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Archive for December, 2009

The term shin splints is a common misnomer in sports medicine. It does not imply a specific diagnosis, rather it is the symptom of pain over the front of the tibia bone. The pain from shin splints can be due to either problems of the muscles, the bone, or the attachment of the muscle to the bone. Therefore, ’shin splints’ is simply the name given to pain over the front of the lower leg.

Shin splints is a common term used for a half a dozen lower leg problems ranging from nerve irritations to tendonitis to stress fractures. The most common type that is experienced involves the tearing away of the muscle tissue that attaches to the front of the lower leg.

Risk Factors of Shin Splints

The first risk factor is overtraining. Evaluate your schedule to determine what training errors you may have made. Mechanically, pronation is most likely to be the culprit. When the foot pronates the medial structures of the leg are stretched and put under stress, this increases the likelihood that they will become injured.

Muscle trauma (exertional compartment syndrome) is often related to overtraining or excessive running on hard surfaces. Repeated use makes the muscles swell and puts pressure on the fascia that covers the muscles in the lower leg leading to pressure and pain.

A primary culprit causing shin splints is a sudden increase in distance or intensity of a workout schedule. This increase in muscle work can be associated with inflammation of the lower leg muscles, those muscles used in lifting the foot (the motion during which the foot pivots toward the tibia).

Anterior compartment syndrome affects the outer side of the front of the leg.

Stress fractures usually produce localized, sharp pain with tenderness 1 or 2 inches below the knee. A stress fracture is likely to occur 2 or 3 weeks into a new training program or after beginning a harder training program.

Symptoms of Shin Splints

You have pain over the front part of your lower leg. You may have pain during exercise, at rest, or both. Stress fractures of the tibia will give you pain directly over your shinbone. It will hurt to touch the part of the bone that is fractured. Stress fractures of the fibula will cause pain on the outer side of your lower leg. With medial tibial stress syndrome, you will have pain and tenderness along the edge of the shinbone, especially along the muscles. With compartment syndrome the muscles in that area will be painful.

Shin splints are a common, often seasonal injury that usually occurs when you start to run after a long layoff. They can also result from playing a sport (such as tennis) on a hard surface, changing your style of workout shoes, dramatically increasing workouts, or gaining a substantial amount of weight and then exercising.

Anterior shin splint is due to a muscle or tendon injury (that help to lift the front of the foot) and results in pain and tenderness on the front outside of the leg. Posterior pain (a soreness that radiates along the back and inner side of the lower leg or ankle) is typically caused by stressed muscles that help support and stabilize the arch of the foot.

Stress fractures should be taken seriously, so if you suspect you have one, you should consult a physician before continuing to engage in any exercise or activity.

Treatment of Shin Splints

If pain is severe or you suspect a stress fracture, contact your physician for an examination. After a medical history and examination, he or she may suggest x-rays to detect any minute cracks in the shin – the sign of a stress fracture.

Rest. Avoid activities that cause pain, swelling or discomfort — but don’t give up all physical activity. While you’re healing, try low-impact exercises, such as swimming, bicycling or water running. If your shin pain causes you to limp, consider using crutches until you can walk normally without pain.

Who doesn’t enjoy browsing around shops offering wonderful products at bargain prices? Suffolk is home to such a large and varied selection of shops that you are sure to find something to suits your tastes and needs. Along with all of the recognised High Street chains, Suffolk offers shoppers something a little more distinctive. Throughout Suffolk you will find a great many independent and family-run shops selling unique, hand-made and specialised items covering everything from clothes, jewellery & accessories, to knick-knacks, ornaments, food & drink, and home & garden ware. You are sure to find the perfect gift for that special someone – or perhaps even treat yourself to an irresistible item!

So get the credit cards at the ready, and continue reading to discover the vast choice of shops open for you to visit in the Shoppers’ Guide to Suffolk.

A shopping trip to Long Melford is sure to make your day, as here you will find not one but two lovely shops belonging to Anne and Owen Roberts. The Cuckoo Flower on Hall Street stocks a fabulous range of Lifestyle & Interior products including jewellery, handbags, scarves and other accessories, indulgent toiletries, gifts for all and kitchen ware. Just a stone’s throw away you will find The Cuckoo Flower Home, proudly boasting a remarkable selection of contemporary and trendy designer furniture for your home and garden, plus interiors, glassware, and kitchenware. You are sure to find a delightful addition to your home that will impress your friends – or leave them green with envy!

Are you green-fingered? If you want to add something special to your garden, a trip to Harveys Garden Plants in Bury St Edmunds is the order of the day. This family-run nursery growing rare and unusual breeds of plants offers you the opportunity to buy seeds, plants and other garden accessories. You can also ask the advice of the expert staff, or attend one of the various talks and events frequently held here.

In Ipswich is Evolution, a shop owned by a Buddhist charity, The Windhorse Trust, offering gifts and home ware sourced directly from developing countries – the profits of which go towards International and Community projects. Here you will find a delightful selection of interesting and unusual items to choose from, such as mirrors; candles; cushions; jewellery & accessories; toys & games; teapots; photo frames; and furniture. So why not make that special purchase whilst also doing a good deed?

Kitty’s Homestore in Framlingham invites you to drop in for some retail therapy! At Kitty’s you will find a large selection of items to indulge you, your home or your garden with, and you can take a shopping break in Kitty’s Cafe, now offering light lunches along with coffees, teas and delicious cakes.

One shop offering an unparalleled experience not to be missed is The Amber Shop in Southwold. Sitting alongside The Amber Museum, here you will discover the delights of all things amber. The museum features a beautiful selection of carvings and artefacts from around the world, and in the shop you will find a breath-taking array of traditional and modern amber jewellery for both men and women. This is a unique shopping event, so be warned – you are likely to want to spend the whole day there!

The Jessica Muir Gallery in the centre of Long Melford is a wonderful place simply to visit, view and admire its products – though we are sure you will be tempted to make a purchase once you see exactly what is on offer. Artists and shop owners, Jessica Brown & Jean Muir, specialise in jewellery, ceramics, glass, wood, textiles, painting and limited edition prints. Individual commissions and sourcing for specific requirements are undertaken to accommodate individual customer requirements, and the gallery features a changing programme of exhibitions which run throughout the year.

Another great place to pick up some original arts and crafts is the Suffolk Craft Society in Ipswich. Within this magnificent 1868 Town Hall building shoppers will find a sales outlet for contemporary designer craftwork such as ceramics, jewellery, sculptures, weaved baskets and home & kitchen ware. The Society also has a craftwork commissioning service, an online shop, and hold monthly, free-entry talks and exhibitions by a featured artist.

Stepping Out in Bury St Edmunds is the best place to visit for all your travel clothing, adventure gear and other outdoor accessories. The shop stocks all well-known brands of outdoor clothing and accessories – from hiking boots and waterproofs to sleeping bags and tents, amongst many other useful and necessary items. Their friendly team of staff are always on hand to offer advice, and for those of you unable to reach the shop in person there is an online catalogue.

Nursey & Son Ltd stock a wonderful selection of sheepskin clothes and accessories in their shop in Bungay, and have done so for over 200 years. Here you will find everything from coats and bags to hats and slippers – and all crafted by hand! You can telephone or visit the shop and speak to a member of staff who knows everything about the products on offer, so if you’re looking for that special item made with a personal touch this is the place for you.

Variety is the key word when describing Anglia Photographic in Halesworth. Primarily stocking a wide range of digital cameras, 35MM cameras, and other photography equipment, they also feature sports clothes and equipment – including fishing rods – and school uniforms.

Rafi’s Spicebox in Sudbury is something special. Rafi Fernandez, author of over 12 cookery books, has created an Authentic Asian Delicatessen that will bring the true delights of Indian cooking into your home. Simply visit Rafi’s, browse their vast menu of mild-to-hot Far Eastern dishes and select the option you fancy. Rafi’s staff will then prepare a Curry Pack by blending the spices and ingredients while you wait. Finally, take your purchase home, add water, and enjoy your authentic cuisine within 30 minutes! Rafi’s also offers a mail order service from their online shop.

Another shop selling foods that are sure to make you sweat is The Chilli Company in Stowmarket. As you can guess by the name, here you will find all things chilli. And we mean ALL. They have a Chilli Farm, growing over 150 varieties of chilling for you to come and see; Pablo’s Deli selling fresh chillies; a Chilli Shop bursting with locally produced gourmet sauces, salsas, jellies, chutneys & oils, plus extra-hot imported sauces, as well as gifts, clothing, books and ceramics; a Chilli Coffee Shop selling a great selection of teas, including Chilli Tea, Coffee and Chilli Hot Chocolate and soft drinks plus a selection of Light Lunches to suit all tastes; and finally a Mexican Restaurant and an outdoor Tapas & BBQ Restaurant. This is one place you could easily spend the whole day in!

If you have worked up an appetite whilst out shopping, a trip to Palmer’s Bakery is sure to put an end to that rumbling in your tummy! This is a family-run bakery, using local produce to prepare recipes handed down through generations. Alongside traditional baked goodies such as breads and pastries, you may also purchase specialised items such as wedding and birthday cakes, fine oils, hampers, teas & coffees, free-range eggs plus a variety of jams, marmalades & conserves.

Finally, Borley Smokery in Gestingthorpe will tantalise your taste-buds with their delicious smoked fish on offer, including sea trout; kippers; halibut; salmon; rainbow trout; scallops; and haddock, to name but a few. What better way to end a day out shopping than to pick up something yummy for tea!

There are a huge number of resorts in the Maldives to suit a wide range of tastes and budgets. Here, we’ll take you through many of the popular destinations.

Angsana Resort & Spa Maldives

Angsana is located in the Ihuru islands (North Male Atoll) and is a short 14 km distance from the capital of Male.

The resort contains 45 villas – some of the nice features of these include thatched roofs, individual private gardens and pleasant verandas. Guests can choose between deluxe beachfront villas and standard beachfront villas.

Ihuru has a great reputation for having some of the finest house reefs in the Maldives and so is a good destination for those wanting to do a bit of diving and snorkelling.

The spa at Angsana offers a wide range of treatments including facials, massages and various others.

Asdu Sun Island Maldives

Asdu Sun Island is a three star resort with 30 rooms located in the Kaafu (Male) Atoll.

While it may not be one of the more luxurious choices, Asdu Sun Island does offer the usual range of activities including diving, canoeing, snorkelling, fishing and more.

Additional facilities include a reading library where guests can take out books to read by the beach plus a video hall and internet surfing.

Bandos Island Resort Maldives

The Bandos resort has 225 guestrooms of varying types – guests can choose from standard, deluxe, garden villas, Jacuzzi beach villas, and water villas. The resort is located in the North Male atoll.

Bandos first opened in 1972 although it has grown considerably since then to become one of the largest Maldives resorts with facilities to match. For example, just some of the facilities include tennis courts, a coffee shop (and five restaurants), a disco & bar, gym & sauna, pool room, a couple of swimming pools, beauty salon as well as a spa offering massages.

The diving facilities are good with a diving school offering diving courses.

Banyan Tree Maldives

The Banyan Tree is another luxurious resort set in the North Male atoll. The resort offers five different types of rooms from standard to ocean view villas. There’s a choice of four restaurant and bars, a very good spa, and excellent recreation facilities including diving, snorkelling & deep sea fishing to name but a few.

Baros Island Resort Maldives

Located in North Male Atoll, Baros is just a 20 minute speedboat ride from Male airport. The resort offers three types of accommodation – water villas, baros villas and deluxe villas.

There are several bars & restaurants offering a wide selection of continental & oriental cuisines.

The recreational facilities at Baros are huge, and aside from the standard diving & snorkelling options offered at practically all resorts, Baros offers several additional services – badminton, aerobics and cycling are just a few of these.

Bathala Island Resort Maldives

Certainly one of the smaller resorts located in the Ari Atoll, Bathala is well regarded by divers.

The 4 star resort contains 37 cottages and is better suited to those who do not plan to do much other than laze away.

Biyadhoo Island Resort Maldives

Biyadhoo is located on the Kaafu Atoll (South Male Atoll) is a four star resort containing a total of 96 rooms. The resort is highly regarded as a good place for diving and snorkeling. Certainly an island for those looking for water sports and activity in addition to the spectacular scenery that the Maldives offers.

Boduhithi Island Resort Maldives

This club style resort with over 80 rooms is a particular favourite with Italian clientele. As you would expect, this means a high number of available activities and all the fine Italian dining you can handle. The staff are also predominantly Italian.

Boduhithi is located in the North Atoll (Kaafu) and has an official rating of four stars.

Bolifushi Island Resort Maldives

Located in the South Male Atoll, about 12km Southwest of Male this 4 star rated resort has three types of rooms – Boli, Beach Villa and Water Villa.

The facilities are good and offer diving, snorkelling, scuba diving and plenty of other activities. There is also good Spa.

Club Med Farukolhufushi Maldives

Set in the North Atoll, this island resort is very good for scuba diving and watersports. The 4-star resort offers a wide range of facilities and 150 rooms. There are two room types – superior, and superior with balcony.

Tuition is available for water-sports including windsurfing and sailing while other activities on offer including kayaking, beach volley, soccer, water-polo and more. The resort also offers a swimming pool, spa, arts/crafts workshop, a TV/pool room and more.

Coco Palm Resort & Spa Maldives

This five star resort is located on the private island of Duikolu (Baa Atoll) and is approximately half an hour via sea-plane from the Capital of Male.

The accommodation is highly luxurious and there are four types of rooms from beach villas to the incredible lagoon palace suite.

The resort offers several restaurants and bars, all set in highly tranquil locations and also has a highly recommended spa.

Activities and diving are also available with a diving school and plenty of sports such as water-skiing, canoeing, surf-biking, sailing & more. Tennis, badminton, volley ball are also on offer and the resort has a gym too for the health conscious.

Cocoa Island Maldives

Cocoa Island is a five star resort in South Male Atoll and is approximately 30 minutes from Male via speedboat.

The rooms are of a high standard and come in varying types including one and two bed villas, dhoni loft suites and dhoni standard suites.

The main activities on offer are diving, water-sports and island hopping.

Dhonveli Beach & Spa Resort Maldives

Not surprisingly, “Dhonveli” in Maldian stands for “crystal white sand”. This is a five star resort with five different types of rooms that is located on the North Male Atoll.

The resort has one main restaurant, the Banana Garden Restaurant but also offers a sunset bar & coffee shop.

There are several of the usual indoor and outdoor recreational facilities available, including “big game fishing” and “adventure cruising”. Floodlit tennis/badminton, carom, table tennis are a few of the more traditional activities on offer and the resort has a gym and spa too.

Ellaidhoo Tourist Resort Maldives

Located on the North Ari Atoll is the four star Ellaidhoo resort. It’s quite a distance from Male (over an hour by speedboat although only 20 minutes via seaplane). Ellaidhoo is one of the smaller resorts and the whole island is around 300 metres long and 280 metres wide.

There are 156 rooms split up into standard, superior and deluxe. The dining facilities include the restaurant, coffee shop and bar.

Diving & recreation activities are available and these include island hopping, snorkelling safaris, morning fishing, an excursion to Male and more. There is also a Spa.

Embudu Village Maldives

This four star resort is set in Kaafu Atoll and the island is just 300 metres long. There is a very easy-going feel to the island. There are 118 rooms divided between standard, superior and water bungalow rooms.

As you would expect, the main activities in Embudu are diving, water sports and a feast of additional activities normally found in Maldives reorts.

There is a restaurant, bar and coffee shop serving a variety of food and beverage.

Eriyadu Island Resort Maldives

Set in the North Male Atoll, Eriyadu is a four star resort that contains 57 superior rooms only. It’s a 45 minute transfer via speedboat from the capital Male. It’s a 4-star resort.

There is a restaurant, bar and coffee shop available for guests and there are good diving facilities available as you would expect.

Filitheyo Island Resort Maldives

Situated on the Faafu Atoll, Filitheyo is a five star resort with 125 villas of different types.
Filitheyo offers a main restaurant, a couple of bars and a coffee shop and several of the standard diving & recreational facilities are available including cultural shows and live music too.

Four Seasons Resort Maldives

Set in the North Male Atoll, Four Seasons is a spectacular five star resort with 106 rooms of various types (from standard beach villas and beach bungalows with outdoor showers to water villas).

The resort offers three restaurants and two bars and some of the features include a healthy offering of vegetarian food as well as themed nights.

The facilities & recreational amenities are very good – as well as the standard Maldives offerings guests can try their hand at aerial excursions, catamaran sailing, big game fishing and island hopping.

The resort is a half hour transfer via speedboat from Male.

Full Moon Resort Maldives

The five star Full Moon resort is located in the North Male Atoll and is a 20 minute speedboat ride from Male.

There are 156 rooms – from deluxe and cottage rooms to water bungalows and water villas. The architecture has a very traditional, wooden feel and the accommodation is very comfortable.

No less than five different restaurants offer a huge selection of international cuisine and keep the guests pallets delighted at all times. There are also three bars and a coffee shop.

While most Maldives resorts have their own spas, the Full Moon spa is actually located on a separate island – a delightful touch.

A good range of activities and recreation are also on offer.

Hakuraa Club Maldives

On the Meemu Atoll lies the four star Hakuura Club offering either beach or water bungalows. The resort is 130km from Male. A good range of activities and recreation are offered.

Halaveli Holiday Village Maldives

This is a three star resort in the Ari Atoll offering a range of beach bungalows. The transfer from the airport is half an hour by sea plane or 1.5 hours via speedboat. Dhon transfers are available but take 360 minutes.

There is a main restaurant and bar offering a wide range of cuisine. A fair standard or recreation and diving facilities are also available.

This is a fair option for those with a tight budget that are looking for a Maldives experience. While the rooms are not exactly cheap, they are more affordable than the four and five star options available.

Helengeli Tourist Village Maldives

Helengeli is a four star resort that’s based in the Kaafu Atoll. There are 50 beach villas available and offers the usual choice of recreation and activities. To name a few, they include Spa, restaurant/bar, internet facilities, freshwater pool as well as dhoni/speedboat/seaplane hire. There is also a dive school.

Hilton Maldives Resort & Spa Rangali Island Maldives

The luxurious five star Hilton is not for those with a fragile budget! Located in the South Ari Atoll, the resort is 90km from Male airport.

There are 150 rooms divided into standard/deluxe beach villas, water bungalows, and sunset water villas.

The main restaurant is the Atoll restaurant containing two open kitchens. The sunset bar & grill is a lovely addition built over the water with stunning views of the lagoon. You can even have a private barbeque specially made by a resort chef.

Some great recreational & diving activities are offered including swimming pool, tennis courts, fitness rooms & spa and a huge range of water & other sports.

These are just a handful of the premier holiday resorts available in the Maldives. While all tend to be mid to high end, your choice may be determined by the type of holiday you’re interested in so some further research is always recommemded.

I was reading a book the other day (a romance novel of course) and the author said that romance was incredibly important in todays world. Romance is the cornerstone on which love and families are created. A good family loves each other but great families have couples that are still activily romantic. I love it!

I was reading in a book on business, yes I read everyday, that romance was a form of intelligent stress relief and creativity of the mind. It went on to say that creative, relaxed people tend to be brilliantly smart. I couldn’t agree more.

So, to encourage others to have strong families and brilliant children….let me tell you how to make 4 fabulous (cheap) canopies for your bedroom.

Asian Canopy (it isn’t really asian, just inspired)

A bamboo shade

mounting hardware

screw driver

curtain rod

Take a bamboo/twig roller shade the wideth of your headboard. I like the kind with the built in vvalance. Attatch midway between the foot and head of your bed onto the ceiling with the hardware provided. Attatch a curtain rod at the ceiling (on the ceiling or the wall – doesn’t really matter much – to taste)

Thread the shade through the curtain rod to creat a nice drape – let the rest fall behind the head of the bed to create a headboard.

Ta da!

Kid’s pirate canopy

muslin fabric

mardi gras beads (gold preferred)

red or black bandanas

scissors

four mug hooks

some fishing net (or dirty looking tulle)

Shred the muslin – make it look worn and dirty (or as dirty as you can handle – I’m neat freak and can’t handle much) Tear up the tulle too.

Attatch the mug hooks one at each corner of the bed into the ceiling.

Use the gold beeds to “tie” on the shredded fabric. Stretching it this way and that, over and around the four hooks. You’re just going for messy drapes. Add the bandanas at the four corners as well. (I snuck in some zip ties for added stability) Top if off with a Jolly Roger if you can find one (try Ebay).

My daughter has this – and a wooden bed frame. It looks awesome. All said and done I got the supplies at Walmart for about $10.

Romantic Garden Canopy

Arching Garden Trellis

Fake flowers in mass

Fake butterflies

white twinkle lights

Tulle (about 6 yards)

Ribbons

One arching trellis is perfect for a twin size bed. However if you bed is larger than purchase two trellis’ and use them together to make one big trellis. I originally purchased a trellis in a box – and just simply put them together to arch over the head of my bed. Play around with this. I’ve also discovered that you can just buy PVC piping that will arch over your bed. (About 16-18 feet of PVC a skinny flexible size – put them in a large flowerpot filled with heavy rocks or plaster of paris. Intertwine for added character.)

