Indigo-Daisy

This is my Mother’s day gift from my oldest son, a donation of a llama on my behalf to a village in need via an organization called Heifer International .

What an amazing organization this is and it has been in existance for almost 60 years. Their main focus is on ending world hunger and poverty by providing livestock, trees and other resources to those in need.

What is truly amazing is that this is more than just a charity because they don’t just provide a gift and then leave, each project must have a long term solution with a cornerstone of defined principals set in place that will attribute to the success of the project. The program then instills the same principals in the recipients and the recipients in turn are encouraged in the spirit of goodwill to pass their blessings on to others.

The families and villages who receive the gifts are taught to be aware of and make use of the environment in which they live and how to care for the animals in which they were bestowed and to treat them lovingly.

The organization also provides AIDS education, living loans in the forms of livestock and funds to help  start and expand their businesses. The recipients in turn must also respect human rights and gender equality.

I hope my Llama is a blessing to whom ever receives it.

For all my fellow bloggers, here is a tool that you will love.

If like me you have a lot of blogs you like to follow, and you find that you are spending a lot of time clicking through them only to see that many have not changed from the last time you checked them, then you will will love diffbot .

diffbot is an online bookmark manager that notifies you when one of your pages has new content on them. So instead of wasting time clicking through blogs that have not changed, diffbot will bold the bookmarks of the sites that have changed for you. This way you spend more time reading new content rather then clicking through old content.

Another thing I really like about it is that you can take it with you to another computer. So if you are in the library, school or work and want to find a page that is in your diffbot bookmarks, you just log into your account and there they all are.

If you happen to use FireFox as your browser, then you are really in luck as they have developed a firefox plugin that will integrate diffbot into your firefox bookmarks sidebar. It is very easy to install and it updates automatically.

Besides reading blogs, I also use it to keep up with my sisters photo albums, to see whats new in deviantArt and other galleries, and things like searching for items on Craig’s list or e-bay.

Just thought I would share this really cool tool as I have been using it over a year now and found it saves me a lot of time.

Just happened to glance at this in the video store while passing by and was drawn to it by the beautiful cover and all the awards it won. With that many awards it was sure to be good.

Turns out it was beyond good, it reached right in my soul and made me sit up and pay attention. Beware and don’t watch without a box of tissues sitting right next to you. In some scenes the tears flowed no matter how hard I tried to hold them back.

This was a documentary revolving around the refugee camp of Patongo in northern Uganda were over 50,000 displaced members of the Acholi tribe lived under military protection from a rebel terrorist group called the Lords Resistance Army. The children of the Patongo Primary School for the first time qualified to participate in a music and dance competition in Kampala.

The story followed three children in particular, 13 year old Rose, 14 year old Nancy and 14 year old Dominic.

The horrific events that these children witnessed were such that any human being should never have to live through let alone a small innocent child. Just to give an example, one of the girls had been taken by the rebels and brought out to the bush to identify her dead parent’s whom they had just killed. She remembered with utmost clarity one of the rebels pulling her mothers head out of a large pot.

As I was watching this, my thoughts kept going back to the realization that this was not a script; these were actual events that had actually happened to these children.

The cinematography in the film was a welcome relief to the children’s stark reality. I don’t recall ever seeing a sunset so beautiful even in real life, one in particular had a deep indigo blue sky surrounded by a vibrant fiery orange red light mixed in with dark clouds above and green grass below all in the same view. I guess this sort of represented the beauty amidst their pain. The beauty being that this competition gave these children a sense of purpose and self worth.

The movie takes you through both the preparation for the competition and the actual competition itself where the children, some for the first time in their life leave the camp to go compete with other schools in their country in song and traditional dance.

If every you get to feeling that your in a situation so bad that you can’t bear to face another day, these very special children are sure to inspire you. For they have found in music and dance the ability to find their own special place which gave them the courage and strength to let go of the past and move on.

My local library is subscriber to "Film Movement" a distributor of independent and foreign films.  I started ordering some to watch on the weekends as I have been getting somewhat bored with the type of movies that Hollywood has been turning out these days.

