Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
October 24th, 2010
Rally to restore sanity of the week
It would be unwise to underestimate what large groups of ill-informed people acting together can achieve. -- John D'Oh, January 14, 2010.
I’ll be there, will you?
Quotes of the week
The best soldiers are not warlike.
~Proverb, (Chinese)~
~Proverb, (Chinese)~
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.
--Italian proverb
--Italian proverb
Nobody can misunderstand a boy like his own mother. Mothers at present can bring children into the world, but this performance is apt to mark the end of their capacities. They can't even attend to the elementary animal requirements of their offspring. It is quite surprising how many children survive in spite of their mothers.
~Norman Douglas~
~Norman Douglas~
Meditation of the week
Property Lines
A helpful tool in our recovery, especially in the behavior we call detachment, is learning to identify who owns what. Then we let each person own and possess his or her rightful property.
If another person has an addiction, a problem, a feeling, or a self-defeating behavior, that is their property, not ours. If someone is a martyr, immersed in negativity, controlling, or manipulative, that is their issue, not ours.
If someone has acted and experienced a particular consequence, both the behavior and the consequence belong to that person.
People's lies, deceptions, tricks, manipulations, abusive behaviors, inappropriate behaviors, cheating behaviors, and tacky behaviors belong to them, too. Not us.
People's hopes and dreams are their property. Their guilt belongs to them too. Their happiness or misery is also theirs. So are their beliefs and messages.
If some people don't like themselves, that is their choice. Their choices are their property, not ours. What people choose to say and do is their business.
What is our property? Our property includes our behaviors, problems, feelings, happiness, misery, choices, and messages; our ability to love, care, and nurture; our thoughts, our denial, our hopes and dreams for ourselves. Whether we allow ourselves to be controlled, manipulated, deceived, or mistreated is our business.
In recovery, we learn an appropriate sense of ownership. If something isn't ours, we don't take it. If we take it, we learn to give it back. Let other people have their property, and learn to own and take good care of what's ours.
Today, I will work at developing a clear sense of what belongs to me, and what doesn't. If it's not mine, I won't keep it. I will deal with myself, my issues, and my responsibilities.
A helpful tool in our recovery, especially in the behavior we call detachment, is learning to identify who owns what. Then we let each person own and possess his or her rightful property.
If another person has an addiction, a problem, a feeling, or a self-defeating behavior, that is their property, not ours. If someone is a martyr, immersed in negativity, controlling, or manipulative, that is their issue, not ours.
If someone has acted and experienced a particular consequence, both the behavior and the consequence belong to that person.
People's lies, deceptions, tricks, manipulations, abusive behaviors, inappropriate behaviors, cheating behaviors, and tacky behaviors belong to them, too. Not us.
People's hopes and dreams are their property. Their guilt belongs to them too. Their happiness or misery is also theirs. So are their beliefs and messages.
If some people don't like themselves, that is their choice. Their choices are their property, not ours. What people choose to say and do is their business.
What is our property? Our property includes our behaviors, problems, feelings, happiness, misery, choices, and messages; our ability to love, care, and nurture; our thoughts, our denial, our hopes and dreams for ourselves. Whether we allow ourselves to be controlled, manipulated, deceived, or mistreated is our business.
In recovery, we learn an appropriate sense of ownership. If something isn't ours, we don't take it. If we take it, we learn to give it back. Let other people have their property, and learn to own and take good care of what's ours.
Today, I will work at developing a clear sense of what belongs to me, and what doesn't. If it's not mine, I won't keep it. I will deal with myself, my issues, and my responsibilities.
Poem of the Week
Evolution
Was it dissatisfaction or hope
that beckoned some of the monkeys
down from the trees and onto the damp
forbidden musk of the forest floor?
Which one tested his thumbs
against the twig
and awkwardly dug a grub
from the soil?
What did the tribe above think
as it leaned on the slender branches
watching the others
frustrated, embarrassed,
but pinching grubs
with leathery fingers
into their mouths?
The moral is movement
is awkward. The lesson is fumble.
that beckoned some of the monkeys
down from the trees and onto the damp
forbidden musk of the forest floor?
Which one tested his thumbs
against the twig
and awkwardly dug a grub
from the soil?
