KateThoughts

Christmas 2008

This has been a very interesting season. For now, I'm going to tell you about the last couple of days and how I spent my Christmas time.

Almost first thing, after starting the coffee, was my morning walk. The coolest thing has developed: Mango goes with me! He really likes the walk, and becomes impatient (so it seems) if I take too long to get to it - or if I don't get to it at all.
Here is that cutie pie:
Our walk is only a half mile circuit, but it has some BIG hills. I guess that Mango covers about 3 times the distance that I do.

Christmas Eve morning was gorgeous. We were out early enough to see the morning sun hit The Mountain.

So. yeah, you can't really see anything for the trees, but it was great. And contrasted sharply with this morning. We had sunshine for our walk, but the western sky (where The Mountain sits) was gray & cold & promising interesting weather for later on... I tried a picture, but it showed even less that this last one did. 

We always see deer, usually in the yard as they were this morning:
This shot shows a buck at the end of the driveway, and more of his herd across the street in the meadow.

Carmel met us in our neighbor's drive way, but won't take the walk with us. We've finally got some great shots of him:
Here's a closeup of Mango, too.

I love the way the light hits his fur in this one.  Be sure to click on it to see it larger.

Aren't our boys beautiful?!

OK...that was Christmas morning until about 7:30 or 8:00.
Now it's time to get down to the food.
Carol & Nancy came over for breakfast. Nancy brought a terrific casserole of grits, cheese, green chili, and eggs. I made my famous (Rachel Ray) bacon: thick sliced with brown sugar and red chili flakes. We had some outstanding sour dough bread that Carol brought, and a Finnish Breakfast braided bread that Nancy & I found in a Great Harvest bakery in Albuquerque on Monday. If there is one of those any where near you, check it out. They grind their own grain and the baked goods are wonderful.

Here we are enjoying the feast: Nancy, Carol & Joel in that order left to right. That's me, behind the camera.

And now, I'm enjoying playing with the blog and thinking of stuff. And enjoying some quiet. Everyone's gone right now; some to the Casino, Nancy to her family across town.
I'm heading to the bath tub to enjoy a soak & a good book. Later on, we'll meet at the baby casino (The Travel Center) for a family-style turkey dinner...unless it just seems like a better idea to order pizza or eat left-overs.

For my money, this day has been about perfect so far.
I'd love to be seeing my brother & sister, but I'll see them soon; and on holidays they tend to be followed by lots of other people and quite a bit of noise.

There is one really special thing that happened this year I want to tell you about. You may not really understand, but it won't matter; I got it.
In a recent conversation with my friend Shaula my Mom's quillows came up. Mom made some years ago; mine had a cat on it. Shaula saw it years ago - oh, maybe 15 or more. She loved it and commissioned Mom to make some for her & her girls which Mom did...all five of them. And Shaula & her girls still have them & love them. Shaula found out that mine was gone. (Why it's gone is another story for another time.)
In any case, Shaula came over on Christmas Eve with a gift for me - we usually only exchange cookies or such.

Shaula had packed up her own quillow and brought it to me.
I have one of my Mom's quillows again! Oh, the bawling that went on...we had Joel & Carol crying too. It was so sweet and so touching. Thanks, Shaula.

And for those who don't know, a quillow is a cross between a quilt & a pillow. They're usually about lap rug size, as these Mom made are. The quilt has a special pocket into which the quilt folds, so that it can sit out on your couch and look just like a beautiful pillow. Here's my 'new' one:

I wanted a good shot of it unfolded, but Mango got involved and is now certain that the quillow is his. We will have to talk.

And for a final treat, I believe it has begun to snow.

Love & Joy to you & yours

Winter Solstice Wishes w/Melissa Etheridge & Salman Ahmad

Today is the Solstice. Noon is less than hour away, here. Meet me outside with your bells! 

Wisdom

I found this in Ronni Bennett's sidebar today, and wanted to link it here, also. THANKS, Ronni!
This is a great video - short quotes by various famous folk about what Wisdom means to them. It will reside in my left sidebar as well for awhile. Hope you enjoy this... 

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view,
and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
even a stranger, when in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people and grovel to none.
When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself.
Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools
and robs the spirit of its vision.
When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled
with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep
and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

Chief Tecumseh (Crouching Tiger) Shawnee Nation 1768-1813

Thanks, Nancy   ; >D

Single-Payer Health Care - More Resources

Places to go for more info & ways to take action on this very important subject:

• Physicians for a National Health Plan
  Scroll down on this page for a list of informative articles, overviews, and resources.

