Category: Life

Categories
Film News Relationships

Cutie And The Boxer – Review by Jim Martin

CutieAndBoxercovCutie And The Boxer is a moving and insightful journey into the lives of two artists  in a relationship that has evolved over forty years.  The story begins with the eightieth birthday of Ushio Shinohara. He and his wife Norika celebrate this event by lighting a candle on a small cake.  Ushio and Norika are both artists, married now for 40 years. There’s about a twenty-year age difference between the two. They met when she was an art student who had just arrived in NYC from Japan.  Norika has lived in Ushio’s shadow for their entire relationship and she is now struggling to find  her own identity. Up until recently she has largely neglected her own work to support Ushio and raise a son. She harbors some justifiable resentment about this that manifests itself in her pushiness and her controlling their domestic life. But even with all the stress and issues, there’s an obvious bond between these two people.

The title of the documentary, Cutie And The Boxer, is connected to one of Ushio’s painting techniques, which is to put on boxing gloves, dip them in paint and punch the canvas from left to right. He’s still doing this at age eighty. He also does sculptures and other paintings.  Norika paints and draws.

To read entire review and watch trailer go to Cutie and The Boxer.

Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.

Categories
Contemplation Life Observations Reading

Selected Readings on Mindfulness and Meditation

Selected Readings on Mindfulness and Meditation by Jim Martin

These are a few, of the many excellent titles available that we have found informative and well written on the topic of Buddhism,  Mindfulness and related subjects. This includes both nonfiction and fiction titles.

If you have a favorite book on these subjects  that you would like to recommend please leave the name of the book, details and any thoughts about the title as a comment and it will become part of the list.   If you have read any of the books on the list and wish to comment that is also appreciated.

 

Nonfiction

The Foundations of Buddhism – Rupert Gethin – © 1998 

ISBN 978-0-19-2892223-2 – Oxford University Press

The Foundations of Buddhism (Opus S)  

“Rupert Gethin is Lecturer in Indian Religions in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, and co-director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies, at the University of Bristol. He  is the author of The Buddhist Path to Awakening (1992) and is a specialist in Theravada Buddhism.”

“Buddhism is a vast and complex religious and philosophical tradition with a history that stretches back over 2,500 years. In this book, Rupert Gethin investigates the common threads connecting diverse traditions of Buddhist thought and practice: the story of the Buddha, the scriptural tradition of his teachings, the four noble truths, monastic and lay ways of life, karma and rebirth, ethics, meditation and philosophy. While concentrating on the formative phase of Buddhism in India, he also considers the ways in which these foundations have shaped the development of Buddhism beyond India and into the twentieth century.”

 

Mindfulness In Plain English – Bhante Gunaratana – © 2011

ISBN 978-0-86171-906-8 – Wisdom Publications

Mindfulness in Plain English: 20th Anniversary Edition

Bhante Gunaratana is also author of Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness, Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English and the memoir Journey to Mindfulness

“ A Masterpiece.” Jon Kabat-Zinn

Mindfulness In Plain English is said to be “one of the most influential books in the burgeoning field of mindfulness and a timeless classic introduction to meditation.”

Excerpts from Mindfulness In Plain English:

“Within the Judeo-Christian tradition we find two overlapping practices called prayer and contemplation. Prayer is a direct address to a spiritual entity. Contemplation is a prolonged period of conscious thought about a specific topic, usually a religious ideal or scriptural passage. From the standpoint of mental cultivation, both these activities are exercises in concentration.”

“Out of the Hindu tradition comes yogic meditation, which is also purely concentrative.”

“Within the Buddhist tradition concentration is also highly valued. But a new element is added and more highly stressed: the element of awareness. All Buddhist meditation aims at the development of awareness, using concentration as a tool toward that end.”

