Stuff

Get everything you wanted this Christmas? How about more time to spend with your friends and loved ones? Better relationships? More time for your hobbies?

Or did you just get more stuff?

Could it be time for a new take on the American Dream? How about a society where our values are honored and lived out: family, community, fairness, connected functional neighborhoods, environmental health and safety? This New Years I think we should be reflecting on what really matters to us and whether our daily choices are supporting our personal values. Or will you just turn on the TV again and turn off your freedom?

Thankfulness

I feel very thankful for all I have: I have enough food and shelter to keep me safe and healthy. I have a loving family including a beautiful little niece who is learning and growing fast. I have friends who care about me and share their joys with me. I have an inquisitive and creative mind with which to explore and enjoy the world around us. I have meaning and purpose in my studies and my work life. I have beauty all around to discover and appreciate constantly. I have the gift of life itself, being, which I should never take for granted.

Thanks be.

Ally rides the rocking horse

This Sunday the family gathered for my Dad's birthday, and I got to see how much Allison has grown since September. She's a very active and smart little girl. I think she is learning well how to do things for herself, though this often puts her at odds with her mom. She is not very verbal yet, though. She says a few words, but I did not hear her speak much. Mainly if she is unhappy about something she will fuss or cry. Otherwise, she communicates non-verbally. She seems able to make her wishes known to those who are patient enough to pay attention.

I took pictures of her riding the toy rocking horse that was my brother's when we were little. It is so great to see how big and capable she is becoming.

Happy All Hallows E'en

Wild Geese

I read this poem on a door the other day. The first line got me to stop and pay attention. Mary Oliver wrote:

"You do not have to be good."

I read that again a few times again before I could get past it. That's what it says. OK. She continues:

"You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves. ...

Meanwhile the world goes on."

Yes. It does, doesn't it? Here is the world, going on. Nature. Landscapes. Human and non-human. Some wild geese fly overhead. In all the open expanse of prairies and mountains and rivers and lakes, they know exactly how to get to their place, their home. So easy to get lost? Maybe. Or:

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things."

We all need to love what (and who) we love. We all need to listen to the wisdom that we all hear but often choose to ignore, that we already know what we need. We already know where we belong. We just need to accept and appreciate and enjoy what we have: ourselves. We know where home is, and we know what makes us happy.

Our home is not our ideas we have about what we should need or have to have. It is the wisdom of the voice inside that tells us what we love. It may take time to learn to listen and understand this voice, our own truest self. If we stop to listen, we find what we already always knew.

You might find the complete poem here. Or Google it.

Allison is one

Allison turned one on July 30th, and the family all celebrated last weekend. See a few more photos on Flickr.

My Summer Garden

Summer Garden

in the center of
My Summer Garden
i placed a little plant

with green leaves
And White Flowers
that smelled like honey

i came to treasure
This Secret Place
as days grew shorter

until at last i
Joined My Love
beneath the dark soil

(6/7/04)

Imagine

Last night as I was sleeping

I dreamt – marvelous error! –

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.

– Antonio Machado

A dream is a goal that you both believe you can accomplish if you work hard enough, and feel in your deepest self that you truly need and must have.

ONE MORE TIME!

No, I will not be sharing my rendition of an Irish shanty song, no no. I'm talking about the 6+" of glorious, newly fallen powder we had at Willamette Pass the Sunday before last. It was April, for Pete's sake, but it was incredible.

I worked yesterday, but have next Sunday off, soooo... Here's wishing it might not be too nice of weather next weekend. I'd love one more chance in the deep stuff before it's really truly springtime.

