I Saw God in the Sky the Other Night.

 My husband and I were walking in the rain and from overhead came a great honking noise.  I stopped and looked up into rain falling on my face, and there in the sky, a great flotilla of geese honked their way across the heavens.

They didn’t fly in big “V”, although there were some little v’s among the group. The majority flew in irregular circles, like the edges of puddles, black dots that ebbed and flowed over our heads in a dance of movement and music. How they honked and flew at the same time was a mystery to us.

Why did I call them God?

I was reminded of Izak Dinesen’s book, Out of Africa, “The natives,” she said, "think the God of the Americans is old and infirm for he spends all day in a church. The God of Africa lives in the forest and the fields and on the mountain when the rains come.”

This week I have seen God, my three chickens began to lay after a long time of winter fallow, I got my book up from 21,000 words to 31,000, I have been inspired by Will Rogers who said, “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there,” I have let the pups in and out the back door 3,678 times, big boy hound dog, Layfette, has lost his testicles, and little Sweet Pea has had her first estrus.

The Daffodils are blooming.

I guess it’s spring.  

How was your week?

Dancing baby goose.

“How Do We Teach Values to Our Children With No Church to Rely On?

A beautiful young woman with two small children asked me that question.

At first, I thought it was a non-issue for me—having raised my children with no organized religion. And then I pondered the question…

It seems clear to me that ethics and values and humanity are outside the scope of religion. Unless you consider religion to be the holder of the philosophy of the ages, which it is not. Philosophy and ethics and morality teach rather than control.

We still bow to Popes and Priests like they are Gods, and think our ministers can set us straight. Authorities know more than we do. Fear is the paramount controller.

Sorry folks, if this offends, but look at it. How many of us were raised believing that if we were bad we would go to hell? What was bad? What “sin” did we commit as a child? We got angry. We experimented, we had “impure” thoughts. We were normal. We were human.

Now really, would any sane parent send their beloved child to eternal damnation? I think not. And the idea of original sin is absurd. If God had been a woman instead of a man, she would have known her kids would eat of that forbidden fruit. And remember they had an eternity in which to be tempted.

If you want to blame Eve, blame her for being smart. If someone told me if I ate of that fruit I would be like God, knowing the difference between good and evil. Do you think I would say, “Oh, but I can’t. Daddy told me not to?”

The Garden of Eden is an allegory.

If you look at the Journey of the Hero as put forth by Joseph Campbell, he explains the archetypes of the human, and it is a pattern that drives most stories—such as the story of Adam and Eve.

The  archetype of the innocent, as with Adam and Eve, must get kicked out of their comfort zone, for if not there would be eternal frisking and frolicking, but no growth, and no adventure.

The archetype of the Orphan enters, he is lost, alone, and becomes a Wanderer for a time, searching for his place in life. The Warrior raises his mighty head, and fights for his place in life, but wait, the archetype of the Martyr  knows that some sacrifice is in order to get along with his fellow man.

Finally, in our Heroes Journey our hero meets his mentor, he fights the dragon, and he emerges victorious. He  becomes the Magician, he has learned to use magic powers, to become wise, and thus he is peaceful again, like the Innocent. Our hero has become full circle. (Look at Luke in Star Wars.)

Someone long ago said, “Do unto others. as you would have them do unto you.” This has been attributed to Jesus, but long before he appeared on the scene others said it, Plato, and his voice Socrates.  Confucius said it, the Greeks “Do not unto others what you would not like to have done to you.”  And from The JewishTalmud:  What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.

Dear woman with the children, remember this poem:

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten

by Robert Fulghum

Most of what I really need
To know about how to live
And what to do and how to be
I learned in kindergarten.
Wisdom was not at the top
Of the graduate school mountain,
But there in the sandpile at Sunday school.

These are the things I learned:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life -
Learn some and think some
And draw and paint and sing and dance
And play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world,
Watch out for traffic,
Hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.

Multitasking Doesn’t Work

Oh Yeah?

