Just Do It, It's Good for You!

The photo above is my amaryllis pushing through the hard earth to the sun which, while it is stressful, it is good for the plant and will result in a beautiful blossom. 

I sort of thought, in the back of my mind---not consciously, that when I was an old retired f**t, most of the anxieties of my life would dwindle away into the level of stress that a rain storm on a picnic afternoon might cause.  I had run my finances and felt that I could pay for my late years.  I kind of worried that my days would be gray and boring and sometimes full of guilty waste but certainly less stressful.  Sure, in the distance I could see the challenges of aging and health, but not the Monday through Friday anxieties of raising a family or tending to a job and career that I had previously survived.  There would be no more dreadful Monday mornings of heading out in the gloom of a cold gray day to an office or leaving early in the day to tend to a very sick child as I fought rush hour traffic.

Well, those of you who are my age and sitting in your chair reading this know that I was wrong.  Life goes on and gets in your way and you get in its way if you are still breathing and talking and not hiding in a closet or sitting  on the side of  a mountain far away from civilization being a hermit.

The point I am wandering toward, and I do have a dull one as we climb this switchback, is every decision you make impacts your life in some way and sometimes that way is a little more annoying than you anticipated.

This morning I am on a new schedule.  My student from Peru, a woman in her early 40's (married to a retired Navy intelligence officer with PTSD and in his late 50's) is trying to improve her English and I am the next tail of a rocket that she has grabbed after passing her high school equivalency test through our county program.  She is sweetly pushy and demanding in her plans for this trip and she is eager for the rocket to continue at break neck speed.  Because her temporary jobs in this area require flexibility in my setting classes I must keep moving with a watchful eye on my calendar.  This month the classes are on Mondays at 11:00 A.M.!


I kind of dread this having to head out and having to be on my toes at this time of day.  I am a hard person to please.  I know this is both good for her and certainly good for me to get back into remembering digraphs, graphemes, irregular verbs and whatever.  This is a free wheeling project in that the county has done its job and I have no hard curriculum to follow.  As you may remember from a prior post, I have PILES of books to choose from and am trying to hone my focus and create some structure to this journey.

She wants success yesterday and I have explained to her that there is no magic wand that she or I can wave.  But I keep thinking to myself, am I focusing enough in the right areas.

Anyway, while I feel full of satisfied hope at the end of each class, I do feel a bit of tension as I plan each lesson and as I head out to each class.

I do know that this is probably good for me and I hope it is good for her and I will continue to stick my courage to the sticking place and just do it!

A Sunday Sermon

I am not a Christian or even very religious.  But today is Sunday, a Christian day of prayer and worship.  I heard this sermon on the radio a few days ago and it certainly touched my soul, so I will share, now that churches are being told they can have more freedom of political speech by this White House.

