Posts Tagged ‘inspiration’
We Can
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we can do this
standing on our heads
like those who came before
those who survived
attempted extermination of their tribes
those who endured hardships of two world wars
those who lived through the great depression
how about the rise of crime syndicates during prohibition
how despondent must it have felt
to get knocked down repeatedly
in quests for equal rights
this country survived
how many assassinated leaders
climate disasters
economic failures
pollution calamities
drug wars
political scandals
terror attacks
space shuttle explosions
can we get past
social media addictions
corporations’ algorithms
malignant narcissists
gaslighting white supremacist kleptocrats
undereducated generations
conspiracy-minded idiocy
religious dogmatic insanity
shameless hypocrisy
we can
we can stand fast
we can outlast
the worst of any attempts
to destroy the rights
of citizens to know the truth
of a free press
of free and fair elections
of the democratic ideals
in the U.S. Constitution
we can love one another
we can help our neighbors
we can feed the hungry
we can honor those who came before
and the generations yet to come
we can do this
together
standing on our heads
we are innumerable
a great loving multitude
and there will always be more of us
than there will ever be
of those who prefer we give up
and go away
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Extra Day
Since circumstances led to Cyndie and me each having a car up at the lake over the weekend, we didn’t need to go home at the same time. I asked for an extra day at the lake and Cyndie headed home to relieve the animal sitters. With no responsibilities, I opted for a bike ride in the middle of a Monday in the north woods of Wisconsin.
There are some wonderful stretches of good pavement passing through wooded acres that offer a rewarding combination of forest bathing while sailing along on two wheels. It feeds my mind, body, and soul.
Returning to the Wildwood driveway brought me up to the empty house where I could enjoy the best of everything it provides in precious solitude. After a quick dip in the lake, followed by a shower, I stretched out diagonally across the bed under the sunshine coming through the skylight window for a luxurious nap.
For those of us who don’t live alone, having a spare day every so often when you can leave a trail of your belongings anywhere you please and eat and sleep when the whim arrives is invigorating. I also chose to watch a movie in the middle of the afternoon while eating a sandwich and some West’s Dairy Praline and Caramel ice cream.
Sure, having pets can add a lot to a person’s life, but being free from any need to tend to precious critters often gives me just as much joy. I wouldn’t have been able to finish a full-length movie while devouring delicious bite-sized portions of ice cream if Asher had been staring up at me with his big eyes and whining to play.
How do you describe eating ice cream from a spoon (I’m not usually a cone person), but not ever biting it? I don’t actually lick it. Am I lipping it? Sliding the spoon back out from my mouth while silently scraping a portion of the creamy goodness with my lips to be held back for my tongue and mouth to absorb it with glee. The spoon then goes back in for a second pass, maybe a third before it is clean and ready to be reloaded for another iteration.
Maybe there is a word that better describes the technique. If I weren’t so inclined to avoid interacting with AI sites, I might find such a descriptor by searching.
The movie I watched lasted much longer than my ice cream and it was almost as much fun, given the subject of Sherpas and Mount Everest. I highly recommend the documentary film, “Mountain Queen – The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa,” which I found on Netflix.
Lhakpa was the first Nepali woman to climb Everest and survive. She holds the record for most Everest summits by a woman. What she has accomplished in her life outside of climbing is maybe even more remarkable. She is an inspiration of great strength, both physical and emotional.
She and her children deserve much broader recognition, which I hope this film will bring.
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Biggest Difference
We jumped on the inspiration yesterday and rearranged the furniture in our main living area. When all was said and done, the change ended up being rather minimal. Cyndie and I agree that the biggest difference is that the room received the deepest cleaning it has had since we moved in.
Before:
After:
One of the changes that satisfy my sense of order is that I was able to reposition the rug so it is centered in the middle of the fireplace.
After a night’s sleep, we are pleased to find our initial response to the change is that we are okay with it. I am satisfied that neither of us is finding the new layout totally unacceptable.
It doesn’t hurt that the rug and floor are ridiculously clean. The true test will be if we still like the seating after a few weeks of dust and debris settle back into the nooks and crannies that the vacuum misses.
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Rediscovery – Revisited
First published about a year ago. I could use some reminding today about this seedling deep in my core.
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Rediscovery
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Words on Images
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Fence Maintenance
I’ve tried a number of methods in dealing with fence posts that get pushed up by the freezing and thawing cycles that occur in our location. Our land has areas where the level of ground water sits just below the surface. It will drop during extended drought, but otherwise it doesn’t take much digging to reach moisture.
Every time it freezes, the water expands and the pressure slowly but surely pushes fence posts toward the sky.
Upon consultation with the owner of the company that originally installed our fencing, I learned that they would likely use a skid-steer tractor and press down with the hydraulic bucket. He suggested I save their time and my money and use the same method with my diesel tractor.
