HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
A BIG Happy Birthday to Alfred... Da Man!
Another big birthday, but Alfred continues to be sweet, kind, funny and a bit perplexed...
:)
What is it about friendship that makes being among friends so much richer than being among the most accomplished and interesting strangers?- Sandy Sheehy
And then Johnny got into the act, celebrating our buddy Alfred's birthday with a drink...
John has his own goings on to celebrate these days, what with the birth of a beautiful new grandchild.
He makes a lovely grandfather- how lucky his two grandkids are- they will realize that themselves some day.
Love is shown in your deeds, not in your words.- Fr. Jerome Cummings
The April page has come late. But it has always been on the way.
Even those who have asked me where it was knew that it was so, that it is always on the way.
These days are full, and life continues to bring...
I am not exactly in the same place that John Lennon was when we wrote of the wheels going 'round and 'round and people saying he was dreaming his life away, but I am someplace.
I should go back over my own pages, because the quote that is going 'round in my head may have been on one of them already... yes, sometimes we do return back, back to the place we came from, back to the place we were before, and when we do, we know it for the the first time, and it is good.
Today was a very good day.
We work toward all of those things, those things that we think are building our life. Working on improving our jobs, improving our salaries, improving our house, getting a better car, planning that wonderful vacation, and our retirement.
Today was a good day and one thing I know for sure is that it will not come again. Today was part of the currency of my life, the minutes and hours that make it up. And then it is gone. The day is done- even the best days end up being done.
Cheryl Wheeler says that life is short, but the days and nights are long. I don't know. In looking back it doesn't seem like the most precious of life's currency have been those spent planning, doing or succeeding at what I had been focusing on. Unplanned moments of connection can be so full of joy that they are almost painful. Life is short, and it seems to me that the days and nights are also short- but that those brief moments and minutes of connection hold within them almost all of eternity.
Jay and I recently watched "Forest Gump" on video. Forest's momma keeps telling him that life is full of the unexpected, that it is like a box of chocolates. And yet Lieutenant Dan keeps telling him that life is shaped by fate, that we have a destiny that is already written.
Towards the end, after Jenny's death, Forest contemplates this and wonders if these two people he loves and admires so much could both be right, if maybe both are happening- that destined fate and random luck or free will are both happening at the same time.
I don't know, but I like it when Forest tells Jenny:
I may not be a bright man, but I know what love is.
LIFE, it is a good thing.
Keep on schwinging. :)
Chop Suey photo courtesy of Jay D. Eckert
The picture at left came to me as an email. I guess it is supposed to be patriotic, thumbing our American nose at the French who dared to say that they thought we were too rash in wanting to invade Iraq because we had yet to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and intended to use them against us- remember? the "pre-emptive attack" rationale.
But we went ahead anyway, and thankfully the war has gone pretty well for us and so far only about 101 Americans have died. Even as we invaded Iraq Saddam did not use those weapons of mass destruction against us- they are a hard people to figure out. We have found one stash of something that might be chemical weapons and we are testing and scrutinizing it to see if it is. Funny how the service men supposedly have instruments to detect chemical and biological weapons with them so that they can don protective garments if need be, and yet they cannot tell for sure if items they encounter are actually those types of weapons- either we are outfitting our service men with inadequate gauges or we need time to doctor up the evidence.
It is good that Saddam's regime is toppled, he was a brutal dictator and that was never in question. Is the US justified in its attack of Iraq should no weapons of mass destruction be discovered? If no weapons are found then just what were Bush and Powell talking about? Are they delusional? If not, are their motivations other than what they present? Oh no! How irreverent of me, to question their motives when their actions have saved the whole Iraqi nation for democracy... And which peoples brutalized by dictators are we going to save next? Cuba? Maybe some other countries in our own back yard? Not likely. We are, after all, capitalists. Why not just call a spade a spade? "Show me the money". For better, or for worse, our country appears to be capitalists before they are democratists (is that a word?). C'est la vie. Well, no, it is not "the life", it is just how it is here, in the US, where pretending we are pure and good is really just the way it is.
Time is flying, and now it is almost Easter. So, since we all know that Easter is all about chocolate bunnies, the picture at left is my contribution to the "holiday".
And then there is the joke e-mail sent to me by parents' neighbor in Michigan, Doreen, one of those with many different lines on it, and this is the one I include here, since it is religious: Jesse Jackson, Jim Baker, and Jimmy Swaggert have written an impressive
new book ... It's called: "Ministers Do More Than Lay People."
Here's wishing you a good day of reflection on this Easter Day.
"I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book."- Groucho Marx
Click on either picture to go to a site dedicated to Marxist Propaganda...
Here's Some Good Reading!
Ran across an interesting book at the book store last weekend (actually, pointed out to me by Jay...) called Dog Works. It is about dogs who build structures or manipulate objects in some sort of artistic or meaningful way- one dog arranged stones to look kind of like Stonehenge.
It is a bit weird, but interesting nonetheless. The pictures are fascinating and I still don't know what to make of it.
Both of these book pictures link to pages about them- they each link to a different site...
We went to the bookstore last week with Margaret, to Third Place Books in lake Forest Park, to see Bill Dietrich speak about and read from his new book Natural Grace. Both the seal image and the picture of his book link to a UW site with info on the book.
