Very cool picture!

Bad-to-the-bone!

Another amazing picture!

It's a humming bird! It's a bee! Its a....

This is a picture of the humming bird that my girlfriend saw that was half humming bird and half bee! When Kim told me about it, I did not believe that this thing existed...I thought it was just a humming bird...but I turned out to be wrong. It turns out to be a moth that looks alot like a humming bird/bee mix. Its wings make a buzzing sound like a humming bird and it has most of the same characteristics as a humming bird.

Pain and Stress are Universal

Lobsters and Crabs feel pain, study shows

March 27, 2009 -- Ripping the legs off live crabs and crowding lobsters into seafood market tanks are just two of the many practices that may warrant reassessment, given two new studies that indicate crustaceans feel pain and stress.

The findings add to a growing body of evidence that virtually all animals, including fish, shellfish and insects, can suffer.

Robert Elwood, the lead author of both papers, explained to Discovery News that pain allows an individual to be "aware of the potential tissue damage" while experiencing "a huge negative emotion or motivation that it learns to avoid that situation in the future."

Both pain and stress are therefore key survival mechanisms.

Elwood, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at The Queen's University in Belfast, and colleague Mirjam Appel studied hermit crabs collected from rock pools in County Down, Northern Ireland. All of the crabs survived the experiments and were later released back into their native habitat.

Awesome Specimen

This is an awesome specimen. It was sent to me by a friend and it was represented as the largest butterfly in the world. When I noticed how thick its body was I felt like it was a moth and not a butterfly. A butterfly would have a thin body...This is, in fact, a moth. But it is a very beautiful moth indeed. Google 'Attacus atlas' and learn more.

Notice how the quirky curved edge of the front wings shape and colour imitates snake heads. This discourages many predators.

A few good ones...

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.

-- Robertson Davies


The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

-- Herbert Spencer


elucidate: to make clear or manifest.

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Bum Ankle and Busted Lip

My girlfriend is recovering from a bum ankle

that she hurt while hiking with me and now

she is also recovering from a busted lip that I

gave her when I threw her the baseball and it

hit her on the lip. I told her that maybe she

should just put the bag of frozen beens on top

of her head. She would not stay off of her feet,

so I got her some crutches in hopes that would

get her off her foot so it would get well.

Hiking along Rock Creek

This is a stop we made while hiking along the

Rock Creek Segment of the Cumberland Trail.

More Americans say they have no religion

More Americans say they have no religion

“More Americans say they have no religion.” This was the headlines in the local paper. The article starts out by saying, “A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.”

“Almost all denominations losing ground, survey finds.” This was the headline in a national newspaper. This article simultaneously outlined the decline of religion and the church in America.

This is good news….if those that are rejecting religion are also looking into what constitutes a good life and the art of living and do not become narcissistic human beings. And we each need to learn what it means to be human and to go beyond this self and to find out what it means to die while living. But this can only be brought about by a deeper understanding of the mind and the problems that are created by names, labels, judgments, and this thing called memory. We must begin to understand how knowledge and accumulation of knowledge alone, and put into the form of one’s intellect is not going to bring about a better world. This means that it is only by a creative understanding of oneself that a true revolution can take place.

The tragic side to all of this is the sad reality that people are never going to change on any mass scale…people are too much like a herd of sheep or herd of cattle, and they run in pacts, rarely questioning themselves, what they are taught, or authority….putting their faith in these extraordinary politicians and people of power and greed…and there is no hope for mankind. We are fast becoming a socialist country and a global economic collapse is in the not too distant future.

This may sound very bleak and seem to be a very negative observation…but facts are often not what we are willing to see. To see this fact is to realize that most of the analysis of life and attempts to save the world are for the most part nothing but a bunch of nonsense. This does not make one sad or depressed to see the truth of this; on the contrary, it frees oneself from the illusions that we can save the world and this brings about a state of mind that is still, but not made still, and an acceptance and a love that is without motive and free from corruption, and therefore timeless.

This Girl Kim - a poem

This Girl Kim
By Kerry Craig Walker


I went to eat breakfast at the Red Barn in Spring City
And I met this blond that seemed a bit witty.

We talked about politics and religion and actually gave a hoot
And as we talked I noticed she was cute.

I got her number and thought about how I liked her ways
So I thought I would call her in a few days.

She was not shy and I notice how she was bubbling with energy
Got a call from my brother, she was trying to find me!

I thought it was nice that she would have the guts to find him,
‘Cause there just aren’t many like this girl Kim.

