10 for $10,000.00

" What if, instead of climbing Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God, Moses had turned to the Israelites and asked, "Hey, what do you guys think we should do?"

Considering the Hebrews' bad behavior, with the coveting of neighbors' wives and murdering their own brothers, that might have been a disastrous idea.  But in our own more enlightened age, we're perfectly capable of crowd sourcing our own commandments -- or, at least, that's what a new project would have us believe.

Lex Bayer, an executive at AirBnB, and John Figdor, a humanist chaplain at Stanford University, delivered their own 10 "non-commandments" in a book they co-wrote: "Atheist Heart, Humanist Mind." Bayer said the book forced him to clarify and articulate his own beliefs, and he thought others could benefit from doing the same."

Enter the "10 'Non-Commandments' Contest," in which citizens were asked to offer modern alternatives to the famous ten. And, to sweeten the pot, the contest offered $10,000 in moolah to the winning would-be Moses.   Yeah, that's right - each one of the lucky ten individuals, received $10,000!   Wish I had known about it, as none of the ten selected,  looked that difficult to come up with!

The contest drew more than 2,800 submissions from 18 countries and 27 U.S. states, according to Bayer and Figdor. The proposed "non-commandments" ranged from the quizzical ("Don't follow your nature") to the quixotic ("Thriving in space is the ultimate goal").

A team of 13 judges selected 10 of the more sober and serious submissions, and announced the winners Friday.

There's nary a "thou shalt" among them -- nothing specifically about murder, stealing or adultery, although there is a version of the Golden Rule, which presumably would cover those crimes.  If they lack faith in the divine, the atheist "non-commandments" display a robust faith in humankind.

Bayer said humans are hardwired for compassion, and the scientific method and wisdom of crowds -- or the tribes that gather online each day -- will weed out bad ideas. In other words, this is an open-ended, and hopefully progressive, process, he said."

Article from CNN 

Excerpts from: http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/19/living/atheist-10-commandments/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

Luck of the Draw

Thomas Hardy

     

Many of the views of my 17-year-old self were formed around the novels and poetry of Thomas Hardy;  views to which I still hold onto, over 40 years later.   He was my favorite author then, as he is now.

      
Even though he wrote fiction, his novels represented stark and raw truth. It was a truth that overrode  any religious dogmas ever taught to me. 

       
Hardy never lied to me.    He had analyzed life meticulously, and through pure genius, come up with certain answers.   They rang so true to me, that I believed them, too.

 Thomas Hardy

These philosophies included: 

  
• Nature is impersonal and a primitive force   
• Chance plays a conspicuous part in the course of events
• Any person's life can easily be derailed by unexpected bad luck
• Inborn instincts and inherited traits are responsible, to a large degree, for a person's thoughts and actions    

Far From the Madding Crowd - read at 17 

 In Hardy's novels, irony of circumstance results in human suffering.   Throughout it all, nature remains unconcerned and indifferent.  

  But realization comes to the reader, that  social laws and conventions can be changed and cause an improvement in our human lot.  

    

      Through his novels, one learns that time is a great series of moments and incidents, some fortunate but others not so much so.   Even though fate does not take into account a person's aspirations and desires, a successful answer still exists, for happiness and meaning.

   Turning to human kindness and empathy for our joy in life,   is that answer.   Becoming a person that refuses to impart cruelty to our fellow beings, including animals,   defines a life well fulfilled.   Another conspicuous note that resonates, is Hardy's acknowledgement of the merit of loyalty in human relations. 

       I love Thomas Hardy for setting me straight and telling me things that were hard to hear, but in such a beautiful way.  

     I am in awe of the ability of any brilliant mind,  to capture nature's beauty and the depth  of human experience as coherently as Hardy did.      I truly admire his genius.    

Beautiful Paintings from England

 

The Haywain

How awesome is this? It is a website called
Your Paintings.

John Constable
1776-1837

 It aims to show the entire UK national    collection  of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings,  and where to see them for real. It is made up of  paintings from thousands of museums and other institutions around the country.  Your Paintings is a joint initiative between the BBC, the Public Catalogue Foundation and museums from across the UK.  

