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Where is Enchanting Sunshine?

Dear loyal reader of one, you may be wondering where I have been. Fear not, I am still here, alive and well. Exciting changes are underway… Stay tuned…

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Finally

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That is a beautiful sight!!

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Happy Obama Day!!!

Happy Obama Day everyone. In less than three hours we officially get the United States of America back.

My husband and I originally planned to be in D.C. in person today, but decided in the end that an event several times the scale of Cal Ripken’s induction, in freezing temperatures with the possibility of snow, carrying heavy camera bags for hours, walking long distances because the Metro would be an insane zoo, well…maybe I would prefer to watch from the comfort of my warm home. I admit, when it comes to cold, I’m a wimp.

Still, it must be awesome to be there.

Wherever you are in the U.S. this is a wonderful, happy day to be alive! We are so lucky to have Obama. There is no one else like him: thoughtful, measured, brilliant, kind, and warm. Someone with heart and character and empathy! Someone who believed it was better to get elected on a platform of how we can unite rather than rancor and bitterness. Someone who has the courage to urge us to national service. Someone who believes in his words that peace comes when “we can see ourselves in another.”

I love this man! This is a long awaited change that the U.S. deeply needs.

So as the snow is falling here in Charlotte, my classes have been canceled and I have no guilt about planting myself, riveted, in front of the television as the day’s events unfold. Tonight I will attend a local inaugural ball and celebrate with other people like myself who believe that we’re capable of achieving far higher ideals than we’ve seen exhibited over the last eight years. We are looking forward to having a leader we are proud to claim.

May your day too be utterly Obamelated!

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Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to everyone who is celebrating either holiday. If you’re secular, I hope you’re enjoying a day off and relaxing.

I apologize for not giving you anything interesting or scandalous to read for many months. There was a lot of interesting stuff to share, especially from my anthropology classes, there just wasn’t time to share it. Finally, now that I have a few moments to catch up I cannot remember any of the many interesting things I wanted to write about. Because my every waking moment was devoted to finishing five classes (okay, maybe my time was divided between goofing off on Facebook and studying), the only news I have is that three weeks ago I was one of the many millions laid off. Even though the severance is laughable and will be almost finished by the time I finish writing this blog entry, nonetheless, I feel extremely fortunate. How can I not? I have a roof over my head, clean drinking water, food in my belly, a husband I love dearly, and I live in a peaceful country. Last week, coming home from taking a final, I heard this program on “On Point” about hunger in America. It’s disgraceful that such a wealthy country has such poverty, but then we do worship capitalism more than human health and well-being, don’t we.

So though I am currently jobless, I am not hungry, unhappy or distressed. I find myself eager about a new adventure and excited about making a fresh start, hopefully doing something interesting and meaningful. I wonder now, as I did every day before, “How can I make a difference in the world and make life better for others?” Maybe my forced reentry into the job market will give me more options to explore an answer to that question other than by torturing you, my few dear readers.

For the next few days though, I will be exploring how to approach my backlog of over 2000 podcasts (yes, I am an information junkie), a stack of books and magazines, redesigning some websites, and tackling a slightly disorganized garage. Otherwise, I expect to be back to a regular schedule of boring you with many inane and irrelevant facts.

Most especially, I hope that your life is full of gratitude and happiness. As you celebrate this holiday, I hope that you find many reasons to feel blessed for important things, and for the mundane. For the myriad things we use regularly and take for granted: safe disposable razors, boxed milk, libraries of books, the Internet, pens, paper, nail files, shelled nuts, refrigerators, ice cubes, Blistex, scarfs, gloves, and lotion. As you go through your day, consider what life was like for our ancestors only one hundred years ago, what luxuries we have that we don’t consider luxuries (shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, electric toothbrush, indoor heated plumbing), and how life is for many in our own country for whom items that should be a given, like fresh produce or a couple of meals a day, are a luxury.

For many people, Christmas is about the presents. When we reunite with our circle of friends or coworkers after the holidays we make conversation by asking, “What did you get for Christmas?” I love stuff as much as anyone, but I can’t help but wonder how much more fun the holidays or any celebration for that matter, might be if instead of spending a frantic month of shopping and stressful worrying about finding the right gift, we had a day to celebrate togetherness. Oprah had some great suggestions for this.

