At the request of a long time friend of The Zoo Fence, I have reinstalled an original second page of Editor’s Desktop “just for curiousity’s sake.” It dates back to 1998. I am not adding it to the “Go directly to” list on TZF’s index page, but I will leave this entry at the top of this page indefinitely, so anyone who comes here will learn of it. Scanning it quickly, I notice that, over the years, I have moved bits of it here and there on TZF. Also, some of the links on it are to TZF pages that no longer exist, and so generate the Oops! page. Just ignore those. Anyway, here it is.
August 21, 2022
As some regular visitors to TZF have observed, I am making
increasingly fewer “Additions, Deletions, and Alterations” to The Zoo Fence. (In
fact, I have removed that feature from TZF altogether.) One of the reasons for this, of
course, is
age. I am eighty-plus, and not getting any younger. I have been working on The Zoo Fence almost
daily, certainly weekly, since 1996, the year of the first issue. In
those days, TZF was published in hard copy, “printed” (actually, copied on a
Xerox or Xerox-like copier)
at a shop in Hancock, Maine. That was a couple of decades ago. Since then, Nancy and I have said pretty
much all we know how to say, by which I mean, as all seekers will undoubtedly understand,
there have been and there continue to be, ideas, concepts, experiences, we are unable
to put into words. All the
rest is here.
One of the most affected features is “Here’s A Thought”
which was first suggested by a regular visitor in the early days of TZF’s presence on
the web … probably while it was on a server at America OnLine or GeoCities. As I recall, he
suggested we include a feature offering inspired or, at least, inspiring, quotations;
he thought it should be changed daily. I liked the idea, but settled on changing it
weekly … and it has
been. But no more. There was a lot of good stuff there over the years, and so I am
compiling as many of the quotations as I have records of, and
putting them together on the website as a simple list. The first “edition” of that
effort is posted as hat_archive.html.
I will add to the list from time to time until I have included there as much as I can recover.
January 14, 2020 & May 11, 2021
I have restored TZF's front page to its original design. By doing
so, I do not mean to suggest that the world – the political world – has returned to
normal; far from it. But it seems, or at least I am hopeful, that the “division of
powers” designed into the US Constitution by our brilliant Founding Fathers are serving their
purpose in keeping us and the Republic safe from the worst instincts of those who seem intent on
proving themselves to be the worst of us notwithstanding the opportunity they have to prove
themselves better than that.
May 6, 2017
To those of you who have
wondered about TZF’s revised index page (home page) in the days since the inauguration of
Donald John Trump to the Presidency of the United States, I offer this explanation.
Over the years, Nancy and I have met with a few true Gurus (and read
many more), and almost without exception, they insist on “No politics!” Let’s
face it, politics is a divisive, perhaps the most divisive, subject, and so clearly it is to be
avoided by spiritual seekers who are trying to rid themselves of the separative perspective
“I am me, and not you” and its countless entangling implications which define and inform
what we take to be our selves. So, from the outset of TZF, the rule has been “No
politics!”
So why now the revised index page that clearly is political in
content and intent? To that question the Teacher would respond “Because, Stefan, you're an
idiot; well meaning, perhaps, but nonetheless an idiot,” and I could not deny it. My (measly)
excuse is “I’m human.” For many in the United States, including me, and for many
in the world (please click
here), the election of Donald Trump is disturbing at least, terrifying at worst. And so I
succumbed to my (worst) instincts, and decided to have TZF take some minimal note of it.
But, perhaps in hope of fooling the Teacher (yeah, right!), I have limited display of the
new page to a few seconds.
Why the phrase “We The People”? At the Daily Beast’s
website, I read an article calling for a name for the movement that Trump’s
election has generated. The article suggests several but acknowledges that none has the necessary
oomph. After reading the article, it occurred to me that a good name would be “We The
People!” It is simple, inclusive, to the point, quintessentially American, and, for me
at least, it’s got oomph.
February 4, 2017
This month — in the wake of
November’s election — I have revisited the blog I started in 2004. Like a lot of other
Americans (and others!), I am hoping that this man will, once the dust has settled, succumb to the
better angels of his nature. But, just in case, heeding the lesson of Niemöller’s experience, I will use the blog to speak
from time to time, if only to get stuff off my chest. (All the while, of course, my own better
angels are reminding me of the teachiing of Nisargadatta, among others: Find out who you are in
Truth, and then see if this issue signifies.)
The blog’s URL is http://theophyle.blogspot.com.
The server and format are provided by Google. I am not as fond of the
design and function of the
feature now as I was twelve (!) years ago when I signed up for it, but for now it is
fine.
