First, break the symbiotic connection between greedy, parasitic pharmaceutical companies and their hosts--which comprises the entire "medical" community.
Second, all legislators who vote on the bill should be mandated to put their names at the top of the list of recipients for the services provided by the bill. The doctors should all have to sign up for it, as well.
I recently heard the "sales pitch" from a nurse practitioner for a new vaccine being given to young girls. When I asked the obvious question, "Did you have the vaccine yourself?" she waffled. She's a young woman in the right age-group. If she didn't do it, why would I submit my young daughter to it.
I say, if our representatives are making this decision for us that will impact us for years to come whether we vote for them next time or not, they should submit themselves to the program they are signing us all into.
Truly unburdening the population of their medical nightmares would be a much harder task for the governmental powers. Curb spending, cap ridiculous costs, encourage wellness and prevention, cut out pharmaceutical usury.
Why should a simple chest x-ray cost $4,000? It's funny how in every other area of technology, things get smaller, more efficient and less expensive, but the x-ray machine was invented in 1895 and it was free light passing through the body. Then the medical community got hold of it.
There was a time when people entered into the healing arts because they were gifted and they gave their gift to their community as an offering for the gift. The idea of holding it out to select members of the community who are deserving of it only evolved in the modern world.
Here is my prediction. God will raise up people with the gift of healing in every community and they will serve their communities without pharmaceuticals, focusing on the mind-body-spirit connections that bring illness, and the whole medical monster will collapse for lack of interest, as it should.
Before any decisions are made in Congress, the Dr. Seuss story, "Yertle the Turtle" should be read slowly out loud.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Do Hard Things Book Review
I just read Do Hard Things, A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations by Alex and Brett Harris, and it’s a very impressive book for anyone of any age to write. These twins were 17 when they undertook this particular hard thing, which makes it both a testament to what God is growing in this generation, and a huge challenge to adults everywhere.
As a fifty-year-old mother of teens (and a grandmother) who comes up against the warm, dangerous sleep of complacency every day, I finished this book asking myself some very hard questions about how I arrived in my own personal mess and how we all got here as a country.
Do Hard Things is both the explanation and solution to these hard questions.
If we are to change how we do business in this country, we will have to do hard things. I am looking forward to it. One of the best points the twins make is that we often claim we do hard things, but we either do it for selfish reasons or it just looks hard to others, but is easy for us.
We are not unlike the Israelites coming out of 200 years of slavery. They didn’t wander in the wilderness because God was mad at them. They had to learn to do hard things before they could inhabit and effectively govern themselves in their new land. God loved them, so he allowed them to do hard things for about forty years.
Our slavery to money has taken two hundred years to take root, creating a sweepingly depressed and medicated society where no one has either the energy or hope to change course. And here’s the important point. We’re no more stuck that the elephant with the thin rope around his leg, an illustration the Harris twins use to describe how low expectations trap us.
When we remove the thin rope of media driven exploitation that requires us to be patriotic consumers, we find that it takes much less to satisfy us. In fact, when we are not driven by fear as consumers, it’s possible to discover that a truly satisfying life requires us to discover our purpose and pursue it productively without thoughts of usury or profiteering.
For instance, my 16-year-old daughter is a photographer, and hopes someday to be a psychiatrist helping the vast number of mentally ill homeless. She says, “I never want to make money for my photography, because I think pricing it will make if feel like work, while now it’s an art.” Art for it’s own sake? Imagine that!
The Rebelution—the heart of the Harris twins’ countercultural message—is a call to teens for sober discipline, compassion and stamina. The stories told in this book remind me of the youth of Israel, raised (counter-culturally) faithful during seventy years of slavery in Babylon. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego stand out. It will take their kind of faith and guts, and doing some really hard things to repopulate our land with hope. As adults, we can support our kids to do hard, character-building things, and we can model character, competence and collaboration every day. Who knows, maybe we’ll even remember how to do hard things.
“And now these three remain: Faith, hope and charity (love). But the greatest of these is charity (love).”—1 Corinthians 13:13.
Read the book. Change the world.
Hats off to my young nephew, Ryan, a Great Lion of God, who passed this book on to my daughter.
As a fifty-year-old mother of teens (and a grandmother) who comes up against the warm, dangerous sleep of complacency every day, I finished this book asking myself some very hard questions about how I arrived in my own personal mess and how we all got here as a country.
Do Hard Things is both the explanation and solution to these hard questions.
If we are to change how we do business in this country, we will have to do hard things. I am looking forward to it. One of the best points the twins make is that we often claim we do hard things, but we either do it for selfish reasons or it just looks hard to others, but is easy for us.
We are not unlike the Israelites coming out of 200 years of slavery. They didn’t wander in the wilderness because God was mad at them. They had to learn to do hard things before they could inhabit and effectively govern themselves in their new land. God loved them, so he allowed them to do hard things for about forty years.
Our slavery to money has taken two hundred years to take root, creating a sweepingly depressed and medicated society where no one has either the energy or hope to change course. And here’s the important point. We’re no more stuck that the elephant with the thin rope around his leg, an illustration the Harris twins use to describe how low expectations trap us.
When we remove the thin rope of media driven exploitation that requires us to be patriotic consumers, we find that it takes much less to satisfy us. In fact, when we are not driven by fear as consumers, it’s possible to discover that a truly satisfying life requires us to discover our purpose and pursue it productively without thoughts of usury or profiteering.
For instance, my 16-year-old daughter is a photographer, and hopes someday to be a psychiatrist helping the vast number of mentally ill homeless. She says, “I never want to make money for my photography, because I think pricing it will make if feel like work, while now it’s an art.” Art for it’s own sake? Imagine that!
The Rebelution—the heart of the Harris twins’ countercultural message—is a call to teens for sober discipline, compassion and stamina. The stories told in this book remind me of the youth of Israel, raised (counter-culturally) faithful during seventy years of slavery in Babylon. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego stand out. It will take their kind of faith and guts, and doing some really hard things to repopulate our land with hope. As adults, we can support our kids to do hard, character-building things, and we can model character, competence and collaboration every day. Who knows, maybe we’ll even remember how to do hard things.
“And now these three remain: Faith, hope and charity (love). But the greatest of these is charity (love).”—1 Corinthians 13:13.
Read the book. Change the world.
Hats off to my young nephew, Ryan, a Great Lion of God, who passed this book on to my daughter.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
New Employment Stimulus Idea
Here is a perfectly perfect idea to boost employment in nursing.
Nurses will be needed in greater and greater numbers as the baby-boom generation ages. Why don't we just train the nurses we need? Because nursing instructors don't earn as much as nurses earn, so nobody stops nursing to teach unless they can't nurse anymore. Because of this, nursing schools are competitive and only have a few seats each term. Additionally, nursing is not taught year-round so you have one shot each year to get a spot in a nursing school. If the need is really there, then this system is broke.
My idea has two parts. First we should offer every nurse from every area of care the opportunity to teach one 8-week class per year on salaried sabbatical from the hospital or care facility where they work. They get a break from their real work and the schools get all of the experienced nurses they need to teach. Also, because they are paid by the facility, the savings in cost of teaching wages can bring down the cost of nursing school.
The second part of the plan is this. With this plethora of nursing teachers, every nursing school can start new sessions every eight or sixteen weeks, thereby injecting the medical community with more qualified nurses more often.
This is a win-win situation for the nursing schools, nurses, and health care facilities. There can even be a participation incentive by schools partnering with facilities to place nurses after school is complete. Say the facility agrees to provide six nurses a year to the school. At the most, the facility has paid about $70,000 in salaries and benefits to these six nurses while they each take a different two-month break to teach. That hospital then gets to have priority for student placement in their facility. Its like a farm team. As they build a higher level of qualified nurses in the facility they can provide more nurses to teach.
Someone needs to get this idea up and running. Immediately.
