The Earthdance Experience

As I mentioned in my previous post (I think!) I went to the Cape Town Earthdance last weekend with a bunch of my friendies. We set up our own little tent boudior and actually spent most of our time hanging out and being crazy and chillaxing and all that. We did mission to the dance floor (when it was finally put up at like 10pm!) and stayed there for a good few hours and stomped our little feet to the beats and sounds of some pumping psy trance tunes.

The weather was rather chilly and wet to say the least, but that did not dampen our spirits, we all got rather cosy and snuggled in the boudior.

So I have attached some pics of the weekend that was Earthdance, not many of Sunday though as most of us were in 'recovery' mode!

In the Daytime when the weather was fine(ish) :






And when the sun goes away, in the night time we play:

Earthdance 2006 - Global Party for Peace

EARTHDANCE September 16, 2006

THE GLOBAL FESTIVAL FOR PEACE - Uniting over 250 locations in 50 countries through music and dancein celebration of peace

The highlight of the Earthdance event is a simultaneous link up, when every event across the world plays the Prayer for Peace. Morning in the Australian rainforest, midnight in London, and sunrise over the Himalayas, the Prayer for Peace is a profound and powerful moment that unifies our intentions for World peace and healing.

"We are one global family

All colors, All races, One world united.

We dance for peace and the healing of our planet Earth

Peace for all nations.

Peace for our communities.

And peace within ourselves.

As we join all dance floors across the world,let us connect heart to heart.

Through our diversity we recognize Unity.

Through our compassion we recognize Peace.

Our love is the power to transform our world

Let us send it out

NOW..."

The Mission
Our mission is to promote peace by joining participants worldwide in a synchronized PRAYER FOR PEACE and to support humanitarian causes through the global language of music and dance.
The Goal
Our goal is to inspire participation from promoters, clubs, artists, musicians and peace-lovers worldwide to dedicate one day to support humanitarian efforts and help unite people from all nations in a day of peaceful celebration and harmony. This year we are expanding the circle to include anyone interested in world peace, even if you can't make it to an official event.
The Objective

Our objective is to create as many Earthdance events around the world as possible. From public stadium concerts to private living room gatherings, there are no conditions on how big or small an event has to be. The spirit of Earthdance is participation on whatever level possible.
In the spirit of "Think Global, Act Local," each local promoter must donate at least 50% of their profits to a local charity related to one of the following categories:

* The Welfare of Children & Urban Youth
* Indigenous Peoples
* International Relief and Development;
* Environmental Sustainability & Protection
* Organizations that help Promote Peace

Give Peace a Dance…check out http://www.earthdance.org/ for further details and the cities listing where the parties are going to be happening.

I am going to be lucky enough to be in Cape Town for Earthdance (like last year with Jo and Chris!) and I will look up at the moon and send out my love and energy to those I hold dear.

Peace, Love and Earthdance

Orangeblossom xxx

The Essence of Man - by Werner Klokow

Under stars underneath clear skies
Rhythmic pulsating sugary beat
Existence reflects in pure bliss
Humanity in a momentary pause of life
Rides the beat of our basic instincts
Bare feet in mud and dust pounding
Together write the story of our essence
Life becomes a reflection of a moment
All moments become one leading up
Upwards the music sends our psyche
Upwards our souls soar careless
Like children perfect when born first

Checking out the Czech Republic

I am not going to drown this posting in the potholes that surrounded Jo and my trip to Czech. Instead I have decided to post some lovely pictures of our good times spent in Prague and Cesky Krumlov.

Prague and Cesky are beautifully preserved medieval places with towers castles and many spiers and bridges. The architectures is so detailed and glorious and I loved how the streets (especially in Cesky) just wind in cobbled mazes.

Some sights we saw in Prague were the Charles Bridge, Prague Castle complex, Old Town, New Town and a charming tea room not far from our pristine hostel (seriously, if you go to Prague stay at Miss Sophies!)

In Cesky we went up to the castle complex and gardens, lazed in another tea room and then just strolled around the town, absorbing this quaint and charming little town surrounded by a meanding river moat.

So despite all our hiccups and drama, we did still have a good time and we plan on visiting Hungary next year esp Ozora festival that we had to miss out on :( boo hoo

But such is life and I thought I would include a few travel quotes that have rung true on this little journey of ours:

* "Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journey. " - Babs Hoffman

* "The rewards of the journey far outweigh the risk of leaving the harbor." - Unknown

* "For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints." -Robert Louis Stevenson

* "If you come to a fork in the road, take it." -Yogi Berra

* "Tourists don't know where they've been, travellers don't know where they're going." -Paul Theroux

So ahoy I shout from my travelling ship, its off I go again, back home to Africa on Saturday for a few weeks before I begin the student life - horray!

Love, Light and Safe Travels
Orangeblossom xxx

The Truth about Soya

Soya. It’s a controversial story.

While the health benefits of soya consumption have been shouted from the rooftops for many years now, there are also frequent reports that it may actually be bad for your health.

So, what’s the truth? Jo handed me an article from The Guardian newspaper about soya.

I have copied the article in, and you can read at your leisure and decide for yourself if you would like to look into it further. I have stopped buying soya milk, and am going to make a conscious effort to look more at what is actually in the products that I buy. Its not just about the potential health dangers that soya poses, but also the unethical cultivation and fermentation methods in which most soya is forced to grow in.

