Friday, July 31, 2009

Home Made Tomato Sauce

My new video. This is a play-list on YouTube. My first instructional video: How to make Tomato Sauce from home grown vegetables and herbs.

Here is the link to the play list.  Enjoy!

July 31st 2009

The elegance afforded by a simple vegetable garden this summer has been a great blessing. There is something about the process of life as we witness it in the growth spurts of plants that feed us delicious food. Encouraging life is a lovely elegant and very positive human pursuit. I guess that is why farmers are happy even when they are poor. I bring life and sustainability to my world in ways few people on the planet do. I recycle, save water, compost and limit waste to a greater degree than most of my contemporaries but without suffering or feeling lack. I indulge myself in a hot tub and a few luxuries but I do not deliberately off-gas bad things into the environment. I think I am doing a pretty good job while providing about 1/20th of my food grown right here at home. I am so lucky to have this house. Being a home body type person it means more to me than the home means to many single men or women. So I get an extra big kick out of the space the large yard and yet the city is only three minutes away. Not bad for a guy with my IQ and SAT scores.

A lovely feeling comes over me when I think about some of the people in my life. I know they are far from perfect and yet some of them really shine. Some of them are massively disappointing and some of them can not see their nose in front of their face, the forest for the trees or the writing on the wall.

I have my challenges too. Depression dragging my days into the LaBrea Tar Pits I feel like a Woolly Mammoth! Drag my ass out the pit up into the light only to be pulled down by the dark forces of despair illusion and self indulgence. But sometimes I escape the gravity of it all and I can see the world from a nice light elegant place where I can view my accomplishments, joys pain and challenges - and from this place, from this point of view it does not appear to be so hard... and I am reminded of my power. But then the forces grab my ankles again and drag me under. Sometimes I wonder if I need anti-depressant drugs again. I never really can tell.

Therapy with Liz Baxter appears to serve only to remind me of the pain thus increasing it by recognizing it and refreshing the ideas behind it. I am almost certain to change therapists for a more future oriented therapy type. This no mans land between Freud and New Age therapy is not good.

Exhausted now as it is very late. I will Twitter the highlights and head to bed.

Friday, July 10, 2009

A great link to some seriously great poetry and poets

A great link to some seriously great poetry and poets

Here is one of my favorites - Amiri Baraka who has been a force in American life and literature for almost fifty years.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Open letter to Barbara Boxer conderning the environment

Hi Barbara,

Great to hear from you about the clean energy economy. I think it is wonderful you are pointed in that direction. I am concerned however. Some of the very best technologies that are here now are being suppressed. Corporate domination of energy and the changes that threaten them make it very difficult for revolutionary answers to energy when they threaten change that either is too fast for the corporations or loss of business and/or control of business turns these giants into pretty nasty political and sometimes dangerous adversaries for the little guys with the best ideas. I won't go into too much detail but I think you know what I mean. It is not entirely the fault of the energy companies but rapid change and free energy ideas are very threatening in many ways not only to the status quo organizations but to society in general.

In a time when we need rapid change the most creative people are silenced by government and by industry in power while they scramble to figure out how to keep control of the revenue and power over the consumer/citizens while cleaning up the environment. It is almost an oxymoron. A lot of evil confronts some of the best solutions. Free energy while fighting for funding, support will never be met with open arms by the political and corporate figures who would stand to lose revenue (and taxes) from its appearance on the world stage. I worry that much of what "clean" solutions we push forward that we will always be silencing the voices of those with the most brilliant answers while remaining in the dark ages of very mediocre answers to the most important questions of out time.

There needs to be much more funding for product development and deployment of the most exotic technologies where creativity and the best of human consciousness and science are encouraged when we hear time after time of people being killed silenced or bought off by the very companies that need to clean up environmentally.

Greed and the fear that accompanies potential loss of power and control of economic strangle hold is too great a threat for real progress to be made on the scale that is required to meet the needs required by our dying planet.

This is your dilemma, and I do not envy your position. It is hard to believe that our kids will all be wearing oxygen tanks is a hundred years and to look ahead two, three or four generations is a frightening prospect for our children who we love so much. It is a daunting task. I wonder what goes through your mind particularly when I am rather certain you know the players, the game and the solutions (all of the solutions) as well as anybody. Scientists with answers who have made videos on YouTube say that Al Gore will not even return their letters or calls when they have amazing science to contribute. But their science is SO GOOD that it threatens multinational corporations. Whether this is true, half true or not we know that you can not move an elephant that does not want to walk? We may be dealing with an elephant that does not "have to" walk at a time when we approach a tipping point where our answers will not produce the necessary change and the environment will begin turning on us and Mother Nature will begin her march of revenge on a people who have so very much negleced her.

These new facts presented to us regarding polar ice melt and the fact that global climate change is much more rapid than we knew just a few years ago places before us a mandate for change that is politically and economically impossible without a dictator style rule. These words are very hard for me to write but how on earth can politics and business make changes when casualties with thier ranks will be massive when the going gets tough? Democracy and free enterprise will not fare well under the demands of a rappidly declining environment.

I would be very interested in hearing your candid views regarding these thoughs.

Bill Zimmermann, San Diego

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Reaching potential

I think the most important thing friends can do is encourage one another to do things they might not otherwise do. To be encouraged to push yourself in ways only friends can perceive and who have the bravery to propose for consideration ideas that can help us move past our self-imposed limitations. I think this is the mark of true friendship. I do not have any friends like this. In fact rarely does anyone take enough interest in me to see that I have dreams. This is not self indulgent pity-pot thinking. It is a sad fact. Of course I do not make my self available and quite often I repel people with forbidding flashes of intimidation - I'm sure that does not help much. Fear and abuse mixed with wisdom and experience make for very strange bed fellows. I suppose issues do not always evaporate with therapy meditation or Life Spring retreats. But we still need the input of each other. Especially friends who ponder our perplexing lives, friends who take the time to think through our illusions delusions and denial. Going it alone is hard enough when few if any other person finds you important enough to intently listen to the beat of your drum. I miss having people like this in my life, but I do not know people who are capable of such trust. I have many good friends that I love dearly but they all appear to be selfish with not enough to occupy them or they are overwhelmed by life having few moments to think about anything more than solving daily problems of their own.