Healthy Solutions

Why Organic?

2009-10-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

Top 10 Reasons To Buy Organic

These Reasons were excerpted from an article by Sylvia Tawse, marketing coordinator for Alfalfa's Markets in Boulder, Denver and Vail, Colorado.

In 1994 Delicious! Magazine reprinted these tips, since they received so many requests after they first printed them in April 1992.

1 PROTECT FUTURE GENERATIONS
"We have not inherited the Earth from our fathers, we are borrowing it from our children. " - Lester Brown
The average child receives four times more exposure than an adult to at least eight widely used cancer-causing pesticides in food. Food choices you make now will impact your child's future health.

2 PREVENT SOIL EROSION
The Soil Conservation Service estimates more than 3 billion tons of topsoil are eroded from the United States' croplands each year. That means soil erodes seven times faster than it's built up naturally. Soil is the foundation of the food chain in organic farming. However, in conventional farming, the soil is used more as a medium for holding plants in a vertical position so they can be chemically fertilized. As a result, American farms are suffering from the worst soil erosion in history.

3 PROTECT WATER QUALITY
Water makes up two-thirds of all body mass and covers three-fourths of the planet. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates pesticides - some cancer causing contaminate the groundwater in 38 states, polluting the primary source of drinking water for more than half the country's population.

4 SAVE ENERGY
American farms have changed drastically in the last three generations, from family-based small businesses dependent on human energy to large-scale factory farms. Modern farming uses more petroleum than any other single industry, consuming 12 percent of the country's total energy supply. More energy is now used to produce synthetic fertilizers than to till, cultivate and harvest all the crops in the United States. Organic farming is still based on labor intensive practices such as hand weeding and green manure and crop covers instead of synthetic fertilizers to support soil.

5 KEEP CHEMICALS OFF YOUR PLATE
Many pesticides approved for use by the EPA were registered long before extensive research linking these chemicals to cancer and other diseases had been established. Now the EPA considers 60 percent of all herbicides, 90 percent of all fungicides and 30 percent of all insecticides carcinogenic. A 1987 National Academy of Sciences report estimated that pesticides might cause an extra 4 million cancer cases among Americans. The bottom line is that pesticides are poisons designed to kill living organisms and can also harm humans. In addition to cancer, pesticides are implicated in birth defects, nerve damage and genetic mutations.

6 PROTECT FARM WORKERS
A National Cancer Institute study found that farmers exposed to herbicides had six times more risk than non-farmers of contracting cancer. In California, reported pesticide poisonings among farm workers have raised an average of 14 percent a year since 1973 and doubled between 1975 and 19&5. Field workers suffer the highest rates of occupational illness in the state. Farm worker health is also a serious problem in developing nations, where pesticide use can be poorly regulated. An estimated 1 mi1lion people are poisoned annually by pesticides.

7 HELP SMALL FARMERS
Although more and more large-scale farms are making the conversion to organic practices, most organic farms are small, independently owned family farms of fewer than 100 acres. It's estimated the United States has lost I% more than 650,000 family farms in the past decade. And with the U.S. Department of Agriculture predicting that half of this country's farm production will come from I percent of farms by the year 2000, organic farming could be one of the few survival tactics left for family farms.

8 SUPPORT A TRUE ECONOMY
Although organic foods might seem more expensive than conventional foods, conventional food prices don't reflect hidden costs borne by taxpayers, including nearly $74 billion in federal subsidies in 1988. Other hidden costs include pesticide regulation and testing, hazardous waste disposal and cleanup, and environmental damage. For instance, if you add in the environmental and social costs of irrigation to a head of lettuce, its price would range between $2 and $3.

9 PROMOTE BIODIVERSITY
Mono-cropping is the practice of planting large plots of land with the same crop year after year. While this approach tripled farm production between 1950 and 1970, the lack of natural diversity of plant life has left the soil lacking in natural minerals and nutrients. To replace the nutrients, chemical fertilizers are used, often in increasing amounts. Single crops arc also much more susceptible to pests, making farmers more reliant on pesticides. Despite a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides between 1947 and 1974, crop losses due to insects have doubled-partly because some insects have become genetically resistant to certain pesticides.

10 TASTE BETTER FLAVOR
There's a good reason why many chefs use organic foods in their recipes - they taste better. Organic farming starts with the nourishment of the soil, which eventually leads to the nourishment of the plant and, ultimately, our palates.

Healthy Products for A Happy Life

2009-10-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

Wild Plant trolls for four year old wild albacore tuna, because they have a minimal amount of mercury in their body, Fewer years of feeding have resulted in the fish they catch having 2/3 less bio-accumulation of mercury. The fish is packed raw and cooked in the can. The liquid in the can is the juice and oil from the albacore itself. Most canned albacore on U.S. store shelves contain fish that are up to 12 years old.

Wild Planet's tuna is loaded with essential omega-3 fatty acids. Mix the oil back in for the best flavor and nutrition.

Ingredients: Oregon caught albacore and sea salt. www.1wildplanet.com/safe_seafood

Check out the following websites I've chosen to do business with.

Organic peanut butter & organic almond butter (3 flavors each) www.justinsnutbutter.com

Feed your pet healthy food www.wysong.net

Herbs, homeopathic & naturopathic remedies for your pet www.petalive.com

Herbs, homeopathic & naturopathic remedies for you www.nativeremedies.com

Progesterone body cream for older women's hormones www.life-flo.com

Clean and disinfect your home, dishes and laundry www.ecover.com

All-purpose natural Spray Cleaner with tea tree & lavender www.lifetreeproducts.com

How about cleaning out your body and giving it SUPERFOOD Plus www.herbdoc.com

Odor eliminator, cruelty free, food grade spray www.pureayre.com

Let me know about something you'd like to purchase at less than retail.

The customer service and shipping experiences with the companies I work with are very reliable and prompt. Some of the companies will drop ship.

When you are interested in ordering, call me or send an e-mail.
(See contact information below.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,
Dianna
dianna@sonic.net
707-575-9237
1-888-240-2636

When we know better, we do better, we live better.

The Story Of Stuff

2009-10-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

Click on the following link to become aware of a situation you may not have considered.

http://www.storyofstuff.com

Patricia Dines, the EcoGirl of Sebastopol, CA

2009-10-14T13:30:00.000-07:00

Sonoma County has been very fortunate to have Patricia Dines, the EcoGirl, http://www.askecogirl.info live in Sebastopol for a number of years. Patricia not only created Community Action Publications (CAP) she was the chief researcher, writer, typist, layout and editor of five editions of The Organic Guide to Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino Counties as well as The Organic Guide to San Francisco. She brings to her work 25 years experience as a professional writer and educator, with 15 of those years specializing in environmental topics. Patricia is not only well informed, well organized and talented, but an excellent speaker for The Sacred Earth.

Over two years ago Patricia was instrumental helping to create the Sebastopol Toxics Education Program (STEP), an innovative city-wide toxics-reduction program. The primary project is a 2-page newsletter called The Next STEP, which is sent 6 times a year to all City residents in their water bills. It provides friendly, informative and helpful information about the potential health and environmental harm of common household toxics - and about the viable, earth-friendly (and often less-expensive) alternatives that can be used.

The following topics have been addressed in the newsletter, which can be accessed by going to: www.ci.sebastopol.ca.us
Click on Programs (See list on left side. 8th word)
Scroll down to Toxics Educaton (in alphabetical order)
(First time save to disk. Then check the "do the same" box.)
Vol 1 Issue 1: What Are Pesticides -

And Why Should We Be Concerned About Them?

Vol Pesticides & Cancer
Pesticides & Parkinson's Disease
Children & Pesticide Exposure at School
Vol 1 Issue 4: Controlling Ant Invaders
Vol Issue Snails Be Gone!
Vol Issue Eating Your Weeds
Vol Issue Got Mosquitoes?
Vol Issue Vinegar: Your Multi-Purpose Cleaner
Vol Issue The Glories of Borax
Vol Issue Sticky Barriers
Vol 1. Issue 5: Nurturing your Garden Non-Toxically

EcoGirl! believes that we can all be superheroes for the planet, and she shows you how!
Check out: www.askecogirl.info or contact Patricia Dines at: pd@askecogirl.info or 707-829-2999

Community Education Programs

2008-08-11T14:15:00.000-07:00

About three years ago, after a very special cat I loved died, I began thinking of starting a nonprofit to bring together pet owners, to get acquainted with alternative care professionals and others, who had exceptional "alternative" experiences caring for their pets.

Some time later after I read Neale Donald Walsch's Conversations With God, book 2, Chapter 9 regarding Education, I began to get an exciting picture of more expansive possibilities.

My Business Card (front)
Alternatives for Curious People.
A place for people who are willing to explore LIFE
beyond the common educational system.
Be a Speaker - Share Your Stories
Be a Mentor - Have Mentors
For the Love of People, Pets & The Planet,
Are you willing to Trust the Possibilities?

(back)
To provide an eclectic learning environment in order to
discover and experience Your Authentic Self. With the
help of mentors, speakers, written and filmed materials,
conversations, reflection and support, discover who You
are, what You're doing here and Your Special Place in
The World in new refreshing and optimistic ways that
will benefit all Life - People, Pets and The Planet.

Mission Statements:
To explore the meaning, purpose, function and process of education.To go beyond the knowledge accumulated from our families, our culture and public schools. Wisdom is what we've been searching for. Wisdom is knowledge applied. When you're open and willing to know better, You'll do better!

To understand and practice calm-assertive leadership as taught by Cesar Millan, The Dog Whisperer, who often mentions his observation that the same methods work well when raising children and in other relationships.

To learn to use calm-assertive energy to replace negative self-talk, fear, stress and doubt.

To experience life beyond childhood perspectives - "harsh realities", dysfunctional relationships at home, in the work place and in day-to-day life that seems to endlessly present familiar challenges, which hold us captive in a survival mode.

To untangle ourselves from the web of confusion, suffering and narrow expectations of others, including the disappointment of not living the life you envisioned as a child.

To face and release the traumas of childhood and adulthood in order to move forward to experience balanced stability and enjoyment of living by using your expertese and talents for your good and those around you.

