Weekend Snapshot: Angels Around Us

This the angel at the gate to the Lourdes Grotto in Litchfield, Connecticut. My husband and I stopped there for a walk while our daughter was at at Girl Scouts event at a nearby school. Though I am not Roman Catholic, I have come to appreciate the Stations of the Cross and the like as works of art, means of telling a story of faith, and a source of inspiration and comfort.

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Blog Your Blessings: Wiffle Ball

The backyard version of baseball known in these parts as Wiffle Ball is this week's blessing. We had the chance to play nine innings with my nephews on Easter weekend, and my daughter and I have had our own version of pitchers-and-catchers during the week. She's been batting left-handed as well as right, and she has figured out how to throw the ball where she wants it to go. She is the first female in our family's history to accomplish this.

Wiffle Ball is a variation of stick ball played with a plastic bat and a perforated plastic ball designed to travel only short distances so the game can be played in small areas. It has been around since 1953 and is one of those backyard games anyone can play. You don't have to be especially good at it to enjoy it, and that's a big part of why it's so much fun. It was a staple activity of all my family's backyard picnics when I was growing up. It was the game that got young and old alike out of their lawn chairs and running around in circles on whatever rough approximation of a baseball diamond we had created.

I had some fun this week when I went to the Wiffle Ball website and discovered there are actual rules to the game. I told my daughter, and she said, "Let's not get complicated with rules." That has always been the sentiment of players in my family over the years! But rules there are for this game invented by a dad for his son in Fairfield, Connecticut, so the kid could play stick ball and throw curve balls without hurting his arm. The rules recommend team sizes, a batting order, and more. The website even offers diagrams depicting ways to hold the ball for various pitches. It suggests using a broomstick if you don't have the official plastic Wiffle bat. Nothing like telling people how to play a game if they don't even own the product the company is promoting!

We worked out and warmed up one cold spring day after another thanks to the fun of Wiffle ball. How much did we spend on the bat and balls so many years ago? Three or four dollars. Cheap, clean, easy, portable fun. Timeless, too. What's not to love?

More Weight for Connecticut's Witches

Reading this week's stories about the Connecticut legislature's considering a resolution that would acknowledge the horrible nature of this state's 18th century witch trials, my mind rolled back to Dublin, Ireland, in the mid-1990s when I watched a performance of Arthur Miller's 1953 play The Crucible at the Abbey Theatre.

Set during the Salem Witch Trials of the 17th century, the play explores the brutal effects of mob hysteria and government by and about fear. The damning word of unreliable witnesses, the conniving ways of jealous girls, and the hunger for pleasure and joy that rips through these colonists like an invisible, silent earthquake turn the rule of law, common sense, and fair play on their head with deadly results. The Crucible has been called a play about McCarthyism. It can be that, but it is in fact about any situation in which reason and compassion surrender to blind power.

I knew the story line as I watched the drama unfold in Dublin so many years ago, but the folks around me did not. For them, every word and every twist in the plot were brand new.

It was a thrill, then, when the play had arrived at the point where Giles Corey is literally being pressed into a confession. His torturers place more and more mill stones weight on them to elicit a confession. Though Corey is a tad eccentric, he is far and away not in league with the devil. To his death, Corey maintains his innocence. When his captors pause in their torture to ask him if he has anything to say, Corey responds, "More weight!"

At this point in the drama, the Abbey erupted. People rose to their feet and clapped and held hands and wept and I don't know what. I never saw anything like that highly charged moment in the playhouse. It made perfect sense in the Ireland of that time. In that time and place, this was an Irish play.

"More weight." No fear. No defeat. No honor lost at the say-so of dishonorable people. No truth but the one truth.

So what about those men and women killed in Connecticut for what many say now was nothing at all? Their names will stay on the record as witches until the next legislative session. Time ran out before honor could be restored. More wait.

More about Connecticut's witch trials
More about the pending resolution

Skywatch Friday: Blowing in the Wind

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Thursday Thirteen 26: Forwarding Wisdom

I used to dislike receiving forwarded emails. Will I really go to hell if I don't forward to the 10 friends I don't have? If I can drum up six friends, will my wildest dreams come true in six months? Should I reply? Hmmm....

Once I unwittingly expressed this frustration with this kind of mail in front of a woman who was a prolific sender of the stuff, though I didn't realize it. She was a disabled woman with a warm word and a smile for everyone. "I don't always have something important to say, but I want the people I care about to know I'm thinking of them," she said to me. I could see I had hurt her feelings. "And I only send the ones I think are good to people I really like."

So I read these. I forward and reply as much as possible. And I make a point of learning something, of finding goodness. It's always there. Look at these pearls:

1. Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
2. Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.
3. Meanness doesn't just happen overnight.
4. Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.
5. Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
6. It doesn't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
7. You cannot unsay a cruel word.
8. Don't judge folks by their relatives.
9. Don't interfere with something that isn't bothering you.
10. Timing has a lot to do with the outcome off a rain dance.
11. Letting the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back in.
12. If you get to thinking you're a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else's dog around.
13. Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.

