With markers. Or their siblings.
“But, mom, it’s an ART project!”
“We were just playing He Man and Skeletor, mom! I have the power!”
Of course if you have more than one child, you know all about “Sharpie Wars”.
And yes, Krista, I’m thinking of you….
Via My Confined Space.
Greg was inspired to cook today so he made the bacon placemat.
He’ll be cleaning the oven this weekend, though, since he used a flat cookie sheet…
Mmm, bacon…
As long as it’s not Smithfield….
Why, why why must we suffer this ignorant idiot ANY LONGER? Gah! At least muzzle the moron for the next year and a half and don’t let him speak in public….
Bush cites Israel as model for Iraq – Yahoo! News
“Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy’s ability to get a car bombing in the evening news,” he said. “No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street.”
He suggested Israel as a model.
There, Bush said, “Terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it’s not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq.”
It was likely to be controversial — and possibly even explosive — for Bush to set out Israel as a model for a Muslim Middle Eastern nation. Israel has been locked for decades in an intractable dispute with Palestinians in the neighboring occupied territories, a conflict that is viewed as a major recruiting tool for Islamic extremist groups like al-Qaida.
UPDATE: I see Juan Cole agrees with me:
These words may be the stupidest ones ever uttered by a US president. Given their likely impact on the US war effort in the Middle East, they are downright criminal.
The US political elite just doesn’t get it. Israel is not popular in the Middle East, and it isn’t because Middle Easterners are bigots. It is because Israel is coded as the last European colonial presence in the region, an heir to French Algeria, British Egypt, and Dutch Indonesia– and because the Israelis pugnaciously continue to try to colonize neighboring bits of territory. (This enmity is not inevitable or eternal; in 2002 the Arab League offered full recognition of Israel in return for its going back to 1967 borders, but the Israeli government turned down the offer.) But for the purposes of this analysis it does not really matter why Israel is unpopular. Let us just stipulate that it is. Why would you associate American Iraq with such an unpopular project, if you were trying to do public diplomacy in the region? Bush had just announced a new push to get the American message out to the Muslim world, the day before.
Israel-Palestine is among the world’s hottest trouble spots, and the conflict has poisoned politics throughout the Middle East. It was among the motives for Bin Laden’s attack on the US on September 11, so it has spilled over on America, too. A second one of those would be a good thing?
So who would play the Palestinians in Bush’s analogy? Obviously, it would be the Sunni Arabs, who apparently are meant to be cordoned off from the rest of Iraqis and put behind massive walls and barbed wire, and deprived of political power. That is not a desirable outcome and is not politically or militarily tenable in the long run.
And, let’s just stop and think. Even if it were true that an Israel-Palestine sort of denouement were in Bush’s mind for Iraq, was it wise for him to make it public?
I don’t know whether to sob in grief or tear my hair out in frustration. How much longer do we have to suffer?
Labels: monumental stupidity
Dharana: Concentration is the process of holding or fixing the attention of mind onto one object or place. — yoga sutras
Concentration is sometimes identified with “one-pointedness” (ekagrata), but this is not quite correct, for the latter simply represents the arrest of the mental flow, while concentration implies a fixation of the mind in order to gain understanding; as such, dharana is a creative act.” — Georg Feuerstein.
Dharana means ‘to bind, to focus, to hold the mind at one point’. It comes from the word dhri, which means ‘foundation’ or ‘basis’. The foundation of the mind must be stable. Right now none of us has that stable base. Just as the earth shakes during an earthquake, in the same way we are also shaking like that much of the time. The practice of dharana comes when we have become steady, stable and unshakeable. We are unshakeable because we understand ourselves. We understand our mind, our emotions and our thoughts. We have come to terms with them so we are unshakeable. Whatever faces us and whatever situation arises we can manage it without being affected. Dharana is a higher stage, not just in meditation but in life. –Swami Satyadharma Saraswati
I was a bit annoyed at many of the definitions of dharana as focusing on one thing — that just didn’t feel right to me. I like this definition of being able to focus the mind at a stable point – it seems to fit better what I feel and observe when I am in my yoga practice.
