End of Year

“When I stand before thee at the day’s end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.” Rabindranath Tagore

“Now national boundaries are not so important. The whole world is one entity, one body. That is the new reality.” Dalai Lama

Anther year is coming to a close. I will spend New Year’s Eve at home where it is warm and I don’t have to deal with drunks on the road. A couple of people from the office are going out. One of the ladies is throwing a party but didn’t invite me, which is fine with me. I don’t care to socialize with her. She is too nasty to too many people. Life is too short to have to put up with nasty people when you don’t have too.

Even though I have been swamped at work it ended on a positive note. I got a nice compliment from a lady, who in the past, has always been really rude and tried to get me in trouble more then once. My boss has always stood by me and now this lady finally understands why. I am really good at my job and the only way she could have possibly fixed a major accounting problem was with my help.

I also made a decision today to give a little help to a woman who was disabled and was only a couple of days shy of getting a payment in time for a prompt pay discount. She had also accidentally made her check out for a dollar short. The lady who was giving the party had gotten rude and refused to give her the discount so she made the trek into to office again today. I decided to honor the discount and the extra dollar. She had asked for me personally and her record of paying has always been excellent. There was no reason to treat her badly. My boss backed me up on that decision. She is a good woman and deserves to be treated with kindness.

That is one of the things I tried to do this year, spread kindness around whenever I could. I have been a shoulder to cry on many times at work. I have tried to give help to people who needed help. I handed out a lot of my Kleenex to people who had been in tears trying to figure out how to pay for hospital bills with no jobs and no insurance. I have been a shoulder for my Mom and have helped her with numerous problems this year. I have been a shoulder for my niece.

Happiness is a Warm Kitty

“The ability to see things normally is no small thing; to be really normal is the unusual. In that normality begins to bubble up inspiration.” Sessan

“Happiness is a state of mind. With physical comforts, if your mind is still in a state of confusion and agitation, it is not happiness. Happiness means calmness of mind.” Dalai Lama

In our neighborhood there are a lot of cats wandering around. A couple of years ago my Mom had been feeding a particularly skinny black cat that she had felt sorry for. Having owned cats all my life I could have predicted what was going to happen next. One day this little skinny black cat gave birth to four little kittens in our storage shed, three black ones and one gray one. Mom was surprised but bought some kitten food when they were old enough to eat it.

One morning when I went down to get the elixir of life other wise known as my morning coffee I was surprised to see this little black cat walk out of my Mom’s bedroom. I looked at her and asked if Mom knew she was in the house. It turned out that Mom had been letting the brave one of the quartette into the house. After shooing her out five times Mom decided to let her stay the night. The rest as any cat owner knows is history.

Since her own mother died several years ago, my Mom inherited the mantle of the most stubborn person on the planet. She finally retired a couple of months ago at the age of 82. She has an extremely bad heart. In 1999 she lost her husband of 55 years, my Dad, the only man she has ever loved. She has been emotionally battered since then. I moved in four years ago at her request to help take care of her.

Back to this little black cat that Mom had nicknamed Snickerdoodle. My brother and I renamed her Pixie since it was obvious that she was going to be a part of the household much to my cat Merlin’s distress. Merlin is a ten-year-old, highly skittish, Momma’s boy who was relishing being an only cat. If they gave out report cards to cats his would have an A+ in napping. Doing the proper cat owner thing we had Pixie spayed and got her all her shots.

Pixie has transformed my Mom’s life. If Mom raised us the way she raised that cat we would all be in Sing-Sing. Pixie is allowed up on cabinets. She sleeps with Mom. She gets feed meat from the deli section whenever she demands it. I even have to get extra meat so that Pixie has her treats. She is into everything. Mom will pull blinds up so that she can go from window to window and watch the squirrels. Pixie is sweet natured when she isn’t being a brat. She torments my poor Merlin who wouldn’t get any exercise at all if Pixie didn’t chase him.

