A Happy Ending

Daughter dear listed this LEGO minifigure on eBay for about a year. Then a couple of days ago a woman from Australia found it and bought it for her husband. She met him while backpacking, and thought he would get a kick out of it. Please, she said, include the story.

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The Picture and story below is as it was listed on eBay. He is now sold.

 Success! Old Surfer Dude Werewolf made it to Australia.

On his way to Australia to surf the big waves, Bobby Beach Bum camped out on the sands of a moonlit cove. Suddenly the light of the full moon transformed this poor unsuspecting surfer dude into a terrifying Werewolf!

Determined not to let his disability get in the way of his dreams, he continues to hitchhike across the country. Sadly, not too many people will stop and give him a ride. One look at his snarly teeth and hairy hairiness and wheels squeal off into the distance. Also, it's hard to hitchhike when you don't have any thumbs.

Please help this little guy get to Australia. Anyone living in Australia will receive FREE INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING! You say you don't live in Australia? You can still help by giving him a proper home with plenty of cream rinse and chew toys.

Hope for a Better Tomorrow

During the Second World War girls back home would write to their brothers, fathers, boyfriends, husbands, and they were given the suggestions to write something cheerful.

At home the girls and women were fighting the war as were the men. They worried constantly that they would get that fateful message that their soldier boy/man was killed or maimed. Newspapers constantly barraged them with war news. Girls tried to escape by going to the movies, and there they were shown Newsreels of war horrors. There was no escaping it. It was a terrible time for the World.

The girls rallied, going into the factories and proving that the little woman could build airplanes or run a factory as well as men. Others, even children pulling their little wagons, collected cooking pots that could be spared, tires, aluminum, and any steel that could be confiscated.  Girls gave up their nylon stockings for parachutes, ladies gave up their girdles for rubber. Gas was rationed as well as food. The family gave sugar coupons to my mother one Christmas so she could make candy. Most everybody had a “Victory Garden.” The girls and women tried to give their men hope.

I was reading about a Polish man who had escaped Poland to come to America with the dream of becoming a citizen, which he had. He married, began a business, built and ran a filling station, was successful, had a family, and upon hearing that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, he laid his head on the table and sobbed. “We cannot lose America. The world cannot lose America.”

War drives me nuts.

When I hear someone excited say, “Let’s bomb them back to the stone age. Or “Let’s kick their butts,” I cringe, knowing there was a time when most every able-bodied man reluctantly, sadly, leaving behind their families and facing death, enlisted for war service.

When I, with fear and in trepidation, visited Dachau, the former Concentration Camp in Germany I got their message, “Never Forget.”

It was a never forget experience, but a strange one too. People had poured so much love into that complex that it felt cleansed. There was a bank of flowers extending the length of the fence in honor of those who were interned there.  The grounds had been bulldozed clean except for one barrack. A church had been erected on the grounds, and on the step into the crematorium someone had carefully placed a single dandelion flower.

And now I will end with a good story, a true one. It came into my daughter’s email. It was from a man who, he said, had taken an Ocean Cruise 10 years ago when he was 13-years-old. During the cruise he used the rock-climbing wall, and as they were required to take off their shoes and put on special rock-climbing ones, he did that. Then he forgot to pick up his regular shoes. He had kept the climbing shoes all these years, and felt guilty. He was Jewish, he said, and as a 13-year old he was supposed to be at the age of reason, and to be responsible, he should have known better than to keep the shoes.  Now he was looking for an address in which to send the shoes back.

That’s my mind drippings for the day.

Joyce

Finding the Purposeful Good

While browsing through magazines at the Portland airport waiting for my daughter’s plane to arrive, I was attracted to a periodical on The Animal's Mind. Beautiful, I thought, as I thumbed through the pages. Good articles. Then as I reached the last of the magazine, I was hit with a picture so horrible I dropped to the floor in shock.

I sat on the floor waiting to recover.  How do I rid my mind of what I just saw? How do I change the way people treat animals? While sitting there I pulled another magazine from the shelf, Oprah’s.   In it I read an interview between Oprah and Paulo Coelho* (author of The Alchemist). This will help, I thought.

 It didn’t.

That night horror lifted me from sleep. That picture popped into my mind over and over again. I wanted to save all the animals of the world. I wanted that cruel man dead. I tried to think of something else. My new focus would work for a time, then the picture would come in again. I attempted to change the picture. I tried to create a happy ending.

This caused me to think: “What purposeful good can come of events such as these?” People want to see you happy, not sad. Don’t talk about it. I don’t want anyone else depressed. How, then, does one then rid their minds of horror?

I did write to someone. It was a wonderful friend who identified with me, who didn’t turn a deaf ear or a blind eye. Instead she offered help, identifying with me, telling me what she did in times such as the one I was experiencing.  She offered a link to Mira Kelley’s  past life regression tape.* Listening to Kelley’s soothing voice, I thought, I ought to create such an event that for my Grandson when he is overwrought and can’t go to sleep. Guide him to a beautiful place, allow him to create a helper, or another image of himself. Give him the tools to sooth himself and know that he has access to the beauty and wisdom of his own body.

This very morning Grandson had such an occurrence. He couldn’t go to sleep, He was over wrought. He wanted his Mommy to come home—she goes to work in the early morning hours. We sang, we counted sheep, eventually he quieted and slept, but next time—I hope there won’t be, but if there is—I will create a guided meditation.  