New parents are still amazed by the miracle of life. What day did you begin the "slippery slide" to becoming someone other than a miracle? You and I are still the Creator's miracle. When you believe this, and get up each day with this perspective of life, this will be your proof that you are loved and cared for beyond your wildest dreams.

To go beyond transitory self-help books, articles, one-time speakers, week-end workshops, films, counseling and church, to be sure you "get the message" and it becomes a part of you.

My Vision:
Since then, my eclectic range of interests and the exciting information I receive, is propelling me to create a unique nonprofit organization - a place for people to come together to learn, to mentor and experience ways to enjoy a healthy, satisfying, creative, balanced, happy life, for themselves, their pets and others living on the Earth.

Alternative dentists, doctors, nutritionists, veterinarians, life coaches, financial planners, organic growers, organic food preparers, dowsers, relationship experts, film makers and authors, to name a few, would be invited to share their perspective.

Progressive mentors and speakers who are familiar with Nature's Laws, including ancient and current information they have been willing to acquire beyond their professional training, would be welcomed to expand the consciousness of forward thinking members.

A place where professionals explain their work to others, who are unfamiliar with what they do and how they do it and are willing to provide paid services who choose to experience their unique expertise, such as: whole body massage, face and foot massage, thermography, and live blood analysis. Some services, which would be paid directly to the professional, would be available on site.

I envision a room large enough for 25 to 30 people with a small stage, so local professionals and others from many fields will come to share their personal stories, knowledge, experiences and services.

Instead of paying professionals to speak, we will charge them a small advertising fee. The room can be rented to other harmonious groups at a very reasonable rate.

A pretty, cozy, clean, and practical place to share thoughts and feelings and to learn what our parents and teachers didn't know to teach us, in an atmosphere of non-judgement peace and love. A place for the child still in us is welcome to become curious and excited about life again.

A place to gather and discover new friends. A place that would be open many hours (6 am to 9 pm) most days for drop in chats and classes to explore new possibilities.

A place to read and learn from a variety of non-fiction authors and to watch life-changing documentaries from my extensive library of books and videos regarding spiritual and consciousness awareness, animals, health, agriculture, environment, economics, critical thinking, problem solving, politics, relationships and death and dying.

A place to learn and understand Nature's Laws, and receive grief support for those who experience the loss of a human or a pet. A place to be in harmony with people, pets, Life, Mother Nature and Angels.

I envision a nice homey building in a quiet environment with organic soil around it to grow beautiful fragrant flowers, herbs, vegetables, dwarf fruit trees and room for outside seating, where the sun can be enjoyed and a labyrinth available for walking. There will be plenty of storage space for old accounting records, office, maintenance and gardening supplies.

With windows that open to get fresh air, to feel connected to nature, and to rest eyes by looking at trees, bushes, plants, flowers, sunshine and rain.

A place for cooking classes, potlucks, eating, snacking, learning, show and tell, taste testing and picking up ordered products. A peaceful, happy, happening place.

I envision several rooms for people, who generally work at home, but who can benefit from sharing an office with a shared receptionist. Two separate, pretty, clean private bathrooms. A quiet room for naps. (Studies have proved that a short nap energizes people. I have always found them to be very beneficial.)

People also work better if they have a chance to exercise during the day and it helps them to stay healthy. Therefore, a room with exercise equipment such as: indoor trampoline, treadmill, recumbant bike and an on-site massage chair, would be very important, as well as a quiet place for stretching and yoga.

Young pre-school children and manageable sized animals of employees and volunteers would be welcome, therefore there would be special areas inside and outside for play, exercise and rest to accommodate them, as well as a paid nanny/disciplinarian/caregiver, teacher, a dog/child walker, and a Cesar Millan trained behaviorist, as needed.

I envision myself as the paid Executive Director, office and accounting supervisor and grant writer with a team of 3 to 5 people on the Board of Directors and a paid support staff of 3 to 5 employees:

Receptionist: clipper, filer, product ordering and product pick-up co-ordinator
Bookkeeper: membership, marketing, fundraiser
Newsletter editor: speaker co-ordinator, historian
Film producer: and editor

Consultants would be hired to provide short term expertise, regarding Feng Shui, land and building clearing, labyrinth architecture, landscaping, inside and outside maintenance, counselors, teachers of meditation, dowsing, yoga, personal help regarding, balancing bank statements, learning a system of keeping track of finances and credit cards. (I have created a system and a form for credit card "maintenance". Ask me about it.)

Volunteers will also be greatly appreciated to be greeters/tour guides and other jobs as may arise. Volunteers will be able to "graduate" to being paid a stipend, to part-time, to full-time work as long as they are compatible with the mission and are willing to become a supportive member of the team.

A place where each person who comes in the door will say with confidence when they leave, "Who I Am Makes A Difference, and others care."

I've been envisioning and preparing for such a place, and if you have too, lets get together and make it happen. The Angels and I don't want do it alone.

To get in touch with me, go to the Table of Contents, Chapter 10.

If you are interested in my qualifications, please see below.

Kind regards,
Dianna

My Qualifications:
After receiving a B.A. from San Francisco State I worked for over ten years as a full charge bookkeeper for three nonprofit agencies. Since the nonprofits I worked for were required to hire an outside auditor annually to check the accuracy of "the books" it was an exceptional experience. I learned what the auditors needed, I had everything in order when they arrived and worked closely with them when they had questions.

Later I worked for several profit making businesses, who expected the bookkeeper and the CPA, who did the taxes, to be perfect. So I've had a lot of experience setting up systems to keep financial records organized, accurate and simple enough to explain to unschooled owners, managers and students what they needed to know. I've also completed a management class, took nonprofit classes and attended board meetings. At the time, I didn't realize I was training to become a passionate, effective Executive Director of a unique nonprofit.

Sense of Fairness Affects Decisions

2008-06-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

Workplace Burnout Often An Issue Of Fairness

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 9, 2008

Printed on Wednesday, June 11 in
The Press Democrat
Business Section E1 & E2

American workers are hurting. The country is in an economic slump, thousands of people are being laid off, and hundreds of companies are retrenching. With house values falling in many parts of the country and with gas prices soaring, many people are struggling from paycheck to paycheck.

The unfolding shakeout might ultimately be good for the economy, but it can be extremely painful for individuals. For companies, managing change is very important, not only for the well-being of their employees but also because to succeed, they need employees who are engaged, enthusiastic and energized -- and not burned out.

A pair of psychologists recently evaluated hundreds of employees at a large North American university that was in the grip of painful change. The researchers wanted to find out whether there were factors that explained why some employees successfully weathered the transition and reengaged with their jobs, while others spiraled into cynicism and exhaustion -- the classic signs of burnout.

Burnout has been long associated with being overworked and underpaid, but psychologists Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter found that these were not the crucial factors. The single biggest difference between employees who suffered burnout and those who did not was the whether they thought that they were being treated unfairly or fairly.

"These fairness issues can be huge," said Maslach, a social psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley. "Issues around fairness are highly linked to the anger and cynicism that are linked to burnout."

When a worker suffers burnout, she added: "You feel you have been treated with disrespect. It generates enormous personal anger for small things because of what it implies."

Affected workers report more mental health problems. Their work can suffer, creating a vicious cycle of a shrinking workplace, burnout and poor work. One study showed that nurses suffering burnout provided their patients with inferior care.

Leiter, co-author of the study, which looked at 992 employees at the troubled university, said people who sensed they were being treated unfairly were twice as likely to burn out as employees who did not. Leiter and Maslach were particularly interested in people who showed some risk factors for burnout but not others: people who were enthusiastic but exhausted, for example, or who felt energetic but psychologically disconnected from their jobs.

Leiter, an organizational psychologist at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, said participants in the study were concerned about downsizing and afraid of being assigned to a job they would not like. The situation was volatile, and people were extremely alert to signs they were being treated worse than others.

"The people who were confident they were working for a fair employer went in a positive direction," he said. "The people who did not have confidence in the employer's fairness tended to go toward burnout."

Maslach and Leiter published their study, "Early Predictors of Job Burnout and Engagement," in the most recent issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Their research on fairness dovetails with work by other researchers showing that humans care a great deal about how they are being treated relative to others. In many ways, fairness seems to matter more than absolute measures of how well they are faring -- people seem willing to endure tough times if they have the sense the burden is being shared equally, but they quickly become resentful if they feel they are being singled out for poor treatment.

One classic way to study fairness is an experiment known as "the ultimatum game." The game involves one person offering to divide a sum of money, and the second person deciding whether to accept or reject the deal.

If the sum is $100, for example, the first person might offer to give away $25 and keep $75 for himself. If the second person agrees, the money is divided accordingly. But if the second person rejects the deal, neither one gets anything.

If people cared only about absolute rewards, then Person B ought to accept whatever Person A offers, because getting even $1 is better than nothing. But experiments show that many people will reject the deal if they feel the first person is dividing the money unfairly.

Such thinking may be universal. In a 2006 paper published in the journal Science, Joseph Henrich, an evolutionary psychologist who is now at the University of British Columbia, found that people in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Ecuador, Bolivia, Siberia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji all placed a very high premium on being treated fairly.

In every case, people were willing to forgo money in order to keep someone else from dividing it unfairly. Henrich and his colleagues argued that this apparently universal impulse suggested an evolutionary mechanism; the willingness to make personal sacrifices to punish unfair people, they argued, helps make fairness the norm. And over time, a species that enforces fairness might be more successful than a species that allows or encourages disparities.

An evolutionary mechanism might also explain why people have very forceful reactions to unfairness -- not merely disappointment but rage.

"When you are treated unfairly or disrespectfully, the organization is excluding you from being a real member of the community," Leiter said. "There is something about that that makes people feel really insecure.

"When loyal employees are treated in a way that is not fair, they feel betrayed in a very deep, emotional way," Leiter added. "When you do a lot of work you get tired, but it does not have the same emotional impact as being treated unfairly."

