Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Budda Neck

I like the budda on the beads. Makes me feel zen.

down

not much of a "conscious" message here other than watch out for the holes on the floor at the dance club!

I just liked this perspective. It's not often people look down at a club!

2000 remembered

This picture would have been a lot more powerful if that women wasn't smiling. This event was nothing to be smiling about!!!! oh well.

Last night there were peace vigil memorials for the 2000 Iraq war soldiers dead, all over the nation. The one in Santa Rosa was quite unique in that they had hundreds of people lining Santa Rosa Ave. at the Old Courthouse Square, while each holding candels, and a long string of photos of each soldier with a bio printed out about each of them. It was quite moving to read the bios of these young soldiers who gave their lives. The soldier that we were holding a picture of, had actually been in favor of the war when he went over there, but his parents later started getting letters from him describing the horrors he was seeing, and how much the Iraqi people hated the US and didn't want us there. He was not a supporter of the war any longer before he was killed.

A speaker made a powerful statement last night when she said that over 1.5 million people have died in Wars in this past century. When people say that war is the only answer for helping to prevent more death from terrorism, she says that 1.5 million war deaths is more than enough reason to risk giving peace a chance.

Budda lounge

it just made me happy to see such "conscious" decorations in a bar in San Fransisco as this buddist style statue.

how do you like 'dem apples?

fake fruit. kinda looks like the stuff we buy in the non-organic supermarkets. YOU KNOW THEY ACTUALLY PUT WAX ON THOSE FRUITS IN THE STORE!!! To make them look pretty. I think these statues in the De Young museum are the only fruits that should be shiny. If it's shiny in the supermarket, maybe it's not a good thing for your body!

women of peace

This woman is holding up a picture of Casey Sheehan who perished in the military. I took this picture at a candel light vigil in support of Cindy Sheehan the mother of Casey, who was camped out in front of President Bush's ranch, and trying to meet with him, to get a response from him about the reasons for the war.

I liked the idea of this picture, because it is a positive message rather than a cynical, jaded, or negative message as many of my pictures tend to be, and as many political activist activities tend to be. Gotta throw some positivity in for the balance!

I put this picture up today also in honor of Rosa Parks who sat down for freedom back in the 60's. She just passed away yesterday. She was 92, and the spark of the civil rights movement for refusing to stand up on her tired feet, and give up her seat to a white man.

I have seen a bumper sticker recently that said..."well behaved women rarely make history". It's true...the women who make their mark on this world are often the ones who are feisty and independent. Watch out guys!!

Don't fence me in

Do you ever feel fenced in sometimes? Like there's no way out for your beauty and sweetness to spread out and be shared with the world?

Tingles

I get the tingles when I see this picture, so I thought I would share. Isn't Adrien BEAUTIFUL!

Jeep walk

Ok...this was not planned AT ALL. I took this shot of the jeep about two months ago, while I was driving down the street, and noticing how bright the yellow pedestrial sing was reflecting off the jeep.

Then I pulled my car over and jumped out to take a picture of it, as I thought how unique a message it would be to take a picure of a sign with a person walking over a car with no driver in it...as a reminder for all who need it that walking is better than driving.

Out of the blue, the other day, I saw this ad on the internet for Jeep's new car. It was a newer model of the same black jeep in the picture i took, and the sign in their ad was the same sign that was in the reflection in my picture.

Funny how Jeep is using the sign to represent passengers in their vehicle, and in my image, the sign represents people walking and NOT driving.

Oil thirsty

a spill in the old railroad square warehouse in Santa Rosa. I just thought it was interesting how the oil or whatever black muck that stuff is, looked like it was coming out of the milk carton. Doesn't our culture crave oil like it was milk from a carton. Glugging away like there is no tommorow? Maybe that's because there IS NO TOMORROW FOR OIL!!!

Rebarred

A huge warehouse in Santa Rosa's old railroad square is being torn down. Some friends of mine had great hopes to install an alternative fuels station there, but were not able to raise the funds for it. A huge food and wine retail outlet and center is being built there now. I decided to go take pictures of the demolition process. This is a pile of rebar that seemed haunting to look at. It was as if a huge war zone or natural disaster clean up was taking place, with all the concrete chunks and rebar and other junk lying all over the place. Kind of like a post apocalyptic scene.