December 15, 2016
A long time ago, we had a DVD video about
J. Krishnamurti, his life and his teachings. At one point in
the film, the narrator relates the story of a visit to K, as he was known, by an Indian holy man or
sadhu. Following a discussion between the two, the fellow departed, apparently satisfied. But, not
long after, the man returned, in agitation and distress, his earlier composure gone. He expressed
his discomfort at length and in detail.
When he was done, K responded gently, softly, simply,
“See what your mind is doing
to you.”
The man’s composure returned, his agitation and
distress gone.
He thanked K, saying he would not need to bother him
again: what he had just heard was enough, and would serve him thenceforth.
Nancy and I have never forgotten that story. Over the years, we have
repeated K’s instruction to ourselves, to one another, and to others.
See what your mind is doing to you. It’s
one of the half dozen or so most powerful expressions of lively and living spiritual teaching I have
come across.
November 27, 2016
After the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, there
appeared safety pins on shirts and blouses and elsewhere indicating support for and solidarity with
those who felt
marginalized and threatened by the vote, specifically, but not only, various immigrant
groups. I do not know where the safety pin image evolved in this context, but I suppose it is
intended to indicate to any who see it, “You are safe here!”.
Over the last couple of days, the safety pin image has been appearing in the
United States, again on clothing but also throughout social media, as an
indication to all those who feel threatened by the election of Donald Trump — his
narcissistic personality, his disrespect for
diversity, his feral regard towards women, and so much more. Specifically, I suppose those most
fearful are African Americans, Hispanics,
Muslims, LGBT, and, again, women, but also probably recent immigrants generally. We should all
include ourselves among those numbers,
for a threat to any one of them is a threat to every one of us. Indeed, on various reliable
newspapers' websites, I have seen reports of
threats being made by Trump supporters against members of those groups and others, threats made
in the name of Donald Trump.
For whatever it may be worth, I have written a couple of people who I expect
might have access to the Trump world, asking them to urge Donald Trump himself to speak out
forcefully against those kinds of activities and to denounce their perpetrators. Hopefully, others
are doing the same. (Update November 24: As far as I know, Donald Trump has not yet spoken out with
force and conviction about the violence against diversity which he encouraged as a candidate and
which continues in his name here and there across the nation, particularly in schools against
children. When asked about this by Lesley
Stahl during an interview on the CBS television program 60 Minutes, Donald Trump did take a few seconds to
turn to the camera, and mutter “Stop it”.)

I am grateful to Shutterstock for the royalty free images of safety pins that
I have posted here and on a few other pages of TZF.
November 12, 2016
Update: As I consider, in the context of the preceding paragraphs,
the implications of America celebrating its Thanksgiving Day just a few days after the election, I
am unavoidably reminded of Martin Niemöller’s immortal lines repeated here.
November 24, 2016
In a vivid dream one night
three weeks ago, I received a postcard urging me to develop a mobile version of The Zoo Fence
website for visitors
using smartphones and other mobile devices instead of desktop or laptop
computers, which is, of course, what the website has been designed for. The dream was sufficiently
“real” to convince me to act, and so, over the last three weeks, I have translated a
chunk of the website’s material for use by mobile devices. To date, there are selections from
Consider This!, Letters, The Gazebo, A Sacred Riddle, Stories, and Definitions, with more to come.
To be sure, it is, and likely will remain, an abbreviated version of The Zoo Fence, for I doubt that
the entire TZF website will ever be, ever could be (at least by me), made mobile-accessible.
I have tested the readied pages on an Android smartphone and on an
iPod, and they all open properly, although the two operating systems generate slightly different
displays. The mobile-intended pages can also, of course, be opened by a laptop or desktop computer,
but on those devices, the pages will not look “right”.
For those who are interested, the URL of the home page of the mobile
version of The Zoo Fence is https://www.zoofence.com/mobile or https://www.zoofence.com/mobile
June 21, 2015
We have received a
promotional e-mail message from the publisher of Conversations with God by Neale Donald
Walsch, announcing the author’s new title, God’s Message to the World:
You’ve Got Me All Wrong.
In the publisher’s words, this “could be one of the most
important books ever published”.
Sample chapters are available free-to-read on the internet at www.godsmessagetotheworld.info/.
November 10, 2014
Our
friend, Steven Callahan, has written us that his book “Capsized”
is now in a second printing. In Steve’s words,
“‘Capsized’ chronicles four men’s 119-day drift aboard a
flipped, half-flooded boat, spending most of their time
crammed into the space of a double bed with 20” of
headroom. To me, the book is many things – a story of
redemption and discovery of what is important in life,
the discovery of love; a tale of true friendship; and a
yarn with a surprising amount of humor. It chronicles
the longest survival voyage in cold waters of which I am
aware. It demonstrates the ultimate safety of
multihulled boats. At base, it focuses on how even very
different people must learn to rely upon and support one
another to survive and create a functional society,
despite their weaknesses. It reveals how everyone
possesses strengths and desirable qualities, but also
how even strengths can become liabilities at times while
at the same time, people’s weaknesses can emerge as
strengths or things we actually need.”
