Hey everyone, all over the states, people will be getting together to watch An Inconvenient Truth this Sat.  We want people to become aware about the environmental situation and press congress to ACT in favour of MOTHER EARTH and not their own interests!
here's the flyer for a get together that's being hosted here in Miami! So if you're in the area, go to: http://www.ecoist.com/thetruth.html for more information and to show your support for Mother Earth! And if you're not in the Miami area, then get together your own Inconvenient Truth Screening and pass the knowledge on!

Hello! i've been working for a few months now doing the website for a wonderful eco-company. the company is called Ecoist, and they make handbags, purses, messenger bags, bracelets, belts and even placemats, out of recycled and discontinued candy wrappers. For every purse and bag purchased, a tree is planted through the "Trees for the future" foundation. They are also part of an eco-shopping ring. there are always fabulous sales going on, and it's the styles are beautiful! the bags are made through Fair Trade practice, in Mexico and Peru. they've been a huge hit in Japan! check them out! this is a banner i made. If you're interested in purchasing something from store, write me, and i'll give you a discount code for 10% off.

I've been wanting for a long time to find (or create) some sort of free book trade! well as luck has it, i found one! it's a wonderful website! you join free, and everything is free, except for the postage which is $3.99, which you only pay if you receive a book, not if you send it. put up all your old books for trade, and browse for new ones! i love this site! i just joined! check it out and help feed the "book-streams" of the world! LINK: http://www.bookins.com blessings, Shell

I’ve been reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh - Anger: wisdom for cooling the flames, and i’ve found so many pearls of wisdom. In the book he says we already know much about ourselves and our world, but we need other people to remind us of these things. Some people remind us of the negative, and some of the positive. This books “reminded” me, or clarified in other words, for me some things about anger that i wanted to share. I don’t know if we’re “taught” or if it’s “understood”...but anger is technically thought of as being a “bad thing”. It shouldn’t happen, or if it does, a certain extent is allowable, but passing another point it’s wrong. But in all cases, it’s not looked upon as a desirable, positive thing. I’m not saying it is either, but Thich Nhat Hanh puts it differently. His entire goal through the book is not to suppress or tame our anger, or to stop it, but to simply change our attitudes about it. If we change the way we see anger, perhaps it’ll become more manageable to us. in a paragraph he states: Energy Zone One is anger. Energy Zone Two is mindfulness (awareness or compassion). The practice is to use the energy of mindfulness to recognize and embrace the energy of your anger. You have to do it tenderly, without violence. This is not an act of suppressing our anger. Mindfulness is you and anger is also you, so you shouldn’t transform yourself into a battlefield, one side fighting the other. You should not believe that mindfulness is good and correct, while anger is evil and wrong. You only need to recognize that anger is a negative energy and that mindfulness is a positive one. Then you can use the positive energy in order to take care of the negative one. A little light bulb went on in my head. Now the above paragraph may have been painfully obvious to some people, but i had never had it put that way to me. It’s true, anger comes from ourselves, it is US. Why think of it as evil or bad? I got the picture in my head that anger was just happy, positive energy gone sour. In the book, Thich Nhat Hanh uses the example that if you get a stomachache, you don’t simply throw away your stomach, or call it bad for not being perfect. You tend to it, help it, try to make it feel better (even if it was you who gave your stomach the ache in the first place by stuffing yourself with tons of chocolate or the like...). The same applies to our anger. He calls it our “baby”...we must be tender with it, tend it when it “cries”, help fix it like we would with our stomachache. I’d never thought of it that way. I always assumed anger was due to a lack of self-control, something that i hadn’t fully suppressed yet, and probably never would. I always imaged anger to be a fearful, disgusting beast that would rear it’s head and distort my facial features, lower my voice and compel me to do things i would never dream of doing in a rational state of mind. How refreshing, how enlightening to find that my anger is something natural, human, normal, and easily “fixed” simply by returning to myself when i am angry, breathing deeply, and being honest enough to admit if it is I who have the problem, and not whoever is the subject of my anger. He also states that a wise way to express your anger is simply to say so! (what a novel idea!)...instead of pretending you’re not angry, saying things to hurt the other person, or believe they are to be “punished” for your suffering, the thing to do, once you’ve calmed, perhaps taken some time to yourself, etc...would simply be to, either in a note or verbally, tell the person you are angry, you are hurt..and if the other person at point is willing to listen, then sit and talk about it. This especially applies if it is a family member. Because they are the subject of your love, because you see them more than anyone else, it only makes sense to try and keep those relationships open, with the most amount of communication possible, even if it’s as simple as “i’m angry with you, you’ve hurt me, this is why...”. I don’t know about other people, but sometimes i think that there are phrases or things that are “understood” and don’t need to be said. (how ridiculous of me)...things like “i love you, i’m sorry, i’m angry, i’m happy, you’ve hurt me, i miss you, i can’t be without you”...etc... simple phrases, that i think (or thought) didn’t need verbalization because they were “understood”, “there”...of course i love you, of course i’m happy...i figured actions were enough to express how i felt. And now i realize half the other garbage that comes out of my mouth doesn’t need “verbalization”, and i should really focus on saying these simple phrases that carry so much meaning. In school they teach us to simplify our art. We always start out so complicated, so full of jumble and meaningless things. The teacher sits there and picks away at the things that aren’t necessary, things that are there perhaps because the artist (or I) has gotten attached to them (a certain color, a certain design, a certain phrase)...but that really has nothing to do with the subject. So as i learn to remove the clutter from my art, i should also apply the same to every aspect of my life. Keep it simple! get rid of the clutter of meaningless things. In another section entitled “organic feelings”, Thich Nhat Hanh states: Our practice (of mindfulness) is based on the insight of non-duality. Both our negative feelings and positive feelings are organic and belong to the same reality. So there is no need to fight; we only need to embrace and take care. Therefore, in the Buddhist tradition, meditation does not mean you transform yourself into a battlefield, with the good fighting the evil. This is very important. You may think that you have to combat evil and chase it out of your heart and mind. But this is wrong. The practice is to transform yourself. If you don’t have garbage, you have nothing to use in order to make compost. And if you have no compost, you have nothing to nourish the flower in you. You need the suffering, the afflictions in you. Since they are organic, you know that you can transform them and make good use of them. I love this book. It’s an easy read, it makes TONS of sense. It’s keeping it simple! I really feel inspired by what Thich Nhat Hanh teaches about anger. I recommend the book to anyone, happy or angry people, because there’s a pearl of wisdom for everyone.

