My 51st January-
The gift, the present, of time.

After the terrorist attack September 2001 and after various tragedies and events that followed, I often wrote about the tenuousness of life: "And so, how many times will life demonstrate that it is itself tenuous, as if we need to learn that over and over? Safety is an illusion that we must create in order to go about the mundane... an illusion that we create for ourselves so that we can function, can go about the tasks of life... As we go about working, keeping up our home, getting the oil changed in the car, and remembering our mother's birthday, we so easily forget to stop, consider what it is to be alive, consider what we are doing to learn the lessons we came here to learn. This year, remember to stop-- incorporate stopping into your life's schedule and make it, yourself, your number one priority. Unfold your self."

Yes, and now yet another reminder for us...

When I worked in hospitals, and especially when I worked in emergency rooms, I was privileged to get to learn this particular lesson and I was able to hold onto its teachings for a time. It is one of those lessons I seem to have to learn over and over.

It is indeed a funny thing, this thing called life. I am glad to have Jay here with me.

There are fine things which you mean to do some day, under what you think will be more favorable circumstances. But the only time that is surely yours is the present, hence this is the time to speak the word of appreciation and sympathy, to do the generous deed, to forgive the fault of a thoughtless friend, to sacrifice self a little more for others. Today is the day in which to express your noblest qualities of mind and heart, to do at least one worthy thing which you have long postponed, and to use your God-given abilities for the enrichment of someone less fortunate. Today you can make your life - significant and worthwhile. The present is yours to do with as you will.- Grenville Kleiser

We stayed home and celebrated New Year's Eve by ourselves. It was a quiet, pleasant evening- click on "about us" for pictures.

"You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave."- Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845)

I confess, I am immoral- no surprise to many, I'm sure. I did not vote for the party that presented itself as morally superior to all others. In fact, I could not figure out what they were talking about. The moral party comes from a very different place and I have not been able to figure it out. I do not know how to get to the place where it is ok to imprison people off the coast of our country in order to skirt our own laws, I do not know how to get to the place where it is ok to consider even the possibility of engaging in activities not approved by the Geneva Convention. I do not know how two wrongs make a right. I do not know how to be sure which evil-doers are performing with God's blessing. I never realized that God condoned such things. I am repeatedly confronted by my own ignorance.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I met a cool lady recently, one of those short little ladies in their 80s. I told Mary that I want to grow up to be like her.

Blind since young, she makes her way around with a white cane and since she is also so hard of hearing that it is hard for her to follow the verbal directions of others, she leads her exercise group and admonishes the others to make sure they take the time every day to walk. When I was in her room she told me that her back was the best it had been in a long time, since she exercised so much and used her treadmill. She told me she had moved here from the midwest a few years back to be near her daughter and when she did she had decided there were still a few things left that she wanted to do- she wanted to ride a horse again, ride a Harley and ride in a helicopter. She showed me beautiful pictures of herself in a bright red helicopter and told me about riding a Harley around town with a Santa driving and riding a horse for the first time since she was very young. With these things accomplished she has decided that there is still one more thing she wants to do- ride in a hot air balloon. Actually, I doubt if she will ever be done. She is active, fiesty and her mind is busy with life and doing. Yes, that is how I want to be.

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.- Ivy Baker

I had a great day last Saturday, met Kira in Edmonds and picked up a piece of art she had purchsed for me for Christmas- a lovely collage of sorts by: Patricia Brier.

The picture at left shows the artwork hanging in the middle of our wall at home and links to the gallery where it was being shown. The closer picture on the right links to a nice enlarged picture of the print itself- please check it out.

Kira is a very generous person; I am very proud of her. She is beautiful inside and out, and I hope she learns this truth about herself.

"It is a long baptism into the seas of humankind, my daughter. Better immersion than to live untouched."- Tillie Olsen

The Victoria's Secret semi-annual bra "bin" sale is on right now! Kira and I made it and made out with bargains... go and seek.


