Me yesterday:
“I would suggest not leaving stuff you care about on the table in the kitchen…. Darwin’s been table surfing.”
Husband this morning:
“Well, you were right about not leaving stuff on the table.”
Me:
“Oh? What happened?”
Husband:
“Sometime between 6:15 and 7:15, Darwin ate my wallet…”
Me:
“I warned you.”
The Circle has healing power. In the Circle we are all equal.
When in the Circle, no one is in front of you. No one is behind you.
No one is above you. No one is below you.
The Sacred Circle is designed to create unity.
The Hoop of Life is also a circle.
On this hoop there is a place for every species,
every race, every tree, and every plant.
It is this completeness of Life that must be respected
in order to bring about health on this planet.
To understand each other,
as the ripples when a stone is tossed into the waters,
the Circle starts small and grows…
until it fills the whole lake.
Dave Chief, Oglala Lakota
Sorry not to be posting much. My doctor’s office called today and said I have anemia, which explains why I’ve felt so tired and been so cold all week. Apparently it’s also responsible for the rash I’ve had since the beginning of December around my lips, something called Cheilosis. One of the stranger symptoms is wanting to chew ice, which I’ve also been doing since the beginning of December and couldn’t figure out why! I had to laugh when I saw that.
Needless to say I’m suffering the fuzzy thinking and lack of focus as well, which I blogged about a couple days ago, too.
UPDATE – Feb 18:
It really sucks when you get your period on top of already having anemia. I am truly exhausted now.
In honor of Darwin Day, a picture of MY Darwin!
More at DarwinDay.org and here.
UPDATE:
Aw, sweet! Darwin got featured on Land of Pure Gold! Thanks!!
Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever have real journalism in this country again…
Via Digby, a look at how bad “journalism” in our country is:
NEW YORK—New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller today announced that the paper’s longtime staff writer Michael Gordon is not an actual person, but rather a voice-activated tape recorder.
“I’m not sure why everyone didn’t figure this out before now,” said Keller, pointing to the fact that, in Gordon’s 26-year career, all of “his” stories have consisted entirely of transcribed statements by anonymous government officials.
According to Jill Abramson, the paper’s Managing Editor, Gordon was purchased for $27.95 at a Radio Shack on West 43rd Street. Describing the situation as “a prank” that had “gotten slightly out of hand,” Abramson said the paper had decided to acknowledge Gordon’s identity because—after the tape recorder’s front page story today, “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says”—there “was no place left to take the joke.”
And from Editor and Publisher:
Saturday’s New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the “deadliest weapon aimed at American troops” in Iraq. The author notes, “Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile.”
What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than “civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies.”
Sound pretty convincing? It may be worth noting that the author is Michael R. Gordon, the same Times reporter who, on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.
Gordon wrote with Miller the paper’s most widely criticized — even by the Times itself — WMD story of all, the Sept. 8, 2002, “aluminum tubes” story that proved so influential, especially since the administration trumpeted it on TV talk shows.
When the Times eventually carried an editors’ note that admitted some of its Iraq coverage was wrong and/or overblown, it criticized two Miller-Gordon stories, and
noted that the Sept. 8, 2002, article on page one of the newspaper “gave the first detailed account of the aluminum tubes. The article cited unidentified senior administration officials who insisted that the dimensions, specifications and numbers of tubes sought showed that they were intended for a nuclear weapons program.”
This, of course, proved bogus.
OK, I’ve been spacing out on reading books for a while now, favoring reading blog posts. I can waste my entire day on the Intertubes if I let myself.
But now, I’m spacing on long blog posts, finding myself favoring short and pithy stuff. Oh there are still some writers who can hold my attention for a long post, but really – shouldn’t my attention span be longer than this?
How about you, is anyone else having this problem lately?
I have new jeans that were just delivered! They are perfect! They fit (and are size 12s!)! They are triple stitched on the inside and outside seams!
Wow wow wow!!
