All Posts Tagged ‘Coronavirus’

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Something is Fishy about Staying at Home Here… (2 pics and a video)…

May 18, 2020
44 comments

A man who doesn’t merely sugar-coat stuff and (lie like a snake), Governor Andrew Cuomo recently stated, “Do not underestimate this virus. It has beaten us at every turn, and it has surprised us at every turn. Don’t take it lightly. Don’t underestimate it. I believe the facts will change as we go forward. The more we learn about the virus, the more the facts change, and the worse it gets.”

With this Covid-19 situation going on, some people are going absolutely bonkers with regard to staying at home. Some people are vehemently protesting the staying at home orders. All this while most people see professional medical experts’ recommendations to stay home as being very insightful, intelligent, fact and data-based, and beneficial; many people don’t mind staying at home. We live in a very rural area, so we can go to nature areas without contacting people. At our home, we don’t have to go out to be close to nature; nature is part of the essence and foundation of our living space. (We have — and have had — dogs, birds, tropical fish, shrimp, and praying mantises; not that animals can ever truly be “owned”.)

I’ve kept tropical fish for around 59 years so far. Right now i maintain around 700 gallons of aquariums. Aquariums are a very relaxing, educational, and beautiful way of keeping nature within your own home. (Many apartments, where pets are not allowed, allow aquariums.) Think about getting one for yourself. Many can be maintained without a heater. Most tropical fish, despite what the stores tell you, do very well in aquariums kept at room temperature. Petco periodically has “$1 per gallon” sales, wherein you can get a 20 Gallon Long aquarium for $20 or a 40 Gallon Breeder aquarium for $40. Air pumps from Walmart cost around $10 and can run 2 or 3 aquariums at only 4 watts. Walmart sells natural gravel. Many home-bred fish, like Endlers Guppies or hardy Corydoras Catfish (or very colorful Shrimp), can be purchased on eBay.

Most all of my aquariums have live plants. There are all kinds of very beautiful live plants that you can get and they can be very enjoyable to raise and reproduce. Some of my aquariums have shrimp instead of fish, or shrimp combined with small fish.

The following well-done, short video is by Lucas Bretz, where he talks about the “Staying at Home” thing and aquariums. I disagree with him on a number of things regarding the way aquariums should be maintained but there are a number of good ways to keep aquariums that all work well. I met Lucas at an Aquarium Auction/Swap in Champaign, Illinois, and i gave him some young Daisy Neon Blue Ricefish that i bred. Daisy’s are extinct in the wild — due to pollution — and only aquarium enthusiasts like myself and others are keeping them alive. Cory (of Aquarium Co-op) is another great source for videos and aquarium plants and supplies. Prime Time Aquatics is also a great video source. LRB Aquatics sells home-bred fish, shrimp, and plants online.

Below are two different shots of my 8 feet long Angelfish aquarium.

Angelfish and Italian Val Plants … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2020
Large Aquarium with Angelfish, Emerald Corydoras Catfish, and Ivory Mystery Snails … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2020
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Goodness and Fear

May 11, 2020
24 comments

It is intelligent to be fearful during this Covid-19 thing. Not being fearful would be a form of foolishness and ignorance. Fear has its place. Is one separate from the fear that one has? Well, one doesn’t merely “have” or “own” fear. Psychological fear is actually part of what one is. If that part gets to be too habitual, too excessive, too dominant… then unnecessary disorder manifests. What is it that is going to “get rid” of excessive fear? What is it that is going to “control” fear from a distance? Is it going to be a supposedly separate set of habitual fabricated images and “learned mental patterns” that are designed to think that they are manipulating fears that are “there” (at a distance) to manipulate? (Such supposed psychological distance is fallacious and is a barbaric inheritance that maintains conflict and illusion. The internal psychological distance creates a false duality; it manifests as the “controller” and the supposed separate “controlled.”)