Thread the twinkle lights then the tulle over the arch. Follow with tucking in the flowers and butterflies. Add a nice droopy bow at the center twining extra ribbon over your fancy creation.

You could even hang a simply chandilier here but NEVER LIGHT IT!

NO-Sew Floating Canopy

Flat sheet the size of your bed.

Fishing line.

Screws

safety pins.

Chandelier bobs (or pretty matching tassles)

At the four corners of your bed screw in screws – half way.

Lay the sheet on your bed adjusting it so that it drapes evenly all the way around. Put safety pins on the four corners. Using four strands of fishing line cut exactly the same lenght (go for about 1.5ft) tie them onto the safety pins.

Mark off two inches on the fishing line – wrap that amount around the screw in the ceiling that matches the saftey pin and finish put the screw in.

Attach the chandelier bob onthe underside for sparkle! Adjust as needed (at the safety pins) All done!

I hope you already have wonderful romance in your life but if you don’t start by adding a canopy to your bedroom!

 

 1 Riverside

The bulk of Singapore’s historical attractions are by the river, so a great place to start a daytrip is at the mouth of the Singapore River. This area is a lovely for a walk, with small green gardens dotted amongst old-style bridges and historical buildings. Maybe take a late afternoon stroll and soak up the peaceful atmosphere before hitting the nightlife hot-spots of Clarke Quay and Boat Quay. Before you have a drink, Riverside is also a good area to get fed. The western end of the river, around Robertson Quay, houses a Japanese expat community, and consequently the Japanese restaurants nearby serve some of the best fare this side of Tokyo. The best places for a splurge with a view are Boat Quay and Clarke Quay, which have many superb and atmospheric riverside restaurants offering cuisine from most corners of the globe. Another good choice is Chijmes, the former Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus and now, since most Singaporeans have lost interest in Christianity, an alluring assemblage of high-end food and drink outlets near the Raffles Hotel. Travellers with refined cultural tastes will enjoy the nightly opera, dance and classical music on offer at the Esplanade Theatre.

There are two options for seeing the area from the air:

G-Max Reverse Bungy. Get strapped in and flung upwards by a giant rubber band at 200 km/h. Do this before, rather than immediately after, dinner.

Singapore Flyer. Singapore’s newest tourist attraction, this 150-metre-tall observation wheel, modelled on the London Eye, is the world’s tallest. If you can afford it then avoid having to share your capsule with dozens of other people by stumping up the $1,000 (GBP 370) for a private ride. Or maybe justify it as a valid business expense by taking along a business associate – just hope he or she doesn’t return the favour and take you for a ride, too.

 

2 Orchard Road

Orchard Road and neighboring Scotts Road form Singapore’s top shopping district, with several kilometres of busy but fairly quiet roads lined on both sides by practically nothing but shopping malls. Shopping heaven, husband hell.

3 Merlion.

Singapore’s official symbol, 8.6 metres tall and weighing 70 tons, spouts water on the south bank of the mouth of the Singapore river. The monument was commissioned by the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board in 1964 to give tourists something to take photos of, as the city is somewhat lacking in spectacular sights. Many Singaporeans regard the monument as a bit of a joke: in Singaporean slang the verb to ‘merlion’ means ‘to vomit’. Popular mainly with Japanese photo-holics.

 

4 Bugis

Bugis has a colourful, even lurid, past, as the den of iniquity at the centre of the sin city that Singapore once was. Whilst the government’s imprisonment and execution of all the pimps and lowlifes has completely cleaned the place up, one can’t help but mourn the loss of the colour of Singapore’s history a little: the only lurid thing about Bugis these days is the neon signs. Originally named after the bloodthirsty race of pirates who prowled the Straits before their extermination by the British, for a long time the area was Singapore’s equivalent of Bangkok’s infamous Patpong. After its sanitisation and conversion into a shopping experience for the whole family, it is now a place where pillaging and looting still occur, but only of the most gullible tourists.

 

5 China town

Chinatown’s main attraction is the jumble of restored shop-houses full of strange boutiques stocking everything from plastic Buddhas to dried seahorses. It’s a great place to wander around at random and see what you can find. Temple aficionados may enjoy checking out the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, which towers above the area, although whether the Lord Buddha would approve of purported bits of his remains being worshipped is open to debate. Chai-curious tourists will enjoy a visit to the Tea Chapter, at 9 Neil Rd, for a spot of tea drinking, Chinese style. Why not spend an afternoon reading the papers and tea-tasting some of the fancier brands (“would sir care for some ‘Phoenix’s Shrubbery’, perchance?”).

 

6 Little India

Little India remains one of the most colorful and attractive places to visit in Singapore. Ladies in saris and gold bangles sashay by while spices and incense waft in from the doorways and Bollywood’s latest soundtracks blare from every other alleyway.

Have your fortune read by Pepe the parrot, but don’t get too jubilant when he tells you that you are about to become massively rich, meet a lovely other half, slim down and become younger – he tells everybody much the same story.

If searching for enlightenment then join the yearly festival of Thaipusam and attach shrines to your flesh with piercing hooks, then walk across town in a day-long procession, dribbling blood on the pavements. Female devotees usually just carry a pot of milk on their head, which is impressive, both because it looks impossible to achieve and because it demonstrates how the gentler half of the species don’t need to bother hang heavy objects off their flesh in their quest for enlightenment. After the festival you will have enough time to recover from your wounds before the festival of Thimithi, in which you can walk on red-hot coals – or alternatively, just marvel at how the David Blaine-style yogis and gurus can possibly do this without sustaining serious injury.

7 Balestier

Singapore Polo Club Dating back to 1886, the colonial-style clubhouse is a good spot to quaff a gin and tonic below lazy ceiling fans while watching the idle rich pootle about on the polo field. Riding lessons are available and, even if the horses leave you cold, the spicy tiffin lunches certainly won’t.

8 North and West

To find out what a sauna full of bugs feel like, go for a steamy jungle hike.  These are five of Singapore’s best:

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve is one of the last places in Singapore that is still covered by primary rainforest. Watch out for monkeys, who look cute but aren’t. Whatever you do don’t smile at them, as baring your fangs is an aggressive gesture and may result in them throwing something unpleasant and smelly at you.

Singapore Zoo If you have written all zoos off as sad, inhumane places then maybe consider having your mind changed by Singapore Zoo, which was endorsed by the late Steve Irwin and is used by Animal Planet for some of its documentaries. The animals are kept in spacious, landscaped enclosures, separated from the visitors by dry or wet moats. Most, except the poor old panting polar bear confined to his air-con den by the blazing heat outside, seem happy with their lot and no more psychologically damaged than some of the creatures on the other sides of the moats. For a cooler experience, board the little train that trundles through the park. Kids will love the Jungle Breakfast, where visitors are joined at a 9am buffet by a host of exotic animals such as orangutans, otters and elephants.

Night Safari A part of the Zoo but located on completely separate grounds that are closed during the day, this is the world’s first wildlife park built to be viewed at night. The grounds are in fact larger than the main zoo and only parts are accessible to visitors on foot, so most people opt for the guided tram tour instead. There is a 30-minute animal show at an amphitheatre three times per night: sit in the center section three rows from the front for a big surprise. Stopping at the second tram station is a must as there is a walking path for viewing giraffes, flying squirrels, leopards and lions. Other animals you can expect to see include various types of tigers, elephants, bats, flamingos, porcupines, leopards, otters, badgers, and storks. Child heaven and pretty good for adults too.

Jurong Bird Park The Park specialises in the more exotic and colorful birds from southeast Asia and has a collection of more than 8,000 birds from 600 species. To avoid becoming a soggy mess in the tropical heat, you can circle the park on the Panorail monorail.

The Botanic Gardens This has walking and jogging trails throughout. Outdoor sculptures dot the gardens. Look for the girl on the swing who appears to hang from an invisible chain in the air.

Here are a few things to do that don’t involve stomping about in the jungle:

Singapore Turf Club Betting is allowed.

Snow City Interesting enough for residents of the tropics but probably not on the top of the agenda for pallid Europeans escaping their own winter. Sledding, snowboarding and other wintry pursuits, including the inevitable subzero bar.

9 East Coast

Whilst the main attraction is the beaches, the East Coast also offers Singapore’s solitary flashback to the past, the rustic little island of Pulau Ubin.

East Coast Park 20 kilometres of free beach on Singapore’s southeastern coast: very popular on sunny weekends, despite the rather murky water. The main attractions are the imported white sand and palm trees, plus the locally-grown roller-bladers zooming scantily-clad around. A good choice for families with skate-boarder sons, as skates are available for hire.

Pulau Ubin Singapore’s flashback to yesteryear, a little island off the northern coast where people still live in fishing villages on stilts. The island is covered in biking trails and is an excellent spot for a little steamy jungle off-roading.

10 Sentosa

Long a bit of a joke — Singaporean wags like to quip that ‘Sentosa’ actually stands for “So Expensive and Nothing TO See Actually” — Sentosa’s attractions have received some much-needed upgrades in recent years, with the worst of the kitsch unceremoniously demolished. Offerings of interest to adults are still quite limited, but there’s enough to keep children amused for a day or two. The best way to get there is by the cable car.

Dolphin Lagoon Cute pink dolphins up to their usual tricks.

Fort Siloso Formerly the largest WW2 British naval base in Fortress Singapore, its guns stare balefully out towards the sea in preparation for an enemy attack. Unfortunately, however, the Japanese didn’t oblige by staging a kamikaze assault from the sea. Instead, they rode bikes down the Malayan peninsula. Despite hastily turning the guns around, this was something the British had not prepared for and, after less than a week of fighting, Singapore ignominiously surrendered and the colony’s erstwhile rulers were packed off to Changi Prison. The return of the British in 1945 was less than triumphal and it was clear that their time as Singapore’s rulers was up. Granted self-rule in 1955, Singapore briefly joined Malaysia in 1963, but was expelled because the Chinese-majority city objected to the pro-Malay racial biases built into Malaysian legislature. The island became independent in 1965 and the Malaysians haven’t stopped kicking themselves ever since.

Images of Singapore A kitsch and corny child-friendly rendition of the Singapore story, where people of many races have come together to live in harmony. Renovated in 2006, the show now uses the latest technology, but there is not all that much substance under the glitz.

Sentosa Merlion A 37-metre-tall version of the statue by the Singapore River, this one lights up at night and shoots lasers from its eyes. Admission enables you to take the elevator up into its mouth and gaze out over the nearby Port of Singapore, as well as take in some seriously cheesy exhibits downstairs. 

Sentosa Luge Up the hill in a ski lift and down again in a steerable bobsled. A good attraction for younger kids, but not very exciting for those over 15.

Songs of the Sea. Multimedia extravaganza with live cast, pyrotechnics, water jets and lasers. Very popular, so book ahead, especially on weekends. Kitsch, but fun.   

Underwater World. Features a walk-through aquarium with lots of sharks. Impressive.

Beaches By the standards of the region, these are mediocre, but if all you need is some sand for the children to play in, they will suffice – just make sure you don’t swallow any of the murky water.

Fish Reflexology For a spa treatment with a difference, have fish nibble the dead skin off your feet. You have a choice between ‘gentle’ Turkish fish and ‘aggressive’ African ones: neither will cause damage, but the African ones are really ticklish. The treatment concludes with foot reflexology or head and shoulder massage, performed by masseuses of the more customary species.

Sentosa Golf Club The only golf club in Singapore open to the public, it features two famously challenging 18-hole courses and hosts the yearly Barclays Singapore Open.

Spa Botanica. Singapore first self-proclaimed ‘tropical garden spa’. Out of this world.

 

 

After your trip to Singapore, maybe check out some of southern Thailands’s beaches : www.andamanadventures.com

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K RAMANUJAM –“How many Ramayana’s? Three hundred? Three thousand? At the end of some versions, a question is asked: How many Ramayana’s have there been? And there are stories that answer this question.”

K TSIOLKOVSKY –“The earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.”       

K.BLANCHARD –“People who feel good about themselves produce good results.”

K.D.LANG –“Sometimes the people you love i9n the night/The morning will choose to forget. This is my last cigarette/My last cigarette.”     

K.R.NARAYANAN –“My parting appeal to you … is to guard our tradition of tolerance, for, that is the soul of our culture and civilization.”    (K.R.Narayanan in his farewell address, July 24, 2002)    

KAIFI ZMI – “Break the bond of custom, from the prison of tradition escape Delight not in your weakness, from this imagined delicacy escape Prom these self-conjured vows of greatness escape It too is bondage, from love’s bondage escape. Not only has the thorn, the flower too emasculate risen my love! You have to walk along with me.”  

KAILASH VAJPEYI – “In Jain philosophy, the universe has no beginning, so the question of a Creator has no logical basis. Every one of us is a reservoir of positive energy Divinity is not somewhere out there. So each one of us should strive for perfection and purity of consciousness.”

KALIDASA’S RITUSAMHARA –“Trees put forth flowers, waters abound in lotuses, women’s thoughts turn to love, the air is sweetly scented; mornings are pleasant and days delightful; all things are more alluring in springtime, my love.”    

KALPANA CHAWLA –“Do something because you really want to do it. If you’re doing it just for the goal, and don’t enjoy the path, then I think you’re cheating yourself.”

KALPANA CHAWLA –“I never thought while pursuing my studies or doing anything else about being a woman, I or a person from a small city, or a different country. I pretty much had my dreams, like anybody else and I followed them. People around me fortunately always encouraged and said “if that’s what you want to do carry on”.”

KALPANA CHAWLA –“It was starting to get dim outside, so you got to see your own reflection. And there is the Earth and you can still see the Earth’s surface and the dark sky overhead. And I could then see my reflection in the window and in the retina of my eye the whole earth and the sky could be seen reflected. So I called all the crew members one by one and they saw it, and they said, “oh wow.”   

KALPANA CHAWLA –“Just looking at Earth, looking at the stars during the night part of “Earth; just looking at our planet roll by and the speed at which it goes by and the awe that it inspires; just so many such good thoughts come to your mind when you see all that… Doing it again is like living a dream — a good dream — once again.”

KALPANA CHAWLA –“When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.”   

KANSAS JOE MCCOV & MEMPHIS MINNIE –“Crying won’t help you, praying won’t do you no good. When the levee breaks, mama you got to move.”   

KARAN SINGH –“In our arrogance and ignorance we have destroyed the environment of this planet. We have polluted the oceans, made the air unbreathable, desecrated nature and decimated wildlife. Vedantic seers knew that man was not something apart from nature, and, therefore, they constantly exhort us that, while we work for own salvation, we must also work for the welfare of all beings.”  

KAREEM ABDUL JABBAR –“Basketball is an endurance sport, and you have to learn to control your breath; that’s the essence of yoga, too. So, I consciously began using yoga techniques in my practice and playing. I think yoga helped reduce the number and severity of injuries I suffered. As preventative medicine, it’s unequalled.”   

KAREEM ABDUL JABBAR- “I try to do right things at the right time. They may just be little things, but usually they make the difference between winning and losing.”

KAREN ARMSTRONG –“ Every fundamentalist movement… is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion.            

KAREN ARMSTRONG –“We could say that the nativity is a myth. That does not mean that it is not true. A myth can be defined as something that, in some sense, happened once, but those also nap- pens all the time. Myth reveals the underlying arid timeless significance of an event. It is also a programme for action. The gospels are not accurate biographies of Jesus; like any religious text, they I tell the reader how to behave. Unless a myth is put into practice, we do not grasp its full import. The Christmas myth reminds us that faith does not always bring comfort and joy, but demands self-sacrifice, a commitment to justice and equity, and determination to seek the sacred in the outcast and dispossessed.” 

KAREN LAMB –“A year from now you may wish you had started today.”   

KARL KRAUS –“Prostitution might endanger the moral of an individual; corruption endangers the moral of an entire country.”      

KARL MARX –“Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.” 

KARL MARX- “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

KARL MARX- “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point, however, is to change it.”

KARL MARX –“Workers have nothing to lose but their chains.”  

KARL VON BONSTETTEN –“To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart — and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love.”   

KARLBARTH –“Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.”     

KARLKRAUS –“Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellrs to metaphysics.”  

KARSANBHAI PATEL –“Hardcore value maximisation, avoiding usage of non-required elements into the product and hence reducing the cost results in benefits to the consumer.”              

KARUNA MALHOTRA –“We clean and decorate our homes to welcome Goddess Lakshmi but do not attempt to cleanse our antarman (belief system), where anger, jealousy, unlimited desires and hatred reside. If we are able to eradicate them, Lord Vishnu and Goddess Lakshmi will stay in our hearts forever and thousands of lamps will light up in bliss.”   

KARUNANIDHI –“If the captain of the ship is not perfect, the ship should not be allowed to sink. We have to search for a new captain and repair the ship.”

KASHF-AL-MAHJUB –“The aim of a dervish is to become a dead man walking one whose body stays alive on earth yet whose soul is already in Heaven. Towards the end of his journey, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, that is, a place over which something is passing, not a traveler following his own free will.”

KATE W FURMAN –“When walking down the path of life, Remember what I say, That every man must feel the thorns That grow along the way. And every soul will stumble, For every man is weak, And the road of life uncertain, Its prospects often bleak. But always give a helping hand, A word of love, a smile, To help the soul beside you walk Across each weary mile.”   

KATE W FURMAN –“When walking down the path of life, remember what I say that every man must feel the thorns that grow along the way and every soul will stumble, for every man is weak, and the road of life uncertain, its prospects often bleak. But always give a helping hand, a word of love, a smile, to help the soul beside you walk across each weary mile. For love will cause the sun to shine, and everywhere you go, the painful thorns less noticed as the roses bloom and grow.”

KATHARINE HEPBURN –“If you follow all the rules, you miss all the fun.”  

KATHARINE HEPBURN –“If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.”  

KATHARINE HEPBURN –“There are no laurels in life…just new challenges.”

KATHARINE PAINE –“The moment you make a mistake in pricing, you’re, eating into your reputation or your profits.”       

KATHE KOLLWITZ –“For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.”  

KATHEBINE MANSFIELD –“This is not a letter but my arms around you for a brief moment.”   

KATHERINE HEPBUM – “Do not make reason for him to stay, only reason for him to return.”

KATHERINE HEPBUM –“Don’t accept ride from strange men. And remember that all men are strange.”

KATHERINE HEPBUM –“When love is not madness, it is not love. Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.”

KATHERINE LOGAN –“The greatest thing you can do for any individual or any group in your day is to help them find the best.”   

KATHERINE MANSFIELD –“Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for yourself. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”   

KATHERINE NEVILLE –“The laws of chess are as beautiful as those governing the universe, and as deadly.”  

KATHERINE PATTERSON –“The name we give to something shapes our attitude to it.”     

KAUSALYS’S ADVICE TO RAMA –“It is dharma alone that will protect you … so it is dharma you should protect with courage and steadfastness.”

KAUTILYA- “The arthashastra -a great leader shows the ability to make decisions and act boldly in the face of set backs and adversity.”

KAVIGNAR VAIRAMUTHU –“Today, we pick bodies, not seashells from the sea shore…It is we who are in mourning—then why do you sport the colour black? Kumarikandam, Kabadapuram, Poompuhar: you swallowed them all. Unsatiated, you sent dinosaur waves to devour the innocent. …O mighty sea, what have we done to warrant this severe punishment? Sumatra was once conquered by the great Raja Raja Chola. Is the devastating tsunami Sumatra’s belated vendetta? …We shall overcome all of Nature’s calamities: We shall return to the seas to fish, to travel… But Never to dissolve the ashes of the dead.”  

KAY GRANGER –“We need good faith efforts and results, not roadblocks.”  

KAY KNUDSEN –“True love is when you put someone on a pedestal, and they fall- but you are there to catch them.”

KAY LYONS –“Yesterday is a cancelled cheque; tomorrow is a promissory note; today is the only cash you have: so spend it wisely.”

KAY THEESE –“DO you know how much you mean to me? As you grow into what you will be. You came from within, from just beneath my heart it’s there you’ll always be though your own life will now start. You’re growing so fast it sends me awhirl, With misty eyes I ask, Where’s my little girl? I know sometimes to you I seem harsh and so unfair, But one day you will see, I taught you well because I care. I The next few years will so quickly fly. With laughter and joy, mixed with a few tears to cry As you begin your growth to womanhood, this fact you must know, You’ll always be my source of pride, no matter where you go. You must stand up tall and proud, within you feel no fear. For all you dreams and goals, sit before you very near. With God’s love in your heart and the world by its tail. You’ll always be my winner, and victory will prevail. For you this poem was I written, with help from I above, To tell you in a rhythm of your Mother’s heartfelt Love!”   

KEIICHI MORISATA – Love is life. Everything that I understand I understand only because I love.”

KEITH BELLOWS –“There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won’t go. For me, India is such a place… I had been seeing the world in black and white and, when brought face-to-face with India, experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant Technicolor.”        

