here are my Christmas Flamingos, not a very good photo but the only one that turned out, and you can't see the little sleigh they are pulling, will have to try again next year.

here is a photo of "Ken" feeding one of his home-made cupcakes to one of the flamingos. As you can see this photo was taken in Autume, and a warm one it was too!

THINGS PINK!

"Designed for Union Products, by Don Featherstone, a serious sculptor and classical art student, the first plastic flamingo was "born" around 1957. In the 1960s this fake-feathered friend became the 'proto-type for bad taste and anti-nature.' By 1970 even Sears had removed it from its catalogue. "

In 1984, Miami Vice kicked the sales of pink flamingos into full throttle. For the first time ever Union Plastics sold more flamingo than they did ducks. Bans have been placed on the Pink Plastic Flamingo all over the united states, so people painted them blue". - Get Flocked

This famous bird continues to add colour to our lives all over the world...





















flamingos in snow photo by pj; all others by "Get Flocked"

"Every new adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem" - Eric Hoffer

Cherry Blossoms in Vancouver (Spring 2004, Photo by pj)




Frozen Apple on Reflecting Pond (photo by pj, circa 1977)

i treated myself to a present at Christmas, -- one of the last two copies on the shelf "on Sale" at SuperStore...and the best present i have given myself in a long time.

some excerpts from pages 181 - 187.
Mireille writes: " Bread and Chocolate.

I recently saw a short play in Paris calles "Les Mangeusses de Chocolat (loosely translated, Women Who Eat Chocolate).
Three young addicts decide to try group therapy, and the therapist (an ex-chocoholic herself) will try to help each other find her element declencheur (key to getting unhooked). They fail (surprise), and nothing gets resolved (this is French theatre), but there are lots of good lines, some with more than a grain of truth. For instance: A survey reveals that nine out of ten people admit to loving chocolate...and the tenth one is lying.

The play was satirizing a French obsession (chocolate), but also the therapeutic establishment, which perhaps one couldn't get away with in America. I took it in good fun, except when a comment was made about women who eat their chocolate in private. To the French, the idea seems silly enough for a gag, but given my American experience, I couldn't laugh. Too often, American women eat on the sly, and the result is much more guilt than pleasure.

French women eat chocolate (about twelve pounds a year on average.) They also eat bread (we fought a revolution over it!), another item on our watch list of offenders. But: French women don't get fat. In fact, here's another form of the French Paradox: Pretending such pleasures don't exist, or trying to eliminate them from your diet for an extended time, will probably lead to weight gain. The only long-term effect of deprivation is the yo-yo -- down today, but up again before you know it. It's utterly pointless, especially because both bread and chocolate are good for you.

In its pure dark form, chocolate has indeed been shown to be "heart smart,," with more antioxidants than black tea or red wine, as well as lots of magnesium, iron, and potassium (all vital to women's health). It can also ease anxiety and depression, as it contains serotonin and theobromine, which act on brain receptors and have a beneficial influence on mood. As it is also high in fat, however, it is better enjoyed after lighter meals than after fat-laden holiday feasts, or by itself as a pick-me-up.

One of the most dispiriting developments of the twentieth century was the mass production of chocolate. It created an inferiour product loaded with bad fats, and as a result, many Americans have never in their lives tasted the real thing. But relief has appeared iwth the rise of new artisanal chocolatiers, pasionate guardians of traditional methods that were perfected in the eighteenth century.

Quality chocolate is labour-intensive and complex. It requires careful orchard selection, cultivation, and then harvest of the precious fruit. Next comes fermentation and two rounds of drying, followed by roasting and a few more delicate procedures before one obtains the cocoa mass. From that mass, three products are extracted: liquor, cocoa butter, and cocoa powder. These are the materials from which the artisan works, making chocolate slabs, ganache, praline, or chocolate filled with fruit or liquor. Toto, I don't think we're in Hershey, Pennsylvania, anymore."

So, suffice it to say, this was one of my favourite chapters, since i absolutely adore chocolate, real chocolate, not that sticky artificial stuff of "candy bars"... and i take it as my personal responsibility to let people know that there is a difference. I will be posting more on chocolate in the future.

oh, there's more...

CHOCOLATE RICE PUDDING (serves 4)

2 cups milk; 1/2 cup sugar; Pinch of Salt; 1 cup arborio rice; 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 ounces dark chocolate (80% cacao preferred), broken into small pieces.

1. Pour the milk, sugar, and pinch of salt into a saucepan and bring to a boil over low heat. Add the rice and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the milk is absorbed (if the mixture becomes sticky, add a bit more milk to keep the rice creamy). Stir in the vanilla.

2. Pour the rice pudding into 4 ramekins and using a spoon, insert the chocolate pieces in the middle of each mold and push them into the rice. Leave at room temperature. The chocolate will slowly melt and mix with the pudding. Let your guests play with the way they want to eat it: mix the whole thing together or start by eating the rice laced with melted chocolate and the chocolate center separately -- a matter of taste and mood and a tough decision.

Serenity Photographed in the South Okanagan, BC by Michael Wheatley www.members.shaw.ca/magicallight

"Life is never quite the way it appears, but it is allways filled with light and colour. Dragonfly can help you see through your illusions and thus allow your own light to shine forth. Dragonfly brings the brightness of transformation and the wonder of colourful new vision."