Nurses will be needed in greater and greater numbers as the baby-boom generation ages. Why don't we just train the nurses we need? Because nursing instructors don't earn as much as nurses earn, so nobody stops nursing to teach unless they can't nurse anymore. Because of this, nursing schools are competitive and only have a few seats each term. Additionally, nursing is not taught year-round so you have one shot each year to get a spot in a nursing school. If the need is really there, then this system is broke.
My idea has two parts. First we should offer every nurse from every area of care the opportunity to teach one 8-week class per year on salaried sabbatical from the hospital or care facility where they work. They get a break from their real work and the schools get all of the experienced nurses they need to teach. Also, because they are paid by the facility, the savings in cost of teaching wages can bring down the cost of nursing school.
The second part of the plan is this. With this plethora of nursing teachers, every nursing school can start new sessions every eight or sixteen weeks, thereby injecting the medical community with more qualified nurses more often.
This is a win-win situation for the nursing schools, nurses, and health care facilities. There can even be a participation incentive by schools partnering with facilities to place nurses after school is complete. Say the facility agrees to provide six nurses a year to the school. At the most, the facility has paid about $70,000 in salaries and benefits to these six nurses while they each take a different two-month break to teach. That hospital then gets to have priority for student placement in their facility. Its like a farm team. As they build a higher level of qualified nurses in the facility they can provide more nurses to teach.
Someone needs to get this idea up and running. Immediately.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Of Mice And Men
Okay, I guess I'm probably just a dumb old girl, but does it seem to anyone else that the people are really not being consulted or considered in this whole second stimulus package?
The first stimulus didn't do anything but create a platform for the greedy to seek new and higher levels of niggardly greed, I suppose because it might all be gone tomorrow?
And nothing has been done to hold banks accountable after getting $700 billion (!!) to help improve the economy and (of course) holding onto the extra money all the more tightly to secure their existence through a crash. Hmmm. So now we're all supposed to believe that this new "stimulus" is going to cost us all something but somehow lower our taxes? Feed the greedy one more spoonful while the children starve and they will suddenly become selfless public servants. Right?
I'm not the brightest crayon in the box, but is this "benefit" like getting cash back for spending more on my Discover card? California residents are getting IOUs when they file taxes this year, because (whoops!), well, no money for refunds. Is that what it's going to come to next year when we file Federal? It's OUR money they're discussing up there on the hill, and we're not even at the meeting!
In the lovely state of CT we had a $70 million "excess" (because taxes are higher here than any other state, so, whooops, we charged you too much)... and that was three months ago. Now (in just one week) we're collectively on our way to the poorhouse and all systems are broke. I just don't get it, and frankly, I don't believe it.
I think this whole mess is 90% propaganda, but what interests me more is the question, Why? Why were gas prices two years ago permitted to drive us into this collapse? And only when collapse was certain, why did gas prices drop suddenly? Why did all the people who "saw it coming" allow it to continue? Doesn't anyone but me feel manipulated by the very people that constantly told us they had it all under control (so just keep watching reality shows filled with pathetic people that make you feel good about yourself)?
When you hand your finances over to an accountant, you have to trust in a somewhat parasitic relationship where he/she benefits only when you make lots of money. But what if you don't know finances, and because of your ignorance, he/she decides to skim off the top until you wash out, then bails to a nice comfy island somewhere to live on the proceeds? Who knows better than the accountant when the timing is perfect to bail out?
My point is: The people who knew the most had the most to lose by revealing the truth to 235 million Americans. Greed, naked greed, is what happened to America. And greed is no respecter of political affiliation. Your party has as many bad guys as mine does.
What are we to do? We can stop all this if we stop believing in it. The emperor really has no clothes. When we don't "buy" into the lie of credit cards any more and stop using them, when we vote for public servants willing to do the job for nothing, when we suck it up and turn off the television propaganda convincing us that its our patriotic duty to buy more crap at Target, maybe we'll take our country back. Are we mice or are we men?
The first stimulus didn't do anything but create a platform for the greedy to seek new and higher levels of niggardly greed, I suppose because it might all be gone tomorrow?
And nothing has been done to hold banks accountable after getting $700 billion (!!) to help improve the economy and (of course) holding onto the extra money all the more tightly to secure their existence through a crash. Hmmm. So now we're all supposed to believe that this new "stimulus" is going to cost us all something but somehow lower our taxes? Feed the greedy one more spoonful while the children starve and they will suddenly become selfless public servants. Right?
I'm not the brightest crayon in the box, but is this "benefit" like getting cash back for spending more on my Discover card? California residents are getting IOUs when they file taxes this year, because (whoops!), well, no money for refunds. Is that what it's going to come to next year when we file Federal? It's OUR money they're discussing up there on the hill, and we're not even at the meeting!
In the lovely state of CT we had a $70 million "excess" (because taxes are higher here than any other state, so, whooops, we charged you too much)... and that was three months ago. Now (in just one week) we're collectively on our way to the poorhouse and all systems are broke. I just don't get it, and frankly, I don't believe it.
I think this whole mess is 90% propaganda, but what interests me more is the question, Why? Why were gas prices two years ago permitted to drive us into this collapse? And only when collapse was certain, why did gas prices drop suddenly? Why did all the people who "saw it coming" allow it to continue? Doesn't anyone but me feel manipulated by the very people that constantly told us they had it all under control (so just keep watching reality shows filled with pathetic people that make you feel good about yourself)?
When you hand your finances over to an accountant, you have to trust in a somewhat parasitic relationship where he/she benefits only when you make lots of money. But what if you don't know finances, and because of your ignorance, he/she decides to skim off the top until you wash out, then bails to a nice comfy island somewhere to live on the proceeds? Who knows better than the accountant when the timing is perfect to bail out?
My point is: The people who knew the most had the most to lose by revealing the truth to 235 million Americans. Greed, naked greed, is what happened to America. And greed is no respecter of political affiliation. Your party has as many bad guys as mine does.
What are we to do? We can stop all this if we stop believing in it. The emperor really has no clothes. When we don't "buy" into the lie of credit cards any more and stop using them, when we vote for public servants willing to do the job for nothing, when we suck it up and turn off the television propaganda convincing us that its our patriotic duty to buy more crap at Target, maybe we'll take our country back. Are we mice or are we men?
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Why Rehab For Teens Rarely Works
Here's a perfect idea that will probably never be implemented.
Having a Social Sciences degree and the gift of more than my share of life experience with addicted teens in rehab, here is my observation:
Teens admitted to rehab are immediately placed on other drugs than the ones they are addicted to, and then they are evaluated through the fog to determine a diagnosis, in order to continue them on a variety of "appropriate" meds for an indeterminate length of time.
My contention with this method is that no baseline determination can ever be indicated, therefore no diagnosis can be complete or appropriate. Mom and Dad bring children home with a cart full of interactive meds without any way of determining if any of them are working with or against each other or the diagnosis.
Here's my idea:
What if we just kept them off all meds for three or four days, feed them good food, let them sleep, apply urinalysis until all traces of the drug (or drugs) of choice are eliminated. In this way, a real determination about the addiction can emerge using talk therapy to present a plausible diagnosis.
Then, rather than dose them with a variety of meds that might or might not be making matters worse inside their little heads, they could walk away clear-headed with real tools and coping skills for handling the stress that precipitated the addiction.
Somebody needs to fix this system.
Having a Social Sciences degree and the gift of more than my share of life experience with addicted teens in rehab, here is my observation:
Teens admitted to rehab are immediately placed on other drugs than the ones they are addicted to, and then they are evaluated through the fog to determine a diagnosis, in order to continue them on a variety of "appropriate" meds for an indeterminate length of time.
My contention with this method is that no baseline determination can ever be indicated, therefore no diagnosis can be complete or appropriate. Mom and Dad bring children home with a cart full of interactive meds without any way of determining if any of them are working with or against each other or the diagnosis.
Here's my idea:
What if we just kept them off all meds for three or four days, feed them good food, let them sleep, apply urinalysis until all traces of the drug (or drugs) of choice are eliminated. In this way, a real determination about the addiction can emerge using talk therapy to present a plausible diagnosis.