KEITH HENSON –“Nanotechnology will give us vast wealth … it might also completely destroy us.”          

KEITH RICHARDS & MICK JAGGER –“Just as every cop is a criminal/And all the sinners saints As head is tails, Just call me Lucifer/ ’cause I’m in need of some restraint.”  

keith richards & nick jagger –“We all need someone we can bleed on/And if you want it, why don’t you bleed on me.”

KEITH RICHARDS- “If you are going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.”

KEN BLANCHARD –“None of us is as smart as all of us.”  

KEN GRIFFEY –“I can’t play being mad. I go out there and have fun. It’s a game, and that’s how I am going to treat it.”

KEN HAKUTA –“People will try to tell you that all the great opportunities have been snapped up. In reality, the world changes every second, blowing new opportunities in all directions, including yours.”  

KEN KESEY –“The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”       

KEN WILBER –“Bad Gardens copy, good gardens create, great gardens transcend. What all great gardens have in common are their ability to pull the sensitive viewer out of him or herself and into the garden, so completely that the separate self-sense disappears entirely and at least for a brief moment one is ushered into a non-dual and timeless awareness. A great garden, in other words, is mystical no matter what its actual content.”   

KENA UPANISHAD –“If you think that you know well the truth of Brahmn, know that you know little. What you think to be Brahmn in your self, or what you think to be Brahmn in the gods — that is not Brahmn. What is indeed the truth of Brahmn you must therefore learn. He truly knows Brahmn who knows Him as beyond knowledge; he who thinks that he knows, knows not. The ignorant think that Brahmn is known, but the wise know Him to be beyond knowledge.”           

KENA UPANISHAD –“That which speech cannot express but that by which speech is expressed is Brahman. Know that alone as Brahman, not that which people worship here. That which cannot be felt by the mind but that which enables the mind to feel, that is Brahman.”

KENA UPANISHAD –“The ignorant think that Brahmn is known, but the wise know Brahmn to be beyond knowledge.”        

KENA UPANISHAD –“The supreme power of God is manifested as knowledge, activity and strength.” 

KENA UPANISHAD –“Those who realise Brahmn shall overcome All evil and attain the supreme state. Truly they shall attain the supreme state!”         

KENA UPANISHAD –“You should enquire further about Brahman…”

KENNETH TYNAN –“A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping.”  

KENNY ROGERS –“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”

KENT NERBUM –“Love has it’s own time, it’s own season, and it’s own reasons for coming and going. You cannot bribe it or coerce it or reason it into staying.”

KERALAFOLK SONG –“When Mahabali ruled the land Everyone was equal Happily they lived Danger befell none There was no falsehood, or fraud And no untruth.” 

KESHAVAN NAIR –“With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity.”

KEVIN EIKENBERRY –“It is easy to feel rich any time. Just count all the things you have that money can’t buy.”      

KEVIN SPACEY –“I mean we all played as kids. You play games, you take on different characters, you imitate; the fun and the love of play has never left me.”       

KHUSHWANT SINGH –“Here lies one who spared neither man nor God Waste not your tears on him, he was a sod Writing nasty things he regarded as great fun Thank the Lord he is dead, this son of a gun.”   

KHWAIRAKPAM CHAOBA –“These Meitei waters before us resplendent is what we call our Loktak; on life’s new current this day, a nascent tide awakens; a towering wave approaches, to drown our wildest imagination. These Meitei waters before us resplendent is what we call our Loktak. A fresh wind caressing the waters, quickens the waves to a dance; on boats are our women afloat, their fishing nets exulting. These Meitei waters before us resplendent is what we call our Loktak.” 

KHWAJA ABDULLAH ANSARI –“From the unman fest I came, And pitched my tent, in the forest of material existence. I passed through mineral and vegetable kingdoms, Then my mental equipment carried me into the animal kingdom; Having reached there I crossed into the beyond; Then in the crystal clear shell of human heart I nursed the drops of Self in a Pearlier, And in association with good men Wandered round the Prayer House, And having experienced that, crossed beyond it; Then I took the road that leads to Him, And became a slave at His gate; Then the duality disappeared And I became absorbed in Him.” 

KIERKEGAARD –“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every, illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts… Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”

KIM ANDERSON –“You love simply because you cannot help it.”

KIMBERLY KIRBERGER –“For me growth begins immediately after I am able to admit my mistakes and forgive myself.”

KING FAROUK OF EGYPT –“There will soon be only five kings left- the kings of England, Diamonds, Hearts, Spades and Clubs.” 

KING JAMES I OF ENGLAND –“Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”     

KING JIGME SINGYE WANGCHUK –“The country is more important than the king.”   

KING SIMEON II –“To be a King is dedication, patience and moderation, self-denial, statesmanship, national unity and, above all, having faith in one’s people.”     

KIRAN BEDI –“Be fearless. Nothing is permanent with you. What is permanent with you is your attitude to the moment. That is what is within your control, and that’s the only permanent thing at the moment i can see… No obstacles should be allowed to derail you from your dreams. All of us are placed differently in this world — in different cultures, homes, environments. The higher the adversity, the greater the courage life demands: the higher the mountain the longer the climb. It is imperative that women continue climbing… Every day is important for tomorrow. Cultivate self-awareness with fortitude and courage. Don’t ever give up.”    

KIRAN DHAR –“0 Holy Mother, we bow to you In times of happiness and prosperity, Or in the dire hour of need, With reverence deep, we remember you…”    

KIRAN DHAR –“On this bright and auspicious day You came into the world to guide and show the way 0 Holy Mother, endless fount of grace, Your blessings flow in countless ways… Your promise given in years gone by Holds true today, as at that time, That those that call you Mother, At your feet will always find A shelter everlasting for all time…”  

KIRAN DHAR –“Your message eternal, flows gently forth, “No one is a stranger, my child, The whole world is yours. If you want peace of your mind With others do not find fault. Whenever in distress remember me And say to yourself I have a Mother. To those who have come to me And to those who will come in the future, To all my children, give them my love And let them know That my blessings with them forever are”. This, your message timeless i hold fast in my heart As I on Life’s perilous journey embark.”     

KIRK DOUGLAS –“When you become a star; you don’t change- everyone else does.”

KIRORI SINGH BHAISALA –“We got what we wanted… I also apologise to the nation for the hardship that people suffered.”

KIRSTI A DYER –“Like the mighty phoenix, Once again I rise from the flames set to destroy me and take flight. I am Stronger Glorious Powerful Victorious.”   

KIRSTIE ALLEY –“There’s a lot more to life than how fat or thin you are.”      

KISHORE ASTHANA –“Complete in my Self, fully free/ I am all that I can see/1 am That all the time/ I am its prose, I am its rhyme. Not for me pilgrimages galore/ Or visits to seers, door to door Wherever I look, there I am/ My holy land is where I am.”       

KISHORE ASTHANA –“I donned the saffron robe I roamed here and there I begged from door to door And didn’t get anywhere I counted a million beads I recited every prayer I read all the books And didn’t get anywhere I discussed God all the time And debated religions Threadbare I fasted days on end And didn’t get anywhere Then wisdom smiled on me one day And said to me in its own calm way AU these are traps of your mind Of one or another kind Just go inside if you want to find What is it that makes you blind To what is illusion and what is true To the false and the real you) It spoke of power and it spoke of pelf It spoke of mind, it spoke of self  It spoke of the real; It spoke of show. It spoke of what I needed to know Now I fast not, nor do I pray I go nowhere but travel in a way “And find the Truth, as wisdom did say Inside myself,  at work and play. It is not holy in the worldly sense It needs not knowledge, smoke, incense It is not demanding of ritual and fast It wants nothing that will not last It’s AU-That-Is’, never surpassed My future, my present and my past.”       

KISHORE ASTHANA –“I have waited long/ In this darkened place/ But I sleep not/ lest I miss/ Those dainty steps/ that beloved face I wait, and waiting in me/ My music sleeps/ Its strings wet with unshed tears/ Its flutes but exhausted reeds The dancing bells have closed their eyes/ And arm in arm they lie aside/ But I wait with bated breath/ For I am sure you said ‘tonight’ My song that was, is now a hymn/ Even the grapes are now old wine/ This bed alas, an unfulfilled altar/ But the dawn is not yet,/ Beloved mine.”       

KLANS KINSKI- “One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real.”

KNUTE ROCKNE –“Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.”

KNUTE ROCKNE –“The secret is to work less as individuals and more as a team. As a coach, I play not my eleven best, but my best eleven.”   

KOBI YAMADA –“Anything is possible. Nothing is too good to be true.”   

KOESTLER –“In my twenties I regarded the universe as an open book full of mathematical formulae, and now I regard it as an invisible piece of writing in which we can now and then decipher a letter or a word and then it’s gone again.”

KOFI ANNAN –“Fierce national competition over water resources has prompted fears that water issues contain the seeds of violent conflict.”        

KOFI ANNAN –“No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime.”    

KOFI ANNAN –“To live is to choose. but to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.”         

KOFY ANNAN –“The Lord had the wonderful advantage of being able to work alone.”

KOICHI TSUKAMOTO –“One step by 100 persons is better than 100 steps by one person.”   

KONSTANTIN E TSIOLKOVSKY –“Mankind will not remain on earth forever, but in its quest for light and space will at first timidly penetrate beyond the confines of the atmosphere, and later will conquer for itself all the space near the sun.”            

KONSTANTIN TSIOLKOVSKY –“For me, a rocket is only means—only a method of reaching the depths of space—and not an end in itself… There’s no doubt that it’s very important to have rocket ships since they will help mankind to settle elsewhere in the universe.”   

KORAN SINGH –“These five concepts from the Vedanta if taken together provide us a comprehensive world-view which will greatly help us in these troubled times. 1. The all-pervasive Brahmn; 2. The Atman which resides in all beings; 3. The concept of the human race as members of a family regardless of all differences; 4. The idea that all religions are essentially different paths to the same goal; 5. The concept that we must work for the welfare of this entire ecosystem and not only for ourselves.”    

KRISHNA IN ‘KRISHAVATARA BY KM MUNSHI –“Town and Country I would never have loved Radha had I not felt sure that I was going to be in Vrindavan as a cowherd forever But when I was called to Mathura as Vasudeva’s son, it would have been wicked to bring her with me. She was born to be an exquisite flower in the spring and would never have survived the hot winds of the life I was called upon to face… I, with my mission to fulfill, could not have played the gay cowherd, who was the very breath of her life.  So I parted from her.”    

KRISHNA, BHAGAVAD GITA –“Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings, nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.”

KRISHNAMACHARYA –“Inhale, and God approaches you. Hold the inhalation, and God remains with you. Exhale, and you approach God. old the exhalation, and surrender to God.”    

KRISTEN KAPPEL –“Love is when you look into someone’s eyes, and see everything you need.”          

KS DUGGAL –“In Guru Arjan we have the culmination of all that Guru Nanak and the three Gurus following him stood for. They combined in themselves the best of Islam and Hinduism and strove for mutual understanding. They were peace-loving, devoted to meditation and prayers, and service of their fellow beings… Sikhism comprises love of God and service if humanity.”   

KS RAM –“A spokesman of God/ The tsunami, perhaps, came to deliver/ His mild admonition/Proud mankind, ponder this/and measure yourself! While this one hit the nations’ coasts/ Another tsunami lashed against/ The coastline of the mind./Did it shatter faith in God?/ Or did it lash out to strengthen faith?” 

KUBERA MANTRA –“I salute Kubera, lord of Yakshas, who provides the spell for magical weapons that bring wealth and good fortune. May the utterance of this prayer bring forth those magical weapons.”  

KUKT COBAIN –“Teenage angst has paid off well/Now I’m bored and old.”  

KULARNAVA TANTRA –“Adepts in yoga speak in the manner of the uncivil, behave as if ignorant, appear like the lowly They do so in order that men may ignore them and not flock to them; they talk nothing at all. Though realised in freedom, the yogi will sport like a child, may conduct himself like a dullard, talk like one intoxicated. If the yogi accepts things of life it is for the good of the world and not out of desire.”    

KULARNAVA TANTRA –“No creature shall be harmed for one’s own sake, one’s own enjoyment. All depends upon the purpose; not even a blade of grass shall be cut without a worthy purpose. What is called sin becomes a merit if it is done for a higher purpose, even as what is considered uplifting becomes a force for binding if done in disregard of the higher Truth. Rightly used, rightly directed, the very means of fall become the means for rise…”       

KUNAL KOHLI –“Speak up, so you never lose that right, because if you don’t speak up, you’ll lose that right.”    

KUNDAKUNDA –“The soul which is free from the defect of karma gets to the highest point of the universe, knows all and perceives all, and obtains the transcendental bliss everlasting.”

KUNDAKUNDA PANCASTIKAYA –“The soul which is free from the defect of karma gets to the highest point of the universe, knows all and perceives all, and obtains the transcendental bliss everlasting.”  

KURDISH PROVERB –“Kind words can unlock an iron door.”     

KURT COBAIN –“In the sun I feel as one/In the sun, in the sun/I’m married/buries.”      

KURT COBAIN –“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”    

KURT SPITERI CORNISH –“Love is too strong a word to say too early, but it has too beautiful a meaning to say it too late.”

KURT VONNEGUT –“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion… I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”   

KURT VONNEGUT Jr-“We are what we pretend to be, so we careful what we pretend to be.”

KURTVONNEGUT –“History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised again.” 

KYM OVERY –“If you want to experience a life totally unlike anything you have ever seen, then go to the Kumbh mela. You’ll never look at the world in quite the same way again.”    

L E KNIGHT –“When things don’t go as planned, you’re the first one there beside me —someone to count on, someone who cares. When the world has lost its luster, you never lose your faith in me — and somehow, through the clouds, I find my wings… You’re my light in the darkness, laughter in the night, and all the things that keep me going on life’s unwinding road. You’re a special kind of person, a unique and caring friend… I know I’m really lucky, and I wish everyone could have  a sister like you.”

L RON HUBBARD –“You may have been taught that the mind is a very difficult thing to know about. This is the first principle of Scientology possible to know aabout the mind, the spirit and life.”

L.M. CHILD –“It is a rare and difficult attainment to grow old gracefully and happily.”   

L.P. SMITH –“Do not laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.”  

L.P. SMITH –“There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.”  

LA BRUYERE –“Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.”  

LA BRUYERE –“There are two ways of rising in the world, either by your own industry or by the; folly of others.”

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD –“Friendship is only a reciprocal conciliation of interests, and an exchange of good offices, it is a species of commerce out of which self-love always expects to gain something.”    

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD –“It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.”  

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD –“People rarely succeed at anything unless they are having fun doing it.”   

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD –“True bravery is shown by performing without witness what one might be capable of doing before the entire world.” 

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD –“What renders us so bitter against those who trick us is that they believe themselves to be cleverer than we are.”    

LACHLAN MELEAN- “You can only lead others where you yourself are prepared to go.”

LADISLAUS BOROS –“Friendship is the union of two selves’ lies beyond happiness or unhappiness. It is simply the other side of our life and thus free from all danger.”

LAFRED TENNYSON- “Ring out the want, the care, the sin. The faithless coldness of the times.”

LAL DED –“I will not harbour any ill will towards those who abuse me.”         

LALLESHWARI (LAL DED) –“I, Lalla, entered through the garden of my soul, Lo! I saw Shiva and Shakti rolled in one, Overwhelmed with joy I got immersed there itself.”  

LALLESHWARI –“There is neither you, nor I;/neither the object of  meditation/nor the process of meditation…”       

LALLESHWARI –“You are the sky, You are the earth, The air, the hours, the sacrificial grain, You are the water, the sandal paste and flowers; You are already in everything. What shall I worship you with?”            

LAMA KAZI DAWA-SAMDUP –“He who is ever looking for faults in those who are learned and righteous, has the nature of a crow.”    

LAMA THUBTEN YESHE –“Examine your own mental attitudes. Become your own therapist.”

LAMA THUBTEN YESHE –“The narrow mind rejects; wisdom accepts.”

LAMARCHUS –“In war it is not permitted to make a mistake twice.” 

LAMASHOE –“To live well, is to be happy every day It can be done! Just find one good thing about each day that passes….”  

LAN FLEMING –“You only live twice. Once when you are bor and once when you loo death in the face.”    

LANCE ARMSTRONG –“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take place. If it quit, however, it last forever.”

LANCHENBA MEETEI –“Because — There is no end to revenge/ For him it is mutual loss, destruction/ Not victory/ With everyone defeated.”

LANDON DONOVAN –“Some things you can shake off, some things dig deeper than soccer.”   

LANDOR, W.S. –“Principles do not mainly influence even, the principles, we talk on principles, but we act no interest.”

LANGBRIDGE –“Two men look out through bars: One sees mud, the other sees stars.”  

LANGSTON COLEMAN –“Luck is what you have left over after you have 100 percent.”  

LANGSTON HUGHES –“The Black Man Speaks Oh! Supreme Lover! Let me leave aside my worries. The flowers are blooming with the exultation of your Spirit. By Allah! I long to escape the prison of my ego and lose myself in the mountains and the desert. These sad and lonely people tire me. I long to revel in the drunken frenzy of your love and feel the strength of Rustam in my hands. I’m sick of mortal kings. I long to see your light. With lamps in hand the sheikhs and mullahs roam the dark alleys of these towns not finding what they seek. You are the Essence of the Essence, The intoxication of Love. I long to sing your praises but stand mute with the agony of wishing in my heart.”

LANGSTON HUGHES –“When dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”  

LANKAVATARA SUTRA –“The triple world originates from the discrimination of unrealities and where discrimination takes place there is duality and the notion of permanency and impermanency, but the Tathagatas do not rise from the discrimination of unrealities.”    

LANKAVATARA SUTRA –“When this entire world is regarded as concatenation, as nothing else but concatenation, then the mind gains tranquility.”

LAO TZU –“ He who controls others maybe powerful, but he who has mastered ‘himself is mightier still.”   

LAO TZU –“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”       

LAO TZU –“A journey of a thousand miles starts in front of your feet.”  

LAO TZU –“A man with outward courage dares to die. A man with inward courage dares to live.”  

LAO TZU –“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”  

LAO TZU –“Can you let go of words and ideas, attitudes and expectations? If so, then the Tao will loom into view.” 

LAO TZU –“Change direction, or you may end up where you’re heading.”           

LAO TZU –“Continuing to fill a pail after it is full, the water will be wasted. Continuing to grind an axe after it is sharp, will wear it away. Excess of light blinds the eye. Excess of sound deafens the ear. Excess of condiments deadens the taste. He who possesses moderation is lasting and enduring. Too much is always a curse, most of all in wealth.”

LAO TZU –“For the Wise man looks into space and he knows there is no limited dimensions.”    

LAO TZU –“Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish … too much handling will spoil it.”

LAO TZU –“He who is content can *   never be ruined.”     

LAO TZU –“He who knows others is wise: he who knows himself is enlightened…”    

LAO TZU –“Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Nonbeing is the greatest joy.”   

LAO TZU –“I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.”        

LAO TZU –“Kind and Compassionate Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”        

LAO TZU –“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them — that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”  

LAO TZU –“Manifest plainness, Embrace simplicity, Reduce selfishness, Have few desires.”   

LAO TZU –“Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity.”

LAO TZU –“Nature is not human hearted.”

LAO TZU –“Superior leaders … are catalysts, and though things would not get done as well if they were not there, when they succeed they take no credit. And because they take no credit, credit never leaves them.”

LAO TZU –“The more weapons of hate, the more misery to man. The triumph of hate ends in a festival of mourning.”

LAO TZU –“The subtle melody of universal life is eternal and constant, yet only those who are in consonance with it can perceive it.” 

LAO TZU –“The supreme excellence is not to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles. The supreme excellence is to subdue the armies of your enemies without even having to fight them.”   

LAO TZU –“There is nothing softer and weaker than water, and yet there is nothing better for attacking hard and strong things. For this reason there is no substitute for it.”  

LAO TZU –“There is nothing softer and weaker than water, And yet there is nothing better for attacking hard and strong things. For this reason there is no substitute for it.”    

LAO TZU –“Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained…”   

LAO TZU –“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: What is soft is strong. Water flows humbly to the lowest level. Nothing is weaker than water, yet for overcoming what is hard and strong, nothing surpasses it.”           

LAO TZU –“What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”

LAO TZU –“When a man points at the moon, the idiot looks at this finger.”

LAO TZU –“When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”   

LAO TZU, TOO TE CHING –“To know you have enough is to be rich.”    

LAROCHEFOUCAULD –“True courage is to do without witnesses every thing that one is capable of doing before the entire world.” 

LARRY GEIBART –“One doesn’t have a sense of humor. It has you.” 

LARRY HARVEY –“Originally the core ritual was the raising and the burning. That required that people act together, perform a cooperative action that had enormous expressive quality But essentially we didn’t have to assign any meaning to it. It was very apparent that we were going to raise him.”  

LATIN PROVERB –“If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.”   

LAURA GILPIN –“A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.”

LAUREN BACALL –“Imagination is the highest kite that one can fly.”

