Ode : Exchange

Humanitarian Dating

Hdating — 2008-05-17T04:47:28-04:00

We would like to share our not for profit business. We have started a dating site for people who care about the world and its people. The site is called Humanitarian Dating. You can find us at: http//:www.humanitariandating.com

The site is a community of people concerned about our planet. We have many members working as humanitarian and international development practioners as well as people making a difference in their own communities from all around the world. We have blogs and resources on international aidwork and the site is in English, Spanish and French.

The site is a not for profit. All profits from the site will go to humanitarian organizations.

Making better buying decisions to benefit todayâs people, the planet and posterity

PhilanthropyNow — 2008-05-16T01:26:40-04:00

Before You Buy Thought-Action Stimulus Questions By Charles Bernard Maclean, PhD

âYou can never have enough of what you donât need to make you happy.â - Eric Hoffer

Framing Question: How will I put this factor to work NOW in my life? (Use these thought-action stimulus questions to decide what to buy/not buy.)

Questions About Increasing Happiness for Self and Loved Ones

1. Is this purchase mandatory for safety or health?

2. Is it a need or a want?

3. How specifically will this purchase contribute to your bliss relative to other options and is this bliss sustainable?

4. To what extent will this purchase deepen your heart connection with those you care about most?

5. What will you be giving up, deferring, trading off to buy this item?

6. What message do you want to give to your children/friends with this purchase decision?

7. To what degree will this decision increase the length or quality of your life?

8. How many hours will you need to work to purchase this item that could otherwise be devoted to leisure and human connection?

9. What do you want your tombstone to say about the kind of earth steward-consumer-conserver you became?

10. Other factors influencing you buying decision:

Joy is not in things, it is in us - Jess Lair

Questions About Increasing the Sense of Community Where You Live & Itâs Sustainability

1. How many people will this purchase benefit and in what way?

2. How will this item increase connectedness or reduce conflict?

3. How will this expenditure effect those with more or less wealth?

4. How will this expenditure enhance aesthetics, beauty, sharing and harmony?

5. How did pressure from others effect your decision to make or not make this purchase?

6. How much of this buying decision is about looking good or âKeeping up with the Joneses?â

7. Other factors influencing your buying decision?

To tackle climate change you donât have to reduce your quality of life, but you do have to change the way you live - Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London (foreword to the Mayor's Climate Change Action Plan, 2007)

Questions About Reducing Ones Contribution To Global Warming

1. What is the carbon footprint left by discarding the old item and by buying the new item?

2. Is your current item serviceable or can you repair or refurbish the current item cost-effectively?

3. Can both the old and new item be recycled and is it made of materials that biodegrade or are renewable?

4. What is the usable lifespan of the item and how subject is it to obsolescence?

5. What are the energy, maintenance and âadd on featureâ costs of using this item?

6. Do I have to buy it or could I rent it, borrow it or get it from a thrift shop used?

7. From your spiritual or ethical tradition, how does this purchase decision relate to responsible stewardship?

8. Is the producer/supplier of the item or service socially responsible? (Do they also produce tobacco, alcohol, munitions or toxins?)

9. Can I purchase this item or service from a producer/grower within 100 miles and support local business and reduce transportation costs?

10. Was the item produced by child or slave wage labor?

11. Are you willing to pay more for some goods and services now and help reduce global warming?

12. Other factors influencing your buying decision?

âThere is only a slight tendency for people who make lots of money to be more satisfied with what they make. Satisfaction isn't so much getting what you want as wanting what you have.â

- David Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness

Charles is founder, donor advocate and committed listener for www.philanthropynow.com âHe is one of the core members of www.trilliumhollow.org cohousing in Portland, Oregon. He is author of âIs Cohousing Right For You?â and âWill You Survive & Thrive In Cohousing

Get with it, U.S. - Buy a bike!

wahwahnyc — 2008-05-14T20:07:42-04:00

An idea for 2009: hold off on nonessential auto purchases, and buy a bike instead! (http://williamaveryhudson.blogsome.com)

âMaking love, with lifeâ¦â

measureless — 2008-05-14T13:59:07-04:00

A warm smile. An unexpected compliment. Moonlit nights. A bear hug.

The smell of burning logs on a cold wintry night, the soft rhythmic sound of wind chimes in my balcony, the rain soaked breeze entering my bedroom window. Seeing a long awaited mail in my inbox, smell of freshly sharpened pencils.