Call it becoming more “food conscious”, but I think in today’s world of mass production struggling to keep in demand for global food consumption, its worth thinking about it a bit more about what actually is being put into everyday foods.

~~~ The Guardian 25th July 2006 - by Felicity Lawrence

Should we worry about soya in our food?

Whether you know it or not, you'll probably be eating soya today. It's in 60% of all processed food, from cheese to ice cream, baby formula to biscuits. But should it carry a health warning?

For Dr Mike Fitzpatrick, the saga of soya began in Monty Python-style with a dead parrot. His investigations into the ubiquitous bean started in 1991 when Richard James, a multimillionaire American lawyer, turned up at the laboratory in New Zealand where Fitzpatrick was working as a consultant toxicologist. James was sure that soya beans were killing his rare birds.

"We thought he was mad, but he had a lot of money and wanted us to find out what was going on," Fitzpatrick recalls.

Over the next months, Fitzpatrick carried out an exhaustive study of soya and its effects. "We discovered quite quickly," he recalls, "that soya contains toxins and plant oestrogens powerful enough to disrupt women's menstrual cycles in experiments. It also appeared damaging to the thyroid." James's lobbying eventually forced governments to investigate. In 2002, the British government's expert committee on the toxicity of food (CoT) published the results of its inquiry into the safety of plant oestrogens, mainly from soya proteins, in modern food. It concluded that in general the health benefits claimed for soya were not supported by clear evidence and judged that there could be risks from high levels of consumption for certain age groups. Yet little has happened to curb soya's growth since.

More than 60% of all processed food in Britain today contains soya in some form, according to food industry estimates. It is in breakfast cereals, cereal bars and biscuits, cheeses, cakes, dairy desserts, gravies, noodles, pastries, soups, sausage casings, sauces and sandwich spreads. Soya, crushed, separated and refined into its different parts, can appear on food labels as soya flour, hydrolysed vegetable protein, soy protein isolate, protein concentrate, textured vegetable protein, vegetable oil (simple, fully, or partially hydrogenated), plant sterols, or the emulsifier lecithin. Its many guises hint at its value to manufacturers.

Soya increases the protein content of processed meat products. It replaces them altogether in vegetarian foods. It stops industrial breads shrinking. It makes cakes hold on to their water. It helps manufacturers mix water into oil. Hydrogenated, its oil is used to deep-fry fast food.

Soya is also in cat food and dog food. But above all it is used in agricultural feeds for intensive chicken, beef, dairy, pig and fish farming. Soya protein - which accounts for 35% of the raw bean - is what has made the global factory farming of livestock for cheap meat a possibility. Soya oil - high in omega 6 fatty acids and 18% of the whole bean - has meanwhile driven the postwar explosion in snack foods around the world. Crisps, confectionery, deep-fried take-aways, ready meals, ice-creams, mayonnaise and margarines all make liberal use of it. Its widespread presence is one of the reasons our balance of omega 3 to omega 6 essential fatty acids is so out of kilter.

You may think that when you order a skinny soya latte, you are choosing a commodity blessed with an unadulterated aura of health. But soya today is in fact associated with patterns of food consumption that have been linked to diet-related diseases. And 50 years ago it was not eaten in the west in any quantity.
In 1965, the earliest year for which the Chicago Board of Trade keeps figures, global soya bean production was just 30m tonnes. By 2005, the world was consuming nine times that a year, at 270m tonnes. World soya oil production, meanwhile, has increased sevenfold over the same period, from 5m tonnes to 34m tonnes a year.

To feed demand, new agricultural frontiers are being opened up in Brazil, where large areas of virgin rainforest have been illegally felled to make room for the crop. US-based transnationals are now exporting soya back to China, the country from which it originated, as newly urbanised Chinese switch to industrialised western diets. Thanks to US agribusiness, we have developed an apparently insatiable global appetite for the bean produced by farmers in the Americas.

James and Fitzpatrick became convinced early on that this entirely new dependence on soya was, in fact, a dangerous experiment. The dead parrots were no joke - they were the canaries in the coalmine.

For James and his wife Valerie, breeding the exotic birds down under was a retirement dream. They wanted to feed their young birds the best, so they began giving the chicks a soya feed. Parrots do not eat soya beans in the wild but the high-protein animal feed had been marketed in the US as a new miracle food.

The result was a catastrophic breeding year. Some of the birds were infertile; many died. Other young male birds aged prematurely or reached puberty years early. "We realised there was some sort of hormonal disruption going on but we'd eliminated other possible hormone disrupting chemicals such as pesticides from the inquiry," Fitzpatrick says.

So the toxicologist began a systematic review of the scientific literature on soya. After finding out about the plant oestrogens in soya, Fitzpatrick says, "My next thought was: what about children who are fed soya milk?" He calculated that babies fed exclusively on soya formula could receive the oestrogenic equivalent, based on body weight, of five birth control pills a day.

In fact, it had been known since the early 1980s that plant oestrogens, or phyto-oestrogens, could produce biological effects in humans. The most common of these were a group of compounds in soya protein called isoflavones. Food manufacturers had variously marketed soya foods as an antidote to menopausal hot flushes and osteoporosis, and as a protective ingredient against cardiovascular disease and hormone-related cancers. Large quantities of mainly industry-sponsored scientific research have been produced to back up these claims.

The American soya industry spends about $80m every year, raised from a mandatory levy on producers, to research and promote the consumption of soya around the world. The rash of new soya foods can be seen as the latest in a line of innovative ways devised to use soya.

The hypothesis behind the health claims is that rates of heart disease and certain cancers such as breast and prostate cancer are lower in east Asian populations with soya-rich diets than in western countries, and that the oestrogens in soya might therefore have a protective effect.

Fitzpatrick, however, looked into historic soya consumption in Japan and China and concluded that Asians did not actually eat that much. What they did eat tended to have been fermented for months. "If you look at people who are into health fads here, they are eating soya steaks and veggie burgers or veggie sausages and drinking soya milk - they are getting over 100g a day. They are eating tonnes of the raw stuff."

Mass exposure to isoflavones in the west has only occurred in the past 30 years due to the widespread incorporation of soya protein into processed foods, a fact noted by the Royal Society in its expert report on Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in 2000. When the independent experts on the scientific committee on toxicity trawled through all the scientific data, they concluded that soya milk should not be recommended for infants even when they had cow's milk allergies, except on medical advice, because of the high levels of oestrogenic isoflavones it contains.

On breast cancer, they decided that "despite the suggested benefits of phyto-oestrogens in lowering risk of developing breast cancer, there is also evidence that they may stimulate the progression of the disease". The lower risk of certain cancers among Asian populations might be due to other factors - their high consumption of fish, for example. They advised caution. On the effects on menopause symptoms, the evidence was inconclusive, the experts ruled. On bone density, the committee thought there might be some protective effects, but the data was unclear. The evidence on prostate cancer was mixed. Since isoflavones cross the placenta, the implications of pregnant women eating large quantities of soya were unclear. There was some evidence that soya-based products had a beneficial effect on the good HDL cholesterol but they were not sure that was down to the isoflavones. On the other hand - reassuringly - they judged that a study linking soya consumption to decline in cognitive function was not convincing.

What the committee also pointed out was that the way soya was processed affected the levels of phyto-oestrogens. Traditional fermentation reduces the levels of isoflavones two- to threefold. Modern factory processes do not. Moreover, modern American strains of soya have significantly higher levels of isoflavones than Japanese or Chinese ones because they have been bred to be more resistant to pests. (One way to tackle pests is to stop them breeding by making them infertile. It turns out that unfermented soya did play one role in traditional Asian diets - it was eaten by monks to dampen down their libido.)

Sue Dibb, now food policy expert at the National Consumer Council, was a member of the CoT working group that compiled the final report. She questions whether infant soya milk should still be on public sale and is troubled by the latest marketing of soya. "We looked in detail at the claimed health benefits for adults for soya consumption and concluded there was not sufficient evidence to support many of them. There may be benefits but there are also risks. The groups of adults of particular concern are those with a thyroid problem and women with oestrogen-dependent breast cancer. It worries me that soya is being pushed as a health food by a big soya and supplements industry. We ought to be taking a more cautious approach."

The Food Standards Agency advice is that soya's potential to have an adverse effect on babies' hormonal development is still controversial, but that soya formula should only be given to infants under 12 months old in exceptional circumstances.

