Contest

I have to tell you I just have not had time to clatter away at the keys this week. My sister, bless her little heart, fell off her bike and broke her ankle a week ago and I'm spending as much time as I can keeping her company because she is not feeling to well and can't get around much.

We have started a Uno championship tournament and it's not looking good for yours truly. My sister is the luckiest card player in the known universe. I've takin' to calling her sharkie. I think as soon as her leg is healed and she can walk, I'm packing us both off for a trip to Vegas. I'm sure she would strip every bit of gold off that glittering city of sin. She would need no help from me, I would just go along to help her tote her moneybags through the airport when she returns.

Our games usually start pretty friendly, but end up with me flinging curses around while she does the happy dance again.
You have to admire her style, it's not easy to do the happy dance with a 14 pound cast covering 8 pounds of screws and metal plates hanging around your ankle.

This weekend ( I'm writing this on Wednesday and using the new blogger feature to post into the future, you will see it Saturday! Cool!) we plan on playing another 3227 rounds of Uno, as well as watching a couple of long, dramatic, engaging films. My sister gets sucked right into a good drama, so I figure to take her mind off her wheelchair deformed butt by screening a few of my favorite dramatic movies that she has never viewed. I picked "Out of Africa" and "Legends of the Fall". Both are sweeping sagas with lots of drama, a few tears, some adventure and a couple cute guys. I also picked up "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", in case we need some comic relief after watching Brad Pitt morph into a crazed pirate. (please, Hollywood, we don't ever want to see Brad with a beard again!)

Meanwhile, I wanted to give you something fun to do for a few days 'till I can get back to posting more often. I have this wonderful photo of- I can't tell you where- and I thought wouldn't it be fun to have a contest?

So here is the photo:



Now, who can tell me what and where this is? I will give you a hint- it's not some isolated outpost in the middle of no where.
The first comment posted with the correct answer will get...a....um...lots of praise?
Your name in lights? Officially recognized? A round of applause?

Keep in mind I have to moderate the comments and post them so it might be a few days before you see your name in lights. Thanks for playing! This is gonna be fun! Talk soon, Meandering

Pope Benedict XVI US Tour ‘08

The t-shirt would be a little lame, right? I mean, the back would say this:

Pope Benedict XVI US Tour ‘08
“Blessing the US!”
Washington, DC
New York, NY

Not much of a tour, only two stops, but I guess that is what made it so special. I was thrilled to have gotten a ticket to a historic religious event like this. And I’m not even Catholic. As I told you in an earlier post, I was riding shotgun for my devout catholic friend who wanted a companion for the long trip. I owed her, and I’ll admit, in this instance I was glad I owed her and happy to pay up.

I could give you a blow by blow of the whole event, the drive to New York, the kindness of the Church group who allowed us to enter their parish lottery for tickets and then took us into their hearts and onto their bus. The drive down the Hudson, with the steely grey skies and a cold wind blowing us along.

My discomfort with seeing New York City again, I know that many people consider it a tourist destination, a thrilling fun place to visit and apparently a lot of people consider it a great place to live and work, but I have to admit I don’t care for NYC. I hadn’t been there in about 15 years and I could have spent the rest of my life with out going again. I don’t know, it’s just to grey, to dirty, to cement and steel, to crowded, to noisy and yes, I know about central park but besides that, I don’t see enough nature to keep a June bug alive. It’s just too manmade for me. I don’t like that caged in feeling I get when there are buildings towering all around me. I want to see the sky above, the horizon in the distance and the earth under my feet, so NYC and me, we just don’t fit.

I could go on and on about the amazing choreography of the support staff who parked 800 buses and got 57,000 people through security in the blink of an eye. I was having trouble telling the FBI guys in their conservative suits from the Catholic guys dressed for Mass with the Pope. The NYC cops were short. Yes, I said short. I’ve never seen so many short cops in my life. Maybe it’s a process of evolution; these homeboys growing up in crowded city conditions are naturally starting to grow smaller.

