mriversong

05:05 pm: Miscellaneous Craziness
Today has been a truly crazy day. In town, we have winds howling up to 65 mph with some occasional horizontal snow. It's been difficult to walk around. Sometimes the sun has been shining through all this. At home, well i can't get there because both roads have been closed all day. It was supposed to clear up this afternoon, but apparently that's not going to happen until tomorrow. So it's another night staying with friends in town.

Work was crazy too. I ended up with assignments at 2 schools next to each other. Having 2 half-day assignments is unusual. In the morning, 2 out of 4 classes were totally nuts -- i apparently have no right to request that junior high students stay quiet for a video about how they make Levis 501 jeans just in case one of them is interested. One student polled her class -- actually i thought that was cool because it meant there's a potential she's waking up. Terrible thing was that i wasn't interested in the video either. Perhaps some maturing women i know who love to sew would have been fascinated.

One of the great flaws in our educational system is that we're expecting students to be perfect at everything! It would be so much better if the only people who saw that video about how they make jeans were the ones who were really interested.

When substitute teaching, any day you don't have to use the words "stabbed" or "throttled" in a report is a good day. Actually i haven't had to use those words in quite some time, so work tends to be wonderful most of the time.

In the afternoon, i did a second grade class. That was a real contrast. They were much better behaved than the 7th graders. And i got to play harp for "Friday Fun", which was ok for them. Someone from Administration happened to hear a bit of that. Hope it was ok for her.

One frustrating thing about blogging is i think of all this great stuff while driving or out on a job, and then forget it all when in a location where it's actually possible to write...

04:07 pm: Ordinary Adventures
Lots of things have happened, mostly around Cheyenne. A couple of weeks ago i went to the Denver area & performed at a new health fair. It was a lot of fun. As we were packing up, one of my clients from over 12 years ago in the Wichita area came by. Turned out her family had moved to the Denver area. It was great to see her, especially since at the time i was working on her house, which was in itself a tough case, she had cancer. One factor that often promotes cancer is geobiological energies, and her house had plenty! I taught her how to spot the energies, and block them for herself. So seeing her still alive & in good health was a real joy.

Biggest items in my life right now are preparing for the June & July tour to the East Coast, and getting the new DVD ready for release. There have been a number of technical blocks coming up, which is why promoting it has not been a high priority. Just had the master re-scanned for duplication again today. There are many steps to putting out an educational DVD.

Sometimes it occurs to me that it would be nice to hang around with a wife or a girlfriend. In all fairness, it is necessary to tell any women:

I don't do dates. I have adventures.

Somehow noticed that today is Earth Day. It's the 38th anniversary of the only day i ever ditched high school, to ride my bicycle with some friends all the way to downtown Denver for a rally. Actually, for me every day is Earth Day -- continues to be one of my deepest commitments. So, Happy Planet... always!

05:50 am: Miracle Shoes
This thought came up. To better protect my feet, a new pair of shoes would help a lot. They should be medium-top, for support, slightly big, since sometimes there's swelling, and this time it would be nice if they were white.

Two days later we had a communion service at Cheyenne Brethren http://www.forministry.com/USWYBRCAOCBCCB and a new lady showed up. She said, "I just had this calling in my heart that I should bring these shoes, since they didn't fit me."

They fit, exactly.

Would be a great title for a song...

03:05 pm: Healing and Hope
This past month has been more difficult than usual. Perhaps you should know what's been going on.

On January 11, i suddenly came down with a flu, just before classes. Students are still talking about how i passed out in the hall on the way to the bathroom. My pastor had to come by and carry me out of the building to my monk's cell. Was in bed for about 4 days straight. Got the right combination of food at the grocery store (mainly pineapple juice) and that worked.

Then, 10 days later i got food poisoning. It was my own fault, trying to hard to be economical and using some leftovers that should have been thrown away. Almost died that night, literally. That in turn triggered severe diabetic neuropathy. I was nearly unable to walk for several days.

Got 2 chiropractic adjustments, and visited the Vibe Machine 2 times. That, along with diet adjustments, got things going in the right direction. It's really nice to not go through the process of learning how to walk all over again each morning.

All this has apparently helped to deepen my consciousness of people who are in serious pain. Hope this will make me more helpful to them, including one friend who was recently in a devastating auto accident, who i see a lot.

Meanwhile, the Barack Obama campaign has temporarily moved into the building where my office is. Getting to know these people is fascinating.

