Faint Hearts Never Won Fair Ladies

The Vision

I wrote this blog, and then I chickened out and let it sit. Then I thought I would go ahead and publish it. No, don’t do it, Joyce, you’re sticking your neck out. It might get chopped off.

Maybe. Maybe not.

This how all this came about:

A couple of days ago as I wandered Barnes and Noble bookstore, I came upon Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s 50th-anniversary book #Gift from the Sea. I have loved it for about that long, and there it is, still in the bookstore. It occurred to me that I, too, might have something to contribute to the world.

Many women related to Lindbergh when she recounted how fractured she felt caring for five children, and even though she had household help, she still managed the meals, drove the children to the orthodontist, to soccer practice, cared for her husband, called repair men when the refrigerator broke down, and in the midst of it all searched for grace.

We all related to her words when she penned: “The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere.”

We championed her cause when she wrote “When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return.”

 The subjects of which she spoke have lived and touched the hearts of readers throughout all that time.

So why I am writing this?

I am using you as a sounding board. Forgive me—I could use the page alone, and not send this, but I trust that you are with me on this journey, as we were with Anne when she lived in a minimal house on the beach. It was a house where she let the wind blow through and brought in only what suited her—shells from the beach, shells she used as metaphors for her chapters.

Last night I listened to a webinar by Caz Makeover who is a travel writer (www.yTravel.com). Her topic was “How to Turn a Blog into a Business.” I have wished for that but felt it was not possible for me. My mindset was that making money from what I wanted to do was a pipe dream. Yes, I know, I have read, “Do what you love and money will follow.” Nice lure, I thought.

Then I realized I had “Stinkin thinkin.”

I tell other people they can do it and then I don’t believe it myself.

Why not me?!

If your intent is to serve, and mine is, if your intent is to make a difference, and mine is, then if you don’t make money doing it, your business is soon over—no service, no difference. Kaput.

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

I had been griping that it appears that people are often asking for money. I felt the pull, the desperation of others so that I couldn’t consider that maybe people wanted to give to me.

Open the pipeline so money flows to you, not out of you.

I don’t know how I am going to do it yet. I can offer my words on a blog, and that’s free, so I’m not sure where the money is, but I trust that I will find it.  I have the first step, The Vision.

To quote Jonathan Mead (Paid to Exist)

“As we grow up, we're taught to follow a template.

“Let's call it the "Freedom Template."

“We're sold this idea, this myth that if we just follow the template, someday we'll earn our freedom. Someday, we can finally be happy.

“…This "Freedom Template" is a big, fat, lie.

“But the problem is, maybe you don't know how to do it any other way.

Maybe you don't know that in order to opt out of the template, you must create your own path.

“That's pretty terrifying.”—

Keep checking in, and together we will see what happens next….

Next blog is the Mission statement.

Thank you for reading.

“Don't wish me happiness
I don't expect to be happy all the time...
It's gotten beyond that somehow.
Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.
I will need them all.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Super Heros

On June 30, 1908, at 7 a.m. a man was sitting on his porch when he was suddenly hurled from his chair and felt such heat that he thought his shirt was on fire.

“Suddenly in the north sky… the sky was split in two,’ he recounted, “and high above the forest, the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire… At that moment, there was a bang in the sky and a mighty crash… The crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or of guns firing. The earth trembled.”

All this was caused by a “#dirty ice ball” known as a comet. This occurred in a desolate area of #Turguska Siberia Russia. No causalities (of people) were reported, but it decimated over 770 acres, killed Reindeer, and sent a shock to Japan 5.0 on the rector scale.

In 2009, a comet, (The Westly Impact), hit Jupiter leaving a “spot,” the size of our Pacific Ocean.

Fifteen years earlier for the first time, humans saw the impact of two solar bodies. This was the Shoemaker Levi 9 comet plowing into Jupiter.    