Christianity and this President

We teach our children not to be bullies. He is a bully.
We teach our children to tell the truth. He openly lies and repeats those lies with greater and greater insistence, until they become truth in his own mind. For example, "Obama was born in Kenya."
Related: "Trump's pledge to Catholics: 'I'll be there for you' " (Oct. 7, 2016)
We teach our children to be kind and respectful of others. He openly mocks the disabled and belittles his opponents, e.g., "Little Marco" for Sen. Marco Rubio and "Lying Ted" for Sen. Ted Cruz.
We teach our children to be generous with the poor and the needy. He is selfish in the extreme and gives little or nothing to charity.
We teach our children not to be prejudiced on the basis of race or ethnicity or looks. He ranks women by their looks. He speaks with open racism. He stereotypes Latinos and African-Americans. Remember his remarks about Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Remember his characterizations of African-American culture and living conditions.
Jesus began his public ministry with a proclamation of the need for repentance, that is, "re-thinking" our lives. Trump has said he isn't sure that he has ever asked God for forgiveness.
In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus called on us to repent as he began his ministry. Immediately afterward, he gave us the Beatitudes. In those eight couplets, Jesus gave us the formula for Christian life.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Generally, we take this to mean we should be "detached" from worldly goods. We don't have to dwell in poverty, but we don't measure the value of life or people by their wealth. Trump brags about his wealth. He lives ostentatiously. He sees such enormous wealth as perfectly OK, even laudatory. He does not think he needs to contribute even the socially required minimum to the commonweal, the common good, by paying his taxes. He ignores the needs of the poor.
"Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted."
Jesus meant for his followers to be empathetic, sharing in the joys and sufferings of others. If we want to be comforted by others we must mourn with them in their sorrow.
Empathy is a part of the Christian life. Donald Trump mocks people for their looks and handicaps. He mocks those who are empathetic. When Jeb Bush said, immigrants come here out of love for their families whom they support, Trump mocked him.
Narcissism is the antithesis of one who mourns with others. Narcissism is a preoccupation with self. You cannot share in the sorrow of others because you are only focused on yourself. Only you count. Trump is a textbook narcissist. He is so busy bragging about himself and the size of his crowds, so busy obsessing over every slight, that he cannot mourn with others.
Jesus also said "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
When we think of "meekness" Donald Trump does not spring to mind. Meekness is an aspect of the virtue of humility. It is the quality of deferring to others and being open to learning from others. Humility means not arrogant, but teachable. Meekness requires that we admit when we are wrong. Meek people are not puffed up with themselves.
"Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice or righteousness, for they will be satisfied."
Justice or righteousness in the Scriptures was a right relationship with God and others. It was being zadok, righteous like St. Joseph. It means we should humbly seek to conform our lives to God's commandments and not our own will.
At a minimum, it means that we should treat others fairly and keep our commitments. A man who cheated his contractors and repeatedly evades his creditors in bankruptcy is not righteous. A man who defrauds people enrolled in his so-called "university" by taking money and not delivering training is not zadok.
A righteous man is more than just doing the minimum. He goes beyond justice to mercy. He upholds the widow and the orphan and defends the alien and the stranger.
"Blessed are the merciful," says Jesus, "for they shall be shown mercy."
Can a man who advocates torture and extreme interrogation techniques be considered merciful? Can a man who advocates beating up people at his rallies be called merciful?
"Blessed are the pure of heart, or the clean of heart, for they shall see God."
Everyone struggles with this, to be clean of heart. Lust and greed cloud our judgment and become competing "deities."
But a man who admits to and brags about groping women cannot be called pure of heart. A man who objectifies women, by assigning "numbers," is not pure of heart.
What does he worship? Physical beauty and superficial attributes? He owned the Miss Universe pageant. Such a superficial and degrading view of women is not pure of heart.
Can we imagine Mother Teresa or Dorothy Day in a beauty contest? What number would Trump assign to Mother Teresa? What does he see when he looks at virtue and goodness?
Jesus says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."
Can a man who would deliberately target the civilian families of terrorists, in violation of the law of war, be called a peacemaker? Can a man who is so thin-skinned, that every slight, every disrespect, every implied insult, must be answered by a full frontal Twitter storm be called a peacemaker? How does he make peace with others?
He never apologizes. He never backs down or lets up. He does not do what peacemakers must do: listen. He does not see the other side's point of view. He does not credit his opponent with good will.
He sees every opponent as someone to be shouted down or roughed up. He is not a peacemaker.
Finally, Jesus says, "Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and speak ill of you for my sake, for your reward will be great in heaven."
In other words, we don't have to win every argument and answer every insult. We don't live for the praise of others. We live for the approbation of God. Him alone do we seek to please. When we are insulted, we should offer it up and let it go. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors.
Repentance is not an option for a Christian. It is the essential beginning of our Christian life. Every follower of Jesus must at some point repent.
The gospel Trump is preaching absolutely contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We who stand in the real pulpit should be willing to say so.

[Fr. Peter Daly is the pastor of St. John Vianney parish in Prince Frederick, Md.]

She's Baaaack!

Not sure what I tweaked as I was changing very little these days on templates and settings for this blog, but some one thing must have done it!   I am back on the blog rolls of my readers and what better gift can that be?  Both of my blogs appear on my blogroll which I set up as a test, and then when other's said my new posts were appearing on their lists, I felt as if someone had let me out of a very stuffy closet back to the outside.

My post updates failed right after I had posted my first nasty political post and I thought maybe that was a warning.  Then my computer crashed...for the second time after a year of repair...then trying to set up my new PC took days...and then I found the repair person failed to load scanner drivers, so I worked for an hour and got those two loaded.  It has been a rough month.

Enough of this!  I am back.

I have been going through old photos and taking a nostalgia trip being glad that I lost only a very few things with the crash.  Below is my Maxfield Parrish (one of my favorite Art Deco painters) version of the mountains in Breckenridge Colorado which I took  a few years ago!  (I am so glad I am back!!)

The Guts of the Beast

Perception is one thing, and yet, our experience cannot help but color perception in some ways. Is the photo below (generously manipulated) a view of an industrial park from some high perspective? Is it an architect's model of a future business development? Is it the cover of a science fiction book?  Does it remind you of something that you cannot quite put your "finger" on?  Please note that while the shapes and focus have been manipulated, the colors are pretty true from the original.