At this point, there's no way to know whether or not Obama is a good man, or would be a good president. However, the people who are mobilizing to get him elected are an awesome and beautiful force in our society right now. In essence, they are saying, "It's ok to be in a difficult position, to be a single mom, or an artist, or a laborer, or anyone else who has not been in any way valued by the current hierarchy. Of course there's the whole idea of Hope connected with this campaign, and that's good too. My hope is that inventors will be unleashed to do what they do best, and get us some technology that will counterbalance the damage that previous industries have done. These folks don't even need government support -- they just need the space and time to work.

Which brings us to a word that i love introducing to students: Livingry. That was coined by Buckminster Fuller, and is defined as "things to make living better in every way." In other words, the opposite of weaponry. What we want, and one of the things that can be carried on this wave of hope, is the ability of Americans to create excellent livingry.

For those who are into praying, the main concern is to successfully finish and release an educational DVD. It's been recorded. Several more steps will take it into availability.

04:52 pm: More on Drugs
Over the past few days a correspondence student has been discussing psychiatric medications. So i decided to write this, and put it here for everyone.

Intelligent people can be persuaded to take on terribly destructive opinions. This usually comes about through suppression, either on an individual or group basis. Suppression is accomplished by individual persuasion and propaganda. Whenever encountered, the intentions, techniques, and results of suppression must be carefully analyzed.

Today we can see that one of the most destructive elements in society is psychoactive drug use. It can be seen at every level of society, in legal and illegal forms. In general psychoactive drugs can be seen to have many undesirable effects. They always have physical and mental effects which in one way or another make it impossible for people to achieve anything close to their potential or their ideals. This in itself is a form of suppression. It could be said with great accuracy that psychoactive drugs place a kind of shield between a person's mind and anything else in life. As we try to deal with drug use, we find that all age groups, social classes, and economic levels are affected.

Illegal drugs are a well recognized problem. No amount of money thrown at the problem ever seems to significantly reduce it. Keep in mind that almost every illegal drug, with only a few exceptions, was at one time promoted by medical authorities as being highly beneficial for one purpose or another. This includes marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, and methamphetamine. In some ways, old promotional campaigns for these drugs are still circulating.

Currently there are many legal psychoactive drugs being heavily promoted that have effects just as bad, or worse, than illegal drugs. Therefore, on that basis a worthwhile goal would be the elimination of all psychoactive drugs from anyone's life.

Several excellent books are available which document how specific legal drugs were developed, promoted, and caused tremendous damage. Reading these books is highly recommended for anyone who wants to or must confront this problem. Among the best are:
Toxic Psychiatry by Dr. Peter Breggin
Prozac: Panacea or Pandora by Dr. Ann Blake Tracy
Psychiatry, the Ultimate Betrayal by Bruce Wiseman

Legal drugs present special concerns because they are tied to large promotional campaigns. Some of these campaigns are obvious and high-profile, such as advertisements and magazine articles. Others are more subtle, including hidden incentives for physicians, product placements in media presentations, and alleged payoffs to relatives of people who commit crimes under the influence of specific products. All this makes it difficult to gather statistics about the effects of legal drugs. A few specific court cases have exposed instances where heinous crimes were committed under the influence of drugs, and also how research data by pharmaceutical firms has systematically been kept from public release.

Right now, worldwide, nobody has comprehensive data which could conclusively and finally prove the case against legal psychoactive drugs. This is because no company, foundation, or government has been willing or able to put forth the massive amount of funding needed for absolute proof. In other words, the relevant data has been suppressed. Therefore we are all forced to draw conclusions based on incomplete data.

A systematic review of psychiatric papers publicly released as of 1998 uncovered many serious problems with original data on legal drugs when considered from a scientific standpoint. These papers are filled with unsubstantiated conjectures, incomplete data sets, undefined terms, and vague conclusions. The working mechanisms of many drugs are not actually stated, and apparently are not known by anyone. Yet these papers formed the basis for the widespread use of several pharmaceutical products.

This alone exposes one popular concept about legal drugs as a lie. It cannot be said for certain that some people have a "chemical imbalance" that can be corrected by specific drugs. At best, this statement and others like it can only be applied to a limited extent nutritionally. Many widely used pharmaceutical products literally cannot be evaluated according to this criterion.

Violent deaths associated with certain drugs, especially those in the SSRI class, are a special problem. These have usually been known to happen either shortly after a drug prescription was started, or upon sudden discontinuance of the drug. We know this from several high-profile violent episodes, including school shootings, where data was available. These types of crimes were nearly non-existent before legal psychoactive drugs became so prevalent. Due to the fact that partial data shows some cases where crimes happened upon sudden discontinuance of drugs, a popular idea arises that these drugs are necessary to prevent violence. Deep and complete statistical studies are needed to prove what many people involved with these cases already know, which is that everyone involved would have been much better off if drugs had not been a factor in the first place. But there is no funding available for such studies.