The most important thing Pixie has done however is to give an elderly woman a new lease on life. My Mom has been happier these last two years since she has been in since the death of her husband. Pixie, more then anyone else, was responsible for my Mom finally retiring. I managed to slip into conversations enough that “Pixie really needs you to stay home with her” that it entered into my Mom’s subconscious and she actually retired. Pixie has been showing her gratitude by climbing up on Mom’s lap when she is resting in “Dad’s chair” a comfortable recliner. Pixie likes her naps on Mom’s lap so Mom will stay in the chair longer as she doesn’t want to disturb the cat.

Pixie has an arsenal of cute things to keep my Mom entertained. She talks to her squirrels. She plays with ribbons and things. She uses the rungs of the dining room chairs as her own little jungle gym. She rolls on her back and wiggles around making sure Mom is watching her. She bonks noses.

Charles Shultz titled one of his books Happiness is a Warm Puppy. Actually happiness is a conniving little black cat with a couple of white spots, which waltzed into our house two years ago and won an elderly woman’s heart.

Play

“The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.” Japanese Proverb

”Compassion and peace are the basic elements for the survival of humanity.” Dalai Lama

One of these days I’m going to have to take the day after Christmas off from work. To say I wish we had been closed was an understatement. Half of the office was out and I ended up having to do triple duty because I was literally the only person in the office who knew how to post or even knew that everything had to be posted. Sigh.

Christmas was nice. My two favorite gifts are the DVD for The Forbidden Kingdom with Jackie Chan and Jet Li and the Stargate Atlantis action figure doll of Joe Flanagan’s Colonel John Sheppard, which is now sitting next to the monitor in front of me. Grin! My favorite gift last year was the Cabbage Patch doll that stuck her tongue out to “lick” the ice cream cone. Come on the clothes are nice but be real we still love to play with toys no matter how old we are.

I think one of the problems we have in life is that we take it too seriously sometimes and we need to relearn the joy of just playing like we knew when we were children. Children, whether they are human or animals, love to play. We really need to be able to have a sense of fun in our lives. Sure life can be very serious but you have to make time for just being silly. Remember the old adage “all work and no play?” Well a person who has forgotten how to play becomes very boring. Life is too short to be bored.

The picture is called Safe Inside.

Merry Christmas

“O God of light, let Thy figure of illumination play over every key of my life, that all the notes may unite in one song of harmony and love.” Paramahansa Yogananda

“Faith dispels doubt and hesitation, it liberates you from suffering, and delivers you to the city of peace and happiness. It is faith that removes the mental turbidity and makes your mind clear. Faith reduces your pride and is the root of veneration. It is the supreme lake because you can easily traverse from one stage of the spiritual path to another. It is like your hand, which can gather all the virtuous qualities.” Dalai Lama

The ice is sparkling like diamonds outside but at least there is a little sun.

I want to wish everyone a blessed and wonderful Christmas.

This is my Christmas picture for the year and is called Magic Night.

Thoughts On A Freezing Day

"I vow to offer joy to one person in the morning and to help relieve the grief of one person in the afternoon." Thich Nhat Hanh

"If you do not have the capacity to love yourself, then there is simply no basis on which to build a sense of caring toward others." Dalai Lama

Two of the hottest topics lately have been Obama’s picks for science positions in his cabinet and having Rick Warren give the invocation at his inauguration. And while it may be stretching things to tie the two together there is actually a connection at least in my mind. But lets start with a little background into my thought processes first.

To start with I have almost as many gay and lesbian friends as I do straight friends. I have no problems with either life style. What I do have a problem with is people demanding that people live only according to their narrow beliefs that are usually tied to their religion. When I was living in California several years ago there were a group of religious rights trying to get a resolution passed that would prevent gays from teaching in the district. I was accosted by one of these people, who was covered in religious pins and dragging along a child who appeared to be about seven. I was in no mood to be charitable to this woman. I told her that she was a hypocrite and that Jesus taught “Though shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” and that he put no qualifiers on that statement. He did not say “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself providing he is white Anglo-Saxon, upper middle class, Republican, heterosexual with 2.5 children.” I told he she was not living Christ’s word and had no right to call herself a Christian. I also told her as far as I was concerned dragging a child around while engaging in hate mongering was child abuse and that she was a lousy mother. Like I said I was really pissed off. She never tried to get signatures at that grocery store parking lot again.

