On Aug. 21, 2017, every square inch of the USA will experience a solar eclipse.  In most places, the eclipse will be partial - that is, the Moon will cross the sun off-center, leaving a crescent shaped portion of the solar disk exposed. Is it really worth the trip to the path of totality when you can stay home and see the partial eclipse?  Pulitzer prize winner Annie Dillard, who witnessed both types of eclipses in 1979, compared them as follows:

"A partial eclipse is very interesting. It bears almost no relation to a total eclipse. Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane."

Indeed, during the minutes of totality, the whole world changes.  Saying that day turns into night barely scratches the surface of it. The shadow of the Moon lances down to Earth from a quarter million miles away. On one end is you; on the other end is a million square miles of dusty lunar terrain. You're connected, and you can feel the cold.

Darkness inside the path of totality has an alien quality. Because the shadow is only 70 miles wide, you can see daylight at the edges even while you stand in the dark core. This distant scattered light produces a slight reddish glow and unusual shadow effects. Many birds stop singing, daytime flower blossoms begin to close as if for the night, and bees return to their hives.

"What you see in an eclipse is entirely different from what you know," says Dillard, whose brilliant essay "Total Eclipse" is a must-read for anyone deciding whether to stay home ... or have their minds blown.
www.spaceweather.com

The Story of Stuff, originally released in December 2007, is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the Stuff in your life forever.

Download the Fact Sheet
Story Of Stuff, Referenced and Annotated Script By Annie Leonard

Credits
The Story of Stuff was written by Annie Leonard, Louis Fox, and Jonah Sachs, directed by Louis Fox and produced by Free Range Studios. Executive Producers included Tides Foundation and the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption.

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A video was submitted to the Free Thought Project this week that is sure to infuriate all who see it.  In the video, which was originally posted on the Facebook page of Gary Schlesinger of Brooklyn, New York City trash collectors are being ordered around by an NYPD cop. They are picking up dozens of cases of fruits and vegetables — and throwing them into the back of a trash truck.

According to Schlesinger, "NYC [is] cracking down on fruit stores that put out merchandise more than 4 feet from store."  The food was allegedly blocking a sidewalk, so, instead of asking the owner move it, or merely confiscating it from a non-compliant owner and giving it to a food shelter, the government's decision was to put it in a landfill.  The Free Thought Project contacted the New York Police Department and the City of New York on Saturday for a statement on why they are throwing away the food, but we've yet to hear back.

According to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, in the 2012-2014 time frame, over 1.4 million New Yorkers - including nearly one in four of the city's children - lived in households that lacked sufficient food. In the Coalition's latest annual survey of hunger in New York City - the most comprehensive of its kind - New York City's emergency food providers (food pantries, soup kitchens, and brown bag programs) reported a 5 percent increase in need for their services, on top of a 7 percent increase in 2014, 10 percent in 2013, 5 percent in 2012, 12 percent in 2011, 7 percent in 2010, and 20 percent in 2009.

In spite of starving children, quite literally within blocks of this video, the NYPD is carrying out its tyrannical enforcement of city codes.  This is what 'just doing your job' has become.

Please share this article so this downright despotic practice of throwing away perfectly good food will be exposed.

It would seem intuitive to every single Human Being in the room that in order to accomplish what you do as Americans in Congress, you must have at least two parties. For that is the way it has always been - the red and the blue.

What if I told you that there will come a time when there will be no parties? You might then say, "Well, that's impossible, Kryon, because you're not Human and you don't know how funding works." You might say, "It has to be a party that creates the power to raise money for the ones who cannot, and then the funding is spread around and this is the way we work. If you didn't have parties, you'd have no funding. Nobody could advertise, and no one could get elected."

Oh, really?

Are you aware right now, that you have a president who was elected on the Internet? He figured it out. When everybody can talk to everyone, you have plenty of funding. A few dollars here, a few dollars there. You talk to millions at the same time, they talk to millions at the same time. It's a new paradigm of communication. The young people know all about it, and you can't stop it. Watch for more from this new paradigm.