Concerns and Influences

2007-12-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

Under Construction

Safety for People and Pets,
Agriculture & the Environment,
Conventional Medicine & Prescriptions,
Corporations, Pesticides & Drugs

Empty Harvest, book by Bernard Jensen and Mark Anderson

Erin Brokovich, movie & DVD

Bitter Harvest, movie & video starring Ron Howard and Art Carney, Hollywood, 1990
A vivid dramatization of a chilling true story of Ned, a young diary farmer whose vital herd's
milk production declines, calves are stillborn and sores break out on the skin of the cows.
He worked feverishly to unravel the mystery and discovered a deadly toxic chemical had accidently been mixed into a widely sold cattle food. The industry and government officials try to hush-up the scandal.)

Secrets Of The Soil, book by Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird,
New Solutions For Restoring Our Planet, Third printing, 2002
"So long as one feeds on food from unhealthy soil, the spirit will lack the stamina to free
itself from the prison of the body." Rudolf Steiner

Silent Spring, book by Rachel Carson, 1962 and documentary video

Animals

Be The Pack Leader: Use Cesar's Way to Transform Your Dog ... and Your Life, Cesar Millan with Melissa Jo Peltier, New York: Random House, 2007

Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide To Understanding & Correcting Common Dog Problems, Cesar Millan with Melissa Jo Peltier, 2006

See Spot Live Longer, Steve Brown & Beth Taylor, 2004

Biology
Molecules of Emotion, Candace Pert, Ph.D.,

Biology Of Belief, Bruce Lipton,

Economics
The Commanding Heights, The Battle For The World Economy, by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, 1998
(This book was made into a PBS series and is available on three DVDs. Commanding Heights dramatically captures the issues that have defined the wealth and fate of nations. It shows how the battle over the world economy will shape our lives in the twenty-first century. The DVD includes on-camera interviews, and biographies of the people who played significant roles in the development of the modern global market. The DVD also includes an online teacher's guide that provides suggestions for applications of the web-site in classroom instruction.)

Freakonomics, book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, 2005
One young, very smart (curious explorer) economist and one New York Times Magazine author and journalist coaborate on the results of Levitt's economic thinking of everything from sumo wrestlers to the falling crime rate.

Who's Counting? Marilyn Waring On Sex, Lies & Global Economics,
(Marilyn Waring was elected in 1975 to the New Zealand parliament. She was re-elected three times, and eventually brought down her own government, which launched her as the foremost spokesperson for global feminist economics.

Nineteen Eight-Four, book by George Orwell, made into the film 1984
(A terrifying classic where a treacherous sadistic agent of the ruling party is determined to control the thoughts ...and crush the soul of the main character, who committed the crime of independent thought. Big brother is watching.)

Psychology
Power vs Force, The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior, book by Dr.David R. Hawkins, (psychiatrist using kinesology)

Finding Fish, book by Antwone Fisher with Mim Rivas 2001
(A stunning, gripping, uplifting, authentic autobiography of one man's journey from a very unfortunate childhood to inspiring writer, poet and screenwriter.
Made into a movie by Antwone Fisher
(Memoir of a childhood spent in foster homes in and around Cleveland.)

Who Will Cry For The Little Boy! Antwone Fisher, 2003
(A collection of poetry revealing the inner truths that took Antwone from a tumultuous
childhood to the man he is today.)

Politics
The Exception To the Rulers, book by Amy Goodman with David Goodman, 2004
Amy is host of Democracy Now! the daily voice of truth on the radio and TV in the U.S.She simply and profoundly continues the quest for global justice and awarenessby bringing us stories and perspective that we don't normally get from the mainstream media.

don't think of an elephant!, Know your values and frame the debate,
The Essential Guide For Progressives, book by George Lakoff, 2004
George Lakoff is one of the world's best known linguists. His expertise is in cognitive
linguistics, the scientific study of the nature of thought and its expression in language.

Civic Arousal, booklet by Ralph Nader, 2004
Two letters sent to Ralph Nader with his responses to the letter writers.
Someday an entrepreneur will start a nationwide cluster of storefronts teaching citizen-skill seminara.

Who Will Tell The People, book by William Grieder,

Physics
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! book by Richard P. Feynman (renowned physicist) and Ralph Leighton, Adventures of a Curious Character, 1985

What Do You Care What Other People Think? Richard P. Feynman by Gweneth Feynman and Ralph Leighton, (Further Adventures of a Curious Character), 1988

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Richard P. Feynman and Ralph Leighton, 1985

Spiritual
Conversations with God. Books 1, 2, and 3, books by Neale Donald Walsch, 1996

The Wisdom of Florence Scovel Shinn, an anthology of 4 books taken from talks (The Game Of Life and How To Play It, by Florence Scovel Shinn,
Florence was widely known for many years as an artist and illustrator, metaphysician and lecturer. She helped thousands of people through her great work of healing and assisting in solving their problems, 1989

Individual booklets are ...
The Game of Life & How To Play It, 1925
Your Word Is Your Wand, 1928
(a sequel to the 1925 book)
The Secret of Success, 1940
(A series of Addresses given by the Author, teaching the individual to control conditions and
release Spiritual Law.)
The Power of the Spoken Word, 1945
(Teachings of Florence Scovel Shinn compiled by Christine Schneider,
L.N. Fowler & Co. Ltd, London, 1959 - Thirteenth Edition 1967)

The Unobstructed Universe a book by Stewart Edward White,
Other books regarding similar psychic subjects,
The Betty Book
Across The Unknown
The Road I know
Anchors To Windward
The Stars Are Still There
With Folded Wings,
"Walk through your days as a creature with folded wings, conscious of the possession of
another element and your ability to enter it." A quote from an "Invisible"

Wellness
www.cancercontrolsociety.com, a non-profit educational, charitable & scientific society supported by contributions and memberships. (For over 30 years the society has been educating the public and professionals with information on non-toxic Alternative Therapies and Nutritional Approaches to cancer and other diseases. For In 2008 they will sponsor the 36th Annual Cancer Convention, held in Hollywood, California over the Labor Day Weekend with 50 well known speakers, 6 movies and over 80 exhibits. One of the largest of its kind in the world.

Resurrection,Sam Biser, for souls in broken bodies, A Home-Study Course, 2006

Create Your Own Healing Miracle a video by Dr. Richard Schulze (herbalist) "Tomorrow is what you believe today."
The Dr. Richard Schulze Story (A video)

I have many more books on politics, pyschology, wellness, the pH Factor - Alkalize Or Die.

Leadership Behavior: Dogs & Humans

2007-12-09T16:33:00.000-08:00

Shakesphere
(edited quote from As You Like It)
All the world's a stage,
And all men and women are merely players;
They have their entrances and exits,
And in their lifetime play many parts.

Men and Women are still trying to figure out their lines. As we stumble about improvising what words and behaviors to choose, the "PLAY" is often less than entertaining!

I believe it is critically important that dog owners, parents, business owners, managers and government leaders become familiar with Cesar Millan's work. Cesar's expertise is closely aligned with many of Dr. Phil's and The Nanny TV series out of control children episodes.

Over and over in Cesar Millan's, The Dog Whisperer on the National Geographic TV Channel www.cesarmillanic.com. Cesar explains how dog "owner's" behavior affects the behavior of their dog. People come to understand that bad behavior is not the dog's personality, it is a frustrated attempt to become the pack leader, when there is none available!

Also, if a dog (or a child) is "spoiled" (given affection when in an excited or agitated state) the owner (parent) is reinforcing undesirable behavior.

You, as the Pack Leader must be calm and assertive (no angry or tense energy) and claim your space by putting yourself between what your dog thinks it wants and your dog. Words and eye contact should not be used. That confuses or challenges the dog. Challenges can create aggressive behavior. The goal is to create a calm submissive dog that is always a pleasure to be with. The dog will be happier too!

These learned and practiced behaviors are integral aspects of the expertise Cesar shares in his books, his TV program and with clients. Generally he has a standard approach for the owners and the dogs, but he is able to calmly and assertively adjust to individual circumstances.

When an owner reaches his limit of bad dog behavior and is reluctant to follow the advise of other professionals, who often will suggest to "put the dog down", and if the frustrated owner knows about Cesar's work, they call him as a last resort. "Miracles" happen when Cesar shows up! Cesar often says he rehabilitates dogs and trains people.

The title of Cesar's first book with co-author Melissa Jo Peltier (2006) is Cesar's Way The Natural, Everyday Guide To Understanding & Correcting Common Dog Problems.

This wonderful book includes very descriptive biographical stories of Cesar and the incredible calm assertive, kind people who have been his mentors, as well as very important information regarding the universal language of energy, dog psychology, instinct and our connection to Mother Nature,

The introduction includes an excerpt from a fan, which begins: "Thank you so much for your show, Dog Whisperer. The funny thing is you've changed me and my family's life and we don't even own a dog. The excerpt ends with: "You have not only taught humans about their dogs, you have taught humans about themselves."

And in the priceless inclusion between the Introduction and the Prologue, "A Note About Gender", Cesar writes," I credit my brilliant and beautiful wife, Illusion Wilson Millan, for opening my eyes to the vital role that women play in our human existence. They truly are the glue who hold our human "pack" together." (See page 53 & 54.)

In Chapter 9, "Fulfilling Our Dogs, Fulfilling Ourselves" page 271, Cesar nears the end of the chapters by writing, "If you fulfill your dog in these ways - by giving him exercise, discipline and affection, in that order --- you will witness the miracle of two very different species communicating and bonding with each other in ways you never thought possible. You will achieve in your relationship with your dog the kind of deep connection you always dreamed of having."

Page 64:
When it comes to energy, we humans have much more in common with animals than we usually like to admit.

Page 73:
The proper energy for a follower in a dog pack is called calm-submissive energy. This is the healthiest energy for your dog to project in his relationship with you.

Calm-Submissive Energy
The word submissive carries with it negative connotations. Submissive doesn't mean pushover. It simply means relaxed and receptive - open-minded and able to converse easily with one another Cesar admits, "When I learned how to be calm-submissive to my wife, it improved my marriage 100 percent!"

The Calm-Assertive Energy
Page 69:
A calm-assertive leader is relaxed, but always confident that he or she is in control.
(It does not mean frustrated-angry-aggressive.)

