Join the Party

Craig and Caz Makepeace's little one greeting a friend.

“I wouldn’t live next door to a US citizen,” said a lady from Iceland.

“What? Why not?”

“Because they don’t take care of each other," she said. "They don’t care.”

This was from the Michael Moor movie, Where Shall We Invade Next?

Michael said, “I care.”

I care too.

How about you? I believe you care. All around us people care. However, we have become fractured from each other. People don’t know their neighbors. And sometimes it appears we need an invitation to be friendly.

One time in London, I was looking for a glass blowing shop I had seen advertised in a shop window downtown.  I asked a distinguished-looking elderly British gentleman for directions, and he transformed from his apparent conservative nature into an animated direction pointer. He went out into the middle of the street to direct me.

Here is an invitation.  Join the party.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve had dreams of traveling.  I’ve done a fair amount of it, so, I can speak with some authority on how the Acropolis shines at sunrise and how the sound of the cicadas of Greece drift on the breeze and appear to vibrate the air as you approach an island.

I have wondered how it would be to travel with a daughter and her child (I have a seven-year-old grandson). What sort of education would that provide for the child? Would he become a child of the world? Would he learn to understand and be tolerant of various cultures? Or would he be bored out of his skull, and whine to go home?

#Caz and Craig of #YTravelblog.com travel full time with their two girls, around four and eight years of age.

It's hard to form lasting friendships Caz says, but their girls are quick to make friends and are open and eager travelers. Caz provides a wealth of information on their site, and she encourages travel bloggers.

“If it encourages a few people to broaden their mind due to the stories and photos they post then please, let’s have a few more of them.”

--Caz Makepeace

However, I am not one who travels full-time, Nor am I one who travels much anymore for that matter. I say that. I think I am home-bound, then I  take off for four days to San Jose California to attend a live event with Tony Robbins.

That was traveling.

That was a broadening experience.

 I travel.

A mini-vacation can do wonders for the spirit.

Getting away, having time to one’s self—time to broaden your horizons, to learn new coping skills, that is often the reason we leave home and hearth to settle into someplace new, or remote, or different. 

I think of Anne Morrow Lindbergh going off to a beach cabin and since, she said, she thinks better with a pen in her hand, she began to write. The result was her book Gift From the Sea. Now there is a  50^th-year-anniversary issue, and Morrow’s book is as pertinent now as the day she penned it. Women try to find balance in a chaotic world, they try to juggle a home husband, children, finances, food, cooking, home repairs, taxiing the young ones to various events. Whew. And all along they are trying to find grace.

No wonder people are busy, and find is difficult to connect.

That is my purpose here. To connect, and to offer a reprieve from the hamster wheel.

It is my purpose to offer inspiration to go for your dream whatever that might be. Is it to travel? To begin a business? Write a book? Take painting lessons, or would you like to take your easel out to the beach and paint the birds? Perhaps we can find, that maybe, just maybe you can unplug and live the life of your dreams.

We are, after all traveling-thru-life.

And as Caz says:

  

“Life’s ultimate goal is to make money doing what you love in a way that serves.”

When I came home from California, I realized that whether we travel far or near, we are still traveling through life. And life is what we came here to experience.

Life is something we all have. It is something we struggle with or celebrate daily. And whatever we can do to lighten the daily load, for ourselves and others, that would be a contribution.

In that light, I have started a new blog. It is http://traveling-thru-life.com

Caz’s travel blog inspired me, and she encouraged bloggers to use Siteground, Wordpress.org,  

So I decided to join the big kids. The result was, I ended up on the playground yard bleeding.

Apparently, Google loves Wordpress as it has many functions. However, for a cyber inept person like me, it is a challenge, and not intuitive—as though they expect their players to know something about computer programming. Ha.

http://traveling-thru-life.com is a simple site, but alive. (That is if I’m not working on it.)  See, I’m playing with websites instead of packing, for we are moving to our new house on Thursday of this week.

Please check it out my new site. Blow the audience numbers out of the water—that is hit the ceiling of my allotted hits, and I will sign up for the next level.  

