March brings with it the newest trends and ideas...
Fashion hits from Japan:
not "see-through" but printed on pictures...
How clever??
March brings with it the newest trends and ideas...
Fashion hits from Japan:
not "see-through" but printed on pictures...
How clever??
HAPPY BIRTHDAY RHETTA!!!
It is a big one, half a century done, another half to go...
Rhetta was the first friend I made after moving to Washington. We worked together in Clarkston doing CPS... January 1984- seems like another lifetime ago, or just yesterday.
Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.- Anne Frank
Rhetta still works in childrens' services. She is a strong, intelligent and loving person. Have a great year Rhetta (click on your picture to get your birthday present...)!!
Six months clean and sober... life is quite a dance. Congratulations sweetie.
... we could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.- Helen Keller
I hope that when your dance is over you will be exhausted, happy and pleased with it all. I am proud of you.
The picture at left is titled "Negro Man Climbing Stairs to Movie Theatre. Belzoni, Mississippi. 1939." It was taken by Marion Post Wolcott while she worked for Franklin D. Roosevelt's Farm Security Administration. The FSA program was part of the federal corps of documentarians hired to record the world of Depression-ravaged America. I guess if I had to pick one, just one, favorite image, it would be the Negro Man Going Up the Stairs of the Movie Theatre. I think it says the most about me, about what I was trying to do and trying to say. (Conversation with her daughter, Linda)
She titled the picture at right "Child in Doorway of Shack of Migrant Workers. Migrant Vegetable Pickers' Packing House Near Belgrade, Florida. 1939." Marion worked at the FSA for only three years, then married, left her camera behind and got busy raising children on a farm in Virginia. She died in 1990 at age 80.
Click on either picture to link to a nice site with tons of photos taken by Marion- check out the past.
When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.- George Washington Carver
Last year marked the forty year anniversary of the book that changed how we look at what we do to and how we interact with the environment: Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. She gave impetus to the environmental movement and gave pause to our narcissistic view of man conquering nature, using nature to his own ends without a thought of man's own reliance upon the natural environment, or indeed that man is merely a part of nature, and can himself lose his habitat. That year Esquire magazine wrote, "The book that her efforts resulted in was about the spraying and what it did to the birds and other creatures. But that does not begin to describe its scope or account for its impact. One might just as well say that Darwin wrote about turtles and the Pacific islands where they were found."
In 1960 chemical companies in the Untied States produced about 32,000 tons of pestisides; today about 615,000 tons of pestisides are used each year by consumers, farmers and the government according to the EPA. I guess we are lucky that Rachel Carson increased our sensitivity to this issue- at least today the pesticides used are less toxic and break down faster in nature... Insects continue to develop chemical resistance, and today a higher percentage of crops are lost to pests than before pesticides were first widely used, according to Worldwatch Institute.
Rachel died at age 56 of cancer, two years after her book was published.
If you click on the "Creation" picture it will take you to a PBS site about all of this...
More environmental "stuff" to come... later, sooner, or whenever.
More later about the environment...
Carol sent me a new way to check your stress level- that seems more important at the moment.
She says to look at the picture of two dolphins at the left and if you can see both dolphins your stress level is within the acceptable range. If you see anything other than two dolphins your stress level is too high and you need a break...
Of interest, this test does not work for those of us who grew up on farms- we see a dolphin and a cow, yet we are fine. (Whew! Had me scared for a minute there- probably scared Jay and Ken too!)
Weird, huh?
These pictures are by french photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand. He has a book of his photos called "Earth from Above"- great photos. His images are interesting, with incredible color use and perspective.
If you click on the picture at left of dromedary caravans near Nouakchott, Mauritania it will take you to a larger image.
And, again, if you click on the picture at the right of a mangrove swamp in French New Caledonia it will also take you to a larger image.
Both images and some more are available to download for computer wallpaper on the photographer's site: http://www.yannarthusbertrand.org/. He began photographing the world from above in 1978 when he and his wife took pictures of lions from a hot air balloon as part of a study of lion behavior. He has amassed hundreds of thousands of images and has published his book twice, with his beautiful photos and essays from conservationists. His images convey that our world is magical, and fragile.