It is worldwide communication, one person at a time. It doesn't matter how many laws you pass, and it doesn't matter what you decide about who is in charge of it, you can't stop it. It's out of the bag now, and the communities of the young are going to be communicating. This is how the politicians are going to be communicating to you, literally coming into your home in a holographic form perhaps, explaining their position one by one, without a party. Then you will elect them to your Congress without a party and they will sit in the chairs without a division and there will be no such thing as the "other side of the aisle."

And that, Human Being, is called unity and there is a paradigm that you cannot even imagine. And it's in the works. And then you'll have a Congress that works together and gets things done without the current duality.
 
~ KRYON
through Lee Carroll, the Original Kryon Channel

Every activist has read the increasing number of stories where homelessness is being criminalized, as if simply being homeless isn't punishment enough. However, there is a rising tide among all walks of life that is beginning to view homelessness in a very different light.

As a sinking economy and the criminal actions of the banking elite are leading many middle class, stable families into abject poverty, it is becoming much easier to identify with the less fortunate the closer their plight appears to be. Defenders of the homeless are becoming much more vocal now. We have seen some amazing examples recently of people moved to help those in need through programs such as an artist who paints and sells portraits of the homeless and gives them the profits; a former homeless man who gives back to the homeless by selling book reviews and buying food to share; or the inspiring story of a community organizer who used his own faith to connect with those from other faiths in a common cause of feeding those in need.

We are even seeing people of conscience openly defying oppressive laws to draw a line in the sand that says: if it becomes illegal to help one another on our own terms, we simply have no freedom left to celebrate.

Feeding the homeless has also gone from the concept of a "handout" of money to allow people to buy whatever meager sustenance they can find, to realizing that if people are going to have any chance of turning their financial situation around, they must be physically and mentally fit to do so. A key cornerstone to building oneself back up again is nutrition ... and if it's "free" nutrition, then all the better!

An organization in Atlanta is calling themselves Task Force For the Homeless and should be highlighted for their message and their tactics to restore dignity and prosperity to those who have fallen on hard times. They have chosen to combine two essential approaches to reverse the conditions which afflict the homeless the most: not having access to healthy food, and not being able to connect with others who are working in structured way to engage in practical solutions.
Enter the organic community rooftop garden.

The rest of this article can be read here.

Kelly McEvers : NPR : 11 Dec 2015

© Cayce Clifford for NPR : Homeless camp in Utah

A decade ago, Utah set itself an ambitious goal: end chronic homelessness.  As of 2015, the state can just about declare victory: The population of chronically homeless people has dropped by 91 percent.

The state's success story has generated headlines around the country, and even The Daily Show With Jon Stewart looked to Utah to understand how the state achieved its goal.  In fact, Utah still has a substantial homeless problem. The overall homeless population is around 14,000.

The chronically homeless, on the other hand, are a subset of the homeless population that is often the most vulnerable. These are people who have been living on the streets for more than a year, or four times in the past three years, and who have a "disabling condition" that might include serious mental illness, an addiction or a physical disability or illness.  According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, that represents about 20 percent of the national homeless population.

By implementing a model known as Housing First, Utah has reduced that number from nearly 2,000 people in 2005, to fewer than 200 now.

The whole story can be read here.

Travis Branum from North Vernon shared beautiful but eerie photos of giant vertical beams of colored light that appeared over North Vernon Indiana early this morning.

So what is it?  These are called "light pillars" and are pretty rare around these parts.
What caused it? Light pillars are created through the reflection of light off of numerous tiny ice crystals .

According to Wikipedia:
"The crystals responsible for light pillars usually consist of flat, hexagonal plates, which tend to orient themselves more or less horizontally as they fall through the air. Their collective surfaces act as a giant mirror, which reflects the light source upwards and/or downwards into a virtual image. As the crystals are disturbed by turbulence the angle of their surfaces deviates some degrees from the horizontal orientation, causing the reflection (i.e. the light pillar) to become elongated into a column. The larger the crystals, the more pronounced this effect becomes. More rarely, column-shaped crystals can cause light pillars as well"

The combination of a dense fog and air temperatures in the 20's allowed the water droplets in the fog to freeze into ice crystals allowing the phenomenon to occur.This same combo of dense fog and subfreezing temps also contributed to the formation of widespread hoar frost and rime ice. It made for a neat scene this morning in many locations.