Professor Richard Sharpe, head of the Medical Research Council's human reproductive sciences unit at Edinburgh University, was also a member of the committee's working group on phyto-oestrogens in food. He has been studying the decline in male fertility in the past half-century. He recently completed studies on the effects of soya milk on young male monkeys which showed that it interferes with testosterone levels. "In the first three months after birth, baby boys have a neonatal testosterone rise. The testes are very, very active in hormone production at this point and there is a lot of cell activity going on that will determine sperm count in adults and will affect the developing prostate. If you introduce a phyto-oestrogen, which can, in large amounts, alter these changes, you may predispose children to later disease. Soya formula milk is a [recent] western invention. There is not the historical evidence to show it is safe."

Manufacturers, however, argue that soya infant formula has been widely used without problems. "The industry has said that if the CoT comes up with clear science, we will take note, but the case is not proven," says Roger Clarke, director general of the industry's Infant Dietetics Food Association. "A lot of the work it looked at was based on experimental work with animals. There does not seem to be clear evidence of adverse effects, and there is demand for it. There are some markets, such as vegan usage, where soya is the only alternative."

While 30-40% of all infants in the US are raised on soya formula - not least because it is given away in welfare programmes - soya milk for babies has always been confined to a small minority in the UK. So does Sharpe think exposure to soya from other sources - vegetarian soya proteins, the soya flour in factory bread, the hydrolysed proteins added as flavourings, for example - has a cumulative effect that might be worrying to other age groups? He says he is not concerned about people who eat soya foods in moderation or in the way they are traditionally used in oriental diets, but when it comes to modern processed foods, which use soya proteins in different ways, he prefers to turn the question round. "If someone said they were adding a hormone to your foods, would you be happy with that? There may be lots of effects, some of them may be beneficial, but would you be happy with that? I am not a fan of processed foods, full stop. And these quick fixes for protecting against ill-health - you know they can't be true," he adds.

A steaming hiss fills the kitchen of the top London restaurant Nobu, even after the lunchtime rush. Japanese chefs are filleting the evening's fish while stock bubbles and concentrates in its stainless steel vat behind. Executive chef Mark Edwards hands me a teaspoon of one of his soy sauces. Cool from the fridge, it is thick, rich, dark and sweet, yet remarkably clear from its long fermentation. The miso that he uses to marinade his famous black cod for three days is dense and strong from its lengthy brew too. Muslin cloths envelop delicate curds of tofu, made fresh each day and added in small cubes to miso soup.

Soya is used in traditional oriental diets in these forms, after cultures, moulds or precipitants have achieved a biochemical transformation, because in its raw form the mature bean is known not only for its oestrogenic qualities but for also its antinutrients, according to the clinical nutritionist Kaayla Daniel, author of The Whole Soy Story. Soya was originally grown in China as a green manure, for its ability to fix nitrogen in the soil, rather than as a food crop, until the Chinese discovered ways of fermenting it, she says.

The young green beans, now sold as a fashionable snack, edamame, are lower in oestrogens and antinutrients, though not free of them. But raw mature soya beans contain phytates that prevent mineral absorption and enzyme inhibitors that block the key enzymes we need to digest protein. They are also famous for inducing flatulence.

Christopher Dawson, who owns the Clearspring brand of organic soy sauces, agrees. He lived in Japan for 18 years and his Japanese wife, Setsuko, is a cookery teacher. "I never saw soy beans on the table in Japan - they're indigestible."

Dawson describes the traditional craft method of transforming the soya bean through fermentation, so that its valuable amino acids become available but its antinutrients are tamed. The process involves cooking whole soya beans, complete with their oil, for several hours, then adding the spores of a mould to the mix, and leaving it to ferment for three days to begin the long process of breaking down the proteins and starches. This initial brew is then mixed with salt water and left to ferment for a further 18 months, during which time the temperature will vary with the seasons. The end result is an intensely flavoured condiment in which the soya's chemical composition has been radically altered. Traditional miso is similarly made with natural whole ingredients, slowly aged.

Most soya sauces (and misos) are not made this way any more, however. Instead of using the whole bean, manufacturers short-cut the fermentation by starting with defatted soy protein meal. Soya veggie burgers and sausages generally use the same chemically extracted fraction of the bean.

This meal is the product of the industrial crushing process the vast majority of the world's soya beans go through. The raw beans are broken down to thin flakes, which are then percolated with a petroleum-based hexane solvent to extract the soya oil. The remains of the flakes are toasted and ground to a protein meal, most of which goes into animal feed. Soya flour is made in a similar way.

The oil then goes through a process of cleaning, bleaching, degumming and deodorising to remove the solvent and the oil's characteristic "off" smells and flavours. The lecithin that forms a heavy sludge in the oil during storage used to be regarded as a waste product, but now it has been turned into a valuable market in its own right as an emulsifier.

In so-called "naturally brewed" soya sauces the processed soy protein meal is mixed with the mould spores and given accelerated ageing at high temperatures for three to six months. Non-brewed soya sauce, the cheapest grade, is made in just two days. Defatted soya flour is mixed with hydrochloric acid at high temperatures and under pressure to create hydrolysed vegetable protein. Salt, caramel and chemical preservatives and flavourings are then added to provide colour and taste. This rapid hydrolysis method uses the enzyme glutamase as a reactor and creates large amounts of the unnatural form of glutamate that is found in MSG.

Most commercial soya milk today is made from soya isolates, although some of the pioneers of soya foods as health products in Europe avoid the chemical extraction process and use whole beans to make their milk. The key selling points for both types of soya milk are that they contain complete proteins and oestrogenic isoflavones.

Bernard Deryckere, president of the European Natural Soyfood Manufacturers Association, says that his members' products, made using natural processes, are a healthy alternative to diary products. "A lot of people in Europe are lactose-intolerant. Soya milk was invented in China 4,000 years ago and today it's consumed by all types of people as a cholesterol-free source of quality protein."

Daniel's detailed examination of the history of soya milk, however, suggests that soya milk was made not to drink, except in times of famine, but as the first step in the process of making tofu. After the long, slow boiling of soya beans in water to eliminate toxins, a curdling agent was added to the liquid to separate it. The curds would then be pressed to make tofu and the whey, in which the antinutrients were concentrated, would be thrown away.

Dibb points out that if you are drinking non-dairy milk because you want calcium without cow's milk, there are plenty of other sources such as green leafy vegetables and nuts. And only those eating extremely limited diets are likely to be short of protein as adults.

Dawson, a lifelong vegetarian, does not drink soya milk and only eats tofu in moderation. "I will only use a product for my family if there is 200 years of tradition behind it. You are asking for trouble if you take an isolate from soya - yet so much effort seems to go into taking industry's waste and turning it into new food."

The effort that has gone into creating the global soya market has indeed been enormous. Today it is dominated by a handful of American trading companies. Three of them - Bunge, ADM and Cargill - control 80% of the European soya bean crushing industry. These three, together with allied companies, are also estimated to control up to 80% of European animal feed manufacturing. They dominate the US soya market, and also account for 60% of Brazil's soya exports.

Before the first world war, only a very few soya beans were crushed. The Americans had begun experimenting with using the protein meal as animal feed, but farmers were reluctant to take it up because it was indigestible to chicken and pigs. The oil produced was considered "a bit of an embarrassment", according to Kurt Burger, a fats and oils technical expert at the Society of Chemical Industry, whose experience in the food industry goes back to 1944. It was mainly used in soaps because it was considered unpalatable. (Henry Ford later funded research projects to turn soya into plastic for car parts.)

Cottonseed oil, a byproduct of the cotton industry, was the main edible oil used in the US. But then the combination of disease in monocropped cotton and demand from European allies in the first world war for oil both to eat and to make the glycerine needed for nitroglycerine in explosives, stimulated American soy oil production.

It was not until the 1940s that industry worked out how to deactivate the enzyme inhibitor in the protein meal sufficiently for animals to tolerate it, and it was only technology taken from the Nazis at the end of the second world war that solved the problem of the oil's horrible smell and flavour. That left the way for the US to promote the soya that suited its agricultural conditions as part of the reconstruction of Europe through the 1950s. Soya oil exports to Europe tripled under the Marshall Plan, and heavily subsidised exports of surplus US soya ensured the commodity's dominance in animal feed. The subsidies continue. Between 1998 and 2004, US Department of Agriculture figures show that its soya farming received $13bn in subsidies from the American taxpayer.

Until 2003, the US was the largest exporter of soya. But through the 1990s, multinationals promoted the expansion of the crop in Latin America, helping finance farmers and building the infrastructure for soya exports. The attraction of Latin America is that land is cheap and labour costs are minimal too. Three years ago, the combined exports from Brazil and Argentina surpassed US exports for the first time. The cost is now being counted there in environmental damage and social upheaval. The cost to western consumers may yet be counted in health.”
~~~