In a postapocalyptic world like this...designer watches, car insurance,
Debt Consolidation, or vioxx lawyers don't have much use!

Ladybug Trap

Noticing this bug's near peril in the soda can, i realized how even the smallest things our society produces can have a huge impact on our fellow living things. I mean how tempting must it be for insects to come lick the sugar off our soda cans, yet, how impossible for them to get out. Sugar coated fantasies turn into sticky nightmarish traps.

If only the ladybug had Car GPS Navigation

hope remains

I just saw this scene at a concrete factory, where the ground was all dried up due to the massive amounts of sand mixed with chemicals and water. I couldn't help but think about the symbolizm and hope this gives me. Even though the earth is parched and in parallel many of the earths species are becoming parched in not only water but also air, resources, food, etc., hope remains for life to flourish in the future because of the results of many people. Especially every day folk in their effort to be more conscious and take action towards living more sustainable lifestyles.

a polar bear in ice

Or a castle in a snow storm. Do i need to say any thing more (in my attempt to figure out something nice to say about this tragedy of art that has befallen the world called "modern art"). My artist friend Suzanne (in the picture) couldn't figure this one out, and if she couldn't appreciate it...then I feel sorry for this artist. The guy behind us said the classic line in response to most modern art..."sheez, i should become an artist."

but the one comeback line to that never ending negative critique of most modern art, is that hey...the artist actually did produce it. what have i produced?

Suffice it to say, there was a lot of AMAZING modern and ancient art in the De Young museum opening this sunday at Golden Gate Park.

choices of pumkins

Leave it to America to make sure we have choices even when it comes to pumpkins.

"Would you like the regular orange pumpkin, or the genetically engineered orange pumkin, or the genetically engineered green pumkin, or the genetically engineered white pumkin?"

Well I'm not so sure these pumpkins were actually GE. The may be heirloom pumkins/squash, and they were actually very pretty. It's amazing how many different varieties are out there. But to keep in sync with the satirical theme of this blog, i will rant that how classic america is it to need more choices of pumpkins than just our typical orange? We gotta commercialize EVERYTHING!

Maybe that's what lead to 5 minutes later, Adrien having the worst panic attack of her life? No seriously, she's phychic, and she said there was something off and weird about this place...it must have been these weird colored pumpkins. seriously....weird.

Urban Forest 2

Another reminder of the value that trees hold in our society. It would be nice if someone could put an oxygen tank on these defaced trees as a symbol of what they do for us.

Urban Forest

While driving down a huge 4 lane avenue in the cookiecutter residential area of Irivine, this massive wood framed apartment complex being constructed caught my attention. Here was all the wood I had seen recently on the back of those logging trucks in Oregon, that had come from all those clearcut forest lands.

Seeing the use of all that wood was so sad to me, as it is so apparent to me now after learning about alternative building materials, that it is so unnecessary for us to be using all that wood to build this apartment building. We could be using rammed earth, adobe, cob, straw bale, rocks, meadow grass board, recycled trash (tires, bottles, etc. etc.) called an Earthship house, etc. etc. etc.

Another new little twist

I just found out from an ad on Craigslist.org about a way to make some extra money by posting ad links on my blog every day. Anyone heard of this?
Well it seems like a good way to get publicity for my photo site, as I imagine the ad company i am working with will be making my blog site known. So not only am I getting publicity, I am getting paid for it, and all i have to do is put a link on my blog!

well here's today's $5 link:

anybody interested in buying flowers online?

Tribal Light

This is a glowing teepee I passed by at the rainbow gathering one night last summer of 2004. It was a beacon of light to me in the dark wilderness that night, as there are no lights out at the Rainbow gathering, and i didn't have a flashlight that night. Symbolically it seemed to be beconing me to it and offering the goodness of the tribal lifestyle to be a part of my life again. How tempting.

