Pondering

I really need to thank my friends at the Mastery Foundation and Ann Overton for the box of quotes they sent me.

I often talk about 'pondering' things over. It's what I like to do. And the quotes give me that opportunity.

I'm going to share a few I've had scattered over my desk for the last couple of days. Take some time to ponder them. I'll make no comments. Don't try to 'get to the answer' or 'solve the problem'. There are no answers and no problems.

Just ponder.

PONDER (verb)
   to consider something carefully for a long time.
      ("The back porch is a quiet place where I can ponder.")
   syn. contemplate, meditate, muse, reflect, ruminate, speculate
                                                                          --Cambridge Dictionaries

"There is more to life than increasing it's speed."
                                                    Ghandi

"Silence is a privileged entry into the realm of God and into eternal life. For silence is a language that is infinitely deeper, more far reaching, more understanding, more compassionate, and more eternal than any other language."
                                                       Meister Eckhart

"The truth doesn't mean anything. It just is."
                                                      Werner Erhard

"We are fullly human only while playing, and we play only when we are human in the truest sense of the word."
                                                     Rudolph Steiner


Find your back porch and be blessed.

words matter and mean something

Chief Justice Roberts crossed over to the four remaining liberals on the Supreme Court to block a Louisiana law that would have left one abortion doctor in the whole state.

I'm sick and tired of the 'anti-abortion' forces in this country.

I'm AGAINST ABORTION and I'm so liberal I'd make most people's head spin. I wish there were never an abortion, ever, any where.

But words matter--I am PRO-CHOICE. I have no right to tell any woman what to do with her body whether or not I agree with what she does.

It's that simple.

I hate abortions--but I respect that women have the rights to their bodies, period.

And I'm sick and tired of those who claim fetuses have 'the sanctity of life' until they're born, then all bets are off.

Sanctity at birth but if you're a baby of color born into poverty, well, good luck with that on your own, our Pro-Life job is over.

If anti-abortionist believed in a living wage for all people, universal health care, equal and free education and enhancing Social Security as well as making sure a baby was born or not--well, I might be more compassionate to their beliefs.

But none of that is in anyway true.

Put up or shut up Pro-Life supporters....

R.I.P.--Albert Finney and our youth....

When we heard that Albert Finney had died today, Bern said, sadly, "it feels like the death of our youth."

As soon as she said it, I felt the same way.

Bern and I never had "our song" the way many couples did--but we had 'our movie'. It was Two for the Road, starring Aubrey Hepburn and Albert Finney.

We saw it in 1967--Bern was 17 and I was 20. We'd been dating for over two years and were three years from marriage.

We loved the movie. Talked about it endlessly. Saw it as 'our' adventure--driving away, falling in love.

Years later we got a Puli, born in Hungary, whose registered name was Templomkerti Palac Suba. We named him "Finney".

Funny, I hadn't thought of that movie in years and had half forgotten the title. But everytime, after that, when I saw Albert Finney on screen, I had a flash back.

Rest in Peace, dear Albert.

And thanks for the memories.

Reading report

I seldom make reading recommendations but today I will.

The author is Michael Robotham. He lives in Australia but writes about England.

His books are psychological mysteries since the main character is Joe O'Loughlin, a clinical psychologist who often works with the police. There are 12 books in the series (I just finished the most recent--The Other Wife. They begin with The Suspect, where Joe is a suspect in a murder and meets DI Mike Ruiz, who becomes a regular in the series, though most as a retired detective. Joe's family--wife, children, parents, three sisters--are also in most of the books.

The second book is Lost, wherein Ruiz is forced out of Scotland Yard after a botched case.

I really loved them all.

Oh, and Joe has Parkinson's disease--he calls it 'Mr. Parkinson'--and even with that weakness and just being a scientist, boy he gets into a lot of violence....

You have to like psychology and mystery and wondrously complex plots and complicated personal relationships to like Roboham's writing.

But I love them.

Check them out if you wish.

You won't blame me.

OK, I did watch it

I tried not to but I couldn't not watch the SOTU speech last night.

I was amazed at the president's initial call for unity.

I was not amazed when that call really meant: "Unity on MY terms...."

I loved watching "Nancy" behind him. She put on a show. I think he was totally aware she was back there.

The warning about "investigations" getting in the way of economic growth didn't even get applause from Mike Pence. I think the president wanted support for that line. It didn't come--not at all.

The 'women in white' were wondrous. After they got all excited about the President's line about more 'women working', pointing to themselves, it was like a break dance on the Dems side of the house.

When he mentioned there are more women in Congress than ever and the women started chanting "U S A! U S A! U S A!...I'm pretty sure he didn't know what to do, having his chant stolen like that.

Shots of Bernie Sanders listening--especially at the slam about 'socialism' were painful. (By the way, just to be clear, Social Security, Welfare/Food Stamps and Medicaid/Medicare ARE socialistic programs.) Why Paul Ryan wanted to dismantle them.

Stacy Abrams' response was wondrous: dignified, folksy and deeply sincere all at once, not to mention 'right on'.

If you haven't, go on line and look at articles that fact checked the speech. As he, himself, would say, "sad".

And I slept well, beloved, deeply with prednisone dreams.

The State of the Union

The State of the Union is as bad as I ever knew.

I don't know if I can watch the speech and still get some sleep--I'll be so upset and angry and confounded it will be hard to sleep.

Yet, I probably should watch it just to see the 'fact checking' that CNN and MSNBC will doubtless do.

Maybe I should just watch it on line tomorrow and have pleasant dreams.

Alas and alack.

The STATE of the Union?

Don't get me started.

One phase comes to mind: "in disarray".

Mejol

I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with my first cousin, Mejol (the only person on the census records in the country with that name--my Aunt Georgie was reading some obscure Native American novel with a character named 'Mejol', which is why she called her that.) Not many people must have read the book.

Spell check always highlight Mejol's name. Suggestions to fix it are: Mikol, Majority, Mel, Mejia, Merola. (The first and last of which, spell-check just highlighted!!! Good suggestions, spell-check.)

I think of her a lot. She helped my parents raise me. I love her dearly. We talk about every week on the phone--politics, childhood memories, kids and grand kids, pets, books, stuff like that.

She's the only one of my 18 first cousins (5 deceased) that I keep up with. So I should have said she's the only one of my 13 surviving first cousins I keep up with. I haven't consulted a medium yet so I won't hear from those 5.)

She's just special to me and I'm so glad we're in touch.