Steven is perhaps most known to the
public for his best-selling book Adrift, which chronicles his own
seventy-six day ordeal at sea after losing his boat in a
storm. Since then, he has been an active writer,
speaker, designer, and adviser on nautical matters. Most
recently, Steven worked with noted director Ang Lee in
the production of the Oscar-winning film, Life
of Pi.
We are delighted by this good news
about the book “Capsized”. In our view, it is an
excellent story, highly readable, and thoroughly suited
for film. We urge those who are capable of making it
happen, to do so. Although Nancy and I rarely make it to
movie theaters, we enjoy watching movies on DVD, and we
look forward to having “Capsized” on our television
screen soon! In the meantime, we wish Steven and his
wife, TZF’s long-time friend Kathy Massimini (co-author
of “Talking
with Children about Loss”), continued success and
joy in this venture and in all their work, inner and
outer.
For more about Steven Callahan,
personally and professionally, please visit his website
“Steven Callahan and Associates” at http://www.stevencallahan.net
November 16, 2013
Today, I
locked TZF’s Open Forum. As we have aged, it
seems to me the time has come to make a few changes.
Shutting down Open Forum is one of those. However, there
is a lot of good stuff there, some of which may be of
interest to future TZF visitors. So, rather than remove
the forum, I have decided simply to lock it down; that
is, convert it to “read only” mode.
June 27, 2010
In the past
few weeks, two long-time, good friends of The Zoo Fence
have died. One is the writer of the article Fully Involved,
and the other is author of Christ:
Yes, Religion: No, as well as a frequent
contributor to TZF’s Open
Forum where he was known by the username W4TVQ,
and to TZF’s Open
Space — not to mention his contributions at other
spiritual and theological forums across the internet.
In the words of another equally good
friend of The Zoo Fence, their time has come, ours is
coming.
TZF, and we personally, will miss
both of these good friends. We wish them wisdom,
strength, endurance, enthusiasm, and love, endless love,
as they continue their onward journeys.
June 17, 2010
The shift
of The Zoo Fence from one server to another at our
webhost OLM.net seems to be complete.
The shift was necessary because the
group that provides the software for TZF’s Open
Forum (phpBB.com) announced that future
updates of their software would require a version of PHP
which was not available on the server where TZF had
been. That server had a PlusMail platform, which I had
gotten quite used to over the years. Anyway, that is why
we had to move to a different server. The new server has
a cPanel platform, which I am now learning to use. So
far, I like it.
While transferring Open Forum’s
files between the two servers, I encountered a wrinkle
generated by the fact that the servers had different
versions of MySQL, the software which manages the
board’s database. It got a little complicated (by which
I mean, over my head), but eventually, with the help of
a couple of internet support forums, I deciphered the
problem, found a solution, and it worked! However, in
that process, some Open Forum passwords were jumbled.
So, if you find you are unable to log into Open Forum,
write me, and I will fix it.
Thank you for your patience
June 2, 2010
During
the next ten days or so, I will be moving all the files
that comprise The Zoo Fence website from one server to
another at our host OLM.net. To some extent, this
activity will be in the background, invisible to the
website’s visitors. But at some point, there will be a
period during which TZF, including Open Forum, will be
inaccessible. Browsers directed to TZF will yield an
error message like “website not found”. It will be so
only for a short time. I thank you all for your
understanding and patience.
May 12, 2010
I am done.
I have come to the end of The Zoo Fence. Since January
1996, when The Zoo Fence was first published in its
original hard-copy form, I — and Nancy too (she is
sometimes known on TZF as Anna) — have put into this
website in one form or another everything I know about
the spiritual process. Whatever I know, whatever I have
to share, I have freely shared here.
I know that The Zoo Fence has been
useful to some, for they have told me so. I am grateful
for that. In the hope that it will continue to be of use
to some others, The Zoo Fence will remain in place more
or less indefinitely.
I will continue to post new items to Here’s
A Thought and
probably the Gazebo,
and there are Theophyle cartoons in my head which I want to
draw and eventually
post. In addition, there are a couple of items in train
which I will post in the next days or weeks. And there
may be additional contributions from others to Open Space, which I will
post. But that is likely to be the extent of it.
TZF’s Open Forum will remain in place, and
I will participate there
irregularly from time to time as I am doing now.
However, The Sand Box feature will no longer enjoy the
protected status it has had. That is, The Sand Box will
be as open to view as is everything else on Open Forum,
indeed as is everything else on The Zoo Fence.
Therefore, any Open Forum members who have contributed
material to The Sand Box which they would prefer not be
publicly viewable, should log in and delete those
entries.
