Stop

Don't buy my book Where The Birds of Eden Sing for 72 hours.

It is going into revision.

I am so embarrassed to find so many mistakes, and I had read it umpteen times. But after reading it on Kindle where the font is large and the page has little text I could see the errors. Blame me not jewell, she tells a good story.

Me? Well I can't cut hardiebacker any better than I can proof read. Last night I told Daughter Dear that I would help her tile the wall of the Tiny House she is refurbishing, and she gave me the job of  cutting hardiebacker. (A cement-type water-proof underlayment for tile.) A little tape and thinset fixed my ragged edges, now if I can fix the ragged edges of my manuscript, I'll be a happy camper.

If you have bought it, I apologize. 

This is Going to Be Weird

I'm guilty of it.

I know it, and yet, for some bizarre reason, I forget. 

It's the attitude that runs the show.

Daughter Dear reminded me that our thoughts are a built-in mechanism to tell us if we are on the right track.

Well, well, that's telling. 

If our thoughts run the show, we're in trouble.

We are used to reacting to what we see, hear, or feel. We bounce off reality, or what we think is reality. We jump to conclusions and rail against the injustice of it all.

Take this Covid19 scare, for example. We were driven by fear of getting sick, and of losing our lives. (Well, that's natural.) But, wouldn't it help a bit to focus on what we want instead of what is?

 I remember a teacher telling us to see the banquet table as full.

"But master, the table is empty."

"See it as full."

I can hear you…"Jo, for heaven's sake, don't be a kook. If there is a killer virus out there, it is prudent to protect yourself and those around you."

Yes, indeed, but to run scared and let the propaganda machine drive us into hidey holes without questioning is irresponsible.

Some say the virus isn't as deadly as we have been led to believe.

Can we test that?

Some say that people don't die of anything but Covid19. If a person goes into a hospital with a heart attack and dies—chances are it's labeled as "Killed by Covid19," for they tested positive. I've read that most people, if tested, have the antibodies for a coronavirus. Perhaps they've had a similar virus in the past. So, a large percent of the population would test positive.

Babies are born every day, and I'm sorry, but people die every day. We don't usually follow the numbers. 

But now, death numbers are thrown in our faces daily.

Why?

And where did this social distancing come from anyway?

Yes, wash your hands, keep your hands away from your face. Be aware of distance if someone is sick, disinfect. 

Grocery stores are carefully disinfecting, why can't business stay open? 

And there is unemployment.

The government wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds it. If people aren't working, they aren't paying taxes.

Don't you smell something rotten in Denmark?

Yesterday I noticed how the media wants to keep the word "Killer" in front of our faces. (Oh, heck, it sells.) Now we have "Killer" hornets, and "Killer" white cap mushrooms.

Don't eat any mushrooms growing up in your yard, and get out the bug spray.

I read one blogger this morning who was depressed out of her gourd.

I refuse to go there.

I am grateful for medical science. I remember well the Polio rampage and how thankful we were for the Jonas Salk vaccine. TB used to be a death sentence. They would send TB patients to sanitariums, and they would get better for a while, then relapse and eventually die of the disease. Talk about living in fear. Cough up blood. Whoops.

What I'm not grateful for are FEAR-driven tactics that appear to be good for a few at the expense of the many. 

Have you ever had a feeling that something was amiss, but you're afraid you might be wrong? It concerns me for what if we wait too long to wake up? 

I have been grateful for vaccinations—my kids didn't get the measles or mumps or whooping cough as I did, they did get the Chickenpox before there was a vaccine. And I had a terrible scare with German measles, as my husband got it while I was three-months pregnant. I didn't remember ever having it. I was shot in both arms and legs with Gamma globin (a substance in the blood collected from many people, figuring someone had the antibodies for the three-day measles). All turned out perfect, but it was a worry. Before our time, many babies and children died of Diphtheria, and not anymore. 

However, and I hate to say it, but I'm beginning to wonder if Pharmacia companies have an agenda. What do they want to inject into us? Please don't let it be mercury or zinc or some of those chemical preservatives, or anything that would make us sicker or more susceptible to other invasions? (For which we need another vaccine.) Can we have all vaccines tested by a third party the way they test Cannabis? 

Have you seen The Awakening? *I didn't know an Awakening was happening until a dear reader sent me the video. (See below.) Around the world, especially in cities, people are peacefully assembling to protest the lockdown. One lady said, "Well, is this our choice, "Get the virus or starve to death?" 

