mermaidcamp
Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water
You can scroll the shelf using ← and → keys
Hallelujah!!!
December 2, 2012
— 1 Comment
Hallelujah, the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth, for sure. My holiday dreams have finally come true. Technology has made possible the flash mob Hallelujah Chorus. Be still my heart. Kill the muzak, strike up the choir.
Fumigate Congress
December 2, 2012
— 5 Comments
Greek Senate
I watched an excellent program on the history channel about the use of drugs in history. During the discussion of ancient Greece they showed the Senate (from the same word as senility) being fumigated with herbs before they met to discuss matters. The Greeks hot boxed the lawmakers in the chamber with hallucinogenic herbs to make them cordial. How have we not thought of this? How did this practice ever disappear? These people invented classic. Why has the CIA not been given a mission to find the fumigation recipe they used?
We know they are all on a number of pharmaceuticals, mind and soul altering drugs with disastrous side effects. We know that they can not distinguish between health care and wellness. We know we do not trust them with our money, and they have our money. I say we dose them, gentle readers, and NOT with their own medicine. It is time for a major toga party on the hill.
Best Time to Time Travel
December 1, 2012
— 2 Comments
Gotham City
Today is the first day of the slowest travel time of the year. For the next two weeks hotels, flights, attractions, and everything related to tourism will be experiencing low season. This will abruptly come to a halt on Dec 15. If there is a place you want to visit but like to have the best service at the lowest price now is your moment. Get while the getting is good. The essential key to happiness in travel is beating the peak. If you fly on Sunday after Thanksgiving in the US you will be accompanied by the largest crowds of the year. Wait a week and a magical thing happens. Along with happier staff in hotels, restaurants, and airports the people know know the secret of hitting the road the first two weeks of December are a far less cranky group than the one that will stand in line for absolutely everything at the end of the month.
Carnegie in Pittsburgh
Phipps Conservatory
Last year at this time I went to Pittsburgh, where I grew up, but had not been since 1965. I had the best time finding landmarks and taking in the whole Gothic Christmas scene downtown. I went to Phipps Conservatory, a fond memory from youth, to enjoy the holiday botanical show. I enjoyed a superb performance by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and perhaps best of all I was invited to a family home to get down Steeler style. Although I didn’t go out to Oakmont to see my own suburban home with a basement, cheering the Steelers with a family of serious fans in their basement did bring back big memories. Naturally the place has changed since 1965, but since the three rivers made it what it is, the rivers still define the city. Once full of coal barges, lit up by the steel mills running all night, the Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers form the mighty Ohio in Pittsburgh. This strategic point, where Fort Pitt is memorialized, made Pittsburgh the gateway to the west. It certainly worked for me. I moved to Venezuela in 1964 to be a petroleum princess, then to Texas in 1966 so my dad could be an Aggie. I never lived in a cold place, or the eastern part of the country again after that departure. I was an ice skating whiz at the age of 10, but I tried it in Zermatt when I was about 47 and found I had truly lost my ability. I decided against the rental skates last year, not wishing to leave the ‘Burgh on crutches. Just watching brought back enough fond memories for me.
Choice and Awareness
November 29, 2012
What choices do you make all the time?
Free will is the ability/responsibility to choose. It is not something that we have or have not, but something that is always there to varying degrees. Choices are realized through awareness. These choices are enabled or hindered by situational variables. These situational variables are very much a product of choices made in the past. The variable that determines the choices made is self awareness. This is because most of what we choose is based on who we believe ourselves to be. Think; “what would I do in any given situation” and you will see that it depends on who you understand yourself to be. Therefore, it matters less to the well being of the situation, how many choices you have to choose from, than it does the ability to discern between those choices. Focusing on self awareness seems to be the optimal way to bring about a collective existence which…
View original post 256 more words
Moses at the Mall, the One Commandment Diet
November 29, 2012
— 2 Comments
i have been reflecting a lot about the way the monotheists enjoy and spread their beliefs. There is such a giant conflict of interest inherent in pledging aligiance to one god then using that God as a marketing device. It appears that these worshipers do many diverse things to indicate how much they are into religion and their own sect. Sinning, confessing, decorating, blessing, baptizing, and tithing are slightly rediculous if they are performed to honor false gods.