• CNHPNow

 
I'll post more as I find them.

...thanks to commenter, Little Red Hen...

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall: a twist in the right direction

This was shared by my Tai Chi sifu, Jim Blackburn.
Encouragement to support our commitments to 'practice' everyday.

"In New York's Lower East Side a Cadillac filled with Texans pulls slowly up to Grandmaster," Hey, how do y'all get to Carnegie Hall?" they ask loudly.

                    " Practice." whispers Grandmaster.

 

But what is practice and how do you approach your practice? Practice as a verb is clear to all of us. To practice in this sense means something we do separate from the rest of our life to enhance a skill or a technique (ie, practicing the guitar, practicing an exercise, practicing presentations ). This way of thinking about practice serves a purpose , because you clearly need to practice to get to Carnegie Hall. However, if you seek to develop mastery, practice becomes a noun.
Practice becomes something you have , something no longer separate from the rest of your life, but something you are in all aspects of your life.

Practice then becomes similar to the Chinese Tao or the Japanese Do. Practice becomes the Path upon which you walk daily. Practice in this sense does help you achieve goals and benefits along the way , but masters don't practice for these reasons alone. Masters practice because they love Practice and this leads to improvement, which in turn adds joy, eliminates distractions, and encourages additional practice.

How you practice reflects who you are. Who you are reflects how you practice."

May you be your practice, Jim

Thanks, Jim...

TED Talks: David Holt & Mountain Music

Wait until you see/hear the mouth bow...and stay tuned until the very end to see Thunderwear! Video is about 25 minutes and worth it all.  ENJOY! He's got a dobro, too, Bill.

Health care: Wouldn't it be great to have some for EVERYBODY?

Ronni Bennett, about whom you already know from this blog, just keeps getting better and more on point, IMHO.
I hope you'll read her article, "Elders Lobbying for Healthcare for Others".  Here's the opening excerpt:

"As I’m sure you remember, during a speech in Cleveland on 20 July 2007,
President Bush had this to say about health care:

"I mean, people have access to health care in America.
After all, you just go to an emergency room."

For the president of the country with the worst record on health care in the
developed world to make such a statement is awful enough,
but I think the greater giveaway is that it tells us a lot about
what rich people think the rest of us are worth."

Saul Friedman, Newsday writer and long-time journalist, wrote this post recently, from which I take this opening excerpt:

"I’m old enough to remember how it was before Medicare. My mother-in-law was in declining health and my wife and I were seeing to her care. On one visit to her family doctor, a golfer whom we called Buzzie, he told us, “Boy, if she only had the money we could give her the treatment she should have.” We left him for a nice, non-Jewish doctor I had met on the police beat."
[emphasis added]

Both of these articles contain links to other reports and articles related to this issue. Here is one from the New England Journal of Medicine, penned by David Blumenthal, an unpaid advisor to Obama.

Ronni calls us to action! So go do it! Here is a link to Obama's Change.gov site where you can tell him what & why. 

Then go to these websites and tell your Congress people.
[Note, some of your Congressional leaders will be new in January; mark your calendar and write to them them. ]

The US House of Representatives
The US Senate

Ronni, thanks for the story, the links, and your encouragement to step up and say my piece. 

So, what's on MY mind? Well...

I'm 61, and in pretty good health, though I have some high blood pressure and I don't even want to know my cholesterol numbers. The most chronic problem is pain in my lower back (from a VERY old injury), and some stuff that may be the beginning of some arthritis. I have a very high threshold for pain, and don't need anything except periodic generics like aspirin or ibuprofen.

Which is a good thing, because my insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, has already disallowed everything that could possibly be associated with my skeletal structure and/or that old injury. In order to comfortably afford the payments, I had to choose a pretty big deductible, and because the treatments I would most like to use and from which I could benefit (chiropractic, massage, Rolfing, etc) are disallowed, I rarely meet the deductible, and so I don't use the services.

Also, there is a $400 annual allowance for 'preventative' care. I tried that out last year. My doc decided that I should have a colonoscopy. No real symptoms, just age related. So, I didn't ask a lot of questions, I just made the appointment and went. Well, part of it all was covered: the $400, of course, but then 50% of this charge and 20% of that charge and yada yada yada, until I was out of pocket almost $2500, AND HAD NOT MET MY DEDUCTIBLE for that year. Better not get the flu!

So, I have health insurance. I can use it for broken legs or heart attacks. In four years I can dump it...and will have enriched BCBS by about $15,000 for basically nothing. What a joy it is.

