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"Honoring the Talents, Abilities and Uniqueness in Each of Us,
as Strengths
that can Benefit
All of Us"
"... because we have more in common as a world, than we have differences between nations."
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Sites:
-One World Flag
-Hyphenate Productions
-DoingIt!-- a journal of positive living
-Joan Clark's Palais Aromaetica
-Powerful Passionate Women for Peace
-New Civilizations Network
-PenMark Potions
-Rock and Roll Stories
Blogroll:
-Joan Clark's Palais Aromaetica
-Joan Clark on BoomerGirl.com
-Powerful Passionate Women for Peace
-Flemming Funch: Ming the Mechanic
-Rock and Roll Grandma on Boomergirl.com
Syndication:
 ![[Valid RSS]](http://www.newciv.org/pic/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
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 7 Apr 2008 @ 23:28
[excerpted from DoingIt!, May, 2005]
This month we are proud to bring you a chat with Bill Griffith, creator of the “Zippy the Pinhead” comic strip, philosophy and fine line of quaity cleaning products (okay, so no cleaning products.. yet). Since discovering the strip over 20 years ago I have always appreciated the feeling that comes across-- that life is to be enjoyed, savored, played with and turned inside out. In this, I feel Zippy (and Bill) are living the lives they’ve been given to the fullest! Zippy asks, “Are We Having Fun Yet?,” and out of his surrealistic observations we gain a bit of wisdom and are able to see our world differently and anew.
DoingIt!: The two-sided Griffy/Zippy conversation is within a lot of us. How would you best characterize it, and who is winning inside of you?
Bill Griffith: Zippy and Griffy are essentially two sides of my split personality-- not that I limit myself to only two sides. Zippy is my accepting, happy, uncritical nature, Griffy is the neurotic, insecure, analytical side. The Zippy daily strip is, in one sense, my attempt to join the two and keep from going crazy. Neither side is winning, because that would be the death of both my delicate persona and the strip. Griffy without Zippy on his own would be, I think, a big blowhard and a bore. Zippy without Griffy would be like eating only cotton candy for eternity. Something fun to do, but best in small doses. Griffy is aware that his cynicism masks a desire to be happy and he literally asks Zippy, on occasion, for help in getting in touch with his "inner Pinhead". I've done this in a few strips. Zippy has reciprocated in a few other strips, becoming suddenly "rational", but only when he’s frightened or angry (rare states). In general, Zippy does not yearn to be like Griffy. In fact, Zippy rarely yearns at all. He’s too busy absorbing and recycling sensory and psychic input.
DI: One particular Zippyism—“Adopt my lifestyle or I’ll have to press charges”—really stands out with me this month. There are seemingly a lot of self-appointed hall monitors in the world today spending more time keeping track of the goings-on of everyone else than appreciating and playing with all of the "godstuff" strewn about, and really enjoying things, differences, each other, etc. Do you foresee anything that can shake people out of that beyond the short-term and keep us in “the moment” longer?
B.G.: Comedy (and the act of laughter) is the only thing short of brain surgery I know of to release us from the stresses and illusions we live with on a daily basis. All response to humor, from the belly laugh at a pratfall,
to the appreciation of cosmic absurdity, snaps us momentarily out of our socialized selves and allows us a glimpse of what’s behind the curtain. More >
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 7 Apr 2008 @ 23:12
[excerpted from DoingIt!, April, 2005]
It seems much of the world has brought itself to a state of either-or.
Blue/liberal/democrat state or red/conservative/republican . My “one” religion or your blasphemous, misguided, imposter religion. Sadly, much possibility, variety, imagination, toleration has gone out the window for an us vs. them (U.S. vs. them), dug-in, black and white mentality. And we’re just the ones to clear it up. In this I see an immense opportunity.
“All living souls welcome
whatever they are ready to cope with;
all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous
and wrong, or deny to be possible."
--George Santayana
"Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors."
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Where the world we all knew innately as children-- fueled by (questionably authentic) parental urgings to “play nice with others”-- was full of unlimited potential, novelty and worth based on all of the diverse people, creatures and opportunities “God” put on Earth in all “His” Glory, Omniscience and Bounty…
… somehow some of us have come to believe that: More >
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7 Apr 2008 @ 19:29
Maybe I am just a numbskull.
