Another

They think there will always be another. Another friend, another lover, another moment. Another town. Another job. Another day. Another dawn at the threshold to greet fate. Welcome, come in inevitable. You've been waiting. Patient soul.

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Dancing Shadows

When evening shadows frolic with delight!

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Our Soul

We have no control over where our soul gets planted on earth. Our soul does not have the privilege of choice. It can't plead its way into abundance. It can't buy its way out of poverty. Our soul, our person is simply where we wake to find ourselves.

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Self Evident Truth

If ever you question your belief in one person or another, dig deep in your heart as there lies the truth.

Our world is in possession of humans who will deceive you with their twisted version of truth. They will attempt to rewrite your past into something they can manipulate to bolster their own self image.

Leeches will bleed you dry for their own edification. Lose not yourself in the letting. Hearts truth, place your trust, it's your only defense.

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Regret

Regret falls from the sky like bitter licorice drops. Saturating the ground with sticky residue. It clings to your shoes, and tracks through your house. Unable to remove its remnants, regret collects the remaining discarded grey dusty ash left behind by laments rash misdeeds.

~MDJG~  

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Current Habits Challenge

Below written by Chuck Swoboda August 2020 - worth sharing

Southwest Airlines Doesn’t Settle For Best Practice – And You Shouldn’t Either

"Best practices are often sold as the answer to all your problems — if you follow these steps, you will likely have success. Even better, you won’t get in trouble if the results aren’t what you wanted. However, the truth is that best practices limit your ability to impact significant change. The same boundary conditions that prevent failure, also limit success and get in the way of uncovering the best ideas.

Challenge your current habits!

Habits are a powerful and useful tool to get things done effectively and efficiently. But once formed, they often go unquestioned and unchallenged. When left unchecked, they become an excuse for accepting best practices and ignoring the inevitable truth that there is always a better way."

Mark Twain once said: “A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.”

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We have been persuaded!

Over the past 100 years we have been persuaded to become the ultimate consumer, perhaps against our will, and most definitely without our conscious knowledge. 

Below is from "A Brief History of Consumer Culture" published on The MIT Press Reader. Which is an article adapted from Kerryn Higgs book “Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet”

Sobering words to ponder:

Frederick Allen wrote in1931, “Business had learned as never before the importance of the ultimate consumer. Unless [the consumer] could be persuaded to buy and buy lavishly, the whole stream of six-cylinder cars, [], cigarettes, rouge compacts and electric ice boxes would be dammed up at its outlets.”

"President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes welcomed the demonstration “on a grand scale [of] the expansibility of human wants and desires,” hailed an “almost insatiable appetite for goods and services,” and envisaged “a boundless field before us … new wants that make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.” In this paradigm, people are encouraged to board an escalator of desires (a stairway to heaven, perhaps) and progressively ascend to what were once the luxuries of the affluent."

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Placement

If the soul has a say in where it was to be placed on earth, the conscience keeps no remembrance. If it was merely a request, how does it know that it was granted or denied?

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Sell them their dreams!

"Sell them their dreams. Sell them what they longed for and hoped for and almost despaired of having. Sell them dreams—dreams of country clubs and proms and visions of what might happen if only. After all, people don’t buy things to have things. They buy things to work for them. They buy hope—hope of what your merchandise will do for them. Sell them this hope and you won’t have to worry about selling them goods."

Advice to participants in a 1923 convention of marketers - William R. Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture

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Consumption

If they can't sell you your desires, they will sell you your fears.

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On Being Right

An overwhelming desire to be right, could lead to an irrevocable wound in a treasured relationship.

Granted this is a complicated statement, and there are multi-layered factors that need to be considered before any semblance of an answer can find a foundation. Starting with the type of relationship: is it a parent and a child, extended family members, life-long friends or a partner relationship; each hold background causal factors, that lead to the desire to be right. Each person’s life experiences, as well as, the relationship being healthy and balanced or shrouded by an underlying complication, needs to be measured as a foundational block to this statement’s validity.

So today it is worth asking, in this moment in time is being right worth the wound?

Secondary question one might ask: is it a desire to be right or is it a desire to prove another person wrong?

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Hershey's Bar Day

It won't fill your belly but it'll make you forget you're hungry. If only for a while. 

May our hearts be momentarily filled up in the memory of your greatness!

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Gusty Days

Gusty summer days elapse with a favorable friendly wind across our cheeks. Autumn days our backs bend against a brisk discomforting chill. Winter days, the birds perch among the unmoving ice burdened branches, and our ears strain heeding the slightest motion of life. Nerves unsettle in the frosty quiet stagnant stillness. We anxiously await the tender days of spring.

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Landing the Truth

 We are not responsible for anyone else's happiness, and a safe landing is not always a greaser.

Wisdom from my aviator husband.

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Real

 

The struggle is real but you don't have to give it a voice!

~MDJune~

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Once...

... upon a time there were two peas in a pod, and they almost shared the same birthday. 

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Seasons

Seasons undulate drop by flake, full to empty, cycling through the color wheel with dizzying accuracy. Driven by the magnetic force under Atlas's unconscious control, seasons tilt us awry. Our season may yet again bloom, heavy with bounty, laden with laughter.

~MDJune ~​

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Merry Christmas ~ Mid-Winter Snack

The winter wonderment hides her true height. Waking from a long morning snooze, hunger becomes number one on the list. Legs at full stretch, neck reaching for the space beyond, a shiver bristles every inch of her in an attempt to shake the matted snow from her hide. This winter it's important to stay nourished. Feed on willow. Feed on any shrubs that might still fuel bounty. Feed for two or possibly three. Willow nurtures her winter weary soul till spring light brings new life.

