mermaidcamp

mermaidcamp

Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water

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Flowers Speak Louder than Bombs

April 16, 2013 — 2 Comments

Powerful voice of reason, the garden

The calming fleeting beauty of flowers and trees

Brushstrokes of genius, music of color and urgency

Soothe the mind and heal the body

Drinking Color, Tasting Light

April 14, 2013

Taste with your eyes, smell with your feet.

Take in the story with all our might

While there is color, while there is light.

Dreamtime reorders sensuality

In living color.

Canine Massage

April 12, 2013 — 2 Comments


My dog Artemisia had her first canine massage yesterday. I met Beth Jacobson, CVT ( certified veterinary technician and CCMT (certified canine massage therapist) at the U of A hospital wellness clinic. I really enjoyed the work she did on my body, so when I noticed she had this special skill I booked an appointment for my dog. If you live in Tucson you can arrange for a session with Beth for your dog, bjacobson10@cox.net. Artemisia highly recommends her services.

Meesie elected to take her treatment on the big parents’ bed, jumping right up. I left them alone for almost an hour before I checked in and took these pictures. This red bone coon hound was in heaven. She held on to a very snappy happy mood, although she did take an epic nap right after her massage. Her movement seems a little easier today. She is a loyal client, even if she does not get a big spa allowance. I am sure she will have a chance to do this again. It is healthy for her body, and she obviously loves the experience. Compared to a vet visit, which she does not enjoy at all, this is a very reasonable expense.

Build Open and Honest Relationships with Communication

April 8, 2013 — 5 Comments

Zappos core value number six describes the goal of the communication systems.  Any company has to be specific and mindful about communications within the company and with customers.  Zappos takes this seriously.  The open office design and the systems of training and benefits are conducive to better than average communication.  Since the workers are encouraged to express their personalities in decor and office fashion, at least some nonverbal design language is included in the conversation.

If all companies bothered to find out if they really communicate what they think they are saying I believe huge leaps of employee satisfaction could result.  Statistics show that most employees in the US are disengaged.  What the disengagement does is psychically disconnect the employee from the mission of the company.  Doing time in such an environment resembles jail more than it does a place of productive creativity. If the management has no clue about the reality of the workers, all possible loopholes will be used to avoid helping the company.  For the purpose of oversight as well as for the purpose of clear discussion management today needs to interact rather than hand down dictums. Employees who feel at all unhappy with their work life will take it all out on your customer.

The fun starts at the front door at Zappquarters in Henderson, NV.  Ties are cut and placed on the trophy board.  The best communication device I noticed was the way they used your toilet time to make you look at the wellness information.  Trapped in the stall you are educated about the opportunities to improve your overall health in the company wellness program.  This is a fabulous message and delivery method. The Zappsters do not miss any opportunity to deliver that happy message honestly and clearly.

Poetry and Plants

April 7, 2013 — 9 Comments

New this year at the Tucson Botanical Gardens is a collaboration with the U of A Poetry Center, bringing poetry to the gardens.  I attended the class next to the iris garden yesterday and was surprised at the depth and education they packed into the experience.  We learned about the Poetry Center’s history and the very good luck we have to live in a city with a center such as this. We learned about the botanical gardens and the history and meaning of the iris plant.  An enthusiastic docent from the Tucson Botanical Gardens opened the readings with a poem of her own about iris and the field of everyday glory we can find in nature.  We then read together a selection of poems, all in some way referring to the iris.  Our favorite reader was dressed like an iris and has a British accent that enhanced her interpretation.  It was an exceptional experience on all levels for me.  I enjoyed the crowd, and had time after the class to get some technical growing advise from the lady who represented the Iris Society.  Poetry and gardens do go together very well.  Next month the group will meet by the cactus garden….a thorny subject.  I am encouraged to use my poetic voice more often, and listen for stunning stories to tell.

Poetic Justice

April 4, 2013 — 1 Comment

Any unexpected twist that makes a story intriguing demands our attention.  We expect certain things to happen in context, so when they do not we begin to wonder about the nature of things.  The term poetic justice was coined between 1720-1730.  Much drama and some poetry contains this magical distribution of perfect reward and retribution in exactly the right proportion to all parties.  Rarely do we see this in action in real life. It is more common to witness social, political, or just plain crazy injustice.

We can write stories and poems that highlight our own particular brand of justice.  Simply focus and spotlight on causes like nature, environmental awareness, or animal cruelty can change hearts and minds.  You can be a spokesperson for the things that matter to you.  The impact you have may never be known to you, but that is not a good reason not to create and share your own version of poetic justice.  If you bother to bring your message artfully and with grace you may hit the target you hoped to find in the gentle reader.

Art and Practice

April 4, 2013

This month many writers are writing a poem a day in NaPoWriMo..the poetry challenge.  I am accomplished in a few expressive ways, but I have not visited my poet for years.  I was a prolific song writer as a teenager, and wrote poetry every day of some kind.  I am a language fan, loving words because they sound funny or because they have obscure specific meanings.  Being poetic, or even doing rhymes as improvisational humor, sharpens the wit, grows the vocabulary and enhances connections and metaphoric images.