LAURENC J PETER –“The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.”   

LAURENCE J PETER –“Ignorance once dispelled is difficult to re-establish. “

LAURENCE J PETER –“Ignorance once dispelled is difficult to re-establish.”       

LAURENCE J PETER –“Most hierarchies were established by men who now monopolise the upper levels, thus depriving women of their rightful share of opportunities to achieve incompetence.”   

LAURENCE J PETER –“There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.”       

LAURENCE J. PETER –“Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status”       

LAURENCE PETER –“An optimist expects his dream to come true, a pessimist expects his nightmares to.”

LAURENS VAN DER –‘There is a way of winning by losing, a way of victory in defeat which we are going to discover.”

LAURETTA P BURNS –“As children bring their broken toys with tears for us to mend, I brought my broken dreams to God because He was my friend. But then instead of leaving them with Him in peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own. At last i snatched them back and cried, “How can you be so slow?” “My child”, he said, “What could i do? You never did let go.”       

LAWRENCE DURRELL –“Journeys, like artists, are born and not made.”

LAWRENCE SUMMERS –“Students in Harvard will now study India as a subject.”  

LAWS OF MANU –“Though he may be destitute of virtue, or seek his pleasure elsewhere, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must be constantly revered as a god by a faithful wife.”

LEA LACOCCA –“Apply your self. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don’t just stand there, make it happen.”

LEBANESE PROVERB –“If anyone is not willing to accept your point of view, try to see his point of view.” 

LECH WALESA –“It is the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they did not like walking or carrying things.”    

LEE BOLMAN & TERENCE DEAL –“The essence of leadership is not giving things or even providing visions. It is offering oneself and one’s spirit.”     

LEE HAMILTON  -“Democracy thrives on information; secrecy is its enemy.”  

LEE HAMILTON –“At what point do you say we cannot tolerate this anymore?”         

LEE HANEY –“You’ve got a good body? That’s not enough. You have to have the heart and soul to go with it.”

LEE LACOCCA –“Motivation is everything. You can do the work of two people, but you can’t be two people. Instead, you ham to inspire the next guy down the line to get him to inspire his people.”   

LEE LACOCCA –“My father always used to say that when you die, if you’ve got five real friends, then you’ve had a great life.”       

LEE LACOCCA –“The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution I know that works is the family.”    

LEE LACOCCA –“Why is our free-enterprise system so strong? Not because it stands still, frozen in the past, but because it has always adapted to changing realities.”    

LEE SEGALL –“A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.” 

LEE STOREY –“It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won’t go.”        

LEIGHTON BATES –“The very first time that i practised noble silence i had become so angry that i quit after a few hours. Our chaplain, who is trained in Tibetan Buddhism, had told me this might happen. I think it happens because you are putting your mind and body under a control that it is not used to, and therefore, you start to rebel against it.”     

LEO BOGART –“The Great Idea in advertising is far more than the sum of the recognition scores, the ratings and all the other superficial indicators of its success; it is in the realm of myth, to which measurements cannot apply.” 

LEO BOOTH –“We are co-creators with God, not puppets on a string waiting for something to happen.”   

LEO BURKE –“People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.”

LEO BURNETT –“When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, hut you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.”  

LEO BURNETT –“When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get them. but you won’t come up with a handful of mud either.”  

LEO BUSCAGILA – “Change is the end result of true learning.”

LEO BUSCAGILA – “Love is always about open arms. If you close your arms around love, you will be left holding only yourself.”

LEO BUSCAGILA –“Find the person who will love you because of your difference and not in spite of them and you have found a love for life.”

LEO BUSCAGILA –“Life is uncharted territory. It reveals its story one moment at a time.”     

LEO BUSCAGILA –“Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.”     

LEO BUSCAGILA –“Our talents are the gift that God gives to us. What we make of our talents is our gift back to God.”   

LEO BUSCAGILA –“The hardest battle you’re ever going to fight is the battle to be just you.” 

LEO BUSCAGILA –“What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret  than our willingness to choose life.”

LEO BUSCAGILA –“When we cling to pain we end up punishing ourselves.”           

LEO BUSCAGILA –“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”

LEO TOLSTOY –“All everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”

LEO TOLSTOY –“Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…’ Our whole life is taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we never really live at all.”         

LEO TOLSTOY –“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

LEO TOLSTOY –“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”   

LEO TOLSTOY –“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”

LEO TOLSTOY –“Hypocrisy may deceive the cleverest man, but the least wide-awake of children recognises it.”   

LEO TOLSTOY –“I have learned that every man lives, not through care of himself, but by love.” 

LEO TOLSTOY –“I know that my unit with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.”

LEO TOLSTOY –“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”

LEO TOLSTOY –“Our whole life and I taken up with anxiety for personal security, with preparations for living, so that we never really live at all.”   

LEO TOLSTOY –“There is no greatness where there is no simplicity.”

LEO TOLSTOY –“To sin is human, to justify sins is devilish.”    

LEON SLUM –“Morality may consist solely in the courage of making a choice.”   

LEON TROTSKY –“Historical law is realised through the natural selection of accidents.”             

LEON TROTSY –“Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness. The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions.”

LEONA MATTINGLY WEBER –“Christmas is for children. But it is for grown-ups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts.”

LEONARD BERNSTEIN –“From New Year’s on the outlook brightens; good humour returns. I resolve to stop complaining.”          

LEONARD COHEN –“Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering./ There is a crack in everything,/ That’s how the light gets in.”   

LEONARD DA VINCE –“A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man’s mind.”               

LEONARD DA VINCE –“All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions- it should have limited in it.”

LEONARD DA VINCE –“He turns not back who is bound to a star.”   

LEONARD DA VINCE –“In rivers, that water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.” 

LEONARD DA VINCE –“In youth acquire that which may requite you for the deprivations of old age; and if you are mindful that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so exert yourself in youth, that your old age will not lack sustenance.”   

LEONARD DA VINCE –“Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction spoil the intellect.”  

LEONARD DA VINCE –“Look at light and admire its beauty Close your eyes, and then look again what you saw is no longer there; and what you will see later is not yet.”    

LEONARD DA VINCE –“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

LEONARD DA VINCE –“The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.”   

LEONARD DA VINCE –“The great bird will take its first flight… filling the world with amazement and all records with its fame and it will bring eternal glory to the nest where it was born.”

LEONARD DA VINCE –“When once you have tested flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards.”

LEONARD NIMOY –“What fiction could match — in drama or suspense — man’s first walk on the moon?”

LEONARDO DI CAPRIO –“I’ve always been spontaneous and outgoing… I’ve tried lots of things so I’ve got some good life experiences, which is great ’cause it means I’ve got lots of material to work with as an actor.”   

LEROY PAIGE -“Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.”

LES MISERABLES –“To love another person is to see the face of God.”

LESLEY P –“If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always had.”      

LETTY POGREBIN –“If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable — each segment distinct.”    

LEUIS, C.S.- “When you have nothing left but love, then for first time you become aware that love is enough.”

LEVI STRAUSS –“Quality never goes out of style.”   

LEVITICUS –“Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.” 

LEVITICUS –“Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself.”      

LEVITICUS –“You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

LEWIS B SMEDES –“If we say that some people are unable to forgive, we give them a power they should never have… they are given the power to keep their evil alive in the hearts of those who suffered most. We give them power to condemn their victims to live forever with the hurting memory of their painful pasts. We give the monsters the last word.”         

LEWIS B SMEDES –“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”       

lewis carroll –“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take yon there.”

LEWIS CARROLL –“It’s a poor short of memory that only works backwards.”

LEWIS CARROLL –“The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam today.”          

LEWIS CARROLL –“When I use a word Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone it means just I choose it to means neither more nor less.”

LEWIS CARROLL –“When you are describing, A shape, or sound, or tint; Don’t state the matter plainly, But put it in a hint; And learn to look at all things, With a sort of mental squint.”    

LEWIS CARROLL –“You mean you can’t take less’. It’s very easy to take ‘more’ than nothing.”  

LEWIS FREEDMAN –“You can’t be afraid of stepping on toes if you want to go dancing.”  

LEWIS GRIZZARD –“Sex hasn’t been the same since women started enjoying it.”   

LEWIS H LAPHAM –“Unlike any other business, sports must preserve an illusion of perfect innocence. The mounting of this illusion defines the purpose and accounts for the immense wealth of sports. It is the ceremony of innocence that the fans pay to see — not the game or the match or the bout, but the ritual portrayal of a world in which time stops and all hope remains plausible, in which everybody present can recover the blameless expectations of a child, where the forces of light always triumph over the powers of darkness.”            

LEWIS, C.S. –“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”

LI CHI, CHI YI –“The man of refinement turns his thoughts back to the past, goes back to his origin, and does not forget those through whom life has come to him.”

LI PO –“You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain; I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care. As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown, I have a world apart that is not among men.”      

LIBBIE FUDIM –“We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always respect their good judgment.”        

LIEH-TSE –“The true reason underlying things are invisible, unseizable, indefinable, in determinable. Only the spirit established in the state of perfect natural simplicity can attain it in profound contemplation.”

LILLIAN HELLMAN –“You don’t have to agree with people to defend them from injustice.”

 

Overview of Triage Therapeutic Approach

 

         The Triage Method of Emotional Therapy (TMET) is supported by clinical experiences during a 24-month pilot program titled, Operation Recovery. The method is influenced by empirical findings from recent neuroscientific research and considered an on-the-ground application of the Hakomi Method of Body/Centered Psychotherapy.

         In a pilot program titled Operation Recovery, TMET proved effective when applied in a contained, open-air garden/woodshop environment. While engaged in physical activities and social interactions, participants were able to:

        (a) develop the trust required for an effective therapeutic alliance

        (b) experience a sense of self-control by initiating their own therapeutic process

        (c) learn to self-regulate physical and psychological function through         education and experiential training

        (d) gain trust in their capacity to acknowledge and tolerate their own feelings,

             emotions and thoughts

        (e) learn to engage and control their own physical and mental defensive systems

             in real time.

 

      With survival as the genetic dictate, organic systems of the body regulate energy and effort in relation to efficiency and effectiveness. Affective Neuroscience, a book authored by Jaak Panksepp, describes how threats to survival, labeled traumatic experiences, activate survival mechanisms in the primitive brain, which increase affect, a pre-emotion neuroprocess, for the primary purpose of stimulating physical movement.

     As threats to survival increase, the Primitive Base Brain becomes the Supreme Command Center (SCC) and instinctually elevates the production of motivational affect to influence other neuro-centers. Greatly increased affect results in an overload for the Central Nervous System (CNS) and a decreased capacity in higher brain function – emotion, cognition, language, attention and memory.

     All three of these neuro-centers are systematically integrated during:

        (a) the integration of sensory input with motor output

        (b) the regulation of physiological arousal

        (c) the capacity to communicate experience in words.

     However, only the SCC has the capacity to selectively control the process. Its supreme control is dictated by genetic survival structures.

      Continuing SCC arousal with a decrease in CNS function – combined with limitations in memory and attention, produces a virtual experience of being lost in space and time. This produces the out of body experience during moments of trauma and may explain the Marine feeling like they are still in Iraq, when they are with family at home.

     Until the SCC is convinced the threat is over it will continue its potential to control with or without reminders or triggers of the original threat. Variations in reactions to trauma and in the persistence of control by the SCC are related to the particular structure of each individual’s genetic coding for survival – suggesting relationship to resiliency.

     Additional research published by Rauch/Van Der Kolk, Hull, and Lindauer supports Panksepp’s work on how threats of survival motivate increased affect in the SCC as a means of generating physical action, while decreasing the higher brain’s capacity to regulate affect – to slow or stop action in threat’s presence.

     These researchers have all pointed out that popular therapies, which seek to medicate or modulate the higher brain functions of emotion, cognition and language, may find their methods inefficient and/or ineffective in treating trauma. As Van Der Kolk points out, higher brain chemistry and emotions are activated in order to bring about action. They are not what “is” motivating the activation. In addition, experience in Triage suggests that some of the actions being motivated may be designed to hide and protect the motivator!

         The SCC is not easily convinced that threat is over. When missing the experience of a return to safety or through physical damage, the SCC appears to be mandated to continue generating affect, which stimulates the chaotic thoughts, intense emotions and irrelevant behavior of PTSD. The SCC is not designed to simply trust the CNS and higher brain functions to make decisions on issues of survival. It is designed to resist and distract any deviation from its dictate to survive. Only by the experience of knowing the threat is over will this system lower its guard and allow the other neuro-centers the opportunity to regulate peace of mind.

     Continuing symptoms are evidence that the SCC is actively sorting for safety and not finding it. During psychotherapy treatments where the focus of support was on SCC processes, a decrease in affective tones has been documented using Quantitative Electroencephalography (QEEG). Certain popular treatments may prove more than ineffective if studies were to find a rise in affect during symptom treatment.

     Van Der Kolk concludes, that effective trauma treatment needs to involve (a) creating a safe, controlled environment where trust and the therapeutic alliance can develop organically, (b) learning to tolerate feelings and sensations by increasing the capacity to mindfully observe and track one’s own inner experience, (c) learning to regulate one’s own affect and the resulting emotions, thoughts and actions, (d) learning to re-engage physical defenses and re-build collapsed or overwhelmed systems.

 

 

The Triage Method

       The Triage Method (TMET) is an on the ground adaptation of methods and principals of the Hakomi Method of Body/Centered Psychotherapy and neurologic system concepts supported by empirical findings of recent neuroscientific research. The Method has been refined over the last 15 years working with individuals exposed to mild to severe violence, who have lost trust and remain hyper vigilant to mental and physical invasion.

       During the last 24 months, working with Marines and their families the method did show very positive outcomes. A garden provided the safe environment to initiate therapeutic relationship in a non-clinical, non-diagnostic way. It provided a space where Marines and families could rest, turn their attention inward and notice their unique organic process.

         Triage principals honor the fact that living organisms were created to ensure selfish longevity and purpose. The best hope for both is that the organism’s design includes a systematic electrical/chemical system at its core – one, which can self-direct communication between all possible participants in its survival, from its simplest gene to its complex social environment. The supreme goal of this selfish system is to maintain an efficient and effective balance – of all things relevant to self-survival, within limits defined by a Window of Tolerance.

       The practice of Triage in the garden involves noticing any activity threatening to take a participant outside their Window-of-Tolerance. This means noticing any subtle thing that disrupts the participant’s present state of balance and theoretically becomes a threat to their survival. Once noticed, choices are made about what to do about the perceived threat.

       For example: In broad strokes, too long under water, not enough oxygen tips the balance and causes survival systems to ratchet down efficiency (stop thinking and emoting and swim like a fish to the surface), regain balance and survive. Here, noticing someone is drowning – we take action and throw out a preserver. We don’t shout to them the fact that they are drowning.

         Prolonged exposure to threat of immediate death and constant surveillance with sleep deprivation provides information that the Supreme Command Center (SCC) must take over and dictate the survival effort. Thinking stops. Emotions cease. Information from the SCC is standard operational procedure and the first line of motivation for muscle and body organs. Here, noticing someone is sleepless – we help them notice the process they may be using to block sleep. We don’t throw them a pillow and turn down the lights.

       As long as the affective signals of communication from the SCC continue to prevail other neuro-centers generating emotions, thoughts and ideas will struggle to compete, to regain their stature. This struggle heightens the potential for an individual to feel disordered and malfunctioned. The choice here is, do we join in the struggle or do we support the SCC until it can self-integrate into present real time?

       In a more specific example: An active duty Marine with two tours of Iraq returned to a church group for Marines struggling with PTSD and TBI. He hadn’t looked at me or said anything to me, the visitor, until he suddenly turned and started telling me his traumatic story of war. He persisted, deepening as he went. The church counselor attempted to interrupt by commenting, “Gosh, you haven’t told me any of this stuff before.” He never took his eyes off mine. Never blinked.

     When he was done I simply said, “Damn, I wish that hadn’t happened to you. Seems like you had a lot of responsibility” (the story was laced with gestures of responsibility and distrust for superiors). I used the word responsibility because it seemed to be a core theme in “Who” this Marine was.        In theory, to be responsible was a core process of his SCC. As we begin to explore the possibilities of the theory, our connection abruptly ended. He pulled back saying, “I had chores like everyone else when I was a kid.”

     That was it. He turned back to the group. To check, I asked if he wanted to continue. Without looking at me and with assurance he said, “No!” We had arrived at a Window of Tolerance, too close to a vulnerable operating system the base brain SCC utilized to define his World. Responsibleness defined him. It was a core filter he automatically used to efficiently regulate his World. He was using it before the war. He used it during the war. And, he was now using it to define how he carried the war experience. Responsibleness was both motivating his PTSD associated rage (They weren’t/aren’t responsible and I am) and limiting his resolve (It’s all mine to bear).

     At the end of the meeting, he again turned and said in a voice of authority, “I want to come visit you at the garden on Friday. I need to build a bed frame.” Two days later he visited the garden/woodshop and built a bed frame. We didn’t return to the earlier conversation about his combat experience. We stayed in the present moment. He let me assume and direct some of the responsibility for making the bed frame sturdy. I applied my idea of Gorilla Glue and dowels, while he sanded and stained.

     His agreeing to let me assume some responsibility may have been a test. However, it felt like a shift in his perception of threat, where he was assessing threat to Who he was with present time experience. In theory, his SCC experienced safety, turned down affect allowing trust to develop, when responsibleness was recognized, supported and given time to rest.

     The example demonstrates an aspect of the therapeutic process involved in the resolution of Operational Stress, PTSD and other general distractions from efficient and effective regulation of the life experience. The SCC, especially when activated for frequent and prolonged durations, remains hyper-vigilant and active dictating when and how other neuro-centers get to contribute.

     Intellectually, the Marine in the last example may or may not have understood what had been revealed, but somehow he deduced when it was time to stop and how to allow himself to reorient. Research from Damasio, Ledox, Panksepp, Porges, Llinas and Davidson has shown that the internal process he may have used is automatic and systematic. Its function is to stabilize the life-experience by maintaining a predictable environment within a Window of Tolerance.

     For this Marine, exploring the intimate structure of responsibility in his life-experience was unfamiliar and thus unpredictable territory, posing too much risk. Staying with what I had noticed about the motivating core structure was the quickest way to demonstrate predictability. It by-passed all the negotiating involved in the emotional and cognitive neurostructures.

     A Marine puffed-up with power cannot risk knowing or exposing a vulnerability his SCC is mandated to protect through puffing. John Wayne and General Patton are historic examples.

         Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, recently published studies on how the brain codes for predictability as a vital resource and generates social interaction based on rewarding predictable experience. The more predictable life-experiences are, the less effort required to maintain the Window of Tolerance and the less risk to survival.

      Fortunately, as the intimate processes of the SCC, which frame the life-experience, become more familiar they become more predictable, making them the most efficient systems to engage for the reduction and resolution of stress and disorder. Triage encourages participants to become familiar with their own inner, neuroprocesses. Once core impulses are experienced as predictable they become tolerable and manageable. Talking, planning and medicating can be supportive to this process. However, The Triage Method guides participants to self-discover their own intimate core processes, which support self-directed integration of their life-experience, as a means of empowering self-discipline and control.

        A Marine who struggles to make sense of two extreme feeling states, the serene, calm feeling he has outside the wire in Iraq and the irrational, chaotic thoughts and emotions he has at home with his wife and children, may be experiencing distortions in space and time and the effects of his brain sorting for predictability. Outside the wire surprise and uncertainty are predictable and expected. At home nothing feels predictable. Over time a Marine and family can sort out who makes breakfast and when, and who will drive. They may even quickly reconnect intimacy, but the overriding question of who will live to return can’t be predicted. The impermanence of life affects predictability.

       That question looms as unanswerable, yet the answer is vital to calm the impulse to predict. Without the answer nothing is predictable in the family structure because all things depend on continuance. For civilians the question rarely impedes on their life-experience, rarely leads to hanging themselves out of hopelessness. PTSD and Operational Stress make it a real and threatening situation for Marines, as with the late Marine Sgt. Boyd “Chip” Wicks, 2004.

     The Triage Method offers the potential to overcome and decompress these systematic, base brain operational procedures. By directing attention to where, when and which system is activated and or overwhelmed in any particular moment participants begin the process of turning their attention inward. This is the mindfulness of Triage, noticing and tracking inner neuro-processes in action. This is the primary and most critical job for achieving self-directed self-discipline and self-regulation.

     Once operational procedures are noticed they become known and are the general framework for behavioral development and change. Without appreciation for the potential of systems – especially core mechanisms related to survival, a change in life-experience is inefficient and takes great effort.

     The result of inefficient effort is usually circular violence within these systems and throughout the individual’s family and social system. Response to this violence is often labeled denial, resistance, bone headedness and/or just Who they are, creating stigma for the individual and hazard for the culture and it’s ethos.

