32 Flavors (and we're not talking Baskins and Robbins!!!)

Chosen by Vig

I was listening to Ani DiFranco last night, who's music I don't know that well but the songs that I do know blow me away. She is a true poet and metaphor magician. I was inspired by her songs to write a my Myspace status update about the music and musician I was listening to. Carol picked up on this and suggested Ani for a blog. A fabulous idea I thought and as '"32 Flavors" is probably one of her most recognizable songs and one of my favourites, that would be my choice of songs. To me it says that we are all unique, have many levels to us, show to people what we want them to see and that we don't need to change for anyone else. The last one a lesson I'm still learning! Have a listen - what do you think?

Playing for Change

by Vig





I have watched this video at last twenty times in the last while. And since there have been over 5 million views, chances are you have seen it as well. It touches me deeply. I love the song to begin with, and in this rendition I love how the different styles and musical textures meld so well together. And it just sounds good. I have been trying to think of a topic to come from this video and I can’t really think of one. So I will give you a couple of the thoughts that are wandering around my brain. “Playing for Change” the producers of this video – see themselves as “a group of artists and inspired people who have come together to connect the world through music”. I think this is an amazing commitment to peace, but is this possible? Is music really a global unifier? How does music connect you with people who you might not normally connect with? If we substitute the word "supports" for "stands by", who stands by you and who do you stand by? What does this song or this version, mean to you?

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Dear Travel Diary……

by Vig

Dec. 30, 2008 entry

Here I sit on the beach in La Manzanilla, Mexico. It is fabulous! I love that it’s all about:

-warmth

-sunshine

-not raining

-not snowing – not shoveling

-hot

-spicy

-sunsets that blow up the sky

-roosters crowing at odd hours

-3 mile beach

-walking the beach everyday

-hospitable village

-relaxing -not working!!!!!!!!!!!

-rejuvenating, refreshing, reviving

-reading "Eat, Pray, Love" and saying thank you to Rob for choosing such a special book

-not worrying -not thinking -no sad memories in my back pack

-guacamole

-fresh tortillas

-jugo de naranja

-myriad of bright colours

-snorkeling

-sand in interesting places

-body surfing

-no snow boot or gumboots -sandals in December!!!!!!!!!!!!

-beach vendors and many no gracias-es

-beautiful people

-beautiful language

My little piece of paradise!

And I ask my Owl friends….where’s your paradise on earth? Is it a place, a room, a song to retreat to?

Forever Grateful

by VIG

Josh Groban with the children choir from Africa, singing You Raise Me Up

My dear Owls, as you read this I am on a plane heading away from memories of this day last year. Many of you were there last November and December as I wrote about my brother’s illness and you prayed for him as he began to lose his fight with cancer. If you remember he went into hospice and came out a few days later and had three more weeks at home. I am still convinced that it was your prayers that gave him more time with his kids and brought him closer to Christmas. And you were so there for me when I wrote about being with him as he took his last breathe on December 20th, 2007.
This blog is partly a tribute to him, but even more it is a tribute to you, my dear Owl friends. You have been my shoulders to lean on over the past year as I worked through the grief process. You never complained as I wrote over and over again what I needed to write in order to make sense of the loss. You just listened and cried with me and let me talk about it whenever I needed to. And I know that this blog and the people who come here, are the reason that I have been able to come out the other side of grief. And for that I will be forever grateful.
You are my earth angels! You truly have raised me up and I am so thankful that you are all in my life.

Who has raised you up when you were down? Who is/are your earth angels? Maybe they reside in this very nest!

No More H8!!!

by VIG

FOR WHABBEAR

Without editorializing or offering up my beliefs or anyone else's, I ask you to watch this video. Watch and think about an Owl we all know and love and who’s wedding we celebrated here on the blog not long ago and who is now having to deal with the fact that the majority who voted in his state believe his love and his marriage are not real and should not exist.




If you believe this is a global human right’s issue, what are you going to do about it?

Trick or Treat Treats

by VIG

Based on an idea from Zona! Thanks, kiddo!



