mind body planet

Today I want to move away from the super weighty issues and away from the political rants as I am want to to do. I was talking recently with one of my good friends who is a music therapist and we were discussing various ways in which she uses her methods to help people with the problems that they are facing in their daily lives from various outside influences. We were discussing the various issues that she has dealt with both physical and emotional. She has personally had over two hundred clients that have met her more than ten times to complete a regimen that she personally created for them. She works in a private clinic and so she gets all of her business through private inquiry as opposed to others who will get their base from whatever program they are a part of. Other practitioners of this form of therapy may deal specifically with one type of population and then specialize in treatment of those types of maladies. Her clients have a great range of variability. They  are people that come in with children who have mental disabilities, couples having marriage problems, or people looking to relieve some kind of mental dissonance that they believe music can cure in some way. 

My friend was a graduate of the Berklee college of music up in Boston and she has told me a good deal about the program that she went through. Basically she was given an amazing education in how to not only play and write music, but she was also taught how to interact with people through the medium of music in order to overcome, at the deepest level, some kind of mental blockage that music alone can release. She got to spend many years do exactly what she loved and at the same time she picked up an amazing set of skills and an interesting perspective on disease and mental illness They also taught her how to run a successful business through this medium of therapy but she has chosen, with the poor job market and all, to become a part of something already created and then move on after a time. 

At this point she has been telling me that most of her client base has been coming from sort of similar populations of people. On the one hand she has lots of people who have relationship problems and are seeking marriage counseling that is more intimate than simply talking with a counselor. She is also getting plenty of people who simply wish to learn how to play. That is another big part of what she does is that she teaches every single one of her clients how to apply themselves to something as revealing as a musical instrument and they can take that away and do with their gifts as they will. I think that that is the real magic of what she does for a living. 

This week we got a big mix of what seems to be extremely troubling news about the financial state of the country and the world at large. Some pretty big actions have been taken by some of the biggest investment banks and the government to try and salvage the economy and the structure of our society at this point. I have been trying my best to simply ignore the things that I have been hearing because there is nothing I can do about it. All that the people down here on the bottom can really do is hope that everything works out in the end and try to keep going without the comfort we held before.

One of the way that I am doing this is by looking at a lesser known story from earlier in the week. This week GM unveiled their new electric car called the Volt. They held their little press conference and showed off the vehicle. I am sure that everyone who left that day with their corporate gifts in hand was happy to see the newest model, but sharing a question that I am also having around this story. What is the price for such a car?

GM showed off their new car as the latest in a long line of electric designs that has put this one at the fore. In terms of the marketability of this vehicle I think that they surely kept that in mind when designing it. We all have see the Toyota Prius, I love it, out there on the road and thought about how funny the design of the body is. It doesn’t look to me to be that aerodynamic and for many the fact that it is not what could be called stylish would shoot it right out of the pool of new cars they’d buy. The Volt ont the other hand is designed to be the most aerodynamic car GM has ever built thus making it look and handle like a sportscar of old. This sort of contradicts what we would think of when we imagine a hybrid or fully electric car but they have pulled it off here.  GM has also managed to create a product that those who car about environmental initiative can feel happy about. The battery life on this one is around forty miles and then the gasoline engine kicks in to keep the battery charged for hundreds more. It is also only about four cents a mile on avaerage to drive and charge this little baby up for around eight hours a night.

All in all I think that GM has made a winner here. I just hope that they don’t stop here and they move all the way in to the future with this design and they don’t kill it with the price.

MindBodyPlanet 23

It is the duty of the youngest generations of us to be idealistic and driven to change those things we see around us which give us pause. In my life there are plenty of things that force me out of my own little comfortable bubble and make me want to cry sometimes. When I find these inexplicable occurrences I choose not to ever hide my face and run away. These are lessons given to us from some higher power to make us open our eyes. 

You may be wondering why I have gotten myself all worked up and on this soap box. Well i am standing up here because I am now part of a little campus group that hopefully will turn in to something of a movement. We are a group of students for social change and we understand that as a group we must be committed to the betterment of social justice and living everywhere. We have structured ourselves much in the way of Amnesty international in our written guide, but we want to take a more active role in the social causes and how to change them. Where amnesty would be campaigning against the leader of a country who commits genocide, we would do the that but we would also look at the reasons buried under the genocide. 

One of our biggest committed issues is that of climate change. As you all know it is quite an intricate and divisive kind of issue in the country and around the world, and we want to take a big bite out of it. Our group has a greta liberal leaning in our stance on these issues and so we also wish to spread our word through dialogue. We have set up some speaking events as well as debates to try and bring more people in to the fold. At these events we will of course be giving out promotional gifts to help get our namer around. As with any group even promotional pens can turn your garage project in to Microsoft simply by landing them in the right hands. Through these meetings and discussions we want to not only further our own agenda, but try to bridge the political gaps that keep these issues in a dead lock. IF we as students can achieve even a few minor successes I think we can act as an inspiration or even a driving force behind some real change in the places where it really makes a difference. 

We have once again reached the fall everyone and the harvesting season has really begun. In just two short months all of the farmer’s markets will be slowing down or closing entirely. Our CSA’s will be puttering to a stop here around the same time and then we will be on our own to try and figure out how to make our food choices work and believe me you do have some options. For those of you out there whop don’t know already, you also have one other option to store up some food for the winter that you are currently able to find at the markets or in your CSA box.

Canning is a practice that I tout till the ends of the earth because it as gotten me through years of winter. When I was a kid it was normal part of every week that on sunday nights the whole family would can whatever produce we had left over because mondays were the farmer’s market days and we would survive off that food for the week ahead. Canning is a way to store food for yourself at home that will certainly last you all winter long and will definitely save you some money in the long run. It will take a small investment at first but it is well worth the pocket change from your student loans.

The art of canning begins with a trip to the store. In any supermarket you can find, in the isle with the plastic bags, ball jars. These jars come in all sizes from a pint all the way up to a two gallon jug. For most canning purposes you will need either the pint or the quart jars. The smaller jars are for things like jams and jellies and the larger jars are for your staples like tomatoes and pickles. When you have the jars the next thing to get will be a pot large enough to fit about six to ten jars or so. The pot doesn’t need to have a lid but it helps. You will also need some type of tongs and there are some that are made specifically for this purpose. Now you are ready to get to canning.

At this point I won’t go too much in to the actual process of canning because the process varies for every kind of food you wish to can. Here I would recommend that you go ahead and buy a book on canning. There are plenty of resources for this and even I still go out of a book to keep myself focused on the way the process is supposed to go.