Whenever someone becomes addicted to any drug, it is a natural human reaction to justify its use. Since drugs have a tendency to disable many mental processes, some truly bizarre justifications can result. With incomplete data, wild conjectures, and obvious special interests involved, the debate over many legal drugs quickly becomes political and impossible to satisfactorily resolve.

What we can do, as perhaps an interim step, is consistently demand more data. Let's get some comprehensive studies funded. Meanwhile, we would do well to rely on one stable datum. Psychoactive drugs limit human abilities and cause undesirable physical effects. On that basis alone, we can reasonably advocate avoiding their use and overcome some of the suppression associated with drugs.

10:23 am: Tme Dynamics
It has been some time since i posted an entry here. We could say that "time and the perception of time are two very different things."

Following is an excerpt from a note posted to a group that is attempting to form a scientific research community. Part of their work involves research into gravity. This brings us into the study of time dynamics, because gravity appears to operate instantaneously and that creates huge puzzles.

There is excellent material about time perception in the writings of Chinese philosopher Chuang Tze, dating back to the late 500s BC. These can be useful guidelines for discussion of this topic. I got to read this material, some of it in the original language, while in college during the early 70s.

We might consider an interesting possibility that i have called "Time Domains". This is a theory that time is different in each domain of space. Thus, the only absolute time would be that of the One who created all universes. All other time domains are essentially frameworks for whatever consciousness is in each domain. Some beings might be conscious of only part of a local domain, which is why some religions have come up with a concept called "eternal punishment". At low levels of consciousness such as apathy, everything can seem to be lasting an eternity, while paradoxically little movement of the being's physical manifestation can be detected. At higher levels of consciousness, among beings we might call "angels", operation in multiple time domains may be occurring. Therefore we would need to consider possible relationships between levels of consciousness and ability to operate within and among time domains.

This means that we might indeed be able to use inertial propulsion to get to any point in space in a manner that subjectively appears to be instantaneous.

However, getting to WHEN you want to be there might be a different problem altogether.

Also we can refer to two books, part of a series of five, by Buddhist teacher Tarthang Tulku. The first relevant volume is "Dynamics of Time and Space". In these works, the author is moving somewhat beyond the basic considerations of Chuang Tzu, while essentially incorporating them, and into a geometry that has some interesting possible parallels with Synergetics.



So what happened to all my time during the past six weeks, when no postings happened? Quite a bit. It felt like traveling through several universes. There have been many performances, meetings with friends, and miracles. Also paradoxically i've enjoyed a lot of time alone.

One of the miracles was finding an affordable place to stay in town. That helps with getting to substitute teaching assignments, and there have been many of those. Most were at one particular junior high school, where recently someone tried to poison a substitute teacher. She told me that if she had taken her usual medications that day, she would not have lived. Fortunately she was taken to the local emergency room and recovered quickly.

Assaults on teachers are only a symptom of a much larger problem. In American education now everyone is being pressured by federal laws and local interpretations of these laws to "make sure students learn certain key materials". This creates tremendous pressures on teachers and students. Few people are satisfied with the current situation anywhere in the USA. There simply is not enough time to cover the essential material, and provide a warm, human educational experience at the same time.

Alternatives have been found. The past couple of weeks have involved intense journeys to the Denver area, Southern Colorado, and Ft. Collins. In order to keep this post from growing too long, here are some relevant web references:

http://www.endtimesscrollsdelivered.com especially the initial material entitled "Istmas"
http://www.MadeByKids.org

Thanks, readers, for your patience! That's another aspect of Applied Time Dynamics.

Current Location: Alterity House

Current Mood: relaxed

Current Music: InTuneWithSpirit Internet radio

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05:10 pm: Regeneration
At the Synergetics Workshop back in June, one conversational thread kept coming up.  It becomes more relevant every day.

We all keep hearing this idea of "sustainability".  That term is used to describe an ideal in opposition to our current society.  It mainly is used in relation to how we use energy, because it is becoming painfully obvious that we cannot sustain current energy consumption patterns for much longer.  Our country in particular is beginning to feel constriction and distress.

Several people at the workshop noticed that Buckminster Fuller didn't use that term.  It is not in the index of Synergetics.  Instead, you will often see the phrase "eternally regenerative Universe."

This is significant.  Observations of nature will show that nothing stays sustained in one state for very long.  And if something is not growing, it's decaying.  Whatever feeds on decay grows whenever something is not increasing.

In the United States, this has meant increasing levels of debt, and impossible situations arising for many who have gotten caught in endless debt cycles.  Some types of beings who feed on decay and accelerate its course are bankers and terrorists.  Because of the way this has all evolved, most of us are not in a position to end our dependence on certain energy sources that are linked to terrorism.  Bankers were instrumental in setting up that system.

