Equality Twice A Year

March 20th 11:44 am is the precise moment,
the earth's equinox occurs.

Where day and night are equal to one another...
and there is equality whether people want it or not.

When Spring arrives and we crash to our knees
for having survived yet another winter

...or is it just me who feels this way?

Some facts

* World Storytelling Day is a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling,
celebrated every year on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere,
the first day of autumn equinox in the southern.

* World Citizen Day occurs on the March equinox.

* Earth Day was initially celebrated on March 21, 1970,
on the equinox day. But was likely thought to be too pagan.
So it is now celebrated in various countries on April 22.

People in the Americas and Asia are accustomed to expecting the equinoxes to occur on March 21,
which did, in fact, occur quite frequently in the 20th century and will occur occasionally in the 21st century,
but due to some high precision clock that tracks these things (which is at least four hours in advance of any clock
in the Americas and as much as twelve hours behind Asian clocks), there will be no spring equinox later than March 20 in the Americas in the 21st century.

sproing!

Read All About It !

That sequence of silence this month was performance art on my part....

My silence was a representation of the-quiet-silencing-that-is-slowly-creeping-over-the-world-like-a-thick-fog.

As newspapers run their last editions, and as television media companies cauterize their costs which, more often than not, are found in the way of eliminating employees and shedding their assets like a snake skin....leaving husks, reducing reporters and leaving what few journalists left, with less forums in which to articulate the silent strep throat scream that is spreading faster than-said-virus in every city, country and industry around the world.

The poetic injustice of only being able to print and report THAT they are having to shut down their century old institutions, but nothing of the aftermath, the human fallout, the implications, ramifications, result or consequences closing and boarding up physical and proverbial doors have, IS the ignorance and darkness we'll be left sitting in as more cities lose their local news papers, radio and tv stations, until there are fewer windows to let in the light of day and clarity of integral reporting and information, which the eyes, ears and minds of millions will forever need (if they are sentient). That being, objective, insightful, independent, well researched, intelligent critical thinking and information they can trust and rely on.

not stuff like you find in blogs like this for gawds sake...but the real McCoy.

Imagine what life would be like if we didn't have independent, unembedded information that miraculously made its way to our eyes, ears and mind?

We'd be dumber than a stump by twelve noon.

But we'd never know it.

It's that not-knowing how much we were never-informed-of that will be the death of us.

That's like not knowing our history....the worlds history....or science....biology....physics.....
the environment...evolution....cosmology....philosophy....ethics and morality....

Don't ask me HOW it's like these things, only THAT it is as fundamentally essential as all of these things....

...such knowledge is vital to our well rounded personal comprehension and collective growth.

Last month, Colorado's Rocky Mountain News published their final issue, 55 days before it could turn 150 years old leaving the city with one last remaining paper, The Denver Post.




In other news - In 1863 The Settle Post Intelligencer printed it's first newspaper issue, and on March 16th 2009 printed its last newsprint edition.

It now only exists online existentially.

France, despite that French penchant for striking every 2 minutes, have suavely stepped up to the print industry's current situation, by saying the government has a duty, a responsibility to ensure there is future in the print industry in a speech to industry leaders, President Nicolas Sarkozy said it was legitimate for the state to consider the print media's economic situation."It is indeed its responsibility ... to make sure an independent, free and pluralistic press exists,"he said.

In measures that took effect last month, the state increased its annual support for newspaper and magazine deliveries to euro 70 million ($90 million) from euro 8 million last year, and spend euro 20 million more a year for its advertisements in print publications. The state will also defer some fees the publications face.
The initiative is designed to help the sector over three years "to modernize and invest in the print media sector in exchange for important structural reforms," he said. The measures he announced recently came from recommendations that were printed in a three-month study into the industry's health that was released in Jan. 2009. The study also recommends that newspapers restructure their finances and that journalists be better trained for multiple forms of media, including online.

"None of the proposed measures ... will be useful in the end if the profession doesn't meet its challenges," he said. "The industry has a future to reinvent...."

What-Fi-Sees is - every person, industry and country will find it is time to reinvent, re-envision & re-present themselves.

In a word: evolve

...that tricky little thing that has plagued people for eons heaped upon eons
but there it is, as has it always been, it's our only way forward...cause there ain't no goin back!

I look forward to reading about it when it happens.

Iraq's National Museum Reopens

Iraq reopened it's National Museum today after being ransacked
by a US led invasion in 2003 under the command of George W Bush.




50,000 artifacts of antiquity disappeared in one of the worlds worst,
and concerted cases of erasing 7000 years of human history.