And the very worst thing, to my way of thinking, is that I'm actually betting with the insurance company that something WILL happen. I'm betting AGAINST myself. Wow! How's that for confidence in the laws of attraction? Crimenentlies!

So, yeah, you bet; I sent my letter to Obama. And I've plugged my calendar to remind me to send similar letters to my 'leaders' in January. Now, you go do it, too.

"Afternoon of life..."

"The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning." - Carl Gustav Jung

 

a Winter poem

I found this beautiful winter poem

and thought it might be a comfort to you.

It was to me; and it's very well written.

 

 

 

I felt it really captured my own

feelings about  winter.  

 

(...Laura, I know you & Erin will really appreciate that I've added poetry here...)

 

"Winter"

A poem by 

Abigail  Elizabeth McIntyre  

   
  

 

SHIT, It's Cold  ! 

 

 

The End 

 

a vison

Do you see her the way I do, sometimes?
Like a woman - tall, strong, quiet...
...she senses something unpleasant- like the hood of a jacket, resting too heavily on her shoulder. Ooh, just shrug it off.
                ...there, that's better.     ...sigh

The Mother.
earth mother? yes. But not just that... more...
She encompasses Father Sky and Cosmic Mind. Her cellular body resides within the planet. Her shoulders are the mountain ranges that press up thru her dress of green and brown and blue. Her hair is the clouds, often tossing in the wind.

But the hood and the whole jacket are not hers. They were put there by those little people. The ones who leave their stuff all over the floor. It takes a really good, long shower to feel really clean. "I love standing under the power jets of the shower massage. I like the rushing water in the hot tub, too. Yum."

I see her best when the storms come upon us. Sometimes, like today, the storms do tremendous damage to some of the things we've 'put on the floor' and they hurt - a lot - to many.

But now, step back - back up in your mind's eye until you stand on a plain between mountain ridges...see her shoulders in the mountain's silhouette, and imagine her there. Shrugging her shoulders and aiming her blow dryer while she shakes her head...
...whew, the freedom, the skweeky-clean-ness of it all...
"...and how those little pieces, uhh people, do fly about. What were they doing there? Oh, yes, I remember...the experiment...

From an old old draft I decided to publish...

A Great Article "On the Election of Barack Obama"

An article on Barack Obama has just been published in the major national Native American newspaper, News from Indian Country.

an excerpt:

"And finally, a great leader, a chief or a President, inspires the people to greatness. He makes them feel not less than they are but more than they imagined. “You cannot see clearly,” said Mark Twain, “when your imagination is out of focus.” He would have the American people rise to his expectations, emphasizing the positive over the negative, a strategy much appreciated by Native American traditional healers."

Read the full article here.

If the link is no longer active, please go to the website indiancountrynews.com and do a search for 'Kenneth Cohen'. His article pops up as the first entry.

author bio info from the article:

"Kenneth Cohen is a health educator and scholar/practitioner of indigenous healing traditions. Of Russian Jewish ancestry, he has worked with American Indian traditional healers and elders for more than thirty years. Ken is the winner of the leading international award in complementary and alternative medicine, The Alyce and Elmer Green Award for Innovation. He is the author of Honoring the Medicine (Ballantine Books), national health book award winner, and more than 200 journal articles on spirituality and health."

Additionally, I've done a two-day Qigong workshop with Mr. Cohen; read from his book, The Way of Qigong; my most excellent Tai Chi teacher, Jim Blackburn, is a friend and former student of Ken's, and I feel very comfortable in recommending his work to you.

In this article, besides learning about why Cohen believes that Obama represents 'a new source of strength', you will learn some very interesting facts about the history of our presidents and the Native American nations that you probably don't know...

NOTE: The link behind the book title goes through HMHC's affiliate page and will help support the Center. The link behind the word 'book' goes to the 'books' page on Cohen's website.

The AMAZING Dance Troup: Pilobolus

Just can't get over what this group of young people can do. If you like this, head to YouTube and just search their name, Pilobolus; there are pages and pages of videos of this group.

O.M.G.
Two Pilobolus dancers at TED Talks, summer of 2007. This one is almost 15 minutes and oh, so good.

SOMETHING NEW!

Hey, check out the new item at the top of the left sidebar!

If you're getting something from me for the holidays this year, it will come from Heifer.org. You can check out their site from the link here, or in the sidebar; both will take you there.

Hmmm. what shall it be this year? Bumblebees? Ducks? How about a Heifer?!

Ho! Ho! Ho!