“There is a part of each of us that would like to miss the point — a part of each of us that wants to believe that there will be no magic, no mystery, that our own life is not blessed and sacred, that our days are not a miracle, and that we are not connected to all living beings as a leaf is to a tree. In response to this predicament, we have created yoga.” — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat
Darwin and I had visitors today – Deb and Pentu! We had a great time visiting with them!
Darwin’s all “I think I’ll call him “mini-me”…”
Thanks for coming to play with us, Deb and Pentu! It was FUN!!!!
It’s really a blessing of sorts when your teenagers enter that phase where they’re mortified by the very idea of you, preferring to imagine that they were created by pixies and laid under a cabbage patch, to be discovered and raised later on by wolves. It beats the hell out of having to admit the fat, pasty, middle-aged person in the minivan has shown up at school to pick up you.
It’s a blessing, of course, because revenge is a dish best served cold, and parents have to exact some sort of punishment for the routine humiliation teenagers doled out to their parents ten years earlier.
I have had many such moments, such as the time, and I won’t name names here although he deserves it, one of my kids announced to my mother over the phone that “sometimes my penis gets really big! And it feels good!”
For hands-down humiliation, however, I haven’t yet been able to top my neighbor’s misery, when his three year old daughter interrupted his poker game by running naked into the room and screaming with a joyous voice of discovery, “DADDY! DID YOU KNOW? I COME WITH MY OWN POCKET! AND IT CAN HOLD A PEN! LOOK!”
And while he was knocking his chair over to get across the room to put a stop to her performance, she showed all his friends where the pocket was and how well you could put in and take out all kinds of things.
This is a man who’s going to show up at his daughter’s high school graduation drunk and shirtless, with her name painted across his chest and gut, randomly shouting “WOOO!!!” during her valedictory speech and making devil horns with his upraised hands. And she will have totally earned it.
Wow, I can’t even get close to topping this story. About the closest I can get is when we used to call my son Gregory “Nature Boy” because of his habit of running out of his bath or just his bedroom naked and giggling in the middle of our parties. Somehow when he was 7 or 8 he turned into the boy who would scream, “Mom, get OUT!” if I entered the bathroom or his room unexpectedly and he was undressed. Go figure.
Eight random things about myself
Whig tagged me.
1. All right, here are the rules. 2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts. 3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves. 4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. 5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
1.) I absolutely adore golden retrievers currently have three of them, Roxie, Darwin, and Chance, and want to have a golden retriever ranch one day to raise and train service dogs.
2.) Like Jane Pauley, I have bipolar disorder.
3.) I spent a couple of years studying and blogging about Taoist philosophy. A search for “Tao” on my blog will turn up hundreds of posts. It is the defining philosophy I try to live my life by these days.
4.) My current philosophical and physical passion is yoga. I’m studying yoga this year mainly to get in better physical shape, but also to enjoy the mental and spiritual benefits of this ancient practice.
5.) My other main physical practice is pilates, which is wonderful for the core strength it gives me. It is an excellent complement to my yoga practice. I also need to do a lot more of both, since I’m not very good about practicing regularly.
6.) I got politically active over the last few years in frustration at how screwed up our country has become. When I started, I couldn’t see how people could be so fooled by this administration. I’ve found great comfort and gained tremendous knowledge from all the political bloggers I read, and am grateful that so many devote such energy to informing us all about what is happening. It saddens me deeply that so many people in this country really don’t even seem to care, or don’t feel that they can create change. One of my main hopes is to present my own examples for change in my blogging, and encourage others in making changes in their own lives, and in our country’s path.
7.) I love to garden and watch things growing. There are lots of posts here about my garden, as sometimes it has been one of the few things that has kept me going when I was very depressed. My own garden has taken a lot of effort since i only have like a foot of soil in my yard to garden in. The house is on a cut on a granite hill, and literally has about a foot of top soil in some places. It is a difficult terrain that I’ve worked hard to make both beautiful and practical for this area. I have another blog called Native Growers that I don’t post at often enough, trying to encourage people to learn about and grow the plants native to their area. It is so important for us ecologically to become more aware of our environment and live more in harmony with it.
8.) I love poetry and used to write a lot of it as a way of sorting out my thoughts, but haven’t felt the need to write much lately. I still enjoy reading poetry, though.
