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JERUSALEM (CNN) — An Israeli archaeologist has discovered what he says is the earliest-known Hebrew text, found on a shard of pottery that dates to the time of King David from the Old Testament, about 3,000 years ago.
The shard — or ostracon — contains five lines of text divided by black lines.
Carbon dating of the ostracon, along with pottery analysis, dates the inscription to time of King David, about a millennium earlier than the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, the university said.
The shard contains five lines of text divided by black lines and measures 15 by 15 centimeters, or about 6 inches square.
Archaeologists have yet to decipher the text, but initial interpretation indicates it formed part of a letter and contains the roots of the words “judge,” “slave,” and “king,” according to the university. That may indicate it was a legal text, which archaeologists say would provide insights into Hebrew law, society, and beliefs.
The researchers say the text was clearly written by a trained scribe.
The shard was discovered at the Elah Fortress in Khirbet Qeiyafa, about 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem. The fortress, measuring 2.3 hectares (about 5.7 acres), is the earliest-known fortified city of the biblical period in Israel.
Excavations began there in June. So far, just four percent of the site has been excavated, the university said.
Because the ostracon is similar to that found in other Israelite settlements, and because no pig bones were found at the site, archaeologists say the site was likely part of the Kingdom of Judea. Jewish dietary laws forbid the eating of pork.
Among the artifacts found at the site are more than 100 jar handles bearing distinct impressions which may indicate a link to royal vessels, the university said. Such a large quantity found in such a small area is “unprecedented,” the university said.
The site of Khirbet Qeiyafa is located near the place where the Bible describes the battle between David and Goliath — the Elah Valley, which shares its name with the fortress.
Garfinkel said it is the only site in Israel in which to investigate King David.
“The chronology and geography of Khirbet Qeiyafa create a unique meeting point between the mythology, history, historiography and archaeology of King David,” he said.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are the earliest-known copies of the Bible, some dating back about 2,000 years.
It is widely believed that the first set of Dead Sea Scrolls was discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin shepherd who ventured into a cave in the Judean Desert in search of a lost sheep or goat.
Tea Rituals
Coffee may be the power beverage that gets us revved up in the morning and fuels us when we’re burning the midnight oil, but tea is the drink we turn to when we want to relax and be refreshed at the same time. Black, green, white, herbal, hot, or ice cold, tea is more than a soothing beverage. It can be a ritual, a cultural experience, and even a spiritual practice.
The reverence for tea has inspired ceremony in many cultures. From the spirituality of Chanoyu, the Japanese way of preparing and serving tea, to the sharing of Maté in Latin America, tea rituals are for celebration, ceremony, and relationship bonding. In China, tea rituals are part of many wedding ceremonies with the bride and groom serving their elder relatives in a show of respect and gratitude. The Chinese art of drinking and serving tea has been a source of inspiration for poetry and song. The Russian custom of chaepitie has inspired a unique style of teapots, caddies, teacups, and cozies. The samovar, a special brewing device, has become the symbol of the Russian tea ceremony and an object of art in its own right. Iced tea, popular in the U.S., as well as other parts of the world, is a modern ritual bringing cool relief on a sweltering summer day.
You can turn your own tea time with a friend into a simple ceremony by preparing your tea with the intention of offering nourishment and good wishes to the other person. When you are seated together, rather than drinking your tea right away, look at one another and express your gratitude and appreciation for your friendship. When you pour the tea, again intend it as an offering. Drink your tea slowly, savoring its flavor and aroma. Let its warmth or its coolness soothe your body. When you are finished drinking your tea, thank your friend for taking part in this nourishing ritual with you. Whether savored in the presence of another or tasted alone, the custom of drinking tea provides a soothing pause in our hectic world. Drinking tea can be a daily ritual that brings inner calm and clarity to the body, mind, and soul.
Allowing Your Soul To Shine
At times, we’ve all wanted to crawl under a rock and hide away from the world. We may have preferred to be invisible rather than let other people see us or notice that we exist. This desire not to be seen often happens when we are feeling very hurt, angry, or simply weary of the world. And while we may console ourselves with the defense that we are shy, an introvert, or a loner, we may actually be hiding.
When we hide and make believe that we are invisible, we can think that we no one sees us even though, truthfully, we are only really hiding from ourselves. And while we may try to live life as inconspicuously as possible, we only succeed in becoming more conspicuous because people can’t help but notice that we are trying to hide our light. None of us are meant to hide; each one of us radiates a unique brilliance that is meant to illuminate the world. When we try to dim our light, we diminish the natural radiance of the Universe, and we deprive the people around us of the unique gifts and talents that we are here to share.
Stepping out of the wings and letting your light shine is actually a way to serve the planet. We each have a responsibility to contribute to our community, and we do this when we let ourselves be seen. It doesn’t do anyone any good when we try to hide. We are all beings of light and we are here to light the way for each other. When we let ourselves shine, we become a bright mirror that others can see their own reflected brilliance through, and they can’t help but want to shine also. Shine your light out into the world, bless those around you by sharing your gifts, and watch the universe glow.
When Life Throws You A Curve Ball
In life, we are always setting goals for ourselves and working to make them happen. This gives us focus and ensures that we use our time and energy efficiently and effectively. It also provides us with a sense of purpose and direction. We know where we are going and what we want to do. But quite often, due to forces outside our control, things do not go as we had planned—the flat tire on the way to the wedding, the unforeseen flu virus—and we have to adjust to a postponement or create a whole new set of circumstances. Even positive turns of fortune — an unexpected influx of cash or falling in love — require us to be flexible and to reconsider our plans and priorities, sometimes in the blink of an eye. This is what happens when life throws you a curve ball.
The ability to accept what is happening and let go of your original expectations is key when dealing with these unexpected turns of fate. We have a tendency to get stuck in our heads, clinging to an idea of how we think life should go, and we can have a hard time accepting anything that doesn’t comply with that idea. The fact is that life is unpredictable. The trip you thought was for business — and when the deal fell through, you got depressed — actually landed you at the airport two days earlier than planned so you could meet the love of your life. Your car breaks down, and you are late for an appointment. While it’s true that you never arrive at that important meeting, you end up spending a few relaxing hours with people you would never have met otherwise.
In order to keep us awake to opportunity and to teach us equanimity, the universe throws us the occasional curve ball. Remember that curve balls are not only life’s way of keeping us awake, which is a gift in and of itself; they are also often life’s way of bringing us wonderful surprises. Next time a curve ball comes your way, take a deep breath, say thank you, and open your mind to a new opportunity.
We Are All Connected
There are times when we may feel disconnected from the world. Our actions can seem like they are of no major consequence, and we may feel like we exist in our own vacuum. Yet, the truth is that our simplest thought or action – the decisions we make each day, and how we see and relate to the world – can be incredibly significant and have a profound impact on the lives of those around us, as well as the world at large. The earth and everything on it is bound by an invisible connection between people, animals, plants, the air, the water, and the soil. Insignificant actions on your part, whether positive or negative, can have an impact on people and the environment that seem entirely separate from your personal realm of existence. Staying conscious of the interconnection between all things can help you think of your choices and your life in terms of the broader effect you may be creating.
Think of buying a wooden stool. The wood was once part of a tree which is part of a forest. A person was paid to fell the tree, another to cut the wood, and yet another to build the stool. Their income may have had a positive effect on their families, just as the loss of the tree may have had a negative impact on the forest or the animals that made that tree their home. An encouraging word to a young child about their special talent can influence this person to develop their gift so that one day their inventions can change the lives of millions. A poem written “merely” to express oneself can make a stranger reading it online from thousands of miles away feel less alone because there is someone else out there who feels exactly the way they do.
Staying conscious of your connection to all things can help you think of your choices in terms of their impact. We are powerful enough that what we do and say can reverberate through the lives of people we may never meet. Understanding that you are intimately connected with all things and understanding your power to affect our world can be the first step on the road to living more consciously.
The Flow of the Universe
The flow of the universe moves through everything. It’s in the rocks that form, get pounded into dust, and are blown away, the sprouting of a summer flower born from a seed planted in the spring, the growth cycle that every human being goes through, and the current that takes us down our life’s paths. When we move with the flow, rather than resisting it, we are riding on the universal current that allows us to flow with life.
Many people live their lives struggling against this current. They try to use force or resistance to will their lives into happening the way they think it should. Others move with this flow like a sailor using the wind, trusting that the universe is taking them exactly where they need to be at all times. This flow is accessible to everyone because it moves through and around us. We are always riding this flow. It’s just a matter of whether we are willing to go with it or resist it. Tapping into the flow is often a matter of letting go of the notion that we need to be in control at all times. The flow is always taking you where you need to go. It’s just a matter of deciding whether you plan on taking the ride or dragging your feet.
Learning to step into the flow can help you feel a connection to a force that is greater than you and is always there to support you. The decision to go with the flow can take courage because you are surrendering the notion that you need to do everything by yourself. Riding the flow of the universe can be effortless, exhilarating, and not like anything that you ever expected. When you are open to being in this flow, you open yourself to possibilities that exist beyond the grasp of your control. As a child, you were naturally swept by the flow. Tears of sadness falling down your face could just as quickly turn to tears of laughter. Just the tiniest wave carrying you forward off the shores of the ocean could carry you into peals of delight. Our souls feel good when we go with the flow of the universe. All we have to do is make the choice to ride its currents.
It is 10:55pm and we are home from a semi-cold, blustery day on the marching field.
Yesterday, we had no marching band or other commitments. Jose and I did the traditional end-of-marching-season dinner – he chose Golden Corral (not my choice), and then we went to the mall so he could go to Game Stop. I chatted with Mother on the phone while he shopped. Afterward, we went to Buy Backs – a neat place to purchase used DVD’s or CD’s.
Jose went to a Haunted Cave in Lewisburg, Ohio with his youth group, and I worked at home.
This morning I lounged in bed with my laptop, and finally rose to fix an delicious egg white omelet. I showered and drove to UD’s Welcome Stadium to watch several of my drum-majors in their last performance on a marching field.
I drove to Meijer for a few items, grabbed some sandwiches from Rally’s, and hurried home with ten minutes to spare before Jose had to be at the high school. I also jotted down a few notes for the Fairmont band director, informing him of some of the difficulties other bands were having with the very strong wind – rifle and flag tosses not landing where expected, hats and plumes blowing off, guard skirts providing Marilyn Monroe moments, and props collapsing on the field.
After Jose left, I framed and hung a neat print – signed by the artist, Paul Melia. The print, a wonderful gift from the Salchak family, is MANNDED FLIGHT – 100. It features the Wright Flyer, both Wright Brothers and about 30 planes, along with the stealth bomber. It proudly hangs in my study.
I also put plastic up to the windows in my bedroom and study. Tomorrow I will grab Jose’s room since the western windows receive a good deal of wind. Already tonight, with the great wind, they have already paid off.
At 7:00pm, Jill Chabut picked me up and we had a great chat en route to Welcome Stadium. The wind had died down, but the dark clouds hung in the sky threatening a down pour – and our theme was CLOUDBURST! Fortunately, we had no natural special effects.
Jill Chabut
The band was wonderful and received a Superior (I) rating. A wonderful way to end the season.
Jill and I had another great chat about spirituality on the way home. She is such a neat spirit, and I enjoy my time with her. Jill is also Jose’s youth leader, and he loves being with Jill and her children, Ali and Neil. Ali is in band with Jose, and Neil was one of the percussion instructors for marching band.
The Chabut children (Craig, Ali, Neil) when I met them in 1996; and the Chabut children (Neil, Ali, Craig) today. Neil is at UD, and also works with the high school marching percussion; Ali is a junior, and is in band; and Craig is at Ball State. Some of the nicest kids you could ever meet!
The band unloaded the truck, and everything was put away. Since it was late, there was no party as last year. It was somewhat odd not having some closure.
Tuesday night is the band concert and the grand finale is the marching band plowing down the aisles with the fight song. They assemble on stage and play the show one last time. So, I will have one more opportunity to hear Jose’s “ding.”
Jose & the “ding” heard round the world!
One of my favorite hours each week is listening to Dr. Robert Schuller on THE HOUR OF POWER. In the 1970’s, while in elementary school, my grandfather introduced me to Dr. Schuller – one of my grandfather’s favorite writers. I figured Grandpa liked Dr. Schuller because he was a minister. However, one day, when I was in junior high, I was questioning whether I would have a chance to succeed to the high school’s drum-major position because of various concerns. My grandfather pointed out that “faith” and “positive thinking” were the best tools I could ever possess. He walked over to an entertainment unit and pulled out one of his books written by Dr. Robert Schuller. I was introduced to “positive thinking.” My grandfather bought me two books by Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller when I was in the 8th grade. A few months later I became drum-major.
Those two books?
They traveled with me through college moves, the move to Dayton, and the five moves since moving to Dayton in 1990. Today they are in my living room on bookshelves I made my self because I had confidence I could build them! My first bookshelves at age 40! On each of those book shelves are letters that spell out “BELIEVE” and “ACHIEVE”. Not only do they remind myself, and my son, but they remind anyone who enters our home.
Today, Dr. Robert Schuller gave one of the most fantastic messages, and I am including it in this post. Though I do not buy into some of the doctrinal rhetoric, his message is brilliant and inspiring.
I have four faith points that hopefully you will not forget.
(1) Faith is a fact, not a fantasy.
(2) Faith is a force, not a value.
(3) Faith is a decision, not a debate.
(4) Faith is a commitment, not an argument.
If you have read some of my 36 books, you know that I keep coming back to the subject of leadership again, and again, and again. I am a strong believer that we each need to use leadership to meet the challenges that life throws at us. But most of us are not educated, trained, or motivated to be leaders. That’s because the people who influenced us want us to be their followers. So our peers are tempted more often than not to see us as their followers more than as their leader.
Leaders are not what most of us are called to be; yet in the final analysis nobody else will set your dreams for you. Nobody else can kill your dream. One of my books is entitled, “If It’s Going To Be, It’s Up To Me.” That’s being a leader and we desperately need that in our private, personal lives and in all of the institutions in our countries. The quality of leadership … but what is leadership?
Leadership is the force that sets the goals and addresses the problems. Leadership is a force, and that force is the force of faith.
St. Paul, the author of the Hebrews, introduces the subject of faith in Chapter 11 this way: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for … the evidence of things not seen …”
Then in verse 6 he writes: “For without faith it is impossible to please God. For he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6)
That text was assigned to me by my professor when I was a student in theological school. Each of us had to prepare a sermon, which had to be delivered to the entire student body and faculty for their review and critique. Those words from St. Paul still impact me today with faith power, along with the mountain moving words of Jesus Christ from Matthew 17:20, “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you can say to your mountain ‘move,’ and nothing will be impossible to you.”
Just a little bit of faith, but where does it lead? An idea goes through your head and you grab hold of it carefully, prayerfully, and you listen to that idea. When you do that, you become not just a follower, but a leader. I hear again and again in life that leaders are those who have the right degrees, the right credentials, the right resume, the right experience, but often they become trapped in professionalism. Then they are not leaders. Leaders haven’t been brainwashed – “this will work” … “that won’t work.” In that kind of thinking, they become followers because they are basically impossibility thinkers.
Leaders are possibility thinkers. They say, “What’s the problem? How can it be solved?” They don’t say it can’t be solved. No, their attitude is … Anything is possible. They may not have the answers, but they find answers. They go for the answers and make it happen, because they’ve got drive, passion, practicality and positive thinking! That’s leadership!
You can be a leader and that’s what our world needs. Think … think … think. But start with faith. Faith makes leaders.
(1) Faith is a fact, not a fantasy.
Now early in my life in ministry when I met with important people who didn’t believe in God or religion, they would always put me down very swiftly. Now I was not an honor student, but I was a national debate student, an elected member of the Phi Kappa Delta, the National Honoree Forensic Society. I thought I was good at debate, but when unbelievers would debate me with an argument on faith, I backed away. I thought I’d lose the debate so I wouldn’t go there.
I’d hear their argument against faith, “Schuller, you say you believe in God and all that stuff. It’s all based on assumptions.” And I remained quiet because I didn’t want to say ‘yes’ and I was thinking, “Maybe my faith is based on assumptions.”