I was reading the other day, in Ode, of two Brit's that have invented a concrete canvas. It comes in small packs, light enough for a plane, a truck to carry, can be used in refugee or natural disaster situations. Once the packet is dropped, all that has to be added is water, and then the free-standing ovular-shaped home is ready to be inflated. It can be set up by one person in 40min. Once it has dried, it has a life of 10yrs., can withstand earthquakes and has a good insulation system. i find it truly amazing! check out the website: http://www.concretecanvas.org.uk

i had to do a project in my design honors class in university, and our teacher, a fabulous, thought-provoking man, asked us to design posters (i study graphic design), depicting "pro & con" about guns. well, i'm not very fond of them in the first place, so i my CON poster was much easier than my "pro"..in the end, i really didn't put a lot of effort into the "pro" and seeing as how we had one week left before the end of the quarter, and i already had a "A" i didn't sweat it. but in my research on guns, and popular opinion...i found many more "pro" websites out there...(i only did a weeks worth fo research, so perhaps i didn't dig as deeply as i'd liked) but..one in particular stood out: http://www.stopungunban.org ...the NRA is making a campaign against the efforts of (in my opinion) peace. The UN is proposing a ban on guns, not jsut here, but worldwide (i'm assuming commercially sold). Truly the laws in this country are lax, more in some states than others. There's a video on the site...and i was just slack-jawed at the way that man was speaking. In my incredibly naivete, i truly didn't think people were so backwards STILL! you'd think in this age of technology, and cultural tolerance (although Bush keeps proving me wrong time and time again)...that people would be more tolerant, more accepting of outside cultures, ideas, PEACE...sheesh. So then, trying to see "their" point of view...are guns really that bad? Does the "right to bear arms" give people a moral right to actually carry them? Or is it as Bush said "The constitution is just a piece of paper"...and therefore unimportant and subject to change? is the constitution outdated?? (i think some parts, yes)... Or are these people just stuck in tradition? Do they honestly believe a right would be removed by not allowing guns to be so accessible? i'm asking a lot of a questions i know, i'm spitting them out as they run through my mind...i have many threads, it's hard to clamp down on one...but i like to ask them all, even the stupid questions...because sometimes you find your answers there. But not matter how much i tried to see from their point of view, i really couldn't find a good reason to have guns around anymore! i think recreational hunting is terrible, and i'd love to see a deer, wielding a rifle, go hunt a HUNTER in his own home,a nd let's see how much he likes it. Truly in this society...in this country, which, compared to others, is relatively pretty safe (no matter how much the news and Bush state otherwise....check out The Culture of Fear by: Barry Glasner) i think guns are just so people can feel powerful, macho, in charge and control. but that's just my opinion, i'd LOVE to hear others! blessings, Shell

Article in bbcnews.com: i truly find this amazing, imagine what other treasures the earth holds! hopefully these species will be allowed to continue to cultivate themselves, without human interference ruining what they've become these millions of years. bbcnews: Eight previously unknown invertebrate creatures have been discovered in an underground cave in central Israel. The largest is a white shrimp-like crustacean. Another resembles a species of scorpion and is blind. The cave was uncovered during drilling at a quarry close to Tel Aviv. Scientists say it is a unique ecosystem that has been sealed off from the world for five million years and could contain other ancient lifeforms. "The uniqueness is of the environmental conditions and of the palaeohistory," said Dr Hanan Dimantman, a biologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "The result of this is that the ecosystem is unique. We are sure that the eight species that were found are only the beginning of the story of this ecosystem." Ancient ecosystem The cave is connected to a lake and a network of passageways that extend for more than a mile (1.6km) some 400ft (120m) underground. t is thought to date back millions of years to a time when the area was part of the Mediterranean Sea. Scientists believe the ecosystem has been isolated since then, creating a unique environment in which new species have evolved. Two of the crustaceans are adapted to seawater and two others live in fresh or brackish water, suggesting they may be descended from ancient sea creatures. They have lost their eyes over the course of evolution in the gloom of the cave. All of the species were found alive, except for one species of blind scorpion, but scientists are confident that a complete set of living specimens will be found. Samples have been sent to experts in Europe and Israel to be named and classified. Paul Pearce-Kelly, senior curator of invertebrates at London Zoo, said the organisms would give clues to how life can evolve in the absence of sunlight. "They can give a very good insight into how robust life, and the evolutionary process driving it, can be," he said.