Standing Rock Represents a Shift in American Consciousness

Water is sacred. Water is life. Water is freedom. Water heals.

What the world has witnessed at Standing Rock is an unprecedented coming together of Tribal peoples and representatives of indigenous cultures from around the world who understand the urgency of protecting the sacredness of the water and the land.
Standing Rock marked a turning point in our nation’s history as American Veterans came to stand between international corporate mercenaries and the First Americans. Veterans came to stand with their Tribal brothers and sisters in defense of the land, the water and constitutionally guaranteed rights. As they acknowledged the atrocities that separated these great peoples, they also sought forgiveness for the horrors of the past. Standing together to protect that which is sacred, a great healing began. This represents a monumental shift in the consciousness of the people of the United States.
The Spirit of God is in the water, the land, the trees and all of nature. All of nature is sacred and so are we. We are not mere stewards of this planet. We are her children. We are sovereign. The onslaught of violence against our Mother Earth has also been an onslaught against us as her children and against our sovereignty.

False Paradigm

The control or confiscation of land and water, the assault on the health and well-being of life, all for the sake of controlling the resources of this planet is the centuries old model for the false paradigm. The Agenda 21 and 2030 models of environmentalism that separates us from our mother and supplants our relationship with layers of bureaucratic jurisdiction is just as false as the model of corporate confiscation that is exemplified by the Black Snake of the DAPL. Both remove the people from the land and give all authority to a few controlling globalists. Both serve to violate the sacred relationship between the Mother and Child. The symbolism in this violence is not lost on us.
The Long Nights Moon of December holds vigil over Standing Rock. The December moon brings a time of introspection and self-examination. Symbolically, it is a time of death and rebirth. It’s a time for casting off that which has proven untrue or deceitful; a time for reshaping the direction of our path. So too is it a time for our country to cast aside the false paradigm of dependence, lack, confiscation and control. We must restore our relationship with the sacred.
The coming together of Water Protectors and the Veterans represents a cognitive shift in perspective. Our ancestral participation in the Manifest Destiny was but a prelude to WWI and WWII, Korea, and the Middle East. The prospect of war with Russia so zealously propagandized by candidate Clinton is still spuriously promoted by President Obama. American troops are being positioned to again serve the will of a false paradigm.
Global corporatists and social technocrats are aligned in their rush to control the resources of the entire planet. Technocracy has no need of the sacred or sovereign. Instead, that which is devoid of life would supplant the sacredness of all life and consciousness with the sacrilege of an artificially intelligent post human technocracy.

Reclaim the Sacred

As the long nights of introspection give way to the re-birthing of life, we must find both the will and the wisdom to reclaim the sacred in ourselves, in our land, in the water, and in our future.

The Water Protectors remain encamped in the snow and blizzard conditions to safeguard their land from the Dakota Access Pipeline. The whole world is watching. In solidarity, we are all standing watchful and determined. The path forward must be a sacred path. We each claim the sovereign responsibility to heal ourselves, our water and our land.

Let the coming together of the Water Protectors and the Veterans set an example for the reuniting of our beleaguered and election weary Country. Let the courage of forgiveness and true healing lead us forward. May our next President rise to the responsibility of leadership that healing this sacred nation requires.

Standing Rock Represents a Shift in American Consciousness

#Shake4Mike: "I needed to be his rock in return"

“He was nevertheless waiting to hear back from a task interview, so I assumed it was about that and I got truly thrilled,” she says. “I experimented with to ring a number of instances, and ultimately I acquired by means of over fairly a patchy line. He mentioned, ‘I consider I’ve got leukaemia.’ When you hear those words, you know how significant it is. I just advised him, ‘I’m going to get home as rapidly as I can.’ ”

The information that followed was devastating. Mike, 29, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and is at present undergoing intense chemotherapy six occasions a week at Bristol Royal Infirmary. Such is the severity of his situation that medical professionals have stated he requirements a stem-cell transplant to save his lifestyle – and time is working out.

As has been widely reported this week, his family, who live in Somerset, have only until finally the start of July, when his chemotherapy program ends, to find a ideal donor. Normally a third of folks requiring the operation are able to find a sibling match. All of his 3 brothers have presently been examined, but none has been productive.