Flying over the globe, I realize we don't account for much. We're part of the landscape, even if, nowadays, we have the ability to imprint our mark.- Yann Arthus-Bertrand
It is that green day once again, that March icon: St. Patrick's Day. Yes, Happy Irish Day to my "Kearney" girls, Carrie and Kira, and to good old :) Ken. We can thank the Brits for sending us all those Irish- apparently the Irish were producing four times more potatoes than they could eat even at the time of the big potato famine, but the crown demanded and got most of what was grown and, thus, the flood of immigrants to the US at that time... A little-known fact Jay ran across this weekend: There are now more people of Irish decent living in America than there are native Irish people living in Ireland.
It was a scary day today, and a refrain from a song kept drifiting into my head as I listened to the President speak this evening:
When the New York Times said God is dead
And the war's begun- from the song Levon, written by Elton John/Bernie Taupin
We are here now, at a place I had hoped we would not make it to. I don't like it; it does not feel good to me. I hope my misgivings are misplaced, I hope today's actions lead to a safer world.
It is often easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.- Adlai Stevenson
Saddam Hussein and his chauffeur were rolling down the highway when suddenly they hit a pig crossing the road.
It was killed instantly.
Saddam tells his driver: "Go to da farm over dere and hexplain to da honer of da pig what appened."
One hour later, Saddam sees his driver coming back from the farm, his clothes all wrinkled, a bottle of wine in one hand, a cigar in the other and pretty girl on his arm.
"What appen to you?" He asks.
"Well, the farmer gave me a bottle of wine and the cigar, his wife made me a fine meal and he offered me his 19 year old daughter in marriage".
"What did you tell dem?" asked President Hussein.
The driver answered: "Good evening, I am Saddam Hussein's chauffeur and I have just killed the pig."
A couple had two little boys ages 8 and 10, who were excessively mischievous. They were always getting into trouble and their parents knew that if any mischief occurred in their town, their sons would get the blame.
The boys' mother heard that a clergyman in town had been successful in disciplining children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys. The clergyman agreed, and asked to see them individually. The mother sent in her 8-year-old first, in the morning, with the older boy to see the clergyman in the afternoon.
The clergyman, a huge man with a booming voice, sat the younger boy down and asked him sternly, "Where is God?"
The boy's mouth dropped open, but he made no response, sitting there with his mouth hanging open. The clergyman repeated the question. "Where is God?" Again, the boy made no attempt to answer. So the clergyman raised his voice some more and shook his finger in the boy's face and bellowed, "Where is God!?"
The boy screamed and bolted from the room. He ran directly home and dove into his closet, slamming the door behind him. When his older brother found him in the closet, he asked, "What happened?"
The younger brother, gasping for breath, replied, "We are in big trouble this time! God is missing and they think we did it!"
And so, returning to the earlier environmental stuff, yes, the stuff I was going to come back to...
I am reading Eight Little Piggies by Stephen Jay Gould(1993), at Jay's suggestion- he reads fast, and voraciously. Mr. Gould's book is a series of chapters that were originally magazine articles in Natural History. He taught at Harvard. He died last year. I liked the chapter titled The Golden Rule in which he discussed environmental ideas and the reality of scale- geological scale.
