a real mortar and pestle

a real mortar and pestle, a photo by freestone on Flickr.

a real mortar and pestle
A real Mortar and Pestle! A not very large one, I bought this at the New Leaf Market, here in tallahassee. Looks nice.
They still make these.
Made in China, of course.

Even if I do not use this, still looks nice. I "am an Alchemist now"!

the Glowing Live Oak tree!

the Glowing Live Oak tree!, originally uploaded by freestone.

the Glowing Live Oak tree!
aA live oak tree outside of my 4th floor window, why it glows in the setting sun. Almost "too" much so! The sun is getting powerful, now, in May, here at 30 degrees North, Tallahassee, florida!
"sunscale...10" shouts the paper for sunscreen ratings, every sunny day.

Nothing special, really, just yet another face of a tree under different light conditions.

Art at the Party

Art at the Party, originally uploaded by freestone.

Art at the Party
Across the street from where I live the Hotel Duval hosted a Cinco de Mayo, (Spanish for "fifth of May, party. There is live music and lots of Drinks and food.
There were several art sections too, and This bust was done by
Karen Tharp
Shannon Yang

sort of goes with a party atmosphere.

raiding the colleges.

an educator told me today that  most states pay far far more for professors saleries than here in florida.
ugh.
brain drain, soon our florida schools will be teacher certification only!  

what is happening, i see, is the "china syndrome"!   when there is about 1000 colleges, soon there will be only 50 *Real* universities, mostly up north, all the rest will be online-only.  either do a simple college course online or if you want a REAL education and go in person, go to one of these schools and be prepared to Pay dearly.  probably only 20% of the population should attend these!

what I think florida ought to do to balance budget!

well, well, well......

Here I live in Talahassee, florida, and the goverment session is trying to balance a shortfall of nearly 4 billion dollars.

my advice?
---follow the example of the northeastern states.  create a state income tax, make it very high.  Then increase the sales tax too, up to Northern levels.  Increase the school and property taxes too.  bite the bullet.  get florida's schools out of the number-something-like 48, right down there at the bottom.  Someone has to pay for all the growth!

stormfront

here is a very good example of something that I have had to deal with for years! I do not get my life views and philosophy from any one good source.
I find that there is bad stuff in any goodness and Truth can be found even in an association of demons!

like: take this organization below. most readers might find this Internet site utterly repugnant. But these readers pitch out all the dirty bathwater including maybe a baby too, in it!
They turn off 100%:  do they look at the comments saying that each race has its own genetic differences that make each race unique?!   probably not!
 there IS genetic differences between all races.

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/

Welcome to the Stormfront.
We are a community of White Nationalists. There are thousands of organizations promoting the interests, values and heritage of non-Whites. We promote ours. You are welcome to browse our seven million posts, but you must register before you can post to any forum except those designated as open to guests.
=============

=============
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10950396

Ethnic differences in nocturnal blood pressure decline in treated hypertensives.
Hyman DJ, Ogbonnaya K, Taylor AA, Ho K, Pavlik VN.

Department of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, USA.

Abstract
Lack of a nocturnal decline in blood pressure (BP) has been associated with more severe end organ damage in hypertensives, and blacks appear less likely than whites to have a > 10% drop in nighttime BP ("dipping"). Little information is available about the relationship between treatment regimens, ethnic group classification, and dipping in treated hypertensive patient populations. We obtained 24-h ambulatory BP readings in 438 adult white (n = 103), black (n = 200) and Hispanic (n = 135) treated hypertensives.

=============
http://www.lifeclinic.com/fullpage.aspx?prid=513268&type=1
Races React Differently to Hypertension Drugs
5/16/2003

FRIDAY, May 16 (HealthScoutNews) -- Doctors need a combination of drugs to control hypertension in patients with coronary artery disease, says a new study that finds different races respond differently to such medications.

"It takes two to three drugs to adequately control blood pressure," says Eileen Handberg, an assistant professor of medicine and director of the clinical trial program at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "Physicians can now tailor treatment to individual patients needs using a variety of drugs."

============

what the book "the spiritual supermarket" tells me, is this: that one must look *everywheres* in this store for truth!  even There!  [ "there": the places you might think are ..."gay"..."communist"...skinhead...."black magik occultist", for instance!]

freestone

japan and nuclear

bothers me.
this bothers me, those four to six reactors, there in Japan.  the danger goes from "they will soon have it under control" to the worst nightmares, all six reactors blow up as one melts down and even explodes.  By this time, days from Wednesday the 16th, the winds might have shifted from the west to the northeast, bringing One to SIX "Chernobyl's" to Tokyo city!

I see it now....riots in the streets, the government itself taken down, as the politics of Japan implodes.

how far could this thing go?!
--would China send over troops and then Japan see this as an invasion?  then a war between China and japan?!