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Wordless Wednesday: Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, NYC

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Faded Beauty

The other day my daughter and I got into Waterbury too early for her choir rehearsal, so we took a walk around the corner to pick up my paycheck in the Chase Building, built in 1919 as a headquarters for the Chase family's charitable and business ventures. It's a formerly beautiful building that the city has let run down since it purchased it from the Chase family for $1 in 1963, but it's not hard to imagine how splendid it was in its time. My daughter was immediately taken by the Palladian window in the stairwell, and she was quick to find the line by Abraham Lincoln in the leading.

We stopped for a moment to read it and a moment more for me to photograph it. We talked about what Lincoln might have meant by "manly"--strong, generous, courageous, honorable--and thought we could strive for this kind of heart, too.

On the way back to the church, my daughter picked up on many other beautiful buildings, monuments, and natural works of art in the form of trees that marked our way. She didn't pick up on the rust, the broken stonework, the debris. It was all good.

What's better than a few extra minutes in the company of a bright-eyed optimist?

Weekend Snapshot: Happy Easter

First to break the earth
These hearts are broken by it
I live for such joy

Blog Your Blessings: The Chorister Academy

This week's blessing is one that has come up before: The Chorister Academy at St. John's Church in Waterbury, Connecticut. This group of young people includes students from second through tenth grade who come from all over the city. All the kids come from hard-working families, though none is well-off financially. Twice a week this diverse group of kids meet for hours at a time to learn to read music and to sing some pretty challenging hymns. The group is constantly in flux. Kids come and go, so the group is always starting over as it tries to advance.

The program is free to these kids. They have only to want to be there, to participate, and to sing in church twice a month as well as on special occasions.

Through the Academy, St. John's does what a church should do. It helps these kids find the essential beauty within themselves, to make the most of it, and to give it all away in the name of Love.

The choristers sang the very beautiful and poignant "Lenten Love Song" on Maundy Thursday. My daughter wrote the lyrics for me from memory on Friday morning. (The last two lines are her phonetic Latin.) It is a profound story of sincere friendship.

Now Jesus went into the garden,
The garden of Gethsemane.
He went there sad and very weary
To be alone to pray.
"Dear God, I am so sorrowful,
Is there no other way?
Dear God, if there is,
Please let this cup pass away."

Now Jesus went into the garden,
The Garden of Gethsemane.
The olive tree bent over him
And heard him sadly pray.
"Dear God, your Son is sorrowful
But knows your way is best.
Let love take hold of me.
Help me to be bold and free
To do your will, to do your will,
To do your will and rest."

Ubi caritas, et amor,
Ubi caritas, ade oo sibe est.

The podcast below is a recording of their gift. God bless.

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Skywatch Friday: Time Tells in Thomaston

The first shot is the Thomaston Opera House. Below it is the factory that produced those Seth Thomas timepieces that put Connecticut on the map many moons ago. (The clock at Grand Central Station in New York City came from Thomaston.) No matter where you look in Thomaston, it seems there's a clock on a tower with the exact time!

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"Play Nice" Researchers Catch up with the Teacher

At last, research is catching up that great teacher whose brief but profound rabbinical career 2000 years ago could be summed up in the three words "love one another."

Today Nature magazine published the findings of researchers who studied the behavior of 100 Boston-area college students playing the game "Prisoner's Dilemma," which the researches describe as "a punishment-heavy version of the classic one-on-one brinksmanship game of prisoner's dilemma."

Common game theory has held that punishment makes two equals cooperate. But when people compete in repeated games, punishment fails to deliver, said study author Martin Nowak. He is director of the evolutionary dynamics lab at Harvard where the study was conducted.

"On the individual level, we find that those who use punishments are the losers," Nowak said his experiments found.

Those who escalate the conflict very often wound up doomed.

When faced with a nasty opponent, turning the other cheek and continuing to cooperate--or at least not handing out punishment--paid off more in the long run, the study found.

"It's a very positive message," said study co-author David Rand, a Harvard biology graduate student researcher. "In general, the thing that is most, sort of, rational and best for your own self-interest is to be nice."

Read the full story here.

Thursday Thirteen No 25: The Labyrinth.

"Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth." -Rumi

Every now and again I stop off at the labyrinth at Wisdom House in Litchfield, Connecticut. Walking it is a wonderful experience in itself, but recent reading has made it all the richer. Here are some thoughts on the labyrinth from The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor.

1.The labyrinth traces its roots to the Great Mother, the earth goddess.

