Happy Birthday to Me!

 
October 2. Yep--it's that day again. I think birthdays are highly overrated. Certainly, we should not have them so often!


According to Astrologer Georgia Nicols:

If Your Birthday Is Today

Social reformer Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) shares your birthday today. You're charming, witty and attractive. You display grace and gentleness: yet you're tough inside. You're also frank, candid and erudite. You have much endurance and perseverance. People respect you. In your early twenties, you become much more aggressive about going after what you want. Work hard this year for success in 2008.

Hey, though long past my early twenties, I can live with that!

~

Last night I dreamed about the Dalai Lama. He wore a red baseball cap, as he did during his recent trip to Vancouver. This small man has a huge presence; goodness seems to emanate from him like an aura. (see below for more on that) He smiled and spoke with everyone, joked and laughed. The dream was sweet and calming--I woke smiling.

Years ago, when I, and the world, were younger and less jaded, I read a book called The Third Eye, by Tibetan T. Lobsang Rampa. It's a detailed account of how young Rampa studied to become a monk in a Lhasa monastery. Under the tutelage of older, wiser monks, he learned the tenets of Buddhism.

(Shades of the Kung Fu television series! However, the book was published in 1956; the series wasn't made until 1972.)

The book simply fascinated me. From the gentle Buddhist beliefs, the teachers honing young Rampa's abilities, to the depictions of ever more-challenging tests he undertook--all was esoteric and new to one who had led a fairly sheltered childhood. Rampa's trials culminated in an operation that opened his third eye, that mystical "eye"whereby he could see people's auras and know if they were good, evil, honest, etc.

I learned much about Tibet, China, Buddhism--which charmed me because it was light years above and beyond organized religions as I knew them. Who could not be intrigued by the concept of Astral Projection, whereby one can be in a meditative or sleeping state and travel on the astral plane, meeting people who are similarly engaged? Who could argue the Buddhist's solemn belief in reincarnation, which they call transmigration of souls?

To someone as young and green as I was then (despite my innate certainty that I Knew Everything) this was all mystical, profound, verging on mind-blowing information. At the time people were expanding their minds many ways--yoga, meditation, hallucinogens. Some trekked to the Himalayas in search of that elusive goal--Enlightenment.

I believed the events of the book, even to the point where Rampa fulfilled his destiny: at the moment of his death during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (misnamed--yes?) he transmigrated his soul into the body of an Englishman, Cyril Henry Hoskins. I believed then that it, that anything, was possible. Ah, youth!

Years later I was disappointed to learn that Mr. Hoskins, an avid student of the occult, had never been to Tibet, was called a hoaxter, the story was pure fiction, and despite the accurate details in the book, no record existed of a Lobsang Rampa ever having studied to be a lama.

He did, however, insist it was all true. And who are we, or anyone, to say it can't be so? Cynic that I've become, I still have brief moments of faith.

So on this birthday I'll think outside the box, outside the norm. Expand my mind. Work my way back to that young person who truly believed.

As Buddha said:

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.

and

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.


I still admire the Buddhist beliefs, their tenets, their noble truths and precepts. Championing peace and good, honoring all life, can never be incorrect.

And maybe, just maybe the Dalai Lama and I were astral traveling at the same time!




--Cat

Bad Words and Reality Shows

 I don't watch reality shows because I don't believe in their reality.
That said, while recently channel surfing I happened upon one, then another reality show that was disappointing in its, well, reality dialogue.

An abundance of beeps highlighted the dialogue of both shows. Often the beeps outnumbered the words, so the viewer must decipher/read lips/guess the conversation.

I know a beep could have masked the A-word, the B-word, the C-word, the D-word the E-word... (well, maybe not E). However, I get the sense that the F-word won the count.

I don't completely disapprove of the F-bomb, as it's often called when used in an "oops" moment by politicians and celebrities. It's an effective word that gets to the nitty-gritty of the matter. Psychologists at a British university did a study which found the use of expletives strengthens one's endurance to pain.

Yes indeed. Stub a toe and find out how true that is.

However, I find that overuse dilutes the effectiveness of any cuss word. To me less is more. I'd rather see a show with a few bombs used in strategic--shall we say explosive--moments instead of tossed away like fluff in every other sentence.

Ditto in books. If I read a book in which a character goes overboard with the reality dialogue, it becomes a big yawn. But a judiciously placed pained/frightened/horrified/grievous/excited detonation bursts off the page and gives an effective single-word stress moment to a most dire (or alternately, most loving) event.

