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Annual Report 2005-2006

Over the years, The Institute has grown, and you are well aware of its growth. Our website has details.

I begin my comments with a strong line, a heavy and purposeful line that separates The Institute from the CAM movement. We have consistently held the position that each discipline has its own integrity. It is for us, as a sophisticated society to offer, as on a plate, different disciplines to the alert and astute public. The practitioner must be true to the integrity of his or her own discipline of training. Surely, multiple disciplines can be sought after, and mastered. However, they must be mastered. A practitioner cannot go to a ‘weekend’ course of a totally different discipline and hope to master it. And vise versa. The Institute has always endorsed, and continues to endorse, an in-depth knowledge of the particular discipline of a healer’s chosen field of training. ..specially when on the other scale someone’s life, well-being and happiness is placed. The concern is not the ego of the practitioner. The concern is of the integrity of his or her practice beliefs. This integrity must remain. As we evolve into a more intricate society, it is for us, as a group, to ensure that the range of human health and well being are available to us all, as a group.

This is America.
This is do-able.
This can be achieved.

We come here to this New World for the ideal that is within our collective vision. From our individual and personal ideals, to our collective ideal our migratory movements remain and continue to unfold.

How do they unfold? Perhaps in our hopes and our desires. Perhaps in our imagination and in our scholarship. Your guess is as good as mine. It is about discovery.

And scholarship is about intellectual curiosity - the essential quality that makes us human.

We were born with it. What we do with it is really up to us.

Our purpose here, at The Institute, is to encourage and support the efforts of those who verbalize their individual intellectual curiosity in any of the forms provided in our cultures - or, failing to find an adequate form, invent a new one.

Our purpose is also to provide the forum for the ones who watch and listen to the various presentations, learning and supporting as their selected means of examining their own intellectual curiosity.

Our "Life on the Mississippi - The New Millennium" manuscript has grown new pages as we enter a world permanently changed to continue in its unlimited unfolding.

In the upcoming sessions, we will, again, devote some time to bring the new pages of the manuscript into the light of these wonderful evenings.

This past year we began an interesting new chapter for The Institute. Together with the past Poet Laureates of Quad Cities, Rebecca Wee and Dick Stahl, we began a winter session devoted to the evergreen poets.. Those poets who remain well loved and consistently revised in our memories. These are the poets who, like our friends, give us strength. They give us vision and hope through the years. Again and again, to each new and old reader who delights in their message and their vision. We delight in these poets during this winter session we have named, with great joy, "The Lion in Winter." We thank Roald Tweet and the other core group members in this new aspect of The Institute.

This past year we achieved something quite unusual and fascinating. The first ever choreographed dance in the history of modern America for the mighty Mississippi river was performed on May 14th at the close of our 9th. year.

This dance was choreographed performed by Prashant Shah, one of our independent scholars from India, celebrating the Mississippi in its form as the largest male river on earth. The dance revealed the creative and destructive power of its waters. We had no idea that recent history would make that imaginative concept so acutely palpable. It is faith that will guide us through these upcoming months as we rebuild our lives in a permanently changed geography.

Please join us in congratulating Neil Dahlstrom and Jeremy Dahlstrom with their work on John and Charles Deere, and Kim Vivian with his work on Goethe.

Lars Rehnberg on his work with music and his very innovative presentation on Film Critics.

Randy Arcenas has done a specific piece of musical history which he subsequently celebrated throughout the Quad Cities. Leslye Killian had her first presentation on the theory of Fifth Love. Congratulations to her and all support for her ongoing work.

The work of Jim Nickel has continued over the years. Please join me in congratulating him on his ongoing work.

Lisa Arbisser wrote a beautiful new poem on The Mississippi. Congratulations to her as well as to Dale Haake and Kathleen Cox for their new work.

We have something else that is of notable interest: The Obese Emotion... it is a concept we came up with on the psychology and emotions of obesity. and Denise Strathdee, a nutritionist from Genesis Medical Center gave the first presentation on that concept. We have had a few calls for a repeat discussion, which, as the interest gathers up, we will certainly invite.

In closing, I ask you to please remember our slogan... " Quality Control is in your hands."

Welcoming speech for the 10th. year given by Narveen S. Virdi President and Founder The Institute for Cultural and Healing Traditions, Ltd.