Tagging:
Whoever would like to blog on this meme. I think it’s gone through most of my blogging community already! Please comment with a link if you take up the challenge! BTW, tracing back through the tags takes me to PZ’s place. His stories are pretty good there.
Returning to the Self: the practice of pratyahara
For years I interpreted the teachings I heard about pratyahara to mean that I must physically and literally withdraw from the world in order to be a true disciple of yoga. I would react with dismay at this teaching; I was an engaged person, busy studying physical therapy in school to improve my yoga teaching, additionally I was married and contemplating having several children. I sometimes worried that unless I learned to separate myself from the world I was a lesser or inferior yoga student.
Today I feel differently, I realized life is about interaction and that many of those interactions are about conflict: conflict with those I love and conflict with those I do not. In fact, I do not even need another person to be in conflict. I can be, and occasionally am, in conflict within myself. How am I to withdraw when I am so completely enmeshed in relationships, in life, in the world as a whole?
I like to believe that Patanjali means something different from a simple
withdrawal from life. Today the practice of pratyahara means to me that while I participate in the task at hand, I remain separate from my reactions. In other words, no matter how much meditation and postures and breathing I practice, I still continue react to the people and situations around me. This reaction in and of itself is not the problem; my attachment to the reaction is. Where the practice of pratyahara is manifested is the space between the stimulus that comes into my nervous system via the sense organs and my reaction to that stimulus.Practice gives me the choice about my reaction. I can choose to dance with that stimulus or I can choose to step back and not add my conscious participation with the stimulus. In other words, the variable is me and how I choose to use my energy. If I physically retreat to a cave in the mountains I can still agitate my nervous system; I can still generate thoughts and re-live past reactions which are stimulating. To me the practice of pratyahara is not about running away from stimulation which is basically impossible anyway, but rather practicing pratyahara is about remaining in the middle of a stimulating environment and consciously not-reacting to it.
Pratya comes from the word pratyaya. Pratyaya are the internal seeds, the basic tendencies in our nature which are there from birth to death. They are the basis of our personality. The word ahara means food or nutrition. Normally in our day-to-day lives, we are concentrated and extroverted in the outside world, so the mind, the senses and the pratyaya, these internal tendencies and seeds of consciousness, are receiving nutrition from outside, from objects, events, situations and interactions in the external world. So, pratyahara means a practice which internalizes the senses and the mind so that the mind begins to receive its nutrition from within. The pratyaya begin to receive nutrition from within. This is said to be the first stage in mental training, when we can learn to internalize the senses and the mind at will. –Swami Satyadharma Saraswati
Guess things are so bad in the California GOP that they have to hire immigrants to run it…
I don’t blame them. I live in California, have actually sat in the same room with Ron Nehring (shudder!), and I wouldn’t go near these people if I were a California Republican either.
Aussie hired by state GOP embroiled in immigration lawsuit
Michael Kamburowski, the Australian immigrant hired as a top official in the California Republican Party, was ordered deported in 2001, jailed three years later for visa violations — and has filed a $5 million wrongful arrest lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to U.S. District Court documents.
Kamburowski was named in March to be the chief operating officer of the California GOP. He is responsible for the state party’s multimillion-dollar budget and oversees campaign funds and financing for the nation’s largest state GOP organization.
As the state GOP’s new operating officer, the 35-year-old Kamburowski was handpicked for the post by state Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring, who became party chief in February.
Kamburowski is a former registered lobbyist for Americans for Tax Reform and a top operative for the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, both founded by conservative activist Grover Norquist. Nehring — also a former senior adviser and consultant to Norquist’s Washington, D.C., operation — worked with Kamburowski at Americans for Tax Reform in the 1990s.
News of Kamburowski’s troubled immigration past comes on the heels of revelations in The Chronicle earlier this month that the state GOP used a highly sought-after H1B visa to hire another immigrant as a top consultant.
Christopher Matthews, a Canadian citizen with no experience in statewide politics, was hired this month after the California Republican party applied for, and received, an H1B visa specifically to fill the role of “political director,” according to U.S. Department of Labor data.