When I was running my science fiction/mystery convention one of my guests was the late Ray Sharkey. He died a few months later of AIDS. My staff and I all had pins that we wore that said “You can’t get AIDS from a hug” and I will always treasure the hug I got from Ray when he was leaving. We did a square for the AIDS quilt in his name. If you ever see it my section is the embroidered rosary. Mr. Sharkey shared my Catholic religion and he was buried with the rosary that we gave him.

This brings me to Rick Warren. Two years ago he was attacked by the religious right for inviting Barak Obama to speak at his AIDS conference. While I disagree with Mr. Warren and his views on gays I would like to suggest that maybe what Obama is trying to tell the world by inviting Mr. Warren is that he will be a President who will actually try to lead in the fight to find a cure for AIDS. Obama has already made clear that he supports Gay Rights. Maybe what he is trying to say to us now is that he will team up with whomever he has to stamp out AIDS. I have lost too many friends to AIDS. If Rick Warren is going to fight for a cure then he will have my support in that. As far as his views on homosexuals is concerned I would suggest that if he is going to call himself a Christian then maybe he better start living Christ’s words of loving thy neighbor with no qualifiers on it. Also keep in mind where Mr. Warren is speaking, first. What are people going to remember? They will remember Obama’s speech and maybe the prayer at the end.

It will take the dedicated work and funding of scientists to discover a cure for AIDS. Science is one of my loves and I find no reason why it can’t exist with my belief in God and my desire to follow Christ’s teachings. What I believe in though is an intelligent God. I have put forth the idea before that even if we take the science of physics all the way back to a primordial atom then where did that atom come from? I believe that is where God’s hands is. It is a personal belief. What I cannot believe in is a God that is stupid. Creationism is not science. Why should I believe in a God that cannot work according to scientific principals? I believe that the greatest thing we can do if we believe in God is to use the minds that S/He gave us.

I am really jazzed about the fact that Obama is naming real honest to goodness scientists to science positions. What a concept! I am hoping that these men and women will use their brains to come up with solutions that will solve the problems facing us with the climate and pollution and feeding an ever-expanding world. As a space geek I hope to see us reaching for the stars. And while I am a real Doctor Who fan I do know enough about science to realize that you can’t “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.” It sounds impressive but I would be more impressed to see a man on Mars.

The picture is called Medieval Christmas.

Short Days and Long Naps

“Real happiness abides in self-knowledge alone. All else is fleeting. To know one’s Self is to be blissful always.” Ramana Maharishi

“If we have a sincere and open heart, we naturally feel self-worth and confidence, and there is no need to be fearful of others.” Dalai Lama

Today is the Winter Solstice or the shortest day of the year. It is also below freezing here in the Midwest. So far it doesn’t look like we will have a white Christmas just a cold and freezing rainy one.

I am actually ready for Christmas now. I am finishing up printing the last calendar now and I have a booklet that needs to go with it on my Chinese Horoscope artwork. This is going to a long time friend who is Chinese. I may go ahead and run off some Christmas cards for people at work. Several people have given me cards so I probably should give some back.

Everyone is down with a retched cold. Mom is coughing her head off. I’ve been feeling miserable for several days. It is probably what is contributing to my feeling emotionally drained. I am worried about my niece and her family. They are going through a rough time at the moment. I am worried about Mom’s health. She is forgetting so much lately. A couple weeks ago she was desperately looking for her car keys. I was helping to look for them as she thought she had dropped them in the car. Instead she had laid them down on the brick wall. Anyone could have taken them and taken her car.