I have read that we are tricked into thinking we are multitasking when in fact our minds are are doing one thing at a time. 

I guess the girl at the McDonald’s window is doing that when she takes our money while talking on the headset to another customer. Take order. (Brain switches gears.) Punch order into the menu selection. (Stop—take attention away from the customer at the speaker, to a customer at the window--us). Take our money. (Stop) Give us change. (Stop) Speak into the headset, “Does that complete your order?” (Stop) Now you wonder if she is talking to them or you. She hands us our change. (Stop.)  She smiles, “Have a nice day,” She turns attention to the headset,“May I take your order?”

My God, that girl ought to be hired by a corporation.

Speaking of corporations, here is a message from a CEO:

 “We foster sustainability and social responsibility through our people, technologies and on-going commitment to our global and local communities.”

What the heck?! Did you get that?

Once I picked up a little lady at the dump. (Or to be politically correct a Transfer Station.)  

This story applies, give me a minute. 

I was unloading my pickup into the Transfer Station’s ginormous trash receptacle when she came to me and asked if she could help. She did, we began talking, and I ended up hiring her to mow my lawn. I didn’t realize that doing that was like taking home a puppy.

She was a sweet person, quite messed up emotionally; being raised by nuns and beaten by them can do that to a person. But then we must be careful believing the stories some people tell. I believed her, however, as something dreadful happened to her to put her on disability for mental problems.

The point I am about to make is that once in awhile this little lady would pop out with some pithy advice. For example, regarding multitasking, she said, “Pretend you are washing the baby Buddha.”  In other words, if you were washing the baby Buddha you would place all your attention on your task at hand.

Another time, when my first-born daughter was about to be married in May, in Oregon, outside, by the banks of the McKenzie River, I was concerned that it might rain. It had been off and on. My little friend said, “Ask the Grandmothers,” meaning ask my grandmothers on the other side for beautiful weather. I did and the weather was perfect—shirt-sleeve weather.

You never know who the master is…

Thought for the day: Haruki Murakami once said “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking” --Black Sun Reviews

Kudos for Shorts

Shorts

Some of the best talents are displayed in these short films--too bad they aren't easily accessible unless you have access to an Art Theater. 

The five above films were shown at the #Bijou here in Eugene. To decide which is best, is, to me, impossible, for all are different. Ave Maria is the funniest. The little girl in Everything Will be Okay ought to win for best actress. Day One is poignant, impactful and memorable. Shok will leave you shaken. The Stutterer is hard to watch at first, but all ends well.

Kudos to the film makers.

P.S.

All five are nominated for an academy award for best live action shorts. I had to mention them before the awards ceremony. Why don't we see more of these???

I'm off, my daughter inspired me about writing fiction--which I am efforting to do. Perhaps it deserves comment on 

www.thebestdamnwriterbloggerontheblock.com

See the Michael Moore Movie, See the Michael Moore Movie, See the #Michael Moore Movie

Movie title: “#Where to Invade Next.”

Don’t be misled by the title. The idea is that we invade other countries to take what we want. This time, Moore  has “Invaded” various countries to find valuable philosophical attributes and bring them back to the US.  Astounding. Wonderful.

The film was playing at the #Bijou Art Theater in Eugene, Oregon, not in one of the “big” theaters. They will wait to see if it is a blockbuster. Maybe if Moore is nominated for an award, then they will show it. (My seven-year-old grandson has gotten sarcasm already, guess I have taught it to him.)

I missed an opportunity to be involved in a discussion that was happening outside the theater. A few people were standing in a group talking. As my husband and I walked past I figured they were friends visiting, but on second thought, I said, “I bet they were discussing the film.” I should have poked my head in. Opportunity missed.

And then I read that theaters are having a hard time clearing people out of the lobby after seeing the film, for they want to discuss it. Imagine.

I don’t want to be a spoiler for the film, but some things sang to me with such vigor I have to say something.

