@N01/2330268706/

Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroanatomist pictured above, suffered a massive stroke. Her recovery took 8 years. She describes the sensations she felt during her stroke in the video called "Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight" which is at http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html [click on this link to view the video]

Say a prayer...

Invite You to an Experiment. Need Your Reaction. "Are you an Insider or an Outsider?"

Please read through this experiment's guide below and at the end enter in comments which environment is more important to you--the exterior or the interior of your home and give your reaction to this guide.

Guideline ideas to help you decide:

• Think about your existing home.
• Do you feel more comfortable being on the outside or inside where you live?
• When you make your choice of exterior or interior what activities do you enjoy in the area you prefer? 
• Is there a specific activity you enjoying doing and what is that activity or enjoyment? 
• Does your area choice have certain elements that give you comfort? 
• What are those comforting elements?

Please consider YOUR FEELINGS. Choose only ONE AREA either the outside or the inside where you live. Try to figure out WHY this chosen area makes you feel more comfortable than the other. Can you identify specific elements in the area that create this comfort zone?

And then ASK YOURSELF two questions:

1. Was this preferred environmental area created by you AFTER you moved in?
2. Could you transfer some "Feel Good" elements from your chosen area that could be added to your non-preferred area?

Finally, ENTER YOUR REACTION to this experiment in the comments. Thank you for helping me.

Runde Environmental Centre, Norway by Toften from Wikimedia Commons

"Is it the Exterior or the Interior of Your Home 

which is More Important to You? 

And Why?"

For those who like to make statistics lie...  Add a reaction that is not from the guideline at the end of your comment.

Got Stress. Does It Make You Itch All Over. Don't Scratch. PUNT.

Punt is kicking the ball before it hits the ground. How do you kick stress? Start with kicking the biggest stressor. Do not scratch it. Give it a kick before it scratches you raw.

Whether the stresses are people or stuff, stress can make you itch all-over. Kick stress hard and deep. Punt like in football to let your gunners do the work. The gunners force a guy to fair catch. You control stress. It can be a fair catch--not an itch.

A fair catch is a catch of a punt on the fly by a defensive player who has signalled that he will not run and so should not be tackled. You kick stress and then catch it and it doesn't tackle you. 

Football and stress have common tools to combat itching.

Photo by Orrling andTomer Scheib-Wikipedia Commons

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7iImLtDFOc

for disclaimers by VikingsWorld on this youtube video

Photo by Pitke: a 5-year-old Finnhorse gelding nibbling his itching right hind leg, Wikipedia Commons

Related Links:

Itchy. Itch Me. A Word Picture by Sigourette, a fellow blogger Importance of the Punt Team by DEADSPIN  Face-Off or Just Ignore the Itch by a Little Thread of Thoughts, a Wordpress blogger

Myeloma. Bone Marrow Cancer. What do you do? Go to the playground.

You live. Day by day. Minute by minute. The clock ticks. You try to forget. Stress builds.

You live. How to control your thoughts? Some say faith. Some say ____________.

I say go to the playground everyday. Children keep us alive. Watch the children.

Go to the playground. Sit on the sandbox edge. Watch them play. 

Play is therapy for body and mind.

Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) 15 Jul 1955, wikipedia commons

Thinking. Creating. Use of Time. HOW TO DO IT ALL? Receptor Ripples.

Solution to HOW TO DO IT ALL: Take the kitchen sink throw it in. Leave the faucet running. Then watch the ripples. Let the plasticity of your brain form ripples in its neurons. Be mindful of the wave action to sooth your receptors. Insight will come.

If you create this state of mind, you can call on it when you need it.

Imagine having the power to release ripples on your brain neurotransmitter receptors.

• Every time you are at your kitchen sink. 
• Every time you see water.  
• Every time you see any ripple pattern. 
• Even on a very hot day in rush hour traffic watching heat ripples... 

Create a Memory Trigger of Ripples.

Perhaps ripples in a tidal pool...

Photo by Hugh Chevallier. Children swimming in the tidal pool at Dancing Ledge, Purbeck

Or if you think better alone perhaps ripples in the sand underwater ...

Photo by Michael C. Rygel from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ripples_mcr1.JPG

YOU CAN DO IT ALL. Use ripples on your receptors. Ripples are everywhere.

