How do I say this?
I never set out to be a "sweet woman." It still sounds vaguely cloying. Like candy. We all know candy isn't strong. It crumbles. It doesn't nourish. It's just...sweet.
Over time, however, I've met some incredibly sweet men and women. Not a one of them have been weak. On the contrary. They have dealt with difficult people, heartbreaking events in their lives, and managed to see good anyway. They can be amazingly patient. They can stick to their goals and responsibilities.
When you are with them, you just feel a sort of safeness. They can be funny, even bawdy, but you aren't on guard waiting for the zinger. It isn't coming. Oh, they can suffer. They can get angry. They just don't destroy with it. They don't smash things or people. And they never blame a child for a grownup reaction.
They aren't doormats. And negativity is something they simply step away from, because for them, it just doesn't reasonate.
Most are fairly quiet persons, because they are the listeners, not the talkers. They have great smiles. Many give great hugs.
I sometimes suffer negative vibes, wanting to snarl and complain. More and more, these times feel like a particularly nasty virus that feels really icky. (To me, icky implies sticky, nasty bad. Putrid.) It can last awhile. Depends on me.
To be really negative takes a tremendous amount of self-centeredness. You really have to get into the zone where no one else really matters. That's pretty sick. We do it. Sometimes.
But the people I think are really sweet--I don't catch them doing this. They don't stew over negative people or events. They also don't spend unnecessary time around them. Sometimes you have to deal with a negative person because he or she is the boss. That's tough. It's also survivable.
I never aspired to be sweet. I'm beginning to mature enough to find it a really healthy, fun way to live when I do it right.
I laughed to myself yesterday, mulling this in my mind. I am not sure I have said what I want to say yet.
But I think I am jusssst about ready to wear big girl panties.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Monday, May 27, 2013
How do we see the world?
You know, sometimes I wonder about the words written thousands of years ago, in one culture, read thousands of years later in another.
I don't question often but how's this: I live in desert country, the Southwest. We consider most rains a blessing.
In Job, we hear the rain falls on the just and the unjust. How many in the Western world blame the rain? How many in the dry climates bless it? Funny; One reality. Many ways to interpret.
Sometimes, what we need is inherent, we see the need immediately.
This seems to me a struggle in spiritual leadership.
I don't question often but how's this: I live in desert country, the Southwest. We consider most rains a blessing.
In Job, we hear the rain falls on the just and the unjust. How many in the Western world blame the rain? How many in the dry climates bless it? Funny; One reality. Many ways to interpret.
Sometimes, what we need is inherent, we see the need immediately.
This seems to me a struggle in spiritual leadership.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Recognizing A Civilization That Works Through Honest Sacrifice
Today, the preacher asked all those who had served in the Armed Services, had family members serve, stand up. There were a quantity.
I sat.
None I know of in my family have ever gone to war or even served in the Armed Forces.
We are patriots.
Memorial Day when I was a kid was when all families went to the cemetery and cleaned up and left flowers from the garden. In my town, the mulberries were ripening, and we kids would climb the trees, eat the berries and what we didn't eat, zing at each other.
I was the surviving child of three my parents had to nurture. They lost two.
I thought Memorial Day meant we all remembered all our dead. I had good parents. I still was highly conscious of dead siblings. Memorial Day was almost a balm, when we took flowers to the brother and sister I never would know. Never did. But they were there. I had no idea Memorial Day didn't honor them at all. Not for years.
I agree we should applaud dead soldiers.
I still am surprised we have no day of remembrance in society for the people we all have lost. As a kid, I thought the day included my dead brother and sister. No. No day does.
I am so glad for our heroes.
They do deserve recognition.
After Pearl Harbor, my dad was too old. Everyone was applying. He got into war bond efforts. I understand my county had some stellar amounts, thanks to my dad. He helped. He worked. He was not in battle. He helped pay for it.
In 100 years or more, both sides, I know of no one in my family who has ever served.
