paradox cafe portland: everyday gratefuls day 41

this is a mural on the wall  in the bathroom of the Paradox Cafe on Belmont in Portland.  FUN! the boy on the carrot is probaly about 2 feet tall, the mural takes most of the whole wall.

  

mt hood: everyday grateful day 40

 a different view: this time Mt Hood.   And there is snow on the ground in Mosier, Oregon.

This is the morning view, with the moon.

Taking pictures of mountains is always difficult with a regular camera, the mountain is never close enough.  However you can get the feel for the morning light.

Making valentines: everyday grateful day 39

Susan Callan volunteered to do a valentine making session for some of us at work.  We worked on a specific style: a valentine that folded/unfolded like a puzzle,  creating its' own envelope.  We started working on it, and noted that this was for us, better than going out for beer after work, and then someone volunteered a bottle of wine,  so we were totally set.

Here's a couple of the works in progress.

almost ready to fold up and mail

Cooking Dinner: everyday gratefuls day 38

I walked into the common house tonight, and the kitchen was full of activity.  There were 3 adults actively cooking dinner (chile, rice, swiss chard, homemade tortillas, salad), and one of the cook's kids was busily moving uncooked lentils from one bowl to another.  He would pick up a cup of lentils, and pour it into the other bowl, listening to the rustling sound the lentils made when they landed in the other bowl.  Then he would do it over again.  He was very intent on the whole process,  which allowed his mom to work on the real dinner.  By the time I found my camera to take a picture, yet another neighbor was in the kitchen, and she was helping him with the lentils.
It was a very cooperative cooking process for all.

something to smile at: everyday grateful day 37

http://www.recyclart.org/2011/12/saturday-morning-cartoons/

The thought of recycling stuffed animals into a chair is too much fun.  Anyone who has kids has gone through way too many stuffed animals.  Make them useful!

and, for a more local note:  I love this rock that was made into the entrance sign for our library:

Note: our 5 days of sunshine have ended and it is raining again.  Surprising how many people commented on how much they like the rain.  True northwesterners can't take too much sun.

book : The Big Burn: everyday grateful 36

I am grateful for my book club.  There are 5 women, all active readers, constantly finding new books to read.  Whenever we are discussing what book to read next, each person has ideas and many other books they are in the process of reading. (a joy to trade ideas and passions)  We trade the books around and get them from the library to keep costs down.

The Big Burn:Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, was also a One Book One Community book, where the library  was getting everybody to read the same book.

I listened to some of it on my ipod, and the parts that stuck are the descriptions of the way the different small towns dealt with imminent destruction by fire, and the different fire crews that were caught in the destruction.  The book becomes a bit like a series of short stories, introducing a bunch of characters and following them from beginning of fire to the aftermath.  Immigrants, prostitutes, miners, and families are followed from beginning of fire to end.  Woven in were   the politics of big business vs the starting of the forest service by Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot.  To show the relationship between them and something about their characters, Egan included a story of Pinchot and Roosevelt  having a wrestling and boxing match.   Mostly I got drawn in by the descriptions of the fire, and its effects, from embers the size of horses to evacuation via train... And, very disturbed by the number of people killed, and how, and the total destruction of millions of acres of forest...

Compassion: Everyday Gratefuls Day 35

Started a Study Group tonight for the book "12 Steps to a Compassionate Life" by Karen Armstrong. We are going to try and do one chapter a month.  With homework in between.

She defines compassion as "to endure [something] with another person", to put ourselves in somebody else's shoes,  an attitude of principled, consistent altruism.  Merriam Webster says "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it"


From the Dalai Lama:

"Nirvana may be the final object of attainment, but at the moment it is difficult to reach. Thus the practical and realistic aim is compassion, a warm heart, serving other people, helping others, respecting others, being less selfish. By practising these, you can gain benefit and happiness that remain longer. If you investigate the purpose of life and, with the motivation that results from this inquiry, develop a good heart - compassion and love. Using your whole life this way, each day will become useful and meaningful."

"Every human being has the same potential for compassion; the only question is whether we really take any care of that potential, and develop and implement it in our daily life. My hope is that more and more people will realise the value of compassion, and so follow the path of altruism. As for myself, ever since I became a Buddhist monk, that has been my real destiny - for usually I think of myself as just one simple Buddhist monk, no more and no less."

Karen Armstrong says we should help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help build a Charter for Compassion -- to restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine. For more: see www.charterforcompassion.org  and also the Ted Talk that Karen Armstrong did: http://www.ted.com/talks/karen_armstrong_makes_her_ted_prize_wish_the_charter_for_compassion.html