July 15, 2016

Thom Hartmann speaks with Johann Hari, author of “Chasing The Scream”, about addiction and why the “War on Drugs” is the wrong way to stop it.

In “Future Shock,” Alvin Toffler used the term to describe a real psychological malady stemming from too-rapid change. Credit Bettmann

July 6, 2016 (New York Times)

More than 40 years ago, Alvin Toffler, a writer who had fashioned himself into one of the first futurists, warned that the accelerating pace of technological change would soon make us all sick. He called the sickness “future shock,” which he described in his totemic book of the same name, published in 1970.

But even though these and bigger changes are just getting started — here come artificial intelligence, gene editing, drones, better virtual reality and a battery-powered transportation system — futurism has fallen out of favor. Even as the pace of technology keeps increasing, we haven’t developed many good ways, as a society, to think about long-term change.

In many large ways, it’s almost as if we have collectively stopped planning for the future. Instead, we all just sort of bounce along in the present, caught in the headlights of a tomorrow pushed by a few large corporations and shaped by the inescapable logic of hyper-efficiency — a future heading straight for us. It’s not just future shock; we now have future blindness.

It didn’t have to come to this. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, as the American government began to spend huge sums in the Cold War, futurists became the high priests of the coming age. Forecasting became institutionalized; research institutes like RAND, SRI and MITRE worked on long-range projections about technology, global politics and weaponry, and world leaders and businesses took their forecasts as seriously as news of the present day.

But since the 1980s, futurism has fallen from grace. For one thing, it was taken over by marketers.

“‘Futurist’ always sounded like this weird, made-up, science-fiction term,’” Ms. Webb said, even though in its early years, people were doing deep, nuanced research on how various tech and social movements would shape the world.

Futurism’s reputation for hucksterism became self-fulfilling as people who called themselves futurists made and sold predictions about products, and went on the conference circuit to push them. Long-term thinking became associated with the sort of new-agey “thinkfluencers” who hung out at TED and Davos, and who went by names like Shingyand Faith Popcorn. Futurism became a joke, not a science.

Newt Gingrich has long been enamored of science fiction — he wants to build a moon base. But when Mr. Gingrich, a Georgia Republican, became speaker of the House in 1995, he quickly shut down the Office of Technology Assessment. The government no longer had any place for futurists, and every decision about the future was viewed through the unforgiving lens of partisan politics.

Yet without soliciting advice from a class of professionals charged with thinking systematically about the future, we risk rushing into tomorrow headlong, without a plan.

“It is ridiculous that the United States is one of the only nations of our size and scope in the world that no longer has an office that is dedicated to rigorous, nonpartisan research about the future,” Ms. Webb said. “The fact that we don’t do that is insane.”

B.B. King & Friends – A Night of Red Hot Blues (1987)

01. Intro
02. Why I Sing the Blues
03. Please Send Me Someone to Love
04. The Thrill Is Gone
05. I’d Rather Go Blind
06. When Something Is Wrong with My Baby
07. The Sky Is Crying
08. Something’s Got a Hold on Me
09. In the Midnight Hour
10. Ain’t Nobody’s Business
11. Let the Good Times Roll
12. Take My Hand, Precious Lord

Line up :

B.B. King
Eric Clapton
Phil Collinns
Gladys Knight
Albert king
Steve Ray Vaughan
Etta James
Paul Butterfield
Dr. John
Chaka kahn
Billy Ocean

Grabado en directo en el Ebony Showcase Theater de Los Angeles, el 15 Abril 1987.

Contributed by Robert McEwen, H.W., M. who says:  “Mercury and Venus both just went into Leo together…hot Passion!  Along with the Current Moon in Scorpio is very sizzling HOT on fire.  Give it a listen and burn in the groove!”

Buskers share their music with us everyday
Yet most of them remain invisible to our eyes

DOT MOVE surprises them with a one-of-a-kind subway jam session where classical music, folk guitars and ragga rhythms meet break dance, ballet and contemporary dance, as a way of giving back.

Enjoy!

