Category Archives: Striving

The Five-Year View

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Posted by on in Personal goals, Striving

November 29, 2015, Prescott- I got back here around 8:10 P.M.  It was another picture perfect day, leading me to hope that the southern Plains will catch a break from the horrid ice that has caused so many to break out the blankets and longjohns.  I pray our weather heads to you, and soon.

I left Chula Vista at 11, stopping in Riverside for lunch, at Hideaway Cafe and a brief walk around Mission Inn, which I last visited in 2012.  The displays are as splendid now, as then.  I will post photos tomorrow, but for now, I am tired, so briefly, as to my longer view:

I am looking at the second half of my seventh decade.  Age is somewhat as the late, beautiful Aaliyah said, “but a number.”  It isn’t, however, nothing, in my opinion.  Age is an experience magnet, and, if one is paying attention, attracts wisdom as well.  The “old fool” in the ditty is most often asleep at the wheel.

As I’ve said earlier, I plan to be at work, each school year, until I reach 70.  Summers will see me making shorter journeys, to specific places.  One exception to both of the above is likely a two-week visit to Chile, next Fall, as the first Baha’i House of Worship in South America is to be dedicated soon, but nothing’s definite yet.

My focuses, as always, are on the welfare of our children, the propagation of the Baha’i Faith and grassroots health and wellness promotion.

The only specifics I have set, as my “new year’ starts, are for December:  To continue at Mingus Springs, to visit my family in Massachusetts during the Christmas period and to hike the Pemberton Loop in Scottsdale’s McDowell Mountains, on Dec. 29.  2016 will see three essential oils gatherings, two in Boulder and one in Salt Lake City.  I am determined to finish what I start, from now on.

It’ll be a most interesting maw into which I jump, this year 2016.

 

 

The Road to 65, Mile 365: Janus, 2015

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Posted by on in Personal goals, Personal Values, Striving

November 28, 2015, Chula Vista- I woke this morning, to a fabulously blue sky, with my body telling me it is still happy, under my care.  Son got up, about an hour after I did, and with my support, tended to an urgent matter.  A while from now, his second housemate will begin moving in.  The day will revolve a bit around that process, and a small pre-planned activity.  This last reminds me of my actual 60th:  With Penny in bed asleep, eight of us observed the day with pizza, soda/iced tea and a small cake.  Serendipity, randomness, have their odd beauty.

I will get outside, in mid-afternoon, and we will find a spot for hiking, for an hour or so.  Then, I will change clothes quickly and we will head out for dinner- most likely in Little Italy.

I spoke, yesterday, of people departed during this 65th year of mine.  Some were friends of many years’ duration.  One was a cousin-in-law.  Too many of my friends lost a parent.  I sense the Divine Concourse is now that much fuller with well-wishers.

There were some goals fulfilled in the past twelve months:  I made it to southeast Alaska, Vancouver and Victoria, San Antonio’s missions, Santa Barbara and Panama City, FL.  Haida Gwai’i, upper Vancouver Island, Half Moon Bay, and Kelowna, BC remain on my radar.  I found a blessed spot, Aanacortes, WA, which could easily be the next Prescott in my life, should the Universe direct me outwardly. (No such move is imminent, though.)

I did not have any further association with Mountain Oak School, but proximity to Mingus Springs School has led me to close a significant gap in my skill set, and if nothing else, my value to school systems in general increases with the elementary teaching certificate that I will obtain, within the next month.

My Faith community is more focused, and I will be active in that process.  Also more focused is my work with essential oils, and business cards, at long last, will bear my name and hint at my skill set.

So, as the journey begins anew, I look outside at a beautiful San Diego day, and see what my life will face, going forward.  Tomorrow, a new year will find its basic outline.

 

 

 

The Road to 65, Mile 361: Paper Turkeys

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Posted by on in children, Community, Education, Personal Values, Striving

November 24, 2015, Chino Valley- Today was the last day of school before Thanksgiving Break.  The concept of a two-day work week is a bit foreign to me, but I will take it, gladly.   It’s the season of my birth, after all. I had the kids do homework, last night, and maintained my regular teaching regimen today, with one adjustment:  Many children treasure the idea of making paper turkeys and Pilgrims. So, we spent the afternoon class hour, before P.E., following tradition. One little girl made an Indian headband, with a paper feather sticking out.  Some made separate turkeys and Pilgrims.  Others designed turkeys wearing an Elizabethan-Era hat.

This sort of fun activity, for elementary school students, harms nothing and no one.  Some will say that “The truth about the Pilgrims must be told!”  Yes, it does need telling, and to people who are of an age at which the black, the white and the gray can all be processed, and sifted out.  Sharing such information, too soon in a person’s life, is exactly what has brought on the excesses of Political Correctness.

The Pilgrims and Puritans were dour, narrow-minded people, as regarded those of other faith traditions, both European and Aboriginal American.  So, too, were the Spanish and Portuguese.  Many of the Founders of the United States were slaveholders, men of their time.  The best of these slaveholders were progressive in other ways, and some educated their chattel-people.  None of that excuses their slaveholding, but therein lies a tale of lives lived in the gray.

