Weekly horoscopes

Okay, since my horoscopes lately have provided sound advice, I am posting the ones for this week. Let's see what happens....

This week, a magnificent Grand Trine takes place in the water signs - sultry Scorpio, nurturing Cancer, and romantic Pisces, exact on Sunday May 7. Mars generates passion, Jupiter brings good luck, and Uranus supplies electricity. If there were ever a week in which you'd want to open up to meeting that special someone, this would be it. Or, if you're already partnered, this positive Grand Trine supplies just the right ingredients to take your relationship to a deeper level. Remember: the planets impel, they do not compel. So don't miss this wonderful opportunity to let love flow. Dive in. The water's fine!

**********

Mars is still in your sign, Danielle, enabling you to get moving on all those plans and projects that are of greatest importance to you. Meanwhile for much of the week Mercury will be in your career zone, which is great for attending interviews or speaking to those in positions of authority. Wednesday could be the most intense but also the most fruitful. Mercury trines Pluto so one decision you make may have a powerful impact on your career direction. One conversation may move mountains - it is worth a try. On this day Venus also moves into Aries which helps you to charm the socks off of anyone you really need to impress. If you have to make a speech or a presentation, you are going to make a great impact. Thursday could be great for networking and for unexpected meetings that boost your opportunities in wonderful ways. Stay alert to surprise happenings and great ideas that you don't want to miss out on. Mercury will also move into Taurus on Friday, further improving your chances of holding the right conversations with the right people. Sunday is going to be more businesslike, a day when being practical counts for everything.

New Whirled Order

I revised my honeycomb kaleidescope image, and came up with this one. I like this one, but then, I just plain like blue.

My heart is blue, too, so it figures, I guess.

Some of my flickr friends have said the following about this submission:

franciscophile ~ it looks like it has skin and it is very nice.

robinzeggs ~ LOVE the title!!!! :)

Northreflections ~ Looks like the a world globe and the country called
'Butterfly Republic'....

rebelxtned ~ Cellularly organic like honeycomb gone colorful and global, Punster.
(Are there puns in your French?)I think you have found your metier.

des bleus au coeur ~ Mais j'aime encore mieux celle-ci! Forcément, elle est bleue! :-))) Je te souhaite un excellent week-end :-)

Their encouraging comments are so nice. I especially like Northreflections idea. I meant it to look like a globe, but hadn't seen the Butterfly Republic until he pointed it out. too cool!

Something to keep in mind today...

My horoscope for today seems right on. I don't ever know how much stock to put into such things, but these words seem to be sage advice for me, in general, no matter their source:

If you've been feeling a little under the weather, expect to wake up today feeling even stronger than you were before. Your enthusiasm is up, Danielle, and new ideas are flowing into your brain. Whatever you work on today should really stand out, and you'll experience a new sense of power and optimism. A warning: Don't be too intense; others might get the wrong impression. Be your usual sensitive self and all will go smoothly.

We shall see what the day will bring! I'll update you soon.......

W.E.T. (Weekend Theme) Challenge Images

One of the flickr groups I belong to, the Amazing Circles, group, or pool, has a weekend contest series that I just discovered. The guidelines are as follows:

W.E.T Challenge Guidelines

1) A Master image is posted ever Friday and MUST be used to apply the Amazing Circle technique. Download LARGE size for max working area.

2) Add-on filters are allowed however outside resources such as images must be kept to a minimum. THE CIRCLE MUST RETAIN MAIN FOCUS.

3) A limit of three entries per W.E.T

4) Include the Tag: 'wetchallenge'

5) Post a small version of your circle with 'Title' in the appropriate weekly thread.

9) Relax, have fun and ENJOY!!!!!!

Dates and Times

Entries Close: 10PM GMT (22.00) Tuesday
Voting starts: AFTER 10PM (22.00) GMT Tuesday
Voting close: NOON GMT (12.00) Thursday

Voting Process

# Voting rights are open to ALL MEMBERS.

# Cast Vote for your favorite circle (not your own) in the Current thread as follows - NO MORE NO LESS - Wading through loads of text makes record keeping difficult.
(line 1) #1 Member name and IMAGE TEXT LINK.
(line 2) #2 Member name and IMAGE TEXT LINK.

# Member with the highest votes picks the next Master image and agrees to upload it to the group by 7PM GMT Friday.

# Royalty Free- No Restriction stock images are allowed. A good source is Stock.XCHNG or Flickr's own Creative Commons page. Please credit others if you use their pics.

# Large, good quality Master images are prefered ie over 1000*

# When a MASTER image is not posted 5 hours past deadline, one will be provided so not to delay the challenge.

This week, the master image was this one, from last week's winner, a person whose flickr alias is Lifelive:

Using the Amazing Circles technique, which is described at: http://brilliantdays.com/how-to-create-amazing-circles/, and a few other Photoshop filters, I created the following submissions for this weekend's challenge:
Entry #1, Kaleidescope ~

Entry #2, Cellular ~

Entry #3, Triskell en Spirale ~

I had a good time with the challenge, and thought it a neat way to spend the evening, so I wanted to share my efforts with you...

A haiku to think about

My friend, Nicole, just posted a photograph of a page from one of her favorite childhood books. The page contained a haiku, written by Issa. The poem reads as follows:

If you are tender to them,
The young sparrows
Will poop on you.

Isn't that the truth sometimes?

We must be careful not to be too tender to those undeserving young (or of any age!) sparrows, huh?!

On "My Baby Has Rainbow Hair" by Mark Morford

My friend, Thomas, sent me this interesting article about modern-day family structures, especially in San Francisco. It is a well-written, thought-provoking piece, and I thought I would share it.