Thank you thank you, Duluth Trading Company! You are totally freakin’ amazing! This is how I remember clothes are supposed to be made from 20 years ago!
Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
And I saw the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy…
But anywhere is the center of the world. — Black Elk, Oglala Sioux, 1863-1950
Oh jeebus. We are so screwed… get us out get us out get us out….
Copter Crashes as Baghdad Push Begins – New York Times
An American CH-46 Sea Knight military helicopter crashed about 20 miles northwest of Baghdad on Tuesday, the American military said today. It is the fifth American helicopter to crash or be shot down in less than three weeks, and military officials have grown increasingly concerned that Iraqi insurgents have adapted their tactics to be much more effective against American aircraft.
Great article on this at Smirking Chimp here:
Today US forces in Iraq are in the same sinking boat the Soviets found themselves in 25 years ago. We can’t move our forces safely or quickly on the ground, so we move them by helicopter. And, when Iraqi troops get their asses in a sling – (which appears to be whenever anyone shoots back at them.) – they call in US air support to do the heavy killing for them. No US air support would mean Iraqi troops refusing to venture far from base.
Then there’s the Baghdad airport – the main lifeline into and out of that hell hole of country. Lumbering transports and troop-ladened passenger planes already have to perform corkscrew-dive bomber style landings to avoid getting hit by conventional ordinance. Such aerial dodge-ball antics don’t confuse the new Iranian-supplied Manpad missiles.
So now what? Well, for starters don’t expect many of those photo-op visits to Baghdad by US officials after the first commercial or military transport gets hit. After that the once routine task of flying in fresh US troops and flying out the exhausted and wounded troops will become a life and death crap shoot.
All of which raises the obvious question; does the Bush administration realize they are repeating the Soviet’s mistakes?
Change is only brought about by awareness and understanding. Understand your unhappiness and it will disappear–what results is the state of happiness. Understand your pride and it will drop–what results will be humility. Understand your fears and they will melt–the resultant state is love. Understand your attachments and they will vanish–the consequence is freedom. Love and freedom and happiness are not things that you can cultivate and produce. You cannot even know what they are. All you can do is observe their opposites and, through your observation, cause these opposites to die. — Anthony De Mello, The Way to Love
I’m halfway to my goal of losing 30 pounds by my next birthday (in November). So far I’ve lost fifteen pounds. I know I will really need to push myself with diet and exercise to lose the other fifteen. I’m trying to increase my yoga and pilates workouts and need to take more walks with the puppies, which will be easier now that the days are getting longer. I can’t really walk all three dogs by myself, although I guess I could take them out separately and leave a couple at home now that Darwin is getting big enough to leave alone.
It’s nice that the size 12 jeans actually fit again (yay!) — but now I would like to feel better in them, and mostly, just feel better!
When the practitioner is firmly established in continence, knowledge, vigor, valor and energy flow to him. — yoga sutras
The fourth yama is the discipline of brahmacarya, which literally means to “walk with God.” Although it is often translated as “chastity”, brahmacarya also means “continence.”It is, quite simply, a call for us to practice moderation. The arena most associated with brahmacarya is sexuality, and this yama is often misunderstood as the expectation that we be celibate, on the assumption that the celibate yogi is somehow more enlightened. This is definitely not the point. B.K.S. Iyengar, in his discussion of brahmacarya, points out that the yogi Vashita had one hundred children and yet was still living within the definition of brahmacarya.
Brahmacarya iis not a call for abstinence but a call for temperance. As we practice brahmacarya, we have the opportunity to enact the balance that is yoga in all that we do. We can bring moderation to our thoughts, words, and deeds. — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat
People often seem to think they cannot be spiritual and still be sexual. For me, I don’t see how you can be spiritual and not include the sexual. I’ve certainly felt more spiritual and in communion with another person when having sex that anytime I’ve been in church!