Some ripple links:
Dancing Ledge and World Heritage site on your doorstep
Wikipedia on Tide Pools
Ripples in a Beaver Pond by fellow blogger, Kim Ykema
Isle of Purbeck
Ripples of Change by Sandy Penley, a fellow blogger

Post Office by Charles Bukowski. A Menu with Intense Flavors. Choose one of His Dishes to Pass.

With June's book club selection, I selected the first novel of a poet. His life in Los Angeles, from 1920 when he was born to 1994 when he died, went through many social changes. These changes and the alcoholism, his bad acne scarring, his strict upbringing brought forth in him a need, a drive to write. So his writing reflects those different times and experiences. Just as Studs Terkel wrote of the people in Hard Times so has Charles Bukowski written of the people in their lowlife hard times.

This lowlife has intense flavors. No 12-course meals. During a period of his lowlife he lived on one candybar a day for the only meal a day he had. This candy bar was ironically  a bar called Payday. His first real payday was his novel, Post Office. It was the only regular payday he hung onto with the hopes of having enough steady money to continue writing.

Working at the post office began with delivering mail. But it helped him have money to drink, write and get very ill from bleeding ulcers and drinking too much. After he nearly died from this he returned to the post office to sort mail for over 11 years. Grueling grunt work.  During those years he drank and wrote every day. The people at the bars and race tracks were what he wrote about--he told their stories. He was their voice. Bukowski began also to write poetry that told a story with the raw intensity of life in the streets. 

Charles Bukowski, portrait by italian artist Graziano Origa, pen&ink+pantone, 2008
image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bukowski-by-origa.jpg

Bukowski says it was his father that gave him the ability to write.  His father beat 'the shit out of him.' Bukowski says his father's beatings took away all pretense, all that was unnecessary. Pain cleared his mind. Usually the beatings occurred several times a week from when he was 5 until he was 11 or 12 years old. Bukowski comments that as the years of beatings continued he slowly over time cried or yelled less and less during the beatings.  When he finally stopped reacting to the beatings his father stopped beating him. Within a year or two later he started writing. Writing stories. Later  also writing poetry.

He wrote his first novel, Post Office, in three weeks for John Martin. Martin was a book collector who discovered  and admired Bukowski's streetwise stories in the alternative press of the 1960s. He proposed that Bukowski quit his job at the post office to write full time and he would pay him $100 a month for life. Martin remarked to Bukowski that he might consider writing a novel since novels can produce more income compared than selling stories or poetry. Bukowski found his own Payday, the novel, Post Office. Within three or four weeks after their agreement he called John Martin to come and pick up the novel.

But he had to wait five years before he could cash this Payday from the novel. During that time John Martin gave Bukowski 25% of his own income for 5 years; then Martin sold his  book collection of valuable editions for $50,000. Just as this last money was almost gone, the publishing began to make a profit. Black Sparrow press was in the black. Bukowski finally earned his PayDay, making a living as a writer.

John Martin says there is no other poet whose poetry has gone into 30 to 40 printings and no other poet who has written so much poetry. Here is just a few stanzas of Bukowski's  poem called

Dinosauria, we

born like this

into this

as the chalk faces smile

as Mrs. Death laughs

as the elevators break

as political landscapes dissolve

as the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree

as the oily fish spit out their oily prey

as the sun is masked

we are

born like this

into this

into these carefully mad wars

into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness

into bars where people no longer speak to each other

into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

born into this

into hospitals which are so expensive that it is cheaper to die

into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty

into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed

into a  place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes...

You can get a sense of who he was from some films. There is the documentary film on his life, Bukowski: Born into this. There are poetry readings. One reading is titled Bukowski at Bellevue. Also there are two DVDs called The Charles Bukowski Tapes: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. These are film clips of Bukowski during the filming of, Barfly, which Bukowski wrote. All these films are in Netflix.

Bukowski is complex. He had to drink to face people. He wrote of so many intense human emotions but John Martin says Bukowski could not approach a stranger and wouldn't be able to engage in every day small talk.

I would encourage you to read some of his poetry if you cannot get a copy of the novel. Some say his poetry during the 1970s reflect his best voice. But his later poetry gives voice to all the frailties ... being alone, being sick, writing to Lady Death.