          

I had been trying to turn my husband into a Superhero by finding comets before they find us.  He has a long history of detecting things, and I thought comets would be a worthwhile cause. Of course, then we need to engage earth’s brilliant minds on how to get rid of them—drive them away, shoot them down, whatever it takes.

And then I find a superhero in the form of a little lady named Carolyn Shoemaker.

In 1913, she and David Levi had discovered a comet orbiting Jupiter. The following year the comet broke into a “string of pearls” and by gravitational pull was sucked into that humongous red planet named Jupiter. This impact was equivalent to 6 million megatons of TNT and was named after its finders Carolyn Shoemaker, and then an amateur astronomer, David Levi , thus the name, The Shoemaker Levi 9.

Jupiter, “The shining father,” is a giant protective magnet, a sentinel for the earth. For the Romans’ he was “King of the Gods,” and they replaced the name of the Greek god Zeus with the name Jupiter. Maybe they knew something it has taken us years to learn.

Jupiter is protecting us.

Thank you, Jupiter!

Jupiter because of its immense size draws flying objects into its mass, thus sweeping up debris that could seriously damage us.

Mrs. Shoemaker says that as a young girl she had little interest in science.  Yet she has discovered more comets than any other living soul. To date 32 comets, and  800 asteroids.

She said she at first considered Astronomy a field "relegated to only old men in white beards, smoking pipes, and staring at the sky." In the 1960s, there was still a "prevailing attitude in astronomy that women were used as computers for their attention to fine detail, not for theory."

Mr. Shoemaker was a cheerleader of other people's interests. In 1960, he encouraged his wife to fly and become a pilot because he knew she wanted to, as he could not due to health problems. In the late 1960s, at the age of 51, after years as homemaker and mother to their three children, Carolyn was faced with the empty-nest syndrome and wanted to do something fulfilling. She asked her husband for advice. He thought she might be good in astrological research.

In Australia, in 1997, the Shoemakers were involved in a car crash. Gene Shoemaker was instantly killed while Carolyn sustained severe injuries. She eventually recovered and continued her observation work becoming known as “The Comet Lady.”

Her awards have been:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal
Rittenhouse Medal (1988)
Scientist of the Year Award (1995)

More If’s And’s and no Buts.

Isaac Asimov said, “If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood, I’d type faster.”

More If’s to think about:

If the crowd likes sweets, does that mean we ought to sweeten most every food? And instead of sprinkling a few grains of pure cane sugar from Hawaii, grown in the sun, (didn’t we do that when we were kids with little repercussions), we hire scientists to create chemicals that trick our brains into thinking we are tasting sweet, all the while those substances called "diet," are doing the opposite.

If the crowd likes big booms, explosions, and war games, does that mean we ought to up the ante in movies, books, and video games to see who can provide the biggest boom, fire, or car crash?

If children like solving puzzles and playing games via the internet, does that mean that the only way we can provide tension and conflict, it to kill something?

If the crowd likes to be chased does that mean we ought to provide a chase scene in every action movie?

If the crowd likes digests over books, then should we offer more U-tube videos, sound bites, and quick reads?

If the crowd will stand in line for a popular attraction, and by-pass the meatier dramas, documentaries, or movies of substance, then do we need to sell the sizzle and not the steak?

If the crowd likes simple, cheap, fast and fun, then, in order to sell, do we need to enter those concepts into most all advertising?

It the crowd doesn’t like to read, does that mean we stop printing books?

Do  you think when Michelangelo was carving David he was concerned about whether the populace would like it?

Do you think when Andy Warhol painted soup cans he thought that people loved Campbell’s Soup so much they would want a painting of that product on their walls?

Do you think when Orville and Wilbur Wright climbed into their bicycle made flyable with wings they thought they were going to get rich building airplanes?

No, these people were experimenting. They were expressing their creativity; they did what they wanted to do and in the doing of it, advanced their craft, and thus civilization.