Being a Lefty

“Everyone is born right-handed; only the greatest can overcome it!”

I thought I would shed some light on us creatures of the Left existence because well we are few and far between (only 13% of the population around the world) and although no one has come up with a definitive reason for WHY some people are left-handed, our uniqueness should be celebrated!

I found most of this info on a website actually dedicate to being left handed!http://www.lefthandersday.com Celebrate left handers day on 13th August!

FASCINATING LEFT-HANDED FACTS
· Most left-handers draw figures facing to the right
· There is a high tendency in twins for one to be left-handed
· Left-handers adjust more readily to seeing underwater.
· Left-handers excel particularly in tennis, baseball, swimming and fencing
· Left-handers usually reach puberty 4 to 5 months after right-handers
· 4 of the 5 original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed
· Left-handers are generally more intelligent, better looking, imaginative and multi-talented than right handers. Fact.

WHAT MAKES A LEFTY, LEFT?
The way the brain works is incredibly complex, but this simplified explanation will give you some understanding of where our left-hand dominance comes from. The brain is "cross-wired" so that the left hemisphere controls the right handed side of the body and vice-versa and hand dominance is connected with brain dominance on the opposite side - which is why we say that only left-handers are in their right minds!

The left hemisphere (RIGHT HAND CONTROL) controls Speech, Language, Writing, Logic, Mathematics, Science, this is the LINEAR THINKING MODE.

The right hemisphere (LEFT HAND CONTROL) controls Music, Art, Creativity, Perception, Emotions,Genius, this is the HOLISTIC THINKING MODE.

This brain dominance makes left-handers more likely than right handers to be creative, and visual thinkers. This is supported by higher percentages of left-handers than normal in certain jobs and professions - music and the arts, media in general.

Left-handers are also generally better at 3-dimensional perception and thinking, leading, for example, to more left-handed architects than normal. Left-handers are also usually pretty good at most ball sports and things involving hand-to-eye co-ordination.

The view that left-handers are clumsy and awkward is not down to their natural abilities, but being forced to use right-handed tools and machinery which is completely back-to-front for them.

See illustration below...

It's not easy being a lefty.

Statistics show left-handed people are more likely to be schizophrenic, alcoholic, delinquent, dyslexic, and have Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, as well as mental disabilities. They're also more likely to die young and get into accidents. So if evolutionary theory dictates survival of the fittest, why do lefties still exist?

Then again, as many lefties might point out, being left-handed can also offer intellectual prowess. Tests conducted by Alan Searleman from St Lawrence University in New York found there were more left-handed people with IQs over 140 than right-handed people. Famous left-handed thinkers in history from Albert Einstein to Isaac Newton to Benjamin Franklin seem to underline the point.

THE SCIENTIFIC BIT
The way our brains are organised, with the right hemisphere controlling our dominant left-hand, means we do things differently to right-handers. This is called Brain hemisphere division of labour.

The left hemisphere (RIGHT HAND CONTROL) controls Speech, Language, Writing, Logic, Mathematics, Science, this is the LINEAR THINKING MODE.The right hemisphere (LEFT HAND CONTROL) controls Music, Art, Creativity, Perception, Spatial awareness, Emotions, Genius, this is the HOLISTIC THINKING MODE.

This is the most commonly accepted theory of handedness. The premise of this theory is that since both speaking and handiwork require fine motor skills, having one hemisphere of the brain do both would be more efficient than having it divided up. And since in most people, the left side of the brain controls speaking, right-handedness would prevail. It also predicts that left-handed people would have a reversed brain division of labour. Lastly, since other primates do not have a spoken language (at least of the type we have) there would be no stimulus for right-handed preference among them, and that is true.

On the balance, it appears that this theory could well explain some left-handedness, but it has too many gaps to explain all left-handedness.

Several brain-scan studies have verified a fundamental difference between left-handed and right-handed brains. A right-handed person's brain is typically highly specialized, with a specific portion of the brain dedicated to each task. This same specialization is much less prevalent in left-handed brains. Left-handed stroke victims often rehabilitate more quickly than right-handed stroke victims, as the left-handed brain has a lesser tendency to compartmentalize and specialize its abilities.

LEFT-HANDED HISTORY
Stone Age implements discovered seem equally divided between left and right and studies of cave drawings have indicated a preference for the left hand. When tools became more sophisticated, a clear hand preference emerged. The right hand preference may have originated in sun worship.

In the Northern hemisphere you have to face south to follow the sun and move from left to right until the suns sets in the west. This gave moving to the right and the right hand side a great significance. Another theory says that as the heart is on the left hand side, a shield would have to be in the left hand to defend it and any weapon therefore had to be held in the right, which became the dominant hand.

Recent theories have included one that right-handedness is the normality and left-handedness is a deficiency which results from a traumatic birth!

FOLKLORE AND SUPERSTITIONS (the source of Lefty Phobia!)
For thousands of years, the Devil has been associated with the left hand in various ways and is normally portrayed as being left-handed in pictures and other images.

In the seventeenth century it was thought that the Devil baptised his followers with his left-hand and there are many references in superstitions to the "left-hand side" being associated with evil. As an example, in France it was held that witches greet Satan "avec le bras gauche" or with the left hand. It is also considered that we can only see ghosts if we look over our left shoulder and that the Devil watches us over the left shoulder.

· Evil spirits lurk over the left shoulder - throw salt over this shoulder to ward them off. In Roman times, salt was a very valuable commodity, giving rise to the word "salary" and was considered a form of money at the time. If salt was spilled, that was considered very bad luck, that could only be avoided by throwing some of the spilled salt over your left shoulder to placate the devil.
· Joan of Arc (burned at the stake in 1431 for being a heretic and a witch) was not necessarily left-handed, she may have been depicted in this way to make her seem evil.
· Getting out of bed with the left foot first means that you will have a bad day and be bad tempered . i.e. getting out of bed the wrong side.
· An itchy right palm means that you will receive money. An itchy left palm means you will have to give money.
· Wedding rings worn on the third finger of the left hand originated with the Greeks and Romans, who wore them to fend of evil associated with the left-hand.
· The Romans originally considered the left to be the lucky side and used for augury. However, they later changed back to the Greek methods and favoured the right-hand side.
· The right hand often symbolises 'male' while the left hand is 'female'.
· When leaving to go on a journey, if your right foot itches you're bound to have a good journey. If your left foot itches it will end in sorrow.
· It is thought to be bad luck to pass a drink to another person with your left-hand or anti-clockwise around a table.

FAMOUS LEFTIES
Lefties have excelled at both ends of the scale - the very good and the very bad. They seem to make exceptional leaders, inventors, artists, musicians and murderers! (I only picked the ones that I recognized, there are of course many more!)

Ramses II, Egyptian pharaoh
Alexander the Great, Greek conqueror
Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor
Julius Caesar, Roman general
Napoléon Bonaparte, French emperor
King Louis XVI of France, Queen Victoria of England, King George II & VI of England, Prince Charles of England, Prince William of England
Fidel Castro, Cuban leader
Henry Ford, automobile manufacturer
David Rockefeller, banker
Edwin Buzz Aldrin, astronaut
John F. Kennedy, Jr., lawyer/publisher
David Letterman, host
Matt Groening, The Simpsons cartoonist
John Dillinger, criminal/bank robber
Boston Strangler (Albert Henry DeSalvo), serial killer
Jack-the-Ripper, serial killer
Mark Twain, novelist
H.G. Wells, British science fiction writer
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, composer,
Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, Italian Renaissance artists

Go the lefties!!!

The Lefty Orangeblossom xxx

The Story of Todo

I live in my magical forest; where hobbits, goblins and elves wander through. I sit on top a canopy of furry green moss, just listening to the sweet, still sound that whispers along the glade.