"Change occurs when one becomes what she is, not when she tries to become what she is not."- Ruth P. Freedman

Working as a licensor/regulator is weird. I am lucky to be partnered with Mary since she also likes to tell stories, think and laugh. This last week we had to trek in the snow up to Bellingham twice and then up Lynden, almost to Canada. It was nice to see the snow, but it was tiring too, with some worry about travel conditions. My neck and shoulders have been stiff and sore, so I have been seeing a chiroptactor. He said driving aggravates my problems so Mary has kindly done more than her share of the driving. I took some photos while she was driving us back from Bellingham so that if we ended up in a ditch we would have documentation for L&I...

Click on the photo of Eaton Rapids waterfowl to see our driving pictures, and click on the steamed bull to link to the Seattle PI, where you will find a place to click on for their best photos of 2004- enjoy!

"A complete revaluation takes place in your physical and mental being when you've laughed and had some fun."- Catherine Ponder

Jay enlarges my world. We go to the library almost every week and he always gets a number of magazines- providing me with more reading material laying about than I have had in a long time (except when I have had to frequent the doctor's office too frequently, but those offerings can be kind of pitiful).

Anyhow, this prelude is to remarks regarding The January 10th New Yorker and its cartoons- the best part:

I loved one with two dogs sitting outside and one saying to the other "It's just a theory, but perhaps it's their opposable thumbs that makes them crazy."

Another has a couple sitting with a travel agent and the man is saying to the agent "We just want a vacation- we don't want to learn anything."

A third shows a psychiatrist with a woman on a couch crying and he is saying "Hey, I'm just messing with your head." Yes, can identify with that. Click the cartoon...


"You feel the way you do right now because of the thoughts you are thinking at this moment."- David D. Burns

Getting older is very, very interesting. The experiences of people my age and older are so varied, and just about everyone has had to deal with pretty serious heartache, pain and loss. Our regional administrator lost his father less than a year ago and now his mother, too, has passed away. Barbara lost her mother recently, and so did another co-worker. I have yet to lose a parent, yet that day looms ahead as time beckons me forward.

I and others have experienced the incredible loss of a living child slipping into darkness, whether it be drugs and alcohol or mental illness. That loss can be very traumatic as it plays out, day after day.

It seems like most of us have lost a spouse, mostly through divorce and its concommitant loss of dreams once shared and held so close. A few have lost that relationship to death; a harder loss to move forward from. Yet somehow new love can be found, and somehow a way can be found for life to once again include love without betraying the past.

We do move on and time gives us some breathing space, some room to gain perspective- and the gaining of that perspective allows an almost bizarre personal growth. Sometimes we find ourselves in spaces, in places, that only now we could come to and recognize as our place to be. We would never have wished for some things to have happened, yet their very happening has led us to today.

Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living.- Soren Kierkegaard

I used to have this comic posted on my cubicle at work- in fact it stayed up for a couple of years. Today it came back to me in an email from Mary... it is still as true as ever.

Has anyone else noticed how many of today's email jokes originally came to you a couple of years ago? Some of them are pleasantly surprising to see again. I never thought their lifespan would be so long...

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways."- Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

President Bush keeps proclaiming that he has a mandate and I keep waiting to hear what this mandate consists of since a mandate is "an authoritaive command" or "the instruction given by a constituency" (according to my Webster's)- what is the mandate or order that he has received? 49% of the people who voted did not vote for him, but those that did, his constituency, apparently gave him some marching orders- what are they? His constituency is the 51% who voted for him, and apparently they have given him a mandate or order to do something- maybe to get more young American men killed, or ring up more national debt, or alienate the rest of the world, or pump up the rest of the oil in the ground as quickly as possible, or reduce taxes for the richest individuals and/or corporations in order to further us down the economic path we are on? Or maybe all of these noble, moral goals.

It is confusing because at first I thought he was saying "man date" and I was having difficulty figuring out why he was so proud of having gone on a man date in November, given his public stances... Actually I am still not so sure he isn't talking about a date with a man, given his lack of specifics- or maybe it is some sort of subliminal message implanted when I saw the SpongeBob Squarepants movie.

President Bush's "mandate" comes from the slimmest of majorities, since 50% would not be a majority and 51% is the smallest amount that can be considered a majority. I am writing this because the language being used is knowingly devisive- knowingly. The ridicule of others' ideas and values, it appears, will continue for four more years. Frankly, I do not feel safe with a bully in the pulpit.