When I picked up the movie "Arranged" I had know idea on what a treat I was in for in finding this delightful romantic comedy.

Rochel, a soft spoken Orthodox Jew played by Zoe Lister-Jones and Nasira, a spirited Muslim woman, begin their first year teaching in a public school. The two hit it off right from the start finding they had much in common as each came from a family with deeply ingrained values and traditions including that of arranged marriages.

My first thoughts going into this movie was that it would probably portray the difficulty of these young women breaking away from old customs and convincing their family that they were living in a modern day American society where women were were strong, independent and made their own choices.

While the movie did reflect their struggles, it was really about the love and unity of family and traditions that made it work.

The storyline was one of the best I have seen in a long time, the characters were vibrant, honest and sweet lighting up each scene with their glowing energy. It really made me look a little closer at myself on how I sometimes judge people without really knowing the whole story.

If you like romantic comedy’s and appreciate the passion that it takes to make an independent film, I highly recommend "Arranged".

What would you say if the leader of your country based his economic decisions on Gross National Happiness versus of Gross Domestic Product?

That is what King Jigme Singye Wangchuck the King of Bhuton (a small country near the Himalayan Mountains) did in 1976 over concerns of a weakening economy. He based decisions on the needs of his people as well as Buddhist spiritual values versus the need for power and political might.

The King also gave up absolute power in 1998 in order to transform his country to its own independence.

I can’t help but wonder how better off my own country would be if the Bush Administration would have taken the time to address the needs of his citizens and focused on health care, education, and basic fundamental needs versus pushing the country into an endless war over weapons of mass destruction that never existed.

I love working the right side of my brain but get frustrated when doing arts and crafts as I just don’t have the space. By the time I get my project all spread out over the table, it is time to pack it all up again.

So I started doing these little artistamps on my computer. I can play with it for a while, then set my laptop down, walk away and come back to it when I am ready. No mess, no stress, no cleanup.

I use Adobe Photoshop, but my son is really into open source software and told me about this program called GIMP which is free. I experimented with it a bit and found it to be an awesome program. If you like to dabble in computer generated art and don’t want to pay the big ticket price for Adobe, try GIMP.

Currently I am working on dedicating a stamp for each article in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights . There are thirty articles in all and I am only on number seven. This has proven to be a more difficult task than I first imagined. So in between, I started making stamps for other things like blogs I like to visit.

My first blog stamp went to Mountaingirl’s Musings where the author officially changed her name all the way back to her birth certificate. I was just so impressed by this, I guess because I see people all the time who will complain their whole life about things but never take any steps to alleviate their situation. Mountaingirl was unhappy with her name, and just decided to change it, even on her birth certificate. I think that is pretty cool and I started looking at things in my own life that I may be complaining about to see if there is something I can do to change it.

My next stamp went to Welshcakes Limoncello , author of Sicily Scene . She is a sort of retired language teacher from England who has relocated to Sicily. A woman of my own heart as I love all things Italian. Welshcakes has a fun to follow blog and I enjoy reading the day to day ramblings of living in Sicily, where the most stressful part of day seems to be waiting in line at the post office.

All my stamps are posted in my Gallery and if you click on "detail" each stamp has as personal description attached. Look back for more as I travel a lot of blogs.

A. A. MILNE
“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. ‘Pooh!’ he whispered. ‘Yes, Piglet?’ ‘Nothing,’ said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. ‘I just wanted to be sure of you.’”

On my drive back and forth to work, I like to listen to National Public Radio which is an independent radio station supported by private donations.

NPR offers to me a refreshing alternative to the major news media and one of my favorite segments is on Friday mornings where they have this feature called StoryCorps.

Since 2003 NPR has traveled across the United States to set up sounds booths on the streets and invite ordinary Americans to come in and share a life story. So far nearly 30,000 people have come into their booths and shared a personal story.

Sometimes the stories almost move me to tears as they are so innocent and real. This past Friday’s story was especially touching to me. It was about a man from New York who was mugged by a teen, and the interview was recorded a few days after the event.