They were all very nice, just small. I was especially happy with the one who promised not to remove us from the event if we crashed the men’s room because honestly, the ladies room line was around the stadium. I saw one of the shorty cops in our section of the stadium, who had never taken his eyes off the crowd during the whole event, pull his crucifix out of his shirt and cross himself as the Pope concluded Mass. I suspect he was thrilled to be making overtime protecting the head of his Church, I just wish he could have participated in the Mass as well.

I could also go on and on about the number of people, the amazing diversity of ages and nationality, the large group of novice priests in baseball caps (so cute!), the occasional Nun in habit surrounded by little girls with starry eyes asking questions, ( that’s cute too!). The Monks in robes, the Knights of Columbus in full regalia (Stunning!), all the Bishops and Cardinals in tall hats and flowing robes, the elderly dressed in their Sunday best, the families of faithful, the crowds of security people, the reporters and cameras and all of our NYC hosts, the staff at the stadium.

I could go on about the pre- Pope show with Harry Connick Jr. which was a real treat and by then the cold winds were letting up and the clouds were beginning to slide away so the whole event was becoming much more comfortable. My hands were thawing out.

Finally the time for mass arrived and the bells called the faithful to service. The ritual of the Catholic Mass is a beautiful thing to see and even more so when attended by a horde of Bishops and Cardinals and 57,000 people. The Pope made his way around the stadium in the “pope-mobile” and the teenager behind me told his grandma he wanted to get a truck just like that to tour around town in.

When the Pope finally stepped onto the stage and the cameras focused on him, his image filled the big screens and I got a warm fuzzy feeling. I can’t explain it, I just did. Like I was looking at my best friends favorite Grandpa. I raised my white scarf ( handed to me at the gate courtesy of the church) and waved like crazy, welcoming the Pope. It didn’t take long for the crowd to become still, after all, I imagine a large number of people in the crowd had gone to Catholic schools, had been disciplined by the Nuns and knew when it was time to settle down.

The Mass started and I kept half an eye on my devout Catholic friend because I knew that the mass progressed in a predictable fashion and there were times to stand and times to sit and times to bow your head. I was taking my cues from my friend and wondering if God was keeping score, how many missed masses could I make up by attending one mass with the Pope? I figured conservatively that if I were catholic, I would have missed 2600 masses so far in my life. Could I trade, say, half of those in by attending this one?

I was contemplating this question, observing the crowd at their mass when suddenly it came to the part in the mass where the priest calls out and the congregation answers back and 57,000 voices rose together like a flock of doves above the stadium and as one voice answered the call of their faith. I was stunned with the beauty of it. It was enormous.

It was like the entire stadium full of people became one being and the rise and fall of the mass was the heartbeat and breath of this giant. The call of the Priest became the foghorn and the mass the lighthouse in the fog. The huge crowd moved as one being, eyes closed, just listening and responding as it was guided home. Every move of the mass was echoed by 57,000 beings moving as one being sewn together from 57,000 threads, stand up, sit down, bow head. It was the same, always, in every church everywhere and everyone moved with certainty. The consistency a solid rock foundation, they were held comfortably in the arms of the ritual they knew without doubt.

I stood aside as 57,000 people were given the sacrament by hundreds of priests. I looked around and saw 57,000 people in blissful contemplation of the most holy of their rituals. The “vibe” was almost visible and I think, just maybe, that the stadium seen from outside would have had a sheen to it. As the mass ended I took up my white scarf again, and with everyone else bid Pope Benedict XVI goodbye.

It was incredible to see, I mean, who would have thought 57,000 people anywhere, anytime, for any reason, could move in perfect synchronicity? But it did happen, I saw it. I heard it. I felt a sudden renewal in my faith in faith.

