views i've been witness to (Georgia, Carolina, Virginia)

These first few are of the property in South Carolina my father stewards. It was raining and you can see the water dripping from the foliage.

The first building you see is in Virginia, the next one is of an old black church, was not used anymore and, shamefully, was not being taken care of.










Next one is a house in S. Carolina where the doctor, in older times lived, historic Claussen house, followed by S. Carolina sunsets, two of Virginia fields, next two of streams in Virginia.

Next one is Jefferies Creek flowing through the town I grew up in followed by three of the hollowed forested halls on Dad's property, which were my laboratory growing up.












Next is a horse in Virginia I met on a walk when I worked at the organic farm, next is a wetland in SC kind of hidden down a dirt road, followed by ice crystals growing out of the ground in northern Georgia, two graffiti tags under a bridge in Georgia, followed by the stream running under it, next of a leaf on the Appalachian Trail, most of which can be traced to old trails used by the First Nations of North America.

Nextly, an Oak grove in Virginia (Loudoun) which maybe came from the same primordial oak, then another from the App. Trail (or AT) looking toward Shenandoah.

Then a creek in Brunswick, Marylard, you can see the Potomac in the background (Used to be called Berlin, MD befored WWI) .

Next, a tree in a former field on Da's stewardship, he's always respected my knowledge when it comes to land and is following my advice by restoring it to native forest.



Beautiful spider (Da's place), it took me a few times to get the shot, I would get close and it would move but come back to the same place, next a Virginia farm, the skies there were amazing, followed by a stream in Virginia, next a hilltop Virginia winery.




























An up close of the flower of the tree in the former field that is being restored, then wild Jasmine on Da's stewardship (I call it stewardship not property because all you can do is take good or bad care of something and never really possess it).

When I was a child I knew a song which contained the lines, 'He bows to all and despises none', 'A true disciple knows another's pain as his own'. My town though being religiously dominated had a mixture of Arab, Jewish, Hindu, as well as traditional faith traditions which hide within the fabric of Christian denominations, sometimes not so subtly. It taught me that all people approach the writing of their spiritual autobiographies in somewhat similar ways, regardless of nuance. I'm not trying to imply that I lived in an extremely diverse theological mecca, but the minimal diversity I saw was enough to shape my attitude. It showed me that no one was solely father or son, but rather we are all brothers and sisters, and not just in name.

Nurse Ratchett

It's impossible for me to even take short hand to grasp the breadth of ideas related but divergent within the span of my thought process to even unfold. What I was thinking about was related to Adam Smith and the system he is responsible for proposing. To me the system is one that takes a finite amount and says that can be expanded infinitely and in perpetuity. I'm not especially trained in the intricacies of mathematics but that sounds less like solid science and more like an alchemistic endeavor. And you can't blame everyone, indeed most people have yet to think in their lives. People take bits of information and amalgamate them, but most do not use anything more than preexisting constructs, which means no innovation was involved. Furthermore, if you ever truly communicate with someone then you or that person will soon be no more. Come on, we're humans, we talk in what seems like topical structures but we seldom do more than say what we want to say about it, as does the other party involved. So, most people essentially go around raising their banner for others to see, possibly in hopes of finding those who share our banner, and that is what passes for seeing another clump of conscious matter fully, which, as we are, is capable of transcendence and swimming in the Great Silver Stream in the Sky. That sounds to me like an animal being true to form in trying to expend as little energy as possible to stay in, relatively, the same place. I don't say this to bum anyone out, rather I hope more to be viewed as challenging us all to help each other raise the bar. Our very structures which form the enveloping reality in which we operate is designed, I think maybe, consisting of mostly made up structures, takes away from our ability to understand and have a relationship with the real things. Example, do you know how to tell if a river is rising or falling in level? If the level is rising a bulge will be visible in the middle of the stream, if falling a dip will be apparent in the middle. That's the only homage I'll ever address to you Ed, you mean old bastard. The constructs which we know then serve to distract us from the ones which mean something and are the birthright of the people of a locality. An illusionist does the same thing, look over here, while I do something over here. This leads to a wrong assumption of specialization, which is not surprisingly taught in the economic system we use, but it really isolates the people from the relationship they can and should have with their surroundings. When this happens the greedy bastard corporations are the only ones capable of stewarding resources and lives, and that's exactly how they want it. There's a game groups of people can play modeling the fisheries industry, and without fail, if you play it, within a few seasons the fishery collapses and the fleets are scrapped and a bunch of dirty businessmen, moneybags in tow mind you, move on to another endeavor to make their swath of devastation greater than what they left behind themselves already. Presumably because they see the value in stewarding money as opposed to watersheds or forests or herds or communities or..........what else can you think of, because you can add that to. That is the way the economic system of good ol' Mr. Smith works, which is why many with wealth have had several industries within their lives. They pump dry the place they are and find another place to pump dry and so forth into infinity so says Smith's sorry ass. Quite honestly he should have been burned at the stake for teaching principles with which greed could be perfected, and the ground salted thereafter, so that nothing of the evil would remain. If I were a vengeful man I would call for the businessmen of our day to receive the same treatment, setting stakes in the very city streets to light a fire which would be seen in New York City, London, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Hyderabad, and everywhere. Thankfully I don't see destruction as creation, I would rather try to give them some sense of shame and responsibility before their soulless cavities begin to rot, for their own sake. If we have the ability to turn the tide then we would be on the same page, rather than me not having a soul who even communicates to me that they comprehend that of which I speak. So all you asshole who tout globalization, please realize you do a disservice. The only reason the system worked with any positive was because it was only operating for the elites of the world and, look up the history, was achieved through taking more than you need and were entitled to, and by keeping people under thumb, and outright stealing what is not yours. Do you think such as that can work globally? I hope, if you say yes, you are willing to risk your families, homes, cultures, and everything beautiful including the hope of any peace on earth, because that is what it will cost. I once read a quote which stated communism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth and that capitalism will collapse because it does not allow the planet to tell the biological and resource truth. We can do this if we lessen the greed of "bein' about yours", "comin' up", and "gettin' my due". Tremendous times call for tremendous courage and righteousness and we all standing together can fill in any lack any given one has, so all we have to do now is stand arms akimbo and walk towards the horizon as brothers and sisters.