Perhaps a good way to conclude your holiday would be by writing two lists: one of all the things that happened only today that made your life more enjoyable, and a second list of everything you love about the people you spent your day with. I don’t know about you, but for me, the things that touch me most are not the gifts I receive, but the meaning behind the actions. It’s the love behind the gesture, that someone took the time to plan something with the intent to show their affection, that I mattered to someone, that is what means the most.

Happy Holidays and wishes that you feel all the love that is in your life.

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Orange Lights

I first learned of Orange Lights from a program in L.A. KCRW’s, Morning Becomes Eclectic. I think I may have mentioned the group before, but here is a video of one of their songs. Hope you enjoy!

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Remember to be Grateful

I am still extraordinarily busy, but very, very close to leading a normal life again. While I have existed in a questionable state of hygiene for most of the semester, by this time tomorrow, I will hopefully once again be able to resume tasks that the rest of you take for granted, like shampooing and cleaning my teeth. I have lots of news to share too.

In the meantime, while I should have been studying the most odious and badly written book ever written in the five thousand plus years since man moved from oral to literate society, I spent the last hour engrossed in a blog about a 35 year old woman with two young children who just passed away.

As you may know, I have a curiosity about death that other people, and by “other people” I mean mostly “my husband,” find worrisome and disturbing. Though the blog recounts a terribly tragic story, it is a reminder of how uncertain life it. It is a reminder that we should take advantage of as many minutes as we can with our loved ones as an opportunity to let them know how blessed our lives are because of them.

This is truly heart-breaking, but I hope you’ll read at least a few of the posts and then promptly find each person in your house and give them a long embrace and a heartfelt expression of what they mean to you.

I promise my next post will provide more upbeat news.

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Quote for the Day

People who soar are those who refuse to sit back, sigh and wish things would change. They neither complain of their lot nor passively dream of some distant ship coming in. Rather, they visualize in their minds that they are not quitters; they will not allow life’s circumstances to push them down and hold them under.”

~Charles Swindoll

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Bill Moyers on Democracy

A short excerpt from the Introduction of “Bill Moyers on Democracy:”

Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights unequaled anywhere among industrialized democracies, the relentless cheeseparing of federal funds devoted to public schools, to retraining for workers whose jobs have been exported, and to programs of food assistance and health care for poor children, all of which snatch away the ladder by which Americans with scant means but willing hands and hearts could work and save their way upward to middle-class independence. And I connect those numbers to our triumphant reactionaries’ campaigns against labor unions and higher minimum wages, and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of their progressive character, laying the burdens of Atlas on a shrinking middle class awash in credit card debt as wage earners struggle to keep up with rising costs for health care, for college tuitions, for affordable housing–while huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized, rates on capital gains are slashed, and the rich get richer and with each increase in their wealth are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and those who carry out the laws.

Edward R. Murrow told his generation of journalists: “No one can eliminate prejudices–just recognize them.” Here is my bias: extremes of wealth and poverty cannot be reconciled with a genuinely democratic politics. When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice for the people as a whole, it mocks the very concept of government as proclaimed in the preamble to our Constitution; mocks Lincoln’s sacred belief in “government of the people, by the people and for the people”; mocks the democratic notion of government as “a voluntary union for the common good” embodied in the great wave of reform that produced the Progressive Era and the two Roosevelts. In contrast, the philosophy popularized in the last quarter century that “freedom” simply means freedom to choose among competing brands of consumer goods, that taxes are an unfair theft from the pockets of the successful to reward the incompetent, and that the market will meet all human needs while government itself becomes the enabler of privilege–the philosophy of an earlier social Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism dressed in new togs–is as subversive as Benedict Arnold’s betrayal of the Revolution he had once served.

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Happy Saturday!

Here are some videos for your enjoyment:

Cat Stuck in a Box
Why it’s impossible to get a good night sleep with a cat
Slinky Cat

“If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don’t be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning ‘Good morning’ at total strangers.” ~ Maya Angelou

Have a lovely Saturday!

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Happy Weekend!

Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.

– Rosa Parks

Have a lovely evening!