We are living in a strange and inescapable contortion of reality in this here present time.  Where all of life's mysteries have been explained away from the general consciousness through a decisive series of educational quid pro quo.  Where every mystery of the universe, from the most mundane to the most abstract, have been explained away from the forefront of the imagination into a relative and distant point, such that those mysteries appear to be solved yet remain untouched.

    In the area of knowledge and education, the basic questions innate in every human, are concealed and thus ignored; having been replaced by gestures of dismissal in the vocabulary of the definition.  Whereas a naive youth might ask: "what is a duck?" And to this a teacher would reply, a duck is an animal.  Or more precisely, a duck is a bird, which came from an evolutionary line of birds, having somehow (admittedly mysterious) 'evolved' into the present form we now perceive and label "duck."  And if that child were to go on, to college or university, and again, this time much more scientifically, ask his professor "what is a duck?"  The professor may respond: "a duck is a composition of particles, in English we call them cells, these cells are comprised of more particles, atoms," ... and so on. 

My father just turned me on to this term, "permaculture" is like a return to the Garden of Eden in some sense.  It represents an old and earth friendly way to harvest from the earth, and a polar opposite to the sterile way of farming we know now in the 20th century.  This is an amazing insight for anyone concerned with the rampant waste and disregard for nature that we see in contemporary agriculture.  A method of farming with not only doesn't harm the earth with natural chemicals, but also revitalizes it based on natural decomposition and life.  The system is cycle based, utilizing insects and animals, decomposition and symbiotic plant relationships to create the appropriate biosphere for plant life to become abundant, even on a small scale.

Mythology and epic historiography have never left the mainstream culture, in some sense perhaps the legends and folklore that speckle human history define us more than consciously prevalent ideas like technology, psychology and commerce. There exists some kind of inherent attraction for deep and mysterious history, maybe better stated as a longing for a sense of tradition or lore.  Today in the media, anything to gain viewership is a go, so it's no surprise that legends and myths find their way into modern television programming. What is surprising, more for the sake of the close proximity of our lives and our myths, is the extent of programming engaged in these topics. Last Sunday (2/21) on National Geographic Televsion exemplifies this http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/tv-schedule