Alarm bells
from the Latvian forests and wildlife!!!!!!!!!!

Aljezeera English has just published an essay on the state of Latvian forests, re
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am1xKGQ3YHc&feature=autofb

The horror perpetrated against Latvian forests by LVM (Latvijas Valsts Meži -- Latvian State Forests) may not be an official crime, but surely is double talk by  LVM officials and by Latvia's Prime Minister Dombrovskis. See both in Aljezeera clip.

We at "Ceļmalnieki" have the only temple dedicated to destroyed Latvian forests in Latvia. The "Saw Cross" pictured above is our copyrighted symbol, which we hope will be adopted by all organizations against wanton forest destruction. The "Saw Cross" can be seen in more abstract form at posts at the beginning of this series. Scroll down and click on "Older posts".


P.S. The January issue of the Latvian Gardeners' Club (Latvijas dārzu biedrība) magazine "Dārzā" (In the Garden) has an article and photo essay (p. 34-37) on yours truly and the Temple to Johns. The text is in Latvian.

Post 17
Full or partial entries of my blogs may be found at LatviansOnline http://latviansonline.com/forum/ + Forum Home + Open Forum – The 4th Awakening. If you copy this blog for your files, or copy to forward, or otherwise mention its content, please credit the author http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com/, http://melnaysjanis.blogspot.com/, http://the-not-voter.blogspot.com/ or http://the4thawakening.blogspot.com/


I suggest you look at the links imbedded in these blogs or at the end of the blog as an integral part of my argument.


An interesting exchange of letters and information--in Latvian--about the state of Latvia's forest here.
http://aculiecinieks.delfi.lv/news/novados/rakstiet-ja-izcirtis-mezus-mes-nomirsim-bada.d?id=34985063

The governing bodies in Latvia (state and municipal) are going whack-ko cutting down trees and asserting the rule of stupidity over sense.

The cut down trees end up as sawdust and cheap export, rather than in the creation of a furniture industry.
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Viens labs iemesls kāpēc celt sev privāto lauku templi ir fakts, ka daudzās valstīs--ievēromi tās kuras atrodās Eiropas austrumos--mēs sastopamies ar attieksmi kura mums noliedz nest atbildību (šeit vārdu 'atbildību' lietoja angļu valodas conscience nozīmē). Varbūt tāpēc Latvijā ir bieži sastopama neatbildīga attieksme (arī conscience nozīmē) par to kas te vai tur notiek. Templis Melnays Jānis šo nevīžību (arī conscience nozīmē) veicināšanu, lai no kuras vēja puses tas nenāktu, peļ un uzskata to kā nopietnu šķērsli atbildīgas cilvēces veidošanā, īpaši pašdarbības veidā.

One good reason for building your own private outdoor temple is the fact that many countries, especially those located in Eastern Europe, are against the freedom of conscience both de facto and de jure. [How can you not be de jure if you already are de facto?) At Temple "Melnays Jahnis", we see this attempt to limit the breadth of meaning implicit in the word conscience as a form of spiritual repression by corrupt social icons. We lean heavily (without denying other functions to the word) in the direction that defines conscience as an aide to humankind in a self-help fashion to develop behavior that passes as responsibile.

21 Here is a BBC documentary on Angor Wat, the largest temple in the world.

And here is a picture of one of the smallest in Braslavas pagasts, Alojas novads, Latvia. We call our temple "Melnays Jahnis" or Black John.

Black John is Green John turned black and all its limbs cut off. Black John recalls the forests of a land fast becoming deforested. Just yesterday a builder of log houses, which he exports to Norway, complained on a television program that his concern is running up against the problem of insufficient quality timber.

Like the jays and squirrels in the fall gather acorns to store them in their winter barns (whereever these may be), we, too, are gathering acorns and sowing them to grow into mighty (we hope) oaks.

We encourage you or your acquaintances to consider building your own private outdoor temple. Why? Because we all hold something sacred and nature best represents the sense of the sacred in our time.

When enough people build their own outdoor temples with the intent to resacralize the forest, we will have sown a seed that has a future as certain as nature is green.

20 I recently came across (browsing the web) Angela Palmer’s exhibit of tree roots at Trafalgar Square, London. The exhibit was installed on November 2009.


I recommend for my readers to read Ms Palmer’s statement to learn of the artist’s activities. Currently the show is being exhibited on the lawn of Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum in central Oxford and will be shown there until July 31, 2011.