"The mean lifespan of marine invertebrate species lies between 5 and 10 million years; terrestrial vertebrate species turn over more rapidly, but still average in the low millions. By contrast Homo sapiens may be only 200,000 years old or so, and may enjoy a considerable future if we don't self-destruct. Similarly, recovery from mass extinction takes its natural measure in millions of years- as much as 10 million or more for fully rekindled diversity after major catastrophic events... But what can such vastness possibly mean for our legitimately parochial interest in ourselves, our ethnic groups, our nations, our cultural traditions, our blood lines? Of what conceivable significance to us is the prospect of recovery from mass extinction 10 million years down the road if our entire species, not to mention our personal lineage, has so little prospect of surviving that long? Capacity for recovery at geological scales has no bearing whatever upon the meaning of extinction today... We are trying to preserve populations and environments because the comfort and decency of our present lives, and those of fellow species that share our planet, depend upon such stablity. Mass extinctions may not threaten distant futures, but they are decidely unpleasant for species caught in the throes of their power. At the appropriate scale of our lives, we are just a species in the midst of such a moment... We are one among millions of species, stewards of nothing... Nature does not exist for us, had no idea we were coming, and doesn't give a damn about us... We are virtually powerless over the earth at our planet's own geological timescale. All the megatonnage in all our nuclear arsenals yields but one ten-thousandth the power of the 10km asteroid that might have triggered the Cretaceous mass extinction. Yet the earth survived that larger shock and, in wiping out dinosaurs, paved a road for the evolution of large mammals, including humans. We fear global warming, yet even the most radical model yields an earth far cooler than many happy and prosperous times of a prehuman past. We can surely destroy ourselves, and take many other species with us, but we can barely dent bacterial diversity and will surely not remove many million species of insects and mites. On geological time scales, our planet will take good care of itself and let time clear the impact of any human malfeasance... We have a legitimate parochial interest in our own lives, the happiness and prosperity of our children, the suffering of our fellows. The planet will recover from nuclear holocaust, but we will be killed and maimed by billions, and our cultures will perish... I have never been much attracted to the Kantian categorical imperative in searching for an ethic- to moral laws that are absolute and unconditional, and do not involve any ulterior motive or end. The world is too comlex and sloppy for such uncompromising attitudes (and God help us if we embrace the wrong principle and then fight wars, kill, and maim in our absolute certainty). I prefer the messier "hypothetical imperatives" that invoke desire, negotiation, and reciprocity. Of these "lesser," but altogether wiser and deeper principles, one has stood out for its independent derivation, with different words but to the same effect, in culture after culture. I imagine that our various societies grope toward this principle because structural stability (and basic decency necessary for any tolerable life) demand such a maxim... If we all treated others as we wish to be treated ourselves, then decency and stability would have to prevail... I suggest that we execute such a pact with our planet. She holds all the cards... We had better sign the papers while she is still willing to make a deal."
thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears- Wordsworth
As always, the peanuts gang are interesting and timely...
CLICK ON EITHER CARTOON STRIP TO GO TO THE OFFICIAL SITE AND ENJOY...
And more from the desk of "Super Computer Girl", otherwise known as the superhero that protects the elderly from falling...
I used to work with a mental health client who was infamous in our agency. She was very paranoid, could be difficult and time-consuming, plus tiring, so she would get handed off to every new casemanager. I guess the theory was that they would be fresh and have the energy to expend. She was quite aware of this and referred to herself as a staff trainer.
When I got there, well, she became my client. I have never considered myself a therapist. My degree is in social work administration and I feel my skills are mostly in assessing, crisis intervention and setting up services- like referring to a therapist. Many of the case managers who had worked with Zoe had been therapists; I wasn't so I just talked with her. She was a frequent flyer, going down to the state hospital pretty regularly. She had lived in one of our group homes but now lived in her own apartment, and when I would go over there she would complain about the neighbors, many of whom had moved out for some reason... She was sure they were up to no good, that they watched her. After a while there was a travel trailer parked in the parking lot, which I thought nothing of. Zoe remarked one day, pointing at the trailer, "Those people in there, if I only had a grenade, I would launch it at those guys...". I just gave her one of my "therapeutic" looks and said "you know what I think about that stuff". Boy, I am good.
I saw her frequently, mostly to try to keep on top of what she was up to and thinking so she and the others around her could remain safe. She told me about helping her dad to work on the car as a little girl, remembering the sound of the lug nuts in the bowl formed by the hub cap, and also how he would get angry, remembering the feel of the refrigerator pushed against the side of her face. She told me about her dad leaving them, and her quitting school to take care of her sick mom. Her prior therapist told me that a dentist had said that Zoe had two rows of teeth in front most likely from her mother drinking alcohol while pregnant for her. Zoe told me how her mom had gotten real sick when she was about 17, and she called the ambulance and it came and took her away. But she didn't know which hospital they had taken her mom to, and her mom was dead when she found the right one. Her old therapist was surprised, she didn't know about that stuff.