What did the tribe above think
as it leaned on the slender branches
watching the others
frustrated, embarrassed,
but pinching grubs
with leathery fingers
into their mouths?
The moral is movement
is awkward. The lesson is fumble.
Video of the week
It's official: President Barack Obama will become the first sitting president to appear on The Daily Show next Wednesday, October 27 at 11pm/10c
You can’t make up such a thing as that, I dare you to even try
A Breakthrough in Political Campaign Technology: New York
gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, waging a particularly
contentious battle, mailed out a flier in September suggesting that
Democratic state politicians are corrupt, with photos of seven of that
party's current and recent office-holders and accompanied by a
special odor-triggering paper that releases a "garbage-scented" smell
when exposed to air (and which supposedly grows even more foul
over time). [Forbes-AP, 9-16-10]
gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, waging a particularly
contentious battle, mailed out a flier in September suggesting that
Democratic state politicians are corrupt, with photos of seven of that
party's current and recent office-holders and accompanied by a
special odor-triggering paper that releases a "garbage-scented" smell
when exposed to air (and which supposedly grows even more foul
over time). [Forbes-AP, 9-16-10]
Websites of the week
English in 24 accents (language alert!) thanks Rob!
And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor
If you are recovering from alcohol or drug addiction, or are a loved one of someone in recovery (or who needs recovery) you are welcome at Sober24.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
October 17, 2010
Quotes of the week
"You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."
Eleanor Roosevelt
My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness.
~Helen Keller~
A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.
~Proverb, (Yiddish)~
“Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former.” Albert Einstein
Meditation of the week
As a child, I walked through the world with wonder and awe. Each day started with a question and ended with a question. I had the mind of a beginner.
--Anonymous
Did you ever notice that children ask the best questions? Why are things the way they are? How do they work? How did we get here? Who made us? Why?
These are the most important questions in life. Most of us never really get our questions answered. We just learn to stop asking people. We act like the things they tell us answer the questions, but they really don't.
Such questions are questions of the spirit. We can ask our Higher Power to help us learn the answers. We can talk with other people who are also interested in these questions and share our thoughts and ideas. Now that we are sober we can even read books that explore these questions. The truth is, we may never understand the answers because we are only human beings. But thinking about these things is good because it helps us be thankful for the mystery of life.
--Anonymous
Did you ever notice that children ask the best questions? Why are things the way they are? How do they work? How did we get here? Who made us? Why?
These are the most important questions in life. Most of us never really get our questions answered. We just learn to stop asking people. We act like the things they tell us answer the questions, but they really don't.
Such questions are questions of the spirit. We can ask our Higher Power to help us learn the answers. We can talk with other people who are also interested in these questions and share our thoughts and ideas. Now that we are sober we can even read books that explore these questions. The truth is, we may never understand the answers because we are only human beings. But thinking about these things is good because it helps us be thankful for the mystery of life.
Roosevelt 0f the week
It's the birthday of the longest-serving First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, born in New York City (1884) who said, "A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water." She began a secret courtship with her cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt. During World War I, she went off to Europe and visited wounded and shell-shocked soldiers in hospitals there. Later, during her husband's presidency, she campaigned hard on civil rights issues — not a universally popular thing in the 1930s and 1940s.
After FDR died in 1945, she moved from the White House to Hyde Park, New York, and taught International Relations at Brandeis University. As anti-communist witch-hunting began to sweep the U.S., she stuck up for freedom of association in a way that few Americans were brave or bold enough to do. She chided Hollywood producers for being so "chicken-hearted about speaking up for the freedom of their industry." She said that the "American public is capable of doing its own censoring" and that "the judge who decides whether what [the film industry] does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies."
She said that the Un-American Activities Committee was creating the atmosphere of a police state in America, "where people close doors before they state what they think or look over their shoulders apprehensively before they express an opinion."
In 1947, a couple years before the McCarthy Era had reached full swing, she announced, "The Un-American Activities Committee seems to me to be better for a police state than for the USA."
She once said, "We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together and if we are to live together we have to talk."
And, "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."
