Changing Places

Having had my own brief brush with colon cancer, this hits hard today. Fortunately mine was caught really, really early. But this is a reminder that I’m due for my checkup again soon.

Get those colonoscopies done, people. Colon cancer kills WAY more people than breast cancer even it it isn’t as sexy to wear your brown ribbon or walk those colon cancer three-days.

Former Bush press secretary Tony Snow dies

Tony Snow, a conservative writer and commentator who cheerfully sparred with reporters in the White House briefing room during a stint as President Bushs press secretary, died Saturday of colon cancer. He was 53.

“America has lost a devoted public servant and a man of character,” President Bush said in a statement from Camp David, where he was spending the weekend. “It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day. He brought wit, grace, and a great love of country to his work.”

Stubbed my little toe this morning, at least sprained and maybe a hairline fracture. So not much going on today except lots of Intertubing.

Sigh.

Maya’s Granny is no longer with us.

Sadness…..

Go read some of her stories there if you hadn’t. She was an amazing storyteller, and will be deeply missed….

Tears…

Goodbye, beautiful lady, and fabulous blogger….

Joycelyn Ward
April 23, 1942 – June 15, 2008

We mourn the loss of Lilith Joycelyn Ward. She leaves behind her daughter, Julie Asregadoo, her son, Richard Ward, her brother, Forrest Ward, her sister Loretta Beaver, her mother, Virginia Ward, her Aunt Florence, and her many nieces and nephews, and their children. And of course, she was Maya’s Granny.

Joycelyn was born in Oakland, CA, and moved a great deal in her lifetime. She lived in California for much of her life, most recently in Sacramento and Citrus Heights, but also spent many years in Stockton and Berkeley. She lived in Juneau, Alaska from 1993 until February of this year.

She devoted much of her life to helping children, from her early days as a Montessori teacher, to her days teaching parenting classes and working one-on-one to help parents who were at risk of losing their children. She also worked as a volunteer coordinator, as a research analyst, as a secretary, and at an organization working to prevent teen alcoholism.

She was a voracious reader, loved to write and tell stories, and found great joy and satisfaction in her blog, Maya’s Granny.

Her wisdom and wicked humor will be greatly missed.

Donations can be made in her memory to her favorite charity, Heifer International.

No One But Us
by Annie Dillard

There is no one but us.
There is no one to send,
Nor a clean hand,
Nor a pure heart
On the face of the earth,
Nor in the earth
But only us,
A generation comforting ourselves
With the notion
That we have come at an awkward time,
That our innocent fathers are all dead –
As if innocence has ever been –
And our children busy and troubled,
And we ourselves unfit, not yet ready,
Having each of us chosen wrongly,
Made a false start, failed,
Yielded to impulse
And the tangled comfort of pleasures,
And grown exhausted,
Unable to seek the thread,
Weak, and involved.
But there is no one but us.
There never has been.

From the book Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard

One of Darwin’s friends at the Casa where we do pet therapy turns 106 today. Here’s hoping she will have a wonderful birthday!

I’m pretty sure I’ll never make it to her age, but if I did, I would hope to be as bright and alert and lovely as she is. She had a lap full of birthday greetings yesterday when we visited and plans for a big party today.

Nice thoughts on creating life versus getting stuff from Christine Kane.

Creating vs. Getting | Christine Kane

The laws of creativity apply to everything - not just to works of art.

The gift of practicing art is that it teaches the creator how to create, and how to be a creator. Over and over again, the artist learns the process of making things - including the obstacles that arise, the futility of forcing the flow, and the joy of allowing inspiration. This practice has been nothing less than revolutionary in my own life.

That’s because I grew up learning more about Getting than I did about Creating. And I’m not alone in that. Most of the life lessons we’ve all learned are about Getting.

We gotta get rich, get approved, get things from people, get a job, get a life, get laid, get publicity, get someone to do something, get approval, get high, get married, get a loan, get good grades, get a clue, get into college, get up, get down, get out.

Get it?

Getting is an epidemic. It makes us grab at life. It takes us out of the present moment. It makes us powerless. It forces us to manipulate our own spirits so that we can manipulate the situation. Getting requires that we use our precious creative power to get, rather than to use it for its primary purpose, which is to Create. When we misuse this power, we become contorted. We block the flow. The focus is on “out there” rather than “in here.”

When we become Creators, we turn the whole thing around. Everything becomes an inside job. We experience true power. We create our lives.

Man, I wish I was still in this good of a shape…. I do pilates and yoga, but was never a runner. I can sprint pretty fast, but distance running just never was a good thing for me. Run, Joan, run!