Decorating a perfect Christmas tree and dreaming of Santa Claus. Having a frothy cappuccino with warm, blueberry muffins at my favourite cafÃ©.

A deeply satisfying kiss!

A cheery fireplace, hugging a plump soft pillow, black and white classics, freshly mowed grass, sunrise and sunsets.

Andy Williams, singing, âWhere do I begin...â Listening to Simon and Garfunkelâs âThe sounds of Silenceâ

Sometimes â¦ just a cup of tea!

Giving myself the permission to cry...listening to the birds chirping on my window ledge.

Watching âEnglish Patientâ and âPretty Womanâ umpteen times. Getting up late...lazing around on bed for hours, doing nothing...

Buying books, reading books, touching books, and smelling books.

Entering a bookshop.

Knowing the difference between, Solitude and Loneliness. Cooking for pleasure. Cooking a sumptuous dish for someone, I love.

Not having to pick up dirty socks and wet towels from my bed... Having both sides of the bed to myself. Not having to explain myself...ever. Sulking..just like that...only because I want to...! Listening to Chopin at 3: A.M.. Buying my favourite perfume. Getting an oil massage.

Eating chocolates in bed. Shopping for exotic grocery and fruits. Getting wet in the rain.

A loving glance, from the one I love. Hearing a childâs squeals of delight. Touching a newborn puppyâs nose. Buying a bunch of fresh flowers...

These are just some of the things that bring me Happiness... What are yours?

âWe should live each day with gentleness, vigour, and a keenness of appreciation which are often lost when time stretches before us in the constant panorama of more days and months and years to come.â - Helen Keller.

Why do we constantly wait for some distant happiness to come into our lives...? What about those infinitesimal, precious moments that are given to us each and every day when we leave our bed?

Shady corners and closed chapters

measureless — 2008-05-14T08:31:45-04:00

Does mention of books excite you? Do you love to scan the list of new arrivals in various journals and do you often pass your day thinking about a new book that is lying at your bedside table, which you canât wait to lose yourself into at the end of the day?

Join the gang, you are my kind of gal!

We all crave for flesh-and-blood friends in our life, but all book lovers would agree with me that books are the best friend one can ever have.

At least you are assured of one thing... silent companionship!

At times in my life when I have felt completely alone and dejected, books have always been that knight in the shining armour, to rescue me, comfort me and save me from slipping into depression.

My mom being a voracious reader herself, always told me that when in doubt or despair, turn to your own inner strengths, and good books. These two will never let you down.

I opened my eyes in a house that was littered with books, literally. There were huge wooden shelves and cupboards almost cringing with the weight of books, on nearly every topic in the world. Being newly introduced to the wonderful world of reading made me a greedy reader. Print fascinated me so much, that I would read anything that I could lay my hands on, from dictionary to magazines, to novels to scraps of papers I found lying on the roads.

My newfound passion was so overriding that during the long hot summer afternoons when the entire house would be wrapped up in a peaceful siesta, I would sneak into the little store room at terrace, pull out books and devour them, unmindful of the sweltering heat and lack of ventilation. However, this room was full of books that I was told, was meant for adult reading only. The forbidden books for a child of eleven, were those that came under the genre of novels, such as Pearl S. Buckâs âPortrait of Marriageâ, D.H. Lawrenceâs âLady Chatterleyâs Loverâ, âSons and Loversâ ... all these were taken away from me if I ever picked them up. The detective novels and the Mills and Boon series were also banned for me. I was given hoards of books of Enid Blyton, Charles Dickens, P.G. Woodhouse, Prem Chand, and books on literary short stories, etc, all selected carefully by mom.

However, my insatiable mind would not be satisfied with books that were meant only for a girl of my age. I wanted to explore the mysterious world of adults too.

One afternoon I was in that little store room, and had pulled out the fully illustrated âKamasutraâ randomly. Fascinated by the cover, I opened the pages. Just when I was trying to decipher a very intricate pose of a naked man and woman trapped into some kind of a punishing posture, a shadow falls on the book. My mom was standing above me peering... not at me, but the page that was opened before me, and there was a look of absolute horror on her face. She was more concerned about what I was looking at, than snatching the book immediately from my hand. She realised that she was a bit late, and I already had a baffling glimpse of something that I had not even begun to understand fully. Why didnât I hear her coming up the stairs...?