Imagine, a school with no homework. “Children should play,”  the principal said. “They have other things they need to do when they go home.” I have said for years that if a school can’t jam enough information into a child’s head in the 6 hours they have them, they aren’t doing their job. For heaven’s sake, why send work home? Remember endless pages of  long division we had to do at home? Educators then thought that children learn by rote when people learn better by discovery.

The school system implementing that philosophy ranks the highest in education. Their advice to us,  “Stop teaching to the tests.” And I won’t even mention that a gourmet kitchen Moore found was, in fact, a school cafeteria where children were seated at tables set already with china plates, then served a healthy appetizer, main course, a cheese dish, and dessert, and they drink water. This was not a private school—no private schools there.

I had to say it. But I can’t steal any more of Moore’s thunder, you must see it. Don’t take the children, though, a few scenes in American prison’s are brutal. Generally, however, it is impactful and upbeat.

A lady in Iceland looked us straight in the eye and said that she wouldn’t live next door to an American, they don’t take care of each other. They think in terms of Me instead of We. And they don’t care.

Moore said, “I do.”

 Me too.

 How about you?

Oh The Places We’ll Go

Danielle Steel is my mentor. Rosamunde Pilcher is my inspiration.

Why Steel? Because she weaves description, character development, dialogue, and backstory into one seamless flow, and she is so prolific she has kept me reading for months. Pilcher because I just love her. Her writing is exquisite, and her first best seller was The Shell Seekers, about a painting.

My novel, The Girl on The Pier, too, is about a painting.

After completing a novel titled Song of Africa I saw that one publisher was offering a two book contract (not to me), but I thought, my God, two books? How could I ever write a second? 

Whap! A thump on the side of the head.  “Write about the young namesake from the Africa book, and about a canvas featured there painted by her uncle.

Sara Andrews, 22, fresh out of Parsons School of Design, and now with a job as a curator of a gallery in SoHo New York, meets the love of her life on page one of  The Girl on the Pier.

The following day Sara receives a call from a customer wanting to view the painting The Girl on the Pier, painted by her uncle, Clyde Dales. When the customer sees the painting, however, he says, “That isn’t the painting.”

Sara didn’t know there was another. Two paintings by the same name?  When the customer offers two million dollars for it, Sara acts as though she sells two million dollar paintings every day. Uncle Clyde’s paintings have sold for thousands, but never millions. 

Something is fishy.

Sara’s search takes her and her new love from New York to Los Angeles, to Seattle, to Gambia West Africa, to Kenya, to Paris, and with Paris comes my reason for writing  this…

Not knowing Diddy squat about Paris, I needed to find a museum there—not the Louvre, and so I searched and found Muse’e d’ Orsay. And within that museum, I stumbled upon a collection of Vintage American Photographs.

Shirley temple signing her first movie contract

I had to show you a few:

JFK and Jackie, 1953, in a photo booth

Girls at soda fountain 1940's

1939

Hawaiian surfer. The missionaries outlawed surfing, luckily the Hawaiians didn't listen.

Live Wild,
Joyce
P.S. See link below

Live Wild

Island Lilikoi* iced tea, El Yummo

Come sit a spell...I'd pour a frosty glass for you if I could,

We live on earth is experience life.

We write about it to make sense of it.

I tried to be wild once but gave it up in favor of ice.

We lived on the island without a refrigerator—well, we had an ice box, but it didn’t make ice. Strange how something as simple as ice can mean so much when you don’t have it.

Happy times on the Island were going to sleep to the tune of the #Coqui frogs, and awakening in the morning fresh as the #Lilikoi Iced tea pictured above. My computer was in front of a window and as the sun came up it enlivened the green outside my window as though the Morning Goddess was turning up her rheostat.

We saw no sunrises or sunsets where we lived on the island for the trees stood in the way of them, but when we were on the West side of the island we stood in reverence watching the sun sink into the sea. Fascinating again how exquisite a daily occurrence can be when you do not have it daily.