US Army Secretary John McHugh announced this week that American women will be soon forced to register for the draft upon their 18th birthday just as men are. Army officials said that the move was in the spirit of "true and pure equality," but with the country wrapped up in dozens of unpopular wars it seems more like equal oppression than equal opportunity.

Currently, US citizens are not forcefully conscripted into military service, but not long ago the draft was a very real thing, and like the flip of a switch it can be imposed at any time that the government fails to recruit enough people for their wars. 

A recent ruling to open more combat roles to women inadvertently opened them up for selection for the draft.  McHugh said that universal draft registration will be a normal part of American culture before we know it.  "If we find ourselves as a military writ large where men and women have equal opportunity, as I believe we should," he said.

Not only are the wars currently taking place around the world totally inhumane and illegitimate, but the very concept of conscription is nothing more than slavery, forcing someone to do something against their will. Not only that but a mandatory draft would put people into a dangerous situation and force them to kill against their will, which is wrong for both men and women.

With no end in sight for the wars across the Middle East and now Africa, it should be no surprise that bringing the draft back would definitely be on the agenda.

Equality of freedom and equality of opportunity is something that people of all races, genders and ethnicities deserve, and this is a direction that humanity should move in. However, equal oppression is something entirely different, and when one social group is oppressed, we should work to free them from oppression, instead of shifting that oppression onto other social groups and calling it equality, as the US Army has done this week. Instead of celebrating the fact that the draft can be forced onto anyone, we should be working to abolish the concept of a military draft.

Check out Murray Rothbard's classic essay on conscription below:

Overwhelmed by the city's growing homeless population, which has increased by 12 percent in just two years, and facing an increase in complaints from neighborhoods about encampments, the Los Angeles City Council has declared a "shelter crisis." The measure was adopted by the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday in a 14-0 vote. It creates a legal framework for the city to provide temporary housing to homeless men and women in public buildings and parking lots.

"While we're building the infrastructure, we're finding ways to address homelessness. We have a long way to go," said Councilman Jose Huizar, co-chair of the Homelessness and Poverty Committee, according to the Los Angeles Times. "It's going to be a long road ahead of us." The rise in homelessness over the last two years is forcing officials to seek housing solutions for the city's estimated 26,000 people dwelling on streets, in shelters, and living in cars, reported LA Daily News.

The city's Municipal Code currently permits a shelter crisis to be in effect during the cold winter months - from November 1 to March 31. The vote on Tuesday extended the crisis to the spring and allows council members to designate additional buildings in their districts as temporary housing for the homeless, the LA Times reported.

Before the vote, city council members heard testimony from residents and activists from the San Fernando Valley and San Pedro who said that homeless encampments have cropped up near their homes, sometimes populated by people committing illegal acts, such as drug use and prostitution. "It's not something that we haven't been dealing with for 40 or 50 or 60 years, except that it's worse," Judith Hirschberg told the council, according to newspaper. "In my nice neighborhood, we have people who have no place to sleep, come into vacant homes and set fires. It's not a good idea."

Overwhelmed by the city's growing homeless population, which has increased by 12 percent in just two years, and facing an increase in complaints from neighborhoods about encampments, the Los Angeles City Council has declared a "shelter crisis." The measure was adopted by the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday in a 14-0 vote. It creates a legal framework for the city to provide temporary housing to homeless men and women in public buildings and parking lots.

Read the rest of the story at : source.

For one month in Lexington County, Kentucky, individuals who forgot to feed their parking meter or drove too fast and got a ticket can pay off their fines with canned good donations.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that during the month-long "Food for Fines" program (November 16 - December 18), the city's parking authority will accept cans for citations.

Those who donate 10 canned food items will receive a $15 credit on citations. Customers with multiple citations are only allowed to bring in 10 cans per citation to receive the credits.