Done guessing? Below is the original before and after the cropping.

It is the guts of the beast that I smashed with a heavy mallet a few days ago.  It represents a few years of my life, a bit of which was saved and much which was not.

Sorry, But the Truth Sometimes Hurts.

"This post concerns Donald Trump's elevation of Bannon to leading roles within the National Security Council. To review: the National Security Council (NSC) comprises important high-level government officials including the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Director of National Intelligence. Its main job is to use this broad expertise to advise the President on national security matters and assist in carrying out security directives.
Yesterday, the President reduced the involvement of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence from the NSC. He replaced them with Steve Bannon. Bannon has no government, intelligence, or high-level military experience; his experience is leading a propaganda outlet (Breitbart News) that peddles nationalist and white nationalist viewpoints.

This would be deeply concerning in and of itself. But one of the jobs of the NSC is to oversee a secret panel that authorizes the assassination of “enemies of the United States Government” – including American citizens. These targeted killings are fully authorized by law under the Congressional military authorization act following 9/11. There is no trial, no due process, and no public record of the decision or the assassination itself.

Just to recap the absurdity: the President of the United States has appointed a known propagandist, nationalist, and white supremacist to replace the highest military adviser in the country on a council that authorizes secret, legal, targeted killings of American citizens (and others) without due process.

What You Can Do:
- Call your Senators and Congressperson this week and demand that they publicly and legislatively oppose Trump’s appointment of Steven Bannon to the NSC.
- Spread the word about this news to your networks, since this is not getting a lot of coverage right now."

This was cut from a FB post.

Looking Over My Shoulder

One of my blogging friends is going through something similar to what I went through years ago...December 2004 to be exact.  I re-read the post on that day and I am amazed at how cold and practical I sounded.  Maybe that IS me.

The post is here.

Finally Feeling the Groove

The primary problem with my PC was that I had plugged the HDMI (monitor) into the wrong HDMI port. The one I was supposed to use was way down at the bottom of the back hidden under a tiny ledge. Since the PC did not come with any graphics or icons, this was an honest mistake. Still it cost me money to have a nice man, retired from the Air Force, come fix the plug-in. He was also able to install drivers for my scanner and newest printer. When looking for drivers for the Canon printer, a few years old, he found that Canon said it was NOT updating any drivers for any of its hardware for Windows 10!! Therefore I once again have an obsolete printer, as well as one unopened packet of printer ink! The printer was free to me, but the ink was very expensive. I only used it to print photos, which was rare. You get better quality product from the professionals in the Internet.  At least my wireless printer works!

I am only writing this to hope that others will not be surprised when their digital baby dies unexpectedly.  I was told that this solid-state should last much longer...of course, time will tell.

As you can see it already has fingerprints all over the impractical shiny top part.  It also has red racing stripes that glow dim and then brighten like a sport car revving up for a race around the track.  It could have been designed by Steve Jobs, who you may remember was more about form than function.

It runs very quietly with no rattle of a fan.  It has multiple intakes for air.  It also seems to process a tiny bit faster, but since I am not playing a high graphics game on this machine, I really am not testing its full potential.

I had learned from my earlier crash to gather all the software license numbers, disks, serial numbers and whatever was needed to bring the opening screen back to something I recognized. I am embarrassed to say I could not find how to open the DVD driver for many minutes. I could find all the info on it and the place...but the only eject button W10 seems to use is under the File Explorer's icon! Yes, it makes sense if you think about it.

Well, enough boring information that most likely means nothing to both computer wizards and all the rest of the world.  So, I will leave you with a photo from my new gallery that I just loaded on this baby.  These guys are here regularly certain times of the day.

Road is Paved but Still Bumpy

I bit the bullet and ordered a new desktop computer. I researched online at various sites and put together the things I wanted and when I went to the computer store, they explained it would have to be ordered. I got a solid state drive as the last time my PC was repaired, last year, they explained to me that it would last longer...and it is, of course, more expensive.

Well it arrived in the store yesterday and they said as part of the service they would remove "bloatware" and "set it up." The young man was drooling over the speed of the processor and some other technical stuff I can barely understand, so clearly I bought something way out of my league. I cannot remember the last tme a 20-something chatted with me!