I said my mission statement is “Live wild.”  That doesn’t mean running away and living on a tropical island—although one can, and that sounds good--Swimming in a bath-tub warm sea, and being able to go to luxury hotels when the urge and pocketbook collide.

When I say “Live Wild,” I don’t mean going to #Waldon’s Pond as Thoreau did where he wrote 

I mean, follow that wildness that is buried deep in your solar plexus. You know the feeling. It burns with a desire to break free, to live the life you’ve always wanted, to have the courage to follow your dreams. It’s not coming to the end of your life and realizing that you have not lived.

What might those dreams be? And what are you willing to do to accomplish them?

Live wild,

Joyce

P.S. What really pushed us off the island? I have written rewritten, contemplated and journaled about that experience for what, about five years now? Maybe one day One Year on the Island will be a book. Hope springs eternal.

P.S.P.S.  This blog isn't about it being a business, I love you guys too much to enter that into the equation. I'm going to carry on as I have always done--rambling, contemplating, urging all readers to greatness. Whew! That releases the stress.

Ta Da

Lilikoi blossom. Isn't that exquisite?             Lilikoi passion fruit

Mission Statement

You know how mission statements can be boring, run too long, sound like they are God’s gift to the consumer, and promise to heal the ills of mankind? Sometimes when you look at a company and compare it to their mission statement you wonder if they live on the same planet.

I Googled, “#Mission statement” —you know the first place we go these days for information.  Google’s advice was, “Keep it short.”

Viola’ this popped into my head. “Live wild.”

That’s it. That’s short. That’s my mission statement.

Live Wild!

Perhaps a tag line could be: “Help people improve their lives.”

Yes, yes, I know, “Physician heal yourself.” I’m not a physician a psychiatrist or have any such illustrious job titles. Remember the old Bible story of the man on the road to Damascus and saw a fellow traveler lying wounded? The Good Samaritan stopped and poured oil on his wounds. The prevailing joke in college was, “Maybe the man didn’t want oil on his wounds.”

If you do, ask for it.

I’m asking this: If you would like to help with the direction of this blog, it would make me happy as our two pups running around the living room, circling the coffee table, over the couch, into the bedroom, over the bed…

Here are the questions:

1.                 Who are you? _______________________________________________

2.                 What are your hopes and dreams?______________________________

3.                 What is getting in the way of achieving those dreams?

                  __________________________________________________________

Copy, paste and send to my personal email jewellshappytrails@gmail.com

I won’t promise a perfect solution. I won’t always be upbeat because life isn’t that way all the time. I won’t try to be someone I’m not; even wild horses get pissed sometimes. (But that doesn’t remain a permanent condition.)

I’m staying with my title “Wishing on White Horses, www.wishingonwhitehorses.com as that is the title of this blog,  I’ve had it so long it is ingrained in my consciousness, it has a dot com, and I have some dear, wonderful, stupendous followers. Are you one?

How about a sign-up?

See, I’m learning to ask for what I want.

 How about you?

I can’t wait to see/read what is going to happen here. I’m jazzed.

Live wild,

 Joyce

P.S. If you want a personal answer to a question that’s been stuck in your craw, 

  Click here
livewildwithauntjo.blogspot.com

Now 15₵ (Price of living increase you know.)

The answer might be pertinent, or it might be “Go home and eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”  It depends on my mood, my mental capacity, or whether or not Mercury is in retrograde.

Live long and prosper.

Faint Hearts Never Won Fair Ladies

The Vision

I wrote this blog, and then I chickened out and let it sit. Then I thought I would go ahead and publish it. No, don’t do it, Joyce, you’re sticking your neck out. It might get chopped off.

Maybe. Maybe not.

This how all this came about:

A couple of days ago as I wandered Barnes and Noble bookstore, I came upon Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s 50th-anniversary book #Gift from the Sea. I have loved it for about that long, and there it is, still in the bookstore. It occurred to me that I, too, might have something to contribute to the world.