 

The Heart of Buddhist Meditation – The Buddha’s way of Mindfulness – Nyanaponika Thera

  © 1954, 1962, 1996 – Buddhist Publication Society – This edition published in 2014 by Weiser Books – ISBN 978-1-57863-558-0

The Heart of Buddhist Meditation: The Buddha’s Way of Mindfulness

Excerpt from Foreword, by Sylvia Boorstein, to The Heart of Buddhist Meditation:

“The Heart of Buddhist Meditation was the first serious, didactic Dharma book I read. It was the early nineteen-eighties. My teacher, Jack Kornfield, suggested it as the beginning of formal training to become a Mindfulness teacher. “

“Apart from the meticulous yet accessible writing style with which the Venerable Nyanaponika builds every point, I feel a warmth and friendliness in his tone that makes me feel as if he is talking to me.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn writes: “This is the book that introduced Vipassana and Mindfulness to the West. Its content is timeless — and universal. All teachers of mindfulness-based programs would do well to carefully red and re-read this book…”

 

Full Catastrophe Living – JonKabat-Zinn – Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness 

Revised and updated Edition © 1990, 2013 by Jon Kabat-Zinn – Published in the United States by Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-345-53693-8

Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness

“Stress. It can sap our energy, undermine our health, even shorten our lives. It makes us more venerable to anxiety and depression, disconnection and disease. Based on Jon Kapbat-Zinn’s renowed mindfulness-based stress reduction program this classic, groundbreaking work—which gave rise to a whole new field in medicine and psychology-shows you how to use medically proven mind-body approaches derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish greater balance of body and mind, and stimulate well-being and healing.”

 

Where Ever You Go There You Are – Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life –10th Anniversary Edition

© 1994, 2005 Jon Kabat-Zinn Published by Hackette Books ISBN 0-7668-8070-8

This is a well-written, thoughtful guide and reminder what meditation and mindfulness is all about.  In many ways it is the soul of Full Catastrophe Living. If you are practicing meditation and living mindfully, this book will remind you why. After you read it once, you can just pick it up, open to any page and find something inspiring.

 

Living As If Your Life Depended On It! Twelve Gateways To A Life That Works

© 2000 Cia Rico – ISBN 0-9678-849-1-8 Published by Life Care, Inc

Self help in keeping with Buddhist tradition, meditation and modern psychology. Spiritual and psychological growth.

 

 

Fiction

TheDharmBums coverThe Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac © 1958 — Published by Penguin Books

(See full review here: https://www.almostseventy-one.com/2016/03/28/jack-kerouacs-the-dharma-bums-book-review-by-jim-martin/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Island – A Novel – Aldous Huxley © 1962 – Published by Harper Perennial Modern Classics ISBN 978-0-060156179-5 (pbk)

Island

In this amazingly prophetic novel written in 1962, Aldous Huxley creates the fictional island of Pala in the Pacific, somewhere in Southeast Asia, not far from a neighboring country with a powerful corrupt dictator who has a plan to take over Pala, which has been basically left on its own for 120 years because it didn’t have anything desirable until now, after oil is discovered. A billionaire, oil magnate, who also owns newspapers, has enlisted a reporter, William Farnaby to see if he can get a line on how to get the island government to work with his oil company.

But the leaders of Pala have their own agenda, one that has been nurtured for many generations, over  a hundred years, a utopian society built on science, mainly Buddhist philosophy and Hindu traditions. Science, medicine and psychology are being used in ways that are still not put into practice in major countries in the world today. For example education that teaches children skills to stay healthy mentally and physically. Sex education and practices that help keep population growth under control and preventive medicine, rather than treating illnesses with drugs after they occur. Early psychological testing to help children develop their talents and gifts without succumbing to  antisocial behaviors. Meditation and a form of mindfulness practiced by most of the population.

Will Farnaby, the reporter, gets himself ship wrecked on the island and is taken in by key citizens of Pala. They agree to let him stay for a month while they show him their island utopia, discuss their culture and plans for the future. The novel facilitates the exploring of Pala’s history and goals for the future against the backdrop of a world still recovering from Hitler, fascism, political turmoil, television, consumerism, health issues, poverty and racism.

Buddhist philosophy, begun over 2500 years ago, foreshadows many of today’s scientific principles like evolutionary psychology, modern psychology and how the mind works. Huxley writes, in 1962, about concepts that are just beginning to be discussed today.

jrm

Categories
Contemplation News Poetry Reading

Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums — Review by James R (Jim) Martin

 kerouac HaiI wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading The Dharma Bums. I didn’t remember much about Jack Kerouac’s writing having read On The Road, many back in the day years ago; the experience was stuck in my mind’s dusty archives. I wasn’t the same person who read On The Road back then, I was here now in the present suspecting I might be a Dharma Bum of sorts myself.

