HEALING RIVER HOLISTICS

05/07/2026

A large male cougar was spotted over a mile from the nearest shoreline, swimming through a heavy rip current in the open Pacific with his head up and his ears pinned flat against the swell.
Boaters in the Discovery Islands of British Columbia watched him power through saltwater that would put a grown man into cardiac arrest inside of four minutes. He was not thrashing. He was not drifting. He was holding a steady, rhythmic stroke, driving forward against the current with the kind of mechanical discipline you would expect from an animal crossing a meadow, not a mile of deep ocean.

The Discovery Islands sit off the coast of British Columbia in a maze of channels and passes where the tidal exchange runs hard and cold. Some of these islands are three, four, five miles from the mainland. No land bridges. No low tide shortcuts. Nothing but open water and current between the trees on one shore and the trees on the other.

In the last several years, wildlife observers and fishermen working these channels have been finding fresh cougar tracks on islands that everyone assumed were unreachable by a land predator. The tracks were showing up on beaches, in the mud along deer trails, in places where no mountain lion had any business being. The only way to get there was to swim, and the only way to swim there was to survive water temperatures and distances that would qualify as extreme even for marine mammals.

What the cats found when they reached those islands was worth the crossing.

Black-tailed deer had been living on these isolated rocks for generations without ever encountering a ground predator. No wolves. No bears. No cats. The deer were fat, calm, and completely naive to the mechanics of a stalk. A cougar arriving on one of these islands was walking into a situation that does not exist anywhere on the mainland. Unlimited prey with zero competition and zero predator awareness. A private hunting ground surrounded by a moat that nothing else was willing to cross.

But the part that rewrote the field notes was the return data. Telemetry tracking and repeated sightings confirmed these were not one-way dispersal events. The cats were swimming back. They were making round trips between the mainland and the islands, timing their crossings with the tides, navigating the same channels repeatedly like a trapline. One crossing is desperation. Repeated crossings back and forth across miles of frigid ocean is something else entirely. That is a learned route. That is a cat that evaluated the risk, survived the first swim, and decided the payoff was high enough to do it again.

The whole thing forces a revision of what a mountain lion actually is. The field literature describes them as ambush predators of steep, broken terrain. Creatures of the rimrock and the timber, built for explosive short-range power, not endurance. Nothing in the standard profile suggests an animal that would voluntarily enter a freezing ocean and sustain a miles-long swim through rip currents to reach a hunting ground it cannot even see from shore. But the tracks on those islands are not theoretical, and the boater who watched that male swimming a mile out with his head up and his stroke steady was not watching an animal in crisis. He was watching an animal on a commute.

Source: British Columbia Ministry of Environment / Discovery Islands Cougar Study

05/07/2026

The main objective of our joint work is group integration and the setting up of that inter-communication between the group members which will result in the needed interplay and telepathic communication; this will finally establish that golden network of light which will serve to create a powerful focal point; this focal point will be the agent for the revitalization spiritually of the etheric body of humanity - as a whole. This is an essential and important statement. This focal point will, in its turn, aid in the revitalizing of the etheric body of the planet with new power and with fresh impulse.

Source: Discipleship In The New Age Vol 1

04/21/2026

Winged Father Time unveils Truth, who is dressed in white and rests her foot on a globe, symbolising the Earth from which she has sprung. With her left hand, Truth unmasks Deceit, while with her right she gestures to the four cardinal virtues: Prudence, holding a snake; Temperance, carrying a water jug; Justice, with sword and scales; and Fortitude, who rests her elbow on a lion. The subject is based on the classical motto, ‘Truth is the daughter of Time’, meaning that truth becomes apparent through the passage of time.

The monumental figures occupy the foreground like actors on a stage set. They are organised in a balanced pyramidal arrangement with Time and Truth positioned at the top, perhaps to indicate that they will triumph. While all the figures look at Truth, she looks at us, drawing us into the image and guiding us around it by the interplay of glances and hand gestures.

03/04/2024

02/18/2024

Everything you need to know about the most important headlines from the world of art in the last seven days

11/10/2023

'Very duped': Indigenous musicians upset over Buffy Sainte-Marie ancestry report....Buffy Sainte-Marie, wearing a shining dress and long necklace, was led on the stage by a group of Indigenous people in traditional regalia after she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1995.