Cesar adds, "When you're looking for a role model in calm-assertive energy, turn your channel to The Oprah Winfrey Show and watch Oprah interact with her guests and her audience. She is relaxed, even-tempered, but undeniably powerful, and always in charge. That's the kind of energy you should be aiming for when you interact with your dog, cat, boss, or your kids!" (or your Husband or Wife.)

In 2007 Cesar again with the very talented Melissa Jo Peltier co-authored a second book, Be The Pack Leader,

Chapter 7 is a very important chapter regarding leadership!
It begins on page 215 with a picture of President George W. Bush pulling on his dog's leash trying to get him to go up the steps to his airplane. (Once you are familiar with Cesar's work you will understand the significance of this picture.)

Page 216, second paragraph:
Cesar writes, "Amazingly, I had been invited to speak to this elite group about dogs and calm-assertive leadership. Who, me? Telling these major power brokers about leadership? What could I, a working-class kid from Mexico, possibly have to offer them? Much to my surprise, I had a lot to offer. Because among all these international leaders, not one of them could control his or her dogs!"

Page 217, half way down first paragraph:
"I got a lot of applause during one seminar when I suggested that everybody write letters to Congress and suggest that before anyone gets sworn in as president, he or she has to learn how to walk a powerful dog. Maybe even a pack of dogs! It would be a test they'd all have to pass. All world leaders of all countries should be able to do it."

"If that actually happened, then all of our human pack leaders would have to practice calm assertive energy, because that's the only energy that dogs naturally follow. I believe we'd have a lot more balanced people running the world, if they based their leadership on calm assertive energy."

"You see, animals don't follow unstable pack leaders; only humans promote, follow and praise instability. Only humans have leaders who can lie and get away with it. Around the world, most of the pack leaders we follow today are not stable. Their followers may not know it, but Mother Nature is far too honest to be fooled by angry, frustrated, jealous, competitive, stubborn or other negative energy - even if it is masked by a politician's smile. That's because all animals (and children) can evaluate and discern what balanced energy feels like."

Dianna's comments regarding what I have learned from Cesar, even though I have no dogs and my children are grown: Children and dogs will take advantage of parents and dog owners, if there is no authority figure (leadership) in the house - or in the office. Rules, boundaries and limitations are a must, if families, employers, employees and public "leaders" want to experience a non-chaotic, functional relatively stress-less life.

In addition, I'm practicing feeling and projecting calm-assertive energy in all situations. I'm learning the valuable lesson that if you "stand your ground", you will get what you want! (Probably not in an instant. Continue to be clear. Be unwavering. Be patient. Be kind.) Also be willing to accept and learn from calm-assertive wise mentors.

Democracy in America

2007-12-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

Thomas Linzey
Bringing Democracy Back to America

By Stephanie Marohn
stephaniemarohn.com

North Bay Natural Pages
(October 2007 – March 2008)

Email: www.naturalpages.com

In the past few years, the citizens of 100 towns in rural Pennsylvania have discovered that they have no say in what goes on in their community. They have discovered that the government and the courts they thought were there to protect them are actually working for someone else.

Determined to safeguard their homes and families, they have found a way to stand up to the formidable forces arrayed against them. They found attorney Thomas Linzey and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a nonprofit law firm in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, of which he is executive director and cofounder. CELDF provides legal services to groups and local governments seeking to protect their community's quality of life and natural environment.

With Linzey's help, the residents of the 100 towns have taken back their right to self-govern and are rebuilding democracy from the ground up, despite lawsuits filed against them by the state's attorney general.

How Conservative Townsfolk Became Revolutionaries
So what is going on in these 100 towns? The same thing that is, unfortunately, happening all over the United States: Corporations want to use property in a town for a purpose the townspeople don't want, and force their way in with the help of state and federal government and the legal system.

In this case, the corporations are factory pig farms (agribusiness) and sewage waste disposal (land-applied sewage sludge), both of which are hazardous to the health of humans and the environment.

All 100 communities, in 11 counties in central Pennsylvania, passed local ordinances to keep the corporations out. The state responded by enacting legislation allowing the state attorney general to sue municipalities to overturn such ordinances on the grounds that they are illegal and unconstitutional. Pennsylvania's liberal governor signed the bill into law and the attorney general has already filed five lawsuits against the resisting municipalities.

“People have had the veil ripped away from their eyes,” says Linzey. “They're saying, 'We thought the state was here to help us, we thought the state was us, yet here's the state stepping in to stomp us.'”

Unless a courageous judge refuses to uphold the law, the citizens won't find help in the courtroom either. The problem stems from an 1886 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that granted corporations “personhood,” with all the rights that go with that, including due process and equal protection. Corporations have been using that early precedent ever since to sue actual people (local governments) for violating their constitutional rights.

With the mega-resources that mega-corporations have at their disposal, any legal battle is ridiculously one-sided. In addition, with the rights of personhood, corporations can argue that people who try to stop them from coming into an area are interfering with their “personal” right to conduct business. This is absurdly unfair, as the mega-businesses they conduct have a gigantic environmental and human impact, so far beyond that of “persons” and small businesses that they cannot even be compared.

The upshot is that as long as corporations are legally viewed as “persons,” real people have no real recourse against them. This is why Linzey and CELDF are helping municipalities to write ordinances stripping corporations of their
personhood and even, in some cases, to rewrite their local constitutions to override state and federal government.

So far, five years after the first towns in Pennsylvania stood up to the factory farms and the sewage sludge corporations, not one new factory farm or “one new teaspoon of sludge,” as Linzey puts it, has gone into the 100 communities.

The fight is far from over, however. The lawsuits are winding their way through the judicial system, but the townspeople in this traditionally conservative region of the state vow they will not submit, even to judges' rulings. Their experience has turned them into revolutionaries akin to the early colonists resisting the rule of the English monarchy. They now see that we do not have a democracy in this country, says Linzey, and have learned
that it's up to them to take back their right to govern themselves.

Guess What? We Don't Live in a Democracy
It was difficult for people involved in the Pennsylvania fight to believe at first that a clear majority vote in their community could be overridden by outside interests and that the government was not on their side. Linzey has seen the same initial disbelief in people in other states (Virginia, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, and Alaska) where CELDF has helped communities engaged in similar battles. “We thought the state was here to help us. We thought the state was us, yet here's the state stepping in to stomp us.”

Their experiences soon dispel the disbelief, however. “People with their backs up against the wall come out kicking,” observes Linzey. “That's when the organizing happens, when people understand that the system has not left them any other choice but to revolt.”

What small-town America is learning is that “there is a corporate class in this country, a select number of people who operate the largest corporations that do business in the U.S,” says Linzey. “And governance has been stripped away from the people and given to a very few people whose decisions automatically trump and override community majorities.”

Though our schools teach that this country was founded as a democracy, Linzey and others trace the history of corporate control back to America's inception. “One of the reasons for the Constitution was to create a centralized federal government that had ultimate power over commerce, because George Washington and other land speculators were trying to build canals in between the states and they wanted a strong centralized federal government that had the power to override the state objections to that type of economic development,” Linzey explains. “And so they wrote a centralized federal government plan that in essence and on paper—it's in the Constitution—places the federal government in a preemptive position over all other local governments and municipalities in the United States.”

The fact that only white men of property were entitled to participate in the drafting of the Constitution, excluding 80% of the people in the country at that time, lends credence to the argument that we've never had a democracy. As does the fact that the Supreme Court accorded personhood to corporations before women or African-Americans enjoyed the same constitutional rights.

Proof of the existence of corporate control comes to the CELDF offices every day, Linzey reports. “What happens when communities actually stand up and say, 'We're going to make key governing decisions for ourselves about what the community's going to look like,' is that they get squashed by their own governmental institutions. And that there's a corporate state operating today that has nothing to do with democracy.”

This history and current reality are part of what people learn in the Daniel Pennock Democracy School, started by CELDF and Richard Grossman, writer, historian, and cofounder of the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD), named for a 17-year-old resident of Berks County, Pennsylvania, who died after exposure to land-applied sewage sludge, the school offers three-day trainings to provide people with the historical background, analysis of the regulatory system, and other information they need to oppose corporate control of their communities. Launched in Chambersburg, PA, Democracy Schools are now run in more than a dozen sites around the country, with more in the offing. Check their schedule at www.celdf.org for weekend programs near you.

A New Kind of Activism
When the Alabama-born Linzey, who earned his law degree at Widener in Harrisburg,PA, cofounded CELDF with Stacey Schmader in 1995, it was to represent groups across Pennsylvania in permit appeals in the environmental regulatory process. Linzey now calls this process the “regulatory chute”, because it funnels people into arguing over “parts per million or paper versus plastic or how many odors are going to be released or how much of the river is going to be polluted” instead of working to prevent the business from coming into a community and polluting at all.

After five years of being in the regulatory chute, Linzey was frustrated with the process and how little it accomplished for communities and the environment. He saw that this adherence to the regulatory model is the reason that 40 years of environmental activism in the United States has failed to stop degradation of the environment. “Our activism has been in the regulatory dump,” he says. “That's why today, by almost every environmental standard, things are worse in this country today than they were 40 years ago.”

“ Governance has been stripped away from the people and given to a very few people whose decisions automatically trump and override community majorities.”

After getting no recourse from the regulatory process through state departments of environmental protection and/or the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), people come to Linzey and say, “The regulatory agencies are broken, because they're not protecting our health, safety, and welfare.” Linzey's response is “Maybe the regulatory agencies are working perfectly, because their job is not to protect your health, safety, and welfare, but to be a buffer between you on the ground and in your community and the corporations that are actually making the decisions to govern you.” As with the discovery that we do not live in a democracy, people are slow to believe that the agencies that, in theory, are supposed to be controlled by us are actually being used by a minority of people to squash us.”

The understanding that the conventional avenues of environmental activism were not working led Linzey to change CELDF's tactics from regulatory-based to community-based organizing. Now when communities come to him for help, their first step is to figure out how to regain control of their local government, if they don't already have it, or if they do, what ordinances they need to pass to keep the toxic waste incinerator, sewage sludge, factory farm, cell phone tower, or other environmental hazard out of their community.

