YouTube MoviesYouTube Movies Located alongside the Tennessee River, Muscle Shoals, Alabama has helped create some of the most important and resonant songs of all time. Overcoming crushing poverty and staggering tragedies, Rick Hall brought black and white together to create music for the generations. He is responsible for creating the “Muscle Shoals sound” and The Swampers, the house band at FAME Studios that eventually left to start its own successful studio known as Muscle Shoals Sound. Gregg Allman and others bear witness to Muscle Shoals’ magnetism, mystery and why it remains influential today.

A poem by Mike Zonta, H.W., M.

O, my Corona
You embrace me too tight.
I need to inspire
not expire.

A lower form of intelligence
always responds to a higher form,
Our Sadah once said.

If I am the higher, let me just say:

You are holding us all too tight!

If you kill your hosts, your hosts will kill you.
It’s the Golden Rule or something like that.

Being is not a competition. It’s a right.

You are like the panicked buyer
hoarding toilet paper as if it were more valuable
than life.

You are as panicked as we are, if a virus can be panicked.

You are on a worldwide procreation orgy, getting as much as you can for as long as you can, panicked that it will all run out (’cause it will).

You have us all obedient as slaves,
standing in line, 6 feet apart.

Don’t come too close, don’t trust the stranger, don’t touch your face. And, God, don’t touch anybody else’s face.

They might have it.

We all might have it.

We all do have it.

But your orgy will end.
And the world will return to normal once again.

The mob will retreat and we’ll all smile at each other a little sheepishly, having forgotten who we are.

And we’ll tell our grandchildren about the great Corona.

My great Corona.

By William Fennie, H.W., M.

“This is a moment for Americans to show their best qualities”

Governments around the world are acting to contain the spread of COVID-19. The virus has claimed many lives already, and many of the stories emerging from early-hit zones, like Italy, are heartbreaking.

The Prosperos perspective on this crisis, and situations like it, comes from our fundamental teaching that all is Mind and Mind is the unfolding of Divine Intention. Behind the appearance of a possibly terrifying threat there can be only one reality which is ever whole, ever sound, ever complete. The threat is a challenge that motivates deeper thought on many fronts, not simply questions of how best to respond to the medical emergency.

The solution to this crisis is in Mind; it is Mind that will find the vaccine; it is Mind that is responding to contain and ameliorate the impact; and it is Mind from which all of our capacity for caregiving has developed.

Over millenia we have been faced with innumerable crises and we have always risen to the occasion – not ignoring the glaring historical examples of individuals who could not make that leap.

The Prosperos is confident that this challenge, too, will be met; that it will call forth genius and acts of astonishing courage; and we encourage our students to practice the tools of Translation and Releasing the Hidden Splendour, whereby we penetrate the sense evidence of material claims and release the hidden Divine Intention which is the one and only substance of life. There is no doubt that such work produces new insights in Mind, not simply for the practitioner but for ALL.

More at: https://theprosperos.org/covid_response

Aloha Friends,

We are starting a listening & dialog group to discuss, share our concerns, feelings, thoughts, sense testimony, conclusions and anything else you’d like to bring about the current world crisis.

We’ll do these every Friday at 5:30 PM Pacific / 6:30 Mountain / 7:30 Central / 8:30 Eastern indefinitely.

Join us in community and spirit for this open discussion.

Pam Rodolph and I will be your hosts.

All are welcome.

This will be a Zoom online meeting.  See below for details.

The Prosperos is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Prosperos Listening & Dialog Group

Friday at 5:30 PM Pacific / 6:30 Mountain / 7:30 Central / 8:30 Eastern

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/579891643

–Rick Thomas, H.W., M.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Parmenides was among the first to propose an ontological characterization of the fundamental nature of reality.

Ontology is the philosophical study of being. More broadly, it studies concepts that directly relate to being, in particular becoming, existence, reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.^[1] Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology often deals with questions concerning what entities exist or may be said to exist and how such entities may be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.

Etymology

The compound word ontology (“study of being”) combines onto– (Gr. ὄν, on,^[2] gen. ὄντος, ontos, “being; that which is”) and -logia (Gr. -λογία, “logical discourse”). See classical compounds for this type of word formation.^[3][4]

While the etymology is Greek, the oldest extant record of the word itself, the New Latin form ontologia, appeared in 1606 in the work Ogdoas Scholastica by Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus) and in 1613 in the Lexicon philosophicum by Rudolf Göckel (Goclenius).

The first occurrence in English of ontology as recorded by the OED (Oxford English Dictionary, online edition, 2008) came in a work by Gideon Harvey (1636/7–1702): Archelogia philosophica nova; or, New principles of Philosophy. Containing Philosophy in general, Metaphysicks or Ontology, Dynamilogy or a Discourse of Power, Religio Philosophi or Natural Theology, Physicks or Natural philosophy, London, Thomson, 1663.^[5] The word was first used in its Latin form by philosophers based on the Latin roots, which themselves are based on the Greek.