FOLLOW US:
FACEBOOK: http://on.fb.me/1OIdeHi
TWITTER: http://bit.ly/1Rftnpp
INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/1nbNb57
SNAPCHAT (ID): DOTMOVE

Director : Redha Medjellekh
D-O-P : Jon Mark Oldmeadow
Edit : Marc Wolff
Production Assistant : Hanna Baba-Aïssa

Dancers:
Victoria Dauberville
Alexandre Fournier
Melle Lee Za

Musicians:
Oley Yugan
La’hcene
Vanupié (http://www.vanupie.com)

Thank you to RATP (Paris public transport operator) for putting such talent along our way.

PRODUCED BY M6 DIGITAL TALENT
EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY RED IS DANCING

contact: dotmove@m6.fr

June 12, 2016

Devastation, heartbreaking, tears, and deep disappointed only begin to describe what we are all feeling in our community. Distance does not matter, what happens to one happens to us all.

As we search our hearts and minds trying to understand such a hateful act we may want to point our finger and try to reason why. Hate, killing, and violence have no reason and no logic to it. Part of our pain is trying to understand something that seems so illogical. Seeking safety in our minds we think if we can find an answer we will be safe. To hate enough to kill or mane is not a reality that most of us can comprehend.

This act of violence is not an action ever condoned by any religious sects. It has nothing to do with being a Christian or a Muslim. This was an act of self-loathing, fear, and mental illness. Religion plays no part in acts of violence. Acts of violence that are perpetuated in the name of God, Mohamed or not spoken as in Eloyem are not religious acts, but rather acts of individuals who are full of fear and self loathing. When the mind of an individual sleeps in fear of his or her emotions and longings it reacts in hate and violence.

What is needed now is an extraordinary approach to mind and consciousness that allows us to view our past and future from our current position. I do not know the solution to the hate and violence perpetuated on our brothers and sisters in Florida. I am aware that the sick consciousness of an individual was the progenitor of the situation and there for must contain the answer to the problems at hand. Like all problems the answer is contained within the problem itself.

Unlike the governor of Texas who quoted this morning you reap what you sow NO, I mean NO religious leader condones this type of violence and hate. We are at a time of watershed in our history. This is a time when all religions have supported the right to freedom beyond their ideas about our life styles. Yes they may not agree with our life, but they have NOT sought to kill and destroy us. Every congregation in Portland stands with us in our sorrow and grief over this terrible time in Florida.

Any of us with a smidgen of conscious awareness are cognizant that violence doesn’t solve the problem of violence. The violence and terrorism are not situated within any one group or person but rather in the collective consciousness. In the herd consciousness we find the need for separateness and destruction. The question of survival in herd consciousness deals with dominance, power, and control of food sources and territory. The very word terror shares a root word with territory. This in itself is a hint to what terrorism is really about.

It is my experience any place in our private and public lives that contains violence, terror, and trauma is a place of contradiction. A paradox is a place where in great leaps in awareness may be accomplished. An experience of metanioa (a great change in mind/thinking) and the Buddhist concept of the “tulpas” (thought form) can happen while contemplating profound duplicity. Paradoxes hold both the problems and the answers.

How can an act of violence preserve peace? How can power bring power under control? Two opposing and contradictory concepts, duplicity, we use violence to bring peace and yet violence is the very deed that breaks peace. In the study of consciousness we find those places in our personal lives where we have an opportunity to understand the true meaning of power and control by examining the repulsion and addiction to violence and terror. We search for the contradictions in our thinking, beliefs, and actions.

For me the real question/problem becomes one of consciousness. How do I personally work with my consciousness to affect the whole of collective unconscious? Where and what is the paradox? And what do the riddles mean in this situation at a global and personal levels?

Ordinary answers don’t seem to satisfy the push I feel of mind unfolding. A small intuitive whisper keeps whispering, “go further and understand more.” The violence of terrorism has only one answer in my thinking and that is one of consciousness. What is your intuition telling you? Is there a whisper to go further, understand more at this point in your life? I do believe that as we clear our consciousness we establish the basis for world peace…for peace and love in our GLBT family. like the ants, each of us plays a part in the collective consciousness.

We are not outside of the collective consciousness nor are we totally defined by it. Our being and consciousness are a matter of our viewpoint, how we see and experience life. Do we add to the world terrorism by our ego needs of greed and power? Are we capable of loving even the dirtiest faced child and the worst offender of peace? Is it possible to love those who lie to us and take us to places that we don’t want to go?

