Our Two Pups

Panda this evening -- picture taken by Scott with his new loaner phone. Looks like she's been tearing up some paper, a frequent problem.

Panda hoping someone is up for a game of 1-2-3 with her omnipresent tennis ball.

Panda will just hold onto the ball in case someone wants to play later.

Sherpa, naturally modest, wonders why anyone would want her picture.

Sherpa curled for a nap.

At our house we have two dogs: Sherpa, who will be ten years old on Oct. 23, and Panda, who will be a year old in November. Both female shih-tsus, they look a lot alike, but Sherpa is definitely more refined and dignified and Panda is more of a ballhog ruffian. They are both huge distractions around the house because they are so adoreable (to us, their family members, that is.)

Shih-tsus make wonderful pets. They rarely bark - only to sound the alarm that someone is approaching our house or that a plane has crossed over the airspace of the back yard. They tolerate a degree of hair and tail pulling by small children. They are also affectionate and independent. We had no idea how wonderful shih-tsus were when we bought Sherpa on the basis of her cuteness alone.

The only drawback is that they require grooming, which can get expensive when multiplied by two. I bought a kit to do it myself, and these pictures reveal that I am still very much on the learning curve. Both dogs are half groomed. Panda's eyes at least have been cleared for better visibility. She has a true bottle-brush nose and when her bangs are long, you almost can't tell one end of her from the other.

I used to be a big dog snob. I didn't think I would like a small breed. Since then I've discovered that dogs come in all diferent sizes on the inside -- some small dogs think they are large and some large dogs think they are small. I've almost never met a dog I didn't like.

Blog Post #2 Without Quotations

I didn't really believe it when I was in my 20s, but wisdom comes with age - probably because implicit within the concept of aging is experiencing, and we usually learn from our experiences. (Which is not to say that all older people are wiser than all younger people, or even that all older people are wise -- that is certainly not the case. My husband, the wisest person I have ever known, was probably wise in first grade and has just gotten wiser.) Anyway, I digress...

I remember a young man who came to visit me when I was 20 as my home teacher. (For those who are not members of the LDS faith, all members are given 'home teachers' who visit each month to give a short lesson and see if you need help with anything.) He was very proud of his knowledge, like me, and gave me some advice I really needed and have thought a lot about since: "Don't take yourself so seriously."

I wasn't offended by this advice - I think someone had probably given him the same counsel at some point and it had helped him, so he was passing it along to the only person on the planet (me) who had ever beaten him at Trivial Pursuit. (I still remember the winning question involved "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe, which he had never even heard of. When I recited the first sentence of the story from memory, he was astounded. It just happens to be one of my favorite first lines from all of literature, but again, I digress...)

Since that time, I have tried to remember to laugh at myself and to let some of my vulnerabilities show, and I've come to realize that people may admire us for our strengths, but they love us for our vulnerabilities.

A vulnerability is not necessarily a weakness, but it is a soft spot, a need, an unfulfilled dream, an indication of our humanity. We can camouflage our vulnerabilities and pretend that they do not exist, but we all have them. They are what make us empathetic to and protective of each other.

I've noticed a similar phenomenon in my reaction to art. I admire the nearly photgraphic quality of a painting that is a perfect refletion of the subject matter, but I love the painting that has human emotion in it even more. Dramatic brush strokes and blurred lines convey something of the artist and not just the object or landscape he painted. I am seeing the subject matter through the artist's eyes.

I have several excellent quotes on this subject which come to mind...but I am trying to express original thoughts, and believe me it's harder than it looks.

Here is the first line of "The Cask of Amontillado":

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. (Isn't that great?!) (Scott said, 'Isn't this supposed to be a blog without quotes?')

A Blog Post Without Quotations

I'm taking my son to the oral surgeon today to have his 3rd molars (his wisdom teeth) removed. Poor kid. We have ice cream in the freezer for medicinal purposes only and his favorite pudding in the pantry (tapioca). He's more afraid of the IV than anything else. I'm looking forward to the drive home when he is loopy, loopy, loopy. That will be my entertainment for today, and it should be good.

I've cleared my schedule (or rather, kept it clear) and I plan to be a mother hen. It's a good day to catch up on mending at the kitchen table so I plan to set up show down there.

See what happens to my blog when I don't have quotes to rely on? I have quotes, of course, but I promised not to use them for a while here -- I promised to have an original thought, and all I can think about is tooth extraction and seam repair.

Can you stand one more quote?

One more, and I will lay off the quotes for a while. This one is just so good!

Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with old nonsense.

This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being Easily Impressed

I'm not impressed with people who are not impressed.

The world is amazing! We're surrounded by wonders. We witness miracles every day. We have spectacular light shows at dawn and dusk with blue sky, lightening, rain, snow, and clouds in between. We have trees, shrubs, and plants bursting with fruits, grains, and flowers. We have oceans and lakes and babbling brooks. We have feathered, furry, and finned creatures everywhere. We have love, language, talents, skills, thoughts, ideas, laughter...Why are we not in a constant state of speechless gratitude? I don't know why.