“There's a corporate state operating today that has nothing to do with democracy.”

Whereas previously the work has happened town by town, which is slow going, recent developments in Virginia are taking democracy organizing to a new level. There, the people in three counties were told there was nothing they could do to stop the dumping in their communities of sewage sludge from New Jersey. They skipped their town governances and went right to the county governments to demand that they pass an ordinance to prohibit
the dumping. This puts the county board of supervisors in a difficult position because corporations have found yet another way to manipulate the law to force local governments into submission.

A telecommunications corporation (or rather, its lawyers) was responsible for dreaming up this new way to beat down communities. Linzey explains that the corporation invoked an old civil rights act, originally passed to protect the rights of newly emancipated slaves.

Clever manipulation of this act forces municipalities to allow installation of cell phone towers, for example. Corporations can use the act in this way because it does not specify African-Americans, but says only “persons.” Since the Supreme Court recognized corporations as persons, they are able not only to force the overturning of any ordinances or zoning barring the towers, which at least leaves the municipalities no worse off than before they passed the ordinance, but also to sue for “future lost profits” as a result of that ordinance being in operation.

“This means that the corporation doesn't have to put the cell phone tower in to make the money,” notes Linzey. “One way, they make it from the marketplace…. The other way, they make it from us, because they can sue the municipality for damages, and that's our taxpayer money.”

So the Virginia county governments face possible bankruptcy, if they do the bidding of the people they represent. As in Pennsylvania, however, the people in Virginia are determined not to back down. They are already looking to replace county supervisors who are not representing their wishes. And they're not buying the corporate spin doctors'
new terminology for land-applied sewage sludge: recycled biosolids. They know the potential health consequences of allowing sewage sludge into their neighborhoods and no sanitized names are going to change the fact that sludge typically carries pathogens, chemical carcinogens such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and dioxins, heavy metals, and other toxins from processing shared with industrial toxic waste.

Linzey reports that CELDF is now encountering municipalities that are saying, “We'd rather go bankrupt than give in to the structure of law that has been manufactured to make us second-class citizens even though this is our own elected local government.” At the same time, interest in the Democracy Schools has increased. CELDF now gets requests every week from new locations wanting the three-day training in their area. In just the two years the schools have been in existence, they have graduated 2,000 people. This year, the number of Democracy School trainings across the country will rise to 150, with 15–20 people in each. “I think we're at a turning point,” Linzey says. “You can only regulate people so long. When people understand that they're remedy-less under the existing structure of law, they move forward to change it themselves.”

The American Way
Perhaps the grassroots struggle to wrest governance from corporate control is the next American uprising in our long tradition of uprisings in the name of justice. We have a history of going against the law when the law is unjust, beginning with the overthrow of British rule and taxation without representation. Unfortunately, the new country did not accord equal rights to all. Later movements had to break laws and enact new ones to change that. The abolitionists, the suffragists, the Civil Rights movement, and the labor movement all had to go against government and the legal system in pursuit of justice.

When enough people mass behind an issue, judges and juries begin to defy the law, says Linzey. He cites the examples of northern juries who refused to send escaped slaves back to the South, judges who refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, and later judges who refused to enforce segregation during the Civil Rights movement. This is what needs to happen now regarding court rulings in favor of corporations over people. “Disobedience is the only thing that's going to get us out of this,” concludes Linzey.

Wild Law and Home Rule
New and creative approaches are what Americans need now to meet the challenge of trying to return governance to where it belongs: the people. In some cases, there are disused legal structures in place that communities can put to creative use. One such structure is home rule, which exists in some form in 37 states, including California.

Home rule delegates a state's power in specified fields to its counties, municipalities, and towns or townships, resulting in local autonomy and limited state intervention at the local level. The powers and limits vary from state to state. “Home rule allows communities to, in essence, make structures of law over the heads of their elected officials. It's almost like constitution making,” explains Linzey, noting that this is exactly what is happening in some of the 100 Pennsylvania towns. “People who understand that the system of law has to be changed and the Constitution has to be rewritten are now rewriting the Constitution themselves at the local level, to recognize rights for nature and ecosystems, strip corporations of rights, and expand the rights of people in communities.”

Rights for nature and ecosystems is one of the new, creative approaches and an emerging field of law that Thomas Linzey is championing. Known as “wild law,” it gives nature a place at the table, according nature legal “personhood.” With the help of CELDF, five municipalities (all in Pennsylvania) became the first in the U.S. to pass ordinances that strip corporations of their personhood status and give personhood to nature, Linzey reports. These “new-generation ordinances” as he calls them, recognize that nature and ecosystems have legally enforceable rights. The same ordinance dismantles corporate rights, which place property over nature.

Linzey believes that wild law is an idea whose time has come—see our feature article, Wild Law: The Rights of the Earth. Already, two law schools in Florida, the Barry and St. Thomas University Law Schools, are co-hosting the first “Rights of Nature” conference to be held in the United States. Linzey has been invited to be one of two keynote speakers; the other is South African lawyer and former anti-apartheid activist Cormac Cullinan, who is also the author of Wild Law and the person credited with coining the phrase.
www.enact-international.com

Last year, the same law schools opened the Center for Earth Jurisprudence to “reenvision law and governance in ways that support the well being of the Earth community as a whole, and to foster mutually enhancing relationships among humans and nature and recognize the rights of nature.”

After the April conference, Linzey and CELDF are going on a tour of law schools across the country “to begin to transform how environmental law is practiced in this country, to change it from a regulatory model to a rights-based model,” meaning the rights of nature and people.

Although these are exciting developments, Linzey sees a lot of hard work ahead. “What you're doing is building units of hardcore believers in democracy, who are not willing to be sold out or trade anything away for what they've obtained. And I think it means 10,000 to 100,000 communities across the U.S. rising up to say, 'We're not going to do this anymore. We're not going to tolerate this system of law anymore and we're going to rebuild this place.'”

All communities can be grateful that Thomas Linzey is on the job helping them do just that.

For more info, visit www.celdf.org or call 717-709-0457.

Wild Law

2007-12-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

WILD LAW

THE RIGHTS OF THE EARTH

By Stephanie Marohn
stephaniemarohn.com

For: North Bay Natural Pages (October 2007 – March 2008)

Email: www.naturalpages.com

Every component of the Earth Community has three rights:

1. The RIGHT to BE,
2. The RIGHT to HABITAT,
3. The RIGHT to FULFILL its role in the ever-renewing processes of the earth community. Thomas Berry

Remember how suddenly the Iron Curtain came down, despite how solidly it had been in place for almost 50 years?

Remember how the firmly entrenched apartheid system in South Africa ended so abruptly, and the man who had been imprisoned for 27 years, because of it became the country's president?

Yes, many people struggled over decades - many gave their lives - to bring those two events to pass, but when the change occurred, it happened relatively quickly.

This supports the view that when the world is ready for a paradigm shift, the shift is often rapid.

With global warming waking up even those previously in deep denial about the dire state of the environment the embrace of wild law may be the next paradigm shift. And if that shift comes within the next ten years (scientists warn that we have ten years to change our ways or our destruction of the planet will become irreversible), humans and the planet may actually have a chance.

Note, however, that paradigm shifts do not occur without great effort by many humans. A paradigm shift is not something you can just sit back and wait for, but requires that critical mass be reached. So in the case of wild law, many people need to help bring a whole new way of looking at nature into mainstream cultural acceptance.

THE LAW OF THE WILD
Wild law recognizes the rights of rivers to flow instead of being dammed to the detriment of their health,
the rights of mountains to remain intact instead of having their tops blown off for coal mining,
the rights of old growth forests to remain unlogged, and
the rights of all humans, animals, birds, insects, amphibians, reptiles, and other beings to a habitat
that supports their existence.

Wild law requires that decisions made by communities, governing bodies, courts, or other social or cultural authority adhere to, rather than violate, these rights.

Wild law does not place humans above every other component of nature, or
the other members of "the Earth community;' as visionary sage Thomas Berry terms it.

Wild law is ecocentric (Earth-centered) rather than anthropocentric (human-centered).
And if we make the paradigm shift, we will enter what Berry dubs the" Ecozoic Era;'
taking our rightful place in the Earth community instead of attempting to rule it.

Wild law is a framework for the reform of our current approach to law and governance, which currently accords corporations the right to pillage and plunder, destroy the habitats of humans as well as other beings, and send species after species into extinction.

Our current framework gives humans the right to exploit the natural world as we see fit, rather than acknowledge that we are members of a planetary community in which all beings and earth elements are equal.

It would be bad enough to have humans using and abusing the Earth, but we have allowed corporations to gain "personhood'; meaning they can claim the same rights as people. This enables them to override communities of actual people trying to stop the polluting of their air, soil. and water by a factory farm, for example.

The corporation (which wreaks destruction on a far greater scale than that perpetrated by individual humans) can claim that the attempt to keep them out is a violation of, their civil rights and the community is forced by courts and state and federal government to comply. So, humans, too, have lost their rights.

Wild law restores these rights, along with those of all of nature,

Thus wild law is far more than reform of law and governance; it is a fundamental cultural transformation of how humans view their place in the world.

Wild law is both new and old. It is a relatively new movement seeking to restore the age-old worldview and harmonious relationship with nature of indigenous peoples around the globe.

South African attorney, former anti-apartheid activist. and current wild law activist Cormac Cullinan coined the term "wild law" and authored a book of the same name to serve as a text for the new movement.

He explains the term: "I was looking for something sexier than 'Earth jurisprudence' (Thomas Berry's name for the philosophy of law that recognizes the rights of nature).

Initially I was casting around for that, but after a while it did prove to be quite a rich phrase. Partially because it's incongruous for lawyers to put 'wild' and 'law' in the same sentence, because law is seen as being very much about stamping out wildness.

Wildness is also synonymous with the vital natural forces that drive the evolution of the universe and we also associate it with creativity and passion. Part of the problem is that that is exactly what our systems try to stamp out and with that we've lost soul, meaning, and a sense of fulfillment."