I used to apologize. But. Without the war bonds my dad sold, the war could not have continued. Without the victory garden he planted, many might have gone hungry. My mother taught students her course but also, often, how to survive. She lost two children and reared me. And gave my family so much laughter.
I treasure the heroes we recognize. In my heart, as well, I also am giving tribute to those we never recognize, the ones who also keep us going.
You may be one of them.
I sat.
None I know of in my family have ever gone to war or even served in the Armed Forces.
We are patriots.
Memorial Day when I was a kid was when all families went to the cemetery and cleaned up and left flowers from the garden. In my town, the mulberries were ripening, and we kids would climb the trees, eat the berries and what we didn't eat, zing at each other.
I was the surviving child of three my parents had to nurture. They lost two.
I thought Memorial Day meant we all remembered all our dead. I had good parents. I still was highly conscious of dead siblings. Memorial Day was almost a balm, when we took flowers to the brother and sister I never would know. Never did. But they were there. I had no idea Memorial Day didn't honor them at all. Not for years.
I agree we should applaud dead soldiers.
I still am surprised we have no day of remembrance in society for the people we all have lost. As a kid, I thought the day included my dead brother and sister. No. No day does.
I am so glad for our heroes.
They do deserve recognition.
After Pearl Harbor, my dad was too old. Everyone was applying. He got into war bond efforts. I understand my county had some stellar amounts, thanks to my dad. He helped. He worked. He was not in battle. He helped pay for it.
In 100 years or more, both sides, I know of no one in my family who has ever served.
I used to apologize. But. Without the war bonds my dad sold, the war could not have continued. Without the victory garden he planted, many might have gone hungry. My mother taught students her course but also, often, how to survive. She lost two children and reared me. And gave my family so much laughter.
I treasure the heroes we recognize. In my heart, as well, I also am giving tribute to those we never recognize, the ones who also keep us going.
You may be one of them.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
What Cost This Tragedy?
Serendipity is currently my friend today.
I planted vegetables way late. I was cringing. BUT. planted them the day after a big rain. The day after I watered. Yesterday and today we have had three more gentle rains.
I know when my kids were growing up, it seemed sometimes they grew an inch in a week. Considering how tall both ended up, maybe they did, but now, I am looking at vegetables and flowering plants and vines.
With the rains, they all are bigger every day. Really. Wonderfully.
So far the dogs have not lept in and dug them up in the raised bed. This year, I put the short wire fence inside the timbers of the bed, making it a more challenging leap. I also took care to make sure the tomato cages had a tine facing the outside. It's only five days. We'll see.
Last night, we had a mild rain that kept coming through the leaves, tinkling in the birdbath. Early yet, so sleepy calls from some birds in the dark. It was fragrant, musical, comfortable (70s) and wonderful.
I wished then for all those who have gone through horrific storms this week to heal to the sweet, rhythmic drip of the rain, distant and gentle rumble of thunder, and the sweet percussion of leaves brushing in a gentle breeze.
There will be trees again, grass, flowers, even vegetables. Houses will sprout again, businesses regrow.
\When I was a child in New Mexico, I remember the forest fires that destroyed so many acres. For years, it was black ash. Finally scrub oak. Then pinon, and now,50 years later, finally pines are beginning to grow again. It will take another lifetime.
With the tornadoes, times are different. They rebuild more quickly. How is Joplin doing?
I can't remember how many died in Joplin. Can you? My God. 158 deaths, more than 1,100 injured. I googled.
My blog has taken a twist, because I also decided to mention the F4 tornadoes that obliterated so much of Wichita Falls, Tx., April 10, 1979.
I remember that so well. I had just left journalism. I seem to remember there were three tornadoes, only a few miles long, more than a mile wide, F4. I verified all that. What I found eerie is that as I researched, I found costs, devastation photos, economic impact statements. I googled "death toll, 1979 Wichita Falls tornado" but even that didn't get me to the information until the fourth try.
They lost 42, more than 1,000 injured.
