November 17, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

Canberra – the Australian wine region you need to know

As Australia’s capital, Canberra may have a high proportion of public servants and politicians, but when it comes to food and wine, it is anything but boring. Thanks to top class Australian wineries as Clonakilla (Shiraz Viognier) and Helm (Premium Riesling), our nation’s capital has justifiably taken its place alongside Australia’s best growing regions for wine. But two wineries does not a region make, as the Wine Wankers recently discovered when we visited Australia’s Capital of Wine.

Wine has been produced in Canberra for more than 160 years, but it’s only in the past 40 years the region has truly shined. If cool climate, food friendly styles are what you crave, you’ve come to the right place. Riesling, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and of course Shiraz Viognier blends all shine.

Yes – Canberra wine is exciting.

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November 17, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

Mother Earth is Giving Us a Wake-up Call

We are getting a wake-up call from Mother Earth. It is called climate change. The number of Polar bears is declining by forty percent. This was determined by a study linking the Polar bear population and climate change.

Why, you ask? Well, the answer is simple. Polar bears rely on ice to have access to the seals which are their main food source. They move from ice flow to ice flow. Ice is also used for resting and breeding. The problem is that the ice is melting. As ice melts, we must understand that it becomes more and more difficult to find ice.

So, realistically, the polar bears are finding less ice to feed from, to breed on and to rest on. This is why the polar bear population is declining rather rapidly. As of 2010, according to an article published in Ecological Applications, there are now only 900 polar bears. It is such a sad thing.

Polar Bear cubs need our help with climate change.

We have an urgent call to fix climate control. It is the main reason we are losing our polar bears. Close your eyes, now imagine a world without bears, without any of our wild animals. No bears, big cats, elephants, kangaroos, antelope, or rhinos. We are getting way to close to this being our reality. Now, we need to speak up and demand global action.

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Now, on the other hand, we are making some success in slowing the decline of our tiger population. We have had success even where tiger habitats span national boundaries. India and Nepal have worked together with WWF, World Wildlife Fund, to increase the population of tigers. Their goal is to double the population by 2022.

They are using camera trap images to confirm that tigers use three forested wildlife corridors that provide vital links between protected areas across both sides of the international borders.

Bangladesh has hosted the Second Conference of the Global Tiger Recovery Program. They will do a population count in 2016. So this news is good but there is much to do. You could go overseas and help. You could join the WWF and donate money to save the wild animals. You could work within your own communities to improve climate change. Action is needed. Voices need to be raised to our elected officials here in America.

This world belongs to each and everyone of us. That includes you and I. It also includes our neighbors and our communities. And it includes the animals we share the planet with.

Wild Tigers at Play

November 16, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

Checking in with a Prodigy

Some of you may remember that I blogged about the drummer Avery a couple of years ago. He’s eight now, and keeping up with KISS. This is an impressive child with a bright future.

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November 15, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

No Good War: No Bad Peace

Never has there been a truer statement. Hugs, Barbara

Counter Information

By Eric Margolis

November 15, 2014 “ICH” – A full century after World War I we still cannot understand how generals sent so many soldiers to be slaughtered. Ten million soldiers died on all sides; millions more were left maimed or shell shocked. Seven million civilians died. 20 million horses died.

The image we have of hapless soldiers being forced to climb out of their sodden trenches and attack across a hellish no-man’s land pock-marked by water-filled shell holes, deep mud, thickets of barbed wire and rotten bodies is quite accurate for the Western Front. Waiting for them were quick-firing guns, heavy artillery, the greatest killer or all – machine guns – and, later, poison or burning gases, and flamethrowers.

How could the generals of that era have been stupid enough to send waves and waves of their soldiers to almost certain death? Trench warfare in the West…

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November 15, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

Love and Peace Instead of War

Mother Teresa stated, ” Works of love are always works of peace.”

When and where there is God, there is peace. He/she pours their love for us and peace flows over us and within us. Divine love always pours joy and peace into our hearts. My prayer is to be led from despair to hope, from fear to trust, from hate to love, and from war to peace. Our world, our universe is Peace, Peace, Peace.

It cannot exist with war, hate and violence. Every day, we make choices about the world we create around us.

We all have the right to be at peace and happy. We were created to have this life of peace. We can each have peace in our world without causing pain or suffering to others. We each have a responsibility to use what we have been given to create peace. There is no other higher pleasure than to create peace and have that peace in your life create a ripple effect and flow out to touch others in positive ways.

We need to love one another as The One loves each of us. Accepting that love and using it to bring peace into your life will bring peace to those around you. As they feel covered and immersed in peace, it will flow out of their lives and will touch an ever larger group of people. It is a beautiful thing to see and experience.

Peace Plea

Please, protect my child.
Please, protect other mothers’ children.
Please, give me peace.
Please, give other mothers peace.
Please, give the world peace and justice.
This is the peace only you can give.”