Charleton Heston dressed in his Moses gear should be sent to the mall with the tablets and a buring bush. All the parents need to sit on his lap, very close to the bush, while the kids go to Santa’s workshop. Moses asks each parent if they have other gods before the one they take the kids to worship. Charleton will quiz them on their understanding and execution of the first commandment. The bush will then have some private time with each parent during which they will be still and know.
Would you be afraid to sit on Charleton’s lap? Did you have to look up the first commandment?
Boomers Consume. Congress Sucks. Future Foggy.
November 28, 2012
— 1 Comment
We are given feedback about our economic well being based on consumer behavior and optimism. By assigning value to monetary transactions, but no value to the original raw materials contributed by earth our generation has proclaimed that sucking down resources in mass quantities equals wealth. This is similar to the real estate value of the United States being liberated when Europeans brought property rights and money to America. If we stick to this program, identifying citizens of our nation as the entitled robber barons who have been chosen to use all the natural resources in the world, we will be the repository for a very large landfill of plastic while our currency becomes a joke. We will be able to lift up a middle class in China while we trash the one here that currently needs to buy all the plastic. Those Chinese people can count, and we need to learn to do it too.
In Europe there are countries in which the company is required to lease, not sell, a product like a vacuum cleaner. The company is responsible for the economic model of the value of the merchandise. The company must recycle or dispose of any excess or repair parts, rather than leave this to the customer. What the customer buys is the service of a working vacuum cleaner. This is the opposite of trying to sell as much junk as possible with no promise or expectation that it will work well or last. I do not know the details, but it is a direction that makes a lot of sense. Some value must be assigned to the raw materials pre discovery and pricing by humans. Some responsibility for filling landfills with poorly made garbage must be shifted to those who make and import it.
Boomers invented credit card living and mindless consumption as status symbols. Many have found themselves completely boomed out in middle age, and few have a plan or money for their own retirement. The most popular personal spending habits mirror the government model. Spend lavishly and skip the math. While American families take on deep debt to support Chinese prosperity we are still able to afford to support a congress in the fancy style to which they have become accustomed. Taxpayers will need to pay to fly them all home soon for the holiday reward vacation they will give themselves. They probably all need to fly first class. I wonder if we could swap them out for some Asian lawmakers who count.
Superhero, Satyameister, Slayer of Mendacity
November 27, 2012
— 5 Comments
The world is full of mythical beings. Some of them are art rendered by comic book or animation experts. Some are created simply by stereotyping everyone and everything. That guy is both mythical and all too real. I notice that some are not attracted to the concept of personal branding, while others embrace the on line chance to portray themselves as much better than they actually are. There are many who use our new digital instant PR machine to broadcast how miserable they are. It all boils down to attracting the kind of attention that you want to attract. The digital world of communication mimics the physical world by the giving and receiving of attention. Attention takes time and shows the quality of the identification that has been made. When an artist creates a new superhero it is imperative to know what kind of attention the character will solicit. For some reason this kind of scrutiny is not given to the image people project of themselves.
Through the clutter and the noise of endless status updates and offers, very few personal brands ring true. I like the joke that says Facebook is where you lie to your friends, and twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers but nobody cares in either case. The imperative to build an image requires that one question be asked. That question is, “What kind of attention do I want?’ The most common attempts are to solicit envy and or pity in an alternating way. These both work very well if one wants to find like-minded personal brands. If you want to stand out and be noticed for a positive attribute, you need to know what that is and honestly live in the reality you claim to be yours. The job requires self examination as well as craft, editing, and artistry.
I entered the wold of social media by listening to the book Trust Agents, a clear mandate to listen more than you propose. I am now reading the sequel, Impact Equation, which amplifies and expands on the original message. The overview and function of the entire communications system is what enlightens us in this latest book. Brother Brogan is my own bodhisattva of digital darshan. Maybe I bonded with him so much as my first teacher who instructed me on how to enter this strange new world. Maybe he is my superhero because I have never played a video game or felt the need to understand why and how people game. He loves tech and gaming in ways will never interest me, but he does not hang his hero hat on the gaming hook. He finds common ground by keeping a very tight relationship with the truth. He models Satya for the cosmic and decidedly digital age in which we live and express ourselves. His avi wears an outfit not unlike Superman’s own, but the S in his case stands for Satya. I know as a teacher myself that all students do not match all instruction. Style is a strong link that can hold attention for a short time. The teaching must contain truth, however, to hold the student’s deep attention. I am completely into the idea of Chris flying through my dreams in his truth suit, fighting sketchy versions of reality. Satyameister has my attention. There is much to learn.
