Showing posts with label poems philosophy pictures art history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poems philosophy pictures art history. Show all posts

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Beautiful Flowers for everyone....

Muscari flowers Beautiful perrenials multiply and fragrant

M. armeniacum

Fantasy Creation
M. plumosum M. armeniacum



Blue Spike
I got these Blue Spike flowers yesterday. Couldn't resist when a Lady stopped and told me they spread all over her lawn and I just love that. If you have red tulips on one side and yellow tulips on the other and these beautiful ones in the middle it sure is a beautiful sight to behold.

All species' bulbs should be planted at least 3" (8 cm) deep, in a location where the water can't settle in winter plant bulbs in zones 3 - 9, except for M. latifolium which prefers zones 2 to 5
All species will naturalize extremely easily (i.e. come back year after year and gradually multiply); that is, unless you plant them in completely sunless or swamplike conditions!

Muscari are all-round flowers: they are excellent as cut flowers, when planted in rockgardens, beds, borders, under shrubs, and trees, and can be used for indoor forcing. .
Have fun.



Sunday, April 5, 2009


Good Morning and A Delightful Sunday to every one.!!!


Spring is in the air. Sunshine is welcoming.
Sorta ......a very cheerful day is in progress.

We woke up late after a long soccer day yesterday.
Good to come home winners with a 3-0 shut out .
Dogs behaved and came running to greet us.
Caviar was good on rye lol
and bed was even more welcome. :)
On the menu? Chorizo Sausages.
Make them yourself with the following ingredients.
Let stay overnight in the fridge and then form sausage or hamburger patties and
either grill or freeze for later.
Also you can stuff casings from a butcher.

Ground pork: 1 lb.• Coarse salt: 1/2 tablespoon• Garlic, crushed or finely chopped:
1.5 cloves• Ground nutmeg: 0.4 teaspoon• Brown sugar: 0.8 tablespoon• Smoked paprika :
0.8 tablespoon• Aleppo chile pepper or cayenne: 0.8 tablespoon

History had these events today:

1933 FDR signed a US Executive order 6102 , forcing people to sell their gold.
The government required holders of significant quantities of gold to sell their gold at the prevailing price of $20.67 per ounce. Shortly after this forced sale, the price of gold from the treasury for international transactions was raised to $35 an ounce.


1936 U.S.A. Tornadoes strike Tupelo, Mississippi and Gainesville, Georgia . A total of 466 people were killed over four days of nearly continuous twisters. Another 3,500 people were injured.


1951 U.S.A. Rosenberg's Trials. At the end of the trial against the Rosenberg's for giving the
secrets to the Atomic Bomb to the Soviet Union. Julius and Ethyl got the death penalty.

1955 UK Sir Winston Churchill Retires at 80

1969 U.S.A. Anti Vietnam Demonstrations in NY. San Francisco, L.A. Washington DC etc...250,000 protestors were involved.

1970 Guatemala - West Germany's Count Karl von Spreti the ambassador to Guatemala is kidnapped and shot dead.

1976 U.S.A. Howard Hughes, One of the world's richest, eccentric American billionaire dies at 70 after spending the last 20 years living as a recluse in hotel penthouses around the world.


1976 UK James Callaghan, Britain's new Prime Minister, arrives in Downing Street for his first day in office


1986 Germany - A Bomb Exploded In a Berlin Disco in La Belle Disco ,killing two and injuring at least 120. Earlier , a bomb wrecked a German-Arab club in the city and injured seven Arabs.
The West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, set up to investigate the possible involvement of a foreign country in the attack. Later, the US government retaliated by bombing Libya killing at least 60 people .

1988 Iran - Hijack Kuwait Airways Jumbo Jet . 24 women passengers and one man with a heart condition were released after landing in Iran.

1992 U.S.A. Abortion rights activists march and demonstration in Washington, D.C. to safe guard the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that made abortion legal.

1994 U.S.A. Rock icon Kurt Cobain lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the rock band Nirvana commits suicide with a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.

1999 Libya surrendered two suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland to the U.N.

2001 A Dutch lorry driver sentenced to 14 years in prison for his part in the deaths of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants found during a routine search at Dover Ferry Port.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


A Tennessee couple had 9 children. They went to the doctor to see about getting the husband 'fixed.' The doctor gladly started the required procedure and asked them what finally made them make the decision. Why, after 9 children, would they choose to do this?

The husband replied that they had read in a recent article that 1 out of every 10 children being born in the United States was Mexican, and they didn't want to take a chance on having a Mexican Baby because neither of them could speak Spanish.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jean Ferrat Que C'est Beau la Vie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ24Pc0Jyv8&feature=related
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A guide was showing Niagara-Falls to a man from Texas and said; I’ll bet you don’t have anything like this in Texas.The Texan said; nope, but in Texas we have plumbers who can fix it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A man had two goldfish, he named one of them "One"and the other "Two"he did this because..if one died, he'd still have two
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Three sisters, ages 92, 94, and 96, live together. One night the 96-year-0ld draws a bath. She puts one foot in and pauses. "Was I getting in the tub or out?" she yells. The 94-year-old hollers back, "I don't know, I'll come up to see." She starts up the stairs and stops. She shouts, "Was I going up or going down?"The 92-year-old is sitting at the kitchen table having tea, listening to her sisters. She shakes her head and says, "I sure hope I never get that forgetful", and knocks on wood for good measure. Then she yells, "I'll come up and help both of you as soon as I see who's at the door."