There is an aspect of the crowd that creative people sometimes forget—that is that chase scenes wear out, that hype gets old, and that the new, the fun, the creative, gets their juices flowing.

Do the work that matters to you.

You’re the one to make a brighter day.

If

“If you can start the day without caffeine,

“If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

“If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

“If you can eat whatever food is put on your plate and be grateful for it,

“If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

“If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

“If you can watch friends go away on exotic vacations when you have to stay at home, without even a twinge of jealousy.

“If you can face the world without lies and deceit,

“If you can relax without beer, wine, or liquor,

“And if you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

“Then you are probably a dog.”

--Jack Kornfield

What do You Believe?

When you were a kid did you wonder what happened to the miracles?

If you went to Sunday School as I did and heard Bible stories about pillars of fire, people turning into salt, Jesus raising people from the dead and turning water into wine, you might have wondered, as I did, that if they could do it then, why not now? Not that I wanted people turned into salt, but you get the idea.

The events around me were physical, a nuts and bolts life, not ethereal, or even mystical. Yet even in those days there was the concept of a guru sitting on the mountain, where people trudged up steep cliffs to ask him about the meaning of life.

  

And then there was the Wizard behind the curtain who tricked us by pulling leavers, and appearing in smoke. The Wizard, however, honored the gift we had exhibited, a heart, a brain and some courage, and he taught us that he didn't have the magic, we did.

And from the mountain the guru told us “Don’t worry, be happy.”

One must rise above the rank and file to accept that the idea that perhaps, maybe, not worrying and being happy just might be a good idea.

We had to advance to the place where we knew we were good people, we have a heart, a brain, and some courage, and we have a right to be happy.

We’ve come a long way baby.

But we’re not the first civilization on this planet to obtain heights of grandeur—there have been others. We would know that if we had not been knocked back to the Stone Age by a series of cataclysmic events.

About a week ago I heard Graham Hancock at Powell’s Book store in Portland speak to a packed house.  He has written the book Magicians of the Gods, and he not only proposes that much of the archaeology taught is wrong but he supports it with evidence. That mankind is not 5,000 years old, more like 350,000, that there were advanced civilizations long before we crawled out of the mud thinking we came from monkeys.

He spoke of an archaeological find in Turkey called Gobekli Tepe, where carved pillars stand vertical in the ground similar to the buried warriors found in China. These pillars are carved with reliefs, and writings yet to be deciphered, and there are five more layers of columns beneath those—they have ground X-rayed to find them. This incredible find was deliberately filled in with light weight soil and sand, and entirely covered with a mound of earth.

They preserved their story.

What story will it tell?

Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quiche Maya says this about the “Forefathers.”

They were endowed with intelligence; they saw and instantly they could see far, they succeeded in seeing, they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. When they looked, instantly they saw all around them, and they contemplated in turn the arch of heaven and the round face of the earth. The things hidden in the distance they saw all without first having to move; at once they saw the world, and so, too, from where they were, they saw it. Great was their wisdom, their sight reached to the forests, the lakes, the seas, the mountains and the valleys.”

Would that we would be spoken of in that manner…

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. “ - Hamlet Shakespeare

What's Your Perfect Christmas Gift?

Here's mine.

Carry on, and celebrate the Great High Holidays!

Love from Joyce

The Real Scoop

A funny thing happened on my way to my desk, daughter number one called to tell me about the cooking class she offered at her son’s school. It happened during a storm, and when thunder clapped louder than a train going through the building, the little ones hid under the table while the big one’s went outside to hold onto the flag pole to see if they could get electrocuted.

Before I could lay a pinkie on the keyboard, I get a phone call…

"This call will be recorded for quality assurance."

Garrison Keillor (The Prairie Home Companion show on radio) did a shtick about this sort of call. He wondered why they wanted to listen to his voice, so he suggested—backed up by his sound effects guy—that each time you call use a different accent.