I finished watching the last show of the Heroes arc called “Villains.” With a little luck they will get back to a less crazy story telling in the next arc starting in February. Even though this arc was disappointing I will stick with the show. I do wonder though of all the abilities on the show which one would I like? I am leaning towards Hiro’s time travel ability at the moment. I would like to go back in my life and talk to myself and make some different choices. I imagine all of us have things in our past that if we only knew what the consequences would be then we would change our actions.

The picture is from my November calendar and is called Let Sleeping Dragons Lie. A nap sounds real good at this point in time.

Cold Rush

“To Zen, time and eternity are one.” D.T. Suzuki

“Close contact creates clear understanding. Then suspicion and fear may not find much room.” Dalai Lama

It is ice cold and bitter here in the Midwest. The deicer freezes as it hits the window. The weather doesn’t look like it is going to improve any time soon.

The last couple of days have been emotionally draining with a serious family crisis. It isn’t over yet by a long shpt although hopefully we can get at least something done today via the lawyer. I can’t really talk about it now but my family member has my full support and love and I know I’ll hear from her frequently until we get a real resolution to the problem. The hardest part will be getting her over the pain of the past that is being dredged up again.

I’ve got Christmas shopping done and will finish my wrapping tonight. I need to do my brothers if he ever gets his rear in gear. He needs to mail the packages and it looks like Monday at the moment. Nothing like waiting to the last minute. I have a lousy cold thanks to coworkers coming in sick and coughing all over me so I wish he would hurry up so I can get my part done.

In the meantime I needed to do something pretty for my Mom to cheer her up. The picture is called Sitting Pretty.

Snow and Christmas Wish Lists

“You should be attentive today, for waiting until tomorrow is too late.” Bhaddekaratta Sutra

“We have to adopt a wider perspective, and always find common things between the people of north, east, south, and west. Conflict comes from the basis of differences.” Dalai Lama

I really think whoever wrote “Let it snow” did not live where it actually snowed. We have high winds and snow flurries coming in all week long. It is not delightful! And I wish the person who wrote the song all the ice and snow that is freezing those of us who deal with it on a regular basis. Maybe if he had to shovel the stuff he would have written a different set of lyrics.

The Christmas shopping is done and now I have to wrap it all. Sigh. I also have to wrap my brother’s gifts. Considering that he pays to mail them I can deal with that. I already wrapped my Mom’s gifts for my brother. She will wrap mine and blame it on Pixie. ;-) Speaking of the Pixster I found a buckle on collar so let’s see if she can manage to get it off. She has been playing a new game of undoing her collar and leaving it for Mom and I to find.

With Christmas songs in the background everywhere one of the most irritating has to be “All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth.” It does make you stop and think however what are the intangibles that you would like to see for Christmas. The things you can’t buy in a store.

I would like to see the Illinois Governor do the right thing and resign. I’m sure a lot of other people would like that also. I would like to see the mainstream press get a clue and stop trying to insist that Obama is involved when it has been clearly stated by the people bringing charges that he had nothing to do with it. I think the man had been a little busy trying to put together his Cabinet and getting ready to be President to pay attention to a low-life like Blagojevich. I think some people need to realize they are not Bernstein or Woodward and Robert Redford is not going to play them on the big screen.

I would like to see some decent health care for everybody. I work in a small town hospital and you can’t believe some of the things that the insurance companies are pulling. Here are just a few examples. We have one insurance policy now from a major player in the field that is not covering Emergency Room visits. We have one that will pay for an operation but not for the anesthesiologist. We have one that if a woman comes into the hospital in labor they won’t pay because it wasn’t “authorized.” The women have pregnancy coverage but you have to preauthorize them going into labor? Doesn’t make sense to me either. We have one insurance company denying “medical emergency” for people who have fallen in the ice and snow and injured themselves badly. We have had people come in with high fevers, vomiting, and dehydrated, etc. denied as “not an emergency.” We have cancer patients in chemo being denied payment for their drugs because they are “experimental.”

