MORE ON CAMELLIAS

I was reminded by a neighbor this morning that property values on the Shore are increased by the number and age of the camellias growing there! My house is small and humble, but not so my camellias! There are a number of things which increase property values, I guess, depending on where you live… a flat yard in the Poconos, for example and stone walls. Here on the shore all is flat except for a very few “hills” hidden away on a back road, where the elevation changes by about 30 feet or so. Stones are also rare, most of them have been brought here from way beyond our shores. I bring a few each year from my house in the Poconos… just because.

I have given camellias to friends up north who kept them on their sun porches, away from the unrelenting cold of winter. One friend kept hers in a half barrel thing on wheels and had a ramp built off her sun porch to be able to roll it outdoors in the spring, usually in time for the “onion snow.” One went to Reading, PA where I know it lived for years, the other to Michigan, and may still be alive tho’ in a new home. It was included in the will, can you believe it?

Many of my camellias are well over 12 feet tall. Some are old “named” varieties and thus more valuable, but many are the result of bees visiting, seeds dropping, and replanting the little ones, then being surprised to see what blooms develop. A few of these are close to 20 feet tall as I planted them when I first moved in here 25 years ago. Named varieties are slower to grow to such great height. A number of them were house gifts when I moved in. Those dear friends are all departed now, but the beauty of their friendship stays with the beauty of the plants.

My Camellias start to bloom in September and long before they finish, the next variety starts, then another. The latest to start to bloom doesn’t start until March. I confess, I love some more than others with Pink Perfection having been my favorite since I first saw it in probably 1967, the first spring I spent at home on the Shore. If you are really interested, there are a number of Encyclopedias of Camellias, my favorite being by Sterling Macoboy with over 1000 full color illustrations and the Japanese (or Chinese)  names along with the English names, cross referencing for many with numerous names.  The book is divided by the wild varieties, Sasanquas, Japonicas, Higos, Reticulatas, and hybrids.  First to bloom each year, usually on my birthday, is this spicy camellia, one of the few fragrant varieties. You can see the fall foliage behind it.  I have 2 bushes, each roof high. By the middle of Oct, they are covered with blooms. I love to see them at night. Nighttime shows off the multitude of blooms that the eye sees but the camera does not show as well in daylight. And here is a shot to give you an idea of how tall a number of them are. You can see the roof behind them, or a barn.

These are just some of my camellias, each a different kind in order of their appearance.

   

I might have missed a couple. I have started planting them out in the woods as I have run out of space closer to the house. As you can see (the pic of my hand and Ice Angel) some blooms are large, most are 3 to 4 inches, and Yule Tide (red with stamens and bee) is the smallest, 2 – 3 inches. The peppermint bloom, 3rd from last, is part of a tri-color bush with red blooms blooming first, then white and peppermint.

I started with a camellia and autumn foliage, I will leave with camellias in the snow. I hope you enjoy my little Camellia tour!

AUNT ALICE (and Friends)

WELL, NO, not my 2 legged Aunt Alice… she has been gone quite a few years… No, this is my favorite camellia, Aunt Alice. Actually I bought Aunt Alice because of her name, because I had an Aunt Alice, as you might have figured. She had only one bloom on her at the time, a sad droopy looking bloom that fell off before I even got the plant to the van. I planted her in a very sheltered spot, safe from sun burn in the winter time, and she has done real well there. Unfortunately I can’t see her from the house, but she is well worth the little walk to go visit this time of year. I know, there are a lot of pictures, but that is because each bloom is different and unique. (And I am redundant, but that is because I repeat myself a lot in my old age.) Anyway, here is this year’s blooming – pictures from last week that I took before the bitter cold got here and the SNOW!

 

I just had to bring some in for the table. The big double pink is Debutante.  

ON PRAYER IN SCHOOL

 

There have been numerous postings lately about why God allowed all those innocent kids to be killed in Conn. I mean, really? God picked that bunch of little kids to prove a point? Then a cousin of mine (I am still shaking my head over this) sent me this email entitled the Perfect Answer with this picture:Here is my answer to that:

Wrong. SOOOOOO WRONG!