And it was done in 48 hours of unparalleled 'looting'.

Only 15,000 artifacts have been returned.

Archaeologically rich topsoil of Mesopotamia was used to fill sandbags as well.

~~~~~~~~

For everyone and everything that has survived dark times....

It falls to us to prevent tyrants from destroying our human history.

History is everyone's story. Every heritage is woven into our human history.

At what point will we evolve to the point of preventing history from repeating itself?

More Scat

1 year ago I began leaving, some little and some lengthy, deposits for passerby's to stare at, as they strolled and scrolled around the web.

I recall promising to be regular...but have experienced some....lulls.

I find it strange to see that one year ago blogging seemed to help me get through the winter, whereas silence - peace and quiet is what has been required to get through this winter.

But it is my hope that I continue to leave the odd and unexpected steaming little meadow muffin for you.

Space Scat

Had to share this image and info from the BBC today.

So....an American and a Russian satellite collided over Siberia sending space debris everywhere.

But as the BBC also pointed out, there are approximately 17,000 man-made objects above 10cm in size that orbit Earth - and the number is constantly increasing. This in turn raises the risk of collisions between objects.

Nevertheless, experts say the incident was extremely unusual. The vastness of space means the probability of two spacecraft colliding is very low indeed.

But there are still major capability gaps in current systems set up for this task.

Intact satellites share Earth's orbit with everything from spent rocket stages, spacecraft wreckage to stuff as small as paint flakes and dust.

And that's just in the first 51 years of flinging things into space.

Sweet lord what a messy, self serving species we evidently are.

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

Welcome to the year of the Ox.....
(... is it just me that see a BIG hug and little kiss when I see the word Ox? ; )

Eitherway, whats say we just welcome the year we may hug and kiss an Ox how does that sound?

The Chinese Lunar New Year marks the end of winter and the possibility of there being a spring despite all bitter cold temperatures these day!

And what better way to ring in the Chinese New Year than with a solar eclipse that could be seen in
parts of the African continent, a wee bit of India, South East Asia, and a wee bit of Australia.

The first Lunar eclipse of the year will occur on February 9th. The eastern parts of Canada and the United States, will miss the eclipse because it begins after moonset. But people in the western parts of Canada and the USA will have the best views with moonset occurring sometime after the mid-eclipse. To catch the entire eclipse, one must be in places such as Alaska, Australia, eastern Asia, Hawaii or New Zealand.

But I get ahead of myself....

Have a prosperous and healthy New Year everyone!

Caledonia's Bard

The world's poet.

'k, if not the world's poet, then he was the Bruce Springsteen or the Bob Seger of the working mans rhyme and life, the Bob Marley of melody, love and music, the Bob Dylan of civil disobedience, humanitarian, libertarian, equalitarian and freewill living.

Robert Burns was born 250 years ago on January 25th 1759 in a wee Ayrshire single room cottage that housed hens, livestock, a dirt floor, and thatched roof.

The cottage stands to this day, though it is better maintained than it would've been in his own day.

He was dirt poor in material life, but rich beyond riches internally, despite serious strife.

Burns wrote and spoke of and for the working man, and wrote using the everyday truncated vernacular of the country chouchter (the hard working farmer) [pronounced chooook'ter], and spoke of every universal plight, sight, feeling, sensation, lament, love, life or fright....but he did so in a truly unique and remarkable way - it was from one of the most unfathomably deep hearts to have beat in a human body.

His passion for life, his love, his humanity, his compassion, his love of laughter and joy for everything that simply is or was, was a different ken [knowing] altogether. One that isn't long for this life, but lives on for centuries for having honoured his innate love and talent, however impractical, in a pragmatic world that is fixed on collecting rent money, and working people to premature deaths, as was his own fathers fate who died at 24yrs of age.

Robert Burns died when he was 37 without a shilling to his name - literally.
Nevertheless, he was recognized as the Bard throughout Caledonia, and beyond.
He was granted the largest funeral in the history of Scotland at that time.

So, although he died utterly penniless, he was loved and respected by countless people.

Scotland itself is flinging open the doors throughout 2009 and inviting all ex-pats to return to honour Burns' life
on his 250ieth anniversary.

So says I....

raise yer snifter glass and wee dram,
and say Slange Va to the man.

tho' you be gone, yer words live oan
and will move emb'dy
wi'' heart enough to read them.

Slange va! Robert Burns

Cheers wee man, cheers.

Painting of Tam O' Shanter
by: Alexander Grant - my grandfather