The Dharma Bums is a cultural walk-about America in the late 1950’s with the spread of suburbia, a growing middle class with an increasing addiction to television and sameness. It also includes vivid and beautiful representations of natural phenomenon from the desert to the high mountains. The characters that Ray Smith, the narrator of the story, meets in his travels range from intellectuals, artists, poets and beatnik friends, to hobos he meets as he hops fast freight trains up the California Coast or thumbs rides with truck drivers and others while he travels across the country a couple of times. He carries his home on his back and to some extent depends on the good will of those he meets on his path. He meditates in the desert, mountain meadows and the woods. He exchanges what he has learned with his fellow Dharma Bums and gains insight from them and his travels. At times Ray Smith and his Dharma buddies seem like modern-day  bhikkhu (monks), each on the path of enlightenment in their own way.

This is a trip that anyone can enjoy, from the first time Ray Smith, the main character, hops a freight train, headed North up the California coast.  Even though it was written some time ago it feels contemporary and relevant today. One thing I knew as I began reading The Dharma Bums, was that Jack Kerouac knows how to tell a story. I also became happily aware that this book was an adventure entwined with the basis of Mindfulness including the “Four Noble Truths” and the “Eight-fold Path;” a Bodhisattva’s journey looking for nothing, knowing and not knowing.   The two main characters Ray Smith and Japhy Ryder are on a quest for truth that finds them climbing mountains in the high sierras, partying with San Fransisco Bohemians, and others and writing their own poetry.

“…Pray tell us, good buddy, and don’t make it muddy, who played this trick, on Harry and Dick, and why is so mean this Eternal Scene, just what’s the point, of this whole joint? I thought maybe I could find out at last from these Dharma Bums.” — Jack Kerouac — The Dharma Bums

I’d be willing to bet that a lot of people these days may not know much about Jack Kerouac. I wonder if his work is read in high school or college English classes? It should be. Probably banned in Texas or Alabama, like Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye. Kerouac was born in Lowell Massachusetts in 1922, went to public school and ended up with a scholarship to Columbia in New York City where he met Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs who  turn up in The Dharma Bums. Kerouac died in St. Pete Florida in 1969 at the age of forty-seven.

Those who do remember Jack Kerouac would probably think of the classic “On The Road” that was published in 1957 and made Kerouac one of the most appreciated writers of that time. “On The Road” came to personify what was called the “Beat Generation.” Other books followed including those in what Kerouac included in the “The Duluoz Legend Series” including The Dharma Bums, The Subterraneans, Big Sur, other novels and poetry. But Kerouac’s writing is a lot more than “Beat Generation” tales.

The Dharma Bums was published in 1958, after On the Road.  Written in College Park, a neighborhood in Orlando, Florida. It is a subtle, non-preachy primer, in some ways, on certain concepts found in Buddhism, in particular Zen Buddhism. But written as a novel, in Kerouac’s rhythmic, descriptive and first person conversational storytelling style, these notions come up naturally. Words, sentences and paragraphs loose their individual functions as they create a new actuality, moving, nudging and seducing the reader into the strokes and colors of  the author’s word paintings.

            “But I had my own little bangtail ideas and they had nothing to do with the ‘lunatic’ part of this. I wanted to get me a full pack complete with everything necessary to sleep, shelter, eat, cook, in fact a regular kitchen and bedroom right on my back, and go off somewhere and find perfect solitude and look into the perfect emptiness of my mind and be completely neutral from any and all ideas. I intended to pray, too, as my only activity, pray for all living creatures; I saw it was the only decent activity left in the world. To be in some riverbottom somewhere, or in a desert, or in mountains, or in some hut in Mexico or shack in Adirondack, and rest and be kind, and do nothing else, practice what the Chinese call ‘do-nothing.” I didn’t want to have anything to do, really, either with Japhy’s ideas about society (I figured it would be better just to avoid it altogether, walk around it) or with any of Alvah’s ideas about grasping after life as much as you can because of its sweet sadness and because you would be dead some day.”      — Jack Kerouac The Dharma Bums