Disclaimer: Some fictional characters are defined by the language they use, so it's necessary to salt their dialogue in an appropriate manner. Some real people, too, have a limited vocabulary and can best express themselves by fixing on the single descriptive word they know.

That's reality for you.

~

Bad words

My five year old grandson on a recent visit learned a new bad word.

It was unintentional.

I don't know what tv show he was watching, but he said, in true five-year-old righteous fashion, "That's dickless!'

Uncle, knowing the boy's mother would never abide her child using such language, kindly took him aside and told him dickless was a bad word that should never be repeated.

Grandson looked perplexed. Could it be that other members of his family used this vulgar term?

He agreed never to say it again.

Later, Uncle told the boy's mother about the event.

She laughed and laughed. Uncle was now puzzled.

It was the boy's way of saying ridiculous.

Uncle, no doubt slapping the side of his head and calling himself a dickless wonder, had to admit to the boy he'd been mistaken about the word, it wasn't bad at all, etc.

No doubt Grandson was even more puzzled by this revelation.

He probably doesn't know any true bad words.

Give him a few years.

Learning the language is like a rite of puberty. And reality tv.

--Cat

The River God

It snowed today. Snowed!

On unseasonably cold days like today I'm reminded wistfully of the time two summers ago when I saw the River God in the (total) flesh.

Nikomekl River

There's a shortcut we take driving home over a one way bridge on the Nikomekl River, a placid little stream that flows to the sea. As this is in a tidal area, the bridge is part dam, opening and closing for flood control and to allow fish to travel up and downstream.

Until that particular day we had seen only the odd seal swimming in the lower part. One warm evening when the sun was low in the western sky, we were halfway across the bridge when "he" unexpectedly appeared.

First there were hands on the concrete wall that served as a railing. Then arms, a head, dark hair streaming rivulets of water. His muscles strained as he pulled himself up to the top of the rail. And there he stood in all his brazen glory, a handsome Adonis maybe in his mid-twenties, shaking water droplets from his hair and body, laughing, as gods might, at the stupefied expressions on the mortals' faces.

We did not stop--there were cars before and behind ours--but I can still hear the laughter floating in the golden air, both his and a split-second later that of all who'd been startled by this apparition.

Yeah, yeah, it was probably like my husband said, buff young guys playing a prank, or carrying out a dare.

I prefer to believe I saw the River God.

--Cat

Backyard Coyotes

 My husband came in last night and said he heard the neighborhood owl hooting. The owl is big and beautiful, white or gray, and has been around for some months, probably because to him this neighborhood is like a smorgasbord--all his favorite dishes can be found.

The owl's spooky who-who-who certainly invokes shivers. And we talked about the times we camped in the wilderness and at night heard owls and coyotes. Such lovely times.

Hah, my husband said, we hear owls and coyotes here all the time.

Of course, that's true. Wilderness, it seems, has come to the city.

And it's justified, right? We encroached on their lands, so they return the favor. Only they have no chance here.

Not long ago we saw two coyotes just outside our back yard, warming themselves in a sunny spot in the greenbelt. I wanted to write a poem about them, about how wrong it was for wild animals to pad along concrete streets, they should be free, yadda, yadda, yadda. I planned to write it in the style of a sonnet.

Well, there are sonneteers.
And then there's me.

But I will prevail.

Here are the first few lines I wrote:

City Coyotes

Beyond the fence, beyond the grass-banked stream,
I saw coyotes bask in morning sun.
They slept until the warming light was done,
Then wakened from their atavistic dream.
Their slitted eyes stared at encircling homes,
At fences slicing land that once was free.
Yet I believe their hearts can only be
On ranges where their untamed cousin roams.


A picture of the backyard coyotes:



-- Cat    first posted in 2007

Television nostalgia

 I originally published this on the blog in May, 2007. I smiled reading it again. So it's here!

 Note: Some people use capital letters when abbreviating the word television, but my use of small letters explains my regard, or lack thereof, of the medium.

Some years ago I read that to be a true tv snob you must watch all of the programs, or none of them.

The former being impossible for me, I chose the latter.

For a long time I watched nothing, and whenever someone said, "Did you catch X on tv last night?" I could honestly reply, in true tv snob fashion, "Oh, I don't watch television."

There were occasional inroads. My daughter, working nights at the time, watched afternoon soap operas and I began watching The Young and the Restless with her. I still watch to this day, and make no excuses for doing so.