*The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Coelho coined the phrase “Personal Legend. “ One’s personal legend is  “What you have always wanted to accomplish.”

*Link to Mira Kelley’s meditation, Introduction by Wayne Dyer  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLzl0hdf8Os

Below photo just for fun

Please give a Look-See to http://www.motherslettersbyjoyce.blogspot.com

By popular demand!

Maybe, perhaps, possibility, a printed soft-cover version of Mother's Letters...and mine is coming.

I’m a Little Freaked Out Are You?

The new iphone that will enable the holder to tap the register and thus record their sale freaks me out.

This will tell you how old I am I suppose, that I have gone from a time where we spoke the number into the phone and an operator connected us—you know as in the song Pennsylvania 6-5-0-0-0--to ear plug-in phones.

When I was a kid we had a party line with four rings and we were number four. We kids would listen in on someone’s conversation, only to be told, not so politely, to get off.

The phone was tied to the wall by a cord—before that it was stuck to the wall with nails. And then came the long cord-- freedom. Then cordless—more freedom. The car phone came into vogue, followed by one that didn't. Okay, now we have cell phones. Remember what a pain it was if you needed to call and had to drive 16 blocks before you found a pay phone? And in Europe I couldn’t figure out how their damn pay phones worked.  That isn’t a problem anymore for now we carry our phone with us world-wide.

With the new iphone they tell us, and they are considering eliminating the word “phone” altogether, I think it is a fone or some such thing, anyway they say we won’t have to carry anything else but a phone. We will have a camera, a GPS, texting ability, calling, talking, videos, the internet and I don’t know what all, oh yes, access to your bank. My lipstick? Where will I put that?

Dick Tracey used to talk into his wrist watch—now people walk down the street talking and we don’t know if they are talking to spirits or to the device attached to their ear.

And what am I doing? Entering a business where real estate deals are signed, sealed and delivered online via a virtual signature. Oh, if someone wants to sign a real authenticated  paper form they can, but it will be scanned into the computer and sent to the head office. Companies are going paperless, might as well join the fray.

Yes, I passed my Real Estate licensing exam last Monday, (Yea!) and as soon as my background check approves me I will be off and running. (Yesterday I got an email saying my fingerprints were rejected, and I have to do them again. 14 prints for my little 10 fingers. Jeesch.)

My mind went off on this tangent about phones after reading “Seth’s blog”#  and his quote, “Society with a cultural, intellectual core feels awfully different than the society we are walking away from.”

Are we walking away from something precious we used to have, like human connection?  That is what I intend with my real estate adventure. I love houses. I love property, and I love people who are eager and enthusiastic about buying and selling it. It is real.  That is why it is called Real Estate.

Think about your first house, or first apartment. What fun. Gosh when we see something new it just makes our mouths water. (Horses and Houses, I’m into both.)

Seth commented that we all used to read the same newspaper, watch the same TV shows, and read the same book of the month—maybe that was good, maybe not, it didn’t add to individuality, but it added to connection. We could laugh at the same jokes, rail at the same injustices.

If you have any comment on this please share. We are all in this boat together.

Now here's my idea of fabulous Real Estate.

Comment from Reader:

You know, I've been wondering about this same sort of thing lately.  I have been somewhat concerned about the changes I've noticed just in this little neighborhood alone regarding the use of smart phones etc.  It's startling to see how quickly these alterations in behavior are manifested themselves.

For example, the person buying groceries at the store no longer converses with the clerk because she's too busy chatting on the phone.  How often do we see someone shopping at COSTCO or another store walking up and down the aisles while talking on their cell phone?  Office waiting rooms are filled with people reading their kindles or texting - no more magazines.  Families at restaurants don't talk to each other because they're too busy talking to friends on the phone.  Traffic jams, red lights, and road construction are now just all excuses to get back on the phone!

Kids waiting for the school bus these days all have their heads down to their phones, never looking up, all texting or playing games, or whatever. They couldn't talk to each other if they wanted, because they're all doing the same thing!  Kinda creepy.  I remember when I was a kid, the bus stop was always alive with conversations and laughter.  Now it's completely silent.

Another bizarre change is with the dog-walkers who pass by.  It used to be that the dog's owner seemed to be enjoying the walk as much as the dog, but now the person slowly saunters along behind, head down, clicking and tapping, while the dog sniffs around doing its duty, hopefully oblivious to the strange soulless creature behind him.

The freakiest thing is how emotionless the person behind the phone is.  They're like zombies, the walking dead, stumbling along, no expression, almost as if they're hypnotized.

I remember years ago when we were warned about the dangers of "vegging out" in front of the TV.  We were told that when we zone-out to a TV program that the brain actually shuts down, going into another level of consciousness, where the person becomes very vulnerable to programming and suggestion.  The cell phone thing is actually worse because the person's will is taking a backseat to the electronics, putting him into a state where he can easily be influenced and manipulated.

What is going on?  Where is this going?  My guess is at some point there will be a global event where the entire internet will go down and it will all stop.  Believe me, there will be some pretty unhappy people - perhaps even a temporary mass hysteria.  It will probably take awhile before cooler heads prevail.  Yikes ...electronic Armageddon!

Sean's Girl