If I take "God" in my heart, He goes where I go.

If parents raise their child in a faith and teach him to pray, and it is IN HIS HEART to pray, then God is there. NO ONE stops anyone from praying to the god of their choice at any time or in any place.

Do you think a kid is going to be good and holy if he hears the Lord's Prayer at school and is taught to be dishonest, mean and nasty at home? Really?

BUT, I would not want my kid to be lead in prayer by someone whose prayers I might not respect, would you?

If I want my kid raised with Catholic prayers then I should send him to Catholic school. If I want my kid taught prayers from a fundamentalist protestant, they have plenty of little Christian schools around. OR I CAN SEND HIM TO CHURCH. OR I CAN PRAY WITH HIM BEFORE HE GOES TO SCHOOL. My kid, MY responsibility!

This nation was founded on religious FREEDOM - that means your prayers are YOUR prayers and should not be imposed on me. And if i want to pray to Zoroaster and not Jesus, You should not have to be lead in prayer by me.

You want a Buddhist teaching your kid to pray? NO?

Who decides WHICH prayers should be said? There are kids of all faiths in our schools just as there are teachers of all faiths - or none. All have the right to respect and not have some other belief imposed on them. If your kid's teacher is a Muslim, do you want your child to learn their prayers? After all, it IS the same god.

Which God do you want? The one that we pray to to help us KILL the supposed enemy - like those Muslims we have killed on their way to a wedding? The Iraqis that did nothing to us? How about The God that told son of Sam to go kill all those people in NY?  OR The God who brought Katrina to New Orleans because of all the gays living there? (Pat Robertson's god???)...

Does YOUR God kill innocent children because some judges decided it was not constitutional to impose "my" prayer on your kids 30 years ago (or 250 years ago?) That is the real message of this T shirt. Because someone made a decision some narrow minded bigot does not like because they don't UNDERSTAND the decision, I (GOD) am going to allow the killing of innocent little babies. I’ll show THEM!

Wow, that is some god.

Buddhism does not worship any God, as such. Yet Buddhists have never declared war on any one else. Can Christians say that? Buddhists don't bomb other Buddhists because they have a difference in opinion on what Buddha might have said. Look at the Irish who have been killing each other for years. Buddhists do not pray to Buddha. They do not consider him a god... yet they pray. They pray to whatever power helps us to become better kind, loving , tolerant people. They pray for strength to avoid temptations. They pray for the wisdom to accept others on their paths and to have compassion for those struggling on the way. They pray to not be unkind, judgmental, but to be mindful in all they think and do.

They realize our thoughts are things - our thoughts are what define us, may they be kind.

Would I want a Buddhist to lead my child's prayer each day? You betcha. But a Buddhist would not try to impose their prayers on anyone else.

Your prayers, like your God, are in your heart and in your attitude. You take that with you whether it is into a school or a lumber yard.  And if you think your God punishes innocent kids because they don't say some prayer at school in the morning, then you are welcome to that god. I want no part of him. 

(But I love you anyway!) Possum

AARON SWARTZ, HERO AND MARTYR

"Aaron Swartz, Hero and Martyr"

