A Thousand Pounds of Love

I don't know what else to call it. In Japanese it's called a karesansui or dry landscape garden but when someone, namely your eldest son, totes at least a thousand pounds of rocks and gravel to build you one, you can hardly call it anything other than love.

This started, you may recall, two or three weeks ago with a trip to the mountains to select rocks. I picked half a dozen candidates, we ended up using three, as more would have been too much crowding for the space. We'd had some difficulty locating the right gravel. He ended up at a local gravel and stone purveyor and brought 300 pounds of small gyra stone. We thought 300 pounds would be plenty. We were wrong.

We got rocks set, gyra poured over the larger gravel base and discovered we needed twice as much gyra stone as we'd bought. He made a mad dash for the stone purveyor a good distance away. He arrived four minutes after they closed. So he hunted around in the various home stores until he found pea gravel of a reasonable colour match, though larger, and bought a couple hundred pounds of pea gravel in bags.

As we poured it on it looked as if it was going to be a disaster, but bit by bit we worked the large 1" bore gravel to the outside edges and as a kind of "wake" behind the stones closest to the wall and outside curbing, and blended in the rest - and it turned out beautifully. Admittedly it is not going to be a zen garden that takes to raking patterns, we could not find stone fine enough to allow that, but that's probably for the best as it looks good without the burden of daily maintenance.

We installed lawn edging around the largest standing stone, and inside the perimeter put a bag of garden soil. I planted moss and then we covered the raw soil with a layer of crushed clay, to hold the moisture for the moss, hide the black earth and make the colours more consistent. Now I hope that island of soil is not right under where the water pours off the roof during heavy rains, or the downpour will make a mess of my pretty moss garden.

We both also discovered how difficult it is to photograph a garden like this effectively. The "good" spots are filled with shrubs, and neither of us felt like lying on the sidewalk to get the proper perspective, since I'd been hosing down the sidewalk and it was not only wet but muddy. Trust me, it's much nicer than one would expect from my poor pictures. And the moss has doubled in area covered overnight!

As people came and went we had many positive comments, people seemed really happy to see something done with the weedy gravel patch that had been uncovered when I pruned back the shrubs. We've had three or four warm days and there are tulips, daffodils and narcissus in little bunches all up and down the flower beds, and more green spears emerging every day.

We also planted what's called elephant ears locally but is really a member of the saxifrage family bergenia and a foamflower. I had foamflower in my garden in Summerland and loved it. Both bergenia and foamflower do well in the shade and should do well where they are planted. They will get a couple of hours of morning sun and be in the shade the rest of the day. The bergenia gets quite large and I'm now wondering, looking down from the balcony, if I didn't plant it a bit close to the sidewalk, but even if it grows over the sidewalk at that point it won't be in the way.

All in all a lovely day with my big boy - who lived up to his childhood nickname of "Sunshine" - and brought me flowers and 1000 pounds (rather than carats) of rock for Mother's Day.

A Broken Man

I live with one. He's kind of like one of those crazy wind-up toys that charges into walls and bounces off, except he doesn't bounce that well. While unloading the garden bed kits for our new community garden last Friday he slipped on the gravel in the parking lot, fell and broke his right elbow.

I was upstairs unloading my cart when it happened. Not easily dissuaded from his duty (the postal service missed hiring someone obviously born to carry the mail through sleet, snow, rain and dead of night), he loaded the half-dozen four foot long boxes on our little trolley and managed to somehow get them through two huge heavy doors with a dangling right arm.

He then got them all on the elevator, except they all kept falling off the trolley, and getting off the elevator he got boxes and trolley wedged in the door. I heard the commotion of falling boxes and elevator bell/buzzer and thought, "What the....?"

Seeing his white face and that weirdly shaped arm made my knees weak. I helped him down the hall and got him seated on the sofa in the living room, then rescued the boxes from the jammed elevator door.

I'd already been out shopping (obviously) and the allergy medication I'd taken earlier had left me shaky, so I called Ian and asked for help. He jumped to and was here in half an hour and we were off to the emergency room.

Long story short, his right elbow is broken. The end of the bone is sheared completely off. But it's a not a break they can set and they are trying to avoid surgery if possible. He's been in a restrictive sling but we saw the orthopedic surgeon this morning and he said that Tony must now begin to use the arm, despite the pain, to keep the elbow from freezing up. Poor old poop. He's not the happiest of campers. It hurts to wear the sling, it hurts to take it off, it hurts to sleep, it hurts to move, it hurts period.

He's also a sort of appealing pinto-pony pattern of bruises on his right side and down his leg, minus some skin and seriously shaken up. We bought him some different shoes on the way home from the surgeon's clinic today. Good tread on the bottom, and velcro closures so he doesn't have to mess with laces.

Now all he has to do is heal...

Starry, Starry Night

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Green Day

Yesterday was cool and foggy, with a fine mist clinging to the tree tops. It's been a very dry winter. All day the parched earth looked up at the lumpy, leaden sky and pled, "Rain, rain, please PLEASE RAIN!"

Finally, as the sun set, the clouds reached their holding capacity and the rain began, earnest and steady as your granddad's old plow horse. It moved up and down the streets and lawns and fields without the fanfare of thunder, it slid down gutters and flowed along curbs. Slowly it soaked down through the hard top layers of soil to bless dry and aching roots.

By 6:00 am this morning the rain had withdrawn into the clouds again but what a transformation it had wrought in the dark. The winter-bare branches of our apple and plum trees have leaves thrusting out like baby's hands, apple-tree green and plum-tree purple. The grass that was tan everywhere but beneath the downspouts is brilliantly green overnight.

The robins, yesterday pecking apart last year's withered plums, are gorging on worms brought to the surface by the rain. Green spears of tulips, crocuses and daffodils have emerged and unfolded. Crocuses that were invisible yesterday today bloom in bunches.

It is Green Day. The day after the first rain of spring. The cycle of rebirth begins again.

Off to Buy Vitamins

I'm on Facebook, it's how I keep up with my dozens of friends and family members. But the "targeted" ads I am served are absolutely a hoot and some days are as entertaining as the FB posts. My favourite is the one about a 50-year-old woman whose dermatologist hates her for her age-defying beauty secret which makes her look 25 (and which she is willing to sell me). I won't buy it because if I looked 25 people would expect me to act 25 and if there's one thing I love about looking old it's that you don't have to apologize for being slow anymore.

Another frequent ad is from a dating service which laments the fact that their "senior men" can't find "faithful senior women like you Deborah". If I answered that ad I'd not be the "faithful" woman they're looking for would I? Besides their supposedly "senior men" (models dressed as policemen and firemen and doctors in lab coats) - are all about 35! My sons are older!

Still hoping they have a merry and potentially wealthy widow on their hands (I gave them NO information other than name and age and a hometown I left at 11) they offer to move me into a high-end retirement home, then try to entice me to join a single-seniors-only cruise. I sense frustration as they try to find something, anything that I might buy. A decorator will come to my home and make sure it doesn't have that "granny vibe" we all fear. Sadly I do not want a $12,000 sofa that looks like three ironing boards grafted together and covered with fuschia-coloured patent leather.

