Buddha said it best!

Today's quote

“There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.” – Buddha

What is integrity??

I spent the whole evening crafting a letter that probably no one will read.

Where do we have a voice? 

When is the voice of reason going to be heard?

When are compassion, empathy, caring, respect going to be considered more important that personal gain, protecting our material stuff, and fear that if we care for others there will be less for us?

I want a country that will stand up for human rights and not be afraid of the economic or social consequences. Because that is how we are taught to be with bullies. We have friends that will be there if we do and it will give others the courage to stand up too.

This is Leadership!!! Why does no one in government see it/ or more importantly act on it??? If all they care about is being re elected there is going to be no country left to re elect them and they will be merely puppets of the USA. Who's population needs us to be strong and stand up as well! Oh my goodness this is crazy

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau,

There are so many good things we as a country are doing for refugees and suffering people! But our immigration and refugee policies, anti Islamophobia movement, taking in new people and all of our compassion and integrity are at risk of being moot if we do not take action and rescind the "Safe Third Country Agreement" now! 

We cannot win against a bully by appeasement that sacrifices values. Canadians need a stand NOW! Otherwise we will divide ourselves and eat ourselves up over the little battles. The longer it takes to make that stand the more divisive it will be for us, and this is your governments responsibility. It will need to happen, please let us be strong enough to be proactive and not wait until we have no choice.

This is about basic human dignity and respect. This is about being a person with a heart and soul. It is not about politics or economics but about the world our children are going to have to live in. Standard of living means nothing if we do it on the backs of the suffering people that we pretend are not our responsibility.

We have an opportunity to stand up and be the Canada that we as Canadians, along with the rest of the world, believed us to be. This is more important than short term economics and politics. This goes beyond all the what ifs and its not been proven yets... This is the basic right of all people to live without fear of persecution. 

People are suffering and we can do something! Is this not an opportunity to be the country we say we are? Are we going to be the complicit silent neighbour?? That will not be respected ever and once this regime is over will show us as fickle, manipulated hypocrites. It would be easier to be Mexico right now.

I will be hiding my Canadian flag when I travel if we continue to support US as a "Safe Third Country" until their current policies are rescinded. (If travel is safe at all in the future as a 'only look after ourselves' means we cannot expect others to respect or protect our rights and freedoms when we step off our soil)

This is of the most urgent nature, we are a last bastion of hope for desperate people and if we can only find a way to get past our fear and open our doors then it sends the message to other people that there is another way. Sweden and the few other countries that are opening doors need us to stand up! The fence sitters and everyone else who feels their voice is not heard needs us to stand up. 

To do nothing is to support to the current Republican government's views on equal rights.

Saturday morning

Finished reading Reluctant Genius, the biography of Alexander Graham Bell by Charlotte Gray. I recommend it as an excellent read. I had no idea of the range of interests and imagination of Bell's min

Ubterestubg

Just found my blog again - more than a year later. wow!

Today's quote. And why is it that everything has to be judged and isn't considered marvelous for its different qualites????

and the years go by

This week's quote:
I must learn to love the fool in me - the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/theodoreis618045.html?src=t_promises

Was just thinking about promises and how easy it is to mean them at the moment of speaking them and then modify them or justify not doing them later. Some of them should not have been made in the first place, just my mouth opening for the wrong reason at the wrong time... but others, well, I feel there are some apologies I should be making to those I promised things... myself included!

This week's picture; the mighty oak leaned too far

today

Hello Blog,
 A  lot has happened since I posted Apache Blessing.
In the moment I am ensconced on my couch looking out at the city lights listening to Classic Rock, drinking wine and thinking that despite this broken leg and everything else going on I'm doing okay!

Apache Blessing

May the sun bring you new energy by day, 
may the moon softly restore you by night, 
may the rain wash away your worries, 
may the breeze blow new strength into your being, 
may you walk gently through the world and 
know it's beauty all the days of your life.
 - Apache Blessing

Magic Mondays

there's something about Monday's... that I'm not going to let happen anymore... the Misery Attack.

Doing the math based on a random life span of 76 years of which I am now midway through my 57th year so we have a nice round number of 20 years to calculate. 

