"Humility is not necessarily considering ourselves less important or valuable than other people. It is not a lack of self-esteem; nor is it a form of modest behavior, and it is not the result of humiliation.

Humility is the right attitude of the finite to the Infinite, the conditioned to the Unconditioned, the part to the Whole. Humility is our awareness of our dependence on something greater than ourselves, and our interdependence with our fellow human beings and all of life."

--Kabir Helminski, The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation

Enjoying part of the falls work,
28 white tail hides bucked and dried
winter will be to soften, smoke, and craft!

"we are all pointing guns at each other
and we wonder what happened to the world.
We all went out and bought guns to
protect each other from each other
and now we're even scared of ourselves...
you can't stop a bullet with a bullet."

part of a poem by Momma E
Check it out in full

http://torontopoetryslam.com/openmic/viewtopic.php?id=1241

to read...

Wayne Roberts of the Toronto food policy council

"... Imagine that a government gave a cash or tax incentive worth $10 for every $100-purchase of local, sustainable and nutritious groceries. Hugh Joseph and his colleagues from the Friedmann School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston showed that knowledgeable and frugal shoppers could buy such food (as benchmarked against an exhaustive list prepared by nutritionists with the US Department of Agriculture) for about 10 per cent more than the long-distance foods in a typical shopping basket.

Assuming that the cost difference is similar in Canada, what would happen if a Canadian stimulus program picked up the $10 surcharge for every $100 spent on certified local, sustainable and nutritious food? If three million Canuck households took the government up on this offer every week – it’s commonly estimated that a third of shoppers are already keen to try such food if the price is right – the government would have to dole out $1.5-billion per year ($10 per week x 50 weeks x 3 million shoppers). In return, these three million new customers would spend some $15-billion worth of job-creating food purchases (3 million x $100 x 52 weeks). ..."

read the whole article!!

http://alternativesjournal.ca/articles/eat-this-recession

http://www.storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/

living as if I belong

To handle the stuff of our living was for me to be born again.
To take apart an animal's wholeness, the tangible experience of the complete
the smooth of liver and lung
the perseverance of heart

Later
to work the fat of the brain into hide
lustrous fabric
My clothes remind me, celebrate with me, that I am of this earth.
As my body belongs, so to may my living belong.

Cosmos ((carl sagan))

An Excerpt...
p.23

"Human beings grew up in forests; we have a natural affinity for them. How lovely a tree is, straining toward the sky. Its leaves harvest sunlight to photosynthesize, so trees compete by shadowing their neighbors. If you look closely you can often see two trees pushing and shoving with languid grace. Trees are great and beautiful machines, powered by sunlight, taking in water from the ground and carbon dioxide from the air, converting these materials into food for their use and ours. The plant uses the carbohydrates it makes as an energy source to go about its planty business. And we animals, who are ultimately parasites on the plants, steal the carbohydrates so we can go about our business. In eating the plants we combine the carbohydrates with oxygen dissolved in our blood because of our penchant for breathing air, and so extract the energy that makes us go. In the process ew exhale carbon dioxide, which the plants then recycle to make more carbohydrates. What a marvelous cooperative arrangement--plants and animals each inhaling the other's exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant cycle powered by a star 150 million kilometers away."



-photo from- http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/yoemans20091110.html

Another violent night in Toronto

"It was a violent night in Toronto last night", chimed the cbc yesterday morning as patrick whipped up a batch of crepes.
Before the story continued, with stories of two separate shootings at downtown parties.
Before I heard about those sad deaths I thought that maybe:

"It was a violent night in Toronto last night, 400 000 people* watching television witnessed, on average, 14 murders, 106 acts of patriarchal normalcy, 17 displays of hand guns. Overall creativity of a large part of the cities population was under attack."

or maybe:

"It was a violent night in Toronto last night as the city expanded by another parking lot, bringing the total amount of Canada's prime arable land covered by Toronto pavement to 4607 hectares"

or maybe:

"It was a violent night in Toronto last night as 2 million citizens finished another week without taking steps towards living their dreams"

or maybe:

"It was a violent night in Toronto last night as 100 000 high school students, connected through gaming systems, simulated wartime horrors on each other as gun wielding citizens in Assasins Creed, Alliance of Valiant Arms or Call of Duty Modern Warfare.**"

"It was a violent night in Toronto last night... (you fill in the blank)



*Note, all statistics/numbers have been arbitrarily assigned as the author did not wish to research. If you do, please let me know how close my estimates were!
**These are real games. It is my understanding that most 'first person shooters' are military training simulations adapted for public entertainment.