We all search for meaning, for balance, for grace. We all deal with the mundane of life. Some of us dream of that little beach cottage where we can have the solitude to think, to be alone, to understand why we are here and where we are going.

Writing, some say, is thinking through the fingers, and that is what I am doing here. Thinking and connecting.

Thank you for joining me.

Let’s travel-thru-life together.

The Peacock and The Frog

A long time ago I did a visualization to find my totem animal.

In my mind’s eye, I traveled down a path and stopped before bushes that rustled telling me that something was hiding within them. I coaxed, expecting to see some cute little furry animal, “You can come out now."

To my surprise, the animal that strutted out of the bushes was a peacock.

A male peacock in all his finery.

Fast forward: We bought a house in Riverside California. When my little daughter and I visited the empty house, I looked up through a clerestory window, and there on the roof was a peacock.

I figured it was an omen—my first encounter with my peacock.

We lived up a hill from a park, and he was a frequent visitor. From our roof, he could survey the countryside.

A few years later we bought property in Marcola Oregon, and upon visiting the property, what did we see?

A peacock!

 Later on, we would see him running with the wild turkeys.

And then last week I visited our new house, and looking out the bedroom window, what did I see on the fence?

 A peacock!

I couldn’t believe it. I was yelling for the dog to come see.

In the sleepy little town of Junction City Oregon, in the middle of winter, in a neighborhood, I never in my wildest dreams would think I would see a peacock, but I did.

Is this telling me something or what?

If I roll back the time to shortly after my first encounter with the visionary peacock, I visited the bushes again and asked the peacock, “Why do you stay hidden here in the bushes?”

“Because,” he answered, “Here I am the only peacock.”

It’s time for me to join the other peacocks.  In light of this, I am publishing my Island book on Kindle Select. Just a tad bit more editing and it's good to go. No peacocks in it.  It’s not about the peacock. The peacock is grace, vision, a kick in the pants to get with it. I don't know why he is associated with houses, perhaps because I have houses and writing mixed up with each representing significant potential.

I accept his visitation with gratitude.

We saw no peacocks during the year we spent in Hawaii. That year was a hiding-away place, not a be-seen place. It was a time of contemplation, of re-grouping, of finding oneself.

 The peacocks we saw on an earlier trip to Hawaii lived in a fabulous hotel, wandering in and out at will, meandering over expensive carpeting and roosting in the beams of the amazing foyer.  No hiding away for those peacocks—and they had a person to clean up after them.

I wonder what it would take to be the most read book on the month on Kindle. Most read books receive a bonus, and that's the reason I'm asking. I don’t believe it is as strange as seeing three peacocks associated with three new houses.

My book will be called The Frog’s Song. “The frog calls the rain that settles the dust for our journey.”

The Frog’s Song is about the voyage.  It’s about time away to contemplate, to learn that sequestering oneself off on some remote tropical island, living in the jungle off the grid, and down a mile and a half of lava encrusted road gives you time to find yourself.  Sometimes one must go off and regroup, and to learn to forge ahead. Pele called this little family of one husband, one daughter one seven-month –old grandson, two dogs and two cats, and one narrator, to the island, and then, in her wisdom, she kicked us off.

(And the Coqui frogs sang to us, and called the rain.)

P.S. About Kindle Select:

Kindle Select has done a tricky thing. They are paying authors for pages read, not for just having someone purchase the book. Authors of long books were complaining—they spent years writing, and then to be in competition with some little 99-page booklet didn’t seem fair. Thus Kindle Select is implementing the pages-read policy.

Gone are the days when a writer can say, “It doesn’t matter if you read my book, just buy it.”

Remember This If You Are Ever Chased by a Bull

I didn't wish you a Merry Christmas, but I can wish you a Happy New Year. And I want each and every one of you to know how special you are to me. Without you, I would be like the tree falling in the forest. "Does it make a sound if no one is there to hear it?"

Thank you for honoring me by visiting my blog. 

I spent Christmas night lost in the bathroom--the second time in my life--I did it once as a kid, and always remembered it. When I couldn't find the light switch I thought, Oh no, not again.