2. The Great Mother was the body of all life as well as the way that must be traveled to realize life.

3. In all rites of the Great Mother throughout the ages and throughout the world, the way is always connected with a cave/womb and a spiraling entrance and exit.

4. Among ancient Cretans as well as among present-day Hopis in the American Southwest, the earth womb is depicted as a labyrinth and the mythic place of emergence of the whole people.

5. In Hindu tradition, both the convolutions of the brain and the eightfold stages of the mind are identified with the winding spiral form of the labyrinth.

6. A labyrinth both creates and protects the still center, the heart.

7. Through the ages, complex ideas have been expressed through the symbol of the labyrinth, including travel through the underworld to rebirth on a larger psychic level.

8. The journey into and out of the labyrinth reflects the traveler's place in the cosmos.

9. A labyrinth has only one path; the way in is the way out.

10. When you walk a labyrinth, you meander back and forth, turning 180 degrees each time you enter a different circuit. As you shift your direction you also shift your awareness. This is one of the reasons the labyrinth can induce receptive states of consciousness.

11. The labyrinth is not a maze; there are no blind alleys and no decisions to make; the circuits keep you on course.

12. A labyrinth is a right brain task. It involves intuition, creativity, and imagery.

13. As you enter, focus, and walk purposefully, you meditate on the nature of your every step, finding that walking the labyrinth is an exercise intended to create a heightened spiritual awareness in a sacred space.

Thursday Thirteen

Wordless Wednesday: Fading Memory

This is a Coors poster behind a 9/11 memorial painted on a package store window in Thomaston, Connecticut. The window seems to me a metaphor of how we remember as well as how we forget.

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The Watercourse Way

Reflect upon how the gentle water compares to the solid stone and marble it's capable of carving through. The soft water overrides hardness--deep valleys surrounded by mountains of granite have been carved away over the centuries by the patient, quiet, moving liquid. Imagine being able to enter where no space appears to be available, and to move slowly, speaking seldom and allowing yourself to be harmoniously intact as you see a lower, less noisy and noticeable place...a place where all others desire to come to you .This is the watercourse way. (Wayne Dyer, Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life)

Eliot Spitzer--A Feint

Last week, a YouTube visitor left a startling comment on my very brief video of the Stars and Strips flying in a late February breeze. He suggested I was a my-country-right-or-wrong American. There is nothing on this video but the flag and a bit of the hymn "This is My Father's Land," itself a prayer for guidance for home sweet home.

In the spirit of that little video--a meditation on patriotism and a prayer for guidance, as I said--I offer yet another act of patriotic duty on this blog. This loyal American stands aghast in the face of what her nation's leaders do in the name of that flag.

I call your attention to poor old former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. As the world knows, he had expensive sex with a prostitute. It was a cash transaction and a no-no but it was Spitzer's cash and certainly no big deal in the context of the pork farm we call Washington, DC.

So what's the big deal? The big deal is that you name and shame anybody who threatens to come between money and power in Washington, DC. Please read this straightforward story by investigative reporter Greg Palast. He'll get your mind off the prostitute and on your wallet.

While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an 'escort' $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush's new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.

Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there's a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush's man Bernanke was using ours.

This week, Bernanke's Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks' mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.

Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers' bordello: Eliot Spitzer.

Who are they kidding? Spitzer's lynching and the bankers' enriching are intimately tied.

How? Follow the money.

The press has swallowed Wall Street's line that millions of US families are about to lose their homes because they bought homes they couldn't afford or took loans too big for their wallets. Ba-LON-ey. That's blaming the victim.

Here's what happened. Since the Bush regime came to power, a new species of loan became the norm, the 'sub-prime' mortgage and it's variants including loans with teeny "introductory" interest rates. From out of nowhere, a company called 'Countrywide' became America's top mortgage lender, accounting for one in five home loans, a large chuck of these 'sub-prime.'

Here's how it worked: The Grinning Family, with US average household income, gets a $200,000 mortgage at 4% for two years. Their $955 a month payment is 25% of their income. No problem. Their banker promises them a new mortgage, again at the cheap rate, in two years. But in two years, the promise ain't worth a can of spam and the Grinnings are told to scram - because their house is now worth less than the mortgage. Now, the mortgage hits 9% or $1,609 plus fees to recover the "discount" they had for two years. Suddenly, payments equal 42% to 50% of pre-tax income. Grinnings move into their Toyota.

Now, what kind of American is 'sub-prime.' Guess. No peeking. Here's a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren't stupid - they had no choice. They were 'steered' as it's called in the mortgage sharking business.

'Steering,' sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called 'fraudulent conveyance' or 'predatory lending' under US law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton Administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.

But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hardy - it was OK now to steer'm, fake'm, charge'm and take'm.

But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.

Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush's regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of "federal pre-emption," Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.

Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer's investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush's banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.

Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on their predatory enablers in the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide was the Mother Shark, its funder and now owner, Bank of America. Others joined the sharkfest: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup's Citibank made mortgage usury their major profit centers. They did this through a bit of financial legerdemain called "securitization."

What that means is that they took a bunch of junk mortgages, like the Grinnings, loans about to go down the toilet and re-packaged them into "tranches" of bonds which were stamped "AAA" - top grade - by bond rating agencies. These gold-painted turds were sold as sparkling safe investments to US school district pension funds and town governments in Finland (really).

When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked off, investors were left with the poop and the bankers were left with bonuses. Countrywide's top man, Angelo Mozilo, will 'earn' a $77 million buy-out bonus this year on top of the $656 million - over half a billion dollars - he pulled in from 1998 through 2007.

But there were rumblings that the party would soon be over. Angry regulators, burned investors and the weight of millions of homes about to be boarded up were causing the sharks to sink. Countrywide's stock was down 50%, and Citigroup was off 38%, not pleasing to the Gulf sheiks who now control its biggest share blocks.

Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That's Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.

The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure - and got to keep the Grinning's house. There was no 'quid' of a foreclosure moratorium for the 'pro quo' of public bail-out. Not one family was saved - but not one banker was left behind.

Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo's Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company's stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.

And that very same day the bail-out was decided - what a coinkydink! - the man called, 'The Sheriff of Wall Street' was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.

Do I believe the banks called Justice and said, "Take him down today!" Naw, that's not how the system works. But the big players knew that unless Spitzer was taken out, he would create enough ruckus to spoil the party. Headlines in the financial press - one was "Wall Street Declares War on Spitzer" - made clear to Bush's enforcers at Justice who their number one target should be. And it wasn't Bin Laden.

It was the night of February 13 when Spitzer made the bone-headed choice to order take-out in his Washington Hotel room. He had just finished signing these words for the Washington Post about predatory loans:

"Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which he federal government was turning a blind eye."

Bush, said Spitzer right in the headline, was the "Predator Lenders' Partner in Crime." The President, said Spitzer, was a fugitive from justice. And Spitzer was in Washington to launch a campaign to take on the Bush regime and the biggest financial powers on the planet.

Spitzer wrote, "When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners the Bush administration will not be judged favorably."

But now, the Administration can rest assured that this love story - of Bush and his bankers - will not be told by history at all - now that the Sheriff of Wall Street has fallen on his own gun.

A note on "Prosecutorial Indiscretion."

Back in the day when I was an investigator of racketeers for government, the federal prosecutor I was assisting was deciding whether to launch a case based on his negotiations for airtime with 60 Minutes. I'm not allowed to tell you the prosecutor's name, but I want to mention he was recently seen shouting, "Florida is Rudi country! Florida is Rudi country!"

Not all crimes lead to federal bust or even public exposure. It's up to something called "prosecutorial discretion."

Funny thing, this 'discretion.' For example, Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, paid Washington DC prostitutes to put him diapers (ewww!), yet the Senator was not exposed by the US prosecutors busting the pimp-ring that pampered him.

Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer - rarely done in these cases - was made at the 'discretion' of Bush's Justice Department.

Or maybe we should say, 'indiscretion.'

One Single Impression

My One Single Impression offering is here.

Weekend Snapshot: Washi Eggs

This weekend, we've spent time preparing for Easter. Among our decorations are these washi Easter eggs that my daughter and I made a few years ago by gluing handmade paper to blown eggs. They have lasted longer than we thought they would!

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Blog Your Blessings: Slow March Days

I'm not one for rushing the seasons by. I'm not wishing for spring by the middle of February; I like mid-February just the way it is. And I like March the way it is.

This strange and fickle month has no mercy on any of us. When the body aches for a snow day, we get an overcast 50-degree day that never quite produces even a drop of rain. When we'd like to wash the car, the air is 20 degrees with the wind chill.You can't plan or prepare or pretend to know the slightest thing about what to do next in March. March will let you know. The only true thing about March is that it is scheduled to deliver spring. And it does.

I like to feel spring coming in days that are little-by-little longer and warmer and brighter. It was especially nice one cold and very windy day at the very beginning of the month when it seemed the hand of March lifted the lid off the pot of winter and air and light spun round and round and the sky could not be bluer. It was a magical day, and I was happy to be out in it with my camera. I happily posted a photo from that day on my blog--a birch tree against the blue sky. A blogger in England chided me for failing to come up with something springier. I laughed out loud. What could be springier than a blue you could dive into after so many weeks of grey dull days that looked the same from beginning to end?

On another day, someone else stopped by my blog and registered approval of a images of new boxwood greenery, warmed-up rhododendrons, geese, and birch leaves about to let go in the wind. She said her family makes a game of counting the number of signs of spring they see. I like that sort of game, and I have tried it myself.

After a week of shaking off the residual effects of the flu, I was able to take a walk and work in my little garden and enjoy all the signs of a spring that is not so far away. I came across baby squirrels and hungry robins, countless of those temporary streams that babble through the melting woods, bird songs of every kind, the sound of woodpeckers fast at work, divots in the soft moss where squirrel after hungry squirrel had dug for a new meal, buds on the hydrangea bought at church years ago to remember loved ones in no danger of being forgotten, Canada geese not quite at home in our intemperate pond, boxwood unfolding new waxy leaves to the sun, bulbs from grocery store flowers that insist on their inheritance year after year after year, and neighbors happy to come outside and say, "How have you been?" and "We have missed you."

All of these images are grey and brown and soft. Some of them are mucky. None is very photogenic. This is New England getting on with the business of thawing out, but even the littlest of birds know it's something to sing about. But you have to stand still if you want to hear it. And not wish it was May. And that is a blessing.

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My Apologies to the Fat Pig

For the 18 months we've had our two guinea pigs, we've felt a need to look out for the little guy, Delmo.

Tapper (right) is our Alpha Mouse, and he lords it over his little brother all the time. Tapper is the fat pig. New food in the cage? Tapper first, thank you. Is that hay? Outta the way, Delmo. Water? Age before beauty, brother.

Perhaps our table manners have no place in the cage, but we are who we are and we just can't help it. Many a time we've held Tapper back and let Delmo have first go at the fresh food in our interest of fair play and justice. We can be ridiculous. The pigs, wielding their own form of chivalry, never let on to notice. We thought we were doing a good thing.

Doing good. Like all those good eggs we know who chase the squirrels from the bird feeder because they heartily resent the big, bushy-tailed rodents crashing the party they put on for the delicate feathered friends.

Silly us to think we know better how it should be.

Yesterday after I put the breakfast serving of guinea pig food in the cage, both guineas came to the door. I stroked them both simultaneously, and they purred with pleasure. Then Tapper craned his fat little neck to nibble his salt wheel. Finding it good, he nudged Delmo's nose over, and Delmo had a taste.

My daughter, who has read just about all the books on her rodents, melted. "Ooohhh," she said, "Tapper was making sure Delmo had some, too."

"So Tapper takes care of Delmo, even when he's being pushy?"

"Probably, mom. You know how Delmo cries whenever he can't see Tapper? Maybe that's why?" It's true: the little guy squeals up a storm if his big brother is out of eyeshot. Delmo depends on Tapper's company. Whatever it is about Alpha Mousiness works for both guinea pigs. They're good with it.

So there it is. I owe the fat pig a big apology. If being Alpha Mouse means being bossy, it also means keeping the kingdom safe. All hail Alpha Mouse.

Earth Hour

Man is but a part of the fabric of life--dependent on the whole fabric for his very existence. As the most highly developed tool-using animal, he must recognize that the unknown evolutionary destinies of other life forms are to be respected, and act as gentle steward of the earth's community of being. (Essential Kazukai Tanahashi, Essential Zen)

Please click here to find out more about Earth Hour on March 29. Please sign on to this global project.

Skywatch Friday: Anonymous

This Civil War monument in Thomaston, Connecticut, is a standard sight in New England towns. Civil War monuments are the first in the US to celebrate the ordinary soldier. Read more about them here.

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Skywatch Friday

Buddhism Today - Brian Vaugh

If you have a minute or 10, please visit Brian's blog. His top two posts are well worth your time. God bless.

Thursday Thirteen No. 24: 'Golden, Golden'

My musical tastes move through seasonal mood swings. March always brings on an appetite for Andy Stewart and Silly Wizard. My husband and I saw Stewart perform at some remote nature center in a Connecticut village long before our daughter was born. The space was small and the music, alive. The evening felt like a seisun in a Cork pub. Stewart is all magic and romance and fun. Here are the 13 lines of lyrics to "Golden, Golden," one only he he can do well:

Slowly, slowly, walk the path, and you might never stumble or fall.
Slowly, slowly, walk the path, and you might never fall in love at all.

Golden, golden, is her hair, like the morning sun over fields of corn.
Golden, golden, is her love, so sweet and clear and warm.

Lonely, lonely, is the heart that ne'er another can call its own.
Lonely, lonely, lies the part yhat has to live all alone.

Golden, golden, is her hair, like the morning sun over fields of corn.
Golden, golden, is her love, so sweet and clear and warm.

Wildly, wildly, beats the heart with a rush of love like a mountain stream.
Wildly, wildly, play your part as free as a wild bird's dream

Golden, golden, is her hair, like the morning sun over fields of corn.
Golden, golden, is her love, so sweet and clear and warm.
Golden, golden, is her hair, like the morning sun over fields of corn.

Thursday Thirteen

Wordless Wednesday: The Face of Victory

This is the "Spirit of Victory" memorial to the Spanish-American War. (Just imagine the face of defeat....) This statue by Beatrice Longman Batchelder is in Bushnell Park, Hartford, Connecticut. I took the picture because I just love the outfit.

Wordless Wednesday

Of Crunchy Socks and Stiff Bath Towels

Connecticut's legislature is sitting on a big one. Oh, yes.

And someday it just might hatch in the form of the right to dry your clothes in the open air anywhere you want here in the Nutmeg State. How's that for the prospect of progress?

Proponents of the "right to dry" say the clothesline reduces fossil fuel consumption, cuts household utility bills, minimizes carbon dioxide emissions and gives people an easy way to slow global warming. Various conservation websites say that household gas and electric clothes dryers account for 6 to 10 percent of electricity use.

"It makes sense," said state Rep. Steve Fontana, D- North Haven, House co-chairman of the General Assembly's energy and technology committee. "We do have the highest electricity prices in the nation. Having the freedom to dry [on a clothesline] helps save money and contributes to the safety of the planet," Fontana said in February. "I think it's the first time we've had such a proposal here."

Florida passed the nation's first "right to dry" bill. Vermont and New Hampshire are considering similar bills this spring.

Our wee humble abode is in a complex with bylaws and busybodies who make sure all unmanned socks remain indoors at all times. There are no skivvies flapping in the breeze here. That doesn't stop us, though. We use drying racks down cellar for all but the bed sheets and blankets. It works. I hang up a load of wash, leave it for a day, hope like heck the laundry fairies will fold and iron, and then do it myself oh, in a few days, when the fairies stand me up for a better time with my kid.

I grew up with crunchy socks and crisp sheets. It was a matter of course that when the weather was warm enough, the basket came up in my mother's mighty arms, got plunked on the picnic table, and then got reeled out for a day in the sun. We had no shame. We didn't need any. Nobody saw our stuff in our suburban oasis surrounded by trees.

There was nothing better than the smell of sheets dried in the sun or even the scrape of a stiff bath towel across a sun-burned back. That was top-class exfoliating for free. We had it all. We never thought anything of the basket of clothes pins hanging from the pulley by the back door. Never thought it was unsightly. Never thought anything but we were living in our home and taking care of the chores in the best way possible.

How nice it is to take the time to enjoy a warm bright day. I have a friend who once told me she used to love rolling her kids' clothes out on the line. It gave her the sense of a full and complete day. A connection to what her mom used to do. And a few quiet minutes outside.

Let the neighbors put on airs if they want. They don't have a line on me yet, but if this bill passes they'll know more about me than they ever could have imagined. Maybe.

Weekend Snapshot: Spring Comes Dropping Slow

Here in Connecticut, the first signs of spring include boxwoods opening up, dry birch leaves that will soon give way to new ones, rhododendron leaves that are no longer pinched with frostbite, and Canada geese making the long march home after a very long flight North. Spring is slow and subtle, brown and green.

Weekend Snapshot

Blog Your Blessings: The Flu

Shortly after I told my daughter the world would not end if she missed school for a few days to recover from the flu, my world ended. I caught the flu. The nasty thing stopped my in my tracks: I was hot, I was cold, ravenously hungry, nauseated, tired,delirious, tired, cold, hot, cold, longing to be unconscious.

So began the week. Armed with the doctor-certified information that my daughter very positively had the flu, we climbed into our foxhole and stayed there. Despite her own high temperature and physical weakness, she was a merciless couch warrior at all things strategic: Junior Monopoly, Blokus, Quorridor, Rummy, even Trouble. She seemed to gain strength from her victories as I declined, though: "You're letting me win, Mom," she said. "No, honey, I'm trying like heck to stay in the game."

We called a truce and departed the board game battleground to fold some doves for Easter. We didn't get too far with that project before we opted for a return to complete laziness, though.

The game was over. After a day of feverish couch sitting, cuddling, and reviewing musicals--Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Hello Dolly--and even some Andy Griffith Show reruns on DVD--I realized there was no game. The world did not end. In fact, it went blissfully along without us. If I accomplished nothing, I at least predicted accurately. We still had a world. And, except for some spluttering and earlier-than-usual drooping, we had our health back before very long.

The flu is an awful lot like the occasional power outage that cuts me off from the Internet and from the computer, with which I do my work. We had no power, and we loved it for a good few days. We amused ourselves as a pink and punchy mom-and-daughter team might just as well do because life is short.

Blog Your Blessings

'Why Say the Pledge?'

The other day a fourth-grade girl asked me why she said the Pledge of Allegiance in school every day.

I have been substitute teaching in Waterbury lately to augment the family income, and I have learned that anything that can possibly happen in a day will very likely happen in Waterbury; there are few surprises.

