It's hodge podge day!

 First, here's a photo of the gazebo work being done at Lake Tomahawk. Thanks to Elizabeth Swan photographer.

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Maybe by Bansky

And another artist at work... "Critical Race Theory"  by Jonathan Harris.

And yet another artist, Norman Rockwell.

If you've noticed a lot of confrontational pieces here, it's because that's the life we're all living today. I like how Rockwell says so much about the loss felt by these women.

"To stand with Palestine is to be human," she explained. Needless to say, it also means to be criminalized. Greta Thunberg among a group arrested today in Copenhagen. As always she is on the right side of history

San Marco, Venice by Giuseppe Marastoni

This is my Facebook Cover Photo.

I ache so bad, the pain of compassion for the innocents in Gaza, it's just a tiny drop of the incredible suffering they're enduring. Definitely Hamas must pay for it's atrocities. But Israel needs to give the normal people some consideration also. I'm a pacifist. I hate all war, but this powerful heavy handed attack against sneaky terrorists is the worst. 

What kind of future do any of them think they will have?

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OK, here's something that is beautiful (in my opinion) and uplifting.

Slow motion  bee hive...very short, you might want to mute the music.

Sharing with Eileen's Saturday Criters

Today's quote:

Life cannot be classified in terms of a simple neurological ladder, with human beings at the top; it is more accurate to talk of different forms of intelligence, each with its strengths and weaknesses. This point was well demonstrated in the minutes before last December's tsunami, when tourists grabbed their digital cameras and ran after the ebbing surf, and all the 'dumb' animals made for the hills.

 -B.R. Myers, author (b. 21 Aug 1963)

Yes. I said.

 Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. 

He had an hour to kill before the saucer came. 

He went into the living room, swinging the bottle like a dinner bell, 

turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, 

saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. 

It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War

 and the gallant men who flew them. 

Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, 

took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, 

a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, 

sucked bullets and shell fragments 

from some of the planes and crewmen.

The bombers opened their bomb-bay doors, 

exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, 

gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, 

and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes.

The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own,

 which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck

 more fragments from the crewmen and planes.

When the bombers got back to their base,

 the steel cylinders were taken from the racks

 and shipped back to the United States of America, 

where factories were operating night and day, 

dismantling the cylinders, 

separating the dangerous contents into minerals.

Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work.

The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas.

 It was their business to put them into the ground, 

to hide them cleverly,

 so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, 

became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, 

Billy Pilgrim supposed. 

That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. 

Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, 

without exception, conspired biologically 

to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve,

 he supposed.

~ Kurt Vonnegut

from Slaughterhouse Five

with thanks to love is a place

As posted here in The Beauty we Love.

PhotoofdevastatedDresden - Jason Dawsey

Holding place for peace

What way can I help move our world to peace right now, this minute, wherever I am, and whatever I am doing?

Enlarge that saying/poem, and think about it, please.

If we don't pay attention and learn from history, we may repeat it!

Animated map of Nuclear Bomb history worldwide

And on the same day over at Open Culture, Dramatic Color Footage Shows a Bombed out Berlin a month after Germany's WWII defeat.

I acknowledge that its my header at this time, but I frequently change that, so this is included again!

I am posting things that speak to me of reasons 40 years ago when I named my son "Peace" (Tai, from the I Ching.)

"Love is the answer." That's really tough to hold in your emotions when you see what hate can and does do...whether in history or these days. Many people have studied the dynamics of hatred, of the spiral of destruction, and become peace makers. This is what they've concluded...love.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

So the exercise of Tonglen (from Yoga) gives me the opportunity to work on that impossible-sounding approach to the most hateful situations and people. I must start, of course, with approaching the aspects of life closest to myself and explore my own hateful feelings and see how to transform them to love. After all, we can't change other people's feelings, only our own...look at that good old 12 Step Program prayer..."to change the things I can."

But assuming that I've practiced this for a long time, I can then move my thoughts to larger areas where hatred and fear is predominate. And eventually I will wish nothing but good outcomes, peacefulness and love for all the world, and all the sad and mistaken politicians full of their own hateful narrow minded attitudes. Yep, I hope eventually to see them with love and forgiveness. (Believe me, this will take a while, maybe not even this lifetime!) 

In the meantime, I envision them in cocoons of silken threads that envelope their actions and hold them in a room of mirrors where their energy just goes right back into them. Is that too much to wish for? Well, it's a step on the path.

Here's a song by Barbra Striesand confronting Trumps lies.

Ancestor's Saturday and WW I

For this week's Sepia Saturday post...click here and see others.  (I post on Friday, because I'm sure it's Saturday already somewhere.)