Peace and the answers to gaining a lasting peace are the seeds in each of our consciousness. Listen to that intuitive voice… go further, understand, and give more. Only through inner work does it seem possible to gain the peace we all seek. There is no ONE answer but an answer in ONE and understanding we are of one spirit, one force, one higher mind, truth, God, and LOVE.

Stand tall and let your rainbow flag fly for LOVE, compassion, and consciousness for it is this that will make us stronger and less fearful.

This is a beginning of a series for the PQ monthly (Portland Queer Monthly).  It will appear in the pride Issue.

May 25, 2016

In 2007 when I was on the PABA board we received a piece of information that changed the way we looked at business. The information came from the national GLBTQ Business Association. GLBTQ professionals and business people (around 40%) were in the top 30% of the country’s earning power. This tidbit of information is one of the reasons our community, across the country, has been able to change laws and benefit from greater equality.

Money talks. Even today stores such as Target, Walmart, as well as Banks, and large manufacturers know that a substantial amount of their business comes from our community. Our community, includes our friends and allies in general who help push the tides. As a community we are a force to be reckoned with. In many ways we are like a tsunami best to get out of our way because the waves are changing the very face of our land.

This is all good news, and it means we as a national community can do something else. We can change the inequality in pay and opportunity. Not just for our community but for all of those outside of the community. It does us little good to stay insular and separated as a group. It is the integration into the general population that is the real test of our Equal Rights. It is only when we are allowed full use of all facilities that we are living Martin Luther Kings dream for all people. No more separate bathrooms, no more ghettos, homeless youth and health insurance that does not cover Transgender needs.

We have the power to reset the economic growth of this country. A grass roots evolution/revolution whereby we use the power we have to become fully integrated into the well being of our nation and hopefully the global world.

The science of quantum physics tells us that we are all connected. Our actions as individuals have an effect on those around us and those we may never know. The true lesson of the 21^st century is that what is done to one is done to us all. None of us are free, healthy, and loved until we all are. Yeah, yeah I know sounds a little to altruistic, but then there has never been a revolution whose ideals didn’t seemed out of the reach of us common folks.

Truth is we are responsible for each other. We are responsible for the environment the lack of equal pay and opportunity. Until each of us dares to accept the responsibility none of us can move forward where our children, our friends’ children, the world’s children are truly free to live a life where they are free of hunger and want, where they have an opportunity to learn and create. A society who doesn’t look to the future, include everyone in its opportunity is psychotic in its actions.

We must dare to change the consciousness of our world. To become mindful of all peoples, need to have food, clean water, and clean air. These very basic needs in all humanity are neglected by all of us who have them. Abraham Maslow’s idea of hierarchy of humanity is that without the basics needs of survival we can’t be without violence, nor reach for social equality, intellectual curiosity, and self-integration through self knowledge. Our world is at a place of watershed in history. We are the tsunami that is building and ready to break through. If you can look at the Truth and dare to look at yourself and our community you have taken the first step.

This is a series.  Look for more specifics on what can be done next month.

Evelyn Bell passed away Thursday, March 10, 2016, at Sutter Roseville Hospital after a brief illness, She was 95. Ms. Bell was a well-known musical theater actress and the widow of Russell Lewis, Broadway producer and co-founder of Sacramento Music Circus. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 11, 1921. A versatile actress and singer, she started her career in vaudeville alongside such luminaries as Bob Hope, Perry Como and the Gumm Sisters (before Frances Gumm became Judy Garland). Musical theatre came naturally, and Ms. Bell traveled the U.S. hitting all the major regional theatres of the time. During the Second World War, she put her career on hold while she entertained American troops at military bases and hospitals. She resumed performing after the war – theatre, films and the brand-new medium of television. In 1951 she was cast as a “resident” member of the ensemble for the first season of the fledgling Music Circus, performing in five productions. During that summer, Ms. Bell and Mr. Lewis became engaged. They were married on October 26, 1951, in Ensenada, Mexico. Ms. Bell continued her career while raising the couple’s two children. A versatile and resourceful actress, she appeared in more than 60 Music Circus productions before her retirement in 1983, playing roles as varied as Golde in “Fiddler on the Roof” and Bloody Mary in “South Pacific.” After residing in Hawaii for many years, Ms. Bell returned to the Mainland in fall 2007 to live with her son Richard and his family. Mr. Lewis is the CEO of California Musical Theatre, the successor organization to Music Circus, the company that was his father’s legacy. Other surviving relatives include daughter Madith (Dita) Lewis-Panter of Orangevale, her sister, Veronica McKinley of New Brighton, PA, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. No services will be held. In lieu of flowers, donations in Evelyn Bell’s name may be made to California Musical Theatre, 1510 J Street, Suite 200, Sacramento, CA 95814.