Despite my efforts Zoe did make it down to the the state hospital once while I was working with her. She brought home a boyfriend she had met there, a tall fellow with big cowboy boots and a scar running down one side of his face. After a while she told me she had gone and gotten a restraining order, and gotten herself into a battered women's shelter- when I went to see her I suggested that picking up men at mental hospitals might be an even worse idea than picking them up in bars. She thought I just might be right that time.
After I became a full-time manager I handed her case over to yet another new guy... and one day he found out she had bought a gun, and gotten a concealed weapons permit. I can't remember how he had found out, but he did tell me that the local police knew (they were frequent visitors at Zoe's) and they had her on a "two man response" status because they considered her so dangerous. They hadn't bothered to let us know. I called and tried to get mental health commitment folks to come to the office the next day when she was coming in, they said it was police stuff, and, well the police said it was commitment stuff. Zoe had always carried a knife in her purse, we were used to that, and she called it "friend"- she liked to mention that when she was feeling a bit boxed-in. I really did not want her in the building with a gun. I was in the office, having spent the morning on the phone trying to get someone to assist us when I saw her hat bobbing along, on its way up to our door. I hung up, dialed 9-1-1 and informed the operator that we had a client with a gun. The operator was very concerned- she had the police come afterall. They talked to and searched Zoe- her gun was at home. She did later agree to give it up.
Zoe was interesting. A smart girl with an awful past, a childhood whose terrors I had barely scratched the surface of. For some reason she had paranoid schizophrenia, for some reason she thought that she was not safe in this world. Oh yeah- while I still worked there Zoe told me that she had gone and gotten herself a will, and named me an executor. I left that agency in 1993, and haven't been contacted to execute anything yet.
CLICK THE PICTURE AT LEFT TO GO TO "THE ONION".
The Onion bills itself as America's Finest News Source. In addition to the story on Bush bravely leading the troops into battle, it has a story on the US forming its own UN.
On second thought, only click on the picture if you are not a big Bush fan...
Life is short, but the days and nights are long... so sings Cheryl Wheeler.
Jay kindly agreed to go with me to see Cheryl in concert weekend before last. I had never seen her live and looked forward to it. She has a wonderful voice, a gift for the poetry one finds in songs, and a great sense of humor that she shared with us between songs. Jay enjoyed himself.
and broken hearts keep beating just the same
And it's left you wondering, If there's a right way to do the wrong thing
Georgia on their face and hands
All phrases by Cheryl from different songs...
Hooray!! Equal time for our fighting men... for patriotism!
And so, a quote from Rudyard Kipling, written a hundred years ago. It was brought to my attention 9/11/01 by my friend Margaret- I put it on my very first page.
Rudyard wrote about English forces doing battle all those decades ago in Afghanistan:
That was not demoralizing to [them]... who have not European nerves... the foe... wholly mad with religious fanaticism... the only way of dealing with [them]... is by volleys at long ranges; because a man who means to die, who desires to die, who will gain heaven by dying, must, in nine cases out of ten, kill a man who has a lingering prejudice in favour of life.- The Drums of the Fore and Aft
There was a movie about a family:
"You are a terrible mother", he screamed at her on the front porch as she went off to work, and he turned back into the house and went back to his coffee.
"She's just a whore", he angrily said as she tried to digest her daughter's actions and figure out how to proceed.
"It's a waste of time and money", he grumbled as she struggled to help her daughter find her way back home.
Even the Serzone did not make it real enough, but life slapped her in the face with mortality and she slipped off of the screen...
"Why of course the people don't want war. . . . That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."- Hermann Goering, Nazi officer, during his Nuremberg war crimes trial
I LIKE THE POETRY OF WALT WHITMAN...
He likes to put... 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 above, 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...
:)
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 March 2003 |