Security is important in terms of being healthy with food, clothing, and shelter. However, in the quest for mere self-oriented security, the mind-heart can become cold, mechanical, robot-like, over-anxious, and dependent upon strange and unethical patterns. Of course, in the present crisis, if you do not have enough food, fear is a very legitimate factor; good governments and groups need to do more to help people; currently, they are not doing enough. When i was young — and not so young — i quit a good number of jobs because i did not feel that what they were doing (or making) in them was ethical. I left quickly without much concern for what may happen to me. I like what Senator Bernie Sanders recently said: “We must break away from the worldview that everybody should try to become a billionaire — and you can lie, cheat, and steal if your goal is to make billions and not pay attention to the suffering of others.”

Life, real life, is so much more than a Monopoly game.
Compassion, these days, is not prevalent enough. But $ in people’s brains certainly is. Many cling to the apron strings of $ and security… and the real joy, extraordinary spiritual bliss, and meaning of life, unfortunately, pass them by. (Kudos to truly dedicated medical staff and other critical needs and essential needs people working at risk — selflessly — to help others in these very precarious times.)

We think internal fear is there to manipulate (at some kind of distance) and we think organisms that suffer are merely “there at a distance.” We may have been taught wrongly.

Mushrooms don’t have to Social Distance. Photo by Thomas Peace (from a distance) c. 2020.
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Wisdom, Viruses, and existing beyond Chaos

April 17, 2020
27 comments

These are very tough times for the world’s people right now. There is the virus going around, many governments (worldwide) are becoming more and more dictatorial, suppressing such things as human rights, the right to vote, and fair and balanced systems. I’ve included another video, down below, by Dr. Campbell, for you to look at if you have not seen it already. He sagaciously suggests something similar to what i have been blogging about for a very long time… that we should stay local — not pollute the air by (needlessly) flying in jet planes (that most all of us ludicrously assume we have a “right” to fly around in) — and produce and consume more goods locally, rather than (cheaply) getting them from overseas. Our population, too, needs to be kept in check. The over-populated (crowded-in-large-groups-cities) Native American Hopewell culture likely descended from the earlier low population hunter/gatherer Adena culture. With much larger populations concentrated together (in large “towns”), the Hopewell culture went through devastating periods of human to human disease transmissions (i.e., devastating viruses); this may have been the primary reason for the Hopewell culture’s demise. Sound familiar? But people tend not to learn; they tend to follow and merely imitate; hence, dictators and lack of freedom are popping up again as phenomena. Few people, in the many nations, are really talking about lowering population levels. So my premonitions (from childhood) about deadly viruses and a deadly-polluted globe seem to be, indeed, transpiring.

To compromise a lot and to look the other way and make excuses is not great order. Only great order as (and of) the mind can allow the possibility of a true (not fabricated) visitation by that sacred, eternal energy to take place. Then there is a real communion, not all of that phony stuff. If it (i.e., such a visitation) never takes place in one’s life, then one’s life may have, unfortunately, turned out to be like a seed that never germinates, an egg that never hatches. With such visitation may come real wisdom about the whole, and not all of that phony stuff; with it, eternity is revealed deeply, and superficiality continues to significantly dissipate.

Dr. Campbell is right, we need to be close to nature and the outdoors. We need to be responsible for our little, delicate planet. We need to care.

Please, if you are able, donate to your local food bank (as we have been repeatedly doing).

Cutleaf Toothwort Wildflower and Insect in the Woods… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2020
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Covid-19 and the Future (continued)

April 10, 2020
34 comments

Stay safe and be cautious and prudent in this current viral crisis. This thing will likely be around for a long time. Additionally, in this polluted world, more deadly viruses will be coming. Unfortunately, our government officials are superficially looking at things fragmentarily and are not seeing things holistically with a lot of insight. In the U.S., for instance, i feel that Trump is adding to the nightmare of this. I am basically an apolitical person, but what i see this non-compassionate, narcissistic man doing is horrifying. My friends in other countries are equally horrified with the current U.S. administration, and with good reason. It’s like a horror movie. He has a cult-following around him and, while people are dying, he talks about his ratings. He promotes and endorses racism and he is dismantling just about everything that President Obama did in the past… including (recently) the drastic weakening (i.e., ending) of an Obama-era fuel economy standard that made new cars more fuel-efficient and more environmentally friendly.  This will increase pollution while the world wrestles with a respiratory virus pandemic (that Trump had called a hoax) and a climate crisis. (Is a deadly-polluted world really the legacy that you want to leave your kids?) Then there is the drastic cutting of Social Security and Medicare, putting kids in cages, being puppets for the fossil fuel industry, and the GOP’s diabolical suppression of voting in many states. This is an immoral society and we are allowing ourselves to be bamboozled by extremely immoral so-called leaders. Personally, if you subscribe to such nefarious stuff, i would prefer it if you unfollowed this blog and stayed away. Such nefarious behavior is a danger to mankind and the animal and plant kingdoms. Besides, subscribing to such drivel certainly nullifies any chance of ever being visited by that sacred, holistic energy; its order and vast intelligence does not visit the disorderly, the visionless.