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Parrot Jokes.

This woman approaches a man of the cloth and tells him, "Father, I have these two talking female parrots, but unfortunately they only know one sentence: 'Hi, we're prostitutes. Do you want to have some fun?' " "That's terrible!" exclaimed the holy man, "but I have the answer to your problem. You can put them with my two male talking parrots. I myself taught them to read the bible and say the rosary." The woman collects her parrots and puts them in the holy mans parrot cage. "Hi, we're prostitutes. Do you want to have some fun?" the parrots say. One male parrot looks over at the other and exclaims, "Put the beads away. Our prayers have been answered!"

A woman is strolling down the road to work and she espies a parrot in a pet store. The parrot says to her, "Hey you lady, you are really ugly." The lady is furious! And she rushes past the pet store to go to work. After finishing her shift she saw the same parrot in the shop window and the parrot repeated what it had said earlier, "Hey lady, you are really ugly." She is now even more furious. The following morning she received the same verbal abuse from the parrot. "Hey lady, you are really ugly." This time she was standing no nonsense and stormed into the store and said that she would sue the store and slaughter the bird. The store manager said, "That's not good." and promised he wouldn't say it again. When the lady walked past the pet store after work the parrot said to her, "Hey lady." She paused and said, "Yes?" and the parrot said, "You know."

Just before Christmas, a man enters a pet store looking for a special present for his wife. The pet store owner tells him he has just what he's looking for; a beautiful parrot named Chet that can sing Christmas carols. He ushers the husband over to a colourful but very quiet bird. The man agrees with the pet store owner that Chet is certainly pretty, but he doesn't seem to be up much for singing a tune. The owner of the pet store tells him to watch as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a lighter. The owner clicks the lighter and holds it under Chet's left foot. The bird Chet immediately responds by singing at the top of its voice; "Silent Night, Holy Night." The husband is very impressed with Chet's singing qualities and watches as the manager moves the lighter underneath Chet's right foot. Chet now breaks into tune again singing "Jingle Bells." The husband now even more excited says Chet is the ideal gift for his wife and buys him. The husband speeds home as fast as his feet will take him to give his wife this wonderful gift. He presents Chet and starts to explain the parrot's special talent. Demonstrating, what he had seen the pet store owner do he holds a lighter under Chet's left foot and the bird sings "Silent Night." Then moving the lighter under the right foot Chet starts singing a chorus of "Jingle Bells." The wife is impressed, and with a naughty grin asks her husband what happens if he holds the lighter between Chet's both legs. Curious the husband moves the lighter between the bird's legs, and the parrot begins to sing--- Chet's Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire!

A young man's mother was now living in Miami Beach and he didn't get to see her as often as he would like. His father was no longer around and he felt saddened for his mother being lonely. So for his mother’s birthday, he purchased a very rare parrot, trained to speak seven languages. He made arrangements for a courier service to deliver the bird to his dear mother. After a few days he called. "Hey Mom, what do you think of the bird?" "The bird was good, but a little tough. I should have cooked it longer." "You ate the bird? Didn’t you know it was of rare breed and was very expensive? It had a talent where it could speak seven languages!" "Oh, excuse me replied the mom - if the parrot was so smart, why didn't it say something when I put it in the oven?"

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Happy Tuesday (pets)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6ojGM3czbk&feature=related
sarah brightman
don't cry for me argentina


GOOD MORNING!!!
Happy Tuesday to Everyone and Thanks for visiting a Lady's Life.

Listening to the news sure puts a damper on life.
The economy is especially frightening to most people.

One good thing though.
People are beginning to fight back .

Some want to keep chickens in their back yards because
they say government should not tell people what kind of food they should eat.
I agree.
Ducks are easier to keep because they waddle around eating any bugs you may have in the lawn and their soft quacking is very soothing.

You don't have to use artificial fertilizers on your lawn because they fertilize it for you.

When I was little, my Dad always had rabbits or chicks or ducks for me in summer and in winter they'd be supper.

Of course I'd never know. They would just disappear and I'd eat lunch and then go look for them, asking all the neighbors if they saw my animals running around. Of course every one said no.

Had I known I was eating my pets, I don't think I could have.
How do you eat Missy?

Ok. Bitey I could eat lol

Many people kept such pets and every ones back yards was one big garden.

One day on my way to school, I saw this white chicken running down the street being chased by a cat.
He ran right into my arms so I took it home.

He was a great little guy and slept in my lap. Finally my Dad said we can't keep him. Let's give him to your Gramma.
Gramma tied his leg to a rope and kept him under her balcony.

He grew up to be this huge gray rooster. A real handsome sort.