Survey the large Bukowski menu and choose your meal, an experience that you can relate to. If the critics are right people will still be reading Bukowski just as we continue to read Shakespeare today. Many say he is not a 'Beat' Generation poet though some label him so. Bukowski's poetry has a timeless quality. You can see that in theDinosauria, We poem. His writing flavors are intense. I am curious what flavor appeals to you and which of his dishes you are going bring to the book club table.

Here's a Link to the youtube list of Charles Bukowski Poetry Reading. Almost 300.
Also see my previous blogs posts on Charles Bukowski by searching my blog with his name in the search box.

Michigan may Reduce Funding to Universities w Unmarried Partner Benefits. Knock. Knock. Who's There?

Protect Michigan's Universities and Families

By Stella Sunstein

To be delivered to: The Michigan State House, The Michigan State Senate and Governor Rick Snyder

“David Agema's amendment penalizing universities over same-sex benefits violates the universities' budgetary autonomy, interferes with their academic freedom, and penalizes all unmarried couples, particularly those who are not allowed to marry in the first place. Any further cuts in state funding will directly harm Michigan students and their families. Please ensure that the reconciliation process eliminates this hate-driven legislation.”

The Michigan House Republicans recently approved an amendment to the House bill on education funding written by Rep. David Agema. The amendment proposes that the state subtract 5% from the state funding of any university that offers health insurance coverage for employees who live with another adult outside of marriage.  

During a time where public education operates under increasingly difficult financial constraints, ideologically driven legislations have even less of a place in educational policy than ever. The amendment violates the autonomy of public universities and is thus a direct attack on academic freedom.  

Moreover, the amendment’s clear intent to divide the academic community is deeply immoral. Targeting unmarried couples, and by intent particularly gay and lesbian families, at a time where every public poll shows significant majority support for civil unions flies in the face of the country’s commitment to equality. Americans, as a rule, do not want the government to tell them how to conduct their private lives.  

Middle class families already suffer from the rising cost of college tuition. If the amendment passes, the loss of funds may well contribute to an even steeper rise, thus penalizing all Michigan families in the interest of an obsolete sexual morality Americans have rejected resoundingly.  

The bill still needs to be reconciled with the Senate version. Please petition the Michigan Senators, both Republicans and Democrats, to oppose this nasty piece of legislation.

Above copied from Signon.org's Petition Signature Request Site. Click here to go to their site if you want to sign the petition.

If you want to personally call Dave Agema, the author of this proposed amendment, his office phone is 5173738900 per the QUEERTY [Gay Rights] post.  Click here to read their conversations with Mark in Rep. Dave Agema's office.

If you are in a petition signing mood,  Click here to go to the site that wants to "Reclaim Michigan. Recall Rick Snyder," the Michigan governor. Note: 807,000 valid signatures are needed before August 5. 

I think getting petition signatures is a learning experience for anyone going to law, economics, sociology, political science or considering how to get an internship with a desired company  . 

• Real life experience knocking on doors shows initiative which every employer values
• Advocating a pro-employer stance of their right to determine compensation 
• Advocating basic rights of unmarried partners...

If I read your internship request I would want to meet you to talk about your 
"Knock. Knock. Who's There?" experience.

A Soliloquy. Youthful Mercury. "What's this 'ere on the plyte? 'Knock and ring'! Blowed if they won't be harsking yer to 'walk hinside', next!!"

Cartoon from The Project Gutenberg eBook of Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892, by Various, Edited by F. C. Burnand

From http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14514

Tired of People Giving You Their Advice. Test If You Can Stop Giving Advice and Tune into Active Listening.

I failed the test when I tried to stop giving advice. Short of zipping my mouth shut or duct taping it, it is a great effort for me to change and stop giving advice.

designed by http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Chrkl

 So rather than focusing on stopping my advising behavior, I think I'll try a pro-active plan: to be a listener, an active listener. The art of listening is a rarity. It requires me to suspend my own needs. How do I let go of my need to give advice?


Michael P. Nichols who wrote The Lost Art of Listening, says "effective listening requires attention, appreciation, and affirmation." If I can learn to really listen then there is no need for advice-giving. The person to whom I am listening will instead form their own solutions.


