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“Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Meade
Category Archives: Random Thoughts
Quote
| Love shows us the way to be.
(bathroom graffiti) |
The Dangers of Planting Bulbs
Hi Folks:
I thought that subject heading might cause a few people to scratch their heads in wonder, so permit me a moment to explain. First of all, I’ve had a love affair with the earth since I was a boy living in the woods in Quebec. I’d come home from school, drop my books on the kitchen counter, yell a quick hello and I was gone until dark. To this day, the ‘woods’ is my true home. As such I’ve loved gardening for a long time too, both indoors and out. The first apartment Marcia and I had together was above the double garage, attached to the main house. We had a large picture window in the living room and we had so many plants that several visitors to our landlady asked her if she had a greenhouse!
Marcia’s often said that all of my plants want to be trees. In one home we had a 15-foot cathedral ceiling and we had 4 plants over 10-feet tall, including FRED, our Christmas tree. In our guest bedroom we had a hibiscus plant that was basically an 8-foot diameter ball that took up half the room. We planted a Brugmansia in a pot, expecting it (as per the image that came with it) to grow about 2-feet high and have a number of white flowers. Ours grew 6 feet in a couple of months and had one flower that was nearly 2-feet long. It was a night bloomer, and every evening all four floors of the house were filled with the most amazing scent. In our last place together we had two poinsettias that re-bloomed 14 months after we got them. One of them put out 24 blossoms! So, where’s the danger in all of this you ask? Ah, I was just getting to that. Continue Reading →
Telling Tales – The Walk is Part of the Gift
Hi Folks: As a writer and a storyteller, I collect stories the way others might collect stamps or record albums or… I collect them because they give me pleasure, and because it gives me pleasure to share them with others. Wherever I can I give credit to the person or people who authored a given story, but sometimes one comes across a story that is listed simply as ‘Author Unknown’. The following stort story is one of those. So to whomever authored this story, my gratitude!
Mike.
_____
An old Cree woman decided one day to present a priest she knew and loved with a sample of her embroidery. She left the house early, and began her journey to the town far away. The ground was hard and her feet were sore, but she continued on her quest.
As the day progressed, the sun beat down on her and baked her skin. The stones on the path cut her feet, and by the time she arrived at her destination, she was exhausted, her lips were cracked, and her feet were bleeding. Nonetheless, when the priest answered the door she held her embroidery up with great pride.
The priest’s eyes were filled with tears as he took the delicate embroidery from her hands, but his gaze was filled with the question ‘Why?’.
Looking up at him, the woman said, “Father, you don’t understand. The walk is part of the gift.â€
Author Unknown.
Telling Tales: The Law of the Garbage Truck
Hi Folks: We came across this story by David J. Pollay recently, and with his permission we’re including it on our blog. It’s a simple story, but like many simply stories, one well worth remembering. If you have not yet heard of David, here is his bio:
David J. Pollay is the creator of The Law of the Garbage Truck™. He is a syndicated columnist, creator and host of The Happiness Answer™ television program, and an internationally sought after speaker. David’s book, The Law of the Garbage Truck: Take control of your life with one decision and change the world, will be published by Sterling Publishing in September, 2010. You can find out more about The Law of the Garbage Truck™ at www.thelawofthegarbagetruck.com.
David holds a Master’s degree of applied positive psychology (M.A.P.P.) from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale University. He is the founding associate executive director of the International Positive Psychology Association. You can catch David’s newsletter here. You can reach him at david@themomentumproject.com, and you can read David’s blog at www.pollayblog.com.
Without further ado, here’s David’s “Law of the Garbage Truck” (NB: After reading the story, click on the link and take David’s “No Garbage Trucks Pledge”!)
Mike.