I am a little shaken.
So. Apparently we build some better. We have better alerts.
Maybe. Hope so.
I know I'm not a business person. Always have known that. But when I research death tolls for fairly recent events and get the money cost easily and the human deaths only with effort--oh.
Things are worse than I thought.
I planted vegetables way late. I was cringing. BUT. planted them the day after a big rain. The day after I watered. Yesterday and today we have had three more gentle rains.
I know when my kids were growing up, it seemed sometimes they grew an inch in a week. Considering how tall both ended up, maybe they did, but now, I am looking at vegetables and flowering plants and vines.
With the rains, they all are bigger every day. Really. Wonderfully.
So far the dogs have not lept in and dug them up in the raised bed. This year, I put the short wire fence inside the timbers of the bed, making it a more challenging leap. I also took care to make sure the tomato cages had a tine facing the outside. It's only five days. We'll see.
Last night, we had a mild rain that kept coming through the leaves, tinkling in the birdbath. Early yet, so sleepy calls from some birds in the dark. It was fragrant, musical, comfortable (70s) and wonderful.
I wished then for all those who have gone through horrific storms this week to heal to the sweet, rhythmic drip of the rain, distant and gentle rumble of thunder, and the sweet percussion of leaves brushing in a gentle breeze.
There will be trees again, grass, flowers, even vegetables. Houses will sprout again, businesses regrow.
\When I was a child in New Mexico, I remember the forest fires that destroyed so many acres. For years, it was black ash. Finally scrub oak. Then pinon, and now,50 years later, finally pines are beginning to grow again. It will take another lifetime.
With the tornadoes, times are different. They rebuild more quickly. How is Joplin doing?
I can't remember how many died in Joplin. Can you? My God. 158 deaths, more than 1,100 injured. I googled.
My blog has taken a twist, because I also decided to mention the F4 tornadoes that obliterated so much of Wichita Falls, Tx., April 10, 1979.
I remember that so well. I had just left journalism. I seem to remember there were three tornadoes, only a few miles long, more than a mile wide, F4. I verified all that. What I found eerie is that as I researched, I found costs, devastation photos, economic impact statements. I googled "death toll, 1979 Wichita Falls tornado" but even that didn't get me to the information until the fourth try.
They lost 42, more than 1,000 injured.
I am a little shaken.
So. Apparently we build some better. We have better alerts.
Maybe. Hope so.
I know I'm not a business person. Always have known that. But when I research death tolls for fairly recent events and get the money cost easily and the human deaths only with effort--oh.
Things are worse than I thought.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Life music, not tech perfect music
Tonight it rained.
Lightly, in slow, large and chilly drops across an eager, growing landscape.
The dogs and I sat on the screened front porch. They fell asleep.
I listened to the wind on the leaves. A distant train whistle. A lonely mockingbird. My own breath, which slowed and sloughed to the movement of the trees.
I quit thinking, and enjoyed the moisture-laden, cooler air on my body, my face. Listened to slow, redolent drops of rain fall from twilight skies. Listened again to almost quiet thunder, responding to low-wattage lightning, interrupted now and then with a sound like a distant avalanche.
The smells of wet earth, blooming flowers, life all around us is a part.
The daytime sight in my hours' old memory of everything just planted, the roses, the blowing trees, the sleeping dogs...
So peaceful.
I could enjoy this immensely with the addition of my music on reserve, weaving throughout all the sounds and other senses.
That makes sense. To have the beauty of the sound and be aware of your surroundings, not out of fear, but out of joy.
But you youngers. You choose Mc-3 players--do I say it right-- where you plug in and hear nothing else but your music.
Tonight would have been great for Tchaikovsky, Willie Nelson, blues, rock. Anything. But you youngers.
You don't want the trash of outside noise.
I don't hardly know what you are talking about. I'm not sure you can get to the soul without the surroundings.
I love my music, the art of it. But I would not love it nearly so well except for the life and heart of it. I have to hear it in my life, not purified in my head.