He loved my Gramma but when I came to see my little chicken, he chased me up the stairs so quickly I just barely had enough time to shut the door.
My Dad laughed and went out . The rooster ran up to him . He put one wing down and danced around him in a ritual like performance. My Dad kept turning and the rooster walked around him as well with his wing down caw caw cawing. My Dad knew he wouldn't bite him.
I have to give it to my Dad. He sure knew his animals.
My Mom never liked animals but he was a tinkerer and into everything.

The Rooster had become a guard dog and wouldn't let any one into the yard.
My Gramma was real proud of him
I guess my Gramma told my Dad it was time.
He wasn't as lucky as the Pig who saved the Farmer and his wife and just lost a leg cause you can't eat a good pig like that in one shot. lol


Here in BC, we kept Buster the rabbit. He had long floppy ears and was so cute looking.
Whenever he'd get upset over something he'd thump on his aquarium so we'd know something was not right.
He was like a guard as well sitting in his prefab home.
He gave us such good fertizer, my roses bloomed none stop, bud after bud till the end January and into February. I was impressed.

We exchanged him for a dozen eggs lol
I couldn't imagine eating Buster.

Have a happy day everyone. :)

Morning rooster crows. My rooster didn't know how to crow He skipped a beat
Just went ha haha haaaaaaaaaaa These guys here are pros.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIVmvxv7Yi8&feature=related
Crazy Egg Experiment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSLGPl2qU4o&feature=related

Sunday, March 29, 2009

100 YEAR PLUS BIRTHDAY!!!


TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE surpassed the
THE BLESSED 100 year mark

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!

AND KEEP GOING STRONG!!!

WITH ALL OUR GOOD WISHES

A LADY'S LIFE



HEART WILL GO ON CELINE DION
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipMNbf4hb28&feature=related

BECAUSE YOU LOVED ME. CELINE DION
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CkKuA86Mis&feature=related



I SURRENDER CELINE DION
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl9axmrFnEc&feature=related

HOW DO I LIVE LEE ANN RIMES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFnD3uwKHag&feature=related

Friday, March 27, 2009

Lara's Theme Dr Zhivago


Montreal

Montreal

Sarah Mclachlan

I will remember you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSz16ngdsG0&feature=related


I loved Montreal as a kid.
Montreal was originally a Mohawk town called Hochelaga, when Jaques Cartier came in 1535
In 1642 a fur trading town Ville Marie was founded by Sieur de Maisoneuve.
When the English took over in 1762 it all became Montreal.
Montreal allowed alcohol, burlesque etc....in the 1930's
In 1960 it was busy building Expo 67 Worlds Fair and a subway system which later followed with the Olympics in 1976 and a new stadium.

Montreal lost many jobs when the St Lawrence opened up and business went further inland.
Then the Separatist movement began when De Gualle came and yelled out : Vive le Quebec Libre!
This resulted in the Pierre LaPorte Kidnappings and Trudeaus War Measures Act.
No one feared it because it only concerned political radicals.
The licence plates changed from la Belle Province to Je me Souviens.
The English Language was outlawed.

You could speak any other language except English lol
If you were an English customer they refused to serve you in English.

And recently they found out that there were not that many French here for the English to take over in 1762 but this small group of separatists made enough trouble to make 700,000 people leave to keep peace.

Mayor Drapeau who had a vision for his Montreal, told the Separatists if they separate he will separate Montreal from them and then the Indians followed suit so Quebec saw, they would be left with very little if they separated including having to develop a new currency.

It was an exciting, dynamic place to live.
We had a lot of discussions and learned many social things in those days,
most of Canada has yet to learn
--------------------------------------------------
All in all it was a fun place to live.
We had the most snow. Tons of it.
It was nothing like Toronto where the cold is just unbearable.

Montreal was humid most of the time.
We’d get so excited when Jack Frost would visit our windows.
He was such a good painter and as far as I know, he never went to school.
So there must have been some divine intervention. lol

The snowflakes that followed would be huge, fluffy and drifted like feathers from the heavens,
landing ever so softly on the ground.
We tried as hard as we could to find some we could see the patterns in.
Sometimes we even took our magnifying glasses outside to have a clearer view.

We’d dig tunnels to climb in and imagined they were enchanted castles.
We’d climb our trees and sit there breathing the brisk air, watching the holy spirit stream out of our mouths (that’s what we’d pretend it was)
and dream we were on top of mountain peaks.
If we’d get a little drizzle, it would turn into a real winter wonderland, blue and sparkly and holy.
Truly a sight to behold.
The peace and solitude and quiet was tremendous outside.

Every year we were blessed by winters such as these and every year we’d looked forward to more of them.
The trees bent their bows in a majestic eloquent display, saluting old man winter.

Who said they needed green leaves when winter gave them white ones?
Snow saved them from the frost.

We had electric heating so I would shut mine off in my room and open the sliding window just a smidgen,
snuggle into my warm blankees and wake up the next morning with rosy cheeks and a red nose.
The first thing I’d do is run to the window to see how much snow collected and to feast my eyes.
You always slept sooooooo well this way and you never wanted to die.

I would ask my Mom when she tucked me in, why do we have night?
I want it to be day and day and day all the time
I haven’t changed much. I should live in Alaska. My dream would come true.lol

We’d open the front door and it would always be half covered in snow, so we’d have fun shoveling it all out, just to turn around and have to shovel to get back to the front door again.lol
Like they say, when it rains it pours, so it was with the snow.