But I noticed a long time ago there are two kinds of people in the world: people who are easily impressed, and people who are not.

As a teenager, I fell into the latter category thinking it was more sophisticated to withhold praise. I had discriminating tastes and I thought that was a virtue. Only the very best from my limited field of experience deserved my admiration. I approached the ordinary and the unexemplary with reservation. Sometimes I withheld compliments out of personal jealousy because acknowledging someone else's superiority in one area seemed to amplify my own feelings of inferiority.

Gradually I grew out of that and experienced the thrill of recognizing someone else's attributes and accomplishments. Looking back, I think this happened as I associated with older women who were more self-assured and consequently less competitive. I discovered how delightful it is to share a sincere observation of a complimentary nature with someone, because people in general are unaware of their uniqueness. We all tend to think there is nothing really extraordinary about us because the world can summarize us in ten words or less: middle-aged housewife, mother of four. Such summaries don't make us sound particularly exceptional, but everyone has something...It's our challenge as fellow human beings to identify what is good in others (and in the world at large) and celebrate it.

Imagine God planting gifts everywhere -- in every person ever born and in every landscape -- and waiting for those gifts to be discovered, acknowledged, and appreciated.

Here are a few quotes that relate to this topic, which I cannot quite define:

Never lose an opportunity to see anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting…a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

An ungrateful man is like a hog under a tree eating acorns never looking up to see where they came from. - Marion G. Romney

Most of us would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism. - Anonymous

Who can say more than this rich praise -- that you, alone, are you? - William Shakespeare

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present. - Samuel Johnson

And lips say 'God be pitiful' who ne'er said 'God be praised.' - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Gratitude is the memory of the heart. - Anonymous

All great art is praise. - John Ruskin

Joy is the simplest form of gratitude. - Karl Barth

The ultimate success of my life will not be judged by those who admire me for my accomplishments but by the number of those who attribute their wholeness to my loving them, by the number of those who have seen their true beauty and worth in my eyes. – Dave Grant

Trite But True

I almost always strongly dislike BAD poetry, which I would define as poetry that is sacharine sweet, preaches a sermon, and rhymes at the same time.

But once in a while I find that I like a poem that is nonetheless syrupy, preachy and rhyming all at once. I think the difference lies in whether or not I trust the poet's sencerity and believe in the overall sentiment of the 'work,' such as it is.

I came across this poem about 20 years ago, and I have been drawn to it again and again over the years. I am posting it on my blog today in case anyone else could benefit from it as I have. The author is unknown.

"God hath not promised skies always blue,
Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through.
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

But God hath promised strength for the day,
Rest for the labor, peace for the way,
Grace for the trials, help from above,
Unfailing sympathy, undying love."

P.S. I found the picture on the Internet, but it is from the Navajo Loop Trail at Bryce National Park. It's short (just 1.3 miles) but it's the greatest trail I have hiked in my limited experience. I thought it related to the poem because there aren't any flowers in this scene and the blue sky is hard to see so far overhead. When you're at this point along the trail, it's difficult to imagine how you'll ever get out. It's rocky, slick and steep in places, and you don't always get to pick which way you'd like to go. You just have to follow the course water has taken over the centuries and literally 'go with the flow.' But the overall experience is breathtaking! It's a great metaphor for life.

A Modern American Hero: Thomas Sowell

I've been hearing a lot over the past five or six years about Thomas Sowell. He was featured quite prominently in Clarence Thomas's autobiography, My Grandfather's Son. I've heard passages from his books and columns here and there and wondered about him, so I finally did a little reasearch and discovered that he is a modern American hero who has made a lot of thought-provoking statements over the years.

He is a veteran of the Korean War and a magna cum laude Harvard, Columbia, and University of Chicago economist (Bachelor's, Master's, and Ph.D. respectively), but he had an impoverished childhood and dropped out of high school at 17. I've just placed his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, on hold at the library to learn more about him. I think I failed to mention that he is also Black. He was one of the first politically conservative Blacks, which was even more unpopular during the Civil Rights battle than it is now. In his 20s he was an avowed Marxist, but in 1960 he became a true capitalist after observing the unintended negative consequences of a state-imposed minimum wage on Puerto Rican workers while doing an internship there.

Here are a few of the quotes I've found from Thomas Sowell. Some of them will really make you think:

Hopefully, he (Obama) may also leave the voters wiser, though sadder, after they learn from painful experience that you can't judge politicians by their rhetoric, or ignore their past because of your hopes for the future. Thomas Sowell

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it. Thomas Sowell

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late. Thomas Sowell

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism. Thomas Sowell

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today. Thomas Sowell

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it. Thomas Sowell

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. Thomas Sowell

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance. Thomas Sowell

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face. Thomas Sowell

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything. Thomas Sowell

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do. Thomas Sowell

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Thomas Sowell

Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty. Thomas Sowell

The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling. Thomas Sowell

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously. Thomas Sowell

Too much of what is called "education" is little more than an expensive isolation from reality. Thomas Sowell

What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture. Thomas Sowell

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long. Thomas Sowell

Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation? Thomas Sowell