Be Yourself

Let's just be fabulously where we are and who we are. You be you and I'll be me... and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!
Jerry Spinelli
American Author and Children's Novelist

Faith

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
Thomas Merton, 1915-1968
Trappist Monk, Author, Poet and Social Activist

Change

Change ....

“The best thing you can do is the right thing...
the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing...
the worst thing you can do is nothing.” unknown

My 35th Wedding Anniversary

Just read this post on Writer's Almanac.  So befitting for today, my 35th wedding anniversary.  My husband may have left, on the physical plane, but never my heart. . .

It's the birthday of John Steinbeck (books by this author), born in Salinas, California (1902). His early books didn't sell well at all, and he supported himself as a manual laborer. His first success came with the 1935 novel Tortilla Flat, which was the story of King Arthur and the Round Table told through the lives of pleasure-loving Mexican Americans. He was paid several thousand dollars for the movie rights; the film was released in 1942 and starred Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr. Steinbeck's book Of Mice and Men (1937) was very popular, but it was also considered vulgar and unpatriotic, and Steinbeck was accused of having an "anti-business attitude."

In the late 1930s, he was sent by a newspaper to report on the situation of migrant farmers, so he got an old bakery truck and drove around California's Central Valley. He found people starving, thousands of them crowded in miserable shelters, sick with typhus and the flu. He wrote everything down in his journal, and in less than six months, he had a 200,000-word manuscript. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) won the Pulitzer Prize, but the author was roundly condemned in some quarters for his anti-capitalist, pro-New Deal, pro-worker stance.

During World War II, Steinbeck wrote some government propaganda, and although he returned to social commentary in his post-war fiction, his books of the 1950s were more sentimental than his pre-war works. In the 1960s, he served as an advisor to Lyndon Johnson, whose Vietnam policies Steinbeck supported. Many accused him of betraying his leftist roots.

He said: "A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome."

A Million Dollars Worth of Love

The only way to get love is to be lovable. It's very irritating if you have a lot of money. You'd like to think you could write a check: I'll buy a million dollars' worth of love.' But it doesn't work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get. Warren Buffett American Business Magnate and Philanthropist

Edna St. Vincent Milay and Woolworth

It's the birthday of the charismatic poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (books by this author), born in Rockland, Maine (1892). Her middle name came from a hospital — St. Vincent in New York — where one of her uncles was saved from death immediately before her birth.
Edna was in high school when she submitted a poem, "Renascence," to a poetry contest. She didn't win the contest, but one of the judges fell in love with her, and almost divorced his wife. She performed "Renascence" at a poetry reading, and a woman in the audience was so impressed that she paid Edna's way to go to Vassar College.
The last stanza of "Renascence" begins:
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, —
No higher than the soul is high.

Frank Woolworth opened the first of his "five cent" stores on this date in 1878. Armed with $300 and experience working in a dry-goods store, he opened "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store" in Utica, New York; by May, the store had gone under. He tried again in 1879, this time in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and included merchandise priced at a dime. His "dime stores" undercut the prices of local merchants, and they differed from traditional stores in that merchandise was readily available for shoppers to pick up and handle without the assistance of a shop clerk. The Lancaster location proved successful, and Woolworth opened a second location in Harrisburg, at a cost of $127. By the time he died in 1919, the "five and dime" F.W. Woolworth Corporation was worth about $65 million and owned more than a thousand stores worldwide.

Meaning

Your soul doesn't care what you do for a living - and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only about what you are being while you are doing whatever you are doing. Neale Donald Walsch
American Author and Spiritual Teacher

Jeffrey Zaslow Death

Jeff Zaslow’s tragic passing sends shockwaves to those who loved him

Neil steinberg

nsteinberg@suntimes.com

Last Modified: Feb 16, 2012 09:17AM

 

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is a list of numbered propositions, each leading to the next. Number 6.4311 begins, “Death is not an event in life. Death is not lived through.”

For the person who has died, that is. That person is whisked away to whatever reward or void awaits us after death.

It is those of us who have not yet died who live through death, big time, who must cope with it, particularly accidental death, which radiates outward, sending shockwaves, first to those at the scene, stunned to find death intruding onto an ordinary day.

Then to the officialdom who must deal with death regularly and handle the particulars. Then exploding into the lives of family, who suffer the most and, finally, the thunderclap reaches the outer world, where people hear it and look up, moved to the degree they knew the deceased.

Jeff Zaslow died in a car accident Friday, as you’ve probably heard. Longtime Sun-Times readers will fondly recall his thoughtful, human and funny advice column that ran from 1987 until 2001, or his best-selling books such as The Last Lecture.

I don’t do grief well — I’m self-centered and over-analytical, a bad mix — and no sooner feel loss then immediately start questioning it, to see if it’s legitimate. Jeff’s death came as a sickening shock, yet I instantly pulled back, certain that I occupy too distant an orbit among his concentric circles of friends to be entitled to feel awful, which is reserved for his wife and daughters and family, the true epicenter of suffering. Any hurt I feel must be ersatz, overdramatic.