The ad servers are flummoxed. Abandoning the hope that I am high-end, single-cruising-cougar widow, they test the theory that I am a crippled-up penny-pinching old party pooper and offer to sell me the secret of how to get $35,000 free dollars from the government because I am infirm. When I don't even want to know how to get $35,000 of free-for-the-taking-money desperation sets in.

They abandon all semblance of targeting and simply go with alternating stereotypes. It's well known if you are over 65 you are (obviously) either infirm or an elderly Olympian. So they alternate advertisements for medical aids with those for hair-raising adventures. Do I need a new wheelchair? No? Do I want to go a sky-diving? No? How about standing out in the geezer crowd with a hand carved cane from Borneo? No?? Surely I'd enjoy a life-changing (I read this as "life-ending") rafting trip down the north face of Everest? NO??? Perhaps I could do with a medical lift or a potty chair to sit beside my bed? NO? A day of mudding with my dune buggy?

When I don't throw the credit card at any of these wonderful choices, I visualize them hunched over their keyboards with knit brows, shuffling their ads like a deck of solitaire cards. One, gnawing his thumbnail, says tensely, "Pull back just a little, offer her (long pause) square-dancing lessons." They watch with nervous expectation as the ad comes and goes, all Madison Avenue Ad agency sweat under the armpits as FB stock ticks lower by the second. A vein in a temple pulses visibly. The old dame is holding out. She's still not BUYING ANYTHING!

In rapid succession they promise to hide my varicose veins, lift my sagging bosom, glue chalk white facades on my discoloured teeth, ease my aching joints. This gives me pause. I've never noticed any of these problems, perhaps Facebook has a "Future Afflictions" app I have inadvertently signed up for? I was actually beginning to worry about it and even stopped to look in the mirror the other day (an activity I usually avoid).

But the real topper was when I got a message from my cousin Mac this morning. Facebook has apparently developed an app which does what no other web application has ever done before; transcended that final curtain which we have never peered beyond.

My dearly-loved cousin Mac passed away last December. However, he's FB'd me today to recommend a well-known brand of senior's vitamins. They finally have me. I'm going to buy some. If that brand of vitamin pill can make Mac feel well enough to post to FB from where he's gone, they might finally make a square-dancer out of me.

The Zen Gardener in Action

Commonly repeated axiom, "Everything comes at a price."

So my glorious Saturday afternoon in the mountains became my early-morning attack on Sunday, followed by a day of wobbly legs and aching chest. Today's not a lot no better.

But like the unrepentant Toad in Wind in the Willows when he was chastised for his obsession with driving motor cars at break-neck speed down country lanes, "I'm not sorry, and it wasn't folly at all! It was simply glorious! and the first chance I get - OFF I'll go again!"

It wasn't just the trip, or the walking, that did me in. I'd pruned shrubs Thursday and Friday, and really did too much on Friday, to the point where I wasn't able to step up the six inches to get out of the flower bed on my own. Tony had to give me a pull to help me out.

Am I sorry? Heck no! I could sit in the rocker and do not much of anything, but it doesn't make me feel better physically and it certainly doesn't make me feel better mentally. While I know I should probably quit before I fall over and start gaping like a fish pulled from the water, I tend to want to reach a goal. I start with reasonable intentions, "I'll trim two shrubs", but then I see that next one in the row… and think yes, I'm sure that would be fine… By the time I've done this three or four fine times it's not fine, it's nuts!

Three days of this level of physical activity makes me as legless as a cowboy who has just downed a bottle of Kentucky whiskey. Legless in a different sense, as I still retain consciousness… mostly conscious of my exasperation when I realize that I've done it yet again, when the last time I swore never to repeat the same stupid mistake.

But back to, "Oh but it was so lovely." I enjoyed every branch I lopped off and every step on that rocky trail.

Now I look over my balcony at the gravel pad where my Zen garden will be born, but not today. Today the Zen gardener is in the rocking chair cultivating a crop she has had little success in growing thus far, patience.

Image is a close-up of the stone garden in the karesansui style, Ryōan-ji temple in Kyoto, Japan taken by Tedmoseby, on June 30, 2008.

Preparing to go Zen…

I've continued to prune the shrubs out front, pecking away like an old hen, a shrub or two at a time on days when it's been warm enough to be outside. There are perhaps 30 shrubs, several of them seven feet high and as wide. They are full of dead wood and crossed branches.

I'm taking them back to healthy wood and a decent shape, assuming they don't simply die of the shock of being cared for! I'm now down to the last third of the job, with about 10 shrubs left to do. Only three of these are large, the remainder are cinquefoils, which are not large but are very dense. Many many branches. Anyway, they are beginning to green up and I need to get them done in the next week.

But while cutting down the enormous shrubs I've noticed that there is an irregularly-shaped gravel bed to the left of the entryway, right up against the building. It was hidden behind the jungle before. It's perhaps 14 feet long along the wall, eight feet deep with an outer edge of eight or 10 feet. The end closest to the building is angled to run parallel to the sidewalk. It's bordered with railroad ties and filled with very coarse (inch or larger) gravel, some of which has evaporated over the past several years to reveal landscape cloth beneath.

I'm not quite certain why the builder put gravel there, rather than the lawn which is between all the other ground floor unit patios, but for whatever reason it leaves me with the perfect opportunity for… you guessed it… a dry Zen garden.

And after the site the first requirement of a Zen garden is rocks. Yesterday was a glorious day, the first we'd had in a very long time. It was sunny and warm enough that you didn't even need a jacket. I'd asked Ian if he'd take me on a rock-hunting trip, and he was kind enough to say yes. He even said he'd feed me lunch first!

He picked me up about 11:30 and away we went. He drives an enormous four-wheel drive monster of a Land Cruiser of an age which requires veneration in the automobile world. It goes about anywhere given time and assuming you have no loose fillings. We had a delicious brunch at a nice little place in Inglewood, which is sort of Calgary's "Old Town". A friend joined us which was really nice, and it was a very enjoyable start to the outing.

The hills surrounding Calgary are still dressed in camel-coloured grass. The trees are bare but beginning to appear to be enclosed in a light mist as leaf buds thicken on bare stems. As we rode along I saw two trumpeter swans in a slough alongside the road, a well-fed coyote trotted through a field, red-tailed hawks circled, keeping a sharp eye out for any gopher foolish enough to stray far from its burrow.

We pulled off the road where a recent slide had brought down tons and tons of rocks. I walked up the slide, selected my half dozen stones, and then we went on to the Trans-Canada Trail. It was lovely back in the woods. The rocks along the trail were covered with orange splats of lichen and wooly green patches of moss. Two crows argued in the distance. An aspen clearly showed the effects of a heavy snowfall on its branches at some early stage of its growth which left the branches permanently deformed.

Ian pointed out a nearby mountain and told me of a climb when he reached the top of the cliff to find a bald eagle hovering above him in the up draught of warm air rising off the cliff face. We live in a beautiful country.

It was a perfect day. That day will be a part of my Zen garden, along with the hours I spent with one of my favourite people in the world. Zen gardens are all about symbolism. I have plans.

