Word Match: Stents, Naked and Cold

(I challenge you to find the common thread I found among those items!)

A balmy G'd Day to you from sunny and clear western Idaho, where temperatures dropped only into the mid-30's.  Darn.  I've been bulking my pect's loading the pellet stove this winter, so there goes my exercise routine.

You can look at illness and hospitalization from so many angles, but color me amazed when my dad calls to say the stents insertion went very well and he's feeling 100% better.  Stents?  Ahhh, those things inserted into clogged arteries.  Or, as our pre-Med son says, open-heart surgery.  Umm, Jose says when I realized I hadn't a clue he even was a surgical candidate.  That's a man for you, not telling anyone about the problem until after the successful surgery!  I'm just a branch off that tough ol' tree but don't know that I pull the whole thing off as silently as he did ...

Did you know dreams about being naked in public actually can be positive and reinforce one's self-confidence?  Thank goodness; if one can believe websites, I apparently fit into that category of being self-aware and confident meeting life's challenges.  But, man, I just don't want another one of those silly dreams.  Can't I be catching endless fish in a tropical paradise while sipping coconut milk?

Lastly on President's Day, I applaud my fav prez:  Jimmy Carter.  He led us down a painful road toward the metric system and into greater energy conservation.  Which brings me to climate change.  What a fascinating multi-hued topic, where colder weather for us can scientifically be directly linked to warmer Arctic weather.  Whether you're a believer or nay-sayer, check out this tornado of meteorological reasoning:

http://news.yahoo.com/jet-stream-shift-could-prompt-harsher-winters-scientists-132931128.html 

22 Things You Should Never Do Again After 50

Author Jacquelyn Mitchard considers her limits after a half-century of experiences

by Jacquelyn Mitchard, AARP Bulletin

With fate and that rearview mirror in mind, here are a few things beyond ‘the Limbo’ I'm quite probably beyond doing. So, join me in just saying no to:

1.     Parkour.

2.     Jell-O shots.

3.     Karaoke after midnight.

4.     Karaoke after Jell-O shots.

5.     Trying to break a plank with your head.

6.     Mud wrestling (intentional).

7.     Crowd surfing to the mosh pit.

8.     Joining the circus. Joining the ashram.

9.     Drinking champagne from your son's girlfriend's shoe.

10.  Drinking champagne from your daughter's boyfriend's shoe.

11.  Drinking champagne from your own shoe.

12.  Xtreme bingo cruises.

13.  Collecting owls made of shells, frogs made of ceramic or lawn gnomes made of anything — really, really anything.

14.  Playing basketball in high heels.

15.  Throwing a wet T-shirt contest. Throwing a wet nightshirt contest.

16.  Getting publicly and verbally excited about the number of stamps in your passport, zeroes in your paycheck, capital letters before or after your name (unless they're H.R.H.), number of names on your phone-favorites list, number of people you could have married, the size of your acreage … or the size of your anything else.

17.  Explaining your personal role in the fact that your kids "never really got into any of that stuff …"

18.  Explaining your personal role in the fact that your kids got into an Ivy League college.

19.  Explaining your personal role in starting the rumor that Paul was dead.

20.  Single-spacing your Christmas letter.

21.  The Dougie.

22.  Giving up — ever.

Jacquelyn Mitchard, the best-selling author of 20 books, lives near Madison, Wis., with her family.

In-between (and including) Love and Happiness

Do you ever get busy and not feel in the mood to do things you even enjoy?  Well, as long as it’s not personal hygiene, take a break!  I did but I think time's up.

Back to today’s blog:  after my absence, here’s what got me fired up:

“85 richest people own 46% of world's wealth.  Conducted by Oxfam, one sentence screamed at me, “The top 1% have 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world's population.”  