“This is Senior Keillor , I teenk this is a torough explanation…”

“Bonjour, this is Monsieur Keillor…”

The scoop, folks, is, they don’t care how you sound.

They are not listening to you.

They are listening to their employee.

Same with email, Quality Control is watching the employee who is writing the email.  

They are making sure the responder is answering within the prescribed amount of time, that they don’t use contractions, (Horrors), and use proper grammar with no &%4 typos.

Companies are monitoring the very employee they background checked, fingerprinted, drug tested, and interviewed to make sure they qualified  for the job. and then they don't (contraction) trust them to do it.

It boggles my mind.

I hear #Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream is a joy to work for.  #Tom’s of Maine as well, and # Log Rhythms, the company that built our log house is terrific.

Just think, if we knew of companies that follow our ethical, humane, and logical way of thinking, and gave them our business…

I’m excited about the possibility.

Ha Ha: What’s a perfect pitch?

When you throw a banjo into a dumpster and it spears an accordion.

Thanks to Doug McMinn

NDE

Go into a Wall-mart book section and what do you see? Mostly fiction. (I love fiction, the exquisite kind.) But on this Wall-mart shelf we see mainly murder, mayhem, illicit love stories, and world wracking events. The magazine rack is about the same, as is the TV news.

Nobody wants to be on the Red October, but we want to read about it.

Why?

Escape.

Well, listen to this: Most people go to mind-numbing jobs, stop at McDonalds or the equivalent for lunch, don’t have the money for a Big Mac, so opt for a Quarter Pounder instead, go home, watch some TV, play video games, have chili and crackers for dinner, argue instead of making love with their spouse, go to sleep, and the next morning begin all over again.

But that’s not us right?

We have dreams and aspirations, and we are searching for how to achieve those dreams. We want an exciting life. We figure we are here for a reason. We endeavor to find that reason and realize it.  We want to be successful in life, finances, and family. Whew, that’s a tall order.

I was inspired recently by a NDE, A Near Death Experience, sent to me by an intimate friend. It was her experience, not mine to tell. The bottom line is, however, I want to be the sort of person my friend felt she was destined to be--one who makes the world a flourishing place for people, plants and animals.

And I want to enroll others to join me.

According to my friend with the NDE experience, when we dropped the bomb the world was in peril, peril like total destruction, but someone, some thing, something wise, intervened. And now it is our job to carry out the trust placed in us.

We need to hold the planet in awe. We need to hold it with soft hands and a warm heart.  We need to take care of each other. I don’t mean we have to love everybody, heavens, that’s a crock. We just need to see that their basic needs are met, exalt them to a higher plane, encourage them, and stop shooting each other for God’s sake. And while I’m at it, we can stop bellyaching about our childhood. Get over it. Millions of others are in the same boat.

And stop that mind-numbing stuff.

We aren’t lazy people. We just want to be challenged to greatness, to feel that we matter, to be acknowledged for our contributions, to have a job we rush to in excitement.

Some of the aborigines of Australia believed there were the keepers of the Earth, but because the resources are not supporting them in their preferred wild lifestyle, they are leaving. They are not reproducing themselves, and they are leaving that earth’s care in the hands of others.

We are the others.

Why we must start taking a stand against the system that’s designed to make us despise our work, and start being part of a new movement where work is centered in joy, contribution, and community—Jonathan Mead

#Paid to Exist

Let's Sift Through the Sludge and Find the Gold

There are many areas where that title applies. 

One would be Thanksgiving. Remember how the pilgrims survived their first winter in the new land, raised their crops and with a bountiful harvest shared a feast? They needed a feast, the poor people were half starving. And so the story goes, they gave thanks, and invited their neighbors. Some of their neighbors happened to be the native peoples who lived on the land before they arrived. The Natives brought wild turkeys and corn, and thus introduced a tradition.

Few of us need a feast, but we do need to give thanks.

And now with Christmas coming up I want to find the gold, not follow a grumbling scenario:  “Oh yeah I need to cook for eight hours, eat for fifteen minutes, and clean up for seven days.”