God says yes to me...

by Kaylin Haught


I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

and she said yes

I asked her if it was okay to be short

and she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish

or not wear nail polish

and she said honey

she calls me that sometimes

she said you can do just exactly

what you want to

Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph

my letters

Sweetcakes God said

who knows where she picked that up

what I’m telling you is

Yes Yes Yes

Old Friends

I remember clearly the first time I heard this song. I was a young wife and mother, 22 years old, living in Phoenix in a hundred-year-old adobe house with two foot thick walls and plank floors laid directly on the original packed mud floor. Our older son was not yet two, the cicadas sang outside. We had very little money but I was so very happy.

At the time I associated this song with Edie Hewitt, who'd been our landlady in Oak Park Illinois the first year of our marriage. She was 72, I was 19 and we became the best of friends. Tony worked evenings so she and I would have dinner together, her friends Bess and Viola would come by and we'd play canasta for hours.

Edie Hewitt was feisty and knew exactly how to get her own way at City Hall or the local grocer's. Her late husband had been the City treasurer for 17 years. He had died a year or two earlier but she still had contacts. She had "the dirt" on everyone in City Hall, and wasn't above using it. One thing you weren't supposed to have in our upscale neighbourhood was renters, but she didn't like going off and leaving her place empty while she visited her son "Young America". So we were renters/house-sitters.

One day a City Inspector came to the door with a complaint about her "illegal renters". She told me this afterwards with a little twinkle in her highly mischievous eye. She invited him in, looked over his paper and proceeded to let him know that she knew where his particular bodies were buried at City Hall. He thought a minute, put his hat on, straightened his tie and said he was happy her adult grandchildren were able to help her out, now that she was a widow.

One day I found her laughing so hard she was wheezing and crying. The nearby grocer delivered a box of groceries for her a couple of times a week, she'd broken her elbow and found it hard to carry things. She'd call her order in and Frank the grocer would bring the things by an hour or two later.

On this particular day she'd decided she wanted a salad, so she said she'd asked Frank the price of a head of lettuce. He said it was 19 cents. She was outraged! "Nineteen cents!" she told him, "Frank, at that price you know where you can stick that head of lettuce!"

"No, ma'm I'm sorry," the grocer replied. "I can't, I've got a head of cabbage and three pounds of pork chops up there already and it's only 10:00 am."

We kept in touch for years, she visited us when we moved to California, and we exchanged cards at holidays. She passed away in 1973 at the age of 80. I still have some of her letters. She was a lovely friend and it warms me, just to think of her.

This week's Catch-All

I've been very busy the past three or four weeks working on a paper for a neurology journal with neurogeneticists Frank Lehman-Horn and Karen Jurkatt-Rott. These are two of the finest minds (as well as the nicest people) in the field of channelopathy genetics and I was gobsmacked when Frank invited me to co-author a paper with them. I'd have been thrilled to have shined their shoes or pressed their lab coats!

It's been a steep learning curve. Though I've written hundreds of articles and several books on neurological subjects, I've never written for this caliber of audience and I've learned a tremendous amount.

I thought when I sent off the "final-final" edit about ten days ago that I'd hammered down the last nail. Frank and Karen were going to add some slides and expand on the discussion. But somewhere along the road from final final to press someone did what I often do, and turned the paper on its head.

With an appeal, "Please don't hate me!" I got a request this morning to populate five pages of tables with patient-by-patient statistical comparisons - by Monday. This means going back to the original data and pulling out the information piece by piece. Eighteen hours later I have just finished one of five tables. I started with the "easy" one.

It's a groaner of a job, but as I'm doing it I can see why it's valuable. Patterns are emerging that were not apparent before. Funnily enough I did the original research as a sort of "test run" for a much larger project, just to get the feel of the software. I never actually thought I'd uncover new information.

Garden Meeting

My garden meeting went well. Ten people showed up, including an older Indian couple who live around the corner. They speak very little English. Their granddaughter came as translator with her Granddad. But I've been dying to meet them. We pass in the hallway - she is tiny and uses a walker, he walks with great difficulty but they are always smiling and cheerful. I hope we can transcend the language barrier and become friends. The other attendees were from young to older, some who had gardened before and some who never have. I'm not sure all will participate, but if we have five or six it's a start. It should be fun!

And something no one should have to find

Day before yesterday one of the ladies who had come to the garden meeting came to the door, quite upset and in tears. She couldn't explain what was wrong, but asked me to come with her. As we got off the elevator on the third floor the smell was overpowering. She led me to a door, and it was obvious the smell was coming from the apt inside. I couldn't reach our management company or any other board members so called the police and explained the situation.

The young man who lived there had been in the hospital for 10 days, and had been back about 10 days. Asking around, no one had seen him the previous week, but his mother had gone south for a holiday so the neighbours thought he'd gone to join her.

Alas, not so. The police came, broke down the door and found the poor fellow had been lying there dead for over a week. It was not foul play, or even suicide, the coroner had made the assumption while here that the young guy had taken his medication and then had several drinks, which is a no-no with so many prescription drugs.

So it has been a week filled with incident as Lady Bracknell would say. I have now decompressed from my hours of statistical concentration and am going to go off to my comfy bed. Tomorrow is a brand new day.

The Day of Reckoning

Or at least of finding out whether any of the other 250 or so residents of this building are avid (or even aspiring) gardeners. I put up posters on the doors and in the elevators several days ago announcing that we were setting up a community garden for residents and inviting anyone who is interested in participating to attend a meeting at 7:30 tonight.

So tonight we find out. Is there enough interest to start a community garden or not?

If not I will happily confine my gardening efforts to the landscaping which surrounds the entrances to the building. The main approach to the building has a 100' long x 20' wide stretch of sidewalk. It is flanked on both sides by potentillas, saskatoons, a single lilac, a single rose, three wolf willows, and a mugo pine. All were planted when the building was new and have not been touched since, except as noted before, one of the wolf willows has been run over and flattened by a vehicle. You can see by this photo, taken last June, that the saskatoons were trying to take over the walkway, even at the beginning of the season.

I've now managed to prune four of the large and five or six of the smaller shrubs. There's a lot of room in these beds for more plants, and several dead conifers need to be dug out and replaced by more suitable plants. I think some early spring colour would do this place a world of good.

Anyway, we will see what happens. Either way I'm good.

Like life-giving water...

It's never been my object to go back to the year dot with my genealogy. Some of my lines seem to come to an abrupt dead end in the late 1700s, but while adding documentation to a 7th great-grandmother I discovered her maternal line has been documented, not just by genealogists but by historians, all the way back to 450 AD. Fifteen hundred sixty-two years. That's a heck of a pedigree.

Everyone on earth has a pedigree like that. They may not know their ancestors' names and the places they lived. The struggles they endured may not have been documented, but they are back there all the same. So I found the words from this beautiful video especially poignant;

"We all go back so far. And In this present moment on this day, all the people you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world flows together and meets you here like life-giving water if you only open your heart and drink."

Room With Two Dozen Views

Since our living room/den doesn't have a window it's a bit ... well... cave-like at times. I can't say the view off the balcony is the best we've ever had either, RV and truck storage for the adjoining mobile home park. What we need is a window with a view.