I did escape eventually, but then that rasping cough and raw chest muscles kept me awake. You have heard the expression, “She can’t fight herself out of a wet paper bag?” Well, I couldn’t.

Aren’t you glad we tend to forget how miserable the flu can be? Usually, I have symptoms, but don’t feel sick. This time I had both. And that bug is wrecking havoc with this family.

For me, just plugging in the Christmas tree lights was too much work. My girls fixed Christmas dinner. That was before my second daughter got sick.

Our family dragged themselves to the Escrow office yesterday--to sign house papers—hope we didn’t give that nice lady what we have, but the previous owners wanted it done before the end of the year.

And then, today, I couldn’t believe it, the Loan officer assistant asked that I send the bank statement to make sure we had the funds to cover yesterday’s Cashier check. I though a Cashier’s check was like cash, if we didn’t have the amount in the bank to cover it, they wouldn’t give it to us. (Copying and scanning, back to haunt me.)

But then what do I know, my brain is fried.

I had been going up and down with cold symptoms, but the 23^rd the day of the office Christmas Party, I thought I was recovering, got gussied up and had a ball. The bug crashed in on me the following day.  

There I was at a scientific instrumentation gathering--expecting intellectual talk, right? As luck would have it, I sat next to a live wire wearing a Rodeo buckle the size of a dinner plate.

He was a former #bull rider.

I had to laugh, perhaps I was the one in the room who would most appreciative a Bull Rider. I asked him if he had ever seen #Bull Poker, “Oh yes,” he said, “but I would never do it.”

If you don’t know about Bull Poker, it’s when four guys who have drowned their brains in Budweiser plunk $50.00 down on a card table in an arena with a loose bull. They sit in four chairs.

Last man sitting gets the pot.

He said every time he sees a bull, he’s ready to ride. You come off wired, he said. After the man is off their back, and the flank rope is off, the bulls are so tame you can pet them.

Between rides, he was a Rodeo Clown. I know about those fellows. They are the ones who rush in to save the rider on the ground from being gored. Those men are agile—can leap over barrels the size of Volkswagens. He said it wasn’t so hard to out-step a bull, for they are big, heavy and slow to turn.

Remember that if you are ever chased by a bull.

I just got a notice from Google, “Did I want a card with a photo of a past Christmas?” I squinted at the thumbprint copy. "It was my 2009 #Christmas turtles!"

How in the heck did they get that? I keep wheretigersbelchandmonkeyshowl.blogspot.com for archive but have not visited it in ages. 

Ah yes, #Black Sands Beach, Christmas 2009.

Our first trip to Black Sands Beach with its caviar sand and sea turtles. Legend says that the turtles come to scoop troughs in the sand to collect freshwater for the people to drink, and they come to protect the children.

And this Christmas:

• The Plushie Standoff

Chicken by Daughter number one. Sweetpea dog by Grandson number one, 11.

Made entirely by hand.

You are my inspiration.

Five Things That Should Never Be Lost

•   Bookstores

Tsunami bookstore in Eugene Oregon that has been in existence for 28 years, a hold-out from earlier times when we had a bookstore on about every corner. 

I remember Perelandra, the metaphysical bookstore that had the sign at the check-out desk, “I’d like the new book by what’s her name, you know that book.”

Perelandra kept up with the newest releases, and it was such fun to go in there…It was a time of resurgence of spiritual thought. It seemed that after Tibet opened its doors, information came streaming out.

Perelandra is gone.

#Tsunami Books might travel in its footsteps.

I once heard an editor speak at that bookstore to a packed house. Is that still happening?

Used to be we didn’t think too much about spending $24 on a hardback book, for we couldn’t wait for the soft cover to come out, and we figured the author deserved to make a living.

Now, if we can’t buy a book for $2.99, we don’t.

We don’t frequent bookstores either because we can buy books cheaper online, or get used ones. I’m guilty as well. But I just spent $29.00 on a book titled Share, Women to Woman where the publishing proceeds go to Women to Women International, an organization that assists women from war-torn or depressed Africa.  It is a beautiful recipe book featuring African recipes with a foreword written by Meryl Streep.

