lmemsm

April is the month of Earth Day, World Tai Chi Day and a period of counting the omer.

Tai Chi has great benefits for health and mood. It can be done in small spaces or even as part of a break during work. Check out the World Tai Chi Day site for events and more information on Tai Chi. While many areas are back to business as usual and having outdoor events, there are some live virtual events online for World Tai Chi day that you can get involved in. Even if you're all alone, you can join in at the same time with people all over the world and celebrate. Anyone can participate by doing Tai Chi where they are at 10 AM on April 24.

Here are some of my current favorite Tai Chi related instruction videos online.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdaCuigipoM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4VIw41R-PU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32tH89vBtTs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JoQj_lmV54
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2n2zBwQ2vE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kGf2qIKDyg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiR-6Ma3xyA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiYwHXAmDz4

Check out this video on World Tai Chi day for more details on the event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsZHG1CZWbQ

Earth Day is Thursday, April 22nd but many areas celebrate it on a weekend. It was fun touring our water processing plants or visiting local parks and attending fairs for Earth Day. However, visiting those types of events just isn't very practical this year. So how can you celebrate Earth Day at home and still celebrate with the community or enjoy nature?

One of the best ways I can think of to appreciate Earth Day is to work on and visit my herb garden. It's easy to start a small herb and vegetable garden even if it's just in pots on your porch. Eggland's had a clever tip on using cleaned egg shells as containers to start seeds in. They're biodegradable and help fertilize the soil. I've been seeing some wonderful videos on using foods and scraps from grocery shopping to start plants. For instance, cut off the bottom of scallions including the roots and plant them. Plant the eyes of potatoes. Use garlic that may be sprouting. When it grows, you can cut off the greens from the garlic plant and use it in foods.

Grow NYC has some wonderful tips and resources for teaching and learning about gardening.
https://www.grownycdistancelearning.org/blog/categories/garden
https://www.grownycdistancelearning.org/post/gardening-with-the-croods
https://www.grownycdistancelearning.org/post/diy-plant-dyes-and-paints

Here's the seed starter idea from Eggland's:
https://www.egglandsbest.com/news/egglands-best-egg-shell-seed-starters

You can also try out some virtual field trips for Earth Day.
https://www.visitmanateelagoon.com/manatee-cam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IttTVtQmGiM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RIT0Oc91sk
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/cornell-lab-feederwatch

After a lot of searching, I finally found a virtual Earth Day fair. You can check out some of their environmental and craft videos here:
https://www.peanc.org/demand-videos-earth-day
For those of us who can't travel or don't have local Earth Day events, it would be great to see more virtual Earth Day events in coming years.

Counting the omer is a practice for self-improvement based on some concepts from the Kabbalah. This year, it started on the evening of March 21st and the day of March 22nd and it goes for 49 days. Each day relates to two sephirot. The idea is to work on attributes within yourself or to do things that relate to the two sephirot that correspond to that day. Count the cycles through 7 sephirot, one for each week and one for each day. The sephirot are chesed, gevurah, tiferet, netzach, hod, yesod, malkuth which correspond roughly to mercy or charity, strength, beauty, endurance, majesty, foundation and kingdom. Counting starts from chesed and goes to malkuth. So, the first day is chesed of chesed. The second day is gevurah of chesed. The first day of the second week is chesed of gevurah. It ends on malkuth of malkuth.

During a day or week with chesed in it, that might be a great time to give to charity or volunteer. There are some volunteer opportunities listed in this post: https://lmemsm.dreamwidth.org/18603.html Tiferet could be a good time to go out and walk or experience the beauty of nature. Tiferet is sometimes represented by the color green. Hod may have been derived from hodayah which means giving thanks so that might be a great time to try out some count your blessing exercises, journal writing techniques or meditations. Malkuth is sometimes thought of as divine presence on Earth, shekinah or Mother Earth. That's a fitting image around the time of Earth day. A day with yesod might be a good day to practice Chi Kung moves and work on building a solid foundation by improving stance and posture or to meditate on grounding. There are mailing lists and articles online to remind people of what day of the omer it is, what attributes are involved and some activities that can be done related to those attributes.