Can you imagine how much attention, appreciation and affirmation I can show if I said, "Take Your Time -- I'm listening." Listening is not a one-way street - it like a two-way radio or satellite which sends and receives signals. 

When a person talks to me and I am listening, I need to tune into their channel and reflect back what that person said, their original signal. Why? Because my own signal is so strong the other person's channel has static and I don't receive their signal completely. I need to reflect back what they said and check that I received the complete signal. I need to tune my antenna to their channel.

I need to practice listening with the people I have communication problems with. I guess this is how peace negotiators work.

Oh! How I and everyone around me could use more peace! So I'll not need to zip my mouth shut, but to open my ears, my radar, my satellite... to tune in their channel and check with them if I received the signal they sent without my static, my needs.

ACRIMSat animation.gif from (NASA/JPL) wikimedia commons

A Look Inside Michael P. Nichols' book, The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships

Hints for listening if you are in business or social networking

Hints for listening if you are a parent.

Hints for those in Healthcare

Reflective Listening Tips and Some roadblocks to avoid by Chris (WordPress), a fellow blogger.

Click here to see a picture of my Antenna.

Please share any ways you have learned that help or prevent the Art of Listening.

I need to tune in... having too much static on my satellite lately.

Escapism in a book. It is only Time-Delayed. Still Stuck in Comfortable Corners Offstage.

Yes, bertiebass, many readers look for pure escapism in reading a book. And yes, 'lowlife' in a book can be too real and uncomfortable as you say.

Yet, in Bukowski's first novel, Post Office, the main character, Harry Chinaski, offers me a different form of  'escape'... escape from the comfortable corners.  I, too, like Chinaski was stuck ten years in a grunt job. As I read his novel, Post Office, about how he began his escape from the Post Office I become uncomfortable. I realize that I may be still stuck in the comfortable corners and not really living life on the center stage.

Thanks for your comments, bertiebass, you turned on the stage lights. I need to be uncomfortable. Can I open the curtains and step onto the Center Stage?

Stage on Stage. Taken by User:Lekogm November 27th, 2004 from wikimedia commons)

Or maybe I am stuck in the books? Do I choose to live in books and avoid the center stage where I am vulnerable?

Modern Book Printing Sculpture from the Berliner Walk of Ideas from wikimedia commons 

Perhaps it is time for me to reread an earlier post:

 Life is So Good when you make it Center Stage.

Want to Write? Try a Frame, a Pet, a Gravestone or a Fly-Swatter. Advice from Charles Bukowski.

How do you write, create? Bukowski's answer was "You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it."


 Hey. I put my fly-swatter away. Seriously, if you think of your writing as a pet, it opens writing in a totally new frame.. frame of mind... framework...

Link to Some Quotes of Charles Bukowski on wikiquote

Here's a relaxing frame of mind from the ruins at Blawearie

 

An example of a Writer's Gravestone
Note: Charles Bukowski had "Don't Try" on his gravestone.

Choosing a Book for Book Club? Try Post Office? Grunt and Too Real.

Image by lungstruck via Flickr

Book clubs thrive and age. So how to chose a book when it is your turn? Perhaps, a novel by a poet? When the poet, Charles Bukowski, wrote his first novel, Post Office, he was writing of Henry Chinaski, as drunk, throwing up, having sex, manually sorting mail at the Post Office... Hmm. Too real?

A struggling young university student told me Bukowski was among the great 'real life' poets. This student with his love of music, writes songs and posts them on facebook, has a life that at times, was and is 'too real'. His family had a life similar to Bukowski's character, Henry Chinaski. The student had his received Christmas presents and then the presents were gone--pawned or stolen the next day. Is Post Office a book for a book club of older women?

Is this a book for even a Post Office employee? I gave a copy of Post Office as a parting gift to my mailman. His route was being redrawn and he was re-assigned. I didn't receive a thank you note. Perhaps, the novel was too real for him. Yes, maybe, one doesn't want to be reminded of the years at the Post Office when all mail was manually sorted as Henry Chinaski did for over 10 years.

The Post Office is moving the opposite way -- eventually all mail will arrive at local post offices mechanically presorted. Not even a morning sit-down time to sort mail for the mailman's individual route. Mailmen will be walking all day. Hmm. Still manual work.