------but as this nuclear thing cooks, the attention is diverted from the million or so people displaced by the disaster!  this nuclear problem will occupy the Japanese psyche so much that the victims of the quake and the water will be partly ignored!

freestone

men are now drones!

hi all.

I read a disturbing article in this morning's Democrat.  One of those "help columns of giving advice to families", had a questioner saying that her daughter can not find a mature late teen man to date.
    the reply was essentially that there are very very few of these  people!  Then the article went on to say that nowadays teen girls are becoming adult and mature as early as age 13 but the men often do not become adult, mature, until the 20s or even the 30s!

I find this disturbing, people.  I have read of this before.  there is really now no place for a man in our culture.  from childhood on, an active boy, in school, is supposed to be medicated so that he can sit still like the girls and the class teachings is for girls.

Violence, the "frontier mentality", assertion, aggression;  these are not supposed to be done today.

It is being found that women make better Managers as they have better social skills and communication skills.

the Proper Place, today, for many men, is to father the child, then get out of the way, then let the mother raise the child without his presence.

what *really* is to happen is that all of us men are to be raised as girls and to live like women, in our cultural future, I guess!  men will develop tenderness, nurturing skills, communication and social abilities, place feelings as a higher priority than of "mind".

maybe this is a not a bad thing.

freestone

Communism and capitalism: why they are undone!

Communism and capitalism: why they are undone!

at least why I think so.

I once read that there was a man who came down from heaven to incarnate to bring the social economic system of heaven down to earth so that we all could live it, here.

no one listened to him.

At least until the last Empire got to try it and about 1991, after some 70 years, it came apart.

the man?
Karl Marx!

Here is a social system where the happiness of everyone around you is more important than of your own and you might try to make people happier than you.  No one owns, really, anything.  the collective does.  all work is purely volunteer work, and work for the collective good.

all it takes is just one self seeking person to begin to unravel it all.  Then the leaders end up making laws to keep this communism going, repressive laws.  then too *if* the leaders themselves have even a trace of self seeking, controlling ego self, the Pure system is doomed!  the good old boys end up with it all, the peasants who do not end up in Gulag camps, have nothing.

capitalism?
same applies, if one person is self seeking and wants it all, he gets it all and 70% of the people do without.

systems fail due to individuals who want power and money!!

freestone

147

alkonost

alkonost.
at 69 years of age, a band that I am not supposed to like, I guess.  But I do;  one of my favorite bands, along with Grag and Arkona.   Russian pagan rock.
Last night listening to some of their music, one can buy and download from amazon.com.




from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkonost_(band)


Popularity

The band is best known amongst heavy metal fans in their native country of the Russian Federation. However, their music has been discussed and shared on the internet, particularly on Usenet, and they have found new audiences in Nordic Europe and the United Kingdom. Signed to Metalism Records, their albums are available with English titles, although the songs themselves are predominantly sung in Russian. In 2007, for the first time, the band was able to perform outside of Russia, touring Ukraine, Belarus, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.^[1], where they were warmly received.^[2]

[edit] Influences

The band's material is based on Russian paganism and mythology, and the melodies are drawn from indigenous Russian folk music, but the arrangements and riffs are drawn from power metal, death metal and symphonic metal, consisting of simplistic power chords under intricate "shredding" lead guitar (characteristic of power metal), male guttural rasping vocals (found in death metal) and soaring female operatic vocals (as found in symphonic metal). This has led them to be categorised in all these genres, as well as doom metal and folk metal.

Get a Job!

This morning, people, I heard the Mantra yet again, from someone who sees
the homeless wandering about the downtown of Tallahassee, and she says,
"they need to get a job, to Go To Work"!

Then she told me some about her childhood life, she says that in her
family of over 10 kids, if someone does not work, they do not eat!
Everyone got up at 4 AM and worked , ALL of them, all day long, back
in the Great Depression days.
I knew of a local Greek restaurateur, who came from Greece with
$50 in his pocket and he opened a restaurant here in this city, years
and years ago. Naturally he worked long long hours nearly ever day
of the week. A server once saw him tossing the leftover cornbread
into the trash, after dinner, she told him that he could donate it
to the local church to feed the poor. he Abruptly told her, "I came
here with $50 in my pocket and I *WORKED* hard for what I now have,
THEY CAN TOO"!!

"THEY CAN TOO"!.......that is the "magic word" here!

There are several generational gaps at work here, in the 2000s.
The older generation, who Knew the depression and WW II, they see
life as something where one must work hard for every little thing
and "life is hard", and one must hoard and "everything goes bad"!
their solution for the homeless is Simple: Get A Job!! even if it
is cleaning the vats at the Arsenic factory, dawn to dusk 6 days a
week, and die of arsenic poisoning at age 32, it is A JOB!
"I worked like a dog: they must too"!