I’m not doing it.

I want to find the gold.

The gold is to celebrate the great high holidays in a spirit of joy, gratitude, and glad tidings.  

The winter celebration goes back Pre-Christian. The Winter Yule, the Solstice, marked the shortest day, longest night. Trees that stayed green all year held in high regard, and so people took evergreen branches into the house to remind them that life would spring again.

The peoples of Germany introduced the Tannerbnaum, that was they brought an entire evergreen tree into the house. Before that peoples built wooden pyramidal shaped frames and decorated it with branches. Martin Luther, inspired by the twinkling stars, is credited with placing candles on the Christmas frame.

Imagine the delight of a Christmas tree beaming with candles? I can feel the awe in my bones.

Stockings hung by the chimney with care.  So the story goes, a poor widower had three daughters. Because he could not afford a dowry, he believed his daughters would never marry and thus never be taken care of, but he would not accept charity. Saint Nickolas heard of his plight, and on Christmas Eve he slid down the chimney, and seeing the girl's stockings hanging by the chimney to dry, he filled them with gold coins.

Imagine Christmas morning.

The winter celebration has a long tradition, embellished often, and special to the peoples around the world.  When Jesus was introduced into it, it brought new meaning to the faithful. A child is born. The angels sing. And what did they sing? “Good Tidings to all, and Goodwill to all men.”

"Dear Mother, I am writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a 'dug-out' (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Haha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday the British and Germans met and shook hands in the Ground between the trenches, and exchanged souvenirs, and shook hands. Yes, all day Christmas day, and as I write. Marvelous, isn't it?“

(Future nature writer Henry Williamson, then a nineteen-year-old private in the London Rifle Brigade, wrote to his mother, 1914)

Captain Robert Patrick Miles, King's Shropshire Light Infantry, recalled in an edited letter that was published in both the Daily Mail and the Wellington Journal & Shrewsbury News in January 1915:

We are having the most extraordinary Christmas Day imaginable. A sort of unarranged and quite unauthorized but perfectly understood and scrupulously observed truce exists between us and our friends in front. Of the Germans he wrote: "They are distinctly bored with the war...In fact one of them wanted to know what on earth we were doing here fighting them." )

One Christmas Eve night, a man riding home in his sleigh, emblazoned the story of Saint Nickolas aka Santa Claus, into our minds and hearts. This father wanted something to give his six children, so he scratched out the poem, ”A Visit from Saint Nickolas.” That was Clement Moore, and his poem has become known as “Twas The Night Before Christmas.”

In Moore’s poem, St. Nicholas was a “Right jolly old elf.” “He was dressed all in furs from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.”

“He went right to his work and filled the stockings, and laying a finger beside his nose and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.“

And what did he call out as his sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer sailed off into the night sky?

 “A Happy Christmas to all and to all a Good Night.”

The Miracle of the Dog and the Babe:

This was a homeless dog dumpster digging when he found a human infant with its umbilical cord still attached. The dog carried the baby about 100 feet and gave it to a human who rushed it to the hospital. The baby was not injured by the dog, and it survived.

Let’s Go For a Ride in The Gater

A Gater is a small green utility vehicle. It has a driver’s seat, a passenger seat, and small dump-truck bed behind the seats.  “Necessary for a farm,” said the previous owner, and he left it for us. 

I had wanted a Gater since touring 60 acres in one. An Oregon Real Estate Agent and I sat in a Gater's dump bed leaning against a hay bale while husband dear sat beside the property's owner, the driver. The agent said she was scared out of her wits when the driver took off like a bat out of you know where, but I thought it was almost as much fun as a Disneyland ride.

I will be careful with you though, don’t worry. I won’t try to brush you off, as my husband appears to do as he careens through the pineapple fields while I am dodging volunteer trees that have sprung up between the pineapple rows. 

