Quotes of the week
It was on September 8th in 1892 that an early version of the Pledge of Allegiance appeared in The Youth's Companion magazine. It read: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Pressure and stress is the common cold of the psyche.
~Andrew Denton~
Once you get people laughing, they're listening and you can tell them almost anything.
Herbert Gardner
Meditation of the week
The Ego-Less SELF (Paperback)
Achieving Peace & Tranquility Beyond All Understanding
We have become so accustomed to ego-based emotions such as misery, worry, fear, and conflict that we believe these are our normal states. But this is not how it is supposed to be. We were born to be happy and to love unconditionally. So how can we return to a nonlinear state of happiness and peace when everything around us says that nothing is more important than me, me, me?
The Ego-Less SELF is a journey of discovery and a return to the deepest truth. It looks closely at the notion of 'spiritual transformation' by first showing you how the ego develops over time to cause suffering in our lives. Once the ego is stripped away, the pathways to the self—heart, mind, and action—can begin to work.
With a broad range of spiritual influences, from the Bible to Zen Buddhism, The Ego-Less SELF sets out to deflate the ego to let the true self shine through. You will begin to learn how to get rid of resentments, surrender the ego's unconscious programs for happiness, and employ simple techniques to increase contact with consciousness.
The road to self is not about trying to acquire anything but rather the willingness to surrender all of our egoistic ways, thus taking us back to that which we are—the purest self.
Poem of the Week
The Guardian
I don't think my brother realized all
the responsibilities involved in being
her guardian, not just the paperwork
but the trips to the dentist and Wal-Mart,
the making sure she has underwear,
money to buy Pepsis, the crying calls
because she has no shampoo even though
he has bought her several bottles recently.
We talk about how he might bring this up
with the staff, how best to delicately ask
if they're using her shampoo on others
or maybe just allowing her too much.
"You only need a little, Mom," he said,
"Not a handful." "I don't have any!"
she shouted before hanging up. Later
he finds a bottle stashed in her closet
and two more hidden in the bathroom
along with crackers, spoons, and socks.
Afraid someone might steal her things,
she hides them, but then not only forgets
where, but that she ever had them at all.
I tease my brother, "You always wanted
another kid." He doesn't laugh. She hated
her father, and, in this second childhood,
she resents the one who takes care of her.
When I call, she complains about how
my brother treats her and how she hasn't
seen him in years. If I explain everything
he's doing, she admires the way I stick up
for him. Doing nothing means I do nothing
wrong. This is love's blindness and love's
injustice. It's why I expect to hear anger
or bitterness in my brother's voice, and why
each time we talk, no matter how closely
I listen, I'm astonished to hear only love.
Author of the week
It's the birthday of short-story writer O. Henry, (books by this author) born William Sidney Porter in Greensboro, North Carolina, on this day in 1862. He penned the witty, surprise-ending short stories "The Gift of the Magi," "The Ransom of Red Chief," "A Retrieved Reformation," and "The Cop and the Anthem." He worked at his uncle's drugstore, becoming a licensed pharmacist when he was 19, and before he turned 20 he'd headed west to Texas, where he spent time on a ranch as a shepherd, domestic servant, and baby-sitter.
He moved to Austin, Texas, worked as a pharmacist, and played guitars on street corners around the city. He eloped with a tuberculosis-infected, rich and beautiful teenage girl whom he'd fallen in love with.
Later, he got a good-paying job as a bank teller so that he could support his wife and young daughter. But he was not a good bookkeeper, and he was fired for embezzlement. He took to writing full time.
The feds did an audit of the bank he'd been working at, and when they found a bunch of discrepancies, they decided to indict him on federal embezzlement charges. His wife's dad posted bail for him, but instead of sticking around for trial, O. Henry fled to New Orleans and then to Honduras, where he stayed for months. But when he found out that his beloved wife was on the verge of dying from her tuberculosis, he came back to Texas and turned himself in. Soon after, his wife died. He stood trial, was convicted of embezzlement, and was sent away to a federal penitentiary in Ohio.
He wrote short stories there, and he came up with the pseudonym O. Henry. Magazine editors were clueless that the stories they published were written by an inmate locked up in a federal penitentiary.
He got out of jail and wrote fast and furiously, about 400 short stories in those years following his release. He became famous, and an alcoholic, and he died less than a decade after getting out of jail, at the age of 47, from liver disease.
In 1909, the year before he died, he conducted an "autobiographical interview" of himself for The New York Times. It appeared under the title: "'O. HENRY' ON HIMSELF, LIFE, AND OTHER THINGS; For the First Time the Author of 'The Four Million' Tells a Bit of the 'Story of My Life.'"
He wrote:
"What advice would you give to young writers?"
"I'll give you the whole secret of short-story writing. Here it is. Rule I: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule II."
Asked by himself about writer's block, O. Henry answered:
"Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life — that's the stimulant for a story writer."
O. Henry said: "People say I know New York well. Just change Twenty-third Street in one of my New York stories to Main Street, rub out the Flatiron Building, and put in the Town Hall and the story will fit just as truly in any up-State town. At least, I hope this can be said of my stories. So long as a story is true to human nature all you need do is change the local color to make it fit in any town North, East, South, or West. If you have the right kind of an eye — the kind that can disregard high hats, cutaway coats, and trolley cars — you can see all the characters in the Arabian Nights parading up and down Broadway at midday."