Regeneration is the only possible answer now.  At this time of year, we celebrate regeneration, but most of us know little about it.  Instead, we were trained to connect winter celebrations with the kind of mindless consumption that got us into this mess in the first place.  Now we all need to step back and look at what regeneration really means -- individually and collectively.

Now i'm going off to the Plains Hotel, and regenerate myself by playing steel guitar with a bunch of nice people.

02:42 pm: Recognition
Today, was listening to the local country station while driving around.  The announcer said, "Today our program is dedicated to people in dangerous occupations.  Firefighters, oil rig workers, bomb squad members, and substitute teachers."

It's always nice to get some recognition...

04:41 pm: Survival Anonymous
Walking into a classroom at random somewhere in the district, and hearing a couple of students saying something about me to the others, is always an interesting experience.  Sort of like being a celebrity.  Yet on a larger scale, celebrity culture is one of the worst aspects of current worldwide environmental and artistic devastation.

We live in so many paradoxes.  Another one is the interface between life and death.  Recently a good friend had to see death firsthand, in an unusually dramatic way.  We're all trying to handle that.  So we decided we're "Survival Anonymous" -- those who are surviving in spite of every possible threat.

There's an awful lot to think about now.  I have to change many things in my life very soon in order to continue surviving.  Have no idea where any of that may lead.

For you who have been reading this blog, and perhaps waiting through those overly long intervals between posts, here's a special gift.  It's not much, but i want to acknowledge you.  This is a direct link to downloading an MP3 of the newly released song "Air Trick".  It's the only song common to both "Riding Through a Rainbow" and "Breathe!"  http://www.biblicalbards.org/music/AirTrick.mp3 This link is only being given out here on this page, and nowhere else.

Please let me know how it works, and if you like the song.  And thanks for reading!

11:18 am: Hospitality
Was going to write about something else, but this came up.

It doesn't take much to keep this music & teaching work going. Some food, some gas, and make sure a few bills get paid, and everything is fine. One thing that has worked very well in the past, has been "couch-surfing". That's been part of my life since the 70s, and often i have hosted people wherever i have lived. In fact i belong to an organization that was started after World War II in Denmark, that is devoted to international host/guest exchanges. It's called SERVAS. Their American membership has been steadily declining in recent years.

I noticed a general decline in hospitality right after 9/11. We all got spooked by that disaster. In fact i didn't write anything for 3 months afterwards. (Many other writers have said the same thing.) Americans got a lot more suspicious of everyone, including people who are genuinely trying to help others.

The type of music i do has always been oriented to creating a higher consciousness, or a better world. As such, it's not very well supported in our society right now. But, by staying with friends, clients, and true liberals while on tour, everyone got by ok.

Doing that sort of thing has gotten extremely difficult. I just had to cancel out of some events on a planned tour of the East Coast that was supposed to go on all month. It was getting impossible to find places to stay, and that was the biggest problem. With the tiny amounts of money typically made on CD sales at events, it's absolutely necessary to find trade-work places to stay. Motels must be used sparingly if at all. In this case, event organizers were not able to find anything. It became clear that going on the tour as originally scheduled would have been extremely dangerous.

This decline in hospitality is dangerous for our whole country. If you look at history, most civilizations have included it as a high virtue. In some places and times, people would even host known enemies of their own group! In Dante's Inferno, the lowest circle of Hell was partly reserved for people who abused guests. Let's think about that. What could it mean for America, if so many people keep away from this vital part of life and civilization?

04:13 pm: Contemporary Human Sacrifice
Common enough scenario -- a family has a 14 year old boy getting into trouble sometimes. He doesn't seem to hear anything that anyone says to him. He's off in his own little world.

Also common at this time -- law enforcement officials, psychologists, and clergy all agree that "he has to be put on medications so that the rest of you can function as a family."

Let's take that one apart. These harmless sounding medications are, in fact, too often deadly. Some of them have definitely caused suicides and murders, to a point where even the US Government, which is mostly run by pharmaceutical firms right now, has to put warnings on certain packages. Even when these drugs seem to be all right, they all have one thing in common. They take every one who uses them at least partially out of this world. It could be said that any time someone takes a psychiatric drug, they are essentially stuck at whatever point of development they were at, until they quit drugs. And some people never quit -- i know too many my age who are still using.

Maybe it could be worse. Some people are certainly trying to make it so, by either requiring the use of drugs or making committment procedures to mental hospitals much easier.

