http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44116507/ns/today-today_people/t/photographer-reveals-kids-kingdoms-their-bedrooms/?GT1=43001

There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo.
Please use in that order.

Bill Cosby has a great way of “distilling”things.
Looks like he’s done it again!

(AMERICA NEEDS A CANDIDATE WITH THIS PLATFORM!!)

I (Bill Cosby) HAVE DECIDED TO BECOME A WRITE-IN CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT IN THE YEAR 2012.

HERE IS MY PLATFORM:


(1). Any use of the phrase: ‘Press 1 for English’is immediately BANNED!!!    English is the official language;   speak it or wait outside of our borders until you can.

(2). We will immediately go into a two year isolationist attitude in order to straighten out the greedy big business posture in this country. America will allow NO imports, and we’ll do no exports. We will use the ‘Wal-Mart‘s policy, ‘If  we  ain’t got it, you don’t need it.’ We’ll make it here and sell it here!


(3). When imports are allowed, there will be a 100% import tax on it coming in here.


(4). All retired military personnel will be required to man one of the many observation towers located on the southern border of the United States (six month tour). They will be under strict orders notto fire onSOUTH BOUND  aliens.


(5). Social Security will immediately return to its original state.   If you didn’t put nuttin in, you AIN’T getting nuttin out.  Neither the President nor any other politician will be able to touch it.


(6). Welfare. — Checks will be handed out on Fridays, at the end of the 40 hour school week, the successful completion of a urinalysis test for drugs, and passing grades.

(7). Professional Athletes — Steroids?  The FIRST time you check positive you’re banned from sports … for life.


(8). Crime — We will adopt the Turkish method, i.e., the firsttime you steal, you lose your right hand. There is no more ‘life sentences’. If convicted of murder, you will be put to death by the same method you chose for the victim you killed: gun, knife, strangulation, etc.

(9). One export of ours will be allowed: wheat; because the world needs to eat.  However, a bushel of wheat will be the EXACT price of a barrel of oil.

(10).  All foreign aid, using American taxpayer money, will immediately cease and the saved money will help to pay off the national debt and, ultimately, lower taxes.  When disasters occur around the world, we’ll ask The American People if they want to donate to a disaster fund, and each citizen can make the decision as to whether, or not, it’s a worthy cause.


(11). The Pledge of Allegiance will  be said EVERY day at school and  every day in CONGRESS.


(12). The National Anthem  will  be played at all appropriate ceremonies,  sporting events,  outings, etc.


My apology is offered if I’ve stepped on anyone’s toes …. nevertheless…..


GODBLESS AMERICA!

Sincerely,  Bill Cosby

                                      
A candidate for everyone, no matter which side of the fence they’re on. 

“I will never put my name on a product that does not have the
best that is in me.”

– John Deere

Think on this,….

It goes beyond the labels we give ourselves. All we do and say and are, every action we put out into the world has an equal and opposite reaction.
We tag everything, label ALL and live by those tags and labels.
And to the point that these labels become the gods by which we pattern ourselves to be like and worship. Today it is even jokingly placed in comic strips that the son of God rose to heaven on a “tag cloud”. Religion being the largest and oldest labeling industry.
But if we must live life with labels and tags attached to all we are, wouldn’t it be greater in the end to not be remembered by our tags, but by our actions, to be more than just the labels we are given and give ourselves.
Do not just promote peace, love, happiness, growth, respect, community, unity and greatness,….be IT!

“A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a
new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”

– Tony Robbins

In 1931, AugustePiccard and Charles Knipfer flew a balloon from Augsburg,Germany, to a glacier near Innsbruck, Austria. Reaching a height of 51,793 feet during their 17-hour flight, they were the first humans to reach the stratosphere. What freedom do you think they felt in accomplishing this task?
In overcoming obstacles and doubts and ridicule from friends or family in their quest to get to where they wanted in their goals, they obtained freedom….freedom from fear…they tried, and tried again and in the end found a place beyond their expectations….
So,..
Happy Stratospheric day! …and… think on this:
“The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom isfreedom from fear.”
– Aung San Suu Kyi

