Awareness

She stared at me with her oh so serious and piercing eyes, chin resting on her hand, and said in a most sincere voice: “I love talking to old people.”

There she was, one of a gaggle of elementary school girls at the first meeting of our new workshop, and these were the first words I heard out of her mouth.

Well, I responded, "I love talking to young people, so we’re going to have a great time together – sharing and learning from each other."

“Hi hon. How was golf?”
“I was lousy, as always.”
“But how did it feel?”
“It was fabulous being out in this gorgeous weather.”

Sound like a familiar conversation?

We often allow feelings of hopelessness to become our predominant emotion.

When Bruce and I were first married, we discovered Jones’ Family Farm, and started a tradition.

Each October we’d go to the farm and pick out a huge pumpkin. Then we’d bring it home, and work all weekend to make pies (usually 9) and loaves (usually 6).

Sometimes, we’d make pumpkin cookies or pumpkin pancakes (not a big hit). We’d cook the seeds. Then we’d distribute the pies to my parents and my brother Mike, Bruce’s parents, aunties, neighbors, etc.

I’d always bring some in for the teacher’s lounge at Second Hill Lane School.

Facts are facts and theories are theories. It's important to understand the difference because many promoters of theories want you to believe that they are fact.

Facts are reality; they are what is, and what happened. They are absolute and the same for everybody. There cannot be more than one correct version of the facts. There are no "alternative facts".

One of my personal gripes nowadays is e-mail. Not, I hasten to add, my own use of it, but other peoples'. Use, or perhaps I should say, misuse.

E-mail today seems to be something that is uniquely capable of laying bare all the personal foibles and failings of the American public. Carelessness, inattention, confusion, disorganization, and inability to follow simple directions; not to mention ignorance of English grammar and spelling.

There’s nothing like doing nothing.

I feel liberated, carefree, as if all responsibility is paused, and I am placed in a state of open wonder, able to just be.

Some may find it totally boring, perhaps a waste of time – not me!

My imagination is piqued, and ideas appear, as if clearing away everything that was blocking them. My senses are more, well, “sensitive,” magnified. So, I see and hear beauty around me more easily.

Diversity is an asset that benefits organizations just as surely as money in the bank. To many people, that's intuitively obvious, but you don't have to take it on faith. Scientific research has clearly demonstrated that diversity has measurable value.

Why is diversity controversial? Because our basic instincts are at war with our intelligence.

Come to the lake of calm. It sits there open to you.

You will not find it in travel books, nor upon any map ever made.

Because you do not “go there,” but rather “tune-in,” like dialing a radio station.

Many of us keep this place ready for you. Holding a space of pure peace.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, if not far more, offer this collective vision. We pour out thought-power, our peaceful energy, our imagination into this “place,” this little realm, if you want to call it that.

We combine our thought focus to offer this.

Think for a moment about the meaning of the word.

Literally it means: "things that happen at the same time".

But there's a little more to it than that. Things happen together all the time, but we don't call every simultaneous happening a coincidence.

Two things happening together form a coincidence when cause and effect appear to be at work, but in fact are not.

One of our favorite summer days was blueberry day.

We’d put on old clothes, our straw hats, then gather our baskets and make our way to the Jones’ Family Farm in Shelton. We’d hitch a ride on the “berry ferry”, and be driven out to the blueberry bushes.

Blueberries are easy to pick and practically popped into our small baskets. When our small baskets were filled, we’d dump them all into the big basket and fill that up. The camera was always on hand.

After the picking, we’d drive to Huntington Center and have lunch and dessert at Sassafras Restaurant.