Many women related to Lindbergh when she recounted how fractured she felt caring for five children, and even though she had household help, she still managed the meals, drove the children to the orthodontist, to soccer practice, cared for her husband, called repair men when the refrigerator broke down, and in the midst of it all searched for grace.

We all related to her words when she penned: “The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere.”

We championed her cause when she wrote “When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return.”

 The subjects of which she spoke have lived and touched the hearts of readers throughout all that time.

So why I am writing this?

I am using you as a sounding board. Forgive me—I could use the page alone, and not send this, but I trust that you are with me on this journey, as we were with Anne when she lived in a minimal house on the beach. It was a house where she let the wind blow through and brought in only what suited her—shells from the beach, shells she used as metaphors for her chapters.

Last night I listened to a webinar by Caz Makeover who is a travel writer (www.yTravel.com). Her topic was “How to Turn a Blog into a Business.” I have wished for that but felt it was not possible for me. My mindset was that making money from what I wanted to do was a pipe dream. Yes, I know, I have read, “Do what you love and money will follow.” Nice lure, I thought.

Then I realized I had “Stinkin thinkin.”

I tell other people they can do it and then I don’t believe it myself.

Why not me?!

If your intent is to serve, and mine is, if your intent is to make a difference, and mine is, then if you don’t make money doing it, your business is soon over—no service, no difference. Kaput.

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

I had been griping that it appears that people are often asking for money. I felt the pull, the desperation of others so that I couldn’t consider that maybe people wanted to give to me.

Open the pipeline so money flows to you, not out of you.

I don’t know how I am going to do it yet. I can offer my words on a blog, and that’s free, so I’m not sure where the money is, but I trust that I will find it.  I have the first step, The Vision.

To quote Jonathan Mead (Paid to Exist)

“As we grow up, we're taught to follow a template.

“Let's call it the "Freedom Template."

“We're sold this idea, this myth that if we just follow the template, someday we'll earn our freedom. Someday, we can finally be happy.

“…This "Freedom Template" is a big, fat, lie.

“But the problem is, maybe you don't know how to do it any other way.

Maybe you don't know that in order to opt out of the template, you must create your own path.

“That's pretty terrifying.”—

Keep checking in, and together we will see what happens next….

Next blog is the Mission statement.

Thank you for reading.

“Don't wish me happiness
I don't expect to be happy all the time...
It's gotten beyond that somehow.
Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor.
I will need them all.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Super Heros

On June 30, 1908, at 7 a.m. a man was sitting on his porch when he was suddenly hurled from his chair and felt such heat that he thought his shirt was on fire.

“Suddenly in the north sky… the sky was split in two,’ he recounted, “and high above the forest, the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire… At that moment, there was a bang in the sky and a mighty crash… The crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or of guns firing. The earth trembled.”

All this was caused by a “#dirty ice ball” known as a comet. This occurred in a desolate area of #Turguska Siberia Russia. No causalities (of people) were reported, but it decimated over 770 acres, killed Reindeer, and sent a shock to Japan 5.0 on the rector scale.

In 2009, a comet, (The Westly Impact), hit Jupiter leaving a “spot,” the size of our Pacific Ocean.

Fifteen years earlier for the first time, humans saw the impact of two solar bodies. This was the Shoemaker Levi 9 comet plowing into Jupiter.    

          

I had been trying to turn my husband into a Superhero by finding comets before they find us.  He has a long history of detecting things, and I thought comets would be a worthwhile cause. Of course, then we need to engage earth’s brilliant minds on how to get rid of them—drive them away, shoot them down, whatever it takes.

And then I find a superhero in the form of a little lady named Carolyn Shoemaker.

In 1913, she and David Levi had discovered a comet orbiting Jupiter. The following year the comet broke into a “string of pearls” and by gravitational pull was sucked into that humongous red planet named Jupiter. This impact was equivalent to 6 million megatons of TNT and was named after its finders Carolyn Shoemaker, and then an amateur astronomer, David Levi , thus the name, The Shoemaker Levi 9.