We are all seeking satisfaction, searching for answers to what it is we need to achieve happiness.
In the end we go through a myriad of trials with dizzying spin to find that all we have known and experienced is either no good to begin with or too good to be true and though some might offer fever pitched heights of exultation, we find it is merely temporal. There is always the moment we reach where it discontinues to afford us the luxury of intoxication.
But have you ever wondered, if when something more than “human seeking” is needed, that it is actually you, the seeker, who is being sought?
True seekers eminate the search for a purpose and it shows in their energy and integrity, their idealism and their desire to close in on an answer. We are as C.S. Lewis fashioned a meaning to, as a mouse searching for the hungry cat. We are in fact in search of ourselves being able to face the challeges necessary…the looming and hungry challenges and end result of who we have been called to be. And it is because we as seekers have been spurred by something to cause our quest for meaning, we give off a presence about us which falls in terms of our being “called” to a certain purpose. Like a hunted animal gives off a scent, we have become marked in all our movements to the calling of our being….to the purpose which pursues us.

She knew she would make love to him the second their eyes met in passing for the first time. It had been like an explosion of acknowledgement in her brain that there “HE” was, that one man you always dreamed you’d meet. It had been in the entryway of the catacombs where she did her etchings and he his photography. It was if it had been pre-destined that they should meet again in this lifetime, as if they had already known each other somehow before they had even met. She couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t explain it. They were drawn to each other by something more powerful than the rules they were told to live by and those rules would add the complications and the turmoil that were to be the undoing of them. So harbored the signs of ending in the same moment it had not even began.

One year went and came with casual aquaintancy and on the last day of that year, he approached her and asked to buy her lunch. All along she  had felt that she was merely fooling herself to think of him in such ways when after all, he was out of her league, married, older and would be treated as any other. Her heart jumped to her throat in the quiet answer of “yes”. His palms were sweating when he asked her. His heart had raced harder when her answer had surprised him. He had only taken the chance that she had been interested. He was reminded of the movie “Chances Are”. So, they met for lunch, with full intentions on lunch being had and yet, they never made it to their meal. For all it took was one simple thank you and a slight lean forward and he was telling her that he wanted to kiss her. She never backed away. She couldn’t. The fire was rising within her.

One kiss turned into a hundred which engulfed them in the strength of its hold, smoldering. There was no turning back. Their minds connected on the same level. They knew the response of the other before each new touch as if they had known it before.

Life can sometimes be uncanny in how something as simple as lunch can turn into a complex and complicated journey.

For two years they would talk and write to each other, spend secret hours hidden away from the world and lost in one another’s embrace.

She loved him as with both a sickness and the cure. He loved her with an unexplainable fervor he had not felt in two decades. He had not thought it possible to find the passion and depth of emotion he reached with her, yet, with her had found it.
She didn’t claim to be much of anything, though she gave all of who she was. He was lifted to a higher state in her eyes. He was conflicted with the heavenly torture of loving her and not being able to share with the world that she belonged to him. He wondered how it could be that he should find her and yet not be at a place in his life to truly have her. He regreted loving her and couldn’t resist loving her at the same time. He couldn’t stop. She was a part of him. He was a part of her and she felt she was  certainly nothing compared to the light that passed through her, from her lover’s affection.

The two years of hiding from the world began to wear on the mentality of their bonds. As their passion grew with time, the longing to end his marriage came to them both. The reality of their situation plagued their minds daily, eating away at the delicious moments of pleasure. The more they consumed each other, the more it consumed them.

And on no particular Tuesday, he left through the door of their hidden home. Nothing more to be said than they already knew to say.

He loved her. She loved him. Their love was to be the death of one realtionship to breed the life of the new, or it was to be the death itself of them.
Over time, her voice, to him, had become wearing as a forgotten song of a broken record, repeating its play, beckoning him to stay longer each time.
She dared to hold on to web-like wisps of dreamy days, something they once shared, breathed in heavy kisses and deep embraces, entangled with hope.
The words once delighted the ears of his soul who touched her. Now, they formed to fall with brick-like speed in dead air before him.
And his touch, once groping for the flame, became more cold and civil, afraid to burn in the fire of her.
All the many days that shined and all the many nights that sparkled, how they had passed so without care to her of the eventuality of the end, and now, in ignoring its approach it had come all too soon.