20 years x 52 weeks is  1040 Mondays 

So lets say 1000 Mondays, because we like round numbers, that is 1000 days, 1/7th of the total 7000 of my ever shortening allotment of days to live in this particular body, in this story, on this level of spiritual evolution,  and really just to have fun, be fulfilled as a person as a woman, all that shit that I really thought was more like tens of thousands of days away

For a random exercise: 76 x 365 = 27,740 days of that earthly life is definitely in the 5 digits for 64% of that life. so I am well into the last 36.04542% of my days (given that 76 years, which I might be re-evaluating as my random life span when I do this exercise when I am in my 66th year. Which in itself is interesting because at that point I will have lived longer than my mother. And heaven forbid something happens to me before then because i have not got my shit together and there's a lot of stuff around here I'd rather deal with than have my kids have to sort through...

Sooo... this is the first of the next 1000 Magic Mondays!

Starting my list of how to make Monday's magic:

1. Start with 5 minutes walking with the earbuds and something loud that makes me walk faster and then even if I only go that 5 minutes I haven't procrastinated but tonight I kept going to Rod Stewart's "Downtown Train" and I don't even care if the cars driving by had a window open and heard me. I think that CCR and ACDC would work really well for this too...* to do: create a Monday music playlist.

2.  Here's another thing, I usually feel that Monday i should only eat healthy, right after any weekend indulgence and dealing with my body issues (that I really don't want to stress over for my estimated 7000 more days( if I live to 96 I'm back into the 14,000 day range and that would be just ridiculous to waste time seeing only my bellyfat in the mirror and wondering how I can wring out my wine indulged liver start over, cumulative effects are the worst to think about) But this is not working for me... so here's tonight's dinner; potatoes and salad! and yes, wine on Monday makes me happy and that's the magic plain and simple.

here's the potatoes that did it for me

2 potatoes

olive oil

parmesan

rosemary

sea salt

And a great kitchen gadget that slices the potatoes really thinly

and then the salad, one of my staples

Whatever greens are in the fridge tonight was romaine and kale. I rubbed the kale, which is definitely worth doing!

Some kind of onions, i had some green onions which is a treat this time of year. Has to have avocado then some sweet pepper and a few dried cranberries for fun.

Dressing:

juice of 1 lemon

tbsp dijon

tbsp white balsamic

tbsp or maybe 2 honey

olive oil

maybe some s and p 

shake or whisk together, dip leaves in it and taste until you get the combo that makes your taste buds jump for joy.

3. While I was looking for the perfect potato recipe for my mood tonight i was following random threads on Pinterest and discovered my sister's gardening pins which are exactly the kinds of things I would pin and 

 so now i'm in that happy place I'm going to put this Monday to bed with my bookclub book that I need to finish for this Thursday's meeting.

Happy 2014

A New Year to:

Love more

Laugh more

Believe in me more

Risk more

Play more

Work more

Live in the Light!

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; It is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

-Seneca

Thanks

"Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great."

Thanks to all the really Great People!!! 

Threads

Strands
crossing the globe
the universe
crossing differences and struggles
hatred and pain
loneliness and fear and ...

Always there
because you and me
we shared something
I miss you

in space - Somewhere -
all my friends
seeds in the wind
flying in random patterns
dropping into fertile soil
taking root in separate worlds

Till random memory, sparked
by that same wind that carried us away
brings us together for a second

Yet knowing this I wonder
do i trust the threads?
not to break
loose ends drifting

It is not the threads that need my trust
But myself

Cemetary Wall

The 1840's brick walled cemetary which is located in what is now almost the parking lot of IKEA is where my family remains rest. Or are buried and lie there still? Well, its where we are put when we die. At least where they put what is left of us after cremation. My dad jokes that there is standing room only left, at least in our plot. And it is where I go to talk to my mom sometimes. (Although I talk to her lots of other times too, this is just a more formal thing where I take in my coffee and some flowers or an angel or something and sit by her grave and think about her)











Well, I see that I didn't finish my last posting on cynism ... and that was back in May. Spring and summer passed without a word, my garden flowered and faded without a glance, the kids did their thing and I did mine with very little engagement of any sort, and the trees are still here and so am I, but the cemetary wall is falling down. A combination of natural forces and vandalism. Interesting why one is considered vandalism and the other is natural forces.

Cynicism; work in progress

Cynicism; a luxury I can no longer afford.