I think for most people, faith is like a red line on a thermometer, moving up and down in the seasons of their life. If we look at faith as the thread that sews the garment of our life together, we realize the consistency of the stitches to be what makes the garment stronger. As we learn to sew with faith and our stitches become more uniform, no longer tiny and tight in some places, long and loose in others, but consistently even, always in faith, sewn with care, the garment of our life becomes stronger. No longer is our garment easily torn apart by the hands of fate.

For me, that is the message of the Mass, always the same, everywhere, through time, never changing, consistently calling to the faithful to remain so.

Signs of Spring

I saw the first signs of spring yesterday. They were all over town, on every corner, signs that said yard sale and garage sale and estate sale. Signs that appeared to have grown and bloomed overnight in profusion. Big signs and little signs, hand made signs and store bought signs, in a rainbow of colors.

Yes, it’s definitely spring and time to shake out the closets and unclog the garage and rid your self of all that winter gain. I’m jumping on the bandwagon and planning my own yard sale.

I don’t know how all this stuff gets in my house, it seems to grow of its own accord and spread like some all climate ivy. One day my closets are empty and the next they are overgrown. When I moved into my 1900 square foot house it was so empty, with my 600 square foot apartment furnishings. Now it looks like I have lived here for 300 years and developed some obsessive packratting skills.

I’m going to start with the clothes closet. One of my friends said to me one time “ You have a lot of clothes, you know?” Really? I do? Doesn’t everyone use one entire spare bedroom for a closet? Doesn’t everyone have 3 dressers, 2 wardrobes, 5 closets (2 just for coats), dozens of shoe boxes and a shelf unit designed specifically for purses? Doesn’t everyone get calls from major motion picture studios asking to borrow when they are out fitting 3000 extras?

I’m determined to trim down, remove the excess and get all Zen with my wardrobe. I’m tossing anything that is not a perfect fit, does not wash easily, and isn’t museum quality vintage. I’m tossing all artificial fabrics and anything made in china, even if I did buy it secondhand. By the way, if you buy vintage or consignment, most of your choices have nothing to do with China.

When I’m done with the clothes closets I’m moving onto the Christmas decorations. I’m culling it to the ones that fit on the tree, and again, vintage. Last year I tried to save trees by buying vintage Christmas cards at an antique fair. Watch the envelope size if you try this, one style I bought was such a cute but odd size I had to put them in new envelopes to get them past the post office inspectors. I’m going to go natural with my holiday decorations from now on and stick to pine cones, pop corn strings, cranberries, greenery and hot house poinsettias. None of which will be sitting in my attic come July.

Then on to the book shelves, which, over the years and numerous moves are already less crowded then in my past. I still think I can do away with some of the books I’ve collected since my last move, like the one on making candles (to complicated, messy and time consuming) or the one on quilting (already used it once and remember how), or the pile of novels that I bought for next to nothing and already enjoyed ( I seldom read a novel twice). I have very few books that would be hard or impossible to find again if I really wanted to re-read them.

Next I will delve into the linen closet because I’ve finally come to understand the universal truth that the curtains from one home never fit the windows of the next home. Hopefully this realization is fully rooted and has grown to the point that when I move again I will be smart enough to leave the 3 tons of curtains from my current abode right where they belong- hanging in the windows. I’ve also come to realize that no matter how cold it is outside, nobody really needs 14 blankets, three sleeping bags and 2 comforters.

I think I’m gonna have the grand daddy of all yard sales!

Now I come to the perilous part of the unloading- the kitchen. I admit I’m an addict. I can’t pass a cute vintage dish or kitchen utensil with out cooing to it. My cupboards are so full they are pulling away from the walls. I have enough place settings to supply the Waldorf Astoria during wedding season. It’s funny really, because my table only seats 4. I have dishes from the 1800’s to the 1960’s. I have every color of the rainbow and some. I could open a vintage dish store to rival patterns.com. I have enough vintage covered casserole dishes to supply an Amish barn raising party. And I seldom cook. I have no defense, just a newly conceived offense- if it’s replaceable, get rid of it. I’m sure someone else would love to attend a potluck with one of those vintage casseroles, and I hope they stop to shop at my humongous yard sale.