Read that twice and maybe you'll derail like I did.  Even given the inherent error rates and judgment bias in most statistical sampling, this still is shocking.  I mean, how many millions of us are locked into those social ladders and angst I first learned in reading Jane Austen novels, and later in John Mellencamp’s caustic anti-war song, Love and Happiness?”

Let’s flip that coin and be positive in a realistic kind of way.  Folks like you and I don’t have much in comparison of cash and ‘virtual wealth.’  But excluding those 1% from the pool might enable us to turn our thoughts to non-monetary fulfillment.  It’s clear they've schnarfed most of the wealth, and will continue to do so, with the result maybe being for us to stop chasing the money.  Yes, Mom, you’re right and it’s about being happy and not rich.  You just didn't know the being 46% right was so monumental!

HADS: About the Humans Against Dragon Stereotypes

Harken to the simple truths of life, ye mere mortals!  Important words from my dear friend, The Arkansawyer, now follow:

“Things I've found without really looking.  Trying to get to hasd.us (Halifax Area School District) and instead dyslexically typing hads.us (the contents then now displaced by a u ad), which brings us to:

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine (at Archive.org), where if you type the hads.us URL, you can find a cached version of the page:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110609083914/http://www.hads.us/

Knowledge at its finest but now covered over.  Thanks goodness for the archives.”

Smithsonian Article du Jour: 

Stop Ruining Your Christmas Cookies! Follow These Tips to Better Baking

For when you think your Life is oh so very tough … First World Problems (quick meme): 

“I got hired – so now I’ll have to start waking up early again”

Live each season as it passes;

breathe the air, drink the drink,

taste the fruit, and resign yourself

     to the influences of each.

          Henry David Thoreau

Or, 

just be the person your dog thinks you are

Things you might Find when you’re not actually Searching

Mizz K yesterday reminded me that I can’t find some things:

• Snow dense enough to pack into snowballs. 
• New flavor types.  Did you know humans can taste only four flavors – sweet, salt, bitter and sour?  I’ve been robbed.  “Scotty, beam me up and take me away!”
• Moisture.  Our vinyl window clings just won’t…
• The character map feature in MS Word that I so used to love when typing things in foreign languages.
• Anything resembling the poignant power of Stephen’s Stills’ demo tapes of the late ‘60s, he being one of Texas’ finest songsmiths.
• Hustle-and-bustle.  The surprise is many of you would wig-out at the silence of the prairie lambs.
• Stress that I don’t bring to myself.  You know me, Mr. Drama Magnet when I was younger.  I’m recovered, so bring on those millions of dollars of challenge -- “I spit on you!” (movie quote)

But what have I found?

• Prairie dogs.  Did you know they’re my friend Lee’s muse, his inspiration, and their existence is his raison d’etre?  Editor’s Disclaimer:  Just because his inspiration is to grab his 30.06 rifle with ballistic calibration scope and market his prairie dog fur caps, isn’t the point here…
• Unsought beauty in startling stark tableaus, like a cactus flower in the desert.
• Roaring Spring.  Pioneer-fever Summer.  Blustery Autumn.  Soul-wrapping Winter.
• Wineries.  Ste. Chappelle is the foremost of Idaho’s post-Prohibition wineries, a tradition revived from scratch after families like the Rothschilds abandoned the Lewistown, Idaho area vineyards.  We now have 20 wineries.  No, I’m not a winey and we’ve really done but one decent day’s tour, but so much to look forward to!

Smithsonian Article du Jour: 

These Are All the Places That Europeans Actually Discovered

For when you think your Life is oh so very tough … First World Problems (quick meme): 

I hate my government but I live too comfortably to get motivated enough to do anything about it.

My List of Decisions for Seven Generations

Today's blog is based on the community-level consensus-based concept of the Iroquois Ganonsyoni, the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.  The concept said that decisions affecting the confederation’s future should be deliberate and span seven generations (I think that’s 7x20, so 140 years). 

Question:  how many tribes, after 1720, comprised the Iroquois Nation?

