I think is was Harold Macmillian who once said, “Events, dear boy, events.”
Well this week-end threw some events my direction and there is no post for today – apart from this!!
Category: Uncategorized
Weekend off
Just need to potter today and Sunday.
Have a great week-end.
Housekeeping.
Everything evolves in life!
Although how apt that thought is when applied to rather strange world of blogging is a little beyond me!
Anyway, this Blog is called Learning from Dogs because dogs are, in many ways, powerful examples of what we humans need reminding of, both literally and metaphorically.
However, the Home page, or Welcome page, of this Blog is in need of some revising so when you see it change over the next few days it’s because of that housekeeping.
Let me leave you with this thought.
“A dog is not ‘almost human,’ and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such.“
John Holmes
What’s in a song or two?
Trust all Learning from Dogs readers and their families had a wonderful Christmas Day.
Here’s a little distraction, with a serious under-message, courtesy of CASSE.
Top 10 Songs for the Steady State
by Rob Dietz
I have a friend who sees the end of the world coming soon. When he ponders the limits to economic growth, climate destabilization, and other ecological and economic problems, he tends to fall into a state of malaise. I understand to some degree where he’s coming from – I’m not one to hide my head in the sand and ignore or deny the profound problems we face. But given the amount of time that I spend contemplating the limits to growth, I can’t afford to get mired in the swamps of doom and gloom. The main way I keep a positive perspective is by working to change the root cause (i.e., pursuit of growth everlasting) of our ecological overshoot. A steady state economy that can meet people’s needs and exist within healthy environmental systems is a truly inspiring idea.
I also do some other things to keep a positive perspective. For example, I like to play and listen to music regularly. Music speaks to most of us in a way that no other art form can – we all have special songs that touch our souls. Before I go any further with this line of thought, I need to provide a brief disclaimer about my musical taste. I grew up in the 1980s on Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 radio program.
Besides indoctrinating me on some suspect styles, songs and sounds, American Top 40 taught me a lesson. It demonstrated how fun and addictive countdowns can be. In the spirit of keeping things light-hearted, I thought it would be interesting to compose a top-ten list of songs with a steady state theme. In descending order below, I’ve listed the title of the song, the performer, the album on which the song appears, and some choice lyrics. I’m sure that I’ve missed some good ones, so please feel free to comment on your favorites. I have also made a YouTube playlist in case you find yourself in a steady state mood. And now, on with the countdown…
10. The Finest Worksong
R.E.M.
Document (1987)
Take your instinct by the reins
Your better best to rearrange
What we want and what we need
Has been confused, been confused
9. Can’t Buy Me Love
by The Beatles
(1964)
Say you don’t need no diamond ring and I’ll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can’t buy
I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love
8. Excuse Me Mr.
by Ben Harper
Fight for Your Mind (1995)
Excuse me Mr.
But isn’t that your oil in the sea
And the pollution in the air Mr.
Whose could that be
So excuse me Mr.
But I’m a mister too
And you’re givin’ Mr. a bad name
Mr. like you
7. All U Can Eat
by Ben Folds
Sunny 16 (2003)
Son, look at all the people in this restaurant
What do you think they weigh
And out the window to the parking lot
At their SUV’s taking all the space
They give no @#%!
They talk as loud as they want
They give @#%!
Just as long as there’s enough for them
6. Nothing but Flowers
by The Talking Heads
Naked (1988)
I miss the honky tonks
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
You got it, you got it
And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
You got it, you got it
5. Paradise
by John Prine
John Prine (1971)
Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man
4. Fake Plastic Trees
by Radiohead
The Bends (1995)
She lives with a broken man
A cracked polystyrene man
Who just crumbles and burns
He used to do surgery
For girls in the eighties
But gravity always wins
3. Big Yellow Taxi
by Joni Mitchell
Ladies of the Canyon (1970)
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
2. Society
by Eddie Vedder and Jerry Hannan
Into the Wild motion picture soundtrack (2007)
It’s a mystery to me
We have a greed with which we have agreed
And you think you have to want more than you need
Until you have it all you won’t be free
1. Imagine
by John Lennon
Imagine (1971)
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
Bonus Track: Corporation Day
by Dan O’Neill, CASSE Director of European Operations
Day off!