No one complained. Every one was happy, the young, the old, the sick the lame.
My street was cosmopolitan.
We had a little girl with polio across the street and her dad would take her out to sit on the wheel chair.
We were good friends.
Every one spoke a different language and we loved each other, helped each other. It was great.
Then we’d build our snow men. They grew to be up to 7 feet tall. We liked doing it cause the snow man
collected all the snow we’d need to otherwise shovel.

We enjoyed playing, throwing snow balls, making angels, skating. We had a small hill (Agins Hill, never knew the name really. Just kids would say: Lets go to Agins hill lol) nearby so we tobogganed
on it. My Dad got me skis and he said this hill is good to learn on, so I’d go and ski on it.
It took a second to go down and an hour to climb back up. lol
One day I fell and continued rolling down hill but the boot wouldn’t come out of the ski, which was stuck three feet deep into the snow.
I wrenched my knee real good and had to limp home but I was darned if I was going to show any pain,
cause if I did that, my parents would not let me go to the hill anymore. I had a hard enough time getting them to let me wear pants.lol

When I went to college and we had this kind of weather, I would walk cross country about 20 kms. ( I should check this out) there and back. We had no classes but it was fun to get there, sit in the caf drinking hot coffee. Warming up,do some studying.
You’d imagine you lived up in the Alps.You had to imagine, cause it was never going to happen. But dreams come true.
You never know what life has in store for you.
Resting, you’d people watch, to see what other foolish persons decided to go to school that day loll

Most of the day was spent walking and I’d get home with blisters but feeling thoroughly fulfilled.
I had an adventure.

It's Too Late to Make New Enemies (Voltaire)

It's Too Late to Make New Enemies.


La Mer - Charles Trenet




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd_nopTFuZA


Voltaire once said :

All sects are different, because they come from men;
Morality is everywhere the same, because it comes from God.
If God didn’t exist, we’d need to invent him.

If Voltaire woke up today, I believe he’d fit right into our contemporary society.

Voltaire is a name we know him by but his birth name was Francois Marie Arouet.
His life, was anything but boring.

He was an enlightened satirist, always learning, promoting skepticism, criticizing everything:
Aristocracy, religion, bigotry, tyranny, democracy, the Bible, the
Roman Catholic church, Islam. etc..

He tried to make people think rather than accept things thrown at them and the
establishment didn’t like it and burnt his books but the more they burnt,
the more people wanted to read him and many did and still do today.

He died at a ripe old age of 84, in May 1778 , leaving behind over
2000 books and 14,ooo letters.
His humanist stance, offended many and landed him in jail and exile many
times but they were all used as learning experiences.

His 15 year liason with Mme Chatelet, a scientist and mathematician,
gave him an opportunity to experiment with Isaac Newton’s ideas,
study Confucious, and get into areas of philosophy and metaphysics and
the idea of separation of Church and State etc…

His 3 year exile to England taught him about Constitutional Monarchy,
Civil and Social Freedoms and Free Trade.

France had an Absolute Monarchy then and Voltaire believed in enlightened
despotism because he said you needed educated leaders to make change.

Voltaire was very special and two things he did were truly exceptional.

One was his objection to the torture and death of Calas, a man accused of killing
his own son because they said he didn’t want him to become Roman Catholic.
Calas lost all his assets and his children were sent to a monastery. Voltaire went out
of his way to exonerate the family because he saw it as religious persecution.

The Second thing we can admire him for is his stance for womens rights in his poem :
Maid of New Orleans ( really the story of Joan of Arc. But he never finished it.
Tchaikovsky also wrote a play on her).

After all Joan did for France, France betrayed her.

Joan fell in love with an English Knight who changed sides and fought for France just to be with her.
Her Dad Thibault, thought she was possessed because of all the prophetic dreams she had which
got her kings trust and thus to her leading him to his coronation.
( since she made this possible for him)

Thibault asked her if she was pure and holy and because of her liason with her love Lionel,
she could not say yes.
They mistook this as an admission to being possessed and banished her.

The English caught her. They killed Lionel and burnt her at the stake as a witch.
She became a Martyr and a Saint . Voltaire saw this as tyranny, bigotry and persecution of women.

On his death bed they asked Voltaire to renounce the devil and return to God to which he replied:

“ It’s too late to make new enemies.”

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.

Voltaire

Stare Ahead




Grandson Grand pa and Son
Sat on a bench

One looked up, One looked down
One looked straight ahead.

One idealistic, One forlorn and
One looked straight ahead.

One head was empty
One head was full
One just looked straight ahead.

One head will empty
One head will Fill
And One…..
will just stare ahead.

If you lose idealism you can’t look up
If you lose knowledge and answers,
you won’t look down

All you will do……. is stare ahead.
Sit on the bench and stare ahead.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

BOCHSA LE GAROP

BOCHSA Le Garop

Great little bit for a penguin guard inspection

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvRGeQMwhyQ&feature=related

Eddington - Harris - Grand Tarantelle

Eddington - Harris - Grand Tarantelle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtB1W5hi0kM

Enlightend Roaches.


