Dream

(This is what I call a roll over dream, they happen just before walking up.)

I was with Jan who looks like Betty Boop. We were reporters watching a young woman conduct a drug deal in a cafe. She was counting a wad of cash. "Here's your moment, go talk to her," someone whispered to us and Jan and I did.
"I'm holding," the young woman said.
"What does that mean," I asked.
"It means I have a gun," she replied.
A man resembling Peter Lorre was following Jan from across the restaurant. "Lets get out of here," I said. We went out to the street which was very wide. Jan crossed ahead of me with my dog Romeo, accidentally letting go of the leash. I raced across to grab his leash and a bull appeared and sat on me. Then an elephant crossed the street as well. A tow truck came to help me and the driver looked exactly like a young Bob Dylan. This must be his son, I thought, and I woke up. My (bull) dog was leaning on me.

Loving Spoonfuls

"When I looked at the grandmothers in my own extended family," says Novak, " I realized that not only did they embody the true heart and soul of good food, but they are also hysterically funny. If this was true in my family, it had to be true in others."
About

Opioid Crisis

Article about one city cancelling the needle exchange.

Thank You Paul Krugman

Article
The War on the Poor

Dream

I dreamed I was at my dentist's office and they were preparing to auction off antiques that had been part of the decor for decades. A woman in the office showed me a small doll wearing a violet velour gown. Underneath the doll's dress at the belly was a miniature steaming oven for warming small breads.

Solitude

“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry.

But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”

― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales

Love

“It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann

“Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

Article

One of the more distressing truths of America’s opioid epidemic, which now kills tens of thousands of people every year, is that it isn’t the first such crisis. Across the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States, China and other countries saw drug abuse surge as opium and morphine were used widely as recreational drugs and medicine.
Article

Octopus Reproduction

The male octopus has a modified arm called the hectocotylus, which is about a meter long and holds rows of sperm. Depending on the species, he will either approach a receptive female and insert the arm into her oviduct or take off the arm and give it to her to store in her mantle for later. In the latter scenario, the female keeps the arm until she lays her eggs, at which time she takes the arm out and spreads the sperm over her eggs to fertilize them.
Article

Pets and Brain Chemistry

Article

Treat Everyone...

“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”
― Ram Dass

“The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.”
― Ram Dass

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”
― Ram Dass

“What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.”
― Ram Dass

Ram Dass

“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.”
― Ram Dass

Invention Arises

“I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”
― Agatha Christie, An Autobiography

Instinct

“Instinct is a marvelous thing. It can neither be explained nor ignored.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Lion's Mouth

“If you place your head in a lion's mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.”
― Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
― Agatha Christie

Upton Sinclair

“The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.”
― Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

Alchemy of the Spirit

“Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure - such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

Lao Tzu

“The best fighter is never angry.”
― Lao Tzu

Susan Gubar

My father used to say, “A wise man learns from experience, a wiser man still learns from the experiences of others.” I’ve never been a wiser man still. But I have learned, from experience and then from the experience of others, that it is possible to alleviate the isolation of the ill without condescension and with disarming charm.

Susan Gubar, is distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University.
Article Imaginative Caregiving

Evolving for Deep Sea

Article

Dream

I dreamed I played a movie about Lily and then she appeared for real and people were petting her. When it was time to leave, Lily had crawled into a small space in the wall. I was confused about whether this was digital or tangible reality. "Don't we need to let her out before we go?" I worried.
Then I was house sitting for my friend. I was in her basement removing wet clothes from her washing machine. There was a gigantic boxer in the house with a snaggle-toothed underbite. My husband and I were leery of the dog. He charged into the laundry room. Moments later there were people carrying trays of delicious and exotic hors d'oeuvres. It was a memorial party setting up for someone we'd never met. Then someone said we're moving the party out onto the lawn.

Pema Chödrön

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.”
― Pema Chödrön

“We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.”
― Pema Chödrön

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. ”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape -- all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heartfelt Advice for Hard Times

The Tigers Story

“There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape: How to Love Yourself and Your World

Glorious and Wretched

“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”
― Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

Pema Chödrön

“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice For Difficult Times

Pema

“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”
― Pema Chödrön

Lao Tzu

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
― Lao Tzu

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
― Lao Tzu

The Italian Porcupine

Here's an Italian version of porcupine meatballs.

Grandma has an Affair with Mr. Chang

On my long walk I realized what to make for supper. Porcupine meatballs! I used ground turkey, mixed with freshly chopped garlic chopped onion rice and Adobo and pressure cooked the meatballs on the steamer tray over water for ten minutes. Then I made a quick sauce using the leftover steaming liquid and tomato paste dissolved in it and ladled it over the meatballs. I sauteed fresh broccoli in olive oil and a bit of chicken bouillon we had that too. I said this meal should be called Grandma has an affair with Mr. Chang.

Your Kakistocracy is Collapsing

The Greek root 'kakistos' means “worst.”

The word is pronounced \kak-uh-STAH-kruh-see\, and means “government by the worst people.” The plural form is kakistocracies. Our earliest evidence for its use comes from 1644, when it was used by Paul Gosnold to warn about transforming “our well-temperd Monarchy into a mad kinde of Kakistocracy.” Following this the word had a period of relative inactivity, and reappeared in the early 19th century.

The Insta-Pot Robot Made My Dinner

Yesterday I went swimming for the first time in 10 weeks. It was the right thing for receive-mode. I did get tired but it's the right thing for this phase. It was snowing in the afternoon so I made chili in the insta-pot. It took 22 minutes. I pre-soaked dried kidney beans using the 3 minute boil and 60 minute sit. Then I added 6 chopped onions, the puffed up beans and soaking water, 2.5 pounds of "manager's special" good-looking boneless country ribs and BBQ sauce. I set the time for 22 minutes and walked the dog. When we came back it was ready. All it needed was a small can of tomato paste to thicken it and some salt.

Stephen De Staebler

“Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working.”
-Stephen De Staebler

Jennifer Taitz

From Ex-Husband to Co-Grandparent

Stacks of Books and Papers

Allergy season is here and I am well aware of the stacks of dusty papers in my office. It's overwhelming!
https://www.theorderexpert.com/how-to-sort-through-stacks-of-papers-without-having-a-meltdown/

Dream

I dreamed I was at a writer's conference and I couldn't find my way to my room. People had decorated their little rooms and I was lost in the maze.