December 29, 2009
As
frequent visitors to The Zoo Fence are aware, the page Selections, Sources & References provides source
information for the many selections and
quotations and other stuff that appear scattered here
and there throughout the website. Originally, I had
included on that page, also known as que.html,
source information for prayers that appear in The Quiet Room, but because the
source page has now grown so large (as the website
itself has grown), I have moved the source information
for The Quiet Room material to a separate source page,
called quepray.html. This
event will be of interest only to those who, like me,
have an interest in html-stuff.
December 6, 2009
This
week's selection at TZF’s Here’s
A Thought is from Bart
Ehrman’s Lost Christianities, which I have
been reading along with his Misquoting
Jesus (Issa); both books are about the New Testament and
particularly the Gospels. Their focus is not theology as
such, but the evolution of early Christian and
pre-Christian sects, the conflicts and controversies
among and between them, and how that influenced the
development of New Testament canon: who wrote the books,
how many books were there to start with, why were some
books included and others rejected, and so on, as well
as detailed consideration of the additions, deletions,
alterations, and errors in the texts, some significant,
some minor, some intentional, some accidental.
These are scholarly books in the
sense that Ehrman is a scholar, and his work is well
researched with lots of end notes. But they are an easy
read, and offer a fascinating look
into the evolution of Christian scripture. I
enthusiastically recommend them to all seekers.
As expected, other books have been
written attacking Ehrman’s work and in “defense” of the
New Testament. I have not read them, but I have read
reviews of them, from which I gather that they are
essentially apologetic (in the theological sense of the
word, meaning that instead of addressing Ehrman’s
points, they pretty much simply reassure the faithful
that there is nothing to worry about).
For my part, I do not doubt for a
moment that the canon we have today has gone through
numerous manipulations along its way to us. Even among
current spiritual groups whose teachers or gurus are
still alive, Anna and I have seen manipulation of the
leader’s and the group’s history, in one case even
rewriting a living teacher’s autobiography to remove
mention of events in his life which now seem
inappropriate to a man of his presumed stature.
For me, none of Ehrman’s conclusions
detracts from the power of the Gospels. On the contrary,
Ehrman’s books have made the Gospels more, not less,
meaningful. In my mind now, they fit far more
comfortably and sensibly with the scriptures of the
world’s other great spiritual traditions.
I had hoped to post at TZF’s Ampers&nd a
lengthy excerpt from Ehrman’s “Lost Christianities”.
Unfortunately, the publisher denied me copyright
permission to do so.
July 5, 2009
Today is
Memorial Day in the United States. It is a day intended
to celebrate those who are serving and who have served
in the nation’s armed forces, particularly those who
have lost their lives in that service. This year I am
moved to include TZF in that celebration by changing the
website’s home page to the Brother Theophyle cartoon on
war. It will be so for only today. Those of you who use
the regular index.html page as your portal to TZF need
make no changes. Tomorrow we will be back to normal.
May 25, 2009
This morning, I added to TZF’s My Space feature a
link to LibForAll Foundation. I like the
sounds of it a lot, and I recommend a visit. I learned
of the website by reading Nicholas Kristof’s column in
the New York Times about a recent conference at Notre Dame
University described as “an international conference …
on the latest scholarship about the Qur’an”. It is a
good column, and an interesting conference.
April 23, 2009
I am delighted to report that
we have received and granted a request from a Vietnamese
student at a university in Korea for copyright
permission to translate The Cranberry Tales into
Vietnamese for posting on his blog. From his messages to
us, he seems an enthusiastic fellow who is up to the
considerable challenge he has undertaken for himself. I
will report his progress here as we learn of it, and
again when the task is completed. In the meantime, we
wish him well in his effort to teach the Vietnamese
language to Pilikia, Cantachiaro, Tancredi, and their
friends!
March 22, 2009
This morning, I restored TZF’s
regular home page. Barack Obama is now in office, doing
his thing, hopefully restoring some balance to this
country (and the world), and TZF can return to normal,
whatever precisely that is. We continue to wish him
well. The special home page I posted last month (about
which, see the item immediately below this) is still at
the site, but the only link to it is this one.
February 1 , 2009
From the beginning, I have purposely kept politics out of
The Zoo Fence. The Google
blog is the closest I have come to commenting
publicly about politics, and even there I have written
little and rarely. I ran a special home page after the
events of September 11, 2001, because they seemed to me
to call for notice. That page remained in place for
about a month. Likewise, the inauguration of Barack
Obama as President of the United States is so immense an
event from almost every imaginable angle and perspective
that it demands attention. Accordingly, today I posted a
special home page. It will remain in place for a while,
by which I mean I don’t know just now how long I will
leave it up. Once opened, the page displays for a few
seconds, and then jumps to TZF’s familiar home page (which is
temporarily renamed indexa.html).This automatic jump
works in most browsers, but not all; so I’ve included a
clickable link, too.