Marathon Matriarch Is Still in the Race - New York Times

She keeps a home for her husband, Scott, who was her college sweetheart and is now a marketing executive. She keeps an eye on her 20-year-old daughter, Abby, a sophomore at nearby Bates College, and her 18-year-old son, Anders, a high school senior.

She confers with neighbors on how to replace an old neighborhood bridge that was recently closed. She makes speeches and appearances.

And she runs an hour or two a day in preparation for the women’s United States Olympic marathon trials next Sunday in Boston, which raises questions:

Why would a 50-year-old woman (51 next month) want to run 26 miles 385 yards against potential Olympic medalists?

Why would she compete as the oldest of the 160 or so starters? (The next oldest are four 46-year-olds.)

Because she is Joan Benoit Samuelson, the matriarch of American distance running, the winner of the first Olympic marathon for women in 1984 and a pioneer in bringing acceptance to women’s distance running.

In a recent interview at her home, she said she would be running “just because it’s an Olympic trials and I qualified. But if the weather turns up terrible, I might not run and just race in the Boston Marathon the next day.”

The first three finishers in the trials will qualify for the United States team for the Beijing Olympics. Can Samuelson make the Olympic team?

“Oh, God, no,” she said. “It’s just me against me. I want to run 2:50 at age 50.”

If she averages 6 minutes 30 seconds a mile, she will reach her goal of 2 hours 50 minutes. Her career best is 2:21:21, but that was 23 years ago over Chicago’s flat course.

“This will be my fourth Olympic trials,” she said. “I qualified for all of the previous six, but in 1988 I just had Abby and in 1992 I had a full mother load with two small children. But I’ve always had the urge to run.”

Samuelson said she used to run 120 miles a week. “Now I’m down to 70 or 80,” she said. “That’s all I can do.”

This is one of my early Tao postings, from November 2004.

_______________________________________________________

Beginners acquire new theories and techniques until their minds are cluttered with options.

Advanced students forget their many options. They allow the theories and techniques that they have learned to recede into the background.

Learn to unclutter your mind. Learn to simplify your work.

As you rely less and less on knowing what to do, your work will become more direct and more powerful. You will discover that the quality of your consciousness is more potent than any technique or theory or interpretation.

Learn how fruitful the blocked group or individual suddenly becomes when you give up trying to do just the right thing.

Tao of Leadership

____

I think a lot of people are running around with cluttered minds these days. We worry about what to do about the direction the country has taken, we worry about how best to deal with personal situations in our lives, we worry about work, way too much. Perhaps the way to unclutter our minds is to stop worrying and start taking more direct action. Talk to the people around you, find out their real concerns and help them find some answers. Take your own problems and solve the ones you can, without worrying about whether you are creating the optimum solution. Get out of your head for a while and take a walk somewhere full of nature.

For me, my uncluttering spot is in my garden. I go outside and wander in the garden for a bit, and find myself feeling better about things. No matter what worries and concerns I have, they are small compared to a day full of sunshine and flowers and growing things. It helps living in San Diego where I can almost always count on a beautiful sunny day.

I think Americans really have a disease about getting things right, though. We want to live in the right house, drive the right car, send our kids to the right schools, live the right moral values. Yeah, sure we do. But how many people do you know who are simply happy with their lives? How many don’t worry about having enough money, even though we are among the richest people on the planet? Do you hear many people saying, “I have enough, I think I’ll just relax this year and not work too much?” No, we just go on with our disease, not realizing that if we stopped caring about having the right things and living the right way, our lives would be so much easier and better.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve come to focus on what is left. What’s left of my life, where I would like to go, what I would like to see, how I would like to live. Not what other people think is right, or even what I may think is right, but the things that are left out of most people’s lives. Beauty, simplicity, artful living instead of filling our houses with cheap crap. Time spent learning and growing instead of watching TV or spending yet another day working at jobs we hate to buy more stuff we don’t need. Why can’t America be about spreading fun and laughter instead of spreading war and trying to control everything? We have enough, people. Let’s learn to enjoy it, instead of wanting more. Unclutter our minds, our houses, our lives, and let’s learn to live again. Let’s share a new American dream - one about making life fulfilling again instead of filling our gas tanks, bellies, and houses full of crap.

After three months with no period, this one is now in its ninth day and still going strong.

Perimenopause sucks.

I got to meet Gene Wilder tonight (briefly) signing his new book, “The Woman Who Wouldn’t”.

I told him “thank you”, and, “it was wonderful”, and he looked surprised, so I said “I read it in line”.

He looked at me surprised and a bit sad, and said, “The whole book?”