So it’s the day after Halloween. When I was a kid, this day was as important as Halloween itself because this was the day that you really got to spend time with the candy haul from the night before. It was a day, if one could swing it with parents, that candy was on the menu for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. It was a time to sort the candy and create groupings….my categories were always along the lines of chocolate, chewy, and rejects. It was the big negotiation day and the trade period of the rejects for siblings’ non-faves. It was a day of really treasuring the best and getting rid of the ones you weren’t happy to find in that pillow case candy bag. Apples, raisins, peanuts, and toothbrushes were definitely in my discard or trade pile. In the olden days when I was a wee trick or treater, homemade caramel apples or popcorn balls were a true find. It kind of saddens me that those have had to go the way of the dinosaur. Mars bars, Smarties (Canadian version of M&M’s), Oh Henry’s (Canadian?), Reese’s and Twizzlers were always my most treasured candy treasures and I hung on to those ones tightly and savored every bite.

What was your favourite candy to get at Halloween? What didn’t you like to get? Do you give out the kind of candy now that you liked to get as a kid?

Those That Leave An Impression

by Vig


A teacher that definitely has impacted the lives of so many, many people! Randy Pausch, may you rest in peace!



Have you had a teacher who years later you still think about what and how they taught? The impact they had on you, stays with you? I had a professor in university who left such an impression. He taught two of several History courses I took. He wasn’t liked by everyone – he was truly a macho man and a bit of a dude. I was majoring in Women’s Studies (History was my minor) and I didn’t always agree with him – his manly man attitude slipped through sometimes. I did, however, respect him. He was the same age as me and had gone back to school after having been in the work force for a while – just as I had. He understood that it was exciting but also a little overwhelming to go back to school when most of the students were many years younger. He was the most accessible professor I ever had - his office hours were extensive, he answered all his e-mails and phone calls immediately, he was willing to sit and listen to a stressed out student, and offered great suggestions when one was stuck on an assignment. He helped me get in to a class that I couldn’t get into, which I so appreciated as I needed it to graduate. He was really there for his students. He was a great teacher - inside and outside of the classroom.

As I continued on to a second degree in Education and then on to a teaching job, I thought about him and the way he taught. I incorporated some of the techniques he used for adult learners and I tried to be as accessible and as there for my students as he was. I often thought I should contact him and tell him of the impact he had made. I imagine college and university professors teach so many students who just disappear into their own lives, that profs don’t necessarily ever know the continuing effect they have had. One day about two months ago, I saw him going into a store that I was coming out of. I was going to run after him and talk to him, and then decided I would write him a letter. I went straight home and did that. I told him of the lasting impression he had made. I heard back from him within a half hour of sending that letter out by e-mail. He was so gracious and appreciative that I had written and I was really glad that I had.

Yesterday, I opened the local paper, which I hardly ever buy and it opened immediately to the obituaries. And there was his picture and a write-up. He had died suddenly last weekend at 49 years old. Even though I really didn’t know him, I was very sad. And then I was extremely happy that I had written that letter when I did.

Now I am trying to think of other teachers I should write to say thank you to while I still have the chance. Have you had a teacher (elementary, high school, college, etc.) that years later you remember fondly and that he or she continues to have a positive impact on you? If you were to write a letter to that teacher, would there be anything in particular that you would want to say?

Little Girl Found

by Vig


Casa Guatemala, Rio Dulce, Central America, Orphanage where I met this precious child

For reasons still yet to be determined, I have never married and I have never had children. Resolving that I would not have children has proven to be much more difficult then resolving the marriage part - especially when I came very close to being a mom. In 1996 I went to Guatemala for two months to volunteer at Casa Guatemala orphanage on the Rio Dulce River. It was hard work but the kids were amazing so it was well worth it. One small girl stood out amongst all the little children. She was three years old and had the biggest sparkly eyes I had ever seen. She lived in adverse conditions but was so full of life, it was bursting out of her. The kids were grouped together by age and she was apart of the group called Los Ninos. The volunteers called her the Head Nino because she was definitely the leader - always in charge of her peers. She was wonderful and she stole my heart.

