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by Barry Long

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by Tanis Helliwell

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by Thomas H. Greco, Jr.

Hands of Light

by Barbara Ann Brennan

Samsara

Lagaan

 

 
The candlelight peace vigil at Pohara Beach, Golden Bay, New Zealand

 
Have been out and about with my camera recently, taking pictures of small creatures both in the garden and on walks in the forest.

A caterpillar of a Monarch butterfly, taken in the garden.

A stick insect, a spiny flightless fearsome looking creature.

This is a cicada, of which only the males sing.

When they are young they spend many years underground, before they crawl up a tree trunk transform and leave an empty shell behind as the adult emerges.

A little water spider....

I only regret that my Nikon Coolpix 885 digital camera isn't really made for close-ups.

 
Hi all!
The last few weeks, well, since end of November really, have been quite busy. Work, travel, projects and pleasure also. Sorry for those who have been looking into my weblog for some news.

 
Taniwha

"Construction work is to resume on a Waikato motorway after stalling last week over a claim by local Maori that a taniwha lives in a nearby swamp." So starts an article burried somewhere deeply in one of the major New Zealand newspapers. I don't know what exactly what a "taniwha" is, but I guess it is an guardian or nature spirit. So, it is therefore quite significant that such issues are considered when building modern infrastructure.

However, the article then goes on, refering to all kinds of stuff, like feng shui, time distortions, old family curses, the social psyche, energies of the land, earthbound spirits and gypsies. Each of the issues certainly merits to be taken seriously with closer attention. However, mixing them all together in a mumble-jumble to explain "taniwha" just reflects the utter helplessness the conventional western society has with metaphysical phenomena.

Of course, the roots of this helplessness became apparent when I also came across a letter to the editor that was printed a couple of days later, suggesting that obviously the activities of the christian missionaries hadn't been enough. Apparently they knew all along about the "evil" nature of those spirits.

The genocidal "cultural cleansing" activities of the christian missionaries in all parts of the world, combined with the narrow outlook of conventional scientific thinking which only accepts physical phenomena as real, makes sure that we have lost all means of perceiving, communicating with and co-creating our living space, the planet Earth, with all the metaphysical and angelic beings which live with and around us. A great loss - especially now where both nature and culture is spiralling down towards complete desaster.

 
Well, it finally didn't work out - to write something every day. Anyway, I'm back home now, and in short: it was cold and wet. So much so that I found it not much fun to continue travelling. And catching a cold didn't help, of course. But I prepared a page of photographs I've taken recently, most of them on my trip. Here is my new page with black & white photographs of New Zealand (Aotearoa - the land of the long white cloud!)

 
Day 5 - 7

Not so much to report. There is one connecting theme: rain! Rain up at the Fox Glacier, down at Okarito and Hokitika. A sunny break when crossing the mountains into Canterbury, but there as well as Christchurch was raining. So, especially on Monday I didn't feel too well, it was cold, wet and miserable!

However Tuesday looked so much better. Christchurch has a wonderful Arts Centre, just beside a wonderful and large park! So, I'm just enjoying what I can in the city, before leaving again for some more rural areas!

 
Day 4

Saturday. I decided to declare this a "Day of Rest"! I woke up to the sound of heavy rain dropping onto the roof. It was cool, grey, damp... What more would someone want to do than curl up somewhere before the fire. Well, I went for a hearty breakfast, and proceeded to read the newspaper. Most of the afternoon I just relaxed, watching a movie. Later the rain subsided a bit and I went for a short forest walk. I truely relaxing day!

 
Day 3

Friday. I really intended to post some news more frequently. But that day I went up to Franz Josef, and the phonelines up there are so bad that there was just no chance to connect to the internet and do some serious work. Had to forget about the pictures, too! will post them when I can plug my own laptop back into the net, at some reasonable cost...

The day started with a leisurely walk at the beach. It was rather grey. Relatively soon I drove off, South, towards the glaciers. I walked all the way up to Franz Josef, named after an Austrian Emperor. It was quite good. I went up to the very edge of the ice to take some photographs. When it started to rain, I decided to turn back.

Slowly I realized how powerful the place is. To the left is spirit of the Tasman Sea, to the right the mighty mountains. Above me the glaciers, the eternal ice - and below me the fire spirits of the continental faultlines. Churning, and earthquakes waiting to happen....