While Angela Palmer calls her exhibit a “Ghost Tree Exhibition” and I dedicate my “Temple to Johns” to axed forests, I believe that our concerns are the same.

As irony would have it, even as I posted my two previous blogs, a small forest next to my property was torn down by the owner of the property abuts mine. I say “torn”, because modern technology can quite manage without the chain saw handled by human hands. While a saw cuts the stump, the operation actually resembles Jack the Ripper at his worst. Of course, I am speaking from the point of view of one who believes the forests to be holy places even from a quite practical point of view. Are the floods in Pakistan not the result of a lack of forests to absorb the rains?

Incidentally, I believe that Ms. Palmer’s exhibit is in its own fashion a temple. If you live in England, it might be worth visiting it and writing a letter to this blog about your impression.

19 As per a previous post, on August 13, the Temple to Melnays Jānis held a fundraising dance with the musical group "Kantoris 04" performing. The temple was visited by about one hundred people, seventy-eight of them paying guests. The next public get-together is being planned for about the middle of September.

Just a day before the dance, we finished painting the temple floor. Here are some pictures of it. If you come visiting, we do not for fear of damaging the design encourage anyone stepping on to the floor. However, we will provide a carpets to lead you up the temple steps for a closer look.

Some visitors have asked whether the temple floor will survive the harsh conditions of the winter. We do not know that it will, because in very cold weather, the cold will penetrate far below the surface layers and cause cracking. Like the Tibetan monks do with their sandpainting, we will fix or redo what needs fixing and redoing.

18  Temple MELNAYS JĀNIS. August 14.

In its Saturday, August 14th issue, the Latvian newspaper "Diena" [suspect for some time to be the voice of the neo-capitalist right wing (Šķēle, Šlesers, Ulmanis, et al)], published a "questionnaire” under the heading "Politics with a tune for religion” (Politika ar reliģisku pieskaņu). All six men interviewed, politicians of as many political parties, came out for politics in religion and religion in politics. The most cited reason for collaboration is that collaboration of church with state has a long tradition. The first politicians, one Cilevičs, describes this “tradition” as one where one “should not build a fence” [between the state and religion]. The last helped the newspaper “Diena” to identify itself with the Bible. Said Šmits: “We will encourage the teaching of the Bible until High School.” (Rosināsim obligātu Bībeles mācību līdz pat vidusskolai). The politicians are:

Boriss Cilevičs (SC)
Dzintars Rasnačs (VL-TB/LNNK)
Juris Sokolovskis (LPCTVL)
Aleksejs Loskutovs (V)
Staņislavs Šķesteris (ZZS)
Jānis Šmits (PPL)
Not least among the above named is the editorial board of "Diena" standing up for the Bible and not separating politics from religion.

The tyranny of reactionary religious thought (I describe it as the projection of an attitude that claims for itself to be „I am my own state and social service and no law against it however I understand it”) highlighted by its collaboration with a corrupt state has troubled Latvia with its exclusionarism for a very long time. This once beautiful countryside, where once the endearing word ruled everyday speech of the people who lived there, has become a mind-oppressive closed-end bottom of the spiritual barrel. The men listed above are not the only ones for keeping Latvians there. The Latvian Prezident Zatlers, too, is a not so hidden Christian mole in government. Who speaks for the “religious” who do not identify themselves with the neo-Christian movement that arch-Christianity has been forced to become?

The Temple Melnays Janis invites the reader to build more private temples to challenge the prejudiced state of their state. It is time to shake off the iconoclasts that would prevent nature from becoming our garden again.

17 A Hindu temple in London  costing 16 million British pounds is a long way from our humble attempt here in Latvia to build a private temple. However, looking at the BBC post, I am reminded that the Hindu Ganesh (the God with the elephant trunk) is a cognate of the name John and the Latvian “Jahnis”. As I have pointed out in other posts, the consonant G may slip slide and become a J (as in John) or Y (as in Janis). While the Latvians have for the most part forgotten about Janis as one of the godheads of their ancestors, reading about Ganesh may bring back some long forgotten associations. Oh, yes, our Jānis--as you can see--has four trunks.

We are presently planning an evening of dance with the well known "shlager" band known as Kantoris 04. The event will take place on August 13th at 21:00. Tickets Ls 2.50. The event will take place at "Melnays Jānis", the only temple in Latvia dedicated to Jānis (the Latvian version of Ganesh).