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Macmillan's Pocket Classics ~ A history lesson on the life of Lenore Catherine Broome

This time of year, it is common to be on the hunt for engaging books to read, and the Macmillan's Pocket Classics are always top of the search list. This year I found six books (shown in the photo above) from an Ebay seller in California. The seller states that they purchased these books from an estate sale, and are not related to the books previous owners.

Like a lot of books, these have been inscribed by their previous owners, and in this case, these appear to be the original owners. Five of these books were inscribed by Lenore Broome, and the sixth book by Westel Wallace, all of them from Monte Vista Colorado. The publish dates on these books are 1908, 1909, and 1910.

Normally we receive as gifts or purchase the Macmillan’s Pocket Classics one at a time, so to have six arrive at once, five of which from the same owner, the same place, and with similar publish dates got me to thinking… I put my googlefu to work, and am completely fascinated by what I found!

In the 1906-1907 school year for the State Normal School of Colorado, as posted in the quarterly bulletin series VII No. 1 on page 193, Lenore Broome is listed as being a junior from Pueblo Colorado.

In the September 1910 edition of The Colorado School Journal, Denver Colorado page xliv (page 40 at the beginning) it reads: “U. OF C. Of those who graduated from the College of Education, University of Colorado, in 1910, the following are some of those who are teaching in high schools : Lenore Broome , Monte Vista…”.

The University of Colorado Bulletin Vol. XXI No. 10 General Series No. 175 Directory Officers and Graduates 1877-1921 published in Boulder, Colorado August 1921, on page 82 lists: Broome, Lenore Catherine, A. B. (Mrs. Westal Wallace). Monte Vista, Colorado.

On an aside an A. B. degree the abbreviation of “artium baccalaureus,” which is the Latin name for the Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree.

Next up comes the most in-depth information about Lenore Broome that I uncovered. The History of Colorado Biographical Volume IV published by the Linderman Co., Denver Colorado 1927 on page 357 reads:

“Westel Bruce Wallace, vice president of the Wallace State Bank, at Monte Vista, Rio Grande county, was born in Denver, March 4, 1891, and is a son of Robert Bruce and Lulu (Love) Wallace, the former of whom is a graduate of Wooster College, Wooster, Ohio. Our subject is a member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons and the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, and also belongs to the Monte Vista Rotary Club. His religious affiliation is with the Presbyterian church. On November 19, 1912, at Pueblo, Colorado, Mr. Wallace was united in marriage to Miss Lenore Broome, who is now deceased, and to them were born two children, Patricia Joyce and Westel Bruce, Jr.”

Searching for just a bit more information to round out this story; it seems that Lenore Broome Wallace died in 1924. As for Westel Bruce Wallace, he received an education at the University of Colorado, seemed to have an engaging work career, and remarried in 1936 to Mildred Crooks. This information is from the Prabook website. However the marriage date of Westel and Lenore is incorrect on this page. Their marriage day was in fact November 19, 1912 and it can be verified from the Denver Public Library Digital Collection - Colorado marriages, 1858-1939 page 1627. Worth noting that here Catherine is listed as her first name. The joys of genealogy even if its not your family.

The last bit of interesting information is that their daughter Patricia Wallace came to be known as Mistress William F. Rapp. Why is this interesting? There is a leg of my family tree that is from Colorado, and they had friends in the 1950’s with the last name of Rapp. Further research is required to connect these dots, and perhaps discover how these books migrated from Colorado to California, but for now, its time to get reading.

These are beautiful books and will be enjoyed in our home as winter covers the view out the window. May your winter days be filled with joy and contentment.

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Free Will

Our car tires steamrolled over the jagged searing asphalt to match the flat terrain, as we traveled highway 30 between my grandparents’ farm and my uncles’ fancy home in the city. Highway 30 divides the state of Iowa in half from east to west, the heart of the heartland where endless fields of corn swagger in the breeze of each passing vehicle.

The stream of sunlight flashing through each row of corn is mesmerizing. It can lull a young girl into a sense of complacency. Was this all there was in the world? Endless fields of corn where my only option was to become a farmer’s wife? Sure, I could choose to attend college after high school graduation, learn another skill that would change the trajectory of my life. But my grandfather always held sway that it was an M.R.S. degree that I would be seeking.

This seed of thought took root, and I chose to seek my degree without having to spend dollars, that I didn’t actually have, on an education, that was just a piece of paper according to my mother.

Looking back from where I am today, these antecedent conditions held a grip over what I thought was my free will choice not to attend college. In other words, it was the cause and effect of my life experiences that made the choice for me. That I did not actually freely choose to not attend college. The causal chain of determinism holds merit in this narrative.

Over a quarter of a century later this narrative has changed, and I find myself seeking illumination granted by attending an institution of higher education. However, the question still swaggers in the breeze. Did I make the choice to attend college as the result of my own decision (free will), or was it the result of a complex chain of cause and effect (determinism)? The Heisenberg uncertainty principle guides me to an answer I can conceptualize.

I am a tiny particle, smaller than a quark, in a large universe of organic and inorganic matter. Matter made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, which according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, it is with enormous uncertainty that we can measure anything as tiny as an electron. If one can ascertain the position of the particle, its motion is unknown. Or one can measure its motion, but then one will not be able to know its position.

Therefore, being a tiny particle surrounded by other subatomic material, it is impossible to predict, where I am or where I am going. It is impossible to use the concept of determinism to know exactly what my future will look like. It is within this unpredictability that gives my free well its authority to choose.

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