Thursday, October 30, 2008

Balance, or The Center Must Hold





Angelina, her BFF, JMax & I saw The Jones Benally Family as Blackfire at the American Indian museum in DC in August 2007. Clayson Benally did the hoop dance with his brother and sister drumming and singing, and Jones Benally also sang/chanted. I was very impressed by the hoop dance and how precise and graceful Clayson Benally's dancing was. (And only someone as skinny as a Navajo could even dance through those hoops, I swear.) This video doesn't really do the dancing justice, but I felt it was the one that showed the most, blurry as it is.

Jones Benally speaks in the first video about how we are the injured people and the hoop dance is a healing dance to bring us back to the center. We are still as we were when Yeats wrote his famous The Second Coming nigh on 90 years ago. Not enough dancing, maybe, or not mindful dancing, anyway...

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Monday, October 27, 2008

Try this:

Open two windows. In one window, listen to this. (Start that one first)

Then also play this video in another window:


Or the video from yesterday, or both.

The Gongyo chanting is quieter than the music (and longer), but I think they go well together.

Monday, October 20, 2008

I can't help myself

I don't like to make fun of people, really, and especially not for poor command of the language, but I have to laugh at this.

Sedentary people may sit like rocks, but they are not sedimentary.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Kuanyin


I don't know the artist, but this Kuanyin I found through Jayarava is exquisite.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Monday, October 13, 2008

Nothing to See Here

The "video" is nothing to look at, but I liked this version I came across cruising the wayback machine. If I start posting old clips from Moonlighting, somebody please just shoot me already...

Sunday, October 12, 2008

What It's About

Gaiamuse put this "Commercial for Compassion" together from Flicker photos:


I highly recommend taking the time to view her other videos also.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Not another video...


No, actually, not another video. I just came across a darling poem, here (scroll down to September 25th). It was written by Maitreyabandhu, pictured right. Here it is:




The Bond

Now that we are here again in this dark place
we must find something – a scratch of light,
an oval pebble. And we must sit here quietly
till he comes, wait patiently, not look
too often out of the window, not peep,
but know that he is coming, yes, and make
a clean place – like having clipped nails
and washed hands and a sharp pencil at the ready.
No crumbs. No digressions. We should say
gentle now and gentleness, like someone calming
a horse, or helping a child hold a kitten.
But not sweetly, not gingerly – hair pulled back,
buttons and a smock – he wouldn’t want that.
Just the air blowing through us. Just the air.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Excellent Birds!

So I looked at a few variations before selecting this one. Although I really like it with Peter Gabriel (and there are several videos, including this one that is oddly/scarily reminiscent of Napoleon Dynamite), ultimately, I selected the classic:


I saw her once at Lisner (Strange Angels tour). Awesome.

Something peculiar occurred to me watching this: big boobs didn't used to be mandatory. It's so nice to see that again. Although I've never felt deficient in that aspect or considered it a big deal (unavoidable pun, sorry), there used to be a time when it was not unusual to see women on even a TV or movie screen who were flat-chested and it was just normal. Superman's girlfriend did not have to have giant boobs. (And Superman did not have to look "ripped".) And Indiana Jones' woman, not flat-chested, but the boobs were so not the point. (And on the man's side again, check out Harrison Ford, hotter'n'hell without looking artificially enhanced.) How often do we see images now of women with less than a C-cup? When, exactly, did big boobs become mandatory? And "sculpting" for male and female physiques? I mean The Plastics were a joke, right?

OK, rant over, just watch Laurie Anderson and it'll all be good...

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Happy Birthday, Baby Brother!

OK, so he's not a baby. (lawdy lawdy, look who's fawdy) And I wouldn't dare call him "Tedlet." But when I searched youtube with the string "happy birthday Ted" I found this sweet video, so I'm posting it here in honor of my baby brother Ted's 40-th birthday.

Happy Birthday, Ted!

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Call It a Wash



I peeked today, after talking to Abi. I'm not exactly sure why talking to Abi made me peek. I said to him we should be thankful for the blessings in our lives every day, so that they don't leave us. I think it was something to do with that. I peeked. I wish I had something like a grip. (Of course, I'm always noting that there's a huge difference between wishing for something and deciding to have it... What I really need to do is decide to have a grip.)

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Monday, October 6, 2008

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Pro



Beautiful!!!!

Saturday, October 4, 2008

The The Beat(en) Generation

I thought this was timely (again). The retro look of The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show is a nice touch. I tried 3 times to upload the video so it could be embedded, and Blogger is just not cooperative this evening, darnit. Of course, Matt Johnson's a Brit, but considering how he feels about that:
(Wow, and he's still so hot, too!)...I can hope he'll forgive me for considering the song to be about US, too.

And here's another old fave that's still timely: Sweet Bird of Truth


This bird is sinking!

Friday, October 3, 2008

Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb

So WebMD has another article about the relationship between a high-fat diet and inflammation and obesity/metabolic syndrome, this time pointing to the hypothalamus as the mediating organ. While the suggestion that a high-fat diet causes inflammation that worsens obesity/metabolic syndrome is not new, low-carb diet furvor edged out low-fat diet dogma years ago, and the low-carb promoters still have hegemony.

Now while I maintain the view that oversimplification breeds extremism and failure in diets just as in everything else, I do need to sort this out, since genetics and industrial disease put me at high risk for developing metabolic syndrome soon myself if I don't get my BMI below 25. My smart-but-no-bedside-manner physician persistently reminds me of that, which works as well as an apple-a-day, apparently, only in reverse. ;)

Data-phile that I am, one of the things I love about FitDay is that I can look at, or experiment if you will, with which approach works best for me. After a Summer of this, I think that the low-fat approach works better for me. I supplement with 3g of DHA daily and although I have to have butter and dislike margerine, I use olive oil rather than canola or other vegetable oils. So understand that I'm not talking about anything remotely like ultra-low-fat craziness. But while I understand that carbs hold water and that affects weight, too, from my own observation of my own body's response to diet, weight loss is more likely when I limit fat than when I limit carbs. Of course the primary thing I need to curb is my stupid sweet tooth, but I try to take in more grams of protein than of fat, and I think when I succeed at that, my diet improves. So I guess I'm a believer in the too-much-fat-causes-inflammation-causes-metabolic-disorder-and-obesity theory. (But it's not a Grand Unification Theory, ferpetesakes.)