A month after I got back from Guatemala, I received a phone call informing me that she had just become adoptable and asking if I was interested in adopting her. I was ecstatic and extremely interested and started the adoption process immediately. International adoption is a very expensive endeavour and I didn’t have a lot of money, but friends and family wanted this to happen and were helping out in whatever way they could. The Canadian government however was not as helpful and was blocking the wee girl’s adoption to Canada. She had a syndrome that would require medical care and since this country has socialized medical care, they felt that one little girl would cost the government money. They offered to allow me to cover the cost of her medical care, but I could barely afford her adoption. For almost a year it was a roller coaster ride. I would hear she would be arriving in six weeks and then something bureaucratic would happen. At the end of almost a year, the government’s final decision was that it was a high-risk adoption, which they would not allow. I was devastated.

About three months later, I began to receive phone calls from a family in the US who was interested in adopting her. They wanted to know everything they could about her. Her medical condition did not prevent them from adopting her, because they had medical insurance through work. They eventually did adopt her and I was able to come to terms with it as they were a wonderful family and she would grow up in a loving home. I kept in touch with them for about five years, but eventually lost contact.

Earlier this week I received a friend request on Facebook from a teen-age girl whose eyes I recognized right away in her profile picture. The little girl has come back into my life. And I am beyond the moon and the stars that she has.

So to you, my fine feathered friends, I pose the question, have you ever had someone who has had a huge impact on your life disappear for what you thought was forever, and then have them reappear unexpectedly?

Beginning with Books

by Vig

Books. I love finding that book that has to be read to the very end as soon as it is begun. What a treasure a good book truly is. I have always loved a great story. For as long as I can remember, books have been a big part of my life. My mom read at bedtime – she loved to read Black Beauty, Little Women, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. My brothers read to me when I couldn’t read yet. We were limited to one hour of television a day and were encouraged to read instead of watching t.v. I remember Clifford the Big Red Dog and all of Dr. Seuss’s books as being much loved. The Bobbsey Twins was the first series I became obsessed with. Then all of the Little House on the Prairie books, soon followed by all of the Anne of Green Gables books. All my friends loved Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, but I never did.

I can see patterns in what I liked then having crossed over to what I like now. I am not big on mysteries or fantasy but love stories about people and relationships. We have talked a lot here on the blog about books we have loved as adults, but what did you love to read as a child? What were your favourites? Are they the same genre of books that you enjoy now? If you have children, did you share the books that you loved as a child with them?

I remember when Dr. Seuss died. Jesse Jackson paid tribute to him on Saturday Night Live by reading a favourite!

Let’s Go To The Drive-In!

by Vig



On the phone recently, Tinka and I were reminiscing about the days when we went to drive-in movies. That conversation has brought back great memories. In the summer, as a child and adolescent, going to a drive-in movie was one of my favourite things to do. I remember as a kid, waiting all day for it to get dark so we could go. I loved being allowed to wear my pj’s into the car and snuggling in to the blankets and sleeping bags in the backseat. Popcorn never tasted as good as it did at a drive-in! I remember annually on the Labour Day long weekend, a night or two before school started, the local drive-in would show “To Sir With Love” and because it was one of my Mom’s favourite movies, we would go every year. And each time she would be so entranced by the movie, that when it ended she would drive away with the speaker on the window!

I remember as a teenager, sneaking friends in through the fence and then all of us sitting on the hood of the car or around the car. Sometimes we even watched the movie! Once when we had about eight people squashed into a Volkswagen, the horn got stuck right in the middle of a steamy scene and everybody went in eight different directions at the same time in that crowded vehicle trying to get it unstuck.

Oh those were the days!

Did you love drive-in movies too? What are your favourite (g-rated!!!!!) drive-in memories!!!!

My Hero

by Vig

June 27th is the birth date of Helen Keller. It is now celebrated worldwide as a part of Deafblind Awareness week. Throughout her life Helen Keller impacted the lives of those with disabilities and continues to do so forty-one years after her death.

Helen Keller is one of my heroes. She was a true activist. Her life was devoted to social change and righting wrongs. She understood that one person really could make a difference. She did not let what others see as a handicap, prevent her from doing what she knew to be her life’s purpose.

From Wikipedia:
Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities amid numerous other causes. She was a suffragist, a pacifist, a Wilson opposer, a radical socialist, and a birth control supporter. In 1915, Helen Keller and George Kessler founded the Helen Keller International (HKI) organization. This organization is devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. In 1920, she helped to found the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

So I put this dinner party question to you…if you could meet a hero or someone who has impacted the world and really made a difference (living or dead) who would it be and why?