Our ride today in the Gater will be easier than walking to the area I want to show you, for we would likely be huffing and puffing in this sultry heat. 

You’re willing? Okay. Let’s go.

The sun isn't up yet as we climb into our seats, but birds are trying to pull it from its slumber. We will not see the sunrise, for the trees stand in the way of it, but the sun gradually brightens the sky, and enlivens the expanse of emerald green around the house as though the morning goddess, sleepy eyed, is turning up her rheostat.  

We putt through the row of eucalyptus trees that separate the house area from the orchard. We pass a MACK dump truck the size of a small house that is tied to the ground with vines the way Gulliver was tied by the Lilliputians.

I push in the throttle, and the Gater gallops up a gentle incline—or slithers, whatever Gater’s do. We bump past the pineapple field, and past the few scruffy orange and lemon trees that while small in size, produce delicious fruit.

To our left are macadamia nut trees. Ahead is the best lime tree in the world. Its limes are the size of lemons, and so fragrant they can call me from bed when daughter dear is making French toast dusted with powdered sugar, slaughtered with butter, and loaded with fresh lime juice.

 A Star Fruit tree grows beside the lime tree, and while the fruit of the enormous beautiful Star Fruit tree that grows close to the house tastes horrible, this tree’s fruit is delicious. I don’t know why. 

There are more eucalyptus trees along the side fence separating this property from the ten acres next to us. Ahead and to the right is jungle.

Along the back fence grows two exquisite plants, so hidden in the brush I didn’t know they existed until the day I found them flowering by the fence, shining like beacons. One is a Macaw plant, its flower a brilliant red, that looks as though folded by an origami specialist. Next to it grows a hanging Lobster Claw. Both have waxy petals and together they look like bird’s beaks and lobster claws, as their names describe.

Macaw flower

I pull back the throttle, and we roll to a silent stop. I wanted to show you the largest most beautiful tree in the area. It is the reason I brought you here.

It is a Signature tree.

We hop out of the vehicle and walk up to the tree.  It is evergreen with leaves thick as a succulent’s. The amazing thing about this tree is that if you scratch a message in a leaf that leaf and message will last for years. Looking up into the immense green foliage, we begin our search. I know the vicinity, and there we find them—notes from the two little girls who lived on this land before us, little notes, sad notes, notes that said, “Goodbye Farm.”

A few days ago my family wrote their names on the leaves, and now you and I could sign our names as well, and for a while far away in the vast Pacific on a tropical island we would be made illustrious for a time. 

In Praise of Goats

Orville and Wilbur with a rider, Oregon

Little Boy Darling with Do and Re, Hawaii

If you have never met a goat you might not imagine how sweet they can be.

The subject of goats came up for me when my daughter told me about the #Weston Price Conference she attended last week in Los Angeles.

It was a food conference, and you might wonder how the subject of goats came into the conversation. No, don’t eat them.  Use them. One of the presenters was a farmer. And he said we need more animals on our properties.

I began thinking about Orville and Wilbur our free-range goats, who came running from the forest every morning to dive into the horse’s hay. They talked to us, followed us, came when called, and hiked with us. They kept the brush cleared around the house, and they never damaged anything. Well, they would have eaten all ornamental plants and flowers, but everything not wild was behind a deck railing.  The house was fenced in the goats were fenced out.

One thing the farmer said about goats is that they are problem solvers, and they use that ability to get out of fences. They use that ability, too, to climb on anything fun, but we didn’t have that problem with Orville and Wilbur, as all temptation was out of reach, and we lived in the forest. They were perfect.

When we moved to Hawaii we bought two little nannies, Do and Re, still on bottles when we got them, and the only time they were penned was in the dog kennel when we were away from the house over night. The rest of the time they were free-range, as sweet as kittens, and kept the property trimmed as though we had hired a ground crew. They came when called and hiked along the “green trail of bliss” with us.