"Aaron Swartz, Hero and Martyr"
by Jeffrey Tucker

"My apologies for the sad tone of this piece, but a hero has fallen and we need to pay him tribute — and make sure his death is not in vain.
Every turning point in the history of civilization has its champions and its opponents. The opponents of the digital age are those who use the power of the state to keep the population in a state of ignorance, even though the technology is at hand to universalize knowledge through digital networks. The main weapon they use is known as “intellectual property,” even though the monopoly censorship they advocate has nothing to do with actual property.
The champions of the digital age are doing the opposite, breaking down the limits and working to spread enlightenment through peaceful means. They understand the astonishing power of computer networks to produce, reproduce, scale, and distribute unto infinity everything that can be rendered into digital form. Their work has set off the greatest migration in human history from the limits of the physical world to the unlimited possibilities embedded in global computer networks.
One such champion — now a martyr for the cause of freedom — was Aaron Swartz (1986-2013). He was the one of the brightest stars of his generation. That star took his own life in apparent frustration, depression, and fear over the ghastly hounding he was receiving from the U.S. Department of Justice. You might say that this David should have battled this Goliath to the death. But Aaron was only 26, a brilliant, kind, and sensitive young man whose passion was not war, but enlightenment. It was too much for him.
Born in Chicago, he showed astonishing promise at an early age. He came of age as the Internet opened to the world. He was winning prizes and meeting the greats at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the age of 13. At 14, he co-authored “Really Simple Syndication,” an innovative means of assembling and distributing Web content that makes Web browsing easy. It powers the “app economy,” makes reader programs work, and enables the content to be mixed and remixed all over the digital universe.
Aaron founded Infogami, which later turned into Reddit, one of the Web’s most popular sites for information sharing and content generation. As with most of his projects, Reddit pushes aside the gatekeepers and puts the tools of creation in the hands of users. He then founded openlibrary.org on the same principle: By devolving power to you and me and away from the big shots, we can create tools that serve humanity in unprecedented ways.
To Aaron, the digital economy was not really about running the world through code and technology. It was about empowering people themselves with the ability to contribute to the building of ever greater technologies in the service of humanity. As much as he loved code, his true affections were for the human mind and the way technology enables it to take flight as never before. He could never understand why government was in resistance. He was like a person in the Renaissance raised with the printing press, astonished at people who wanted to smash it.
He was so convinced that digits were powered by human minds that he even put it to the test in seeking the real power behind Wikipedia. He refuted the supposition of even co-founder Jimmy Wales that it was a relatively small number of editors who were the main content providers. He demonstrated that the main providers were millions of users themselves, thereby upending even what the owners and experts had supposed. (He was only 19 years old when he showed this.)
Aaron was facing a trial this coming April, with him on one side and the full power of the world’s most heavily armed government on the other. The prosecution wanted him fined more than a million dollars and jailed for possibly 30-plus years. And what had he done? He hid a laptop in a closet at MIT and downloaded academic papers that are already available to millions around the world, with the apparent attempt to make them available even more broadly. That’s all he did. For this, he was charged with wire fraud and computer fraud.
The database he had tapped into is known as JSTOR. It is a global archive of academic papers published over the last 100 years in all fields and disciplines. It allows students to search, assemble, cite, and study in ways that would have been unimaginable a generation ago. Bibliographies that once took months to assemble now take seconds. Research once available to a tiny number is now available to students and faculty the world over.
JSTOR is a mighty service, even a marvel, and there are good reasons to celebrate the company and its achievements. At the same time, there is something squirrely about the service. It is available only at superhigh subscription prices and allocated based on geographic IP address. If you are on campus, you can get the goods. If you are not and have no logins, you are out of luck. Outside the IP range, it’s darkness.
Remember, we are talking about scientific research that is mostly tax-funded and from which the authors themselves receive no royalty or payment of any kind. Moreover, the subscription system is made profitable not because of the forces of free enterprise, but because the payments are made largely by public universities also living off taxpayers. The whole thing smacks of a kind of information feudalism. The scientists are the serfs. Those without access are cast into the outer darkness.