     In the previous example, the church counselor seemed to feel left out regarding information pertaining to the Marine’s traumatic war experience. Her not noticing the system motivating the experience represents violence. The interaction could have been experienced as threatening to the SCC if her desire to connect appeared self-focused. By not noticing the motivator in the war story, driven by emotions and thought, she was not truly supporting the Marine’s supreme dictate to stay within a Window-of-Tolerance.

     The expressions of the SCC, those systematic or instinctual base brain directives, can be noticed in physical structure as well as behavior. Core systems that hold the behavioral codes for survival appear to utilize those codes as blueprints to mobilize a body in support. Ron Kurtz and his associates at the Hakomi Institute have spent 30 years utilizing reference to eight generalized physical or character expressions they contend develop in relation to nurtured experiences.

 

       These postures illustrate the core neuro-blueprints expressing physical tendencies to Withdraw – Collapse – Rely on Self – Charm, Manipulate – Expand Power – Take on Burden – Distract by Doing and Up the Struggle.

       In developing The Triage Method, correlations have been researched showing relationships between Kurtz’s eight physical character expressions and behaviors described by Panksepp’s core neuromechanisms, Keirsey’s innate temperament types and Bowlby’s attachment styles.

       This is an area offering significant potential for understanding Marine behavior in relation to Marine ethos, the codes of war and expression of behavior associated with stress, especially PTSD. Behaviorist may have been duped by the self-fulfilling prophesy of the SCC. Based on the theory utilized in Triage, the parent/caregiver didn’t just reject the baby causing it to develop a tendency to withdraw. The baby came organized, at least in part, to reject the caregiver.

      Research coming from the field of Genetic Biology is clearly showing that at least 50% of human behavior is genetically directed. If we accept this data, then we must begin to consider the possibility those same genetic codes have influence on the physical structure expected to back up the behavior. A baby born with a frail, alien body may be predisposed to support its own SCC directives to withdraw and carefully regulate energy before any possibility to feel rejected. Genetic directive to express a power attitude, born into a frail body, would be ill matched to survive the generations.

       Triage treats these character types as physical expressions of neuro-blueprints organized by the same SCC codes that dictate behavior. While aspects of these characters appear to be evident in everyone and usually remain relatively fluid, they do deepen and become more pronounced in relation to increased stress load.

         Functionally, Marines can learn to utilize Hakomi’s eight character types to predict generalized behavior for themselves, their fellow Marines and their adversaries. An individual who has a tendency to stay withdrawn from the social environment usually has an underlying and continuous sense of feeling not welcome. They will also have a supportive body structure, one that is thin, unstructured and undefined – unnoticeable.

       An individual with a tendency to withdraw may become a Marine but leave duty disappointed in not getting what they were hoping for from Marine ethos. The tendency to withdraw or be responsible plays a vital role in the experience of trauma and expression of PTSD. The Marine expressing responsibleness had unique physical resemblance to the illustrated Take-on-Burden character.

    Triage maintains its potential when both physical and behavioral expressions are noticed at the point of initial contact. It builds trust and produces a great amount of efficiency. Trust and respect happens at a feeling level and it is allowed to deepen in an organic way without effort, reducing tension, stress and ultimately risk.

     Marines who learn to utilize The Triage Method have tremendous potential to mentor fellow Marines at home and during deployment – increasing Marine ethos, reducing Operational Stress and Risk, reducing dependence on medication and supporting intelligent career choices rather than automatic or emotional ones.

     It makes no sense that a Marine can return from Iraq, after a rocket slammed into his armored vehicle, killing three of his team members and burning him, has to spend five years struggling to make sense of and control the persistent impulse to kill/destroy himself and others. In a particular situation, who was in imminent danger was depending on his level of hopelessness and rage.

     The most difficult aspect of this Marines struggle was that because of his injuries, he had spent most of his post-traumatic days in therapy of one form or another. When we met he seemed relatively relaxed – for what appeared to be a Marine coping with a heightened use of the “Withdrawn” neurological character style.  However, once he began to trust me – after an all day fishing trip off the coast of San Diego, we explored what he called his consistent “just under the surface” suicidal / homicidal rage.

     The alarming aspect was that – in all the years of therapy, he had never been asked to notice his own inner experience of rage, notice the layers of how he organized the associated emotions or that, indeed his rage had complex associations to memory, meaning, and automatic impulses. This is simply wrong and beyond comprehension!

 

The Triage Perspective

 

New information offers the potential to adapt our ways of viewing,

managing and treating Operational Stress and PTSD.

 

      The garden environment and its many activities are unquestionably grounding and therapeutic. However, the proposed Common Ground therapeutic garden’s potential and effectiveness is enhanced with therapeutic principals and methods currently successful in Operation Recovery’s Garden Program in Oceanside, CA. The Triage Method of Emotional Therapy (TMET) frames the relational principals and methods utilized. TMET is an adaptation of The Hakomi Method of Body-Centered Psychotherapy, where awareness is always related to and from a loving, heart-centered perspective – one of acceptance and respect.

      The Triage Method is a relational method, which utilizes an attunement to existing temperament, attachment and intrapersonal neuro-radiance theories, and empiric neurological findings.

 

Key mentors include:

Dr. Jaak Panksepp

            Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Psychobiology at Bowling      Green State University (Primal Neuro-Mechanisms motivating behavior).

 

Dr. Stephen W. Porges

            Professor of Psychiatry and Co-director of the Brain Body Center at the        University of Illinois at Chicago (The Polyvagal Neuro-system Theory).

 

Dr. Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

            Clinical Implications of Neuroscience Research in PTSD, New York            Academy of     Sciences, 1071: 277-293 (2006). Boston University School of Medicine, The Trauma Center, Brookline, MA.

 

Dr. Marco Iacoboni

            Neuroscientist at David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles.

            Pioneer in brain imaging studies of the human mirror neuron system.

 

      Of primary importance in Triage is Dr. Jaak Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience. His research is deeply rooted in psychophysiology and behavioral biology – including behavioral genetics. His work offers the conclusion that survival mechanisms or core neuroprocesses, based in the primitive neuro-structures of the human body, generate affective expression or primitive affect from the Basal Ganglia, the reptilian “old school” area of the brain.

     Dr. Panksepp’s research suggests these mechanisms have ultimate control over the body’s physical affective expression because they potentially frame all behavior with genetic dictation. And that stress, especially extreme stress of combat and long-deployment, activates these survival mechanisms in extreme ways.

     Fear, anger, panic, and to seek have been empirically identified as the primary core processes by Dr. Panksepp’s research and that of others. It appears that the symptoms of PTSD are motivated by at least one of these four core neuroprocesses. Triage often reveals PTSD symptoms to be a complicated blend of two or more.

     The supreme dictate of survival is the incentive for these core processes to be inherently continuous, systematic and efficient. They represent the body’s core organizational structure, which Panksepp suggests, provides the information motivating other brain activity and ultimately behavior.

     This is one foundation for the relational and information gathering aspects of The Triage Method. By noticing which mechanism or combination of them a Marine is utilizing to manage experience in the moment, choices can be made to deconstruct the automatic structure of affect – offering the potential to experience a change in the behavioral outcome.

 

       With respect due Dr. Panksepp, it may be valuable to add  Justice as a 5th mechanism.  Justice, or “making things right” seems to innately permeate all cultures and is an especially obvious concern in trauma. Genetic neuroscientists may add a whole range of other innate mechanisms. However, these are the mechanisms supported with the greatest amount of research.

       My experience working with OIF/OEF veterans suggests that they (as we all do to different degrees and intensity) – in trying to regulate to their post-war environment, migrate between and within these five with greater intensity and with out much relief.  Unfortunately, relief is the antidote! And, successful relief comes – in part, by experientially understanding these mechanisms.

     In a very short mater of time, this Marine had – through his developing trust, began to notice and differentiate when he migrated through the various innate mechanisms described by Panksepp.  He did however, continue to struggle with the underlying tension of not understanding “Why!” – still not able to make sense of it. Until, I wrote the word justice on an old fishing lure carton and slipped it to him. He immediately said, “That’s it, that’s freeking it!”  I quietly, made an observation, “Pisses you off”, without emphasis or elicitation – as in a question. Triage is not about questioning. Instead it is about guiding awareness.

     He got quite and began to reflect on a lifetime of struggling with justice.  It was his dominate drive. It was what drove him to be a Marine. And, it was what was driving his rage.

     How was he going to make sense of how his team died and he was air lifted from duty moments before they were to roll towards Fallujah in 04’.  Or, that an immediate family member had become seriously ill while he was in recovery. Or that his girlfriend left him after repeated warnings about his abuse on her.  Where was the justice in all that had happened?

     It appeared that this decent – although shy (withdrawn), kid from middle America had had his natural bias (sensitivity) to justice amplified – not only by his experience in war, but by his post-war experiences.  And, as research suggests, once these impulsive mechanisms or neuro-systems are amplified during traumatic experience they remain amplified.  Having an opportunity to learn and experience his inner processes in relation to these systems offers an opening to regain control of their intensity and persistence.

     This Marine, in his final days of assignment to the Wounded Warrior Battalion West, finally found relief and an understanding. Word has it he is now a Marine veteran and ready to go fishing again – only this time in a different state of mind.

     In general, Panksepp concludes the core affect originating in the raw nerve structure of the body and brain-stem are used to stimulate the limbic area or mid-brain to regulate, regulate and adapt that affect as a means of surviving in a social context without neurologic overwhelm. This regulation process produces the felt sense of experience known as emotion. The more evolved outer layer of the brain, the neo-cortex, utilizes core affect and mid-brain emotion to generate cognitive function, declarative knowledge, reasoning and logical thought, which are advanced coping, managing and surviving processes utilized when risk is low.

     All parts of the brain initiate muscle action. However, the instinctual part has supreme control because it has genetic dictate with the ability to shut off or restrict higher brain function under extreme stress. Also, because it is integrated with all areas of the brain and environment the base brain’s creation of affective information is paramount in the creation of moment-by-moment behavior. It is always on-line.

     When the underlying processes influencing felt emotion and cognition are intensively activated, especially by extreme psychophysiological stress, their structure of influence may become disorganized demanding them to remain persistently on or off. This persistent override thwarts thoughtful emotional action and appears to be related to some of the disorders referred to in PTSD. Rage or panic affect, override emotional action. Freezing or taking flight limits the ability to seek. Understanding this process with the experience of self-regulating affect reduces the possibility of system overwhelm and allows emotions and thoughts to regain their status of control.

      Attention to the possibility that these systems may be exerting inappropriate influence is the primary focus for change provided by TMET.  As the affective signal from these mechanisms increases the body and brain experience increased stress, the more stress the closer to the Window of Tolerance the more survival impulses ignite.

      For example: A Marine with two Iraq tours was diagnosed with PTSD at discharge. His horrendous stories of combat were punctuated with hopelessness for a marriage and a desire to live. He had come to the garden seeking something. Turning attention to the seeking allowed its affect to settle (be regulated) and his whole coping system was discovered.

     In theory, separation from the Marines had created increased panic (Who am I now?), to cope with the intense panic affect his SCC directed an increase in rage affect (I’ll control this), which was mistakenly directed at a mush safer object, his wife. The shame of beating her (Who am I, a monster?) and her leaving him reignited the panic affect. To cope the SCC shut those affect motivators down and collapsed him with flight motivating affect. Here, without available rational thought or emotion, it manifested into a flight to suicide ideation.

      Once he had the opportunity to notice and feel this unique process loop in real time the overwhelming affect gave way to increased emotions and rational thought. He found a balance when risk declined and more systems were allowed to participate in his life-experience.

 

      Survival is assured by nerve circuits systematically informed, organized and motivated by 3-levels of brain function in direct relation to perceived degrees of risk.

 

Base-Brain     The Supreme Command Center, (SCC). The instinctual blueprint part uses a core neuro-blueprint to automatically seek/find, panic/connect, flight/freeze, fight/rage or be just/make sense as survival risk escalates. This area of the brain receives and regulates continuous affective information from the sensory systems of the body and filters them to the Mid-Brain and through some systems, directly to the Executive-Brain.

 

Mid-Brain      The regulating Mid-Brain defines and sets the stage for memory by utilizing Base-Brain’s affect to generate emotion as a means to communicate and cope in relationship – to self and social environment, in relation to associated risk.

 

Executive       The thinking, planning, learning (memory) and explaining part of the brain. Constructs concepts of reality from base affect and emotions utilizing thoughts and words to communicate, manipulate, cope and survive within an ultra low risk, stable environment.

 

 

      Affective, Biological and Anthropological Neuroscience all offer new understandings of how our nervous systems organize, express and resolve experience. They also honor that individual nervous systems and family and group relational systems organize in much the same way.

      Within these developments there is evidence supporting methods of prevention, mitigation and resolution of Operational Stress and PTSD. The Triage Method, as an on the ground application of the Hakomi Method, utilizes these developments with respect for the participant’s potential to heal themselves. Yoga, Meditation, EMDR, and Virtual Iraq seem to be affecting core neuroprocesses, only in a more externally directed way.

      Perhaps the most important finding relevant to the Marine is how the base brain’s neuro-mechanisms produce mental chaos through instinctual processes when internal impulses deviate from the code of a warrior. The dissonance between the way a Marine expects to respond and the actual real time reaction produces stress. This stress represents the emotional/mental disorder in the brain’s function and validates the SCC function.

      For example: A Marine, who initially knows he is a kind person and a Marine trained to act with morals and integrity in the act of war, may experience something in the line of duty that cannot be reconciled. Perhaps he turns toward incoming fire, trained to make fast decisions to reduce the threat, but momentarily freezes, not able to pull the trigger until it is too late. Or, he snipes a 12-year old at 300 yards. How does his brain make sense of the experience and the difference between instinct and training? Any lasting incongruence holds potential for stress and increased Operational Risk.

       Science seems to have the mechanism of this process in PTSD understood. It is a disorder in the primitive brain. When the Basel Ganglia’s generation of affective signals to higher brain function is startled into activation or activated for extended periods of time its instinctual structure is reorganized and remains vigilant though not necessarily ordered in its capacity. The Department of Defense’s funding to research experimental drugs this summer, designed to alter the chemical function of the base brain’s genetic dictate to freeze or flight, is based on these findings. It is an attempt to cure or limit the structure of PTSD development.

      An artificial adjustment to this process may have interesting ramifications because these neuro-mechanisms are motivated by genetic dictate for a reason. Survival. Seeking shelter, panicking during separation, raging at intrusion and freezing or flight from threat may serve Marines in combat even when they are trained to act otherwise.

      In another example: A pattern of SCC directed action was discovered when a Marine’s curiosity was aroused during a garden experience. He made the statement, “This is weird. I was just remembering a situation I don’t understand. I don’t think I was ever afraid, while it was happening, but I was doing some odd things.”

      As a Warrant Officer he was leading a crew outside the wire to gather concrete barriers to cover their new base camp’s flank. Standing in open field, under threat of snipers, he calmly directed the loading and transfer of the first barrier with heavy equipment. As his crew moved into the distance, toward base camp, he found himself standing alone next to a pile of barriers. He said he wasn’t afraid. He knew with his training and physical resources he could handle what might come at him. But, he still found himself diving and freezing behind a barrier until his crew returned.

      In theory, his panic mechanism motivated the anxiety of separation. It increased to a point where his SCC coped with it by directing the activation of muscles to seek shelter, then freeze behind a remaining barrier. Once the crew and heavy equipment returned he was suddenly out from cover and calmly directing the next load. He felt safe and calm again.

      When the last barrier began to move off with his crew, he surprisingly found himself running and zigzagging to keep up and behind the last barrier as it dangled from the equipment. He described this as odd because his training and beliefs were telling him he wasn’t afraid and that he should stand and be alert to threat. His SCC was overriding his training and the result was disconcerting.

      If the natural instincts directing his actions were to have been medically altered, could the outcome have changed? Would he have scurried behind the barriers when alone or stood in the open waiting? Would he have run behind the last barrier or walked along side? Did he experience himself as scared and weak or as a warrior?

      More importantly, would the difference between his experience and mental expectations have created Operational Risk?

      An article in Semper Fidelis: A Psychological Study of Heroic Bravery, describes research conducted by Terence W. Barrett, PhD, Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University. Dr. Barrett found that 292 U.S. Marines who acted heroically brave and earned the nation’s Medal of Honor shared forty-one behavioral tendencies or characteristics.

      Each of these characteristics of bravery appears to be motivated by the instinct to seek. Seek challenge, adventure, risk, social unity, approval and more. It is possible that the instinctual mechanism to seek was genetically dominant for these Marines. There may have been a predisposition to shut down fear and seek. Had they understood this, those that subsequently died in combat may have survived longer by augmenting their heroic impulse.

      The capacity to distinguish honorable acts from those that may lead to unnecessary death or be felt as shameful and lead to serious psychological damage is important. Understanding the neuro-mechanisms motivating these seemingly automatic actions may be vital to a Marine’s capacity to optimize self-regulation and change results – of actions and stress.

      The officer in the example found considerable relief as he came to understand how these instinctual processes work. It allowed him to resolve and integrate an experience where previously he had been bothered by irrational and conflicting thoughts. Had his tendency to seek overridden his other impulses would he have stood in the open and unknowingly risk unnecessary death?

      By understanding and experiencing these neuro-mechanisms in action, in the garden, the Marine learned techniques of how to participate in his own neurological processes, to make sense of both honorable and potentially shameful action, and minimize the potential for any resulting mental chaos. This training could be paramount to the mitigation of the long-term effects from stress, which can fester into PTSD.

      Other Marines have successfully embodied the art of self-attunement and emotional regulation through participation in an educational training process in Operation Recovery’s garden. It is expected that this training will enhance their capacity to maintain situational awareness under extreme conditions and ensure the Marine makes appropriate decisions with awareness rather than instinctual inclination or habit.

 

It couldn’t be easier to select a topic for an ebook. People are hungry for information, and people are looking to the Internet to feed their hunger. After you’ve read this chapter, you will feel confident enough to choose your own topic, or you can literally pull your ebook topic directly from this ebook and use it! How’s that for a deal?

Observe what’s going on around you.

If you’re smart enough to read this book, you’re smart enough to look around you and determine what interests you and those around you. Think of what problems you’ve recently solved, and what kinds of problems others have had and solved. Any problem that has been solved in your world could easily be the subject of your next book. People love to read how other have solved a problem that they currently have.

So, brainstorm a list of problems in your life and in the lives of those around you. Your friend Bob lost his job? Your sister’s child had chicken pox? How did they cope or find solutions? While you’re at it, start another list of unsolved problems evident in your corner of the world. Write down problems you wish you had solved. Aha! These are subjects that people will really be interested in! How to lose the last ten pounds. The truth about UFOs. The straightest path to becoming a millionaire. From your personal corner, your step-granddaughter is pregnant at age 14? Your grocery bill is double what it used to be? Your roof leaks? These are problems waiting for ebook solutions!

These unsolved problems would also be great ebook topics. Remember, you don’t have to know the solution, just the topic. You’re going to get someone else to do the research and write the book for you. You will not actually be writing one word.

Spend a few minutes Googling

The Internet is a great way to find out what people are looking for at any given moment. You can search for almost anything. Googleâ„¢ is a popular search engine you can use, or you can try any of the others like Yahoo!® or Mamma.com. Type in phrases like “top concerns of Americans,” “best-selling nonfiction topics,” or “popular how-to manuals.” Common worries of 2005.

And while you’re on the Internet…

Find out the most popular nonfiction books from the New York Times bestseller list, Amazon, and a Google search for ebooks. Your findings will tell you exactly what book subjects people are buying right now.

Try this. Go to www.amazon.com. From the tabbed menu running along the top of the Amazon home page, click “Top Sellers.”

I did this one day in September 2005 and found a Harry Potter book, several other fiction books, and titles such as Natural cures “they” won’t tell you about, How what you wear can change your life, How to profit from the demise of the dollar, and The official SAT study guide. I’ve paraphrased to some degree, but you get the idea.

Here’s what I learned just from spending a few minutes on Amazon that day. People are reading good fiction from already-best selling authors (Da Vinci Code, the Harry Potter series, and others). Secondly, Amazon buyers, buying over the Internet, are interested in nonfiction topics such as improving their lives and making more money. For these books, just about any author will do, even virtual unknowns or people who went to prison for lying to the American public.

And that quick visit only confirmed that the straightest route to ebook profits is in the nonfiction ebook market. This is for a number of reasons. Fiction readers tend to like to curl up in a chair with an actual book. Some of them attend book clubs where the physical books are brought around someone’s kitchen table with wine and cheese. Fiction readers tend to purchase from authors they’re already familiar with. Fiction can be more difficult to write and deliver well. Also, many of the classics in fiction are available as free ebooks. A reader interested in fiction could just download those. So stick with nonfiction unless you’re feeling particularly bold and experimental.

Here is some more good news, and if you didn’t already know this then you are going to be smiling big. Drum roll please… ideas are not copyrighted, therefore any idea you see, hear, or read anywhere anytime, is yours to use for an ebook! You can create books around the same ideas that are covered in the Amazon best seller list, and turnaround and create an ebook on the exact same subject!