Then, rather than dose them with a variety of meds that might or might not be making matters worse inside their little heads, they could walk away clear-headed with real tools and coping skills for handling the stress that precipitated the addiction.
Somebody needs to fix this system.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
The Shack Book Review (Read It!)
The single most ridiculous thing I’ve heard about “The Shack” so far, is that a pastor of a Christian church has warned his club members against reading it.
After you read “The Shack,” by Wm. Paul Young, this will possibly appall you.
My experience with the judgment of church leaders is that they have exchanged the indwelling of God for the capitalistic intent of remaining in business, and for this God has a special sort of judgment I’m sure. But it belongs to Him and will be accomplished by Love.
I entered into this story with a life experience very like Mack. In my story I failed to save my child from an evil suffered at the hands of a criminal, which left her alive, but permanently damaged. This experience put me more completely in Mack’s seat than some others might be in reading this fictional truth. When this sort of pain comes in, your relationship with God must change. “The Shack” illustrates how that occurs truthfully.
By the measure of truth, then, this story is as true as any story by Hannah Hurnard, George MacDonald or C.S. Lewis.
“The Shack” seeks to demonstrate the indwelling nature of all relationship with God, and God’s personal relationship with all His creation. This is probably the sticking point for believers and unbelievers alike, not because it doesn’t feel true, but because it requires us to accede our independence and repent our self-faith apart from Him.
Because of original sin, we experience ourselves as alone. However, even that knowledge of separateness cannot exist without some “other” from whom we find ourselves separated.
We think this must be overcome by better faith in the unseen, however, the indwelling of God to his creation is actually born out in our physical world in more than a myriad ways which we accept as “normal”: The indwelling of man to woman, the indwelling of sperm to egg, the indwelling of child to mother, the indwelling of food to body to provide energy, the indwelling of seed to earth, the indwelling of oxygen to lung, the indwelling of molecule to cell, cell to system, system to organ. You might call this indwelling the most amazing fractal.
Perhaps we don’t see simply because we are too close to these physical laws to recognize the miracle of them.
I’ve heard people say that this book is not for new believers. I say, let God be the judge of that. When I was a babe, still God sent me personal messages of His personal nature, which drew me fearfully, but always more deeply into His loving arms. The God of all creation is not limited in His love for each created being. There is no secret prayer, sign, club, level or path you must know for Him to meet you in the midst of your mess and speak words for your ears alone.
"I am especially fond of you!"
After you read “The Shack,” by Wm. Paul Young, this will possibly appall you.
My experience with the judgment of church leaders is that they have exchanged the indwelling of God for the capitalistic intent of remaining in business, and for this God has a special sort of judgment I’m sure. But it belongs to Him and will be accomplished by Love.
I entered into this story with a life experience very like Mack. In my story I failed to save my child from an evil suffered at the hands of a criminal, which left her alive, but permanently damaged. This experience put me more completely in Mack’s seat than some others might be in reading this fictional truth. When this sort of pain comes in, your relationship with God must change. “The Shack” illustrates how that occurs truthfully.
By the measure of truth, then, this story is as true as any story by Hannah Hurnard, George MacDonald or C.S. Lewis.
“The Shack” seeks to demonstrate the indwelling nature of all relationship with God, and God’s personal relationship with all His creation. This is probably the sticking point for believers and unbelievers alike, not because it doesn’t feel true, but because it requires us to accede our independence and repent our self-faith apart from Him.
Because of original sin, we experience ourselves as alone. However, even that knowledge of separateness cannot exist without some “other” from whom we find ourselves separated.
We think this must be overcome by better faith in the unseen, however, the indwelling of God to his creation is actually born out in our physical world in more than a myriad ways which we accept as “normal”: The indwelling of man to woman, the indwelling of sperm to egg, the indwelling of child to mother, the indwelling of food to body to provide energy, the indwelling of seed to earth, the indwelling of oxygen to lung, the indwelling of molecule to cell, cell to system, system to organ. You might call this indwelling the most amazing fractal.
Perhaps we don’t see simply because we are too close to these physical laws to recognize the miracle of them.
I’ve heard people say that this book is not for new believers. I say, let God be the judge of that. When I was a babe, still God sent me personal messages of His personal nature, which drew me fearfully, but always more deeply into His loving arms. The God of all creation is not limited in His love for each created being. There is no secret prayer, sign, club, level or path you must know for Him to meet you in the midst of your mess and speak words for your ears alone.
"I am especially fond of you!"
Sunday, December 21, 2008
What If We Just Told The Truth?
Friends & Family:
Well another year has passed and it’s time to catch you up on all the news here. As you know Bob has not had a job in three months because he got laid off at the car dealership. Who knows what he will do now, as it’s not easy finding work selling stupid stuff that people don’t need these days.
Marge is doing fine since she unloaded all that bad debt in her bankruptcy filing. She’s feeling lighter than air, now that she’s not paying $30,000 annually to credit card finance charges. She doesn’t even care that Bob doesn’t have a job, because it means more quality time with family.
Marge and Bob had a great time in September holding a yard sale and selling off all the TVs, computers,cell phones, ipods and SUVs that were no longer affordable. Truth be told, the SUVs were acting as yard ornaments for more than a year because of gas prices anyway :).
Our son little Bobby was really in the money earlier in the year until the police busted him for drug dealing. Boy, we sure had a few good steak dinners until that happened! He’s got his daddy’s selling gene, that’s for sure. Hopefully, they’ll teach him how to use that skill in a legal job while he’s counting the days in prison.
As for our daughter, Suzy, she’s doing great on her most recent medication, so we’re just keeping our fingers crossed this one will work. We had a lovely visit with her in the hospital recently, and she didn’t even seem to mind that we were selling her doll collection in the yard sale. She just sat there and nodded.
We’d love to send you all lots of stupid, overpriced gifts to display our wealth and status...but we’re broke, so we thought this year we’d ask everyone to take the money they’d spend on stupid gifts for us, and just buy yourselves a little something.
We won’t be sending out Christmas cards this year because we can’t afford the stamps, so Marge is sending this letter as a Reply All.
Sorry if you received this letter by mistake,
Merry Christmas!
Well another year has passed and it’s time to catch you up on all the news here. As you know Bob has not had a job in three months because he got laid off at the car dealership. Who knows what he will do now, as it’s not easy finding work selling stupid stuff that people don’t need these days.
Marge is doing fine since she unloaded all that bad debt in her bankruptcy filing. She’s feeling lighter than air, now that she’s not paying $30,000 annually to credit card finance charges. She doesn’t even care that Bob doesn’t have a job, because it means more quality time with family.
Marge and Bob had a great time in September holding a yard sale and selling off all the TVs, computers,cell phones, ipods and SUVs that were no longer affordable. Truth be told, the SUVs were acting as yard ornaments for more than a year because of gas prices anyway :).
Our son little Bobby was really in the money earlier in the year until the police busted him for drug dealing. Boy, we sure had a few good steak dinners until that happened! He’s got his daddy’s selling gene, that’s for sure. Hopefully, they’ll teach him how to use that skill in a legal job while he’s counting the days in prison.
As for our daughter, Suzy, she’s doing great on her most recent medication, so we’re just keeping our fingers crossed this one will work. We had a lovely visit with her in the hospital recently, and she didn’t even seem to mind that we were selling her doll collection in the yard sale. She just sat there and nodded.
We’d love to send you all lots of stupid, overpriced gifts to display our wealth and status...but we’re broke, so we thought this year we’d ask everyone to take the money they’d spend on stupid gifts for us, and just buy yourselves a little something.
We won’t be sending out Christmas cards this year because we can’t afford the stamps, so Marge is sending this letter as a Reply All.
Sorry if you received this letter by mistake,
Merry Christmas!
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Cup Alternative
Here we go!
There's got to be a better way to deliver bodily fluid samples to total strangers than the way we've been doing it.
I know, it's an ugly subject, but frankly, it has to be addressed. There are 149+ million women in the US alone, and these women probably have to fill a cup at the very least 20 times in their lives, but most probably quite a lot more.