Years ago, when I was in high school I had this fantasy about underground houses with windows rather like big TVs, with a view which might change from day-to-day but would be like looking out any window you might choose anywhere in the world. Finally, with flat screen TVs and DVD players fantasy has caught up with reality. Now you can choose your view.

We've been talking about (gasp, please excuse my coarse language but I don't know any other way to say this) - buying a new TV. No, there's not a thing in the world wrong with the one we have, except that it's 19" and neither of us can see it well enough anymore. Poor old Tony has to pull the Windsor captain's chair right up to the screen, and from my vantage point eight feet away I can't read the news crawler or see any fine details. Time to move up in size.

But then we can buy this DVD. Twenty-four views on five minute loops. There are some on here I might live with for months. Put it on full-screen and see if you don't agree. Just what I need, a room with 24 views.

Wait Your Turn

It's a crisp 4 degrees C (39 F) outside with a sharpish wind right from the north but the sun is brilliant and the snow is all melted, except for a patch here and there like a sodden mound of discarded newspapers.

I am seized by that irresistible longing of all gardeners in early spring. To be doing something, anything in the garden. I throw on a windbreaker and toque and go out to walk the fence line of the triangular plot of ground the condo board has said I could use as a community garden this spring. It's large enough for 20 gardeners to have good-sized plots. There are small trees at irregular intervals but they are not large enough to block the sun. Our summer days are long and with planning we can throw the shade primarily in the aisles between the rows.

Water may be a bigger problem. The area is watered by an automatic sprinkler system. Two sprinkler heads cover this entire hundred-foot-long section. You guessed it, they are like two fire hoses. I'm hoping we can talk the condo board into putting faucet heads on those sprinkler nozzles. Otherwise everyone is going to have to put some kind of water force diffuser between their crop and those nozzles. Ah, but what's gardening without a challenge? If you have sun you have no water. If you have water, you have no sun. If you have both the soil is rocky or alkaline enough to make soap with.

So I came back in, pleased with the site and the sun. I was still restless. I got my secateurs and gloves, grabbed the trolley and a big blue plastic tub and headed back out again. The landscaping here was done by a "What's colourful immediately?" approach. Not to say it isn't nice, but no one has laid a finger on it since it was planted in 2007 and the shrubs are pretty sad looking. There's lots of dead wood on them, the bottom halves are bare, they have overgrown the walkway and grab at people's eyes as they pass.

I began with the worst offender, a serviceberry bush near the entrance. It was about seven feet tall by end of summer. I trimmed it back in September, when it was absolutely over-run by aphids, and looked (and I'm sure felt) sick. Today I lopped off all the dead wood, took it back to about 18" tall, and rounded up the form. It should come out nice and compact in April. Serviceberrys usually bloom in May here, these were so spindly and sapped by aphids that they didn't start to bloom until September.

A tree has either volunteered or was planted right beside the serviceberry, so the shrub surrounds it. Branches were hanging over the walk, so I trimmed those as well, and cut a sucker which had come up out of the bottom.

I noticed on the other side of the walk there are about six or eight green spears of whatever we planted there last fall. My fellow condo board member Trevor and I planted 200 spring bulbs, a mix of tulips, hyacinths, crocus, daffodils, narcissus and others I am forgetting. We put about 150 along the main walkway and around the base of the trees out front, the others went at the other entrances. I'm thrilled to see something coming up, probably crocus - they are close to the building in that spot, and probably stayed warmest all winter.

I went out to the end of the walk and pruned the wolf willow. This little tree is at the very end of the walkway and at some point it must have been run over by a vehicle. The trunk lies perpendicular to the ground. I trimmed back branches that had overgrown the sidewalk and get walked on, or tripped over.

I emptied the heaped high trimmings into the dumpster, and having satisfied my garden lust I came in to be greeted by my dirty kitchen. It has to learn to take its turn.

For my friends in Summerland

Just substitute Illahie Beach...

New Lessons

Today marks the first anniversary of the day we took possession of our wee condo and began unpacking our goods and chattels. We look at each other and agree we can hardly believe it's so. Three months maybe?

The place is cozy and comfortable. We wouldn't want it any bigger, except for the occasional time when it would have been nice to have had room for overnight guests. I keep thinking I'd like to paint at least one or two walls a colour other than paper bag brown, but the pale aqua paint I had mixed up is still in the container under the sink.

We miss our friends in Summerland. After a year here we haven't really made friends. It's hard to do when you have unpredictable health. In Summerland friends were close by, next door, a few steps away. Here, not so much. So we must enjoy our own company.

Sadly, our big bouncy red boy has gone on to whatever hereafter cats congregate in. I hope he's happy there. We surely miss him, even though we have adopted a new kitty who is beautiful and sweet tempered.

Life is rather like a kaleidoscope. A small turn can produce dramatic changes, a picture that was full of light can go dark, but the next rotation may bring brilliant colours up again. It's a lesson you learn over and over again. And when you think you have learned the lesson, life falls into a different pattern, a new shape emerges and there are more lessons to be learned and relearned.

Thrive where you're planted!

The Life of flowers (Жизнь цветов) from VOROBYOFF PRODUCTION on Vimeo.

The Inevitability of Cats

It was too quiet in here, and our hearts and arms were too empty. I know we said Salvador would be our last kitty, for a list of reasons, but those reasons didn't stand up to the torrents of loneliness he left in his wake. My Buddhist detachment has not yet detached itself from my beloved four-leggers (or much of anything else I fear).

There's no way we could ever replace Salvador. Aside from being the biggest cat any of the vets we took him to had ever seen, he was a force of nature, as evidenced here. Note that the cupboard doors had to be closed with bungee cords because a naughty red boy would pull open the doors and empty the cupboards.

One of the most fascinating aspects about cats is that each has a distinct and individual personality. Cats are no more like each other than are children, as in one of these things is only superficially like the other. All standard-issue cats have the four legs, and I was going to say the pointy ears, but Scotch Folds' ears fall over. The "long-tail" qualifier fails when you're faced with a Manx, who has no tail. Furry? Several breeds have no hair whatsoever and one "hairless" cat is what has the be the cat owner's nightmare - it grows hair which it immediately sheds, leaving it bald.

So I can't even describe what a cat is and yet you know exactly what I mean when I say 'cat', and assuming you are a 'cat person', you'll understand why we had to have another one, asap.

We lost Sal on Friday. By Saturday evening I knew I couldn't live without a cat in the house. I'd spent the day cleaning red hair out of the corners, from under the furniture and out of the upholstery, packing up toys, emptying the house of Sal's presence. But it was with a growing sense of grief, not just that Sal was gone, but that there would never be another cat to fill that void.

Ian came over in the evening, and while he was here I finally said it.

"I have to have a cat. I don't think I can live without a cat." One of the reasons we'd decided not to get another cat was because Ian has to help us get food and litter, and had to carry Sal to the vet when Tony wasn't well enough, because he was too heavy for me to carry.

"Well, get one then," he said, "I don't mind helping."

