Let's Dance in the New Year 2011

So you don't think you can dance! Take a lesson from the all time greats! Follow the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6O9FB90kAU

And for some more chicken legs (this one is great, stay with it!) follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6O9FB90kAU

Hawkscry Snow

Jane and I just returned from Hawkscry. We went up to see if the roads will support traffic for the celebration on Friday. Unfortunately, we think they will still be pretty bad on Friday, especially the secondary roads and access road to the meadow, so we will have our celebration in Kenilworth instead. Here are some photos of the beautiful snow at Hawkscry, taken on Wednesday, December 29, 2010.

 

Happy new Year.

Repeal of DADT

From Day One, President Obama has said that the question wasn't if, but when, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" would be repealed. Now we know the answer. This morning, the President signed repeal into law -- setting into motion an end to this discriminatory policy that weakened our military and forced some brave men and women to lie about who they are. It was a moment for the history books -- possible only because the President wasn't alone in his determination to get this done before the end of the year.

As this discriminatory law falls into the rubbish heap we move closer to the ideals this country was founded upon; a country dedicated to the idea that all men and women are created equal and deserve all the rights and responsibilities inherent in being a citizen. Sexual orientation is not chosen, and therefore part of who you are as a person. To deny that is to deny you the dignity of being a complete person, and this is outright discrimination and not worthy of this country. We must continuously be on the alert at how individual civil liberties are challenged and sometimes eroded in society and do what we can to contradict that erosion.

Today we can feel proud that as a country we move closer to being that perfect union so passionately dreamed of and fought for throughout our history.

Follow the link for the speech given on Wednesday, December 22, 2010 by President Obama.

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/TellRe

Trust Yourself and Believe

Inspiring TED talk about perseverance and spirit. William Kamkwamba overcame many obstacles in his fight to better himself and his family. This short TED talk will amaze you with his indomitable spirit.

At age 14, in poverty and famine, this Malawian boy built a windmill to power his family's home. Now at 22, William Kamkwamba, who speaks at TED, here, for the second time, shares in his own words the moving tale of invention that changed his life.

Follow the link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/william_kamkwamba_how_i_harnessed_the_wind.html

Captain Condom; How HIV declined 90% from 1997-2003 in Thailand.

Ted talk by Mechai Virvaidya in which he uses humor and facts to show how low tech solutions can effect large scale change and improve public health. Amazing what can happen when you get the politicians out of the way!

Follow the link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/mechai_viravaidya_how_mr_condom_made_thailand_a_better_place.html

Getting to Yes! Finding the 18th Camel.

Follow the link for a talk by William Ury on resolving conflict and moving toward resolution.

William Ury, author of "Getting to Yes," offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations -- from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East.

William Ury is a mediator, writer and speaker, working with conflicts ranging from family feuds to boardroom battles to ethnic wars.

http://www.ted.com/talks/william_ury.html

Rising Water Parable

The waters were rising in the story of the man

on the roof of his house waiting for God to save him.

A boatman pulled up asking if he could help.

A helicopter hovered overhead and asked if he needed help.

Each time, the man replied, no I’m waiting for God to save me.

At the gates of heaven he asked God why he didn’t save him.

God replied, who do you think sent you a boatman and a helicopter?

Bridges

The flow of one year into the next somehow feels more momentous than the simple passage of one moment to another. We stand at the foot of a bridge anchored in the ruins of the past and taking our leave of what was once and is no more, stumble into the soft unformed future, burdened needlessly with resolutions that fill a persistent suspicion of brokenness, as if we could use this mud to fill the cracks through which only light flows.  As if we were not loved in our various states of abandon! For this is an enigmatic journey, this moment to moment passage, in which we must shed the illusion of foreign destinations in order to inhabit the illumined Now, eternal in its fluid nature. A journey whose sole purpose would have us understand that we never left.

Thoreau in his essay "Where I lived, and What I Lived For," describes this moment:

Time is but the stream I go fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. It's thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

In truth there is only one bridge to cross and that is the one that leads from ignorance to the joyous recognition of our own devine nature. The miraculous happens and we find ourselves standing refreshed on the sandy bottom of eternity, full of childlike wisdom and content to rest in the slipstream of time.

The Old Venerable Apple Tree

The old apple tree which dominated the corner of the lower meadow near the road for so many years finally succumbed to the slow persistent tug of gravity and old age and fell across the road, partially blocking it. I was able to drive around it, the length of trunk not quite fully occupying the width of road, granting me even in death this one last consideration. In truth, she was mostly dead years ago but the mass of vines, bitter sweet and poison ivy principally, took every advantage of her decrepit verticality in a mad frenzy of sky stretching, and hid the fact. Now, indisputably dead and resembling a beached whale, she was forever relieved of her quiet sentinel over the passing seasons across the meadow.

Fact is, she was never much to look at being always grossly deformed of limb and nearly buried in vines. But she did produce yearly the sweetest little red apples and in great quantity too! Most of the apples fell into the riot of brambles at her base to be eaten by untold legions. But at least a few would make it into the yearly applesauce effort, appreciated long after the seasonal downfall.

I never much paid attention to her, these few short musings being the bulk of conscious thought directed her way in all the years she stood quietly making no claims for my affections. Now that she is gone, I feel a sad unoccupied place in my heart, nothing much, more like a tender sigh of things remembered and no more. A quiet acceptance of the fleeting passage of time and a vague remembrance of the sweetness of little red apples.