So, why has no one invented a hands-free cup? This is serious! It's a quality of life issue that remains un-addressed probably because men run the world. I realize that's a global statement, but really. Think about it. We touch your food, we touch your children, we touch the faucets and pots and pans and dishes...we should definitely have a hands-free cup.
This might make you laugh, but you should also be thinking about some sort of invention, because I imagine it would bring some notoriety (or dough) your way.
I was thinking about some plastic or cardboard sink device that fits to the inside of the bowl and drops fluids into the container, but I haven't perfected the idea in my brain yet.
Somebody, please, invent this!
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Give Gifts of Giving
Here's an amazing idea.
'Tis the Season for many people to struggle for their basic needs. What if we all asked ourselves in what ways we can help those in need in our own communities through our gifting this year?
Instead of giving Aunt Zelda another gift card to one or another consumer emporium, what about a donation in her name to her local food bank or heat bank? Not only might she have her eyes opened to the need in her own area, but she would feel she gave something toward that need, by virtue of the gift.
More people this year than ever before are struggling under the mantle of horrifyingly mishandled capitalism. We are now required to pay more taxes to bolster the unregulated criminal greed of banks and investment companies who already get three dollars for every dollar we spend "shopping" for things we don't need. When you go Christmas shopping, the rich just get richer on the backs of the poor.
Be the change you want to see. Give your gifts to your loved ones' communities. I know I'm an idealist, but we are capable of this.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Ozone Regeneration
Hello Again!
This is not my biggest idea, but it is one big idea that is probably already under research at some college or University (except for the Biblical part) and I want to share this possibility with all the college students out there working on molecular stuff.
What do I know, I'm no scientist, but if one takes the Bible literally concerning the creation of the earth and the flood accounts known to every people group on the planet, I'm thinking that there was an expanse of water (or something) over the whole earth that protected life from the cancer-causing rays of the sun.
Now, we've gone and destroyed whatever protection was left (the ozone) after that expanse was depleted in the flood. But what if we could regenerate the ozone. If there was protection from the dangerous rays of the sun at one time, it must be possible to make that happen again. Like, maybe a shield of connected molecules that can deflect those deadly rays...
Beam me up, Scottie!
Friday, November 21, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
More Great Ideas!
Ryan and Juanita have suggested more ideas based on the chirp beep for dead cell phones.
Ryan thinks there should definitely be a clapper for lost cell phones and Juanita thinks a chirp for lost remote controls could work, or a button on the television that locates the remote control like the one used on wireless house phone bases.
I would love for someone to invent a device that sucks dust out of the air before it settles constantly on my flat surfaces. I even researched those negative ion things online for about two hours to see if it might have already been invented in some way. Hasn't NASA invented something on this track? Dust can't be good when you're trying to get back home from the Moon, or whatever.
I used to clean at IBM (in another life many years ago) and they had rooms called clean rooms that even the janitors couldn't go into. I didn't like the looks of them much, but they had somehow eradicated all dust.
So, the inventor of a dust-free house is definitely going to get my money for this invention.
It could be a conspiracy in which the manufacturers of dust-bunny eradicators do not want dust-busting consumers to stop buying New & Improved, Lemon-scented dusting stuff. That would really bug me more than dust. And dust REALLY bugs me!
Ryan thinks there should definitely be a clapper for lost cell phones and Juanita thinks a chirp for lost remote controls could work, or a button on the television that locates the remote control like the one used on wireless house phone bases.
I would love for someone to invent a device that sucks dust out of the air before it settles constantly on my flat surfaces. I even researched those negative ion things online for about two hours to see if it might have already been invented in some way. Hasn't NASA invented something on this track? Dust can't be good when you're trying to get back home from the Moon, or whatever.
I used to clean at IBM (in another life many years ago) and they had rooms called clean rooms that even the janitors couldn't go into. I didn't like the looks of them much, but they had somehow eradicated all dust.
So, the inventor of a dust-free house is definitely going to get my money for this invention.
It could be a conspiracy in which the manufacturers of dust-bunny eradicators do not want dust-busting consumers to stop buying New & Improved, Lemon-scented dusting stuff. That would really bug me more than dust. And dust REALLY bugs me!
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Hooray For Consumers!
I just want to say, "thank You!" to all the Americans who have suddenly gotten smart and realized that they must actually have money to spend it.
I don't know how much more a free society can say to its leaders, than that they are ready to allow the whole economy to collapse rather than be held hostage for it.
Perhaps someone should be looking at the numbers of bankruptcies files in the last year. People who are bankrupt do not shop at Macy's for Christmas.
Wouldn't it be great if what we are experiencing is a change that puts greedy people out of the network, and empowers the masses to begin using grassroots, community networks to make things happen in their own economies? An Army of Obama supporters could make that happen.
"What if they gave a war and nobody came?" was a Sixties poster. Maybe ours should be "What if they gave a credit card offer, and nobody took it?"
I'm an idealist, but I think everyone has a purpose, everyone has a gift, and everyone has something others need. In an inspirational economy devoid of greed, everyone could be satisfied living an inspired life.
Just another inventive thought...
I don't know how much more a free society can say to its leaders, than that they are ready to allow the whole economy to collapse rather than be held hostage for it.
Perhaps someone should be looking at the numbers of bankruptcies files in the last year. People who are bankrupt do not shop at Macy's for Christmas.
Wouldn't it be great if what we are experiencing is a change that puts greedy people out of the network, and empowers the masses to begin using grassroots, community networks to make things happen in their own economies? An Army of Obama supporters could make that happen.
"What if they gave a war and nobody came?" was a Sixties poster. Maybe ours should be "What if they gave a credit card offer, and nobody took it?"
I'm an idealist, but I think everyone has a purpose, everyone has a gift, and everyone has something others need. In an inspirational economy devoid of greed, everyone could be satisfied living an inspired life.
Just another inventive thought...
Friday, August 15, 2008
Nap Hotels
Okay,
here's an idea that's been percolating for a year. Nap Hotels. I was in the Hospital District (Brookline) of Boston and realized there is a completely unexploited market for shift workers from students to surgeons who work 12 hours and probably need a nap more than they need a good sandwich.
A nap hotel could be set up a lot like a tanning bed joint, with soft sleepy music piped into small rooms comprised of a twin-sized sleep space with a clothing hook for jackets and ties. People could book naps around the clock, 20-minute minimum to 2-hour max. Wake-up calls and music optional. Nap Hotel. Wouldn't you like to know that your surgeon had a nap before operating?
Just a thought.
here's an idea that's been percolating for a year. Nap Hotels. I was in the Hospital District (Brookline) of Boston and realized there is a completely unexploited market for shift workers from students to surgeons who work 12 hours and probably need a nap more than they need a good sandwich.
A nap hotel could be set up a lot like a tanning bed joint, with soft sleepy music piped into small rooms comprised of a twin-sized sleep space with a clothing hook for jackets and ties. People could book naps around the clock, 20-minute minimum to 2-hour max. Wake-up calls and music optional. Nap Hotel. Wouldn't you like to know that your surgeon had a nap before operating?
Just a thought.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Child Care For Shift Workers
Okay,
Here's my next idea. I think someone should form a non-profit to deliver childcare to night-shift workers. I worked it all out in my head:
This center would have play/homework areas, a kitchen, and (mainly) beds in small dorm rooms.
Boys and girls separated and children also separated by age group: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12. There could be workers for each room, sort of like in a nursing home, and webcams so that parents and workers could keep an eye on them through the night.
Shifts covered could be 3-11, 7-7 and 11-7. Anywhere there are factories or hospitals (or both) would be perfect for marketing this idea. The center would not provide day care, but because of the dorms it could be transformed by day into a sick care center Monday-Friday for kids who have been treated, but are too sick to attend school. Two staff nurses can alternately supervise workers to meet this need.
While this has been done before in casinos and hospital markets in the West, it is always done as a for-profit partnership and so only workers associated with the partnership may take advantage of the child care.
I want to help the shift workers who are struggling to find acceptable care outside normal childcare hours.