I gave her a call as soon as I could and with no reason to balk,
Because I’d thought about her and wanted to talk.

We talked and talked for some time and got along well,
But how things would go only time would tell.

She was in school and math was one thing she was not above,
So I tutored her and then we made love.

There is someone else in her life and his name is MoJo.
And this little doggie is always on the go.

It turns out that she liked the outdoors and nature too,
And when we were together we never felt blue.

She liked going hiking and walking the trails in the wilderness,
One thing for sure she was not like the rest.

I’d been thinking for sometime how much I liked her goods,
And this girl would even pee in the woods.

She can climb way high up the cliffs ‘cause Kim is a Tom Boy,
And being with her brings me nothing but joy.

Her unconditional love and acceptance will put away most strife,
I want to be with this girl for the rest of my life.

On Naming

On Naming

Question: How can one be aware of an emotion without naming or labeling it? If I am aware of a feeling, I seem to know what the feeling is almost immediately after it arises. Or do you mean something different when you say, ‘Do not name’?

Krishnamurti: Why do we name anything? Why do we give a label to a flower, to a person, to a feeling? Either to communicate one’s feelings, to describe the flower and so on and so on; or to identify oneself with that feeling. Is not that so? I name something, a feeling, to communicate it. ‘I am angry.’ Or I identify myself with that feeling in order to strengthen it or to dissolve it or to do something about it. We give a name to something, to a rose, to communicate it to others or, by giving it a name, we think we have understood it. We say, “That is a rose”, rapidly looking at it and go on. By giving it a name, we think we have understood it; we have classified it and think that thereby we have understood the whole content and beauty of that flower.

By giving a name to something, we have merely put it into a category and we think we have understood it; we don’t look at it more closely. If we do not give it a name, however, we are forced to look at it. That is we approach the flower or whatever it is with a newness, with a new quality of examination; we look at it as though we had never looked at it before. Naming is a very convenient way of disposing of things and of people—by saying that they are Germans, Japanese, Americans, Hindus, you can give them a label and destroy the label. If you do not give a label to people you are forced to look at them and then it is much more difficult to kill somebody. You can destroy the label with a bomb and feel righteous, but if you do not give a label and must therefore look at the individual thing—whether it is a man or a flower or an incident or an emotion—then you are forced to consider your relationship with it, and with the action following. So terming or giving a label is a very convenient way of disposing of anything, of denying, condemning or justifying it. That is one side of the question.

What is the core from which you name, what is the centre which is always naming, choosing, labeling? We all feel there is a centre, a core, do we not?, from which we are acting, from which we are judging, from which we are naming. What is that center, that core? Some would like to think it is a spiritual essence, God, or what you will. So let us find out what is that core, that centre, which is naming, terming, judging. Surely that core is memory, isn’t it? A series of sensations, identified and enclosed—the past, given life through the present. That core, that centre, feeds on the present through naming, labeling, remembering.

We will see presently, as we unfold it, that so long as this centre, this core, exists, there can be no understanding. It is only with the dissipation of this core that there is understanding, because after all, that core is memory; memory of various experiences which have been given names, labels, identifications. With those named and labeled experiences, from that centre, there is acceptance or rejection, determination to be or not to be, according to the sensations, pleasures and pains of the memory of experience. So that centre is the word. If you do not name that center, is there a center? That is if you do not think in terms of words, if you do not use words, can you think? Thinking comes into being through verbalization; or verbalization begins to respond to thinking. The centre, the core is the memory of innumerable experiences of pleasure and pain, verbalized. Watch it in yourself, please, and you will see that words have become much more important, labels have become much more important, than the substance; and we live on words.

For us, words like truth, God, have become very important—or the feeling which those words represent. When we say the word ‘American’, ‘Christian’, ‘Hindu’ or the word ‘anger’—we are the word representing the feeling. But we don’t know what that feeling is, because the word has become important. When you call yourself a Buddhist, a Christian, what does the word mean, what is the meaning behind that word, which you have never examined? Our centre, the core is the word, the label. If the label does not matter, if what matters is that which is behind the label, then you are able to inquire but if you are identified with the label and stuck with it, you cannot proceed. And we are identified with the label: the house, the form, the name, the furniture, the bank account, our opinions, our stimulants and so on and so on. We are all those things—those things being represented by name. The things have become important, the names, the labels; and therefore the centre, the core, is the word.