There was a star fruit tree close by the house whose fruit tasted terrible (another tree in the orchard tasted great, I don’t know why the difference), but the one by the house dropped fruit on the ground leaving a mess—not after we got the goats, they erased all evidence of ground fruit. And you don’t have to worry about goat poop, it’s like a deer’s, pelleted, and when dropped into the grass it disappears.

A downside was that we had to enclose anything that could be climbed upon, the boxes in the storage shed, the Prius, and the tree in the front yard. So I suggest penning in the house and leaving the goats free. They will stay close, they like people.

That’s our story.

The conference speaker said that people are desert makers. If ground is scraped bare in a dry arid climate, like Africa, the ground can heat up to 140 degrees where no plant can survive.  With animals and grass and grazing, the soil will be about 70 degrees, perfect. The grazing animals will nibble the grass encouraging it to grow. One must not allow them to over-graze however, but rotate them to different pastures. And goats, being browsers, will keep the brush cleared. In Oregon they can clear out blackberry bushes that left to their own devices will  over run an entire acre—or more.

The farmer showed two pictures with the caption, “Which picture had the rain?”

 Neither.

The green land had animals, the dry one didn’t.

Up to Chapter 10 on oneyearontheisland.com

What Happens Next?

“A young couple are driving down a beautiful country road.  In the back seat are their two kids. They stop for a moment to drink in the view… what happens next?”

This was a test for our thought processes and how we are being programmed. Many people would say “A car comes barreling down the road and bashes into them.”

Who’s in control of our thoughts?

For a reprieve, drink in the joy of an innocent. Only a camera is pointed in her direction.

“Have you ever seen a deer frolicking in the surf?”

“Well I did.”

click on

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1676079492671127

What’s That You Say?

The other day at the grocery store the checker remarked that he had gotten recognition for being the fastest checker that week. Did he get an award? He didn’t say, but he seemed proud of his accomplishment.

“Are they timing you?’ I asked.

“Yes.”

At the grocery store?! Not them too.

I already know about emails from a large corporation. The respondents have eight minutes to answer an email, and one must go down the list in order of first written, even if the ship has already sailed. Sometimes to answer the question requires doing research. Whoops, no time for that. Sometimes the system breaks down or is slow. Too bad, you are still on the clock.

One solution is to shuffle that email off to another department. Clearing your docket is paramount, not answering the question.

Why all the rush? Why put people on a clock? It demoralizes them—except maybe the checker at the grocery store. It turns them into an assembly line mentality. Have happy customers? What a concept. Those grocery store checkers are so fast I hardly have time to unload my cart, slide the credit card, give them my reward card, and scribble my signature. That’s after I stood in line of course.

Do the efficiency experts go to school to learn how to drive employees insane? Faster makes more money--so it is believed. No wonder some people hate their jobs.

I understand we are a technologically based culture, and I remember when a computer needed an entire room for all its bells and whistles, and that computer had less memory that the lap top I am currently typing on. Let's not forget, however, that there are people attached to that computer, or standing in front of us waiting for eye contact. Have you ever stood in front of a clerk while  behind a computer screen you heard, "Click, click, clicky, click, click?"

Oh yes, and televisions in restaurants. Why? Didn’t we go out to escape the box or to visit with friends or to enjoy our meal in luxury?

Guess not.

Remember, some genius created a device to record television shows enabling them to be watched later.

I was wondering the other day if painting was out. You know, a brush, paints on canvas, sketching. Well, I watch Face Off on television and those people know how to sketch and sculpt, and fabricate in a day or two what it would normally take months to create so I know there are talented, skilled, creative  people out there, but when I see something like a Bionocle, a toy so complex you know a computer created it, it makes me wonder if a person with their simple little hands on materials has a chance anymore. CGI has replaced glass backgrounds movie backdrop painters used to paint by hand. Remember when the Disney corporation hand- painted all those cells used in their animated films? And the art of Bambi is so exquisite it should never be lost, although the sadness of Bambi could. It was my first movie and it scared me forever.

