Mental Vacation

Mental Vacation: "A mild cerebral hiatus from consciously entertaining expectations from the perilous and numbing things that infiltrate our lives. It can last as long as one desires, and, depending on one's skill, can go completely unnoticed." ~ Urban Dictionary

Small simple stressors build up. We all need a mental vacation from time to time. I took one last weekend with an inspirational visit to DiaBeacon, a beer at The Hop, and Korean take out on my screened-in porch. We wrapped the day with a viewing of Before Midnight at Upstate Films. Ah.

Do you step away and allow your mind and body to relax? How?

Image: Design Seeds via Pinterest

He Gets It.

President Obama gets it.

“That bright blue ball rising over the moon’s surface containing everything we hold dear – the laughter of children, a quiet sunset, all the hopes and dreams of posterity – that’s what’s at stake.” ~ President Barack Obama, June 25, 2013

On Tuesday, President Obama told us he gets it -- he's putting the breaks on climate change. Obama is imagining a "cleaner, safer, more stable world," because he gets it. He gets that humans have created climate change by burning massive amounts of fossil fuels. He gets that these changes will have a devastating impact on people, ecosystems, and energy use. He gets that we must do something about it now.

“Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.”

 “We have to all shoulder the responsibility for keeping the planet habitable, or we’re going to suffer the consequences – together.”

“Our planet is changing in ways that will have profound impacts on all of humankind.”

“We can’t just drill our way out of the energy and climate challenge that we face.”

"I urged Congress to come up with a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one that Republican and Democratic senators worked on together a few years ago. And I still want to see that happen. I’m willing to work with anyone to make that happen."

“A low-carbon clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come.”

“Those who are already feeling the effects of climate change don’t have time to deny it – they’re busy dealing with it.”

“While we may not live to see the full realization of our ambition, we will have the satisfaction of knowing that the world we leave to our children will be better off for what we did.”

“Someday, our children, and our children’s children will look at us in the eye and they’ll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safer, more stable world?”

President Obama gets it.

Please join me in telling your representative to do everything in her or his power to support the president’s plan HERE. Thank you.

Watch full speech here. For those visually-inclined (like me), here's an infographic. 

Photo: Ben Scott for Bluerock Design

Knit Your Vegetables

The detailed needlework pins created by Japanese artist, Itoamika Jung Jung are simply nutritional fiber candy for the summer soul. Using lace threads in muted colors, these jewels embody everything fine in nature.

I’m at a loss to even speculate what level of finite skill it takes to create such exquisite representational fruits, vegetables and flowers from minuscule needles and lace yarn.

Do I have the patience required to knit with lace? No. But, I just had to order Jung Jung's book, Knots, Itoami Plants.

Is this not perfection for the first day of summer?

Credit © Itoamika Jung Jung via Pinterest

Rain

This chilly, rainy Memorial Day weekend, I'm taking one of my favorite poems out of my head and putting it in yours. Enjoy!

Rain by Shel Silverstein

I opened my eyes And looked up at the rain, And it dripped in my head And flowed into my brain, And all that I hear as I lie in my bed Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly, I walk very slow, I can't do a handstand -- I might overflow, So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said -- I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

Helpfulness, Heroism and Hope

Lately, does it feel like we are on a treadmill running from disaster to tragedy, while reacting to situations unimaginable? The news of the devastating category 4 tornado that ripped through Moore, Oklahoma came via Facebook in a Monday evening panic. A blogger I work with, Lisa Sharp, provided a blow by blow heartbreaking account of friends missing, lost relatives, worry about pets and charged cell phones...all as she moved from a watchful perch on her porch to packing a bag and heading underground. Her last post for a while just stated, "Yes hug everyone...When Okies freak out about tornadoes, it's bad..." Riveting and horrifying. As the night dragged on, the death toll rose...but in days to come, stories of helpfulness, heroism and hope emerged. In the wake of such tragedy, there were two stories that reminded me just how powerful humanity is.

1. The New York Times reported about a parent's worst nightmare. Just as the storm raged, Sarah Johnson rushed from her home in Moore to the hospital because her 4-year-old daughter, Shellbie, was having an asthma attack. Johnson told the Times that she put a hard hat on her daughter and raced to the emergency room, while hail poured down. By the time they got to the hospital, all of the nurses were down to the ground. Johnson shoved her daughter next to a wall and threw a mattress on top of her. The two survived the storm.

2. Just moments after the tornado swirled through Moore, leveling houses, schools, and leaving behind death and debris, a brilliant rainbow spread across the Oklahoma sky. Nature's prismatic moment illustrated that there's a spectrum ahead of us that will be decisively noxious and deceptively hopeful.

Photo: Levont'e D. Douglas