31 December 2006

Spleen Chakra (Companion)

Spleen Chakra ~ SoulCollage® (Companion) Wolf Totem Animal

I am the One who dances with desire and I am in step with the arousal of its passion.
I am the yin and the yang.

I give you eyes to see the world from a place of innocence and with a sense of wonder.

I shall remember when the tracks of my footprints lead me to the seat of creativity and allow my Self to feel the Source.

30 December 2006

Root Chakra (Companion)

Root Chakra ~ SoulCollage® (Companion) Snake Totem Animal

I am the One who survives.
I am the One who rises above the fear like the transforming kundalini fire.
I am the One who connects with the Earth and reaches for the stars.

I give you strength and stability.
I give you physical health and prosperity.
I give you the ability to overcome adversity.

I shall remember when fear arises and attempts to paralyze me, and with resolve I shall stand firm and bring forth my truth and my song.

SoulCollage® was developed by Seena B. Frost and is a trademarked collaging and writing process with just a few requirements to follow when using it or talking about it with others. There are certain elements that should be included in SoulCollage® work, such as non-competitive artistic expression and the "I Am One Who..." exercise. SoulCollage® cards are for personal and inner exploration. They are to be shared, but not to be sold, traded, or bartered.

20 December 2006

Susan Tedeschi Receives Grammy Nomination


Susan Tedeschi's critically-acclaimed Verve Forecast debut, Hope & Desire, has been nominated for a Grammy award in the category of Best Contemporary Blues Album. This is Tedeschi’s fourth Grammy nomination: she was previously nominated in 2000 for Best New Artist and received two nominations in 2003 for her album Wait For Me. The Grammy Awards show will air on February 11th on CBS.

Susan Tedeschi website

Andreas Vollenweider nominated for a Grammy Award!

The Soundtrack of Andreas' latest DVD "The Magical Journeys of Andreas Vollenweider" is nominated for a Grammy Award!

Andreas already has quite some history with the Grammys:

1987 he received a Grammy for the album "Down to the Moon"
2001 his song "Cor do Amor" from the album COSMOPOLY (featuring Milton Nascimento) was nominated for the first Latin Grammy together with Jennifer Lopez, Gloria Estefan, Marc Anthony and Ketama
2006 the soundtrack CD of his current DVD "The Magical Journeys of AV" is nominated for a Grammy!
Let us keep our fingers crossed until February 11th 07!

Latest releases:
DVD "The Magical Journeys of Andreas Vollenweider"
25 years live! Almost 4 hours of live concerts, interviews, documetaries, music videos...

CD “MIDNIGHT CLEAR”
a special, even unusual album; a Christmas album – in the widest sense. An "all-year-Christmas-album"!

Andreas Vollenweider

08 December 2006

Yoko calls for a day of worldwide healing

"Love is touch, touch is love. Love is reaching, reaching love. Love is
asking to be loved." John Lennon



Yoko calls for a day of worldwide healing on December 8.

In a full-page advertisement appearing November 26, 2006 in The New York Times, Yoko Ono urged readers to mark the anniversary of John Lennon's death by apologizing to those who have suffered due to violence and war.

"Every year, let's make December 8th the day to ask for forgiveness from those who suffered the insufferable," writes Yoko.

In the open letter, Ono urges readers to take responsibility for failing to intervene on behalf of victims around the world.

"Know that the physical and mental abuse you have endured will have a lingering effect on our society," she writes in a portion of the letter directed to victims. "Know that the burden is ours."

Of her own loss, Ono says: "I don't know if I am ready yet to forgive the one who pulled the trigger. ... But healing is what is urgently needed now in the world."

"Let's wish strongly that one day we will be able to say that we healed ourselves, and by healing ourselves, we healed the world."

YES

07 December 2006

Pearl Harbor sailor given final honor


Pearl Harbor sailor given final honor

Plaque at Analy to be dedicated Dec. 7

by Patricia M. Roth - Sonoma West Staff Writer

Randolph Franklin Theiller, one of 1,078 sailors, including three from Sonoma County, entombed aboard the U.S.S. Arizona.

SEBASTOPOL - A Sebastopol sailor who was killed in action during the bombing of Pearl Harbor 65 years ago will be memorialized in front of his hometown high school on Dec. 7.

The public is invited to the 3 p.m. (1500 hours military time) ceremony complete with taps and a 21-gun salute in honor of Randolph Franklin Theiller, one of 1,078 sailors, including three from Sonoma County, entombed aboard the U.S.S. Arizona.