   A little landscape print that  I bought in a small antique store in  Yorkshire,
   called The Haywain, is on the site.  It was painted by John Constable.   A 
   quote from the site says, "Constable's wife, Maria, died from tuberculosis 
   in 1828.  He was devastated and wore black for the rest of his life."

My Favorite Poems

Favorite Poems

The Goldfinch

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, is the fictional novel I am mesmerized with right now.  It has proven to be one of those books that every lover of fiction hopes for; a story so well written that the characters can't help but endear themselves to you in a very profound way. 

    Then today, I discovered a new poet.  Her name is Jane Hirshfield.  Here are two of her poems that are incredibly touching:

The Weighing

The heart's reasons
seen clearly
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved
antelope forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her, 
she enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

*********************************************************************************

Standing Deer

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is 
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry.  I knew no better.

A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

*********************************************************************************

Google Search did not allow me to read enough of Jane Hirshfield.  So I had to move on to other poems by other poets; and so I discovered this. It is by William Stafford.

Traveling Through The Dark

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson road.

It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By the glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car

and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;

she had stiffened already, almost cold.

I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason---

her side was warm;

her fawn lay there waiting, alive,

still, never to be born.

Beside the mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;

under the hood purred the steady engine.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;

around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all--my only swerving--,

then pushed her over the edge into the river.

********************************************************

The truth is that, "no eye is on the sparrow".

And that leads me back to The Goldfinch again and thinking about Theo, who said, "Because I don't care what anyone says or how often or winningly they say it: no one will ever, ever be able to persuade me that life is some awesome, rewarding treat.  Because, here's the truth:

life is a catastrophe.   The basic fact of existence - of walking around trying to feed ourselves and find friends and whatever else we do - is a catastrophe.  Forget all this ridiculous OUR TOWN nonsense everyone talks: the miracle of a newborn babe, the joy of one simple blossom, Life You are Too Wonderful to Grasp, &c. For me - and I'll keep repeating it doggedly till I die, till I fall over on my ungrateful nihilistic face and am too weak to say it: better never born, than born into this cesspool.  Sinkhole of hospital beds, coffins, and broken hearts.  No release, no appeal, no "do overs" no way forward but age and loss, and no way out but death".

Too much introspection for today I suppose, which I blame on my recent readings, all of which oddly enough (and not by my choosing) carry adult themes of death and loss.  I have come to the conclusion that nature will not change one wit to address a desire, no matter how terribly we long for it and no matter what living plant or animal we happen to be. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/books/review/donna-tartt-by-the-book.html

Book Review of MORTALITY by Christopher Hitchens

 “In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.”

The book Mortality by Christopher Hitchens was a sober read, to say the least.  
In typical Hitchens style, it was brilliantly written and riveting in it's honesty.    We "listen in" as a man grapples with the process of dying from Stage 4 Esophageal cancer.   

 

Christopher Hitchens Quote

  Last week, I happened to mention to a friend what book I was reading.  I suspected what I immediately heard.  "Ugh!  Why would anyone want to read a book so depressing as that?"   We dropped the subject and moved on to something more acceptable, but trivial.

The fact is, that I want to know what emotions a person feels when they know they are dying.  I dare say that friends, married couples and family members often go their whole lives without even broaching the subject with one another.   Yet it is a battle we will all go through and eventually lose. 

Starting with the first page, Hitchens describes how he suddenly finds himself being deported  "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady."  He then calls it Tumorville.

Some of the passages were so stark that I found myself physically flinching and drawing  back with empathy...

• "the word “metastasized” was the one in the report that first caught my eye, and ear. The alien had colonized a bit of my lung as well as quite a bit of my lymph node. And its original base of operations was located in my esophagus." 
• "On the less good days, I feel like that wooden-legged piglet belonging to a sadistically sentimental family that could bear to eat him only a chunk at a time."
• "Most despond-inducing and alarming of all, so far, was the moment when my voice suddenly rose to a childish (or perhaps piglet-like) piping squeak. It then began to register all over the place, from a gruff and husky whisper to a papery, plaintive bleat. And at times it threatened, and now threatens daily, to disappear altogether. I had just returned from giving a couple of speeches in California, when I made an attempt to hail a taxi outside my home—and nothing happened. I stood, frozen, like a silly cat that had abruptly lost its meow. "

The paragraph where I heard Hitchens voice come through so vividly is when he comments on the quote by T.S. Eliot, "I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid."