To its credit, JSTOR never lifted a finger against Aaron. They knew of his downloads, but never pressed charges. In fact, JSTOR has responded to his activism by gradually moving toward a more open policy. MIT can’t say the same, but the real villain here was the federal government. “Stealing is stealing,” barked U.S. District Attorney Carmen Ortiz, “whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data, or dollars.”
Except for one thing: That is completely false. Crowbars hurt people. Stealing dollars takes from one person to give to another. But Aaron didn’t take anything away from anyone. Ortiz might not understand this, but when you download something, it doesn’t actually remove it from the original server. It makes an exact copy. It can do this with no limit. That’s the whole power of digital media.
The driving motivation in Aaron’s mind was information liberation. We have the capacity — right now in our times — to create global libraries of all known things. What’s stopping it is this antique institution known as copyright, an outright government privilege for monopolistic producers who use the violence of the state to stop peaceful sharing of knowledge. Aaron was offended by such limits in times when they are wholly unnecessary and cause unneeded human suffering.
Aaron didn’t choose the path of piracy and underground hacking to disable the feudalism. He wasn’t even particularly exercised about copyright itself. What he favored was freedom, free speech in particular. He sought constructive alternatives, which is why he was a great champion of Creative Commons, a system that uses existing copyright law, but allows writers and researchers to share their discoveries and creations with humanity, instead of having them smothered.
All that said, it wasn’t his attempt to liberate JSTOR that caused the government to go after him. No, it was something far more specular. Aaron also founded Common Dreams as a vehicle for digital activism. Much to the astonishment of nearly everyone, he marshaled the power of global networks last year to beat back one of the most deadly pieces of legislation to ever be proposed by Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. SOPA was at war with the whole idea of information sharing, which is to say the whole basis of modern economic life and cultural progress. It would have given the power to any private party to aggress against any distributor of information and to do so without warnings, hearings, or burdens of proof. Taken to its extreme, the legislation would have rolled back history to a pre-1995 state of being.
Because no one told him that he could not, Aaron used every innovation to stop it. Within a matter of weeks, Congress backed off in absolute fear of the global outrage that had been engendered by the educational materials that Aaron had distributed. What no one expected had happened. Even politicians in the pay of media moguls backed down.
It was beautiful. In doing this, Aaron not only stopped the leviathan state; he pointed to the possibility of something completely marvelous, a reinvention of the way that citizens take part in the political process. In other words, he was showing how computer networks themselves could be used to upend the power of the state as we know it. He was innovating a new form of restraining power and giving it back to people, doing for the business of civic affairs what he had already done with technology.
The establishment was insanely bitter about the defeat. Within days, the government took action against the popular file-sharing site Megaupload in a military-style hit against its founder’s private estate, using SOPA-like powers that Congress had just denied the beast. It was as if the establishment was saying, “We don’t care about Aaron and what he did. We want this power. We are going to use the power. The people have nothing to do with it.”
Aaron’s work pointed to a brighter future. The government never forgave him for this. This is why they hounded him. This is why they wanted to bankrupt him. This is why they wanted him behind bars. They wanted him brought low. They wanted him in an orange jumpsuit, eating old bread and groveling before the judges and wardens. And they would accept no compromise, despite his lawyers attempts to negotiate: Aaron must be captured and jailed.
He would not relent. He would not give up his dreams and let them be shattered by their lies, pomps, black robes, and prisons. Our hearts break — deeply and profoundly — at Aaron’s decision to take his life. Maybe he saw it as a last cry for freedom. His having done so makes it impossible for them to make him a slave.
The state has taken from us an epic genius and humanitarian. What can come of this? Sometimes, the suffering and death of one great individual can shock society into dramatic change in a legal practice. Such people become martyrs, and their memories touch the conscience of everyone. We are overwhelmed by the sense of loss, and we vow to never see its like again."