This man displayed such incredible courage and I thought to myself while listening to it, if only more people had this same courage to really reach out and treat others with such kindness, what a peaceful this world this could be.

Below is a copy of the transcript and a link to the web page so you can listen to it yourself.

Julio Diaz - “A Knife and a Fork”

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”

Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.

“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”

“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz says he told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’”

Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”

“Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.

The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”

The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”

“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

Produced for Morning Edition by Michael Garofalo.

Here is a link to a few of my other favorites:
Mary Caplan and Emily Collazo About a woman whose brother died of Aids.
Mary and David Warm A father with a daughter who has Downs Syndrome.
Hector Black A man who lost his daughter to a violent crime.

My family thought I was crazy for thoroughly enjoying this movie. I loved it so much I have to see it again to catch everything I missed the first time around. Director Wes Anderson is known for his incredible eye for detail so I am sure there is a ton of hidden gems that will make it make it worth seeing more than once.

The story revolves around three somewhat neurotic brothers coming together for the first time in over a year after their father passes away. Their hope is to go on this spiritual quest to India to renew their relationship as brothers. I was immediately drawn in by the visual wisdom of every scene which was splattered with bright beautiful colors of orange, yellow, cinnamon and turquoise.

This was India with herbal remedies, sacred rituals, and a cure for everything. But the thing about spiritual journeys is, that you can’t go in with expectations, and you can’t force them to happen according to your own agenda.

Oh the joy of watching these three actors on screen as they meld as a family unit and make their relationships as brothers so unbelievably believable. It just worked. And to see how hard they try to make this trip worth their effort. You could sense that they just did not want to return home without finding what they came for.

One of the funnies parts of the movie is where the train comes to a halt in the middle of nowhere because it had lost its way. How is that possible for a train to get lost, and how often has that happened in your own life where you know exactly where you are going because you are following the path laid out before you, and then all of a sudden life stops in the middle of nowhere and you don’t know where you are. Wes Anderson is an amazing storyteller as he finds ways at eluding to the message but not coming right out and saying it and leaving it up to us as the viewers to grasp the clues and figure it out.

Another example, throughout the entire movie, the brothers carted around loads of luggage where ever they went, and you could feel this heavy burden following them around. It isn’t until the scene at the end of the movie where they let it go and leave it all behind, because if they continued to hold onto it, they wouldn’t be able to move forward.

This film was entertaining, colorful, fun, refreshing, adventurous, and intoxicating. For a brief moment, it took you away from the problems of the world and brought you into this spiritual quest where you always find what you were looking for, even though it wasn’t what you thought it was going to be.

Into the Wild is a movie based on book written by Jon Krakauer about the true adventures of Christopher McCandless, a young man who just graduated from college. Instead of pursuing a career and entering into society as most young graduates do, Christopher took risks that most people would not dare to take and set out on a journey of discovery into the wilderness of Alaska. I have always admired people that have taken a certain amount of risk to find themselves and basically this is what drew me to the movie and made me bring it home.

I will have to say Kudos’s to Sean Penn who was Writer, Producer and Director of this movie, and to Emile Hirsch who played the part of Christopher McCandless. Into the Wild was beautifully made, the cinematography was breathtaking, and Emile must have went through great pains to get his body prepared for the extreme situations he had to portray. It was rated R for some nudity and language, but personally I thought it was very tastefully done and not offensive.

For those looking for a movie of substance with a spiritual undertone, I think you will find it here as you follow this mans journey. Christopher McCandless had everything going for him, he was smart, well educated, athletic, and had his whole life in front of him. However, he became disillusioned with society’s greed, he watched his parents struggle in an abusive marriage, and he refused to acquiesce with his fathers expectations.

In the beginning what seemed to drive him to take such great risks was pure rebellion, but later as the movie unfolded you could see that this was his personal journey of self discovery, and on the road he discovered that there does come a time to forgive, a time to heal, and that for one to find real happiness, it has to be shared.

I won’t go into the details of the movie as not to spoil the ending, and upon reading more about the real storyline there were some details that were left out, and some that were changed up a bit, however all in all it was well worth the journey and I personally came away with a true understanding of this brave mans message.