I just wanted to explain what and
why I’m up to — particularly for our long-time, frequent
visitors.
January 18, 2009
As some of you will have
noticed, The Zoo Fence website (zoofence.com and
zoofence.com), including TZF’s Open Forum (and our
email), was down and inaccessible much of yesterday and
today. Our domain host, OLM, experienced technical
problems which took longer than expected to resolve. I
regret the inconvenience, and thank you for your
patience. Unfortunately, computers, like lots of other
stuff, do these kinds of things from time to time.
In the process of their work, the
OLM technicians needed to restore TZF to their server
using their backup files, which were made a couple of
days ago. As it happens, during that interim, I had
uploaded some new or revised files which were not
reflected in OLM’s backup package. Fortunately, I keep
copies of all TZF files, and so today I have been able
to replace those few files (notably the new Theophyle cartoon) which OLM
inadvertently lost.
Now, the affirmation “I keep copies
of all TZF files” in the preceding paragraph does not
include Open Forum material. What that means is that if
any new Open Forum members signed on, or if any existing
members worked on their profile (like, changed their
password), or if anyone made any new posts in the last
day or so, that information may have been lost, and, if
so, will need to be redone.
I guess this event is just one more
example of why God created the
eraser!
Other than this cyber wrinkle, we
are looking forward to, and we expect, an exciting and
uplifting new year ahead, and we wish the very same for
all our friends and visitors.
January 4, 2009
There are some extraordinary
photographs of the recent volcanic eruption in Chile at http://
megagalerias.terra.cl/galerias/index.cfm?id_galeria=30734!
The first ten or so, of the accompanying electrical
storm, are breathtaking.
May 8, 2008
As frequent TZFers know, for
some years TZF’s bookstore
pages have been “in association with Amazon.com”,
meaning that we are able to sell books, videos, and
other stuff through Amazon.com directly on The Zoo
Fence, and Amazon pays us a small percentage for each
sale so transacted … for which we are grateful,
particularly to those TZFers who regularly make the
extra effort to purchase from Amazon through TZF! Now,
Amazon has initiated a new feature, called “aStore”
(presumably for “Amazon Store”, a play on eStore?),
which seems to me to be essentially the same service
writ large. All the same, I have installed the page, and
we’ll see how it plays. To jump directly to this new
feautre, please click here.
April 30, 2008
The folks at phpBB.com who provide
the software that drives TZF’s Open
Forum have issued an update to it which I
installed yesterday and this morning. Happily, it went
without incident. The instructions that accompany their
update and upgrade packages are normally clear and easy
to follow. However, for me at least, the process is a
little scary because the scripting language of the
software is PHP,
about which I am not as fluent as I am in straight HTML,
for example. It can get particulalry iffy where I need
to insert or reinsert my own tweaks to their scripts,
which their updates sometimes undo, like the TZF logo
(the kestrel & “Open Forum”) on each page. Like the
rest of life, it is a learning process! As the kids say,
we should be good to go now, but please let me know if
you encounter any unexpected difficulties or obstacles
at Open Forum.Thanks.
April 11, 2008
At the
author’s request, I have re-posted Fully Involved at TZF’s Integral Health after having
removed it about a year ago, also at her request. The
author is a long-time friend of The Zoo Fence. The piece
is the story of her son’s leukemia, and how she and her
husband dealt with the emotional, physical, and
insitutional rigors associated with the disease. Thus,
it is a mother’s story, and compelling as such, but it
is all the more so because she happens to be a
Registered Nurse (RN), and therefore brings to the
telling all the knowledge and experience which that
profession offers.
March 1, 2008
This
morning, I posted a new submission to TZF’s Open Space. It is an article
entitled The Awakening, and
is apparently also the first chapter of a book by the
author. I do not know any more about the author or the
experience reported in the article than appears on that
page. However, I can say that it is a beautiful story
nicely told. I am glad to have it on TZF.
February 22, 2008
The folks at phpBB.com have issued a new version of the software
that drives
TZF’s Open Forum. I am in the process of
installing it now. I expect that it will be up and ready
to go tomorrow or the next day. I will post updates
here. Thanks for your patience.
December 18, 2007
Update December 19 morning: The new
software is installed and, on first glance, it seems to
be working fine. Accordingly, I expect to re-open the
forum Thursday (tomorrow) or Friday.
Update December 19 evening: The new
version of phpBB software appears to be performing
correctly. It looks different, and it has some new
features, but it seems okay, so I am opening it. All the
usernames and threads appear to have transferred
successfully. However, if you have any trouble logging
in, or anything that does not seem to work properly,
please let me know.