Ray Smith’s journey moves along spontaneously and as fast paced as Jack Kerouac’s prose. This timeless story is hard to put down with a bonus if you are interested in Dharma, mindfulness and Buddhist philosophy; you will find many moments in the book with which to relate. Beyond the philosophy you will find a artfully crafted novel that is engaging and classic, as a spiritual journey to find self or perhaps no self. Jack Kerouac, intentionally or not created his own Buddha book of “sutras” and left them with us.

The Dharma Bums – Jack Kerouac – 1957 – Penguin Books – 244 pages

The Dharma Bums

The Dharma Bums

 

Review by James R (Jim) Martin

Books by James R Martin

Documentary Directing and Storytelling: How to Direct Documentaries and More!

Listen Learn Share: How & Why Listening, Learning and Sharing can Transform Your Life Experience In Practical Ways

Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.

Actuality Interviewing and Listening: How to conduct successful interviews for nonfiction storytelling, actuality documentaries and other disciplines … (Documentary and Nonfiction Storytelling)

Categories
Contemplation Life News Photography Uncategorized

Pullman Case Contemplation and Time Travel by Jim Martin

Smelling like old paper, film negatives and musty storage, a cloud of old memories slowly filled the air as I opened the venerable Pullman suitcase. Old family photographs, and other pictures I took, some a half a century ago, waited with negatives stored in protective sleeves. There were people, places and faces, including my own, stuck in time. The difficult part was being there in that moment again, retaking the picture or being in the photograph in that place and that time.8J4A0419Acamp

Is it possible to smell the heather and feel the morning breeze gently drifting off the English hills in the Lake District, all those years ago? The actual event can’t be relived, but the mind makes magic sometimes. The photograph acts as a visual reminder, conjuring up bits of experience from the archives in the mind, like an artist creating a painting. Wellington boots seen through a tent flap, “two bob” said the woman wearing the boots and  collecting the camping fees. This and other memories stored in the same picture.

A black and white picture, taken on a sunny day, of a friend and I standing next to a sports car I owned. The friend and the car are remembered. The city street we’re standing on looks familiar. What was the name of that street? Why were we there in suits and ties? Does the mind have a librarian checking the stacks for this event? It may take a while, but sometimes, a day or two later, the librarian pops up with the information. Events, places, and people in memory are abstract, subjective thoughts lost in context, perspective and time.8J4A03812ndmg

The object and the people in a photograph may bring back memories for some time after the picture was taken. How long the memory replays depends on how significant the event and how much attention it was given. Human imagination only needs a few clues to create what feels like a mountain breeze, the smell of a rose or a loved one’s touch. But everything the mind and body experiences in a lifetime is not remembered. In addition what is remembered is a subjective interpretation of the person or event, and so is the photograph.

No dates and places written on the backs of most photos. Still every picture has an inherent date and place in the past, my past and other people’s pasts even if it can’t be fully visited; reflections of a time and place that only exists there on the paper. The face on the paper is not my face anymore. The beautiful woman in the picture no longer looks or is the same. These things only existed for that photographic moment.8J4A0378TOM&...

I used to think that “I” was the sum of my experiences and memories. But this cannot be. The past is like those old photographs, moments frozen in time that do not exist beyond the shutter’s opening and closing. Here in the present, there is no past, no current me that remains from those pictures; every second this mind and body are changing. The body and mind in the picture no longer exist. Each memory is only a silent sketch, faded a bit more each day. The mind is like that old Pullman suitcase, stuffed full of folders with pictures, some in better shape than others, but all moments frozen in time. However, the mind, like the case may be opened occasionally for time travel to see the past, to imagine and perhaps explore those fleeting moments.

8J4A0389Wen

Written by James R (Jim) Martin, Author, Documentary Filmmaker, Photographer and student of  Mindfulness.

Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.