People around the world are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. Track the money. "What doesn't seem right?

We can't question—we're afraid to.

So, to go back to my original comment on HOW WE ARE FOCUSING ON THE WRONG THINGS:

Instead of reacting to what is, what is we focus on how we want it to be?

I'm having trouble explaining this, although I know many metaphysical teachers ascribe to this line of thinking. If thought creates—then you begin with a thought. "In the beginning was the word." 

You might say, "Jo, thinking doesn't make it so."

Yes, but the attitude pulls in more of the same. Have a thought, hold it for a minute or so, and it will attract another thought. It's like iron filings pulled to a magnet. What can we do to fix it? Another thought joins it. Well, we can do this…and this, maybe this, until a solution is found. 

Woo-woo? 

Could be, but what if it works?

I'm not a person who's standing on their rooftop amid a flood praying to God to save me while ignoring a boat that comes to the rescue.

I'm going to take it.

Something fun: I wish I had a picture, but I'll have to describe it. A creative family eating out: Two adults and two children had set up a table, complete with a table cloth and settings, and four chairs in the back of a pickup and were having a dinner out. Real civilized opposed to balancing dinner on their laps. They were parked in the middle of an empty mall parking lot that had take-out restaurants along its periphery. Eugene, Oregon.

https://youtu.be/2cmPhUAXsU0 

The Winter the Music Stopped

I can play music in my house, but out there the concerts are canceled, the street musicians are silenced, the Eugene Hult Center of Performing Arts is closed.

All entertainment has stopped—sports events, movies, concerts, restaurants except for drive-thru, Disneyland, festivals, folks dancing…we can’t even collect at the beach, or visit friends, even family outside our little conclave.

We yell “Hi,” across the street.

It’s quiet. We’re on hold. We’re waiting to be shot down by a bug.

Well, that stinks.

This morning I wanted to buy an item from a store that is closed down, but will take orders by appointment. We arranged a meeting. The man appeared behind a drop-down grate, opened the door about four inches, was wearing a mask and latex gloves, took my money through the slot in the grate and gave me my merchandise. I felt like I was doing drug deal—yet all was legitimate.

When will we trust each other again?

One time I watched a movie where the actor Ralph Fiennes’ character, in a concentration camp, was stripped naked, sprayed with water, and allowed to freeze to death while his fellow inmates looked on in horror. I was yelling (silently in the theater), "Rush them! There is more of you than them." (Sunshine 1999)

    

No one did. Each person was afraid for their own life. If one person rushed the Nazis, they would be shot. 

If one person said, "Let's rush them," the rest of the group would hesitate, and it would be a blood bath.

The only way more of them vs. the controllers with power and guns is for people to communicate, to get together, to have a plan, and be willing to stick to it.

Why did I tell you that horrible story?

Because I don’t want us to lose connection with our fellow human beings. I don’t want us to be so afraid for our own hide that we allow authority to the point of ridiculousness. (Hoarding toilet paper?  Well, that’ll save you from the virus.)

This shows that in moments of fear and crisis we don’t think clearly. That was one reason for the Great Depression—a run on the banks. If everybody else is taking their money out, I better too.

Writing this blog post has caused me to think and rethink. What shall I say? And does anyone really care? People have their own thoughts. Should I comment on current conditions? Should I use my years and experience as a benefit?

I’m hoping this lock down and warnings will end up as it did after the 60’s when people were building bomb shelters in their back yards.

I tried to find a cartoon that expressed that situation succinctly. The picture was of a couple who crawled dazed and confused out of their bomb shelter, presumably after a number of years, only to find that their shelter was buried under a landfill.

Beyond the garbage, the rest of the world was playing in the sunshine.

Does this represent some sort of mind set? Ones who think garbage, see garbage? Ones who see the lightness of being, find that?

"Stay at home," they say. "Close your business," they say. "We are protecting you." "You're doing great. Do more of the same." "Wear masks."

Heavens, now I can't even understand the mumbling that comes from behind those masks. 

We can't read people's faces—for a lot of speech is understood by watching the face, and we lip-read a bit even when we don't know we're doing it.

When I heard that You Tube was taking down dissonant voices, I was concerned about censorship, but then YouTube, being a private organization, can monitor their content.  Every kook can sing.

I still hold fast to the idea that we can trust people enough to let them make up their own minds, that people can speak their piece, and that we could sort through the morass. 

Silly me.

That's what they taught me in college, but that was a good old liberal arts school in the olden days.

