Michelle Viggiano healthyhomeaz

Smoke and Mirrors...I was at one with it. It was nothing but a house of cards, from the initial planning stages right up to the departing flight from Iran. Secrets and lies - a resounding yes. Discoveries and truths - a whispering nod. As it all brought me to my knees more than once.

A Tower of Silence at the Zoroastrian Burial Grounds,Yazd, Iran. I am the figure in black in the lower right.

I had at that point in my life been to about fifty countries and lived and worked in the Middle East for almost a decade. I visited many Muslim countries all over the world and spent a month in Malyasia, time in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the list is long. But nothing prepared me for Iran. The jewel in the crown which pierced my temples as I wore it; forever altering my consciousness long after the precious headress was discarded.

At the mountains in Iran.

I should have know something was in store for me in that country. While in Damascus at the Iranian Embassy where our visas were issued, an Orthodox nun, proudly wearing her full habit, would periodically waltz in and out of the building all the while bossing everyone around. The Iranians rewarded her with tea and laughter while she was there and miraculously the smiles did not disappear quickly as she left. That should have been my first clue.

My male traveling companion pretended to be my husband while we were there. He is gay, I was married to my ex-husband at that time. See, we were hopelessly in sync with the smoke and....So we begin our travels throughout Iran with our dedicated guide. Ebby, an Iranian who lived in Germany for the last twelve years and is blond due to his Russian ancestry. We all travel together traversing the country, in an Iranian montaged car that looks like, but does not sound like a Chevy Nova. It appeared as if three Westerners, Americans in this case, were on holiday...with no American Embassy, no American money or credit cards accepted and only the Swiss embassy on Wednesdays, between noon and 2:00 pm, possibly offering any assistance if things turned bad.

Truck drivers are the same all over. Check out the "babes" on either side of the license plate.

An orginial antique print by Christian Neighbur of Egyptian hieroglyphics drawn by him during the Danish Expedition to Arabia in the middle of the 18th century. From the Dutch edition of Niebuhr's Travels through Arabia And Other Countries In The East, published in the Netherlands in 1776. From my personal collection.

Why do we wish to connect with millions of let's face it, very often faceless people? If that desire isn't strange enough on its own accord, the willingness to connect is so strong we sometimes, if foolish or brave enough, expose a manifesto, if you will. About ourselves, what we hold dear, and what we don't. Some may protest and say that's not true in their case. Yet the non-opaque approach can offer a much overlooked and possibly undervalued property - a somewhat transparent emotional blueprint of our businesses and of ourselves within a commercial framework. My postings on various sites on the web certainly do. Sure, many individuals and corporations are cunning, and engineer only what they want you to know, but those types of bloggers or networkers will always render a blatant "tell" when they or you least expect it.

I blog, simply put, because I can. Not because I am good at it, have anything that is terribly original or compelling to pass on, or impart topics of great interest to most. But let me come totally clean as to why I blog and am on social networks. Because it is expected. Yes expected. In today's world, it is not enough to advertise, go to meetings at the various chambers, have an ethical company and give excellent service. You have to blog about it too! We are so curious and voyeuristic; we feel a sense of entitlement to command a view behind the scenes. Not content to just peek through the front door, we require access to see what's going on in the back room as well.

Arroyo Garcia petroglyph "Happy" photograph by glyphwalker

For one of my businesses, my exposure is now totally Internet activated. I no longer do print ads, stopped all conventional advertising in general. Sure I have brochures at particular locations, but the overwhelming business I receive is from the Internet. It is all from my targeted blogs, my site listings, my web friends whose recommendations are on the net. If that isn't enough of a bounty, exposure from my various postings, prompted an online friend to connect me with an editor of an online magazine. I am a regular monthly contributor to the magazine entitled "Magnify You". www.magnifyyou.com I enjoy being on the web, posting, reading blogs, meeting people, but I love my real time life, my friends and my social life too and therein lies a precarious balance that I have not yet perfected.

All this posting, blogging, social networking takes quite a bit of time. It is a bit of a contradiction to me in some ways, as everyone is swimming awash in time management, too pressed for time to actually read books, not enough time with our families, our non-virtual friends. Yet most everyone wants to be able to glean something fresh and juicy from a blog. Or write one in order to turn on the lights and open the drapes. I remember such warnings when I first lived on my own, to certainly not to do that in the evenings; as the fascination to further investigate was too hard to resist for most humans. I didn't think it to be all together true, but alas, it has been proven a million times over and is what I have learned on the social networks. And for my businesses' sake I am willing to be interchangeably voyeuristic and exhibitionist.