What struck me the most was the following paragraph:

We do know one thing. There are only a few key ingredients that work every single time. They are: stability, deep love, laughter, honest communication, solid boundaries, human kindness, balance and chocolate ice cream. That's about it. There is only the impulse to love and connect and carry on. And maybe, now and then, a good hot bath.

I think that is a list to live by, no matter the nature of your relationship:

• Stability
• Deep Love
• Laughter
• Honest Communication
• Solid Boundaries
• Human Kindness
• Balance
• Chocolate Ice Cream

Here's the article in its entirety for your reading pleasure:

My Baby Has Rainbow Hair
Gay parents, solo moms, sperm-swappin' friends. It's alternative-family bliss! Or is it?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, April 12, 2006

I have a friend who has a very young and beautiful son with a woman to whom he is not married or even dating and with whom he has never actually had sex because he is quite perfectly in love with someone else and she is quite perfectly single and, well, it's sort of out of the question.

My friend, however, he has good sperm. He is, as they say, good breedstock. This seems to be the general consensus. He is light and luminous and strong and tall and beautiful and his apparent spermal excellence is evidenced by the fact that the mother of their happy beautiful child would very much like to have another child using another dose of the high-quality DNA of my friend. And so would, he tells me, two other women.

It is a proposal he is quite modestly and humbly considering, given how my friend is open hearted and generous and also because he has been, to his peaceful dismay, only requested to act as casual and hush-hush (but still wonderful) part-time quasi-parent with his first child. Such is the way.

It is a situation that, as you might imagine, creates all manner of curious parenting dynamics and intriguing emotional conflicts, messy and wonderful and strange. And my friend is, of course, far from alone.

This is San Francisco. This is what you do. Modern twists on the staid ol' family format are much more accepted and expected in this glorious liberal bubble of progress and experimentation, and few people raise an eyebrow when they hear of happily unusual breeding practices that casually flaunt traditional pseudo-Christian 50-percent-divorce-rate nuclear family values.

I know unmarried, fortysomething women who very much want babies and who have yet to meet the right guy and so have naturally considered the semi-creepy world of sperm banks or asking friends or maybe posting something unusual on Craigslist. I know kinky polyamorous couples who are working toward babydom, on their own terms, multiple lovers intact. I know of lesbian couples who've adopted boy babies and gay male couples who've adopted girl babies and straight couples who've adopted baffled toddlers from China.

I know of all types of couples -- gay, straight and in between -- who've brought in surrogate mothers or sperm-donatin' friends and swapped eggs and semen and vials and tubes and syringes and fertilization tips and laughter and cocktails and it's all good and happy and progressive until someone loses a zygote.

Such giddy rearrangement of the traditional family pieces is a terrific and good thing, overall, despite (or perhaps exactly because of) how much consternation and pain such reconfiguration induces in the vicious religious right. Because the fact is, by almost any measure, the traditional, man-woman, Christian family configuration has been an abject failure, an utter embarrassment to time and culture and the art of favorable statistics. Oh yes it has.

Show me a single scientific experiment where fully 50 percent of the results turn out negative and induce collapse and emotional breakdown and childhood therapy and Xanax and alcoholism and screaming, and I'll show you a scientist who will quickly scrap the whole thing and start all over. Which is not to say it's not one hell of a lot of wicked fun to try anyway, should you be wired that way. You just gotta know your odds.

But then it appears the quirky alt-family options aren't exactly gilded slabs of congenial bliss, either. Seems a funny thing happened on the way to the alternative family: People still have issues. People still have just a tremendous number of hang-ups and emotional dramas regarding family and babies and who the hell gets to shape and mold and influence the consciousness of another human life. Go figure.

This is what we're learning: It does not matter if you're Christian or gay or bi, Mormon or neocon or a rainbow-colored leather-clad bear with hair where your legs used to be. Issues arise. Emotions tumble forth. There is, apparently, no perfect way. There is no ideal family structure and quit pointing to your Bible before you hurt yourself -- rule No. 1 in all matters reproductive: Never trust musty dogmatic mythology written by angry old men who never had sex. Duh.

We do know one thing. There are only a few key ingredients that work every single time. They are: stability, deep love, laughter, honest communication, solid boundaries, human kindness, balance and chocolate ice cream. That's about it. There is only the impulse to love and connect and carry on. And maybe, now and then, a good hot bath.

For awhile, my friend was troubled by the fact that he was supposed to be close with his child and help take care of him and celebrate their love, and yet has been instructed not to tell anyone he's the father because, well, the mother had issues (they later revised this plan after realizing that hiding such significant details from this child would only screw him up and induce resentment and possibly turn him Republican, so they invented a bed-time story telling of his charmed birth and his loving community and how they all lived happily ever after).

Then again, a wonderful lesbian couple I know used the sperm of a gay friend to become pregnant and have given birth, only to suffer a major falling-out with the donor, and now he wants access to the kid, which violates the spirit of their agreement and hence he and the couple hate each other and no one's the slightest bit happy.

It can get convoluted. Sperm-bank kids may never know a thing like a father exists or that mom was just too, um, "unique" to find a mate. Spouses of egg or sperm donors can become crazy-jealous that their lover shared such intimate genetics with another, and hence marriages get ruined and relationships get tangled and none of this even touches on what happens when the kid comes of age and wants to know what the hell is going on -- and by the way, Where's Dad?

For every success story in the alternative-family sphere, there's a debilitating wrinkle. It is perhaps no better -- or worse -- than traditional structures. But for every major falling-out and nasty emotional entanglement, there's a mad success story resulting in a glorious kid (or three) who will be raised with a funky and fresh perspective on family and parenting which, oh my God, we so desperately need in this culture right now that we might as well be in a desert pleading for water.