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

- http://dailyreckoning.com/

WHEN YOU THOUGHT I WASN’T LOOKING

WHEN YOU THOUGHT I WASN'T LOOKING

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you hang my
first painting on the refrigerator, and I immediately
wanted to paint another one.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you feed a
stray cat, and I learned that it was good to be kind
to animals.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you make my
favorite cake for me, and I learned that the little
things can be the special things in life.

When you thought I wasn't looking I heard you say a
prayer, and I knew that there is a Power I could always
talk to, and I learned to trust.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you make a
meal and take it to a friend who was sick, and I
learned that we all have to help take care of each other.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw you take care
of our house and everyone in it, and I learned we have
to take care of what we are given.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw how you
handled your responsibilities, even when you didn't
feel good, and I learned that I would have to be
responsible when I grow up.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw tears come
from your eyes, and I learned that sometimes things
hurt, but it's all right to cry.

When you thought I wasn't looking I saw that you
cared, and I wanted to be everything that I could be..

When you thought I wasn't looking I learned most of
life's lessons that I need to know to be a good and
productive person when I grow up.

When you thought I wasn't looking I looked at you and
wanted to say, ‘Thanks for all the things I saw when
you thought I wasn't looking.'

LITTLE EYES SEE A LOT ..
Each of us (parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, teacher, friend)
influences the life of a child.

How will you touch the life of someone today?

Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply.
                          Speak kindly. 

Think good thoughts – thoughts are things… and someone just might be watching!

CRÈCHE, FINAL WEEK

The CRÈCHE came down this week. These are the final scenes. As you may remember, the location of the people and animals changed every week for a month. The Wisemen never arrived in Bethlehem, as in truth, they did not head there, since Mary and Joseph were only in town for the census (tho ancient records debunk this story also). The purpose of this blog is not to argue the truth and fiction of the Christmas story, there have been books enough that do that far better than I can in this small space. But, suffice it to say, the Wisemen were shown, just not in Bethlehem. Stables back then were not barns but small caves or areas in the rocks that could be closed off to contain animals. Roofs were unnecessary for the animals but tradition makes us put some sort of shelter over the couple and child. Wood was scarce and too much of a luxury to put over an animal, plus it very seldom rains in this area. Most stables were on the outskirts of the city. You can see the gates to the town in the background.

In this last scene, the shepherds and their sheep have arrived. If you look carefully, you will see some chickens and little biddies, and the rooster. The trees are live (except the palm trees)… those are real rocks – most from my place in the Poconos, a couple from Maine, one from NH.

The Wisemen are still traveling, supposedly to meet up with the Holy Family a year later in Nazareth. 

There was a different ground underneath everything when I first set it up, but whoever put the tree up behind the display moved everything from its original table (where the poinsettias are) dumping sand, kitty litter, and straw on the floor – so we just put a table cloth under everything. If I do it again next year, I will bring in a piece of plywood and get rid of the tablecloths… but, sometimes ya just gotta make do given the circumstances. As I said, everything moved to a different place in the church every week. This last week Bethlehem was closer to the middle of the church, to the left of the tree, just in front of the poinsettias. (For those of you who know me real well, yes, the roof is still standing! Lightning did NOT strike!)

WITH WHAT WE HAVE LEFT

MY INSPIRATION for today (and tomorrow, the next day, etc…)

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York  City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, You know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him.

He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches.  To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual.  They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair.  He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his Chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward.  They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. 

They wait until he is ready to play.

Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.

We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage – to either find another violin or else find another string for this one. But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.

The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that.

You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before. When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said – not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive,reverent tone - "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life.

Not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left. ………….

HAVE YOU MADE YOUR RESOLUTIONS YET?

THOUGHTS… CHRISTMAS, 2012

I sit here with a little cat on my lap (making it difficult to type,) but I can’t keep him off for more than a few seconds. Guess he needs some people attention. Maybe I do, too. I guess we share that from time to time. The stereo is on, Christmas carols being sung in Latin, the way I learned them. I do love Christmas music – not the junky Rudolph or Santa stuff, just the classics. I have so many things I want to say yet I promised myself that I would keep this blog positive and upbeat – it’s just that sometimes it is so hard to do that, especially when we are constantly being reminded of one tragedy after another. I tried reading some other blogs for inspiration, but instead I found more sadness and heartbreak. Even the pictures of the happy little grandchildren just brought back the images of those babies just laid to rest in Connecticut. One fellow blogger will be burying her mother this week, and Christmas will never be the same for her. (My heart hurts for you, my friend.) My neighbor is on her way to Florida to bury her mother as I type these words. We buried Aunt Kathryn one year ago – she was more of a mother to me than the woman who gave birth to me (and immediately passed me off to her mother and sister.) I think of the mothers and fathers for whom Christmas will forever remind them of burying their child. And if you have never had to do that, I am here to tell you even 50 years does not erase that memory, that pain. Christmas will always hurt. Always. Sorry, but that is a fact.