Finally, I agree with them. My faith is all based on assumptions … but I say to the unbeliever, “Your unbelief is all based on assumptions also!”
Atheism is a negative assumption in an impossibility thinker’s brain. Theism is a positive assumption in a believer’s mind. I don’t think any of us ever make a single decision without basing it on assumptions that we don’t even understand are a part of the process. You assume the chair will hold you. If you are a scientist, and many of my friends are, you assume that the research is accurate. Maybe it is, but you assume that the sources were reliable. And you’re assuming that the newest discoveries haven’t invalidated what was published to be fact. The truth is the human being is an assumption-managed person, positive or negative! That’s reality.
That means assumption is nothing more than faith. Faith is accepting as truth something that you cannot prove and you’ve got to make a decision one way or another. And that means all human beings are assumption managed so we are really living in the realm of faith all the time, believers and unbelievers alike. So faith becomes a scientific reality in the mental processing.
(1) Faith is not fantasy … it’s a fact of managing human living.
(2) Faith is a force, not a value.
Faith in itself has no value. It’s neither good nor evil, but it is powerful for good or evil! The terrorists who flew those planes into the twin towers had faith. They believed in terror. They were driven by assumptions of the power of evil to serve their cause. Faith in itself has no value. The value comes in what you choose to place your faith in.
If you place your faith in goodness, God, Jesus Christ, you have the power to change the world and become a saint. Then since we’re all naturally faith creatures (and God planned it that way) we are to relate to God and the only way you could possibility relate to God if God remains invisible.
My friend, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is worshiping with us again. He is a celebrity. He can’t go anywhere without everybody around him grabbing at him, surrounding him and he is only Arnold Schwarzenegger. But can you imagine what would happen if God Almighty or Jesus Christ, were here in flesh and bones? The ultimate reality is that God in Jesus Christ has to remain invisible so we can each relate to Him in our own way.
(3) Faith is a decision, not a debate.
Don’t debate me about what I believe about God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, holiness, courage and leadership principles. I won’t debate my belief because I can’t prove to you that I’m absolutely right. I simply made a decision.
I have studied the Bible. I have studied the Ten Commandments and I believe they are given to us to keep us from getting into trouble so they’re a blessing. I’ve studied Jesus Christ. I’ve studied what I believe about the Christian church. There is no other institution on planet earth that specializes in encouraging people to be emotionally healthy, hopeful, optimistic, courageous, brave, cheerful, generous and kind! So Christianity will never go out of style!
I’ve chosen to believe in God and I’ve often said, “If moments before I pass away, someone would say to me, ‘there’s strong new evidence that there is no God. What do you say to that, Schuller?'” I would reply, “I’d believe in Him even if you could almost prove to me that He didn’t exist. I want God. I need God. I look at the good life God has given me. I wouldn’t never not believe. It’s a decision! I’ll live and die on that.”
(4) Faith is a commitment … not an argument.
So finally, faith is a commitment … not an argument. I made my commitment to Jesus Christ.
Leadership:
(1) Faith is a fact, not a fantasy! Faith is driving you, for good or ill.
(2) Faith is a force … not a value … not a debate.
(3) Faith is a decision, you need to make.
(4) Faith is a commitment … not an argument.
You need to make a decision. Make a commitment. Forget the argument. Focus on your natural instincts to live on assumptions and focus your assumptions on Jesus Christ. Where are you at? God has a plan for your life, absolutely. Have faith … for without faith, life is impossible.
Writing Your Story
Everyone, at one time or another, has wanted to express his or her story. Writing a memoir to read privately, share with family or friends, or publish is an emotionally satisfying way to gain perspective on your experiences while sharing your unique voice. We’ve all experienced feelings and events in our lives that we are longing to write down. Giving in to that urge can give you an outlet for purging any frustration, anxiety, or long-dormant feelings. No one else has to read it. You may even want to write your story without reading it right away. Satisfying the need to tell your story is not predicated upon your writing ability. It does, however take effort to write down the truth in detail. Your memories, captured on paper as descriptive scenes, sights, sounds, and scents, may at first seem disconnected or incomplete. But rest assured that you possess the ability to shape your recollections into stories.
Everyone wants to be heard. Reading your story to others can meet that need. Writing your story can also help you understand your life experiences. And when you finish writing, you may be surprised at what you have accomplished. Your story can encompass as much or as little of your life as you prefer. You may surprise yourself with new insights, or you may find yourself exploring your roots, your identity, and your future through your words. Allow your writing to guide you and write as truthfully as possible. Don’t worry about what others will think of your personal journey, your style of writing, or your words.
Research has shown that writing a personal narrative filled with feelings and perceptions can create long-term health benefits. As you write, remember to have compassion for yourself, particularly when writing about traumatic events. If you are a young person, you can add to your life story as you grow older. Your writing may help family members know you better, or they may understand themselves more through reading about your experiences. More importantly, you are expressing yourself in a permanent way, giving a gift to yourself, and letting your voice be heard.
Birds fly in a V
As they swoop, drift, and glide, inscribing magnificent patterns across the sky, birds are serene displays of grace and beauty. Long a source of inspiration, birds can be messengers from the spirit realm, or a symbol of the human soul, as they cast off their earthly mooring and soar heavenward. An upturned wing, a graceful flutter, all so effortless and free… More magnificent still is the inspiring sight of birds migrating, progressing steadily across the horizon in a solid V formation that is a singular pattern too unique to be mere chance.
Pushing steadily forward, this aerodynamic V reduces air resistance for the whole flock. With wings moving in harmony, the feathered group continues its course across the sky, covering more ground together in community than as individuals. When the bird at the front gets tired, she will move to the rear of the formation where the wind drag is lowest, and a more rested bird can take her place.
By learning from the example of our winged guides, all of us can feel empowered to take on daring challenges as we chart adventurous courses. Feel the strength of others moving alongside you, as their presence lends power to your wings during this journey across the sky of life. When buffeted by unexpected gusts, we can choose to find refuge in the loving shelter of friends and family. We may even marvel as an otherwise difficult day passes by like a swift wind, as a kindred spirit charts a way for us through the clouds and rain ahead. If your wings begin to ache on your journey, look around for somebody else to fly at the front for a while. All of us move faster when we move together. Let your ego drop earthwards as we all soar ever higher.
You Have All the Answers
Many of us seek the answers to life’s questions by looking outside of ourselves and trying to glean advice from the people around us. But as each of us is unique, with our own personal histories, our own sense of right and wrong, and our own way of experiencing the world that defines our realities, looking to others for our answers is only partially helpful. The answers to our personal questions can be most often found by looking within. When you realize that you always have access to the part of you that always knows what you need and is meant to act as your inner compass, you can stop searching outside of yourself. If you can learn to hear, trust, and embrace the wisdom that lives within you, you will be able to confidently navigate your life.
Trusting your inner wisdom may be awkward at first, particularly if you grew up around people who taught you to look to others for answers. We each have exclusive access to our inner knowing. All we have to do is remember how to listen. Remember to be patient as you relearn how to hear, receive, and follow your own guidance. If you are unsure about whether following your inner wisdom will prove reliable, you may want to think of a time when you did trust your own knowing and everything worked out. Recall how the answers came to you, how they felt in your body as you considered them, and what happened when you acted upon this guidance. Now, recall a time when you didn’t trust yourself and the results didn’t work out as you had hoped. Trusting your own guidance can help you avoid going against what you instinctively know is right for you.
When you second guess yourself and go against what you know to be your truth, you can easily go off course because you are no longer following your inner compass. By looking inside yourself for the answers to your life’s questions, you are consulting your best guide. Only you can know the how’s and why’s of your life. The answers that you seek can be found when you start answering your own questions.
Life Lessons Through Reincarnation
You meet someone for the first time and feel as if you know them already. You’re in a town that you’ve never been to before, yet you recognize streets and buildings. You start playing a new sport and amaze everyone, including yourself, at your natural abilities and intuitive knowing of the rules. We often describe such experiences as déjà vu: the experience or feeling that a new situation has happened to us before. Then again, the possibility does exist that we have actually lived these experiences in the past or, rather, in another lifetime.
Many spiritual practices believe that reincarnation is real: Our souls return to this earth over a series of lifetimes to evolve, learn, grow, transform, and become more spiritually attuned through the course of each life. When we reincarnate, it is believed that we tend to cycle through our different lives with many of the same people. Often these traveling “soul” companions are the ones we enter into relationships with; we work through our unresolved issues together so that we may heal. When we struggle or keep encountering blocks that keep us from reaching our goals, there may be a specific lesson that we are supposed to learn in this lifetime. Being naturally blessed with a musical talent or another gift can be a special ability that you worked hard to develop in a past life. You may even have lived before as another gender or as part of a different social or economic class. Each lifetime brings with it specific lessons that are necessary for our spiritual evolution.
Past life recall can give us valuable insights into our past, present, and future lives. The knowledge of how we lived before can help us overcome present obstacles, understand phobias, and resolve relationship issues. There are workshops you can take to learn about past lives, and past life regression therapists can guide you on your journey backward in time. You can learn to visit your past lives through your dreams, meditation, and trance work. It is even possible to see full scenes of a former lifetime flash before you in your mind’s eye as if you were watching a movie. While looking back at your past lives can be exciting and enlightening, it is important to remember that the answers you are seeking to this life can only truly be found by living this one. Look to your past to see where you’ve been, but remember that the life that matters most is the one that you are living now.
Being Aware is the First Step
Life is a journey comprised of many steps on our personal path that takes us down a winding road of constant evolution. And each day, we are provided with a myriad of opportunities that can allow us to transform into our next best selves. One moment we are presented with an opportunity to react differently when yet another someone in our life rubs us the wrong way; on another day we may find ourselves wanting to walk away from a particular circumstance but are not sure if we can. Eventually, we may find ourselves stuck in a rut that we can never seem to get out of. We may even make the same choices over and over again because we don’t know how to choose otherwise. Rather than moving us forward, our personal paths may take us in a seemingly never-ending circle where our actions and choices lead us nowhere but to where we’ve already been. It is during these moments that awareness can be the first step to change.
Awareness is when we are able to realize what we are doing. We observe ourselves, noticing our reactions, actions, and choices as if we were a detached viewer. Awareness is the first step to change because we can’t make a change unless we are aware that one needs to be made in the first place. We can then begin understanding why we are doing what we are doing. Afterward, it becomes difficult not to change because we are no longer asleep to the truth behind our behaviors. We also begin to realize that, just as much as we are the root source behind the causes for our behaviors, we are also the originator for any changes that we want to happen.
There is a freedom that comes with awareness. Rather than thinking that we are stuck in a repetitive cycle where there is no escape, we begin to see that we very much play a hand in creating our lives. Whether we are aware of them or not, our behaviors and choices are always ours to make. Our past and our present no longer have to dictate our future when we choose to be aware. We are then free to move beyond our old limits, make new choices, and take new actions. With awareness, our paths can’t help but wind us forward in our lives while paving the way for new experiences and new ways of being. It is through awareness that we can continue to consciously evolve.
“To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.”
When God takes someting from your grasp, He’s not punishing you, but merely opening your hands to receive something better.
Concentrate on this sentence: “The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you.”
Hidden Treasures in the Air
Whether listening to the low muted murmur of a confidential whisper or the proud declarative boom coming from behind a mic on the podium, there are few sounds more evocative than the human voice. Each human being’s voice has a unique tone that is all its own. Carrying their own signature traits and idiosyncrasies, no two voices are alike.
Yet so often, we neglect to hear these resonances under which our spoken words are floated over. A lover’s voice vibrating with tenderness can feel like a warm caress touching the body; words spoken over an angry voice can seem like bullets hitting one’s auric field; and a voice tinged with laughter can’t help but fill us with good feelings. And then there are the voices of other people we encounter. The radio announcer’s soothing baritone that accompanies us during a long ride, the cheerful chatter of children playing on the street, and the dulcet hum of a yogi in mid-mantra are just a few of the voices we may be blessed to hear on any given day. Taken together, they’re like a wondrous symphony of mellifluous notes.
Every time we use our voices, we send our energetic imprint out into the universe and to the people around us. And, like the words that we use when we speak to people, our voices can communicate what we are feeling, what we desire, and what we really mean. There is no hiding our truth that can be felt through the sound of our voices. Timidity, desire, pain, and love can all be expressed and felt through the human voice. Our voices also have the power to heal, to hurt, to love, and to transform others. When we are aware of the impact our voices can have, we can consciously choose what we are expressing. Remember that what you communicate when you speak goes beyond words. Take responsibility for the power your voice has to impact the space and the people around you, and let your voice be a sound that creates harmony and compassion in the universe.
Cutting Cords
In every relationship, people are constantly exchanging energy that can become a chord connecting two people. This energetic cord forms just below the breastbone and can remain long after a relationship has ended. This unbroken cord may leave an open channel between you and another person, through which emotions and energy can continue to flow. If you are unaware that the chord exists, it is easy to feel the other person’s emotions and mistakenly think that they are yours. Besides the fact that this can limit the amount of closure you can experience in a relationship, letting this cord remain intact can leave you with a continued sense of sadness while creating feelings of lethargy as your own energy is sapped from you. Cutting the cord can help you separate yourself from old baggage, unnecessary attachments, and release you from connections that are no longer serving you.
Finding and cutting unwanted cords is a simple, gentle process that is best done alone and when you are relaxed. It is important that you are strong in your intention to release the chord between you and someone else. To begin, breathe deeply and perform a simple centering meditation. When you are ready, visualize or sense the chords that are connecting you to other people. Run your fingers through the cords to separate them until you find the cord you wish to sever. There is no need to worry, because the chord you need to sever will feel just right. When you have found it, determine where the cut should be made and then visualize the cord being cleanly cut. If you need assistance, Archangel Michael can be called upon to help you with his sword. Afterwards, if you feel that cutting the chord has left spaces in your energy field, then visualize those spaces being filled with healing sunlight.
There may be times where cutting a cord can help free a relative or loved one to reach new stages of growth. You’re not severing a relationship, but you are severing the chords that are no longer serving you both. At other times, a cord may simply refuse to be cut because it is still serving a higher purpose. It is also important to remember that cutting a cord with someone is not a replacement for doing your emotional work with people. It can, however, be an enactment of that work upon its completion. In any case, cutting a relationship cord should always be viewed as a positive and nurturing act. By cutting the cords that no longer need to be there, you are setting yourself and others free from the ties that bind.
By Richard Wolf and Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY
A look at the claims made by Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama at the third and final presidential debate Wednesday:
Tax cuts
The claim: Obama said his tax plan offers three times the tax relief as McCain’s plan does for the middle class.
The facts: The non-partisan Tax Policy Center shows that is the case for the first year of Obama’s plan, but not over the long haul, and only for a narrow slice of the “middle class” — those making between $37,595 and $66,354. The group says Obama’s plan would save those families $1,042 in the first year, compared to McCain’s $319. In later years, the difference is not nearly as great. In 2012, the last year of the next president’s term, the difference is smaller: a $2,197 tax cut under Obama’s plan compared with $1,441 under McCain’s. And for people earning more but who still consider themselves middle class — those earning up to $112,000 — Obama’s plan would cut their tax bill by $1,264 in 2009, McCain’s plan by $994.
Bill Ayers
The claim: McCain criticized Obama’s association with former Chicago radical Bill Ayers, whom McCain called “a guy who in 2001 said he wished he would have bombed more.”
The facts: Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical group that engaged in domestic bombings to protest the Vietnam War. He was in hiding for years after three Weathermen died in 1970 when bombs they were making exploded. Federal charges against him for crossing state lines to incite riots and conspiracy were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.
In a New York Times story published by coincidence on Sept. 11, 2001, about his memoirs, Fugitive Days, he said, “I don’t regret setting bombs … I feel we didn’t do enough.”
These days, Ayers is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has drawn kind words from the city’s mayor.
Ayers and Obama have moved in some of the same circles. Ayers was a founder of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a school-reform group. Obama chaired its board from 1995 to 1999. In 1995, Ayers hosted a brunch for Obama, who was running for the Illinois Senate. In 1997, they were on a juvenile justice panel sponsored by the University of Chicago. Ayers gave $200 to Obama’s 2001 state Senate campaign, and the two were on a 2002 panel on intellectualism that was co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.