I was not thrilled when my brother emailed me last week asking if I would go to yet another meeting. I owe him big time though, in the way of meetings he has been to more and read more realms of technical and legal jargon than any non-lawyer human being should ever be subjected to. To honour this, once again, I resigned myself with as much grace as I could muster, to attending another Public Information meeting which I assumed would be another example of the ‘government’ spending money on ‘consultants’ to appease the ‘public’ by giving lip service to informing us before an outcome was predetermined and asking for input.

I’d had my own notice of this meeting and thrown it out a month ago, I saw the notice lying around at my dad’s house and scorned to even look at it. Cynical hah, I was being totally realistic! I received the notice because I’d attended the first go round of meeting on what was then referred to as the Mid Peninsula Highway. Egads, it was painful. Though technically at the preliminary stage of determining the Terms of Reference for an Environmental Assessment it was impossible not to feel the buzz that the Harris government was fast tracking the ‘Process’, that the highway was a done deal, and that the best we could hope for input on was a pathetic struggle about who’s back yard was going to be paved.

It turned out the meeting night was the only night this week both my teenage daughters were home from work and I left them at the dinner table (after only a couple sips of wine) complaining all the way. My first impression on entering the meeting room was the smell of coffee and I made a beeline. Caffeine and I do not have a good relationship but I’d done my own Needs Assessment and deemed short-term gain more important than long term sleep. The analogy here of instant gratification that justifies impacts and ignores less tantalizing options (like water or juice) seemed to correspond to my expectations of the meeting’s scheduled entertainment: A Public Stakeholder Orientation Session for the Niagara to GTA Corridor Planning and EA Study.

The purpose of the meeting was to provide an update on the study progress since the approval of the Terms of Reference, outline the planning, technical and public consultation approaches being proposed by the Study Team, and obtain feedback and advice from stakeholders. Yeah, right. Who are these stakeholders ‘they’ want advice from?? I didn’t quite roll my eyes but man, there is something odd about us paying for the services of consultants hired to make us believe a fair process has taken place with the end result that some government will get credit for a legacy of accomplishing something because dammit they know better than the masses and once they’re elected they can manipulate their mandate into any pet project they want.

Do I sound cynical? As I ...
To be continued - tomorrow if I can sleep tonight, and later tonight if the coffee does its thing.

Violins and Raindrops

I walk pass these trees every morning on my way to work. Yet I do not see these trees every morning.
Imagine missing trees dripping with pearls.










I cried when I read about a man playing violin in a subway station for change, and out of a thousand people who walked by only a handful heard the music.
This violin player was one of the best classical violinists in the world and the music brilliant. Each piece was an emotional powerful, each note a pearl.
Imagine not hearing a thing ...





How can that happen? How can we pass by beauty without seeing or hearing it. Has beauty become irrelevent?

"What is this life, if full of care
We have no time to stop and stare?"
From Leisure by W.H. Davies

The amazing article about the violinist (Joshua Bell) and the subway is called Pearls Before Breakfast and was on Washingtonpost.com. It came to me from www.charityfocus.org which sends a thought of the day and an article everyday.

Robert's Calendar

My friend Robert gave me a calendar for Christmas. More than a calendar really, it is "the Ultimate Family Organizer" with huge lined squares for each day and hundreds of stickers to use for birthdays etc. It was lovely of him of course, although I always wondered why he thought it was a good gift for me; I'm generally pretty organized, my kids look after their own schedules now (at 17 and 20 they don't let me sign them up for soccer or piano lessons anymore) and I've never missed a dinner or a party with this group of friends ... But it is quite possible Robert sees things in a different way. (Perhaps it was simply a thoughtful gift for a woman entering her fiftieth year offering her the convenience of one place where she wouldn't need to find her reading glasses.)

Whatever the motivation I find myself attached to this calendar. Well, I wasn't at first, at first I didn't know what to do with it. It was too big to put on the wall in the usual calendar spot, and took up a lot of room on the desk so I just shifted it from pile to shelf and forgot about it until a couple days into February. Dreary old February when the snow settled in for a long visit and the cold crept through the windows and doors. It was February when I decided enough was enough and it was time I took control of my habits. Inspired by an article I'd read about a woman who challenged herself for one year to give up one thing for each month (after each month she would be able to have that thing back and choose something else to give up the next). One month it was chocolate, another it was shopping, another it was elevators ... The point being to take a conscious look at some of her habits and assess their meaning in her life.