Here's my next idea. I think someone should form a non-profit to deliver childcare to night-shift workers. I worked it all out in my head:
This center would have play/homework areas, a kitchen, and (mainly) beds in small dorm rooms.
Boys and girls separated and children also separated by age group: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12. There could be workers for each room, sort of like in a nursing home, and webcams so that parents and workers could keep an eye on them through the night.
Shifts covered could be 3-11, 7-7 and 11-7. Anywhere there are factories or hospitals (or both) would be perfect for marketing this idea. The center would not provide day care, but because of the dorms it could be transformed by day into a sick care center Monday-Friday for kids who have been treated, but are too sick to attend school. Two staff nurses can alternately supervise workers to meet this need.
While this has been done before in casinos and hospital markets in the West, it is always done as a for-profit partnership and so only workers associated with the partnership may take advantage of the child care.
I want to help the shift workers who are struggling to find acceptable care outside normal childcare hours.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Chirp Beep For Cells
Okay,
Here's my first idea.
Someone needs to invent for cell phones the same chirp mechanism that makes smoke alarms chirp to alert battery replacement. The design should activate when the phone hasn't been used, turned on or touched in 24 hours. It should operate by a chirp every 20 seconds, so that lost cells phones can be located even when they turn off because of low battery. I personally know of at least ten cell phones that wouldn't have been replaced if this mechanism was in place.
Somebody invent it quick, before I lose my cell phone!
Here's my first idea.
Someone needs to invent for cell phones the same chirp mechanism that makes smoke alarms chirp to alert battery replacement. The design should activate when the phone hasn't been used, turned on or touched in 24 hours. It should operate by a chirp every 20 seconds, so that lost cells phones can be located even when they turn off because of low battery. I personally know of at least ten cell phones that wouldn't have been replaced if this mechanism was in place.
Somebody invent it quick, before I lose my cell phone!
Monday, March 10, 2008
Charlotte Houses
Circling to land,
All the tiny Charlotte houses
Coil in comforting precision
Amid tree-lined pockets of the city,
Identical dark crowns, white siding, swimming pools
Two-storied and essentially agreed upon,
Cul-de-sacs of ordered wealth
Severely gated, secure from ground inspection
But blandly desolate from above
All the tiny Charlotte houses
Coil in comforting precision
Amid tree-lined pockets of the city,
Identical dark crowns, white siding, swimming pools
Two-storied and essentially agreed upon,
Cul-de-sacs of ordered wealth
Severely gated, secure from ground inspection
But blandly desolate from above
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Home
You’re a home I never knew
Dream familiar, yet fathomless,
Home of healing seas,
Salt tempests blast denial
Of your invariable stain,
Ocean-breeze kisses,
Like a tender crown of care
Rest faint upon my breast
Dream familiar, yet fathomless,
Home of healing seas,
Salt tempests blast denial
Of your invariable stain,
Ocean-breeze kisses,
Like a tender crown of care
Rest faint upon my breast
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Out On The Edge
I don’t like it, but there’s this edge. I believe all women and some men have been near its border; felt the cold chill of that deep chasm beyond.
It happens when we’re overwhelmed, and without resources to get the job done.
When we’re young or old.
When we’re isolated from support of friends or mothers.
When we finally beg for help in a desperate whisper as we slip over the edge, but no one hears.
When hormones sweep in like high tide, engulfing the sanity, sucking our breath from our lungs.
When we just want to call out “Do Over!” and have that be enough to make a fresh start way over there, away from the edge, where something named "normal" resides.
When a women drops over that edge, and takes a few victims with her, we SAY we can’t imagine what was going through her head. But in the dark night of our own souls, we can. That’s what scares us most.
To be so brave and such a coward all at once.
To stand up and shout, “Enough!” And yet, to choose the worst possible method of doing so. To finally jump off the beckoning edge.
I reveal this paradox of weakness and strength in women without prejudice.
Women are the foundation. They represent firm earth, boundless strength..and helplessness. Women can always carry one more burden. There is never a last straw, even if women made up that metaphor.
My son is in jail?
My daughter’s pregnant?
My child needs a psychiatric evaluation?
My husband lost his job?
My mother is dying?
Just load that next weight on my back. I can take it. My mother took it. It’s our job. We can’t afford to get sick, or give up . . . or get any closer to that slippery, uneven edge.
Some of us seem to handle these myriad burdens perfectly. Whip up a gourmet meal? Stitch a quick prom dress? What kind of woman am I if I can’t do these things while mopping floors? Mostly we just muddle through, like Erma Bombeck did.
We loved Erma because she made us look good. She made us laugh at ourselves, which is how we push away from the jagged edge. Even hysterical laughter pushes the insanity back into the closet when it crawls up into our laps at the end of a long day.
A few of us are out near the edge most of the time.
So, when one woman drops her load and steps off, we shake in our shoes because we know: There, but for the Grace of God, go I.
It happens when we’re overwhelmed, and without resources to get the job done.
When we’re young or old.
When we’re isolated from support of friends or mothers.
When we finally beg for help in a desperate whisper as we slip over the edge, but no one hears.
When hormones sweep in like high tide, engulfing the sanity, sucking our breath from our lungs.
When we just want to call out “Do Over!” and have that be enough to make a fresh start way over there, away from the edge, where something named "normal" resides.
When a women drops over that edge, and takes a few victims with her, we SAY we can’t imagine what was going through her head. But in the dark night of our own souls, we can. That’s what scares us most.
To be so brave and such a coward all at once.
To stand up and shout, “Enough!” And yet, to choose the worst possible method of doing so. To finally jump off the beckoning edge.
I reveal this paradox of weakness and strength in women without prejudice.
Women are the foundation. They represent firm earth, boundless strength..and helplessness. Women can always carry one more burden. There is never a last straw, even if women made up that metaphor.
My son is in jail?
My daughter’s pregnant?
My child needs a psychiatric evaluation?
My husband lost his job?
My mother is dying?
Just load that next weight on my back. I can take it. My mother took it. It’s our job. We can’t afford to get sick, or give up . . . or get any closer to that slippery, uneven edge.
Some of us seem to handle these myriad burdens perfectly. Whip up a gourmet meal? Stitch a quick prom dress? What kind of woman am I if I can’t do these things while mopping floors? Mostly we just muddle through, like Erma Bombeck did.
We loved Erma because she made us look good. She made us laugh at ourselves, which is how we push away from the jagged edge. Even hysterical laughter pushes the insanity back into the closet when it crawls up into our laps at the end of a long day.
A few of us are out near the edge most of the time.
So, when one woman drops her load and steps off, we shake in our shoes because we know: There, but for the Grace of God, go I.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
She left Her Eyebrows at Church Camp
It is my first year at church camp with teens. My own daughter is one of them. According to people much older than me, this place hasn’t changed in 40 years. Two lovely (air conditioned) worship centers were added in the past decade, but we only get in there about two hours a day. The dorms are simple. Concrete floors. Narrow wire and wood navy bunks. Three showers, three stalls. My lovely oldest daughter claims one bathroom stall as the location of her salvation, and while I have a hard time visualizing it, I can’t deny anyone’s moment of salvation.
She was my reason to be dorm mom that year. She left her eyebrows at church camp. Yes, her eyebrows. I can tell you about it now because she’s grown, as are her brows.
According to her, it was all Charlie’s fault. Either way, there was a dare involved. Charlie promised to shave his legs if she would shave her eyebrows. If she had been alert she would have realized that Charlie had already shaved his legs the day before on some other dare.
A crowd of youth gathered, chanted, the mob mentality kicked in, and zip--zip, there went the eyebrows. For three days, my daughter screamed whenever she saw herself in the mirror. I tried very hard not to laugh. Eyebrows grow back. Good sense, however, may never find fertile ground in the soul of a 14-year-old girl.
She was my reason to be dorm mom that year. She left her eyebrows at church camp. Yes, her eyebrows. I can tell you about it now because she’s grown, as are her brows.