Video of the week
You can’t make up such a thing as that, I dare you to even try
It was on this day in 1962 that Pope John XXIII convened the first session of the Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II, with the goal of bringing the church up to date with the modern world. More than 3,000 delegates attended, including many of the Catholic bishops from around the world, theologians, and other church officials.
As a result of Vatican II, Catholics were allowed to pray with Protestants and attend weddings and funerals in Protestant churches; priests were encouraged to perform mass facing the congregation, rather than facing the altar; and priests were allowed to perform mass in languages other than Latin, so that parishioners could finally understand what was being said throughout the service.
Websites of the week
And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor
Now that is a bowling split
Sunday, October 10, 2010
October 10, 2010
Quotes of the week
If we would only testify to the truth as we see it, it would turn out that there are hundreds, thousands, even millions of other people just as we are, who see the truth as we do...and are only waiting, again as we are, for someone to proclaim it. The Kingdom of God is within you.
~Leo Tolstoy~
If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.
~Bible, Mark (ch. III, v. 25)~
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
Mahatma Gandhi
Enjoy your little while the fool seeks for more.
~Proverb, (Spanish)~
Poem of the Week
The Very Old
by Ted Kooser
The very old are forever
hurting themselves,
burning their fingers
on skillets, falling
loosely as trees
and breaking their hips
with muffled explosions of bone.
Down the block
they are wheeled in
out of our sight
for years at a time.
To make conversation,
the neighbors ask
if they are still alive.
Then, early one morning,
through our kitchen windows
we see them again,
first one and then another,
out in their gardens
on crutches and canes,
perennial,
checking their gauges for rain.
hurting themselves,
burning their fingers
on skillets, falling
loosely as trees
and breaking their hips
with muffled explosions of bone.
Down the block
they are wheeled in
out of our sight
for years at a time.
To make conversation,
the neighbors ask
if they are still alive.
Then, early one morning,
through our kitchen windows
we see them again,
first one and then another,
out in their gardens
on crutches and canes,
perennial,
checking their gauges for rain.
♬ Song of the week
The Avett Brothers - Murder InThe City 974,830 views
Thanks , Rob, for this song and for the love that lets us share our name.
Video of the week
Walkin’ my baby back home
You can’t make up such a thing as that, I dare you to even try
☞Websites of the week
Old photographs with lots of famous people like Albert Camus and Marie Curie
☢And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor☢
It was on this day in 1970, that the Public Broadcasting Service was founded in America. The model for "public service broadcasting" was established in Britain in 1922 with the creation of the British Broadcasting Company, which a few years later became the BBC we know today, the British Broadcasting Corporation. The stated mission of the BBC was to "to inform, educate, and entertain." It had lofty ideals for how it would serve the country, and adopted a coat of arms whose motto was "Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation." At the same time in the United States, radio was being set up in a way that encouraged commercial-driven, decentralized programming.
So in 1967, Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Public Broadcasting Act, with similar goals — the Act stated that the new media would be "for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes." Johnson said: "It announces to the world that our Nation wants more than just material wealth; our Nation wants more than a 'chicken in every pot.' We in America have an appetite for excellence, too. While we work every day to produce new goods and to create new wealth, we want most of all to enrich man's spirit. That is the purpose of this act." The Act established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and out of that, PBS and NPR.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Quotes of the week
Quotes from Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baronne Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George
“Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it”
“Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age.”
“One is happy as a result of one's own efforts once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.”
“I must learn to love the fool in me the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries”
Meditation of the week
It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
-- Chinese Proverb
With all the negativity that surrounds us, it is easy to become overwhelmed. It is also tempting to fight against the negative or to declare war on it. Yet a master teacher offered a better way: "Resist not evil, but overcome evil with good."
Imagine you are in a dark room. Wanting the darkness to leave, you curse and fight against it. But no matter how much effort you make, the darkness remains. Turn on the light switch, however, and the night vanishes in an instant.
In a similar manner, when the light of truth is shed on a situation, fear and disharmony dissolve. When you send out a positive thought to another person or take a constructive action, an enormous amount of good is accomplished. Each good act begets another until a network of love and light is created.
The purpose of life is to reflect this light into places that are dark. Let your light shine and stay focused on the power of love. When enough of us have turned on our spiritual light switches, the earth will become as bright as a shining star. Where, then, could darkness dwell?