Long story short, Sunday we added this beautiful long-haired silver tortie, a three year old male, to our family. His name is Smokey, he's very sweet, gentle, affectionate and playful. He's adjusted very well, and seems extremely content. He came from a home with two dogs and two small kids who were hauling him around a little too roughly for his own good. So while he's not filling Sal's big boots with his tiny feet, and we are still wrestling with the loss of our big boy, the house and our hearts are not so empty.

Come Healing

Rare Disease Day

February 29, 2012 marks the fifth international Rare Disease Day. On this day hundreds of patient organisations from more than 50 countries worldwide are organising awareness-raising activities converging around the slogan "Rare but strong together".



Many rare disease are invisible. They include disorders of metabolism, where the body doesn't make enzymes needed to utilize nutrients essential to life, others where processing errors allow toxins to slowly destroy organs, brain and muscles and others where the body produces toxins. Over 6,000 rare diseases have been identified so far and for the most part they are incurable, and often there is no treatment.

My particular rare disease is Hypokalemic Periodic Paralysis, an inherited genetic disorder which causes temporary attacks of flaccid (rag doll) paralysis triggered by eating carbohydrates, an unusual level of physical activity, sleep or immobility, by medications (like muscle relaxants, pain meds, anesthetics and any medication which lowers the level of potassium in the blood) and by stressors such as overheating, chilling, hunger and pain.

I have lived with this disorder since birth and while it has disabled me physically it has taught me many valuable lessons about life as well. I often think of these lines from Henry Van Dyke's poem,

Reliance

Not to the swift, the race:
Not to the strong, the fight:
Not to the righteous, perfect grace:
Not to the wise, the light.

But often faltering feet
Come surest to the goal;
And they who walk in darkness meet
The sunrise of the soul.

I am honoured to be president of Periodic Paralysis International a non-profit organization which has served periodic paralysis patients around the world since 1996. Visit us today and show your support by "liking" our website!

Salvador "Red Chief"

14 Feb 1999 - 24 Feb 2012

I am of the nature to grow old.
There is no way
To escape growing old.
I am of the nature
To have ill health.
There is no way
To escape ill health.
I am of the nature to die.
There is no way
To escape death.
All that is dear to me
And everyone I love
Are of the nature to change.
There is no way
To escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
from: The Plum Village Chanting, by Thich Nhat Hanh

While he was being treated for increasing arthritic pain in his back and hips, the acute phase of his illness lasted only three days. We have a wonderful vet, who did everything possible to ease his pain, but we were not successful. The vet cried with me as we eased the big beautiful boy into that gentle sleep from which we do not awaken in this world.

I have a giant Salvador-shaped hole in my heart, a heart that is riddled with other holes as well, shaped like Patches and Fred, Nosey and Fatty and Bully Boy. Little pieces torn from the fabric of life. Anyone who hasn't loved and been loved by a creature innocent of all agendas, who dances only in the breathing moment, has yet to live.

KIVA Loan Thirty-six

Lubomir lives in the village of Gladkovka with his wife and daughter. In his greenhouses, he grows early-season vegetables for sale. On 1 hectare of land, he annually grows 8,000 tomato plants, 2,000 cucumber plants, and 10 tonnes of potatoes. Lubomir has been a farmer for four years. His working capital totals about $10,000, while his take-home profit is approximately $650.

Lubomir needed a loan of $2,500 in order to purchase seeds, fertilizer, firewood and plastic film.

These additional funds are needed to perform timely maintenance on the greenhouses and to prepare properly for the spring season, so as to produce a good harvest.

Together several KIVA lenders loaned him the $2,500 he needed and now this obviously very hard working man can get on with his spring work.

Starry Starry Night

I like Vincent Van Gogh's work anyway, but this is one of my favourite paintings, and it's given new dimension in this interactive video. Watch it full screen if you can. Gorgeous!

Starry Night (interactive animation) from Petros Vrellis on Vimeo.

Kleshas and the Supreme White Man

We sat yesterday morning as we do most mornings, sipping from our cobalt mugs half-coffee-half-milk, watching the CBC news. One of the leading stories was that the hacker's group Anonymous had hacked into the Canadian Neo-Nazi's database and turned over thousands of documents, e-mails, plans, discussions and such to the CBC.

The story revealed that there are fewer than 100 members of so called "White Supremacy" groups in Canada, but they have been associated with some ugly attacks on other citizens recently. They are a minuscule minority in a diverse population that for the most part is extremely tolerant of difference. You wonder about the people in these violent groups, so filled with hatred and rage, and what tragic paths brought a once innocent child to such a state. What terrible lives they must lead.

I'd had a rough day Wednesday, wrestling with my very aggressive ego, and my sweet husband began my day with the question, "How are your kleshas today?"

I laughed and told him that "so far" they were well-behaved. But in each of us is that impulse to lash out, to feel the surge of power being in control, being able to hurt, to deny or grant. The "charge" of aggressiveness hidden beneath the soothing hand, at every breath the impulse asks, selfish or altruistic, hurt or heal?

As we deal with others the kleshas rise as regularly as the pulse. When we come to the point where we recognize that we make the choice between self-interest and serving others almost as unconsciously as breathing we tear back the mask and are face to face with ourselves. It's not an entirely pleasant experience for someone who thinks of herself as as "humanitarian". (As Lucy in Peanuts said, "I love humanity, it's people I can't stand.")

And so our morning conversation moved to Jean Vanier, whom I greatly admire. Vanier is founder of L'Arche, group homes staffed by volunteers who care for developmentally disabled adults. He was idealistic and had this pretty dream of founding a group home, full of radiant love, but when his dream was realized and his first group of disabled adults came, he found he didn't like them.

Like the young monk who came from Japan to teach Zen Buddhism in the 60s, and whose only students were dirty, unkempt hippies who came to class high on drugs, Vanier was repulsed by the very people he had pledged his life to serving. The monk sobbed his heart out at night, because he was teaching tolerance and love during the day while barely suppressing his revulsion for his students. Vanier spent many a night agonizing as well. And in the end both men came not just to like but to truly love, not with a sentimental "so-sorry-for-you" love but with deep compassion.

The true hero is not the one who had a magic cape and sailed in blissful serenity above the cares of men. The hero has faced agony of spirit when standing at the bottom of the wall of self-realization. The self-interested child inside urges violence, from the impatient or sarcastic word aimed at someone who annoys you, to the beating or burning of one who is a different colour, a different religion, a different political persuasion - The sarcastic word and the beating stem from the same dark urge, and having uttered more than my share of sarcastic words I can understand how overpowering the rage must be that makes people lash out in violence.

My own dark urge is only different in its intensity, in my own ability to regulate my emotions and my slowly awakening realization that the skinhead on the street and his victim are both deserving of compassion. The only way to stop the cycle of violence is to stop being violent.

Our 35th KIVA Loan

We have made our 35th KIVA loan.

42-year old Máxima lives south of Barranquilla, Colombia with her husband and their three children aged from 12 to 20 years. She was born in Bolívar Department. Together with her husband Máxima has a business selling fish and she also sells puddings. They use the income from these two jobs to support the household and would like to expand the businesses so they can earn more money and have a better life. As well, they wish to provide their children with a good education.