Agonizing Beauties

I was thinking about stories, I'm sure all places have their representative examples. For instance one from the small town my father grew up in was a man who lost his young wife and infant in child birth. He never remarried and every year for two weeks he would travel the region to collect for the March of Dimes, which collects money for the purpose of trying to help to make sure all babies are healthy babies. I also keep thinking about the different way and examples I've seen of Charleton Heston, Clint Eastman, and Billy Bob Thornton of being able to express deep wells of emotion such as regret, the agony of a moment when there was an opening given and you failed to take it, the sense of some deep unspoken pain or loneliness, or a knowledge of some misdeed or foul wind ahead which will without fail overcome you and to accept it and face it. I think we all, as people could identify with the feeling of horror at sitting through a process and not have the wisdom or strength or combination thereof to stand and have your perspective be recognized by the Great Debate. Ah to be shamed, as the Scottish would, possibly, say. I was never really told by my parents what to believe as it were, it was mine to take the pieces from them and elsewhere, with their blessing, and make of it what my heart saw. I chose to try to think of others before myself and to be ashamed to be taking a seat while important work is yet to be done. I sometimes feel that I'm the only one to come to that conclusion, and somehow I'm the stupid shit for it.

Confederation

I am going to tell a theory of mine which I hold close to my heart. I'll add an aside here by telling you that Thomas Jefferson's closest advisor was, to many scholars, the woman who birthed his mulatto children. You see, the plantation system was supposed to pose a challenge to municipal incorporated areas, in that the plantation was supposed to represent a more ordered option which knew what the ideal of stewardship was. Let me put it to you this way, when one of your valuable workers on the plantation got sick or hurt the person who came to assess their health was the same person who came when the plantation owner was injured. In the early days of the factory of the industrial capitalist the person they called was a coroner, while muttering grind that stupid Irish son of a bitch into dog food because i've got 1,000 dumb slavs and latins who would be proud to come die for my profit margin. I know that. No matter what the history book, printed in Boston, N. Y. C., and Philadelphia, says, the war between the states was a struggle initiated by the the new industrial capitalist against the mercantilists , who by the way, ran business in a more local, community run way, including stewardship of the raw materials base, as the so called liberals of our day call for, while railing against those in the past whom their own ancestry helped to destroy. The British, for instance, gave us moral support while knowing they could give no real support because that ran contrary to their economic rationality. The cotton industry in British India is a prime example. In fact the British nobles had already lost to the new elite, as had the Dutch and Belgians, and later the Germans expedited by von Bismarke and the Brandenburg coalition. One could at this point draw direct correlation to the Masons, Illuninati, and Skull and Bones, but I'll refrain from that at this point, mainly because I would not swear I know which side these groups supported, save for Skull and Bones (1830's, Yale University, Duh). After they came for us they came for Spain in 1898, 30 years later, which was the only one left operating a system in defiance of the industrial capitalist. If you can prove me wrong I'll kiss yo ass, and you will not prove me wrong. You should call what I just gave to you a history of the modern world.