Homeless

Article

Devil Kitty

I checked the contents of my swim bag and the towel and suit were damp. My cat had peed on it. I tossed everything including the flip flops into the wash. I am still furious.
Article

A Wonder

There was an attempted break in so they rushed out and adopted a 12 week old puppy. They grumble that he's not house trained. They know nothing about dogs and can't remember the dogs name when I ask. Above them on the top floor two parents raise a brilliant happy toddler and all they see is annoyance. They yell at him in long sentences as if he was able to understand. It's a wonder that anyone in the world survives.

Remedios Varo

Artist

Meet it and Live it

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Remedy

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
― Henry David Thoreau

Spacious

“Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.”
― Henry David Thoreau

Truth

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Fools

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
― Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The Clown Fish

The tale of the stressed out clown fish is a reminder of the myriad ways in which humans are damaging the ocean.

The Rescue Dog Scam

Story

Long Walk

My downtown walk was not enough so I walked to the Blackstone reservoir. When I came home I had a cup of strong Yorkshire tea.
When I came back the Honda-camping kids were gone and the dead unregistered cars have been notified with day-glow orange stickers.

Annual Conference on Boredom

http://boredomconference.com/
Welcome at the website of
INTERNATIONAL INTERDISCIPLINARY BOREDOM CONFERENCE
This unique event is the only scientific conference on boredom which is:
(1) recurrent (2) totally boredom-oriented and (3) truly interdisciplinary
Join us to realize Boredom is anything but boring
Find us on Facebook in English or Polish
THE NEXT EVENTS:
2019 – 4th International Interdisciplinary Boredom Conference

When the Soul Lies Down

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi

“What you seek is seeking you.”
― Rumi

“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.”
― Rumi, The Illuminated Rumi

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
― Rumi

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi

“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
― Rumi

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
― Rumi

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”
― Rumi

“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.”
― Rumi

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

The Lost Boys

Receive mode is back. I walked Romeo early this morning and noticed the kids were camping in the parking lot again. Someones car alarm went off and I could see the kids waking up in back of the green Honda. It's a real tent city back here with 4 unregistered cars, 2 draped in fabric for privacy and a big couch. The lost boys of Woonsocket have a whole thing going on back here. I hope the new landlord nips it before it escalates any further.

Poplar Alder Juniper

Breathing is a challenge!

Crazy Art World

“Perhaps if you truly want to understand a drawing, you have to just eat it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/arts/design/eduardo-navarro-edible-art-drawing-center.html

Library Dog

April is always a heavy month for me. I am feeling the intense effects of pollen and mold allergies as well as waning energy. It's all okay really. I am currently baking six loaves of bread and my dog is patiently waiting for his downtown walk. I am so glad he doesn't bark when I tie him out front and run into the library to get my books.

Six Loaves

I am baking six loaves on this damp gray day. They are sourdough wheat-berry oat breads.

Food Disasters

Yesterday I had two food disasters. The first was making pancakes improv style using too much pumpkin puree and the second was making popcorn in a pot that had cayenne flavors leftover and it influenced the taste of the popcorn. I ate them anyway since I am unable to throw food away.

Sky Food

Article

Helaine Olen

Why ask a man to take responsibility for his bad behavior when you can point the finger at a woman for calling him on it? There is a phrase for this: “double standard.”
source

Opioid Epidemic Moves to Ohio Courtroom

Article

Sofija Stefanovic

By Sofija Stefanovic
Smells Like Home
Ms. Stefanovic is the author of “Miss Ex-Yugoslavia.”

Teaching Breadmaking in Woonsocket

I had a great time teaching 5 new students how to make their own multigrain sourdough bread at Neighborworks Cafe Space yesterday. I sent my students home with their pairs of braided loaves to bake in their own home ovens. I did the same thing and baked mine when we got home. We ate fresh bread for dinner. Life is good. Soon there will be an outdoor wood fired oven on the patio for community baking! This is how we grow a community one bite at a time.

Andrew Penn

https://www.psychcongress.com/blog/you-can-only-take-patients-far-youve-gone-yourself

RI Farmers

Article

Be Kind to Everyone. Everyone is Fighting a Great Battle.

"Be kind to everyone, everyone is fighting a great battle."

We were raised to take care of the childish emotional lives of our narcissistic parents. This was not a good way to discover who we were and what OUR needs were.

Now that they are dead we have to raise ourselves. Better late than never.

Be healthy live long. Life has just begun. Find out who you are.

Nobody knows what they think until they start writing. Writing is therefore a crucial form of therapy, more valuable than talk therapy. More rapid than medication. For this I can attest.

You can't take in unless you let out! Get cracking.

Article

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/magazine/the-strange-case-of-anna-stubblefield-revisited.html

Canjica

My neighbor V brought me this Brazilian dish last night. Delicious.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canjica_(dish)
Canjica (Portuguese pronunciation: [kɐ̃ˈʒikɐ]), mugunzá ([muɡũˈza]) or mungunzá ([mũɡũˈza]) is a Brazilian sweet dish, associated with winter festivals, which in Brazil is in June (Festa Junina).

The dish is a porridge made with white de-germed whole maize kernels (canjica), cooked with milk, sugar and cinnamon until tender. Coconut and coconut milk as well as some cloves are also added, mainly in the northern variety of this recipe (Northeastern variety). Other ingredients may be added, such as peanuts and sweetened condensed milk.

The name canjica is prevalent in central-southern Brazil, while mugunzá is used in the northern states (where canjica means a different dish, made with unripe cooked corn juice).

This food is of African influence, firstly created by Brazilian black slaves during the colonial times.

In Colombia and other Latin American countries, one dish similar to canjica cooked corn, known as mazamorra, is widespread in the traditional cuisine.

Andy Clark

Clark not only rejects the idea of a sealed-off self—he dislikes it. He is a social animal: an eager collaborator, a convener of groups. The story he tells of his thinking life is crowded with other people: talks he’s been to, papers he’s read, colleagues he’s met, talks they’ve been to, papers they’ve read. Their lives and ideas are inextricable from his. His doors are open, his borders undefended. It is perhaps because he is this sort of person that he both welcomed the extended mind and perceived it in the first place. It is clear to him that the way you understand yourself and your relation to the world is not just a matter of arguments: your life’s experiences construct what you expect and want to be true.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/02/the-mind-expanding-ideas-of-andy-clark

Kairos and Chronos

What is the difference between the two concepts of time kairos and chronos?
James Quek:
The best way to differentiate between chronos and kairos is to see time as either a flowing river which carries us away (chronos), or a quiet lake which we swim in (kairos). We all experience time as both, all the time, in whatever we do. We experience chronos when we are impatiently waiting for something to be over and done with. We experience kairos when we are so deeply engrossed in an activity that time seems to stand still. In chronos, we are stressed—in kairos, we are refreshed.