So I smiled and said, “Yes!” and “Thanks for everything”, and shook his hand and he squeezed mine. It was awesome.

My favorite passage from the book, the one that made me cry:

“I brushed away a fly that looked like it was about to land on Clara’s eyelid. What an angel face she has. I don’t want her to die. And I don’t want her to fall in love with me on the rebound from that asshole she was married to, or out of vulnerability because of her thoughts of death and cancer. I just want her to be happy, for as many weeks or months or days that she has. The pain is going to come later, Dr. Gross said. Well, watch over her, Jeremy. But I’ll be glad when I’m healthy enough to return to my work and my home, without responsibility for Clara’s happiness.”

That evening I received a note addressed to Mr. Webb, from Mrs. Mulpas. It read:

Dear Jeremy:
Too tired to eat dinner…perhaps because I’m so happy after our lovely picnic. I’ll see you tomorrow. I hope you’re happy, too.

Clara

UPDATE:

This is pretty cool - here’s an interview with Wilder the day after the book signing I was at:

GW: I went to a book signing last night at the Borders book shop in Caramel Mountain. I had never been there before. And there were people who had come at 8 in the morning to get a number. And when I walked in — I’m used to big crowds, but not this big — it was overwhelming. And here’s the answer to your question. When it started, we saw one of the parents carrying a baby. I said , “How old is that baby? It looks so young!” — “Three months.” Then I saw another parent carrying a baby. “How old is that baby?” — “Five weeks.” So there were kids, then there were the parents of the kids, then there were the parents of the parents, and then there were the parents of the parents of the parents. I mean, I had generations! And happened at every book signing! When there were people in their late 70s early 80s, then in the 60s, then in the 40s and then as teenagers or young married couples in their 20s. Age was spread across the board, and that’s a nice thing. But… well, I suppose, I have an ideal. Probably a woman involved, who is reading the book and crying afterwards. My memoir, it used to be called “I Lean Towards Women”, and I thought it was a stupid title because it sounded like a man who had one leg shorter than the other. Then I remembered what Gilda had said 3 weeks before she died “I have a title for you” and it didn’t make any sense to me till 14 years later!

Another Wilder interview here.

So hubby comes home from his physical this morning wanting to tell me all about it for some reason, and says, “Do you get prostate exams?”

Sigh.

On a day when I am not at peace with myself or my surroundings, Ascender comes along and kicks my cage door wide open. I was going to write something about how I am feeling today, but I think I’ll just link to her good wishes instead. Please click on her link below to visit all the bloggers she lists; I don’t have the time to fix all the linky love at the moment here.

Namaste, to all.

Studio Lolo tagged me with this ‘peace and love’ meme; to spread the word to send loving energy and thoughts to the places and people that need it. Rather then tagging others I hope to pass on some urls of my virtual pals who could use some of your loving energy and thoughts. Please leave some virtual peace and love to some people who could really use it right now.

Red Moon at the loss of her daughter

The Daily Warrior successfully fighting ALS for 16 years

Studio Friday is closing down. Stop by and show her some love for her dedication all these years.

Check out these bloggers who address peace and love almost everyday: 3191, a poetic justice, another poster for peace, anti-war us, Art For A Change, Art of Mark Byran, Artists Helping Children, Blog Like You Give A Damn, Blood For Oil, bricalu, Buddha Project, Change Me, Changing Places, Crafty Green Poet, No Blood For War and Profit, Inhabitat, kamurawayan, Light a Candle, Military Families Speak Out, Miniature Gigantic, Paris Parfait, Peaceful Societies, Pinwheels for Peace, Poets Against the War, rambling taoist, smile, smile, Take it Personally, The Peace Train, Treehugger, Visual Resistance, We Are What We Do, Betmo, Bloggers For Peace

One of the weird things about the Internet and blogging is caring deeply about people you’ve never met.

One of my favorite bloggers is ill - think good thoughts for her, people…..

Oh, and if you have symptoms of angina and congestive heart failure, please do not think you are “lazy” and get yourself to the hospital a bit more quickly than Maya’s Granny has, please. We older women are simply not indestructible, no matter how much we think we are.

Maya’s Granny

This is J again. Mom came through the angiogram well. She did not enjoy it at all. Looks like she will need bypass surgery, probably on Friday, but that’s just a guess, as I haven’t talked to her surgeon about it yet.

Will keep you up to date as I know more.

I was reading Sally’s latest article in Yoga Journal today, “Waking Life”, which is excellent, by the way, and decided to check out her web site. She has a number of other excellent articles posted there, including this one which appealed to the engineer in me. Surrender is probably one of the most difficult concepts on Yoga for me (or any spiritual practice).