Apologies to all the many readers of Learning from Dogs but events over the last couple of days have conspired to keep me away from the PC and there just wasn’t time to publish something for today.
Pathi Harn aka Mr Shuffles
(I’ve been shuffling through some old draft posts that didn’t make it live on to the Blog. Found this one and thought that it would appeal to many Learning from Dog readers, hence the fact that this is rather old news, so to speak.)
A baby elephant is back from the dead, big time!
Mr Shuffles as he was known then was born on the 10th March this year. The magical aspect of that was the fact that, well let the journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald take up the story.
WRITTEN off for dead just five days ago, Taronga Zoo‘s teak-tough elephant calf has emerged from intensive care to perform his first routine on the public stage.
Sticking close to the protective belly of his mother Porntip, the calf, dubbed Mr Shuffles, gingerly explored the confines of one of the world’s more unlikely elephant breeding grounds on the harbour’s rocky edge on the fringe of Mosman.
Venturing close to the waters of his yard’s little pond, his trunk danced like a conductor’s baton as he sampled smells and textures of his world, tasting the palm trunk that was his mother’s breakfast. He sniffed sawdust and almost teetered over as he struggled up a tiny mound of earth, a first lesson on just how high an elephant’s centre of gravity really is.
But the young elephant did survive and now has been renamed to something more appropriate for an Tibetan elephant – Pathi Harn, meaning miracle in Tibetan.
Here’s a video of the young lad.
Back to the Sydney Morning Herald story:
Apart from his bloodshot eyes, which are a normal feature of birth, he appears remarkably healthy. Although, the zoo’s experts are still struggling to comprehend how quickly the 116-kilogram infant has recovered from a week-long labour, including three motionless days in a coma with no hint of a heartbeat.
”As far as we were concerned, he’d been dead for three days,” said Gary Miller, the zoo’s elephant supervisor. Since the calf proved the experts wrong on Wednesday morning, Mr Miller has hardly left his side, struggling to get him through those early days. ”He needed help. His left legs were not working real well … his left side was not really functional.”
He and his staff spent days massaging him, encouraging blood into his right side, getting him up, walking him around and moving his joints to get them functioning.
Wonderful.
By Paul Handover
Editorial update!
Your humble author going through the grinder!
Dear Readers,
I am rapidly approaching the point where I have to devote some considerable time and energy to persuading the US
Government that I am a fit person to enter the USA and get married to my Jeannie!
It involves more form filling than one may imagine plus attending interviews in London, etc., etc.
Without doubt it is going to put that small creative part of my brain under some pressure and as a result I am concerned that regular fresh daily postings on Learning from Dogs may be a challenge.
My hope is that there is always something for you to read on a daily basis because that is the least that should be done for so many loyal supporters of this Blog.
But some of the Posts may be popular ones recycled from the archives, small snippets of items from the news that have caught my eye, or just a beautiful or funny picture to mark another day in all our lives.
If you have something you would like to contribute, then please feel free to email it to learningfromdogs [at] gmail [dot] com That would be most welcome and really appreciated.
STOP PRESS: I was granted my fiancé visa by the kind folks at the US Embassy in London on the morning of the 26th October. Amazing that at my age, one can still feel like a love-sick teenager!
UPDATE: Arrived back in Payson on the 5th November – what a wonderful feeling that was. The wedding is just 2 weeks away!
Dealing with the fear of the Known!
Can we ever conquer fear?
In a recent article I discussed the fear of the unknown, linked to the down-turn, redundancies, etc.
Per Kurowski, a great supporter of this Blog, posed the following question.