Anyway, I picked it up and brought it home. It is an ASUS, which is a brand now under the DELL umbrella and Consumer Reports said it was well made and their repair response was reliable. It took me some time to clean out the old PC, dust, remove cables, etc. Then I got the new tower out of it foam snug box and took out the directions (6 sentences in English) on how to get it running. I miraculously found all the ports for the two monitors, the new keyboard, the mouse and the electricity. I wisely left the two old printers and Scanner on the other table alone.

I finally plug in the power cord and turn it on! I get the most beautiful red racing stripes lit across the sides and front as it hummed very quietly. I waited. The monitors showed nothing except that they had electricity from the PC and then they went to sleep. Nothing. No old-fashioned DOS prompt, no screen with blinking lines, nothing. I was going to load the one CD I found for the newer monitor, but the disk drive does not open except by computer command, so that is a null and void process.

I have finally given up and scheduled an appointment for a home visit as I am not hauling all this equipment back. He/she is coming tomorrow afternoon and I am going to watch closely what he does, because this is a real mystery...unless the PC is broken in some way!! I do not ever remember having difficulty getting a PC running.

Life is never easy even when you dip into the bank account to pave the road.

A Belated Attempt at a Challenge

Grannie, who primary talent is drawing, also has a great talent for manipulating words.  I have been intimidated by this but decided to play in her recent Weds. Words challenge.  You can go here to find out more about it.  I posted my work to her blog site in the comments section, but also decided to share it here since my precious little mind cannot come up with anything else.

You have a list of words and must use the first ones and can select an choose from the second set to create a  story or word poem.  Then you link to the Wednesday Word  site.  The words are below.

Honest, worth, another, parallel, fan, intention

and/or

Blue, electricity, cash, outrage, potential, memory:

What is honesty worth?

Another misplaced intention

In a parallel universe

Of  outrage?

In an era of memory loss?

Most of us are no longer fans
Distracted

By the blue electricity

Of digital cash

In a click-bait  world

Of  dishonesty.

UGH!! It died.

My tower PC gave me the blue screen of death today. I had recently backed up most of my stuff and since my tower PC is a HP after several reboots it gave me the opportunity to do a full back up on my removable drive. I am doing that now  and it is taking hours and hours.  

I had paid over $100 last year to repair this computer when Windows 10 forced an installation  and crashed the machine.  I am more than depressed as a replacement for this will cost much more than $100.

Perhaps the chaotic news that I read on the machine broke  its heart?

My hardworking friends who have given their lives to handling jobs in research and security are depressed as they are criticized in the public without proof or a chance to defend their side of the issues.  We are returning to a society where intellectualism and education are liabilities.  Fear and opinion carry more weight than fact.  Maybe my PC is just tremendously depressed  as it relies on data to work.

I am pro entertainment industry, pro science research, pro academia, pro public schools, pro public libraries and pro journalistic voice.  I am smart enough to follow  the trail of a news story to see if it holds water and do not  need to  reduce the press corps to the 6 who agree with the leader as Putin has done.  I am pro transparency except when our country's security is involved as I do trust those who have been trained to analyze our threats from other countries.  Are some people in these fields power hungry, liars, stupid?  Of course, just  like  some real estate moguls.  But I continue to think  this is the minority and most public servants enter the field to serve the public because they are not going to get rich  doing these jobs.  No wonder my computer is confused and committed suicide! 

I just re-booted and the PC is gone, gone, gone.

Sorry, but this is a BAD day for me.   I hope to be more moderate in my next post if my bank statement is flush enough for a new computer and I  feel that I have  the energy to do this.  (Thank goodness that  this old laptop  is still working.)

Compromise and Acceptance

I am a novice of this being alone for days on end. Coupled with a snowstorm that has prevented me from seeing anyone for days, and being a person who is not crazy about talking on the phone, I have lived in a very hollow echo tunnel it seems. I am surprised when I say something out loud and it fills the room.  A simple bump of the pipes has me listening for something wrong.  I have had the TV on more than usual and played the Christmas music until I became tired of that nostalgia and had to turn it off.  I am reading Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" out loud in bed, which might otherwise annoy my husband.

There are people in this world (I have friends) that live alone and work alone, but also have a calendar filled with coffee dates, exercise dates and dinner dates. I do wish I was that type of a person, but I am not.  I have a calendar filled with a few hobbies and am blessed with children who see me now and again.  I can go for several days in a row and never talk to anyone, and miss people, but not really miss people.  It is hard to explain.