I have a problem… but I believe it is a good one. I love it and hate it. It is the best and worst of me. In all of it there doesn’t seem to be a resolution. A minor war rages within. And it’s cool with me, most of the time.
It’s just that I get interested, enthused and excited… about everything. Well, many things. This has contributed to me being a jack of all trades, master of none. It keeps me perpetually interested in learning something new. It has me jumping from thing to thing. It makes me question my focus. It helps me to be a good “big picture person”, but to also appreciate and admire the “detail people”. It got me a shot once on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” with Regis. And I know enough to be dangerous on a lot of subjects, but am never really able to craft detailed arguments and stories that don’t ramble or ping-pong into all kinds of other areas. It helps me “get” the references in just about any Dennis Miller rant and to understand the nuances within most comedy and appreciate a lot of Charlie Rose interviews. It’s a real pisser when it comes down to answering someone’s question of, “So, what to you do?”
When listening to music I want to immerse into this genre and be able to play each instrument that comes forward with a solo… until the next song, that is of a different genre and highlights other instruments. On Saturday mornings I can find myself switching between the Topeka and Kansas City PBS stations, delving into the garden shows, home improvement shows, art classes, quilting shows, and cooking shows… and to then chastise myself for having spectated the morning away as opposed to having participated in one of these or any of my other interests during the same period. I think I sometimes freeze amidst maybe too many choices. At times I hear the echo of my feisty, New Yorker roommate from Annapolis, chiding me to, “Do something… even if it’s wrong.”
This universal interest in things makes me lose myself in front of a magazine rack or in a bookstore or on internet searches that take me from A to D to J and back to B, and 12:45 to 4:30 pm, without my having known how I got moved around the gameboard.
“Fires can't be made with dead embers,
nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men.
Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and
turns even labor into pleasant tasks."
-- James Arthur Baldwin
"Catch on fire with enthusiasm
and people will come for miles to watch you burn."
-- John Wesley
“Charisma is the transference of enthusiasm."
-- Ralph Archibold
More >
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7 Apr 2008 @ 18:32
[excerpted from DoingIt!, November, 2004]
I pull back from the immediacy of the world and try to sense what is in the wind. I do this a lot, and have sensed it as an especially important task these past days in putting the presidential election (the lead-up and now in the aftermath) and pulse of the country in perspective in these weird times.
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
-- Hunter S. Thompson
I feel the swing of the pendulum of popular opinion. It is always in motion. It signals the ebb and flow of the tide of the collective consciousness. It foreshadows times of embracing more light and periods more intent on hiding from that light.
These days the pendulum of morality is swinging back, the tide of fear is washing in, attempting to hold us to dry land and ward off increased attempts to test the depths of the waters of our truest (and greatest) nature. Ironically, the moral backlash taking hold in our society… is a direct response, proportionate to equally great fear… of realizing exactly that which would lead us to removal of all such fear. Not so ironically, history repeats itself and the pendulum has returned on its appointed rounds, such as it has as any given civilization or culture arrived at the dawn of a new age, a new paradigm, change seemingly for the better, but change nonetheless. More >
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7 Apr 2008 @ 18:08
[excerpted from DoingIt!, September, 2004]
Faith is the strength by which
a shattered world shall emerge into the light.
~~ Helen Keller
Without faith, nothing is possible.
With it, nothing is impossible.
~~ Mary McLeod Bethune
To one who has faith, no explanation
is necessary. To one without faith,
no explanation is possible.
~~ St. Thomas Aquinas
I have taken to looking at the various hurdles and obstacles that have been popping up in my life… as stress tests of the mettle of the ongoing acts of faith I have committed to.
I figure such tests wouldn’t even be popping up… if I wasn’t even enrolled in the class! So there’s my slick way of welcoming little annoyances and irritations, temporary pitfalls and some real humdingers-- as gold stars and smiley-face stickers on exercises completed satisfactorily; my version of “God doesn’t create challenges we don’t already have the skill to overcome”.
Any act of faith, by definition, requires a stretching beyond what is known to our small selves to be possible… into the realm of hope and belief that it must be so. Such acts are not safe (for our “small selves”), involve change and never leave you the same as you were prior to taking the leap. More >
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7 Apr 2008 @ 16:56
[excerpted from DoingIt!, June, 2004]
If the doors of perception were cleansed
everything would appear to man as it is,
infinite.