His book is a collection of some adaptations of his essays as science writer for the Seattle Times. Dietrich has unearthed fascinating and unexpected facts about his subjects, and he has a gift for expressing complex information in clear and vivid language. He asks intriguing questions and makes good use of interviews with Northwest scientists and experts to convey current and historic attitudes and economic realities, and to consider where we go from here.
It is worth checking out...
Carol gave me a book last year when my life took a huge turn. I have included excerpts from it periodically here- it is called Each Day A New Beginning, Daily Meditations for Women and it is put out by Hazelden Meditations as part of several books for AA and for people following 12 step programs.
Its daily meditation for April 19 included: We need be mindful that what is right today may not be right tomorrow or thereafter. As we move through our experiences, we are changed, and then we look with a new perspective on old conditions.
So, as all of us continue on the greatest thrill ride of them all, don't forget to pull out your crayons and make a new picture from time to time- as only you can deem necessary.
To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.- Margaret Fairless Barber
The child is an almost universal symbol for the soul's transformation. The child is whole, not yet divided... when we would heal the mind... we ask this child to speak to us.- Susan Griffin
Life can catch you a little off balance once in a while, or even most of the time...
And so, how does one go about meeting all of these people with such stories to tell? Isn't it overwhelming at times? Doesn't it sometimes break your heart? Make you want to cry? Make you wonder what it's all about?
Yes.
And the stories continue to come, piling up, one upon the other... Let's see. A couple of weeks ago I went to see and set up services for a nice man in his mid-60s who at that age found himself living with his parents, themselves now in their 90s. He had been having some pains and it had taken a while for the doctors to sort out what was going on, and when they did they realized that he had bone cancer in one of his hips. It was a metastasized cancer- the original site was the lungs. He had had his diagnosis for about three weeks when I saw him, and now his other hip was hurting, and it was far more difficult for him to walk. He worried that his elderly parents already had enough to deal with... His worries will be over soon, he got admitted to a nursing home the other day. Already. He was lucky though- he got to know what was coming, he got to think about what it had all meant, and he got to say his good-byes and make what peace there is to make.
A little later I met a lovely man from Vietnam, in his early 70s. He had come to the US in the mid-'90s, and he had brought one of his daughters with him, and his wife. Now he had brought over to the US two sons, one having arrived here six months ago. He was getting more frail, and at night he would have nightmares and go around the house yelling and afraid. His daughter would try to keep him safe while he was still asleep, and try carefully to wake him so that he could come back to now. He had been a prisoner of war for seven years during the Vietnam "Conflict". He would dream of being captured again, his captors stabbing him and slicing at his skin with their knives. He became a US citizen a couple of years ago. He spoke of his five other adult children still in Vietnam and how he wanted to get them all here, to the US. I think he did not finish that sentence, or maybe the translator trailed off. He said he worries a lot about getting them here. I think he worries that he may not get them here before he dies. Maybe he thinks their skin will not be sliced with knives if he can get them here.
Today I met a woman one year older than myself. She has cancer in her brain stem. She just found this out a couple of months ago, when she started having trouble with her balance and then one side of her face froze. Her adult daughter was helping her and she was planning to start five weeks of daily radiation therapy next week. She told me that she had asked about her prognosis but that the doctors didn't seem to know. "Even they don't know; they are not gods." She was emotional, she was crying. She was struggling to make sense of it all and spoke of having episodes of losing her "will to live". She knew that she might die, she knew that maybe the best she could hope for was a little more time. I told her that it would be alright, that either way it would be alright, because it would have to be. She thanked me and told me that I am kind. It is hard to believe that those words are ones of kindness. Sometimes saying what is true when the words bring tears to your eyes is about as kind as you can get.
Onions are strong. If you cut up enough strong onions your eyes will water. I like onions, raw and cooked. Regular ones, and sweet ones. And both, when sauteed in oil, are about as sweet and yummy as you can get. Life is full of strong experiences that make your eyes water. And it is so incredibly sweet. I saw a piece on a man in prison who had not been able to see his child for two years and then got into a program reading children's books. The books softened him, maybe like an onion being sauteed. His child listened to him reading the books via tapes. Then he finally got to see and visit his five year old daughter on her birthday. He said that the reading program had helped him get to where he wanted to be as a man. He said that if you keep wanting something, you will get it.
Sometimes we go through what seems like hell, but, in the end, you get what you need. I did.
Just keep on cooking...
I LIKE THE POETRY OF WALT WHITMAN...
He likes to put...(yes, the three dots...) in his work, just like I do...
The picture at left is when he was younger, the picture at right is Walt Whitman in 1887 (Photograph by George C. Cox, New York). He lived from 1819 to 1892. Clicking on the left picture will take you to a poetry site about him.
If you click on the name Walt Whitman that is underlined, it will take you to a page that I have put some of his poetry on and will be adding to as I go along...
:)
(Last added to 4/20/03) WALT WHITMAN
CLICK for ongoing writings/quotes from JUDITH VIORST'S book: Necessary Losses
(Last Added to 02/17/03...)
If you have comments on my topics or content, please send them to me at:
thecindyj@hotmail.com or click: MAILTO
Comments received from responding humans and my responses can be accessed by clicking on the picture of Ken's 1962 Wheel Horse Garden Tractor at left;
Ken was the originator of the idea for this...
Music: Click on Lips Page Created April 2003 |