Cullinan now travels the world as a legal consultant, lecturer, and organizer for wild law.
He cites Thomas Berry as the inspiration for the wild law concept.

Berry had been calling for a "new jurisprudence" that would recognize the rights of the Earth Community. Cullinan and others are in the process of developing how to put this new jurisprudence into action throughout society.

While some object to the systemic change this will entail, Cullinan notes, "The feedback we're getting from the planet is that the existing system is not working. It's dysfunctional on a catastrophic level.

If that's where we're at we've got to try something new. And it seems to me that attempting to bring ourselves into alignment with the system of which we are part, must be a good start:'

As for what individuals can do toward that realignment, Cullinan says, ''As a personal practice, renewing and strengthening one's personal contact with the wider natural world, with other species or plants or beautiful places, is very important.

And then the next thing to do is to be willing to stand up for it. In other words, both to try and change one's personal life to reflect one's belief, but also to go out in the world and say. 'I'm not willing anymore to be a party to gratuitous assault on the rest of the planet:"

Here are four recent developments in the field of wild law that give hope that the paradigm shift to Earth justice may be closer than we think:
the first wild law conference in the U.S.,
the establishment of a wild law center inside a U.S. law school,
a web of wild law communities around the world, and
the first actual wild law enacted in the U.S.

FIRST CONFERENCE - FIRST LAW CENTER
In April 2007 –
the first wild law conference ever held in the U.S. took place at
the first earth justice law center in the U.S., the Center for Earth Jurisprudence (CEJ).
CEJ, which opened in 2006, is co-sponsored by two Catholic universities,
Barry and St. Thomas, in Miami Gardens, Florida, and
is the first Earth jurisprudence entity operating within a law school.
CEJ's mission is "to re-envision law and governance in ways that support and
protect the well being of the entire Earth community:'

To that end. CEJ hosted a conference for law faculty and students, to introduce them to the concepts of wild law. The official title was" Earth Jurisprudence: Defining the Field and Claiming the Promise".
The keynote speakers were Cormac Cullinan and Thomas Linzey (see "A Landmark Legal Case").

The Gaia Foundation had held the first Earth jurisprudence conferences in South Africa and the U.K. two years before, but the CEJ conference was a first in the U.S. More are likely to follow, however, as Cullinan and Linzey embarked after the conference on a 10 day tour to speak at law schools across the country.

Meanwhile, CEJ's first law school course in Earth jurisprudence came to a close, with enthusiastic reviews from the 19 law students who completed it.

Patricia A. Siemen, O.P., J.D., director of CEJ, is a Dominican Sister and civil attorney who came to Earth jurisprudence from a social justice background of working with the underrepresented on civil rights, voting rights, and immigrant rights issues.

Her own experience during that period led her to regard the embracing of wild law principles as a continuum. Some, like Thomas Berry (she, too, found a mentor in him) are at one end of the continuum, with naysayers at the other end. Despite her rights advocacy, she was a naysayer.

"In the midst of trying to get land and provide housing for immigrants in Florida:' she says, "I remember being so annoyed at the state EPA and the land-use policies, because we had to slow down our housing, becausewe had a threatened jay. I remember being so indignant, saying, 'My god, housing is more important than these birds!' So I have a lot of compassion for people who are at different points on this continuum:'

What changed her view was listening to a Thomas Berry tape. He said, “I would hazard a guess that if the rest of the species had a right to vote in an Earth democracy, they would vote the humans off the planet.”
“That was shocking to me”, she recalls. She suddenly realized she had been working all these years
for human justice and had never considered the rights of other species and nature in general.

That pivotal moment led Siemen to begin serving what is the most underrepresented community today: Earth and Nature.

An eventual meeting with the presidents of the two universities and the deans of their two law schools to propose that they sponsor CEJ within their walls earned their immediate support.

Siemen notes that the fact that CEJ is founded within two faith-based law schools is no accident, but reflects their common ground with the wild law movement of "recognition of the sacredness of the natural world, the sacredness of creation."

ASK THE KNOWLEDGE HOLDERS
Like Cormac Cullinan, Liz Hosken, the cofounder and director of the Gaia Foundation in London, is from South Africa and was exiled due to her antiapartheid activism. Also like Cullinan, she now travels the world on behalf of wild law. The foundation "is committed to cultural and biological diversity, and a living Earth democracy".

To this end, Hosken and others worked with indigenous communities in the Amazon to develop a model that could be applied to any community in the world - a model based on the primary laws of the Earth and aimed at restoring wild law and a recognition of the sacredness of nature. The foundation then took a group of Africans to experience Amazon communities, as a living example of Earth jurisprudence in practice.

Most recently, the foundation has been developing this work with divergent communities in Sweden and
along the Thames River in the U.K.

At the recent CEJ conference, Hosken spoke on "Earth Jurisprudence: Lessons from Indigenous Peoples:'
to explain the link between wild law and indigenous wisdom. She says, "Indigenous people see themselves
as part of a living whole. That's their cosmology, that's their world view based on Earth lore. And of course, that's what Earth jurisprudence is trying to say, that the Earth is the primary giver of law, the primary text,
and that human beings should regulate themselves according to that primary law, and that law as it governs
all life systems."

The methodology that the Gaia Foundation, the Amazonians, and the Africans have developed is based on tapping into the wisdom of the eiders or "knowledge holders" in any community, those who know the workings of the primary law in their particular ecosystem, with the goal of reconnecting the whole community to that natural world.

The first step is to identify the knowledge holders and hold community meetings to stimulate community dialogue and create a map of the community's ecosystem. Hosken describes this eco-mapping as "a very
interesting powerful tool for bringing out the knowledge of the wisdom holders and engaging others in connecting with their place and understanding how it works:'

In the process, community members connect with each other in a new way, and cohesion is re-established as a basis for good governance. The young gain new respect for their elders and the traditions of their people, their heritage, and their identity. Excitingly, Hosken and her colleagues have discovered that the methodology works as well in communities in developed countries as it does in the Amazon and Africa,

Restoring wild law at a grass-roots level, in individual communities, and linking those communities in a region, throughout a country, and internationally is how wild law will become the law of the land. Hasken notes that the Amazonians talk about sacred sites as critical places where the Earth needs to rest and be protected and that these sites used to all are linked. "Of all the things we need to do - the destruction is so huge, but we have to begin somewhere - they say to us that sacred sites are the places we really need to prioritize in any ecosystem;' she says. "The vision they have is that we work with these little small nodes of interested people in different countries and try to get this process going, try and get it to spread and to link up into a global alliance. The interlinkage is a really important part of building up the critical mass for change:' It is the knowledge keepers in your community who know where the sacred sites are in their ecosystem.

A LANDMARK LAW PASSES
Recent events in Pennsylvania highlight American communities that are taking back control of their own ecosystems and restoring nature's stolen rights. On September 19, 2006, the Tamaqua Borough Council in Pennsylvania became the first municipality in the U.S. to strip corporations of rights and recognize the rights of Nature, thus becoming the first in the country to enact wild law.

The council passed an ordinance prohibiting corporations from applying sewage sludge in the borough.
(Land applied sewage sludge is a known hazard to the health of humans and the environment.)
Four other communities in the state have since passed similar ordinances denying corporations personhood and recognizing Nature instead.

The municipalities were able to do this with the assistance of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a nonprofit law firm in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, that provides legal services to groups and local governments seeking to protect their community's quality of life and natural environment.

CELDF's cofounder and executive director, attorney Thomas Linzey, now receives calls from all over the country from communities facing unwanted incursions by corporations. The first thing he helps them figure out is how to regain control of their local government, if they don't already have it or, if they do, what ordinances they need to pass to keep the toxic waste incinerator, sewage sludge, factory farm, cell phone tower, or other environmental hazard out of their community.

CELDF's project director, Ben Price, said of the landmark Tamaqua ordinance, that the council took "an extraordinary - but logical-step. Since this nation's founding - and for thousands of years before - 'Law' in
the Western world has treated rivers, mountains, forests, and other natural systems as 'property' with no rights that governments or corporations must respect. This has resulted in the destruction of ecosystems and natural communities, backed by law, public policy, and the power of government.

The people of Tamaqua have changed how the law regards Nature, and have acted in the grand tradition of the Abolitionists, who launched a people's movement in the 1830s to end the legal but immoral treatment of slaves as property and to establish forever their rights as people entitled to fundamental and inalienable human rights:' With these "new-generation ordinances:' as Linzey calls them, Nature's inalienable rights are beginning to be restored, and the five Pennsylvania communities are likely the start of a movement.

The wild law heroes described here and the many others working in a variety of ways toward the goal of restoring the rights of Nature cannot alone bring about the paradigm shift from our, current anthropocentrism to a worldview of ourselves as members of an Earth community that includes all beings and natural elements. But the more of us who take action toward this goal, the closer we will be to wild law, perhaps suddenly, becoming the status quo instead of being regarded as a radical or idealistic concept.

Cormac Cullinan - www.enact-internationaJ.com
Liz Hosken and the Gaia Foundation - www.gaiafoundation.org
Thomas Linzey and CELDF - www.celdf.org
or call 717-709-0457
Patricia Siemen and CEJ - www.earthjuris.org
or call 305-623-2389.

I Am One: Podcast created March 5, 2006

2007-12-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

powered by ODEO

Hi, I’m Dianna.
This is my first and only audioblog.
I felt inspired to share some of my personal, spiritual and politically progressive thoughts with anyone who might like to hear them.

I've lived in Santa Rosa, California many years, but I didn't always live here.
I came to Santa Rosa, because my former husband and his 2nd wife moved here after he graduated from the Berkeley law school.

He actually grew up on the south side of Chicago, but discovered Howarth Park when he came here to participate in a tennis tournament while going to law school.

I'm telling you all this, because I'm always interested in knowing more about a person.
Maybe you are too - and maybe not! Anyway ...

I AM ONE person who is very concerned about the future of America The Beautiful. I am a spokesperson for democracy.

The democracy we learned about in school never did exist. We’ve been told lies, so we would be willing to go to work and willing to go to war.

What would Jesus say? I believe he would say: One world, One Creator, With Liberty and Justice for All.