He and his loved ones are now browsing the Anthony Nolan stem‑cell donor register for a match with a stranger inclined to assist. The charity warns, nonetheless, that it can generally locate a ideal donor for only close to half the individuals who need to have a existence-saving stem-cell transplant.

Kate, as a end result, has taken issues into her personal hands. This week, she launched a public campaign for men and women to signal up to the register, urging social media end users to submit silly movies of themselves shaking their faces from side to side – some thing the couple employed to movie each other carrying out – to encourage the campaign she has called #Shake4Mike.

Her hope, of course, is that much more signatories to the register will enhance her fiancé’s chances of locating a donor – and she has been inundated with responses. “Some have been so funny they’ve produced me laugh out loud.”

Indeed, in conversation, the Nottingham University graduate is strikingly upbeat and resilient. But optimism in the encounter of tragedy is a skill she has previously been forced to master. In 2005, her 59-year-previous father, David, died all of a sudden at the household home in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, following building a blood clot following an operation on a hip he had broken skiing. “He had just eaten his Sunday roast and walked on his crutches to the residing area and died.”

A number of weeks later on, her grandparents followed him. In 2008 her mom, Ali, invited her ideal pal, Simon Blackett, to move in to assist support the family members. Within two months, the 38-year-old suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage.

It was a 12 months soon after this most recent loss that the couple first met. Kate says her fiancé has aided flip her existence about and that, ever since she acquired that mobile phone contact in Burma, she has been established to be his “rock” in return.

Nonetheless, the journey home was in itself adequate to test her emotional strength. She remembers a “horrendous” 48-hour blur of buses and planes. “Mum picked me up straight from Heathrow and drove me to the hospital. I considered when I noticed her I’d break down, but she’s actually strong and that assisted so significantly. When I received to the hospital and noticed him he looked pale, but other than that it was just a relief to be with him,” says Kate.

By then, Mike had previously been in Bristol Royal Infirmary for 3 days, having suffered fatigue and evening sweats in the weeks leading up to his admission. When he at some point visited a medical professional for blood exams, he was told – just 4 hours later – that he had leukaemia.

Mike is now undergoing his 2nd of three phases of chemotherapy. The total course finishes at the end of subsequent month, which is when the stem-cell transplant will be required.

The Anthony Nolan register will not be capable to verify till subsequent week how many men and women have signed up to donate given that Kate launched her on the web campaign. But presently her Facebook web page has attracted one,500 “likes” in just four days – and more will surely follow. Tomorrow, she has been invited into the Tottenham Hotspur stadium in north London to indicator up donors prior to the final match of the season.

She is evangelical about her result in. “People are often fearful of donating, but the approach, if you are matched with someone, is not dissimilar from offering blood,” she tells me. “It’s incomparable to what Mike’s entire body has to go by means of as the recipient: 3 huge regimes of chemotherapy that ruin all the bone marrow, his immune method, all the cancer cells, plus I don’t know how numerous other cells in his body.”

That undergoing this kind of a process is the greatest case scenario demonstrates what a hard path lies ahead for Mike and his household. None the much less, in accordance to his fiancée, he is in an “amazing” condition. “He’s producing continuous jokes and is in actually excellent spirits. That makes everybody truly feel stronger.”

A new occupation Mike had been provided in March and not but commenced, functioning as an ecology assistant in Banbury, Oxford, is being held for him while he undergoes treatment. The only element of the future he is not speaking about is his wedding ceremony following summer time, the reception for which is to be held in the Robertsons’ backyard.

“Pre-diagnosis he did not get also thrilled speaking about wedding plans anyway,” his fiancée says, “you know what boys are like. I’ve told him that right up until we get previous the transplant, we do not have to mention it.”

Nowadays, significantly less than 60 days continue to be till that transplant is required. Kate chooses not to focus on what that “deadline” could signify, nevertheless.

“I haven’t asked what will take place if he does not get the transplant. My understanding is that if they do give him the transplant they can remedy him. If they do not, the likelihood of relapse is enormous.”