Detail from "Cave of Swimmers" at Wali Sura, Gilf Kebir. photo by Kit Constable Maxwell

Mill Creek 23, photo by glyphwalker

I studied petroglyphs, cave paintings and wall impressions in college and still do. Researching the various ancient sites it is evident that we have always had this fascination with ourselves and those around us and had to convey the wonderment at all costs. Gossips at heart, maybe. The new posting sites that have evolved from the ancient ones are Facebook, Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleviggiano Twitter, Biznik, http://www.biznik.com/members/michelle-viggiano The new "paintings" are with words and some as short as a single brush stroke - the tweet.

I blog mainly about my eco-responsible company because my type of business comes across a different type of scrutiny. Are they for real, are their products as effective, are they just jumping on the band wagon of all things green, etc. For me, it is a labor of love to actively change those traditional possibly negative perceptions. I frequently give a moment of my time to include a daily visit to the following site, http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/home.faces it is part of a larger site http://www.thenonprofits.com and click or donate in my company's name. Not because it looks good or I feel I should, rather, because it is part and parcel of my and my company's sensibilities. The icon is on my desktop so it can't be easier. I offer links on my website that I believe are helpful and stay within my areas of concern. I do have strict parameters of which types of links I will include. As a business owner, I don't leave any of that out of the equation. So, I blog publically about what my company stands for and what is does hold supreme. I have learned from others who don't, that they are missing an opportunity to position themselves as intimately and effectively as possible.

Here are a few links that offer a range of options and opinions on social networking as a business tool. An article depicting 25 social Media Tips from executives and others at Dell, General Mills, Home Depot, etc offers interesting insight into social networking for big business. http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/04/social-media-marketing-tips/

If you prefer here is a list of green social networking sites http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/social-media-green-good6.html and there is http://www.care2.com the largest and most comprehensive, based in Australia.

"Crowded" petroglyph photo by glyphwalker

I check the corporate temperature of other firms regularly. I can gage if they are hot, cold, or dispassionately luke-warm. My company and yours convey its overall mentality throughout the dense fibers of its being. Whether that is in person, practice, on paper, or on online. I offer a thermometer to any and all who are interested in the reading. Here, take my temperature.

Original antique print of Carsten Niebuhr drawings of Egyptian hieroglypics during the Danish Expedition in 1760. From Niebuhr's Travels Through Arabia And Other Countries In The East. This one was published in The Netherlands in 1776 or it could be from identical ones published in Paris in 1779. From my personal collection.

Here is some business social networking in action - the photographer. "petroglyphwalker" of all the above petroglyph photographs fabricates individual ones. He is a geologist who also has the business www.southwestpetroart.com Check him out, his petroglyphs make great gifts and are beautifully done on a small scale. Delight a child with a gift that they can learn a great deal from - thier ancestors musings...

And while I am at it, in the true interest of being at heart with the social networking cause - please check out http://www.mcromanshades.com Michael Crum fabricates the most beautiful Roman shades and ships nationally and internationally. Social networking in action!

There is a painting I have inspected and wondered about since I was a child. It has been in various parts of the home I grew up in and has gone through a few incarnations in various frames. It is a painting of a gate and a view of a valley with not really anything around it. The focus is the vista. It is painted on a wooden board that has since warped. Now the slight vertical splits can be viewed from the front as well. There is a combination of German and French writing illegibly scrawled on the back of it. I have a curious memory of my mother always taking this painting down and checking the back of it and wiping that area.

I thought this very strange as she never appeared to do this with any other framed pieces. One day I asked her, what is this all about? And what does it say on the back? I would always hear - "I will tell you when you are ready to hear it." I was an impatient child and rather than wait and be frustrated, I decided it was no longer interesting enough for me to be bothered to find out.

A few years passed, and a friend of my mother's named Odile, who was also originally from France paid a rare visit. She saw the painting and burst into tears. My interest was piqued once again. I acted like I wasn't listening in on their conversation and found out that Odile gave the painting to my mother because it was too painful for her to keep. The chain of events the painting belies is grisly, bizarre, and political. Yet, the painting was painted in the spirit of forgiving the unforgivable.

The painting was by Odile's father. You see, Odile, her father and my mother were held in a Nazi internment camp near Alsace, France. My mother was a captured intelligence officer with the Free French and Odile and her father were French Jews that were interned there. My mother was not in the same barracks, but for some reason, my mother and Odile's father knew each other. Young, beautiful Odile caught the eye of and later fell for one of the high ranking German officials. Her love interest brokered a deal with the US government and moved to Glendale, California along with her. And with all his Nazi paraphernalia, the Mercedes which he used when conducting official business during the war, and many other haunting pieces of highly prized Nazi articles. All those artifacts that represented such hate and horror were displayed in their garage and were dusted and waxed regularly. As a very young child, I used to see this and didn't really understand what it all meant, but I did know it was evil, and was not under any circumstances to speak of it to anyone. Needless to say, Odile left her father inside the camp to meet whatever fate he was dealt. My mother was able to escape with some other officers, and they made their way to North Africa to fight against Rommel's shaky front on that continent.