I highly recommend watching Dr. John Campbell’s (daily) videos on the coronavirus. (One of his wonderful and very helpful videos that i especially like is provided below. He is from England, and one meter equals around 3.3 feet.) He is a top-notch medical expert (now retired). We all need to talk more about population limitation, healthy environmental measures, and living cooperatively. And please donate, as i did, to your local food bank (in these very difficult times).

Stay safe!

Easter Eggs (kind of)… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2020
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Covid-19 and the Future

April 3, 2020
32 comments

This Covid-19 thing is affecting us all worldwide. We are all in this together. Clairvoyance, or whatever you wish to call it, tends to run in our family. My mother certainly had it, and i tend to have it. I’ve told my wife, for many years, that a terribly virulent virus or germ would be devastating to the human race. I had that “vision” when i was a kid and never forgot what it meant. I also, when i was a kid, saw that humans would pollute the world in very globally lethal ways. (Just a few months ago, one Thursday morning, i had a vision that i was precariously going into the side of a fast-moving Mack truck; the truck was coming from my right and going to the left… in the “vision”. I always go to grocery shop on Thursdays, so i bravely went to shop at our local Walmart, in spite of my vision. I was very cautious. I got groceries and was almost all the way home and thought, “Well that was an unusual false-alarm, thank goodness.” Then, about a mere half-mile from home, i came to a four-way stop. I came to a full stop, was about to proceed when a huge Mack truck came barreling through the intersection without stopping. I was glad that i hesitated at that stop. I was facing south; the truck was coming from the west going east… coming from the right of me and going to the left of me.)

Nature has a way of teaching us lessons. Right now the air across America is getting cleaner — so the scientists say — and the environment is getting healthier, from far less jets in the air and fewer cars on the road. Healthy environments usually produce healthy organisms; sick environments usually produce sick, diseased organisms.
Nature has a way of teaching us lessons. But we have to listen.

Shrooms … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2020

The March of Snow -- Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2020
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STAY SAFE! The hours tick away… the cells tick away…

March 25, 2020
40 comments
The March of Snow -- Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2020
The March of Snow — Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2020

With this coronavirus thing going around, stay safe and intelligent, use social distancing, wash your hands often, refrain from touching your face, take vitamin D3 and natural vitamin supplements, and (like i’ve been suggesting for eons) stay local (in your own home and yard). Even after this crisis is over, refrain from long-distance traveling, long-distance vacations and excursions in heavily polluting jet planes (all of which are non-green and contribute to a sick planet).

I am not going to give you some “mindfulness techniques” to (supposedly) get you through this crisis with less fear. I myself am afraid (for my wife, myself, and for so-called others). Marla and I are both high-risk. (My recent cardio-stress-echo test, by the way, showed that my heart is in great shape… which was a relief to find out after having had that heart attack in October.)

Being fearful — at this time (with our inept, corrupt, science-denying government and rotten system) — is intelligent. The so-called U.S. government leader(s) — with $-signs in their eyes — are talking about businesses opening again soon, defying Public Health Experts. Bill Gates says we can’t restart the economy soon and simply “ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner.”

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A Poem i wrote the other day…

with-
out
a there
there isn’t
a here
and
with-
out
a here
there isn’t
a there
and
with-
out
a future
there isn’t
a past
and
with-
out
a past
there isn’t
a future
and with-
out
a with
there isn’t without
and we won’t just
be those things
that they
taught us
because they
are immersed
in illusion
and
are
it

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Two pertinent songs by Rush. Neil Peart, their excellent, top-notch drummer and lyric-writer, recently passed away.