Friends and precious links
Ron Finley
www.ronfinley.com
Once upon a time in the West… South Los Angeles metro train moves away… Once upon a time, there were a garden, a fence, and some wise words painted on a blue wall: “There are no broken dreams, only unfinished reality”… And in the garden sits a pool which can either be some huge plant nursery, a Street Art exhibition or a movie theatre, it depends…
And in this dream come true and upon this concrete reality reigns Ron Finley. With a bighearted smile, he joyfully welcomes us, happy to share his passion: creative gardening for everybody.
Ron Finley is a wise man: “Gardening transforms you because you begin to understand the alchemy of the planet”. He is also a designer and an artist: “I called it my street art because it’s my canvas. To me, gardening is an art form”.
Ron Finley can spend hours talking about his joys and about how seldom he is understood. He has witnessed, in Los Angeles and other big cities, the lack of fresh and quality foods in poor neighborhoods, these areas of limited access to healthy produce called “food deserts”.
So Ron Finley planted fruits and vegetables, flowers and trees on his parkway, “that strip of dirt between the sidewalk and curb”. Los Angeles authorities were not very happy about that and he nearly got arrested, even if the people of his street, grown-ups and children, delighted in the beauty of their new surroundings and were provided with fresh foods in profusion. It is true that sunny California promotes garden abundance. Nevertheless, not many imitated Ron and the parkway in front of his house still stands out like a haven of greenery among the sad and torn-up lawns of the City of Angels.
In 2013, a TED talk brought Ron Finley in the spotlight of American alternative culture and introduced him to the entire world. Following this path, in 2015, John Legend produced “Can you dig this”, a documentary on the urban gardening movement which celebrates Ron’s creative work.
Ron Finley is a wise man, an artist and a poet. He beautifully describes the wonders of Nature which can be found in a flower, a fruit, a seed: “Beauty doesn’t cost money… If you put people in an ugly environment, what are you gonna get out of it? Ugly. Beauty in, beauty out. Beauty doesn’t cost any more than ugly. It’s simple.”
Ron Finley calls himself a gangster: “Growing your own food is like printing your own money”.
On his Facebook page, he shares videos of children marveling at the salads they planted and watching them grow: “If kids grow kale, kids eat kale; if they grow tomatoes, they eat tomatoes”.
But, for now, Ron Finley and his wonderful garden are beautifying the parkways and inspiring many people around the world but they still haven’t transformed the city dwellers who persist in delusion and get side-tracked in complete ignorance of human physiology and Nature. Ron Finley is a pioneer and, like all pioneers, he walks alone the path of an artistic and creative relationship with Nature.
“You can’t get more gangsta than Mother Nature. We are a part of nature. We are organic matter, and we forget. If we can give kids the message that this is a part of breathing and a part of life, then giving back to the planet becomes magical.”
As a first step, we can assist Ron Finley by promoting his website and his Facebook page. It is also possible to support his work financially. But, furthermore, we can follow his example and start growing our own lettuce…
La Ferme Vaudoise
www.lafermevaudoise.ch
In the archway of Lausanne’s Place de la Palud City Hall, hidden behind a white cow on wheels, stands La Ferme Vaudoise. This rural shop has been for years the result of a true partnership between the city and the country. It supplies the city-dwellers with local products from the surrounding farms. The whole selection of goods proceeds from local and integrated production and thus didn’t travel thousands of miles from Peru, Togo or some other remote supermarket choice. As the seasons go by, we are invited to taste different foods grown and made nearby. Shopping in La Ferme Vaudoise is a simple way to use better products and less petrol.
Fermens Estate
www.fermens.ch
As they relate in their website, Judith Ammann-Silva and Hector Silva started growing fruits and vegetables with the help of a small motorized cultivator and loads of elbow grease. Since 1987, their seasons go by, rhythmed, every Wednesday and every Saturday, by the markets of Lausanne and Morges. A small part of their produce comes from Southern Europe but never out of season. We are always astonished by the way organic and local produce can be kept fresh longer. Usually we make a weekly trip to the market and buy our food for the whole week. And we find that, even after seven days, Fermens salads are still crispy and remain much tastier than their decaying cousins withered by the pale supermarket spotlights.
François Brunet’s bees and honey
www.mielsbrunet.ch
Even though his website is in construction, François Brunet’s bee hives and honey products are not, they are booming! Booming and blooming all over the French part of Switzerland, from Le Locle to Gryon, up the Alpe des Chaux and down again in Denens. The honey of his bees is delicious, full-flavoured and of perfect quality. When you meet François on a market, he will thoroughly describe his millions of hardworking friends, the precious bees who provide us with the nectar of the Gods.
It is a popular Internet belief that Einstein said: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left”. While this affirmation is biologically wrong because there are many pollinator insects other than the bee “Apis mellifera”, it has the advantage of placing this precious animal at the heart of ecological concern. The future of mankind lies in collaborating with Nature rather than behaving as thieves.
A stroll with the angels
www.promenades-angeliques.ch
Yes, a true stroll with the angels! Combining Baroque architecture with the skills of a tightrope walker: Joëlle Richard and Alain Kilar did it! They are allowing us to see the world through the eyes of an angel in a cathedral. Who has ever seen the rose window of Lausanne Cathedral from a few meters away? Who has ever seen the labyrinth of Chartres Cathedral right from above? The angels of course, helped by Joëlle and Alain, masters in the field of pictures and patience.