But moderation, ah, that I can understand. To be obsessed with sex is not really a fun or pleasant thing, any more than being obsessed with anything else. Too much of anything is not a good thing. Rolf continues later in the discussion with some great questions to ask yourself:
Practicing brahmacarya is quite simple, and the results are immediate. The yoga sutras tell us that valor, vigor, knowledge and energy flow to those who practice moderation. A quick inventory will illuminate how we are doing in a given area. Does my sex life fill me with valor, vigor, knowledge and energy? Or is it a cause for concern, anxiety, confusion, and stress? How about food? Am I energized by my food, or obsessed by it? Do I feel liberated by the choices I make around my food, or am I filled with concern, anxiety, and stress? We can go on to examine our relationship with money, work, time management, hobbies, exercise — whatever preoccupies our days. As we consider these questions honestly, it becomes easy to see where we are being intemperate and how the first small steps into moderation can be life-changing.
Brahmacarya is the feeling of freedom that comes when we have let an addictive craving go — when we can eat to live, not live to eat; when we can work to live, not live to work; when we can stand firmly and with ease of heart in the postures of life. — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat
Prince and his big, um, guitar…
Prince! At the Super Bowl! Doing Purple Rain!
IN THE RAIN!!!
Best. Halftime Show. EVHAR!!!!!
All I ask
Is to live each moment
Free from the last
Take the road forgotten
Don’t leave me here
Oh, please let me stray
Far from familiar things
All I ask
Is to live each moment
All I ask
Is to live each moment
Free from the last
Strange roads
Going nowhere
Going nowhere in particular
All I ask
Is to live each moment
All I ask
Is to live each moment
Free from the last
Free from the last
All I ask
– Crowded House
Awww… too cute!
BBC NEWS | Wales | Mid Wales | New-born lambs’ Rottweiler ‘mum’
Molly has been using her maternal instincts after lambs Lucky and Charm were born with complications on a farm.
Her owner Maria Foster, 38, from Forden, near Welshpool in Powys, said Molly slept with the pair at night, and even protected them from other animals.
Lucky and Charm are recovering and will be placed in a field in about 10 days.
Ms Foster said the pair needed help to improve their circulation soon after they were born.
They were placed in an Aga oven for warmth and after being lifted out Molly took over and started licking them as a ewe would have done.
Over and over…. how much longer must it go on?
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Helicopter ‘crashes near Baghdad’
Police and witnesses reported seeing a helicopter come down near a US air base at Taji, shortly after dawn.
If confirmed, it would be the fourth helicopter lost in two weeks.
Last month, 12 US soldiers died when a Black Hawk military helicopter crashed near Baghdad. The helicopter is believed to have been shot down.
The US military has lost more than 50 military helicopters in Iraq since May 2003.
“I can confirm that we are looking into reports that a helicopter went down north of Baghdad,” US military spokeswoman Lt Col Josslyn Aberle said.
Reuters news agency quoted an unnamed Iraqi military source as saying his unit saw the helicopter go down near Taji, about 30km (20 miles) north of the capital.
“We don’t know the reasons for the crash, nor its exact site because the US army has sealed off the area,” the source said.
Maybe we all ought to send them a heart for valentines day, since they don’t have any.
BobGeiger.com: The Heartless Three Voting Against Minimum Wage Increase
We may have peeled off almost all heartless Republicans who, at the very least, saw the political writing on the wall, but there were still three Republicans who voted against raising the minimum wage this afternoon and for keeping the working poor at $5.15 per hour.
And they are…
* Coburn (R-OK)
* DeMint (R-SC)
* Kyl (R-AZ)
None are up for reelection in 2008 but let’s never, ever let them forget this vote.
Changing Places is about the process of creating and opening up to change. My current interests include spiritual change, business change management, cultural change, artistic change, Tao Te Ching (The Way of Change), interpersonal and relationship change, and lifestyle change. It is also my personal blog, so my own life changes get top billing. The change in social media means a lot of my activity is now on Facebook, Google Reader and Twitter, so follow me there to see more.
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