After I recover from skinning my kitchen I’m heading with gusto onto the big ticket items. Every yard sale has to have big ticket items to attract a crowd. Last time I had a sale I dragged half my furniture out to the yard and put “sold” signs on every piece just to attract attention. This time, if I drag it out, it really is for sale. I’m thinking things like my bar stools, which have been floundering around since my last move because this house has no bar, and my telescope that has not left it’s box in a few years. I have more chairs than asses in my house so I think a few of those could go. Things like that, handy when you need them, but honestly, how often do you need them?

So, my battle plan is drawn, a date circled on the calendar and numerous prayers for good weather already offered. I hope this helps cure my compulsion to fill my space with stuff. After all, it’s a lot of work to carry all that stuff out to the yard, set up a nice looking sale and sit in a yard chair all day making small talk and change. In this area, yard sales start at the crack of dawn and traditionally last just one day- after all, Sunday is for church, not shopping. When the last sale is done, and the crowds have dispersed, I’m committed to loading every last item off the yard directly into the car for a short ride to the local thrift store. Then I’m gonna count the loot and breath in my new found wide open spaces.

Eat Pray Love

One of my friends gave me a book to read this week. This is the same friend that sometimes brings me margarita glasses or bottles of wine or yoga DVD's. She's also been known to motivate me into exercising, and she's the only other person on the planet who can get anywhere near my one-woman cat, so she's his sitter. As you can see, she's a valuable friend. She's a gem, and she brought me a gem of a book. It was so good I just have to tell you all to go get it and read it. I loved every bit of it. From the cover art to the last goodbye, this book is fantastic.

The book entitled Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a series of articles about a year in her life when she stepped back and said “who am I”, and the path she took to discover the answer. Ms. Gilbert, as it turns out, was already a professional writer, and that may explain why the book was so well written. Her style of writing has depth and humor rolled into one. When I grow up, I want to write like she does. In fact, I wish I had written this book.

During her year of living discoverously, she traveled to three areas of the globe that held some sort of fascination for her and along the way she met many a strange and wise character. She learned to listen with her heart as well as her ears, and write from her being as well as her mind.

I can’t tell you too much, or it would ruin your read, but I will tell you that she threw herself whole heartedly into three very foreign landscapes and came out looking like a local. She did, in fact, learn who she really was at the time and developed a path to continue to lead her to who she was going to be in the future. She became, I think, very flexible.

There were many times during my read that I would say to myself, that was fantastic, I should put that in my blog, there were just so many really cool concepts to ponder. I guess my favorite, and the one I will share with you is this:

On page 95 she says “The Bhagavad Gita – the ancient Indian Yogic text- says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly then to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection”.

I definitely have that living imperfectly concept down. Living imperfectly is a constant companion on my path. We hold hands while we walk. We are great friends. You could say we are peas in a pod. Add to that the fact that I have never been attracted to imitation anything, except of course when it comes to acrylic nails, and although I often find bits and pieces of others that I admire and wish to emulate, like for instance Tony Robbins in his live with passion frenzy or this writer, Elizabeth Gilbert with her humorous insightful style of writing, I think I’m safe in saying my life’s goal has never been to imitate anyone.

I’m an imperfect original and apparently I’m walking an imperfectly authentic path. According to the Bhagavad Gita, I’m doing great!

Mass at Yankee Stadium with Pope Benedict XVI

I'm still percolating on my article about meandering to NYC to see the Pope. It was really amazing, I can tell you that. Check back soon for the truth, the whole truth, and nothin' but the truth.

Three Days of Peace and Music

while I was meandering to NYC to see the Pope, I figured why not take a side trip and make another pilgrimage to another inspirational spot? The site of Woodstock is now a performing arts center with lots of parking, restrooms, and a visitors center. It's still a beautiful natural amphitheater surrounded by farmland and woods, and I swear it still carries "the vibe" of August 1969 when 3 days of peace and music birthed a new nation.