I'm finding out so much by reading what other Sepians post, the history of people living in England, Canada, Australia and the US.  Sort of on topic, though often not at all...they are (mostly) all enjoyable to read.  It's an education of "items in a bottle" that, when opened, are bubbly and colorful for sure.

This week's theme is related to World War I.  It asks for us to think that "2014 is, of course, the centenary of the start of that conflict known as The Great War or the First World War...and a chance to remember loss in any of its manifestations."



I spend many hours, er, days researching the lives of my ancestors, but find it very sobering to think of those who fought for what they believed in.

The World War I records I have are the draft cards.  I don't believe any men of the age to go to war in my family did fight in that conflict.

Grandfather Web registered for the draft on June 5, 1917.  (My mother was 3 months old at the time)

Albert "Bud" Webb

 He turns out to have been "tall, medium build," with "blue eyes," and "slightly bald," and hair of "light color."  He also gave his birthday incorrectly, having been born in 1891, rather than 1892.   I wouldn't have known that he was tall from any of the few photos we have of him.  And he doesn't give any "next of kin" information besides wife and child.  I think Edna (who filled out the form) may not have pushed for more information. She couldn't spell where he was born anyway. (More info about him on my blog HERE)

Interestingly enough, on the same date, my soon to be step-grandfather (Frederick A. Munhall) also registered for the draft, in Chicago.  (Albert Webb died in 1919, and my grandmother remarried around 1921).  Both of these men stated they were born in 1892 (according to these draft cards), making them 25 at the time they registered.  Both were tall with blue eyes, and salesmen.  That tells me something about my grandmother's choices of companions.  (More on Fred Munhall HERE)

Fred Munhall was 2 years older than he listed.  Putting a younger age on a draft card must have carried some weight, but it would seem the opposite effect in my reckoning. 

Frederick Munhall

Moving along from San Antonio and Chicago, here's what happened in Fort Worth.

My 41 year old grandfather George Rogers registered on Sept 12, 1918 for the Draft for WW I.  This was the first indication I found in my research that his mother was still alive in Galveston, since he gave her as next of kin.  His wife and children in Fort Worth somehow didn't qualify.  (His life is commemorated in my blog HERE)

George Rogers Sr. in 1942, Dallas, TX

As far as records and family photos indicate, not a one of these men served in WW I.

My Uncle Alex did serve in the Navy in WW II, and I've given a brief review of his life HERE on a previous blog.  He didn't live to raise his lovely daughters.

Alex Rogers with Dona V, and children Claudette and Sandra

The cockpit

There are some hair raising stories of air travel going around.

I had minor difficulties on a recent visit, and managed to take a picture of the captain in the cockpit as he had just rebooted the computer for the plane.

I don't remember the kind of plane, but it had 3 letters, beginning with C, and I think was called a Sierra something.  It was only half full, with only 2 seats on each side of the aisle.  Not that the seats were any larger than any other planes, but this was a smallish plane.

I sat next to a young woman who might have still been a teen.  She was highly anxious, and her way of dealing with it before the plane even taxied to the runway, was to wind her watch hands around and around.  After 10 minutes or so, staring hypnotically at the hands going around, she leaned over the window, so I couldn't see anything outside (being in the aisle seat).  I was hoping she felt a bit better, since we were still on the ground.  I knew how anxious she was when she reached up to turn on her light and her armpit reeked of fear.  No wonder animals can smell it.

When we had safely landed, she asked me the correct time.

And I haven't forgotten to remember the veterans in my life.  Thank you for risking your life for what you believed in, or at least by following orders.  I wish you peace as a result of being willing to go to war, whether you did or not.  I personally don't believe political divisiveness helps anyone feel any more connected to our world neighbors.  I didn't think the War in Vietnam was good in any way.  But my friends who fought there survived twice, first the terrible war, and second the lack of thanks from America after they got home.

Sighs

The election is over, for this time, this season, this "country."  Sigh.

I have  become somewhat of a "world citizen" and no longer identify myself so much as one nationality or another.

I think the more we can see our worldly citizenship the less likely we'll be to have "teams" of nations that combat against each other...each believing their deity is supporting their efforts to overtake, kill and claim parts of geography. 

There were once tribes of people who knew ownership of land was pretty silly. 

Last night pictures (maps) of some of land were colored red or blue to denote choices for leadership. 

Another competition, and yet the losing side had a lot to offer.  But their opinions won't be expressed so much now.  They are equated with "infidel status."

 
World peace isn't easy.

But just as we see how difficult it has been to leave behind our racial prejudices, (assuming we have) we need the effort now to leave behind our national prejudices.

Yep.  Next step for world peace.  Will you join me?

Can you let go of identification with one side or another, now?

Sigh.