My sister is fighting part of the battle. Go to her web site, click and buy an excellent comic book on this subject. It's called "Loony Bin Chronicles" and it really hits hard. Every teacher, police officer, and politician should read it. So get a copy for each of them. Her site address is: http://www.aliententacles.com

11:22 am: Son of the Return of Sicko, Part II
Probably the number one question coming up about all this Tesla-related technology is, "Does any of it work?" That's always a tough one. As in so many areas of life, the answer is "Yes and no." Power generation is still the most difficult area. Transportation modifications are a mixed bag. Gravity control can be considered experimental. One area is working very well, and many excellent products are currently available: health care.

Shortly before coming to the conference, got to see the movie "Sicko" with a good friend. The movie was so good, he was willing to see it again! Moore brought out a number of points about the American health care system which need to be discussed widely.

Let's look at the case of my illness during the recent ExtraOrdinary Technology Conference. The patient arrived by bus and was already experiencing symptoms the evening before the conference began while checking into the hotel. By the next morning, the patient could barely move, and stayed in the room most of the day hoping to get better while doing computer work and eating little besides vitamins. Next morning, the condition had not changed much.

At this point, one would have to see a doctor, right? In this case that was not exactly possible. Someone with no health insurance in such a situation in a strange city has almost no options. The only known possibility would have been an emergency room. There, a person would wait many hours to be seen, surrounded by chaos and probably becoming more ill. Even with health insurance, the available options would have been difficult, in some cases involving immediate payment for services with hopes of possibly getting reimbursement months later after many hours of wrangling with unhappy bureaucrats. Since the infection was obviously viral there would be no actual treatment that could be administered anyway. All that could be done under the best of circumstances would include prescription painkillers along with recommendations for bed rest and plenty of fluids.

Instead, i went to the conference. A few key people were informed of the situation. First, some electrically charged water was provided. The tasks of the evening were accomplished.

Friday, the patient took a short nap under an Orgone Blanket and later was honored to sit between two electric plates of a Multi-Wave Oscillator, while continuing to consume the charged water. All of the day's required work was accomplished between several naps. One person recommended exposing some skin to the sun for vitamin D production. This apparently helped a lot.

On Saturday the infection had moved and pain was more intense. Appetite was gone. A sample of a chelated supplement provided by one of the speakers was consumed, and it seemed to help a lot. Pain diminished during the day, and again all the work required was done. It was necessary to stay up fairly late that evening doing important networking.

Sunday's work load was fairly light, and the pain was almost completely gone during the morning. In the mid afternoon there was a gradual decrease of energy, to a point where it became impossible to work any more. Severe and painful swelling in the upper jaw developed after eating some lunch. Eventually, a treatment with a European electromagnetic wave machine was given. Within an hour the swelling went down and a sufficient level of personal energy returned.

The point of describing all this is to show that Moore's points in the movie can be extended in this way. Health freedom is necessary along with finding a way to guarantee basic access. Given America's current political situation, we are likely to get a compromise system with profit guarantees for pharmaceutical companies. That won't work. Any system based on medicine as currently practiced by American Medical Association members would lead to something worse than the worst-case scenarios described by anti-socialists. We could easily get into a situation where drugs are not just prescribed, but required. People with some conditions that cannot be treated with drugs might be systematically denied any care by government mandates. This is actually happening in England right now. Unexpected bottlenecks, meaning long waits for treatment, could develop anywhere. Canadians have to deal with that problem.

We have at our hands incredibly cheap and effective therapies that have been developed over a period of many years. Some of these were originally researched and developed by Nikola Tesla, who was by all accounts an extraordinarily healthy individual. Some of the people who developed these therapies have been terribly persecuted, and others have managed to put them into limited use by being extremely cautious. Workable therapies have been demonstrated at many conferences, including Global Sciences, International Tesla Society, and ExtraOrdinary Technology since 1983. Extensive video documentation is available through TeslaTech www.teslatech.info

With health freedom in place, health care costs will definitely go down. People who would be hurt by this include insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, for-profit health delivery corporations, and their dependents. We can hope that the profits already made by these entities would be sufficient to carry them through a transition to more enlightened health care.

Please copy this essay and circulate it widely, along with contact information:

Michael Riversong
P.O. Box 2776
Cheyenne, Wyoming 82003
healthcare@teslaacademy.info

05:56 am: ExtraOrdinary Technology -- Personal View
This conference has become the pivot point of each year. I do a lot of work helping out in various ways. Many people who put on the event and attend are now old friends, some dating all the way back to the first International Tesla Society Symposium in 1984. We're all growing old together now.

An occupational hazard associated with being an inventor in America is suppression. Everyone seems to know some stories about visits by "Men In Black" (MIB) and injustices carried out against inventors. And the situation seems to be much worse in other countries. For example, a set of photographs of an invention recently sent from Honduras reportedly included armed guards in the background.