Spending
The claim: Obama said he has proposed “a net spending cut,” adding “every dollar that I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut so that it matches.”
The facts: The non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Obama’s spending and savings policies would emerge in 2013 with $144 billion in net savings. However, that’s dependent on a phased withdrawal from Iraq over 16 months, leaving only 30,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2010. It also relies on several less-than-specific spending cuts and changes. And Obama’s overall economic policies still would lose money, because his tax cuts would cost $360 billion and his health care plan would cost $65 billion over that period, the group says.
Voter-registration fraud
The claim: McCain said the Obama campaign has contributed to an organization that is perpetrating “one of the greatest frauds” in American campaign history.
The facts: The organization — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN — says it has registered 1.3 million people this year. Obama’s campaign paid an ACORN affiliate, Citizens Services Inc., $832,000 this year for get-out-the-vote efforts in the Democratic primaries, according to the non-partisan CQ MoneyLine, which tracks campaign spending. Republicans have repeatedly accused the group of submitting fraudulent registrations; Obama said it had hired some people who “just filled out a bunch of names.” What’s not clear is whether any of the fraudulent registrations can lead to fraudulent votes.
Negative advertising
The claim: Obama said McCain’s television advertisements have been “100% negative.” McCain said that wasn’t true.
The facts: Obama’s claim apparently was based on an analysis released Oct. 8 by the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin. The report said, “During the week of Sept. 28-Oct. 4, nearly 100% of the McCain campaign’s advertisements were negative. During the same period, 34% of the Obama campaign’s ads were negative.” But the report also said that overall 73% of McCain’s ads and 61% of Obama’s have been negative. The study used information obtained from TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, which analyzes data on the airing of every presidential ad in the top 186 TV markets in the country.
The McCain campaign last night released its own tally of TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group data based on total ad spending, saying that the Obama campaign had spent $42 million on negative ads to McCain’s $27 million, and that Obama had run 81,638 negative ads to McCain’s 59,835.
Iraq
The claim: McCain said Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden had proposed dividing Iraq into three countries. He called it a “cockamamie idea.”
The facts: In 2006, Biden, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed partitioning Iraq into three regions — Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni — with a central government in Baghdad. He said it would “maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group … room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests.” He did not propose that it become three separate countries.
Supreme Court
The claim: McCain said that Obama voted against Associate Justice Stephen Breyer and Chief Justice John Roberts.
The facts: Obama voted against Roberts, but he was not in the Senate when Breyer was approved by the Senate in 1994. Obama became a senator in 2005.
McCain’s health care plan
The claim: In discussing his $5,000-per-family tax credit for health care, McCain said the average cost of a health care plan is $5,800.
The facts: The average cost of a family plan purchased by employers this year hit a new high, $12,106, according to an annual survey of nearly 2,000 employers by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, a research group based in Menlo Park, Calif. Individual coverage premiums averaged $4,479.
Obama’s health care plan
The claim: McCain said that under Obama’s health care plan, a small business could be fined for not offering coverage to its employees.
The facts: The key to this charge is what defines a “small” business, and the Obama campaign has not said. Obama has said he would exempt small businesses from having to contribute to their employees’ health coverage or pay into a national fund. He has not, however, said what size company he has in mind for the exemption. In August, Obama adviser Jason Furman said companies with 10 or fewer employees would likely be exempted, but he did not limit it to that size.
Obama did not directly address the charge from McCain that parents would be fined for not insuring their children. Obama has not said how he would enforce his requirement that parents get coverage for their children.
Abortion
The claim: McCain said: “Sen. Obama, as a member of the Illinois state Senate, voted in the Judiciary Committee against a law that would provide immediate medical attention to a child born of a failed abortion. He voted against that.” Obama said he opposed the bill as a threat to abortion rights, knowing that state law already required doctors to care for babies born alive.
The facts: FactCheck.org, a non-partisan project of the University of Pennsylvania, found that Obama opposed Illinois legislation in 2001, 2002 and 2003 that would have defined any aborted fetus that showed signs of life as a “born alive infant” entitled to legal protection, even if doctors believed it could not survive. Obama opposed the 2001 and 2002 “born alive” bills as backdoor attacks on a woman’s legal right to abortion, but he said he would have been “fully in support” of a similar federal bill that President Bush had signed in 2002, because it contained protections for Roe v. Wade, FactCheck.org found.
FactCheck also found that Illinois law already required physicians to protect the life of a fetus when there is “a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb, with or without artificial support.”
Alaska budget
The claim: McCain said his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, “cut the size of government.”
The facts: Palin has not cut the size of government. State spending under Palin has grown dramatically, fueled by an explosion of revenues thanks to Palin’s multibillion-dollar tax increase on the oil and gas companies that fund most of the budget.
In 2007, Palin vetoed about $231 million in projects sought by legislators in a proposed $1.8 billion capital budget. Even after her cuts, the total capital budget was about $1.54 billion — “a lot more than the level of state spending she outlined when she took office in December,” the Anchorage Daily News reported. The operating budget she signed in 2007 grew to $6.6 billion from $6.2 billion the year before. This year, Palin signed an operating budget that had grown to $11 billion, according to the Daily News. She vetoed about 10% of the proposed capital budget, but that budget nonetheless grew to $2.7 billion. While Palin was mayor of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002, the budget grew 55%, according to PolitiFact.com, a joint project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly.
Oil drilling
The claim: Obama said a key way to expand domestic oil production would be by “telling the oil companies the 68 million acres that they currently have leased that they’re not drilling, use them or lose them.”
The facts: Offshore drilling leases run for five to 10 years because that’s how long the government expects it to take to find and begin producing oil or natural gas. Leases are extended if oil companies are making progress and not renewed if the area is totally dormant. So not nearly all of the 68 million acres Obama refers to can be drilled immediately. Willard Green, past president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, has said Democrats “are suggesting that there’s a great big lake of oil under that acreage, and all the companies have to do is dig a hole down and produce it.”
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Neal Hefti, a Big Band trumpeter, arranger and composer of themes for the movie “The Odd Couple” and the “Batman” television series, has died. He was 85.
Hefti died Saturday at his home, said his son Paul Hefti.
Neal Hefti’s notable achievements include the iconic theme of the 1960s superhero series “Batman,” which became a Top 40 hit and won a Grammy Award in 1966 for best instrumental theme. He also composed music for “The Odd Couple,” “Barefoot in the Park” and “Harlow,” which featured his classic track “Girl Talk.”
His son said the “Batman” theme was Neal Hefti’s most difficult piece, taking him at least one month to compose the driving bass and explosive trumpet bursts.
“He threw away more music paper on this thing than any other song,” Paul Hefti told The Associated Press. “It got down to the blues with a funny guitar hook, the lowest common denominator and a fun groove.”
Neal Hefti was born October 29, 1922, in Hastings, Nebraska, and played trumpet with local bands as a teenager to earn money.
As an adult, he worked with and arranged music for the greats of the Big Band era, including Count Basie, Woody Herman, Charlie Spivak and Harry James.
“He was one of the really great arrangers and composers of all time,” radio and television personality Gary Owens, a longtime friend, told the Los Angeles Times.
Your Special Gift
Each of us is born with a specific genius that was bestowed upon us so we can do our part to make this world a better place. All of us have a role that we’re uniquely suited for. Imagine our planet without trees, oceans, or clouds. In this same way, when one of us doesn’t develop or use our special gift, a cosmic void takes place.
This unique talent or ability may be hidden from your own sight like a golden treasure buried under shifting sands. Often, we spend so much time dazzled by the talents of others that we can overlook our own gifts. It may even be that our unique ability is something we view negatively. Perhaps we find it difficult concentrating on any one subject for long; meanwhile, others are thrilled by our ability to weave various ideas throughout our conversations. Or, you might think of yourself as “frivolous,” when it’s likely your charming approach to life casts a light of inspiration that others can’t help but follow. It’s important for all of us to try to find our special gift and discover how we can best express it. Ask others to name what they think is your most overlooked talent or character trait. Their answers may change your life.
Explore these riches that are yours to express, and you may find yourself helping others discover and develop their own blessings. Acknowledge and appreciate the gifts you see in those around you. Tell your neighbor that loves to garden how much her green thumb enlivens the whole block. Thank your coworker for always greeting your days together with a smile. Tell your close friends that their ability to listen makes your world a better place. Our unique gifts are like golden rays of expression that can encircle the world with light.
I am so dreadfully sick and tired of so-called Christians making claims that Obama is NOT a Christian.
How can anyone, with the exception of Senator Obama, know whether or not he is truly Christian? How can anyone be so absolutely sure?
On the Willkie’s Pride site to which I belong – a Yahoo group from my hometown of Elwood, Indiana – this is the constant chatter from all these supposed Christians who write on the site. This was one from today:
Barack Obama insists that he is a “devout Christian” of “deep faith,” and Big Media echoes his claim without question. Even some critics hesitate to challenge the validity of that claim.
The ruse that he is a Christian must be exposed for what it really is: Obama’s cloak to conceal that he is a Marxist from a Muslim background, for which he holds widespread support in the Islamic world. This series of three articles will analyze his exploitation of Christian rhetoric to serve the subterfuge.
Now, who in the hell is this woman – one who claims devout Christianity herself – to say whether or not Obama is a Christian, or not?
Is this a judgement?
If you asked this woman, I am sure it would not be a judgement. How do we draw the line between what is judgement and what is fact or what is speculation?
I have always found myself disgusted by Christians who raise themselves to superior positions, but it has only become worse with this current election. They do not realize they are doing Christianity such a hideous diservice.
As my son said the other day, “Why would I want to be called Christian? I consider my self to be a good person who does not try to pass judgement and am kind and accepting of others no matter who they are.”
Out of the mouths of babes!
Thank you for smoking
This stamp honoring Bette Davis was issued by the U. S. Postal Service on Sept. 18. The portrait by Michael Deas was inspired by a still photo from “All About Eve.” Notice anything missing? Before you even read this far, you were thinking, Where’s her cigarette? Yes reader, the cigarette in the original photo has been eliminated. We are all familiar, I am sure, with the countless children and teenagers who have been lured into the clutches of tobacco by stamp collecting, which seems so innocent, yet can have such tragic outcomes. But isn’t this is carrying the anti-smoking campaign one step over the line?
Depriving Bette Davis of her cigarette reminds me of Soviet revisionism, when disgraced party officials disappeared from official photographs. Might as well strip away the toupees of Fred Astaire and Jimmy Stewart. I was first alerted to this travesty by a reader, Wendell Openshaw of San Diego, who wrote me: “Do you share my revulsion for this attempt to revise history and distort a great screen persona for political purposes? It is political correctness and revisionist history run amok. Next it will be John Wayne holding a bouquet instead of a Winchester!”
The great Chicago photographer Victor Skrebneski took one of the most famous portraits of Davis. I showed him the stamp. His response: “I have been with Bette for years and I have never seen her without a cigarette! No cigarette! Who is this impostor?” I imagine Davis might not object to a portrait of her without a cigarette, because she posed for many. But to have a cigarette removed from one of her most famous poses! What she did to Joan Crawford in “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane” wouldn’t even compare to what ever would have happened to the artist Michael Deas.
Look, I hate smoking. It took my parents from me, my father with lung cancer, my mother with emphysema. They both liked Luckies. When my dad’s cancer was diagnosed, they played it safe and switched to Winstons. When my mother was breathing oxygen through a tube, she’d take out the tube, turn off the oxygen, and light up. I avoid smokers. It isn’t allowed in our house. When I see someone smoking, it feels like I’m watching them bleed themselves, one drip at a time.
So we’ve got that established. On the other hand, I have never objected to smoking in the movies, especially when it is necessary to establish a period or a personality. I simply ask the movies to observe that, these days, you rarely see someone smoking except standing outside a building, on a battleground, in a cops’ hangout, in a crack house, in rehab, places like that. In an ordinary context, giving a character a cigarette is saying either (1) this is a moron, or (2) this person will die. Smoking no longer even works to add a touch of color to an action hero. Does Jason Bourne smoke? I haven’t seen James Bond with a cigarette since Pierce Brosnan took over the role in 1995. Daniel Craig smoked cigars in “Casino Royale” (2006), but the producers cut them out. (Craig: “I can blow someone’s head off but I can’t light a good cigar.”)
Two of the most wonderful props in film noir were cigarettes and hats. They added interest to a close up or a two-shot. “Casablanca” without cigarettes would seem to be standing around looking for something to do. These days men don’t smoke and don’t wear hats. When they lower their heads, their eyes aren’t shaded. Cinematographers have lost invaluable compositional tools. The coil of smoke rising around the face of a beautiful women added allure and mystery. Remember Marlene Dietrich. She was smoking when she said, “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.”
Everybody smoked cigarettes in the movies. Even Katharine Hepburn. Even Loretta Young. Ronald Reagan posed for Chesterfield ads. On the radio, it wasn’t “The Jack Benny Program,” it was “The Lucky Strike Program with Jack Benny,” although in that PBS documentary you only see him smoking cigars. Robert Mitchum smoked so much, he told me, that when the camera was rolling on “Out of the Past,” Kirk Douglas offered him a pack and asked, “Cigarette?” And Mitchum, realizing he’d carried a cigarette into the scene, held up his fingers and replied, “Smoking.” His improvisation saved the take. They kept it in the movie.
If virtually all actresses smoked, Bette Davis smoked more than virtually all actresses. When she appeared on the Tonight Show the night after she co-hosted the Oscars, she walked onstage, shook Johnny’s hand, sat down, pulled out her Vantages, and lit up. Tumultuous applause. I would guess it is impossible for an impressionist to do Bette Davis without using a cigarette. Remember Paul Henried lighting two cigarettes and giving her one? Read this quote from the first paragraph of Wiki’s entry on Davis: Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized. Ubiquitous.
I think some smoking is okay even in contemporary stories, if only to acknowledge it exists. Movies can’t rewrite reality. The MPAA cautiously mentions smoking in their descriptions of movie ratings (even if it’s Alice’s caterpillar and his hookah). If, by the time you’re old enough to sit through a movie, you haven’t heard that smoking is bad for you, you don’t need a movie rating, you need a foster home.
And yet, and yet…I could not do without that moment in “Sweet Smell of Success,” where Burt Lancaster plays the big-shot Broadway columnist T. J. Hunsaker, and Tony Curtis is the desperate press agent Sidney Falco, trying to get an item into T.J.’s column. Hunsaker holds a cigarette in his fingers and, without looking, says “Match me, Sidney.” A relationship defined in two words. That still leaves “Cigarette me.” I predict it will turn up as dialog within 12 months.
Blues legend Robert Johnson’s cigarette vanished on a 1994 stamp.
Editor’s note: Campbell Brown anchors CNN’s “Campbell Brown: Election Center” at 8 p.m. ET Mondays through Fridays. She delivered this commentary during the “Cutting through the Bull” segment of Monday night’s broadcast.
NEW YORK (CNN) — You may find it hard to believe that this remains an issue in this campaign, but it does.
Campbell Brown says it’s on the record that Sen. Barack Obama is a Christian, but why should that matter?
The candidates, both candidates, are still getting questions about Barack Obama’s ethnicity and religion. If you are even semi-informed, then by now you already know that of course, Barack Obama is an American.Of course, Barack Obama is a Christian. Yet just a few days ago, there was a woman at a rally for John McCain incorrectly calling Obama an Arab:
Woman at rally: I don’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s an Arab.
Sen. John McCain: No ma’am, no ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. That’s what this campaign is all about. He’s not, thank you.
‘Now, I commend Sen. McCain for correcting that woman, for setting the record straight. But I do have one question — so what if he was?
So what if Obama was Arab or Muslim? So what if John McCain was Arab or Muslim? Would it matter?
When did that become a disqualifier for higher office in our country? When did Arab and Muslim become dirty words? The equivalent of dishonorable or radical?
Whenever this gets raised, the implication is that there is something wrong with being an Arab-American or a Muslim. And the media is complicit here, too.
We’ve all been too quick to accept the idea that calling someone Muslim is a slur.
I feel like I am stating the obvious here, but apparently it needs to be said: There is a difference between radical Muslims who support jihad against America and Muslims who want to practice their religion freely and have normal lives like anyone else.