I believe a MIGHTY WAVE of PUBLIC OUTRAGE from people, like you and me, can MAKE AN OVERWHELMING HEALING DIFFERENCE in what is happening to us and those we love, including our pets, all animals and the Environment.

People, like you and me, who are willing to stop believing the lies and realize why we are constantly being distracted away from our very important mission.

This is a very serious situation.

Many politicians, both Republican and Democratic are financed by self-serving executives of big corporations. It has been a law for many years that each corporation has been given the same rights of an individual person. (By the ruling of U.S. Supreme Court in 1886.)

With the big corporation’s enormous piles of money, they extract from the labors of the work force, they seem to have much more power than a small group of people.

However, there are more of us than them. We must be willing to recognize our power potential. And encourage our friends and neighbors to do the same. There is power in numbers of people focused on the same results: LIBERTY, JUSTICE and HEALTH for ALL PEOPLE, ALL ANIMALS, ALL NATURE and our home, the PLANET.

Our Earth home is being destroyed! Our lives are being stressed and sick. We must be willing to stop this destruction.

We must understand that all life, including trees, plants, bugs, water and air is PRECIOUS.

Corporations are interested in their bottom line financial profits and our Government is interested in political games and power. And we can’t trust elections, because they are being stolen! It’s up to us. If you are willing, I will keep sending a spiritual, progressive, political message each Sunday.

However, I do need to earn an income. If I’m spending my time working at something else, I won’t have time to pursue other ways to bring this message to those who are not computer literate, yet.

So, if you’re willing to send $1 dollar to me, I will keep track of how many people feel the same as we do, and keep you informed on my blog. which is: (www.suprlif.blogspot.com). The title on my blog is: I Am One. (Changed to: Political Progressives Perspectives)

Please leave a comment on my blog. Just say YES. Also, if you like, add your first name, city and e-mail address or blog name,

When enough people say YES! I will get a P.O. Box and post the address on my Blog, so you can mail your $1 to me.

I will keep you posted on my blog as to how many ONEs are willing to stand up and be counted for a peaceful future for America The Beautiful - and all who live here.

Each week (This is the only one I did.)
I will record and publish on www.healthynetwork.blogspot.com another segment regarding being a spiritually progressive force, using kindness, caring, generosity and healthy solutions to encourage better living for all.

When we have enough ONEs to make a difference -
When we are certain we are not a few among the BIG GUNS -
We can plan our next step to overcome the forces of evil..

In the meantime I encourage you to take one step forward towards a great future each day.

A changed life begins with the first step! This audioblog is my first step.

I’m sending you kind regards, and a hope that I hear from you!

This is Dianna, signing, off until (Some other time.)

Who Is Dianna?

2007-11-21T20:20:00.000-08:00

Oak Park, Illinois was my birth place. The first and only child of my mother and father, who divorced when I was about 4 years old. Moline, Illinois is where I grew up with my mother, step-father, half-sister, 6 years younger and half-brother, 7 years younger. A couple times a year I would travel alone, with a kind black "porter" who looked after me on the Rocky Mountain Rocket train to visit my father in Chicago.

At Moline High, I had the opportunity to be in a unique English class, which focused on newspaper writing. I was also in a Spanish club that went to nursing homes and sang Spanish songs, a library club, and was chosen to be the mother in a play. Also, I worked at the public library as a Page, restocking shelves and helping the assistant librarian with clerical work.

After one year at Beloit College in Wisconsin and one year at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, I married an Augustana graduate from Chicago, I met at a summer camp when I was 16 years old. After the birth of 2 boys, Jack and Rick, we moved to San Bernardino, California. Within three years we had another son, Rob.

Over several years I was involved with little theater, a civil service job with the U.S, Forest Service, became divorced and went to work as an accounts maintenance clerk in the hospital food service division for the Department of the Army on the Monterey Penninsula.

During that time I enrolled in enough junior college classes to equal another semester. One of the classes I was particularly interested in was Accounting, and was rewarded with an A.

In 1968 and '69 my former husband and his wife, who had moved to Santa Rosa, were willing to care for my boys while I earned a BA in Creative Arts from San Francisco State.

Within a few months I found a house to rent in Santa Rosa and a job at a savings and loan company that seemed thrilled to have me learn how to become a loan officer. However, on the first day of work I discovered that not only was another woman hired for the same job, we were being trained by a young married woman who wanted the job herself!

Within a couple of months my competitor was let go. However, I was not happy about the obstacles the "trainer" created, or the job itself, so I had a talk with the manager and began scanning the want ads. Almost immediately I saw an ad for a bookkeeper for the Sonoma County People For Economic Opportunity, a non-profit agency for disadvantaged people.
I knew about their mission and had actually approached them for a job when I was first looking for a job in Santa Rosa, At that time they had no job for me and even if they did, I had no car.

However, when I saw their ad, they had moved to new offices within walking distance of my house! I immediately applied - along with about 30 other applicants, who no doubt had bookkeeping experience! Several applicants were asked to come in for an interview, and I was one of them. Before I left the interview, I asked the interviewer when he would make his decision. Every Friday I called, and was told he had not had time to decide. Finally after several weeks, he said I could have the job, because I had shown I really wanted it and was so persistant! I was thrilled! My career was launched.

During the four years I worked there I not only did the bookkeeping (posting and balancing to a set of books - before computers) but kept the accounting for 5 individual programs, including budgets, funding and expenses, payroll, A/R and A/P, filing, supervising low income students, creating a personal manual and annually working with an outside CPA auditor.

For 13 years I worked for three non-profit agencies and one year for a profit company.

In 1983, after learning to use an Apple computer (with no accounting software, and only an early version of Excel called MaCalc) I was hired as an Independent Contractor for a woman who owned a spa and health food store. For many months I provided payroll and other accounting tasks, until I decided to look for a computer job with a company that had proper software and benefits.

It turned out that the engineer owner of the massage table company I was hired to work for, had pieced together his version of a computer and the software he had was purchased at the flea market - it had no manual or phone number to call when I had questions!

During the four years I was employed at Living Earth Crafts as the full charge bookkeeper, I became the working supervisor of two bookkeepers, the customer service department and clerical staff. I also prepared and audited data for monthly financial statements and year-end corporate tax return information for the outside CPA.

During the next few years I was self employed for a time, worked part time for an advertising agency where I had the experience of converting their accounting construction software on a PC to MultiLedger on a Mac, which was more appropriate software for their business What a relief! (I've personally owned a few Macs, although in order to take a Quickbooks online class, I purchased an HP PC, which I use only occassonaly.)

Because I knew MultiLedger and the Mac, I was sought out and hired to work full time with another profit making business, which sold wine online. (Every bookkeeper I have "followed" left the job in terrible condition! Nobody knew how or what the bookkeeper had been doing, so it was up to me to get it in shape! I came to consider myself an unappreciated, hard working, dedicated, employee and management considered me a necessary evil magician! (Bookkeepers may save money for a business, however, they don't make money for the business.)

Within a couple of years I became very involved with a couple of health oriented network marketing companies. Then my husband wanted me to stop and take a vacation to his childhood home in upper state New York, which I agreed to. However, soon thereafter, one of the network marketing companies was having a big get together in Hawaii. I really wanted to go, but taking two vacations so close together wasn't acceptable for that company, When I returned to work from Hawaii, I had been replaced.

Now with free time and sick of being a bookkeeping magician, I became consumed with researching, writing and self publishing a health book, Why Would I ... Eat Algae?

The book was very well received across the country by people who were also involved with the same company. Long after I stopped printing the book I had people ask for it. During that period I was also the treasurer of a related distributor support group that helped others with the marketing aspect.

In 1998 I was ready to go back to work on a part time basis, so searched the want ads for a bookkeeping job with a Mac. I quickly found just what I was looking for at a small printing shop and was immediately hired, probably because I was ready to work and willing to accept a meager pay! Their flexible and customizable accounting software was MYOB, which has become my software of choice.

After working for almost a year, I decided I could handle a second part time job, so I applied to a company that was looking for a bookkeeper who knew MYOB. Even though they only had a PC, and I was told the owner of the company was very difficult, I was very interested in working in a beautiful office for a company that designed golf courses around the world!
Soon I was working over 10 hours a day and week ends between these two companies!

During this time my youngest son started his own advertising business, so I also volunteered to reconcile his bank statements, including a few other clerical duties.

In 2005 after giving up the demanding two part time jobs, I began doing more bookkeeping for my son. I continue to provide my services, as needed.

Now I had time to focus on my interests, which amazingly keeps growing. Our local newspaper The Press Democrat, and the Wall Street Journal provide me with so much interesting information on so many subjects, that hardly a day goes by that I don't want to save some article or keep the whole newspaper, because I didn't have time to "mine" it!

In October 2004 I started a Sonoma County Chapter of the American Society of Dowsers. www.dowsers.org. After our chapter was certified, I was elected the volunteer president and assumed the roles of treasurer, speaker scheduler and e-mail communicator to over 125 people - and growing, who have participated in our "get togethers".

In October 2005 I became the owner/manager of Dianna Coulombe's Healthy Solutions.
This is a small monthly Excel driven digital online ordering "store" for a small group of friends, who wanted to purchase healthy products at a discount. As the volunteer manager I have developed the process, the forms and have been only partially able to teach busy, computer reluctant participants how to use the Excel based process. Each month one of the participants is my assistant to consolidate the orders in Excel and on pick up day the assistant helps sort the delivered items.

The final reconciliations and other finishing tasks are now done exclusively by me, since consistency is not only vital, but is quicker and easier for me in order to be sure that all the numbers are accurate.

Since graduating from San Francisco State, I have taken a variety of Santa Rosa Junior College classes, including one on grant-writing for non-profits. I also attended several 1 day classes given by outstanding professionals, offered by the Volunteer Center of Sonoma County, regarding several aspects of non-profits, including the application, mission statement, grant writing, funding, managing , newsletters and finding compatable peope for the Board of Directors.

Several years ago I took a class regarding what is required to be a good manager. During my work experiences I found that most owners and managers don't know that type of class exists, and who dares tell them!