According to her, it was all Charlie’s fault. Either way, there was a dare involved. Charlie promised to shave his legs if she would shave her eyebrows. If she had been alert she would have realized that Charlie had already shaved his legs the day before on some other dare.
A crowd of youth gathered, chanted, the mob mentality kicked in, and zip--zip, there went the eyebrows. For three days, my daughter screamed whenever she saw herself in the mirror. I tried very hard not to laugh. Eyebrows grow back. Good sense, however, may never find fertile ground in the soul of a 14-year-old girl.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Monet Blue
Monet blue walls
And mauve doorways
Erased the unease
Of our first visit
To the stout, negro woman’s home
The house, aged, dignified
Browning biscuits perfume rooms
Wafting through ancient furnishing with musty scent
Invoking us to breath secure within
Monet blue walls
And mauve doorways
Erased the unease
Of our first visit
To the stout, negro woman’s home
The house, aged, dignified
Browning biscuits perfume rooms
Wafting through ancient furnishing with musty scent
Invoking us to breath secure within
Monet blue walls
Monday, November 19, 2007
One Hero of Many
Vic is my oldest friend.
She's not old, but our friendship is old.
We met our first day in Panama, May 1984. The reason I mention her is that she taught me the most important lesson about all relationships and it is this:
Your behavior does not dictate mine. Your behavior does not dictate mine. You behavior does not dictate mine!!
It's so simple, yet a physical rule that changes every interaction. It is not just a rule, it's a practice.
She is also my hero because when a beloved uncle tried to teach her about trust as a child by asking her to jump into his arms, and then dropping her!! She learned a little about trust, but a great deal about truth. She has never once tolerated a lie and she has a pretty hearty intuition when she is being lied to. Her children can surely attest to that.
Because truth is sometimes a very slippery subject for me, I look to her for that solid ground.
Love you, Girl...
She's not old, but our friendship is old.
We met our first day in Panama, May 1984. The reason I mention her is that she taught me the most important lesson about all relationships and it is this:
Your behavior does not dictate mine. Your behavior does not dictate mine. You behavior does not dictate mine!!
It's so simple, yet a physical rule that changes every interaction. It is not just a rule, it's a practice.
She is also my hero because when a beloved uncle tried to teach her about trust as a child by asking her to jump into his arms, and then dropping her!! She learned a little about trust, but a great deal about truth. She has never once tolerated a lie and she has a pretty hearty intuition when she is being lied to. Her children can surely attest to that.
Because truth is sometimes a very slippery subject for me, I look to her for that solid ground.
Love you, Girl...
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Buried Memories
The graveyard of my childhood lay
Just beyond the schoolyard’s crippled gate
It took a morning’s march,
Sharing mother-daughter secrets
Fearless, we’d pick one neglected stone
To sit near in the sun
Fine clay dust clinging yellow to bare feet
We sought the oldest date,
The sweetest words—none but we two
Honoring faded bones,
Ghosts who buried them
Long wandering greener lawns
One day monsters rumbled in
Pulling stones like rotted teeth,
I gazed through classroom panes,
Imagining uncertain souls
Evaporate to morning mist
Now interred beneath trimmed turf,
Cemented into skateboard trails
Just beyond the schoolyard’s crippled gate
Just beyond the schoolyard’s crippled gate
It took a morning’s march,
Sharing mother-daughter secrets
Fearless, we’d pick one neglected stone
To sit near in the sun
Fine clay dust clinging yellow to bare feet
We sought the oldest date,
The sweetest words—none but we two
Honoring faded bones,
Ghosts who buried them
Long wandering greener lawns
One day monsters rumbled in
Pulling stones like rotted teeth,
I gazed through classroom panes,
Imagining uncertain souls
Evaporate to morning mist
Now interred beneath trimmed turf,
Cemented into skateboard trails
Just beyond the schoolyard’s crippled gate
Monday, November 05, 2007
Prayer
When I think of my prayer life with God, I see with the clear eyes of age how my relationship with God deepened and changed throughout my life.
I also see my whole life strung together in compact, defining moments of prayer like pearls strung exquisitely together on the strong fiber of God’s faithfulness and love for me.
Each new beginning and each ending tied off as a jeweler might make his delicate knots between each pearl in a strand so that none might be lost if a break occurs.
This is how my life of prayer appears to me.
I also see my whole life strung together in compact, defining moments of prayer like pearls strung exquisitely together on the strong fiber of God’s faithfulness and love for me.
Each new beginning and each ending tied off as a jeweler might make his delicate knots between each pearl in a strand so that none might be lost if a break occurs.
This is how my life of prayer appears to me.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Acting On The Dream
Okay, so you gave yourself permission to dream, and maybe you made a list of the things you want, no matter how outrageous they might be. Now the enormous question is: How do I get there from here?
While you’re the only expert on your goals and dreams, I do have a few tips. First take your list and begin to write or draw a picture of what your life looks like when those goals are accomplished. Steep yourself in the reality of it for a few moments as if it is now accomplished. Some people will call this visualization, while others call it fantasy, but either way, it’s a good tool to begin the steps toward making it real.
I always wanted to be an astronaut. Unfortunately, I get airsick occasionally and seasick regularly. I can’t go on those spinny rides at the fair. There may be limitations in actual astronaut work for a girl like me. But maybe after I start to draw a picture of it, it’s not really being an astronaut that I want.
Maybe I just want to see the Earth from space, or help get the space station operational so that my children can go out there someday. Maybe what I liked about astronauts was the adventure of new places and the possibility of meeting aliens. Maybe I could write a space novel or movie script. My point is this: Sometimes we think certain limitations revoke our dreams, but getting down to the gritty details helps us see what it really is that we wanted all along.
While you’re the only expert on your goals and dreams, I do have a few tips. First take your list and begin to write or draw a picture of what your life looks like when those goals are accomplished. Steep yourself in the reality of it for a few moments as if it is now accomplished. Some people will call this visualization, while others call it fantasy, but either way, it’s a good tool to begin the steps toward making it real.
I always wanted to be an astronaut. Unfortunately, I get airsick occasionally and seasick regularly. I can’t go on those spinny rides at the fair. There may be limitations in actual astronaut work for a girl like me. But maybe after I start to draw a picture of it, it’s not really being an astronaut that I want.
Maybe I just want to see the Earth from space, or help get the space station operational so that my children can go out there someday. Maybe what I liked about astronauts was the adventure of new places and the possibility of meeting aliens. Maybe I could write a space novel or movie script. My point is this: Sometimes we think certain limitations revoke our dreams, but getting down to the gritty details helps us see what it really is that we wanted all along.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Santa Fe Spirits
The desolate drive from the blue bays of San Diego to the naked red mesas of New Mexico slowly equipped my mind and body for the change.
As the six of us sweated through thirsty desert, crushed into an airless turquoise Pontiac, we soon craved any respite from close quarters.
To make matters tortuous, my father--a large, darkly handsome wanderer--saw travel as a mission to get from point “A” to point “B” in Guiness-World-Record time. Since we never fed in restaurants and rarely stopped for gas, my opportunities to escape the congested rear seat were few.
--From my novel
As the six of us sweated through thirsty desert, crushed into an airless turquoise Pontiac, we soon craved any respite from close quarters.
To make matters tortuous, my father--a large, darkly handsome wanderer--saw travel as a mission to get from point “A” to point “B” in Guiness-World-Record time. Since we never fed in restaurants and rarely stopped for gas, my opportunities to escape the congested rear seat were few.
--From my novel
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Getting To It
The beginning of giving your creative self an honored place in your life is to ask, “What do I really want?” Some of us have left those dreams on the back burner for so long we only have a vague ache to inhale a refreshing ocean breeze and reinhabit ourselves.
For most of us, the real problem is that you can’t know what you want until you know a lot more about what you don’t want. For instance, if I want a burger, and I never ate a burger before, it wouldn’t really matter where I start. But after I’ve tried a few burgers from a variety of places, I’m pretty likely to be more selective.
For a more appropriate example, I have a friend who was determined that the main thing she lacked in life was a husband. She had three husbands (in a row) and they never quite managed to live up to her expectations.