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The Rainbow gathering is basically a huge hippy festival that is THE original hippy festival. It all started around the time of the summer of love in 1969. Around the time of Woodstock (that huge music festival in the summer of 1969) there was a ton of wandering homeless hippies, searching for more meaning in this world. So a bunch of hippies got together and decided to try to create a connecting place in some National Forest land for all these hippies to gather and just celebrate life together for a while. The people called themselves the "Rainbow" people, (meaning all colors shapes and sizes and types of people were welcome). The Festival started as just a new type of thinking spiritually, emotionally, physically, economically, etc. Meaning there are all differnet types of spirituality explored at the gatheing, new types of emotional interactions (new ways of greeting people, resolving conflict, listening to each other), new ways of connecting physically and taking care of your body physically (yoga, etc.), and there was a new type of economy that they started. No money is allowed at rainbow gathering. Only trade and barter. It keeps the values of things down to their real values. Only services and goods could be traded for other services and goods of equal values. it makes for a much simpler system.

With that, the rainbow gathering just wandered with the hippies, and every year after that, these homeless wandering hippies who were kind of a loosely connected family now, would somehow get a hold of each other, and try to figure out where they could have the next rainbow gathering. There are amazing strories every year of how they finally find a spot in some National Forest land (because that land is the only land in the US that is open for anyone to camp on),where they camp for over a month. They would spread the word through word of mouth (and it is still done this way...they try not to use the internet as the FBI always trys to mess up the rainbow gathering....for various reasons). The rainbow gathering I went to was in Northern California (way up at the tip by Oregon and Nevada).Over 10,000 people pitched their tents, teepees, school bus homes (i drove my converted school bus to it networking and picking up travelers and hippies all along the way)
It was so amazing to see this huge valley of forest land, bordered by huge expansive open meadows with a creek running through it, just scattered with little dwellings all over the place. It looked like a tent city, but if you looked carefully it looked similar to Hobbiton (home of the Hobbits from Lord of the Rings).

The coolest part of if for me (well there was so much that was cool...like people sharing food with each other, people creating these Themed camps like, Bread oven camp (where they give out free bread that they bake in earthen ovens that they build from the earth at the gathering), there is yoga camp, childrens camp, bluegrass music camp, fairy camp, bus camp (where I parked my bus), Hawaii camp, Jewish Camp, Christian camp, bhuddist camp, etc. etc. etc. But anyways the coolest part of it for me, was this HUGE circle on July 4th where litterally 10s of thousands of people gathered quietly in a circle and prayed for world peace. It was sooooo amazing to watch. I went out on a hill at 7 in the morning and just sat there and meditated (as the whole gathering agrees not to talk for the whole morning to just meditate for world peace), and then slowly as people get up, and the straggling travelers trickle in to the huge beautiful meadow of the national forest land we are in (which also happens to be sacred native american lands), I just got to watch litterally over 10,000 people slowly form a HUGE circle.

I made my way down to the very middle of the circle and got to watch and take pictures of the whole ceremony. The elders of the Rainbow family who have been there every year since the late 60's were there and they lead a group "Ohm" which is just exactly what it sounds like. Say "Oooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:.
It's a bhuddist mediation chant. You say "Ohm" very slowly and long and with your eyes closed and sitting on the ground, and you just empty your mind and mediate on a subject (in the case of the rainbow gathering it was world peace). The whole circle of 10,000+ people all doing that together out in the wilderness brought chills to my whole body, and it was so amazing how strong the energy in the air was. I could feel the goodness and the positive energy being built up all around me, and it was so healing. I think that the whole world doing that together could seriously create world peace. And that is the aim of the rainbow gathering (along with environmentally conscious living, and harmonious relationships.)

Displaced

Misplaced trees at a logging company in Santa Cruz that actually claims they are a "sustainable" logging company. It can be done to "sustainably" harvest wood, by making sure that the trees are "selectivly" cut rather than clearcut. But the bottom line is that you will never be able to keep the demand for wood down to a "sustainable" level, unless society stops using so much wood products. For example houses built out of wood rather than other eco-friendly materials, so much paper, toilet paper, paper towels, paper packaging, magazines, DAILY NEWSPAPERS, napkins, paper utensils, paper mail, wrapping paper, etc.

it's not that depressing actually. There are alternatives to all these products. And they are usually more beautiful, and usefull products anyways.

Rainbow people

The utopian dream of the Rainbow gathering. Here people WALK everywhere, share food with eachother, and live like Hobbits for a week, somewhere out in the wilderness.

Kicking the oil habit

now here's a compromise...instead of walking...how about biking?