Telling Tales – New Year’s Eve
Last night we caught the bus downtown as we wanted to be near the water. There’s one place in town that’s on our ‘dream list’ and we went there first. It was raining yesterday, but although we brought our umbrellas with us the rain stayed away. The sky was a blanket of cloud however, and Marcia said, “It would be nice to see the Grandmother tonight.” Well, where we were going there’s a bench and we sat down there and looked over at our ‘home’… All of a sudden the sky cleared in a circle around the moon and she shone down bright and beautiful and directly over our home. The clouds were like veils of mist coalescing around her, but there were also rainbows from the light shining down. It was the only clear patch in anotherwise cloudy sky. We both sat there going, “Wow…”, glued to our seats.
A little later on we were walking down by the docks and we were met by this beautiful long-haired orange and white cat. He wouldn’t let us approach him at first, but he was quite content to be our guide as we followed the path around the harbour. At first it was quite a treat to have him as our guide, but we began to grow concerned the farther we went as he showed no signs of going back home. As we walked, he walked, sometimes in front, sometimes beside, sometimes trailing behind but always keeping pace. He walked about 1 1/2 km with us, and nothing we said would dissuade him, even though he was getting farther and farther from his ‘home’. If we sat, he sat beside us, even gaining some lap space at one point. We finally read his tag – AZAN – and called the phone number on the tag, but being New Year’s Eve there was nobody home. When we reached a busy street his fear overcame him and he would go no farther. We kept going north, and after a bit of hesitation he began to follow another couple walking back the way we had come. We trust he made his way home safely. We finished our night down at the water, each holding a candle, lit from a place of peace within us.
Love,
Mike.
Bears On the Loose!
Hi Folks:
We heard through the grapevine that the Sidney Museum was being overrun with ‘bears’, so yesterday we had to go and see for ourselves. The museum is located on Beacon Avenue in Sidney in the ‘Town Centre’ building, down in the lower level. We walked in, flashed a badge and informed the gentleman sitting at the front desk that we were from the ‘Teddy Bear Squad’ and had received a report that they were being taken over by bears. Having ascertained our qualifications, he ushered us right in. Turned out it was just as we had suspected…
Teddy Bear Squad
Telling Tales: An Early Christmas Schnoodle
Hi Folks: The link for the following story showed up in my email Inbox today, and this being Christmas and all, it was too beautiful not to share. It was written by Trevor Lautens and first appeared in the December 24th edition of the Winnipeg Free Press.
Love and hugs,
Mike.
Telling Tales
Hi Folks:
I haven’t told any stories on this blog for a while, and if I let them build up too long, well, it might not be pretty. Actually, that reminds me of a technician I had working for me once. Great technician, but every once in a while she’d just burst out giggling. I asked her about it and she replied, “I don’t know.. they just build up!” I’m the same way, except instead of giggling I start babbling. Like now for instance.
Okay, on with show. I’ve had the privilege of working over more than half of Canada (so far), and I’ve been involved with some really interesting projects and some wonderful people. Sometime late in the last millenium I had two separate opportunities to work with black bears. I’ve accumulated a number of bear stories that I carry around with me, and I thought I’d take a moment or two to share one of them. In the first bear project on which I worked there were three main aspects to the work. One aspect was to create a map of the habitat of the area, and another was to create a map of bear movements by using radio collars on certain bears. In this way we could overlay the bears’ movements onto the map that we’d created so that we could try to interpret where the bears were going at different times of the year, and possibly why. The third aspect of the work was the most ‘adventurous’, and that was dealing with the bears themselves. In a nutshell we set out traps for the bears, and when a bear stepped into our trap s/he was anaesthetized, weighed, measured, and samples were taken to determine both the age and the health of the animal. Yes this was potentially dangerous work, especially on occasions when we had a cub in the trap and his or her mother was less that 10 or 12 yards away and watching intently. I must say up front that every precaution was taken to respect the health and integrity of both the bears and the staff, and every step was taken to minimize the stress caused by our interactions. We did have some bears that seemed to find their way into our traps regularly, and there was some suspicion that maybe they liked the drugs… Yes, that’s a joke, and no, the anaesthetics are neither narcotic nor addictive (just in case that one swept past you).