My nephew might call this type of work, grunt work. He said he was a grunt when he was in basic training running for hours for days with full combat gear with hair-line cracks in his ankles.

Is the novel, Post Office, of interest to a book club? Time magazine called Bukowski, the "laureate of American lowlife." We are all grunts in some way. We often run with full combat gear and consider ourselves still in basic training. Now I am wondering about my hair-line cracks--did they ever heal?

Help me decide my book club selection by selecting Agree or Disagree if I should select the novel, Post Office, in the area below these links. 


Link to the NY Library Friends Bookshelf to see comments about Post Office and other books that influenced people the most and where you can donate and add your book choice and how it influenced you

Link to wikipedia on Charles Bukowski.

Link to a little race track poetry by Charles Bukowski.

Buried in Negativity. Refocus on Bright Spots with Solutions. Try Positive Deviance.

62 percent of our thoughts are negative. Stuck in the muck? Negativity is a stimulating distraction. What can we do? We can find happiness in everything. The dragonfly is a model. It hovers and holds its position like as if time was stopped. Yes, we can stop reacting negatively and focus on the bright spots where communities have found solutions. Change occurs locally. Be a dragonfly with a stopwatch.

Examples of local solutions: 

• We can give to the Post Office's canned food drive to stamp out hunger. 
• We can sign a petition to reopen the Peace Road to the kindergarten in the village of Al Aqaba in Gaza.   Link to petition.   Link to Al Aqaba
• We can write our pension fund holder, TIAA-CREF to divest from Israel occupation products to encourage focus on the bright spots in the Middle East. Link  
• We can make a mock wall at our university to raise awareness about the walls in Palestine and on the U.S. border. Link
• We can learn what Nakba Day means to Palestinians and Israelis. Link

Solutions exist in the bright spots. We can see them if we are not buried in negativity. Try Positive Deviance. Link to Positive Deviance  The 62 percent negative focus needs a dragonfly stopwatch.

Edouard Manet sketch 1873

End Israeli Apartheid. Who to Boycott. Divestment Worked in S. Africa.

Campus BDS Heating Up This Spring! April 26th, 2011 *copied from endtheoccupation.org

This spring, the weather is not all that's heating up! April has brought a burst of U.S. campus boycott and divestment(BDS) initiatives following inspiring actions around the country on the BDS Day of Action, held on the annual Palestinian Land Day. Active campaigns in California, Arizona, Indiana and beyond are becoming a force to be reckoned with. We are thrilled to welcome and support many of these campus groups as new members of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation! Here are some of the exciting ongoing initiatives:  At the University of California at San Diego, the UCSD Associated Students are voting tomorrow night on a resolution to divest fromNorthrop-Grumman and General Electric because they profit from violent conflict, including in Israel/Palestine. Click here to read the resolution and send endorsements to rzuabi@gmail.com. Above: Students' wall on the UA campus. Click to enlarge.  No Mas Muertes at theUniversity of Arizona (UA) recently issued this call for campus boycott and divestment from national targets Caterpillar andMotorola, due to their involvement in racist policies against Latina/o migrant communities and indigenous peoples in Arizona, Palestine and around the world.  The statement coincided with the launch of a national "Mock Wall" Movement protesting U.S. support for Israeli occupation and discriminatory U.S. immigration policies, with students at six universitiesaround the country constructing walls on their campuses to raise awareness about the destruction wrought by the walls in Palestine and on the U.S. border.  At Earlham College in Indiana, students launched this BDS resolution to divest their campus from Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, which profit from Israeli occupation and violations of Palestinian rights. The students put together this terrific video.  Northrop-Grumman, Caterpillar and Motorola are also three of the five companies targeted in a national campaign initiated by Jewish Voice for Peace (a member of the US Campaign) to compel financial giant TIAA-CREF to divest from Israeli occupation. Campuses are fertile ground for this growing campaign. Check out the comprehensive new campaign web site and resources here! Don’t forget to check our "BDS on Campus" resources here, including ahandbook by veteran activists to guide students through campus divestment campaigns. Whether your group is on a campus or not, we invite you to join our coalition too, by clicking here. We are more excited than ever to support diverse groups working around the country for corporate accountability and an end to U.S. supportfor Israeli occupation and apartheid. *Copied from http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=2966