Ray Grasse on Thinking VS. Meditation Looks like an art form to me!!

 

Just a Different Art From from Ray Grasse, 

Thinking vs. Meditation 

RAY GRASSE APR 19

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I don’t teach meditation anymore, for various reasons, but back in the day when I did, a fellow come up to me after a class where I taught a particular breathing technique, and asked me:

“So what am I supposed to be thinking while I’m meditating?”

I was a bit surprised by that. After thinking about it for a few moments I said, “Okay, imagine someone you know is about to have sex for the first time and they come up to you and ask, ‘So, what am I supposed to be thinking while I’m having sex?

How would you answer?”

Ray Grasse is a writer, astrologer, and photographer living in the American Midwest. His websites are www.raygrasse.com and www.raygrassephotography.com. 

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Jamie Forbes, A Diary Memory of Jane Goodall, and more current image of Baboon and Girl.

I had the pleasure of meeting Jane Goodall at an event hosted by publisher Louise MacBain in 2007, I think. The round table she sat at was small. During a break I came to sit beside her, and we spoke for a short while about her work. In telling her I was struck by the poignancy of her work, her response there was humble. Jane was reticent to talk about herself saying she had always pursued her goals without people approving of her. Later when my personal journey began to segway out of publishing, and the travel required I picked up a Masters in Eco- art Awareness, Photographic Theory, and Environmental ethics. As an environmentalist I was concerned about people’s relationship to the world around them.

Baboon and Girl/San diego Zoo/ ©rights reserved JamieForbes/SunStormArtsPub.Co.Inc 2026

As time moves forward last year, I participated in showing my environmental ~Galactic Dust SunSet Series. ~  in San Diego at the EC Gallery opening of a Native American art exhibition. While there I went with my family to the San Diego Zoo, one of our favorite spots.  The below image ~Baboon with Girl~ I captured while observing a large male Baboon walk over to place his hand on the separating partition.  He was looking at a small girl. He waited for her response. After several seconds I leaned over and said” I think he wants you to put your hand up too.” With my suggestions she placed her hand on his.

Observe the hands. What strikes me most is that I see the Baboon’s happiness resulting in a real connection. I was touched. You know I think all creatures aren't very different. Jamie Ellin Forbes, Publisher if the FineArtMagazine bog.blogspot.com, and SunStormFineartmagazine.com  ©rights reserved JamieForbes/SunStormArtsPub.Co.Inc 2026 /https://sites.google.com/view/eco-advocacy/home

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Jamie Forbes: ~Turkey in Mating Season Full Color~ 2026 Art Environmental Fun fun fever!!!!

Jamie Ellin Forbes is an Eco-Art Photographer, based on Long Island New York. Jamie's  work features local environmental  imagery. Her process was honed while earning a MA, the process documented at https://sites.google.com/view/eco-advocacy/home 

Jamie Art images can be seen https://sunstormfineartmagazine.com/jamie-forbes-photography/

Jamie Forbes is the publisher of the Fineartmagazineblog.blogspot.com, and Sunstormforneartmagazine.com

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Art Laguna World : Ashlin McAndrew Body and Craft, Constructions as Images :

ASHLIN McANDREW Body and Craft

Ashlin McAndrew (New Jersey, 1994) began her artistic journey with a gift: a handmade doll, given to her by her babysitter. That early encounter sparked a lifelong pursuit of sewing and handcraft. When her formal studies failed to offer what she called the "lost art of handcrafting", she sought it elsewhere, building relationships with makers who could cultivate and pass on that knowledge directly. Her work centers the body as a means of engaging with the material world — a practice that becomes not only a physical expression of our humanity, but a meditative ritual through which we understand ourselves as part of nature.

In Divisible, 2025 Discover FINALIST ARTWORK - Upcoming exhibition in Arsenale Nord (Venice) The work In-Divisible (2025) was created using the fabric of old decommissioned American flags. The piece references the artist's early memory of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school on the morning of 9/11. The work addresses the role of ritual in propaganda, personal and collective memory, and veneers created versus the reality lived. Flags are taken apart and stitched back together to create the word "Indivisible," questioning the actions and false image that has been coupled with this word, while holding hope for genuine unity and repair. More info

THE QUILTING As mentioned previously, the theme of quilting connects not only to artistic representation, but to the body itself. What the artist values the most about this technique is its fundamentally human, imperfect quality. Each stitch carries will and intention — not mechanical repetition, but the deliberate presence of the person making it. There is magic and special care embedded in what is sewn, and it is precisely here that McAndrew begins her work.