There are more than 1.2 million Arab-Americans and about 7 million Muslim-Americans, former Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, successful business people, normal average Americans from all walks of life.
These are the people being maligned here, and we can only imagine how this conversation plays in the Muslim world. We can’t tolerate this ignorance — not in the media, not on the campaign trail.
Of course, he’s not an Arab. Of course, he’s not a Muslim. But honestly, it shouldn’t matter.
The Sky Is Blue Even on a Cloudy Day
When we refer to a “beautiful day,” we are often describing a day that is sunny, clear, and without a cloud in sight to mar a sky that is a brilliantly perfect blue. We find ourselves bouncing along, light in spirit, free from worries, and enjoying the moment. That is, until the clouds begin to form. The sky may turn grey, and a fog may roll in. Puffs of white take on whimsical, darker shades, and our beautiful day disappears along with the sunshine… or so it seems.
A clear blue sky often inspires in us good cheer, bringing on a lighter, more carefree day. We may find ourselves spending time outdoors, breathing in the fresh air, and basking in the warmth of the sun. Yet should clouds appear to wash the sky with shadows, we may let this change of weather decrease our energy and enthusiasm, pulling us into our own cloudy funk. Darker days are just as much a part of life as are the days graced with sunshine. They show us a different perspective of our world, while helping us appreciate the moments of illumination that inevitably follow. A rainy day with clouds helps to clear the air, washing away stagnation. Still, it’s hard not to feel gloomy or think that the day has been ruined when there are clouds hanging over us. Yet if you can remember that these shades of grey won’t last forever, and that hidden behind the clouds is the blue sky, you will find that the beauty of your day is merely playing a game of peek-a-boo with you. Like the mis! haps and interruptions that occasionally block the brilliance that is our own lives from shining through, clouds eventually clear away so we can open up to a brighter horizon.
The next time you wake up to a cloudy day, remember that these shades of grey in life are there just for the moment. And that no matter how hard the rain falls or how chilly the fog is, the clouds will go away, the sun will break through, and you will be able to see the sky that has always and forever been a beautiful and brilliant blue.
Falling in Love with Yourself
Many people, in seeking out love, tend to look outward rather than inward. Yet falling in love with yourself can be just as wonderful an experience as falling in love with someone else. While the idea of falling in love with ourselves may be perceived as conceited or selfish, choosing to fall in love with who you are is a powerful act of self-love.
When you fall in love with yourself, you can’t help but experience a wonderful sense of discovery. You begin to look at yourself again through fresh eyes, becoming more attentive to the little details that make you so unique. Once you discover how much there is about you to fall in love with, you can’t help but want to treat yourself as lovingly and respectfully as you would treat anyone who is special to you. You start to give to yourself more because you become more attentive to your own needs and desires.
Choosing to fall in love with yourself is a very personal process that takes time. There is no magic wand you can wave to make this just happen. But there is the magic of your intention and the power of your actions, whether you are taking the time to do the activities you like, speaking to and treating yourself with respect, taking inventory of all your wonderful qualities and accomplishments, or nurturing yourself with plenty of rest and self-care. When you fall in love with yourself, you begin to see yourself more positively, appreciate your unique outlook on life, and treat yourself in a more nurturing way. In loving yourself, you are acknowledging that you are special and deserving of love. Best of all, you are giving yourself one of the greatest gifts you have to give another. You are giving yourself the gift of your love.
This morning I woke rather late and rolled over to scan mail on my bedroom’s laptop computer. There was the message from Mother than another member, designated by Tom Brokaw as The Greatest Generation, had passed on. For myself, it was another member of my “great” generation – siblings or their spouses of my grandparents’ generation.
Normally I wait until after 9:00am to do any work outside that provides loud noise; however, this morning, characteristic of my need to work when I hear of a death in the family, I lit a candle, popped in my pipe and was blowing leaves by 8:15am.
One of my earliest recollections of Uncle Dewey was of the man behind the counter at the post office who knew my name. Now, the ladies behind counters at Leesons, Penneys, Johnsons and Rhodes knew my name – even Mr. Zirbee knew my name – but this man had a uniform and looked official, important.
One day Mother allowed me to take the mail in all by myself. I must have been around age five or six, and this was a huge responsibility. At that age, walking up big marble or stone stairs – such as the post office, library, or city building – was exciting for me. Once inside the echoing chamber, with the one wall filled with little bronze doors, I turned to my left and walked to the tall counters.
“Hello, Mr. Jolliff. And how may I help you today?”
The tall gentleman leaned on the counter looking down at me, smiling. Of course, this was my great-uncle, but at that age, he was someone really important who recognized me and made me feel important.
And through the years, each time I would see Uncle Dewey he never stopped making me feel important, for there was always a kind word, questions about my life, and always humor.
The past several years, I have enjoyed reading Uncle Dewey’s posts on Panther Den and Willkie’s Pride. His crisp memory of his youth in Monon, and his vast knowledge of family and Elwood history from the 1940’s to current day were always appreciated, and looked for.
To my cousins – Judy Smith-Hallett, Jan Smith-Kleyla, Dewey Smith and Kevin Smith and all their family – know you are in my thoughts and prayers.
Good bye, Uncle Dewey. Thank you for making a little boy feel so important that nearly forty years later the memory is still with him.
And give Aunt Evelyn and others a hug from me as you join them on this new and exciting camping trip.
By the Campfire
Author: Unknown
We sat around the campfire
On a chilly night
Telling spooky stories
In the pale moonlight
Then we added some more logs,
To make the fire bright,
And sang some favorite camp songs
Together with all our might.
And when the fire flickered
and embers began to form.
We snuggled in our sleeping bags
all cozy, tired, and warm.
Dewey Smith married my maternal grandfather’s sister.
My thoughts are included in RED…
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — At least 900 Christian families have fled Mosul in the past week, terrified by a series of killings and threats by Muslim extremists ordering them to convert to Islam or face possible death, officials said Saturday.
An official says Christians protests in Mosul last month ahead of elections may have led to the attacks. The attacks may have been prompted by Christian demonstrations ahead of provincial elections, which are to be held by the end of January, the deputy governor of Nineveh province said.
Deputy Gov. Khasro Goran said 13 Christians have been slain in the past two weeks in Mosul, about 260 miles (420 kilometers) north of Baghdad. Fleeing Christians have sought refuge in monasteries and churches and with family members in other towns, an Interior Ministry official said.
The attacks began after hundreds of Christians took to the streets in Mosul and surrounding villages and towns, seeking greater representation on provincial councils, whose members will be chosen in the local elections. But isn’t this a predominately Islamic country in which they are residing?
Duraid Mohammed Kashmoula, Nineveh’s governor, told The Associated Press that the exodus was “a major displacement.”
“Of course, al Qaeda elements are behind this campaign against Christians,” Kashmoula told AP. Does he have verification of this, or is he merely speculating?
A week ago, leaflets were distributed in several predominantly Christian neighborhoods, threatening families to “either convert to Islam or pay the jizyah or leave the city or face death,” said the Interior Ministry official.
Historically, jizyah is a tax paid by non-Muslims in exchange for protection. Well, if this is one of the rules, play by the rules. But our own country has not commited itself to making illegal aliens follow our own rules.
Goran said that a few days after the leaflets were passed out, gunmen set up checkpoints in parts of Mosul, stopping vehicles to inspect identification papers, searching for Christian names or other signs of religious affiliation. Many of the Christians killed were targeted in this way, he said. They were warned.
Bashir Azoz, 45, told AP he fled his Mosul home after gunmen warned a neighbor to leave or be killed.
“Where is the government and its security forces as these crimes take place every day?” asked Azoz, a carpenter who is staying with his wife and three children in a town about 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Mosul, according to AP.
The Rev. Bolis Jacob, of Mosul’s Mar Afram Church, told AP he couldn’t understand the attacks.
“We respect the Islamic religion and the Muslim clerics,” he said. “We don’t know under what religion’s pretexts these terrorists work.” So far in this article it has not been clearly defined who is targeting the Christians. How do they know they are terrorists?
Goran said police have set up security checkpoints in Christian neighborhoods.
In response to the violence, Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul Qader al-Obaidi visited Mosul on Saturday morning, conducting meetings with local authorities and military commanders.
His spokesman, Mohammed al-Askari, said that in addition to ordering more checkpoints in Christian neighborhoods, al-Obaidi ordered more troops deployed, additional security patrols and an increase in aerial surveillance of Christian areas.
Al-Obaidi also ordered more guards for Christian clerics, al-Askari said.
The other day, my son, Jose, and I were chatting and he asked, “How can we be over in Iraq killing people when the Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not kill?'”
Good question.
But Christianity seems to take exception to this commandment, and has done so all throughout its history. There has always been great chatter about Christian persecution, but a strong wall of defense quickly rises when Christians are accused of persecution – which they seem to do so with regularity. The mantra seems to be strong, “If you don’t think like us, believe as we do, we shall make your life miserable.”
On one of the hometown websites to which I subscribe, the Christian Republicans think nothing of persecuting the Democrats running for office, or even those who vote Democrat on the site. I am amazed at their two-faced postings, and their superior attitude.
Today, one of the spewings revolved around abortion. One poster quoted Psalm 139: 16 with: “Your eyes saw even the embryo of me and in your book all parts of it were down in writing, as regards the days when they were formed.”
I checked in the KING JAMES BIBLE and found: (starting with verse 15) “My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in they book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
The NEW AMERICAN BIBLE offers this translation: My very self you knew; my bones were not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned as in the depths of the earth. Your eyes foresaw my actions; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be.
I have looked through a number
When Jose and I stopped attending one church – not because of anything with the church, its pastor, or the people – it was because we were both struck with a strong sense of questioning, basically from condemnation of the church on any one who does not believe as they do. We did not experience such things at this church; our concerns questioned which was most important: 1) Do we develop a strong spiritual life, following the credo of love thy God, and love one another, or 2) do we subscribe to a church body that does not practice basic concepts of its own teachings?
The ironic item was that I remained in email contact with a number of folks from the church, but one member, who had adored Jose and myself, asked me to stop sending her email because we were no longer one of them.
One of them…
What does that mean?
Is Christianity a club or fraternity to which one must follow the individual church’s dictates or a truly spiritual body that follows God’s ideals?
Christ reportedly said, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”
In modern translations it reads, “Go forth and make disciples of all nations…”
Teach vs. Make.
To teach is to offer ideas. To make is to force.
There are several things to be noticed: (1) Go, implies an aggressive warfare. The Gospel army must move upon the nations. The Lord seeks universal empire, and sends forth his armies to conquer the world. Every church and every disciple must understand that they have marching orders. (2) Not only is every saint commanded to go, or to take steps to make the gospel go, but the object is stated. They are to make disciples, or pupils, and scholars of Christ; not great philosophers, but babes in Christ Jesus. (3) Who are to be made disciples is next indicated. Not the Jews only, but all nations. Christ came to be the Savior of the world. His is a universal religion. In the Great Commission he looks beyond Judea, and commands that the Gospel shall be offered to all nations. To teach implies Christ was instructing his own Disciples to share information.
On several of my hometown websites, the Christian Republicans spew all sorts of hatred towards Obama – not just political rhetoric, but absolutely mean things, and call him names – a terrorist, Hitler, etc.. However, when anyone dares to criticize President Bush, or bring up anything against Senator John McCain they burst with even more cruel things.
There was one lady who grew up in the hometown, and whenever she would post anything she was vehemently attacked. Eventually she left the group, but just the other day one lady named, Fran, who spouts her Christian values for all to read, went on this incredible attack against the lady who has been gone from the group for a month.
I truly struggle with these particular Christians who believe they are exempt. To me, these people are the true Hitlers of the world today. They proclaim God’s word and demand the world bow to their beliefs – and yet, there is a knife of cruelty hidden behind their cloak expressing love to all.
It is sad to see people from my hometown – people I use to respect, behaving in such a disgusting manner. The poor community has become an economic disaster through the years, and thus, the class and mentality has diminished greatly… and sadly, it shows in the posts of these individuals who were educators, politicians, and other highly respected career folk.
So, the killing…
The abortion issue is hot. Personally, I have no direct stand on the issue, but I guess I am pro-Choice as I do believe it is a woman’s right to choose – not a church’s decision, nor a politician’s decision.
Capital punishment is another hot topic button – especially when one on death row is up for execution. I never really had an opinion on this topic until I met a wonderful family at church who experienced a traumatic double murder in their family, conducted by their younger brother. In the end, they rose to the occasion as their parents had obviously raised them, forgiving and loving the younger brother who was executed.
But how is it the Christian Church can support the Fifth Commandment – thou shalt not kill – and support invading other nations?
Amazing that once the Ten Commandments were shared with the people of Israel, they continued going to war, killing. In Sunday School we celebrated young David slewing the giant, Goliath!
Why?
This violated the Fifth Commandment. That commandment specifically said, “Thou shalt not kill.” It did not offer an addendum of, “unless it is someone who you feel justified in killing.”
In Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq (1991), and the current invasion of Iraq – we were not attacked. Our imperialistic leaders decided we should go in an kill not only “enemy soldiers” but blameless citizens, as well.
In the book ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, there is the mantra offered by Deep Throat, “Follow the money.”
So, how do we teach our children that it is wrong to kill when we, a nation supposedly created upon Christian principles, continue to invade other countries, killing their people?
And the article in this post expresses concerns over Christians living in an Islamic nation we have invaded…
I cannot wrap my mind around this.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Birthdate: October 11th, 1884
White House portrait
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (IPA: /ˈɛlɪnɔr ˈroʊzəvɛlt/; October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and assumed a role as an advocate for civil rights. After her husband’s death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an internationally prominent author and speaker for the New Deal coalition. She worked to enhance the status of working women, although she opposed the Equal Rights Amendment because she believed it would adversely affect women.
In the 1940s, Roosevelt was one of the co-founders of Freedom House and supported the formation of the United Nations. Roosevelt founded the UN Association of the United States in 1943 to advance support for the formation of the UN. She was a delegate to the UN General Assembly from 1945 and 1952, a job for which she was appointed by President Harry S. Truman and confirmed by the United States Senate. During her time at the United Nations she chaired the committee that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Truman called her the “First Lady of the World” in tribute to her human rights achievements.
Active in politics for the rest of her life, Roosevelt chaired the John F. Kennedy administration’s ground-breaking committee which helped start second-wave feminism, the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. She was one of the most admired persons of the 20th century, according to Gallup’s List of Widely Admired People.
Early life
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884, at 56 West 37th Street in New York City, New York[citation needed]. Her parents were Elliott Roosevelt and Anna Hall Roosevelt. She was named Anna for her mother and for her aunt, Anna Cowles and Eleanor for her father, who was nicknamed “Ellie”. From the beginning, Roosevelt preferred to be called by her middle name, Eleanor. Two brothers, Elliott, Jr. (1889–1893) and Hall Roosevelt (1891–1941) were born later. She also had a half brother, Elliott Roosevelt Mann, the result of an extramarital relation between Elliot and Katy Mann, a young servant girl employed by Anna. Roosevelt was born into a world of immense wealth and privilege, as her family was part of New York high society called the “swells”.
When Roosevelt was eight, her mother died of diphtheria and she and her brothers were sent to live with her maternal grandmother, Mary Ludlow Hall (1843–1919) at Tivoli, New York and at a brownstone in New York City. Just before Roosevelt turned ten, she was orphaned when her father died of complications of alcoholism. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, author Joseph Lash describes her during this period of childhood as insecure and starved for affection, considering herself “ugly”. In the fall of 1899, with the encouragement of her paternal aunt Bamie Cowles, the family decided to send Roosevelt to Allenswood Academy, an English finishing school. The headmistress, Marie Souvestre, was a noted feminist educator who sought to cultivate independent thinking in the young women in her charge. Roosevelt learned to speak French fluently and gained self-confidence. Her first-cousin Corinne Robinson, whose first term at Allenswood overlapped with Roosevelt’s last, said that when she arrived at the school, Roosevelt was “everything”.
