Peter Stokes

Meditation...

2011-06-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

Wonderful and cool thing happening at the house this week… Cindy’s meditation teacher, Paul Muller Ortega, is doing initiations. His teacher was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (the one in India the Beatles made famous), and as it happens, I was initiated by Maharishi in 1972. I was 11 at the time, and while I remember several things about the experience, there’s a fair amount I don’t. I do, of course, remember my mantra as he gave it to me, and though I haven’t practiced meditation with much regularity it’s always been in my “toolbox”…. a pretty good tool.

Ultimately, we're all beings of faith... some people have faith in the randomness of things, and that there is no unifying force... I have faith that many (if not most) things do not happen by accident, and that love is like hydrogen- you can't run out of it. What will you do with yours?

Inspiration

2011-04-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

Interesting winter... after a 30 foot fall from a roof and two crushed and fractured vertebrae, I'm back to working and climbing, though carefully. I'm very lucky to be alive and able to walk. I'm also very lucky to have a wonderful, loving partner and some good friends to help me through. There are times in life when a person can be "blown open" - this wasn't the first time like that, and I've been taking some good things from my fall and subsequent recovery period. The sun still sets in the West, I still jerk around and convulse without completely being able to control it, my spine still hurts.... but something is different, and it feels really good. As a performer, "Inspiration" is a term I used to reserve for the creative process, but in recent years it's meaning has expanded for me- "in-Spirit", or "of-God"...

Really, who are you? I've known for a long time that my "being" doesn't stop at the ends of my fingers and toes, but, like most folks it's easy for me to forget about that in the daily effort toward food, clothing, shelter, and whatever else I think I need. The truly exceptional people I've known seem to remember it more often. I don't know all the things I was put here to do, but I do know some of them- apparently I'm supposed to stay around a bit longer....

Details...

2009-09-21T09:41:00.000-07:00

Good fun yesterday up at the Animal World crag in Boulder Canyon... went up after lunch to rope solo my favorite 5.8, and maybe look around for some other stuff to do after warming up. The wind was quite a factor, though, and after the 5.8 I wound up toproping on something nearby with a couple of friends from the BRC I happened to run into, and wearing a windbreaker to do it. I didn't check in advance how my foul weather clothing would work with a harness (gear loops, etc.), and wound up trying to clip hardware to fabric, fumbling around, and so on. Not really a problem on a toprope, but as fall arrives I'll be needing to get this little part of my act together.... this is the time of year when the climbing around CO and UT is at it's best; the weather doesn't change quite as suddenly as it can in summer, and the insect factor is minimal- enjoy it wherever you are!

Smart grid?

2009-03-22T18:59:00.000-07:00

Recently, Boulder (as well as several other towns) has been getting "smart grid" utility hardware on poles and electric meters around town; the pitch is that automated meters and two-way power consumption data can be used to improve the efficiency of the grid's power distribution. Over the long term, we may be able to save quite a bit of energy this way, but in the near term it looks a bit like the weird setup our local power company uses to bill for wind energy- customers wanting to support wind power pay a higher price for electricity that comes from the exact same grid as it does for the rest of us; same wires, same mix of wind, gas and coal burning plants (the "smart grid" isn't smart enough to allow one household to buy power from a different plant than the house next door). I'm not really against the idea, but some restraint might be in order here- when a large amount of stuff is run by computer from far away, well, things don't always go as planned..... this link is to a story about hacking smart grids

Spreadin' the pain

2009-03-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

For a long time now, we've paid for roads and bridges in this country by taxing the sale of motor fuel; it's been a more or less fair way of spreading the cost- larger vehicles damage roads more than smaller ones, and also happen to use more fuel. Vehicles that are driven a lot cause more damage than ones that are parked, and happen to use more fuel as well. Farm equipment (that rarely goes on the highway) uses fuel that's taxed at a lower rate. Simple enough, right? Well, now that vehicles are being driven less and/or getting parked, fuel tax revenues are down to the point where many needed repairs are in jeopardy (or so we're told; Boulder is about to spend $500,000.00 on one traffic light at the end of North Broadway- with prices like that it's no wonder we're out of highway money). Among the solutions proposed recently is the idea of transponders installed in every vehicle to track and charge a tax for miles driven. Now, this might seem like an even better way to spread infrastructure costs fairly, until you look a bit closer...... many of these devices also track (and store) everywhere the vehicle has gone, along with information about how it was operated. Some of the people here in Boulder promoting these things are the same ones who (rightly) have decried the Bush administration's privacy rights violations, so.....? Human nature being what it is, these devices can (or will) likely be hacked into, removed and/or disconnected part of the time, etc. Nobody I know can hack into a fuel tax (or an electric rate surcharge)- if you want to buy gas (or electricity) you have to pay the tax. I suspect at least some of the pressure for tracking devices is coming from people who stand to benefit from their widespread implementation- manufacturers and installers. Wouldn't it be cheaper and more practical to just raise the fuel tax?