I do think about what habits I would absolutely have to change if my husband passed on before me. He is in excellent health for someone in his mid-seventies (swims a mile once or twice a week, runs four to six miles on the elliptical every now and then and is far more active in general than I) and both his parents, who were not in excellent health lived into their late 80's and early 90's.  He is becoming more forgetful.  This is hard to measure because he always has been a bit scattered on details and location of things.  Still, even now he admits his memory is not as good as it used to be.  He called today and complained about how he forgotten his backpack when loading the boat, lost his phone on a hike, but while both were later retrieved, he is having fun and does not let the annoyance get to him.  When he is home I do spend more time than I would like looking for something he set down somewhere.  It is what it is.

Could I live out here in the woods all alone?  I read a blogger, actually a few bloggers,  who live alone in the country and relish the quiet and beauty.  I think I would have to find some compromise...not the city or the suburbs...some community that is rural but has amenities and a sense of community for the less agile.  My children have said that I could come live with them, but they both live in the suburbs which means I would have to be able to drive to get anywhere and I would be in a neighborhood that is empty during most of the day.  

I must admit, what a luxury to be able to think about this, to not be forced into some situation...at least for now.  It is wise to be willing to admit that compromise is in the future of most of elders.  Compromise and acceptance or you do battle with the inevitable.

Unwritten and Unstudied

The days are growing longer and have been since December 22. Our skies are so gray and gloomy and rainy that I barely notice unless I am sitting inside and a bit of sun finally breaks through at the time of sunset and I, with some surprise, notice that the sunset is still out there but a bit later.

For those who work nights or who, like my relative, work in a very dark office without windows and much light during the day and have had to actually order a full spectrum light to sit near their desk, I feel you deserve better.  I do not know how they can keep their spirits up. They go for much of their lives without sunlight.   It is SAD (Seasonal Adjustment Syndrome).

I do like that I can light the candles earlier in the evening and start a cozy fire in the fireplace and have an excuse for doing cozy rather than energetic things.

I have finished reading Upstream by Mary Oliver, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but could not finish the Book of Kells as it seem a bit of a slog.

I am now reading some light, silly romance whose title escapes me.  It takes place in the South and the heroine is overweight and insecure but has marvelous inner strength which she calls upon in her divorce. 

The Christmas Decorations are re-packed except for two little wooden houses I had forgotten.  I do think there is an unwritten rule of nature that you must always forget to put away a decoration or two!

Rain Makes My Brain Soggy

Not sure why all of a sudden my other blog appears on my readers' (virtual friends) posts, but I have just compared the settings for both Blogs and made sure they are identical--as much as possible. Maybe the Google search gods have put down the eggnog and are back indexing bloggers posts and recognized my reset.  I had been feeling like the decayed mushroom above and was wondering if I should just stop blogging for a while and do all those things I have been procrastinating about for a few years.  Now it seems I have a brief reprieve with at least one blog being revived.

As most of you know, and many some of you agree, this new year will be a big challenge for those of us who love and support gender equality, education and access to that for others as well as ourselves, the free press and journalistic excellence in helping us understand what is going on (thinking about the movie Spotlight for example), the precious and fragile environment, labor laws and labor negotiations to empower the worker, access to healthcare for everyone---already in every major country, political humor that is satire, broadway (all theater actually), religious tolerance, acceptance of strange cultural foods and dress in this country, and trying to understand why polite behavior is no longer the norm but being PC is so yesterday.  And what the hell is alt-truth?  Is this snowflake being too sensitive?  

Within the last two months there have been FIVE rope nooses hung at the liquid natural gas construction site and our Sheriff  seems to be at a loss to find out who is doing this, and we wonder if this clearly racist act to some of us is looked upon as just a joke by our county government who thinks voters are too stupid to understand their policies.  Maybe next we will see the Star of David painted in blood?   This site has all kinds of security and cameras and limited access in part because it is next door to the nuclear power plant.  We all wonder why the culprit has not been caught and why they have all this expensive security if it can be breached so often.  I mean, even if you work there, you cannot drive onto the construction site, you must take a shuttle bus from the parking lot across the highway.  So this freedom to threaten hate is now at my door.  They have been required to bring in the Feds finally, but who can trust the FBI after our President-elect has pointed out their incompetence.

Anyway, my immediate challenge is a long list for the New Year and I am actually going through it pretty fast already.  Therefore, I can ADD to it if I get energetic.  Hubby is leaving tomorrow for a camping fishing trip to Florida which means I will be alone for two weeks.  It will be a good challenge for me to be on my own, but I am guessing the TV will be on more in the afternoons for background noise.

Today is a rainy and cold day and so gloomy outside and I am sure that is contribution to the mood of this post.  I promise to be more mellow next time.