Enlightened Roaches.

Dominick Dunne:

"Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty four hours
and too little on the last six thousand years."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I had never seen a cockroach as a child. In fact, I don’t know why they are called cockroaches
since they come from the latin word
“blatta” , meaning as we know it today, cockroach.
There’s about 4000 different kinds and they don’t usually grow over 3 inches.

The first time I laid eyes on one was in Florida, on a palm tree.

This HUMUNGOUS golden brown beauty, just sat there, glorifying its gorgeousness for the world to see and it was over three inches long.
(I SWEAR)

I HAD to ask a local what this beautiful bug was. So I did.
The look I got for this question was like: “Are you insane?” and then he answered:
“It’s a cockroach.” My face must have shown how shocked I was at learning this.
To this day, I have never again seen one like it ....ANYWHERE.

I kept thinking to myself how could people have such things in their homes?

Our first newly wed apartment, was in a brand new building.
It wasn’t long before I saw bugs coming out of my bathroom sink.

I caught one in a jar and plugged up all the sinks and bathtubs and took it to the janitor,
who became increasingly alarmed because
he found them in his apartment as well.
Both our apartments were 2 floors and in between us was a small one bedroom flat.
And so began the story…….

The Janitor opened the door to that flat and was appalled to find it literally covered
from top to bottom with roaches.
He almost cried.

They were everywhere!
It was a major ordeal getting them out of the building

but ………this was how I was introduced to Buddhism. lol

The couple who rented this flat were Oriental and Buddhists, who don’t kill bugs.

We often wonder, even today, how they slept?
It was Ironic in that “The Buddha” is otherwise known as

“The Awakened One”.lol

There are around 500,000 Buddhists today who believe every living thing has it’s place and reason for being and it must be respected as all nature, so it doesn’t revolt.
Buddhism exists now for over 2,500 years.

Buddhists believe, anyone following the Buddha, can have spiritual enlightenment or awakening and become like him.

If any one ever rubbed a Buddhas belly, he would know that there is some truth to that belief. lol

The Eightfold Path teaches how to stop suffering life and learning to live it.

The Four Noble Truths teach the path that must be taken to reach Enlightenment.

I truly only began to understand all this, once I accidentally found an Enormous Buddha, sitting in a mountain, in Malaysia, in the middle of no where..... in ABSOLUTE PEACE AND QUIET.

It blew my mind.

And all this ……….because of Cockroaches…….. truly Enlightened Creatures, having lived for over 350 million years on this planet.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Time Takes Care of Love

Time and Love

Sir Julius Huxley: 1887 - 1975

Religion without Revelation
"Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat"

Once upon a time Prosperity, Vanity, Sorrow, Happiness, and Love went to a lush Island Marina on vacation.
Clouds began to form and soon they were told by the Hotel, the Island had to be evacuated because a big storm was coming.
Every one panicked and began rushing for their boats, except Love, because there were so many people to help and things to do to prepare for the storm.
When she was finally ready to depart, she saw her boat was gone.
She saw Prosperity on her luxurious boat and called out: “Prosperity! Could you please take me in your boat? Some one took mine!!”
“No!” She yelled back.“ It”s full of gold, silver and diamonds. There’s no more room!!”
Vanity was circling her way out of the waves . Love Called out Vanity! “Can you help me and take me with you?”
“No! You’re all dirty and wet! And I need to get this boat back before it gets to be the same!!”
Love ran up the beach and saw Sorrow and thought Sorrow will surely take Her so she called out to her as well and asked.
“No.” cried sorrow. “I just want to be alone!” and as for Happiness well she just flew by on her sails and didn’t even look to see if any one needed help.

But then finally a small boat came by and she heard some one yell: “ Come on Love! Jump on and hold on tight!” Love was only too happy for the kind hand.
When they reached a safe cove to stowe their boat, Love was dropped off on the pier and Knowledge was there to greet her.
Before she could say anything to the boat that saved her, it pushed off and left.
So she turned and asked Knowledge who it was that saved her? “Oh “, said Knowledge. “That was Time.”
“Time? Why would he want to save me.?”
Knowledge, being full of wisdom, answered. , “Because ….only Time knows your true greatness and what you are capable of.
Time knows, only Love can bring peace and happiness to the world.”
When you’re prosperous you overlook Love. When you’re important, happy or sorrowful you forget Love.
But with Time, you realize just how important Love is.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

AWARENESS AND THE EXISTENCE OF WHATS IN BETWEEN

AWARENESS AND THE EXISTENCE OF WHATS IN-BETWEEN

I AM - Horses

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVWYMl2yg1E&feature=related


Nothing is permanent in this world.
You travel just to come home and find that there is no home.
All traces of your life and existence have disappeared.
The streets have changed. More importantly the character of the streets has changed.
The people have either moved or died.
The school buildings have been torn down and replaced by huge structures.
The little mall you roamed in is no longer a mall.
Used to be a hill to ski on, up a few blocks.
That’s gone.
The Church burnt down.
It’s gone and even the places you worked….all gone.