Grub, etc.

2009-03-07T18:44:00.000-08:00

As more and more businesses struggle, I can't help but wonder about some of them around here- I used to eat at Dot's Diner on 28th street in Boulder, and several of my friends and customers have worked there over the years; I've never once had any problems with the staff, and the owner is an all around great guy who has always treated me as well as I treat my own customers..... I have, however, witnessed a lot of questionable behavior on the part of the staff, including making fun of a customer's clothing in front of the other customers after she had left. Since I have a sense of humor (and not much fashion sense), I wasn't personally uncomfortable with that, but I think it points to a larger picture of a place in decline- staff morale low from poor revenue, poor revenue from low staff morale, etc. (becomes a vicious cycle) I stopped eating there myself because I started getting stomach pain afterward. For a while I figured it was just my body having lots of miles on it and being less forgiving these days, but I've been hearing the same thing from others who've eaten there as well. We're heading pretty quickly toward a society that, for better or worse, has a surplus of qualified people who'd be happy to take over from folks who've forgotten how the service industries work. I've shifted my business to the Walnut Cafe (Walnut & 30th st. and Table Mesa center), where I've never had trouble with the food, and the staff is friendly and professional. As a business owner myself, I don't like this economy any more than anyone else- there may not be enough room for well run shops, let alone people making avoidable mistakes.....

Job well done?

2009-02-03T18:45:00.000-08:00

So, here we are with a lousy economy, sick people with no health care, a rising homeless population (next to empty foreclosed houses), a changing climate, etc. etc. (not to mention a new Denver Broncos head coach) I hear the so called "stimulus plan" will cost about $9,700 for each taxpayer in the country........ have you noticed that whenever the politicos want a tax cut for the rich they always say "the people know how to spend money better than the government"? Well? How about it? I don't know about you, but I could put $9,700 to work pretty quickly........oh, wait a minute; my plan doesn't give fat bonuses to CEOs for doing a bad job....... never mind (what was I thinking?). As for climate change, well, I'm not sold on Every Little Thing the Sierra Club might want me to be, but so what? What's the worst thing that'll happen if we build solar and wind power plants and drive electric cars? Cleaner air, cleaner water and towns we actually like living in sure would suck, huh? Here's a link to a friend of mine in Seattle who's found some interesting stuff to try out...... http://www.debgoesgreen.com/

Life's a twitch

2009-01-30T18:46:00.000-08:00

For some time now, I've noticed that performing tends to bring on more intense Tourette symptoms than it did when I started out in music back in the 1970s.... I usually let the symptoms show more when I'm at relative ease, and I was less relaxed during shows earlier in my career. The trouble these days is that I'm relaxed enough not to bother scheduling any shows........ climbing tends to calm the symptoms, though my "loosen up" dance between routes might get interesting. When the winter sets in, as it has for the past few days, I sometimes go web surfing for other climber's blog posts- Jason Kehl has gained quite a reputation for high level bouldering, photo manipulation, and some (awful) good recipes! Point your browser to some of his stuff at http://www.deadpointmag.com/blogs/7-jason-kehl (check out his post from Hueco Tanks). For some interesting writing on climbing, travel, life, etc. try Majka Burhardt's blog at http://www.majkaburhardt.com/liminal-line-blog/ or Jonathan Siegrist's blog at http://www.jstarinorbit.com/

Indoor climbing

2009-01-26T18:46:00.000-08:00

Well, here goes.....the "ruminations" page. Was at the Rock Club yesterday with the usual suspects (George Newell and Eric Aldrich) for some fine indoor climbing. Sundays are quite crowded there when the weather is bad, making for a real air show- with so many people falling on lead at the same time it's a wonder there aren't more midair collisions. As with many other human activities, some of the folks who've gotten really good at this sport have developed a language aimed at defining and categorizing anyone who isn't at their level- fairly normal behavior, especially among young people, but the climbers who have inspired me most over the years seem to avoid it. Here are some climbing links if you're interested..... Verve makes great clothing for active folks, as does Stonewear Designs, both from our city by the Flatirons...... Mountain Project is a great website for route info in the US and beyond, and Front Range Bouldering.com is a good place to look if you just want to get on some rock without all the gear. Have a great time doing what you enjoy, and remember, we're all in this together.