Mitsvah Monday, and some revisionist /Reconstructionist history

all play and no blog this weekend

Hi.  Miss me?  I missed you.  I was busy in the woods and mountains doing secret challenges involving taking risks, creating, observing a day of rest, and connecting with nature.  I'll give you an extra challenge for Groundhog Day to make up.

Those of you on the Facebook Group (join here now) did get late instructions to connect with nature.  What a fine job you did.  We had Mount Tabor climbers, photo-documenting the experience.  We had bird watchers and swan lovers and compost composers.

Remember, you can do these tasks at any time during the month, and you are eligible for a prize if you finish all by Feb 2, Groundhog's day.  The winner receives a random desk drawer dumped into a box, or other assorted treasures, and smug satisfaction, increase in general positive warm feelings towards self and others, shiner hair, etc.

Sunday--seeing that it's over now, you can count as your day of rest.  Anyone want to share some good self-care tales from their day?  Here's mine:  jammies and art and packing up to retreat from out retreat.  Long meandering (alternating with terrifying hurtling times) ride down the snow mountain.  Singing.  My yearly peppermint milkshake.  Some kitchen dancing.  Connection with competent women.

Don't just stand there-- be a dear/deer

Which brings us to today's Monday Mitsvah Challenge:  Do a kindness for another.  As always, the opportunities are endless and varied.  You can loan someone your phone, pay them a compliment, but them a cup of fair-trade tea.  You can offer to do something important and helpful even if it's not in your job descriptions.  You can take something sweet to a shut-in, perhaps soup or maybe just your company.  Smile and greet strangers, volunteer at the soup kitchen, let someone in a bigger hurry go ahead in line. Teach someone a skill they need, or assist them. do.  Pay a compliment.  Buy someone a cup of tea.  You get the picture.

Brooke from Ohio offers today's quote:
"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible". Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
 Today's song from the wonderful project PLAYING FOR CHANGE:

January 30th Challenge

Titles for the 10en20 are going a little slow.  Hope you found some Sunday creativity.

I'll hold out for 10en20 for our finale' day on Tuesday. 

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.  --Robert Brault

Here's an easy Monday challenge:  Practice some uncommon courtesy.

Looking forward to hearing what you did.

Lots of resources linked below should you need a little guidance.

Jimmy Daggett's daily kindness challenge blog (not updated in a while, but scroll on down when you get there for good ideas).

February 13-19th is National Acts of Kindness week.  Gear up here.  

From last year's challenge list:  Be generous (it needn't be with money).

100 Kindness ideas from another Kind Blog.

Another list from LifeHack.

100 Ways to Serve Others from the Learn This site.

Today's video:

January 16th Challenge: Facilitate A (Postcard) Writer

Talk to the Hand.. today's Goodwill find

The Challenge:  Find or make a postcard.  Stamp it and address it to  Art at Large, PO Box 1313, Lawrence KS 66044.  Keep the writing part blank except for a tiny note that says "Please complete in any way you choose, then mail" or something to that effect.  Alternately you can write the instructions on a sticky note and attach.  Now find somewhere wonderful for the card to rest until it meets its maker-- perhaps on a table in a coffeeshop, an active bulletin board, or tucked into an interesting library book.  With any luck, the finder will send it on its merry way.  I'll keep you posted on the results.  Can't part with the inspiring card?  Write and send your own.  But seed some, too.
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Still hoping to see some Poet Challenging (yesterday's game).
It was sweet to see snow falling on the firs last night.  Spent a warm evening catching up on poet games with friends in the Coastal mountains.  We'd been invited and looking forward to a weekend at Seaside, some three hours north, but the wintry weather kept us closer to home.  We missed our friends but enjoyed the games .

You're Either On the Bus or You're Off It, said local hero Ken Kesey

A flight of Swifties:
"I prefer Brut," she said, dryly.
"I love R.E.M," she said dreamily.
"Watch out for what happens after the third one," he said forewarningly.

Bovine Powered Tilling:  "Little" the Cow.
Stay on her Good Side

"My bed's upstairs", she said loftily.