Now, copyright law does protect the way ideas are expressed, so you want to make sure your hired author does not plagiarize or copy book text outright. And you cannot use the title word for word either. But there’s nothing stopping you from creating another book or ebook that covers the same subject with a different voice. It’s all as completely legal and guilt-free as nonfat Haagen Dazs. This is why looking at bestseller lists is a great way to get topic ideas.

Digging a little deeper

There are groups of people who are willing to buy nonfiction ebooks: hobbyists. At any given time, these people are looking for ways to spend their money on their hobbies. Their passion is your financial gain.

What avid hobbyists want will always make great ebook material. Note that I did not say what hobbyists need. You may have certain opinions on what exactly certain people should need or should read. But those are not necessarily good topics for immediate ebook profit. Those topics may be areas for you to dabble in at your leisure. However, if you want to make money at this, find out what niche groups want, and hit those groups with your ebook.

Find hobbyists and niche groups by searching the web for “popular hobbies,” “enthusiasts,” or “what America is buying.” Or, you can search specifically for forums and discussion groups for hobbyists. In the forums, people talk with each other to share ideas with one another. Often, they will exchange testimonials for equipment, upcoming events, and books.

One popular site where hobbyists go to talk to one another online is Yahoo!. Check it out. Go to www.yahoo.com. Click “groups.” On the groups page you’ll see a list of categories such as Business & finance, and Religion. For demonstration purposes, click on “Games.”

On the games screen, game subcategories are listed followed by numbers. The numbers indicate how many discussion forums are available for that subcategory. These numbers reveal a lot. Notice how “role playing games,” and “video & computer games” have factors of ten or in some cases factors of 100 more forums than other subcategories. “Wargaming” and “paintball” don’t even come close, although those categories are much more discussion-laden than “horseshoe pitching.”

For fun, one day I continued selecting subcategories until I arrived at a list of over a thousand (yes a thousand) discussion groups on Yahoo having to do with vampire role playing. Here’s how I got there: Games>>Role Playing Games>>Live Action>> World of Darkness>>Vampire: The Masquerade.

Some of the forums are open to new members, and you can join to read what everyone’s discussing. Once in the forum, you can review discussion threads from today, yesterday, or a year ago. Don’t go back too far if you want to find out the hottest possible ebook topics. You can participate in discussions if you like. FYI, do not drop into a discussion group just to market an ebook; hobbyists consider this spam and will drop you from the group.

When you read and/or participate, you’ll find out what this group is buying. All you have to do is skim to find out what questions they are asking each other about products or traveling or information. What they are interested in buying is a key piece of information because passionate consumers love to research before they buy. This is an immediate ebook market. Create a book on how to select the best this or that on the market, related to the current wants of the enthusiasts.

Enthusiasts come in all shapes and sizes. Think brides-to-be, golfers, whitewater rafters, people who collect vintage baseball cards, wine connoisseurs, gardeners, frequent vacationers, video gamers, and parents who put their children into private tutoring, ballet, and violin lessons before age 3.

There are some hobbies that seem to continually attract enthusiasts, like playing golf, watching football, restoring old cars, and listening to music. These are classics. Then there are some hobbies that seem to come and go in waves, such as Red Hat Societies participation, snow boarding, or line dancing. Pick either a classic hobby or a fluctuating hobby in its peak season for your best odds.

A big market on the Internet is the 20-30 set. Here’s what they are doing right now, according to one survey. They’re snowboarding, wakeboarding, traveling, camping, listening to music, taking photographs. They’re drinking gourmet coffee, rock climbing, playing guitar, camping, dancing, looking for online love, shopping for computers and other electronics, attending sports events, studying the Bible, exercising, trying to find jobs, and watching movies. Any one of these subjects would make a great ebook with a buying market standing by.

How-to’s and hot topics

There is almost no limit whatsoever on the marketability of how-to books. Everyone wants an instruction manual, advice, and encouragement that they can do anything they read a how-to book for. Anything you know how to do, anything you’ve ever wanted to learn, or anything that’s teachable at all, can become a how-to ebook.

How-to books for hobbyists are a good way to go, and this overlaps with the discussion above. A hobby how-to ebook could be anything from how to build a home from hay bales to how to play Texas Hold ‘Em to how to understand Shakespeare.

One book publisher knows how hungry we are for how-to information, and has created a whole series of “Dummies” books around the market. Further, there are other similar book series’, and all of them are doing quite well! “The Everything” series, “Idiot’s Guide” series and others are all cashing in on the how-to phenomenon.

You could cash in by creating ebooks on any or all subjects covered in any of those series’. Go to www.dummies.com, and check out their list of titles. Pick one you like, and move full speed ahead!

Remember that even though the books have “Dummies” in the title, that the books are as popular as they are because the readers are not treated like dummies at all. The authors cater to a person who wants to find out the easiest way to do something without too much tangential discussion. When you have your ebook written and when you choose a title, make sure you are appealing to a reader’s smarts! If you use words like stupid, dumb, or hopeless in the title, make sure that it is clear that the meaning would not extend to insulting the individual reader.

Ebooks, because of their brevity and because they are marketed primarily on the Internet can target smaller audiences. You don’t have to write a universal book like How to use a computer (which may not be interesting enough to sell anyway in this decade). Ebooks can cover more specific territory. Knowing this, you can 1) create your ebook in a specific way for a specific niche readership, and 2) create additional ebooks for different facets of the same subject, and sell each one separately!

Say you’ve decided to write an ebook on fishing. (FYI, this is one of those hobbies where enthusiasts are willing to spend money!). You could create “How to Catch Freshwater Trout,” “How to Tie Your Own Flies,” or “How to Plan a Successful Deep Sea Fishing Trip.” Almost anything related to the hobby can become a separate ebook depending on how much detail you include. Clearly, “How to put on waders,” probably wouldn’t be a great choice (though some would say it’s impossible to underestimate today’s consumer), because you would have to strain to fill up 60 to 100 pages on such a simple topic. You get the idea. The topic would need to be, in most cases, book worthy. Use good judgment.

Then, life itself requires instructions, as we know from “Life’s Little Instruction Book.” So, life also qualifies as a good how-to book topic. There are numerous subtopics, and you’ll never run out of ideas. Here are a few examples:

· “How to ensure your child gets an A+ in math”

· “How to have a successful garage sale”

· “How to organize your home office”

And while we’re on the subject of how-to books, I’d like to make one quick point. The titles of these ebooks do not need to be incredibly clever. Be sure the words “How to” are the first part of the title, and the rest should tell exactly what the ebook is about.

For example, which of these three titles would be best?

1. “How to have a successful garage sale.”

2. “One weekend away from a cleaner house”

3. “How to sell your old shoes for a profit”

Although numbers 2 and 3 are clever, a little punchy, and correspond with the ebook content, I would still recommend using title number 1. “How to have a successful garage sale” sums it up pretty well and will catch the eye of an Internet surfer who is interested in putting together a garage sale and needs a how-to manual.

Anyway, back to the point. Any phase of life, way of coping with life, or large or small thing about life can be the subject of a how-to book.

Looking young

Perhaps sixteen year old girls don’t want to look younger, but from that point on, and for most of the population in Western society, looking young is a common desire. Everybody wants to find the fountain of youth, whether it be in a pill bottle, a special diet, surgery, or an ebook.

An ebook about staying or appearing young in the face of growing old will have a solid future. Here are some title ideas, and I’m sure you can come up with a truckload more.

· “Drop ten years and ten pounds in ten days”

· “How to look 28 forever”

· “100 ways to look younger”

· “Grocery store products that will help you look younger”

· “Look 30 again without surgery”

· “How to live to be 100″

This topic is red hot. Botox, surgery, chemical peels, lasers, diets, acupuncture, electronic pulses, mega vitamins, prescription teas, thigh cream, and teeth whiteners are being purchased by baby boomers, the elderly, and even women as young as 20 ! No one wants to look a day older than they have to.

Health

Health is a concern to anyone who is growing old or ill or faced illness with a loved one or wants more energy or, basically, everybody. Health ebooks are a good investment for you to make. And doctors don’t have to be the authors. Anyone with any credentials, or no crendetials at all, can write books on health. Just be sure you don’t claim to be a doctor if you’re not one.

Here are some health topics you can hit at this moment in time and be almost guaranteed immediate interest, readership, and sales!

Disease prevention and cure.As our baby boomer population ages, most will be afflicted with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, or some other malady. Give these people some hope. Create an ebook on how to cope, how to find the best practitioners, how to avoid disease triggers, or cures American doctors are unaware of.

Natural remedies. People are curious about alternatives to standard medicine, and are anxious to try herbal, natural, or holistic treatments. Create a book on any disease that covers alternative cures. For example, “How to Treat Lymphoma, Naturally.” Or, you could just address natural supplements in general, “The best natural remedies for common ailments,” or “Holistic health.”

Diet. What we eat is always a hot topic. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of diet fads currently out there. Pick any one of them for an ebook. Then there’s obesity, general health, and also diet supplements like vitamins. Think “How to equip your kitchen for macrobiotic dieting.” Or, “Eat to cure cancer.”

Travel

Never has so much travel been available to so many. People today want to get in touch with the people they love. They want to experience different parts of the world. See exotic things. Be entertained. Also, because, especially in America, adults sometimes work well more than 40 hours a week, people need really good vacations. They’re doing their research to make sure that they will really enjoy their precious few weeks off each year.

Here are some topics for you: how to trade frequent flyer miles, how to keep airport security off your back, how to travel on a dime and get change, and how to keep your children happy on long car trips.

Beyond the how-to’s, there is plenty of room for books like, the best amusement parks for your money, top 100 campgrounds, things you must see and do in Utah before you die, and free things to do when visiting Washington, D.C.

Get the idea? The good thing about creating travel ebooks is that you may already know a lot about a place that other people may be interested in visiting. Makes it easy!

Money

Money makes the world go around (well that and the earth’s axis and planetary forces), and so it would make sense that ebooks would abound on the topic of money. They do, but the market is nowhere near saturated. There’s always room for more. From getting rich to just saving money day-to-day, people are always interested in how-to books related to money. Ideas below:

· “How to feed your family on less than $40 a week”

· “How to get free stuff”

· “How to pay almost no taxes”

· “How to buy a retirement home for no money down”

· “How to be richer than your parents”

· “How to buy cars at auction”

· “How to start a financial management business”

Life enrichment

In these days, although fewer and fewer are attending churches, more and more are flocking to purchase self-help books. Self-help books are leaping off shelves at brick and mortar bookstores. People want to feel that if they read a self-help book, they have all the power to change their lives. Whether or not this is true is moot. Changing your life, soul searching, and helping thyself, are all great ebook topics.

As much as ever before, people want to know how to find peace with their pasts, how to be creative or spiritual in a consuming society, and how to find true love. There is no end to how-to books you could create in the category of self-help, or life enrichment. Here are a few more ideas here:

· How to marry for life

· How to unbreak your heart

· How to stay sane in a crazy world

· How to meditate

A few more topics bound to explode

These are fiery hot topics that are sure to be on the rise. You can pull any one of these to use for your first ebook. Then come back and pull another topic for your next ebook.

Using the latest electronics. We are a society obsessed with having the latest and greatest technology. Do an ebook on iPods, email/camera cell phones, wireless Internet, digital TV, or any combination of these items.

Home improvement. There’s so much of a craze in this area that do-it-yourself (DIY) stores are on every corner of major cities. If you haven’t been to a Home Depot or Lowe’s lately, then you are one of the few. Sure, apartment dwellers and young students aren’t in this market, but people with homes and money to afford them are in this market. In fact, some cable TV services offer entire channels dedicated to home improvement.

Especially of current interest are in-home automation systems. DIY home improvers are eager to learn about and buy things that will make their home lives more relaxing, high-tech, or fun. Create a book to teach them how to make their lights come on for them before they get home from their jobs, or how to press a button to adjust window blinds, music, or temperature. Or how Bill Gates’ house works. Or how to add automation to an existing home, or how to build-in automation when a house is constructed.

Identity theft prevention. Especially because ebooks are marketed on the Internet, this is a great topic. This is because people who purchase over the Internet are concerned that their credit card numbers will not be seen by others or misused in any way. Even away from the computer though, consumers are on-edge about identity theft. Today, people are shredding their receipts, removing their personal information from the face of their checks, and cautiously covering themselves when they type in passwords at public terminals or ATMs. Microchips are being installed on ID cards. People are worried. Tap into this with an ebook!

Safety. Along the same lines as worrying about identity theft, people are worried about their safety from other things like crime, chemical warfare attack, and natural disasters. Watch the evening news tonight, and you will be able to list at least twenty things that people are afraid of. When you talk about safety, you are speaking their language. Titles along the lines of be prepared for any natural disaster would go over well, as would those like never be a crime victim again, how to defend yourself in a parking lot, or prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

How-to manuals for any new product recently on the market. This harks back to the Dummies series but takes it one step further. Target your ebook to people who want to buy the most current commercially available item. How to use the new model John Deere tractor. You will be sure that no one else has a book like yours, and you can say so in your sales pitch.

How to survive any phase of life. People face numerous demons and battles as they live their lives. For many, when they’re in need, they’ll be reaching out for help. Support groups, private therapy, being with friends, starting over – these are all solid topics for an ebook. You could also reach out specifically to certain people needing emotional assistance. How to get through the terrible two’s. How to cope with a cancer diagnosis. Living with your own shortcomings. How to live with someone who is dying. Surviving high school. Any of these will do.

Anything to do with pets. People are pampering their pets more than ever before. Some pets are treated better than people. It’s the people who spend small fortunes on their pets that will also be willing to pay good money for an ebook that gives them ideas on how to treat their animals even more royally than they already do.

Write books on how to pamper your parakeet, homemade meals for picky dogs, where the pet spas are, how to train your kids to be cat-friendly, million dollar homes for mutts, which animals make the best pets, or pet psychology.

Traveling mixed with the subjects above. Not only are people traveling like crazy, but they want to customize their itineraries and their methods of travel with their hobbies and lifestyles. Try a few of these on for size: where to dine around the globe and still stay on a low-carb diet plan. Hotels with the best exercise facilities. How to travel exquisitely with large dogs. Crime-proof your campsite. Be creative. There’s a market here.

Using the Internet to meet people. As I said, the craze is upon us. Everyone’s online, and sometimes folks spend more time chatting with Internet buddies than they do talking face to face with actual friends. I know I’ve been guilty of this one myself. Anyway, along with the advent of the World Wide Web, came people who need a little help figuring out how to get where they want to get. They want to find like-minded people, find a date, find love, find support.

There’s a huge ebook market for hooking people up with people online. Here are just a few things that could be covered: speed dating online, virtual music jams, taking online classes, hooking up with people who share your hobby, and finding online support groups. Any of these and more are of interest to people who wish to get maximum benefit from their ability, thanks to the Internet, to network with people in the farthest reaches of the world. In fact one of the appeals with online communing is that distance does not matter. Help these people in foreign lands find each other with an ebook.

Topics of special interest to women. The facts don’t lie. Women dominate the Internet, and they spend or influence spending of 80 cents for every dollar changing hands. What women want has never been so important to business owners and authors.

Certain topics appeal particularly to the female set. These include beauty, health, decorating, emotional support, and life enrichment. Women do a few things, generally, that men don’t. They play bunko, wear make-up, and talk for hours to their girlfriends on the phone. They send more greeting cards, prepare more casseroles, and vacuum more often than men. They eat more salads and go shopping more often for clothes. They get more pedicures and love to dance more than the average man.

There are two things to keep in mind with regards to women and ebooks. If you want to attract a female market, you need to write about a topic that women like to read about, and you want to make the title friendly towards women.

Here’s a female-oriented subject and title: Where to find great shopping bargains in Taos. And here’s a male subject: Where to catch the most fish in Taos.

Here’s a female-friendly title (same as above): Where to find great shopping bargains in Taos. And here’s a male-friendly title on the same subject: Keep your money in your pocket in Taos. See the difference? Know your market, and if you need to choose between one or the other, you’re safe going with the women’s title.

Sex. People don’t need to sneak out of bookstores with erotic books in their hands anymore, and they know it. They are looking on the Internet for sex materials, toys, and books. The Internet is private, individuals can take their sweet time, and indeed they can surf with or without a lover sharing their chair. There’s been a recent ebook success entitled Orgasms for two. There is room for more similar ebooks. On the subject of sex, this is one case where a fiction book may also do the trick. You could create erotic short stories or a how-to-have-great-sex ebook. Either ebook would entice adults interested in this category (and incidentally, most adults are indeed interested in this category).

Get more interesting articles on Internet Marketing at my blog: http://mfuzi.com

There is so much to ponder as we try to operate in our daily lives and continue in charting a certain path the concept of freedom comes into play. Some people have gotten fired from a job only to find it was a relief. What does that say about where they were then? There are so many other possibilities further down the road not even pondered. The concept of further maneuvering or going in any given direction has dealings with freedom. Give me some space, give me a little time, give me some breathing room, or at least give me a chance. Give me a chance to get to the next page, turn a new leaf, and close this chapter finally. You never know how things are going to some move or at what at least one move on the chess board might give you. Sometimes what I want to do is monitor a situation for its movement. Other barometers commonly used such as cash flow may not be good enough. Is the t movement I want or like within all this? Or do I really want to catch that first big wave out of here? Also related is the concept of personal autonomy, of being or doing things on my own, assisting my own cause. Maybe freedom will bring a new dawn for you, it is a new Century and we are past the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Somewhere out there is a happy future for you and me that might yet come into view.

To recover is something that might not always be as big or as steep as you think it needs to be . Sometimes a recovery process might be monumental. Then we think, everything I need to recover from is monumental when in fact it might not be as big a recovery involved in other cases where things could be on the mend rather quickly and easily. For example, my finances might have me in trouble to the point that I can’t picture it otherwise. But maybe the right scenario would come along and it would be a rather easy and not so big a deal to recover my financial position. It might take only one or two things to happen to pick me up and get me back on the horse again.

Try to view each of your options in very optimistic fashion, even if you are only exercising one option at a time. For example, I might be trying out a new field, really on a trial basis and it is going fairly well. I don’t want to disparage what other real options could also still be for me career wise. Sometimes we artificially devalue other options to justify the choice we are making. By doing this, I am trying to narrow the field, but I am also narrowing my outlook by bringing clouds into a projected situation that in fact might not be there People might do this in dating, when they more look for something wrong, and never picture the optimistic view of this person, even momentarily. At least momentarily, try to view all your options optimistically as this is more of a freedom view of the situation. I’m having a bad job interview; I can say that I can still be President of the United States .

There is a lot of what we deal with that hits on issues of personal autonomy and has dynamics related to this. We might be searching for that lacuna, the missing part of our personal landscape that might seem to complete our dreams for the time being.

This is not just ceremonial freedom for all but freedom with a substantial purpose to me. Not necessarily that elusive freedom but that which pertains to something that is eminently possible.

There needs to be a freedom to address that which stays with us, those issues that hang around and keep knocking at our doors must then be addressed in some fashion and my stuck feet can only move if I can somehow find that freedom.

A question for anybody is how can I best use this. I still have this talent, this circumstance, this understanding, and this enlightenment. How can it be used to its utmost advantages for myself and possibly others? We can look to freedom and how it can still to be extended while we still have a chance. Freedom to look at and summon evidence from afar and the evidence that is close by, observing that which seems to stay with us. What do I still have? Do I still have the ability to read a book even though I have not read anything in weeks? Does its use extend into the idea of free use, and do I need to extend into free paths or free lanes on the highway of freedom to use these gifts?

One of the things I might be doing is trying to pinpoint something. However, my ability to pinpoint my way just may not be there at least to the degree I hoped for. I may be trying to pinpoint in major or minor ways. If I can pinpoint the lottery numbers, I might well be on the way to a financial fortune. I can steal the day.

Not everything is going to be a straightforward find. You might have to meander to find something or stumble upon something you want. You don’t want to discount the finding, or discovery, just because it didn’t appear in a straightforward manner, as an option or opportunity is just as real and valid even if found in less than expected ways.

Don’t say I’m 100 percent this or 100 percent that because you end up taking away freedom from how you view yourself and you want to peruse different aspects of yourself and your personal gifts. If you’re transitioning in terms of your career, you could still look back and see parts of the career you are leaving as highlighting some talents, even though you weren’t a 100 percent into it. Someone dating is taking away options if they say they are 100 percent this way or that way and it might also take away from adjustment processes that can be made.

If someone goes on a date, and there isn’t a fraction of an interest on the other person’s part, then they can call it a day. But there might be fraction of a interest and you may or may not wish to proceed. And this can apply to reading interests or other interests as well where a fraction still remains, and you can take a chance on fractions if you wish to.