Sally Kempton, meditation teacher, Swami Durgananda

My favorite surrender story was told to me by my old friend Ed. An engineer by profession, he was spending some time in India, at the ashram of his spiritual teacher. At one point, he was asked to help supervise a construction project, which he quickly found was being run incompetently and on the cheap. No diplomat, Ed rushed into action, arguing, amassing proofs, bad-mouthing his colleagues and staying up nights scheming about how to turn the tide. At every turn, he got resistance from the other contractors, who soon took to subverting everything he tried to do.

In the midst of this classic impasse, Ed’s teacher called them all to a meeting. Ed was asked to explain his position, and then the contractors started talking fast. The teacher kept nodding, seeming to agree. At that moment, Ed had a flash of realization. He saw that none of this mattered in the long run. He wasn’t there to win the argument, save the ashram money, or even make a great building. He was there to study yoga, to know the truth—and obviously, this situation had been designed by the cosmos as the perfect medicine for his efficient engineer’s ego.

At that moment, the teacher turned to him, “Ed, this man says you don’t understand local conditions, and I agree with him. So, shall we do it his way?”

Still swimming in the peace of his newfound humility, Ed folded his hands. “Whatever you think best,” he said.

He looked up to see the teacher staring at him with wide, fierce eyes. “Its not about what I think,” he said. “Its about what’s right. You fight for what’s right, do you hear me?”

Ed says that this incident taught him three things. First, that when you surrender your attachment to a particular outcome, things often turn out better than you could ever have imagined. (Eventually, he was able to persuade the contractors to make the necessary changes.) Second, that a true karma yogi is not someone who goes belly-up to higher authority, but a surrendered activist—a person who does his best to help create a better reality—all the while knowing that he’s not in charge of outcomes. Third, that the attitude of surrender is the best antidote to anger, anxiety, and fear.

I often tell this story to people who worry that surrender means giving up, or that letting go is a synonym for inaction, because it illustrates so beautifully the paradox behind “Thy will be done.” As the god Krishna told Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, surrender sometimes means being willing to get into a fight.

A truly surrendered person may look passive, especially when something appears to need doing, and everyone around is shouting, “Get a move on, get it done, this is urgent!” Seen in perspective, however, what looks like inaction is often simply a recognition that now is not the time to act. Masters of surrender tend to be masters of flow, knowing intuitively how to move with the energies at play in a situation. You advance when the doors are open, when a stuck situation can be turned, moving along the subtle energetic seams that let you avoid obstructions and unnecessary confrontations.

Such skill involves attunement to the energetic movement that is sometimes called universal or divine will, the Tao, flow, or in Sanskrit, shakti. Shakti is the subtle force—we could call it cosmic intention—behind the natural world in all its manifestations.

Surrender starts with a recognition that this greater life force moves as you. One of my teachers, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, once said that to surrender is to become aware of God’s energy within oneself, to recognize that energy, and to accept it. It’s an egoless recognition—that is, it involves a shift in your sense of what “I” is—which is why the famous inquiry “Who am I?” or “What is the I?” is central to the process of surrender. (Depending on your tradition and your perspective at the time, you may recognize that the answer to this question is “Nothing” or “All that is”—in other words, consciousness, shakti, the Tao.)

May my creativity be restored
On all levels
In all areas
and forevermore

When the Madwoman is transformed from destructive paths and embodied in creative ways, a woman will not give up her vision. Rid of the resentments, paranoia, and isolation that result when her anger is suppressed or goes unrecognized or unacknowledged, she will be free to create. Her vision will be clear and congruent, and she will have the courage and wisdom to embody it in the world. — Linda Schierse Leonard, Meeting the Madwoman

I am just finishing up reading this book, and if anyone would like to read it, I will be happy to send it along to you. Just leave a comment here and I’ll get in touch with you for a snail mail address.

Or actually, ocular hypertension.

Hey, welcome to your 50th year on earth…

Oh well, at least I will have pretty eyelashes. I’m so thrilled.

OR perhaps I’ll try some alternative medicine.

And you should, too!

Really though I can’t stand it when my gums get inflamed, so I try to avoid it. These days, I rarely have any problems.

A healthy smile may promote a healthy heart

Each year, cardiovascular disease kills more Americans than cancer. And while most people are aware that lifestyle choices such as eating right, getting enough exercise and quitting smoking can help prevent cardiovascular disease, they may not know that by just brushing and flossing their teeth each day, they might also be avoiding this potentially lethal condition.