Odile's father stayed for the entire duration. It was by some miracle that he was not sent off to the main extermination camp. In the early fifties, he went back to the place where he never lost his spirit, but nearly lost his mind, and certainly lost his daughter. He returned to the most inhumane place he ever knew and lovingly painted the plein-air several years after the war was over. He painted the entrance to the internment camp, but reframed the scene. Rather than the barbed wire, ominous gates, and the left over air of atrocities, he depicted a lovely and serene valley, with a gate free and wide open. The doors of the gate are small and narrow but the opening to the path is wide. No buildings or other distractions to stop your eye traveling to the horizon. He painted it as a gift to his beloved daughter so she would know that he forgave her for running off with the enemy and leaving him and others like them behind. Odile's father later gave it to my mother as he was near the end of his life and knew that my mother would find Odile and present the painting to her. And she did. It was not so difficult as many were tracking the movements of Odile's husband. Yet the intended recipient couldn't forgive herself. She didn't feel worthy of the gift. So that is the story of the painting that I still have in my home. As I take it down to clean it or just straighten it, I am reminded of the deep well of forgiveness the human spirit resonates. As much as I am reminded of the well, just as deep, this same spirit creates in order to block the greatest human gift - the art of forgiveness.

Michelle Viggiano www.healthyhomeaz.com Four Winds Healthy Home plant based carpet & air duct cleaning in Scottsdale

Bonobos ~ The Last Of The Epicureans ~ The Rarest Of the Great Apes ~ Around the year 300 B.C. Epicurus founded a school of philosophy in Athens. His followers were called Epicureans and they all lived together in a garden. The story goes like this, above the entrance to the garden there was a notice saying "Stranger, here you will live well. Here pleasure is the highest good." But before you jump to broad ranging hedonistic conclusions, Epicurus always stressed that the pleasurable results of any action must always be weighed against its possible consequences. Bonobos have heeded this theory of mind quite profoundly while forming the fabric of their society. They make pleasure calculations like no other.

The garden of the Bonobos is the Congo forest. They dwell only here in the equatorial forests of central Africa. Bonobos are found in just one country, the Democratic Republic of Congo which was formerly known as Zaire. They were the last discovered of the great apes by non-indigenous people of Africa and were classified in 1933 at a Belgian museum via a skull which was classified as Pan Paniscus.

Some say that bonobos are the most like humans, without actually being human. They are in grave danger. Trying to survive in a war torn country where carnage has been the norm for over a decade, a country where poaching is practiced by many and since bonobos are susceptible to viruses and even the human flu, their numbers are dwindling rapidly. Daily. If you had a town meeting and invited all the bonobos to attend you would most likely have lots of extra seating, as even if they all RSVP'd many would have met their demise after the confirmation was received and before the event was held. They are sold for $60,000 US on the black market for pets and on the other end of the spectrum they are killed for bush meat. Bonobos shun violence and avoid eating meat. They do not aggressively hunt other mammals and enjoy many of the same pleasures and outings that humans do.

But let's get back to the garden ~ there is a magic garden within the larger garden of the bonobos, a sanctuary called Lola Ya Bonobo ~ founded by Claudine Andre in 1994. Lola Ya Bonobo translates to "paradise for bonobos" in Lingala , the primary language of Kinshasa. "Friends of the Bonobo" is a US group of supporters who donate to help the 60 or so bonobos who live in 30 hectares of primary forest. There is an estimated 5000 bonobos in all of the Congo, but these numbers are also dwindling at even a quicker rate. The sanctuary can not continue to house and feed bonobo orphans and ill bonobos without your help. Sadly, one of the great apes, the one most like us is the rarest and the most unknown to the rest of the world. Some of the indigenous people in the Congo state that the bonobo is striving to be human, striving to survive and trying to reach out.

Here are some curious and wonderful facts about Bonobos

•· Some bonobos in captivity have learned to use human language, not signing. They are extremely intelligent and compassionate and communicate via a keyboard. Here is an NPR link that tells the story of Kanzi and Panpaanisha http://ww.npr.org/templates/story/story.phP?storyld+5503685

•· In contrast to male dominated war-like chimpanzees, bonobo society is peaceful, and matriarchal

•· Females rank the highest and they form strong bonds and alliances to further cement their hierarchy

•· Bonobos unlike chimpanzees do not aggressively hunt other mammals

•· Indigenous people of the Congo Basin and bonobos eat many of the same foods except for game

•· Make Love Not War is their commonly known credo. Bonobos are considered the hippies of the animal world. They are considered pan-sexual and often share food before having sex after a meet and greet. A bonobo version of a dinner date with a romantic conclusion. In their society, they apparently use sexuality in order to maintain peaceful and cooperative relations.