Church Bells

We've been hearing the neighborhood church bells...
Then I remembered it's easter for the Romanian Orthodox church.

Orthodox Easter 2018 and 2019 - PublicHolidays.ro - Romania Public ...
https://publicholidays.ro/easter/

Easter in Romania is celebrated according to the Julian Calendar used by the Eastern Orthodox Church, rather than on the date used in Catholic, Protestant, and other Western churches that use the Gregorian Calendar. “Orthodox Easter” often, but not always, occurs a little later in the year than does non-Orthodox Easter.
Fri, Apr 6
Orthodox Good Friday
Sun, Apr 8
Orthodox Easter Sunday
Mon, Apr 9
Orthodox Easter Monday

It's Snowing!!

Ginger Cayenne Lemon Honey Beverage

My brother suggested I make this beverage for my cough. I simmered slices of fresh ginger root, cayenne, honey and lemon slices. It feels good.

Elephant Rejuvenation Camp

Article

This Morning

This morning when I helped my husband carry his lunch and coffee to the car I noticed a small dark green Honda with the back windows covered in blankets, parked back here. I also noticed that the windows had moisture on them. I realized there were people sleeping in the car. I spoke to the kids a few hours later when they were up for the day folding their magenta mattress into the trunk. I suggested they call my friend in City Hall and she could help them find a safe place to live. One of the kids from the neighborhood who lives here came over to talk to me and he said his blind mother fell and broke both hands so now he is her sole caretaker. It's high drama all the time for my neighbors.

Good Book

I'm reading a book I can't put down. A memoir called MENTAL by Jaime Lowe.

A Letter to Rachel

Ram Dass wrote a letter some years ago to a family who had lost their young daughter, Rachel. Although he wrote it to these two parents specifically, everything in this letter applies to anyone who has lost a child.

Dear Steve and Anita,

Rachel finished her work on earth, and left the stage in a manner that leaves those of us left behind with a cry of agony in our hearts, as the fragile thread of our faith is dealt with so violently. Is anyone strong enough to stay conscious through such teaching as you are receiving? Probably very few. And even they would only have a whisper of equanimity and peace amidst the screaming trumpets of their rage, grief, horror and desolation.

I can’t assuage your pain with any words, nor should I. For your pain is Rachel’s legacy to you. Not that she or I would inflict such pain by choice, but there it is. And it must burn its purifying way to completion. For something in you dies when you bear the unbearable, and it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees, and to love as God loves.

Now is the time to let your grief find expression. No false strength. Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to Rachel, and thank her for being with you these few years, and encourage her to go on with whatever her work is, knowing that you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience. In my heart, I know that you and she will meet again and again, and recognize the many ways in which you have known each other. And when you meet you will know, in a flash, what now it is not given to you to know: Why this had to be the way it was.

Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts – if we can keep them open to God – will find their own intuitive way. Rachel came through you to do her work on earth, which includes her manner of death. Now her soul is free, and the love that you can share with her is invulnerable to the winds of changing time and space.

In that deep love,
include me.

In love,

Ram Dass

Dream

I was in a house, my house in the dream but it was different than my real house. I was on the first floor rear of the house closing the storm windows when a gigantic alligator came towards me. I let go of the window and it smashed. I ran around the front of the house and rang the doorbells. My husband came to the door soaked from the shower wrapped in a towel. I told him about the alligator. He said go to the roof. Why, I asked, to jump?
No, to be safe.

Ram Dass

Ram Dass Meditates on Learning to Grieve


Ram Dass –

It is important, as we get older, to learn how to grieve. Although this may sound self-evident, experience has taught me that it is not. In a culture that emphasizes stoicism and forward movement, in which time is deemed “of the essence,” and there is little toleration for slowness, inwardness, and melancholy, grieving – a healthy, necessary aspect of life – is too often overlooked. As we get older, of course, and losses mount, the need for conscious grieving becomes more pronounced. Only by learning how to grieve can we hope to leave the past behind and come into the present moment.

The older we get, the more we lose; this is the law of impermanence. We lose loved ones, cherished dreams, physical strength, work, and relationships. Often, it seems like loss upon loss. All these losses bring up enormous grief that we must be prepared to embrace completely, if we are to live with open hearts.

My dear friend Stephen Levine has recommended that we build temples specifically for the purpose of grieving, ritual sites where we can feel safe to pour out the sadness and loss that we feel. In the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva, and in the traditional Irish wake, we find such outlets for extended grieving, but these rituals are becoming rare in our culture and are not frequently practiced.

Over the years, in working with people who are grieving, I’ve encouraged them first of all to surrender to the experience of their pain. To counteract our natural tendency to turn away from pain, we open to it as fully as possible and allow our hearts to break. We must take enough time to remember our losses – be they friends or loved ones passed away, the death of long-held hopes or dreams, the loss of homes, careers, or countries, or health we may never get back again. Rather than close ourselves to grief, it helps to realize that we only grieve for what we love.

In allowing ourselves to grieve, we learn that the process is not cut and dried. It’s more like a spiral that brings us to a place of release, abates for a time, then continues on a deeper level. Often, when grieving, we think that it’s over, only to find ourselves swept away by another wave of intense feeling. For this reason, it’s important to be patient with the process, and not be in a hurry to put our grief behind us.

While the crisis stage of grief does pass in its own time – and each person’s grief has its own timetable – deep feelings don’t disappear completely. But ultimately you come to the truth of the adage that “love is stronger than death.” I once met with a girl whose boyfriend was killed in Central America. She was grieving and it was paralyzing her life. I characterized it for her this way. “Let’s say you’re in ‘wise-woman training.'” If she’s in wise-woman training, everything in her life must be grist for the mill. Her relationship with this man would become part of the wisdom in her. But first she had to see that her relationship with him is between Souls. They no longer have two incarnated bodies to share, so she had to find the Soul connection. Two Souls can access each other without an incarnation.

When my Guru died in 1973, I assumed that because of the important part he played in my life, and the love I felt for him, I would be inundated with grief. Surprisingly, I was not. In time, I came to realize why. He and I were so well established in Soul love that, in the years since he left his body, his palpable presence in my life has continued unabated.
– Ram Dass

Working from Home

The neighborhood is noisy from a rusted roof vent belonging to the building next door. On windy days like TODAY it sounds like an air raid siren.

Julie Fast

Article

Why are People with Bipolar Drawn to Drinking & Substance Abuse?
What society often doesn’t understand: Untreated bipolar disorder symptoms are far more painful than what happens to us due to substance abuse.

by Julie A. Fast
What society simply doesn’t understand is that untreated bipolar disorder is far, far more painful than what happens with us due to substance abuse. We choose being drunk over being suicidal. Think about that.

Empathy Gap

Article

4 Types of Shame

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/a-psychotherapist-says-there-are-4-types-of-shame-heres-what-they-are-and-how-they-affect-us

Change Your Brain

Writing a daily diary can literally change your brain

Robots Can't Pick Strawberries

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/robots-can-t-pick-strawberries-as-well-as-humans-yet

My Husband's Metaphor

The car is up on blocks and the whole family is inside making vroom vroom noises.

Revised Away

He knew from his Tiananmen experience what that meant. “There is no way to resist,” he said. “Except to die.”
Article
“I hate it when history is lost or revised away,” he told me. “The erasure of what happened at Tiananmen is something I won’t allow. It’ll happen over my dead body.

“All it Takes is One Mistake,” He said. “Somebody fires. And Then What?”

“We are so lucky here in this country when you look at our borders,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a retired veteran of the Iraq war. “We’ve got the Pacific on one side, the Atlantic on the other and allies to the north and the south. Mexico is not an adversary. Why would you present this offensive barrier to a friendly country?”
Article

50 Years Later...

Detectives used ground-penetrating sonar to identify the location of the bones, and dug about four feet underground, Gigante said. Sensing that they were close, authorities dug deeper. At about seven feet underground, they noticed a jawbone. Then, they found the remains — a full skeleton.

“I just broke down,” Blampied told the Suffolk Times after learning the news that her mother’s remains had been identified. “I just broke down and cried. It is so hard to believe what has happened. I still can’t believe it. This was my mother.”

The missing-person investigation is now a homicide investigation, police said. Although it’s unclear whether a medical examiner will be able to determine a cause of death, Blampied says she’s convinced that Boken killed her mother.
Article

Medical Beer

Beer is Prescribed in Hospitals

Benny And Mia

Adopt them!

Burlseque

Burlesque
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.[1] The word derives from the Italian burlesco, which, in turn, is derived from the Italian burla – a joke, ridicule or mockery.[2][3]

Burlesque overlaps in meaning with caricature, parody and travesty, and, in its theatrical sense, with extravaganza, as presented during the Victorian era.[4] "Burlesque" has been used in English in this literary and theatrical sense since the late 17th century. It has been applied retrospectively to works of Chaucer and Shakespeare and to the Graeco-Roman classics.[5] Contrasting examples of literary burlesque are Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and Samuel Butler's Hudibras. An example of musical burlesque is Richard Strauss's 1890 Burleske for piano and orchestra. Examples of theatrical burlesques include W. S. Gilbert's Robert the Devil and the A. C. Torr – Meyer Lutz shows, including Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué.

A later use of the term, particularly in the United States, refers to performances in a variety show format. These were popular from the 1860s to the 1940s, often in cabarets and clubs, as well as theatres, and featured bawdy comedy and female striptease. Some Hollywood films attempted to recreate the spirit of these performances from the 1930s to the 1960s, or included burlesque-style scenes within dramatic films, such as 1972's Cabaret and 1979's All That Jazz, among others. There has been a resurgence of interest in this format since the 1990s.[6][7]

Howling Wind

The wind is fierce today but the sun is out. I am full of rage!

The Power Differential

In Therapy Article
In Relationships Article

“The whole community came outside,” he added. “People were going crazy. It was a nightmare out there.”

“All he did was just walk around the neighborhood,” Wilson said. “He speaks to himself, usually he has an orange Bible or a rosary in his hand. He never had a problem with anyone.”
source

Madeleine Albright Warns:

Madeleine Albright Warns: Don't Let Fascism Go 'Unnoticed Until It's Too Late'

While Albright does not call Trump a fascist, she says that he is "the most anti-democratic leader that I have studied in American history."

"We're not fulfilling the role that we're supposed to," she says of the United States today. "I believe very much that democracy in the United States is resilient [and] that people can be skeptical about things that are going on, but I really am afraid that we are taking things for granted."

On her belief that President Trump is "anti-democratic"

What he's trying to do is undermine the press and [he] has disdain for the judiciary, and the electoral process and minorities, and I think that his instincts are not ones that are democratic. He is interested, basically, I think, in exacerbating those divisions that I talked about. ... I've picked up that phrase "see something, say something," and I am seeing some things that are the kinds of things that we have seen in other countries, and so I am saying not only should we say something, but we have to do something about it. ...

I think people may disagree with the president of the opposing party ... but we normally have believed that the president tells the truth. And I know I'm very worried about the fact that there are deliberate ways of misstating the issue, and then the people think, "If the president said it, it must be right," when it's just a deliberate untruth.

Persona Non-Grata

persona non grata
adjective per·so·na non gra·ta \ pər-ˈsō-nə-ˌnän-ˈgra-tə , -ˈgrä- \

Definition of persona non grata
: personally unacceptable or unwelcome

Surgeon General

Important message: carry antidote

Electronic Pet Rocks

Social Media as High-Tech CB Radio
From winter storms to WikiLeaks tsunamis, we're seeing the power (and limits) of social-media sharing

The Crime of Puberty

I realize upon reflection that the crime I committed was moving from child to woman. This intensified my mother's controlling behavior and subsequently became the campaign of hate against me. She recruited my step father who was my biggest fan. I was once the favorite child and I became publicly despised, ridiculed and shamed. So I walked away and the hatred became more intense with frequent threats. I stayed away found jobs and a car and never returned. The damage still holds today. What remains of my family is nothing. It's like visiting a post nuclear war site.

If People Cannot Write Well, They Cannot Think Well

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”
― George Orwell

Seizes Power

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”
― George Orwell, 1984

He Wears a Mask

“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”
― George Orwell

“He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

Revolution

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Nervous System

“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Now Do You Begin to Understand Me?

“Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.”
― George Orwell

“To die hating them, that was freedom.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”
― George Orwell, 1984

Orwell

“Four legs good, two legs bad.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

Not Thinking

“Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Journalism

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”
― George Orwell

Man

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

Nowhere Else

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Sleep

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
― George Orwell

The Choice

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
― George Orwell, 1984

A Minority of One

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Writing

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
― George Orwell

Siblings

“Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Love

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell

Political Language

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
― George Orwell

Propaganda as Narrative

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
― George Orwell

Mary Oliver

'Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.'

— Mary Oliver

Every Generation

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
― George Orwell

Understood

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Treating a Cough

Article

5 Questions

Is the person usually negative and unhappy in their career, with family, relationships?
Do you feel exhausted after spending time with the person?
Is the person demanding and self-absorbed?
Is there a lot of drama and crisis in the person's life?
Does the person have a victim's or helpless mentality?
source

George Orwell

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

Jeanne Graner Krochta

"Strong social support is one of the keys to happiness and good health. Making an effort to improve relationships with people already in your life is one way to increase your social support."
— Jeanne Graner Krochta, L.P.

Start the Day

I have to start my day with the wisdom of the ages to go with my coffee.

The Flu

Drink lots of fluids. Lay low.

Nation-Wide Hunger Strike

Perhaps the nation should go on a hunger strike to get this political administration out.

A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not solid food.

In cases where an entity (usually the state) has or is able to obtain custody of the hunger striker (such as a prisoner), the hunger strike is often terminated by the custodial entity through the use of force-feeding.

Arthur Miller:“The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.”

“Everything we are is at every moment alive in us.”
― Arthur Miller

“Just remember, kid, you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away.”
― Arthur Miller, A View from the Bridge: A Play in Two Acts

“Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.”
― Arthur Miller

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.”
― Arthur Miller, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan

“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.”
― Arthur Miller

“Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.”
― Arthur Miller, Death Of A Salesman

“I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it.”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.”
― Arthur Miller

“The two most common elements in the world are hydrogen and stupidity.”
― Arthur Miller

“Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it.”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“If I have to be alone I want to be by myself.”
― Arthur Miller

“A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw — the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy?”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“You are pulling down heaven and raising up a whore”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible


“Chris: I don't know why it is, but every time I reach out for something I want, I have to pull back because other people will suffer.”
― Arthur Miller, All My Sons

“Sometimes...it's better for a man just to walk away.
But if you can't walk away?
I guess that's when it's tough.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.”
― Arthur Miller

“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.”
― Arthur Miller

“If a person measures his spiritual fulfillment in terms of cosmic visions, surpassing peace of mind, or ecstasy, then he is not likely to know much spiritual fulfillment. If, however, he measures it in terms of enjoying a sunrise, being warmed by a child's smile, or being able to help someone have a better day, then he is likely to know much spiritual fulfillment. ”
― Arthur Miller

“I believe in work. If somebody doesn't create something, however small it may be, he gets sick. An awful lot of people feel that they're treading water -- that if they vanished in smoke, it wouldn't mean anything at all in this world. And that's a despairing and destructive feeling. It'll kill you.”
― Arthur Miller

“We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
― Oscar Wilde

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The heart was made to be broken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”
― Oscar Wilde

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde

“Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

Embarrassed Millionaires

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
-John Steinbeck

If you think American politics is a rigged shell game, where the views of the rich and powerful count but those of regular Americans don’t, then two prominent political scientists agree with you.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/2/16226202/oligarchy-political-science-politician-congress-respond-citizens-public-opinion

Jane Crow

She was caught up in what lawyers and others who represent families say is a troubling and longstanding phenomenon: the power of Children’s Services to take children from their parents on the grounds that the child’s safety is at risk, even with scant evidence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/nyregion/foster-care-nyc-jane-crow.html

Child Abuse

I am deeply upset by this story
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/04/devonte-hart-and-siblings-death-shows-racial-disparity-in-child-abuse-investigations.html

Begin Again

If I was to start my life over again I might want to be a detective or an acupuncturist.

Share a Sandwich

In the 60's they said save water take a shower with a friend. Perhaps we need an upgrade for 2018. Save your jeans share a sandwich with a friend.

Smile, There is No Hell

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201803/smile-there-is-no-hell-even-the-pope-says-so

This Morning

This morning the sun was out and Romeo and I walked to the pond. He had a sip of water and then we headed home. We ran into my neighbor Robin's grandson and his friend and had a long talk about baking and cooking and life with ADHD. Then the clouds came and the wind picked up. My fingers turned red and yellow so I finally said goodbye. I was freezing on the way home but I remembered my red bandana in my pocket and I tied it like a kerchief over my head and it helped warm me. When I arrived home I gave Romeo his snack and I made an egg sandwich and hot tea. I LOVE the feeling of having had a long walk. The rain arrived and I am cozy and content to be inside.

I Preach Dog Walking as Therapy

https://www.bphope.com/walk-this-way-the-benefits-of-walking/

In Praise of ADHD

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/opinion/sunday/praise-adhd-attention-hyperactivity.html

Animal Assisted Play Therapy

Article
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animal-emotions/201804/animal-assisted-play-therapy-integrative-approach

Dibs: In Search of Self

BOOK
https://www.amazon.com/Dibs-Search-Self-Renowned-Emotionally/dp/0345339258
I have read this book (2) times before. My copy of the book got lost when we moved to a new house, so I just had to get a new copy. I wish this book was available for my kindle, then I would always have it to refer to or read again when I want to. I have been so touched by this story, that I never have forgot it. It shows me how amazing children are and their ability to survive under unbelievable circumstances. It also makes me think about , but do not understand, what people can do to a child. I love children so much and my heart feels for them so deeply. I guess this is why I feel the need to read this book again and again. I recommend it for any one who is interested in children and their emotional makeup.

This book was assigned reading for my play therapy class and gave excellent insight into the process and effectiveness of play therapy in the life of this little boy. I ended up reading it twice for my assignment which I didn't mind because it is a quick and easy read. Dibs' story immediately grabs your heart and you are engaged in his journey to find himself again through play and the help of a caring therapist. The book was insightful into the process of play therapy, and it provided an excellent case example to use in parallel with our text. Virginia Axline's use of the skills in the session helped the textbook description make much more sense. I was also intrigued by the power of play in the lives of children and how much they use toys to express what is in their heart and mind when they either lack the vocabulary to express what they think and feel or when what they have experienced is too scary to them to talk about. For children, toys are often their words.

Friends have raved about htis book for years... whether you are a teacher, a patrent or a grandparent - this is a moving and insightful book. My best friend, at that time a teacher, bought 25 copies for his entire high school class - decades later, they still thank him.

This book is rightfully a classic of its kind. I had read it before and lost my copy so was delighted to read it again with more knowledge of understanding severely distressed children. If Miss A, as Dibs calls her, had not taken on the case of this lonely, misunderstood, mistreated, highly intelligent little boy, you can only imagine what would have become of him. His parents believe he is mentally subnormal. His school is about to reject him. All he does all day is sit under desks, refusing to speak or participate in any way with the other children.

This gradual unfolding of how to allow a small child to come to find himself in the playroom without any interrogation, with complete freedom to be himself and with minimal rules - "our time ends in five minutes Dibs" - is about it. No-one to say, you can't do that, even when he tips water all over the playroom floor or mixes the paints up into a glorious mess, or "you shouldn't want to bury your father," or even "why do you want to bury your father DIbs?"

A beautiful written and observed book about a beautiful 5 year old boy.

This book, although written decades ago, was still a riveting read. As a teacher, it was a very interesting reminder that what a child may present in class can have many different causes. I shared it with my special education team teacher and she found it as fascinating as I did and just as useful. Anyone going into education or any type of therapeutic work with children would benefit from reading this book.

I wish I had read this story 13 years ago when my son was first diagnosed with Autism. He has come so far, but I wonder if anything would be different had I taken the therapist approach instead of the mothers. Always teaching and pushing. I will be recommending this book to all of my special needs parents.

Reinvention

As the sun set and the tide started to rise around City Island, the seaside village off the eastern tip of the Bronx, Saul Chandler took his seat at a bar called the Snug. Mr. Chandler, 70, a small man who smokes cheap cigars and refuses Budweiser not in glass bottles, is one of the island’s waterfront eccentrics. He is a bar-stool fixture at the pub, known for telling bawdy jokes and paying the tabs of strangers before slipping into the night.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/nyregion/redemption-of-a-lost-prodigy.html

“Saul was very mystical in the way he interpreted music. He went somewhere else when he played. He was a poet.”

Missing Booksellers

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/magazine/the-case-of-hong-kongs-missing-booksellers.html

Irascible

i·ras·ci·ble
iˈrasəb(ə)l/
adjective
adjective: irascible
having or showing a tendency to be easily angered.
"an irascible man"
synonyms: irritable, quick-tempered, short-tempered, hot-tempered, testy, touchy, tetchy, edgy, crabby, petulant, waspish, dyspeptic, snappish

Pulvis et Umbra Sumus

“Pulvis et umbra sumus. (We are but dust and shadow.)”
― Horace, The Odes of Horace

“Mingle a little folly with your wisdom; a little nonsense now and then is pleasant.”
― Horace

“Carpe diem."

(Odes: I.11)”
― Horace, The Odes of Horace

“Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.”
― Horace

“Ut haec ipsa qui non sentiat deorum vim habere is nihil omnino sensurus esse videatur."

If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all.”
― Horace

“Rule your mind or it will rule you.”
― Horace

“Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.
(They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea.)”
― Horace, The Odes of Horace

“Happy the man, and happy he alone,
he who can call today his own:
he who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Be fair or foul, or rain or shine
the joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself, upon the past has power,
but what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.”
― Horace

“Pactum serva" - "Keep the faith”
― Horace

“he who is greedy is always in want”
― Horace

“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.”
― Horace

“Anger is a brief madness.”
― Horace

“A picture is a poem without words.”
― Horace

“wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone”
― Horace

“In love there are two evils: war and peace.”
― Horace

“Dimidium facti qui coepit habet: sapere aude" ("He who has begun is half done: dare to know!").”
― Horace

“Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.”
― Horace, The Epistles of Horace

“Whatever advice you give, be brief.”
― Horace

“He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.”
― Horace

“He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.”
― Horace

“He who feared that he would not succeed sat still.”
― Horace

“Without love and laughter there is no joy; live amid love and laughter.”
― Horace

“The aim of the poet is to inform or delight, or to combine together, in what he says, both pleasure and applicability to life. In instructing, be brief in what you say in order that your readers may grasp it quickly and retain it faithfully. Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full. Fiction invented in order to please should remain close to reality.”
― Horace, Epistolas Ad Pisones De Ars Poetica

“Cease to ask what the morrow
will bring forth,
and set down as gain
each day that fortune grants.”
― Horace

“Even as we speak, time speeds swiftly away.”
― Horace

“Now is the time to drink!”
― Horace

“Virtue, dear friend, needs no defense,
The surest guard is innocence:
None knew, till guilt created fear,
What darts or poisoned arrows were”
― Horace

“Capture your reader, let him not depart, from dull beginnings that refuse to start”
― Horace

“Leave off asking what tomorrow will bring, and
whatever days fortune will give, count them
as profit.”
― Horace, The Odes of Horace

Irresponsible and Unwarranted

Climate

Jesus Christ Superstar the Musical

Here
My friend Cynthia Berardi and I used to dance to this in her parents living room when we were in 5th grade.

Tea Practice

http://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/meghan-markle-practice-drinking-tea-meeting-queen-elizabeth
Meghan Markle Had to Practice Drinking Tea Properly Before Meeting the Queen
rules to consider:

You should never add the milk to your cup before pouring the tea. Always add milk after.
If you need to stir the milk in the cup, you should use a back and forth motion, rather than a circular motion, so that the spoon doesn’t clink against the sides of the cup, according to British etiquette expert Jo Bryant.
Bryant also advises that you should not blow on the tea to cool it down and that you should replace the cup on the saucer between sips.
You should never drink your tea with your pinky finger extended, despite what you may have seen in the movies.
As People points out, women should take a sip from the cup at the same place every time, to avoid leaving lipstick marks around the cup.
There are rarely foods that require cutlery served with tea (scones and small sandwiches, which you are permitted to eat with your fingers, are more typical) but if you do use a fork and knife, do not put down your utensils while the meal is being served, unless you are completely done eating or must excuse yourself from the table.
Even the placement of the napkin is important: You should never leave a used napkin on your seat. If you’re getting up to leave or to use the restroom, place your unfolded napkin on the table, to the left of your plate.
Your host may consider it rude if you only stay long enough to enjoy one cup of tea—it’s most polite to drink two cups, but three is excessive, according to etiquette expert The Royal Butler.

Magenta Medley of Grains and Vegetables

last night I peeled two large beets and sliced them thin and chopped them. I added them to freshly trimmed green beans. Then I added my cooked grain mix (brown rice, wild rice, wheat berries, barley,) then I added my home cooked chick peas with the gelatinous cooking liquid. I added olive oil and fresh garlic and Adobo and simmered until it was all cooked. I reheated it today for lunch and it was divine!