I finally asked her this: “If you were completely secure financially without a husband, what would you want in a husband.” At that point she realized she didn’t want a husband, she wanted a bank. Her way of putting it was: “I could overlook all the yucky man stuff if he would make me financially secure.”
SO, what you DON'T want is scattered behind you on the path to finding your passion.
For most of us, the real problem is that you can’t know what you want until you know a lot more about what you don’t want. For instance, if I want a burger, and I never ate a burger before, it wouldn’t really matter where I start. But after I’ve tried a few burgers from a variety of places, I’m pretty likely to be more selective.
For a more appropriate example, I have a friend who was determined that the main thing she lacked in life was a husband. She had three husbands (in a row) and they never quite managed to live up to her expectations.
I finally asked her this: “If you were completely secure financially without a husband, what would you want in a husband.” At that point she realized she didn’t want a husband, she wanted a bank. Her way of putting it was: “I could overlook all the yucky man stuff if he would make me financially secure.”
SO, what you DON'T want is scattered behind you on the path to finding your passion.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
By The Poet
Silence is important
In a poem (the poet said)
As images compress
Words confine each bright hole of silence
Leaving the empty places
With their own truth
In a poem (the poet said)
As images compress
Words confine each bright hole of silence
Leaving the empty places
With their own truth
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Dreaming Your Life
Here’s an important question. Why don’t we get what we want?
My experience with people, especially women, is that most of us are basically dissatisfied with parts of our lives. The primary reason for this is that we don’t give ourselves permission to get what we want.
Men struggle with this sometimes, too, but I think women struggle longer with it. We are the nurturers. We are the ones who have to wait. We raise children, support our husbands, and try to love the menial tasks we have to do to get those people out the door with their shoes on the right feet and matching socks inside of them.
We don’t really think we can have everything we want unless others sacrifice, and we can’t do that to them! We say, “I’ll try throwing pots when the kids are grown”. Or, “I’ll travel the world after George dies”.
So we put our hidden dreams and aspirations on the back burner for a day…a year…a decade. Many of us are surrounded by people who think we are genetically mutated to love cleaning up after others. They think we are designed to want only happiness and clean undies for them.
Sometimes God is the only one who knows our secret purpose, and if we ever knew, we’ve forgotten.
There lies danger in those deep but quiet waters. Beneath the calm surface of cheerful (or NOT so cheerful) service lurks an artist, a writer, a gourmet cook, a mechanic, or a passionate inventor waiting to be acknowledged. Drug it, drink it away, do your best to stuff it down, but sooner or later it will break the surface and beg to be unleashed, possibly creating a tsunami in those lives we’ve worked so hard to protect.
My experience with people, especially women, is that most of us are basically dissatisfied with parts of our lives. The primary reason for this is that we don’t give ourselves permission to get what we want.
Men struggle with this sometimes, too, but I think women struggle longer with it. We are the nurturers. We are the ones who have to wait. We raise children, support our husbands, and try to love the menial tasks we have to do to get those people out the door with their shoes on the right feet and matching socks inside of them.
We don’t really think we can have everything we want unless others sacrifice, and we can’t do that to them! We say, “I’ll try throwing pots when the kids are grown”. Or, “I’ll travel the world after George dies”.
So we put our hidden dreams and aspirations on the back burner for a day…a year…a decade. Many of us are surrounded by people who think we are genetically mutated to love cleaning up after others. They think we are designed to want only happiness and clean undies for them.
Sometimes God is the only one who knows our secret purpose, and if we ever knew, we’ve forgotten.
There lies danger in those deep but quiet waters. Beneath the calm surface of cheerful (or NOT so cheerful) service lurks an artist, a writer, a gourmet cook, a mechanic, or a passionate inventor waiting to be acknowledged. Drug it, drink it away, do your best to stuff it down, but sooner or later it will break the surface and beg to be unleashed, possibly creating a tsunami in those lives we’ve worked so hard to protect.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Daughters
My daughters
Reborn endlessly of midnight labor,
I wrestle with your souls’ distress,
This imposed impossibility
Of liberating you
From brutal grip of certain life
Feeble me
Sidelined to the rear playground corner
Witnessing your tumbles,
Unable to retrieve--or aid you to believe
These bruises will convey
Their own distilling consolation
Daughters
Each so astonishing--disparate
Strong, yet ever fragile
How inadequate my prayers
My irregular devotion
Abandons you to deep abyss
Of faithless survival
Lord,
I granted them to You
An everlasting age ago,
Let my sacrifice suffice,
Impart hopeful
Salve to desperate wounds
My womb
Still aching with the fact of you,
Stinging waves swept you to my wild shores,
Forgive my labor’s fee
Embrace this deficient life
With love
Reborn endlessly of midnight labor,
I wrestle with your souls’ distress,
This imposed impossibility
Of liberating you
From brutal grip of certain life
Feeble me
Sidelined to the rear playground corner
Witnessing your tumbles,
Unable to retrieve--or aid you to believe
These bruises will convey
Their own distilling consolation
Daughters
Each so astonishing--disparate
Strong, yet ever fragile
How inadequate my prayers
My irregular devotion
Abandons you to deep abyss
Of faithless survival
Lord,
I granted them to You
An everlasting age ago,
Let my sacrifice suffice,
Impart hopeful
Salve to desperate wounds
My womb
Still aching with the fact of you,
Stinging waves swept you to my wild shores,
Forgive my labor’s fee
Embrace this deficient life
With love
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Write Yourself Into A New Story
My inner writer percolates for ten years in the arid desert of self-inflicted non-writing exile because she fears to write truth until everyone dies.
Without truth, there is no story. With truth, her life will unravel. Then one day the tight laces come undone. She does not kill herself or others, she does something much worse: She writes herself into a new story.
When I gave myself permission to walk away, I found a house for rent that very day and subsequently, every other thing I needed. No plan. No savings. No safety net. No bed!! Two daughters (one pressing a self-destruct button daily), one Very Difficult Husband who thinks I’ll betray myself and return to him when I am broke (and he controls my job and reads my e-mail). But now the truth is out and it empowers me. I’ll live under a bridge for it. It’s ugly, but it’s mine. And no one has to die.
I had to think of myself as a character in a book to make my escape. Had to admit I’m not always (or maybe ever) a good girl, and God may not want me pretending anymore. I never did anyone any favors being Mom The Martyr Who Never Writes. My first truth manifests itself. I am not that woman.
Without truth, there is no story. With truth, her life will unravel. Then one day the tight laces come undone. She does not kill herself or others, she does something much worse: She writes herself into a new story.
When I gave myself permission to walk away, I found a house for rent that very day and subsequently, every other thing I needed. No plan. No savings. No safety net. No bed!! Two daughters (one pressing a self-destruct button daily), one Very Difficult Husband who thinks I’ll betray myself and return to him when I am broke (and he controls my job and reads my e-mail). But now the truth is out and it empowers me. I’ll live under a bridge for it. It’s ugly, but it’s mine. And no one has to die.
I had to think of myself as a character in a book to make my escape. Had to admit I’m not always (or maybe ever) a good girl, and God may not want me pretending anymore. I never did anyone any favors being Mom The Martyr Who Never Writes. My first truth manifests itself. I am not that woman.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
My Lips to God's Ear
This is my bed. It is my transition bed. I slept alone and dreamed the promises of healing and a new life. I prayed and treated myself as a sacred, wounded friend for the first time in forty-plus years, and this is the bed I slept in.
This is still my bed in some cosmic and essential way although it now dwells in a good friend’s house. I still visit, and occasionally I sleep in it again. When I do, this bed is still my miracle. It gives me rest and remembrance of one small piece of many answered prayers that fell serendipitously into my lap at exactly the right moments in the midst of chaos, signaling God’s perfect timing rather than my own.
It makes me both joyful and sad to sleep in this bed, because transitions build and grow us toward greater joy even as they prune us painfully. It’s a high bed, and significantly I scaled higher realms with less oxygen and more hazardous sheer cliff faces as my search for an authentic relationship with God (and myself) ascended to new levels, again.