An article published in the December issue of the Journal of Periodontology (JOP), the official publication of the American Academy of Periodontology (AAP), suggests that periodontal patients whose bodies show evidence of a reaction to the bacteria associated with periodontitis may have an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

“Although there have been many studies associating gum disease with heart disease, what we have not known is exactly why this happens and under what circumstances,” said JOP editor Kenneth Kornman, DDS, PhD. “The findings of this new analysis of previously published studies suggest that the long-term effect of chronic periodontitis, such as extended bacterial exposure, may be what ultimately leads to cardiovascular disease.”

Researchers at Howard University identified 11 studies that had previously examined clinically-diagnosed periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease. The team then analyzed the participants’ level of systemic bacterial exposure, specifically looking for the presence of the bacteria associated with periodontal disease, as well as measuring various biological indicators of bacterial exposure. They found that individuals with periodontal disease whose biomarkers showed increased bacterial exposure were more likely to develop coronary heart disease or atherogenesis (plaque formation in the arteries).

“While more research is needed to better understand the connection between periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease, this study suggests the importance of taking of your teeth and gums and how that can help you take care of your heart,” said Susan Karabin, DDS, President of the AAP. “With the number of people with heart disease continuing to increase, it is important to understand that simple activities like brushing and flossing twice a day, and regular visits to your dental professional can help lower your risk of other health conditions.”

“Dancing With My Mother”, Elizabeth Williams

I haven’t written or thought much lately about negativity. I dropped my sack of resentments a long time ago, or so I thought. But perhaps I merely traded that large heavy sack for a smaller and lighter one, since I do still feel those resentments popping up on occasion, although I don’t carry them around for very long. I’ve learned to use my inner mirror and my own resources to deal with a lot of the negativity in my life. Sometimes now I forget to do this, though, and on those days when I begin to find myself blaming others, I need to remember that I am resourceful and that any negativity I feel towards others is simply a mirror to something that I am disliking within myself and need to work towards resolving. And sometimes I know I just need to sit with the feelings in the stillness for a while, let them happen and acknowledge them and feel the compassion for myself in dealing with those feelings, so I can return to feeling joyful about my life again.

But now, I feel I am moving once again, to an even deeper part of myself, to the very center of myself. And not everything here is all joyful and happy; there are some deep, dark shadows. I have had dreams of killing the dark negativity, of being grabbed to be taken away by it and turning it around and grabbing it by the throat to choke it. But this is “negative negativity“, as Chogyam Trungpa would say. What I need to learn is to have compassion for these dark places and develop an understanding of why they exist. I need to learn to “be present with my raw edges” as John Welwood puts it. Perhaps if I stop trying to overcome this residual negativity, it will become worthwhile to sit with it and let these remaining storms pass through.

Good freaking grief. How can you not KNOW you are pregnant?

KOIN News 6 for Local News Weather and Sports, Portland, OR; KOIN.com - Baby Born At McDonald’s

A baby was born in a McDonald’s restroom in Vancouver, and the mother didn’t even know she was pregnant.

It was evening shift last Friday at the fast-food restaurant at State Route 500 and Gher Road when employee Danille Miller suddenly felt ill and ran for the bathroom. Her 16-year-old co-worker, Jaynae Herrera, followed.

“I was like are you pregnant?” Herrera asked. “Because she was in the bathroom, and I’m like, are you pregnant? She says, I don’t think so. A couple minutes later, she says the baby is coming out, and that’s when I started freaking out.”

Herrera, with the assistance of a 911 dispatcher, helped her deliver baby Austin Laddusaw, and both mother and baby are fine.

I first discovered this article in May of 2003. I did a search on my posts for the word “present”, and this is the second post that came up. The first is this one on a trip to Disneyland. This seems to be around the time when I actually began to wake up from my deep depression.

Perhaps what it is really all about is simply learning to be present, to be here now, as they say. It seems trite, but once you’ve really learned that, everything else becomes so much easier. Just to be present with yourself, with how you really actually feel in the moment, seems to be what makes us most alive.

Shambhala Sun - Six Kinds of Loneliness

The experience of certain feelings can seem particularly pregnant with desire for resolution: loneliness, boredom, anxiety. Unless we can relax with these feelings, it’s very hard to stay in the middle when we experience them. We want victory or defeat, praise or blame. For example, if somebody abandons us, we don’t want to be with that raw discomfort. Instead, we conjure up a familiar identity of ourselves as a hapless victim. Or maybe we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is. We automatically want to cover over the pain in one way or another, identifying with victory or victimhood.

Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It’s restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.

There are six ways of describing this kind of cool loneliness. They are: less desire, contentment, avoiding unnecessary activity, complete discipline, not wandering in the world of desire, and not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts.