Previously on Alphawoman...

The Rules

Recently I have not had the opportunity to read. I dearly miss curling up with a good book. So I decided to venture down to the local-ish public library and pick up some audio CD's to enjoy when I am driving.

I picked up Tony Robbins talking about something or another. I find I enjoy him much more as an orator than as a writer. Several times I tried to read this book I am listening to and failed. But I'm loving the audio.

I am picking up quite a bit about changing your behavior and little tricks to make yourself a better and happier person. Now you might be asking yourself, "I thought Mary was an extremely happy and well balance person!" And you're right, I am. But everyone could little readjusting now and then.

One interesting section was about rules. Not just any rules, but the rules you make for yourself and thereby inflict them on those around you. I found this "spin" quite easy to apply to real life. Especially if I apply it to other people. I understood at once why Joe is having a difficult time with a certain someone. He does not understand her rules and therefore, breaks them. As much as she dislikes Joe, he must break every single one of her rules. (see how easy this is?)

Is it possible to sit down with some one you are having a conflict with and somehow find out what their rules are? I don't know. But he makes sense and I believe that if you could follow his advice and put into action his behavioral shifts I think you're life might just be less annoying. Better? Happier? If I am less annoyed, I am happier.

Simple.

Take today. I go to Kroger's because I like Kroger. It is a classy supermarket in this town. This area is limited in the supermarket offerings. For some reason the powers that be think that "everyone" just drives into Nashville if they want variety. (I stop here, I learned my lesson in Ft Wayne about city bashing). I pick up the two items I want from the vegetable area and mosey on down the Halloween aisle (1/2 off and tremendous make-down) and pick up some (pukey - but I only find this out later) Kroger brand Indian Corn. The place is packed. Last minute Halloween shopping but it looks like a blizzard might be making a beeline for us with the crowded store and impossible to find a space in the parking lot! So I go to the self check out line and get in the queue. As I stand in the middle area of the two lines a gentleman assumes his place behind me to await his turn after me. Out of nowhere a lady and her husband arrive, just out of church by the way they are dressed to the nines, and get behind the lady at the check out space to the right!

I turn to the guy behind me and say, "Did I miss something about check out etiquette at this store?" He is Mexican and just smiles and nods. Maybe he understands, maybe not.

I realize one of my rules was just broken!!

So life goes on. I understood (not right then but later) that my rules about standing in line at the self check out area is totally different from the people who just left church. They believe in every man/woman for themselves and those who play fair go after them.

Then I go to Walmart. Halloween candy is still top dollar. Thank God I stocked up on my Almond Joys at Kroger. I get the items I need and head to the self check out lanes and immediately get one. As I am lifting the 35 pound cat liter out of the basket this woman comes up behind me and gets in my space!! I just ignore her breathing down my neck and swipe my coupon and pay with her shopping cart right up my thigh. As I get ready to leave I see a second lady ignore the queue and rush towards the person next to me and get as close to her as the lady behind me. I look at all the people who obey the rules of etiquette waiting patiently in an orderly line and wonder why some people think they are more important.

And I think that maybe Tony is right.

Right about something.

(also apprearing on Alphawoman)

LOONEY TOONS TIME

Hello! anyone noticing? White House - No Flag
It is time we ousted this scoundrel...
THINK ABOUT IT
Have you noticed that the decor at the White House haschanged since BHO moved in? The Oval Office is now stripped of the traditional red, white, and blue, and replaced with middle eastern wallpaper, drapes, and decor. The hallway that he walks out of to talk to the press now has middle eastern chairs, drapes, etc..Most disturbing is the bright yellow drape behind him every time he speaks from the White House. It has Arabic symbols on it and has been there from the beginning.Today I received this and it clearly shows what I have been noticing. That bright yellow curtain is highly visible, but as you scroll down, you will see what is predominantly absent. Also, as you look at the pictures of other presidents speaking from the same spot, look at the traditional 'American' background and decor as opposed to the new decor. This is intentional and should alarm every American

This is the text of an email forwarded to me by a relative of a relative. I've done some Googling about the new oval office decor and I'm still trying to figure out what's Middle Eastern about striped wall paper, among other things.

I'm not seeing the Arabic characters in that backdrop fabric. I'm not really into yellow but it looks like a really nice satin brocade to me.

It's getting loonier by the hour.

Great Breakfast Treat, Oatmeal Cake

A cold morning, water in the birdbaths lightly frozen over. The birds are emptying their feeders in record time, and I am feeling quite guilty about forgetting to fill them last evening. It's still too cold to go out there and do it right now in my jammies.  But it's the perfect morning to bake up a panful of Oatmeal Cake so we'll have it to take as a portable breakfast for fly-ins at the Bosque del Apache next week. Oatmeal is a breakfast staple for us in winter, both in our previous life, and our New Improved Vegan/no oil life. 

This is something I used to make for breakfast when we ran Marigold's, our guesthouse on Cape Cod, only now I have modified it for our new diet to exclude eggs. sugar and oil.  It is actually quite good, with the banana and applesauce providing a nice sweetness. It makes a grab & go breakfast if you don't have time for a sit-down, or can be heated up with fruit for a tummy-warming morning start.



Oatmeal Cake 

1 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats (NOT instant)
2 cups soy (or almond/hemp/oat/etc) milk
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsps baking powder
1 (or more, as you like) tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1 large banana, mashed
1/2 cup applesauce
handful chopped walnuts
1/2 cup raisins (cranberries are also great)

Oven at 350.

Spray 8" round or square pan.
Soak oats in milk about five minutes.
Add nuts/raisins, vanilla, banana and applesauce to soaked oat/milk mix.
Mix dry ingreds separately, then mix in to oat mix until well blended.
Pour into baking pan, bake 40 - 45 minutes, until golden crust forms on top.
Let cool before cutting.  Serves six, or keeps two in breakfast  treats for several days. 

 

(Cross-Posted from Quid Nunc)

 

SUMMER SOLDIERS

An expansion on a comment I posted on Lisa’s entry. Do I think that the president might have done a few things differently over the past couple of years? Personally, I believe the administration might have spent more political capital on putting people back to work. The president worked like an old time coal miner trying to put together a bi partisan consensus even though it was pretty damned obvious from the beginning that the ‘Pubs weren’t going to cooperate. Do I wish there was a way out of Afghanistan that doesn’t involve throwing our hands in the air, saying the hell with it and pulling out? Oh yeah. The only consolation is that Alexander, the Russians and the British couldn’t do any better.

Thomas Paine coined a wonderful phrase back during the Revolution in his pamphlet “the Crisis”. To the “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots” who voted Democratic in ’08 and aren’t happy or satisfied with the results and feel too “discouraged” to vote this time around; if you don’t vote you can’t complain about the results can you?

We’ve got a candidate for the house in my district who, among other things, believes that public education is socialistic and “child abuse” and should be abolished. That our radioactive waste could either be diluted and dumped in the ocean or mixed into housing foundations because low dose radiation is good for you. That the EPA should be abolished, and that all our energy problems would be solved if companies like Exxon and BP (and their employees) didn’t have to pay taxes. Of course now that he’s running for office and being reminded of what he said in the past, well that wasn’t exactly what he meant. Seems to be a lot of that going around.

It gets even better. Other candidates want to gut the fourteenth amendment. Some candidates would repeal the seventeenth amendment that provides for the direct election of senators. There are modern nullifiers who would allow the states to ignore any federal statute they don’t agree with. Andrew Jackson must be spinning in his grave. Sharon Angle is on the record advocating a “second amendment” solution if the election results don’t suit the far right radicals.

There is a radical minority who are willing to trash what we have in hopes of replacing it with something more to their liking. Now, they can’t succeed, but they can create a hell of mess in the process. An even bigger mess to clean up. Now all you discouraged folks out there; if you want to risk this by all means stay home, sit in a corner, stick your fingers in your ears and hum real loud.

As for me, my mail in ballot it already deposited in the drop off box. We filled ours out the same day we got them.

Hail to the Chief

Last night, for about twenty amazing minutes, I got to be in the same room (okay...it was an auditorium. A very BIG room, but a room nonetheless) with the President of the United States.

After standing on the sidewalk for three hours (I SO wore the wrong shoes) then sitting in an ugly auditorium for two more hours, and having to endure a rather childish political pep rally, that man walked out on the stage.

I'm not saying it was worth all the peripheral bullshit to get a glimpse of an obviously tired president who was sniffling from a cold and guzzling water in order to try to retain an audible voice for the duration of his speech. And we were really far away (mostly watched him on the Big Screen.) :(

But I realized I am still very proud that he is President of the United States. I'm proud that I voted for him. I'm proud that he speaks FOR me, and TO me as if I were a rational adult.

I'm proud of what he has achieved so far, in the face of ridiculous opposition. And I'm proud that he hasn't lost heart, and that he's just going to keep on plugging. He has set his sights on accomplishing as much as he possibly can while he holds the highest office in the land. I'm proud that I was in that crowd, among those five thousand people who showed him a degree of excitement, admiration and support that, I'll wager, he doesn't encounter too often these days.

Barack Obama has my greatest respect and loyalty.

Hail to the Chief!

Let's All Go, Shall We?

This is probably the only thing in the world that would induce me to get on an airplane and fly across the country...

Jon Stewart's Rally To Restore Sanity.



...and Blogger refuses to upload the video about it. Sigh!

On the Tea Party Victories…

A lot of press is being given to the primary victories of Tea Party-endorsed candidates in states like New York and Delaware. Somehow, the exponential surge of the Tea Party is being painted as a serious threat to the Democrats' congressional majorities in this mid-term election cycle. Say what?

Personally, I think this is a spin job being perpetrated by a desperate Republican Party, which is trying to hold itself together at the seams as the Tea Party tears the ultra-right-wing ideologues away from it. Those same ultra-right-wingers who were nodded and winked and placated for eight years by the Bush/Cheney/Rove political machine. The machine that understood it needed the votes of the ultra-conservative nutjobs to keep its stranglehold on the political power in this country. The power that was going to allow them to advance their "build wealth, protect wealth" agenda. The agenda that, in the end, didn't effectively accomplish either of those things. Which is why they are no longer in power.

So tell me: How is the rending asunder of the Republican Party going to threaten the Democrats? Isn't it traditionally so that when an independent party splinters away from one of the two major ones, the party from which that upstart splinters becomes weakened? These Tea-Partiers, with their ultra-conservative agenda, their "birthers" and their altered definitions of socialism, are not the folks who put Barack Obama in office. They are not the folks who threw the bums who had spent eight years leading this country to the brink of economic, intellectual and moral collapse, out on their ears.

THEY are the ones who fell in love with Sarah Palin.

And in case you hadn't noticed…Palin lost.

It's indeed a pity that she hasn't gone away into Losing Candidate Oblivion. But still. Ubiquitous and strident and seemingly popular as she is—she's a loser.

And it's unfortunate that she has become the mouthpiece for a group of discontented loud-mouths who, in my humble opinion, gave up the best thing they ever had when they ripped themselves away from the mainstream Republican Party. Because I think they are going to find that they need the Republicans as much as the Republicans needed them. Together, they are a block to be reckoned with.

Apart…not so much.

The Politics of Love

I have completely given up hope on our country, politically. The stuff that filters down to me, even through my overworked, sleep-deprived haze is so inane, so unbelievable, so...filled with hatred and divisiveness, name calling and power grubbing, that I have, finally, just had to step away from it. I have, literally, given up. I can no longer be that voice in the wilderness--albeit a weak one--that I was in the waning years of the Bush Administation.

The "Tea Party" thing makes me crazy. But I just can't have any hope that the progressive answer to that hideous noise--the "Coffee Party"--will have any effect other than feeding the fire of divisiveness and "Us vs Them." I don't want to be an "Us." I don't want there to be a "Them." I just want us all to figure out a way to live in peace.

Fat Chance.

Still, every once in a while, something comes along that makes sense and I need to endorse, regardless of where it comes from.