He states, "Like so many of life’s varieties of experience, the novelty of a diagnosis of malignant cancer has a tendency to wear off. The thing begins to pall, even to become banal. One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. And I don’t so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it’s time to be on my way. No, it’s the snickering that gets me down. The book is a short read and at the end, I found myself feeling less afraid of death, than more.  I have to agree with the review by the San Francisco Chronicle.  "To the end, Hitchens produces sentences of startling beauty and precision.  One of our best is gone, yet Mortality is a powerful and moving final utterance."

Makes Of 2017

Before January comes to a close in just 3 more days, it still seems not too late to post my sewing projects from last year.  My thoughts were that I had not done much sewing in 2017 and wouldn't have enough to put in my little collage squares. 
It made me happy to put together my little annual collage and visually see what I had sewn in 2017.    

Starting at left top corner: 

• January - Happy Flower Quilt Blocks 
• February - close-up of my In The Window, at the Sue Daley workshop
• March - Bird Pillow
• May -  Clamshells 
• June - Low Volume Hexagons
• July - Embroidery & Applique Bonnet Bird
• August - Tenderness Quilt Blocks
• November - Fun Hexies  

     Always in the middle of things is my pal Marley, announcing 2017.                         

January - The year started out with me joining the Happy Flower Quilt Sew-Along but when it came out that you could purchase the entire quilt already printed on fabric, I felt disenchanted.   It's all good though because the blocks I made, are turning into a chair cover and bringing me joy whenever I sit down. :)

Happy Flower Quilt Blocks

February - Then, much to the astonishment of our little farming community, the acclaimed Sue Daley (from Australia, no less) of Busy Fingers Patchwork  held a workshop at our local quilt shop.   What fun we had as every quilter's project started to materialize, all so varied and different than the next!   Sue also persuaded us to use a size 11 Milliner's needle and finer thread for our projects.   This has helped my stitches "sink into the seam".

March - When we were turning the corner into warmer weather and all the excitement of Spring, I spied the cutest pillow on  Nana Company's Blog.

Who could resist when it was this cute?   My piecing is finished so you can see how my fabric fit in with the coming season.  

May - My friends at Sunny Day Supply showed me how adorable clamshells could be.  I had to buy some of their adorable fabric to make my project just as cute.

 June - Alas, then I got sidetracked in seeing some low-volume hexagons on Instagram.  My needle magically sidetracked!  My new laptop needed a cover and this seemed "just the ticket". 

July - I needed a bird for the pocket of my purse.

August - I discovered the Tenderness quilt pattern and had to try a curved seam on my English Paper Piecing

November  - The Bunnies and Cream fabric by Laura Nash had been a purchase of mine in the summer.  Even in November I was still enchanted with how fun they were to fussy cut. 

In looking back now in January of 2018,  I realize that starting some really cute projects, was so much fun last year.  My weakness was actually finishing them!   That leads me to my New Year's Goal - 

'Don't start anything else until unfinished projects are completely done'.

Wish me luck!