Then there were shows like ER and NYPD Blue. I loved the tension of those early ER shows. I will always remember one episode where at the climax I burst into tears. A movie, tv show, or book that makes me cry has rare power. That episode was, for me, an "eleven." (on a scale of one to ten....)

I stopped watching ER when it became too depressing for me. NYPD Blue, though I watched, and enjoyed, from beginning to end.

At one time my desk sat in a large room that also had a tv set. For a time I shunned that tv set, though I only had to look slightly to the side to see it. Then I discovered British mystery series on A & E.

What a wonderful variety! I watched them all: Prime Suspect, A Touch of Frost, Inspector Morse, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Lovejoy, Dalgliesh, Inspector Alleyn, Brother Cadfael, Ruth Rendel Mysteries, the gritty Cracker--my favorite. (perhaps others I've forgotten...)

Alas, we moved and things changed, my ability to view these shows while I worked at my computer came to a regrettable end.

But then came the autumn of 2000, the autumn of the Olympics in Sydney, the autumn of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, the autumn I spent several weeks in a hospital.

Almost overnight I went from tv snob to tv slob.

I watched EVERYTHING that was on. All the game shows, all the sitcoms, all the dramas: Cops shows, lawyer shows: Ally McBeal, The Practice, Family Law, scenic shows, e.g. Baywatch! on and on ad nauseam. The good, the bad, and the really ugly, it made no difference to me, I was passing time and for once in my life had not the will to read. (As if that were some sacred act not to be performed in the mundane setting of a hospital.)

My tv extravaganza came to an end when I came home. I tried to keep up with some of the better shows, but my interest soon waned. I had no patience left for silly sitcoms, though I always made time for Frasier.

Now I've come to that point where I recall important times of my life by the tv shows I watched. Who can forget the summer of 1980 when Who shot JR? was a question that held an entire continent in thrall? (This, before my tv snob days!) And how about the years I spent watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers with the young ones?

I remember books I've read, some the age I was when I read them The same with movies. But television goes farther than that. Because of the nature of the beast, the long running shows mark a passage of time, for some the change of an era. My son was a kid when he began watching The Simpsons in 1989. Almost 18 years later he still watches it when he can. Heavens, I aged 12 years during the course of NYPD Blue.

And now this entry, like a tv show that's been on too long, is losing it's original intent. I digress easily when it comes to this subject. I'm not qualified to criticize tv shows. I know what I like, what I find good. What others like, and watch, is their call.

I will admit there's lots that good. Even fascinating. But more that's bad. Even plain stupid. Would I miss it if it vanished?

I honestly think not.

--Cat

If Only…

 

 Yes, I like Tony Bennett.

Was listening tonight to THE ULTIMATE TONY. The lovely words to If I Ruled The World*, seem to have come from another century. Well, they ARE from another century. But then, they could just as easily apply to this century, this year.

*written in 1963 (thanks for finding the date, Gloria!)

Tony Bennett

IF I RULED THE WORLD

Words by Leslie Bricusse/Music by Cyril Ornadel, 1963

If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring
Every heart would have a new song to sing
And we'd sing of the joy every morning would bring

If I ruled the world, every man would be as free as a bird,
Every voice would be a voice to be heard
Take my word we would treasure each day that occurred

My world would be a beautiful place
Where we would weave such wonderful dreams
My world would wear a smile on its face
Like the man in the moon has when the moon beams

If I ruled the world every man would say the world was his friend
There'd be happiness that no man could end
No my friend, not if I ruled the world
Every head would be held up high
There'd be sunshine in everyone's sky
If the day ever dawned when I ruled the world

~

One can always dream.

--Cat

The more life changes…

 The more t stays the same.

 [I published this in November, 2006. And now, almost 18 years later, what has changed? It's gotten worse. That's what!]

Two recent articles on the CBC News website caught my attention, simply for the absurdity of placement.

More working poor using food banks: study
November 28, 2006 | 12:05 PM ET
CBC News

BMO sets profit record despite fourth-quarter weakness
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 | 12:01 PM ET
CBC News

I've posted the articles below, with pictures I've found. Exaggerations, maybe. Maybe not.

The Potato Eaters, 1885
by Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890)

More working poor using food banks: study
November 28, 2006 | 12:05 PM ET
CBC News

More people with jobs are relying on food banks despite an 8.5 per cent drop in overall use, says the Canadian Association of Food Banks.

According to the group's HungerCount 2006 report released on Tuesday, the percentage of food bank clients who are working is 13.4 per cent, up from 13.1 per cent last year.