I recently read of some studies that stated that bird songs can improve mood and that the diversity of the birds in your area had a correlation to happiness. Bird watching is a great pastime for Earth Day. Recycle old materials to create bird feeders or bird houses. Try to identify birds that land in your yard or outside your window. See how many different birds you can spot. Can you identify the birds by their songs? There are also meditation recordings online of bird songs. Most meditation apps include that as well. CDs or recordings of soundscapes often include bird songs. You can try meditating to bird songs to celebrate Earth Day.

Here are links to some of the bird watching and identification webinars I've come across:
https://www.grownycdistancelearning.org/post/for-the-birds-virtual-workshop
https://www.grownycdistancelearning.org/post/rescuing-wild-birds
https://www.grownycdistancelearning.org/post/summer-birds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPt1XwfI6vE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmH1jGmQrGE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi9AfvgiQt8
https://vimeo.com/513567173
Check out the Birding for Beginners video at:
https://vimeo.com/cpawsmanitoba
There are links to pictures, recorded webinars and events at:
https://www.facebook.com/SPNI.EN

You can find more pictures of birds to help with identification here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds_of_the_United_States

Check with your local libraries, museums, arboretums and botanical gardens, local national parks and parks and recreation department web sites for ideas on celebrating some of these events. Some may offer activity worksheets or virtual webinars to help you enjoy these holidays. Also checks sites like Eventbrite, GeTogether or Meetup for virtual events. You can even put together your own virtual event using sites such as https://gettogether.community/
and https://meet.jit.si/

Check out the online libraries with public domain books. Your local library may offer online books as well.
http://www.distasis.com/cpp/pbtc.htm#pb11

ACM is offering free access to their wonderful and comprehensive digital library until June 30, 2020. This is a great resource for all things programming and computer related:
https://dl.acm.org/

archive.org has set up the National Emergency Library for people to borrow books in electronic format on a wide variety of subjects:
https://archive.org/details/nationalemergencylibrary

If you're having trouble reading, you can listen to books with collections like Librivox and Free Classic Audio Books.
https://librivox.org/
https://freeclassicaudiobooks.com/

You can also listen to public domain radio plays. Check out archive.org or sites that specialize in pd radio plays.
http://www.oldradioworld.com/

Try out some public domain sheet music. Sing and play songs or try some Karaoke at home.
http://www.distasis.com/recipes/music.htm
http://www.distasis.com/recipes/pdmuse.htm

If you're watching TV, turn on the closed captioning so you get some reading practice as well.

There are some great Open Source educational computer games. dnb is a psychological research activity that helps improve memory. Tuxmath can help keep math skills sharp.
https://lmemsm.dreamwidth.org/8013.html

Try some online tours using Google Cardboard, Google Expeditions or other online resources. Many museums provide an online tour at their web sites.
https://www.commonsense.org/education/top-picks/virtual-field-trip-apps-and-websites

You can do bird watching from your own backyard or window. Identify some of the birds in your area and see how many you can find.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_birds
https://davesgarden.com/guides/birdfiles/

Try baking.
http://www.distasis.com/recipes/

Keep a journal. Some writing resources are listed at:
http://www.distasis.com/write/

Gardening can be done in a yard or on your porch. You can garden from pots if you don't have any ground. Vegetables can be added to your salad or meal. Herbs can add flavor or be medicinal. Some flowers are edible and can add cheer to a meal.
https://davesgarden.com/community/

Try out some hobbies. If you program or want to learn, several Open Source projects need volunteers. Look into ham radio.

Use your arts and crafts skills to recycle household items. You can also try out projects like origami.

Help out a charity. You can help feed people and learn and play games at the same time. Help out via the freerice.com site.
https://freerice.com/categories/english-vocabulary

Exercise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqfGRx8k_zA

E-mail Pen Pals.

Meditation is a great activity and it can help you calm down, feel better and cope with not enough sleep. There are many types of meditation from visual and guided to breathing to mantra to music and walking. Biofeedback equipment is useful for some if you're have trouble getting started or concentrating. If one form of meditation doesn't work for you, try another. There are so many techniques, you're sure to find some that suit you.