She learned without him, the nothingness filled the empty halls of her heart. Those halls that held faint echoes of a joy she held close, too close, for too short a time. The echoes became drowned in present passings of all else that took place over all else.
The face on the old clock was cracked, in its casing, an askew view of the exact moment in time she became nothing more to him than a memory.

The cragged caverns of her mourning were littered with wragged and torn pages, scattered leaves of letters written and never returned, tossed and blown away.
What kindling glow of his passion was left? Was it forever to wane, frigid? She struggled to reach him, her breath heavy with tears she couldn’t let fall. All her attempts were called in vain, for each try proved solely  a movement for herself and not striven to be met by him.
One year and six months marked the calendar. She fell to her knees and gave way to the wrenching cries within her heart. For eleven days she ate nothing, save for sparce attempts at toast and tea, went nowhere and spoke barely a word, her misery her only consolation. And on the twelfth night,…

She arose from her sorrow, to move into the other empty rooms of the house. She stayed seated in the bay window staring at the moon and stars. Her heart beat low and slowly. She fell asleep with his words in her mind and his picture fell from her hand to the cushion at her side. She let go.

In what seemed like only a moment having passed, she opened her tired eyes, still red from the nights of no sleep and many tears shed. She went to the back of the house and opened the doors to the outside world and walked out, realizing the night had turned to day. A mixed feeling of the numbness inside and the peace of the bright day before her moved her to continue her way into the grass.

Her bare feet loved the sensation of the waxy and cool blades of green beneath her. She turned her face upward to the sky and watched the wind push the gray clouds across the bluest sky.  A whispered prayer of thanks left her lips. It was a sense of gratefulness that she could still find beauty even in her state of heart.

In walking, she made her way into the trees, just to the banks of the lake, then stopped. The ripples of the water reflected the sun. She dropped her gown to her ankles and stepped out. She waded out in her nakedness, feeling the level rising to her breasts.

Her eyes closed and she let go of her stance in the wet earth between her toes. The water went over her head filling her ears first and then enveloping her eyelids and forehead until her whole body was in liquid movement. Her arms and legs propelled her deeper into the cold, darker areas.

Turning to look up at the light shining through the water above her, she swam up and out into the sun again. She wiped the water from her face, feeling refreshed from nature’s baptismal effect.

Making her way back to the tree-line, she gathered up her gown and returned to the house, the cotton material clinging to the wetness of her frame. She walked through the open doors and the vision that met her gaze stopped her steps.

In the corner of the room in the bay window, lay her body curled against the glass, face up to the sky and his picture within her curved,  open palm on the cushion next to her.

“Why are you so far away, she said. Oh, won’t you ever know that I’m in love with you. I’m in love with you.”- The Cure-” Just Like Heaven

The window reflected a younger man in memory as the steam from the coffee cup fogged one square pane of glass. A smaller figure with an age spotted hand reached out from behind him and drew a familiar “x” and an “o” in the condensation. It was a familiar signature to him.
“Good morning”, she said as she leaned in for a small kiss on his lips.
He turned to look at his wife. Raising his hand to touch her face, he remembered the soft fair skin and darker hair of her youth; even through the years she had remained beautiful, wrinkles and all.
The drawings on the window faded and he was reminded that he was alone. Only the kisses from memory and her empty coffee cup hanging on the rack on the kitchen wall.
He swallowed back the tears with a drink from his mug and moved from the table to the kitchen sink. How old this house was, even older than he and how much they had put into building it into a home. All those days replayed in his head of standing in the kitchen and sitting at the table talking of the plans they had over a hot cup of coffee. She never seemed to be able to resist getting in a few kisses somehow. She loved being close to him and he loved that about her.
As the years rolled on they had their ups and downs, yet nothing that couldn’t be settled over a good talk, cup of coffee and ending in those sweet and sometimes fevered kisses.
He chuckled to himself as he rinsed off the few breakfast dishes, remembering the day she swore she could figure how to change out the line for the water filter. She had drowned herself in the process. She had been so sexy standing there in wet shirt, stringing hair, face dripping. He had put his coffee cup on the table and laughingly gone over to her. Teasing her efforts and seeing she was becoming irritated by it, he had kissed her full on the mouth. This led to a passionate excursion on the wet, cold floor, interrupted by kids busting in from school to grab a quick afternoon snack.
Smiling he refilled his coffee mug and got ready to start working on another project. She was no longer there to come out and see the new idea he was getting going.
The kids were grown and gone, so he had a lot more “busy work” these days, work to keep him from thinking too much on what the heart was missing.
He situated the cap on his head and zipped up his coveralls, heading out to the barn. It was a cold, gray morning. He looked back at the kitchen window, sighed with a smile and then turning around walked on through the brown grass.
Back in the kitchen a small area of the window fogged up and an “x’ and “o” appeared inside the square pane of glass.