“We're thrilled that he's finally being recognized. It's long overdue,” said Analy Principal Martin Webb, who will be one of the speakers at the memorial along with city, county and state dignitaries.

A highlight of the event, sponsored by Gold Ridge Post 3919, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, will be the unveiling of a cast aluminum memorial plaque that will hang forever near the entrance to Analy High School, from which Theiller graduated when he was 16 years old in 1939.

The ceremony will give guests an opportunity to reflect on what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy” and, moreover, to remember a teenager from the Hessel area south of Sebastopol who played high school basketball and football, was active in Future Farmers of America, showed his Hampshire and Duroc hogs at the Sonoma County Fair and later received a state degree in agriculture and a Gold Key Award from the governor for being one of the top students in the state.

Larry Graham, 85, of Sebastopol “chummed around” with Theiller during high school, and especially enjoyed driving him back and forth to basketball and football games in his yellow 1929 Model A Ford Roadster.

“He was a good friend. I feel I was fortunate to have been a buddy of his, and I'm honored to say he was my friend,” said Graham.

He remembered Theiller as being “a quiet fellow” who was “well oriented about what he wanted to do with his life and where he was going and how he was going to get there.

“Like my grand dad said, ‘He's the kind of guy that has his feet on the ground.'”

Graham said that during the last semester (of high school), Theiller talked a lot about joining the navy. “He felt that would help him get to where he wanted to go. It was either that or go to the JC or try to find some kind of a job, and there weren't a lot of jobs at that time for people getting out of high school. We knew the world was not really at rest. There were so many conflicts around the world, it was inevitable that something like Pearl Harbor was going to happen.”

According to a biography Robert Theiller wrote about his brother for the upcoming Memorial Dedication Program, Theiller's parents (Rudolph and Martha Theiller) wanted their son to enroll at Santa Rosa Junior College and finish his education at a four year university. But “the U.S. was just coming out of the Great Depression ... he didn't wanted to burden his parents with that cost.”

Theiller enlisted in the Navy “to learn a trade and see the world” on August 6, 1940, attended boot camp in San Diego and was assigned to the U.S.S. Arizona on Oct. 14, 1940. He was inducted in the Navy as an Apprentice Seaman and by Sept. 1, 1941 had advanced to the rank of Seaman First Class before his death on Dec. 7, 1941.

“We knew soon after Rudy had been killed that he was at Pearl Harbor. It was not a happy day,” said his friend Graham.

However, Graham explained that the rest of his friends were being faced with “the same sort of thing. It was just a thing on our backs that was going to happen” as his three brothers and most of his classmates were either drafted or enlisted.

“The fact that Rudy lost his life was a sad thing for all of us,” he said.

Graham, a Navy pilot, and his brothers came home from the war. “But it was not easy on my parents, and I'm sure it wasn't easy on Rudy's mother or father either,” he said.

Sebastopol native Jim Nagy, who was a junior at Analy High School during the attack on Pearl Harbor, is active with and serves as adjutant for the Gold Ridge Post 3919, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. He and Jim Richter, commander of the post, will be the masters of ceremonies for the Analy High School event.

The idea for the dedication came last year after a Pearl Harbor Survivors breakfast. “Four or five of us said it's a wonder nothing had been done for Rudy from the community. We thought it would be a nice gesture to do something,” he said.

The two other sailors who died on the U.S.S. Arizona were from Santa Rosa: George Maybe and Robert Montgomery, who has Montgomery High School named after him.

According to military records, Theiller was listed as missing until March of 1942. “His mother traveled to Letterman Hospital in San Francisco two to three times a week to talk to the wounded sailors who came back to see if they knew anything about her son, hoping that someone saw him,” Nagy said.

Although Theiller's parents are no longer living, his brother Robert will be present at the ceremony with his wife and children - and will be presented with the American flag from members of the United States Naval Guard.

Members of the Analy High School Band will perform “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Along with MCs Nagy and Richter, speakers will include Martin Webb, principal of Analy High School; Frank Sennello, Pearl Harbors Survivors, Chapter 23; Michael Whitaker, Analy High 11th grade student; Chris Smith, Press Democrat columnist; Mike Reilly, Fifth District Supervisor; Nancy Bennett, Deputy Director S.F. Branch of Governor's Office; Sam Pierce, Sebastopol mayor; Jeff Weaver, Sebastopol police chief; and Larry Graham, Analy High Class of 1939.

The Santa Rosa American Legion Post 21 will furnish the rifle squad and a bugler, who will play the hauntingly beautiful bugle call, “Taps.”