Happy Easter 2008

I feel blessed to have a loving family to spend my Easter holiday with today. We gathered in Salem -- me, Leo, my sister, brother, their partners, my niece, and parents. We shared a delicious meal. We visited and played showed off new toys (my new iPod, my Dad's new iMac). We talked about life and family and art and being together. I played a little recital of an adagio from a Handel sonata and a couple of church hymns appropriate for the day.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Bunny Baby

Oh dear, my poor sister has a mutant child. I knew she never should have gotten mixed up with that guy she married...! ;-P

Tears and Rain

I enjoy James Blunt's music very much. I recently (March 2008) went back to iTunes to look for songs by him I didn't own yet, and decided to try out "Tears and Rain" from his first album, "Back to Bedlam." This isn't my favorite song, but it raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

I had posted here a video I'd found on YouTube, but it has since been marked private, so I can't share it with everyone now. So instead I'll share some brief reflections on the music and meaning I find in this song.

I love how the song opens with gentle acoustic guitar strumming. James' voice has a lovely, expressive quality. In this song he uses a tone that is very sorrowful, like weeping. How perfectly he sings this melancholy tune!

My favorite line is "How I wish I could walk through the door to my mind; / Hold memory close at hand, / Help me to understand the years." Memory and imagination are a great gift for turning over experience and learning from what has come before. How tempting it can be to feel like one could live there, inside an idea, inside an instant from the past! Perhaps it is well that we can't literally step through this door.

Allison Update

My baby niece, Allison Elinor, is now about 7 1/2 months old, teething, starting to stand and crawl and eat solid foods and so many exciting developments. I haven't seen her since Christmas, but will see her this Sunday for Easter. Here are links to some photos my family have taken of her and put online:

February Photos

My Allison Page

New iPod Shipping!

On Thursday night I tested out Leo's 1st generation iPod Nano on the PowerBook G4 with USB 1.1, and it recognized and synced with it fine. It didn't even care to reformat the iPod from PC to Mac. The song transfers took about 5 seconds per song, and about a minute for a longer MP3 of about 50 MB. This seems like an acceptable compromise. I can set up the iPod to sync while I'm doing something else, and I'm guessing it might take a couple of hours to fill an 8GB Nano.

So, Friday morning I took the plunge and ordered a new green iPod Nano from my business site. (Since I need it for my business and I can get sales credit for buying from my own business, this made the most sense to me.) The order just shipped yesterday and according to FedEx's tracking site it left Ohio early this morning, so I eagerly await it's arrival at my door in the next day or two. :)

(Not So) New iPod Shopping

My 5-year-old iPod 20GB died recently, and my 6-year-old iPod is getting creaky and unreliable, so I figure it's time for me to get a new iPod. Problem is, my iMac G4 and Powerbook G4 are old enough that neither has USB 2.0, which all the newer iPods for the past few years require in order to sync up your music and other media. I've done some research and it seems I have three options:

(1) Apple Service. According to Apple's support website I can send them my iPod and they will basically send me a replacement, for $249 plus a few dollars shipping fee. The plus side would be I could probably trust that the "new" iPod would work great. The minus side is it's a lot to pay for old technology.

(2) Buy a used or refurbished iPod with firewire. The last iPod Apple made that uses firewire (which my computers DO have) was the iPod Photo. I've searched on the web and can find a couple of sites selling 20GB iPods like mine that died, or a 40GB slightly nice iPod for a bit more. This option would cost me under $200, which seems reasonable enough. The downside is that my chance of getting a lemon that doesn't work seems a bit higher than going through Apple.

(3) Buy a new current generation iPod and put up with the syncing being very painful. My partner has an iPod Nano from a couple of years ago, so I'm going to try out syncing his iPod on my computer to see whether it works and how long it takes to fill it up to its 4GB capacity. If that seems good enough, I might just spring for a new iPod Nano or maybe a classic. The downside is that it may be painful, having to leave the thing running overnight to sync up, or it may not even work that well. The upside would be to have a nice new iPod and when I upgrade my computers in a year or two I'll still have a newish iPod rather than something out of the digital stone age.

All in all, I love my iPods, and I especially love that they've totally changed the way I listen to music. Music is much more a part of my life now, and that's exciting. I just don't have the money to upgrade my computers to USB 2.0. It is a shame to be getting stuck on something that seems so basic, but that is the way technology seems to work a lot of the time.