Serendipity

Serendipity

by Vig


Thomas is twenty-seven years old, deafblind, developmentally delayed, a little person, and one of the most important people in my life. Thomas came into my world on December 30th, 1990. I was working as a teaching assistant with students with special needs and did some home support on the side. I was called into the agency that I worked for to hear about this medically fragile ten year old who at the time was the size of a three year old and weighed twenty-five pounds. He didn’t see or hear well. He didn’t talk. He could only walk a few steps and he tired out because of serious cardiac problems. I was extremely apprehensive when I went to his house on that December day. Even after many years of working with children with specials needs, I didn’t know what to expect. The picture that had been painted and the reports I read had been bleak. I walked into the living room where he was sitting against the stereo speaker feeling the vibrations of the music - and my heart soared. There sat a very cute young fellow with curly strawberry blond hair, big thick glasses, a sweet face and very worried eyes. I sat down in front of him and let him process and understand that there was someone there. Suddenly his feet were in my lap. I began to rub them. When I stopped he let me know that he wanted more by thrusting his tiny feet into my hands and clapping his hands – his sign for more. Suddenly we had a game going. I rubbed his feet. I stopped. He had to do something to keep the game going. I realized then, that despite what I had read and heard, he was just a kid like any other kid who wanted to play and to connect with other people. From that moment on, I was hooked. I eventually became his school Intervenor (the person who works one to one with a person who is deafblind) for many years. He is the one that has lead me to what I am doing now. I knew nothing about deafblindness before I met him and now I am a teacher consultant with students with deafblindness. Meeting Thomas led me to my heart and back to school to become a teacher and to become a specialist in deafblindness.
Serendipity is defined as the gift of finding agreeable things not sought for. So look back in your life…what wonderful thing has happened to you when you weren’t expecting it or planning it? By meeting one person or going to one event, what did that lead to?

Earth Day

Three Promises to the Earth

by vig


April 22nd. It is Earth Day today! Happy special day to this incredible planet. This planet that is so loved and so beautiful yet so at risk. It worries me what the earth will be like in one hundred years, two hundred years, a thousand years. The baby that is born at this very moment as I type, what will her generation and generations to follow inherit? And what can we as individual global citizens do to stop the destruction of our planet?

We have talked here on the blog about what we do to live green and environmentally aware and it was inspiring and motivating to read how we Owls protect our global nest.

The celebration of Earth Day began on April 22nd, 1970 and was a time when people all over North America made promises to help the earth. I challenge you now to take things further then what you are presently doing and on this day of honoring the earth, to make three promises that you know you can keep and are do-able and are meant to help save our planet.

My three promises to the Earth:
I promise to have fewer and shorter showers so I waste less water.
I promise to ride my bike more and drive my car less.
I promise to read newspapers and magazines on line and buy less products that use paper which subsequently means that fewer trees will be cut down.

Now it' your turn. On this Earth Day 2008, what three promises can and will you make to the Earth?

Diet....Do You Try It?

Diet...Do You Try It?

by Vig


I was put on my first diet when I was twelve years old. At that time I remember being just fine with the way I was and when I see pictures now, I think I was kind of cute and looked fairly typical for that age. My mom, however, felt I needed to lose twenty pounds and said she would give me twenty dollars if I did. I was totally motivated by money; twenty dollars in 1971 was a lot of money. I lost the twenty pounds, won the twenty dollars and also won a body image that forever after felt imperfect.

I have spent a good deal of my adult life trying to change my body and to correct what I have had difficulty seeing as being fine just the way it is. Diet after diet has failed and has always led to gaining back the weight plus just a little more for good measure. After doing Weight Watchers, Diet Centre, Adkins. Scarsdale, the cabbage soup diet, Eat to Live, master cleanses, and listening to Richard Simmons, Susan Powter, Oprah, Suzanne Somers and all of their fitness gurus, I have come to the conclusion that I actually know what I need to do for myself, as most people do.

As a vegetarian, I have spent a lot of time researching what I should be eating to be healthy and I have a good idea of what my body needs. And I know for sure I have to do what Rosie has always said: move more, eat less. Just as importantly, I should be looking at the reasons that I eat and how that is informed by how I feel about my body and by what I have experienced. Examine what, when and why I eat what I eat. The triggers! And it has been interesting when I have done that and have examined the major events in my life and the loss that I have suffered (whether it be through death or failed relationships), there is always a considerable weight gain very soon after.