For now, she says, they are just focusing on remaining good – a single day at a time.

To donate to the Anthony Nolan register, go to www.anthonynolan.org

#Shake4Mike: "I needed to be his rock in return"

Revolution in the head: Kitten Pyramid carry rock to the psychiatric ward

A tin of chicken soup, a Kinder egg, a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, and a sponge. These are the things I am offered, in a carrier bag, when I arrive in Shrewsbury to set off on tour with Kitten Pyramid – Britain’s most current, and probably most surreal, purveyors of prog rock. “Your welcome pack,” says bass player Mark Hamon, who has a tufty yellow beard and a tattoo of an octopus on his proper shin. “What is the sponge for?” I request. Hamon’s smile broadens. “You will locate out.”

In the globe of Kitten Pyramid, such a random assortment of objects tends to make a kind of sense. Formed in Burton upon Trent in 2010 by songwriter Scott Milligan, the band is a loose 5-piece, swelling to 14 for some gigs (when the core guitars, bass and drums are joined by trumpets and strings). Out this month, their very first album is called Uh-Oh! and is pitched someplace between Talking Heads at their most fractious and unusual, and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.

Lyrically, Milligan’s songs are each hilarious and bizarre. “I want to see you naked in a caravan,” he reveals on Chester. Elsewhere, he sings the praises of “gorilla fajitas”, “ladybird jumpers”, and a “pyramid army with their bags of peshwari”. Clearly, Milligan is bored by typical pop. But significantly of Uh-Oh!’s freshness and richness springs from the fact that it truly is a concept album inspired by Milligan’s late Uncle Jarek, a Polish immigrant who had schizophrenia.

To launch it, and to draw interest to the issues all around psychological overall health, Kitten Pyramid have place together their personal idiosyncratic tour – of psychiatric hospitals, performing for sufferers and personnel, with each daytime hospital session followed by an evening gig in a pub. Their aim is to increase funds for, and awareness of, Arts for Wellness (AFH), an arm of the band’s local NHS trust, South Staffordshire and Shropshire, which organises arts events for sufferers.

All of which explains why, even now puzzled by my welcome pack, I am watching Kitten Pyramid complete in Redwoods hospital on the outskirts of Shrewsbury. The gig requires area in the vibrant, domed foyer, all around a splendid grand piano, with a string of fairylights marking out a makeshift stage. The band kick off quietly, strumming through Red Footwear, a song that traces feelings of alienation in a supermarket. “You can’t look down,” Milligan sings, “since she’ll consider you happen to be weird.” The lady sitting beside me has a complaint. “I can’t hear you!” she shouts. “Louder?” asks Milligan. “Yes!” the audience phone back as one.

John, sitting subsequent to me, tells me he lately misplaced his wife, Glenys, to early-onset Alzheimer’s. They employed to go to singing workshops run by AFH. “Even when she was hardly able to communicate,” says John, “she could even now sing total lines from her favourite songs. Music is incredibly effective for folks with dementia. It seems to stir up so many memories.”

Surely, one thing equivalent seems to be happening nowadays. As the band play Whale, a track that calls for the audience to shout the song’s title at standard intervals, even the most distracted patients look to sharpen their target. An elderly girl with a cotton cloud of white hair taps out a regular rhythm on the footrest of her wheelchair. “It was wonderful,” she tells me afterwards. “I used to be a ballet dancer. Listening to the music brought it all back.”

Jessica Kent, the AFH manager behind the concert, thinks the band went down properly. “Kitten Pyramid have a exclusive sound,” she says. “It really is like a musical patchwork, with some thing all ages seem capable to relate to. It’s so crucial to have occasions like this in psychiatric hospitals. The age of the asylum is in excess of. New psychiatric hospitals are really different areas.”

As we all sit down to post-gig fish-finger sandwiches in a nearby pub, Milligan tells me the album’s notion began with a bus. “Exactly where I used to live,” he says, “was opposite a bus-quit. I was sitting in my bedroom a single day, seeking out the window, when a bus arrived. I started thinking how weird it would be if I climbed into a bus with no driver, no passengers, and the bus took me to Burton, and there was nobody anyplace. Then I started to feel that possibly this was the type of issue my Uncle Jarek utilised to knowledge.”