 
Day 2

At first it looked like the day was going to be the same as the previous day. But driving out towards the lighthouse at Cape Foulwind I already saw a patch of blue. And indeed, soon the sun was out, though heavy and dark clouds were approaching from the south. After taking some photographs of a nice tree, I drove on to visit the seal colony close by. When I arrived there were already lots of people gathered there, and indeed there were dozens of seals playing and drooling around on the rocks. I started to take a couple of photographs, and then the terrible thing happened: the battery of my digital camera run out - just flashing a red text requesting a replacement. And to my horror also the replacement battery was empty! What a bummer!
Well, then I just decided to drive on towards Greymouth. After a short shower the sun persisted. So, I enjoyed the coast, the breaking waves and the wild forest that reaches down to the beach. There are some quite amazing rock formations, and the pancake rocks and the blowhole at Punakaiki are just amazing. In Greymouth I was greeted as the bringer of sunshine (apparently the first one since a week at least...). Hokitika is still sunny as we speak ....

 
Day 1

I'm on the road again, travelling the South Island of New Zealand. With my new car, I intend to see a little bit more of the country I will be spending time in. The first day started late, had to do some packing and internet communications first before I could hit the road. When I left Golden Bay, over Takaka Hill towards Motueka, the sky was getting darker and darker, and soon enough it was raining. The grey and heavy clouds stayed with me the whole way to Westport, at the west coast. Clouds, rain, and all the mountains in the interior just disappeared somewhere white....

 
Yesterday I was at a tree-planting event. At a small project of riparian restoration a fairly large group of volunteers planted about 300 trees. It was an excellent occassion to also test a new product, weedcrete - basically made up of chewed up recycled paper and water. The purpose of applying weedcrete is to supress the grass around the newly planted tree to prevent it from being overgrown.

At the same time I was also witness to a procedure which at first I found rather strange: electro-fishing. Here, electrical shocks are sent through the water, with the purpose of incapacitating the muscle functions of the fish which are in this area. The fish were caught for study purposes - mainly to show them to the many small children that were present, and then they were let go, unharmed!

 
Saturday afternoon, the main road of Takaka....

 
First impressions of Golden Bay ...

 
A new country, a new start. Three days ago I arrived in New Zealand. I was wondering how I would introduce this country to you. It is a very peaceful country, far away in a very quiet corner of the globe. When browsing New Zealand news on the web, I was always surprised that stories of escaped pets would make national headlines. When getting off the plane in Auckland, different kinds of headlines were screaming at me: Terror on Bali! The Bali bombings happened thousands of kilometers away, but the Kiwi's are shocked. As a bus driver told me, “that was too close to home”!

 


It looks like autumn has finally started!

 


Last weekend, on an trip to the mountains, there was a flying cow in the sky, or maybe it was a Pegasus...?

 
Today is a dreary day. The hills and mountains around here disappear in grey and heavy rainclouds. Rhythmically the raindrops fall onto the tin roof. It is only 12 degrees outside. Autumn has started for real. It is one of those Sundays where I feel like doing nothing else than staying at home, reading, listening to music or maybe watch a movie.

I noticed that I haven't written much into my weblog recently. But I guess it is a good sign. I'm busy and I'm well. Even though there are lots of things to write about. The anniversary of September 11 would have been one. In vain I've looked out for a newspaper headline like "24'000 children death of hunger today". That sort of news is probably not worth mentioning in our media. After all, those children die slowly and quietly, and not spectacularly in an televised inferno like September 11. A further problem is that this headline should be appearing daily ... that would be boring, too, and nobody would care about it anymore...

I could also write about today, 22 September. It is only shortly before noon, and I don't know the results of todays elections and votes yet. But who knows maybe todays date will also be rememberd in history, though probably not as an outstanding date. Today, there is the day of voting on the Gold Initiative, which I've described earlier on. According to polls it is going to be rejected. The election of a new government in Germany will have less influence here. But I expect an interesting election night, with governement and opposition parties being head to head in the polls.

For results, please consult the papers tomorrow! And have a nice day in front of a cosy fireplace!