VANISHED! Like it and you, never happened.

The emptiness you feel inside is overwhelming at finding out….. that you, for all intents and purposes, don’t exist and it doesn’t matter.

How can that happen?

I guess it’s like everything else in life.
Germs mutate, rivers change course,
people are designed now and not begot normally.
We destroy all the history and evidence and then spend
milleniums looking for it, to find the missing pieces, in what is now a puzzle.
Everything changes and nothing is predictable or permanent.

In Zen teachings they tell you there is only the awareness
of things happening around you.
Time and space are one and as people, we are caught in it and
flow along trying to keep busy,
like everything and every one else.

We search for happiness and learn it is begot from plain good judgement.

Good judgement is begot from experience and

experience is begot from bad judgement. lol

Everything goes full circle which means man has to be aware of bad
to become good and aware of what is good to become bad.
And this applies to everything in the Universe from the macro to the micro.
There is always a play with opposites.

People are on a journey. flowing along in that circle, of being and existence, and
depending on where you find yourself, this is what you’ll be.

Now we find out that there is new matter , something apart from Quantum Physics. That should be interesting.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090320-new-particle_2.html

Everything in our lives is about change.
Politics Science Religion Sports are all in turbulence and
this turbulence has never stopped from the beginning of time.

People are not happy because basically they just want it
to stop but instead, it is getting more and more chaotic,
bringing about more uncertainty, more unpredictability and impermanence.

We are afraid, because we get tired of chasing this change,
this turbulence, to keep on top of things and
in the end we know, it will out run us and we will fail.

Maybe this is the reason we have death.
Maybe this is deaths’ purpose.

Maybe death takes us away to a place where there is permanence, predictability and certainty,
where we can finally beget joy and peace, which we cannot find on the journey this life takes us.
Maybe death is a tangent on the circle of life, just as birth is.

Maybe death is not death, but a new life.

We don’t know where we came from and we don’t know where we will end up and
most of us don’t know where we are in this circle of life either.
So the Zen Masters must be right, in that all we do know,
is that we have awareness, we are conscious, of things happening around us, right now.

The best way to live in a world, where you only have awareness,
is to be happy in the moment of time you find yourself in.

I guess by saying this, we imply that nothing needs to be the way you think it should be.
Nor should it be, unless it is.

Awareness begets a new meaning, in that once we are aware,
that there are no laws for us, and things don’t have to be one way or another,
things will just be, because they are.

There will be only good and bad and the large midpoint in between, where you are misled,
begins to disappear, instead of being the focal point, of all that is.

Awareness brings to light, meaning understanding,
that there actually is good and bad and thus people need to decide what they want,
for themselves, and work daily towards that goal.


good <----------(M I S L E D) -----------> bad.

Working to provide food is good. Killing man for food is bad.

Giving food is good. Stealing food is bad.

Giving shelter is good. Killing a man for shelter is bad .

Giving clothes is good. Stealing or killing man for clothes is bad.

Entertaining for good is good. Entertaining to beget badness or sickness, out of people is not.

Taking drugs for health is good. Taking drugs to promote sickness is bad.

Once you simplify things, people are aware and better understand
what it is to be good and exactly why the world needs it.

Awareness itself, begins to teach people to self censor
through the theme of being good because it clarifies the fact
that no one can survive being bad
whether it be in this life or the next.
In fact, being bad would not be of interest anymore because
doubt would be instilled in the action of being bad.
The graph then changes to different ranges of good.

+Good < ----------------------------------------------- > Good-

Hmmm interesting.

Worlds Smallest Horse

/watch?v=Yf68mJQCVOg&NR=1

Monday, March 23, 2009

JOHNNY APPLESEED


JOHNNY APPLESEED

No one is really sure if our planet is changing because of CO2 emissions or because we
cut down the Amazon forest and sent it north where lumber is needed more, thus changing
the planetary weight distribution or if the planet is slowing down and wobbling because of
magnetic field fluctuations or other changes in the universe.

We do know, through various calculations, that 6 trees off set about one ton of CO2.

In Australia they estimated that each person produces approximately 13 tons of CO2 per year when the allowable rate is only 2 tons per year at most.
So if the calculations are correct, each person should be planting about 78 trees per year to neutralize our carbon out put.

So what do we do?


The best thing to do is to go out into your environment and see what trees grow naturally in your woods and
bring home seeds from these trees because they will be the easiest to adapt to the environment you live in.

The next step is to plant them in your yard, in some cool out of the way place.
Once the seedlings are large enough to survive on their own, with a good root system, go out and plant them
in safe areas where they have a chance to survive.

In British Columbia we have lots of Douglas Fir and pine cones galore.


Collecting them is fun in early spring and if you leave them in the sun to dry, they will open up and expose plenty of seeds.
You can then collect the seeds and plant them outside.

Sometimes you may use a zip lock bag to put pots in so that when you water them the soil does not dry.
The humidity will stay in the bag and keep the soil moist.
It usually doesn’t take long for them to sprout and then you can open the bag and treat them as normal seedlings.



This a great project to do at home and so easy and watching these babies grow gives you so much joy.