Marriage and family life
In 1902 at age 17, Eleanor Roosevelt returned to the United States, ending her formal education, and was later given a debutante party. Soon afterward, she met her father’s (Elliott Roosevelt‘s) fifth cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt, then a 20-year-old junior at Harvard University. Following a White House reception and dinner with her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt, on New Year’s Day, 1903, Franklin’s courtship of Eleanor began. In November, 1903, they became engaged, although the engagement was not announced for more than a year, until December 1, 1904, at the insistence of Franklin’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt were married on St. Patrick’s Day (March 17, 1905) at Eleanor’s great-aunt’s home in New York City. The marriage produced six children, five of whom survived infancy: Anna Eleanor, Jr., James, Franklin Delano, Jr. (who was born and died in 1909), Elliott, Franklin Delano, and John Aspinwall. Following a honeymoon in Europe, the newlyweds settled in New York City, in a house provided by Sara, as well as at the family’s estate overlooking the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York.
The family began spending summers at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, on the Maine–Canada border, where Franklin was stricken with high fever in August, 1921, which resulted in permanent paralysis of his legs. Although the disease was widely believed during his lifetime to be poliomyelitis, some retrospective analysts now favor the diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome (see Franklin D. Roosevelt’s paralytic illness). Franklin’s attending physician, Dr. William Keen, believed it was polio and commended Eleanor’s devotion to the stricken Franklin during that time of travail, “You have been a rare wife and have borne your heavy burden most bravely”, proclaiming her “one of my heroines”. A play and movie depicting that time, Sunrise at Campobello, were produced almost 40 years later.
Relationship with mother-in-law
Roosevelt had a contentious relationship with her domineering mother-in-law, Sara Delano Roosevelt. Long before Eleanor fell in love with her future husband and distant cousin, Franklin, she already had a relationship with Sara as a distant but highly engaging cousin, with whom she corresponded. Although they had a difficult relationship, Sara sincerely wanted to be a mother to Eleanor and did her best before and during the marriage to fill this role. Sara had her own reasons for attempting to prevent their marriage and historians continue to discuss them. Historians also have had widely diverging opinions on the pluses and minuses of this relationship.
Eleanor and her future mother-in-law Sara Delano Roosevelt in 1904
From Sara’s perspective, Eleanor was relatively young, inexperienced and lacked the support from her late mother, Anna Hall Roosevelt. Despite her forceful and domineering personality, Sara had much to teach her new daughter-in-law on what a young wife should know. Eleanor, while sometimes resenting Sara’s domineering nature, nevertheless highly valued her opinion in the early years of her marriage until she developed the experience and confidence a wife gains from the school of marital “hard knocks”. Historians continue to study the reasons Eleanor allowed Sara to dominate their lives, especially in the first years of the marriage. Eleanor’s income was more than half of that of her husband’s when they married in 1905 and could have lived still relatively luxuriously without Sara’s financial support.
From Sara’s perspective, she was bound and determined to ensure her son’s success in all areas of life including his marriage. Sara had doted on her son to the point of spoiling him, and now intended to help him make a success of his marriage with a woman that she evidently viewed as being totally unprepared for her new role as chatelaine of a great family. Sara would continue to give huge presents to her new grandchildren, but sometimes Eleanor had problems with the influence that came with “mother’s largesse.”
Tensions with some “Oyster Bay Roosevelts”
Although Roosevelt was always in the good graces of her uncle, Theodore Roosevelt, the paterfamilias of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts, as the Republican branch of the family was known, she often found herself at odds with his eldest daughter, Alice Roosevelt. Theodore felt Eleanor’s conduct to be far more responsible, socially acceptable and cooperative: in short, more “Rooseveltian” than that of the beautiful, highly photogenic but rebellious and self-absorbed Alice, to whom he would ask, “Why can’t you be more like ‘cousin Eleanor’?” These early experiences laid the foundation for life-long strain between the two high-profile cousins. Though the youthful Alice’s comraderly relationship with Franklin during the World War I years in Washington is still the object of curiosity among Rooseveltian scholars, both Eleanor’s and his relationship with Alice and other Oyster Bay Roosevelts would be aggravated by the widening political gulf between the Hyde Park and Oyster Bay families as Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s political career began to take off. Embittered as she was by the eclipse of her father’s career, characteristically caustic comments by “Cousin Alice”, such as her later description of Franklin as “two-thirds mush and one-third Eleanor” certainly did not help. When Franklin was inaugurated president in 1933, Alice was invited to attend along with her brothers, Kermit and Archie.
Franklin’s affair and Eleanor’s relationships
Despite its happy start and Eleanor’s intense desire to be a loving and loved wife, the Roosevelts’ marriage almost disintegrated over Franklin’s affair with Eleanor’s social secretary Lucy Mercer (later Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd). When Eleanor learned of the affair from Mercer’s letters to Franklin (found in his suitcases), which she discovered in September 1918, she was brought to despair and self-reproach. She told Franklin she would insist on a divorce if he did not immediately end the affair.
Eleanor and Fala, the Roosevelts’ dog during the White House years
So implacable was Sara’s opposition to divorce that she warned her son she would disinherit him. Corinne Robinson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Louis Howe, Franklin’s political advisor, were also influential in persuading Eleanor and Franklin to save the marriage for the sake of the five children and Franklin’s political career. The idea has been put forth that because Mercer was a Catholic she would never have married a divorced Protestant. Her relatives maintain that she was perfectly willing to marry Franklin. Her father’s family was Episcopal and her mother, Minnie, had been divorced. While Franklin agreed never to see Mercer again, she began visiting him in the 1930s and was with Franklin at Warm Springs, Georgia when he died in 1945.
Although the marriage survived, Roosevelt emerged a different woman, coming to the realization that she could achieve fulfillment only through her own influence and life, not someone else’s. Ironically, her husband’s paralysis was soon to place his political future at least partially in her hands, requiring her to play an active role in NY State Democratic politics in order to keep his name alive in party circles. In fact it was a move she had been gradually making, having long held considerable if repressed interest in politics and social issues. During the 1920s as FDR dealt with his illness, with the coaching of his trusted political advisor, Louis McHenry Howe, she quickly became a prominent face among Democratic women and a force in NY State politics (see Public Life in the years before the White House). Although she and her husband were often separated by their activities during these year, their relationship, though at times strained, was close, despite Eleanor’s insistence on severing their physical relationship after discovery of Franklin’s affair. He was to often pay tribute to her care for him during the worst days of his illness, her help to him in his work, encouraging his staff and others to view them as a team, and to her ability to connect with various groups of people. He respected her intelligence and honest and sincere desire to improve the world even if he sometimes found her too insistent and lacking in political suppleness. “Your back has no bend.” he once told her. In 1926 he took great pleasure in presenting her with a cottage on the Hyde Park estate (the Stone Cottage) where she and her closest female friends at the time [Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman] could escape from the main house when her difficulties with Sara became too challenging. In 1928, she was urged by Al Smith, party politican, bold social reformer, NY State Governor, and the Democratic (and first Catholic) candiate for President to press her husband, then in Warm Springs, GA, undergoing what he hoped would be the treatment that would restore his legs, to run for New York Governor in Smith’s place in order to hold the state in the Democratic fold. After repeated urgings she finally placed a call to Warm Springs and was greeted by a cheery Franklin who gleefully told her he’d been successfully dodging all of Smith’s frantic calls. She handed the phone to Smith and the rest, as they say, is history. Though pleased for Franklin she was increasing despondent as he resumed his career, fearing she would be forced to take on an increasingly ceremonial role as governor’s and later, President’s, wife. During the 1932 campaign, Louis Howe was horrified to read a despairing note about her feelings of uselessness she had sent to a friend and tore it up, warning the friend to say nothing. A cautious approach by her to Franklin after the election, to take on some of his mail was gently rebuffed by him to her distress, he suggesting it would offend [Missy Le Hand]. However he and Howe had larger plans for her. The skills she had developed as a political trooper for the women’s branch of the NY State Democratic party as well as during her time as NY State’s First Lady were to stand her in good stead. Howe made immediate use of her in dealing with the problem of the Bonus Army, unemployed veterans of World War I who had marched and encamped in Washington, DC, demanding payment of the bonuses promised to them for their wartime service. President Herbert Hoover had viewed them as a dangerous, Communist-inspired group and sent the Army under Commander-in-Chief Douglas MacArthur to drive the group out with tear gas. Now Roosevelt and Howe took a radically different approach sending food, friendly greetings, and Eleanor… “Hoover sent the Army, Roosevelt sent his wife.” becoming one of the classic lines of the New Deal era.
In 1933 Mrs. Roosevelt had a very close relationship with Lorena Hickok a reporter who had covered her during the campaign and early days of the Roosevelt administration and sensed her discontent, which spanned her early years in the White House. On the day of her husband’s inauguration, she was wearing a sapphire ring that Hickok had given her. Later, when their correspondence was made public, it became clear that Roosevelt would write such endearments as, ‘I want to put my arms around you & kiss you at the corner of your mouth.’ It is however unknown if her husband was aware of that relationship, which scholar Lillian Faderman has deemed to be lesbian. Hickok’s relationship with Roosevelt has been the subject of much speculation but it has not been determined by historians whether or not the two were romantically connected.
Roosevelt also had a close relationship with New York State Police sergeant Earl Miller. Franklin had assigned Miller as her bodyguard. Prior to that Miller had been Al Smith‘s personal bodyguard and was acquainted with Franklin from World War I. Miller was an athlete and had been the Navy’s middleweight boxing champion as well as a member of the U.S. Olympic squad at the Antwerp games in 1920.
Eleanor Roosevelt was 44 when they met, in 1929, and Miller was 32. According to several of Franklin’s biographers Jean Edward Smith, Joseph Lash, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Miller became her friend as well as official escort. He taught her different sport activities, like diving and riding, and coached her tennis game. Whether they were more than good friends is open to conjecture and Miller has denied a romantic relationship. For example, according to Blanche Wiesen Cook, Earl Miller was Eleanor’s “first romantic involvement” in her middle years but she does not speculate further. James Roosevelt wrote that “From my observations, I personally believe they were more than friends.” Eleanor’s friendship with Miller coincided with Franklin’s relationship with his secretary Missy LeHand, and Smith writes that “Remarkably, both ER and Franklin recognized, accepted, and encouraged the arrangement… Eleanor and Franklin were strong-willed people who cared greatly for each other’s happiness but realized their own inability to provide for it.” Their relationship went on until Eleanor’s death in 1962, but there is not much evidence of it. There are some photographs and a few home movies. They are thought to have corresponded daily, but all letters are lost. According to rumors the letters were anonymously purchased and destroyed or locked away when Eleanor died. In later years, Eleanor was said to have developed a romantic attachment to her physician, David Gurewitsch, though it is likely to have not gone beyond a deep friendship.
Public life in the years before the White House
Following Franklin’s paralytic illness attack in 1921, Eleanor began serving as a stand-in for her incapacitated husband, making public appearances on his behalf, often carefully coached by Louis Howe, with increasingly successful results. She also started working with the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), raising funds in support of the union’s goals: a 48-hour work week, minimum wage, and the abolition of child labor. Throughout the 1920s, she became increasingly influential as a leader in the New York State Democratic Party while FDR used her contacts among Democratic women to strengthen his standing with them, winning their committed support for the future. In 1924, she actively campaigned for Alfred E. Smith in his successful re-election bid as governor of New York State. By 1928, she was actively promoting Smith’s candidacy for president and Franklin Roosevelt’s nomination as the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor of New York, succeeding Smith. Although Smith lost, Franklin Roosevelt won handily and the Roosevelts moved into the governor’s mansion in Albany, New York.
Roosevelt also taught literature and American history at the Todhunter School for Girls in New York City in the 1920s.
First Lady of the United States (1933–1945)
Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Chiang Kai-shek
Eleanor Roosevelt met President Ramon Magsaysay, the 7th President of the Philippines, and his wife at the Malacañang Palace.
Having seen her aunt Edith Roosevelt‘s strictly circumscribed role and traditional protocol during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), Roosevelt set out on a different course. With FDR’s strong support, despite criticism, she continued with the active business and speaking agenda she had begun before becoming First Lady, in an era when few women had careers outside the home. She was the first First Lady to hold weekly press conferences and started writing a syndicated newspaper column, “My Day”. Roosevelt maintained a heavy travel schedule over her twelve years in the White House, frequently making personal appearances at labor meetings to assure Depression-era workers that the White House was mindful of their plight. In one widely-circulated cartoon of the time from The New Yorker magazine (June 3, 1933) lampooning the peripatetic First Lady, an astonished coal miner, peering down a dark tunnel, says to a co-worker “For gosh sakes, here comes Mrs. Roosevelt!” Roosevelt saw the job of the First Lady as a buffer between victims of the Great Depression and the government bureaucracy, a guardian of human values within the administration, not just as a social, ceremonial position and her husband encouraged the nation’s view of the couple as a team in politics and their approach to social issues, often reaping political benefits without the risks of committing himself to such positions.
Eleanor also became an important connection for Franklin’s administration to the African-American population during the segregation era. During Franklin’s terms as President, despite Franklin’s need to placate southern sentiment, Eleanor was vocal in her support of the African-American civil rights movement. She was outspoken in her support of Marian Anderson in 1939 when the black singer was denied the use of Washington’s Constitution Hall and was instrumental in the subsequent concert held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The first lady also played a role in racial affairs when she appointed Mary McLeod Bethune as head of the Division of Negro Affairs.
World War II
In 1941, Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie, and other Americans concerned about threats to democracy established Freedom House. Once the United States entered World War II, she was active on the homefront, co-chairing a national committee on civil defense with New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and frequently visiting civilian and military centers to boost war morale.
Roosevelt flying with Tuskegee Airman Charles “Chief” Anderson
In 1943, she was sent on a trip to the South Pacific, scene of major battles against the Japanese. The trip became a legend, her fortitude in patiently visiting thousands of wounded servicemen through miles of hospitals causing even the hard-bitten [Admiral Halsey] who had opposed her visit initially to sing her praises. A Republican serviceman insisted to a colleague that he and the other soldiers who’d encountered her warmth would gladly repay any grumbling civilians for whatever gasoline and rubber her visit had cost.
Desirous of improving relations with other countries in the Western Hemisphere, Roosevelt embarked on a whirlwind tour of Latin American countries in March 1944. For the trip, which would cover a number of nations and involve thousands of air miles, she was given a U.S. government-owned C-87A aircraft, the Guess Where II, a VIP transport plane which had originally been built to carry her husband abroad. After reviewing the poor safety record of that aircraft type (many had either caught fire or crashed during the war), the Secret Service forbade the use of the plane for carrying the president, even on trips of short duration, but approved its use for the First Lady.
Roosevelt especially supported more opportunities for women and African-Americans, notably the Tuskegee Airmen in their successful effort to become the first black combat pilots. At a time when there was still racial segregation in the armed forces and considerable opposition to allowing blacks to train as pilots, the First Lady was openly supportive of the Tuskegee Airmen. She visited the Tuskegee Air Corps Advanced Flying School in Alabama and, at her request, flew with a black student pilot for more than an hour, which had great symbolic value and brought visibility to Tuskegee’s pilot training program. She also arranged a White House meeting in July 1941 for representatives of the Tuskegee flight school to plead their cause for more support from the military establishment in Washington. Afterwards, the president of the Tuskegee Institute, F.D. Patterson, wrote to her at the White House that he was “greatly heartened to know of your sympathetic interest”. As the war raged in Europe and the Tuskegee Airmen distinguished themselves in combat over the skies of Europe in 1943, Tuskegee President Patterson sent a telegram to her expressing his gratitude: “[I] feel your presence and endorsement … was a major factor in favorable action. [I] am happy men in air now at front are justifying in full measure the great confidence you and others expressed in them”.
Roosevelt was a strong proponent of the Morgenthau Plan to de-industrialize Germany in the postwar period, and was in 1946 one of the few prominent individuals to remain a member of the campaign group lobbying for a harsh peace for Germany.
The years after the White House
United Nations
Roosevelt speaking at the United Nations in July 1947
In 1946, U.S. President Harry S. Truman appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. She played an instrumental role, along with René Cassin, John Peters Humphrey and others, in drafting the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Roosevelt served as the first chairperson of the UN Human Rights Commission. On the night of September 28, 1948, Roosevelt spoke on behalf of the Declaration calling it “the international Magna Carta of all mankind” (James 1948). The Declaration was adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The vote of the General Assembly was unanimous except for eight abstentions.