————Karen Lavin

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Bloggers 4 Peace

November 15, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

My Message in a Bottle

To whomever finds my message:

I have filled this bottle with Love, Peace, Patience, Compassion, Empathy, Gratitude, Beauty, Forgiveness and Kindness.

I believe that when we sow the seed of these ideas with words and plant them in the soil of life and add water and sunlight, we can grow Peace. Peace is the trunk of the Tree of Life.

If, every day, every person performed one Peaceful act, shared beauty with one other person, shared forgiveness with one who needs it, then we would have the beginnings of the Peace we need.

Everyday that you touch someone else with kindness, with compassion and peace, you make an imprint on their heart and on their soul that will gradual help them find their way to a life lived in peaceful harmony with everyone in the world.

This could erase racism, sexism, ageism, all forms of bigotry and the violence that comes from it.

There are people who are haters, and bullies. These people need our kindness and empathy perhaps more than other people, because bullying comes from insecurity and troubled minds and the inability to know how to be kind.

Statistically, 97% of American families are dysfunctional to some degree. But what I know and have experienced is that with self-compassion, self-understanding, self-love, everyone can learn to grow beyond what traumatized or hurt them, and continue on their way to a life filled with kindness and peace.

You may know someone who has had a very difficult life, and you can make a difference in their life by living your peace, your empathy, your forgiveness, your gratitude, and they can learn from your example and from living within the light of your being.

After a while, someone who carries darkness and hatred and negativity and violence within themselves can be changed by the daily dose of gratitude, love, acceptance, peace, empathy, and kindness that touches their heart and soul even if they don’t want it to. These gifts are much stronger than the negativity within any soul.

Please open my bottle and spread the contents around. You won’t be sorry.

May peace fill all of your lives.

Namaste,

Barbara

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Artists4Peace

November 14, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

To Heal the Whole

Let us be united,

Let us speak in harmony;

Let our minds apprehend alike.

Common be our prayer;

Common be the end of our assembly;

Common be our resolution;

Common be our deliberations.

Alike be our feelings;

Unified be our hearts,

Common be our intentions;

Perfect be our unity. —From the Rig Veda, Hindu scripture

This is not thinking about humans being carbon copies of each other but that we all unify around love, kindness, compassion, gratitude and forgiveness. No matter what country you live in or what religion or spiritual path you follow, no matter your skin color, we are all one. Our planet is not divided. It is whole and beautiful, though damaged due to our not being good stewards. It is us who have divided, sectioned off, and formed boundaries out of human blood. For this is a big part of what war accomplishes.

We are in a time of great imbalance on our planet, and again we have no other planet. Mother Earth is reflecting the imbalance within ourselves. We need to heal humankind. There is no one who does not have their own inner traumas and psychological problems. We are not separate from this wonderful planet. We are totally part of the living Earth, and we must recognize that isolated health is an illusion. Healing ourselves and working to resolve the contradictions in the human-Earth ecology is the same work. And it is work, hope and love that will bring us to success.

All healing involves making whole again. For many people who have lived with violence or trauma, they feel it is just them and the rest of the world is whole and mentally healthy. I have heard this many hundreds of times from patients. This leads them to feel marginalized and not part of the mainstream. In truth, we all need healing of one sort or another. We all need each other.

All healing involves making ourselves and our world whole again. We need to resolve the contradictions that exist between self and other, body and spirit, mind and nature.

We need to relearn that we belong to the whole. We need to know that we are not encapsulated, self-enclosed entities, but we are fields of energy integrated with the environment.

Everything we do transforms and reshapes the world. Because our actions can destroy, they can also heal. There is no distinction between our physical lives and the work of our spirits.

WeCon

Like it or not, we are all one beautiful, intelligent species

Mother Earth

November 13, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

Fortunate Son

This is America and we have Freedom of Speech and that includes Music. There was nothing wrong in Bruce Springsteen singing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Fortunate Son at the Concert for Valor.

If you’re young enough that you don’t remember the Vietnam War, rich kids got to buy their way out of serving their country, while some other kids claimed Conscientious Objector Status or went to Canada to avoid the Draft, but many went to Vietnam when their draft number was up because they thought it was the right thing to do.

Not everyone believes in war.

The conservatives are reacting very stridently and very angrily that Bruce Springsteen chose to sing this song at the Mall on Veterans Day, this past Monday.

I am sharing the song with you, and I am saying that everyone in America has the right to choose whether they serve in the military or not. That’s what America is about — Freedom.

November 13, 2014 by IdealisticRebel

Welcome to Winter

I know, I know — Winter doesn’t start until the Winter Solstice.

But here in Ohio, there’s snow on the ground and it never got about Freezing all day.

I have two things to say about that:

First, “brrrrrrr”

And second, this:

From Neptune’s Daughter is a 1949 musical romantic comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starring Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalbán, Betty Garrett, Keenan Wynn, Xavier Cuga