I would like to see politicians put partisanship aside and work towards getting this country back on the road to recovery. It is going to take everyone working together to solve the problems. It would help if we stopped playing the blame game and just work together.

I would also like to see one of my favorite actors, David Tennant, make a complete and speedy recovery from his back surgery on a prolapsed disk. He is a great actor, my favorite actor to play the lead in Doctor Who, and from everything I have read a really nice down to earth person who quietly does a lot to help others. Having battled back problems all my life I can really sympathize with the man. In fact I am doing Christmas cards tonight rather then wrapping gifts because my back and neck are out and I can’t really sit on the floor and try to wrap until they settle down.

The picture is called A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes.”

Friday Potpourri

“The self cannot be realized by scriptures nor by intellectual probity, nor by the astuteness of the intellect. It can only be realized by him who chooses it.” The Upanishads

“Human rights are of universal interest because it is the inherent nature of all human beings to yearn for freedom, equality, and dignity, and they have a right to achieve them.” Dalai Lama

This blog will be a potpourri of things for this Friday. I had most of it written before Microsoft decided to crash Word and lose it all. Sigh.

We got our Christmas bonus checks today and it will get me through Christmas shopping which I need to do the majority of tomorrow if the gifts are going to get to people on time. I’ll have to wrap and print calendars like mad tomorrow if I am going to get stuff out in time. The cards will be done next as I can fudge on them a bit. If they get there late it won’t be as bad as missing the deadline for Christmas gifts.

Today turned very emotional at work with tears and in the end something positive coming out of it. I have mentioned before the one lady that others like to pick on. I was washing my hands in the bathroom when she rushed into the room in tears. I didn’t know what had happened but I knew I couldn’t leave her there alone and crying so I went up to her and hugged her and tried to comfort her. She didn’t really want to talk about what happened. The other lady who turned out to be involved came in and I finally left the two of them to talk. The other lady did talk to me later and told me what happened. She had learned a valuable and painful lesson. Some of the other ladies in the office had convinced her to do something that went against what she really believed in and as a result someone was badly hurt. She has resolved to be true to herself from now on and be the nice person she really is rather then trying to fit in with people who are not nice people.

Sometimes we are so desperate to fit in that we turn from our own true natures and try and be what we are not. In the end we only hurt and disappoint ourselves. When you try and live a lie you damage the essential part of yourself that is you. I had shied away from this person because I saw how others were turning her from the good person she was into something I didn’t want to associate with. I had felt her behavior myself and snapped at her a couple of weeks ago. I am fed up with the cruelty around me. I just try and do my job the best I can and keep to myself as much as possible being professional but drawing the line at being personal with these people. I have had to comfort three people in two days who had been hurt by others in the office. I have found myself in tears over the years by hurtful people and I try and comfort others now when I see them in tears. I refuse to relinquish my essential self to try and fit in. I will maintain my own standards of morality because in the end I have to live with myself. I am glad my coworker finally discovered that essential truth. To thy own self be true.

I have been following the story of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and the attempts of the right wing to try and link him to President Elect Obama. They keep wondering how could Obama not know? Obviously these people are not familiar with Illinois politics. ;-) As a resident of the state for 6 years I know very well how Obama couldn’t know. Like many Democrats he had as little to do with the Governor as possible. Obama concentrated on the Federal Government and the Senate. Believe me the Governor has not been popular with a vast majority of his Party members in Illinois for a long time. People like State Attorney General Lisa Madigan managed to avoid him as much as possible. Think how much easier it was for Obama to be in Washington. When he came to the State he spent his time touring the entire State in Town meetings. He didn’t spend any time with the Governor. If you managed to stomach listening to the taped conversations then you know that the Governor can’t stand Obama. The only time Obama ever injected himself into Illinois State politics was to urge campaign contribution reforms something that Blagojevich was very opposed to. My brother amused me the other night when he asked what was up with the Illinois’ Governors? It didn’t matter whether they were Democrats or Republicans they were corrupt. He couldn’t figure out how the State elected such great Senators but crooks for Governors. I really didn’t have an answer. I would imagine it has something to do with the history of Chicago and corruption from the Mafia. I just know that it is an interesting place to live. I wouldn’t want to run for office from there however. ;-)