"carwashing"

Ever heard the term brainwashing? What's wrong with walking? Funny how it's the oil industry who doesn't want people to walk. Is this a genuine concern for people's transportation needs, or propoganda intended to coerce people to keep driving so the oil industry can continue to profit?

processed

This is a strong contrast between the clearcut land and the finished product. Looks like something out of the Lorax to me. Except in this world the trufulla trees are not cut down to make thneeds that everyone needs. They are cut down to build things like houses that could be made out of other material. Funny how we kill the houses of many animals to build our own houses...and we call ourselves a "sophisticated" and "advanced" culture. Until we stop killing the homes of other creatures to make our own, I can't morally say that I am part of a "sophisticated", "advanced" or even HUMANE species. This shot was up in Oregon, and was actually just a fleeting thought to get the clearcut. Then I noticed the sign told me to watch for heavy trucks, and I learned one of the most important lessons of this style of photography...don't just press the shutter button...wait for the shot! It works!

End of gas days

Maybe this coastal Oregon shop is what use we can make of our gas stations in the near future. Hopefully there will be trains wizzing by, people on bikes, and walking. Creative people will have made great use of the remaining gas station infrastructure, by selling things like these sea and wind carved pieces of wood. It's such a conscious effort to take these stumps as well and to turn them into something beautiful. We need more of that in this world. Taking things with pain in them and giving them love and beauty.

in toil you shall eat

"cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life" Genesis 3:17

I was biking to the store and saw this statue on a lawn. At the correct angle it looked like the machine parts stickman was pulling a sunflower out of the earth with his chain link rope. It immediately reminded me of the verse in the first book of the bible where God tells man that he will have to work hard for his food after taking the apple from the serpant in the garden of eden. This quote and the picture are also ironic to me in that we have tried to make the toil of our food easier with our factory farms, and complicated farm machinery. The irony is that our farming methods are polluting the soil, the air, the water, and our own bodies, as well as ruining the homes of many animals.

Maybe we should all toil a little more for our food, rather than ruining it.

Progress

With tire tracks on this LA beach, and oil refineries in the background, it's apparent we love to get cozy with our automobile based society, even on our most precious leisure spots.

In actuallity this is one of the few times I have seen a vivid example of our culture allowing the toxicness of our products and their waste to be in our own backyard. Often we choose to put our waste in places that are "not in our backyard" and would rather have the byproducts of our overconsumptuous society out of sight and out of mind.

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Hindsight

Traveling up Hwy 1 on the Coast of Oregon this summer, to a sustainability bike tour, I passed truck after truck after truck of logging trucks carrying huge trees. The saddness welled up inside me greatly. At one point I just reached over, grabbed the camera and without looking through the viewfinder, I took this picture (this is the one that turned out of many shots). This is a hopeful image for me, as it makes me realize that someday in hindsight, we may have moved beyond these sights of diesel spewing logging trucks carrying these life sustaining trees to the sawmill. It is ironic that the trees that are laying dead and lifeless on these trucks are no longer able to do their job and contribute to the ecosystem in the way that they are naturally designed for. They breathe Carbon Dioxide. These logging trucks are spewing out more carbon dioxide than most other vehicles do. It is just completely insane that we are cutting down the earths natural carbon dioxide filterers of the air, and transporting them in trucks that spew out more carbon dioxide into the air than is naturally supposed to be there. It is like we humans have a death wish or something and are pumping in carbon dioxide into the air while taking away the filter. Sounds similar to suicide by car running in a garage.

I heard soon after I took this picture that all these logging trucks in Oregon right now are a result of the price of oil going up. Logging companies are supposedly in a hurry to cut down as many trees as possible to stockpile the wood before the price of oil goes up so high that it makes transporting the wood too expensive. Maybe this clearcut frenzy, and the resulting environmental catastrophy, will make us realize immeadiately that we need to find alternatives to our demand for wood.

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There is irony in my posting this picture today as this sight was similar to the sight I saw in my rearview mirror this weekend as a HUGE double trailer vegetable transport truck sideswiped my car. As it was clipping my car, it smashed this very same rear view mirror, and damaged the drivers side of the car. Hopefully everything will be repaired in time, but thankfully no one was hurt, and we were actually able to continue on our trip to LA.