It would seem there is no escaping the human drama. It would seem there is no way around personal issues of life and sperm and DNA and pulse. You may thump your revisionist Bible, you may cite your lopsided studies, you may wave your freak flags high, but the truth is, we are here on this planet to work toward the new. We are here to adapt and evolve and try to clue into the Mystery. And playing with reproduction and family structure is one hell of an often glorious, often tortuous way to do exactly that. What, you thought we were all done? Not even close.

Clara Yu on NPR station KAZU

From our local NPR station, KAZU:

MONTEREY, CA (2006-04-20) The Defense Language Institute and Naval Postgraduate
School get all the headlines. California State University Monterey Bay has the
most students. So the Monterey Institute of International Studies often gets
overlooked. The 750-student graduate school in downtown Monterey focuses on
expanding understanding across cultures to avoid international conflicts. MIIS
signed an affiliation agreement with Vermont's Middlebury College last December,
and longtime Middlebury Professor Clara Yu will be inaugurated as MIIS President
on Saturday.In an extended interview, much of which did not make it on the air
due to time constraints, Dr. Yu speaks with KAZU's Ben Adler.

© Copyright 2006, KAZU

Email from my friend, Dawn

My friend, Dawn, sent me this email, sort of a chain letter and a "getting to know you" activity all rolled into one. I thought it was kind of fun. Here are my answers...

How well do you know me? This is different and always a fun way to spend fifteen minutes of the day...

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Waitressing at Ponderosa Steakhouse in Burnsville Center, Burnsville, MN, in high school
2. Waitressing at Pizza Hut in Apple Valley, MN, one summer in college
3. Night shift at the granola bar factory, the Grist Mill, in Lakeville, MN, lasted a week or two
4. Milking cows on a dairy farm in Brittany, France

Four movies I would watch over and over:
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. As Good as it Gets
3. Something's Gotta Give
4. Amelie

Four places I have lived:
1. Lido Beach, NY
2. Lawrence, KS
3. Cleden-Poher, France
4. Monterey, CA

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. Law & Order, Criminal Intent
2. Law & Order, Special Victims Unit
3. Trading Spouses
4. Dharma & Greg

Four places I have been on vacation:
1. Pound Ridge, NY, as a kid
2. Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, several times
3. Frankfurt & Heidelberg, Germany
4. A small village in the Pyrenees, on the French side, between Pau and Lourdes

Four websites I visit daily:
1. Le Telegramme (a French newspaper, even though I haven't been there in years)
2. Flickr - to work with my pictures and look at other people's
3. Blogger - to work on my blog
4. Yahoo.fr

Four of my favorite foods:
1. Cherries
2. Shrimp
3. Asparagus
4. Rice Pudding

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. The Pyrenees
2. San Francisco
3. The Galapagos
4. On my friend's boat, sailing out of Monterey Bay, down towards Point Lobos, CA

Four Friends that I think will respond:
1. Natalie
2. Nadine
3. Vicky
4. Janelle

Four things I love to do:
1. Write
2. Read
3. Go on vacation with my kids
4. Spend time with a special friend

Favorite Musicians/Singers:
1. Bob Dylan
2. Alison Krauss
3. The Dixie Chicks
4. Johnny Cash
(I like ALL kinds of music, but these are my favorites, at least for today!)

On "Tuesdays With Morrie"

I've been so tired this week, that I have been doing a lot of sleeping and resting and thinking. I've been tired from the post-tax letdown, and tired from not sleeping all that much of late.

When in a high-stress or intensely emotional situation, I think that I, like many people, tend to seek out ways to numb all of the feelings, and push them down, so that I don't have to deal with them. Actually feeling and experiencing your feelings is a lot harder and a lot more life-altering than simply going with the flow and pretending that whatever is happening really isn't.

I have not really dealt with my mother's death. Sometimes the anguish and pain just take me over. But, usually I push the emotions down, I don't talk about what I am feeling, and I find things in my world to occupy my mind and heart so that I do not have to deal with her passing and all of the confused and contradictory feelings associated with that loss.

I sometimes find myself doing that same thing with my feelings for other important people in my life. Occasionally they seem so overwhelming as to take over my whole being, my whole life. In a way, that's very good. I have never been able to do that before. Now, I have let my guard down, I let myself be vulnerable, and I have allowed myself to love and to be loved. That hasn't been easy for me. It takes so much more courage to feel my feelings and let my passion and compassion and affection flourish, than it does to try to replace those feelings with work. It's a scary thing to do. But, at the same time, it is exhilarating and exciting to finally love someone, and to be willing to truly experience all that loving entails.

In this case, I have been able to use my fear as a strengthener to support my courage, to surrender control, and to live my unembarrassed love as completely and totally as I am able. "My fear is my only courage, so I've got to push on through." I think that that is the hardest part, and the most gratifying. I believe that this has made me the most open and vulnerable that I have ever been in my whole life, and the most able to be committed. In some ways, it is the scariest thing I have ever experienced, but I believe that this is the only way to truly be me and to live my love and passion. The mask is gone, the walls are down, and all that's left is me, who I really am. It's such a powerful experience to know myself and connect with myself like that, and even more powerful to know and connect with someone else and to allow him to know and connect with me. I think that he knows that. I read that knowledge in his eyes, and feel it in his love.

Years ago, before my mother got ALS, before she even had breast cancer, I read the book, Tuesdays With Morrie. It was written by Mitch Albom, who also wrote that book I love so much, The 5 People You Meet in Heaven. I have read and reread The 5 People You Meet in Heaven. I had read and reread Tuesdays With Morrie, although I hadn't opened it since my mother died, it hits too close to home. I opened it just now, in writing. I remember that there are thoughts in this book that are relevant to how I feel, thoughts that apply to my current situation.