I blamed my brief attention lapse on that bewildering book. It had zapped my senses completely for a while.

The book was taken away and as punishment, a huge lock was slipped over the terrace door. I was allowed into that room only when chaperoned. That was the perplexing world of adolescent, and itâs a different matter altogether, that when I finally had all the freedom in the world to read whatever I could lay my hands on, I found Vatsayanaâs âKamasutraâ the dumbest book I have ever read on sex. I cannot categorise it even as good pornography. In retrospect, I realised that mom was unnecessarily paranoid about me seeing the pictures of those contortionists with deadpan expressions on their faces (where was the rapture Vatsayana spoke about?) After all, it was only a book!

Nevertheless, the wonderful world of books is something that having once discovered, no one can ever be tempted to leave it. My greatest horror is to be trapped in some place without books.

Hope that never happens to you and me.

Leap of faith - Not just one, rather a million

lgarrick — 2008-05-13T23:54:50-04:00

Searching for a way to give back, a Seattle leadership consultant took a leap of faith. I was reading the book, "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert, said Lucy Garrick, organization and leadership consultant. I had been looking for a way to do something around the concept of peace and raising the status of women. I was floating in the pool in July with no consulting work in sight, so I petitioned the universe for consulting projects in exchange for a life devoted to world peace. Ten minutes later, my phone rang and when I answered, I heard someone say, âHello Lucy, this is Riane Eiser.â I was stunned speechless.â

An anonymous email to a website focused on raising awareness about violence toward women and children (www.saiv.org) had yielded a phone call from a complete stranger who happened to be a renown peace activist, scholar and best-selling, author. After some conversation, Garrick offered to create a peace workshop based on Eisler's ground-breaking work on domination and partnership systems. Eisler offered to keynote. As she hung up, Eisler commented, âIâm glad I followed my intuition and called you personally.â

Thus was born, Million Ideas for Peace, an organization devoted to inspiring everyday people to do one more thing for peace. Million Ideas is about creating a new definition for social activism that is positive, inclusive and generative. Garrick defines peace in the broadest of terms and is helping people connect their strengths and passions with causes they care most about. Garrick calls it âactive peace,â a play on the words, acts of peace.

The rest of the story is history. The consulting work came and on April 12, 2008, the peace workshop, Cultivating the Art of Active Peace, was held at the Seattle Art Museum. Garrick's son, David, a teacher and artist built a mobile especially for the event. âMobiles make a good metaphor for peace,â said Garrick, âbecause they depend on balance and flexibility to function.â Participants used the museum's collection to contemplate their own acts of peace and then designed sails for the mobile to commemorate their own ideas for active peace in work of communal art.

Million Ideas for peace continues to develop new work on communication, peace and inspiration. They are also working in partnership with Eislerâs Center for Partnership Studies and the Spiritual Alliance Against Intimate Violence. Learn more and post your ideas for peace at www.millionideas4peace.com

A contemporary William Blake

Iliana — 2008-05-12T16:13:39-04:00

Several months ago, I had traveled to Oxford to visit an artist, Donald Pass, and hear his remarkable story. A native of England, he has had a dramatic career as a fine artist for sixty years. Educated at the Royal Academy Schools in London, he was a successful painter of portraits and religious works, but was best known for his landscapes, especially for the lyrical abstracts of his native countryside. Yet, in 1969 that all changed. While we sat in his living room, Donald recounted the vision he had forty years ago, which has since been his sole subject as an artist. In 1969, he had gone to sketch at a churchyard in Cuckfield, a small town in Sussex. There he saw what he calls now the Vision of the Resurrection. He explains that he calls it a "vision" for the lack of a better word. "It was really like a veil had been lifted. I was so aware of it going on and yet it was as if I wasnât there, as if I was watching a film."

What he gradually saw was a monumental scene - of angels, human figures, a landscape that stretched to infinity, and an event outside the domain of time. "There were all sorts of angels," he tells me "of all different sizes." Human figures were rising in columns and gathered in by angels; others moved towards very dark and still angels standing near the horizon.

"At one point there was this enormous angel' Donald remembers, "who descended with his arms outstretched accompanied by a tremendous chorus of sound." In paintings, he appears under the title of "Archangel Gabriel" - a huge, grave, and sobering presence. Donald Pass pulls out a large painting in his studio. Gabriel looms in the frame, eyes painted without pupils, and hands held palms out in admonition. The power of the image overwhelms the mind.