-- Chinese Proverb
With all the negativity that surrounds us, it is easy to become overwhelmed. It is also tempting to fight against the negative or to declare war on it. Yet a master teacher offered a better way: "Resist not evil, but overcome evil with good."
Imagine you are in a dark room. Wanting the darkness to leave, you curse and fight against it. But no matter how much effort you make, the darkness remains. Turn on the light switch, however, and the night vanishes in an instant.
In a similar manner, when the light of truth is shed on a situation, fear and disharmony dissolve. When you send out a positive thought to another person or take a constructive action, an enormous amount of good is accomplished. Each good act begets another until a network of love and light is created.
The purpose of life is to reflect this light into places that are dark. Let your light shine and stay focused on the power of love. When enough of us have turned on our spiritual light switches, the earth will become as bright as a shining star. Where, then, could darkness dwell?
Poem of the Week
The Return of Odysseus
When Odysseus finally does get home
he is understandably upset about the suitors,
who have been mooching off his wife for twenty years,
drinking his wine, eating his mutton, etc.
In a similar situation today he would seek legal counsel.
But those were different times. With the help
of his son Telemachus he slaughters roughly
one hundred and ten suitors
and quite a number of young ladies,
although in view of their behavior
I use the term loosely. Rivers of blood
course across the palace floor.
I too have come home in a bad mood.
Yesterday, for instance, after the department meeting,
when I ended up losing my choice parking spot
behind the library to the new provost.
I slammed the door. I threw down my book bag
in this particular way I have perfected over the years
that lets my wife understand
the contempt I have for my enemies,
which is prodigious. And then with great skill
she built a gin and tonic
that would have pleased the very gods,
and with epic patience she listened
as I told her of my wrath, and of what I intended to do
to so-and-so, and also to what's-his-name.
And then there was another gin and tonic
and presently my wrath abated and was forgotten,
and peace came to reign once more
in the great halls and courtyards of my house.
he is understandably upset about the suitors,
who have been mooching off his wife for twenty years,
drinking his wine, eating his mutton, etc.
In a similar situation today he would seek legal counsel.
But those were different times. With the help
of his son Telemachus he slaughters roughly
one hundred and ten suitors
and quite a number of young ladies,
although in view of their behavior
I use the term loosely. Rivers of blood
course across the palace floor.
I too have come home in a bad mood.
Yesterday, for instance, after the department meeting,
when I ended up losing my choice parking spot
behind the library to the new provost.
I slammed the door. I threw down my book bag
in this particular way I have perfected over the years
that lets my wife understand
the contempt I have for my enemies,
which is prodigious. And then with great skill
she built a gin and tonic
that would have pleased the very gods,
and with epic patience she listened
as I told her of my wrath, and of what I intended to do
to so-and-so, and also to what's-his-name.
And then there was another gin and tonic
and presently my wrath abated and was forgotten,
and peace came to reign once more
in the great halls and courtyards of my house.
IWANTONERIGHTNOW!
or, better yet, one of these
Magic feeling of the week
“But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go”
You never give me your money by Lennon/McCartney
You never give me your money
You only give me your funny paper
and in the middle of negotiations
you break down
I never give you my number
I only give you my situation
and in the middle of investigation
I break down
Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money's gone, nowhere to go
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go
Oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go
Nowhere to go
One sweet dream
Pick up the bags and get in the limousine
Soon we'll be away from here
Step on the gas and wipe that tear away
One sweet dream came true... today
Came true... today
Came true... today...yes it did
One two three four five six seven,
All good children go to Heaven
You only give me your funny paper
and in the middle of negotiations
you break down
I never give you my number
I only give you my situation
and in the middle of investigation
I break down
Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money's gone, nowhere to go
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go
Oh, that magic feeling
Nowhere to go
Nowhere to go
One sweet dream
Pick up the bags and get in the limousine
Soon we'll be away from here
Step on the gas and wipe that tear away
One sweet dream came true... today
Came true... today
Came true... today...yes it did
One two three four five six seven,
All good children go to Heaven
Websites of the week
http://www.mint.com/ is a really good financial management tool
And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor
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