Their technical requirements are challenging. It is unimaginable to use a remote-controlled drone in a historic monument. A cathedral is not a football ground. Joëlle and Alain work with wires and rods carefully fastened to the sacred stones. The procedure developed by Alain enables him to use long exposure times with heavy cameras and it still requires a huge post-production work. One only has to admire the sharpness of the pictures to realize the scale of the tasks involved.
When they are not playing with the angels, Joëlle Richard writes and directs theatre plays and Alain Kilar takes splendid pictures, he translates concepts into images, he edits and compiles illustrations, he also operates as a lighting designer and creates theatre sets… for Joëlle among others.
Nassim Haramein
www.resonance.is & www.academy.resonance.is
Something is brewing in the Far West… In California, former climber and surfer, ski and diving instructor, Nassim Haramein is revolutionizing fundamental physics much to the displeasure of the conformist academies of the official, widely publicized, science. Nassim was born in Geneva to an Iranian father and an Italian mother. At first he experienced physics through his body by challenging gravity while climbing or surfing, both activities in which miscalculation can be dangerous. With loads of hard work and driven by a strong intuition, he studied the basics of physics by going far back into the very roots of geometry set by Euclid.
From then on, Nassim put together a Unified Field Theory, helped at first, in terms of calculations, by Elizabeth Rauscher and then by a whole team of passionate enthusiasts like Amira Val Becker, William Brown, Marshall Lefferts. He describes the cosmos from the infinitely large to the infinitely small, helped by a graceful use of geometry, in order to reveal an infinitely connected holofractographic universe.
The proton mass is “corrected” so that it becomes a micro black hole, and thanks to this, our ancient conception of the world switches over to a brand new world.
By means of precise mathematical formulae, Nassim Haramein defines a perfectly interconnected universe within which:
– matter and energy behave like a living entity, a living whole, “holo”
– information/energy is a holographic interaction, that is to say that every point in the universe potentially holds the total information of the Whole
– the “empty” space between objects is full of an infinite potential energy that connects everything
– space-time can be apprehended like a space-memory network on which our consciousness travels
One can keep up with Nassim Haramein’s work and teachings by checking his websites: academy.resonance.is and resonance.is, they provide lots of freely available information. To go further, one can register for the main Resonance Academy course which leads to becoming a delegate and, therefore, to taking part in the “Live Sessions” and having access to huge learning material. One doesn’t have to be a qualified physicist to understand this program, Nassim and his whole team have truly amazing training skills. Regardless of where we stand, they gently and joyfully guide us through the geometric labyrinths of the new world of unified physics. The program also allows delegates to sit in and to debate in a fun, worldwide, virtual classroom.
We first joined this program in 2014 and it induced us to understand the world around us as well as our inner spaces in a deeper and more meaningful way than the official and scholastic usual transmission would have.
It’s going to take a while for Nassim’s iconoclastic ideas to be formally accepted. But when this time comes, these ideas will seem so obvious that it will be difficult to remember they once were not.
Saugealles Farm
Patrick Demont and his family
On Wednesdays and Saturdays, in Place de la Palud, Lausanne’s market welcomes Patrick Demont’s nice family. It sells delicious local direct trade products. This small and friendly market stall displays raw milk, much easier to digest than the white liquid bearing the same name which is found in plastic coated cardboard containers. It supplies fresh cream, butter, white cheese, yoghurts, cold-pressed colza oil, eggs and meringues… It also provides milk jam and cream toffees, both of which can lead to serious addiction…
To learn more about the benefits of raw milk, one can read Taty Lauwers’ books and visit her website, www.taty.be. On top of pasteurization, which destroys the enzymes that allow its digestion, milk undergoes homogenization during which its fat globules are very much reduced in size. On one hand, this leads to an insipid product because the taste buds do not have time to appreciate the flavours held in milk fat. And, on the other hand, the fat globules being so small, they permeate the intestinal wall much too quickly. This could be the cause of some milk intolerances. And it may be an idea worth looking into.
Aromatherapy – Medicine or Poison ?
Essentials of essential oils in 21 minutes
As part of their graduation examination, Estelle Droz and Giada Koch made a magical presentation on essential oils. In a 21-minute film, the two students take us on a joyful and enlightening journey into the perfumed world of aromatic plants. Necessary cautions, directions and guidance, together with how the essential oils operate and how they are absorbed, all are precisely stated in a creative way. The invisible chemistry of the oils is shown through dynamic and fun animations.
Claude Jabès
www.gourmandises.ch
Claude Jabès is an expert in the field of “small glass jar sauce”, he is a master craftsman whenever hot chillies are involved. Every Saturday, he brings wonders to Lausanne’s market, right at the top of La Madeleine Street. Claude’s tasteful products are the perfect pairing for vegetables or for any true lover of cuisine dish. And when he doesn’t cook, Claude writes kitchen books in delightful and delicious words.
Jan von Ungern-Sternberg – Circus Artist
www.upinthehair.ch
www.diabolocirque.ch/
Diabolos fly, defying gravity, diabolos land on Jan’s long hair for a while and are flinged spinning back in the air by Jan’s skilled hands.
Jan is a professional circus artist, juggling and diabolos are his speciality. The beautiful act shown on his website is truly dishevelling even if Jan’s hairstyle remains impeccable… When he doesn’t perform all over the world, Jan teaches the art of diabolo to children (9 to 18 years old), more details can be found on his website.