Too many titles:

Irritable Vowel Syndrome:  Why Americans Won't Learn Icelandic
Finding Your Porpoise:  Aquatic Mammal Spirit Guides
Till--The Cows Come Home:  Bovine-Powered Field Work
Days of Whine and Poses:  Hipsters I Have Known
On With The Bloody Show:  Cockney Guide to Labor
The Contraction Attraction:  Why I Became A Midwife
As a Matter of Fact, You ARE Full of S***:  Roughage Deficiencies in the American Diet

A mail in from Carolyn brings us to the Science Section for
"Splendor in the Mass"
and onward to Gardening with:
Bin Here, Dug That
Musings on the Bounty
Dygmamion

Beet Here Now

-----------and we loaded the most crowded shelf at the title store (sampling only----
You've Got Ale:  The Beer-Lover's Guide to Oregon
You've Got Trail:  Hiking in Corvallis
You've Got Grail:  Collecting Holy Icons
You've Got Bail:  How to Manipulate Loved Ones into Getting You Out of the Slammer
You've Got Quayle:  Mistakes We May or May Not Have Made in the Present or the Future
You've Got Yale:  How to Get Admitted to Ivy League Schools
You've Got Pale:  Fighting Vitamin D Deficiency in the Northwest
You've Got Shale:  Oil Refining on a Shoestring
You've Got Rail:  Hoboing 101
You've Got Kale:  Low Maintenance Winter Gardening

There were also translations, first letter and bad and recipe poems, lots of new superstitions and proverbs.  Someday we will hand-bind these into a handsome volume for prosperity.  For now, it would be good to plump there numbers.  We're half way over the hump now!   Keep those cards and letters coming.

Jana
PS Don' forget to honor the Good Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King today-- make the world a better place in whatever loving and tiny way you can.

"Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that." MLK

  

     Last night I was doing my geek thing, surfing weather blogs. I wanted to see what meteorologist Jeff Masters, founder of Wunderground.com, had to say about the spate of terrible and unusual April tornadoes that had resulted in enormous destruction across several states.  I'd had a cancellation the week before, just as major storms were breaking out in the southern states.  It was horrifying to watch the biggest tornado I'd ever virtually seen form before my eyes on a chaser site (severestudios.com)-- a monster storm poised right on top of Tuscaloosa.  Hours later my father and I watched the same tornado come into Birmingham.  We were seeing what was clearly at least an F4, and knew that meant many lives would be lost.  
     Instead of the usual post-storm deconstruction, there was weird chatter about something big about to break on U.S. news.  No one knew yet what it was-- something involving Obama, the CIA-- but even before it broke, people were guessing it was Bin Laden.  And it was.  It leaked before the official presidential announcement.  And on the news channel, people, mostly young, crowded the Capitol Hill mall, waving flags, screaming and shouting in celebration at the news of Bin Laden's assassination. It was a happy party scene. If the sound or subtitling was off, you might have mistaken it for an enthusiastic crowd at a rock concert.
     Meanwhile, back in my little burg, recently named the safest US city from natural disaster, and just a few years after being named the safest town from crime, the headlines were focusing on a different story.  A young man had stabbed his one year old baby and the baby's mother, killing both.
     The 20 year old had come here as an exchange student as a teen.  During his stay he fell in love with a local girl. They were good students, and after graduation began studies at a local college.  By all accounts the two were shining lights--- loved, gentle, loving.   When she unexpectedly became pregnant, both appeared to devote themselves to the task of bearing and raising their child.  And the community surrounded  them with support.  But there were apparently problems in the relationship.  According to local news reports, she broke things off a few weeks ago.  He became despondent.
     I don't have inside information.  I don't know what despondent felt like for him.  But I do know crazy.  And by that I mean the twisted kind of thinking one can have when either through genetics or circumstance it feels as if the world has narrowed to one sharp and unbearable point.  What I do know from the news is that he decided to kill them all.  That he reports thinking they would then all be together in the afterlife.  And that he successfully carried out two-thirds of his plan.   He called 911 after the slitting of his wrists did not result in his own death. thinking he could get the police to finish what he could not.  Something in this boy was broken, and it resulted in much harm.
    I don't know if what follows will make sense to anyone.  But somehow all of this feels linked to me-- the horrific impact of the storms in the South, the celebration of a death of an enemy, and the loss of three (yes three, because there can be no good ending for this young man now) lives for no reason I can begin to understand.  And it is the second time in several weeks our community has had to try and fathom how someone everyone believed to be good and loving could commit such atrocities.
    How is it linked?  Because all of these events are tragic, and none have tidy explanation.  Because in each  I have watched unfolding rushes to judgment from media commenters.
    In the cases of the tornadoes:  multiple writers talked about this being God's judgment.  The result of abortion being legal, or tolerance of homosexuality.  I have lived in the South, and trust me, if you are looking for the churched and the God-fearing, you are going to find it there.  Why on Earth God would pick Alabama to unleash wrath is completely beyond me.  Vegas, maybe.  But Birmingham?
   In the case of the young man, there was an ugly flood of racism, rants about immigration (may I remind us that we are a NATION of immigrants?)  and immediate calls for the accused to be hung or shot.  I understand that people are reacting to the bare facts of the crime, and it is a horrific crime.  But I recoil from the early mob mentality, and especially to the calls for more violence.
     Similarly, while I don't mourn the death of Osama, neither am I inclined to celebrate it.  For me, Bin Laden's death is one punctuation mark in a very sad chapter of world history.  I don't know that I feel safer.  I don't know that it was worth the 5885 American soldiers now dead from the wars in  Iraq and Afghanistan.  The 100,000 plus civilian deaths in Iraq alone.  All I can think is every single one of those dead was someone's baby.  
     Martin Luther King Jr said: "I'm concerned about a better world.  I'm concerned about justice; I'm concerned about brotherhood; I'm concerned about truth.  And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence.  For through violence, you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder.  Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can't establish truth.  Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate.  Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that."
     And I do love the soldiers. Those who have been called up and served two, three, four times for a war even some of them don't get.   I work with them, with their families, with their injured brains and their daddy/mommy lonesome children and their sleepless nights.  And while I admire their bravery, their reality just plain sucks.  There is no prettier words I can find.
   We want easy explanations, simple arithmetic.  We want to subscribe to the Just World Theory:  that if we are good, good things will happen to us, and that only bad people can do bad things.  But life, and especially people, are way more complicated than that.  In these last six months it seems I have seen more examples of this than I have in a dozen years.  Shit happens, as they say, and it certainly doesn't pick those most deserving.  So how do we make sense of it?
     I'll work on that one another day.
     In the mean time, listen to Plato:  "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
---------------