I’m selling it on http://the-frogs-song-design.com as it goes along with my interest in African design.

Yep, an online store.

I’ve been obsessed for a week working on the website, haven’t stocked much merchandise yet, but there are some design ideas there. The latest blog is on  Shiplap, “Sometimes the Hottest New Thing has Been Around forever.”

• Cursive Writing

Imagine The Declaration of Independence  typed on a word processor.

Remember how much we loved getting letters from friends and relations written with care and precision in their own hand. (And remember those circles and infinity symbols we practiced in school to teach our hands fluent moves?)

I cherish my mother’s letters, even though they are copies. I feel connected when I see her handwriting.

• Our Common Sense

 “Horse sense,” they used to call it. Guess some farmers trusted their horses more than some people. And late at night many a drunk relied on his horse to bring him home, and he didn’t get a DUI.

I fear we are dependent upon the media, the television, the internet to tell us what to do, what to think, how to dress, and how to behave. 

It takes a stalwart soul to stand strong in the face of such barrage.

• Our Ability to Care for Ourselves

My husband said that his grandpa used vinegar to make batteries, and I know they had a milk house over a cold water stream where they cooled the milk before shipping or storing.

I’m not saying we ought to go back to this, heavens, I hope not, I just want us to remember that if our ancestors couldn’t take care of themselves we wouldn’t be here.

I was set off thinking about this when I stumbled upon an old survival recipe for a food created by the Native Americans and later used by explorers.

This food, when packed sufficiently has been known to be good after 50 years. It is called Pemmican—the original survival food. (I could have used it at the Tony Robbin’s event, and for backpackers, it could be a lifesaver.)

Here briefly is the recipe for Pemmican:

It’s from The Lost Ways Survival Book, page 48.

6 pounds beef

1/3 cup blueberries

2 pounds tallow

Cut meat into strips, place in 130-degree oven for 15 hours, place blueberries in a small aluminum foil tray and leave alongside the meat until dry. (If you have a food dryer so much the better, or of course, you can build an outside frame over a fire, but I wouldn’t suggest it. )

After the meat is thoroughly dehydrated, place it and berries in a food processor, or you can use a motor and pestle, but let's go the easy route.

Tallow is the fat from beef or pork. Heat it over low temperature for about one hour, until the oil has liquefied and the tallow strips are thoroughly crisp—keep these as treats for your dog.

Pour tallow over ground meat and berries, and mix. Cool so it will not melt your plastic and store in zip-lock bags, (a little modern mixed in, squish out all air, and store.) Well, you could use glass jars.

• Lastly, Never Forget That War is Hell

Few remember the Second World War and that virtually every able-bodied man signed up, as well as some women. My 92 year-old-friend, I have mentioned often was a WAC.

We remember how it took out a majority of those men, and at home and abroad, civilians’ food and clothing was rationed. Children roamed the neighborhood with a wagon collecting any metal utensils people were willing to give for the war effort.

One Christmas the rest of the family gave my mother their sugar coupons so she could make candy.

 “Who remembers the Allied soldiers that were marooned at Dunkirk France with no exit strategy. Winston Churchhill said there was no escape and they would perish or be captured.

British civilians, using pleasure boats, lifeboats, fishing boats, dinghies, whatever floating device they could get their hands on, made trip after trip across the channel, stopping only for Petrol, and rescued all 338,226 soldiers.

In Dakar Germany, the sign at the entrance to the concentration camp says, “Never Let Them Forget…”

There was a dandelion flower sitting on a step leading to the crematorium, beautiful yellow, a simple flower in stark contrast with what lie beyond. And the wall along the front was festooned with flowers.

If you believe in vibes or energy, or even if you don’t, it was clear how people wanted to cleanse that place. They prayed over it and built a church on the property. All barracks were scraped off save one.

The dandelion: “I shed light upon that which is hidden.”

The dandelion is a symbol of positivity, progress, and survival.

There we are...

And here is a big hug for all who visited this site this month, it was an all-time high. Thank you.