Sometimes I am alone, and sometimes I am with my fellow fairy sisters. Always exploring, always laughing, always connected, and always free.

I dip and dive in the chilly mountain stream, nestled in the hidden overgrowth and climb up my favorite mushroom stalk to dry my wings on its furry grooves.

Then along comes a hobbit I have never seen before, so I keep very quiet and watch him down below. He has followed the white rabbit and has found himself in this new and different forest, but is strolling with wonder in his eyes, but caution in his step.

Boom! I fly crashing into him and knock him to the forest floor. Maybe I should of just said Boo instead! But I offer him my hand and help him to his feet, where he shakes off the gathered leaves and grants me a smile as warm as the summer sunshine rays that filters through the trees. How blessed I do feel.

A friendship begins and I find myself asking why I never bumped into this gracious creature before. I feel somewhat deprived, but not really because we were only destined to meet in this forest when our paths merged at the right moment for both of us.

I want to take him to a secret place, a place that exists under our forest umbrella. This place where we can play freely in the wondrous woodland, and be connected with the universal energy. A place that binds our spirits and connects our souls.

This place is my heart, where my hobbit has turned the dormant dew of its night into sparkles of water that gently nourish and rejuvenate the flowers of my soul.

Times drifts by and the days of spending time with this fairy fantastical hobbit and discovering all who he is, illuminates my being.

My thoughts of him are never ending and I jump in ecstatic joy, tingling happiness and unbounded love.

I just want to say thank you, Tyran, for being Orangeblossom’s Todo, but most of all for just being you and for allowing me to crash into your world – you have repaired my broken wings. I hope I can show you more around my magical fairy forest world where we can walk and run, stumble and tumble, trip and skip, hop and bop, dash and dive and fly and float…together.

Love Orangeblossom xxx

The Flight for Freedom

Freedom.

That scene from one of my favorite movies, “Braveheart”, immediately springs to mind. The one where William Wallace is brought into the public square for execution. He is offered clemency (a quick death by beheading) in exchange for declaring himself the king’s loyal subject. He refuses and is strung up, first by his neck, then by his wrists and ankles and pulled until his bones dislocate from their joints. He is then tied to a cross and disemboweled alive. Refusing the taunts of the executioner to accept subjectivity to the king, he yells with a piercing roar that silences the crowd…"Freeeeeeeeeeeedom!".

Freedom. Is that not what our most inner human need is? The freedom of choice, of speech, of religion, of beliefs, of Life.

I know that if I were to be granted one super power, it would be to fly. How I look at birds, with envy, at their ability to soar to the heavens, play in the clouds and still come down to earth to feed and rest.

Like the mythological story of Icarus. When Icarus took flight on his feathered wings, the exhilaration was so intense that he decided to try and reach the gods in the heavens. So he ignored the guidance to fly at a moderate height and eventually the sun melted the wax that binded the feathers of his wings, and Icarus plummeted and disappeared into the frothy sea below.

Ok maybe not the best story to use as an anology for flying - I was going for the historical human desire to fly like the birds, but ultimately it seems that in our pursuit for freedom, we mostly are always met with opposition.

I feel like flying today. To be able to glide and drift on currents, to be able to feel the cooling air wrap around every part of your body, to be able to just feel afloat and…free.

Freedom is a birth right. It is not something that should be fought for. But over the ages, we have seen mankind battle each other for this and murdering or torturing those who fought back.

With all the wars and fighting going on around the world, I often wonder if these people actually still know what they are fighting for. Take the Middle East, they have fought for thousands of years, over what? For the promised land? For religion? Does it really matter anymore now? The prospect or concept of peace is something so far removed, that i wonder if they even know what it is, seeing that for all these years they have just been engulfed in war, death and destruction. How can you fight for peace if you have never even lived a day in it? I wonder if they even want peace, or if they just want to carry on fighting, as they have always done, and have only even known.

Its sad to know that we have not learnt our lessons from the past. Perhaps it is just our time on this planet to go through these vicious cycles or war and restricted freedom. And it is hard to justify or understand the political situations that are going on if you have only ever lived where you have been given your own freedom.

I have included an extract from the Prophet for his take on freedom…

“Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.”

I need to find other ways to fly, and resist the urge to jump off things! Maybe I just have a fear of being locked and bounded in an emotional and spiritual cage and this realization urges me to find the earthly freedoms that I do actually already have. The freedom that my cherished friends grant me. The freedom of the love that my family gives me. The freedom of being in love.

“Just living is not enough... One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”

- Hans Christian Andersen (Danish fairy tale author)

May you always feel the sunshine of love, carry the freedom of being alive and may you always hold a flower in your heart to remind you that wherever you are, you are always surrounded by the beauty of your earth and her inhabitants.

May you fly on your wings of your own freedom!

Peace, Love and Freedom
Orangeblossom xxx

Soul meets Body – by Death Cab for Cutie

I want to live where soul meets body

And let the sun wrap its arms around me

And bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing

And feel, feel what its like to be new

Cause in my head there's a greyhound station

Where I send my thoughts to far off destinations

So they may have a chance of finding a place

where they're far more suited than here

I cannot guess what we'll discover

We turn the dirt with our palms cupped like shovels

But I know our filthy hands can wash one another's

And not one speck will remain

I do believe it's true

That there are roads left in both of our shoes

If the silence takes you

Then I hope it takes me too

So green eyes I hold you near

Cause you're the only song I want to hear

A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

Where soul meets body

Where soul meets body

Where soul meets body

I do believe it's true

That there are roads left in both of our shoes

If the silence takes you

Then I hope it takes me too

So green eyes I hold you near

Cause you're the only song I want to hear

A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

The Weekend that was The Glade

Last weekend I was at The Glade Festival and as promised, here is the rundown and some pictures that I managed to take amongst all the happy madness that surrounded us 24/7

What is The Glade? This review sums it up pretty spot on:

“This is Glade festival, a three-day electronic dance music festival in a field near Reading, and one that was fully sold out. Directions to this year’s event was only sent out on the week leading up to the festival.

The line-up is filled with quality; underground and credible dance music talent, one that confirms Glade’s status as the most leftfield electronic festival in the country. For Glade’s attendees, dance music is a lifestyle choice and a hedonistic attitude, not a weekend pastime, or something you would hear on the radio. Here the hippies are very much in the majority.

It’s like a village, full of young, happy, people, all intent on the same thing - having a good time.

From the moment you step out of your tent at dawn to a barrage of morning greetings, to the queues for the toilets, and the shared germs. Dirt is a unifying factor at Glade, it’s an all-pervasive dust that covers you from head to foot, and gets under your eyelids and toe nails. There’s no use trying to stay clean - best to embrace it and accept the smell for a few days- you cannot escape the dirt!

The chillout zone is called ID Spiral - which is an area of immense beauty, comes complete with a transparent bio-dome and floating objects - wouldn’t look out of place on a Mars exploration mission.

People are wearing anything, from pixies, angel wings, to Y-fronts, and pirate hats. This festival isn’t reality. It’s a fairy tea party, a pirate ship, and a tree-hugger’s paradise.

It’s anything you want it to be.”

So yes in a nutshell, that was it. There were about 12000 to 14000 people that were sprawled out in a maze of tents and marquees that surrounded the enclosure. Oh and it was a scorching weekend with temperatures well in the 30C and above.

Security was really tight – which of course is a necessity at these sorts of things, but I won’t deny that it put a damper on things a bit.