Roosevelt resigned from her UN post in 1953 when Dwight D. Eisenhower became president.
Relations with the Catholic Church
In July 1949, Roosevelt had a public disagreement with Francis Cardinal Spellman, the Catholic Archbishop of New York, which was characterized as “a battle still remembered for its vehemence and hostility”. In her columns, Roosevelt had attacked proposals for federal funding of certain nonreligious activities at parochial schools, such as bus transportation for students. Spellman cited the Supreme Court’s decision which upheld such provisions, accusing her of anti-Catholicism. Most Democrats rallied behind Roosevelt, and Cardinal Spellman eventually met with her at her Hyde Park home to quell the dispute. However, Roosevelt maintained her belief that Catholic schools should not receive federal aid, evidently heeding the writings of secularists such as Paul Blanshard.
During the Spanish Civil War, Roosevelt favored the republican Loyalists against General Francisco Franco‘s Nationalists; after 1945, she opposed normalizing relations with Spain. She told Spellman bluntly that “I cannot however say that in European countries the control by the Roman Catholic Church of great areas of land has always led to happiness for the people of those countries.” Her son Elliott Roosevelt suggested that her “reservations about Catholicism” were rooted in her husband’s sexual affairs with Lucy Mercer and Missy LeHand, who were both Catholics.
Roosevelt’s defenders, such as biographer Joseph P. Lash, deny that she was anti-Catholic, citing her public support of Al Smith, a Catholic, in the 1928 presidential campaign and her statement to a New York Times reporter that year quoting her uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt, in expressing “the hope to see the day when a Catholic or a Jew would become president” (The New York Times, January 25, 1928).
Postwar politics
In the late 1940s, Roosevelt was courted for political office by Democrats in New York and throughout the country.
At first I was surprised that anyone should think that I would want to run for office, or that I was fitted to hold office. Then I realized that some people felt that I must have learned something from my husband in all the years that he was in public life! They also knew that I had stressed the fact that women should accept responsibility as citizens. I heard that I was being offered the nomination for governor or for the United States Senate in my own state, and even for Vice President. And some particularly humorous souls wrote in and suggested that I run as the first woman President of the United States! The simple truth is that I have had my fill of public life of the more or less stereotyped kind.
With Frank Sinatra in 1960
In the 1948 campaign, she was touted by some as the ideal running mate for President Truman. The North Dakota State Democratic Central Committee passed a resolution in 1947 calling for a Truman-Roosevelt ticket, and when Truman was asked if he would consider, he replied, “Why, of course, of course… What do you expect me to say to that?” Nevertheless, Roosevelt rejected the appeals and insisted she had no interest in elective politics. Her son James Roosevelt would later say she refused to be considered for the vice presidency “because she was afraid of it.”
In 1954, Tammany Hall boss Carmine DeSapio campaigned against Roosevelt’s son, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., during the New York Attorney General elections, which Franklin Roosevelt, Jr. lost. Roosevelt held DeSapio responsible for her son’s defeat and grew increasingly disgusted with his political conduct through the rest of the 1950s. Eventually, she would join with her old friends Herbert Lehman and Thomas Finletter to form the New York Committee for Democratic Voters, a group dedicated to enhancing the democratic process by opposing DeSapio’s reincarnated Tammany. Their efforts were eventually successful, and DeSapio was removed from power in 1961.
Roosevelt was a close friend of Adlai Stevenson and supported his candidacies in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections. When President Truman backed New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, who was a close associate of Carmine DeSapio, for the Democratic presidential nomination, Roosevelt was disappointed but continued to support Stevenson who ultimately won the nomination. She backed Stevenson once again in 1960 primarily to block John F. Kennedy, who eventually received the presidential nomination. Nevertheless she worked hard to promote the Kennedy-Johnson ticket in 1960 and was appointed to policy-making positions by the young president, including the National Advisory Committee of the Peace Corps.
Newly-elected U.S. President John F. Kennedy calls on Eleanor Roosevelt at Val-Kill (1961)
By the 1950s Roosevelt’s international role as spokesperson for women led her to stop publicly attacking the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). But she never supported it. In 1961, President Kennedy’s undersecretary of labor, Esther Peterson proposed a new “President’s Commission on the Status of Women”. Kennedy appointed Roosevelt to chair the commission, with Peterson as director. Roosevelt died just before the commission issued its final report. It concluded that female equality was best achieved by recognition of gender differences and needs, and not by an Equal Rights Amendment.
Roosevelt was responsible for the eventual establishment, in 1964, of the 2,800 acre (11 km²) Roosevelt Campobello International Park on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada. This followed a gift of the Roosevelt summer estate to the Canadian and American governments.
Honors and awards
Roosevelt at Hyde Park with Ralph Bellamy and Greer Garson, filming Sunrise at Campobello (1960)
Roosevelt received 35 honorary degrees during her life, compared to 31 awarded to her husband. Her first, a Doctor of Humane Letters or D.H.L. on June 13, 1929, was also the first honorary degree awarded by Russell Sage College in Troy, New York. Her last was a Doctor of Laws, LL.D. degree granted by what is now Clark Atlanta University in June 1962.
In 1968, she was awarded one of the United Nations Human Rights Prizes. There was an unsuccessful campaign to award her a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize; however, a posthumous nomination has never been considered for the award.
In 1960, Greer Garson played Roosevelt in the movie Sunrise at Campobello, which portrayed Eleanor’s instrumental role during Franklin’s paralytic illness and his protracted struggle to reenter politics in its aftermath.
Westmoreland Homesteads, located in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, was created on April 13, 1934, as one of a series of “subsistence homesteads” under the National Industrial Recovery Act. In 1937, the community changed it’s name to Norvelt (EleaNOR RooseVELT), following a visit by the first lady.
The Norvelt fireman’s hall located is called Roosevelt Hall.
Eleanor Roosevelt was the only First Lady to receive honorary membership into Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, the world’s first and eldest sorority for African American women.
Later life
Following Franklin’s death in 1945, Eleanor moved from the White House to Val-Kill Cottage in Hyde Park, NY, where she lived the rest of her life.
Statue of Eleanor Roosevelt at Washington D.C. memorial
Roosevelt was a member of the Brandeis University Board of Trustees, delivering the University’s first commencement speech, and joined the Brandeis faculty as a visiting lecturer in international relations in 1959 at the age of 75. On November 15, 1960, she met for the last time with former US President, Harry S. Truman and his wife, Bess Truman, at the Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri. Roosevelt had raised considerable funds for the erection and dedication of the building. The Trumans would later attend Roosevelt’s memorial service in Hyde Park, NY in November, 1962.
In 1961, all volumes of Roosevelt’s autobiography, which she had begun writing in 1937, were compiled into The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt, which is still in print (Da Capo Press, ISBN 0-306-80476-X).
Roosevelt was injured in April 1960 when she was struck by a car in New York City. Afterwards, her health began a rapid decline. Subsequently diagnosed with aplastic anemia, she developed bone marrow tuberculosis. Roosevelt died at her Manhattan apartment on November 7, 1962 at 6:15 p.m., at the age of 78.
Her funeral at Hyde Park was attended by President John F. Kennedy and former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. At her memorial service, Adlai Stevenson asked, “What other single human being has touched and transformed the existence of so many?” Stevenson also said that Roosevelt was someone “who would rather light a candle than curse the darkness.” She was laid to rest next to Franklin at the family compound in Hyde Park, New York on November 10, 1962. A laconic cartoon published at the time showed two angels looking down towards an opening in the clouds with the caption “She’s here”.
Roosevelt, who considered herself plain and craved affection as a child, had in the end transcended whatever shortcomings she felt were hers to bring comfort and hope to many, becoming one of the most admired figures of the 20th century.
Jeff Carter, my friend who is now the director of music at Webster University in St. Louis, always finds the neatest things. This was an incredible discovery!
http://jeffreycarter.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/candidate-record-on-the-arts.pdf
At 12:05am the five buses carrying the marching band passed in front of the house. I was standing on the front steps smoking my pipe and letting Flyer explore the symphony of smells in the front yard when they passed. Bringing up the rear was Mike Berning, the band director, and his family, honking as they passed.
This week was just incredibly busy. I worked my butt off, but always seemed to be behind in accomplishing all I wished. My email is backed up a mile long, but the study and rest of the house is organized and efficient.
Today I woke after a semi-restful sleep, and plowed right into writing and researching on the Wright Brothers’ musical. I took some time out during lunch to read up on the economy and some of the boiling political issues. At 2:00pm my first student arrived, and at 5:15pm my last student was leaving – an early night with one student ill, and another on a college visit.
I ate some rice, broccoli and cheese casserole, and green beans, and relaxed with two episodes of TWO AND A HALF MEN – one of my favorite shows.
At 8:00pm I dove into the musical writing, and edited a good deal. 11:15pm, I was trying to tackle one particular scene with no success. An email from my lyricist, Gail, who now lives in California, arrived, offering some suggestions to the very scene that had been giving me fits for over an hour. With a few more emails, I knew which direction we should take and by midnight I was sending off the latest draft through the miracle of the internet.
Gail Whipple – another Oscar Hammerstein II
Around 12:20am I walked Flyer over to the performing arts wing and met up with Jose. It is a beautiful evening, just a little chilly – but still nice.
Tomorrow we will run some errands and try to find something fun to do together until it is time to head over to the stadium for the marching band invitational hosted by Fairmont. We will probably be tripping in after midnight.
In two weeks the marching band season will conclude, and Jose and I shall hopefully have more time together. I so enjoy my time with him, and his humor and cheery disposition is a great comfort. In a few years, it will just be me, Flyer and Logan, unless I adopt more sons.
Today is Eleanor Roosevelt’s birthday… what a great lady! Even Jose has one of her quotes posted above his bed.
(CNN) — March 30, 1981. Arguably the most powerful man in the world is shot.
President Reagan waves to crowds just before he was shot in an assassination attempt in 1981.
“We did not know, the general public or the press, how near death he was when he collapsed in the ER,” recalled Sam Donaldson, a former ABC White House correspondent. “The first briefing did not give us any of those details; the first briefing was a fairly upbeat briefing.”
Former White House reporter Helen Thomas has covered every president from John Kennedy to George W. Bush for United Press International. She says the atmosphere was tense and the answers few.
“We were asking many questions, which the White House refused to answer. There was a great sense of frustration in terms of what was really going on,” Thomas said.
Today, HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects the privacy rights of ordinary Americans, but what about when the patient is the president?
Is the next president fit to lead? CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta uncovers the health secrets of presidents past and future.
Over the years, covering a health crisis has been a delicate dance for the White House Press Corps. History shows that administrations have for years covered up presidential illness.
Woodrow Wilson had a series of small strokes before he was sworn in to office in 1913. It wasn’t known whether he would survive his first term, and his doctors never talked about it.
Presidential historian Robert Dallek said Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919. He and his doctor discussed the possibility that Wilson would resign, but his wife talked him out of it. According to Dallek, she largely ran the presidency in 1920.
Elected to the first of four terms in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down with polio. In private, he used a wheelchair, but in public, it was a different story. He was able to downplay his disability — it’s said with the media’s help — and was almost always photographed without his chair. Gravely ill, Roosevelt died less than six months into his fourth term, even though his personal physician claimed that he was in excellent health.
In 1955, Dwight Eisenhower suffered a massive heart attack while vacationing in Denver, Colorado. Facing a run for re-election, he and his staff tried to minimize the political impact.
“We usually received evasive answers,” Thomas said. “James Haggerty, the press secretary and a former reporter, insisted on relaying the un-garbled truth about Ike’s illness. Even then, reporters were given confusing details: some calling it a heart attack, others a stroke.”
Eisenhower announced that he would seek another term when he was cleared by his doctors five months later.
Even presidents who were in good physical health have had medical emergencies while in office. On September 15, 1979, President Carter collapsed while running a 10k race near Camp David, Maryland. After a few tense minutes, he was diagnosed with heatstroke.
“By the time we’d heard about the incident … they’d ruled out heart attack; they’d ruled out something terrible,” Donaldson remembered. “He’d simply collapsed from a combination of exhaustion; he’d lost weight; he’d run himself ragged, if you will, in those months of his presidency.”
Dallek says the public is entitled to a full accounting of the medical condition of the commander in chief but often doesn’t get it. Kennedy had a number of illnesses kept from the public, as was Richard Nixon’s drinking, according to Dallek.
“The people around them want to shield them from the public knowledge that this is an individual who is not going to be able to function all that effectively,” Dallek said. “They think they’re doing it to serve the national well-being, because the public doesn’t want to be so alarmed that a president is immobilized and cannot face a possible foreign or domestic crisis that might emerge.”
The balance between personal privacy and the public’s right to know has shifted some over the years. More recent administrations have been a little more accommodating, a little more open about the health of U.S. presidents. In the search for answers, verbal sparring between the press and White House spokesmen is common. Donaldson said reporters often have to dig deep.
“White House doctors were forthcoming to the extent, I think, that they didn’t lie about the information,” Donaldson said. “But there’s a difference between lying about something and telling it all, expanding on it and giving us the detail … and I think in that sense, they weren’t that forthcoming.”
Former CNN White House correspondent Charles Bierbauer remembers covering George H.W. Bush when the president fell ill at a state dinner in Japan on January 8, 1992. He says he watched in frustration as it all unfolded on a video monitor in the Banquet Hall.
“We couldn’t hear what was going on; we could only see pictures. Which only adds to the consternation of what’s happening and how do we find out,” Bierbauer said. “We tried to get in touch with the White House press office. … I or the producer would get on the phone and say, ‘We need to talk to Marlon [Fitzwater],’ and they would say, ‘Marlon can’t talk right now.’ “
But some in the working press feel that we’re seeing a new era and the lines of communication are getting better.
In 2002, when President George W. Bush choked on a pretzel and passed out while watching a Miami Dolphins football game in the White House residence, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer alerted the press immediately.
“If the president has a little skin tag removed, does the country need to know? Now, I can make a case for privacy there,” Fleischer said.
“President passes out, country needs to know. So there is still a zone of medical privacy that presidents and candidates should be entitled, to but I think it’s a small and it’s a narrow zone. Anything that could affect a performance in office, I think the public has a right to know.”
Of course, when the president is sporting a bruise on his face that’s nearly the size of a quarter, there’s really no way to keep that under wraps or hidden from the White House Press Corps.
Greetings,
As I drove in this morning there was more bad news about the global economy …. markets around the world dropped more overnight and our market was indicating yet another drop this morning. The word everyone keeps using is fear. I can tell you I have had my anxious moments these past weeks as trillions of dollars have evaporated from accounts of real people …. your 401K and mine. I won’t give financial advice but I will offer some spiritual advice.
The more that fear is gripping you the more you need to talk to someone that went through the great depression. Millions of real people made it through the great depression and we will make it through our current economic hardship … or whatever history will call this market fluctuation. In the last number of days I have talked with folks whose families lived through the great depression and they survived. We will survive too.
No doubt real people will have serious and real problems. And the Christian community will do what it has done since Jesus first fed the 5000. We will look out on our neighbor in need and have compassion. We will do what Jesus taught us to do …. love and care for each other!
All will be well! We still, even with incredible financial losses, are blessed beyond measure. But what about the anxious feeling that is real and in my gut? Try this exercise. St. Paul give some wonderful advice to center the soul …. it is a mantra of sorts found in the letter to the Philippians. As you repeat this mantra it will help with your Being. Pray with me. Center yourself with me.
Be . . . .
Anxious in Nothing
Prayerful in Everything
Thankful in Anything.
Or here is how I say it in prayer form:
Let me Be ….
Anxious in Nothing
Prayerful in Everything
Thankful in Anything
Print this out or put this on a 3X5 card and tape it up where you can see it and pray it everyday …. 20, 50, 100 times a day. Pray it until that anxiety begins to fade and the Spirit of God fills you up once again.
Another way to help is to be in church this Sunday. Be with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Be with those that love you. They need your presence and you need theirs. When we see those we love everything always seems better. See you in your pew this Sunday!
Peace, Pastor Monte
545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
[Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper]
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don’t PROPOSE a federal budget.
The president does.
You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations.
The House of Representatives does.
You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central
bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House?