Donald recounts that in the vision, human figures lay on the ground with forms rising out of them as if something was emerging from a chrysalis. "It was almost a transfiguration, a rebirth" he says. He considers what he saw to be the resurrection of the dead. He hopes that his work based on it is an expression of life and hope as it has showed him that life will continue, that death is a transformation within life.

What I wanted especially to share with you, readers, is the sense in his art of the greater powers beyond us. It speaks of the reality of spiritual worlds and spiritual beings of undreamt of power and compassion. Speaking of his experience, Donald says "we are all one of the great many beings who will eventually rise from the dead and be a part of this great scene. I believe that every one being, that every creature on Earth, is held in compassion by God, and I believe God is the centre of compassion. This is the one thing that came through all this: the one thing I felt all the way through this is this overwhelming sense of compassion."

To see more of his work, check out www.donaldpass.com.

ZapRoot 036: An ode to fast food

ZapRoot — 2008-05-12T16:13:29-04:00

Ode Magazine gives us a roundup of eco friendly fast food, Nalgene water bottles get banned, and we show you some of the worst transportation ideas weâve seen.

One person's trash is another person's treasure

RameshSampat — 2008-05-08T15:28:04-04:00

Hello Everyone, I am Ramesh Haridas Sampat, Founder of Partners in Karma.

I have been thinking about a very simple thing. What do we do with our clothes and shoes when they get worn out and we donât want to wear them any more? Well, we throw them away, donât we? Everyone has clothes, shoes and many other personal items that at some point we donât want to use any more. What do people do with those things? Yes, they are just sitting there collecting dust and some day they all go to trash.

Think about it. What did you do the last time you had a pile of things you didnât want any more? What are you going to do with the things you have right now that you donât want to use any more? Same thing. Those things are going to sit in your closet until you get sick of them and then you are going to throw them away.

Now, if we can organize a system whereby we collect all those personal items that people are going to throw away and give them to people who can use them, people who donât have those basic things, imagine if we can do that, then everyone in the world will have clothes and shoes to wear. Imagine, if we can do that, there will be no adult or child anywhere in the world without clothes or shoes.

That is what we do.

That is what we have started doing here at www.partners-in-karma.org We are accepting from the public used personal items that they no longer use and sending them to poor people in India, Africa and other countries. Personal items like clothes, shoes, socks, underwear, items of personal hygiene, bed sheets, pillow covers, comforters, blankets. We accept personal items only. We do not accept household items like electronics or furniture.

It is a very simple thing. But its benefit is miraculous. Everyone has old clothes, shoes and other personal items that they are not using any more. They are going to throw them away. So everyone is a potential donor. These are personal items that poor people in third world countries don't have, items they can use. All it takes is volunteers to set up collection centers to collect the items, pack them and ship them to the needy people. A small team of 5 to 10 volunteers can manage a collection center and collect enough items to help a large number of poor people.

Everyone Can Get Involved

If you like more info, this 15 page text document explains how we do it and how you can do it too. Download the document, free of cost, from this link:

download.yousendit.com/F860ADDB16B12979

If you can open a small collection center in your area, that would be great. We will help you get started and get organized. Please contact me here: rhs@partners-in-karma.org

If you like to donate cash to help pay for packaging and shipping, please send your donation to partners-in-karma.org Post Office Box 6918, Buena Park, CA 90622-9998. USA or send it through PayPal to rhs@partners-in-karma.org We are using this money to pay for packaging, storage, shipping and other expenses. We are not using it to help the poor in any other way.

We need volunteers to help spread this message. If you can send emails to people or write blogs or discuss in chat rooms or whatever, you will be helping many poor people.

Please start by doing this:

Please share this info with ten or more people and ask them to do likewise. If you do this you will be doing something for the karma and thus you will become a partner in this global karma.

www.partners-in-karma.org

Life is a work of art!

leafpond — 2008-05-07T22:43:55-04:00

Leafpond leafpond.com is a unique media space dedicated to the philosophy that artistic living and aesthetics are essential to a rich life experience. We provide an avenue for people of like mind to nourish their creative spirit. In May for our one-year anniversary, Leafpond introduces its new video series, "Conversations With...".

This month's video highlights the life and work of artist Corita Kent presented by Sasha Carrera, Director of the Corita Art Center in Los Angeles, California.