In a week in which the immigration bill is being revisited by Congress — and after Republican presidential candidates and party officials nationwide have called for secure borders and tough enforcement of illegal immigration — the past immigration troubles of a high-ranking California GOP official has the potential to both endanger Republican fundraising in crucial California, the nation’s political ATM, while also handing Democratic opponents ammunition for coming campaigns.
Sigh…..
This may just get you a few bucks from me after all. Keep it up!
Obama says some have ‘hijacked’ faith – Yahoo! News
Sen. Barack Obama told a church convention Saturday that some right-wing evangelical leaders have exploited and politicized religious beliefs in an effort to sow division.
“Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and faith started being used to drive us apart,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in a 30-minute speech before the national meeting of the United Church of Christ.
“Faith got hijacked, partly because of the so-called leaders of the Christian Right, all too eager to exploit what divides us,” the Illinois senator said.
“At every opportunity, they’ve told evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage, school prayer and intelligent design,” according to an advance copy of his speech.
“There was even a time when the Christian Coalition determined that its number one legislative priority was tax cuts for the rich,” Obama said. “I don’t know what Bible they’re reading, but it doesn’t jibe with my version.”
Mine either. I’m really tired of people proclaiming their religion gives them some right to tell me what my values are.
It is not speech which we should want to know:
we should know the speaker.
It is not things seen which we should want to know:
we should know the seer.
It is not sounds which we should want to know:
we should know the hearer.
It is not mind which we should want to know:
we should know the thinker.
– Kaushitaki Upanishad 3:8
“Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical…” — George W Bush
But I guess destroying human life and wrecking an entire nation for oil profits somehow is ethical in his mind.
Gregory has graduated! Congrats!
Being dressed up didn’t last long…
Darwin’s trainer loved this tonight….
Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped! It is not the world that makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible. — A Course in Miracles
One of the fundamental teachings of yoga is that if you encounter a person who is established in nonviolence, you will give up violence in that person’s presence. We each have within us the ability to bring an end to violence. Which is to say that the violence in our midst is our responsibility.
Nation after nation does violence to another, and peace seems ever more elusive. We meet violence with more violence, and then our leaders profess shock and outrage when others do not give up their violence toward us.
Our yoga practice is a nonviolent one. Each aspect of this path teaches us ahimsa, or nonharming, in our dealings with ourselves and others. Pranayama is a profound step in this transformation.
We are intentionally bringing peace to the waters of our minds. This peace, like a ripple moving across the waters of a pond, travels through us and out into the family of all beings. — Rolf Gates, Meditations from the Mat
Can’t sleep… clowns will eat me!
Oh thank goodness for TSA – I feel safer, now!
via Boing Boing…
Pat Cashin’s CLOWNALLEY.NET: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…Part Two
So after leaving the DeSantorium at 6:15 I high-tailed it back to Chicago O’Hare, driving like a stunt man in a Burt Reynolds movie. I made it to the Enterprise car rental with plenty of time to drop off the car and take the shuttle back to the airport.
Once there I was told that my flight was jam-packed and was asked if I wouldn’t mind taking the 12:00 flight which still had 25 seats available. I agreed and THAT was the moment that everything else went to hell in a handbasket.
The TSA confiscated my makeup box, which has always flown in my carry-on luggage for the last 5 years.
Why is my makeup in my carry on bag? Because ALL of my costume is in my carry on bag!
If I get to town and my prop case doesn’t arrive I can always head over to Home Depot or WalMart and scare up what I need to fill out two or three ring gags and some walkaround but if the costume, shoes, wig or makeup aren’t there then I’m royally screwed, so they always fly with me. Those things can’t be easily replaced in Anytown, USA.
Well, the makeup box doesn’t fly with me anymore. It has been thrown into the trash in the interest of National Security. It’s greasepaint, neither a liquid nor a gel, and all less than three ounce maximum.
Whatever. It sucks, but whatever. I can always go out and buy another box, brushes and makeup.
Good grief where will this nonsense end…. via Boing Boing….