And it must be said that as far as logistics go, someone clearly didn’t do their homework – 80 toilets and 20 showers for 12000 people. The maths just don’t add up! But such is the nature of a festival I guess! Luckily Jo, Shazz and I found a bunch of less used cubicles and we stood by at 7am when the cleaning van came round and sprayed anti bacterial in – we were straight in there. My chant was “Find a Happy Place, and don’t touch ANYTHING”!!! And this is why we never drank as much water as we should of (considering the heat and all) because we just didn’t want to go to the loo – ah such girls hey!!

The showers were separated male and female and were very much prison style. We got in there at 8am on the Saturday morning, waiting (half and some fully naked) under the shower nozzles and then we are told that the water had run out!! But we were not deterred and we waited until not very long when the water was refilled.

Being clean again - Life’s greatest pleasures as so simple when you suddenly feel deprived of them! Of course our clean and fresh feeling only lasted for about an hour, then we were back in the sunshine, dust and breathing in the sweaty air and bodies!

But I am going a bit overboard, as I should be used to all the roughing it hey?!

Anyway, back to the festival. We wondered around to all the tents and one can appreciate the different sounds and music, even if it’s not really your sound. The décor and organization I cannot criticize – it all went off superbly.

My favorite tents were Origin and ID Spiral. ID Spiral was just such a happy place and was open all the time at whatever hour of the day and night you just felt like escaping. It was nestled in the corner under the forest trees and shade. And they served yummy Chai Tea – horray!! The music was also so….sublime.

The inflatable Glade Church was set along side The Rabbit Hole and yes people were getting married! Along with a pop infused reception to go along – very random. A bit of a mockery some would say, but then again I was not surprised as this was a festival and anything goes.

The food was also amazing – mostly vegetarian and a lot of organic stuff too (so I was in my element!) with fresh fruit juices and smoothies. So we ate healthily!

We had a good crowd with us too – Jo, Shazz, Chris, Mark, Irene, Zane and Mike and we could always just retreat back to our tenting spot and unwind and relax for as long or as little as one needed.

Overall, I am glad I went – it was my first British Festival! At times I found the big crowd a bit too much, so many different energies and vibes that are constantly changing and moving about. I prefer a smaller and more intimate crowd – maybe I have just been spoilt by the Alien Safari and Origin parties back home.

But still, it was an experience and I had a fairy fantastical time!

Festival Love and Peace
Orangeblossom xxx

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson (25/05/1803 to 27/04/1882) was an American author, poet and philosopher.

Emerson was noted as being a very abstract and difficult writer who nevertheless drew large crowds for his speeches. The heart of Emerson's writing was his direct observations in his journals, which he started keeping as a teenager at Harvard.

An extract from his piece, "The Over Soul":

“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.”

I have put together a few of his quotations, even though he once stated “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

I, however, love quotations, because they express some of the thoughts, opinions and feelings that I harbour, but have just not been able to set free literally and/or verbally. Although there are only a handful that I can remember word for word. I don’t think quotations are there to be memorized and used in repetition. Instead I like to read them, think about them and finally absorb them into my conscious and subconscious so that it may pick out their kindred energy and become a part of my being.

So this is what Ralph had to say…

• The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
• A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
• A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
• Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
• Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
• Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.
• Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
• Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
• Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.
• Nobody can bring you peace but yourself.
• Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
• People only see what they are prepared to see.
• People that seem so glorious are all show; underneath they are like everyone else.
• The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
• Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
• To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
• We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
• What you do speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
• When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

Love and Light, Orangeblossom xxxx

Forests Forever

“Your dream forest may lie within. The forest you have entered in your dreams. An irreplaceable treasure, our children's inheritance." – forests-forever.com

It must have been pure luck that I stumbled (I tend to do a lot of e-stumbling lately!) upon the most enchanting website I have ever come across.

This it literally a journey into the world of the forests. These forests exist right here on Earth, they are not the product of human imagination or hi tech computerized graphics.

From Treehuggers.com:

“Japan’s Fujifilm has put together an incredible site to raise consciousness concerning the planet’s forests and their irreplaceable beauty and their inextricable link to life is revealed through a seamless interface of history from the very beginning, collapsing time into something our brain can handle.

The exhibit is nearly perfect, delivering an enormous amount of content in an elegant and intuitive interface.

But the visuals that accompany the text (as it trickles onto the screen) are aesthetically beautiful, technically intriguing, and, along with the peaceful accompanying music, might even manage to establish a sense of 'serenity' in viewers before they proceed to the main presentation.”

If you're thinking of dropping in, having a quick look around and popping back out again, it's just not going to happen. Wait until you've got some time, or need a break - you should never rush through a museum.

“Everybody thinks that they already know about forests. Perhaps people need to alter their perspective a bit. Forests are not only groups of trees, but a function of the global environment. They provide us with fertile soil, water and food and their existence is necessary for us to survive. Forests are also fragile. Many are damaged by human beings. But, very few people think about how daily life brings harm to forests. Everyone must begin to think about the type of forests we will see 100 years from now.” — creator Shinzo Fukui

Navigating your way around the website:

FOREST GALLERY
The Gallery holds interactive exhibitions, each highlighting a unique woodland from locations around the world.

After the images, each collection has a few Information pages - holding articles written by the photographers, history and ecology of the forest in question, photographer profiles, and a horizontal scroll of the images featured - with captions and credits.

Cradle of Life at the Waters Edge
The Forests outlasting the Ice Age
Under the Forests Maternal Gaze
Primeval Forest – Timeless Grace
The Sanctuary in a Land of Harmony
The Forest of Infinite Genomes
A Guardian Deity, The Boreal Forest
Towering Evergreen Wetland
Enduring Forests, Eternal Forests
The Land of Eternal Jade
The Forest of Life in the Sea of Mist
The Forest of Life’s Blazing Colours
Sylvan Spiritual Haven
The Fabled Forest Living a Fairytale
Wilderness Revived on the Lava Bed

THE FOREST’S GIFTS

The forest and us. Walking side by side, each cradled in the peace that the vastness of nature bestows. The image and inspiration that those forests hold are here, waiting for you.

CONSCIOUSNESS
History traces developments from the first signs of life on the planet to the present day (the last section providing a very graphic demonstration of deforestation in Bolivia via some time-lapse satellite imagery).

History

Since the birth of this planet, the forests have poured their breath into every corner of the Earth for countless thousands of years. Over that time, the forests have grown as one, repeating their ebb and flow and taking their present forms. The Forests are the ecosystem’s genes, passed down from generation to generation for eternity.

Creation of the Earth
Emergence of Life
Benevolence of the Sun
By-Products of Life
Domination of the Land by Plant Life
The Earth’s First Forest
Vast Forests of the Dinosaurs
Coexisting Forest
Disappearing Forest

Vegetation

Vegetation clarifies such points as the differences between temperate and tropical, desert and savannah.

The lives of the forests on this earth are so varied, so diverse. You find them on chilly land, scorching wilderness and mild plains. And on humid islands and shimmering sea beds. But each forest quietly accepts the environment and the fate handed to it, living day to day, searching for ‘the ideal’. While also designing the livelihood of the beings that surround it. Become familiar with the forests that do not give up, but keep evolving, and their incredible wisdom and energy.

Tropical Forest
Subarctic Forest
Temperate Grassland
Desert
Tundra
Savannah
Temperate Forest

ISSUES

Imagine a world without forests, imagine an earth devoid of green.

If there was no forest
The smell of the wind, the sunshine
The joy of harvest, the revitalizing, thirst quenching water
We would not receive all this richness
If there was no forest
Our lives would be left with no order
Our world would be ruled by cruelty and savagery
It is undeniable now more than ever
The Earth faces a crise, a difficult reality.
But the forest stands before our eyes, living strong.
We humans, with out "reason" and "imagination" are the only ones with the power to deliver hope
The key of hope that opens the door to the future lies within us.