Máxima’s husband takes fish (bocachicos and mojarras) to distant neighbourhoods and sells them door to door, while Máxima sells from the house. Her customers are families who live nearby. Her husband buys from the market and sells strictly on account.

Their customer base has grown because people recognise the freshness of their product, so they now need more money to buy more fish. Up until now they have been able to finance this themselves. Now Máxima is asking for a loan, the first she’s had from the Mario Santo Domingo Foundation, to buy fish. She also earns money from the sale of little puddings which she sells from her house. She alternates between selling fish and selling puddings so as to earn money.

Bed of Moss

Bed of Moss from Kurtis Hough on Vimeo.

The Big Bad Me

I had an interesting experience this past week. A friend told me that another friend had taken information I'd shared about a third friend's illness as a criticism of him and had immediately gone to the ill person to expand upon and report my "treachery". Some unrelated incidents were apparently remembered from the past and tossed on the fire until these two had built a roaring case of big bad Deb.

The reporter then went on to confirm that two others are spreading rumors about the content of my character, or more to the point - my connection to reality. Anyone who knows me well knows I am crazy silly, in a good way, but I'm pretty grounded in reality. However, there's a territorial imperative at play there.

In years past I'd have gone blazing to defend myself and confront these gossiping tongues and slanderers, but I guess all these years of meditation has (finally - thankfully) diminished my sense of self-importance. What's said about me is not so important. People will form their own opinions of me from dealing with me.

People who find it delicious or satisfying to speak ill of others are driven by a need to dissipate tension, relieve their anxiety, or build up their own egos or position in other's eyes. I've been in that state myself, and I always felt soiled afterwards, and ashamed.

Being free of the need to defend myself is liberating. There's no feeling of anger, and no pain that I've been "betrayed" by a friend. I don't have to change how I deal with these friends.

I like feeling like this. I'm hoping I can hang onto it.

A Simple Gift

I'm not sure what sparks our dreams, but last night I dreamed of my high school history teacher CW Stevens Jr. In grades 11 and 12 I was his student assistant. I graded papers, kept the bulletin board displays current to the subject each class was studying at the time and led the occasional class.

CW was a meticulous man, immaculately groomed and tailored, like no other man I'd ever known. He was not handsome. He had a bald head, a small jaw and weak chin. No difference. I adored him. He was witty and intelligent and he'd travelled the world - he'd even been an intelligence officer in China in the late 50s and had some truly awful stories to tell.

He told of one spring day when he took a visiting friend to lunch at a local cafe. The friend needed to use the "facilities" which meant he had to walk through the kitchen to a latrine in the alley. When he came back he was green-faced and had lost his appetite. He urged CW to take the same stroll. "Oh, he said, "Look at the stove as you go by."

CW went, and as he passed the large cast-iron stove he cast a glance at it. Encrusted with grease, and in the grease thousands of fat and happy blowfly maggots wriggling away.

"Ewwwww!" I said, when he told me this, "What did you do?"

"Went back to my table and enjoyed my lunch," he said, his blue eyes dancing with mischief. "If you're worried about eating a maggot in China you'd starve in a week."

But I'm profoundly grateful to this lovely little man for something entirely different. He introduced me to classical music. One day he brought a record album to school and asked if I had a phonograph. I did, so he lent (or perhaps gave) me the album. This was followed by others. Operas, symphonies, a whole range of composers. His favourite was American composer Aaron Copland, and I never listen to Copland without thinking of my beloved teacher. Thank you sir.



Copland "Simple Gifts" from Appalachian Spring is based on the tune of the Shaker Hymn "Simple Gifts";

'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,

'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

It will be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,

To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed.

To turn, turn will be our delight,

'Til by turning, turning we come round right
'Tis the gift to be loved and that love to return,

'Tis the gift to be taught and a richer gift to learn,

And when we expect of others what we try to live each day,

Then we'll all live together and we'll all learn to say,

'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,

'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

It will be in the valley of love and delight.

'Tis the gift to have friends and a true friend to be,

'Tis the gift to think of others not to only think of "me",

And when we hear what others really think and really feel,

Then we'll all live together with a love that is real. 

Days and Nights Mixed

My mother would say I have my days and nights mixed. And that's the truth. Otherwise why would I be sitting here at 3:30 am working on a blog post?

I tried going to bed earlier, but my bones hate going to bed. I'm as loosely strung as an old marionette, and when I lie down the backbone connected to the funny bone and the hip bone connected to the hop bone somehow find themselves in new and uncomfortable configurations. Now, why I don't just get smart and take the pain pills two hours before a reasonable bedtime I don't know. My optimistic side takes inventory, finds nothing acant, and says, "I don't need pain meds tonight!"

So here I am at 3:30 am, having not yet slept, waiting for the pills to kick in so I can lie down.

Sprawled on the floor near my chair is the magnificently spoiled Cattus Salvadorus. Salvador means servant in Spanish and never was a name so ill-chosen for a feline. Yes, I know it's because he sports a little Dali-like moustache of freckles just below his duffer nose, but he is no one's servant. Just the opposite. Last night I had not a single hour of uninterrupted sleep, courtesy of a lonely cat.

Where we might just scold him and tell him to get in his bed and lie down, we're a bit soft on him right now. Two days before Christmas he became desperately ill. For a while it was touch and go whether we'd lose him or not. Even now we're a bit apprehensive about his future. He has a back problem, and his hind legs are beginning to fail. He's also lost a substantial amount of weight. We snuggle him a lot. We sneak a pain pill into him tucked inside his "cookie".

Yes, he's a terrible nuisance but he's just the kind of nuisance we love, and any way you look at it, despite all the vet intervention, injections, pills and potions, we can hardly help but wonder how long we'll have him with us.

With him or worrying about being without him, it's very hard to sleep.

Aging as a Spiritual Practice

So, another year slips past and a new unsullied calendar hangs on the wall. When I was five I thought New Year meant all the stars fell out of the sky and the whole cosmos changed. I begged to stay up to see it. My father carried me outside from the warmth of the room where the family was singing Auld Lang Syne and held me as I reared back and watched the midnight sky overhead. I heard the cheering that meant the year had turned and I waited for the shower of stars that never came.

Having seen my fair share of skies which never rained a shower of stars at midnight on any New Year's Eve, I've come to see New Year's as one day in a string of days. Like Mala beads that slip, one by one through your fingers. You look up from your keyboard at 5:30 and ask, "Where'd the day go?" Where did the week, month, year - all those yesterdays of my life go?

Recently I saw the title of a book I want to read, about aging as a spiritual practice. It's something we talk about. We both struggle with significant health issues which bring with them muscle weakness, pain and serious physical limitations. At times the frustration of not being able to reliably (or spontaneously) do the most basic of tasks is almost overwhelming. We snap and growl like a couple of bears arguing over the same den.

It's not something we like doing. It brings us both to tears sometimes, not from what has been said, but because we cannot bear to be cross with each other. This is what we've been talking about, how do we use this process of illness and aging as catalyst for growth? How do we incorporate the realities of aging into spiritual practice?

Joy to the World!

While we are unable to dispense very much joy , we can help lift the burden of poverty just a bit for one or two others who are not as fortunate as we are.