So, I did, and was amazed at how easily that pushed posts down. Almost too easy. It requires painstaking control and mental focus to avoid wreaking total havoc by overtaxing the limits of the posts or cross planks. One wrong slip and I risk doing much more damage than improvement.
There is one other complication with that method that pretty much stops me from even driving up to the fence. The ground in many of the areas of pushed up posts is so wet that my big tractor would sink into the mud and create an even messier problem to be solved.
That led me to desperately trying to simplify the task by just pounding down on the most obvious posts that had pushed up. Several different techniques to protect the post from damage and get the right angle and leverage all brought minimal results.
Yesterday spawned a new insight. I had a hand tool with a square steel pad for tamping soil that I figured would work to pound the top of the posts without damaging them. I also thought it wouldn’t hurt to add my 170 pounds of pressure to stand on a plank when slamming down on the top of a post.
The thing is, I couldn’t feel if it was doing any good. I enlisted Cyndie’s help to watch for progress, which ended up providing great encouragement when she would report how much it was working.
I was thrilled. Right up to the point the steel tamper began to shatter under the mis-use. I tried to carry on, but the loss of weight in the tool seemed to diminish progress. Another tool was needed. We don’t have a specific sledge hammer, but I contemplated rigging something to use the wood splitting maul for the purpose.
That’s when the next inspiration struck. I could modify the broken tamper to make it the handle of a weighty block of wood that would match the fence posts I was pounding.
Look out fence posts. Here I come.
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New Heart
It’s difficult to do a sculpture justice with a couple of two-dimensional images, but taking pictures of my projects allows me to keep a record of pieces that won’t stay in my possession forever. With that, I took these photos yesterday to chronicle the finished product of my latest woodworking endeavor.
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As I am wont to do, I’ve left the backside natural bark and shaped and polished the front into a heart shape from a piece of ash where the tree forked into two branches.
Completing this latest heart has inspired me to start over right away with another wood sculpting project from the variety of wood chunks I’ve stockpiled in the shop, salvaged from trees we’ve cut down over the years. I have a rough idea of what I feel like making next, but that vision will merge with the features of the wood I select to ultimately determine what emerges in the end.
Most often, when I put my heart into it, that is the shape that results.
I’m completely okay with that.
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Figuring Out
The human race has made it this far. Maybe things will change for the better if enough people overcome fear, selfish greed, and exclusionary dogma to embrace love for all others equally. Think about it.
In the meantime, rational thinking must tolerate the rampant distribution of disinformation and innumerable groups of gullible people who allow themselves to believe any narrative that aligns with their versions of reality.
Long ago I became disturbed by ever-increasing reports of atrocities enacted by individuals who had themselves been abused. It was very obvious that those who had been harmed were eventually becoming offenders. Generations of this pattern were creating an expanding pyramid of misery.
This led me to visualize inverting that pyramid of dysfunction by breaking the patterns in some who could raise healthier children. With each generation, there would be fewer abusers and from the top down, the cone of an inverted dysfunction pyramid would be getting smaller with time. A reverse-pyramid scheme.
Of course, the opposite of that is the wonderful perspective of a pyramid of healthy loving people expanding with every generation.
I sought to break the chain of depression that I had inherited from my family tree and provide the knowledge and support for my children to recognize depression in themselves and those they love.
With the innovations of a world-wide internet and social media applications, the less rational portions of the human population have found a method to consolidate their numbers in frightening ways. I’m finding myself stumped for ideas to invert the pyramid of fear-based philosophies.
How much of my loving them will influence a change of thought? Why doesn’t rational logic override conspiratorial fears? How will non-religious spirituality ever compete with entrenched dogma of so many rival sects?
Will our dog and our cat ever figure out how to peaceably get along?
From history, we know that civilizations collapse. There is no assurance that there will come a day when all people eventually come together into a healthy, compassionate, inclusive, and loving society. Maybe if robots are programmed to take over our governance. Although, I saw a curious report that an AI (artificial intelligence) controlled camera mistook a referee’s bald head for a soccer ball and followed it for the remainder of a match.
Based on the last four years of backlash to the US having elected a person of color to the highest office for the eight years previous, our democracy doesn’t appear to be the beacon of hope it was once purported to be. Capitalism doesn’t deserve very high marks either, given the insane disparity of wealth distribution and environmental destruction it has achieved.
If the US survives the outcome of our election on Tuesday, we will have a lot of work ahead of us to overcome animosities and nurture more love for others than ever before. Freedom may ring, but the world will be a much better place if it rings with due respect for all others.
Let’s expand love to more people in the world than any generation before us ever achieved.
Amen.
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Relative Something 