I have noticed the worst suppression coming from people closest to an inventor. That's certainly been the case with Paul Pantone, who is currently being held with little possibility of release in the Utah State Mental Hospital. There was a lot of dicussion about his case during the conference. Certainly his being there is a serious travesty of justice. But a big part of the reason why he is there has to do with angry investors and hostile relatives. MIBs were the least of his problems.

An aspect of this needing to be addressed, is that circulating such stories is in itself damaging. Noticed one young man doing that several times on Friday. Eventually told him it was not ok to do that, and expanded on that statement before one of the lectures on Saturday. We need to spend our precious time passing on news that will directly help people, and there's plenty!

Reducing suppression requires several factors. People need to be educated on how it really works, particularly how it can be manifested by others in the environment who are pretending to help. Bonding together into healthy communities is vital. Yes, this may mean some personal sacrifice and balancing with the needs of others. The day of the lone inventor is now long gone, if it ever existed at all. Many of the most successful presenters at this conference either have large families on their side, or are working in some way with a community.

Tesla Tech www.teslatech.info is in itself a community. One good thing about it is that people can get involved on many levels, according to abilities, wealth, and available time. Members are literally scattered throughout the world. In fact i have spoken with conference attendees from the Netherlands and Canada, among other places. This brings up an important point. If a sufficiently large number of people know about how these new technologies work, there is no way the MIBs, governments, or energy companies can possibly stop the development of more efficient energy sources and other such enhancements to life on this planet.

06:07 am: Best Minds on the Planet, Part 2
Some people collect porcelain, others collect baseball cards. I collect no-drive days. Travelling this much, having a place to stay where it's not necessary to start up a car at all for a day or two has been priceless. At the Northeast Permaculture Convergence near Ithaca, New York, this was the case.

Of course the past few days have been much more than that. As had happened two weeks ago in Oswego, some of the best minds on this planet converged here. By comparison, this group was much more diverse. We had men and women of all ages and several races. Child care was provided.

This event was designed in a different way compared to most conferences. The majority of weekend events are usually scheduled to the wall. Here, we had many concurrent sessions, which are also a feature of many conferences. On Friday and Saturday, schedule structure was relatively normal, with sessions for everyone, breakout discussion sessions, and presentations. During Sunday, however, much of the day was left open for events to be determined during the conference. In other words, everyone had the opportunity to set up a session for that early morning and afternoon.

Permaculture is about much more than farming. In order to be a place where people are happy, a community needs many kinds of people linked together. This includes musicians and other artists. That's why i was here. In fact all of my books fit into this movement, and i've been working with various aspects of permaculture since the beginning of my first marriage in 1978. "Design Ecology" directly addresses building techniques and synergy necessary for functioning permaculture communities. "Wheel of Occupations", which is available for free download through the Tesla Academy web site http://www.teslaacademy.info is about how to create a balanced economy where nobody feels exploited. "Harmonic Chemistry" and "Fundamentals of Geobiology" go into technological ideas that are useful in the process of developing ecologically sane communities. All my work with Tesla related research, which now mainly consists of scattered bits of documentation, covers technologies which ideally could be cheaply adopted by permaculture communities.

A pioneering spirit prevailed throughout the Convergence. Results are much more important than qualifications. Have you managed to keep your crops from getting eaten on the ground, without putting toxic substances there? Are the people in your community able to live without burdens of debt and overwork? Do artistic productions truly inspire everyone to do high quality work? Is everyone properly fed?

At the Convergence, our little temporary community worked well. We had abundant healthy food cooked by enthusiastic volunteers. The Saturday night party with two local bands was absolutely beautiful. Lots of learning took place in group presentations and many private conversations. All the children were safe and happy.

Many photos from the Synergetics Workshop and a very few from this Convergence have been uploaded to the Photobucket site now. That link is http://s93.photobucket.com/albums/l62/mriversong/ Also 2 new podcasts have been uploaded to the Tesla Academy site, on Synergetics and Permaculture.

This Convergence was put on by the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute, PO Box 54 Ithaca NY 14850 phone 303-815-3535. They're delivering a Permaculture Design Certification August 3 - 19, and i strongly encourage anyone with interests in this field to sign up -- it will be worth every penny. Having met the instructors, i know they will be knowledgable and competent. Web site: http://www.fingerlakespermaculture.org

07:52 am: Beautiful Portland
This is a wonderful city. It's modular, scattered around peninsulas, islands, and the mainland. Downtown is one of the modules, on its own peninsula. It's possible to be there indefinitely without seeing much of Corporate America. Lots of people, of all ages, walking around day and night. Lively nightlife. Charming old buildings and squares. Good selection of independent stores. Always, seagulls flying around and the presence of the Atlantic Ocean. During the time here, got to veg out on the beach twice with an old friend.