The following comes from the "Coffee Party" website. I was led to it by Cynthia on Facebook. Here is the link:

http://coffeepartyusa.com/content/phone-messages-loved-ones-towers-fell

But for those of you who don't click on links in blogs, here are my favorite parts: On second thought, here's the whole thing. It's all my favorite part:

Sat, 09/11/2010 - 9:08am — AnnabelPark
The building was on fire and there
was no way down the stairs. She was calling to say goodbye. There was really
only one thing for her to say, those three words that all the terrible art, the
worst pop songs and movies, the most seductive lies, can somehow never cheapen.
I love you.

She said it over and again before the line went dead. And
that is what they were all saying down their phones, from the hijacked planes
and the burning towers. There is only love, and then oblivion. Love was all they
had to set against the hatred of their murderers.

-- Ian McEwan's op-ed
in the Guardian UK on September 15, 2001

British noveist Ian McEwan wrote this essay soon after reflecting on those extraordinary messages left for their loved ones by the victims all saying "I love you." In those terrifying days right after the Towers fell, I looked for guidance on how to understand what just happened. Reading this essay helped me to understand not only 9/11, but something important about life.

The simplicity of the truth stunned me: In the end, love is what matters.

Instead of being consumed by fear in the last moments of her life, this woman -- the caller, the victim -- was consumed by love. When we fear death and destruction, love is what gives us strength as individuals.

When we need to summon courage for a dangerous operation or to pull ourselves together after we get into a car accident, we think of the ones we love and want to talk to them. We don't think of the ones we hate. Hate doesn't give us the strength to live.

Imagine a whole society consumed by hate. All too well, we can imagine this. Now imagine a whole society consumed by love. It's much harder to imagine.

So, why do we indulge in hate when it weakens us as individuals and a society? There is an illusion of power when we hate, when are we are angry. There is a burst of
energy when chemicals are released into our brains that we mistake for power. We
also feel a sense of unity and camaraderie with our fellow haters. We don't feel
so alone when there is organized hatred. We feel like we are part of a group.
But it is a bond that ultimately weakens us as individuals.

Imagine the same bond based on mutual love, not mutual hate.

Let's again try to imagine a society driven by love for humanity and country. By compassion for those suffering. To want to care for people who need care. Whether they are breathing in toxic chemicals in the Gulf, trapped in a mine is Chile, displacedand hungry in Pakistan, still homeless in Haiti or unemployed in Rockford, IL.Yes, it makes us cringe. It's painful to care when we feel that there is little
we can do to help.

But think of the trapped miners in Chile. Knowing,that the world is watching and their loved ones are holding vigil in amake-shift tent just above and not leaving them, strengthens the miners. Theyknow that they matter, that they are loved, that around the world, we care. Thismutual situation of concern and love makes the miners stronger. It strengthensus as well to see the awesome resilience of the human spirit.

Love strengthens us. Hate weakens us. For at least today, let's imagine a world
driven by the politics of love, not hate.

Everythings Amazing & Nobodys Happy

Texas billboard

Mike and I spotted this billboard on I-35, just south of Waco, as we were driving to Austin on Sunday. We stopped to take a pic of it on our way back on Monday night, and we weren't the only ones who did.
A young friend found it funny but I find it disturbing.

A QUESTIONNAIRE

Questionnaire
(a poem by Wendell Berry)

1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing the desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, town, farms you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill.

Wendell Berry


My thanks to a fellow member of the Creation Spirituality Communities for letting me know about this poem. And my thanks also a relative who shall remain nameless who appears to be far more fundamental than I am for her pro life comments regarding a progressive voting link.

I’m aware that not all so called pro lifers seem to lose their concerns for unborn as soon as they are born.

For me, being pro life means supporting all life. We have to support an unpolluted environment so that children have access to clean water, food, housing and air. Pro life means supporting jobs that pay enough to provide at least basic access to the above mentioned water, food, housing and air. Pro life means access to basic education. The ‘Pub candidate running for Peter DeFazio’s seat calls public education “socialistic” and I really believe he’d like to see the public schools closed.

Pro life means preserving as much of the natural world as we can so kids can dig in the dirt; plant a seed and watch it grow. We all need to at least know that the green is out there for the sake of our sanity.

Pro life means the support and protection of all Creation. It is in Creation that we see the face of the Creator.

ONE PICTURE

is really worth a thousand words. I read the cartoon. I read it again. And then it sank in. Then it really sank in.