All the food will be donated to God's Pantry Food Bank, which will use the items to stock the shelves of its four Lexington locations.  Said Marian Guinn, the CEO of God's Pantry: "One expired parking meter ticket could mean two meals for hungry Fayette County families."

LexPark Executive Director Gary Means said that citizens brought in more than 6,200 cans of food as payment during last year's "Food for Fines" program. The wonderful initiative is helping low-income families stay satiated during the cold and long winter months. Its importance, obviously, cannot be overstated.

HuffPost reports that last year, the program was strictly limited to LexPark citations for expired parking meters. This year, any parking citation issued by either LexPark or the police department will be eligible. This means the food pantry is likely to receive even more donations.  "We hope by opening the program up to all types of citations, we'll see the numbers increase," Means said.  No out-of-date, damaged or open canned goods will be accepted. The park authority suggests that those seeking to exchange food for fines bring large cans with vegetables and proteins.

A profound conversation from the 1981 movie “My Dinner with Andre” that is more applicable today than it was then. Let this blow your mind. The truth is out there! Grab it!

Zen Gardner http://www.zengardner.com

 Amanda Froelich : Activist Post : 30 Aug 2015

Said Lisa Tepper Bates, executive director of CCEH: " This means that all known chronically homeless veterans are housed or are on the immediate path to housing, and any veteran who newly enters homelessness will be rapidly put on the path to permanent housing. Nearly 300 veterans previously experiencing chronic homelessness have now been gifted permanent - or at least temporary - housing." Chronically homeless is defined as 'those with a disabling condition who have been continuously homeless for a year or have had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.'

According to a joint report conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs along with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, veterans account for 16% of all homeless adults nationwide - even though they only make up 10% of the population. It is a travesty, indeed.  But this positive news is affirmation that homelessness - especially chronic homelessness among veterans - can be eradicated. "This proves to everybody that you can do it ... You can end homelessness, you just need to go one person at a time," said Bates.

As the Hartford Courant reports, Connecticut was supplied with the means to reach it goal through significant increases in funding for permanent housing vouchers and additional funding targeted to provide rapid rehousing to veterans carried out on a federal level.  Connecticut's state Department of Housing has also invested at least $3 million in rental subsidies and special services for Connecticut's homeless veterans. In many states, there is no such investment.

The positive news doesn't end there...! Government Malloy of Connecticut has set a goal to provide housing and support services for all homeless people in the state by the end of 2016.

Justin Warmoth : WPTV West Palm Beach : 20 May 2015

© Screen Capture Youtube
Titusville, Florida - A strange object was caught on surveillance video at the U.S. Space Walk of Fame Museum in Titusville.  Employees have noticed an orb-shaped object a couple of times and have no idea what it is. On two separate occasions in just the last week, the orb was spotted by surveillance cameras.

This video, which has garnered more than 500 views on YouTube, was taken May 12 in a room filled with artifacts, memorabilia and photos from the Mercury and Gemini space programs. The video shows the mysterious object come into frame, leaves, then comes back before suddenly disappearing.

In a video, taken May 15, you can see it quickly move around toward the bottom of the screen before vanishing once again.

"We can't explain it, nor can the (person) who put in the system for us," Charlie Mars, the president of the U.S. Space Walk of Fame Museum. Mars said in both instances the lights and air conditioning were turned off, which is why he rules out that that it's a glare or a floating dust ball, like some staffers think it is. "There were many items in here that were brought in by people who are no longer with us. They could be coming back to check on it," said Mars. Mars said this type of unexplainable activity is nothing new for the space museum, which just moved into the 100-year-old building after spending the last 10 years just down the street.

"We have had a number of things like that have occurred over the past 10 to 12 years that we don't have an explanation for and we do love speculating about it," said Mars. Some wonder whether it could be a ghost in the historic building, which once served as a county records facility. But for the staff here, whether it's a glare dust ball or perhaps the spirit of Neil Armstrong, it's something for them to talk about. "We love having something come in unexplainable. and it gives us a chance to interchange with each other and talk about what it will possibly be," said Mars.
Source: WKMG via CNN Wire