She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it’s because they want them in IRAQ.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way. They vote their own pay raises for themselves because they want it that way. There are no unsolvable government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like ‘the economy,’ ‘inflation,’ or ‘politics’ that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you, though you appear to have several choices.
1. You can send this to everyone in your address book, and hope ‘they’ do something about it.
2. You can agree to vote against everyone that is currently in office, knowing that the process will take several years.
3. You can decide to ‘run for office’ yourself and agree to do the job properly.
4. Lastly, you can sit back and do nothing, or re-elect the current bunch.
YOU DECIDE, BUT AT LEAST SEND IT TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK, MAYBE SOMEONE IN THERE WILL DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Why We Lash Out
Each one of us has experienced situations where we’ve found ourselves lashing out at someone without meaning to. We later berate ourselves for losing control and feel guilty for treating the other person badly. And while it is human nature that our emotions and moods will get the better of us from time to time, we can learn to navigate our feelings and negotiate difficult situations without losing our center.
Often, when we lash out, it is because we are having a difficult time containing the emotions that are coming up inside of us. We may be feeling overwhelmed, afraid, frustrated, stressed out, or angry. Having these feelings boiling up inside of us can be very uncomfortable, and it is natural to want to release them. But when we release our feelings from our body by directing them outward and toward someone else, they inevitably impact the “innocent bystander” to whom we are directing this energy. They not only get the brunt of our anger, frustration, or stress, but also they can actually experience this energy as a physical force hitting their bodies.
When you find yourself in a situation where you are about to lash out at the person in front of you, try to center yourself by breathing slowly and deeply. A few slow inhales and exhales can help dissipate the intensity of your feelings before they escape you. Later, when you find yourself in a more reflective state, sit down for a moment; recall the feelings in your body just before and during your outburst; note where you feel sensations coming up in your body; and ask yourself if they are connected to any core issue or experience from your life. If nothing comes to mind, then revisit the situation again, exaggerating the details of what happened by indulging in outlandish “what if” fantasies. Exaggerating events after the fact can help expose the unconscious subtext behind your heated response. Understanding the motivation behind your reactions can help you avoid lashing out again when a similar situation comes up. In learning to navigate around your emotions, you are gi! ving yourself the tools to feel better the next time your emotions start to boil. In doing so, you will be taking care of yourself by alleviating your own uncomfortable feelings while respecting and protecting those around you.
Taking Responsibility For Your Destiny
There are those of us who believe that our lives are predestined and that we should resign ourselves to our lots in life. Yet the truth is that it is up to each one of us to decide what that destiny will be. While each of us is born with a life purpose, it is up to us whether or not we will say yes to fulfilling it. And just like when we choose what to eat, who to keep company with, and whether to turn right or left when we leave our home everyday, choosing to say yes to your destiny is a decision that can only be realized when you take action to make that choice a reality.
Whether you believe it is your destiny to be a parent, an adventurer, an artist, a pioneer, or a spiritual guru, saying yes to your destiny is only the first step. While manifesting your destiny starts with knowing what you want and believing you can attain your goals, there are then the actions that must be taken and the decisions to be made before your destiny can truly happen. When you take responsibility for fulfilling your destiny and begin acting with the intention of doing so, you not only take fate into your own hands, but also you become the hands of your own fate. Doorways inevitably open for you to step through, and every choice you make can be a creative act toward realizing your goals and dreams. You begin to follow your instincts and intuition, recognize opportunities when they are presented to you, and seize those golden moments. You also begin to recognize the decisions that may not serve this greater picture and can more easily push them aside.
Remembering that the decision to fulfill your destiny is always a choice can be empowering. Knowing you are fulfilling your destiny because you want to, rather than because you have to, can make a huge difference. When you are freed from obligation, obstacles in your way become challenges to be overcome, and the journey becomes an adventure rather than the obligatory steps you are being forced to take. Your destiny may be waiting for you, but whether or not you meet your destiny is up to you. Your fate is in your hands.
It is 11:35pm on a Wednesday night and I am finally winding down after a full, productive day. After thinking through all I have accomplished I feel like I have competed with my cousin, Dana, who seems to cram four days into one.
This was my Wednesday:
6:00am Woke up on my own; began reading my daily newsletters from BeliefNet and theatre groups
6:30am Cleaned living room ceiling fan, mirrors, dishes
7:00am Dusted living room, study and bedroom; washed dishes
7:30am Berry green tea, Cheerios (heart healthy); put chicken thighs on to boil; folded two baskets of laundry
8:00am At desk writing on Wright Bros’ musical, while watching a DVD on Wrights
11:30am Deboned chicken; made salad; watched a Netflix DVD on Anthony Robbins
12:30pm Reorganized the closet in my study, brought down a book case from Jose’s room for my study; reorganized some of my book cases in my study
1:00pm Took a nap
1:30pm Afternoon Emails and newsletters
2:30pm Started spaghetti and sauce; showered & dressed
2:45pm Finished spaghetti; cleaned the bathroom
3:15pm Talked to Jose
3:30pm Began teaching
4:00pm Had an unscheduled break – watched OPRAH…
Today’s show was on ways to save money during this economic crises. One family described how they cut down their electric bill from $150 per month to $50 each month by unplugging unnecessary items. Hmm… good idea. During this break I reconfigured the living room so that the entertainment unit and all but the torch lamps are on a timer from 2:30pm-8:30pm each day. I may change this so that I just unplug it so that it is off on the weekends, too.
5:00pm Resumed teaching
8:30pm Finished last student; grabbed some spaghetti while chatting with Jose just home from work
9:00pm Began reconfiguring my study’s electrical items; only computer remains plugged in 24/7 and monitor is turned off when not in use (generally do this); Jose and I redid the basement and kitchen
10:00pm Jose and I sat and talked in the study; his girlfriend called and he chatted with her while I redid the electric items in my bedroom
11:00pm Jose took care of electrics in his room; I finished some late nite items with business, washed more dishes and cleaned the counters
And the day is done… I feel invigorated, and slightly tired; however, the mind is still going strong. Flyer is snuggled next to me on the passenger side of the bed, and Logan is on my legs while I type on my laptop which is situated on a hospital table. I had to turn up the television volume to hear Letterman’s Top Ten because Flyer is snoring loudly.
Tomorrow, Thursday, is an exceptionally busy day:
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I will connect with my co-writers
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hopefully accomplish a good deal of writing
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start teaching at 1:00pm-6:00pm (my shortest day)
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run some errands
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relax until Jose returns home from marching band around 9:30pm
We spend most of our evenings chatting, not even watching television. It is a wonderful relationship, and we enjoy one another’s company tremendously.
Sometimes a Loss Can Be a Gain
When we lose anything that we cherish, the sense of emptiness we are left behind with can be overwhelming. A space that was filled, whether in our lives or our hearts, is now a void, and the feelings of pain, loss, and separation can sometimes be difficult to bear. While it is always important to honor what we’ve lost, sometimes a loss can also represent a chance for a new beginning. When we are ready, the void left by a relationship, a job, or a dream can then be viewed as open space that can be filled with something new: new experiences, new knowledge, new job opportunities, new dreams, new people, and new ways to grow.
There are many ways to weave the threads of loss into a blessing. If you’ve lost a job or ended a relationship, your first thoughts may revolve around filling the void with a similar job or the same kind of relationship. Try not to rush into anything just to fill up the emptiness. The loss of a job can free you up to explore new opportunities, especially if you’ve outgrown the old one. Likewise, the loss of a relationship can give you a chance to rediscover your own interests, explore new passions, and meet different people.
If seeking the good in what seems like a bad situation makes you feel uncomfortable, then try to remember that you are not devaluing what you’ve lost or replacing it cold-heartedly. You are surrendering to the fact that, in life, we sometimes have to let go and allow for what is new to enter into the open spaces created by our losses. In doing so, you are honoring what has left you and welcoming the new into your life with open space, an open mind, and an open heart.
Editor’s note: Campbell Brown anchors CNN’s “Campbell Brown: Election Center” at 8 p.m. ET Mondays through Fridays. She delivered this commentary during the “Cutting through the Bull” segment of Monday night’s broadcast.
Campbell Brown says whoever wins should enter the White House with his dignity intact.
But we thought for just a moment we would take you back to kinder, gentler times.
Remember this:
Sen. John McCain: I pledge again a respectful campaign. A respectful campaign based on the issues and based on the stark differences we have on the vision for the future of America.
Sen. Barack Obama: I said I was looking forward to a civil substantive debate on the issues and he agreed.
McCain: I’ve pledged to conduct a respectful campaign and I urge, time after time, various entities within the Republican party to also do that.
Obama: We don’t need John McCain and I to be demonizing each other. You won’t get that from my campaign.
Oh how far we have come in such a short period of time.
To say, as Gov. Sarah Palin is now doing, that Barack Obama pals around with terrorists is just outrageous.
But Obama’s hands aren’t clean either. Here is what he said in May of this year about McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five, a savings and loan scandal that happened in the late 80s.
Obama said, “I don’t think there is any doubt that John McCain’s public record about issues that he’s apologized for and written about is not germane to the presidency.”
And yet this morning the Obama campaign released a mini-documentary, walking voters through all the details of the Keating Five — making it very much germane.
There is just one month left. Please, please don’t let this devolve into a campaign you are sickened by and embarrassed to be part of.
Here’s a purely practical reason: The negativity you are spewing now will only make your job harder after Election Day.
Bipartisanship is really tough to achieve when everyone on both sides is left with a bad bad taste in their mouths.
Here is the new CNN Opinion Research Corp. When asked “How are things going in the country today?” 80 percent said badly. Eighty percent. Pollsters have been asking that question since 1974. Eighty percent is an all-time low. People want to hear solutions from you. They want to hear how you are going to get us out of this mess.
One of you will have to. Don’t you want to be able to walk into the White House with your dignity intact and your head held high?
Taking on the Energy of Others
There are times when you may find that being around certain individuals or groups of people leaves you with feelings of discomfort. It may be that spending time with a particular friend feels draining or that dealing with a specific coworker exhausts you. Being around toxic or angry people is also draining. And you may even find that being surrounded by a crowd of people lowers your energy levels rather than perks you up. This is not that unusual. Each of us radiates energy and is capable of being influenced by the energy of other people. It is important to learn how to shield yourself, so you don’t unknowingly take on someone else’s energy. While some people know how to instinctively protect themselves from being adversely affected by energy, most of us need to discover and practice the technique that works best.
There are a number of ways to avoid being affected by people’s energy. Shielding is one preventative technique you can use. Center yourself and envision being enveloped in a cocoon of loving and protective light. This protective layer should allow you to consciously regulate the energy around you. The intent to shield oneself is all you need for this technique to work. You can even create a trigger word to assist you in quickly creating a shield. Say this word each time you create a new shield, until the word and the shield become automatically associated in your mind. If you run into a person whose energy you find draining, you may want to cleanse your own energy field after your encounter. Sage, cold showers, singing, mineral water baths, spending time in nature, and a simple break to recharge are all ways to accomplish this.
While it is important to know how to shield yourself from energy, there are those energies that you may not want to shut out. The energy of laughter from a newborn baby, the feeling of joy radiating from someone in love, and the frequency of calm emanating from an enlightened teacher are just some of the energies coming from others that you may want to have around you.
Being Happy For Friends
When we are close friends with someone, we intuitively know when they need a hug, a helping hand, or a sympathetic ear. Likewise, when we are going through bleak periods in our lives, we count on friends to support us through loss, illness, and other setbacks, both big and small. And while part of being a good friend means being there when the other person needs us, it is just as important to be there for our friends so we can share in their joyous celebrations and triumphs.
After all, who else would our friends want to celebrate their promotions, graduations, marriages, and good news with than their loved ones and good friends. Yet depending on what is happening in our lives, it can sometimes be difficult to be there for our friends during the good times. We can become so busy with our own lives that we forget to make time. Or, we may be so focused on our own problems that we may not feel like celebrating with our friends. We may even take their joyful moments for granted, assuming that as long as we’re there for our friends during the bad times that we are doing our jobs. Yet part of being a true friend means also being there during the good times. Success and happiness can feel empty without someone to share them with, and who better to join in our victory dances than our good friends.
Taking the time from our busy lives to honor our friends’ happy moments is a wonderful way to show them that they matter. And in many ways, by wanting you around during their happy occasions, your friends are also honoring you. After all, it is the people we cherish that we want around us to sing at our birthdays, visit our newborn babies, and pop open that bottle of champagne with when we reach a milestone moment. The next time a friend wants you to be there to celebrate with them, remember to feel honored that they thought of asking you. Together, you can celebrate their happiness and your rich friendship.
All I can say is, “WOW!”
In 1979, at Smith-Wallbridge Drum Major Camp, instructor Gary Smith, then the director of the Marching Illni of University of Illinois, showed us a film of The Ohio State Marching Band performing the legendary Script OHIO. I was enthralled! As I held the video camera watching the most phenomenal drum-major ever, leading these band through the flawless routine, I realized I had tears in my eyes. While most were clapping and cheering, I was moved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPNnIFH6_RU&feature=related
The best part is when the drum-major leads the sousaphone player across the field after finishing the last “o” – it is incredible! The drum-major struts to the “i” and smacks the end of his signal baton on the spot where the sousaphone player has the honor of “dotting the i.”
The Fairmont Firebirds has their own Script BIRDS, identical to Script OHIO, and it will mean even more to me after seeing the “real thing.”
Finally, 29 years later, I got to personally witness this spectacular event.
Saturday the Marching Firebirds competed with thirty-two other bands at the OSU football stadium. Impressive!
While the tabulation was finishing up, the Marching Buckeyes took the field for one of the most exciting moments in marching band enthusiasm I have ever known.
This past week, my dear friend, Bill Hetzer, who, with his wife, Kay, is experiencing a difficult family crises, wrote to me the words from the OSU alma mater, “Carmen Ohio” – “The seasons pass the years will roll
Time and change will surely truly show, how firm thy friendship … OHIO!” This touched a little deeper as “Carmen Ohio” shares the same melody as a popular Methodist hymn, “Come, Christians, Join To Sing” – the opening song for their 16yo son’s funeral in 1997.
As I walked from the stadium, talking to Bill on the telephone, I stopped to look down at the field and in my mind played the arrangement that can be heard on this clip:
http://www.scarletandgray.info/osu/songs/carmen_ohio.html
Carmen Ohio
Oh come let’s sing Ohio’s praise
And songs to Alma Mater raise
While our hearts rebounding thrill
With joy which death alone can still
Summer’s heat or winter’s cold
The seasons pass the years will roll
Time and change will surely (truly) show
How firm thy friendship … OHIO!
Though age may dim our mem’ry’s store
We’ll think of happy days of yore
True to friend and frank to foe
As sturdy sons of Ohio
If on seas of care we roll
Neath blackened sky or barren shoal
Thoughts of thee bid darkness go
Dear Alma Mater…OHIO!
http://www.scarletandgray.info/osu/songs/carmen_ohio.html
Today is the 100th birthday of my hero in directing, Joshua Logan.
Joshua Lockwood Logan III (October 5, 1908 – July 12, 1988) was an American stage and film director and writer.
Logan was born in Texarkana, Texas. His father died when Logan was only three, and his mother remarried six years later. He was reared in Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish and the largest city in north Louisiana. He attended Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, where his stepfather served on the staff. At school, he experienced his first drama class and felt at home. After his high school graduation he attended Princeton University.
At Princeton, he was involved with the intercollegiate summer stock company, known as the University Players, with fellow student James Stewart and also non-student Henry Fonda. In fact, James Stewart was an architect major when Logan recruited him for a bit part in a production he was directing. Stewart became hooked on acting and the two remained life time friends. During his senior year he served as president of the Princeton Triangle Club. Before his graduation he won a scholarship to study in Moscow with Constantin Stanislavsky, and Logan left school without a diploma.
Logan began his Broadway career as an actor in Carry Nation in 1932. He then spent time in London, where he “stag[ed] two productions … and direct[ed] a touring revival of Camille“. He also worked as an assistant stage manager. After a short time in Hollywood, Logan directed On Borrowed Time on Broadway. The play ran for a year, but his first major success came in 1938, when he directed I Married an Angel. Over the next few years he directed Knickerbocker Holiday, Morning’s at Seven, Charlie’s Aunt, and By Jupiter.