Once they are large enough (6-12 inches), they make fine gifts for all occasions especially when new babies are born. As the child grows, so will the tree and you will always know how old it is.

Protecting our environment doesn’t have to be so difficult if we just learn to enjoy it in a non destructive way
by replacing what we take out of our soil.

As I know we have many bikers crossing the country side, this is a very good thing for them to do.
Just hang a bag full of seedlings over your shoulder and stick them into the soil,
along the routes you travel, preferably, just before it rains, when you stop to take a break.

Every one can become a Johnny Appleseed, who planted seeds in 6 states before he died,
If nothing else, these trees will grow to provide free air conditioning to our overstressed planet.

In Toronto they found out planting trees on high rise roofs to be very beneficial both for the air and peoples health .
So………. become Legends in your own right, think green and have some fun planting.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

LENT CAN BE FUN

LENT CAN BE FUN.

Lent is something not many people practice today but if it is in religion,
we must ask ourselves why?

I believe it is a very good practice to follow because it purges your system of meat, dairy, alcohol and fat for 40 days.
Your body has a chance to rest and not fight toxins which continue to weaken the immune system.
I may be wrong but it sure does make a lot of sense and it costs you nothing to lose a little weight,
while strengthening your character, will power and thus…. your mind.

After 40 days, your taste buds sure do appreciate life and living and of course………FOOD!!!!

My Dad was a man of many talents. He loved to tinker.
One day he decided to design his own tent camper so we could go fishing.
He got the base frame from a car (junk yards were treasures in those days, you never knew what you’d find),
took out his welder, got a few pipes to weld. Then he sewed his own tent from canvas he got from somewhere and we girls
did the interior work putting in the mattresses and pillows to make it homey.
It was quite a project and maybe this is why I love doing projects today, which does my house a disfavor.
But….. I believe a house well lived in, is better than a show case home which looks more like a place you visit
rather than a home you love and enjoy being in, surrounded by…… stuff.(Maybe I should get out more loll.)
Anyway,
My Dad had a propane tank fitted for the outside of the trailer so we could cook inside when it rained and heat when it was wet and damp.
Once all was ready, off we went.

We had great days in that camper fishing in the Richelieu River, in Quebec, in a little town called Noyan, just by the US border.
I have many good memories from that river. Sometimes I feel like Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn, where that river is concerned.
It’s very historic in that it has two forts: Fort Lennox and Fort Montgomery.
Samuel de Champlain went up it and many battles took place with the Iroquois and sitting there,
one could almost feel those days as if they were yesterday.
Fort Lennox is on the Canadian side and they turned it into a tourist place where people are taken out by ferry boat.
Nice little island but when I was a kid, it was a place I’d love to drive to with my boat and run around on with my dog.
The river in those days was very clean. People used it for drinking water and the fish………….
well ……if you didn’t catch one or three on one line at the same time in a few minutes, you had to move on.

I’d do a lot of waterskiing and snorkeling in those days and was fascinated by the world under that strip of water.
We had everything. Perch, sunfish, rock fish, bass, pike, cat fish .
Once I met up with an eel face to face and we both got scared of each
other and high tailed it into different directions.
There was an old wooden bridge, we’d like to hang around to jump into the water from.
(They tore it down now and replaced it with a cement over pass, a little tooooooo high to jump off of today.)
Under it lived this huge old fish. It must have been one of the white fish people talked about.
It was about 5 feet long and if you teased it with a juicy worm on a hook, it was too smart to bite. It just lay there,
so we’d settle to come by every day and hang off the bridge looking at it.
This fish was killed in droves by people who wanted the pearl inside its’ head.
Unfortunately they would just throw the carcass away and the local people were not very happy about that.
We also had our own Loch Ness monster story.
We camped just at the mouth of Lake Champlain and this is where two fishermen disappeared.
After a thorough search, they found their boat broken in half under water but no people. Hmmm.
Since the Richelieu and Lake Champlain connected with the St Lawrence and the ocean, anything was possible.

Well, one day we went out to our camp site and found this jolly old French couple as our neghbors that weekend.
The man wore this hat full of different kind of fishing lures. He’d leave every morning around 4 am and by 8 am would return with 16 nice sized pike.
They were a really friendly couple but did not speak a word of English and my parents didn’t speak a word of French but they managed to communicate anyway.
My Dad was fascinated in how he managed to catch so many pike when at most we could only catch 4, with three fishing.
So the old man told him he’d take him with him the next day.
My Dad set the alarm to ring at 4 am but he didn’t need to cause being the fun guy that he was, the old man placed his boom box under our trailer on full blast and then turned it on.
It basically blasted us out of the trailer.
After having a good laugh at this heart failing joke, and waking up the whole campsite,
he and my Dad left and came back with some very nice pike.

So what does this story have to do with Lent??
Well, the reason we liked Pike was because my Dad would skin it and my Mom would put the meat through the grinder and do her culinary magic and stuff the meat back into the fish.
She’d sew on what needed to be sewn back on so it again looked like the majestic fish that it was when we caught it and then she’d bake it.
It would come out of the oven as proud in death as it was in life, with a wide open mouth, full of jagged teeth waiting for its prey.

