My Weblog

Elder's Meditation

"It's time. If you are to walk the path of heart, then it is time..."

~Nippawanock, ARAPAHOE~

If not now, when? If not me, who? To walk the path of the heart is a great honor. Every human has the choice to walk this path, but very few will decide to make it. Why? Well, because you can't act and behave like everyone else behaves. You must be the person who will learn to look within. You must be the person who will be fully accountable for yourself. You must be the person who prays and meditates. You must be the person who will sacrifice. You must decide to be a Peaceful Warrior. What will you decide today?

Oh, Great Mystery, lead me on the path of the heart.

~Elder's Meditation of the Day May 16~

One definition of fascism

A definition from The American Heritage Dictionary:

fascism n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.

On Government and Power

From The Writer's Almanac, a daily program of poetry and history hosted by Garrision Keillor - March 14 - 20, 2005:

March 15th post:

It's the birthday of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, born in the Waxhaws area near the border between North and South Carolina on this day in 1767.

Andrew Jackson was elected President in 1828. His election was a victory for the common people. He was the first populist president who did not come from the aristocracy. Jackson said, "As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending."

March 16th post:

It's the birthday of the fourth president of the United States, James Madison, born in Port Conway, Virginia (1751). He did more than almost any of the founding fathers to help write the United States Constitution, establishing our nation's federal government, with all its checks and balances. He believed the government needed to be checked and balanced because, he said, "The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."

"Hating the wrongdoing distorts your face too. Shouting angry about the evil also makes your voice hoarse. We who wished to lay the ground for friendliness, couldn't be friendly ourselves."

Bertolt Brecht

20th Century playwright

A quote from Lincoln

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln

Snow Crystal Photographers & Snowmobilers

Re: Snow Crystal Photographers

There are only a small handful of snow crystal photographers in the world; I estimate the ratio of snowmobilers to snow crystal photographers is roughly a million to one! I have to say I'm at a loss to explain such a high ratio. Snow crystal photography requires some expensive equipment and spending long hours in the cold, but so does snowmobiling.

Thoreau Quote

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

Henry David Thoreau

US Transcendentalist author (1817-1862)

34 "what ifs"

On January 26, 2005, Texas Republican Representative Ron Paul, M.D. spoke before the U.S. House of Representatives and unleashed a litany-like list of 34 probing questions challenging the wisdom of the United States' policies of foreign intervention, nation building, proper use of the military, and pre-emptive war.

Achilles Speaks

For five weeks I'm taking a one-hour per week teleclass for work. Although the class content is interesting and useful for my job, one aspect of the course is dredging up an old bad habit I thought was all but gone...procrastination about homework!

I consider myself to be reasonably disciplined in most areas of my life...most areas...but not when it comes to homework. I do dishes, watch TV, pay bills, balance checkbooks, or make unnecessary phone calls. Everything BUT homework looks important and urgent. The weight of the assignment hangs over me all week long. I leave it dangling for the final night or two when I feel sufficiently wedged into a corner and am forced to produce! Once the homework is submitted to the teacher, the heavy shadow of what is owed lifts like a dense fog in sunlight and I feel buoyant and free again.

I suspect this phenomenon of homework is haunting some of my teleclassmates as well. The teacher reminds us that it is important to complete the assignments and to hand them in on time. This feels like high school all over again, except now we're a class of adults.

And so it seems in my life that there are areas which may simply be an ongoing Achilles heel. I will not worry about it too much. Five weeks is doable. I will think the better of entertaining notions of returning to school any time soon though. At the very least, I think I'll hold off until I see a sign of progress by finding myself doing homework immediately after class!

Go Yogi!

Before there were Bush-isms, there were Yogi-isms. Following are a few choice sayings from Yogi Berra, the NY Yankees All-Star catcher:

"It gets late early out here." 

"The future ain't what it used to be."

"If the people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them."

"I usually take a two hour nap from one to four."

"You can observe a lot by watching."

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

"It's deja-vu all over again."

"Never answer an anonymous letter."

And perhaps his most well known...

"It ain't over 'til it's over."

(I wonder if Yogi was talking about winter with that last one?)