Still, this child caught me off my guard. Immediately, my eyebrows went up. These eyebrows descended from 13 generations of Americans who worked long and hard to make and keep home. We can count ancestors in the front lines of every war this country every fought. My ancestors, paid taxes, voted, and did their best. My parents, small children during the Second World War, can nonetheless remember food rationing, scrap metal drives, stars in windows, telegrams bearing the final word of a loved one. My father and so many of his friends did their time in the military as a matter of course as young men.

You stand by your family and friends, and you do whatever is required in the name of love and loyalty. You say the Pledge. You mention God because only under God can there be liberty and justice.

So my eyebrows went up. But there I was looking into the open face of a fourth-grader who had no idea about any of that, even if she lived in Waterbury, Connecticut--a town Ken Burns featured in his blockbuster documentary The War because it played such an important role in this country's efforts during World War II.

This was a teachable moment. This was an opportunity to teach this kid about the things that make this home--Waterbury--her home. I had about 30 seconds to say something that might make the pledge routine make sense.

I tried: "When you say the pledge, you promise to be a good friend. People in this country care about you. People in Waterbury, in Connecticut, and in the United States are working hard right now and giving some of the money they make so you can be in school all day and learn how to write and do long division, and have a good life. People care about you and want you to do well--and they don't know you any more than you know them. When you say the pledge, you're saying thank you."

I remember learning Connecticut history in fourth grade. I ate it up. What happened where and when came to me through my teacher. Why and how and to what good purpose I got from home. I hope this kid does, too.

Skywatch Friday: Parallel Lives

Parallel lives:
A matter of chance
And time and space
Of course
That I stand here
And you, there
Never intersecting
Never meeting
On some distant horizon
In some distant future
I have to remind myself
To notice you.
But look at us:
I could be you
And you, me
So close, so alike
So alone
It is a matter of chance
It is all the same
I am you,
You are me

Skywatch Friday

Thursday Thirteen No. 23: Words to Live By if You Find the Time

I subscribe to way too much online stuff. Although everything I receive is worthwhile reading, I don't always get to it. So I save all the bits and pieces in files that I seldom open. (Does that make me a virtual packrat or a real one? )

The other day I decided to spend some time with the items that I had plopped into my "Hindu Wisdom" folder. Here are 13 gems, the best of which I highlighted to make skimming easier:

1. Bearing and nurturing, creating but not owning, giving without demanding, this is harmony (Tao Te Ching).

2. Love alone will abide thee (Tamil proverb).

3. Whenever I see an erring man, I say to myself, I have also erred; when I see a lustful man I say to myself, so was I once; and in this way I feel kinship with everyone in the world and feel that I cannot be happy without the humblest of us being happy (Mahatma Gandhi).

4. Ignorance is the failure to discriminate between the permanent and the impermanent (The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 2:5).

5. Life is but a playground, however gross the play may be. However we may receive blows and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite (Vivekananda).

6. Adversity and prosperity never cease to exist. The adornment of great men's minds is to remain unswervingly just under both (Tirukkural 12:115).

7. The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience (Mahatma Gandhi).

8. Inwardly give up the idea "I am the doer," yet outwardly engage in all activities. This is how to live in the world, completely free from the least trace of ego (Maharamayana).

9. To everyone of us there must come a time when the whole universe will be found to have been a dream, when we find the soul is infinitely better than the surroundings. It is only a question of time, and time is nothing in the infinite (Sai Baba).

10. Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence? (Sai Baba)

11. The fool tries to control his mind. How can he ever succeed? Mastery always comes naturally to the man who is wise and who loves himself (Ashtavakra Gita 18:41).

12. Knowledge born of the finest discrimination takes us to the farthest shore. It is intuitive, omniscient, and beyond all divisions of time and space (The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 3:54).

13. Do not disparage men who appear small, for there are those, seemingly insignificant, who are like the linchpin of a mighty chariot (Tirukkural 67:667).

Thursday Thirteen

Wordless Wednesday: A Blue-eyed Day

Wordless Wednesday

Andrew Needs a Real Dog

If the original Stepford Wives made your blood run cold, you better hope to stay away from any nursing home that acts on the findings of researcher Andrew Ng's study of robots as human companions.

Ng's study found that humans can warm up to plastic and wire in the shape of a canine almost as readily as they do to the flesh and fur dogs that have been our steadfast and loyal companions since we first civilized ourselves by the fire.

Ng's research involved dividing into three a group of 38 seniors in a nursing home and exposing one third to Sparky, a rescued street mutt turned pet-therapist, one third to AIBO, a Sony-made robot, and one-third, the control group, to neither. The visits lasted 30 minutes.

At the end of this 8-week experiment, the residents exposed to the real pup said Sparky was their confidant. Those exposed to AIBO said it took a bit longer to warm up to it but did. Ng says that both groups showed a decrease in loneliness and an increase in attachment to their visitors.