I teach older students, when I am with them, to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water, as it were.  There has been, is, and will be, no public figure, aside from the Messengers of God, who is a paragon of perfection.  Every person worthy of emulation also has aspects of his/her life that are less than savory, even despicable.  So, one must choose the good elements, and sift out the bad- Wheat from chaff, as The Christ told us.

I will long adhere to things like playing Hallowe’en and Christmas songs, encouraging holiday art, and having birthday parties, when a child’s parents request them.  Childhood should not be frayed at the edges.  It’s when we have time to learn who we are, and build a firm foundation for life’s course.

Bring on the paper turkeys!

The Road to 65, Mile 357: Ten Positive Areas in My Life

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Posted by on in Personal Values, Striving

November 20, 2015, Prescott-  I spent today at Mile High Middle School, here in town.  The classes’ focus for the week was facing prejudice.  The main class had been watching “The Diary of Anne Frank” (2009 miniseries), and finished today.  The Honours classes viewed “Simon Birch” (1998), a film that examines institutionalized, “faith-based” prejudice in a small town. The clever teacher, for whom I was covering, had done a fine job in responding to the events of Nov. 12-13.

My response to those has been engaging in Positivity Week, an annual project of the blogger Cherokee Writer.  Today, I’d like to note my life’s ten positive themes:

1. Children and youth- I so deeply love the younger generations, that helping them build on their personal strengths, and their futures, remains my central focus.

2.  Faith- I am a Baha’i, because of the comprehensive, all-inclusive and forward thinking that infuses every Word of Baha’u’llah’s Writings.  No nation or group need be left out of the World Order, as He envisions it.  It was nice to finally feel like I belonged somewhere, beyond immediate family, and  I still feel it.

3.  Family- My son, mother, siblings, in-laws and all extended family bring me great pride and solace.  That the holidays will find me among many of them offers yet more of these.

4.  Nature- I will elaborate a bit more in the next post, but being in a natural setting gives me all manner of reassurance, that life is resilient.

5. Music- Various genres alternately soothe and energize me.  One of my earliest memories is of marching alongside the Varsity Marching Band, in the Independence Day parade, when I was about four.

6.  Heritage-Both history and lore have fascinated me, since I was small.  Growing up in a town which honoured both Indigenous peoples and settlers from Europe helped engender this focus.

7. Literature-  Fiction and nonfiction alike led me to learn to read early on, and I often had my nose in a book, when others would be watching TV.

8.  Justice- I have been urgently concerned with having the right thing happen, since I was in grade school.

9. Personal development- Largely due to my personal challenges, a major focus of my being has been to own up to, and address, defects and weaknesses.

10.  Mercy-  I have tended to forgive and move on, after slights or mistreatments.  Though I am less forgiving of hurts to children or vulnerable people than I am of injuries to myself, there is still a sense that it falls to the Divine to exact true justice.

 

 

The Road to 65, Mile 353: A Vacation Memory

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Posted by on in Family, Hiking and Nature, Inspiration, Striving

November 16, 2015, Chino Valley- A friend online has set the week before Thanksgiving as Positivity Week.  No year is more apropos for such an event as this one is, in the wake of such misguided efforts by the disquiet among us, to sow the seeds of fear and doubt.

Her first day’s theme is A Vacation Memory.  Let me go back to 1961, when I was ten and Dad took me to Mt. Chocorua, New Hampshire.  It was my first real tent-camping experience, and my first real uphill climb.  I recall the scent of pines, the feeling of security in the morning, when I awoke to dryness underneath, thanks to our having placed sodcloth and groundcloth as the first layers of our tentsite and the sense of accomplishment at having helped my father build a campfire.

The hike up Mt. Chocorua, under a crystal-clear sky, established my love of the outdoors and of trails.  The chatter of chipmunks, and of blue jays, also made me feel at home.

We would visit the White Mountains several times thereafter, and I would hike the Presidential Range, alone, in 1975.  That week, though, established my father’s indelible presence in my life, and that made the biggest difference.

The Road to 65, Mile 328: Deferred

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Posted by on in Inspiration, Striving

October 21, 2015, Chino Valley-  The Chicago Cubs came further than they have, in over a century.  Then they ran into the buzzsaw that is New York City’s professional teams.  It takes time, patience and an indomitable will, to beat a team from the Big Apple.  My Red Sox know that, better than anyone.  The Sox are on hiatus, but they will come back.  Then again, the Yankees are taking a break, too.

The Cubs remain the only team to have waited more than a century to reach even the secondary level of the championship ladder, but they will be at the top, within three years. It takes time, patience and an indomitable will, to overcome the entrenched and powerful.

The voices of the common people, many of whom have not been heard for centuries, are at long last being heard.  Some of what they say is a message of frustration.  It does not ring of justice- when it is voiced by the ignorant, the self-centered, the blinkered- and the opportunistic, who pretend to speak for the dispossessed.  The voices of the common people must all be heard, though, lest those denied a voice end up “stinking like rotten meat”, the way Islamic State is now, the way the Nazis did, in the middle of the last century.

“What happens to a dream deferred?  Does it dry up, like a raisin in the sun?”- Langston Hughes