“To me, art has always been, first and foremost, an act of seeing and paying attention. People often think of art as our capacity to render or create things — but to create anything meaningful, we first have to learn how to see and pay attention. To me, paying attention is the deepest act of care. ”   - A. McAndrew

THE INTERVIEW   The Body is a central element of your artistic career: it’s implicitly present in every artwork, establishing a relationship between body and materials. How does this concept integrate with your work? To me, relating to and having a dialogue with materials — and even other humans — is a dialogue my body is engaged in, rather than my intellect. I perceive our bodies to be extremely intelligent, holding ancient wisdom, with a much deeper capacity to perceive, feel, and hold nuanced and varied perspectives. So many ancient cultures have been rooted in a practice of making and craft. We can’t make things purely with our minds. [...] Full interview →

Fragments, 2025 Discover

ARTE LAGUNA WORLD The International Art Platform T. +39 347 7077251 | +39 0415937242 info@artelaguna.world #artlagunaworld#fineartmagazineblog.blogspot.com#sunstormfineartmagazine.com.# sewingartfun#artfunforever

Eco-Art and the Center for Biological Diversity Support Earth Day

We Eco-Art in support biological diversity, and Earth Day 2026, Publisher, and eco-art conservationists,  Jamie Forbes Fineartmagazineblog.blogspot.com, and Sunstormfrineartmagazine.com

No. 1,345, April 16, 2026

Trump Aims to Gut Endangered Species Act A Trump administration proposal to weaken the country’s strongest legal tool for protecting rare and vanishing species moved to White House review Friday. In a regulatory sleight of hand, the administration is trying to eliminate most habitat protections from the Endangered Species Act by striking habitat destruction from the definition of harm, which is strictly prohibited by the Act.   Of course we can’t save species from extinction if we let their homes be destroyed.   "Habitat destruction remains the leading cause of extinction and species endangerment,” said Noah Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity’s codirector of endangered species. “There's no way to protect these species without protecting the places they live."   Also moving forward last week were proposals to take away threatened species’ protections, limit designation of critical habitat, and strip safeguards from grizzly bears across the lower 48 states.   Read more at Politico or ABC News and stay tuned for what’s next.

Suits Defends Panthers From Massive Development The Center and allies just sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Army Corps of Engineers to protect endangered Florida panthers from a 10,264-acre development in crucial southwest Florida breeding habitat.   There are already likely fewer than 200 adult Florida panthers left in the wild, and dozens are killed every year as development and roads gobble up their last territory.   “Our state’s struggling panthers depend on a thriving southwest Florida population and the ability to expand northward, which are both threatened by this development,” said the Center’s Jason Totoiu. “We’re suing to stop these cats from sliding closer to extinction.”   Help us fight with a gift to the Future for the Wild Fund.

Court Blocks Off-Road Vehicles at Oceano Dunes Responding to a Center lawsuit, a federal court just ruled that the California Department of Parks and Recreation broke the law by letting off-road vehicles harm and kill imperiled snowy plovers at the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area.   Despite a long list of incidents where vehicles ran over snowy plovers, for decades state officials have kept greenlighting motorized vehicle use at Oceano Dunes without a proper permit. That has to stop, the court said.   “The court’s ruling makes it clear that off-roading in snowy plover habitat violates the Endangered Species Act,” said Center attorney Zeynep Graves.

Arizona Court Win on Cattle: Feds Broke the Law A federal court has ruled in favor of wildlife in a Center suit over Agua Fria National Monument, deciding that the Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by ignoring years of damage from illegal livestock grazing to rare desert stream habitat for imperiled fish and birds.   “I’m hopeful this will shock slumbering agencies into finally fixing the problem and working to save Gila chubs and yellow-billed cuckoos,” said the Center’s Chris Bugbee. “It’s not too late to repair our public lands and keep wildlife from sliding into extinction.”

Protect Bears and Wolves in Alaska The U.S. National Park Service has proposed a sweeping plan to strip critical wildlife protections across millions of acres of national parklands in Alaska.   The plan would remove restrictions on cruel and unethical hunting and trapping methods for species like bears, wolves, and caribou. It would allow bear baiting (using food to make bears an easy target) and let hunters use artificial light to illuminate dens and conveniently gun down bears — including mothers and cubs — when they're most vulnerable.   Watch an adorable Alaska bear family in this video on Facebook and Instagram.   And if you haven’t taken action yet, don’t worry — the deadline for public comments has been extended. Raise your voice now to protect Alaska's wildlife.

Revelator: Saving Bull Kelp Today is Bull Kelp Day, an opportunity to showcase the importance of this threatened marine species — and what people can do to help — as warming oceans and a wasting disease throw ecosystems out of whack.   Read more in The Revelator.   And if you haven’t yet, make sure you’re subscribed to The Revelator’s free weekly newsletter.

That’s Wild: The Search for the Snail Holy Grail Hawai‘i boasts an extraordinary rich heritage of land snails who live nowhere else on Earth, but more than half have been driven extinct through habitat loss and exotic species in the wake of colonization.   Researchers and conservationists are hard at work trying to captive-breed some of the most precariously endangered of the remaining snails — for eventual re-release into the wild — but a central problem is figuring out exactly what foods let the animals not only survive but thrive.   In recent years biologists have been helicoptering into high-elevation Hawaiian forests to bring back just the right leaves, with just the right kinds of microbes on them, to suit the gastropods’ fancy. But the expeditions aren’t without hazards; sometimes microbes introduced with the vegetation disrupts the balance in captivity, playing a part in fatalities. So now the scientists are even sequencing the DNA on the leaf microbes to learn more about what the snails need — and have started to grow cyanobacteria in the lab to feed them. #jamieellinforbes#eco-artavocate#thecenterforbiological diversity#fineartmagazineblog.blogspot.com#sunstormfineartmagazine.com.#eco-art fun#artfunforever,