I don't know. Maybe you are more complicated. I think it would be good if you took a while,now and then, and chilled, on a porch, thinking nothing, speaking to no one, and just listened.
To everything.
Lightly, in slow, large and chilly drops across an eager, growing landscape.
The dogs and I sat on the screened front porch. They fell asleep.
I listened to the wind on the leaves. A distant train whistle. A lonely mockingbird. My own breath, which slowed and sloughed to the movement of the trees.
I quit thinking, and enjoyed the moisture-laden, cooler air on my body, my face. Listened to slow, redolent drops of rain fall from twilight skies. Listened again to almost quiet thunder, responding to low-wattage lightning, interrupted now and then with a sound like a distant avalanche.
The smells of wet earth, blooming flowers, life all around us is a part.
The daytime sight in my hours' old memory of everything just planted, the roses, the blowing trees, the sleeping dogs...
So peaceful.
I could enjoy this immensely with the addition of my music on reserve, weaving throughout all the sounds and other senses.
That makes sense. To have the beauty of the sound and be aware of your surroundings, not out of fear, but out of joy.
But you youngers. You choose Mc-3 players--do I say it right-- where you plug in and hear nothing else but your music.
Tonight would have been great for Tchaikovsky, Willie Nelson, blues, rock. Anything. But you youngers.
You don't want the trash of outside noise.
I don't hardly know what you are talking about. I'm not sure you can get to the soul without the surroundings.
I love my music, the art of it. But I would not love it nearly so well except for the life and heart of it. I have to hear it in my life, not purified in my head.
I don't know. Maybe you are more complicated. I think it would be good if you took a while,now and then, and chilled, on a porch, thinking nothing, speaking to no one, and just listened.
To everything.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
I will say nothing, and love you with my eyes
With all this internet access, sometimes people are more eager than they should be to show everything. I mean, Everything. Clear up to what great-uncle Edward did with the upstairs maid 75 years ago.
In many cultures, older persons are accorded wisdom. Sometimes, even among Anglos.
As one of those older persons now, I smile, and show my dentured teeth.
What old people know, and young people don't get, is that wisdom is not what you say.
Wisdom is how I listen to you.
Wisdom is not dumping the info I already have on the recipient.
Wisdom is not triangulating the information, and if you don't know what that is, you probably are doing it. It's when your mother tells your Aunt Doris what a failure you are and Aunt Doris tries to get you to speak more respectably to your mother. And you try to get your boy friend to tell your mother it isn't true.
I am not often wise, but sometimes I am. I listen. I keep my mouth shut. I used to give advice. Now I just listen, try to give a little love, and let life happen.
I think I have stumbled on the definition.
Wisdom is loving, trying to understand and sometimes succeeding, and saying nothing. With a loving smile.
In many cultures, older persons are accorded wisdom. Sometimes, even among Anglos.
As one of those older persons now, I smile, and show my dentured teeth.
What old people know, and young people don't get, is that wisdom is not what you say.
Wisdom is how I listen to you.
Wisdom is not dumping the info I already have on the recipient.
Wisdom is not triangulating the information, and if you don't know what that is, you probably are doing it. It's when your mother tells your Aunt Doris what a failure you are and Aunt Doris tries to get you to speak more respectably to your mother. And you try to get your boy friend to tell your mother it isn't true.
I am not often wise, but sometimes I am. I listen. I keep my mouth shut. I used to give advice. Now I just listen, try to give a little love, and let life happen.
I think I have stumbled on the definition.
Wisdom is loving, trying to understand and sometimes succeeding, and saying nothing. With a loving smile.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
In Search of the Holy Kale
This is a great time for these thoughts. Vegetables.
I know, I know, doesn't twang many of your chords, but hey, a lot of you get all excited at "baseball." That's in season, too, and a free ticket to the ball park does about as much for me as "kale chips" do for you.
Yeah. Kale chips. Turns out we have many and varied cultures in our country.