I was talking to a friend who hesitated to go back to a scenic locale she spent some time in, because she had such a good time, she didn’t think her next experience could match this. The subtle psychological ploy here, is that people do not want to dilute their experiences. They don’t give themselves freedom to go back to something that has gone well, because if it doesn’t continue to go well, then they have diluted the initial experiences which did go well. It does tie in a bit to the fear of success syndrome, going into the idea that I had a little success, I had a good time, lets just leave at that, preserve the experience and forget about trying for more. There could be some truth to this, how many times have movie buffs seen back to back movies, and the second movie dilutes the impact of the first in the moment. At the same time, I need to be aware just how in reality, I might not go forward because I just don’t want to dilute what has already gone well. It would be like someone taking and enjoying a course and also getting an A. Maybe they liked the teacher, the coursework and feel proud of the A. Taking another course, not liking it as much, and maybe not getting an A, would seem to dilute that experience. So I don’t give myself the freedom to try another course.

I can try to pinpoint, but I might be crossing into more difficult terrain here and there might be other things then that I could do that would be far easier. Sometimes the easier way is actually better; the easiest golf swing might get me the most in distance and accuracy.

An example of trying to pinpoint is reviewing financial data and trying to correlate this with a potential stock price or range for the stock price. Not only do I have to write this story, but I have to pinpoint just how this might be correlated to a stock price, and I just may not be able to pinpoint this, even if I am a pro. If even the pros have trouble pinpointing things, that says something about the endeavor itself. Already then, I can first come to an awareness, that I am to a degree trying to pinpoint, and I can freely lessen my attempts on this or increase them depending on what I want to do.

The survivalist mentality is not always where I want to be. For example, I go into a job, and I’m thinking, I just want to survive this day, or I go on a date, and I just want to survive it. In the meantime, for the situation to actually work well for you in the long run, it should more have the feel of a thriving situation.

I don’t when to set up protocol where the criteria are very strict and narrow before I do this. After all, who is to say if the opportunity is automatically going to be found in the stricter protocol I have set up, when the boundaries are often not up to me no matter what criteria I have set myself.

In sports, there is such a thing as for example in tennis tournaments as single game or double elimination, where you have to lose two games to be shown the exit. By what not in some of life’s other situations, where I make my own rules to an extent, can’t I eliminate on my own terms, maybe saying I’ll lose or give this ten tries before I take the fall?

Someone joked you complement my colors in talking about clothing. Maybe you can still get a woman to like you. Maybe you would complement her personality, her style, her humor, her looks or some of her other good qualities. Well what then are the colors of freedom that complement you and your hopes?

I spoke to someone who said about her job, sometimes when I take a walk at lunch, I want to just keep walking. If she did keep on walking, having felt this way about her job, did she really lose anything significant or that mattered to her. She would have probably laughed about her experience a few weeks. I might feel like I want to just keep on walking by sometimes.

We do need some adherence to norms, standards, to operate successfully in a systematized society. You and I are free to come 5 minutes late for a train but the train is not going to wait for us, because this train didn’t know you were coming. If the train had known you were coming, it would have waited, because you are the best. At the same time people find a real encroachment on their time, their focus, their ability to walk in the land, by outside forces. These forces can be institutional in nature or from institutions we have created. What happens is when we are walking on a course that seems to be less free we are compromising distinction. There are distinct ideas, distinct passions, distinct ways that can be examined if we stop compromising our freedom to go ahead.

The scientist needs some freedom to operate and further distinguish and identify what can be identified. In the animal kingdom there are a distinct number of classifications of animals, in the Brazilian forest a distinct range of plants and herbs some of which have been found to be useful for medicinal purposes. In the seas, there are distinct kinds and varied forms of aquatic life, some of it found at enormous depths of the sea beyond the reach of submarines. On the land, there are distinct views, from many places on the earth. In the movie Castaway, Tom Hanks turns in each direction from his view at the very top of the island and then his facial expression is telling when he observes the gigantic waves close to the islands shores on all sides will indeed, keep him away from the vast open calm sea,, that he is indeed surrounded by the huge waves at each run, castaway at every side and his expression is telling to his realization that this is what is. The planets and the stars are mysteries that can be observed. The Milky Way has distinct star systems that can be partially observed by eye in certain locations at certain times from the earth. Of course we can only get the view of the Milky Way from our particular location and vantage point.. But amongst such classifications such as these, the rivers, the classification of different plants, sea life, all yield to continued distinctions. So we need the freedom to find and make and determine distinctions.

Something to ponder for any situation, is where it the freedom located and where can I find the place of freedom in this situation? Is it close by, within the reach of who I am now, and where are the actual points of freedom to contend with?

Freedom from can involve a decision to circumvent or just not take that leap into a situation, not partake with the masses. This cause, that course can be bypassed or set aside for good. It is interesting how if people were involved with a course where they could design their own landscape, they would not include this and would never include that. Or they would always want this and never exclude that on the other side. If given the symbolic blank check what would people actually do with this? But some of the gifts we actually have can amount to blank checks that we can cash in on at some point with some freely applied effort, that concept doesn’t only apply to money and it’s remuneration but other maybe less tangible gifts. A great singing voice could be a blank check to the holder. But only you can cash that check because its your voice. The ability to appreciate the written word can be a blank check. Some athletic, intellectual, spiritual gifts and talents could constitute a blank check if you actually do something with these gifts in freedom, bypassing the previous restrictions coming from anyone including yourself. We have the blank check in so many ways we just don’t know how to cash it.

And then maybe we need to try again. We can’t do this unless we are free. If I seem to fail, and that failure is final, then I’m not free to try again. But the idea of trying again refers to the concept of freedom. It is documented that Thomas Edison needed to try again and again before he came to his famous inventions and discoveries that are still having a profound impact and spun at the time into whole industries. Results did not always come through right away for him, but often they came later on, after numerous tries.

The situation is that we might find ourselves in is getting into problem after problem. How free are we going to feel if we are always in the problem-solving mode, and nothing seems to feel right? The ground I walk on always seems to be falling out from under me. I can get to the starting line, but my sneakers can’t grip the track. How can I race for the gold? How can I erase this sinking feeling? At this point it would be great to just walk on solid ground again.

And what are my primary interests and what radiates from that in freedom. My first interest might be to read historical fiction but that could radiate entertainment, diversion from the routine, stimulating my imagination, stirring forth emotions and obtaining some factual history which was weaved into the fictional account. Does friendship radiate from romance or does romance radiate from friendship? It all depends on the individuals involved and how they see it, and it can change for each of them as they go along. Friendship could have been the primary motivation, which then radiated into romance, or the reverse may have been true.

All this calls into question the idea of ownership. We work with these ideas when we say we have x amount of dollars, we own a certain amount of property or we own a variety of material items. If we are going to work with the concept of ownership, maybe we should consider the idea of having friends, contacts, good health, native intelligence and common sense, life experience, a given set of knowledge, an ability to generate new and exciting ideas or any other concept that has personal meaning to us can be put under the conceptualizations of ownership. I own this experience, at least for a while. Maybe we need to bring more under the concept of ownership to move forward in freedom. Ability at times justifies its use in freedom. Substitute the word power for talent or for ability. I have the power to sing for example.

And then who owns the sun? Who owns the ocean, the rivers, the mountains and the falling snow? There was a movie, the journey to the center of the Earth. Who was owner of that center of the earth?

Say you go to the beach. They charge you 12 dollars at the toll for the beach, 5 dollars for the parking, 2 dollars for the sun, 2 dollars for the ocean itself, a dollar for the sea breeze, and another two for the sea air. Could something like this happen? Look at how many of us pay 2 dollars a bottle for water.

Does the sun make its appearance just for you? Maybe it does at times. But that doesn’t mean we own it. Is it yours, is it mine, would you be my Valentine?

I might have stockpiled all sorts of assets never to use them. Ever hear of the expression, the state has seized their assets. This applies to bankruptcy or similar legal proceedings. But maybe we should seize our own assets and do something with them before its too late.

And then we can consider whether we should refer anything to the concept of ownership. Do I own anything at all? Even the money I have in the bank has no value except as a form of correspondence that will get me some other form of correspondence. Many things I have don’t take on its value until it’s used. So the paradox is, if I don’t use something, I don’t put as much value on it. I can hit a baseball 400 feet plus, but I almost never play baseball. So the value of being able to hit a baseball 400 feet goes down for me. I could potentially run a 4-minute mile, but I haven’t run in 2 years. So I do not value my running ability as much as when I am running or did actually run.

So we can look at almost anything and say, what do I own here, should I refer this to the concept of ownership. Anything that is suddenly taken away from you or me is probably something we felt we owned. So our good health, if it is suddenly compromised, is something we would love to have back. Take this test, what do you have that if you lost it, you would love to get back? I might be more likely to sing if I felt I owned a good voice. I might be more likely to talk to people if I felt I owned good conversational abilities. So we can adjust our thinking back and forth based on whether we want to refer an individual situation to the concept of ownership or not refer to this concept at all. If we do that then we can say we don’t own the money in our personal banking account, it is just another good flowing into and out of my life and it is not something that I actually own. It all depends how we want to work with the concept. We could put time to the concept of ownership as an example. I own these hours. Anything that someone would pay for, that you have and they might not have or vice versa, is something that we could refer to ownership. Maybe you have a luxurious head of hair, and the person next to you on the train just wishes he or she that had that and would pay for that for themselves if it could be brought.

So the concept of ownership can cut across many personal landscapes. And the concept of ownership does have some relations to freedom. I don’t own this or I am not even renting it, so I can’t use it. We can take this concept across most of our dealings and we can see that it often does have subtle relations to freedom. Realistically, though, the concept of ownership does become vague as I stray away from the more concrete examples of this. Yet, this might be what stops me. I feel I need to own the situation, the opportunity, the chance, the moment, when, this is just the left over effect of feeling I need to own things before I proceed. Even, if I am a rich man or woman, technically just about all of what is out there I can’t legally claim ownership too. Even the richest people on the planet, can’t claim to own all that much. So I’ll have to proceed in with a sense of worthiness derived from some other source of thinking, depending on what I am doing. Getting back to the beach example, I pay 10 dollars to get on the beach, but after that, everything is free, such as the swim. Maybe I can say, I own this wave coming to shore. But the wave really could be for anyone.

I might possess this or be in possession of say a good sense of humor. The next step might be to activate on this, which might be hard to do in a gloomy atmosphere. Generally, I can think about some of the good assets and qualities I do possess, and why I have or haven’t chosen to activate upon them. If a firm gives me a debit card, I have to freely go and active on this card, before I put it into use.

So in designing a given landscape, there are some if not many options. Most people if they planted a garden might want strawberries, but if you really don’t want strawberries in your garden, why have them.

And leave some room for mercy in your personal garden for all things. Maybe we want freedom from certain individuals and the agenda they espouse, thereby leaving them off from our own personal landscape.

Say I have a job and it is to tie up the lines and throw out the anchor, or man the ropes in this boat. Legitimate hard work, but I really want another job on this boat, or maybe I don’t want to be on this boat at all. I can take my party elsewhere. I can jump ship to another job on the ship or I can literally jump ship, so in one fashion or another, I am free to do this, I am free to stay or leave.

Another thing that we see is that people come under a seeming umbrella that partly forms through their individual upbringing and the people and circumstances around them. Witness the movie the Godfather with Al Pacino and Mr. Brando. It was all within the big or enlarged family that the huge and uncertain drama takes place with some violent overtones. Not that this is necessarily bad to all viewers, but do I have the freedom to come out from under an umbrella that has set my feet on a certain path, if I wish. Even my concept of righteousness might form into a type of unseen umbrella, which keeps out the rain but also the sun, keeping me away from the bad and also some of the good. Can step off my personal high mountain and come into the valley of possibilities that were still waiting for me.

One possible way to seek out freedom in our thinking it to put equal weight on all considerations really just for the keep up of our thinking. If one of the considerations begins to lose weight, then that begins to tell us something. Fill all the balloons with air and due consideration and see which one loses air and loses it quickly. So you gave each balloon a chance.

Maybe I just want to be less weighed down. Look at the Olympic swimmers do they swim in blue jeans while going for the gold?

They were these special Speedo trunks which have the least resistance to water and weigh them down the least so they can move more freely towards that vaunted gold medal or even a silver or bronze medal.

You don’t have all the power but you need some freedom to play your part. And freedom does relate to power even if only in small ways. How can I be romantic with a girl if I can’t hold her hand? Denzel Washington gave a critically acclaimed performance as Ruben Carter in the movie Hurricane. He spends half the movie in jail, but even in jail he needed the leeway to give a charismatic performance.

Picture yourself at both ends of the spectrum you are considering. It is like being in a marathon and the middle of the race, make believe at that point you are at the end, or make believe you are at the beginning, even though you are still half way through. Then you might not get stuck in the middle in your thinking. I feel old at 30. Well fathom yourself at 40 and see how that feels and fits. Fathom yourself at 20 and see how you think about that. Take your thinking to each end of a given spectrum. Don’t always keep your thinking right in the middle, even if you actually happen to be located in the middle.

But the absolute key word to this particular process is the word apex. Are you at freedoms apex? We may have tripped several times or even have outright fallen. But we might still be at an apex for this opportunity. We have to at least consider the possibility that as much water as has gone over the fall or has not gone over the falls; we could be at the very apex right now for something we want to do. So we can’t say it’s too early or too late. Freedom does have its situational apex and we have to consider where and when it will be found.

I might have abandoned parts of myself to routine, isolating myself from the pomp and circumstance that I still look to with an envious eye, I’m almost married to the paycheck and the hours, holding on to this or that with the inability to let go and let live in the present, still waiting for that distant self I have yet to become before I say yes, or when my ruminations will finally bring me into the present time or find some landing point back in the real world I live in now. So maybe I’m ditching who I am today to my own loss, saying an early goodbye to my present concerns while trying to pinpoint them somewhere on that mostly uncertain, even mostly unknown map of the future. I am putting myself and my resources on a map I can’t even see yet because the arrival is to far in the distance time wise, a map that might not have formed in reality yet or may never form.

But for any difficulty or problem where are the points of freedom. Maybe I don’t do some of these things because I don’t feel free to having anything but a certain result. Then certainty becomes the manner of rule.

I’m operating within certain confines as to the results that I must have. I’m confined to my agenda of the moment, my most present agenda which I can’t seem to mix and match to the ever changing circumstances of the moment. Yes, I’ll go skiing but only if I get the most excellent rides down the slope and the snow is 2 feet deep… Yes, I’ll go fishing but only if they are running well and in visible schools and I’m certain of the catch. So, I control the D.J. as well. Play my songs, baby. Yes, I’ll go dancing but only if they play my songs all night long. Yes, I’ll listen to you in the here and now but only if you say what I want to hear and say it now.

There is no pat answer no guaranteed reference point no one size fits all. Our reference points themselves might be in motion, and we could be stymied by trying to run in tandem with them, or I hold on to my misguided belief that they remained stationary just for me. Does the world stand still for you and me? It used to. The party might be over by the time you get there. I ran all day, I got myself in great shape but the party was over. Why didn’t they wait for me? Maybe the trains will leave the door open for you and you can still catch it running. They actually depict this idea in some Westerns where they jump a moving train. Or even if our reference points aren’t in motion they seem to be. Ever park at a crowded beach parking lot and they go back and try to find where you actually parked among thousands of cars? Or sat in vast rows of people, and went out and came back trying to find exactly where you were sitting in the first place? Neither the car nor the rows moved from their original point but you lost your frame of reference, whatever that was. Maybe you parked next to a light post and you forgot that. Or you did have a lot going for you, and you forgot that. You were sitting next to a beautiful blond and you forgot that. I can reset my personal compass to a changing longitude. But many people feel annoyed, agitated, checkered, disappointed, and upset for reasons that ultimately refer to a sense of freedom. So look at any individual situation or idea we give a passing salute to and further reference the concept of freedom and what freedom means to you in this particular situation. As an exercise, you could write your thoughts under a headline, such as what does freedom mean to me in this situation. It is a valid headline because it is your headline. What does freedom mean to me as a garbage collector, as a translator of a foreign language, as a teacher, as a pursuer of knowledge in international events or sports, as a connoisseur of the movies? Take for example the movies, do you censor yourself and only go to certain movies. If you want, you are free to do this. You might want to avoid certain movies that are excessively or gratuitously violent. The degree of self-censorship is subject to personal freedom of choice with its various applications and continuing consequences.

We tend to look at freedom as some sort of global concept or right, but we need also to look at it on a more individual basis, and ponder its more personal meanings, resonance’s, and those personal practical applications. Freedom could be just another vantage point, taking in another view, the ability to bring something else into the forefront of my thoughts, helping decipher the language of the new and changing circumstances of the world I’m in. Freedom could be the right to seek in my own way, in whatever I want to seek, to take that more winding road with a different view when everybody else wants the straight path to the point of arrival. And then what is freedom herself pointing to for me, where does that finger of freedom point for me. The freedom to go back, in more than just memory only, it might be nostalgia but I really still like the Beatles and the tunes of the days gone by. I can’t go back to those concerts because I don’t have a time tunnel back, but I can still go back to the songs by record.

Maybe we can find encouragement within this freedom. For example, any ray of hope that might be found as we loosen those tightly held reins can be helpful towards feeling at home with this newly minted freedom, finally found along the way on a forming pathway. The most difficult paths might lead to a comforting oasis. Say for example, I run into tremendous traffic going to the beach. I begin to equate this with my upcoming experience at the beach. I finally get to the beach, everything is perfect, the setting, the scene, and the waves are just what I like. I find my oasis. So if I had turned around because of the difficult traffic, I would have missed this. So sometimes we need to realize although the trip to Oz might be difficult, it isn’t necessarily telling as to what Oz will be like. We never know when and where exactly the oasis can come up. The road to nirvana can be bumpy but we can still refer to nirvana in our thinking and our imaging’s if we want to. But maybe that oasis never came for you. It was a long and difficult road leading to another long and difficult road. But remember that this doesn’t mean that oasis wasn’t there, you might have just missed it, by taking a wrong turn and you might still find it, somewhere outside of the forest of your present difficulties.

And why was there so much traffic on the way to the beach. Everybody is looking for that oasis. Any large gathering, a popular concert, a packed movie theater or football stadium, represents a oasis for a large group of people.

I go to the racetrack, I bet my horses, I am free to make varied bets. Recently, I went to the racetrack, and bet a dollar to win on all 13 horses in a particular race. It was the Breeders Cup and all the horses had to be of a certain quality just to race, but yet some of these horses were in the range of 50 to 1 in this race, so there I had a chance at some long shot money. As it turned out a favorite came in and I got back only 7.50 back on the 13 dollars. But I was free to bet in this particular manner, the ticket I purchased showed one dollar to win, horses 1 thru 13. There is the freedom to make my bets and then change my bets if I wish.

I might say, I don’t want to tackle numbers in a work situation. So I wouldn’t be a financial analyst then. Don’t try and tackle something if it really is too big for you, imagine being in the NFL and trying to tackle refrigerator Perry or Ed ” Too tall Jones”. It would be a quite impossible for most people. Be realistic in what you are trying to tackle and this will free you up for more reasonable tries without going ahead with the feeling that you have to go overboard to make due.

And then this freedom of course includes freedom not to. This may be a way of holding to your position by not compromising your original stand. I want to good relationship with the opposite sex within a certain context or framework. This is not happening. So I can say I am free to do nothing in this area if I can’t find something within this context. Sometimes your best stance is to do nothing. Hold the line. You are free not to compromise your general outline. For example, I say I will not work in an office or a concern unless it’s with reasonably honest people. You find yourself in an office where dishonesty is rampart although it is highly unlikely that anybody will ever get caught. However, in your personal freedom watch, you are watching from the lens or scope of freedom, which allows you to quit this job, separating yourself from the situation, which is outside of parameters, which you will hold or adhere to as your choice. This freedom could include freedom from more extreme or widening risks or risk extraneous to your prior thinking on a subject including such thoughts and actions you are willing to take on. There are inherent risks to freedom and all its undertakings, but you don’t need to go overboard if you don’t have to. I saw a segment on TV where in a country where there resided one of the top ten poisonous snakes in the world, an individual captured one of these giant snakes with his bare hands in the outer forest, and held it from behind by the neck with his bare hand as he was getting it’s venom bring back to the science labs so the anti venom can be worked on, all the while talking to the camera about what he was doing. Maybe a good day job for this person, but not for me. Suppose he lost his grip on the snake and it turned for a quick bite. I think they said he would have about 7 minutes from that point. There was no anti venom yet because that is what he was working on. So we have the freedom to keep our parameters and basic outline, or to chuck it to the wind forever. Or we can change the parameters if we want to the degree we want. We can change 10 degrees, 30 degrees 50 degrees if you like, or go for the utmost and do a 180-degree turn.

I don’t have to assume all the risk upfront. I can work with the smaller outline as well as the larger outline. A common example is dating. I could say I want to go to the play and the amusement park for this date. But I might not want to also outline the date to try and determine whether this person is going to be a life’s mate. By doing this, I am trying also for a bigger outline than I necessarily have to, making the task seem larger and maybe more unapproachable. I am possibly increasing the perceived risk scenario when I don’t have to. Not only do I have to find the amusement park for the date, I only have to figure out on this date whether this person is a potential life mate, a tall task. I can just assume the smaller risk of today’s dating outline absence of imposing far reaching decisions.