I had someone (a regular reader who comments in emails not on the blog) complain that my blogs were never personal; they never told anyone anything about who I really was, what I really felt. He said, “You play your cards very close to your chest,” saying I hid in my gardens and behind the accomplishments of others, praising friends, family, even my cats. Recently he asked what a good Buddhist was doing setting up a crèche in a Baptist church! Well, I don’t see a conflict there anymore than I see any problem wearing my headscarf and slippers when I visit my friends’ mosque to honor their traditions. I no longer feel the need to persuade others to believe as I do, and I honor their beliefs and their right to them. I believe we are judged, whether by God or the Law of Karma, by what is truly in our hearts, and how we treat one another, not the name we use when we think of god, not whether we get dunked, spritzed, head bumped, have smoke waved over us with an eagle feather, or just stand in the sunlight with gratitude in our hearts… judge not lest ye be judged… love thy neighbor… do unto others… Do NO harm.

Right now I am struggling to respect all those fighting about what we must do to prevent another tragedy like Newtown or Columbine from happening again, or tragedies like Tucson, Aurora, VA Tech, or any number of other horrific crimes that make no sense whatsoever. But along with the image of all these little faces I have the image of our President shedding a tear, I mean he has kids and had to think of what it might be like to have to bury his child… but does he care about all the kids our drones kill in the Middle East? Does he shed tears for them? Oops doesn’t quite cover that. Did Bush lose sleep over all the innocent Iraqi children who were killed so he could be a War President? Did McCain think about how many innocent children would die when he advocated bombing Iran if elected? Did it matter? Do we mourn for dead children only if they are “ours,” only if we can see their little faces on TV? You can say we are powerless to save the starving children in Somalia or any other country but we are not powerless against the anonymous drone attacks we seldom hear about. That stuff is kept off American TVs.

Will taking guns away from the cowards who feel they need assault rifles to show that they are Real Men make any difference? The gun used in CT belonged to a woman who felt she had to defend her $24,000 a month alimony payments, I guess, and her huge stock of supplies for when the 99% decide to revolt. I don’t know. I do know the gun shops have made a fortune this week as they have sold out every assault rifle in stock. Oversized ammo clips have now disappeared from the shelves as they were sold out within a couple days, too. So now all the scary people have guns and guns to defend their guns. Wonderful. The boy that did the killing (I refuse to honor his name) had tried to buy his own guns but was refused. So, he did the next easiest thing, he took his mother’s guns, killing her in the process. If she hadn’t had them in the house, those children might still be alive. But, she bought them for “protection.” Didn’t work out too well, did it.

Put armed guards in the schools, they say. Didn’t do any good at Columbine, did it? Arm the teachers, they say. Well, I guess I am glad I am retired, I don’t think I would want to have to carry a gun to class, and I can think of several other teachers who I would not want to be around if they had guns. Funny, I remember when I first started teaching, the boys often carried their guns in the back windows of their pick-up trucks because they had been hunting before school or planned on going as soon as school was over. No one got their panties in a bunch over it. Ah, but times have changed, haven’t they?

Get rid of video games. Get violence off the TV. I would vote for that and I have no doubt that both things contribute to the problem. After all, if you spend hours killing people for relaxation (?) or recreation (?) it seems a small step to doing it for real. We seem to thrive on killing. What’s with that? Can we find no other entertainment but in killing someone or something? One blog advocated that the kids who loved killing on video games get themselves to the nearest recruiter and go to one of the countries where we are currently killing people and get it out of their systems. Having a real bullet coming back at you ought to do something for you. But it seems these big old macho men don’t do well when they look into the faces of those they have killed, if only in their imaginations, as nearly 100% of the GIs that return to the states and then commit suicide have at least one or 2 notches on their gun barrels. I guess it is harder to deal with having really killed someone than they thought it would be.

