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Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend. I had the pleasure of spending the Independence Day weekend in the Berkshires at my mother’s lake house, where we saw a plethora of wildlife, took long walks with our dog, went kayaking, and enjoyed some of the local cultural offerings. The area around Lenox, Stockbridge, and Great Barrington, is a hotbed of activity in the summer, drawing crowds of people to attend local theater, dance, and music, stroll countless galleries and museums, and dine in restaurants hawking a delicious array of seasonal, locally grown foods. It’s truly a cultural mecca, and one that I’m happy to see being emulated here on Long Island in more and more areas including Huntington and the East End.

A couple of highlights of the weekend included stumbling upon a gallery in Kent, CT, on the drive up to Massachusetts, where an amazing sculpture drew our attention enough to prompt stopping for a closer look. A giant raven perched upon an equally giant acorn was poised on the precipice of a thick stone slab bench. “This would be fabulous at the edge of the lake,” I said to my husband, before inquiring about the sculpture and finding out it was sold (alas, at $38,000 it was way out of our price range, anyway, but it’s nice to dream). Later in the weekend we attended “All’s Well that Ends Well,” at Shakespeare & Co., which put a fresh spin on the classic with a troubadour leading the chorus with a sort of Celtic-rock schtick. Apparently it received a terrible review, but we thoroughly enjoyed it; after all, how boring can it get performing the same play year after year, decade after decade, century after century; it was refreshing to see the director take a chance by breathing a modern twist into an old saw. Campy, yes, but fun nonetheless, and Shakespeare doesn’t really get campier than “All’s Well that Ends Well” so why not take it to the Nth degree? Bah humbug is all I can say to the reviewer.

We are so lucky to have such a wide array of cultural happenings available to us here on Long Island, and nearby in New York, the Berkshires, Boston, and D.C.  Pity the poor fool that says “There’s nothing to  do!” as there is PLENTY to do and see. Just take one look at the canvas calendar of events and you’re sure to find something fun to do. I’m looking forward to the upcoming canvas events, including Open Mic Night on July 10 and Green Drinks on the 17th. Hope to see you there!

This is the first time I blogged twice in the same day, I couldn’t let this go without sharing though. From Organic Consumers Association:

POLITICAL PLUNDER OF THE WEEK:
WHITE HOUSE LIES TO THE WORLD ABOUT BIOFUELS
A new report from the International Monetary Fund estimates that biofuels are responsible for as much as 30% of the global food shortage. Despite this fact, at the United Nation’s emergency food summit in Rome, USDA Secretary of Agriculture, Edward Schafer, defended the U.S. government’s decision to spend billions of dollars subsidizing corn and soybean-based ethanol and biofuel, falsely claiming that biofuels contributed only 2% to 3% of the overall increase in global food prices over the past year. According to USDA spokesman, Jim Brownlee, Mr. Schafer was unaware that his statistics were off by nearly 90%.

I seemed to notice more American flags of all kinds this year, and even saw a number of “Don’t Tread on Me” flags. Maybe I’m more sensitive to them as we continue in a multi-year war in Iraq, while we have an escalating situation which we never finished in the first place in Afghanistan, and watch other hot spots around the world unfold.

It’s also interesting because I became fascinated with our American Revolution a few years back, reading several biographies of our founding fathers, as well as, a number of other books about the history and birth of this nation. By no means does it make me an expert; however, it creates interesting thought processes when I see the flags and sense a meaning of Patriotism I think they are supposed to represent.

Thoughts that came to mind when I saw the flags were:

Do flag wavers who suggest I subscribe to their form of Patriotism really understand just how radical an idea and the behavior that created our government was?

Do they realize on the global stage we are behaving, as a country, very much like the British at the time of the revolution?

How do we preserve the questioning nature of our founding fathers in a time when questioning is looked down upon? After all they spoke up, without being asked, about perceived unfair treatment by their government

Hmmm . . . I began to think, will history repeat itself? Let’s see . . . we entered Iraq under false pretenses and have gotten mired in muck, we went in Afghanistan to rid them of the Taliban and stabilize the country and we didn’t – the Taliban are back, we are viewed as Imperialists by many in the world and when confronted we seem to behave with the same arrogance King George did leading up to the Revolution.