As I had quit smoking for the last time in January and was therefore riding a confident wave I decided to use the monthly plan to address some habits I'd rather not take with me into my 'mature' years. And to add some habits that I had wanted for a long time. According to another article it takes 21 days to break a habit, or make a habit and here I was going to make the opportunity to give it a try. The deal I made with myself was to give up one thing and add one thing per month, with the option of changing back the next month as long as I made it a conscious choice.

I got pretty excited about this, listing some of the habits took up two pages of my journal and the more I looked the more appeared. Deciding I needed to have a record and a visible progress marker I leaned back and gazed randomly around my office and what do you think? Robert's calendar almost leapt off the shelf at me. Then a pot full of coloured highlighters I hadn't touched for years except to dust around (very occasionally) slid into view and - Bob's your Uncle!

Its a pretty cool thing, the satisfaction of colouring in squares one day at a time. I decided to colour smoking for the whole year so I could have three colours (and in case I ever forgot #$%&@#). I made a X in pink highlighter in every square beginning January 14th. For February I decided to add yoga every day and eliminate playing those damn computer solitaire games. Yoga got a blue X and computer games got a green X. Halfway through February I was feeling great from the yoga and extremely virtuous about work because in the hour that I spent in the office each day I'd done the T4's, finished the year end reports for 2006, done a budget for 2007, sorted the filing drawers, and read the past years worth of farming magazines. And equally, or perhaps even more delicious than all this was the colour pattern appearing on Robert's calendar which I'd posted on the wall beside the computer.

Soon February was over; a work of art, and I felt I was on to a new and wonderful way to make meaningful my every action. March's blank squares challenged me to come up with green and blue habits (smoking kept the pink, a circle this month). I chose to add writing down one new project idea each day (there's been projects circling my mind for years I've never done anything about) without any need for making them realistic, or understandable to anybody but me, or adding details. I chose to eliminate keeping my email on all day and reading emails as they came in, rather I would check it only twice a day; when I turned the computer on in the morning and before dinner.

The idea writing turned out great. The first few days after I exhausted the projects in the top of my head were a struggle, then ideas began pouring out, naturally clarifying themselves and becoming doable projects. Although, or perhaps because, I knew I was not committing myself to actually doing anything details and plans began forming and I wrote everything down. It was fascinating and fun to do this. Not quite so fun was the email habit, in fact I failed miserably and gave up completely after three days.

It is now one week into April and those lovely pink smoke rings are continuing their march across the squares. The end of March I slipped into an old funk and lost some power, but it is back again now. That's another cool thing - I get to make up the rules as I go. April feels like a tough month, particularly Easter because it reminds me of my mom. My habit I am adding this month is a new written prayer each day. And I want to try again to break my addiction to email during the day. I think I'll be able to do it this month because the weather is likely to allow me more time outside.

And as a follow up to February's habits: I am doing yoga four times a week, this feels reasonable. Computer solitaire I play now and then. I think I 'should' give it up for good - like the smoking, and now I know I can, but what the heck, I got so much work done in February there's not enough office work to keep me busy an hour a day now. And some of March's ideas are sprouting leaves and taking shape, still without committment, yet some of the projects are entering the possibility range.

As gifts go Robert - this calendar was a pretty good one, thanks!!

Stuck

I've been listening to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance while pruning in the orchards these last couple of weeks. And today it was the part about being stuck... man that book has stuff to say about 'stuck' that I never imagined. In fact I kind of thought stuck and procrastinating were different versions of the same word. Wrong! Stuck is so much more.
It is a place where perspective is lost, passion is lost, quality (lots of talk about quality) can't be found. As I'm listening I'm thinking okay - purpose, he's talking about purpose that is not aligned with values inside us. Yet don't we get stuck with the things we are passionate about ... hell yes, like this writing assignment I have - I love writing and voluntarily chose this assignment because I think it will be good for my writing and I believe it will take me another step. AND SO ... what is my stuck??