-- William Blake
Okay, so here it is. Without a bunch of hedging and hemming and hawing. Send your inner monologue, your cynical side, the jaded, protector pieces of yourself out for a cup of coffee. Better yet, let them listen: these aspects of ourselves have often been standing in the fire and holding the dream even more tenaciously than our warmer, fuzzier sides.
This is the put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is part of the show. The be-careful-what-you-wish-for-because-you-might-just-get-it, crank-it-up-a-notch, step-up-to-the-plate-and-swing-for-the-fence reason for being here. We are about to reveal the man behind the curtain. We are all about to deliver on a promise made long ago.
In a nutshell--
All we all want… from our deepest levels of yearning… is to connect. To know we are seen and received and understood. To know we belong. To feel we’ve returned home. Each of us has had access to a place within ourselves that knows exactly what this looks and feels like; that is the barometer of how close we are in a given moment, and the homing device that adjusts our course ever closer to this unseen, but ever-present idea of home.
Each of us made a conscious agreement to disconnect from that point of knowing for a time (perhaps of lifetimes). Each of us agreed to feel all of the “this is not it” for as long as necessary. Now is the time at which we all agreed we would wake up… and claim “it”.
More >
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7 Apr 2008 @ 16:11
[excerpted from DoingIt!, March, 2004]
When I am in the doldrums or don’t know what I might want to do on a particular day or night, I often go for a drive to see if I can jar something loose. On these jaunts I get to any given intersection and just feel whether I should go left, right or straight… and I see where that takes me. Many times this has led to a fun, surprising payoff.
Today I was in one of those moods and the stakes seemed higher than usual. This has been a week of deep processing and soul-searching and I was really pleading to be thrown a bone-- some sign that I am on the right track… toward getting me home fulltime, toward whatever. You could say I’d been having Monday morning thoughts… all week… and was ready to take some action toward shifting them.
The road diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-- Robert Frost
When choosing between two evils,
I always like to try
the one I’ve never tried before.
-- Mae West
As I reached an intersection I was aware that my choice was now worded-- to turn in whatever direction felt the most fearful. As a metaphor this was valuable. I wasn’t in actual fear of anything in Sherman Oaks, California. To my know-ledge no assailant has stormed out of a Valley mini-mall yogurt shop or nail salon and assailed a passerby of-late. More >
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 7 Apr 2008 @ 00:53
[originally posted on the One World Flag website on Feb 13, 2003]
I was just thinking that if God, or whatever name you would use in reference to a Supreme Being or Beings-- Allah, Buddah, Great Spirit, Krishna, your name here-- was driving around the neighborhood today… the one thing we would be least likely to see…
… would be a bumper sticker reading something to the effect of “My Children are Honor Students at Earth Humanity School”. More >
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  30 Jan 2008 @ 18:06
The home page of the One World Flag (www.oneworldflag.org) has buried within it an initially ominous sounding phrase-- "Now More Than Ever". This could be slightly misleading if one didn't know from whence it came.
It is not that this "Now" in which we are living is any worse than any "Ever" that has preceded it. I am not Chicken Little, and, perhaps more than most, I am certain that the sky is not falling. Rather, I feel as a "cheerleader for humanity" the constant call to urge us all on to higher and higher ideals, increased possibilities, more joy, expanded awareness, self-expression, sharing of our unique expressions, creations, selves, etc... at all times, and in increasing degrees as we are able.
Those who haven't tried seeing and maintaining the light through supposed darkness, the positive for all the so-called "reality" we are faced with, the forest for the trees... might consider such an outlook naive.
In the midst of myriad distractions, illusions, priorities, shiny baubles being waved at us from all directions... pressures, agendas, and all of the hubbbub, fal-da-ra, doodads, tchotchkes, flotsam and jetsam and information overload crossing our paths and jamming our radar...
... a little couple in Kansas--the heartland-- is attempting to sound two calm and steady voices from the wilderness, reminding us all to hold, from centered places between the cacophony and the din, the continued, expansive Vision of what is actually possible... despite all of the propaganda to the contrary. More >
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An International Symbol of Diversity.
A "Bigger" Flag to Fly.
Since 1996.
Here you will find
postings from
the One World Flag
website and
articles excerpted from
DoingIt!--
a journal of positive living...
... each aimed at raising
the World Joy Quotient
one way or another.
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