Thinning Earth
Overheating Atmosphere
Tainted Air
Eventually, Reason will Vanish

CONTRIBUTION

Forests are full of strength, so kind, its gifts vast and many
Brilliant gift nurtured over ages and troubles.
Possibility fills the forests
As they contain so much power that we do not even know of.
Capacity to connect and nurture lives of all creatures.
Generosity to grant creativity and heal the body and mind.
Forests are more than mere collection of trees.
Forests live within, and together with us all,
How many forests live in you?

Forests Nourishing Water
Forests Purify and Regulate
Cycle of Life’s Essentials
Living Forests

Tree lovers or not, Forests Forever makes an immediate and arresting first impression on its visitors. And the result could easily lead to planet-wide incidents of tree-hugging!!

I really recommend you visit the website http://www.forests-forever.com you will be mesmerized at the exquisiteness of both the images and literature.

Make you want to just run outside, hibernate in the forest, live in an eco village (that’s still the plan eh DB and Lobelia?!) and hug the trees!!

Tree Hugging Forest Love
Orangeblossom xxx

In Remembrance for London July 7th 2005

For hundreds of thousands of people commuting into London, the morning of July 7, 2005 began just like any other.

But at the peak of the rush hour, a series of coordinated suicide bombings that struck London's public transport system during the morning rush hour.

At 8:50 a.m. three bombs exploded within 50 seconds of each other on three London Underground trains. A fourth bomb exploded on a bus nearly an hour later at 9:47 a.m. in Tavistock Square. Fifty-two people were killed in the attacks, including the four bombers, and about 700 injured.

A week later, millions stood in silence to honor the victims of the deadliest single act of terrorism in Britain since World War II.

Today at 12pm, we pay our respects to the casualties of terrorism, not just in this country, but to the innocent millions whose lives have been sacrificed around the world.

I have added some passages and quotes about peace – because where there is darkness, there is also light. And this light is the enduring human spirit – the belief that within us all lies the ability to bring good to this world.

"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.Lights of peace become circles of peace.Circles of peace become communities of peace.Communities of peace become a peaceful world community." - Bob Stewart

“War does not determine who is right - only who is left.” - Bertrand Russel

“In separateness lies the world's great misery; in compassion lies the world's true strength.” - Buddha

“We must be the change we wish to see.” - Mahatma Gandhi
“When in despair I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won; there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall.” - Mahatma Gandhi

“We do not inherit the earth from our fathers. We borrow it from our children.” - David Bower

“The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose.” - Heda Bejar

“You cannot fight for peace. You can only peace for peace.” – David Icke

I then came across these poems written by children in Bulgaria and they are expressed so beautifully, as only children know how…

I had a dream:
The elephants are running free
And the lions and the tigers.
The children are playing on the roads.
The birds are singing happily.
Men and women are walking in the parks.
Peace is an important thing
And everybody should know it
And try to save it!
Ilian Ivailov, 9 years

I dream for happy people
And those terrorists to disappear,
People to be free
And to live their life.
I wish to be free
And to be a star,
And to live in a beautiful house,
And to be in the future.
Tihomir Mladenov, 9 years

Love, Light and PEACE
Orangeblossom xxx

Soul Survival

I cannot help but feel sad and helpless when one of my friends is hurting and in pain. Sometimes one can’t find the right words to help ease the aching. Whenever I feel these moments of being “stuck” I turn to the Prophet writings, because somehow they just make sense of things in a way I could never even try to begin to express.

So this is what The Prophet has to say about Pain:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with his own sacred tears.

Sometimes these words are hard to take in and accept or even just hear and you just want to scream out aloud to someone, no one, to yourself. As Chris says “Your feeling is your healing”. Embrace it.

And sometimes I find some answers in lyrics of some songs like Crowded House

“And your seven worlds collide Whenever I am by your side And dust from a distant sun Will shower over everyone You're still so young to travel so far Old enough to know who you are Wise enough to carry the scars Without any blame, there's no one to blame It's easy to forget what you learned Waiting for the thrill to return Feeling your desire burn You're drawn to the flame”

The flame. We engulf ourselves in the flames of our daily lives. It burns and it nourishes at the same time. But sometimes I guess we choke on the smoke from the fire too long to allow it to actually cleanse us of our wounds.

It is so difficult to survive in today’s world of external pressures and hardships. It’s not so much just ourselves, but other people that cloud our vision and damage our fragile esteems. The old school rhyme “stick and stones may break my bones, but words may never harm me.” Well truth be told, it is mostly the words of other people that do cause the most irreparable harm and psychological abuse. Especially when it comes from those you love or loved. Yet in saying that, words are words and do not always reflect the truth, merely it just reflects another persons own anger, hurt or sadness. Ultimately I feel it’s our own souls (and indeed the love from our true friends and family) that can heal our physical and mental traumas and hang ups, if only we would acknowledge that we have this inner power of healing to do that.

Lately I have been humming away to Tracy Chapman and I just love her soulful music…

“She say dont give or sell your soul away cause all that you have is your soul Dont be tempted by the shiny apple Dont you eat of a bitter fruit Hunger only for a taste of justice Hunger only for a world of truth cause all that you have is your soul.
Standing at the point The road it cross you down What is at your back Which way do you turn Who will come to find you first Your devils or your gods All you folks think you run my life Say I should be willing to compromise I say all you demons go back to hell I'll save my soul save myself.”


What happens when the fire of your love dies...it becomes smoke and ashes. But from the ashes, the phoenix arises and spreads its golden wings to fly heights of higher. I truly believe this, and I am loving flying in the silver lining of the clouds of love.

As time heals the wound, the scars sometimes still remain. But we are all made up of scars, a patchwork on our souls. But it’s these scars that ultimately heal us from within, and we rise up from the depths of our dark winters and into the light of our springs. As Jo always says “we see more walking from the dark into the light, than from the light into the dark”. In truth I think we realised this while literally walking from the dark into the light one night, but nevertheless at that moment I think we both reflected on what was just said. Fused energies and connected souls!

I have long been a fan of the band Live and this is an extract from their song “The Dolphin’s Cry”…

“oh yeah, we meet again it's like we never left time in between was just a dream did we leave this place?this crazy fog surrounds me you wrap your legs around me all I can do to try and breathe let me breathe so that I so we can go together love will lead us, alright love will lead us, she will lead us can you hear the dolphins cry? see the road rise up to meet us it's in the air we breathe tonight love will lead us, she will lead us life is like a shooting star it don't matter who you are if you only run for cover, it's just a waste of time we are lost 'til we are found this phoenix rises up from the ground and all these wars are over ”


Battles are fought until our own wars are won. But really, the fight is only with ourselves. So armour up with your soul survival kit of love, light, understanding, patience, acceptance, optimism and truth. We are all soldiers of freedom and when we break away from our own cages, may we dance the dance of life.