When she would present it on the table, people would dishearten thinking: “ Oh darn, a bony fish to choke on.”
Then you would see their faces change in amazement as my mom gently cut the fish as she would a piece of cake.
All our visitors would suddenly become interested in knowing where she bought this fish with no bones and then we'd sit and talk fish for the rest of the meal.Loll

My parents were brats sometimes and they liked to tease people this way and it especially worked well with the priests in our church who we would invite a few times a year for dinner around the Lent period.
It made them feel so good not to have to fight with the food on their plate and made our family look good cause they thought we fasted for 40 days. lol

LA BOHEME


LA BOHEME.

La Boheme is from a very popular Opera by Puccini.
Opera is not something you need to understand the words to enjoy, if it’s done right.
Pavarotti some what proved this because he became a respected Opera singer without knowing how to read sheet music.
So we have a combination of people who don’t speak Italian and don’t read sheet music uniting
to compose a very beautiful Opera for people to enjoy.
That’s art.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOfC9LfR3PI&feature=related
Pavarotti. One of the famous songs he sung from this Opera, people know.

La Boheme originated from a book called La Vie de Boheme written in 1849 by Henry Murger.
The word Boheme referred to gypsies who lived a wild and free life, in this case artists.
The story is about a poet Rodolpho and a gypsy girl Mimi and of course all the love and passion between them.
The tragedy lay in the fact that Mimi was dying.
Rodolpho wanted to leave her because he couldn’t stand her flirtations.
His was ravaged by guilt because he thought he contributed to her sad state of affairs.
In the end they reunited just before she died.

.http://www.laboheme-derfilm.de/
modern version in a movie I’d like to find and watch one day.

Friday, March 20, 2009

The joy of Easter....

It is a shame society destroys holidays today because each holiday gives us an opportunity to celebrate and interrelate.For instance, my Christmas tree stayed up all year round, for many years, while my children were growing up.All I did was change the decorations from Christmas, to Chinese New Year, to Deepavali, to St Patrick's to Easter etc..and my house was always full of joy as a result. We always had something nice to discuss and celebrated life with people around us.Easter was especially significant because we spent so much time preparing for it.


My Mom would make her extra beautiful Paskhas or Easter bread and her famous syrnyk (recipes can be found here) She would make her own sausage and I would share in making the colorful eggs to fill our basket with.We would go to all night mass and get our basket blessed by the priest.The Church would be filled with flowers and a symbol of a casket and it also gave people a colored egg at midnight, after Christ had risen followed by a procession around the block with people singing holding candles. The priest would then go and bless the baskets and people would exchange eggs with their friends.I remember the day when Easter was not very pleasant for me. I was around six and Pysanky Eggs were a treasured item in those days.. The old ladies made them and would not share the process they used to make them.The first time I saw a Pysanka Egg, I was mesmerized by its intricate beauty and I stared and stared not being able to get enough of it.But the old lady who owned the basket, shooed me away, as if my looking, harmed her eggs. I was heart broken and I vowed to myself that day, that if I ever learned how, I would make tons and give them to every one.

Well, we changed churches and the new church I went to, had very poor, simple baskets. No one decoratedthem like in the church that broke my heart.Then one day I met a Ukrainian girl who invited me to make them with her. I could not believe my good fortune!I did not give away my joy nor show her any evidence that I cared one way or another for fear she would see and change her mind but inside I was bursting.

So three of us sat and made one egg each.When I got home I bade my Mom get three dozen eggs and I began to make as many as I could, determined to elate as many people as I could Easter night, as I was when I first laid my eyes on these beautiful creations. I made three dozen eggs and then had time to make three dozen more. My hands were black from the egg color.The day finally came when my basket was presented on the table to be blessed. It was gorgeous!

This is the first time we did not put in eggs to be eaten but all these wonderful colorful Pysankys, all with a story to tell because the colors and symbols you use also tell a story of what the eggs wants to say to you.

The people did not know whose basket it was and brought my parents over to view this “beautiful basket” and they were secretly pleased but did not let on.

Then this huge group of hippies came over and I suddenly became so frightened they would steal the eggs because they were not from our church.They loved them and called them psychedelic. They were nice and only looked….. like I just wanted to look, some ten years back.

When it came time to exchange eggs, soooo many people came to our basket and we exchanged ours, for one of the edible ones.That was my best Easter ever!!! We came home with tons of edible eggs and they each got one beautiful one they could enjoy looking at, at home.

What I did that night was give people a little bit of joy and an incentive to take pride in their baskets. They began learning to make Pysanky’s, and/or have children stick stickers onto a colored egg. Easter became a joyful event in that church thereafter

What is even nicer is that, when it dries, the egg would stand upright by itself without rolling over, like a little soldier.Since then I have done many things with eggs and they are my favorite thing to work on.

Recently my cousin told me she still had a few of the eggs my Mom sent her that year. Gosh they must soooo old !!!!! loll

She said they were very fragile now and she was afraid to touch them in case they broke. I told her to spray them with shellac so they harden.

Wow! I can’t believe she still has them.

This is a memory that still makes me smile today.