•· Female Bonobos unlike their chimpanzee counterparts have the right to refuse the advances of an interested male

•· Bonobos have more physical characteristic of humans than any other ape - pinkish lips and females have mammary glands similar to humans, they have a cute middle part in their hairdo, these are just some examples. Their natural average life span is around 50 to 55 years, but that is in a perfect world.

•· Bonobo travel single file on two feet more easily and for a longer period of time than other apes, when not moving swiftly through the trees. When traveling a distance they walk in single file behind each other.

Epicurus also believed that a pleasurable result in the short term must be weighed against the possibility of a greater, more lasting, or more intense pleasure in the long term. Please help bonobos create a lasting garden existence and maintain their peaceful and loving presence in a jungle that offers little to support such gentility and a unique spirit of cooperation. Please pass on the story of their plight and if possible donate to Friends Of Bonobos http://www.friendsofbonobos.org Also if you purchase any of these items from the Friends of Bonobos website or at CafePress http://www.cafepress.com/Bonobofriends. the proceeds directly go to Friends of the Bonobos.

Family photo from Friends of Bonobos.org All other photos from Cafe Press/Bonobo Friends

Michelle Viggiano Phoenix & Scottsdale Plant Based Carpet, Upholstery and Air Duct Green Cleaning http://www.healthyhomeaz.com

What makes a mansion a mansion? Merely the immense square footage and luxurious accouterments? What makes a house green? The state of omission of offending materials and a promise of sustainability? Can they co-exist? Can you be earth friendly and not be embarrassed by your riches displayed in such a fashion? I am completely at odds with this. And I shouldn't be as I have an interior design firm that caters to very wealthy people who often have 10,000 square foot houses and want quarried, quarried and more quarried materials.

I have been an interior designer for about 25 years and yes, this is one of my confessions in - True Confessions of An Eco-Entrepreneur, I too love quarried materials. Am actually over the top about them, even the most exploited kinds. Huge slabs of ammonites on the matrix shaved down to create smooth even surfaces for table tops or shower walls. I have been know to purchase half-cut and polished ammonites, the kind with small leaf fossils impressions on the iridescent layers to create an extra dimension and use those as cabochons in showers on top of limestone or Sahara gold marble for children's bathrooms. I used to use branches of reindeer coral or fan coral under 1 1/2" thick glass for counter tops in powder rooms. Large Fish or Lilly Pad Fossil plates/matrix as back-splashes behind stove tops in rustic homes where people rarely cooked, The list goes on and on and it is an appalling confession. And I can't stop there.

Sometimes after visiting a client and I go to pick up something at an eco-responsible supplier for my Scottsdale carpet and air duct cleaning company and I forget which purse I am carrying until I take my wallet out - and all of a sudden the crocodile purse ( purchased years ago) I am sporting becomes as welcome as a rabid, wild, loose anaconda in the place. I could go on, but will stop here as these have been painful enough for all concerned. Believe me, I have been just as embarrassed by my proclivities as I am proud of my other two earnestly eco-friendly businesses. I strive to be part of the local green community, even though they sometimes aren't quite sure of how to frame it. I usually just try to excuse myself and say "two out of three isn't a bad ratio..."

So. how does one perhaps create a green mansion? One has to look back to the basics, possibly the materials of the third world. I know it is a strange voyage, but look at the vast and gorgeous homes in Marrakesh, they are quite green and sustainable as they are utilizing mud, adobe, if you will, clay tiles, clay ceramics, wind tunnels for cooling. Majestically utilizing sustainable materials for their building and surface materials and one of their main energy requirements. If you go inside those homes, they are luxurious beyond belief. Luxurious homes in India, slightly different materials, more gypsum, but same principals, but they do use a little more quarried materials, as let's face it they are rich in minerals, colored stones and those type of jewel like materials. Japan and Thailand, carved teak and tortiose shelled bamboo, you get the picture. Older rustic homes in San Miguel De Allende, same principals just tweaked. So the mansions of the the third and second worlds in all their splendor are greener than ours in the first world. In spite of, or due to all our sophisticated technology. Humble materials gloriously fashioned, what a lesson to be learned.

Michelle Viggiano Phoenix & Scottsdale Four Winds Healthy Home Carpet and Air Duct Cleaning www.healthyhomeaz.com