Apparently, kale chips have been around forever. I didn't know.
I am so ashamed. Technology? I'm not so hot. Veggies? Usually pretty good.
I know what kale is. I'm trying to welcome it into my life. It has so much calcium, and my body needs that.
I actually love spinach. Love the taste, the flavor, all the things you can do with it....I love broccoli--would you believe I have two grown sons who still eat the stuff? I love cabbage, seldom with fatback and never cooked till it is mushy white, but always still green when finished. (One of my sons came home from school one day after buying his lunch for a change. He said he understood why his friends hated cabbage because the whitish green stuff in the cafeteria was yucky." It's supposed to be green," he said with certainty. Such good taste, so young.)
Back to kale. I keep looking for recipes and trying them. It's okay, and I think a problem is I just haven't eaten enough. A younger friend says she makes a salad with fresh kale and cherry tomatoes with Italian dressing. Promising.
I like the recipe I found with long-grain rice and kale, half and half, with chicken broth and spices.
I really like it in vegetable soups.
But until today, hadn't heard of kale chips. Torn leaves, no stems, coated in coconut oil and sea salt. Baked at 325 degrees--about 10 minutes each side until crisp but still bright green. Sounds good. I do have issues.
I am not a fan of sweet potato fries, which so many love, but then, I only like baked sweet potatoes with no salt, black pepper and a little butter or margarine.
I may try these kale chips. My granddaughters, as tots, taught me to eat edemame, and fresh mangoes.
I remember one toddling up with a ripe mango and asking me to "turtle it." (cross-hatches on one side which then can be cut into individual bites.)
"Huh?" I replied then.
Now they sometimes humor me so we can go the yogurt place with mango yogurt and fresh, "turtled" mango slices to go on top. They can do this at home. But they know every now and then,
Grandma needs a treat.
Wonder if kale juice would be noticeable.
I know, I know, doesn't twang many of your chords, but hey, a lot of you get all excited at "baseball." That's in season, too, and a free ticket to the ball park does about as much for me as "kale chips" do for you.
Yeah. Kale chips. Turns out we have many and varied cultures in our country.
Apparently, kale chips have been around forever. I didn't know.
I am so ashamed. Technology? I'm not so hot. Veggies? Usually pretty good.
I know what kale is. I'm trying to welcome it into my life. It has so much calcium, and my body needs that.
I actually love spinach. Love the taste, the flavor, all the things you can do with it....I love broccoli--would you believe I have two grown sons who still eat the stuff? I love cabbage, seldom with fatback and never cooked till it is mushy white, but always still green when finished. (One of my sons came home from school one day after buying his lunch for a change. He said he understood why his friends hated cabbage because the whitish green stuff in the cafeteria was yucky." It's supposed to be green," he said with certainty. Such good taste, so young.)
Back to kale. I keep looking for recipes and trying them. It's okay, and I think a problem is I just haven't eaten enough. A younger friend says she makes a salad with fresh kale and cherry tomatoes with Italian dressing. Promising.
I like the recipe I found with long-grain rice and kale, half and half, with chicken broth and spices.
I really like it in vegetable soups.
But until today, hadn't heard of kale chips. Torn leaves, no stems, coated in coconut oil and sea salt. Baked at 325 degrees--about 10 minutes each side until crisp but still bright green. Sounds good. I do have issues.
I am not a fan of sweet potato fries, which so many love, but then, I only like baked sweet potatoes with no salt, black pepper and a little butter or margarine.
I may try these kale chips. My granddaughters, as tots, taught me to eat edemame, and fresh mangoes.
I remember one toddling up with a ripe mango and asking me to "turtle it." (cross-hatches on one side which then can be cut into individual bites.)
"Huh?" I replied then.
Now they sometimes humor me so we can go the yogurt place with mango yogurt and fresh, "turtled" mango slices to go on top. They can do this at home. But they know every now and then,
Grandma needs a treat.
Wonder if kale juice would be noticeable.
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