Those who have read me for a time know that I am conflicted. I want to be uplifting, encouraging and motivational, yet I feel that my years have given me a perspective that ought not to be lost. Again I ask, where is the medium? (I know, finding it “takes some share of wit, so tis a mark fools seldom hit”--Cooper.)

And I have noticed that the sweet by and by might get a nod, “That’s nice.” Ho hum. We do like something we can sink out teeth into. (Gosh isn’t blogging fun, we can throw out cliché’s. on a regular basis.)

We ought to look at what's important in our lives and what's not. What do we want to accomplish?  Has happiness eluded us? Let's get it back. 

I had an epiphany the other day driving home from Portland. Earlier I printed my mother’s Letters and interspersed mine among hers telling the family secret. Well, that’s over. I decided my mother deserves her own voice without being colored by mine, so I expunged all my commentary within the book. I did write a Foreword and Afterward, and I’m back to my water-color cover. I guess with winter coming I like the snow. And the book ends with snow falling in crystalline stars on my sister and my lapels.

The Foreword can be seen on www.cominginforalanding.com


Still posting chapters on oneyearontheisland.com
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Ain’t It the Truth?

Truth.

Scientists search for it, yet, we hear that statistics can be skewed, tests can be manipulated, and the new, the unusual sometimes so threatens the establishment that their innovative ideas are blown away like so much chalk from the blackboard.

Lawyers and truth? The goal is to win, and whose “truth” can they trust anyway?  Reasonable doubt is often the best we can hope for.

Truth, the word, gets thrown around like broadcasting lawn seeds.

The earth is the center of the solar system. Nope.

Some people believe “The Bible, said it, I believe it, that settles it,” without understanding that long ago Monks painstakingly hand copied the Bible. Most Biblical scholars agree that there are “glosses,” that is marginal notes make by the copiers, became incorporated into the text by future copiers. 

Around the year 300 many religions were tossed about, many canons for the Bible existed, so old Roman Emperor Constantine said, “Enough already. These are the books for the Bible, and Christianity is the religion of the state.” And then years later someone unearthed a few old scrolls buried in the Dead Sea region that created cause for pause.

“What I said is not what your heard, and what I meant to say is not what came out of my mouth, and you weren’t listening anyway.”

Being clear is like hitting a bull’s eye.

Journalists endeavor to uncover the truth, but then the pundits, the naysayers, the opposition, attack their copy. Controversy ensues, and the truth gets lost under tons of oratory. So much doubt is cast upon their findings that soon the populist doesn’t remember what the initial question was.

I suppose we can count on gravity—we believe that to be a “truth” we’re pretty sure it exists, but then we went into space and had to be tied to our seats lest we float to the ceiling, or worse.

“Seeing is believing.” Optical illusionists made us go out and buy new glasses.

Some people think their idea of God is the truth, other people think theirs is.  For some their God is Love, others say that God directed them to terrorize their fellow human beings.

“Sell the sizzle and not the steak,” so say the advertisers. Tell a good story and people will buy your product. Amp it up, glorify it, make it shine.

And then what happened?  Along came philosophers, and writers such as Wayne Dyer who said “You’ll see it When You Believe It.” They ushered in the idea that perhaps we create according to our beliefs.

A few years ago I was involved with a woman’s group who often read esoteric material. After a week apart we would come together completely befuddled.   What to believe? What was the truth?  A conclusion grew out of our conversations. We had to trust out own inner guidance system. Did it “Ring true?” Did it resonate with our thought systems?

We were left trusting our feelings.

I saw the movie Truth last night with Robert Redford and Kate Blanchett, about Mary Mapes, the Producer of CBS, and Dan Rather the year he left the network. I think it ought to be mandatory showing in high schools, and for everyone else, and it lit a fire under me.

P.S. Still adding chapters from One Year on the Island to oneyearontheisland.com