When I was young I heard my father recite the Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W Service.  He knew it by heart. After a couple of drinks he liked to sing, dance or recite that poem. It was always entertaining. He was a research scientist by profession, but my parents loved music and dance more than anything.  We had a player piano which was the scene of many sing a long parties.  What was truly admirable about my parents was their artistry.  They had regular suburban lives, but my dad was an accomplished musician, and my mother designed and executed both landscape environments and fashion with amazing professionalism.  My mother was a prize-winning floral arranger, and avid flower show horticulturist.

I was encouraged , and in some cases forced, to practice art.  Piano was a mandatory 30 minutes every day of my life, and a legal pad sheet of cursive handwriting had to be inspected by my father each night.  I eventually realized I could recycle some of the handwriting, but there was no faking the piano.  My guitar and voice lessons came with mandatory practice sessions when I was in high school.  I learned the power of practice at a very young age.  Discipline is never natural to kids and maybe my parents overdid the whole rigidity thing.  Today, however, I thank Dick and Ruby Morse, the living artists, who gave me the self confidence to know that I can be any kind of artist I care to be.  My art will reflect my practice, and with practice I will improve.  All poems, all songs, all dances are alive and need to be brought forth.  Practice is the vehicle in which they travel into the light.

Sensazione

April 3, 2013 — 9 Comments

Refinement of all the senses leads to a full and more interesting life. Leonardo da Vinci was a student of all phenomena. His seven guiding principals for living were at the heart of all his work. They are his core values, upon which his reputation rests.  By reading his notebooks and  studying his drawings we can see that his constant eagle eye was at work observing nature. Sensazione, or the development of all the senses, was a big reason Leonardo became as productive as he did.  He felt that by making notes and drawings of his sensual observations he grasped more of the meaning around him.  He used his notebooks to create, invent, and make beautiful art.

He gives advise on keeping a listener engaged by carefully noting his posture, body language, and facial expressions. By focus and intent to see clearly sight can be developed into insight. The training of all the senses to be more apt, more receptive, and more able to understand reality was a lifetime practice of the master.  Vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch and synesthesia (the ability to describe one sense in terms of another) were all parts of this whole.  Sight became the best developed of his abilities, which contributed to his artistic talent.

How do you use your senses to take in the world?  Have you ever tried to improve on what you have in the sense department?  I was a potter for many years, so my sense of touch was developed beyond the others during that time.  I had to feel the center of the wheel, and the thickness of the clay with precision or….no pot was made…back to mud.  Taste and smell may be my most developed senses now.  I cook, bake, and experiment as a cocktail creator.  I like making a variety of  teas and baths with my garden herbs. Do you have one particular sense that is your strongest?  We know what Leonardo would do.  He would forever practice to refine them all.

Easter Gourmet

April 1, 2013 — 3 Comments

We had the best time at brunch yesterday with our neighbor Mindy.  We arrived as service began and enjoyed wonderful attentive wait staff, a great ambiance, and most of all, delicious food.  The Lodge on the Dessert is our new total favorite place to celebrate holiday meals.  Christmas was good, and Easter perfect.  I do not enjoy all you can eat buffet, or anything that resembles it.  I don’t even want to see other people eating like that.   Tucson’s Iron Chef, Ryan Clark, rocked the a la carte cuisine for the omnivores and also for me, a nice lacto-ov0 vegetarian girl.  We were too full to finish our desserts, so we packed it to take home.  As we headed out many families were arriving with eggs, baskets, kids and some darling fashion.  We will be back..hungry.

Wealth

March 29, 2013 — 3 Comments

Andrew Carnegie wrote an essay he called  The Gospel of Wealth.  This idea came to him after Carnegie had become the wealthiest man in the world.  As we check the biblical Gospel for Easter, we should check the reality gospel that is practiced in our nations and neighborhoods. The most disgraceful have been hogging the assets of society, and ultimately of the planet. Symbols of power and politics today are all about over consumption. It does not matter which one— fraud, health care scandals, or useless government busy work are the source of the waste. The point is that our wealth is being used to destroy the general good of the entire society. Our assets are spent to promote shameless partisan destruction of our best interests. We are going morally broke. In 1889 Carnegie wrote:

Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free ; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor; intrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself. The best minds will thus have reached a stage in the development of the race in which it is clearly seen that there is no mode of disposing of surplus wealth creditable to thoughtful and earnest men into whose hands it flows save by using it year by year for the general good. This day already dawns. But a little while, and although, without incurring the pity of their fellows, men may die sharers in great business enterprises from which their capital cannot be or has not been withdrawn, and is left chiefly at death for public uses, yet the man who dies leaving behind many millions of available wealth, which was his to administer during life, will pass away ” unwept, unhonored, and unsung,” no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will then be : “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” ~Andrew Carnegie