Her iconic dark hair and fringe hung long as she told the crowd about the importance of artists from remote communities."Most especially in the whole wide world, I'd like to acknowledge all the grassroots Indian artists who haven't yet taken home a Juno, but who continue, as they have in the past, to capture our hearts at powwows across Canada, doing that magic which music does so well," Sainte-Marie said to applause.Those words now ring hollow for some Indigenous musicians after a recent CBC News report raised doubts about the singer's ancestry.

Some musicians say they were disappointed to learn they may have lost career-shaping industry awards to someone who may be neither Indigenous nor Canadian. They say it amounted to lost opportunities at critical times in their careers.

"Juno winners have toured the country and the world, and the runners-up get to play the neighbourhood pubs and occasional summer festival," said Billy Joe Green, an Anishinaabe rock and blues musician who was a nominee for Indigenous Music Album of the Year in 2009 when Sainte-Marie took home the honour.

"Resentful? I can't afford that luxury."

Sainte-Marie has received numerous Junos, the $50,000 Polaris Music Prize in 2015 and a Polaris heritage award for her 1964 debut album "It's My Way!," among a slew of other honours.

The story of her birth, childhood and identity has shifted throughout her six-decade career, with her identifying as Algonquin and Mi'kmaq before saying she was Cree, adopted from a mother in Saskatchewan.

However, CBC located her birth certificate, which says Sainte-Marie was born in 1941 in Stoneham, Mass. The document lists the baby and parents as white and includes a signature of an attending physician. CBC said Sainte-Marie's marriage certificate, a life insurance policy, the United States census and interviews with family members corroborate the information on the birth certificate.

Sainte-Marie, 82, said in a statement the day before CBC's story ran that she doesn't know who her birth parents are or where she's from, but called herself "a proud member of the Native community with deep roots in Canada."

While Sainte-Marie's career was skyrocketing in the 1960s, Green was also trying to make it in music, never surrendering to "the day-to-day rejection, racism and to the many number of obstacles" that came his way.

A life's work culminated with the Juno nomination for his album "First Law of the Land" in 2009. While Sainte-Marie took home the hardware and accolades, Green said his opportunities evaporated and he struggles to make a decent living despite playing better than he ever has.

"I've accepted 'life on life's terms' for the most part," Green said in an online message to The Canadian Press. "Yet, I'm still reflecting on this very unpleasant circumstance that confronts all who lost opportunities."

Karmen Omeasoo, who performs under the name HellnbacK, was nominated the same year as Sainte-Marie as part of the hip-hop group Team Rezofficial.

He first met Sainte-Marie as a child, with his mother explaining that she was an icon, so he understood losing to someone of her stature.

"If we get beat by her, who cares?" Omeasoo said in an interview. "If one of us wins, we all win. That's what it felt likeI held onto that."

Now that feeling is gone. He thinks about all the Indigenous musicians who could have won and what it would have meant for their careers -- recognition, radio play, touring opportunities, record sales.

"I'm feeling very duped. Like something was taken from me. Something was taken from all these other artists," he said.

Omeasoo said he can only speak for himself, not all Indigenous musicians. But, he said, the revelations have shaken him to his core. He imagines how meaningful it would have been to bring the Juno back to his First Nation in Maskwacis, Alta.

"I could have brought that hardware back home to my mom, my dad, my grandma, my kids."

He continues to create with his wife, Lisa Muswagon, under the name The Resilience, but said it's a constant battle to make music and provide for their children.

Chester Knight, who was nominated alongside Sainte-Marie in 1997, said his album "Freedom" should have won the Juno because his was actually an album for Indigenous people. The song "Love Me Strong" was "popular then and has grown to be even more popular now," he said.

There have been calls for the Junos to rescind Sainte-Marie's awards. An emailed statement said the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Junos, is aware of doubts about Sainte-Marie's ancestry.

"We are processing the information presented and are consulting with our Indigenous Music Advisory Committee, other community members and key stakeholders," the statement said.

Knight, who is from Muskoday First Nation in Saskatchewan, said the Juno Awards mean a lot to the artists competing for them.

"It is unfair to my brother and sister artists who grow up in poverty and racism, and are somehow able to create something of emotional value like I did," he said in an email.

"Artists have to raise a family and balance a music career and a job career to fuel the production of an album."

Black Bear, a drum group from Manawan First Nation in Quebec, was nominated in the same category as Sainte-Marie for "Come and Get Your Love: The Tribe Session" in 2016. The group said in a message to The Canadian Press they "work and walk in truth and this includes being true to yourself, your family and friends."

"We certainly don't know where to stand considering what (Sainte-Marie) has done for Indigenous artists and done to those same artists as well by taking away opportunities like Junos."....CTV.....news.....