No matter how I tried to focus my thoughts on others — Jeff’s genius, the key to his life: he was a big-hearted, generous man, a true friend — I kept returning to my own experiences with him.

Memories bubbled up, random stuff, as if my brain were venting everything it knew about Jeff Zaslow, from the fact that at birth, he was delivered by Dr. C. Everett Koop, the future Surgeon General, to his sister’s hand-made picture frames, to his love of Bruce Springsteen — we once went to a concert together — to the day, almost 25 years ago, Jeff was being given his welcoming tour of the Sun-Times newsroom and I hurried over, curious to discover just what kind of idiot leaves a job writing front page stories for the Wall Street Journal to advise women how to get stains out of a broadloom rug on page 27 of the Sun-Times.

If a Russian novelist tried to create two separate characters to split the spectrum of qualities a writer can possess, he might cook up Jeff — happy, concerned for others, frenetic, sincere — and me: melancholy, self-absorbed, shambling, sarcastic.

Jeff wanted to help everybody. He held those enormous Zazz Bashes at Navy Pier because he got so many letters from lonely people, and wanted to fix them up with each other, to give each one a shot at the joy he found with his own wife, Sherry.

I thought he was crazy. “Jeff,” I’d say, “You’re not a social service.”

When I got the awful news — we have the same literary agency — I dutifully phoned it into the newspaper. “Do you want to write something?” an editor asked. I said “No.” The planet of my ego is such — think Jupiter — I knew it would be impossible to launch a tribute to Jeff without having it circle back and crash into myself.

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” is the final line of Wittgenstein’s book. Good advice. I wanted to honor Jeff by shutting up, an underappreciated art form.

But silence felt even worse. We Jews bury our own, and standing at Jeff’s graveside, mutely waiting for my turn with the shovel, I stared at my shoes and tried to block out the sound of his daughters weeping. “This is the worst thing in the world,” I thought. “I hate this I hate this I hate this.”

Silence has no utility, it isn’t a sharp enough blade to scrape at the icy loss that Jeff’s death frosts over the world. I wish I could wrap this up tidily, with an inspiring thought that counterbalances the tragedy in the world and leaves you with a smile. Jeff was so good at that. Alas, he is not here, a hard fact that touches on the often cruel nature of life, one that we lucky enough to have known Jeff will struggle with for a long time.

---

Copyright © 2012 — Sun-Times Media, LLC

Marine Horse Named "Reckless" 14.1 hands 900 lbs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The story of Reckless is not only remarkable - it is unusual.  And once you learn about her, you will see why the Marine Corps not only fell in love with her - but honored her and promoted her every chance they got.  And it wasn’t just the Marines that served with her in the trenches that honored her - her last promotion to Staff Sergeant was by Gen. Randolph McC Pate - the Commandant of the entire Marine Corps.  You can’t get higher than that in the Marines.

Reckless joined the Marines to carry ammunition to the front lines for the 75mm Recoilless Rifle Platoon of the 5th Marines - and she quickly earned the love and respect of all of the Marines that served with her.  Lt. Eric Pedersen paid $250 of his own money to a young Korean boy, Kim Huk Moon, for her.  The only reason Kim sold his beloved horse was so he could buy an artificial leg for his older sister, Chung Soon, who lost her leg in a land mine accident. 

Kim’s loss was the Marines’ gain.

It was not only Reckless’ heroics that endeared the Marines to her - it was her incredible antics off of the battlefield.  You will not believe her antics when she was being ignored, or if she was hungry – let’s just say you never wanted to leave your food unattended.  As legendary as she was for her heroics – her appetite became even more legendary.  This horse had a mind of her own – not to mention, being very determined.  

Reckless had a voracious appetite.  She would eat anything and everything – but especially scrambled eggs and pancakes in the morning with her morning cup of coffee.  She also loved cake, Hershey bars, candy from the C rations, and Coca Cola – even poker chips, blankets and hats when she was being ignored – or if she was trying to just prove a point. 

One of Reckless’ finest hours came during the Battle of Outpost Vegas in March of 1953.  At the time of this battle it was written that, “The savagery of the battle for the so-called Nevada Complex has never been equaled in Marine Corps history.”  This particular battle “was to bring a cannonading and bombing seldom experienced in warfare … twenty-eight tons of bombs and hundreds of the largest shells turned the crest of Vegas into a smoking, death-pocked rubble.”  And Reckless was in the middle of all of it. 

Enemy soldiers could see her as she made her way across the deadly “no man’s land” rice paddies and up the steep 45-degree mountain trails that led to the firing sites.  “It’s difficult to describe the elation and the boost in morale that little white-faced mare gave Marines as she outfoxed the enemy bringing vitally needed ammunition up the mountain,” Sgt. Maj. James E. Bobbitt recalled.

During this five-day battle, on one day alone she made 51 trips from the Ammunition Supply Point to the firing sites, 95% of the time by herself.  She carried 386 rounds of ammunition (over 9,000 pounds – almost FIVE TONS! -- of ammunition), walked over 35 miles through open rice paddies and up steep mountains with enemy fire coming in at the rate of 500 rounds per minute.  And as she so often did, she would carry wounded soldiers down the mountain to safety, unload them, get reloaded with ammo, and off she would go back up to the guns.  She also provided a shield for several Marines who were trapped trying to make their way up to the front line.  Wounded twice, she didn’t let that stop or slow her down. 