Also, please note that the internet
address (URL) has changed. It is now https://www.zoofence.com/openforum
Today I have added a link at
TZF’s home page to a blog I started some time ago.
Originally, I chose not to link
it to The Zoo Fence because the focus of TZF from the
beginning has intentionally been “spiritual” – that is,
matters related to the spiritual quest, path, and growth
process – and the blog, except for a couple of items –
is not about that; it is more about “the world”. But all
the while, I have been fully aware that one cannot
successfully separate the two, as indeed is the
underlying premise of what we call The Simple Way. So, today I
have overruled my earlier decision, and linked the two
together in fact as they always have been in substance.
November 24, 2006
As regular
visitors to TZF have observed, Open Forum has been
inaccessible for several months. The reason, as a few
have guessed, has been the nearly epidemic increase in
spammers who “visit” the forum with no intention other
than to leave behind links to advertising sites and
various other unpleasant websites, or simply to use up
server space for no reason other than to complicate the
lives of others. It seems pretty clear that TZF
generally nor Open Forum itself is being specifically
targeted. Rather, these rascals write computer programs
which then search the internet for any forums using phpBB
software (as we do), and then there leave behind
their footprints … or worse. Mostly, it is just a
nuisance, but it got to be a sufficiently serious
nuisance (a couple of days, there were hundreds of such
“visits”), that I decided to turn off the forum for a
while. Eventually, I will turn it back on, but I have
not yet decided just when.
September 21, 2006
The Zoo Fence, including Open
Forum, will probably be inaccessible this coming Friday,
September 5, from about midnight to about four in the
morning on Saturday, September 6, while OLM, our
domain service provider, performs maintenance on their
equipment. We apologize to TZF visitors who may be
inconvenienced by this interruption.
August 29, 2005
A few days ago, we received a
message from an artist named Mindy Sommers
introducing us to her work. This morning, I posted one
of her pieces, titled “Forgiveness” – which is part of a
deck of tarot-like cards she created – to TZF’s page “Forgive You, Forgive Me” at
https://www.zoofence.com/consdr16.html.
To see the work, scroll past the article, toward the
bottom of the page. Once you have enjoyed that piece, I
urge you to visit the artist’s website,
where you will find one of the most beautiful assortment
of colors I have ever seen on the internet. My
compliments to the artist who mixed them, but equally to
whoever created the graphics from her artwork and
designed the website itself.
July 27, 2005
The website originally sent to us by this artist seems no longer to exist. Here is another featuring her and her work
that I found today.
May 29, 2014
For years, I posted on TZF’s Technical Stuff page reports of virus and
other alerts that we received
from Symantec or McAfee, or that I came across
elsewhere. I stopped doing that because there are just
too many of them, and most people seem now to have
anti-virus software installed, and, perhaps most
importantly, Symantec offers a free alert service that
updates itself automatically, which I have installed on
the Technical Stuff page. To see it, please click here.
I will continue to use that page to alert or inform
TZFers of other tech stuff that may be of special
interest.
June 13, 2005
On Monday, May 30, from about
12:00 AM to about 5:00 AM Central Daylight Time which is
5:00 AM to 10:00 AM Coordinated Universal Time (also
called Universal Coordinated Time, Universal Time, and
Greenwhich Mean Time), all of the features on The Zoo
Fence website, including Open Forum, will be
inaccessible while our hosting service performs
maintenance on their servers and related equipment. We
regret this inconvenience, and thank you for your
understanding and patience.
May 28, 2005
Today, I instituted a new
feature on The Zoo Fence called “Miscellanea”
to which I moved three items of mine that had been at
TZF’s Open Space. They
never really belonged there, because Open Space is
specifically intended for the work or contributions of
TZF’s visitors. The problem was, I didn’t know where
else to put them, so that’s where they ended up. Now
they have a place. Miscellanea,
as the name is intended to suggest, is where I’ll put
anything that doesn’t seem to fit exactly anywhere else
on TZF.
December 5, 2004
Today, we altered TZF’s
sub-title from “A Commentary on The Spiritual Life” to
“A Commentary on Life & Living”. The former still
appears on some of the site’s graphics, and will do so
until I get around to effecting all the changes; but at
TZF’s two home pages (index and index3), where visitors are
first introduced to us, the new sub-title is in place.
We took this action because the distinction “spiritual”
in the expression “a spiritual life” no longer seems to
us to be appropriate. That is, the phrase “a spiritual
life” suggests that there is such a thing as a life that
is not spiritual, a non-spiritual life, and increasingly
that does not make sense. As we explain at The Simple Way, if God is
Infinite, then the entirety is Godly … or spiritual. And
if that’s the case, then “a spiritual life” is a
redundancy. At the same time, I moved the lines “Silence
your thoughts …” from index.html to consdr13.html, where
is The Simple Way (scroll
down the page, just below the painting of the lion). For
now, it seems more appropriate there.