 

Categories
Contemplation Film

With One Voice – Awaken To The Beauty That Unites Us All – Review by Jim Martin

With One Voice explores the world of mysticism and it’s role in spirituality and religion. The documentary is a quest to learn from mystics, representing major religions, about their own spiritual journey and what knowledge they have gained. In the words of Father Keating in the film, “We are all mystics seeking to solve the mysteries of existence.”

The filmmakers who created With One Voice have produced a documentary that is not an external point-of-view of mysticism. Even though, it does use a narrator, Peter Coyote, it also makes extensive  first person interviews.  The unique quality of this story is that its point-of-view, while still subjective, is from the inside looking out.  Viewing the documentary brings the audience into the world of mystic spirituality, religion and to some extent exposes the viewer to the notion of inner peace.

Many people like to say that they are “spiritual.” rather than religious.  But what does that really mean? What is spirituality?  Where does spirituality begin and religion end? How do spirituality, religion and mysticism relate to each other? In a subtle way the answers to many of these questions are examined in this beautifully shot and edited documentary with original music by Michael Josephs.

The film is divided into eight areas:

To read entire review and view trailer go to: J R Martin Media Documentary Reviews

Categories
Contemplation Life News

The Buddhist Notion of Not Self and Modern Psychology by J R Martin

Wheel of Life
Wheel of Life

Is the Buddhist notion of “not self” a philosophy of life supported by modern psychological practice and scientific research?  Does self exist? The Buddhist interpretation of no self may sound nihilistic, but according to Buddhist thinking it is not.

The Buddha’s argument that there is no self has merit. There are only passing, sometimes random, feelings and thoughts. Any notion of self is rooted in past thoughts. Clinging to self is living in the past, like trying to drive a car forward by only looking in the rear view mirror. If there is no self, past, present and future are the products of conscious thinking.

According to Buddhist thought there is a construct of five aggregates that make up human existence, each area constantly changing, but together they appear to have continuity that is mistaken for a self. The five aggregates or “skandhas” are Consciousness (subjective awareness), Form (body), Feeling, Perception and Mental Formations.

In The Foundations of Buddhism, Rupert Gethin writes about considering self as “causal connectedness.” There are twelve progressing links in the chain of “dependent arising,” each “conditions” the next link,” bringing about the whole of suffering. Each link “conditions” the rising of the next link. “…the concern is to show that physical and mental events occur in various relationships to each other.” – Gethin pg. 140-1

According to Buddha, there are only two things in life; there is only suffering (duhkha), or the cessation of suffering. He asks is suffering the self? This would seem to be the same as asking is “life” the self? In an exchange with the monks, who were his disciples, the Buddha challenges them, saying that you will not find self in the five aggregates of physical or mental events that define human existence. Looking at each of the five aggregates (skandhas), he submits that, everything happening in these five areas is temporary or impermanent. Things that are impermanent are considered as suffering (duhkha). Therefore they cannot be self.

Examining the five aggregates the Buddha, in his first discourse, asks the monks if the happenings in these areas are permanent or impermanent? He asks is pain the self? They reply, “no it is not.” Pain is impermanent. The Buddha asks, is it correct to consider something that will change as “this is mine, I am this, this my self?” The monks agree it is not. The Buddha concludes then, that we must say, “This is not mine, I am not this, this is not myself.” There is no self because it cannot be found anywhere within the five aggregates that define human life.

The underlying message here to the monks in a modern context is that they should stop “clinging or “grasping” these experiences in the five aggregates, as they do not need to own these experiences. This is not their identity. The Buddha was a teacher, and in a possibly therapeutic way, counseling the monks, who were obsessing or clinging to all their experiences as their identity, in fear that they would not attain enlightenment.

A modern therapist might ask a patient questions that actually parallel the five aggregates. For example:

“Is the feeling of pain you suffered as a child at the hands of other children, who you are?”

“No that pain isn’t who I am. Not me.”

“Is the resentment you feel toward your friend who you are?”

“I might feel resentful, but that’s not me.”

“What then is the point of clinging or holding on to these things?”

Using different language, not holding on to things that are impermanent because they are basis for suffering is a concept that seems to be a major part of modern psychological therapy. Buddhist teaching of no self allows the individual to summarily divorce traumatic experience, to stop “clinging” to pain and “grasping” suffering, leading to a cessation of suffering.