“I demanded to speak to a TSA [Transportation Security Administration] supervisor who asked me if the water in the sippy cup was ‘nursery water or other bottled water.’ I explained that the sippy cup water was filtered tap water. The sippy cup was seized as my son was pointing and crying for his cup. I asked if I could drink the water to get the cup back, and was advised that I would have to leave security and come back through with an empty cup in order to retain the cup. As I was escorted out of security by TSA and a police officer, I unscrewed the cup to drink the water, which accidentally spilled because I was so upset with the situation.
“At this point, I was detained against my will by the police officer and threatened to be arrested for endangering other passengers with the spilled 3 to 4 ounces of water. I was ordered to clean the water, so I got on my hands and knees while my son sat in his stroller with no shoes on since they were also screened and I had no time to put them back on his feet. I asked to call back my fiancé, who I could still see from afar, waiting for us to clear security, to watch my son while I was being detained, and the officer threatened to arrest me if I moved. So I yelled past security to get the attention of my fiancé.
“I was ordered to apologize for the spilled water, and again threatened with arrest. I was threatened several times with arrest while detained, and while three other police officers were called to the scene of the mother with the 19 month old. A total of four police officers and three TSA officers reported to the scene where I was being held against my will. I was also told that I should not disrespect the officer and could be arrested for this too. I apologized to the officer and she continued to detain me despite me telling her that I would miss my flight. The officer advised me that I should have thought about this before I ‘intentionally spilled the water!’”
Monica said that the incident ended this way: “I missed my flight, needless to say after being detained for over 40 minutes. After the officer was done humiliating me, I was advised that I could go through the security check point in an attempt to catch my flight. The officer insisted that my son and I be rescreened despite us both being detained and under her control the entire time.”
UPDATE:
Note to commentors: IT’S A SIPPY CUP, people. America doesn’t need to be afraid of sippy cups and water bottles, ok? So she got mad and argued, big deal, I would too. I find it insane that we have to more afraid of mothers and toddlers in this country with water bottles and sippy cups than we are of giving up our freedom of movement and travel in our own country. It’s absurd.
I’m a bit late with this, but here are my answers to the “Getting to Know You” questions for this week.
I don’t usually answer these, but this one interests me.
When did you begin your first blog and what inspired you to do so?
I started this blog in February of 2003. I was quite depressed at the time after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was working through a lot of personal issues, so I was using blogging as a way to journal and record my thoughts. As I began to feel better I started to blog about those inspirations that were helping me in my search to rebuild myself, particularly Taoist writings and thoughts. Now sometimes people even say in the comments that they are inspired by the quotes and inspirations I post here. My current readings tend to be about yoga and yoga philosophy.
But mostly people want to see pictures of my puppy Darwin. Here’s Darwin as a swami:
Do you have more than one blog? Why? How are they different?
Yes, actually, I do. Along with this blog, I have a blog called Native Growers that is about native plants. I’m not very good about updating it, though. Initially this blog was going to be a website for connecting those interested in growing native plants with landscape designers and native plant nurseries, but that business never took off. I used to get ideas for businesses a lot and sometimes have acted on them. I’m great at ideas but lousy at follow through. And now that I’m no longer going into manic phases, I don’t start new projects as often.
I also started other blogs here and there, but this is the one I keep returning to and showing up for. Having my name on feels more obligating, I guess.
How would you characterize your blog?
Creative
Political
Informational
Community-oriented
Or something else?
Yes.
To paraphrase Oprah, what is “one thing you know for sure” about blogging?
It’s different for everyone, and everyone’s experience of it is unique.
Is it important to you to get feedback in terms of comments or pings? Why or why not?
Well, yes and no. It’s good to get other’s comments and feedback and I enjoy that tremendously. But i don’t live or die by it. I know most people will read and move along and not care to comment, and that’s ok. I appreciate all of those who do share their thoughts, of course.
What 3 blogs would you recommend to our readers and why?
Wow, that’s hard. I read so many and most of them are on my sidebar, so pick three and visit. They are all interesting, fun, enjoyable and informative. The ones I visit most often are Americablog for political news, The Big Picture for economic news, and Time Goes By for just plain great writing and news about aging. My reading covers a huge range of topics and interests though, and all of my links are wondrous and fabulous in their own way.
I filled up the puppy pool today and Darwin and Chance had a blast climbing into it and playing.
Now they’re mad I won’t let them inside ’cause they are all wet….
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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