Through KIVA we are able to reach far beyond the four walls of our little condo here in Calgary to people around the world.

Are we deluded into believing we are great benefactors of mankind, and those we loan our pittance to feel some undying gratitude? Certainly not. We have been small business people ourselves, and know that a loan is both a blessing and a burden. It can enable, but it lays anxiety on your back at the same time.

But the key word is enable. Without that small lift up, there is no possibility of growth, no digging yourself out of the hole you are in, no matter how hard you work. So this month our KIVA loan, our 33rd, goes to a farmer in Armenia, a married man who supports his elderly father. Karen raises cattle and is a beekeeper. Karen asked for a loan because he needs to purchase calves and additional beehives. This expansion of the farm will help Karen to increase his income and support his household.

Ian gave me a KIVA gift card for Christmas, which I have already invested - loan number 34 has been extended to a group of farmers in Kenya. This group is part of an innovative farming support program called One Acre Fund which acts as a sort of farmer's cooperative . One Acre Fund has an integrated agriculture package, which includes training, procuring and offering quality supplies (fertilizer and seeds), credit and insurance. Clients enroll between July and October for the following planting season, which begins in February. By purchasing the needed supplies between July and October One Acre Fund is able to take advantage of the low seasonal prices for supplies.

Julius is the facilitator of the Mukunduzi B farmer's group which also includes Francis, Elias, Mellab, Neriah, Sachini, Tom. In the photograph, Julius is pictured with his group members and standing on the far left is the field officer.

Julius and his group joined One Acre Fund in the year 2011 and will re-enroll in the 2012 program. In 2012, the members of Mukunduzi B group will each plant maize plots between ½ and 1 acre of land.

Julius takes care of five children at home. He joined One Acre Fund to increase his yield of maize (corn). He works hard to produce enough income through growing corn to provide nutritious food for his children and send them to school. In the recent 2011 season, Julius had an excellent yield, harvesting eight bags on corn from his ½ acre of land. Before joining One Acre Fund, Julius was only able to harvest four bags of maize on ½ acre of land.
Julius plans to continue educating his children and hopes to expand into raising livestock in the future.

Merry Catmus!

This has happened more than once in our house.
Cats really know how to celebrate.

December Strikes Again

I've grown to dread December. There's a strong December tradition in our family - a pact of sorts. It's unstated but understood. Called "Die in December", you can also get credit for carrying on the tradition if you die in the last half of November. However if you linger until the stroke of midnight January 1st, you obviously haven't felt the burden of familial duty.

This year it was my cousin Mack who carried the familial tradition forward by passing away on the 5th of December. Mack was a stellar guy. We shared a childhood a lifetime ago when summers were ten years long and the Oklahoma twilights were filled with fireflies.

Mac was several years older than I, big for his age (he topped out at 6'5") while I was still wearing child's size three dresses at age seven. He was red-headed, blue-eyed, freckled, the perfect model for a Norman Rockwell painting of the All-American boy of the late 40's and 50's. But he was as a child, and as a man, a gentle giant.

He grew up to be a career military man, and for many years we had no contact. But about a decade ago I tracked him down on the web and we began writing back and forth. It was as if the years between hadn't happened.

He was laid to rest with full military honors on Sunday. He will be missed by his wife, seven children, many grandchildren and a cousin who remembers how he carried her on his shoulders and ran, laughing with each bounding step, through the long long memories of yesterday.

How Do You Eat a Tutu?

Many years ago on my way out of the library I stopped to browse the "books for sale" table and bought for the princely sum of 50 cents The Book of Latin American Cooking by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz. The fact that this cookbook was first published in 1969 and is still in print and for sale today should give you some idea of how wonderful it is.

Its only flaw is that it has no tamale recipes, but then, as my mother-in-law was fond of saying, there's no perfection in this world. What it does have is 338 pages of recipes drawn from countries all over Latin America. For dinner last night I made one of my favorites, the Brazilian dish, Black Beans Minas Gerais style or Tutu a Mineira. Over the years I've adapted this recipe a bit. It's a simpler version of Feijoada Completa, Black Beans with Mixed Meats, which has oranges as a garnish or side dish. I added the oranges and limes from that recipe to the Tutu recipe.

Now I'm hungry. I'm sitting here wishing we hadn't been such pigs and eaten every last scrap of it last night, because I'd sure like some more right now. (Note to self: Do not invite a guest next time you make Tutu - you fool!)

The traditional way to serve Tutu is in a large flat casserole, but as I seem to be missing my large flat casserole I used a round pie dish instead. I piled the egg/bacon mixture in the middle and placed the orange slices around the edges, with the lime slices in the middle for colour. The kale had to go in a bowl on the side. It didn't look quite as spectacular, but it didn't deter any appetites. Everyone dove in for thirds and then Tony made some lame excuse about it being a shame to put such a small amount in a container in the fridge and finished what I might have had for lunch today!

Anyway, here's the recipe, should you be inclined to try this Tutu for yourself:

Black Beans Minas Gerais style, Tutu a Mineira

Casserole base:
6 cups cooked black beans
1 medium onion diced
2 cloves garlic
1 tbs dried red/green pepper flakes
1 tsp tabasco sauce
1 tsp salt
1 tbs olive oil

Toppings:
3 eggs
6 slices bacon
2 naval oranges
1/2 of a lime
1 bunch kale
1 tsp tabasco
1 tbs oil (divided)
1 tsp red wine vinegar
----

Method:
Mash cooked beans, adding water if needed to make consistency of mashed potatoes. Saute onions and garlic in oil until transparent, add to beans, along with other seasonings. Place seasoned beans in flat casserole, put in 300 degree oven until hot through.

While beans are heating fry bacon, drain and crumble. Fry the eggs and cut into strips. Cut kale into strips and cook until just wilted. Slice oranges into thin slices, slice limes into half slices. Mix 1 tsp of oil, tsp of vinegar and tsp of hot sauce together.

Mix egg strips and bacon together and lay a strip down center of casserole on top of beans, lay kale down one side, dress with oil/vinegar/hot sauce, put orange and lime slices down the other side.

Stand back....

What Did You Eat This Week?

As Christmas approaches I have begun to prepare our traditional Christmas dinner, which is a far cry from the turkey and dressing which will grace many a North American table in ten days time. Anyone who's suffered through this blog for more than a year or two know that Christmas dinner in our house is Tex-Mex, that blend of indigenous Indian, Spanish food with an Anglo twist found along the Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California borders with Mexico.

But as I looked at the food bulging from pantry and fridge I was reminded of a photo essay I'd seen earlier by Photojournalist Peter Menzel called, What the World Eats.

In 16 photos Menzel moves across the globe, from Japan to North Carolina, from an African refugee camp to a mountain village in Peru and a dozen places in between. In each photo Menzel shows a family in their home, with the week's food arrayed around them. The weekly food budget is given, and the families favorite foods are listed.

It's a fascinating look at global cultures, and at how ubiquitous some items are. Some families eat almost nothing except processed, packaged foods, some eat no packaged or processed food at all. There are very few families who do not have at least one or two bottles of Coca Cola among the week's provender, and sometimes there's a pyramid of the stuff.