So, here are my ideas/laws/regulations that would affect us for over 140 years.  Does it get a “Yeah!” from the audience?  Or just a razzberry?

• Sustainable use of public lands
• Taxpayer subsidies for renewable energy
• Incentivized ways to encourage folks to dump old vehicles and junk
• Automatically ‘sun-setting’of most entitlement laws so they expire and must be renewed by future generations
• Us doing something in particular for society so a family name again means something (aka Miller, Smith)
• Razing unused buildings on condemned properties and making them into public spaces
• Re-thinking where and how we live:  first build communities in main-street/British commons style; then build the businesses near them, and; make houses eco-friendly, such as rooftop gardens and workplace family care

Answer:  Six tribes, spanning nearly all of upstate NY:  Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Tuscarora, Oneida and Mohawk.  Yeah, I knew most but then again I'm a geek who spent a few years in amazing upstate NY...

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  Deep in the Swedish Wilderness, Discovering One of the World’s Greatest Restaurants

Lastly, for when you think your own Life is oh so very tough … First World Problems (a quick meme):  "I forgot I was watching a recording – I sat through the commercials!"

Long may you run

Wisdom is sought and found in a myriad of ways.  Christianity, Islam, animalism, Native American spiritualism and (some say) in plain ol’ peyote weed.  Seriously now, I like my pastor’s words best:

“To come by the Knowledge you know not, come by the Way you know not.”

Long may you run, much may you find, and savor the richness your revelations bring you…

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  This Controversial Invention Promises to Banish All Web Ads

Life in the Shrubbery

Things that hit me today:

•          Discount CD’s are hit-or-miss, but cool - what are your favorites?  Off the top, I’d say these $1-3 CD’s and albums turned me on to some mind-blowing bands:  the Lilith Fair series, Scarce-Deadsexy, Phish-Undermind, Antigone Rising-Live, Livingston Taylor (James’ brother), Shaw-Blades (spin-off from Styx), and the stuff the members of Yes have put out (into the dumpster if you asked Michele)
•          Noontime walks are fun except the dogs almost never want to come back
•          Crock pot cooking opens up a fabulous new world for guys like me whose efforts revolve around cookbooks with specific measurements
•          Life before DVRs, when you had to sit through commercials, was so very inefficient.  And being able to hot-change through nine channels means the world of Saturday sports is only a few clicks away
•          The church’s mens group ‘homework’ on pride, both positive and negative, really re-focused me on what is worth doing – and maybe why I do it

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  The Enchanting Sea Monsters on Medieval Maps

P.S.  Did you know?:  "There was a long-held theory, going back to at least the first century with Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, that every land animal has an equivalent in the ocean.”

Falconry for you and for me

Yes, I’m back in the saddle though not 100% after a nasty stomach flu and two weeks later some neck pain flaring up for the first time in years.  The answer is simple – keep doing meaningful stuff instead of sitting around all day feeling down.  Of course, Arkansawyer is out getting published so he’s still One Up on me; more to follow when I know his new news.

 

So, I was watching a show called ‘Going Medieval.’  Fascinating British piece by an older gentleman who relished doing everything from helping build a castle to hunting to getting leached.  Let’s skip the latter topic and focus on the use of falcons in hunting.  Did you know these items come from the days of falconry?

·         “Wrapped around your finger” (how to hold them before release)

·          “Hoodwinked” (from covering up the falcon’s amazingly acute eyes, 10x better than ours_

·         “Chaperon” (from the French version of ‘hoodwinked’)

·          “Fed up” (full falcons won’t hunt and a cadger can tell by rubbing their chests)

·         The word “caddie” (derived from “codger,” the name for the person tending to the falcons)

·         “Haggard” (an adult falcon caught in the wild)

·         “Gorge” (what these birds do to save food for later snacking)

 

Smithsonian Article du Jour:  Discovered: The Molecule Responsible for Itchiness