- Ted Andrews: Animal-Speak

"I have learned not to worry about love; but to honour its coming with all my heart"

- Alice Walker




another tribute to love


A Troubador's Song

"So throught he eyes love attains the heart.

For the eyes are the scouts of the heart.
And the eyes go reconnoitering for what it would please the heart to possess.

And when they are in full accord and firm all three in one resolve,
at that time perfect love is born from what the eyes have made welcome to the heart.

For as all true loves know, love is perfect kindness which is born, there is not doubt, from the heart and the eyes."

- from Joseph Campbell's Power of Myth, Love and the Goddess.

On my return home from my walk i saw a huge bird circling above me; on closer scrutiny i could see that it was a bald eagle, although i could only discern a very small area of white on its head. That, and the speckled feathers indicated that it was obviously a "teenager". Wild with excitement, i stopped and stared and looked around to see it there was anyone around to share this wonderful sight with. A young boy saw me looking, and stopped, i turned to him as he was preparing to cross the road, and pointing skyward, said to him: "A bald-eagle, a teenage bald eagle!!". He replied: "oh wow, I have never seen one before". So together we stood, looking up in awe at the magnificent young bird.
As the wild creature flew eastward i said: "It's symbolic you know, of..." and as i searched for the right word he said: "Flight, being able to take flight". I said: "Yes! that's exactly it." We smiled at each other, then both continued on our separate way, united only in that brief yet joyous moment in time, each taking with us a Perfect Gift of Knowing.

Watercolour 22" x 22" I Hide Myself Within My Flower by Zen Chuang, a physician painter whose medical practice and artwork seek to "paint our days with colours, fill our lives with beauty!" www.FromEarthToSky.com

pp. 94-95 "Friendship: A Vessel of Soul-making

In the practice of friendship, we might keep this important aspect of soul in mind: its need for containment. [my highlighting] Our capacity to keep a secret could be important to a friend who may feel free to talk to us in a spirit of confidentiality. It often happens, too, that what goes on among certain friends has to be protected from other friendships. Emily Dikinson's biographer Richard Sewall notes that Emily made a separate world of her various correspondents and friends: 'The letters to Higginson say nothing about Bowles, the letters to Bowles say nothing about Higginson; the letters to Helen Hunt Jackson say nothing about either of them.'

A friend could also offer containment by receiving another's feelings and thoughts without a strong need for interpretation or commentary. Sometimes, of course, we ask friends to offer their opinions and judgments, but even then we expect a high degree of acceptance and recognition of who we are. In friendship, we want to receive and to be received.

In the years of my work as a therapist, many people asked me to be their friend rather than their therapist. 'Couldn't we just meet at a coffee shop,' they would say, or, 'If you talked to me about yourself, this conversation wouldn't be so one-sided.' Clearly there is a difference between being a friend and being a therapist, the latter role lacking the mutuality of friendship. I have come to understand this common distaste for the therapeutic role and the desire for friendship as the soul asking for what it know is best. To the soul, there is hardly anything more healing than friendship. I suspect that a patient's wish for friendship with a therapist is more a correct intuition than a defense." [my highlighting]
- Thomas Moore - Soul Mates: Honoring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship

an excerp from Soulmates pp.76-77

Chapter 2 - Intermingled Souls: The Family of the Soul

"Questions about evil and suffering are the most profound mysteries we can tackle, but blaming our struggling human parents for these utterly deep mysteries distracts us from our own responsibilities. The result is that we lay a huge burden on our parents and other relatives, one they canot bear successfully, and we also avoid facing the mysteries of evil and suffering in our own lives, and as our own individual, life-shaping challenges. James Hillman has made the interesting observation that by divinizing our parents, we dehumanize them. Or, to put it another way, when we idealize the family, we also demonize it. When we resolve our own questions of absolute meaning by reducing them to family dynamics, ultimately blaming our parents for life's difficulties, we dehumanize our parents and oversimpligy the challenge of our own existence.

Philosophers and founders of religion have considered these absolute questions about evil and suffering and have offered far more substanstive answers. Buddhism, for instance, looks for the source of suffering and points a finger at our own cravings. Native American traditions wonder about suffering and understand it as the work of an evil community in the dim past of prehistory, like the Bow clan of the Hopi, whose corruption brought about the destruction of the world. Christianity asks the question and answeres it with the mythological story of Adam and Eve.

What if, instead of thinking obsessively about our own family histories, we looked instead to the old stories for explanations of our suffering? For example, to imagine that Adam and Eve, our mythological parents, are responsible for evil and suffering is first of all, to acknowledge that these matters are not really problems, but rather mysteries. Second, we might recognize that the roots of these mysteries do not lie in any temporal dimension but are eternally located in the human heart, mysteriously part of the human condition." - Thomas Moore

Things That Begin With the Letter "C"












Condemmed Site: my body (supposed to be "the temple of my soul" - feels like it should be sent to the scrap yard right now!















Cherry Blossoms will soon be blooming














Comfy Couch - my living room - how can you tell i'm a Peggy Hopper fan

THINGS THAT BEGIN WITH "B"
Barb & Me at Bay of Fundi























Bulls's Eye - well, not quite!

My first and last time target shooting!

MORE THINGS THAT BEGIN WITH "B"


Ballerina - Believe it or not (lol)



















Balinese Compound