From legacy.com

By Vidya Frazier (lovehaswon.org)

Much has been written, spoken and channeled about the Fifth Dimension and humanity’s ascension into this new realm of existence.

In addition, many “ordinary” people are now having their own experiences, visions and inner “downloads” about the Fifth Dimension.

Not every source agrees on details about this dimensional reality, but most describe similar major characteristics, which are described below.

Ascension into the Fifth Dimension

According to ascension teachings, the earth and all beings living on the earth are in the process of shifting into a whole new level of reality in which a consciousness of love, compassion, peace and spiritual wisdom prevails. This has been called the Fifth Dimension.

Some say this shift will probably be complete within the next couple of decades; others give no date. But all seem to agree it will be complete sometime in the near future, although individuals will be each moving into the Fifth Dimension at their own rate when their frequency is high enough to match the vibration of the higher dimension.

Most teachings state that the shift the earth and humanity are taking into the Fifth Dimension has been “planned” for eons. Also that it has already been happening in the last few decades. December 21, 2012 was a date that was given as the mid-point of the shift taking place, and that it will continue to unfold in more and more obvious ways, picking up speed, as time goes on.

A Fairy Tale?

Much of what has been described about the Fifth Dimension can sound like a fairy tale:

• All people living in peace and harmony, experiencing oneness with all of life, fully respecting all people and the earth itself –– love and compassion flowing through all communications

• Equality, justice and respect for all human beings reigning on earth—no more hunger, poverty or crime — abundance available to all

• Everyone living without fear—with complete trust in the Divine

• Everyone awake to the majestic, divine inter-dimensional beings they truly are

Some of the descriptions can sound even more “out there”—such as people freely communicating with beings from other planets and galaxies and traveling to distant parts of the universe with these beings.

Imagination, Memory or Intuition?

And yet, haven’t we all had dreams of living in a world like this? Are these dreams just figments of our imagination?

Or are they memories of what we, thousands and thousands of years ago, once experienced—and at some point lost, as we descended into the kind of world we know of today, filled with struggle and suffering and lack of direct connection with the Divine?

Or do these dreams perhaps come from intuitions about the future that is in store for us? Many of us are having these intuitive feelings; some are having clear visions; others are inwardly hearing about the reality of humanity’s future will be. Some of us feel we have been waiting thousands of years for these times we are now entering.

If we seek deeply within ourselves, we may find that these dreams of an ideal and peaceful world are actually both a distant memory of what we once experienced eons ago and an intuitive glimpse into what is now beginning to happen on earth.

And our longing to return to this ideal world is simply a yearning to finally return Home to this beautiful world ahead of us.

How Can it Happen so Quickly?

The question might arise: How can this possibly happen? How can this world turn around from where it is today and become this utopian kind of world? There is still so much darkness on the planet—wars, hatred, prejudice and injustice.

The answer is two-fold: First, thousands of people on the planet are now experiencing an awakening of the heart at an unprecedented rate—and this awakening appears to be speeding up, as time goes by. At some point, the hundredth monkey phenomenon will inevitably take hold.

And secondly, not everyone on the planet at this time is making the choice (consciously or unconsciously) to make the shift into the Fifth Dimension.

All souls have the choice to enter 5D, given they have assimilated sufficient light to hold the energy levels that exist in that higher vibration. But many will be choosing to leave the earth within the next couple of decades to move on to other third dimensional experiences in other parts of the universe. They will not have finished with what third-dimensional reality has still to teach them.

Those who are choosing to stay and make the shift with the earth will be going through some intense and rapid changes, as their bodies and minds make the radical changes needed to shift into the higher consciousness requisite for moving into the Fifth Dimension.

Continue reading We feel the shift is happening in these Now Moments →