November 27, 2004
Update, six months or so later: I have undone that
change. I am unable to explain precisely why, except
that the earlier way seems to me to ring better. Maybe
it has something to do with feng
shui!
I have revised TZF’s Definitions pages. The new
set of pages is arranged alphabetically, so that the first page contains words
that begin with the letters A, B, or C, the second page has words that
begin with the letters D, E, or F, and so on. The definitions index page remains
the same, except instead of a single (very long) column
of words, there are now two (fairly long) columns. Those
of you who are familiar with HTML will understand that
this process required editing a LOT of hyperlinks across
the entire website. I am (reasonably) confident I got
them all, and that wherever a word on the site is
hyperlinked to its definition on the definitions pages,
the link works.
July 18, 2004
Lately,
we have been receiving so much spam, sometimes as many
as fifty spam messages a day, that I have reluctantly
decided to take some action that may stem the tide. It
is my understanding that spammers send robots across the
internet harvesting anything they find that has the
symbol @ in it, which they take to be an email address
and then send spam messages to it. The obvious solution
is to remove our email address from the site. However, I
do not want to do that because many visitors seem to
enjoy writing us, and we certainly enjoy hearing from
you. Therefore, today I am trying an alternative, which
I hope will help. Wherever it appears on this site, I
have altered our email address to a format which I hope
the robots will not be able to use, as in the entry
immediately above this one. I know that this change will
inconvenience (and undoubtedly confuse) some TZF
visitors, and I apologize for that; but I hope you will
understand the need for it.
May 18, 2004
A
visitor to TZF has just published a new book about
spirituality and celibacy (about which please see here) in which she
has reproduced our own article, Do
We Have To Give Up Sex?. Curiously (or perhaps
not), that article has drawn as much attention as
anything else on TZF (among the other most remarked upon
items are The Quiet Room, Anna’s Page, the article about forgiveness, Bo Lozoff’s piece
at Ampers&nd, and our
definitions pages, where particularly namaste, ahimsa, religion, and seeker). Frequent
visitors may remember that a little over a year ago, the
TAT Forum, which is dedicated to the teaching of Richard Rose, reproduced the
same article on their site, at http://www.tatfoundation.org/
forum2003-01.htm (towards the bottom of that page).
April 20, 2004
This
morning, I inadvertently deleted an incoming email
message sent to our link exchange address suggesting a
link exchange. The message started out by referring to
TZF as a “content rich site” (for which observation we
are very grateful!). I apologize to whoever sent that
message, and if you are reading this item, please resend
the message. This is the second or third time that we
know of when we have inadvertently deleted “real”
messages. Clearly, the spam/scam/virus/worm epidemic has
made us counterproductively cautious. We are going to
have to do some re-thinking.
September 9, 2003
Today, we were able to recover the deleted message. So,
problem solved.
September 20, 2003
Today, at index.html I replaced “The very
One” with “Your very Self”. For those interested, the
history here is: When those seven lines first came to
me, many years ago, the sixth line was “Your very Self”.
Then, when we added the septet to the front door of The
Zoo Fence, the general consensus here was that we should
replace that line with “The very One” which seemed to us
more likely to be compatible with the many paths and
various traditions TZF visitors travel. Now, we are
moved to restore the
original, and so I have done so. I hope that’s okay with
everyone here!
May 10, 2003
David Wertman
has written us about a new CD of spiritually uplifting
music that he has published. It is called “May The
Spirit Be With You”. On his site at http://www.songsofpeace.homestead.com
,
there is a link to several song clips which we enjoyed,
and I am sure others will too.
March 15, 2003
Anna’s Page has been restored. I
apologize for any inconvenience its
absence may have caused, and I thank you for your
patience.
March 10, 2003
I am working
on Anna’s Page, and so for
the next few days her stuff will not be accessible. I
apologize for the inconvenience.
February 12, 2003
Recently,
we received a message from a TZF visitor who has set up
a site to collect stories and reports of miracles and
other nice news. It’s a happy venture, and we wish it
well. The URL is http://www.tobeablessing.com.
January 9, 2003
I have
decided to close down TZF’s Open Forum. There are
numerous serious, mature “spiritual” forums on the
internet, more nearly every day, including many that are
dedicated to some of the specific topics that have been
addressed on Open Forum. Thus, it seems to me that our
forum does not fill a real need. To help bridge whatever
gap this decision may create for other TZFers, I have
added a “Groups & Forums” category to TZF’s Links page where I will list
some that come to our attention. The Zoo Fence itself
will remain unchanged. I thank all of you who have
participated at Open Forum, and, as always, wish you
bountiful success and joy along your own continuing
inner journey.