Moroccan Mimouna

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/dining/mimouna-passover-moroccan-feast.html

Iberian Lynx

Saving a Fussy Predator in Europe, With Help From 50,000 Rabbits

By RAPHAEL MINDER MARCH 31, 2018

An Iberian lynx named Oretana running free after her release in the mountain range of Sierra Morena in southern Spain.

VILCHES, Spain — The Iberian lynx is a picky eater. Despite its agility and speed, it almost only chases rabbits.

This narrow choice of prey helps explain why this feline came close to extinction less than two decades ago, after disease wiped out large numbers of rabbits from the Iberian Peninsula. But a vast breeding and relocation program has now turned the lynx into a flagship example of Europe’s efforts to maintain its biodiversity.

Education Spring

Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, called the movement an “education spring.”

“This is the civics lesson of our time,” she said. “The politicians on both sides of the aisle are rubbing the sleep out of their eyes.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/us/teacher-strikes-oklahoma-kentucky.html

Horace

“To have a great man for a friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it; those who have, fear it.”
-Horace

Bread Pin Ups at Lazy Loafer

Here
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/blog/lazy-loafer

Snowy Day Great for Hot Porridge

The snow is magically not sticking on the road but we have an inch on the trees.

April is the Cruellest Month

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land
The Waste Land
By T. S. Eliot

FOR EZRA POUND
IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

The Illuminated Rumi

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Rumi

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi

“What you seek is seeking you.”
― Rumi
“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.”
― Rumi, The Illuminated Rumi

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
― Rumi

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi

“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
― Rumi

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
― Rumi

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”
― Rumi

“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.”
― Rumi

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
― Rumi

“When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.”
― Rumi

“Knock, And He'll open the door
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.”
― Rumi

“My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
― Rumi

“I want to see you.

Know your voice.

Recognize you when you
first come 'round the corner.

Sense your scent when I come
into a room you've just left.

Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.

Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.

I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
"more”
― Rumi

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
― Rumi, Masnavi i Man'avi, the spiritual couplets of Maula

“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”

“silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
― Rumi

“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”
― Rumi

“In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”
― Rumi

“Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”
― Rumi

“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”
― Rumi

“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
― Rumi

“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
― Rumi

“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.”
― Rumi

Roles without Being Trapped

How do we learn to fulfill our roles without being trapped by them?

by Ram Dass

Our incarnation is a buffet and you get to taste different methods and practices, and then you’ve gotta trust your own intuitive heart as to what you listen to and where you go.

Somebody will come and say, “I have found the only way,” and you say, “I honor you for that and now I gotta listen to my heart.”

If you don’t trust your heart along the way, that game of learning to trust your deepest inner message becomes harder. So you sit down and you say, “I’m gonna listen to my inner message,” and you suddenly realize there are thousands of them, and each one is saying, “I’m your real inner message. I am your real truth. Listen to me. Kill the other ones.”

You see cultures full of this, where it’s not just the thoughts; it becomes about other people and whose got it right. I mean, you see ethnic conflicts where people are listening to their inner truth and willing to die for it. You see how incredibly entrapping the mind is. People get into the practice. The practice works. They get addicted to the practice. They try to get everybody else to do the practice because it works for them. Then they’ll kill because other people won’t do the practice. Isn’t that far out?

You imagine the Arabs and the Israelis, I mean, they’re sisters and brothers in terms of the same god, and there they are beating the shit out of each other over their mind trips. These are mind trips we are playing and we’re all part of it in some way. In our subtle way, we are all caught in these conspiracies of defining reality in certain ways. You realize it takes the individual – it’s not gonna be through the group process – it’s gonna be through each individual to extricate the awareness from the trap of these conceptual maps, in order to draw back, in order to have the spaciousness to see the absurdity of the predicament of the traps of the mind.

I watch C-SPAN, and it’s like watching Beavis and Butthead as far as I can see. I don’t see a hell of a lot of difference. It’s really bizarre. I remember, I was talking and visiting with George Stephanopoulos, who was in the White House. I said,

“George, in the White House is there anybody that holds the vision or is quiet? Is there any silence? Is there any reflectiveness? Are there any elders? Is there any respect for the idea that the rational mind can’t solve all the problems?” and he said, “No.” I asked, “Is there even the appreciation that it would be useful?” and he said, “No.”

I mean George saw the predicament. He couldn’t have answered my questions unless he saw the predicament, but you’ve gotta see the amount of attachment to something that attracts a person into a certain social role. Then to get that person to fulfill that role without being trapped by it. See, in the old days, which weren’t so great either, the kings had jesters and they had fools and they had wise people around to say, “Hey, you’re getting a little caught in your kingliness, don’t you think?” Ain’t nobody around now. It used to be at least Will Rogers, you know. Saturday Night Live doesn’t do what Will Rogers did. It’s a different level of the game. It’s gotta be a certain kind of compassionate satire. It’s gotta be a humor that comes out of such love. It can’t be humor that comes out of fear, and our comedies are full of humor that comes out of fear.



-Ram Dass

Rockette

I always wanted to be a Rockette.

My Head is a Barometer!

Understanding Barometric Pressure Headaches: How Does Weather Affect Your Headaches?
https://www.healthline.com/health/headache/barometric-pressure-headache#symptoms

Understanding Barometric Pressure Headaches: How Does Weather Affect Your Headaches?

If you have ever had a severe headache or migraine, you know how debilitating it can be. Not knowing when the next headache is coming can make it hard to make plans or, in some cases, to fully enjoy life.

If it seems like your headaches come on during or after changes in the weather, start paying closer attention. Changes in barometric pressure can induce headaches, so it’s important to be aware of upcoming weather changes if barometric pressure is a factor for you.

Barometric pressure refers to the pressure in the air or the amount of force that is being applied to your body from the air. Because our sinuses are filled with air, any change in that pressure can affect headaches.


Barometric pressure headaches occur after a drop in barometric pressure. They feel like your typical headache or migraine, but you may have some additional symptoms, including:

nausea and vomiting
increased sensitivity to light
numbness in the face and neck
pain in one or both temples

You may have barometric headaches if you regularly experience these symptoms with headache when it’s rainy or humid.


When the outside barometric pressure lowers, it creates a difference between the pressure in the outside air and the air in your sinuses. That can result in pain. The same thing happens when you are on a plane. As the pressure changes with the altitude on takeoff, you might experience ear popping or pain from that change.

A study in Japan looked at the sales of loxoprofen, a headache medicine. Researchers saw a connection between an increase in medication sales and changes to barometric pressure. From this, the researchers concluded that a decrease in barometric pressure causes an increase in the incidence of headaches.

