A lot has happened since my last post.
20100527 paw prints in the sand
Marek and I took our first trip to Poland, hopefully the first of many, from 12th to 26th May. Marek had not been home since 1989, when he went back to bring his then-wife Ewa and their two kids to New York City, and I hadn’t been back to Europe since I returned from my 10-months-long trip to Luxembourg in 1988.
Needless to say, a lot has changed in the interim, but I will save that for another post. We did visit a number of parks and gardens, including the community garden plot Marek’s mother has been diligently tending since 1973, and I was pleased to discover that she gardens organically as do I. Community gardens are huge in Poland, and in the rest of Europe as well, with each family having a largish fenced plot with a shelter or shed near the center. Many had as many ornamental plants as food-bearing plants, and her plot boasted several lovely lilac bushes in full bloom alongside the apple, pear and walnut trees, and the many and varied fruits and vegetables. What a lovely and peaceful place!
We did not see any sign of aquaponics operations in Poland or Germany (we flew in and out of Frankfurt), though we did see several fish farms and many traditional farms, but this was a rather hurried trip and we hope to have more time to explore at our leisure next time around. I will try to research aquaponics in Poland prior to our next trip; if I don’t find anything, at least I know there will be a good market for what I want to accomplish!
Since we returned home, we have been mostly on the road with Marek’s trucking, but we have endeavored to take Sprinkles to Dog Beach as often as we can. We went this past Monday, but a storm was coming, and even though it didn’t deter Sprinkles from wading in and out of the water, it was much rougher and more turbid than usual.
20100527 Fort de Soto Crab
The best time there we have had was on the 27th of May, the day after we got back from Poland, and it was magic – the beach was clean, the water was clear and beautiful, and everywhere we looked were life forms of all shapes and sizes. We made no attempt to count, but Marek kept coming up with all manner of live shellfish, several species of sea stars, small sponges, and at dusk the waves were filled with small stingrays swimming about. We took a few film clips of the rays, of a freighter passing a cruise ship, of a scurrying starfish (faster than you might think!) and a couple of clips of a couple of Florida fighting conchs trying to turn themselves over in the sand – fascinating and amusing at the same time. Pretty amazing stuff, especially if you are a lifelong marine life geek like myself.
20100527 Florida Fighting Conch
Which makes it all the more upsetting to know what is happening to our beloved Gulf, and even more so to realize that it was all quite preventable, had the people and corporations in question merely done their jobs, rather than falsifying information, passing the buck and playing politics (read: bribes) as usual.
And, although the policies which allowed BP and MMM to shirk their duties began during the Bush administration, despite all of the blaming and name-calling, both parties are equally to blame for not holding big petrochemical companies accountable for at least the past several decades. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have shown themselves to be at best ineffective, and at worst criminally complicit; but knowing this solves nothing and makes no progress toward either cleaning up the oil or preventing harm to our coastlines and wildlife.
If nothing else, this disaster points out the necessity of treating out planet in a less harmful, more sustainable way, which can be accomplished in a number of ways; aquaponics and permaculture among them. I for one would much rather grow my own food, free from pesticides and other chemicals, than to trust in the FDA and the federal government to ensure our “safe” food supply. They have proven abysmal, if not criminal, thus far.
For myself, I am paying as little attention as possible to the spill and its consequences, and am focusing my thoughts and intent instead on a pristine and clean Gulf of Mexico, Florida Keys and world ocean system, healthy wildlife, untainted wilderness, and a sustainable future free from the menaces of offshore oil or gas drilling, petrochemical and/or genetically modified contamination, or a government of, by and for Big Money.
While some might consider me a somewhat delusional Polyanna, I know and understand the incredible power of the human mind, and of focused intent.
In the 1970s, Jose Silva, the man who invented the Silva Method, once convinced thousands of Silva Method graduates to focus at a given day and time on stopping an orbiting satellite in its tracks. Although the shift in movement was slight, it was measurable by scientific instruments, and proved that people focusing together could indeed affect the trajectory of a satellite using thought alone.
So if they could accomplish that back in the 1970s, how much more can we accomplish today, now that literally millions of people across the globe have discovered and are using the information contained in “What the Bleep do We Know,” “The Secret,” “The Law of Attraction,” “The Vortex” and other such films and books, which are, at their core, merely different descriptions and modalities of how to harness the power of focused intent?
When Luke complained to Yoda that moving his stranded ship from the swamp was too difficult because it was “too big,” Yoda demonstrated to him that the size mattered nothing, and was in fact a non-issue. Large or small, the power of the mind can affect everything, no matter what the scale. We can stop the spill, see it growing smaller by the hour, and prevent it from reaching any more of our shorelines; we have only to focus together.
So I challenge us all: Let us turn off the TV, stop paying attention to the doom and gloom, pay attention only to that which is positive and good, and before you go to bed at night, hold an image of the perfectly clean and healthy Gulf of Mexico in your mind, feeling the sun on your face and the wind in your hair, hearing the gulls and the waves, smelling the clean air and salt, and knowing and believing in your heart that everything is perfect in its natural vibrational state. Hold a clear intention for a healthy world and natural environment and you can help us all to make it so!
Blessings to us all.
Fort deSoto’s Dog Beach is still clean and pristine, and I for one will continue to visualize it as the beautiful, vibrant and alive series of interconnected ecosystems I have always known it to be.
20100527 Southern Stingray