Milligan fleshed out his daydream until he had a thorough therapy for a movie (his day work entails making lawyer education video clips). In the meantime, he set about bringing together musicians to function on songs he’d composed above the final decade. He soon realised most of them touched, to some extent, on Jarek’s condition. “One song, Fire, is about the time my uncle set fire to a brand-new mattress,” he says. “Not all the songs are that specific, but a great deal of them seem to relate to what my uncle went via.”

Kitten Pyramid have been born. Milligan secured a bank loan to record an album and, in January 2013, the core five-piece – Milligan, Hamon, drummer Rob Redfern, guitarists Chris Baldwin and Dan Baker – went into the studio with producer Nick Brine, best recognized for his work with Oasis, the Stone Roses and Super Furry Animals. Uh-Oh! was the result.

The difficulty with concept albums is that they can be a bit, effectively, conceptual: they can risk sacrificing musical coherence to higher-artwork pretension. But Milligan’s songs would even now make an affect without having any expertise of the underpinning concept. “What sets this apart from other notion albums,” says Baker, “is that we’re not ponces.”

Milligan is still arranging to make his movie. Every single band member has been assigned a character: Milligan a psychiatric nurse, the luxuriantly bearded Baker a bear. There is also talk of a musical. All this from a band that are unsigned. When I ask if they’re seeking for a significant label, Milligan looks anxious. “This way,” he says, “we have more freedom.”

They are creating no cash from their tour: the hospital concerts are unpaid, and they are donating a pound to AFH from every single CD sale. What’s more, they’ve all had to consider time off from their day jobs, which assortment from teaching to construction. There is no tour bus both: sustained by Coca-Cola and elaborate in-jokes about dolphins, they are travelling in a Ford Emphasis and a Volkswagen Polo, despite the fact that occasionally they get to pile into the “jaffa cake”, Hamon’s orange and brown VW campervan. Their stimulants of decision are “dad naps” (they range in age from 31 to 45, and they all have younger youngsters) and vitamin drinks spiked with Solpadeine.

It is all really un-rock’n"roll – and rather refreshing and cheering, specially when it’s clear how nicely the band’s gigs go down, the two in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Following Redwoods, they hit an open-mic night in the Wrekin Inn in Telford, in which the walls are lined with posters for the 1960s psychedelic band the Groundhogs (its founding member Tony McPhee’s spouse, Jo, runs the open mic). Kitten Pyramid blow the spot away, with shouts of “Whale!” threatening to lift the roof. By the end of the set, two locals (“Juke Joint” John and “Dead Hand” Terry) have joined them on harmonica and kazoo.

The subsequent day takes us to St George’s in Stafford, where Milligan’s uncle was once admitted. Kitten Pyramid are playing two concerts. The very first is on a ward filled largely with elderly sufferers. Amongst songs, an previous man in a hospital gown shouts huskily: “Brilliant!” His name is Tony and he loves the blues. “Loved this, also,” he says. “They blew my head.”

Later, in a treatment room, the band carry out shoeless and cross-legged beneath a board advertising lessons: Monday is rest, Wednesday coping abilities. I am not confident which category Kitten Pyramid fall into, but their flight-of-fancy lyrics and helter-skelter guitarwork go down a storm. After the concert, one patient comes above. “Hopefully I’ll get out quicker now,” he says with a grin. “You’ve put me back on my feet.”

It is this kind of response that makes all the hassles – the lengthy drives, the dad naps, the Solpadeine cocktails – worthwhile. “Which is what it really is all for,” Hamon says as we load the products back into the vehicles. With my relatively surreal stint as roadie now at an end, I seem yet again within the bag they gave me. I never got the opportunity to eat the chicken soup – and I nevertheless have no notion what the sponge was for.

• Uh-Oh! is out on 26 Could. Kitten Pyramid play Newhall Social Club on thirty May possibly and the Alsager Music Festival in Milton Park on twelve July. Particulars: kittenpyramid.squarespace.com

Revolution in the head: Kitten Pyramid carry rock to the psychiatric ward