October 3, 2002
This item just goes on and on … I originally posted the
second paragraph below (which
begins “The story continues” – if you have not yet read
it, you may wish to do so before continuing) on August
20. Now, October 4, I have received a message from TZF’s
cherished friend, Wayne Manning of Unity Auburn,
who stumbled across the same attribution error way back
in 1995. He writes me that someone had given a colleague
of his “a framed copy of the quote, attributed to
Mandela. It was taken from the very reputable and
usually reliable UTNE magazine. Still, it just didn’t
ring quite true, so I
did an exhaustive search on his inaugural speeches
(there were four, as I recall, in different cities, with
no two exactly alike) and the quote appeared in none of
them. We then contacted UTNE who, as I remember, printed
a small retraction on page umpty-ump in a subsequent
edition. Marianne has since made numerous public
statements owning the
quote, in print and verbally, but the ‘folk myth’
continues”.
The
story continues … On October 28, 2000, I posted to TZF’s
“Here’s A Thought” a few lines that I came
across on a website dedicated to Nelson Mandela. There,
they had been cited as being from his 1994 inaugural
speech, and so I attributed them
accordingly. Then, in June, 2001, a TZF visitor wrote to
inform us that although the lines in question were
spoken by Mandela, they originally appeared in Marianne Williamson’s
book, A Return to Love, which was first
published in 1992, two years before Mandela was said to
have spoken the words. Thus, I concluded that Mandela
was quoting Williamson, and I changed the attribution
accordingly. Now, today, I have received a message from
another TZF visitor correcting me once again by
informing me that those lines never were spoken by
Nelson Mandela! And, in fact, a search of the speech
itself at the African National Congress’s own
site, confirms that. This visitor writes, “A
search of all of Mandela’s archived speeches at the ANC
site does not find the quotation, either. I’ve been
searching elsewhere, too, but have found no solid
evidence that these words ever crossed his lips. I have
come across a couple of people who inquired directly to
the ANC, and were told that he never spoke them”. I am
very grateful to this second visitor for re-setting us
straight! For me personally, the lesson of this episode
is to check carefully before attributing words to
anyone! I apologize for this confusion. On the other
hand, had I caught the error back in October 2000 before
posting the lines, I would not have enjoyed the exchange
of email messages with the two TZF visitors which the
error generated, and that would have been a loss.
August 20, 2002
I am very pleased to report that The Zoo
Fence has been presented The Point of Life Gold Award of
Excellence. Please check it
out … and check out their site, too!
August 3, 2002
Once again, we extend our heartfelt thanks
to those of you who use TZF’s Bookstore page as your access to Amazon.com. As you may know, we
receive a small commission from Amazon on all purchases
(books or anything else Amazon sells) made by TZF
visitors who go to Amazon’s site from our bookstore. What
you may not know is how much we appreciate it. Of
course, we have no way of knowing who you are (Amazon
reports only the sales & commissions to us, not who
made them), but whoever you are, we know you are
generous and thoughtful, and we thank you for that, very
much!
August 2, 2002
Last June, I added the feature “Eco-Consciousness” to The Zoo
Fence. The page is coming along nicely, if it is still
working on its personality. Today, I added an “eco-links” page to it,
providing links to other sites whose focus also is on
the planet, its inhabitants, environment, prognosis, and
so on, broadly defined.
November 25, 2001
TZF’s long-time friend Art Hale has written
a new book, “Christ, Yes: Religion, No”. In it, Art
makes a nice distinction between Jesus (Issa) as a “preeminent
teacher, way-shower and spiritual guide” and “the
sectarian chauvinism of the 30,000-plus Christian
denominations”. This issue is not unique to
Christianity, of course, and the book will be of
interest to a seeker on any path. For more, please visit http://www.iuniverse.com where the book is
available online or in hard copy.
November 2, 2001
A TZFer wrote us about this NASA site -
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html.
Check it out for some eye-popping graphics … like “Saturn at night”. Wow! Thanks for
sharing the URL.
April 23, 2001
Please check out this site suggested to us by TZF’s ISP
Administrator. It’s a view of the planet at night
from space … pitch black except for electric lights!
What a view. To get the full affect, some evening after
dark, browse to it with MS Internet Explorer, then press
F11 (Full Screen). Then, turn off your room lights. I’ve
put a link to it on TZF’s Thisenthat page, under “Science”.
April 13, 2001
I recently came across a wonderfully
powerful poem by Maya Angelou written in celebration of
the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations. It is “A
Brave and Startling Truth”. I had hoped to post it at
TZF’s Ampers&nd,
but unfortunately we have been denied copyright
permission to do so. Still, I heartily recommend your
reading it at any of the numerous sites across the web
where it does appear (here is one such).
April 5, 2001 |