So what comes next?

In this election it will be interesting for me to hear what flag waving means to the candidates and what we can expect from them. Will it be a fall from world grace or a rebuilding of what I think the founding fathers really meant?

Tom Pellicane – Publisher, canvas Magazine

I had posted about the success of our June events and the toll it had taken on myself and my business partner Matt. We’ll it’s been a couple of weeks since the last event and I’m happy to share we’re both up and running again.

Thanks again to everyone who came to the events, volunteered for the events, hosted the events, supported the events, staffed the events and even thought about the events.

Being the people Matt and I are we’re moving quickly into planning our next round of events. The concepts are getting finalized and we’ll be working to make our Fall Schedule one to remember.

As he and I talked about October and November events on the list this afternoon we did a Scooby doo impression saying “rut row.” We’ll try to sync them better for attendees and ourselves. There are sooo many though, that are popping up right now, it’s hard to pare them down because they all go to the core of who we are here at canvas.

We hope to get them finalized within the next month and start rolling them out, we’re excited, if you can’t tell already, so sign up for our emails to make sure we let you know when they’re happening.

Tom Pellicane – Publisher, canvas Magazine

This morning, I was up early and spent some time reading, praying and meditating and doing some chi kung and yoga. As I spent time doing these ancient movements, many ideas kept arising and coming to me passing through my mind as clouds pass through the sky. As I became more and more serene and the distance between ‘The Observer’ and the thoughts became very distinct I began to wonder as I have many times before “Where do these ideas and thoughts come from? and what are they anyway?” Visions, pictures, emotions tied to the different images kept coming, ranging from inspiration to fear, and many in between. I stayed conscious of my connection to the earth and the wonderful experience of ‘being breathed’ as I did these movements.

I was then inspired by a thought of doing a little mini research project on this phenomenon which I will discuss briefly in this blog post. This research led into some interesting places connected to Freud, Nietzsche, Emerson and even the Buddha.

One of the first things I like to do when I go on one of these explorations is study the dictionary definition and the roots of the English words because they often help me see more deeply into whatever it is I am interested in at the time.

‘Inspiration’ from the Merriam Webster dictionary is:

1 a: a divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him or her to receive and communicate sacred revelation b: the action or power of moving the intellect or emotions c: the act of influencing or suggesting opinions

‘Thought’ from the Merriam Webster dictionary is:

1 a: the action or process of thinking : cogitation b: serious consideration : regard carchaic : recollection, remembrance 2 a: reasoning power b: the power to imagine : conception 3: something that is thought: as a: an individual act or product of thinking b: a developed intention or plan c: something (as an opinion or belief) in the mind

Inspiro - is the latin for “To breathe upon.”

Tho - is as in ‘theo’ as in “from God”

If I was inspired before I was that much more interested in finding out more about this process and what some other people before me thought on the subject. The following are some quotes that I found on ‘Inspiration and Thought’.

“We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.”

- Frank Tibolt

“Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant, they are a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks.”

- Johann Gottfried Von Herder

“There never was a great soul that did not have some divine inspiration.”

- Marcus T. Cicero

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to have the most insightful ones on ‘Thought’ I could find:

“The ancestor of every action is a thought.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“We do not yet trust the unknown power of thoughts”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

and this gem from the Buddha:

“Let the wise guard their thoughts, which are difficult to perceive, extremely subtle, and wander at will. Thought which is well guarded is the bearer of happiness.”

- Buddha

After researching the definition, reading the roots of the words and reading different quotes I found on the subject, I realized how important it is for me to be grateful for these opportunities and experiences. I rarely feel like I have the time for such contemplation but as I type these words it is ever clear in my mind that without these experiences my life would be less, and I would have less to offer Life without them. Now I have a definite intention to aim at making more time and effort for the contemplation and exploration in my mind in relation to these and other such subjects.

I certainly was not expecting my research to come up with so many ‘divinely’ related pieces of information, it sure felt good to be so calm and unattached to the visions, thoughts and feelings as they passed by the ‘movie screen’ of my mind. However, in hindsight I am able to have a greater appreciation and reverence for this knowledge and experience.

It always amazes me that a little mental attention can go such a long and deep way into understanding anything that we shine the light of our attention and focus upon.