Standing Women

Standing Women Please stand with us for five minutes of silence on Sunday, May 13, at 1 p.m. in Riverhead on the riverfront behind Main Street towards where Sears used to be to signify your agreement with the statement below. We ask you to invite the men who you care about to join you. We ask that you bring bells to ring at 1 p.m. to signify the beginning of the five minutes of silence and to ring again to signify the end of the period of silence. During the silence, please think about what you individually and we collectively can do to attain this world. If you need to sit rather than stand, please feel free to do so. Afterwards, hopefully you and your loved ones can talk together about how we can bring about this world.

"We are standing for the world’s children and grandchildren, and for the seven generations beyond them.
We dream of a world where all of our children have safe drinking water, clean air to breathe, and enough food to eat.
A world where they have access to a basic education to develop their minds and healthcare to nurture their growing bodies.
A world where they have a warm, safe and loving place to call home.
A world where they don’t live in fear of violence – in their home, in their neighborhood, in their school or in their world.This is the world of which we dream.This is the cause for which we stand."

I can't imagine anyone not choosing this future vision for their children and grandchildren. I believe what sets this event apart from others is that it keys in on the power of many people gathering to focus on the solution rather than the problem or placing blame. Anyone want to help? All you need to do is help spread the word by email or any other way you want. I'm going to send out an email blast. This is not an anti-war protest! This is a "positive future manifestation/visualization." I hope you will join me, either at the river or wherever you happen to be that day at that time!

This is scary for me...I've never done anything like this before. Any support/kind words/handholding would be really appreciated!! :)

Watch out for this one...

There is a dangerous virus being passed around electronically, orally, and by hand.

This virus is called Worm-Overload-Recreational-Killer (WORK). If you receive WORK from any of your colleagues, your boss, or anyone else via any means DO NOT TOUCH IT. This virus will wipe out your private life completely.

If you should come into contact with WORK put your jacket on and take two good friends to the nearest grocery store. Purchase the antidote known as Work-Isolating-Neutralizer-Extract (WINE) or Bothersome-Employer-Elimination-Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system.

Please share this warning with your friends. If you do not have friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life.

Meditation

Here is a short video clip from Jack Kornfield that was sent to me from my Sis. "He's a wonderful pundit - psychologist and buddhist monk (and an all-round cool guy) whom I had the pleasure of meditating with, for a week up at Omega," she wrote. "I've also read a couple of his books, both great: 'After the Ecstasy the Laundry' and 'A Path With Heart'. He gives a short but sweet synopsis of how mindfulness meditation can make a difference in your life." This whole website, actually, is pretty interesting. Ebb & Flow is a personal videoblog that focuses on social change and issues of inner peace / outer action. If you have time, let me know what you think...

Freedom of Healthcare Choice

I receive daily empowering and inspirational emails from Anita Pathick Law - I guess you could call her a spiritually-based life coach. Somehow I got on her email list and I stayed on because I liked her messages. Anyway, I got this email today and it was disturbing. Just another example of "Big Brother" trying to take more control over our lives.

"If you are interested in Health Freedom, take vitamins or supplements and/or utilize and/or deliver alternative healing methods, you may want to check into this U.S. Gov't and Big Business effort to take over this industry and read this posting and some replies in its entirety: Health Freedom (and others) in Crisis."

Standing at the Edge

Nancy's perfect, short but sweet tribute to Kurt Vonnegut, one of the greatest American writers, recently gone from us, inspired me to post one of my own.

I've posted some favorite quotes attributed to him below. Some are from his books, and those are noted as such. Norman Mailer hailed him as our generations' Mark Twain. "He was sort of like nobody else," said another fellow author, Gore Vidal. "Kurt was never dull." Indeed.

Asked in a 1974 interview why he was so popular on college campuses, Vonnegut said, "Well, I'm screamingly funny. I really am in the books. And I talk about stuff Billy Graham won't talk about, for instance, you know, is it wrong to kill?" And I think that was the key to his brilliance. He wrote odd and funny stories that challenged you not only to think but to examine life from outside the realm of one's own little world.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.

Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.

I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. (A Man Without a Country)

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe. (Hocus Pocus)

The waitress brought me another drink. She wanted to light my hurricane lamp again. I wouldn't let her. "Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on?" she asked me.
"The big show is inside my head," I said (Breakfast of Champions)

We are human only to the extent that our ideas remain humane. (Breakfast of Champions)

I am eternally grateful.. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on. (Timequake)

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

Kurt, you will be missed...the world may be a tiny bit duller without you, but your words live on, helping to keep us standing at the edge.

Spring Cleaning

After what seems like a couple of gloomy rainy days, but what I THINK was really only one day, (right?), the sun is shining! Even though it's still ridiculously cold out, it feels good to have sun shining through my windows, and when I logged on this morning to check out to see what and if my fellow bloggers posted, I just had the urge to "redesign" for the spring. I wish we had more options, though.

The past few weeks, I have been itchin' with an itch that is just not normal. Well, not for me, anyway. As soon as the weather is warm enough for windows to be open, I am doing a serious spring cleaning. I plan on starting three big piles: Keep, Giveaway, Throwaway. I have so much STUFF that I don't use, wear, read, look at, or whatever, and this old house could use some nice empty SPACE. Removing the clutter in my home will perhaps remove the clutter from my brain? I think that is going to be my mantra for the spring..."I need space!"

Feeling Peevish?

One of the nice things about blogging is being able to blow off some steam every once in a while. I really have to start checking in here more often. I mean, I read my regulars every day or so, and post replies, but for some reason I have felt singularly uninspired lately when it comes to topics. But once again, Life of a Lunachick gave me an idea for this post...those adorable little pet peeves. Yeah, you know, those seemingly tiny things other people do that, in the grand scheme of things really have very little impact on your life or the world in general, but for some reason just push that button, YOUR button, and irritate the CARP (that's right, I'm trying to be family-friendly here) outta you?

Yep, I'm right with you, Lunachick, with the word "irregardless." NO such word, never has been, and I wish I could say never will be. But this world we live in bends to the popular masses, so it may someday be, simply due to "popular" use. And by popular use I mean consistent misuse. Ugh. Although at this moment, an example escapes me. Please feel free to post one.

The first of my two main peeves: there is a grammatical error that I see and hear ALL the time, but it really only makes me want to scream when I read it in a newspaper or hear someone who should know better screw up the use of "I" and "me." It's not all that hard to remember! I don't know why this is, but whenever I hear someone say something like, "The president wanted to be sure he gave the books to the vice-president and I," ARGH!!!!! I am assuming the people who regularly read this know the proper use, but for those who don't, I feel compelled (if you think that's a strong word, you don't know me) to explain. Just take out the "vice-president and" and use whatever fits. Would you say, "The president wanted to be sure he gave the books to I?" NO.

The second thing that bugs me is when people say "I could care less." Huh? When people use that phrase, they use it when they are trying to make the point that they don't care. The correct phrase it "I couldn't care less." If you could care less, that means you care SOME, because you have room to care even less.

Okay, all that being said (and satisfying as it was)...generally, in recent years, I've lived my life in pursuit of letting go - of not "sweating the small stuff." And generally, I've been pretty successful. I don't go nuts, I don't scream, I don't rant and rail when these buttons are pushed. I actually have gotten to a place now where these things really don't get to me the way they once did...the way I presented them above. Usually, when faced with one of these "button pushers," I now sort of inwardly roll my eyes and picture it rolling off my back, just letting it go, and that feeling of wanting to scream is gone. Usually. And that feels just as good as screaming. I wonder what Yoda would say... [see The Greatest Philosopher]