Define worldview:
1. A world view is a set of pre-suppositions (assumptions which are not necessarily true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic make-up of our world.

2. The overall perspective as seen by a group or individual from which the world is seen or interpreted.
3. An individual’s collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.

We are asked to write on five different worldviews and major points of each. There are, of course, several other worldviews than those five. However, the top five major worldviews are Naturalism, Pantheism, Theism, Spiritism/Polytheism and Postmodernism. Each of these has their own sub-worldview categories; Naturalists have the atheist, the agnostic and the existentialist; Pantheism harbors the Tao and Buddhist followers; Muslims, Christians and Jews belong to the category of Theism; thousands of religious views such as Wiccan, those of the American Indian and any other tribal race fall under the category of Spiritism/Polytheism. Finally, most of the rest of earth’s inhabitants take on the worldview of Postmodernism.
For Naturalism, the belief is that everything can be explained on the basis of natural law and all that is incorporated within is one-dimensional. The belief is that all life is a process of evolution. The truth is based purely on scientific proof. All values and morals are subject to that same evolutionary process.
Under the views of Pantheism, reality is seen as false and only the spiritual realm exists in ultimate truth. God is a part of everything and everything is a part of God. Individuality is seen as the artifice. Rationalism has no meaning in Pantheistic belief. Therefore, there is no distinction between good and evil in moral conduct, only in being enlightened or unenlightened to the truth of the unity of the universe.
In Theism there is created by a singular god both material and spiritual worlds. All human creation is made in the image of that god and receives truth through revelation combined with natural senses and rationalism. Morals exist as mirrored through the moral character of the god who created them.
Spiritism and Polytheism hold the belief that there are many gods and spirits and/or demons that are responsible for creation and all that goes on in the world. All natural things have a spirit or a god assigned to them. Truth can be discovered about the natural world through the “shaman” (also known in some tribes as “medicine man”) who has visions of the spirit world, telling of what the gods and demons are doing and how they feel towards their creation’s actions. Any moral values are seen as a type of taboo where the individual is not to anger or disturb the spirits in attempt to live along in harmony.
Postmodernism is the last of the five major worldviews and as mentioned before is the view outside of the top four that belongs to the majority of individuals in current times and also has the capacity to intertwine with any of the other worldviews presently held. It exists to undermine the “traditional” worldviews by gaining footing in some of the most common and putting a skeptical spin on them. All of reality is understood through language and cultural archetype. Therefore, reality is communally fabricated. Individuals are just a product of their social situations or venues. The idea that they are self-governing and free is seen as myth and truth only acquires its nature through relatable and comparable pattern. Morals follow suit in that they are also a part of the paradigm of social constructs. All freedom of expression in any form, including owning up to not having the answers to life’s questions, is universal value.
Within all five worldviews is found the stem questions of “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?” Finding to which worldview you belong is one more way that humans compartmentalize themselves. Sticking the defining label across the forehead of our souls in some way makes us feel better, accepted and being a part of something greater than the loneliness we run from in the quest for our freedom as an individual. We all long to be free and considered unique, yet we are eager to be considered as belonging under a certain category of like believers. As contradicting as this sounds, it proves the last worldview as having that footing in the other five viewpoints, constructing social pattern.

As for my favorite definition of a worldview, I think I will have to go with the Webster’s definition on this. It would be:

A framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts in it.

I think what I like most about it is that it defines the worldview as a
“framework”. I am an artist and know that framing a piece of art is just
as important as the art itself; however, it always remains that what
lies within the framework is the most important.  So the question then
lies with what is within us, what are we made of that is consistent with
and connected to our framework?  Our worldview does not make us. We
make the worldview.