Resolution #9: Be Generous

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.--Winston Churchill

There are many ways to practice generosity.  It's a little late to reflect it on your 2010 taxes, but gifts of goods or money to your favorite charity are always welcome.  Don't worry about it being a small amount.  Think of it this way-- if every Oregonian gave a penny a day to say, scholarships to deserving impoverished commnunity college students, that would be $10,000,000 a year.  Every little bit counts.

You needn't give money to be generous.  Here's other ways to spread your wealth.
1.  Lend you ear to someone who needs to talk.
2.  Share specialized tools and equipment with friends, neighbors, schools.  My dad lived in a neighborhood that had a "tool library."  If you need an air compressor, serger, tile cutter or somesuch twice a year, it makes more sense to borrow one than buy one.  Just be sure you're willing to loan what you have as well.
3.  Share your talents and skills.  Volunteer to read or tutor at an elementary school; do maintenance at a local nonprofit, give a talk in your area of expertise to a community group.  Translate a language you know for someone who needs it. This one is wide open.  What can you do well? 
4.  Share your energy with someone whose is lagging.  Run an errand or cook a meal for someone sick or grieving.
5.  Share information.  OK, be careful with this one. I'm not talking about unsolicited advice.  But you may have an insider's scoop that can ease another's path or brighten their mood.  For example, when I got started in my practice, at least three therapists came forward to offer me forms to use  and client referrals.  I've done the same for another four or five.  I've had friends help me learn how to use my sewing machine, make a pie crust, etc-- all really appreciated.
I think I've only touched the surface with this one.  Look for the chance to be generous in some small or big way tomorrow.  As always, I am happy to hear what you did.

A few words about these resolutions:  these are all ways to improve your health and happiness in small ways.  I hope you will try checking each one off sometime during the month, though most are easy enough to do every day.  I will post a checklist on the blog shortly.  Print it out and see which ones you can hit at least once in the next few weeks.

I bet there are lots of videos about people's generosity and sharing on the web.  I found one about a dog first.

Resolution #8: Mind Your Manners

Today's homework is to practice your Ps and Qs, and bring back the civil part of civilization.   (Thanks, Hal!)

Use politeness words:  please, thank you, you are welcome, I'm sorry.
Let others go first, hold a door, look at people when you're speaking, smile. 
If you're visiting with someone else and not on call for emergencies, turn off your cell phone.
Try not to pay attention if other people are using their manners-- focus on being part of the solution.  But if you notice others being courteous, be appreciative.  If it's in a customer service role, tell their employer it made a difference.

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.  If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter which fork you use. --Emily Post

Today's video provides tips for you Facebook users:

OLA, baby!

 

Time to revisit the OLA philosophy:  let's all be the One Less @$$hole we want to see in the world.

It's been a hard week here in Lake SunBeGone.  Cooler temps and the retreat of daylight seems to have some people listless and some more pretty darn cranky.  I find my patience and my trust in the general goodness of others waning.   

But then tonight an old colleague posted the following quote on her Facebook status:

"Just don’t be mean. Being mean never works. Never. So that’s the only rule I can think of that’s worth following in life: don’t be mean." ~ Kate Bornstein

OK-- we get to be part of the problem, or part of the solution.  We can give in to the dreary, join the naysayers, roll up our tender little hearts and tuck them in our pockets, looking out only for Number One Is the Loneliest--

Or we can remember Plato:  "Be kind.  For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

Love it up,

Jana

Song of the day:

 

Important Message; Please Pass it On

The following is cut and pasted from the good works of Trevor Project:

The Trevor Lifeline

Are you going through a difficult time?  Feeling confused, lonely or blue?  Call us!