Love, Healing and Soul Survival
Orangeblossom xxx

The Great Illusion

I stumbled upon this linked website called www.thegreatillusion.com while I was browsing the latest news on David Icke’s website www.davidicke.com

For those who are not yet aware of David Icke, well he is a world famous (or infamous to most!) conspiracy theorist, but he is also a new age philosopher of sorts, and brings to light some profound and inspiring ways to liberate our own spirits and energies for a greater good. The media portray him mostly as a lot of a nutcase, but the fundamental vision that he has is so honest, he is just a truth seeker. And as Albert Einstein once said “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

"Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut, that held its ground." – David Icke

"A gift of truth is the gift of love" – David Icke

"Don't let them tell you what to think, no matter how "different" your own views may be in relation to the official line. If you are not different in this world of stunning uniformity what on earth are you doing? Baaaaaaa." – David Icke

"Today, the stranglehold of the controlling negative forces upon Earth is extremely advanced and is choking the very life from our planet. The effects of this are evident everywhere in the form of fear, separation, war, disease and multifarious kinds of disharmony on all levels." – David Icke

"Infinite love is the only truth. Everything else is illusion." – David Icke

"You cannot fight for peace. We need to peace for peace." - David Icke

Anyway, The Great Illusion is an interactive journey, written by Victor Khan with illustrations by Jim Warren www.jimwarren.com Each passage is written with such insight and each image is so beautifully related.

I have collated a few of Jim Warren’s stunning artwork above. I have also extracted a few passages from The Great Illusion journey.

The Great Illusion
Close your eyes and go inside, breathe the air and clear your mind. Changing colors lead the way, not a thought to slip away. Search the darkness for a light, see the sunshine in the night. Inside-out is on display, a paradox that hides the way. A twist-of-fate is there to find ~ create the peace found all inside.Get beyond your point-of-view, those limitations hinder you. Anything can be achieved, the mystery behind the scenes. Déjà vu of long gone times, past ignorance that closed the mind. The secret path is locked within, it's opposite to where you've been. Contemplate what life can be, the rhetorical question of reality. Dreams appear that do come true, your love will bring them all to you. Manifest and do pursue, it attracts the higher side of you. Karma that is never known, the oxymoron twilight zone. A parallel of life in rhyme, the great illusion of all time. Behold the threefold flower ~ the eye, the heart, the hand...revealed is all the wisdom that the mind can understand. BELIEVE, ACHIEVE and RECEIVE!

Starting Points
The world as we view it, is much like a dance, you can take what is coming and live it by chance...Or seek answers to questions and live it by choice, just follow your heart and answer its voice. Chance brings that karmic phenomenon,manifested reactions from what you have done.Look for a place that’s hidden within, search for the message, that’s where to begin. Talk to yourself, have conversation inside,it’s a matter of choice, create from the mind. Picture yourself in a world all your own,then bring it to life from the seed to the sown. Search & discover the source of white light,don’t settle for anything, reach for the heights. Your goals are the answer to what you achieve, and it’s almost like magic when you start to believe. Truth & intuition ...bring gifts to rejoice, go it by chance or live it by choice!

The Art of Looking
Look clearly at life and not just your own, how much is reality, and how much is unknown. It's not measured in beauty, possessions or wealth,but measured in consciousness and judged by yourself. Do you wonder if this is your chance,to examine the future and all that might last?Material things just gather the dust,whereas thought becomes life force and this is the thrust. A look in the mirror at the start of each day, a vision of emptiness ...but a nice résumé. It's all in the cards ~ but its not yet a deck.sit back and slow down, take the time to reflect. Look clearly at life and into your own, understanding the choices that cannot be postponed.

Choices
When you think of your past and remember that day, just think of the choices that sent you this way. Try to comprehend how the pieces fit in, realizing the enigma as the shadows wear thin. Timing is everything to see the next step, a wrong choice or decision is a long non-stop trip. If we could see answers to all life's little ways, it wouldn't be so hard to see through the haze. Seeing is learning and that is the test, if you made the right choices at the start of this quest.Live in the real world, a life and a goal, good friends and true meaning ~ let love feed your soul. So be careful of false signs, of tricks and of strife, you'll remember those choices when you look back at your life. The right things in life are here by your choice, you made this yourself, now sit back and rejoice.

The Tiger Within
Have you begun to question the rules of this game, reflect on your actions and take some of the blame. For all that just happens there must be a cause, to find it ...the answer, sit back and just pause. Feel what you’re thinking ~ investigate all. Think what you’re feeling ~ grow to stand tall. Look at yourself then ponder the facts, it’s a positive attitude that makes you attract. All is in harmony ...it’s a quieting sound, the secret of life is very profound. The reason is curious, as above so below,and knowledge is hidden at the end of rainbows. Calming your mind and the tiger within, all is not viewed by the color of skin. Outward appearance is not genuine, it's not what you look like ~ but from where it begins. Thoughts are like mirrors ~ just slightly bizarre, and it all comes from wishing each night on a star.

I seriously recommend that you go on this journey, the graphics and messages are both breathtaking and freeing.

Peace, Love and Believing
Orangeblossom xxx

Hubble Bubble, Space Toil and Galactic Trouble

I thought I would continue posting some more awesomely jaw dropping pictures of our outer space. These are famous images taken by the Nasa space telescope, Hubble. For more astronomical pics and info, go to http://www.nasa.gov/home/

Where Eagles Fly

Perhaps one of the most famous and easily recognized space objects, the Eagle Nebula (also known as Messier Object 16, M16) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens. This region of current star formation is about 7,000 light years distant. The Hubble image is one of the most popular poster images of outer space, and often appears in science-fiction movies. I put together a collage of some of the most spectacular images of Eagle Nebula.

Like Sands through the Hourglass

The Hourglass Nebula (also known as MyCn18) is a young planetary nebula situated in the southern constellation Musca about 8,000 light-years away from Earth. It is conjectured that MyCn18's hourglass shape is produced by the expansion of a fast stellar wind within a slowly expanding cloud which is denser near its equator than its poles.

The Eye in the Sky

Often called “The Eye of God”, The Helix Nebula (also known as NGC 7293) is a planetary nebula about 650 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. It is one of the closest planetary nebulae to Earth.

Are there words to capture one’s sheer awe at what exists beyond the twinkling stars that we see in our night skies?!

As Buzz Lightyear would say…“To Infinity, and Beyond!”

Wanabee Space Cadet OB xxx

* * * Twinkle Twinkle * * *

These pictures (thanks Ty!) illustrate perfectly just how small Earth is within our galaxy. Never mind what lies beyond our own galaxy, into our universe.

To quote Thomas Henry Huxley; “The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us."

Or to break it down in pictures…

Big Blue Earth

These are the smaller planets in our solar system, where Earth is the biggie.

The Rest of the Crew

Here Earth is shown alongside the Big Boys of our Solar System.

The Sun is Shining

This shows the comparison of all the planets in our solar system with the star that is the Sun.

Starry Starry Night

Earth is invisible at this range and here resides Arcturus, the third brightest star in the night sky, after Sirius and Canopus.

The Big Daddy and the Glitterbugs

Jupiter is now invisible and the Sun is but a dot where Antares reigns supreme and is one of the brightest stars in the nighttime sky. Along with Aldebaran, Spica, and Regulus it is one of the four brightest stars near the ecliptic (The ecliptic is the apparent path of the Sun traced out along the sky in the course of the year.)

All stars except the Sun appear to the human eye as shining points in the night sky that twinkle because of the effect of the Earth's atmosphere. The Sun is also a star, but it is close enough to Earth to appear as a disk instead, and to provide daylight.

Astronomers estimate that there are at least 70 sextillion (7×1022) stars in the known universe. That is 70 000 000 000 000 000 000 000, or 230 billion x 300 billion in our own Milky Way.

Fascinating hey! Makes you want to just jump in a spacecraft and go exploring the night sky…Beam me up Scotty!!

So I will leave with the nursery rhyme by Jane Taylor…

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!

Outer Spacey, Starry, Universal and Sparkly Love

Orangeblossom xxx