If there is no word, no label, there is no centre, is there? There is a dissolution, there is an emptiness—not the emptiness and fear, which is quite a different thing. There is a sense of being as nothing; because you have removed all the labels or rather because you have understood why you give labels to feelings and ideas you are completely new, are you not? There is no center from which you are acting. The center, which is the word, has been dissolved. The label has been taken away and where are you as the center? You are there but there has been a transformation. That transformation is a little bit frightening; therefore, you do not proceed with what is involved in it; you are already beginning to judge it, to decide whether you like it or don’t like it. You don’t proceed with the understanding of what is coming but you are already judging, which means you have a center from which you are acting. Therefore you stay fixed the moment you judge; the words ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ become important. But what happens when you do not name? You look at an emotion, at a sensation, more directly and therefore have quite a different relationship to it, just as you have to a flower when you do not name it. You are forced to look at it anew. When you do not name a group of people, you are compelled to look at each individual face and not treat them all as the mass. Therefore you are much more alert, much more observing, more understanding; you have a deeper sense of pity, love; but if you treat them all as the mass, it is over.

If you do not label, you have to regard every feeling as it arises. When you label, is the feeling different from the label? Or does the label awaken the feeling? Please think it over. When we label, most of us intensify the feeling. The feeling and the naming are instantaneous. If there were a gap between naming and feeling, then you could find out if the feeling is different from the naming and then you would be able to deal with the feeling without naming it.

The problem is this, is it not?, how to be free from a feeling which we name, such as anger? Not how to subjugate it, sublimate it, suppress it, which are all idiotic and immature, but how to be really free from it? To be really free from it, we have to discover whether the word is more important than the feeling. The word ‘anger’ has more significance than the feeling itself. Really to find that out there must be a gap between the feeling and the naming. That is one part.

If you do not name a feeling, that is to say if thought is not functioning merely because of words or if I do not think in terms of words, images or symbols, which most of us do—then what happens? Surely the mind then is not merely the observer. When the mind is not thinking in terms of words, symbols, images, there is no thinker separate from the thought, which is the word. Then the mind is quiet, is it not?—not made quiet, it is quite. When the mind is really quiet, then the feelings which arise can be dealt with immediately. It is only when we give names to feelings and thereby strengthen them that the feelings have continuity; they are stored up in the center, from which we give further labels, either to strengthen or to communicate them.

When the mind is no longer the centre, as the thinker made up of words, of past experiences—which are all memories, labels, stored up and put in categories, in pigeonholes—when it is not doing any of those things, then, obviously the mind is quiet. It is no longer bound, it has no longer a center as the me—my house, my achievement, my work—which are still words, giving impetus to feeling and thereby strengthening memory. When none of these things is happening, the mind is very quiet. That state is not negation. On the contrary, to come to that point, you have to go through all this, which is a n enormous undertaking; it is not merely learning a few sets of words and repeating them like a school-boy—‘not to name’, ‘not to name’. To follow through all its implications, to experience it, to see how the mind works and thereby come to that point when you are no longer naming, which means that there is no longer a centre apart from thought—surely this whole process is real meditation.

When the mind is really tranquil, then it is possible for that which is immeasurable to come into being. Any other process, any other search for reality, is merely self-projected, home-made and therefore unreal. But this process is arduous and it means that the mind has to be constantly aware of everything that is inwardly happening to it. To come to this point, there can be no judgment or justification from the beginning to the end—not that this is an end. There is no end, because there is something extraordinary still going on. This is no promise. It is for you to experiment, to go into yourself deeper and deeper and deeper, so that all the many layers of the center are dissolved and you can do it rapidly or lazily. It is extraordinarily interesting to watch the process of the mind, how it depends on words, how the words stimulate memory or resuscitate the dead experience and give life to it. In that process the mind is living either in the future or in the past. Therefore words have an enormous significance, neurologically as well as psychologically. And please do not learn all this from me or from a book. You cannot learn it from another or find it in a book. What you learn or find in a book will not be the real. But you can experience it, you can watch yourself in action, watch yourself thinking, see how you think, how rapidly you are naming the feeling as it arises—and watching the whole process frees the mind from its center. Then the mind, being quiet, can receive that which is eternal.

Kim and MoJo at the Cabin

There's Kim, but can you find MoJo?

Kim at the cabin

Mushroom Rock near North Suck Creek

Kim and I hiked 5 miles to see the great Mushroom Rock near North Suck Creek in Tn. On our way there we also walked across a 240 foot suspension bridge that went over the beautiful rapids of North Suck Creek... It was definitely worth the trip.

Me and my two brothers, Ty and Wyn, and also friends John and Danny, just did this hike again on Tuesday Oct. 19, 2010.