Jupiter, “The shining father,” is a giant protective magnet, a sentinel for the earth. For the Romans’ he was “King of the Gods,” and they replaced the name of the Greek god Zeus with the name Jupiter. Maybe they knew something it has taken us years to learn.

Jupiter is protecting us.

Thank you, Jupiter!

Jupiter because of its immense size draws flying objects into its mass, thus sweeping up debris that could seriously damage us.

Mrs. Shoemaker says that as a young girl she had little interest in science.  Yet she has discovered more comets than any other living soul. To date 32 comets, and  800 asteroids.

She said she at first considered Astronomy a field "relegated to only old men in white beards, smoking pipes, and staring at the sky." In the 1960s, there was still a "prevailing attitude in astronomy that women were used as computers for their attention to fine detail, not for theory."

Mr. Shoemaker was a cheerleader of other people's interests. In 1960, he encouraged his wife to fly and become a pilot because he knew she wanted to, as he could not due to health problems. In the late 1960s, at the age of 51, after years as homemaker and mother to their three children, Carolyn was faced with the empty-nest syndrome and wanted to do something fulfilling. She asked her husband for advice. He thought she might be good in astrological research.

In Australia, in 1997, the Shoemakers were involved in a car crash. Gene Shoemaker was instantly killed while Carolyn sustained severe injuries. She eventually recovered and continued her observation work becoming known as “The Comet Lady.”

Her awards have been:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal
Rittenhouse Medal (1988)
Scientist of the Year Award (1995)

More If’s And’s and no Buts.

Isaac Asimov said, “If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood, I’d type faster.”

More If’s to think about:

If the crowd likes sweets, does that mean we ought to sweeten most every food? And instead of sprinkling a few grains of pure cane sugar from Hawaii, grown in the sun, (didn’t we do that when we were kids with little repercussions), we hire scientists to create chemicals that trick our brains into thinking we are tasting sweet, all the while those substances called "diet," are doing the opposite.

If the crowd likes big booms, explosions, and war games, does that mean we ought to up the ante in movies, books, and video games to see who can provide the biggest boom, fire, or car crash?

If children like solving puzzles and playing games via the internet, does that mean that the only way we can provide tension and conflict, it to kill something?

If the crowd likes to be chased does that mean we ought to provide a chase scene in every action movie?

If the crowd likes digests over books, then should we offer more U-tube videos, sound bites, and quick reads?

If the crowd will stand in line for a popular attraction, and by-pass the meatier dramas, documentaries, or movies of substance, then do we need to sell the sizzle and not the steak?

If the crowd likes simple, cheap, fast and fun, then, in order to sell, do we need to enter those concepts into most all advertising?

It the crowd doesn’t like to read, does that mean we stop printing books?

Do  you think when Michelangelo was carving David he was concerned about whether the populace would like it?

Do you think when Andy Warhol painted soup cans he thought that people loved Campbell’s Soup so much they would want a painting of that product on their walls?

Do you think when Orville and Wilbur Wright climbed into their bicycle made flyable with wings they thought they were going to get rich building airplanes?

No, these people were experimenting. They were expressing their creativity; they did what they wanted to do and in the doing of it, advanced their craft, and thus civilization.

There is an aspect of the crowd that creative people sometimes forget—that is that chase scenes wear out, that hype gets old, and that the new, the fun, the creative, gets their juices flowing.

Do the work that matters to you.

You’re the one to make a brighter day.

If

“If you can start the day without caffeine,

“If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,

“If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,

“If you can eat whatever food is put on your plate and be grateful for it,

“If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time,

“If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,

“If you can watch friends go away on exotic vacations when you have to stay at home, without even a twinge of jealousy.

“If you can face the world without lies and deceit,

“If you can relax without beer, wine, or liquor,

“And if you can sleep without the aid of drugs,

“Then you are probably a dog.”

--Jack Kornfield