So what?

So if it's your job to make the old folks feel good inside the nursing home, mechanical dogs are probably ultimately more cost effective than the kind that eat and pee, require the occasional bath, and sometimes get sick.

If you're a human being who has ever loved a dog, you feel pretty bad for Ng. Because you know there's no replacement for the head of your resting dog heavy and warm and trusting on your thigh, the wag of the tail that says, "I'm happy you're here, friend;" the eye contact that reminds you, that you, too, are part of that natural world that is full of mystery and has a heart that beats with love for you.

Remember The Stepford Wives? The real horror of that movie was that the husbands were as inhuman as the pretend wives they created. The men were rejecting the integrity of life itself when they discarded the thinking, feeling, dynamic nature of their wives. The real horror of this movie is that the robotic wife replacements merely reflected the unthinking selfishness and cruelty of husbands.

There's nothing like looking into the eyes of a dog and seeing a kinship that stretches back to the first fire; no dim and glassy reflection of ourselves in a synthetic canine eyeball can replace that.

I know a woman who is a pet therapist. She is wheelchair bound, and she inherited her dog from her now deceased son. The two of them visit hospitals and nursing homes in all kinds of weather all year. Recently, the dog celebrated his 300th hour of voluntary pet therapy at a city hospital. The hospital feted him as if he were a visiting dignitary. He is that hospital's greatest asset; he is the face of the caring we all seek. He is also a regular communicant in the church I attend. Nobody bats an eye when he receives Communion. Nobody doubts the integrity of his soul.

Poor Andrew Ng needs a dog.

Weekend Snapshot: Delightful Juxtapositions

I've been getting ready for a photo exhibition of images from Strange Attractions: Exploring Graffiti. Here is one from New Haven, Connecticut. I love the juxtapositions of color and shape in this letter.

Weekend Snapshot

Blog Your Blessings: One Single Impression

One Single Impression is this week's blessing. It is a new poetry blog instigated and designed by Andree, whose blog Meeyauw, is always a feast for the eyes. Last week she contacted me via my poetry blog to ask me if I'd want to start it up with her. We had just learned that a blog author of One Deep Breath would be closing down.

Andree writes on her blog: "Michael has written the poetry for my photographs. Our collaboration has proven to be an inspiring journey into beauty and art that has been missing in my life. The poets that participated in One Deep Breath, and hopefully in One Single Impression, are gifted. The poetry is motivational and often life-changing. I am beginning to expand myself and write some poetry of my own. All of the participants are supportive and kind (even to someone like me). "

In blog comments, many of the writers who have participated in One Deep Breath's weekly prompts for haiku had also expressed their disappointment that that cyber meeting ground would no longer be available. There was a need as much as a desire to continue. I agreed to work with Andree, she contacted Jennifer at One Deep Breath and suggested we pick up where she left off, and Jennifer was happy to support us.

So began a new blog designed and set up by Andree at lightening speed. Our efforts have been collaborative; though we have never met personally, we nevertheless worked together on the title, the initial posts, and other matters. It was a beautiful and smooth process, a delightful interaction between people who seek creative interaction online with others about whom we know little more than that they share this desire. It is more than enough. We step into the universe blind but nevertheless find our footing.

Creating One Single Impression might keep together writers who just want to write. It can continue pushing back the isolation that has long been a cliche of the writing experience. Here we are doing the best we can and making a gift of it to others. That's all we have to say.

"When the student is ready, the teacher appears" is a Buddhist expression that tells me humility leads to wisdom, that we are each other's guides on the road, no matter how long any one of us has been on it; we can grow like plants simply by opening our eyes and taking in the light. Amen.

Blog Your Blessings

Seeing the Elephant

I have been reading several versions of this story. This is a combination of three:

An elephant was put on exhibition in a dark house. Crowds of people came to see this animal for the first time. They could not see in the dark, though, so they touched the animal.

The palm of one fell on the trunk. 'This creature is like a water-spout,’ he said.

The hand of another lighted on the elephant’s ear. To him the beat was evidently like a fan.

Another rubbed against its leg.‘I found the elephant’s shape is like a pillar,’ he said.

Another laid his hand on its back.‘Certainly this elephant was like a throne,’ he said.

The people began to quarrel about the nature of the elephant, shouting, "Yes it is!" "No, it is not!" "An elephant is not that!' 'Yes, it's like that!' and so on, till they came to blows over the matter. Unseeing and ignorant, the people were by
nature quarrelsome and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.

The eye of the Sea is one thing and the foam another. Let the foam go, and gaze with the eye of the Sea. Day and night foam-flecks are flung from the sea, and you behold the foam but not the Sea. We are like boats dashing together; our eyes are darkened, yet we are in clear water. (Rumi)