Twelfth Month
November 26, 2012
— 2 Comments
Twelve is a perfect mathematical way to look at everything. There are twelve of everything important because this is a simple, even way to divide any whole. The twelve astrological signs are found in twelve houses that represent different aspects of life and parts of the heavens. The twelfth house is the one that rules the unconscious. By keeping the public from seeing the contents the owner of this house reviews the risks and benefits of the unknown parts of the self. In the heavens, the twelfth house is the one just above the horizon at sunset, the last one visible before darkness. There are twelve Chinese animals that rule the years and hours of each day, passing in a slower, but even pace. These animals rule a year rather than a month, but it is all still divisible by 12.
We have a practice of creating a list for the first day of the first month known as resolutions. These are widely discussed and abandoned in short order until the following first month of the next year. By observing the universal failure of this practice I have devised a new one. By using the last month of the year to review and discover the deep, unconscious meaning of the 11 previous months, we may be able to make significant progress. By facing the shadow, the unknown, the undiscovered that we glaze over with overactivity on a regular basis, we may find wisdom and useful knowledge. You do not need to analyze all of your past to know that important emotions and facts have been swept under a big busy rug of quotidian fuss. You don’t need to meet all your demons, addictions, or delusions of actions past to make progress on taking good care of yourself. You simply have to be willing to consider that the darkness of your own heart may be the only thing blinding your vision. You need to be able to reverse all your assumptions for a while.
Saturnalia is the party time dedicated to Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn, and therefore part of December. Romans reversed all rules and authority during the celebration. After the darkest day of the year, the light returns, reversing the visibility available each day until the summer solstice. The celebration of the darkest time when the world is reborn in the form of seeds and saplings is a universal need through all of history. Here we have some present day Brits dressing up like Romans and getting down for Saturn in December. The beat goes on.
Krampus, Shmutzli, and St. Nick
November 26, 2012
— 2 Comments
The 6 of December is St Nicholas Day. In Europe the popular Krampus, also known as Shmutzli in Switzerland, is St. Nick’s full time side kick. In Austria Krampus is much more popular than the saint, representing old time winter. I have been in Vienna on Krampus night, when people dressed more or less like gorillas run around with big sticks frightening pedestrians. I also saw 6 Krampuses on Austrian television creating a hexagon with the big sticks and circle dancing. The Euros are not afraid to link the ancient religions to the present day. In fact, that is what makes them Euros. They may not know the enitre history of traditional local customs, but they have an strong affinity with preservation of provincial attitudes and ancient practices. The ancestors make them do it.
In Switzerland Santa is paid by neighbors to come to your house and scare you on Dec. 6. Your parents give him alcohol and tell him all about your worst behavior. Shmutzli is with him carrying a sack of ashes. My friend Edith lived at the end of Santa’s route in her village, so he was pretty schnockered on schnapps by the time he arrived at her home. She remembers he smelled like alcohol and pretended to put her in his sack to haul her away from home for bad behavior, of which he knew every detail. She was really scared of St. Nick. During the three weeks between 6 Dec. and 25 Dec. the kids conspicuously make efforts to amend the problem disobedience chastised by St Nick that frightening night. On Dec. 25 the baby Jesus will fly through the window to leave oranges and walnuts to well reformed children. The customs vary from place to place, with the Swiss love of regional tradition and language. What is the same about all the places I have visited during the dead of winter in Europe is a community effort to scare away the winter blues and share light. They still have plenty of real fires on the streets roasting real chestnuts and warming up the spiced hot wine they serve in seasonal huts set up for the purpose. These pop up specialty bars often sell a regional specialty they make each year at the time. There is a big effort to create warmth outdoors with food, alcohol, festivals, fires and lights. These efforts are less personal and more spread across the community, with less focus on the large material haul (or obligation if you are the parent), more on the party atmosphere shared with neighbors.
We Americans may be overlooking some important lessons about stress, greed, and balance that Krampus represents. By teaching kids that a never ending stream of new material objects flowing steadily, but gushing and flooding the world in December, is the key to satisfaction and fulfillment we may be creating a new kind of Christmas monster. I am in favor of importing Shmutzli to the US, as a new superhero action figure and video game.
mermaidcamp 