What she did in this battle not only earned her the respect of all that served with her, but it got her promoted to Sergeant.  Her heroics defined the word “Marine.”  She was BELOVED by the Marines.  They took care of her better than they took care of themselves – throwing their flak jackets over her to protect her when incoming was heavy, risking their own safety. 

Her Military Decorations included two Purple Hearts, Good Conduct Medal, Presidential Unit Citation with star, National Defense Service Medal, Korean Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, and Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, all of which she wore proudly on her red and gold blanket.

There has never been a horse like Reckless, and her story needs to be preserved.

 

God in Nature

"If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in nature and will
realize that it is holy and sacred. We will see God reaching out to us in every
wind that blows, every sunrise and sunset, every cloud in the sky, every flower
that blooms, and every leaf that fades."

~Oswald Chambers

Writer on Writing

It's the birthday of novelist and travel writer Pico Iyer (books by this author), born to Indian parents in Oxford, England (1957). After college, he spent a year working in a Mexican restaurant in the U.S., disguising himself as a Mexican. Then he and a friend went on a trip from California through Central America to Bolivia. He later said: "It's a great thing to take a journey like that when you're seventeen or eighteen because you're relatively reckless and you don't really know what the dangers are. And then once you've done it, anything seems possible."
He went to graduate school at Harvard, and during the summers he got a job writing for a budget travel guidebook. He traveled around England, France, Italy and Greece, living on almost no money and sleeping in the gutters and under bridges. He covered a different town each day, walking its streets and taking notes in the morning and afternoon and writing it up in the evening.

After graduating, he got a job working for Time magazine. He sat in a cubicle all day and wrote articles about places like the Philippine jungles and the Andes Mountains, from reports he got from other writers. He finally got fed up with office work and took a vacation to Southeast Asia. He fell in love with the place and decided to take a six-month leave of absence. He spent the first three months traveling through 10 Southeast Asian countries and the next three months writing the draft of his first book, Video Nights in Katmandu (1988).

He's since published several more books, including the novel Abandon: A Romance (2003).
Pico Iyer said: "The less conscious one is of being 'a writer,' the better the writing. And though reading is the best school of writing, school is the worst place for reading. Writing should ... be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent ... and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger."  And, "Home is whatever you can rebel against."

Poetry in Motion

Nightsong

by Philip Booth

Beside you,
lying down at dark,
my waking fits your sleep.

Your turning
flares the slow-banked fire
between our mingled feet,

and there,
curved close and warm
against the nape of love,

held there,
who holds your dreaming
shape, I match my breathing

to your breath;
and sightless, keep my hand
on your heart's breast, keep

nightwatch
on your sleep to prove
there is no dark, nor death.

"Nightsong" by Philip Booth, from Lifelines. © Viking Press, 1999.

Stars and Flowers

"What a desolate place would be a world without a flower! It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome. Are not flowers the stars of the earth, and are not our stars the flowers of the heaven." ~ A.J. Balfour

Ode to Aging

Grecian Temples

by George Bilgere

Because I'm getting pretty gray at the temples,
which negatively impacts my earning potential
and does not necessarily attract vibrant young women
with their perfumed bosoms to dally with me
on the green hillside,
I go out and buy some Grecian Hair Formula.

And after the whole process, which involves
rubber gloves, a tiny chemistry set,
and perfect timing, I look great.
I look very fresh and virile, full of earning potential.
But when I take my fifteen-year-old beagle
out for his evening walk, the contrast is unfortunate.
Next to me he doesn't look all that great,
with his graying snout, his sort of faded,
worn-out-dog look. It makes me feel old,
walking around with a dog like that.

It's not something a potential employer,
much less a vibrant young woman with a perfumed bosom
would necessarily go for. So I go out
and get some more Grecian Hair Formula—
Light Brown, my beagle's original color.
And after all the rigmarole he looks terrific.
I mean, he's not going to win any friskiness contests,
not at fifteen. But there's a definite visual improvement.
The two of us walk virilely around the block.

The next day a striking young woman at the bookstore
happens to ask me about my parents,
who are, in fact, long dead, due to the effects of age.
They were very old, which causes death.
But having dead old parents does not go
with my virile, intensely fresh new look.

So I say to the woman, my parents are fine.
They love their active lifestyle in San Diego.
You know, windsurfing, jai alai, a still-vibrant sex life.
And while this does not necessarily cause her
to come dally with me on the green hillside, I can tell
it doesn't hurt my chances.

I can see her imagining dinner
with my sparkly, young-seeming mom and dad
at some beachside restaurant
where we would announce our engagement.

Your son has great earning potential,
she'd say to dad, who would take
a gander at her perfumed bosom
and give me a wink, like he used to do
back when he was alive, and vibrant.

"Grecian Temples" by George Bilgere, from The White Museum. © Autumn House Press, 2010.