Thursday, April 28, 2016

Words

"Be teachable to the end" - Rod Stryker. 

grateful today for all that we're learning, for all that I'm learning... 

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Future Self

This post from Cheryl Strayed is making it's way around the internet.  Summary - if you're having a hard time finding motivation think about how your future self might feel...   Would my future self enjoy having a dedicated yoga practice, a blog full of good ideas, a fulfilled relationship.  Keep pushing.  It's worth it. 

Monday, April 25, 2016

It's what we do....

Mama, want to do COLLECTING?!!!!     Collecting is our word for finding rocks, pebbles, big ones, flat ones, and putting them in our buckets.  After they're filled we walk in the woods "all the way to the bridge" and throw them into the stream.  Some make big splashes, some are small enough to fit through the cracks.

It's our little tradition. What we do.  It makes me happy that he's so content.  The farm, the circus, the playground or the woods.  He loves it all.  My busy little bee.  So happy collecting....

 
                                                             
                                                          


Friday, April 22, 2016

Purple

Yesterday we lost the icon, Prince.  I enjoyed listening to all of his classics on the radio while I drove home last night - how many times have we sung along to "maybe I'm just like my mother.... <when doves cry>, or danced away our senior year of highschool to Party Likes it's 1999.

Every legend will go eventually.  And I believe we must not mourn death, especially when someone has had so much influence and achieved such a lasting legacy.  Music heals.  Art heals.  When a 5'2 androgenous guy from Minnesota can become one of our greatest artists ever, we should all be reminded that the magic lies in being authentically ourselves.  Rest in Peace.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

To learn

Cheers to my teachers - can't imagine life without them. 

To learn is to broaden, to experience more, to snatch new aspects of life for yourself. To refuse to learn or to be relieved at not having to learn is to commit a form of suicide; in the long run, a more meaningful type of suicide than the mere ending of physical life. 
Knowledge is not only power; it is happiness, and being taught is the intellectual analog of being loved. - Isaac Asimov

Monday, April 18, 2016

Drumlin Farm

Without much forethought, J and I hit up Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, MA yesterday.  It was one of those "lucky" days - the weather was beautiful, the farm was bustling and J loved every single second of it.  Mama liked it quite a bit, too!

Welcome, spring!! 
 
 




Friday, April 15, 2016

Apocalypse soon

Saw this post on Seth Godin's blog.  Always grateful when people can capture my thoughts:

Apocalypse soon - via http://sethgodin.typepad.com/  
It's a bug in our operating system, and one that's amplified by the media.
I'm listening to a speech from ten years ago, twenty years ago, forty years ago... "During these tough times... these tenuous times... these uncertain times..." And we hear about the urgency of the day, the bomb shelters, the preppers with their water tanks, the hand wringing about the next threat to civilization.
At the same time that we live in the safest world that mankind has ever experienced. Fewer deaths per capita from all the things that we worry about.
Risky? Sure it is. Every moment for the last million years has been risky. The risk has moved from Og with a rock to the chronic degeneration of our climate, but it's clear that rehearsing and fretting and worrying about the issue of the day hasn't done a thing to actually make it go away. Instead, we amplify the fear, market the fear and spread the fear as a form of solace, of hiding from taking action, of sharing our fear in a vain attempt to ameliorate it.
When we get nostalgic for past eras, for their culture or economy or resources, it's interesting that we never seem to get nostalgic for their fears.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Mark Bittman: A Bone to Pick

Recently finished A Bone to Pick by Mark Bittman.  It was more brief and less insightful than Omnivore's Dilemma but a worthwhile read that danced the line of informative without being priveledged.  By the end, I felt it a bit redundant - eat more plants, eat less processed stuff - and can't say that I walked away truly feeling enlightened.   That said, a few new things I learned:
 
GMOs aren't "unhealthy".  The problem with GMOs lies more in their lack of crop diversification and not contributing towards sustainable agriculture.

Local is best - support your local farmer's markets, CSA initiatives etc.

Bittman makes many comparison's to junk food and tobacco.  Just as the progress we've made there at once seemed impossible, it can be done with patience, commitment and personal change.

Choose better quality meat.  Meat is a huge water and energy consumer, by eating less, and lowering demand, we improve our health and environmental friendliness.


Monday, April 4, 2016

On Parenting

"Parenting is a clumsy yet majestic dance in the flames.  When you parent you fall in love with a person who is always changing into someon else, and whom you know will leave you.  Yet most parents will say that they have never given themselves to anyone as fully as they have to their children.  Parenting is a career with the crazy-making job requirement of simultaneously surrendering to and letting go of someone you love, over and over and over again." - Elizabeth Lesser.