My second husband of 25 years and I live off Fulton Road between College and West Third in a tree filled mobile home park with a one mile walking path around the perimiter of the park.

My first born, Jack, graduated from Sonoma State University and has been in love with computers and their potential since his first Radio Shack Atari.

My second son, Rick, who graduated from San Diego State, is a CPA working from his home office. (During his high school years he was the local tennis champion, having been taught by his father, who had become an attorney after our divorce, and later a professional tennis coach.)

My third son, Rob, graduated from California School of the Arts and works out of his home office producing TV commercials and making media buys for his clients.

In about 1975 I took my first organic garden class at SRJC and became the treasurer for The Organic Garden and Nutrition Club. During that period of my life I was able to convert my yard, which was hard-pan clay soil, bound up with bermuda grass, into rich organic soil without pesticides! One of my most satisfying achievements!

Over the years I have experienced taking care of a canary, a rabbit, a duck, a guinea pig, 5 dogs, 11 cats, hamsters, white rats, a rooster, a snake, a turtle and fish. My regrets regarding how best to care for them are many! When we know better, we do better!

I'm more than willing to continue learning and sharing all aspects of living kindly and wisely on the Earth, and about life beyond, as explained by Betty White in The Unobstructed Universe written by her husband, Stewart Edward White. www.spiritwritings.com/stewartedwardwhite.html

Thank you for spending time with me! I look forward to spending time with you.

Kind regards,
Dianna

A Virtual Office

2007-11-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

In the spring of 2006 I signed up for an online class at the Santa Rosa Junior College that prepares students to create a home office and become familiar with all the aspects of providing online business services, according to each person's skills, such as; bookkeeping, internet research, word processing/writing, and marketing, to name a few.

Our extensive testbook and weekly assignments included; Identifying and handling online and home business challenges, developing a letter of introduction, developing a contractor agreement, developing a client order/invoice form, purchasing equipment for a home office, and organizing your home office for efficiency and comfort.

For our mid-term we had a variety of topics we could choose to research and write a paper on. An additional requirement was to get the information from 6 references: 2 books, 2 periodicals and 2 websites.

The following article in The Press Democrat had caught my attention a few weks earlier and inspired me to research how to create an efficient, comfortable office environment.

“Office Disorders Financial, Psychological Costs”. The opening paragraph stated that, “Messy desks, messy computers, messy calendars are messing up the economy.” The quick summary sidebar identified Clutter’s Cost in percentages, as reported in a recent study done by the Delphi Group, a Boston consultancy group. The percentages were: 15% of paper handled in businesses is lost, 30% of all employees’ time is spent trying to find lost documents and professionals lose 2.1 hours daily to distraction.

I chose to use the midterm article as a springboard into creating a pleasant, comfortable and efficient environment for myself, so when the course was completed I would know what I needed to do to make my environment condusive to my being creatve and successful with my life’s mission.

The following 6 resources have given me creative ideas to rearrange my office and home.

2 Books
Kingston, Karen, (1999) Clear Your Clutter With Feng Shui www.spaceclearing.com/
The Table of Contents for Karen Kingston’s book is intriguing. The book is 179 pages, divided into three parts, with an appendix, bibliography, recommended further reading, resources and Index. Karen insists you can’t move to Part 3 until you have read and understand Part 1 and 2.
Part 1. Understanding Clutter
Part 2. Identifying Clutter
Part 3. Clearing Clutter

As I began to read her book, I was quite thrilled it is in my hands! I am looking forward to thoroughly reading it. On page 7 she mentions there are three levels of stuck energy.
1. physical grime (general yuck),
2. predecessor energy (emotional vibrations from former dwellers or
your own emotional traumas)
3. Clutter. She says that low level energy always accumulates around dust!

Now I have a good grip on how to explain to my husband why we need to clean the dust and emotional trauma in order for me to approach my paper clutter! This won’t be an issue of trying to control him, but to free us both from stuck negative energy!

Morgenstern, Julie, (1998) Organizing From The Inside Out. 262 pages www.juliemorgenstern.com/
Julie Morgenstern is the founder and owner of the New York based professional organizing company Task Masters. Julie has been a consultant to individuals and companies since 1989.
The four chapters in her book are:
Part 1 One - Laying The Foundation
Part 2 – Secrets Of a Professional Organizer
Part 3 – Applying What You’ve Learned: Chapter 7 - Home-Based Businesses
Part 4 – Tackling Time Technology

This book does not mention Feng Shui and has been in my house for quite a while; however, I have not taken the time to open it! It rested along with other books I have accumulated over the years regarding getting organized and clearing clutter.

As I looked more closely I noticed on the cover of one, that in addition to the title were the words “The Foolproof System for Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life”. I'll dust it off and read it - when I have time!

2 Periodicals
Weltman, Barbara; Hayes, Michael Copyright Dec 2005 American Institute of CPA’s Journal of Accountancy: Feng Shui for beginners: an organized, harmonious work environment is a business asset p36 (4).

Feng Shui - half art, half mysticism – was gently and tastefully well written as it promoted ideas to liberate creativity and vitality. In order to open up new opportunities, the authors encouraged the reader to be flexible enough to be willing to follow a Feng Shui consultant’s advice, if the CPA is too busy or feels silly about applying Feng Shui techniques.

Another comment was to say that a practitioner didn’t have to take Feng Shui literally to benefit incorporating some easy-to-implement ideas in order to experience real change. An added nudge was suggested by saying, “You won’t know unless you try it.”

This article was written for a CPAs work and home office suggesting that to create a harmonious work-place, a person must take all their senses into account through simple principles of using full-spectrum lighting, mirrors, bamboo and rubber plants, a small aquarium or a mini water fountain, an air purifier or open windows, particular colors, a crystal figurine, gentle wind chimes, and a bowl of real or crystal and jade fruit. These enhancements along with other clutter free suggestions help to achieve a workplace that is pleasant and efficient that promotes harmony, health and prosperity.

This article was of particular interest, since I have worked with many CPAs over the years and was unaware they would have any knowledge of or come in contact with Feng Shui. Although I am not a CPA, I have tendencies to be a bit reluctant to be too far-out, even though others have considered me “on the fringe”.

As an added incentive to quell fears of being odd, the authors mentioned New York City Major Michael Bloomberg, Donald Trump, Virgin Atlantic Airway founder Sir Richard Branson, a couple of high profile corporations, and the possibility of future clients, incorporating Feng Shui into their work places, so I am encouraged to pursue creating a Feng Shui office.

2. Gibbons, Dawn: March 2006 p28 (1) Contract Flooring Journal: Helping You Gain A Competitive Advantage: Dawn Gibbins On Feng Shui And Business Performance

Dawn Gibbons’ article was the fifth of a series she was writing regarding Feng Shui for this industry’s monthly newsletter. She suggests that once a person achieves positive Feng Shui energy they will begin to feel better and their whole life will improve, including their financial bottom line.

She advises getting rid of EMF (electromagnetic frequencies, which can seriously damage health. These frequencies are found in radio alarm clocks, electrical cables and computer bases to name a few. She suggests hiring a consultant, who can bring an EMF meter to determine if you are exposed to more than 20 volts per meter, since more than 20 volts is very unhealthy. Also, Dawn says clutter depresses the human spirit, so it is vital to eliminate it, and surround yourself with things that make you feel good.

EMFs have been a concern of mine for a number of years, so I have placed a piece of equipment, that looks and acts like a clock, near computers, to defuse EMF negative energy. I am pleased she is bringing this information to a whole industry and interested to know that getting rid of EMFs is considered part of “going Feng Shui”.

2 Websites
Wong, Angi Ma Copyright (c) 2000 Excerpted from the Feng Shui Dos & Taboos, a book by Angi Ma Wong, www.care2.com/channels/solutions/home/ Reprinted by permission from Storey Books. www.storeybooks.com

The excerpt from Angi Wong’s book, found on the above mentioned link, are 13 tips for the dos and taboos of Feng Shui office design. Nine of the items are dos and four are taboos. She suggests where to place a desk, what should be behind the wall and behind your back, where to put the computer, the aquarium or tabletop fountain, where to put a safe, the importance of balancing light and dark colors, soft and hard surfaces, and smooth and rough textures.

One “to do” I particularly liked was, to treat the files in your office with respect. They represent your past, present and future business.

When I set up an office, I purchase a box of colored file folders, a box of file folder labels with 4 different colors and 4 different colors of Sharpie extra fine point permanent marker pens.

Each year I choose a specific color for the file folders, the labels and the ink color is the same color as the label. I also align file folders in a particular way, which I find works well for consistency when adding new folders, ease of filing and finding documents. When a file drawer is opened, the color and arrangement is pleasing to my eyes and brain. Any other way is very discombobulating to me! I had no idea I was using Feng Shui in my files!

I stumbled upon Ms. Wong, referred to as the Feng Shui Lady. She is a diplomat’s daughter born in China, who has lived in New Zealand, Taiwan and Washington, D.C. She is a wife, mother, cancer survivor, a best-selling author, an award-winning entrepreneur and the only Feng Shui expert to have appeared on Oprah’s program.
I am quite pleased to “meet” her, so will be checking out her books very soon.

Yates, Gayla: The Art of Placement & Amazing! Feng Shui www.amazingfengshui.com/site/fengshui_tips.html

Gayla Yates states that the art of placement can cause dramatic benefits, but only addresses the environment at the most superficial level. Amazing! Feng Shui goes far beyond the simple arrangement of furniture, mirrors, crystals, fountains and flutes. Gayla suggests that your home and/or office will feel noticeably lighter and brighter with an Amazing! Feng Shui treatment. She says the secret to profound transformation is in the shifting of Qi, i.e. the cleansing, balancing and harmonizing of vital, life-force energy at the quantum levels of the environment.

Gayla lives in Santa Rosa and is an acquaintance of mine. The testimonies her clients give are quite wonderful. I will ask Gayla for her professional expertise, after I have cleared my clutter and made some obvious placement changes.

Feng Shui is of the utmost importance for me to be comfortable in my home, my home office and successful in my business.

Dianna Coulombe
April 15th 2006