Leibniz is the only one of the great philosophers of the 17th century to have used the term ontology.^[6]

Overview

Some philosophers, notably in the traditions of the Platonic school, contend that all nouns (including abstract nouns) refer to existent entities.^{[citation needed]} Other philosophers contend that nouns do not always name entities, but that some provide a kind of shorthand for reference to a collection either of objects or of events. In this latter view, mind, instead of referring to an entity, refers to a collection of mental events experienced by a person; society refers to a collection of persons with some shared characteristics, and geometry refers to a collection of specific kinds of intellectual activities.^{[7][need quotation to verify]} Between these poles of realism and nominalism stand a variety of other positions.

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology

321 GO! r/toptalent-A community about the world’s most talented ? Italian family sings Hallelujah from their balcony while being quarantined due to the Coronavirus

(Contributed by Richard Burns, H.W., M.)

HughJohn’s Lucid Dreaming Webinar will be an exciting class! 

Photo Credit: LunarLanding | Gardens of Time | mcscrooge54

Register at https://tinyurl.com/vtf7k5j

We’re all swimming in our subconscious mind when we dream.With Lucid Dreaming, we bring the conscious mind to be awarethat we’re dreaming (while we’re in the subconscious mind) andamazing things can happen. Come to class and learn the processof becoming a Lucid Dreamer. 

Release the power of your Dreams!

• Accelerate your Personal Growth
• Understand the route to your conscious evolving
• Solve Problems
• Realize those “not so secret” messages in your unconscious.
• Gain ideas to help in waking life
• Turn up your creativity
• Learn to interpret your dreams
• Practice methods to remember dreams
• Review of the Latest scientific information on dreaming and health

What you’ll receive with the Class

• 4-hour class delivered via an online webinar.
• Class Notes
• Workshop 
• Invitation to weekly Dream Group
• Dream interpretation session with HughJohn

Class fee is $50 new or $25 for a review student.Once you register you will be sent 
a Zoom meeting link to join. Register at https://tinyurl.com/vtf7k5j

HughJohnM@gmail.com

310.899.9453

We Look forward to having you in class!  

Aloha, 
HughJohn 

Right click “Open Image in New Tab” for a larger view.

Tour world-class museums, read historic cookbooks, browse interactive maps and more

BY MEILAN SOLLY

SMITHSONIANMAG.COM | March 23, 2020, 8 a.m.

As efforts to contain the effects of the COVID-19 crisis ramp up, millions of people around the globe are social distancing and self-quarantining themselves in their own homes. To support those in search of diversion from the relentless news cycle, Smithsonian magazine has compiled a collection of 68 online culture, history and science collections you can browse from the comfort of your living room. Whether you’re in the mood to virtually explore ancient Rome, read past presidents’ personal papers or download coloring pages from dozens of international cultural institutions, this roundup has you covered. Listings are bolded and organized by field. (See Smithsonian’s lists of museums you can virtually visit, ways to virtually experience the Smithsonian Institution and Smithsonian educational resources for additional inspiration.)

History

History lovers may not be able to tour the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the British Museum or the Hermitage in person, but digital history resources spanning time periods, continents and countless topics can provide some respite from these travel woes.

Step back in time via Ancient Athens 3-D or Rome Reborn, then cross the Mediterranean into Egypt for an in-depth look at the famed Nefertiti bust. Other immersive historical offerings include a virtual reality museum featuring five shipwrecked vessels; the Heritage on Edge portal, which tracks climate change’s impact on five Unesco World Heritage Sites; a 3-D digital rendering of Japan’s Shuri Castle, which was ravaged by fire in October 2019; a 3-D scan of the bullets that killed President John F. Kennedy; Below the Surface, a multimedia project that traces Amsterdam’s history through excavated artifacts; and a Sketchfab collection of around 1,700 open-access cultural heritage models, from the Abraham Lincoln Mills life mask to the entrance gates of Ireland’s Menlo Castle and a Scottish boat-building school.

Interactive maps are another option for individuals seeking higher-tech experiences. Google Earth’s Celebrating Indigenous Languages platform spotlights dialects at risk of disappearing, while Parisian Matrimony tracks women’s cultural contributions to the French capital. Mapping the Gay Guides, a newly launched public history initiative, draws on more than 30,000 listings compiled between 1965 and 1980 to visualize American queer spaces’ evolution over time.

Those with more macabre tastes may want to peruse the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, a tool that visualizes thousands of sites linked with Scotland’s 16th- and 17th-century witch hunts, or the London Medieval Murder Map, which catalogs 142 brutal 14th-century homicides. (In one particularly colorful incident, a man named John de Eddeworth avenged his murdered brother by stabbing the killer “five times with his sword, three times on the back of his head, once on the left side, and once under his left ear.”) Lower-tech maps, including the Library of Congress’ collection of 38,234 digitized travelogues and English king George III’s recently digitized private library of more than 55,000 maps, charts, prints and manuals, are also available.