Great advice… but how do we remove the fear of what is known?
A simple, and slightly flipant answer would be,
“Develop a different relationship with it.”
What I’m saying is that when we are facing the known, and I’m assuming that it’s something unpleasant, our choices are limited. It’s going to happen, so the only thing we can do is change the way we view it.
This brings us back full circle to developing a different relationship with it.
Let’s take the word, ‘fear’.
“All fear is an illusion, walk right through“. I heard Dr David Hawkins say on a CD. Granted, a great trick if you can do it!
Here’s another description of fear: Fear= False Evidence Appearing Real
Fear is generally future-based. We tend to use the past as a learning reference to inform us of what to be afraid of in the future. So human beings live their lives trying to predict and prepare for the future, limited by their past experiences.
Unfortunately, the only way to work with fear of the known is to live in the present! [Just like dogs! Ed.]
Our whole society is geared up to look into the future. We are forever worrying about or planning something for the future.
To begin focussing on the present, try this.
Simply, to start off, become aware of the breath and sensations in the body. This will slowly start to remind us to be present, or embodied, in our own body.
Problems, fear and spiral thinking, often at 3 or 4 in the morning, are generated in the mind.
Thoughts occur randomly, although we call them, “Our thoughts”, and refer to, “Our mind”.
By dropping out of the thought processes into awareness of the breath and body, the noise stops, even if only for a moment.
So very few people in the world will have even the slightest inkling what these words mean.
If more of us got used to coming out of the mind before making an important decision, and simply sat with the question for a while, the answer would probably present itself.
This will probably raise more questions than it answers but that’s not a bad thing.
[If you have been affected by this Post and would like to contact Jon, he would be delighted to hear from you. Ed.]
Elliot’s schooling – Sir Ken’s view
Sir Ken Robinson’s view
I plan to have my final post on education finished very soon. However, with my last week of finals and papers at the undergraduate level (which is finally over!) constantly hoarding my time, I have not yet quite been able to truly decide on which side I plan to end up.
My instinct tells me that the costs of the US schooling system far outweigh its benefits, but I feel I must be sure that this is truly a case that can be supported with logic and not simply my own biases coming through.
However, while I continue to ponder, I thought that readers might find this video interesting. It’s a different take on the nature of institutionalized schooling than is often seen. It’s on the longer side — approximately 20 minutes long — but I definitely think it is worth a watch for anyone pursuing a clear and well thought-out perspective on education, and it’s actually quite humorous and entertaining.
The video is of a presentation by Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized leader in the development of innovation and human resources. His thesis statement is as follows:
My contention is that creativity is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
I hope the Learning From Dogs community enjoys this video. Upon my return from celebrating my college graduation in Charleston, I plan to present my final finding on whether the costs or the benefits of schooling in the United States outweighs the other.
By Elliot Engstrom
Learning from You!
A change to the Blog
Learning from Dogs published its first Post on July 15th last year. Since then we have published another 549!
As you will know our standard pattern is to publish two Posts each working day and one per day over the week-ends, some 50 Posts each month.
Since the start of 2010 we have been running at over a 1,000 readers each week, and now regularly have over 2,000 readers a week. It’s a great vote of thanks for all the hard work put in by the authors. Thank you, dear reader!
Now this week I have to return to the UK until early June and that is going to make it much more difficult for me to spend time every day being Chief Cook & Bottlewasher for the Blog.
Thus, during this period, we will have to relax the target to publish two Posts every working day. Hopefully, we will be able to maintain a single Post each day.
However, what would be valuable is to hear just how your own interest in Learning from Dogs would be influenced, if at all, if we were to continue the lower number of Posts (i.e. one a day) after my return in June.
Any feedback, good or bad, will be welcome and much appreciated. Either by leaving a comment or by emailing the Blog at learningfromdogs (at) gmail (dot) com
Thank you.
Learning from Dogs 