In 1942 Logan was drafted by the US Army. During his service in World War II, he acted as a public-relations and intelligence officer. When the war concluded he was discharged as a captain, and returned to Broadway. He married his second wife, actress Nedda Harrigan (daughter of Ned Harrigan), in 1945; Logan’s previous marriage, to actress Barbara O’Neil, who is most remembered as Scarlett O’Hara’s mother in GONE WITH THE WIND, a colleague of his at the University Players in the 1930s, had ended in divorce.
After the war, Logan directed the Broadway productions Annie Get Your Gun, John Loves Mary, Mister Roberts, South Pacific, and Fanny. He shared the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II for co-writing South Pacific. The show also earned him a Tony Award for Best Director. Despite his contributions to the musical, in their review the New York Times originally omitted his name as co-author, and the Pulitzer Prize committee initially awarded the prize to only Rodgers and Hammerstein. Although the mistakes were corrected, in his autobiography Logan wrote “I knew then why people fight so hard to have their names in proper type. It’s not just ego or ‘the principle of the thing,’ it’s possibly another job or a better salary. It’s reassurance. My name had been so minimized that I lived through years of having people praise ‘South Pacific’ in my presence without knowing I had had anything to do with.”
Logan cowrote, coproduced, and directed the 1952 musical Wish You Were Here. After the show was not initially successful, Logan quickly wrote 54 new pages of material, and by the ninth performance the show looked new. In its fourth week of release, the show sold out, and continued to offer sell-out performance for the next two years.
When director John Ford became sick, Logan reluctantly returned to Hollywood to complete the filming of Mister Roberts (1955). Logan’s other hit films included Picnic (1955), Bus Stop (1956), Sayonara (1957), and South Pacific (1958). He was nominated for an Academy Award for Directing for Picnic and Sayonara.
His later Broadway musicals All-American (1962) and Mr. President (1962) and the films of Lerner and Loewe’s Camelot (1967), and Paint Your Wagon (1969) were less acclaimed. Logan’s 1976 autobiography Josh: My Up-and-Down, In-and-Out Life talks frankly about his bipolar disorder. He appeared with his wife in the 1977 nightclub revue Musical Moments, featuring Logan’s most popular Broadway numbers. He published Movie Stars, Real People, and Me in 1978. From 1983-1986, he taught theater at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. He was also responsible for bringing Carol Channing to Broadway in Lend an Ear!.
At his best, Logan’s direction was distinguished by a deep insight into character and a remarkable fluidity, the latter especially evident in his staging of often cumbersome musicals. He was sometimes criticized in his later shows and films, however, for too heavy a touch. Autobiography: Josh: My Up and Down, In and Out Life, 1976.
Logan died in 1988 in New York of supranuclear palsy.
JOSHUA LOGAN’S OBITUARY…
Published: July 13, 1988
Joshua L. Logan, the director of some of Broadway’s most enduring and prestigious hits, among them ”South Pacific,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, and ”Mister Roberts,” died yesterday afternoon at his Manhattan home. He was 79 years old and had suffered for many years from supranuclear palsy, a debilitating disease.
Joshua L. Logan, the director of some of Broadway’s most enduring and prestigious hits, among them ”South Pacific,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, and ”Mister Roberts,” died yesterday afternoon at his Manhattan home. He was 79 years old and had suffered for many years from supranuclear palsy, a debilitating disease.
Mr. Logan frequently served as co-author and producer or co-producer as well as director of plays. He was also that uncommon phenomenon, the theater director who was also successful in films – with such hits as ”Sayonara” and ”Paint Your Wagon.”
While he attempted the classics only once, with ”The Wisteria Trees” – his own version of Chekhov’s ”Cherry Orchard” – and did not seek out innovative or avant-garde drama, he was a consummate theatrical craftsman, possessing great emotional force that he was able to transmit to the actors he directed.
His long string of successes really began with the musical ”I Married an Angel” (1938) and included ”Knickerbocker Holiday” with Walter Huston the same year, ”Annie Get Your Gun” (1946), ”Picnic” (1953), ”Fanny” (1954), ”The World of Suzie Wong” (1958) and the movie of ”Camelot” (1967). Some Failures, Too
He did have his failures, notably ”Miss Moffat,” a musical version of ”The Corn Is Green,” starring Bette Davis. It closed in Philadelphia before reaching New York, when Miss Davis withdrew from the cast. Another was ”Rip van Winkle,” a 1976 musical for which he wrote both book and lyrics as well as provided the direction. It closed before its New York opening. ”Ensign Pulver,” a 1964 film, was not a success, nor was ”Look to the Lilies,” in 1970.
Mr. Logan was notable for his candor in discussing manic depression, the mental illness in which manic elation alternates with profound depression. He had the condition for many years before it was discovered that it could be controlled by the drug lithium carbonate.
It had been rumored for years that Mr. Logan’s ups and downs of mood were occasionally excessive, and that he required hospitalization for extended periods, which in fact he did on two occasions.
After January 1969, when he learned of lithium and began taking it as a preventive, Mr. Logan decided, he wrote in ”Movie Stars, Real People, and Me,” that he would talk about it. Telling What He Knew ”I had been ignorant all my life about such things,” he said, ”at least I could tell others so they would never be as ignorant as I was.”
He took part in medical seminars, appeared on television and talked and wrote about his illness. But he also made it clear that he felt its manic phase contributed to his creativity: ”Without my illness, active or dormant, I’m sure I would have lived only half of the life I’ve lived and that would be as unexciting as a safe and sane Fourth of July. I would have missed the sharpest, the rarest and, yes, the sweetest moments of my existence.”
Joshua Lockwood Logan was born Oct. 5, 1908, in Texarkana, Tex. His father died when he was 3 years old; six years later, his mother married an Army officer who was later on the staff of the Culver (Ind.) Military Academy.
It was when he was 8 years old that Joshua saw his first professional play, ”Everywoman,” in Shreveport, La. It was, he wrote in his autobiography, ”Josh,” a case of ”love at first sight.” It was during his five years at Culver, Mr. Logan wrote, that he entered his first dramatics class and ”felt my life swerve and suddenly steady itself.” Studied With Stanislavsky.
He chose to go to Princeton because of its Triangle Club show that toured the country, and he entered the university in 1927. The previous year, he recalled, he saw his first Broadway play, ”What Price Glory?”
TRIVIA…
- Won seven Tony Awards:
- two in 1948 for “Mister Roberts,” with collaborator Thomas Heggen as Best Authors and as writers of the Best Play winner
- four in 1950 for “South Pacific,” as Best Director, Best Authors (Musical) with Oscar Hammerstein II, Best Producers (Musical) wirh Richard Rodgers, Hammerstein and Leland Hayward, and as writers, along with Rodgers and Hammerstein, of the Best Musical winner
- and one in 1953, as Best Director for William Inge‘s “Picnic.”
- He was also Tony-nominated on two other occasions:
- in 1959, as co-producer of Best Play nominee “Epitaph for George Dillon,”
- in 1962 as Best Director (Musical) for “All American.”
- Great-uncle of actor Billy Lockwood.
- Directed 6 different performers in Oscar-nominated performances: Arthur O’Connell, Don Murray, Red Buttons, Marlon Brando, Miyoshi Umeki, Charles Boyer. Umeki and Buttons won for their supporting performances in Sayonara (1957).
- Wrote in his autobiography that he was offered the chance to direct My Fair Lady (1964), but the offer was withdrawn when he suggested that some scenes be shot on location in London.
When you finish reading this, you must read my friend’s blog… Jeff Carter had a fun time at his own license branch.
Saturday I searched in vain on the internet to find the DMV’s hours. I could not even locate a telephone number for the Centerville branch. I arrived at 2:01pm – they closed at 2:00pm.
This morning, I left the house after Jose headed off to school, arriving at 7:53am. I sat in the parking lot and at 7:58am seven cars zoomed in – and I mean ZOOMED. The parking spaces around me filled up and immediately, people were out of their cars. I brought the average age in the parking lot down to 80 years. I am certain a few actually remembered starting the car with the crank! These people were in the building before I even got out of my car, and one lady was on a walker.
Inside, everything moved fast and by 8:04am I was having my photo taken. I asked the lady if the DMV had a special where you could have Christmas card photos made from your license photo… no.
I sat down to wait with four others who just had their photos taken. The lady on the walker was complaining because they were taking so long! The two men on either side of her agreed. I sat there smiling to myself. The gentleman next to me began chatting and I learned he grew up in Alexandria, Indiana which is about seven miles from where I grew up.
In less than a minute they called my name. The three complainers were aggrevated that I already had mine. As the lady handed me mine I heard her say, “Oh, no! A malfunction.”
The walker lady bellowed, “Why did he get his before we got ours?”
The lady tried to explain, and then apologized for the malfunction. I started past the lady and she asked, “Why did you get yours first?”
I smiled and said, “There’s not as many wrinkles to touch on my photo.”
All four were slapping their legs and howling.
I pulled out of the DMV and headed to the National City Bank. I had lived in this particular Centerville neighborhood for eight years and could not believe how much it had grown with all the new businesses. It was mostly open fields from 1995-2002. I waited in line, looking for the ATM. I decided I would just do the window.
I pulled up to the window, noticing there were no machines to suck the money into the bank. The window opened and the lady, dressed in a cute shirt and sun viser asked, “How may I help you?”
I said I wanted to make a deposit… her face contorted, and then she began howling.
“This is Starbucks, now.”
I drove off without getting an order…
At 9:00am my neighbor lady, Kay, took me to breakfast to celebrate my birthday at First Watch. We had a delightful time and then walked over to Tuesday Morning.
Tonight, I will head up to Wayne High School to join Loretta Henderson and her daughter, Mara, for the Wayne vs. Fairmont game. Her oldest daughter, Kayla, is the team manager, but I am sure I will see her. Uncle Darin always seems to be a hit with these two darlings. Loretta and I were at KMS together, and she is now a principal in Tipp City.
Saturday is a tailgate picnic for the band, and then a contest at the OSU stadium in Columbus. I have never been to this sacred site, and am excited to do so.
There Is Only Now
It can be easy for us to walk through the world and our lives without really being present. While dwelling on the past and living for the future are common pastimes, it is physically impossible to live anywhere but the present moment. We cannot step out our front door and take a left turn to May of last year, any more than we can take a right turn to December 2010. Nevertheless, we can easily miss the future we are waiting for as it becomes the now we are too busy to pay attention to. We then spend the rest of our time playing “catch up” to the moment that we just let pass by. During moments like these, it is important to remember that there is only Now.
In order to feel more at home in the present moment, it is important to try to stay aware, open, and receptive. Being in the present moment requires our full attention so that we are fully awake to experience it. When we are fully present, our minds do not wander. We are focused on what is going on right now, rather than thinking about what just happened or worrying about what is going to happen next. Being present lets us experience each moment in our lives in a way that cannot be fully lived through memory or fantasy.
When we begin to corral our attention into the present moment, it can be almost overwhelming to be here. There is a state of stillness that has to happen that can take some getting used to, and the mind chatter that so often gets us into our heads and out of the present moment doesn’t have as much to do. We may feel a lack of control because we aren’t busy planning our next move, assessing our current situation, or anticipating the future. Instead, being present requires that we be flexible, creative, attentive, and spontaneous. Each present moment is completely new, and nothing like it has happened or will ever happen again. As you move through your day, remember to stay present in each moment. In doing so, you will live your life without having to wait for the future or yearn for the past. Life happens to us when we happen to life in the Now.
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — House Peters Jr., a TV actor who became the original Mr. Clean in Procter & Gamble’s commercials for household cleaners, died Wednesday. He was 92.
House Peters Jr. (left) poses with his father during the making of a Western in the early ’50s.
Peters died of pneumonia at the Motion Picture and Television Fund Hospital in Los Angeles, said his son, Jon Peters.
The elder Peters’ most memorable role came as Mr. Clean — a muscular man with a bald head, a hoop earring and a no-nonsense attitude toward dirt and grime. From the late 1950s and into the early 1960s, Peters Jr. helped advertise the famous household cleaner with the trademark jingle, “Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean.”
Peters Jr. played many supporting roles through his career, including working with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry on their television shows. He also appeared in “Perry Mason,” “Gunsmoke,” “The Twilight Zone” and “Lassie.”
“He always played the heavy,” Jon Peters said, referring to his father’s customary roles as a villain or brawny character. “Even though he wasn’t happy about being cast in those roles, he worked really hard at it.”
His father’s acting career spanned 1935-1967, according to his Web site. He also wrote an autobiography, “Another Side of Hollywood,” in which he describes growing up the son of an actress and silent film actor in Beverly Hills. His father, Robert House Peters Sr., has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Peters Jr. was never a leading man, but played many character parts in cowboy movies and won a Golden Boot Award in 2000 for his lifetime contributions to the western genre, his son said.
Peters Jr. was born January 12, 1916, in New Rochelle, New York, as Robert House Peters Jr. His son said Peters Jr. studied drama in high school and became inspired to pursue an acting career.
He also is survived by his wife, Lucy Pickett, a daughter, another son and four grandchildren.
Discovering the Little Things that Make Us Happy
Life is full of little wonders that can make us happy. The sound of a baby’s laughter, a good book, the comforting smell of a favorite old sweatshirt, and the warmth from a cup of hot tea are simple pleasures that can easily put smiles on our faces. These “little things” are easily accessible to us and can be sources for finding happiness. A key to doing so is taking the time to put those rose colored glasses from childhood back on so you can easily find the joy in all the “little things” that life has to offer.
Finding a puppy rummaging through the laundry basket, trying on that perfect shade of lipstick, or discovering the extra change you left in your back pocket can turn into moments of delight. Like kids digging in the sandbox for buried trinkets, we may even begin to experience happiness when we engage in the seemingly mundane. Figuring out a software program can feel like deciphering a treasure map, and that first sip of tea in the morning can taste like a forbidden delicacy. Swaying to music playing on the radio can turn into an interpretive jig, riding a bike can seem like flying to the moon, and getting a phone call from that special someone can feel like winning the lottery. A pickup game of basketball becomes an exciting match among champions, and observing an elderly couple walking hand in hand can turn into a meditation on peace and contentment.
When we begin rediscovering that the little things in life can make us happy, we naturally want to share this joy with others. We may gush over a friend when we run into them unexpectedly, praise a street musician for their talents, or blow bubbles for the neighborhood kids to chase. We may even start to think of the little things we can do to make other people happy, which in turn makes us happy all over again. There is an endless supply of little things and little moments that can make us happy. All we have to do is look for them, and they’ll magically start to appear.
Get Out of Your Own Way
When you find yourself facing obstacles that appear to be blocking you from your goals, it is important to try not to get discouraged. It can be easy to feel “stuck” or that “life” is creating circumstances preventing you from getting what you want. And while it is easy to look at everyone and everything outside of ourselves for the problem, perhaps even wanting to “get rid” of the person, object, or circumstance we may feel is blocking us, sometimes the best course of action to take may be to look inside ourselves first.
It is amazing how often we can get in our own way without even being aware that we are doing so. Even though we truly want to succeed, there are many reasons why we may sometimes block our own efforts. It may be that we are afraid to succeed, so we subconsciously create circumstances to keep ourselves stuck. Or it may even be that we are afraid that we will succeed, so we block ourselves by making the achievement of our goals more difficult than they really are. We may even approach our goals in a way that keeps creating the same unsuccessful results.
If you believe that you’ve been standing in your own way, you may want to take a piece of paper and record how you’ve done so. Write down the choices you’ve made that have hindered your efforts and the fears that may have prompted you to make these decisions. Take note of any thoughts and feelings that arise. It is important to be gentle and compassionate during this process. Try not to blame yourself for getting in your own way. Remember the choices we make always are there to serve us, until it is time to let them go. When you are finished, throw the paper away while setting an intention that you are getting rid of any obstacles you’ve created to block yourself. You can then let yourself start again with a clean slate. Doubts and fears are going to be natural, but with this new awareness, you should be able to prevent yourself from subconsciously thwarting yourself. Besides, now that you’ve decided to get out of your own way, the part of you that has always wanted to succ! eed can now do so.
The Play-Wright Flyer Guy 