The survey says the "working poor" continue to comprise the second largest group of food bank clients after social assistance recipients, who account for 53.5 per cent of clients across the country.

"People like you and I, people working, can't manage to feed their families," said CAFB executive director Charles Seiden.

"Low wages may be only one of several factors contributing to the working poor phenomenon in Canada. But the fact that real wages in the country have not improved over the last several years tells us that our leaders have neglected the country's labour rights and standards."

The study also showed children account for 41 per cent of the estimated 753,458 food bank clients, although they make up only about a quarter of the country's population.
Continue Article

Seiden said food bank use has risen 99 per cent since 1989, when the first food bank study was conducted.

Government must step in: Seiden

He called on the government develop policies to strengthen income and employment security and help Canadian families with housing and day care.

The CAFB represents food banks and food distribution centres across the country, serving 90 per cent of the people who use emergency food programs in Canada.

Other findings include:

* Highest provincial per capital food bank use: Newfoundland (5.6 per cent).
* Province assisting the largest share of food bank recipients: Ontario (330,491).
* Percentage of food banks with difficulty meeting demand:34.per cent.
* Years since the federal government promised to eliminate child poverty: 17.

~In Canada, a land of plenty, people can't feed, house or clothe their families. We have a large homeless population, not just junkies and binners who like the life, but poor people who cant' find that elusive thing called a home. Rather shameful. I blame Wal-Mart.

~~

The following painting depicts US senators deciding where all the money will be spent. I think it perfectly represents our banking hierarchy deciding how to milk more dollars from the customers. A pretty painting, but not a pretty picture.

Spending Uncle Sam's Money ca. 1899
by T. Dart Walker (1869 - 1914)

BMO sets profit record despite fourth-quarter weakness
Last Updated: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 | 12:01 PM ET
CBC News

BMO Financial Group set several new records in 2006, as profits rose by 11 per cent to $2.66 billion or $5.15 a share, despite a weaker business environment in the fourth quarter.

The bank raised its quarterly dividend by three cents, or 33 per cent over the year, to 65 cents a share, giving a triumphal farewell for Tony Comper, who will retire in March after eight years as chief executive officer.

BMO three-month tradingBMO three-month trading

He will be replaced by Bill Downe, currently chief operating officer.

BMO, which trades as the Bank of Montreal, was the first of Canada's big-six chartered banks to reports its results for the 2006 fiscal year.

The 2006 fiscal year ended on Oct. 31.

Comper seemed pleased with the results, BMO's fourth consecutive year of record results.
Continue Article

"It was a good year overall," he announced Tuesday morning, noting that all three operating groups delivered a record net income for the second year in a row, while the bank met or exceeded four of its five performance targets for the year.

The bank missed one of its key targets, improvements in cash productivity, because of its continued investment in retail businesses and a change in the business mix.

The bank set the records despite a difficult operating environment. But Comper said "favourable income taxes" and low credit losses in the fourth quarter helped the bank maintain a strong financial performance.

For the fourth quarter, the bank reported net income of $696 million, up $32 million or 4.8 per cent, with a return on equity of 19.4 per cent, down from 20.0 per cent. Revenue declined by 5.9 per cent, and expenses by 0.9 per cent.

The bank was hit hard in the U.S. market in the fourth quarter, where the income of the Personal and Commercial Banking division fell by $11 million to $23 million due to a weaker U.S. dollar, the cost of integrating acquisitions and expensive technology improvements in its branches.

Income of the bank's Private Client Group rose by 12 per cent to $12 million, excluding gains on asset sales in 2005, due to higher mutual fund fees and interest revenues.

The bank expects moderate growth in the Canadian economy in 2007. The Canadian housing market is expected to slow as past increases in interest rates dampen sales and construction. But business investment is expected to remain strong, due to continued healthy gains in corporate profits.

The U.S. economy is also expected to grow moderately in 2007, boosted by a drop in energy prices. Mortgage rates will keep a damper on the housing market, but business loans are expected to grow.

Shareholders seemed unimpressed with the results. Company shares fell by $1.22 to $70.29 on the Toronto Stock Exchange by late morning.
Related
Internal Links

TSX:BMO
BMO Q3 earnings up 30 per cent

~

I don't understand why shareholders seemed unimpressed. Can they be so blasé that million dollar record profits no longer excite them? Oh, I get it -- share prices fell.

Lest anyone think otherwise, I do believe in free enterprise. I also believe in compassion. Maybe you can't have both.

--Cat