To Buddhists the five aggregates are all of existence. Experiences that happen in the aggregates are not you therefore there is no self. It should be noted however, since the Buddha apparently only said that the self was not found in the five aggregates, that he might not have been saying that it did not exist at all. There is a movement around the Buddha’s thinking that acknowledges no self,  but at the same time, recognizes universal consciousness. Meditation brings us into contact with our true collective self.

© 2015 James R Martin

Sources:

Robert Wright — Buddhism and Modern Psychology – All Video lectures, Weeks 1-3.

Rupert Gethin –The Foundations of Buddhism –Chapter 6

Bikkhu Bodhi — lectures on the eightfold path and meditation (lectures 7 and 8: http://www.buddhanet.net/audio-lectures.htm)

 

Categories
Contemplation Life News

Our Stories as Defense Sytems

Self-Care, Mindfulness & The Mind/Body Connection

for Helping Professionals

Mini Retreat & Support Group for MSWs, Coaches, Educators & Helping Professionals

For more information use link below.

Self-Care, Mindfulness & The Mind-Body Connection for Helping Professionals(1)

 

Categories
Observations Politics Spirituality

Religious Liberty is the Separation of Church and State

Kim Davis, jailed for Contempt, has been released.  She and some other “Christians” believe their religious liberty is being curtailed because they must obey laws of which they say their religion doesn’t approve. Interesting to note this is their personal interpretation of their sect’s belief, not necessarily written anywhere.

The notion of “Religious Liberty” is that, we are all free from any religion imposing its beliefs on us as individuals, or on our government. According to the Constitution, we are free to believe in what ever religion, or no religion, we wish to choose.  We just can’t expect, or try to force anyone else to believe in our religion. There is no attempt on the part of the government or anyone else, to force Christians to change their beliefs. It is quite the opposite.

The law, upheld by the Supreme Court, says that same-sex marriage is legal. Government officials must issue same-sex couples a marriage license.  It is legal, and everyone has a right to choose whomever they wish to marry. Under the law, no person has the right  to prevent anyone from being married to whomever they choose. No one is asking Christianity to marry same-sex couples in their churches. It wasn’t so long ago that interracial marriage was not allowed in many states.  Certain Christian religions claimed that was against their teachings. Many Christians also believed in slavery and cited the Bible as the reason.

The laws of the United States say that we are all created equal.  No one can be discriminated against for any reason. If you are a government official or clerk you must follow the law. Refusing to follow the law and then forcing others to refuse is a crime.   Government employees, elected or hired, do not work for God. He does not pay their salary.  They work for the people of that State and/or the country. The state and God are separate employers. If a person’s personal beliefs prevent them from doing their job, and upholding the law, they should resign from holding public office.

The Constitution of the United States does not adhere to any religion. It is a set of  principles and laws on which the country is founded. Neither the national government or any individual state or municipality may adopt religious beliefs into its laws. No state elected official or employee can impose his or her religious preferences on how they will perform their jobs. The Constitution does not infringe on anyone’s religion.

This country has been brainwashed by the Christian right-wing to the extent that many people have forgotten that this country is founded and built on the principle of  separation of church and state.  Any church, any state. The founders of the United States made a choice to exclude religion from a role in government. It appears some Christians would like to create a religious state like Iran or Saudi Arabia.

The Christian Right has been imposing their beliefs on the entire country, in an organized fashion since the 1930’s. To name a few things, there have been movements to have the Bible read in the classrooms of public schools.  Christian prayers in public schools.  Under President Eisenhower Christian groups got “In God We Trust” on to US currency and had “God” inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance.  Presidents and politicians have been pressured into ending every speech with the words, “God Bless America.”  Congress has prayer meetings.   The founding fathers of this country never had a “Prayer Meeting” before they wrote the Constitution.

Judging by how they behave, Congress probably needs more prayer, but it is not part of the law that they do so.