And then the other thing no one wants to talk about – we are a nation of druggies. No, I am not talking about coke or crack at this moment, I am talking about curing every problem with one drug or another starting with giving our kids antidepressants. No, no one wants to talk about that because chances are the person you are talking to is taking them, too. But, all these kids who committed these atrocities were on various antidepressants. They were medicated because someone deemed them mentally ill. One blogger suggested we lock up everybody who needs drugs in order to function in society. OK. Then our next newest business in this country will be building and staffing these huge institutions. That is assuming we can find enough folks not on some psychotropic (legal or otherwise) to build and staff these places. Then we have those who self-medicate with booze and illegal drugs. Lock them up, too? I tell you, it is going to be lonely around the old hood.

So, now that I have ticked off just about everyone, what is your solution? And please don’t tell me it is all because we don’t have organized prayer in school anymore – no one stops YOU from praying with your kid before he or she leaves for school in the morning – then you will have control over what that prayer says. And isn’t that truly the parent’s responsibility to teach their child, to pass on their religious traditions? Do you want me, a Buddhist, to teach your kid how to pray in school? Do you want my friend, Trish, to teach them to cross themselves and start each prayer with “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” or to add a couple Hail Mary’s to the school day? Would you rather have one of those fundamentalist televangelists (who eventually got caught doing drugs with some boy in a motel room) pray with your child before school? Do we give equal time to the Muslim kid to put his prayer rug on the floor, face Mecca, and recite some passages from the Koran? Oh, you support Israel? Well, don’t try to make those little Jewish kids pray to Jesus. Do you want to use their prayers instead? My last school had a moment of silence for everyone to pray as they chose – as they were taught at home – or to be silent out of respect for those who wanted to pray. Prayer has NOT been taken out of the schools; it has been handed back to the PARENTS to train their kid to pray and not to some stranger to impose their prayer on MY child. Prayer is brought to school every day in the hearts of every child who has been taught to pray by his parents.

How do we change where we seem to be going? Kids killing kids, day care providers coaching 3 year olds to fight one another so they can post it on YouTube, neighborhood “Protectors” shooting kids coming from the corner store... kids and adults spending hours blowing up imaginary people on video games, and the “quiet” crimes, the bankers and politicians, the businessmen who rob the rest of us as they lie and hide their money in Swiss banks or the Caymans. How long can we convince our young men that they’re “fighting for our freedom” by patrolling poppy fields in Afghanistan?

Tomorrow is Christmas, and no, I will not be celebrating it in any traditional way. I will be spending much of the day alone and spending it in serious prayer for Peace, a return to sanity, and a prayer that folks might hear the true words of Jesus – words of love, love thy neighbor, do unto others as you would have them do to you – not do it first so they don’t get to do you… those were the things He taught. Man made up a lot of the rest of the story for power, for ego.

I will be spending part of the day between a couple of churches that will be opening their doors for those who will be struggling with a day that does not necessarily bring joy to them, but a day when they will be struggling to stay clean and sober. I will take my sobriety, serenity, hope and love and give it freely. If there are some who are hungry, I will take them and feed them. Giving someone love and acceptance, understanding and compassion beats the hell out of all those nicely wrapped packages under a tree somewhere. As the old saying goes, What Would Jesus Do? The same thing the Buddha would have done.

May your Day be filled with Love and Peace.

MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE

ON SATURDAY, Dec 15th, 2012, we got our Caroling group together for our 3rd Annual Community Caroling – my effort at getting various members of the community together to sing Christmas Carols in town – folks who get together regardless of their religious backgrounds or church membership. This year the bulk of the singers were from the Onley Baptist Church and St Peter’s Catholic Church. I have to say this, we sounded pretty good! We had a much smaller number this year – colds and the flu seemed to have taken their toll… I have a bad cold myself today, and if I had not been the coordinator for our “Joyful Noise,” I, too, would have stayed home last night. However, the weather cooperated, temps were in the middle 40s, and the rain waited until after midnight. Our first year we had snow on the ground.