One of the most important of those thoughts, which applies to what I said above, is, "So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

Before I get to that, though, I want to explain that my Mom's Lou Gehrig's disease started in her foot and her lungs. She had asthma and sarcoidosis, which made her lungs more vulnerable. She never lost her ability to sit up or to use her hands, but she could no longer stand or move her legs, and couldn't swallow, etc. She wasn't always a good woman or a kind woman. Some of that, I am sure was due to her suffering at the hands, and fists, of others. Some of that was simply due to human weakness. But, in her later years, she "found God," and she discovered her own beauty, goodness, and grace. In the many trips to Minnesota that I took, we were able to work through the lingering issues of our past. And, the last time I said goodbye to her, before heading off to a joint 40th birthday cruise with about 35 friends from high school, I knew that I would never see her alive again. And I was right. I'd never had that feeling on any other visit, but I was sure about it then.

That visit was too long, and my sisters and I, or, more specifically, Monique and I didn't get along so well. That frustrated my mother. I was so tired of her being upset, and so tired of being the "smart, evil" daughter, that I wrote my mother an email, apologizing for the things I had done wrong in the past, and asking for forgiveness. I figured, if she could forgive others, it didn't hurt to ask! Here is the email she answered with, the last email I ever received from her:

Dearest Nana,
I am sooo proud of you! Congratulations on 1/ your new degree 2/ your new and beautiful car and 3/ your new and beautiful job! How could you say you're not the daughter I wanted you to be? You've beaten incredible odds to accomplish alot, both personally and professionally and it makes me very happy for you.
This will have to be short because I don't feel tip top today. Know that you ARE the daughter I've
always known you could be and I love you very much.
Love always,
MOMMA

Exactly one week later, she passed away.

Anyway, I wanted to write about some of the things that Albom speaks of in Tuesdays With Morrie, because some of these have been in the back of my mind in my relationships. For example, that "dying is only one thing to be sad over [...] living unhappily is something else." Sharing my love and my life with someone, even from a different house, for the time being, is significant in allowing me to live happily. For that, I am thankful.

On Being Happy:
"The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it." I think of that line sometimes. I spoke to my sister, Michele, a bit, last night. She may not be able to come out in May, because of my niece's activities this summer, as she was going to bring my oldest niece with her. So I asked her to come out in September. She's funny, that one.

On Death:
"Everybody knows they're going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently." That is what I am trying to do with my life and my love in the months since my mother died. I want to be true to myself, while honoring the people around me as well as myself. "Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all that I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?'" With certain friends, with Morgan and Mikaël, with my sister, and, to the extent possible, in general, I try to live that way, doing what I need to do, and being the person I want to be.

“As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on—in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here. […] Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

That all reminds me of the words to a Warren Zevon song that makes me cry and makes me think of my Mom:

“Shadows are falling
And I’m running out of breath
Keep me in your heart for a while
If I leave you it doesn’t mean
I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for a while.”

My Mom ran out of breath on the evening of July 30th of last year. That was it, she just stopped being. I still haven’t allowed myself to feel the pain. It’s too hard. It costs too much. And I still haven’t finished loving her.

On Feeling:
"Take any emotion--love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or [...] fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached; you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is...." "I thought about how often this was needed in everyday life. [...]How we feel a surge of love for a partner but we don't say anything because we're frozen with the fear of what those words might do to the relationship. Morrie's approach was exactly the opposite. Turn on the faucet. Wash yourself with the emotion. It won't hurt you. It will only help you."

“Tears are okay. It’s not just other people we need to forgive, we also need to forgive ourselves […] for all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done. You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened. That doesn’t help. I used to beat myself up over it. Now I see that never did any good. Make peace. You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you. Forgive yourself. Forgive others. Don’t wait. Not everybody gets the time. […] Not everybody is as lucky.”

On Love:
I am slowly learning and accepting the fact that "the most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. [...] Let it come in. We think we don't deserve love; we think if we let it in we'll become too soft. But [...] Love is the only rational act."

"The very thought of you
and I forget to do
the little things that everyone ought to do...”

On Marriage:
"This is part of what family is about." Family is not just about love, "but letting others know there's someone who is watching out for them. [...] Nobody else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work."

“There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. […] And the biggest one of those values? […] Your belief in the importance of your marriage. Personally, I think marriage is a very important thing to do, and you’re missing a hell of a lot if you don’t try it. Love each other or perish.”

Today's News Misread

Today I misread another Yahoo headline in my ongoing fatigued state. I have had a migraine all day, too, in addition to being worn out, and having what seems to be the onset of a bladder infection - yippee!!

So, anyway.

I read the following headline:
Marine Rabbit Restoration Effort Under Way

Wondering what a marine rabbit is, I clicked on the link, only to realize that the headline actually read:
Maine Rabbit Restoration Effort Under Way

Earth Day at MIIS

The MONTEREY INSTITUTE and the Environmental Task Force invites
you to celebrate

Earth Day 2006

Friday, April 21, 2006

Location: Holland Student Center, 440 Van Buren Street
Time: 10:00 am – 4 pm

Debates on current issues by Monterey Institute Professors:
· Is economic growth good for the environment?
· The WTO, agriculture, and the environment
· Should you buy local? Organic? And local economics.

There will be:
· Event booths w/ local environmental organizations and businesses
· Music
· Food
And more……...