The author uses the example of a motorcycle that siezed because of an innocuous little screw that somehow got stuck. And the manuals didn't talk about how to get a screw unstuck, the trained monkey mechanics didn't know because it wasn't classical training, and in all the reasoning and rationalizing of what could be wrong a stuck screw was not mentioned. Then, if by some chance it was discovered and diagnosed as the root of the problem there were no instructions how to fix it ... essentially the machine was junk if the conventional instructions were all that was available.

Fortunately there are things like quality... and in this I infer he refers to 'quality' as a feeling that the product of whatever you are working on is of value. And from this 'quality' the manuals are but a starting point. There is a more intuitive learning and assessment. For certain deductive and reasoning are used; to start at least, then if the object has enough value to the person working on it a passion or a zone place of quality kicks in, the mind goes quiet and restrictions of knowledge are forgotten. This is where the 101 ways to remove this screw become available, or accessible; because they were always available. The knowledge was there, just in a different form for a different purpose and the connection not made because it was out of context and the motivation wasn't strong enough before there was 'quality' or 'value'.

And how does this relate to my writing? I haven't made the connection yet ... wonder if it has anything to do with value? Am I trying to do it in a trained monkey way?? Where is my little screw and where and in what context do I look for answers. Ahhhh, my old favourite quote, paraphrased from Albert Einstein "You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that created it"

Or- maybe it is just plain old fear keeping me away from my computer; fear that it won't be good enough (for what i wonder), fear that it will lead me somewhere I'm afraid to go, fear that if I stop procrastinating on this then I'll have to move on to where it leads me ...

And there we have it ladies; Jan and Lou, at least if you can't understand what I've written you will see that I have written today. About time the old coach was herself accountable.

Spring

they told me it is spring today
and i believe them, only
for me the season is on hold
stuck in winter
waiting for a sign
ahh, not trusting
the longer days or
the birds

Faith takes work
perseverance, determination, and strength
dear source of light, energy and endless love
let me believe in the spring,
trust the signs
and allow it's miracles and mysteries
into my heart

Dead Iguana

I got stuck thinking about the dead Iguana we passed on the road.

That was two months ago, and still I wonder what I wanted to recognize about the Iguana so strongly I couldn't get beyond it. I'd already made a big deal about him lying there sprawled out on the road in the full hot sun like he was in a heat trance and maybe not really dead at all and I'd said a prayer for his soul, although I know people will say Iguanas don't have souls like ours, but they are made up of cells and molecules just like us and live and die just like us and all other creatures and live and have a purpose on this planet just like us and therefore we are all part of one really large family and when any death crosses our path some recognition and show of respect and appreciation of their life is important. This I know to be true, the same way I know that the icicles are dripping outside my window and spring is coming.

Here is my prayer;
Iguana, you beautiful miracle of a creature, unique and no more or less special that the rest of creation but perfect in who and what you are, what you came from and what you become, I recognize, respect and appreciate your presence and value the experience of our paths crossing in this life and all you have taught me. I bless you with all the love, peace and joy in my heart.

cows

When nothing is true anything is possible ...

My daughter is desperately unhappy ... how do I know? I don't - I am unhappy about what I see happening with her - that is true. Or is it? Perhaps I, who professes to not 'buy in' to the status quo for myself, am hypocritical enough to 'buy in' to it for my kids (hedge my bets with them) and that is what I am unhappy about - that she's not fitting the mold, that my friends kids are graduating and making 'responsible' choices about further education so they can get better jobs and become financially independant. Have I bought into that as her role? and therefore my role would be to keep her on that path. And in this I have 'failed', and that is what is making me unhappy?
I wonder why I hesitate to let her drop out of school? To let her choose her own path? Do I know better?
What do I know anyways? I know I just took her to lunch at Wendy's and she had chicken nuggets and fries and coke and I think those are unhealthy choices on many levels, but my taking her and paying for thhis lunch is giving her (and the universe) the opposite message. I also know I ate too - a taco salad, which I thought would be close to real food, but I've been listening to The Omnivore's Dilemna and realized with each bite that what I was eating was supporting the industrialized farming I believe is one of the most harmful 'buy ins' we've ever been a party to. Shit, if those who hate us only have a little patience we'll anihilate ourselves with the poisons we are consuming and demanding (literally and figuratively)
And I do feel sick now. That poor cow that was part of the chili is not digesting well with me. And I committed the sin of wasting, so his life wasn't even worth appreciating.