100 Random Things

100 Random Things

1. I love popcorn.
2. Ballet dancing was my passion as a child.
3. I like to analyze things.
4. Packing a suitcase is NOT fun...I procrastinate and then forget stuff.
5. Not a night owl at all - Early Bird
6. I was a humanist, before I ever knew a name for it existed.
7. My husband and I play Rummicub almost every night while eating dinner. 
8. I secretly think my 4 children are the best ever to be born.
9. What stresses me?  Being late
10. My favorite meal is my husband's spaghetti.
11. I weigh myself every morning.
12. What do I like to talk about?  English Literature, goats and religion
13. As a child, I was a very late talker. 
14. It bothers me when I see a word misspelled.
15. Reading great poetry is a spiritual experience for me.
16. When my hair is cut short, I look like a turtle-head.
17. My children often say very cool things.
18. I love, love, love family and good friends.
19. When I was in college, I was in a very bad car wreck.
20. Thomas Hardy is my fav
21. orite author.
22. Cleaning up the kitchen is more enjoyable than cooking the meal.
23. I rather text than talk.
24. Driving and flying scare me.
25. I met my wonderful biological father when I was in my 20's.  
26. TV Remote Controls drive me bananas!
27. Gardening always seems worth the time and effort.
28. There is a certain quilt I have been working on for 20 years now.
29. The vegetables are better than the meat.
30. My grandma's homemade cookies and pickles were amazing.
31. TV often bores me.
32. Dumb at math - it bores me, too.
33. Tess of the D'Urbervilles is the saddest book ever written. 
34. If a picture is hanging crooked, it bothers me.
35. My Grandpa use to smear horseradish under my meat when I wasn't looking. 
36. Grasmere, England is the prettiest place in the world. 
37. When I was little, I use to play Sunday School for hours with my dolls.
38. My planner is my brain.
39. I like knowing the names of flowers and plants.
40. Favorite Book?  David Copperfield
41. Like everyone else, I think Shakespeare was a flat out genius.
42. I get car sick, boat sick and air sick - any motion sick. Blah.
43. My secret: I am the shyest of the shy.
44. Sometimes I like to suck on green olives.
45. Historical Fiction books bother me - tell me the facts. 
46. Least favorite house chore? Ironing
47. I find random acts of kindness very touching.
48. Don't buy me expensive jewelry!
49. I chaperoned 33 students to England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales for 2 weeks.
50. Black Widow Spiders scare me more than the average person.
51. No to being buried - cremate me, please.
52. Flip flops are comfy.
53. Saddest movie? CHARLY
54. Watermelon with salt is the only way to go.
55. My mom says I have been to every state in the U.S. - I don't remember.
56. After 35 years of marriage, I still think my husband is amazing.
57. I have been told I am too sensitive.
58. Even growing up, having faith seemed foreign to me - show me the facts, please!
59. Decorating and celebrity gossip magazines are fun to read.
60. Licking the cake batter off the beaters is still a pleasure.
61. It is hard for me to throw papers away. 
62. The Portuguese Language spoken by Brasilians is very beautiful.
63. I lived in Brasil for almost 9 months.
64. When I was hospitalized and on morphine for about a month, I saw my Dad playing the trombone and pigs running around my bed.
65. My mom, sis and I saw the movie The Sound of Music 7 times.
66. First record album ever bought?   Jimi Hendrix 
67. I was raised with Big Band Music. 
68. Every few years, I get addicted to genealogy. 
69. Favorite movie? My Left Foot
70. I have an artificial hip.
71. Favorite color? Green
72. Eggplant is ga-ross.
73. I once saw a girl get her finger cut off.
74. Pecans taste better than walnuts. 
75. The first computer I ever saw was in college - it took up a whole room.
76. My husband and I fell in love over Joni Mitchell.
77. Taking pictures is lots of fun!
78. Cotton sheets only!
79. When I was a teenager, my step Dad had to go to Viet Nam for 2 years.
80. I loved dancing and touring with the International Folk Dancers at Ricks and BYU.
81. Compliments come when I cook my Grandma's meatloaf.
82. I play the piano, but not well.
83. Don't make me sleep in total darkness!
84. Wherever I live, I have to plant Lavender.
85. Pots of Geraniums by the front door are welcoming.
86. I was on the TV show  Romper Room. 
87. What I can spend a lot of money on? Perfume
88. I get paid to try to get junior high students to enjoy reading. 
89. Time flies when I am out with the goats.
90. Chickens are more entertaining than a movie.
91. I can’t get enough of key lime pie.  
92. I love to stitch whimsical embroidery.
93. Waiting, without a good book to read, is boring. 
94. I was on the water ballet swim team in high school. 
95. Peppermint tea and toast with marmalade bring me joy!
96. Old English roses are my favorite flowers.
97. We have given our government too much power.
98. I dislike being soft spoken.
99. Religion kills more people on the planet than anything.
100. Feeling the sun on my back is therapeutic.
101. A tomato and mayonnaise sandwich is the best!