The economic situation is difficult and complicated. Mostly i've been meeting young people, from about 23 - 30. Many gave up looking for work a long time ago and are getting by however they can. Day labor places are squeezing people out, according to one person i met at the laundromat. (Oh, and the laundromat uses solar energy.) And those who have jobs and homes are sometimes in worse shape. It's crazy here! Some normal, hard-working people around here are getting by with dumpster diving & worse. The good news is, that ecological ways of doing things are being developed by many groups.

Friday night & Sunday the Tesla Academy workshop went well. Had a number of wonderful people. This group was primarily interested in the social ethics involved with getting new technologies developed. Very admirable! We talked a lot about the importance of raising spiritual consciousness. Also had a nice jam session at one point, to demonstrate how spontaneous music can arise. The nuts & bolts of doing research were not a big concern. None of the people involved had any space to do research anyway -- not even a garage. Buildings tend to be smaller than average here. One subgroup involved with the workshop was doing permaculture in a small town about 75 miles north of here.

In Utica New York, where i now have some connections and will be returning today, the situation is very different. There are almost no jobs to be had, but they do have an economic development authority that's at least willing to acknowledge there's a problem. Utica's greatest asset now is an abundance of abandoned buildings, including houses, factories, and storefronts. Plenty of space to do research. There are 5 (!) higher education institutions in the area. Apparently many people are surviving by being "perpetual students". However, with all that there are few places where young people can meet at random as there are here in Portland, so that's something needing to be changed.

It may be possible to start up a research group around Utica, and have it linked to many other groups. With the abundance of space available, many possibilities come to mind. I've started an email discussion list which you are welcome to join, to facilitate putting this together, called Tesla Community. You can join through tesla_community@yahoogroups.com

While in the Utica area i will be staying at the Shawangunk Nature Preserve. The place is huge, and rules designed to preserve the forest are well enforced. They often host homeschool groups, which is how i found out about them. Of course i strongly encourage people to contribute. Their web site is:
http://www.shawangunknaturepreserve.com/

03:29 pm: Best Minds on the Planet
Last week in Lancaster it got so hot i was wondering where one could sign up to be an aborigine. You know, one of those people who has a right to wear nothing but a loincloth.

Eventually it rained so that was good. Drove up to Oswego for the Synergetics Workshop. That was an awesome event! Each of the ~30 people there was capable of doing a great presentation in his/her own right. We spent much of the time building models, using a process where first a grid was made and then pieces were cut along certain lines. Then we assembled the pieces into basic modules. All this is referenced in Section 900 of Synergetics, Modelability.

There was some time after sessions for Synergetics lore. Quite a bit is floating around. Some had direct connections to Buckminster Fuller, and others knew people close to him. So that was all fun & informative.

It's going to take a while to integrate everything that happened over the weekend. As it turns out, i am apparently the only link between inventors researching Nikola Tesla's work, and the Synergetics community. It is a huge responsibility, and i pray that this will be done in the proper manner.

05:39 pm: Springfield & onward
Springfield is not quite what you would expect.

The wise city fathers, including a mayor reported to have "movie-star" hair, are desperately trying to tie into "The Simpsons". They think that tourism will make their fair city into an ideal place.

In order to do all that, they have to get rid of two pesky little problems -- lower-class unattractive neighborhoods and homeless people.

As is happening in many other American cities, lower-income families sometimes lose their homes. In Springfield, some of these homes end up being abandoned. Eventually the city bulldozes them, since they don't facilitate tourism in any way. Meanwhile, some of the homeless people would be ready, able and willing to fix up these places but there's no way they can do that. And the city doesn't have any way to make the homeless disappear, so it's just frustrating all around. As one writer put it, "It seems the blue tarp is our city flag these days."

Found out about a poet named Vachel Lindsay who lived there in the early 20th Century. He's now a celebrity, and exploited to some degree by tourism promoters, but at the time the city fathers used to think of him as a royal pain. And now, people who currently think like him, who truly are living out his dreams, are also considered that way by todays stuff-blinded leaders. Vachel used to travel sometimes a lot like i do -- taking along samples of his art & trading them for places to stay & meals.

There's a magazine published there named after the one Vachel used to publish: "The Village". If you know me well, you will know how significant that title is, and how supremely synchronous that i got to meet people connected with it.