Consumption of comfort food allows for stuffing the feelings way, way down. And I think that women have been taught that this is an acceptable way to deal with things but then are chastised when their bodies change and they don’t fit the ideal of the perfect woman.

Male Owlettes, I think I am probably wrong in assuming that it might just be women who get caught in that trap. And all Owlettes (if it is not too personal) how do you deal with food? Is food just food for you or is it tied into other things or emotions? What is your experience with diets and the pressure that is put into dieting and looking a particular way?

Life In Six Words

vig has given
us something to think
about today

this daily blog made me think!

LIFE IN SIX WORDS

by vig


Tuesday, February 12...I have been driving for days now. Driving to see family. Driving to see amazing students. When I travel I usually prefer to listen to talk radio rather than music. The miles go by quickly when listening to stories, discussions, interviews. In Canada we have something called the CBC, public radio whose US equivalent would be NPR. It is generally thought provoking, somewhat middle of the road politically and whose topics range from the ridiculous to the sublime. This afternoon while driving “down island”, I listened to Valentine’s love poems being created from six words. They were funny. Now that I am home, my over forty year old brain can’t remember what they were. So I head online to see if they can be found there. I can’t find love poems in six words but I do find lives in six words. An article from a UK newspaper encourages interviewees and commenters to “describe your life in six words”.

Some of the responses were:

-Live forever. So far so good
-Kissed the boys, made them cry
-Big family, endless demands, eternal joy
-Could have. Should have. Still might.

And when I though about it for myself today in this moment, I came up with four:

-Bags are packed, ready to go!!!
-Laugh, laughing, laughed, laugh, laughing, laughed
-Loved hard, lost much, no regrets
-Waiting for ships to come in

And now my Night Owl friends, I pass the torch to you and humbly ask you to write your life in six words! I look forward to reading what the open, honest and creative Owls will come up with!

Seeing

today, our daily blog
is from VIG

i shall stop this morning
and look around as this
blog shows me the reason
i should~~

Seeing

by VIG

In the beautiful west coast city, I enter the area that is called the Downtown Eastside. It is a part of the city that the wealthy talk about with unbridled disdain and disgust in their privileged voices. It is the place where people go who have lost sight of childhood dreams and who have found poverty and addiction in their place. It is not a “nice” part of the city and the “nice” people of the city are warned to stay away. I keep my eyes down as I walk to the bus that I pray will take me out of there quickly and without incident. I walk as if I am not there and hope that I am not approached. The masses struggle by, carrying with them shelter and worldly possessions in shopping carts and garbage bags. A woman in a doorway lies blanketed by empty bottles and a man staggers toward me with his hand out. My eyes drill into the sidewalk and I rush by without raising my gaze from the concrete. I disregard any attempts that he is making to ask me for the help he needs to survive the day - in whatever way that might be. Through fear I ignore him and continue on, then I hear a voice plead “Why won’t anyone look me in the eye anymore. Aren’t I a human?” That voice stops me in my tracks. Perhaps it is a line that he has found successful in “guilting” people into giving. Or perhaps I am the straw that breaks the camels back. Another person he passes on the street that he determines, by whatever criteria, could help him and could see him, but who is choosing instead to render him invisible. I realize that I, who consider myself to be a caring person, am fooling myself. I am caring when I feel safe and am in the “deserving” part of town. In an instant and without looking, I have judged and determined that the person with his hand out is a threat and a social problem and thereby worthy of being passed by. I go back to him and give him the five dollars that I would have spent at the first Starbucks that I saw while riding on the bus. I look him in the eye and smile. He says thank you and God bless like he really means it. I continue down the street and I raise my eyes to see what I have been missing. And I smile. I smile at every human that I see. The response that I receive in return will stagger and affect me for many years. People I come across on that street of misplaced dreams seem genuinely shocked that a passerby is making eye contact and is smiling. And every person smiles back at me. From the words of the man with the outstretched hand and in those shy, authentic smiles, I learn to lift my eyes from the pavement and to really see “the human” in us all.