Freedom could be the freedom to see the limits our dreams. You could have a dream job, a dream relationship, a dream trip in mind. All this might not be so easily obtained, but you can maintain that freedom in your vision, in how far can you see, and in seeing whether this was that ideal and truth which you really would have been happy with if in freedom you were able to see your dreams through. So freedom in its outlines sometimes deals with a sense of sight, we go forward with the open eyes of our choosing, ready to see if not greet the welcoming possibilities, not with eyes blindly following a preset agenda that could suddenly fall away, nor giving a blind eye to other not planned for truths or falsehoods as they come into sight. Seeing from your own personal lookout point, from your individual lighthouse where you can scan the tempestuous seas, from your watching point where you can at least begin to find out. And you could enlist friends, allies who can help in your walk towards freedom, looking in and out and beyond for you from this side or that side, scanning the new horizons on your behalf.

Think of the football scout looking at prospects for the pro’s or college at the QB position. He goes to a game, watches this QB prospect for two sets of downs and reaches a conclusion. Would you say this scout did a good and thorough job? He couldn’t even sit through the complete game or even a half a game. Sometimes we scout situations for ourselves or even make conclusions as to our own abilities without doing the proper homework or making conclusions in a quick summary fashion that just doesn’t let us project properly. We are finalizing our plans over very little evidence where more evidence can be had. Or the lights dim a little bit so I might as well pull the plug completely. This scout could have watched the complete set of plays on offense, and he might not have come to a qualified conclusion but he would have given himself a better chance to come up with a more objective and useful scouting report regardless. You can be free not to jump to conclusions so often especially when you didn’t do your homework and you know you didn’t.

Maybe your dream job was to be a TV repairman and when you go there you were half disappointed. But freedom did see me through to getting job, it is a good job, but I wanted to get there and find out if it was the final dream and maybe didn’t meet with me at that level. When you play your next deck of cards, deal in some freedom cards. Search for that freedom which finds out, which explores further into the still hopefully ample fields of tomorrows dreams.

There might be such a thing a soiled or spoiled freedom it’s less than I would have wanted ideally. So I have granulated coffee instead of its pure form. But hey I still wanted to stop at Starbuck’s and enjoy hanging out, so I’m here. And I’m still drinking coffee.

This idea freedom might cut across the time line. Can I free myself from what I thought about in the distant past, from the happenings and views of yesterday and the day before? Should I carry all things forward, or should I leave some things behind? For example, there have been people who have invested 4 years of their time in medical school, and did well in school, then decided they didn’t want to be a doctor. They took a more circular route to somewhere else. Or they did become a doctor but switched specialties. People have studied law for years and subsequently passed the bar exam and then practiced law. All free choices to divert from chosen fields of study, made without being forcibly compelled by the prior efforts to continue on a chosen path. And then I am free to selectively incorporate that which I will from my past journeys including that which has already told me yes I can. That word itself, selection, is such a key word. Who is doing the selecting for me and why? But we do sometimes carry the heavy baggage into the future, when we could just lighten up and drop it at the next station.

I also might think, what moves have I made towards what I want to do. I might be so entrenched in indecision, that looking back I realize I have made just about no moves on the chessboard. And in the game of chess, you have to make some moves, to get anywhere in the game. You can’t always know what the move will later entail due to the dynamics of the game itself. I can try this or that, but I never have perfect knowledge of how things are going to play.

It might not be worth it to go into a Herculean effort when the dam will burst or things will cave in as soon as you diminish or relinquish your efforts a bit. You might be holding things up or together by a shoestring.

A friend once told me, his major criteria for anything is, “Is it worth it?” Bring that question right to the forefront for consideration and it will help for sure.

Can I be free from the need to project into a future that I don’t see yet? Can I back away from the sunrise, by getting there or trying to get there before clarity and vision come? If I interview a prospective employee do I need to project that he or she will be a 5 year employee when I don’t even know if the company or its markets will be there in 5 years? Do I have to base a future on my numerous observations of the past days, adding them up into their cumulative sum which then forms a nice summary to project off and then projecting them into the next horizon, and thereby conclude in knowing fashion that this will happen when the only guarantee I’ll ever have is that there is no guarantee. Today is not the sum of yesterday. In fact those numerous observations might not do it, so you have to start today with something else.

But maybe that first impression, that first goal, is correct at least in part. I first wanted a blond, my preferences in women have since evolved and now I also like brunettes But that doesn’t mean if I do meet a blond now, that my original goal is now invalid or wrong for me now, that I cannot go back to the original superficial blueprint.

When I grew up in America , the standard lunch was a hamburger French fries and a coke. Things have evolved since then, the menus have expanded, and McDonalds and the like have chicken, fish, and so on. But that doesn’t mean I can’t go back and have my original order that was the staple of its day, like baseball, cracker jacks and apple pie. Look at some of the nostalgia, what people hold to, the people that restore cars, the searching again for the right stuff, all pointing to a restored feeling or experience I still want to revisit in some way. I want a classic coke as it was my first love. Or that favorite show that I still want to see from years back that has become associated with a personal era. Where is the DVD? We might associate seeing a movie with a certain time of our lives when we were actually happy for a moment.

As I sift through the newly emerging evidence, do I give up the old automatically? The original blueprint might have been good as it still holds some fading allure. Look at some people that would still go back to the old fashioned automate for lunch, or I might still want a root beer float after all these years, and even if Gilligan never got off that island, I still go back to that see that show again.

There is also the freedom not to do everything, be everything, and refer to every thought and idea at once. You can isolate on ideas and approaches that you want to pursue now, letting go of approaches that might have been mightily engrained in your thinking but you are free to drop for now in order to isolate on another approach. There is freedom of cadence and personal pacing. The freedom to isolate on and focus on even a specific instance of thought and carry it through to new possiblities.

Then we are also dealing with in simple, small, close by freedoms that might make a difference. The freedoms involved are so close or small that we don’t even realize it’s an issue of freedom. I might have to wear a suit and tie again at work after being in a casual dress environment for so long. These freedoms are so small we take them for granted, but they would be highlighted if they were taken away. Suppose they discontinued my favorite candy, my favorite drink, or my favorite show on TV. All of the sudden, what I assumed would always be available isn’t there anymore. There are no blonds left on the planet, I have to settle for a brunette. I could now only take a hot shower once a week because of the water shortage. Where did my hot shower water go? It ditched me. I can’t get the type haircut I want anymore, what I liked went out of style.

A personal example was when I played my first year of little league baseball, at every at bat I was badgered by the assistant coach who I guess meant well to keep my elbow up and swing level. I couldn’t swing then freely for the fences. I had no home runs and a low batting average for the season. The following year, with a different coach who left me alone to swing away for the fences, I could drop my hands and elbow without constant instructions to do otherwise and go back to my more natural swing and I did have some nicely hit home runs and a much higher average to boot.

But maybe a compromise can be reached. In order to swing more freely, I’ll agree to some adjustment in the rules of the game, maybe a pop fly to the infield is now an automatic out. I want this freedom, but I’ll allow for another rule that relates to this freedom to come in as a compromise between the elements being discussed.

We can make a bargain with the day, forgetting my previous lapses in relation to what I wanted then and now. But does the deal we make with the day, the passage of time, the changing circumstances of our life, include those cherished freedoms. Or did I deal them out this time, muffling those voices that call me forth to somewhere new, bargaining them away, bartering away some freedoms for a safer but less free vision of who I was then and who I could be now. Have you sold your rights, folding your hand against your hallowed beliefs, vanquishing and banishing the freedoms from your own personal kingdom and fiefdom, letting freedom pass by like the last fading rays of the falling sun, letting freedom pass you by yet one more time, leaving you alone as the forgotten companion and friend.

Then, you may have bartered away freedom when there was no give and take. You give up rights, but get nothing in return. Going back to the baseball example, you not only have you freedom taking away to swing freely, maybe you don’t even get to play the field now, you are only the DH. The bartering away from freedom netted you nothing.

And then there is that primal call to freedom, that call of the wild. You see this take form with people that take more extreme risks like skydiving or something like that. You might want to tap that ability to take on risk but also channel it in a way that will get you to another day. See another sunrise.

But there can be a subtle loss of freedom within particular goals, however small. I want to read the whole NY Times, so I end up being not free to read say just the one article. I find myself lacking unless I read at least 10 articles. Why this seeming shortfall is this seen as a free fall on my goals when reading just the one article can be quite valuable as well. I need to give myself freedom to find value and if it is only in one or two articles I can make it too so be it. I find myself riddled with guilt that I cannot seem to meet my prior goals. Instead of trying to solve the riddle, I let guilt rain upon it. My newspaper is all wet with the guilt I rained upon it, and I can’t read anything now. Are you going to get the crossword puzzle done on the Sunday Times by running on a guilt trip? Solve the puzzle. I may still want to cover more territory but I can cover less or more territory based on what I want to do in freedom. And if I cover less territory, I don’t have to take a guilty trip to guilty land, and cover my wagon train with guilt because I didn’t make it all the way west. I can’t read any fiction because it will not translate into a set of knowledge that will net me dollars, so I have to wait until my bank account is swelling with money before I can afford to spend time on this pursuit. So in effect, I am in a way not free to read fiction now, I’m effectively locked out on reading fiction for now, and although I could enjoy this and I have the capacity for this now, my bank account doesn’t let me. My goal of a lot of money in the bank has been a mountainous chore shading away other chances, and has usurped and obscured my present interest in maybe relaxing and reading some fiction. Reading fiction has become objectionable as I let the search for the gold further obtuse my other interests. I never get to that other place. I lose my other views from my high mountain, I got to the summit of Everest but I was above the atmosphere and I can’t see those other earthly opportunities or even pour myself another cup of soup.

Everything is a crapshoot, but it is less of a crapshoot if you can go freely into areas of your strengths that we might have seen had we not been stopped by the voices that say no. We not only voluntarily inhibited our weaknesses, but even our strengths. Why haven’t given myself a license to operate within my strengths? I have these good qualities, I sweep them under the deck, and so I end up with an immaculate deck, that looks great from the distance with such an impeccable view from afar. The perfect noonday sun sparkles on this shining deck. But, where I am on the deck? Where are you on the deck? Where are we on the deck? In fact, I can’t find any of us there. Had we really obtained the ideal view? The landscape was so beautiful, but never full, the occupant sign continually says vacant.

There were beautiful scenes and posh landscapes waiting for us. But I never got there. I heard you never got there. In fact, none of us made an appearance there.

What are my strengths really? What are my weaknesses? It is not so easy to sift through and separate the two. Passion could spur us on to new heights or catch us in our greatest weaknesses. Where does passion lie then, in our strengths or our weaknesses? Or does freedom have its say here?

By the common lumping together process, we classify our weaknesses as strengths or vice versa. The truth is that our greatest strengths can be found within some of our seeming weaknesses. Those are the nuggets of gold that we must find as we sift through.

My strengths could have been posted on the most wanted trail. Where were my strengths post and prior, now and then? You could picture those safe havens in your mind. That safe haven could be revisiting both in your mind and in a reality that is presenting itself in the form of hints. Where are they rolling out the red carpet for you? If this situation isn’t royal and regal it isn’t the safe harbor. If that level of engagement isn’t there, they might cast you out sooner if not later. Even your thoughts can leave the safe harbor, instead of rolling out the red carpet for ourselves, we dynamite against ourselves in our own thinking. If your own thoughts cast you out, then you haven’t even found a safe harbor in your own contemplations. The thought, I can’t hit the jumper, or the rising fastball, doesn’t get us in the game. The safe haven should also be seen as such by you. It certainly is not a place that is a lightning rod for the negative. And this place could be your place of thinking. What is the location of your thinking? Get back to those thoughts that will harbor your best assets in freedom.

An example of all this could be someone who wants to do something, yet ultimately does not see it being a safe harbor. More than likely, they will procrastinate until they can see what about this could form into a safe harbor.

See it you can catch things on the bounce. You still have a chance on the bounce back, maybe on the very next bounce. There are opportunities off the bounce. Every chance that you take is a chance that is taken.

Situations might form into a web or network. You might have a network of friends and relationships that overlap or network of business contacts. Or a web of interests and choices that relate in some way. But these interests as they become complex have the potential to become tangled. If you have ever gone fishing on a party boat, there is potential to really tangle the lines, and it can be very difficult to untangle the fishing lines. In the same way, we need to operate freely and try to avoid and then get out of ways we can get tangled up in these webs. A simple example could be a group of girls who are friends in high school. Gossip can spread among these mutual friends and one friend could get in trouble with most of the group. So gossip could cause entanglements in these webs of friendships, just like having several fishermen get their lines tangled up with each other on the fishing boat. This example shows how the free choice to gossip can have a resonance within a given network or web of relationships beyond its initial scope. Of course a web or network can be a rich and fruitful web. A bunch of mutual friends who keep in touch over the years with each other is an example of a rich web. Or you take a number of courses where there is helpful overlap as to the learning and this is a rich network of knowledge which has formed.

Change can be in two directions, not just one, or even make it three. So this is another thing to consider, I may be changing in two areas rather than just the one I seem to think about most. I need then to see therefore in two directions, and also look in two directions as I’m changing in two directions.

I can get tangled up again, I can trip over myself because I think I’m changing in only one direction, when it is two or more directions that my current movements are changing in. I might think even that this is a bit odd or strange, and therefore, count me out. But there are so many things you have done, in ways that were both acceptable to you and others, that there might be a chance that you could have a similar feel for this, this thing that seems so alien to your hopes right now.

But really I’m just trying to fish. How can I do this with freedom when my lines are so tangled?

You might be just as interested elsewhere. A little bit more freedom might do the trick or be the trick of the trade. This freedom could include a shakeup of the thoughts we hold so dearly about ourselves. I can put those closely held thoughts, at a bit of a distance, or at a little less of a premium. The problems indeed are coming through so close to the situation that we lose sight of the objective mirror as we pass by. Our present opinion of ourselves in based partly on the more subjective reality held by me only. We might be victims of our own gloomy prognosis that leaves us looking in the dust of formerly good opportunities. Can we sometimes settle in on a less gloomy view of our potentialities and ourselves? Ease up a bit on the brakes you have put on your personal freedom train and try to keep your train ride moving in some smooth, positive, and flowing forward fashion. At least give yourself a chance to peruse some of the evidence that you might be wrong as you sift further through the sands of possibility, that you could let the movie have a different ending or somehow find and believe for a better ending, or a different story line that had more appeal to the wider audience of me and them, that you might still be able to move in another chosen direction, rather than continually and conditionally resubscribing to the disrupting thoughts that blanket across your landscape, a twirling and twisting subscript that soon becomes predominate in your own personal movie, clouding your way. Can you cancel your subscription to disaster now? I have these thoughts that have now become corrosive and swollen with negativity. It is far easier to paint all with the same negative brush, swelling the storm, then to search out the good parts that still remain in the mix containing some good yet to be mined. Instead, leave the picture as is with some of those good scenes in the mix. Try to mine the positives. There are ways you can go on the still sunlit course, either automatically or not automatically. Or try to hang in there until the sunrise comes for you

Ever see a movie, particularly when the hero or main character is trying to escape. You root for that character to escape, and try to find with him or her the way out. Why not root for yourself, to find your way out?

Some decisions I make automatically, if the sea is too way strong, it is letting you know by the swells to 40 feet, and I just know I can’t handle it, I might automatically get me and my surfboard out of the water and get back to the babes on the shore of Baywatch . It’s an automatic decision. There is no second guess or even a first guess. If I get an A, I am almost automatically happy with the best results. That is the letter I want to see and it starts with A. But other projected courses are not so automatic and require considerations based on the ability move freely. Even if we get to where we seem to want to be, there is some crossing over that is involved that isn’t automatic. My personal belief system about myself can be shrouded with inconsistencies and inaccuracies that hold me back and keep me from what should be automatically a fairly good choice to make. Since I just can’t get my better thought processes to the forefront right now, doesn’t mean I live by what I can’t get to yet. If I had real confidence, I would automatically take this chance and walk through the good opportunity. The traveling beliefs about myself that I put on active file, on automatic pilot, that check me away at the door of new territory that might contain the golden opportunities that will bring me home to happiness. It’s as if I am skating with the hockey puck, nobody is there to check me, and I think what is going on, so I check myself against the boards. In my previously conceived notions of myself I haven’t considered other spectrums of my possible talents. I shroud my thinking. My one-dimensional ponderings haven’t considered that I may be multi-dimensional in my talents. I’ve blasted away at the whole rock. I have not gotten to the optimistic side of the fence yet. I haven’t told myself the whole story by just sticking with the negative. I’ve beclouded my own skyline. We haven’t exactly given scintillating reviews of ourselves to ourselves, further limiting fuller considerations of what might have yet been possible for me, jettisoning my own potentialities to a lesser form. I’ve giving myself a head start away from the better chances. Usually when someone says, you have a head start, it refers to advantages. But not the way we work things when negativity gets going first in our thinking.

Not only do I not want to be famous I have in fact defamed myself. We have continually declared ourselves ineligible before anyone else has or before the game has even begun. Are you socially engaged to a level of satisfaction, intellectually engaged to a level of satisfaction, have you got the lantern on those thoughts that puts you more in the light?. Can you center your thoughts on something else other than the worst-case scenario and just deal with it if it does when it happens? For example as we take in the bad news, do we need to center our thoughts on it? Centering on good things now may even leave to a fullness of those good things now. A flower blooms centering in the sunlight. Free up your thinking to a more rounded view, towards yourself and you’re your circumstances, giving some credence to the brighter side of things, not that you have to stay captive to the optimistic, but just visit there and see what is going on in that neck of the woods, also trying to give some weight to all the viable ideas you could choose from, not just the negative, which you can probably put in the corner anyway for all the good it has done you in these ramparts.

Going back to the example where I automatically get out of the surf if the waves are 40 feet high. But how about if I am facing waves that are 20 feet high? Even those waves are a bit high for my surfing ability but I am not sure. The decision isn’t automatic. Should I surf now or not? Right here is my rendezvous with freedom. This dance isn’t going to be with Ms. Automatic but with Ms. Freedom. Since the decision isn’t automatic, I will make a free choice. As I move away from the automatic I am moving into areas of freedom that contrast with my more automatic decisions. I am outside the friendly zone of automatic and I have to get used to dealing with the zone of maybe or maybe not. It isn’t much of a decision to grapple with to leave the 40-foot surf alone. But the surf I’m facing now offers more pros than cons but still some cons. I could get some relatively but not totally safe thrills on these waves, but my facility and experience in still more with 10 to 15 foot waves and this does represent an uncertain leap for me.

When someone says to you, “ Don’t automatically assume.” Consider that they might be right. How much and how often, even in the areas where we have a lot going for us, do we automatically assume maximum trust in our prior beliefs, approaches, expectations, and interests in somewhat erroneous fashion. How much should we be so automatic about without looking into freedoms play in the situation. I go out in the summer I automatically assume it will be at least 60 degrees. But what of the anomaly that has happened, that one day in the century when it’s 30 degrees in the summer. I just assumed that would never happen.

We let these negative thoughts rent space in our head. But at what cost do they rent? Can we free up that space for some other tenants?

Don’t totally rely on good bloodlines and circumstances. What good is the great horse with all the good bloodlines, and it never gets out of the barn for the race?

Are you still married to the darkness of the day or can you finally break free and start to divorce yourself from those negative forces? Can you finally get on equal footing with freedom or at least get a foot in the proximal door of freedom’s domain, finally beginning to that first big step into its province. We have tapped danced around freedom for so long we don’t know where and who we are anymore, as we list for a place on the hierarchy of possibilities, we never had a meeting with freedoms demands and invitations, even as freedom knocked on our door not only once but again and again, nether while we dimmed the light on our remained sight of what could yet be.

You don’t have to take on the full force of freedom you can take it in smaller doses. We don’t have to always have a grand meeting with freedom we can also meet freedom in her minutia, in her more minute form. Size up freedom to the situation. Not everything is at the level of détente.. You don’t have to be the leader of the free world to talk to anyone in this world, to talk to this girl, to jump in this nicely heated ocean for another soothing swim. Free yourself from the stifling and stilted worries that have got you swaggering like a ship in yet another storm of make believe.

We can ride the wave of freedom but then we can also get off that wave. We have freedom to ride a wave and stay on its crest or get off it if we choose. Opportunity can be seen from that crest, that panoramic view, from that higher wave, where I have views of new and multiple landscapes, which might yet have widespread applications. Jason Gardner tried to catch that big wave to the NBA but he didn’t have a good camp for the NBA scouts and went back to college for another season. He didn’t surf that big wave to the NBA this time but there will be another chance, another wave for Jason. Another Golden Fleece may yet be found. He did get another view from that wave and then went back. By the way he was just MVP of a major preseason college tournament for his college team the Arizona Wildcats.

Take some of your freedom pills in the morning with our vitamins. Freely have a freedom sandwich for lunch for a change instead of the usual tuna or turkey. And then take a relaxed walk along the highway of freedom afterwards, enjoy the sights, the price is right. Then take a d