Hope 4 America

Marin Shelter for the homeless ~ The People and Ideas

For more information about Marin Shelter, click on Marin Shelter headline above.

The homeless in our own country

I found this picture via my friend Chris Highland’s Marin Shelter website in Marin County, California. Chris is the director of Marin County’s shelter for the homeless. His January post on the Marin Shelter website led me to the picture and article about the "Adopt a Meter" program where businesses in a city can donate money to have old parking meters refurbished "and install them in areas with a high volume of pedestrians. Money deposited in the meters will be given to the city’s homeless outreach programs. Sponsoring companies will have their logo prominently displayed on the decorated meters." The "Adopt a Meter" program is already going on in Nashville and Denver. For more information on the program, visit: http://www.thekeyalliance.org/.

from Al Gore ~ regarding Haiti Earthquake

part of an Email that I'm always honored to get from Al Gore:

"Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 85% of Haitians already living in desperate poverty. Now, with hospitals in ruin, dire shortages of even basic necessities like fresh water, and no way to find out whether family members are alive, the Haitian people urgently need our help.....

There are moments when we, as human beings, must come together as a global community and as stewards of each others' health and welfare. It is that sense of interconnectedness that brought each of us to the climate movement, and it is moments like this that bring out the best in us -- as individuals, as a nation, and as a movement."

If you'd like to DONATE, click on the title of this post.

map photo is from USGS http://www.usgs.gov/

from Conservation International...and "Patty"

From Conservation International ~ 2010

Happy New Year

In the coming year, we’ll be taking on some of the great issues of our lifetime including:

working to secure a stable global climate;

understanding and protecting the sources and flows of fresh water;

ensuring nature's ability to provide food for human needs;

minimizing environmental pressures on human health;

valuing the role of nature in human cultures;

safeguarding the unknown and as-yet-undiscovered option values that nature provides; and

saving our oceans – which are threatened like never before by climate change, pollution and over-fishing.

photo by Craig Smith

Raise Your Voice ~ Change Climate Change

from: Conservation International

"No matter where you live on Earth, what you do affects the oceans—and what happens to the oceans affects you." ~ Conservation International

My NEW CD!!!

NEW!!!
Meditation CD by Patty Ann Smith
INSPIRED THOUGHTS for THE 21ST CENTURY

Unlike my two music albums, this is a meditation album (spoken audio) on topics that are close to my heart, and I have, also, written about. Like New Orleans, War, Peace, Nature, Spirituality, Metaphysics, the Environment, World Cultures, and Holistic Health...and, also, people like the Dalai Lama, Rachel Carson, and others....some of the topics I’ve even taught and given talks on in bookstores and colleges. And, what I hope to accomplish with this album is to relieve some of the suffering in our world for the 23 minutes of this CD whenever you listen to it; and when it’s over, you feel just a little more hope about whatever you might need in your own precious life.
This continuous track of 15 uplifting meditative messages with reflective guitar music by Craig Smith and soothing sounds of nature, is the best from a collection of my Heart Stuff spoken audio series. I hope you enjoy it!
Silently, be drawn by the pull of what you really love...stand in your Truth...and move and live in Joy!

Peace and Love
Patty

Nature and The Rhythms of Life

For me, it’s all part of the music and rhythms of life....music we can hear and music that we can't hear. It’s going on all the time and everywhere.
Silently, be drawn by the pull of what you really love...stand in your Truth...and move and live in joy!

Have a Great Day!
Patty

The song "Amazing Beauty" sung by me is from a poem written by Chris Highland....set to the tune of "Amazing Grace".
Chris Highland is an author of 10 books, a nature photographer, an interfaith chaplain, nature chaplain, teacher, counselor, and free-thinker. For more about Chris, go to his website http://www.naturetemple.net

the DVD Signs Out of Time ~ the story of Dr. Marija Gimbutas

"What does the dance mean to the dancers.
How do we measure the beliefs that set those feet in motion."

Stories, myths, and songs from Marija’s childhood left a lasting impression that led her to become the archeologist who uncovered the truth about old Europe ~ hundreds of cultures all over ancient Europe that were never in our history books. She discovered that Old Europe was actually a peaceful culture without weapons and with high levels of culture and Art. Due to nothing being discovered before this, we accepted that militarism was the way we were supposed to live. We have a better history than we know. And, we can now shape new views of who we are as human beings and how we are capable of living.
Dr. Gimbutas’s extensive catalog of archeological findings throughout all of Old Europe, and later even beyond, uncovered ancient art of the goddess with imagings of designs of the earth ~ birds, animals, plants, stones, etc. ~ creating the cultural story through union of goddess and earth...and coming to realize that the goddess is simply a metaphor for the living earth ~ nothing more. Earth/goddess was the unity of all life in Nature....that has continually been depicted femininely in Ancient Primitive Art for thousands of years in many different cultures all over the world.