This time I understood that God’s perfect love allows for suffering. I no longer believed in my own luck. This large pearl on the string of life’s turning points would be created by gnawing gut fear that I may save one of my children to sacrifice the other, or maybe I would later see that I sacrificed them both. Or—the long shot—I could be saving them both. Only God knew—but for me it was a blind leap.
In this bed I fortified myself for a legal conflict I had no experience to fight, and I resigned myself to the possibility of “living under a bridge” if many things did not work together for our good. Out of control, yet more in God’s control than ever. That was me, in this bed.
This is still my bed in some cosmic and essential way although it now dwells in a good friend’s house. I still visit, and occasionally I sleep in it again. When I do, this bed is still my miracle. It gives me rest and remembrance of one small piece of many answered prayers that fell serendipitously into my lap at exactly the right moments in the midst of chaos, signaling God’s perfect timing rather than my own.
It makes me both joyful and sad to sleep in this bed, because transitions build and grow us toward greater joy even as they prune us painfully. It’s a high bed, and significantly I scaled higher realms with less oxygen and more hazardous sheer cliff faces as my search for an authentic relationship with God (and myself) ascended to new levels, again.
This time I understood that God’s perfect love allows for suffering. I no longer believed in my own luck. This large pearl on the string of life’s turning points would be created by gnawing gut fear that I may save one of my children to sacrifice the other, or maybe I would later see that I sacrificed them both. Or—the long shot—I could be saving them both. Only God knew—but for me it was a blind leap.
In this bed I fortified myself for a legal conflict I had no experience to fight, and I resigned myself to the possibility of “living under a bridge” if many things did not work together for our good. Out of control, yet more in God’s control than ever. That was me, in this bed.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Sisters
I have a picture of my sister, Char. Perfect—this pose of her. She is eleven years old. Her untrimmed hair flails across her face in an erratic ocean wind.
She is standing atop a large drift of ocean-rotted wood flushed from the seas by tide. She is glorious. She is King of the Driftwood. She is master of her fate.
She is wearing a short, purple dress, baring bony knees. Her faded socks have dropped to her ankles. Her feet are floppy in too-large nondescript boy shoes. The whole ensemble comes from the goodwill of strangers. They are charity clothes. She hated most the charity clothes. The charity of those who would remind her later in school or church that she was wearing their old clothes. As if they had a right to tell her publicly what she already knew.
Char hated charity clothes for the same reason my mother loved them: they signified poverty. For my hippy mother, raised in comfortable middle class, this was an attainment. A virtue. Not for Char. For my sister it was a thing to escape. She pushed away from charity like a drowning girl, pushing against the ocean floor to gain clean, fresh air.
She is bold here, in this picture. She challenges the world. She knows herself and knows truth. In this moment, she rules the world in charity clothes. Her face is sassy with a sardonic grin of nearly hate. That glare of her eye barely conceals a secret mind shaking its fist at an unjust world and swearing it will never wear charity clothes again.
She is standing atop a large drift of ocean-rotted wood flushed from the seas by tide. She is glorious. She is King of the Driftwood. She is master of her fate.
She is wearing a short, purple dress, baring bony knees. Her faded socks have dropped to her ankles. Her feet are floppy in too-large nondescript boy shoes. The whole ensemble comes from the goodwill of strangers. They are charity clothes. She hated most the charity clothes. The charity of those who would remind her later in school or church that she was wearing their old clothes. As if they had a right to tell her publicly what she already knew.
Char hated charity clothes for the same reason my mother loved them: they signified poverty. For my hippy mother, raised in comfortable middle class, this was an attainment. A virtue. Not for Char. For my sister it was a thing to escape. She pushed away from charity like a drowning girl, pushing against the ocean floor to gain clean, fresh air.
She is bold here, in this picture. She challenges the world. She knows herself and knows truth. In this moment, she rules the world in charity clothes. Her face is sassy with a sardonic grin of nearly hate. That glare of her eye barely conceals a secret mind shaking its fist at an unjust world and swearing it will never wear charity clothes again.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Girl Talk III
She laughs because her oldest friends must either be sans-relationship or carefully plan their escapes from men to have a bit of girl-talk.
I am embarrassed to admit that I have escaped today, as well. I planned my escape and compromised for it. I love my husband, but the double standard is overt even in my third marriage. He informs me of his escapes—his small, manly vacations from my velvet noose.
“I am going to the game,” he announces. I can agree or disagree, but it is done.
I pave my escapes with concession, or at least conciliation. While you are at the game, I think I will go to the island. Don’t worry. I will board the dog, keep it cheap, not spend too much of my money or myself.
Will I ever feel free to say, “I am going to the island”? And will it ever feel safe and defensible? How many wives or lovers have paid the highest price for their escapes: finding younger versions of themselves in their beds when they returned?
Paybacks are a bitch. It stuns us that our freedom to belong to ourselves still balances on the apex of choice between constant aloneness and compromising togetherness.
I am embarrassed to admit that I have escaped today, as well. I planned my escape and compromised for it. I love my husband, but the double standard is overt even in my third marriage. He informs me of his escapes—his small, manly vacations from my velvet noose.
“I am going to the game,” he announces. I can agree or disagree, but it is done.
I pave my escapes with concession, or at least conciliation. While you are at the game, I think I will go to the island. Don’t worry. I will board the dog, keep it cheap, not spend too much of my money or myself.
Will I ever feel free to say, “I am going to the island”? And will it ever feel safe and defensible? How many wives or lovers have paid the highest price for their escapes: finding younger versions of themselves in their beds when they returned?
Paybacks are a bitch. It stuns us that our freedom to belong to ourselves still balances on the apex of choice between constant aloneness and compromising togetherness.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Girl-Talk II
My friends have always been the response of the Universe to my need. It is no small irony that we met on an airplane appearing to be well-traveled middle-aged girls. We were both traveling, at least in part, for men. We knew we would be seated together. Two flights and a layover later, what could we be but best friends forever? BFF.
This morning we filter our understanding of men through the steaming still of our years on earth, and honor our still sketchy faithfulness to our authentic inner girls. As if they are not quite virtuous enough to trot out in mixed company.
“Nobody wants to be alone,” echoes the whine of another friend, droning drunkenly in my ear through the phone on a different day. These words leap out in synchronic bas-relief. This black diamond of truth cuts through my own resistance, driving me to occasionally more stupid mating behavior as I become older and supposedly wiser. My friend this morning repeats that sentiment. She likes to be alone more than many women, but not always.
This morning we filter our understanding of men through the steaming still of our years on earth, and honor our still sketchy faithfulness to our authentic inner girls. As if they are not quite virtuous enough to trot out in mixed company.
“Nobody wants to be alone,” echoes the whine of another friend, droning drunkenly in my ear through the phone on a different day. These words leap out in synchronic bas-relief. This black diamond of truth cuts through my own resistance, driving me to occasionally more stupid mating behavior as I become older and supposedly wiser. My friend this morning repeats that sentiment. She likes to be alone more than many women, but not always.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Eating Charles Dickens
I met a poet today in a bookstore-restaurant where I waitress. There is probably no other bookstore-restaurant in the country where you can buy food and walk away with books. As a waitress I get first pick of all the books and--as a writer--I think it is beyond cool to discover donated books in this venue.
So here I am being a good little waitress, and I find that a regular customer is a poet. No romance here, just a love of language between a carpet salesman/poet and a waitress/poetess. and I'm amazed at the irony. Truth is stranger than fiction, because when the stars align and ironic coincidence occurs in life, we think of--as nearly contrived--what would be considered trite in fiction. funny thing.
So here I am being a good little waitress, and I find that a regular customer is a poet. No romance here, just a love of language between a carpet salesman/poet and a waitress/poetess. and I'm amazed at the irony. Truth is stranger than fiction, because when the stars align and ironic coincidence occurs in life, we think of--as nearly contrived--what would be considered trite in fiction. funny thing.
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