Participating Organizations: Monterey Bay Aquarium, Friends of the Sea Otter, Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Central Avenue Bakery, Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association, Sustainable Monterey County, Green Party of Monterey County, City of Monterey, Cal-Am, Sustainability Academy, Association of Environmental Professionals, Monterey Salinas Transit, Watsonville Wetlands Watch, Trader Joe’s and others…..

STOP Trafficking of Persons

I'm Ready ~ Bryan Adams

From I'm Ready, by Bryan Adams

I'd like to see you, thought I'd let you know
I wanna be with you everyday
Cause I've got a feeling that's beginning to grow
And there's only one thing I wanna say

I'm ready - to love you
I'm ready - to hold you
I'm ready - I'm ready
Ready as I'm gonna be

What if God Was One of Us ~ Joan Osborne

If God had a name,
What would it be,
And would you call it to His face
If you were faced with Him
And all His glory?
What would you ask if
You had just one question?

And yeah, yeah, God is great,
Yeah, yeah, God is good,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

What if God was one of us;
Just a slob like one of us;
Just a stranger on a bus
Tryin' to make His way home?

If God had a face,
What would it look like
And would you wanna see
If seeing meant you would have to believe
In things like Heaven
And in Jesus and the Saints
And all the Prophets?

And yeah, yeah, God is great,
Yeah, yeah, God is good,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

What if God was one of us;
Just a slob like one of us;
Just a stranger on a bus
Tryin' to make His way home?
Tryin' to make his way home
Back up to heaven, all alone
Nobody calling on the phone,
'Cept for the Pope, maybe, in Rome

Yeah, yeah, God is great,
Yeah, yeah, God is good,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

What if God was one of us;
Just a slob like one of us;
Just a stranger on a bus
Tryin' to make His way home?
Just tryin' to make His way home,
Like a holy rolling stone,
Back up to Heaven, all alone,
Just tryin' to make his way home
Nobody calling on the phone,
'Cept for the Pope, maybe in Rome

French Bashing

My friend, Thomas, wrote the following email in response to the op-ed item from the New York Times that follows his thoughtful reflection. I think Thomas makes a great point, and agree with him whole-heartedly. I am, quite frankly, sick and tired of other Americans' never-ending desire to bash the French. I understand what they say their rationale is, or at least I think I do, issues related to about WWII and VietNam. But, I don't think those are valid or sufficient reasons, and I doubt most French-bashers even understand the complete "story" of their purported position.

Bonjour French ex-pats and fellow France lovers,

This NY Times op-ed piece really riles me. Written with clever obfuscation and under the guise of objective critique, it appears to me to be just another exercise in France bashing. Why is France such a political punching bag? Are the foreign centre-right pundits just so exasperated that the French system allows and even responds to such democratic notions as dissent? Are the foreign centre-left pundits merely envious that the French populace has the gonads to rise en masse against neo-liberal so-called reform? Is it that France stood up to US-Anglo strong-arming for a "coalition" against Iraq? Am I the only non-French person who strongly admires the French populace' will to power and resistance to American hegemony? Notice how the author presents Britain as a state "that works" while giving Thatcher credit for it. What a joke.

Dans la paix et la solidarité,

Thomas

************************************************************************************

April 11, 2006

Politicus

Chirac's Rigid Creed for French Nonreform

By JOHN VINOCUR

International Herald Tribune

PARIS Jacques Chirac is discredited, Dominique de Villepin, too, and with them, it seems, a certain France that told the world it could avoid change and, as exceptionalist as ever, escape immobility's ridiculousness in the process.

Absurdity certainly has caught up with this routine. There's never been a more incongruous political crisis than the country's present misery about relaxing employment regulations for young people: scores of thousands of them - a poll shows 76 percent of the 15- to 24 year-old age group aspire to the privileges, early retirement and ironclad security of civil service jobs - demonstrating for social conservatism on the historical turf of new dawns and revolution.

And rarely has upheaval on the streets led to more ridiculous political repercussions. Here, it has exposed a president who tried to save face for his prime minister by signing a bill changing first-job rules, then explained incoherently that a second measure would soon nullify the original's provisions, and finally turned over the repair job to a rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, who both Chirac and Villepin have long hoped to crush.

For some, this is a hoot. But ridiculousness can be sad, or even ominous. That's the direction this episode points to for the future because it shows the entire French political spectrum locking itself into the depressing cavern of Chirac's political creed.

This article of faith insists that if France will sample the idea of reform, just tasting, it won't willingly swallow real social change. In terms of getting- elected politics, the Chirac precept says that only a presidential candidate who refuses to talk about the necessity of risk, or how France gains through a smaller nanny-state or a freer economy, can inspire enough French trust to win election.

In a new book on the president by Franz-Olivier Giesbert, François Fillon, a Sarkozy ally, describes Chirac as "a psycho-rigid person who's convinced that France cannot tolerate any major reform. This comes to the great irritation of the left which wanted the right to do the job before it returns to power."

In the same book, Jacques Toubon, a former cabinet minister once referred to by Chirac as a man ready to jump out a window for his boss, characterizes him as "incredibly representative of the French, their aspirations, their contradictions, their pusillanimity. Every time I tell him we've got to move, he says 'We're only going to get hurt.'"

Toubon added, perhaps Chirac is right.

With roughly a year to go before Chirac's second term is up, the current unrest and its context has strengthened that awful irony. The upheaval caused by a tiny reform attempt signifies the only thing that this enfeebled president (his approval ratings are in the 25 percent range) has ensured as a political legacy is wide acceptance by politicians right and left of his defeatist analysis of French voters' instincts.

Look at Sarkozy. Locked in battle with Villepin to become the presidential candidate of the democratic right in 2007, the interior minister for years defined himself as France's ultimate anti-Chirac truth-teller. Playing the liberal reformer to the hilt, Sarko said that the statist, timidly capitalistic, nationalist French model was done for and there had to be a "rupture" in the country's consecrated habits for French decline to end.

But with Villepin in big trouble trying to defend his half-cocked labor- market reform (targeting young people while missing the structural causes of France's overall job problem), Sarkozy quickly became the voice of state compassion in erasing Villepin's baby steps toward change.

With big gains in the polls, Sarkozy's friends are now calling this a wise recentering of policy. But in truthful terms, Sarkozy's choice of action stands mostly as his real-time confirmation of Chirac's no-change precept. It's a decision that can only impose limits on what had been Sarkozy's reflex to talk honestly about reforming France's future.

Enter more ludicrousness: Before Villepin's presidential aspirations appeared to go up in smoke (the prime minister has fallen to the 25 percent level in voter satisfaction), his attempt to bring a little more flexibility to the job market was regarded as a pre- emptive tactic to counter Sarkozy's potential pitch as a reformer.

And Villepin was the pol who promised to protect the French social model. Giving every appearance of mocking Chirac's instincts about France - Giesbert's book describes Villepin talking with increasingly brutal relish about forcing the president's hand to become prime minister - Villepin charged ahead thinking he could corner an eventual reformist vote without having the rest of the French come down on his head.

That move was a botch. It effectively ended with this incoherent - or all too comprehensible - phrase from a seemingly punch-drunk Villepin in the National Assembly last week: "Let's not aim for a zero-risk society, which is an immobile society, but for a society of totally controlled risk."

Which leaves the left, riding weeks of protests and the Chirac/Villepin retreat, in a much-improved position to win the presidency. But the left's return to executive power after 12 years' absence would be without the deep reforms in society that Margaret Thatcher left behind for Tony Blair (and which make Britain a country that works.)

Since Chirac fled tackling reform head on, and has been humiliated as a result of his prime minister trying to grab only the big toe of change, the Socialists can't be objectively encouraged or expected to act as its agents.

Rather the opposite. The one hot Socialist presidential prospect, Royal, attacks the word flexibility, a euphemism for reform in a country certified as scared stiff of it. She argues flexibility "means social destructiveness and makes no economic sense."

Royal's prescription for a France she admits is in decline? She says: "I think that to re-establish confidence, citizens have got to see that the experiences they're living through are being identified with. The best way to achieve that is to ask them what they think. I believe in citizen expertise."

If that very probably means that fighting for reform gets eliminated as the best way to win the presidency, it proves Chirac's sorry axiom right.

In all of France's ongoing grief, Jacques Marseille, a professor of the history of economics at the Sorbonne, has become, left and right, the media's go-to guy for wisdom on the demonstrations and the country's rejection of change.

Talking to the newspaper Le Monde, he suggested that what France has now become is a pole of emptiness, "the model of the absence of real democracy, or incapacity for discussion, reform and compromise."

So was France impossible to reform? he was asked.

"Yes," Marseille answered. "Or in any case it's exceptionally difficult."

http://select.nytimes.com/iht/2006/04/11/world/IHT-11politicus.html?_r=1

retrieved 11 April 06

Fatigue and NASA

I'm losing it!

Last night, I saw the following headline on Yahoo news:
NASA to Crash Space Probe Into Moon

In my fatigue, I thought it said:
NASA to Crash Space Probe Into Moron

I thought you'd get a kick out of that!

More on the Consequences of Fear...

To martyr yourself to caution
Is not going to help at all
Because there'll be no safety in numbers
When the Right One walks out of the door

From Lost for Words, David Gilmour

Chanel and Maddie at the Beach

Saturday at the Beach 061
Video sent by NanaP0722

My Ship....

....just might be coming in. And, for once, I am not at the airport, as Vicky would say, that is, I am in the right place at the right time...

...Still holding my breath, though.

Flip Wilson, in a skit with Bill Cosby, just said, and I paraphrase,

My ship woulda come in last year 'cept for that strike that tied up the coast.

That's sort of how I feel, except that it's not really anybody else's fault that things haven't come together sooner. I've done a lot of things backwards in this life of mine; sometimes, for understandable reasons, other times, for no apparent reason!

A friend of mine, no, more than a friend, but I don't know the words, in any language, to define his place in my life, neither in terms of importance, nor in terms of caring, so let's just call him my friend, with the understanding that we are using the broadest, yet most refined, most pure, most sincere, most intimate and most knowing definition of the word...

So, anyway, this friend seems to believe me beautiful. I have difficulty accepting that, especially from him. He amazes me, and I am not easily amazed! Last night, he told me one of the sweetest, if not the sweetest, things I have ever been told. He said,

I wish you could see yourself the way that I see you right now.

What a lovely, lovely thing to say, from such a lovely man.

Yippee!

I came home from work in a tired and depressed mood today, to find the following message in my email. Now I have more energy than I can remember having in years!

You have been selected for an Asst Professor position with the Defense Language Institute of Monterey, CA.

The position is for 13 months and can be extended. It comes with health/life insurance and sick/annual leave benefits. It also comes with a 401K retirement package. The salary offer is $XX. You must pass all your language tests, before we can make this final. If you are interested, please contact this office within the next 3 working days.

Obviously, I have already contacted their office. I'll be starting on the 24th of this month, which gives me enough time to finish tax season, take a break, and then get to work!!

The wonderful lady's wonderful email even ended with:

"When one door closes, another opens...seize the opportunity..."

On Waste

How extravagant you are, throwing away women like that. Some day they may be scarce.

~Captain Renault in Casablanca

She did it again....

Vicky made my day again this morning. She downloaded the song, In Your Time, by Bob Seger, and told me that it is definitely my song. She's so sweet ~ my ego just loves this stuff! It makes me feel awfully nice to have such caring and loving people in my life.

In your time
The innocence will fall away
In your time
The mission bells will toll
All along
The corridors and river beds
There'll be sign
In your time

Towering waves
Will crash across your southern capes
Massive storms
Will reach your eastern shores
Fields of green
Will tumble through your summer days
By design
In your time

Feel the wind
And set yourself the bolder course
Keep your heart
As open as a shrine
You'll sail the perfect line

And after all
The dead ends and the lessons learned
After all
The stars have turned to stone
There'll be peace
Across the great unbroken void
All benign
In your time
You'll be fine
In your time

Copyright 1994 by Gear Publishing Co. (ASCAP)

Random Randomness…

I know what it’s like to crave human comfort like your body craves air, to crave it so badly that you’d sacrifice your dignity to get it.

~Halle Berry, Crashing Into Joy, p. 220

On a sign on someone else’s blog, one that was promoting the use of bicycles over personal cars and other fossil-fuel consuming vehicles… In French, the word for bike is vélo. The sign said:

VÉLORUTION

… as opposed to RÉVOLUTION, which I thought was a really cool play on words, a sort of one-word spoonerism, I suppose, and a good one!

I want to sponsor a child, an elephant, the SPCA, … what else?

I want to look into working with the Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program. Is there a women’s prison facility close enough to where I live for me to pull it off? What about volunteer teaching for the same population?

My friend just made my day...

My friend, Vicky, for whom I work, likes to make CDs and bring them in to the office for us to listen to. Sometimes, she'll decide what songs to burn based on what she thinks I'll like.

Just now, as this song began to play, she said, "This is such a beautiful song, and, I'm sorry, but it reminds me of you."

I'm not sorry, though.

She just made my day!

And, to an extent, she's actually right. Before we were friends, a colleague of mine and I used to debate political and religious events and notions. Not knowing who I was, based solely upon my words in an Internet forum at our school, he would often become frustrated at my refusal to look at the world without "rose-colored glasses." At the same time, I would become quite frustrated, believing he thought his position was the only right one, and sometimes becoming so incensed by his point-of-view, that I failed to see the logic therein. Later on, we spoke in person at another friend's birthday party. Since then, we have developed a certain level of mutual understanding and respect. But, both he and Vicky are correct. In most things, I do insist on wearing those rose-colored glasses, most of the time, anyway. I usually do my utmost to give all people the benefit of the doubt. And, like the person Bono and U2 are speaking of, I do, indeed, find goodness and beauty in everything (and everyone!).

In that, it takes a lot to get me to change my mind. But, once I do, it's an all-or-nothing kind of deal. I am as committed to seeing the good in people as I am in accepting that they are toxic to my life and well-being.

The song, and Vicky's comments truly touched me, though. They made a rough day better, at least for a little while!

Grace

Grace, she takes the blame
she covers the shame
Removes the stain
It could be her name

Grace, is the name for a girl
It´s also thought that changed the world
And when she walks on the street, you can hear her strings
Grace finds goodness in everything

Grace, she´s got the walk
Not on a ramp or on chalk
She´s got the time to talk
She travels outside the karma karma
She travels outside the karma
When she goes to work, you can hear her strings
Grace finds beauty in everything

Grace, she carries a world on her hips
No champagne flute for her lips
No twirls or skips between her fingertips
She carries a pearl in perfect condition

What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark, no longer stings
Because Grace makes beauty out of ugly things

Grace finds beauty in everything
Grace finds goodness in everything

~ Bono and U2

Wouldn't it be nice....?

Ah, if only we all had Descartes' fortitude!!

Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.

~Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician(1596-1650)


A friend loaned me the book, A Voice Crying in the Darkness, by Edward Abbey. It is a collection of thoughts on various subjects. Many of them are quite insightful and/or interesting. For example,

In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.

My JakeJake Kitty

JakeJake
Originally uploaded by NanaP.

He's such a sweet boy... Here he is resting on my bed, and looking at the dog in the doorway.

Things that influence my thinking...

There are many things that influence my thinking, my feelings, and the decisions I make. Those influences comprise such variables as observation (my own or other people’s), past experiences, instinctive reactions, television shows, not just the news programs, and things that I read, whether they be the newspaper, magazines, fortune cookies, or works of literature.

Yesterday, in a moment of weakness, I suppose, I let myself get down in the dumps, for no tangible reason. There’s just a bit of a learning curve in this for me, as I often take things personally when I shouldn’t. My bad. I’m sorry.

My father was an abusive alcoholic. No, I guess that he still is. Growing up, I was rarely allowed to leave my bedroom. As a teenager, I was not even allowed to eat with the family. In eleventh grade, a teacher reported his/her suspicion that I was being abused to social services. That was when mandatory reporting finally hit. A social worker came to school to talk to me. She then told me that she would have to talk to my parents, and that, if anything happened, I should go to the local police. That weekend, my father’s rage was far worse than usual. After sitting on me and holding me by the hair to pound my head into the floor, he pushed me down the stairs. We had a split-entry house, and he walked down the first flight, after me, to push me down the second. My sleeve caught on the banister, so I didn’t fall the way he wanted me to, which made him madder. Then he said I had to walk to work (about 7 miles away). Instead, I walked to the police station, in my Ponderosa Steakhouse uniform. I only had to tell them my name, and they knew what to do, as the social worker had spoken to them. I was made a ward of the State of Minnesota. My parents and I only reconciled briefly in 1984, between that day and the spring of 1988. Since 1988, thanks to one of my sisters, who brought us all together that Thanksgiving, we have remained consistently more or less on speaking terms.

The point of that little bit of history is that, throughout all that time I found solace in art and literature, both enjoying that of other people and creating my own.

That is also the reason why I have always been uncomfortable with people touching my hair or the back of my head. My sisters are the same way, for the same reason, although they were not as abused as I was, being the “smart, evil one,” and all. Once, though, my father did pull out a handful of my sister's hair. He took her on a guilt-induced shopping trip to Burnsville Center, after that.

Now fast-forward to a few years later….

I started having some health problems when I was about 18. At least that is when I first started going to the doctor, with relatively ambiguous complaints. I wound up having endometriosis, ovarian cysts, funky-assed cells growing in different parts of my body, damage to a number of organs that had been fused together by endometrial tissues, etc. That trouble was compounded by a c-section with numerous complications, pre-term labor, toxemia, and then an induced premature delivery, a mini-stroke and left-leg paralysis during labor, a massive hemorrhage, etc., when Morgan was born, a botched hernia repair, DVT, chemotherapy to bring on artificial menopause, many surgeries, etc., to finally be mostly cured in April, 2001, and “completely” cured in February, 2002.

As I felt worse and worse, physically speaking, I became more and more depressed as well, and more and more fearful. I spent almost all of 1999-2002 without leaving the house, except to go to the doctor. At the beginning of that time, I was working, and I would just go to work and the doctor. After a while, I was so sick, and in and out of the hospital so frequently that I was on disability, and rarely left the house. After the botched hernia repair, when I couldn’t walk, I stopped even going upstairs to bed, preferring to sleep on the couch, which was easier than crawling upstairs.

My “boyfriend” stayed with me. Partially because I was sick, I am sure, to his credit. But that was a pretty toxic relationship. We brought out the worse in each other. We weren’t physically intimate for the last four of the six years we were together, because of the pain I was in, but, even more, because we didn’t like each other anymore. I broke up with him, but he wouldn’t move out. We were renting my father’s house, so I thought that illogical, but, nonetheless, as I grew better and more confident, I decided that I would move.

Along the way to feeling better and becoming more self-assured, I re-read a book of poetry that I had bought the winter after I left home in high school. That was one of those books I bought because I liked the title: My Song For Him Who Never Sang For Me.

On that day, at the end of 2001, I decided that I needed to do what was suggested in one of her poems ~ I needed to change my life, and, to do so, I needed to change my mind. So, that’s what I did. But, it really isn’t always easy. Back then, I did what I had to do to get my life together again physically, emotionally, and otherwise, culminating in my moving back to California and going back to MIIS for my second Master’s degree. Rebuilding myself psychologically has taken a bit longer. I didn’t have a basis for comparison and didn’t know how to do so many things, not having had any positive examples until the age of 17, after I got out of foster care, and lived with my then-boyfriend's family, in Stoughton, Wisoncsin. They were wonderful people. The best "parents" I ever had. I've only having had a fewsuitable role models or examples since then.

I do falter at times, feeling good really isn’t a one-time accomplishment. Like the saying says, you can’t live your life in one day. I was recently asked if I really dislike myself. I told that person that I do. That wasn’t right. I don’t dislike myself. Not really. I know what’s inside of me. And I know I am a good, kind, caring, and compassionate person. But it is hard to undo years and years of abuse, neglect, and criticism. I sometimes lack a little bit of confidence. But, ultimately, not only does my father not know enough to support his claim that I am evil, he doesn’t even know me, at all. He only knows the image of me that he has created in his own mind. And, just because he says something, even to me; just because he asserts that I am a bad person, does not make it so, does not make his proclamations any more true. I know that I am not what he says that I am, and so, I choose to live a life that is true to my personal values and how I think people deserve to be treated in life........

Mostly, I strive to act with kindness and respect in all things and to all people. I don’t always do it, but I try.

I don’t ever completely forget that poem, though.

There are a few very important people in my life. They are very precious to me, and I don’t want to miss a thing I can experience with each and every one of them. My relationship with each of them is different from my relationship with any other. But the feelings feel for any one of them, or the time that I share with any one of them, are not superior to those particular to any other. They're different, that's all. I treasure the time they have to share with me, and I am sincerely thankful.

Broken Pieces

(Beach glass, so, discolored)

Buried Treasure

In my heart? . . . unspoken feelings.
In my mind? . . . words left unsaid.
In my dreams? . . . our happy endings.
In my life? . . . actions, untaken;
gestures, unmade;
thoughts, unmentioned; and
feelings I was too broken to share
. . . with anyone.

Alone here,
In the autumn of my days;
Holding tight to all I failed to do, for fear . . .
. . . of success,
. . . of love, and
. . . of peace . . .

In the shelter of that fear,
I gather the pieces;
Cobble them together,
in secret;
Bury them away,
in my heart and mind;
and then, leave them,
in safety,
and in darkness . . .

They cannot grow,
or flourish, but,
No one can shatter the pieces of me
if they cannot be reached;
Not if I do not share
what makes me, me,
with anyone,
ever,
again. . . . Right?

Tender, fragile pieces,
of the treasure I once was . . .
. . . quiet, secret feelings,
. . . unspoken words,
. . . happy endings
that will never be.

The pieces? . . . all that's left,
of a hope-filled little girl . . .

They're my buried treasure . . .
. . . and the map is all the world.

********************************************************************************************************

That is who, or what, I am. . . broken pieces. . . buried treasure. . . a solitary piece of blue beach glass. . .

Copyright, 2006

Geraldine Jones, On Love

Love is a feeling you feel when you're about to feel a feeling you've never felt before.

~Flip Wilson, as Geraldine Jones