"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."- P. J.O'Rourke

So, as I mentioned earlier, Carol asked me to meet her for lunch on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday. She surprised me by inviting other friends I haven't seen for a while... what a nice chick! Good friends, hugs and food.

Thank you Carol and thank you Deb, Pat and Kent.

"I long to speak out the intense inspiration that comes to me from lives of strong women."- Ruth Benedict

Some people have an interesting take on playing the old game of Hide 'N Seek.



The graph links to
The New York Times.








"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."- Lewis Carroll

I finished a new book from the library: "Autobigraphy of a Face" by Lucy Grealy. The author was born in 1963 and writes about her experiences after being diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer at the age of nine, the treatment of which left her face disfigured. She describes those experiences eloquently, trying to describe how it is to grow up "disfigured". Her description of the freedom she felt trick-or-treating and being accepted as just a person when her face was covered with a mask is poignant.

Here are some excerpts:

"It wasn't the sensation of things happening in slow motion, which I had experienced during other minor accidents; it was as if time had mysteriously but logically shifted onto another plane. I felt as if I could speculate and theorize about a thousand different beautiful truths all in the time it would take my lips to form a a single word." [After getting hit with a ball on the playground, the injury sustained resulting ultimately in her cancer diagnosis.]

"Because the pain was genuinely unanticipated, there was no residue of anxiety to alter my experience of it. Anxiety and anticipation, I was to learn, are the essential ingredients in suffering from pain, as opposed to feeling pain pure and simple." [After her first chemotherapy treatment.]

"Once we love or hate someone, we can think back and remember that first casual encounter. But what of all the chance meetings that nothing ever comes of? While our bodies move ever forward on the time line, our minds continuously trace backward, seeking the shape and meaning as deftly as any arrow seeking its mark."

"A year before, my class had gone on a field trip to a museum where I became fascinated with a medieval chart showing how women contained minute individuals, all perfectly formed and lined up like so many sardines in a can, just below their navels. What's more, these individuals contained more minute versions of themselves, who in turn held even more. Our fates were already perfectly mapped out within us, just as we once waited perfectly inside of our mothers, who themselves were held within the depths of their mothers, our great-grandmothers."

"I don't blame her. I was an easy mark, and had I been in her position I'd have done the same thing. Part of the job of being human is to consistently underestimate our effect on other people, and for the specific job of being a twelve-year-old with a younger sister, cruelty is de rigeur." [After her sister, when she was 6, told her that she too will die, like their pet they were burying.]

"Sometimes the briefest moments capture us, force us to take them in, and demand that we live the rest of our lives in reference to them. What did my mother mean? Part of me knew then, and still knows, that she was afraid for me... out of her own fear, she offered me her own philosophy, which meant in this instance that I should conquer the fear by not crying... I resolved to never cry again."

"I viewed other people both critically and sympathetically. Why couldn't they just stop complaining so much, just let go and see how good they actually had it? Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen that would allow them to move forward, waiting for some shadowy future moment to begin their lives in earnest. Everybody from my mother to the characters I read about in books (who were as actual and important as real people to me), was always looking at someone else's life and envying it, wishing to occupy it. I wanted them to stop, to see how much they had already, how they had their health and their strength. I imagined how my life would be if I had half their fortune. Then I would catch myself, guilty of exactly the thing I was accusing others of. As clear-headed as I was, sometimes I felt that the only reason for this clarity was to see how hypocritically I lived my own life."

"One evning near the end of my long separation from the mirror, I was sitting in a cafe talking to a man I found quite attractive when I suddenly wondered what I looked like to him. What was he actually seeing in me? ... As reluctant as I was to admit it now, the only indication in my companion's behavior was positive. And then I experienced a moment of the freedom I'd been practicing for behind my Halloween mask all those years ago. As a child I had expected my liberation to come from getting a new face to put on, but now I saw it came from shedding something, shedding my image. I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which everything else could be measured. I know now that this isn't so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things... I looked with curiosity at the window behind him, its night-silvered glass reflecting the entire cafe, to see if I could, now, recognize myself."

Lucy died in 2002 at the age of 39. She had continued to struggle with reconstructive surgeries that contributed then to a struggle with drug addiction- an escape from pain. I guess she died of an overdose...

You can't choose the ways in which you'll be tested.- Robert J. Sawyer, "Calculating God"

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