Written by J R Martin – Documentary Filmmaker

LINKS

National Memo Story

Categories
Film Health People

YOUR INNER FISH

Your innerfishYour Inner Fish is a well made television style documentary, three episode series.  Episode 1 – Your Inner Fish, Episode 2 – Your Inner Reptile and Episode 3 – Your Inner Monkey.  All three episodes are entertaining, informative, and offer a trip through time going back to when prehistoric fish swam in the oceans and animal life on dry land apparently didn’t exist. The story delves into areas of research that have changed what was thought to be true up until now.

The Your Inner Fish  series is one from which everyone can learn. The documentary presents facts and offers evidence to support the ideas explored.  In addition to Neil Shubin, a Fish Paleontologist, a number of well know specialists in related areas are interviewed or are followed as they go from lab to remote locations to do their work of scientifically exploring the origins of the human primate. Paleontology, Anatomy, Biology and other disciplines are relevant, important contributors to understanding human evolution.

TO VIEW ENTIRE REVIEW GO TO: JRMARTINMEDIA.COM

Categories
News Reading Travel

Turn Right At Machu Picchu – Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time

cover turnrightMachu Picchu is one of those places I’ve always wanted to visit. While in the Army, Leon, and I went to the Boston Library and started researching a possible journey we could take when our enlistments were up. We were researching the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu. Of course we soon discovered that there was a train that went along the Inca Trail or to Machu Picchu.  This took some of the adventure out of the idea. I think we thought the Inca treasure might still be out there.

Reading Mark Adams book Turn Right at Machu Picchu, all these years later has brought back not only the sense of adventure but also, after reading the book, a feeling that I’ve been there. Documentaries (nonfiction stories) come in all forms. Adams takes you step-by-step through his own experience and the history of Peru as it relates to the Inca civilization, the Inca Trail, Machu Picchu and other ruins in the area. The Inca civilization itself didn’t last that long, especially after the Spanish arrived in 1532. But the indigenous people of the Peruvian Andes, who speak Quechua, still live in the area around Cuzco and Machu Picchu.Machu Picchu1

Binghamiii A
Hiram Bingham III

A major part of the story evolves around Hiram Bingham III, who in 1911 basically brought Machu Picchu into the limelight along with the notion that it was the Lost City to which some of the Inca’s, with their Gold and Silver treasures, retreated from the Spaniards. In 1913 National  Geographic featured Bingham’s travels in one edition that brought Machu Picchu, Bingham and National Geographic into prominence.  Bingham was a controversial character and went on later expeditions to Peru. According to Adams he may have been the inspiration for Indiana Jones character in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Adams layers the historical facts with his travel progress so that the book has a narrative cinematic quality. There are some well-drawn maps and black and white photographs included in the book. There is also a glossary that helps with pronunciation of some of the Quechua (Ketch-wah) names.

Mark&John
Mark Adams and John Leivers

Adams writes he “wanted to retrace Bingham’s route through the Andes on the way to discovering Machu Picchu” along with looking at other important locations.  Turn Right at Machu Picchu is more than one man’s journey of exploration and discovery. It leaves you with a feeling that you’ve gone along on this adventure, done the research, heard the many stories, met the intrepid guide, John Leivers, who’s experience makes the journey possible, hiked the mountains, hiked the Inca roads and seen the awesome Apu (mountain) views. There’s also a supporting cast of characters including local Peruvian mule handlers, cooks and others.

Turn Right at Machu Picchu offers new appreciation and insights into Inca architectural and astronomical accomplishments. The Inca employed a method of building with stone and granite that, without the use mortar,  brought the blocks together as flush as any modern building. The built hundreds of miles of small stone paved roads up and down mountains that connected various parts of their dominion. They aligned their cities by the stars and had buildings with windows that would capture the solstices on the appropriate days.

Inca Trail
Inca Trail

If you are planning a trip to Peru, Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail, Turn Right At Machu Picchu is a must read and might be something to stuff into your back pack. You can also be an armchair adventurer, this book will make you feel like you are there. No need for a TV, the words create the pictures.

Review by James R Martin – Author Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia

 

 

Daily Show Interview with Mark Adams

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/1tlapy/mark-adams

 

Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time

 

Create Documentary Films, Videos and Multimedia: A Comprehensive Guide to Using Documentary Storytelling Techniques for Film, Video, the Internet and Digital Media Projects.