Winter

Skies gray and weeping, ground brown and squishy, ten percent chance of sun. Winter in the northwest. High temperatures in the forties, and high electric bills. I'm thinking about fabrics in bright colors of orange, yellow, red and purple - the energy spectrum, and what to do with them. Cushion covers, wall hangings, table cloths, enough large swatches of vivid, pulsing action colors that I forget the winter grayness. My favorite home page these days: the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, also now a book. Enjoy.

Words and Actions: Political not Personal

"Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change." Ingrid Bengis We all know the old childish taunt "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me." We also know what bravado that is, and how very much words can hurt us. We need only to consider the way words of hate fed the holocaust to realize that words can indeed be fatal.

It is political free speech to say "I disagree with the legislation." It is protected free speech to lay out all the ills I might conceive could result from legislation I disagree with. It is not protected free speech to wish bodily harm upon a legislator. That becomes incitement to terrorism and targets the person and not the politics. Here in the land of free speech, it has been illegal to utter threats against the president since 1917.

Congress may soon be considering legislation to extend that protection to members of the House and Senate and Judiciary. It would only make sense in light of the attempted assassination of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of U. S. District Judge John M. Roll, along with five other persons, and thirteen more people wounded at a public meeting last Saturday.

Here's a non-violent response: just turn them off. Turn off the television or the radio whenever violent rhetoric is used. When the point is to foment hate for a person or a group, take action for peace and turn a deaf ear. Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. Let words of violence wither away from lack of a receptive audience. Foment a word revolution, exercising free speech to spread words of hope and peace.

Well that was a pregnant gap - nine months of silence - a golden pause. Goldibear has loaded PandaBaby onto the e-blogger server and recovered the archived blogs, so here we are again. For friends with links to PandaBaby, we have a different 'web address' now, so please update our link! Thank You! Welcome to PandaBaby's realm of the family tree. It is a different kind of tree than what Panda bears usually climb, but this for this pandababy it is my favorite.

What's been happening: We went house hunting, found one we liked, packed, and ... didn't move. Turned out the underwriter found the owner was "flipping". Yes, that is the reason it was turned down, called the flipping rule. Tch,Tch, can't buy a house and sell it for over 120% of the price within the first 90 days - or at least, not with a government approved loan. The depreciating real estate market has caused the house to lose over $15,000 value in the few months since our offer, so in the long run we made a lucky escape. In the short run though, we had seventy boxes to unpack and still need to find a house.

Grateful for friends both old and new, PandaBaby wishes everyone a joyful Winter Solstice on December 21, at 3:38 PM (if you live in the Northern Hemisphere and on the west coast). Throw another Yule log on the fire!

Lived & Loved Completely

Jason Scott Siegal December 19th, 1972 - January 17th, 2010 A more loving or generous son-in-law you will not find anywhere. Jason, we miss you.

Sisters Rock

Yesterday, my sister had the the day off from nursing, and she drove from Astoria for a visit. We spent some time at Barnes & Noble where I bought Mennonite in a Little Black Dress - a laugh-out-loud funny book in a darkly humorous sort of way. For the rest of the afternoon, we played duets on the wii with Rock Band The Beatles. I played the guitar and she sang, and then she played the drums with my guitar. We surprised ourselves with how well we did and it was great fun. My life is nearly all virtual. The real food I eat gets logged into FitDay.com; I exercise with My Fitness Coach, a wii program; my books are digital in a variety of modes - Adobe and Kindle and other; I listen to digital music on my iPod or on iTunes on my desktop; I'm learning to play chess with ChessMaster - Grandmaster edition on my computer; my ancestors are collected in Legacy, a computer genealogy program. And to think, when I born, computers were more or less the stuff of fantasy and science fiction.

Happy 2010

Happy New Year and may it be filled with all your dreams come true. I have made only one New Year's Resolution for 2010: To Be Fully Present in the Now. I have spent the first day of the New Year just doing what is most important to me at each moment - a day filled with little and mundane things but very satisfying - no coulds, shoulds, oughts, in short - no worries mate!

My son and daughter gave me Guitar Hero the complete band set plus Rock Band the Beatles last month. The very best presents ever that I have received. That is what is up for the next moment: I'm going to go rock with the Beatles. (Decisions, decisions: should I choose the guitar, the drum set, or sing along with the mic? Right, all three then - guitar first.) Yes, my son said it was the biggest shock of his life to come home for lunch the other day and find his mother singing About a Girl with Kurt Cobain.

I'm not very tuneful so I like singing Cobain songs as his style is less demanding. But the Beatles were my generation, and I could sing most of their songs in my sleep, plus the presentation is easy on the eyes and ears. Both Wii programs rate the difficulty of the songs and instruments but I find Rock Band the Beatles interface to be friendlier. Of course. They're the Beatles, after all. What a wonderful New Year.