Tuesday

My new CD of solo guitar music One Guitar, is now available from our online store. The album can also be purchased and downloaded from the ListeningLounge.

If you should come to Santa Fe, you can purchase the One Guitar CD from the Ruben Romero World Music Gallery on the historic plaza at 66 East San Francisco Street. Ruben also has outlets at the Jackalope stores in Santa Fe and Bernalillo and a new gallery in Taos.

In addition to that we opened a vendor account at Amazon and expect the CD to become available from them and some affiliated stores within a few weeks.

My thanks to Ritch Fuhrer, who took the cover photo at the Triple Door in Seattle during one of my solo performances there in April. I don't think it's a very flattering photo, but I think it does capture that moment of being lost in the music.

Music that is haunting in its beauty and depth. Highly recommended! - Ken Wilber

Ottmar Liebert's new CD of solo acoustic guitar - the ghosts of Spanish flamenco within the dreamscapes of the New World. One Guitar: 13 tracks of contemplation, meditation, exhalation, levitation... and exquisite solitude. - CultureCourt.com

Release Date: 29 August 2006 - if you read this Diary regularly you might have guessed it: 2+9+8+2+6=27=9

Thursday

Bits and pieces from today:

Unrealpolitik - Click Opera
On 11th August Science magazine, under the low-key heading "Public Acceptance of Evolution", published research by Jon D. Miller, Eugenie C. Scott and Shinji Okamoto which showed that only 14% of adult Americans think the theory of evolution is "definitely true" (around 40% give more qualified consent to the idea). In Europe and Japan, in contrast, around 80% of the adult population believes that human beings developed from earlier species of animals.

Did Humans evolve? Not us, say Americans - New York Times
Only adults in Turkey expressed more doubts on evolution. In Iceland, 85 percent agreed with the statement.

How Did We Get Here? - The Guardian
Evolution is on the way out - more than 30% of students in the UK say they believe in creationism and intelligent design.

Greenland Melting Accelerating
A new study from NASA's GRACE data shows that melting is taking place. According to Dr. Jianli Chen's paper (pdf) published online in Science, Greenland is in fact shrinking, and at a higher rate than earlier studies suggest. The melt rate is the most disturbing. Chen and his colleagues calculate a sea rise of 0.6mm per year from Greenland, a full third of the average 1.8mm annual sea level rise. Most of the melting is coming from eastern Greenland. In addition to trouble for ocean front cottages worldwide, the thaw also raises the chance that huge amounts of freshwater melting will disrupt the thermo-haline circulation, robbing sunny England of its pleasant climate.

What did I do today? I attended and photographed a Jukai ceremony at Upaya this morning.

What do we talk about the most?

A couple of days ago I listened to THIS conversation Stuart Davis had with Helen Titchen Beeth. Stuart mentions that has been trying to teach his daughter a language he invented, but the toddler has figured out that nobody else speaks this language - hence it is not very useful and she gets bored within a few minutes... This is exactly why I have plans to take my son to Germany and Austria next Spring - because I want him to know that the "secret language" he and I speak is useful and is in fact spoken by 100+ million people on this planet. He will be able to translate for the Americans traveling with us and suddenly German won't be dad's crazy language...

This leads me to reflect on what we do talk about, in front of children and to the children. It is obvious to them: the subject we talk most about must be the most important!! I mean, what is the ratio of our talking about planet earth, the matrix of life, nature, preservation, wilderness and our happiness to be alive - to all the crap that's really not important in the long run...

Let's ask ourselves today: what do I talk about the most? And is that something I want my child to focus on... I know I will want to make some changes.