 
Finally, after years of having some of my Swiss friends bugging me, I've managed to put up a page with some photographs of Lucerne, the city close to where I grew up. They always complained that I would only put pictures of far away places - but, I suppose, for me, Lucerne has become one of those far away places itself, most of the time...
Lucerne is one of the prime targets of tourists visiting Switzerland. It has also an old history and is nowadays quite a lively place, with local, national and international happenings. This page is a project in progress - meaning I will add pictures when I take better ones, or exchange some, should I find others in my archives... Enjoy!

 
Gold, Money and Solidarity

Money is one of my fields interest. It is not just about getting as much as possible of it, as it seems to be with most people. But I'd really like to understand how it functions, where it comes from and who creates it. After all, money, or the current economic system which it has created, is responsible for the environmental destruction, crime and most of the wars we are fighting on this planet. Why this is so, I will surely explain in this pages sometime in the future.

Last week I was asked about the popular vote which will be held here in Switzerland before the end of the month. It issue is known as "the Goldinitiative". Since I only returned recently I had to read up on it first.

It happened that the Swiss got an unexpected present: 1300 MT of gold, which the Swiss National Bank had in its vaults to back up the Swiss currency. Since, now, by law, money is not backed by gold anymore, but is a pure fiat currency, the gold was simply not needed anymore. A fiat currency is money that is not backed by anything, but the trust we put into it and those who are behind it, namely the National Bank and the government.

Of course, as soon as it was know that there was a pot of gold to be had, everybody wanted a share of it. As it happened, this was also a time when Switzerland was forced to do some reconciliation with its own history, namely it was forced at looking at the behaviour of the Swiss banks during the World War II. During this time, and also afterwards, the banks weren't behaving very correctly towards the victims (Jews and others) of the Nazi-Reich.

You may remember that a couple of years ago billions were paid out to holocaust victimes and their decendants. It was obvious, as at that time the 1300 MT gold became available, to think of creating some sort of solidarity fund for victimes of hardship.

As it goes in situations of reconciliation with history, there are always those who are reluctant to question the mythos and to look at the real facts. Also in Switzerland, mythos informs our self-image and identity. The Swiss mythos was that Switzerland had been heroically opposed to Hitlers Nazi-Germany, and only the mighty swiss army and the mountain fortresses would have intimidated the German Wehrmacht from invading and occupying tiny Switzerland. Of course it isn't easy to accept that this was by no means so, and that on the contrary, the Swiss supported the Nazi in many instances.

Now, interestingly enough, the same (rather rightwing) circles, who oppose attempts to write objective history, oppose also the creation of this solidarity fund, which would support not just people and projects within Switzerland, but also similar programs abroad.

In a cunning move, they declared the gold "the wealth of the people", and said that basically it should be distributed evenly among all Swiss citizens. But, since this would be too cumbersome to do, they suggested that the gold be transfered to the fund that finances the governmental old age insurance scheme. This was smart, because who would argue against supporting the old age insurance scheme. That at the same time the creation of the solidarity fund would be prevented, is mentioned only in passing.

The financial troubles of the old age pension plan isn't solved at all by transfering the gold. The initiative is clearly an attempt to kill the project of an solidarity fund - without coming out and saying so. If it had been about the old age insurance scheme, then much profunder measures would have to be taken. It follows: If you are against the solidarity fund, vote YES. If you like to keep the possibility open to be able to create the solidarity fund, vote NO!

The Swiss government has developed a counter-proposal, which is also put up for a vote.

 
Today included a few new links in my Eco-village Resource Directory. You can see the new additions on my homepage.

 
How can one prevent a drop of water from ever drying up? The Himalayas are a powerful landscape, especially on widescreen cinemascope. I'm still full of the energy of Samsara, a German produced movie, shot in Ladakh. It is the story of a Buddhist monk who is faced with the question "What is more important: satisfying one thousand desires or conquering just one...?" I'd give it 5 stars!

 
Finally, here they are: my Photographs of Isfahan on my new page.

 
If you have 4 hours to spare for a movie, then here is one where they are well spent: Lagaan. The latest Bollywood success in Switzerland, it is well made and not overly kitsch (as one might expect). There are a few dance-scenes, but I liked mostly the colourful and lively way the characters were shown. And, it is history seen from a different point of view than our usual Western one.... I can recommend it!