Chaplain Bill Brandt of VFW Post 3919 will give the closing prayer.

Members of the community in attendance will include Analy High School alumni, the Analy High School band and students, 2006-07 Sebastopol Future Farmers of America officers, students from Santa Rosa Junior College Agricultural Leadership Program and BSA Troops 14 and 27 of Sebastopol.

When asked what attendees can expect during the ceremony, Nagy responded: “Some of them that knew classmates, they can reminisce. They all knew who Rudy was ... the class was small at the time, 120 at most. They can expect maybe humor, or a bringing back of memories of their own family and close relatives. And of course, appreciation for the people and shipmates that never knew what was about to happen that day ... and, they can expect tears.”

What: Rudolph Franklin Theiller Memorial Dedication

Date: Dec. 7, 2006

Time: 3 p.m/1500 hours

Place: Analy High School, 6950 Analy Ave., Sebastopol

06 December 2006

David Crosby ~ Carefree Hippie



Note: I was lucky to meet David and his wife along with Graham Nash (oh, be still my beating heart..) and Jeff Pevar in the early nineties in Oceanside CA backstage after a show they did. David was so sweet. He embarrassed his wife Jan by showing us a hole in his t-shirt under the arm. She made him change shirts right in front of us. It was a good laugh. He went outside to greet some fans and after coming back inside handed me some love beads that a fan had made for him. He said "You want these? I get so much of this stuff." They were mostly yellow and done in that style that looks like little flowers, which my cousins could do but I never could. I said "Sure." So I have some love beads given to me by David Crosby, a true hippie. Pretty cool. I also managed to get away with a golf tee from Graham that he pulled out of his pocket from his day on the links in San Diego. Great memories.

David Crosby - from carefree hippie to father of 6

By Christine Kearney

American songwriter David Crosby is famed as a leading light of the 1960s counterculture movement but his second memoir finds him showing a gentler side as a father of six children.

The title of the memoir -- "Since Then: How I Survived Everything and Lived to Tell About It" -- hints at the perennial Crosby question: How did he survive his various drug addictions, prison stint and stage highs with former band The Byrds and the still-touring Crosby, Stills and Nash?

But Crosby, 65, says events from the last two decades detailed in his new book, including a life-saving liver transplant, becoming a sperm donor to musician Melissa Etheridge and her partner and embracing fatherhood, are more interesting than any hollow party tales or drug escapades.

"Yes, sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll are a part of my life and have been but this (memoir) goes way beyond that," Crosby told Reuters in an interview. "It (the memoir) is about nearly dying but at the same time having a new son born.

"If I was writing about a life like Paris Hilton's, I wouldn't want to read it, it would bore me to tears. But this is real stuff, life and death."

Interest in his former days addicted to cocaine and heroin is "tawdry and pretty simple," he said, compared to receiving a new liver in late 1994 and coming back from the brink of death.

Then early in 1995, Crosby met an adult son who had been given up for adoption years ago. Crosby's meeting with James Raymond, who is also a musician and sometimes plays with Crosby, came just a few months before his wife gave birth to their first son.

STILL CONTROVERSIAL

But while Crosby transformed into his role as a father and stopped using heavy drugs, the autobiography shows how he continued to push social boundaries.

Crosby, who also has two adult daughters, donated sperm to Melissa Etheridge and her then-partner Julie Cypher, who gave birth to two children, in the late 1990s. Crosby, who regularly visits the children, wrote it was "discouraging" that rock singer Etheridge and Cypher have since split up, and does not know if he would do it again.

"Do I wish they had stayed together? Yes, but not if they are not in love with each other," he said. "I am not out there volunteering myself. I have enough kids."

The book was published in November with the release of a career-spanning triple-disc CD set. His first memoir, "Long Time Gone," was published in 1998.

The new book tells of Crosby's 2004 arrest in New York for marijuana and gun possession while on tour -- an incident he calls "stupid, one of several mistakes that were very dumb."

After years of staying away from drink and drugs, Crosby and his wife Jan started again to use marijuana, which he says should be legal: "It is certainly better for you than booze."

Crosby saves his biggest gripe for the large companies which he says have ruined the music industry, resulting "in people like Britney Spears, who cannot write, sing or play."

"It hasn't produced any Bob Dylans, it is not going to produce a James Taylor or a Joni Mitchell," he said. "It produces crap."

He still tours with Neil Young and Crosby, Stills and Nash, and has not lost his social conscience, but knows some things have changed since the sixties.

"I am a hell of a lot older and more beat up," he said. "And I've got more scars."