As I make my tamales, mole negro and carne adovada, preparing dishes for loved ones who gather at our table, I will think of other families around the globe, and the foods on their tables as we bring this tumultuous year to an end.

Yorn in Cambodia - KIVA Loan for Dec

Yorn, on the far left in this picture, is 43 years old, and lives in Cambodia. She has three children who work for other people grinding corn. Yorn's family doesn't have an easy life. For more than ten years, Yorn's main income source has been growing corn. In order to feed her children she must sometimes also work for others.

Yorn leads a group of four female members applying for their first loan from KIVA. She will use her loan to buy agricultural tools such as hoes and a plow for her farm work. Having sufficient tools will allow her to increase the amount of corn she is able to grow. Through increased production she hopes to be able to better feed her children.

This is our 32nd KIVA loan, and our small fund of about $150.00 spent over two and a half years has enabled 32 people in disadvantaged circumstances to invest in themselves and their businesses. In those 32 loans only one has not been repaid, and that was because a typhoon wiped out the village where our borrower lived.

As the loans are repaid, on a regular schedule, the money is available to reinvest, or to withdraw if you decide to leave the program. We follow our borrowers each month, and it's always good to read a report that their goal of increasing their income and improving their families lives has been reached, in part because we shared our pensioner's mite.

Who's Paying You to Be Here?

Gurdjieff was a late 19th century teacher. Students came to study and live with him on his estate near Paris. There was one man in the community no one could stand because he was impossible to get along with. He complained constantly and had such a short fuse that you never knew when he was going to explode over nothing. He made everyone's life a misery and the other students just wished that he would go away.

Gurdjieff taught by making his students do things that were completely meaningless - with the purpose of making them pay attention to their reactions and learn from them. It wasn't the useless tasks that were important, it was the students' inner experience that mattered.

One day the students had been told to dig up an area of lawn growing on one side of a path and replace it with lawn growing on the other side. This was too much for the man that everyone disliked. He screamed that he was fed up with Gurdjieff's useless chores, threw down his shovel, stormed to his room and got his suitcase, got in his car and drove away, swearing never to return. The rest of the community was delighted to see him go, and cheered as he drove away. But when they told Gurdjieff what happened, he said “Oh, no!” and went after him.

Three days later they both came back. That night, when he was serving Gurdjieff his supper, his attendant asked, “Sir, why did you bring him back? It was so much more pleasant with him gone.” and Gurdjieff answered very quietly, “Between you and me; you must tell no one. I pay that man to stay here.”

This annoying person, and people and experiences like him, are life's therapeutic irritations. They exist to wake us up. Like the sand in the oyster that is the seed of the pearl, therapeutic irritations stir a reaction in us. We can choose to resist them, or we can use them as chances to awaken. They teach us what it is not possible to learn when surrounded by ease and harmony.

Though it's not easy and I frequently fail, I try to let these therapeutic irritations show me where I need to pay attention, areas like developing patience and controlling my angry temper. [Usually they show me exactly how impatient and ill-tempered I really am, but that in itself is a lesson.]

Obviously I need the practice because someone is paying several people to be in my life right now. So far so good, but I'm beginning to get a headache.

Story from Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living, Shambhala, 1994

Winter in Calgary

Calgary's forecast for tomorrow is -25 C. Looking for ways to keep warm from the experts? Here ya go, the tips Calgarians tweeted to the CPO when they asked how you keep warm when the temperature dives in Calgary.

----------NOV 25 IS BUY NOTHING DAY -------

Buy Nothing Day!

Take yourself for a walk in the park instead of the mall.

Stay home and have a bubble bath.

Let the credit card cool down.

Think about what it would feel like to be

DEBT-FREE

Or conversely, you could enjoy the "holiday experience"
Andy Borowitz describes in his column today.



November 25, 2011

In Positive Economic Sign, Walmart Customers Killing Each Other to Buy Shit

Pepper Spraying, Homicide Bullish Indicators, Economists Say

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report) – In what economists are hailing as a clear sign of economic recovery, Walmart customers across the USA jammed into stores on Black Friday, sometimes killing each other to buy useless shit.

“We have been looking for evidence that the economy is on the mend,” said Davis Logsdon, chairman of the economics department at the University of Minnesota. “When people resort to homicide to buy a Blu-ray player, that is very, very good news indeed.”

Mr. Logsdon said he was “impressed” by the lengths to which some Walmart customers were going to grab coveted sale items: “They’re using tactics we usually associate with the UC-Davis police.”

With many customers using pepper spray and other weapons to get a shopping advantage, however, Mr. Logsdon advised Americans not to enter a Walmart unarmed.

“If you want to get your hands on a doorbuster, you’d better have a firearm,” he said. “Fortunately, Walmart is offering several great doorbusters on firearms.”

Walmart and other retailers’ decision to commence their Black Friday sales a day early carries with it an added benefit for consumers, he noted: “Now, Americans will be able to declare bankruptcy one day earlier.”

All in all, Dr. Logsdon said that the increased violence and mayhem at retail outlets across the country was “a testament to the greatness of the American consumer.”

“Egyptians risk their lives for new government,” he said. “Americans bravely do the same for new flat screens.”

GOD HELP US!

No Need to Worry

“If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.” ~ Dalai Lama


And closer to home, a reassuring word from the light of my life, "We've gone through this before. We can't let it scare us. We may very well feel better tomorrow."

Paradise is having someone who understands.

A Postcard from Paradise and Recuerda mi Corazon

Marigolds in March

Dame Judi Dench is by far my favorite actress. She just gets more beautiful as the years roll by, which gives me hope. And finally a movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which has a cast with some character and dare I say depth?

Though I haven't been in a movie theatre since my youngest child was a teenager I'm setting my clock for March (when this movie will be released) and have told my husband that we have a date night coming up.

Reposted from As Time Goes By

I'LL WATCH ANY MOVIE WITH THESE TWO DAMES
(...of the British Empire, that is). Lilalia of Yum Yum Cafe reminded me of an upcoming film starring Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. According to an online synopsis, the movie ”...follows a group of British retirees who decide to 'outsource their retirement to less expensive and seemingly exotic India. Enticed by advertisements for the newly restored Marigold Hotel and bolstered with visions of a life of leisure, they arrive to find the palace a shell of its former self.

“Though the new environment is less luxurious than imagined, they are forever transformed by their shared experiences, discovering that life and love can begin again when you let go of the past.”

“Marigold” is not due in theaters until next March. Meanwhile, here is a trailer.

The Red Hibiscus

Red hibiscus blooms
In winter window glowing
Scarlet borealis

Haiku My Heart Friday

recuerda mi corazon

"We Do"

Let me see. Last time I checked my own marriage of 46 years hadn't dissolved, crumbled, teetered, tottered or turned toes up because a same sex couple looked upon each other with the same love, tenderness and commitment that my dear sweet husband and I feel for each other.

I think it's time we grew up and let families live their lives in peace. Or as my old Mum would have said when someone got a little too interested in telling her how she should conduct her affairs, "You, you go tend to your own knittin' and I'll tend to mine."