Someone changed the rules in the middle of the game play, today!
I see how there are different life agendas, different collective
challenges for people, for souls, in this currant incarnational age.
The older generation canned their dreams and hopes, placing them in
boxes in the attic, like my mother did in the 1930s, where she placed
her college artwork and her teachers certificate, so that she could
raise her family. We found these things in 1975, after she died.
My sister told me of how, in the 1940s, she heard my mother sneak
out at night to play the piano, and play it very very well indeed!
But these "arts" were not to be done, "work" is so so so much more
important, after all, from 5 to 20 people depended upon your work,
so you repressed it all.
I once had a man talk to me for four hours non-stop, telling
me of how he did this, work from dawn to dusk 7 days a week for life
and now is is very very angry as NOW all of the kids, he says, are
now dancing the dances that he could not and
HE IS PAYING THEM TO DO IT OUT OF HIS OWN MONEY!!
he pays taxes, social security, etc, to fund the people on SSI and
welfare and food stamps, all he sees is that now they all are living
their dreams that he could not and doing it on his money to boot!
--you could have had him put his finger in the electric socket and
his anger could have powered the city for over an hour!!

Is he right?
or....
Are the kids of today right?!
or...
has the spiritual Program changed, in the collective
unconscious, and these older people cannot keep up?! I think so.

Actually, I have seen a number of Hippies, in the 70s,
around Ithaca, new york, *want* the next great crash to happen,
or that civilization end through earthchanges, so that their
"survival commune rural" way of life could then be Realized!
Yes, go back to 1820, where women stayed in the house to raise
the kids and cooked and cleaned and the man works dawn to dusk;
all now in "survival mode"!


COP-OUT!!
---for if they did this, they would not Have To Choose,
not to choose amongst the 1,000,000
choices of what the modern life has to offer, both "good"
and "bad", like of the cafeteria lady, who was in her 70s, lost
her husband, was of that Depression generation, where for a lady
the man was *supposed* to do her thinking *for* her; now she was
Alone, facing the 15 kinds of desserts and the 18 kinds of salads,
she was a ship without a rudder, wheel, sail, anchor, motor!
She was *incredibly* Flustered and "beside herself" with indecision,
she could not choose *which* one to order, she had no idea as to which
one she wanted.
So these Hippies wanted the simple life where an Authority
made the choice for them!
In fact, as the couple of years went by, I saw a number of
my friends join cults, cults that
gave them this great opportunity: to have someone make all choice
for them! I never ever saw these friends again. I once saw a couple,
wearing white robes, get on the Greyhound bus, to go to Chicago to
live in the "Ashram", of the Cult.
[Nowadays, the "cult" is liable to be where the "kids"
join a different kind of Cult, like of
eating only a certain kind of food make a religion out of it,
or Bond with the "9-11 movement", where Simple answers to all of
the world's problems, are put forth! Now each and every issue has
that One Simple Answer For!]

So much more of a subtle and deep spiritual Challenge for soul
growth, is to have those million choices and to be able to use this
great freedom of this age, to grow in soul/spiritual Understandings;
if the world were to "end", via war or Volcano Yellowstone blowing up,
why the Lessons would END, would they not? Then back to
"survival mode"! But we all have done that mode before, all
of us, a thousand times before, in past lives!! Over and over and
over yet again!
[my "par idem" symbol of this Choice: to win the 15 million dollar
state lottery and now you have taken the "30 payments" option, now
you get $250,000 a year after taxes!

*WHAT*, sports fans, *will* you DO with all of this money?

that 1950s TV program, "THE MILLIONAIRE", each episode a stranger
would be given a million dollars, and some people made good of it,
other were destroyed. "choice", yet again.

So I would not want the end times to come for quite a while to come!
I want to see the Lessons continue, as it is far far *more*
challenging, I see here, to deal with Abundance, than with Poverty! "abundance", whether in money or Information, forces each
of us to Choose, to choose between this or that path, thing,
knowledge, and for many of us, this is too too much to handle, so
that a "one choice which decides all future choices" route is
taken. Fundamental Christianity, yes, but also a food cult,
9/11 conspiracy cults, or just to marry a strong person and let
him/her
do all of the thinking!

Right this moment at this library, there are about five homeless
people on the computers. They come every day, and stay from opening
until closing time and often for 6 days a week! They are not
Working, of course, which infuriates some of the building staff,
who sees them coming in!
"get a job", they say, those of that older generation.
But what choice-lessons are being learned, by these homeless,
as they surf the Internet? who is to say but Spirit what they
are learning?! For all one knows, they might be learning more
per day than that person who has that boring clerk or construction job!