Our trained counselors are ready 24/7 to talk to you.  If you’re a young person looking for someone to listen and understand without judgment or if you’re feeling suicidal, please call The Trevor Lifeline now at 866-488-7386. It’s free and confidential.  There is hope, there is help.   [U.S. CALLS ONLY]

TrevorChat

Don't have access to a telephone?  Are you in a location where you are unable to talk?   Are you hearing impared?  Let's chat!

TrevorChat is a free, confidential, secure online messaging service that provides live help through this website.  TrevorChat is only intended to assist those who are not at risk for suicide.  It's available on Friday's between the hours of 1:00 PM Pacific (4 PM Eastern) and 9:00 PM Pacific (12:00 AM Eastern).  Connect with a volunteer who can support you with your concerns and questions.  [U.S. Residents only]  Click here on Friday's to see if an IM session is available.

Connect with others

There are plenty of ways for young people to get involved in spreading the word about The Trevor Project, whether you’re LGBTQ, a straight ally or anywhere in between! Youth are our most important advocates, and you can do a lot to be a “lifeguard” for your peers and create a safe, accepting environment for yourself and your friends.
Learn about the warning signs of suicide and what you can do to help a friend in crisis.
Visit and join TrevorSpace.org, TrevorSpace is a social networking site for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth ages 13 through 24 and their friends and allies. Join today!

With Love for Phoebe

Phoebe Prince was 15, an immigrant from Ireland's County Clare.  She moved here with her mother and siblings for a chance to experience America.  Her experience was horrendous, and ended up with her death by suicide.  More accurately, she was bullied to death.

A beautiful young woman, Phoebe faced the ire of the South Hadley, Massachusetts "Mean Girl" militia shortly after her arrival.  Her most grievous error according to articles about her death--briefly dated a popular senior football player.  She was harassed daily at school, online, and even after death on her facebook memorial page.  Administrators appear to have known, and turned a blind eye.  This week nine of her taunters were charged, after an investigation into the months of peer abuse that preceded her death.   It's a good start, holding those responsible to at least a public accounting of their behavior.  But it's action taken much, much too late.

Bullying is not child's play.  I see adults in my practice who still bear the scars of cruelty suffered at the hands of their then-peers.  Sometimes, like in  Megan Meier's cases, adults were involved in the bullying.  The effects are profound.  Although our school district in Corvallis, like many, has a written anti-bullying policy, I hear several stories every year that show intention is not enough.  We need to support a real "no tolerance" policy for bullying.  In-school suspension with mandatory counseling or anti-harassment education would be a start.  Teacher reporting is essential.  It's not a matter of "kids will be kids".  It can be a matter of life or death.

Several years ago, just a block or two from my home,  a youth was severely beaten by his school mates after being taunted about his sexual orientation.  My partner, profoundly disturbed that this could happen in our allegedly tolerant town, canvassed places of worship and community business to purchase an ad in the newspaper decrying the action.  The ad contained a half-page poster that could be displayed on doors to designate the home/building as a safe space where all were welcome, regardless of race, sexual orientation, ability, etc.  It's time to take up the banner again-- not just with words but with deeds.  Stand up against bullying.  Call it out when you hear it.  Educate, educate, educate.  Don't let hurtful words go unchallenged. Ask your school officials what they are doing to teach and support not just tolerance, but compassion.

Resources:  Mean Girls:  Tina Fay directed this funny but poignant movie about being on the outside of the "popular crowd". This is a good conversation starter for middle school girls and parents.  The movie was inspired by the book Queen Bees and Wannabes, by Rosalind Wiseman, educator and advocate.  Click on the link to visit her blog.
Click to listen to Janis Ian's At 17-- a classic song capturing the difficulties of being on the outs of the in crowd.
Tolerance.org is a site devoted to social justice and raising awareness about the problems of hate and intolerance in our culture.  They provide excellent curriculum to schools and other organizations at no cost.  Help them in their good work out with a donation.
Dr. Ken Rigby offers good resources on his site about school bullying and what can be done to address it.
An article about bullying and suicide, by Kevin Caruso can be found here, along with links to prevention sites. Read these four stories about those whose lives were cut short.  These were people's beloved sons and daughters.  Be part of the solution, in their memory.
Ryan's Story
Jared's Story
Maria Herrera
Jaheem Herrera
Be part of the solution, in their memory.

Resolution of the day: NURTURE

What you feed, grows.