The weather has been lousy here all month. We have had freezing temperatures and snow off and on all month. It did inspire me to come up with the above picture that everyone so far has just loved. It is called Fun in the Snow. Of course my Merlin wouldn’t be caught dead out in the snow let alone on a sled with a dog. He has been making a nest of the green blanket on my bed. We call it his security blanket. As much as Pixie torments him I guess he is entitled to a security blanket.

A Mind is a Terribe Thing to Waste

“He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.” Confucius

“When we lose control over our minds through hatred, selfishness, jealousy, and anger, we lose our sense of judgment. Our minds are blinded and at those wild moments anything can happen, including war. Thus, the practice of compassion and wisdom is useful to all, especially to those responsible for running national affairs, in whose hands lie the power and opportunity to create the structure of world peace.” Dalai Lama

I rarely turn to the mainstream press for my news any more. I am more likely to watch The Daily Show then the Sunday morning interviews. An article at MSNBC whining about how Obama’s picks for his administration are too heavily stacked with intellectuals who attended top name universities is a prime example of why I consider the mainstream press as nothing more then hot air idiots.

As I write this I am sitting in front of my Dad’s wall of degrees and certificates. There are 10 of them including his Phi Betta Kapa. My Dad was a man who never stopped learning. I have tried to live my life the same way. For me there is always something that I want to learn more about whether it is the mysteries of space or the very real concerns about the climate or the effects of pollution on human health.

I have always felt that faith and the belief in God doesn’t negate the importance and belief in science. You can take science all the way back to the first primordial atom and the question still remains of how did it get there. My answer is God. I would rather have a science based God then one based on ancient beliefs. The Bible was written for the people of that time. To try and warp science into supporting a book that was meant to try and show its followers that a belief in a monotheistic God was valid at the time the book was written shows a disdain for the minds that God has given us. To totally ignore the research into science that has advanced this planet is stupid as far as I am concerned.

One of the most frustrating things for someone who loves science as much as I do is to watch as the last eight years has been a repudiation of scientific thought wrapped up in a pseudo-science in an effort to push one religious view down people’s throats. It is the same mind set that tries to convince people that Obama is a Muslin when he is a devote Christian but fails to realize that being a Muslin is not a bad thing. Every man has a right to worship or not worship God as they see fit. They have the right not to believe in God if they so wish. Personal religious beliefs are just that, personal.

To ignore the advances in science and to try and warp science into supporting a creation myth is a slap in the face to God. He gave us minds to use not abuse. God is big enough to support anything science can discover. God doesn’t need to be restricted in our ability to go out and discover how things work. S/He doesn’t want us to let our minds stagnate. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

The picture is called In the Beginning. It was inspired by an episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor took Donna back to the beginning on the formation of Earth and the Solar System.

Winter Storm

“Only a vessel that is half-full can be shaken.” Chinese Proverb

“Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.” Dalai Lama

It has been snowing all day. I went out earlier to get my hair cut and then to the store for my Mom and myself. I hate driving in snow especially since this small town only plows a couple of roads and no matter where I am going at least half of the roads are unplowed.

My Mom’s heart is acting up again. I made sure the house was quiet so she could sleep. She had talked about getting up and going to church this evening in the snow but I talked her out of it, either that or she still feels horrible and decided not to go. That woman can be so stubborn.

A word of warning of anyone looking for a new cellular phone company, avoid Sprint like the plague. I spent two hours Thursday night trying to deal with out sourced idiots because they screwed up Mom’s phone bill again! They are the most incompetent phone service in the world. They have a message on their site that they are closing down Customer Service e-mail. That should tell you something about how they view their customers. I have had fantastic service with T-Mobile.

The picture is called Winter Storm.