When The World Becomes to Large

It seems to me, that as our global world becomes smaller, our personal worlds become larger. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe not.

Remember way back when you had to go to the library to look up things or, if you were really lucky, you had a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica (first printing- 1768 in Scotland) at your house? Now all you have to do is sit at the computer and click away.

Remember when mass communication was unheard of? No, well, neither does anyone else. Newspapers (first printed, Germany, late 1400’s-first weekly, Britain 1622) have been around for a long time, but it wasn’t that long ago that newspapers were the only source of mass communication and a large part of the humanity couldn’t read! News got around by word of mouth. The first newspapers were only printed when something “news worthy” occurred.

It also wasn’t that long ago that a person’s interest in the world was pretty much limited to their home town, and possibly an occasional rumor of what was happening in the world outside that town. Top speed for a buckboard and horses is approximately 30 mph- try traveling around the world like that. It was a very large world, while personal worlds were relatively small.

Time moved slower it seemed.

Quantum physics discoveries seem to imply that as the universe expands, time is indeed speeding up, but I was unable to find a definite article on this topic.

Telephones were the next invention that made the world smaller. No longer did you have to wait weeks or months to get a letter from a relative or friend to find out the latest happenings out side of your town.

Then came radio, (first broadcasts to public, early 1920’s) and families gathered together to hear from the world. Before that, printed news traveled slowly. Suddenly news traveled at the speed of radio waves (The speed of a radio wave radiated into free space by a transmitting antenna is equal to the speed of light - 186,000 miles per second).

Television wasn’t far behind (first commercial broadcast July 1st, 1941) and now you could see what was going on as well as hear it. The world was as small as it could get- or so they thought.

Now it’s even smaller, because we have the ability to go out and get the information we want, our knowledge is not limited to what is delivered to us by newspapers or TV. Want to know what’s going on in Tibet (oh, excuse me, the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China) right now? Just get on line and search.

This onslaught of information is enough to crush anyone, but especially those born back when news was something you got at the picnic after church and it consisted of what was happening in your town of 300.

Back then you only had to worry about the three cows farmer Bill lost last week, or the fact that the town mill may close and leave people out of work. Now multiply that amount of worry by about a gazillion as you watch Buddhist Monks killed in Burma, children starving in Africa, floods in Germany, drought in Australia and that’s not even mentioning what’s going on in your own country, state and community. At one time it was a privilege of the educated to stay informed of global events, now maybe it’s not.

Now days you may not know your neighbors, but you can know what is going on around the globe. You probably don’t know the manager of the store you shop in (because the tiny corner grocery store is gone and you now have to drive to the big chain store to shop), but you feel like you know the cast of the latest successful TV show.

The global community has replaced the home town and that is pretty cool, unless you happen to be a 70 year old who feels the world has out grown you. It’s difficult for the young to keep up, how do we expect the elderly to cope?

We can’t really, and they often don’t. Their way of life has passed and they are lost, wondering what happened to family dinners, evenings on the porch and living in a neighborhood where you know the people next door, the banker, the grocer, the cop and the guy who filled the gas tank on your car.

How do you cope when your town has grown so large it’s hard to find your way around even on a good day? How do you keep your family together when the average person now changes jobs every ten years, and often with geographic change as well? How do you cope with 55 mph speed limits, ATM’s, E- tickets , automated customer service lines with menus having 20 options that lead to menus with 20 more options, and self serve everything? Now add in the general anxiety caused by ageing and you have way to much stress for one person. The world has changed, it’s become to large!

And all that modern, time saving, world uniting, robotic stuff looked so inviting back at the 1962 Worlds Fair hosted by Seattle. The Fair used the theme “The 21st Century” and a tag line of. ‘Better Living Through Science” to entice people with visions of a leisurely future in a global community enhanced by automation. Maybe no thought was given to the possibility that the science would run amok and leave the very people who nurtured it lying in its dust.