Now i'm in Pennsylvania which is a wonderful place. Have a lot of work to do tomorrow. So many thoughts are rushing around now -- especially things about perceptual systems and how they tie into Synergetic geometry. Next weekend i'm planning to be at the Synergetics workshop in Oswego. Hopefully will capture a lot of pictures there.

Please do keep on praying! And thanks again for reading!

05:03 pm: Games
Have been trying to find a time to post but this month has been extraordinarily busy. So i'm doing this in the last few minutes before setting out on the East Coast tour.

One of my recent substitute assignments was 4 days for an elementary PE teacher. Learned a tremendous amount. Hopefully the new games i did with the students will be useful later on. We did a live-human version of Pac-Man, Pin Soccer, Medic, and Skunk Attack. These are all fun and have a nice level of competition without being obnoxious.

Every game says something about the cultural context it's played in. That's why i won't support football, which emphasizes corporatism, and will support baseball, which emphasizes individual achievement within a community.

Thought a lot about how some people say they hate games altogether. But everyone plays them, and i've observed that unwillingness to play games, such as the attitude i've held at times in my past, is antisocial and in a way destructive. Some people complain about games within relationships, and the fact is they can't be avoided. The only time games can be a negative influence are when somebody refuses to disclose the rules. That's where you will find all the trouble.

Last week i worked with a small group of hard-working students on a field trip. Some would call them "mentally disabled" but i call them "alternatively wired". I found each of these individuals, while having some difficulties with processes normally part of life in our society, had extended perception in one or another area. They are truly valuable people!

For your reference, here are some points in my upcoming schedule:

June 9 - 10 Brethren Church conference in Ft. Scott, Kansas
June 12 - 13 stopover in Springfield, Illinois
June 17 Church of the Brethren service in Leola, Pennsylvania, near Lancaster
June 23 - 24 Synergetics Workshop in Oswego, New York
June 25 - 26 working at a nature preserve near Rome, New York
June 29 - July 1 doing Tesla Research Basics class in Portland, Maine

If you're near any of these events, let me know. After July 1 things are not yet scheduled. There may be some things happening in Massachusetts, New Jersey, or New York. Then i get to return home and prepare for the ExtraOrdinary Technology conference in Salt Lake City the last weekend of July.

05:03 pm: Irony for Fun & Profit
A couple of Sundays ago i had a letter to the editor published in the local paper. It was about how a school shooting could happen here because of all the students who are on psychiatric drugs in our town. One juvenile facility automatically puts everyone there on a whole chemical soup, despite the fact that it's illegal for most of those to be given to anyone under 18. So, very much an anti-psych letter.

Of course, the next day i was called to substitute for a high school psychology teacher.

At one point a school staff member came into one of the classes and took notes. Would love to know what that was about.

On most of my assignments lately there's been some excuse to play the harp for one or more classes. I like doing that. It exposes students to a type of music they would never hear otherwise. And oddly enough it relates to many types of lessons taught in schools:

Art
Story Time
Math (bit of a stretch but sometimes it helps)
Science (music is more like the way the universe works than anything else we know)
Tutorial (students are supposed to read quietly for a while but rarely do it)
Health (this is what music that's good for you sounds like)
English / Language Arts / Drama (ancient tradition)

Have no idea where any of this is going. At this point, it appears that most of the junior high students here are aware of this work. If marriage ever comes back in style, maybe there will be some business in the future...

10:36 am: Current Events
Substitute assignments over the past few days have been especially rewarding, all at the Junior High level. Opportunities to speak with individual students arise in many ways. Sometimes it is necessary to begin a conversation with, "You are not in trouble right now." It's interesting how so many students are afraid to have conversations with teachers. That's an indicator of how an educational system is working.

Revisions have been made to the Cheyenne Logos Christian Academy site, to reflect current realities. That's been a joy as well. Found out that some people have actually been reading articles there.
http://home.earthlink.net/~chylogos

In recent weeks, i've gotten to do a number of performances in a new context, called "Restless Horizon". Found someone who is an excellent singer, and we're doing a lot of country and easy listening songs together. So far that's all been at nursing homes and assisted living developments, where especially appreciative audiences can be found. Hopefully we will do some photos soon & have a web site for that.

Last night i wrote this poem at the Serendipity Poets reading:

TROUBLED LONER

We might see his lonely time
after he breaks down.

When a campus is littered
with dead bodies
the time is too late.
Then it is only time
for newspapers and cameras.

There is a right time for you
and him.
One can extend a hand
and be a friend
and give something,
anything
even when you're not a superficial hedonistic
rich student.

Be a student of Life.
Gather flowers and Wisdom.
Give freely
and your neighborhood Troubled Loner
won't be so lonely any more
and won't make it
into the newspapers.

Your gifts
will then come back
at the right time
many times.