The barometric pressure doesn’t have to change drastically to cause headaches, either. In a study published in 2015, researchers looked at the effects of barometric pressure on people with chronic migraines. The researchers found that even small decreases in barometric pressure induced migraines.

Another study out of Japan saw similar results. In that study, 28 people with a history of migraine kept a headache journal for one year. Migraine frequency increased on days when the barometric pressure was lower by 5 hectopascals (hPa) than the previous day. Migraine frequency also decreased on days when the barometric pressure was 5 hPa or higher than the previous day.

Swim for Free

Sometimes I would like to build a public pool so kids could learn to swim for free. Too many of the under-served kids do not know how to swim. This should be taught as part of basic life skills. Reading writing cooking and swimming! The parents need to learn too. This is a potentially life-saving skill. Back in the days of my childhood we had public swimming pools.

Clenched Fist in Photo

Severe anxiety!

Vermont Gypsy Wagon by Clara Kazarov

http://tinyhouseswoon.com/vermont-gypsy-wagon/

While Undergoing Brain Surgery, Patient Plays Flute

While undergoing brain surgery, patient plays her flute
by Allyson Chiu April 2 at 5:12 AM

Before the electrodes were implanted, Henry could barely hold a cup of water steady, TMC News reported. But after the electric current was administered, Henry not only played the flute, she also signed her name with smooth strokes. Her handwriting was legible for the first time in decades.

Henry’s operating room concert is not the first time instruments have been played by patients during brain surgery.

In July 2016, a music teacher played a saxophone during a procedure to remove a benign brain tumor that was “located in a part of the brain known to be active when people listen to and make music,” according to NPR. About a year later, surgeons in Bangalore, India were treated to a guitar performance as they operated on a man to correct a neurological condition called musical dystonia, which caused the patient’s fingers to cramp, CNN reported.

Patients are sometimes kept awake during these surgeries so doctors can monitor brain activity to ensure the right areas are being repaired and other parts of the brain are not being damaged, according to Mayo Clinic.

“My folks lived through the [Great] Depression,” Henry told TMC News. “If there’s anything they taught me, it was that an obstacle is not something that stops you; it’s something you find a way around.”

Acts of Kindness, One Cup at a Time

“Whatever the homeless did to become homeless,” he said, “doesn’t mean they deserve to be cold.”

He says he was driven to this weekly act of kindness by the crushing sadness he experienced: His son Travis, 32, was homeless when he died of a drug overdose in Maine in 2016.

“I tried, he tried,” Kelleher said of the back-and-forth struggle between parent and child familiar to anyone who has lived it. “I knew I was going to get that call, and I did. My life will never be the same, but I’m the same as everyone else who’s had to deal with this.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/south/2018/03/30/acts-kindness-one-cup-time/Ty5mlkuSs02vQsl8LKcHfL/story.html

Support the soup man

Authoritarian Monster Devil

Stop him before he destroys us all.

Revive the Roots

1
Community Baking
Today 1 PM · Revive the Roots · Smithfield, Rhode Island
Revive the Roots

Revive the Roots welcomes all to the Mowry Commons for an afternoon of baking in a Cobb oven! The Cobb oven is a traditional wood fired oven perfect for baking crusty old world loafs, crispy pizzas and much more. Bring your own prepared loaf, hang out and explore the beauty of the Mowry Commons in the winter while your bread bakes. You are welcome to bring any bread or baked recipe you like, however, I will post the recipe that I will be trying a few days ahead. Because the oven is wood fired the temperature will vary from week to week and will drop over the baking period. The oven will be roughly 500-450 degrees at 1:00pm (great for pizzas), and from 2:30 to 4:00 it will be right around 350 degrees (perfect for most breads). Our hope is to build community through outdoor baking. This will be a weekly event. Let’s bake and break bread together!

Healthy Pilaf: A Cornucopia of Grains

This morning I blended brown rice, wheat berries, wild rice and barley and cooked them in my instant pot with water salt and Adobo, and olive oil. So good!

Save Your Parmesan Cheese Rinds

https://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/10-uses-for-parmesan-cheese-rinds
Besides the fact that true Parmesan is outrageously expensive, you can use the rind.

19 Ways to Eat Chick Peas

Here!
Oven roasted

Noisy Morning

The roof vent is squeaking on the tenement next door and the screen door is slamming in the wind on the tenement on the other side of us.

Interpreting Fear within Society and the Ego

by
Ram Dass

Buddha says that fear is the result of ignorance. And the ignorance is that when you start out as an infant with an undifferentiated awareness, you are then taught who you are.

That component, which we all call ‘ego’, is a very fragile structure. It seems tough, but it’s actually a very fragile structure.

It’s a structure that is created of mind, of learned neural patterns. It is, on one side of what Freud referred to as the ‘id’, or the ‘impulse life’, while societal structures are on the other side. This ego is designed to interface between impulse life and the society. To protect the society from impulse life.

When you didn’t have a framework, when you didn’t have a somebody-ness, you were just part of the universe, and there was no fear. One has to have self-concept to be afraid, and when an organism is functioning instinctively in a scene, in an infant stage, each change in the homeostasis, each change in the balance of the situation is just a new moment. It’s just a new moment to which it responds.

It’s very delicate to interpret things like ego and fear because we tend to interpret from where we’re sitting, and we’ve developed these structures around it.

But if you can sense the way it works, just see on one side of you the extremely powerful impulses in you that you may be afraid of, and on the other side the tremendous forces outside that you may be afraid of. Then, you can begin feeling yourself as a very fragile entity within the whole structure.

The root of the fear is the feeling of separateness that can exist here, within oneself. The root of the fear is within the model one has of oneself. That’s where fear starts. Once that feeling of separation exists, then you process everything from either inside or outside in terms of that model. It then keeps reinforcing the feeling of vulnerability, because there are incredibly powerful forces moving both inside and outside of you.

The transformative process of spiritual work is reawakening to the innocence of going behind that model of separation that one has, that cuts you off, that made you a tiny little fragile somebody. A lot of the power comes from a freeing of our own fragility.

When you look at social structures, you see how much social institution is based upon the feeling of fragility within the human condition. Based on fear.

You say, “I’m afraid of that person,” but you mean you are afraid of being socially shamed by that person. When you are socially shamed, it hurts, but then here we still are. You’re afraid of violence, and then if violence happens, sure, it’s scary and painful and then behind it, here we are.

I think that fear often feeds upon itself and we’re mostly afraid of the fear, which then gives it greater power… But we are just afraid because we feel vulnerable.



-Ram Dass