I also remember the quote from Abraham Lincoln, not the man, just the quote, I'm not that old. "You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."

I trust the ingenuity of the human race. I trust the independent thinkers. Still, I was alarmed at how people fell into lock-step over a "Killer" virus that has about the same death rate as the flu of previous years.

I admit that with all the voices speaking, theorists, epidemiologists, professionals from various walks of life, and doctors with a line of credentials a block-long, have stories to tell, and they all sound credible. Even fair-minded disconcerting people have a hard time telling fact from fiction.

I just deleted a list I had made up of possible scenarios regarding Covid19. It all made my head hurt. No, I think it was more a heart-hurt.

When someone says they haven't been out of their house for a month, I think, don't you have a yard? What's wrong with walking down the street? 

And to close down outdoor spaces is ludicrous. The emissions from our breath floats about three feet, so six feet ought to be safe. Go outside. Bask in the sunshine, enjoy nature's bounty. And look at each other for heaven's sake.

Since this virus scare began, I have tried to relay fears. But what voice do I have compared to billboards that say, “STAY HOME. SAVE A LIFE. It is like being admonished as children, “Clean your plate, there are starving children in Africa.”

I have often written about how our brain is wired to go into fear. That  aspect of the brain protected the human race for millennia. But there is another aspect. FEAR controls us.

I don't know what to make of this, and I'm not an authority, but then they also taught me in college that an expert is just a drip under pressure.

Here is some data worth considering: 

Swiss Propaganda Research

 "The only means to fight the plague is honesty." Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)

Facts about Covid-19

Overview

1.    According to data from the best-studied countries and regions, the lethality of Covid19 is, on average, about 0.2%, which is in the range of a severe influenza (flu) and about twenty times lower than originally assumed by the WHO.

2.    Even in the global "hotspots", the risk of death for the general population of school and working age is typically in the range of a daily car ride to work. The risk was initially overestimated because many people with only mild or no symptoms were not taken into account.

3.    Up to 80% of all test-positive persons remain symptom-free. Even among 70-79 year olds, about 60% remain symptom-free. Over 95% of all persons show mild symptoms at most.

4.    Up to one third of all persons already have a certain background immunity to Covid19 due to contact with previous coronaviruses (i.e. common cold viruses).

5.    The median or average age of the deceased in most countries (including Italy) is over 80 years and only about 1% of the deceased had no serious preconditions. The age and risk profile of deaths thus essentially corresponds to normal mortality.

6.    In most Western countries, 50 to 70% of all extra deaths occurred in nursing homes, which do not benefit from a general lockdown. Moreover, in many cases it is not clear whether these people really died from Covid19 or from extreme stress, fear and loneliness.

7.    Up to 50% of all additional deaths may have been caused not by Covid19, but by the effects of the lockdown, panic and fear. For example, the treatment of heart attacks and strokes decreased by up to 60% because many patients no longer dared to go to hospital.

8.    Even in so-called "Covid19 deaths" it is often not clear whether they died from or with coronavirus (i.e. from underlying diseases) or if they were counted as "presumed cases" and not tested at all. However, official figures usually do not reflect this distinction.

To read the entire report please go to https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/

On March 16, 2020 Darren Schulte wrote in First Opinion,

"We have learned to live with the flu, which can cause up to 80,000 deaths a year in the U.S. and between 300,000 and 650,000 worldwide. It doesn't invoke widespread fear, dread, and hysteria. Life goes on. People go out in public, eat at restaurants, drink in bars, fly in planes, take mass transit, attend sporting events, and congregate in other large indoor settings.

"We cope with it by washing our hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, avoiding close contact with people who are sick and covering coughs and sneezes.”

The Spring That Laughed in Flowers:

The Chickens that Clucked with Eggs

From 5 hens with love,

 And at home I have something to celebrate

Someone is reading my book!

They told me the dog ought to be a Sheltie. 

A Sheltie in Africa?

Well, ok.

I'm tickled that someone is reading Where the Birds of Eden Sing. This book has been long in coming, on the shelf, off the shelf, an act of love, a dream come true, and finally visited by the muses giving it one spark of completion.

Now, if I could get more than one person to read it…

To read more book-talk kindly go to

https://wherethebirdsofedensing.com

(Someone liked it and I posted only last night. Yippee.

Chin up.

Think big.

Go for your dreams.

Don’t let anything stop you.

Protect the little ones.

P.S. A Llama just might have the antibodies we need . How cool is that?