After singing, we went back to the Fire Hall and had cookies and hot chocolate. Rose Moore was again in charge of setting up the tables with all the goodies… I LOVE her moose centerpiece. A sincere thanks to all those who went with us to sing and those who stayed behind and set up the tables and made hot chocolate.

2 years ago we sang in the snow. Boy it was cold! 

JUST SAYIN’

ABOUT VERIZON.NET

MAJOR FRUSTRATION! For those of you with verizon.net email addresses that end in verizon.net, 95% of the mail I am sending to verizon.net people is bouncing back - and has been for several weeks. I AM NOT IGNORING YOU - Some of you have alternative email addresses, so I am using them... or I am resorting to phone calls. Funny how some folks get all out of joint when they send an email and do not get any reply... Well, folks, maybe their computer died. MAybe they had an emergency and had to leave the state... one best friend's MIL just passed... it is a year since my Aunt Kay left us and I disappeared for 4 days... things happen. Or, your address might end in verizon.net and I hit reply and 2 days later I got a failure notice... a day late to RSVP. Strange how we have become so dependent on these machines. Anyway, I am hoping if you are one of those folks who doesn't understand why you have not heard from me - well - who knows if your mail is getting thru in this direction either. IF IT IS IMPORTANT - use the phone. Thanks.

THE CRÈCHE

Many years ago I made several ceramic crèches, one I gave away, one I sold, and one that got packed up and stashed in my barn where it sat until last year. It once was set up at Zion Baptist Church, but when the pastor, my best friend’s husband, became very ill (and shortly after died of cancer) I brought the set home. In cleaning out one of my barns last year, I found it, or at least most of it… one box is missing containing animals and the angel… and I decided it was time to pass it along to someone who might appreciate it. John Burr is the pastor at the Onley Baptist Church and is a fine man – the kind of man I like to think is a good Christian. If you know me, being called a good Christian is something I seldom do considering some of the other ministers around - but I will not use this space to tattle on them. The crèche – I offered it to John… knowing that I am a Buddhist, I often wondered what he thought, but he was really pleased with it. So we set it up this year. The way I usually set it up is to move the different parts around the church with every one ultimately ending up in Bethlehem. Even the “stable’ does not get built until the next to the last week.

The wise men – or at least a couple of wealthy appearing men and their camels are over on one side of the church. The truth is they never went to Bethlehem anyway, probably never found Jesus until he was over a year old, but, because modern Christmas stories place them at the manger, I at least include them in the parade of folks included in the final scene. Besides, I really have an appreciation for camels, having ridden a few and having watched while they pulled our station wagon out of more than one river we were trying to cross… amazing animals… so I included them. I also have a nice herd of sheep, not all seen here, including one black one, tho whether a black one would have been in the flock of sheep kept just outside Bethlehem, I don’t know. The shepherds would have actually been rabbinical students, and the sheep would have been the sheep they kept near the temple for sacrifice. Each rabbinical student would have served at least a year as a shepherd for this flock having time to pray and contemplate “life” out in the hills overlooking the city. So, I have my little flock moving around.

Not everyone or everything is in this set of pictures… if I have a chance, I will take pictures as the scenes change. I do not have a place to move Mary and Joseph this coming week because of the way the church is laid out – so they will just disappear for now, reappearing on the 23^rd. I am not sure what John wants to do with the wisemen… I would explain to the congregation that they really weren’t there… but who knows what he will do. Churches each have their own way of doing the Nativity scene. A friend of mine was a lobster at his when he was a kid. What? You didn’t have a lobstah at your church’s Christmas play? Guess you didn’t live in Maine! Anyway, here is the setting, 2^nd week.  When we came in to move things around, we discovered whoever put up the tree moved everything, so Bethlehem got places on a smaller table and the ground (which had been kitty litter) was now a white cloth. Snow? Also, MY interpretation of the wisemen  says they traveled to the East… remember there are several books that were removed from the Bible over the years and they are really worth reading… so I put the wisemen in Egypt for this part of their journey. Even with some really swift camels, they would not make it on time. Their ground was covered with sand, but that got cleaned up. Oh well… it is a messy process.