In the realm of information-heavy databases, highlights range from an index of searchable records that sheds light on New York’s ties to slavery to the Digital Panopticon’s descriptions of 75,688 Victorian-era convicts’ tattoos and the Getty’s archive of 6,000 photos from the waning days of the Ottoman Empire. Troves of digitized documents, meanwhile, run the gamut from historic Mexican cookbooks to a 15th-century British manners book that warns children against picking “thyne errys” and “thy nostrellys,” 155 Persian language texts spanning nearly 1,000 years, one million pages of 16th- through 20th-century content formerly deemed obscene, and the famed Dead Sea Scrolls.

Those hoping to read more personal narratives can check out photographs, prints and papers related to Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert; the only surviving Arabic slave narrative written in the U.S.; and papers penned by such prominent politicians as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton. Other public figures whose private lives endure in the digital sphere include civil rights activist Rosa Parks, baseball star Babe Ruth, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, and explorer David Livingstone (as recorded in the diary of his chief attendant, Jacob Wainwright).

Arts and Culture

In recent years, museums have increasingly turned to digitization as a tool for widening access to their collections. Among the major cultural institutions with digitized—and often open access—offerings are the Smithsonian, which released 2.8 million images into the public domain earlier this year; Paris Musées, which oversees 14 major museums in France’s capital; nonprofit organization Art U.K.; the Art Institute of Chicago; Taiwan’s National Palace Museum; the Metropolitan Museum of the Art; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Getty; the Wellcome Library; the Museum of New Zealand; and the Uffizi Galleries. Examples of artworks, artifacts and texts available for download include British psychiatric institutions’ 18th- through 20th-century records, Vincent van Gogh’s The Bedroom and Han dynasty jades.

In addition to digitizing broader collections, many museums have curated archives dedicated to specific topics: The Kunsthaus Zürich has an extensive trove of Dada documents that defy the movement’s long-held association with ephemerality, while the Delaware Art Museum has a portal of papers associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Illinois State University’s Milner Library offers a digital collection dedicated to the history of circus. The San Francisco-based Letterform Archive has a digital archive of typographical artifacts. And Chicago’s Newberry Library provides online access to more than 200,000 images documenting the history of early America and westward expansion, including watercolors and colored pencil drawings by 19th- and 20th-century Lakota children.

Two giants of the digital cultural sphere—Google Arts & Culture and the Library of Congress—are each home to a dizzying number of virtual resources. The former offers experiences covering 3,000 years of fashion, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s unseen masterpieces, Latino culture in the U.S., Banksy’s most famous murals, Vermeer’s surviving paintings, armor through the ages, Easter Island and many more topics. The latter has, among others, collections of rare children’s books, Taiwanese watercolors and Chinese texts, braille sheet music, travel posters, presidential portraits, baseball cards, and images of cats and dogs. See the library’s database of digital collections for a more exhaustive overview.

Other out-of-the-box ideas include using an app that guides readers through Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; downloading free coloring pages compiled during the annual #ColorOurCollections campaign—offerings range from a zany 1920s advertisement for butter to medical drawings, book illustrations and a wartime nurse recruitment poster; or reading the New York Public Library’s interactive Insta Novel versions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.

Another option for individuals with ample time on their hands is transcribing historical documents and data. The Smithsonian Transcription Center is always looking for volunteers to log field notes, diaries, ledgers, manuscripts and biodiversity specimen labels. Other offerings include the Library of Congress’ By the People project, which asks users to transcribe collections related to women’s suffrage, Rosa Parks, Abraham Lincoln and Spanish law; the Newberry Library’s Transcribing Faith portal, which seeks volunteers eager to analyze early modern manuscripts; and the Citizen Archivist, which asks participants to tag, transcribe and add comments to the National Archives’ records.

Science

Flowers, fungi and fauna abound in digitized renderings of the natural world. The open-access Biodiversity Heritage Library, for instance, highlights more than 150,000 illustrations ranging from animal sketches to historical diagrams and botanical studies; the Watercolor World, a portal created to serve as a “visual record of a pre-photography planet,” showcases more than 80,000 paintings of landscapes, seascapes, buildings, animals, plants, ordinary people and historical events.

Other digital science resources include an interactive map that lets users plug in their address to see how it’s changed over the past 750 million years, a collection of unsettling sounds from outer space, Cambridge University’s Isaac Newton papers, Charles Darwin’s manuscripts, hundreds of case files written by a pair of 17th-century astrologers and physicians, a map that visualizes all 21 successful moon landings, and a medical pop-up book dating to the 17th century.

About the Author: Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine’s assistant digital editor, humanities. Website: meilansolly.com

Read more articles from Meilan Solly and Follow on Twitter @meilansolly

(Contributed by Bob of Occupy)