Category: Personal

Tradition!  Every region in the U.S.–indeed, every country around the world–has its own New Year’s traditions.  Here is a look at the ones I grew up with; I hope that all of you will share yours, too.

I’m at least half Pennsylvania Dutch, and the “lucky” food–the one you must eat for luck during the entire new year–is pork and sauerkraut:

Pony Party is an open thread.  Please do not rec the party.

Hey, buhdy, thanks!  I didn’t expect my little pony party to make it to the grown-up side of the page!  What’s your New Year’s tradition, btw?  

i am left with this one question: who are we?

cattle? feudal serfs? indentured servants? are we trapped? who’s in charge, anyway?

i only realize now that the real turn in my political perception happened after the Nov 2005 elections, when Democrats regained a slim majority in Congress. when i expected everything to happen. accountability. push-back at FISA, the Military Commissions Act, the Patriot Act, more oversight of the captains of industry and financial markets. i really thought, listening to the likes of Henry Waxman that the sane people, once again, had some meaningful influence over politics and policies.

what slowly began to dawn on me was that the people i thought would work to restore our country had sabotaging us all along.

so when i read Cheney on Wiretapping: “Congress said we could”

Cheney Rats Out Dem Leadership as His Co-Conspirators

more specifically, the mind stomach connection for me right now. I am continuing to notice that I am stopping eating something halfway and putting it away, or not taking seconds when I would have before, or just not snacking at all sometimes at what used to be a time of day I would feel hungry. Now there are results,too, I lost an inch off my waistline at last! Aero, however ,looks as round as ever though I am reducing her portions and treats.

This will be so random.

I thought about the Dark Ages yesterday. It’s such a curious term, of an uncertain grouping of decades and centuries. Most respected recent historians attempt to avoid characterizing that Western-based concept of a time of unlearning and no learning as the “Dark Ages”. Whatever. When I was young, the Dark Ages were considered to be somewhere from the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century through either the coming of the Conqueror in the early 1000s or the growth of the Renaissance around the 14th and 15th centuries. A mean, lean five hundred  years, or at least it was in Latin literature as posited by Petrarch.

I wondered if one was aware then that they were living in a stunted time, or if they could perceive without envy that future generations might blossom. Most living in those earlier centuries must have seen their lives, their parent’s lives, and their children’s lives, all far shorter generations on average, pass by without measurable advancement in human and cultural development. Health, medicine, philosophy, religion, living conditions, hunger, disease, pestilence, articles and materials of war or peace, tools, wonders of the world.  

Time for me and Aero to come clean. We have issues with portion control and nibbling. You can see she’s a big girl in this shot.

The vet just verified she’s my 2nd biggest pootie ever at 14 pounds ( I once had a 16 pound female-very large frame but still too heavy) As for me, the waistline isn’t budging, though the rest of me seems to be maintaining a toned look better than last winter.

As noted in previous diaries, I have a healthy diet and good exercise habits. And I still think stress promoting the fat storage is a factor. However, the clue that I really still eat more than I need came in an unexpected way.

(crossposted at the GOS)

It’s ironic that WalMart has become an iconic symbol of the very same small towns that they’ve destroyed.  Main Street sits, rotting if even in a beautiful way, as a vacant reminder of the not-too-distant past when we built walkable communities that worked.  Places worth caring about, aesthetically pleasing mixed-use human scale neighborhoods that grew organically over time as the need arised.  Buildings designed and built by real people, kept up with pride by the business owners who lived in an apartment on top of the store itself, or in a house a few blocks away.  One with a long porch, on a street with sidewalks…so they could greet their neighbors as they walked by on a Sunday morning.

I’m not gonna think that I can influence the shopping habits of America with one blog post, but I am going to ask you the favor of at least considering what I have to say.  If you’re gonna shop tomorrow, at least consider our neighbors and our neighborhoods.  America is in the late stages of a serious disease, but fortunately there’s a cure…

I’ve been moving all day so I’ll keep this brief.  This is my happy Thanksgiving wish for you all.

I think it’s interesting how artists can be ahead of their time in ways that maybe even they don’t understand.  Some works of art only resonate the more as time passes.  Orwell’s 1984 for example.  

I felt that way about Paul Simon’s American Tune, and I think Jackson Browne speaks to our time in a similar fashion in Before the Deluge.

I just got a new degree in July; it’s a mouthful, Post-baccalaureate certificate in Complementary Therapies and Healing Practices-Health Coaching track, but we were theoretically training to be “health coaches” The problem is this new profession already seems to be gelling into something different than what we were trained to do. Though I have some entrepreneurial impulses, I did not feel up to doing a business plan during election season. So I did some preliminary looking at working for someone else, and health coaching at larger companies that would hire usually involves the company identifying who is a health risk and then having the health coach cheerlead (or nag) the employee to quit smoking, lose weight or whatever  over the phone in order to save the company money. This could still benefit the employee, but it is not exactly what I was taught.

Shortly before I finished the degree, I wrote an article (below the fold) I hoped to get in a local publication. They did not use it, but it explains what felt I learned how to do. And even then I had misgivings about our title, but what would I use instead?

We stand at an historic juncture.  Though we face daunting odds, there is at least now a chance, a slim one perhaps, but a real chance that we might turn things around.