I love this one. My Mom used to play this on 45 all the time, and sing the chorus. She really liked it, maybe because her mom is Italian. I had forgotten about it until about 6 or 7 years ago, when thanks to the internet I found it again.
Report says hate speech should not be covered by Human Rights Act
No. No turning back the clock. Call me biased and petty, but I like things as they are now. People like Fred Phelps cannot enter this country with a (clear) intent to promote hate.
Yes, that means limits to free speach.
Reasonable limits, that is.
And I’m okay with that.
We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.
Joseph Roux
It’s only as an adult that I realize how much music played a part of my childhood, particularly the music my mother listened to. It stays with you, the songs you learn as a wee one. I remember, about 2 years ago one of my nieces got an MP3 player, and had a Beach Boys song on it.
This flabbergasted my mother, who asked “why does she have THAT on there?”, to which my sister replied, “She likes that song because *I* like that song!” It brought to mind all the many songs I love today because my mom loved them and played them at home.
This is part ONE:
The music of John Williams sung a cappella (lyrics as a tribute to star wars)….
So, now that I have been fully and completely bitten by the travel bug, as they say, I’ve been working on my plans for 2009. Here are the tentative travel/holiday plans for 2009:
This put me on vacation close to once a quarter, which I think is a perfect spread over the year. And it gives me more time to save for the Europe trip, which is gonna cost a fair amount of $$$.
Woo!
jasonrobertbrowncom – lyrics – If I Told You Now
I’ve never heard the original, just a cover, but the song is beautiful.
If I told you now
That I didn’t have the answers,
That I didn’t know the reasons,
That I didn’t hold the key –
If I told you now
That I couldn’t say for certain
That I wouldn’t break my promise,
Could you bear to look at me?
If I told you now
That in spite of my persistence
And my confident demeanor
I am more and more in doubt;
If I told you now,
Would you smile with understanding?
Would you burn with disappointment?
Would you turn and turn me out?
If I told you now,
I suspect you still might say
We’ve gone too far to change,
Or push away the tide.
Would you close us down,
Or would I get extra points because I tried?
If I tried.
If I told you now,
And I’m not about to tell you,
But in case I chose to mention
Things I know you won’t allow,
Would it hurt less later
If I told you now?
If I told you now
That we’re never really safe
From all the fires we set
Or debts we had to pay,
Would you hold me now
So at least, for this, for here,
I know you’d stay?
If you’d stay…
If I told you now,
It would be for your protection,
‘Cause I’m sure I’ll disappoint you,
Though I can’t imagine how –
Does it make me better
If I told you now?
Would you make me better
If I told you now?
I feel like one the last people on earth to read this book. I remember when it came out a few years back and it was everywhere. It seemed to be almost an instant best seller the moment it was published, and now I can see why, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
I received Eat, Pray, Love as a Christmas gift from my sister. Books, or gift cards for books, are always, always, forever and always, a gift that I will love. I received the book and February and didn’t get around to picking it up for good until this summer — which is actually quite quick. The length of time a book stays on my To Be Read shelf (and I do have a very literal shelf like this) is ususally much longer than that. Sometimes it’s just the physical act of acquiring a book that brings me joy. Finding the time to read it thereafter can be…difficult.
So I started the book this past summer, and it took many months to finish. Work, life, sleep all these things got in my way, yes, but I think it was also helped along by the structure of the book. Eat, Pray Love, is at it’s heart, the story of Liz Gilbert’s time spent travelling in Italy, India and Indonesia (purposefully all “I” countries?) So, automatically, the book is divided into 3 parts. Each part then divided into 36 sub-parts, so 36 vognettes for Italy, 36 for India and 36 for Indonesia. Gilbert explains to us that this is done to model japa malas, a string of pray beads that are apparently quite common in India. Each set has 108 beads on it. Thus, 108 mini stories in Eat, Pray Love. This makes it very easy to consume the book in bite sized pieces. I’ll have a piece of Eat, Pray, Love, today please.
So why do I think this book was such a great best seller? Well, the most obvious answer is that it’s a good book, which is very true. But I also suspect envy had a whole lot to do with it.
Think about it. Despite the fact that what prompted Gilbert’s journey was divorce, depression and despair, what she describes in Eat, Pray, Love, is the ultimate in wish fullfillment. 30-something women, leaves behind her life of sadness and takes a year long journey around the world. Not only that, but she gets paid by her publisher to do so. Yep, gets paid to write for a living — well enough to get generous advances on her books –, experiences these fabulous countries, and at the end of it all, well, I won’t spoil it for you.
But man was there ever a few moments I wanted to fling the book across the room in jealousy. It seemed rather incongruous, really. Here I was piggy-backing on this woman’s journey for self, for peace, and I’m overcome by jealousy just reading it. Eventually I had to tell myself that if her life was one that I truly wanted for myself, well, it was up to me to create it. That for every risk taking, travel by the seat of their pants, need to actually move to go on a journey, there are those of us who crave stability, who work our unexciting jobs that keep the world moving. Those of us who journeys take place inside ourselves, rather than the external world. And we’re equally a valuable asset. The ying to their yang, after all.
And it helps that Gilbert is remarkably frank about how lucky she is. Acknowledgement goes a long way.
Ultimately, I really enjoyed the book, despite my pettiness. While it didn’t grip me in the way of my super-loved favourite books (non-fiction rarely does), it asserted itself quietly and made a place on my mental shelf of Books I Will Read Again.
So what was my favourite part? I thought it would be Italy. I was there this spring, so I imagined that it would be easy to picture and relate to. In fact it may have been too easy to picture and relate to. It wasn’t boring, but it wasn’t as good at drawing me in as India and Indonesia. Perhaps there was a small sense of “Been there, done that.”
India was my absolute favourite. The India portion of her book takes on the spirituality portion of her journey. Gilbert spends 3 months in an ashram learning meditation and yogi spirituality. It was wonderful. While I can’t see myself ever doing the same thing, there are so many parts of her spiritual journey that I can relate to. I learned so much in this part of the book, from chants to mantras to meditation techniques.
And India brought to my attention a very simple idea that Gilbert quotes in her book. I actually had to put the book down after I read it, because it so simple, so obvious, but I had never seen or heard it articulated before. And it is this:
If praying is the act of talking to god, than meditation is the act of *listening* to him.
Wow.
If that is the one idea I take from this book, the read will have been worth it. I know that thought, that idea, will stay with me for a lifetime.
Remembrance Day is always an interesting experience in centretown Ottawa.
The obvious ceremony at the National War Memorial is one thing (although I’ve only ever been once, myself). As part of that ceremony the snowbirds do a flyover in the Missing Man Formation. For me, 11:11a.m. is virtually impossible to miss because of this, at least for the last 3 years. My apartment is directly in the flyover path. Mere seconds after they fly over the National War Memorial, the jets are flying directly over my apartment building. You can see them, still in formation, from my balcony. And let me tell you, they are LOUD, loud planes.
So there’s that, the ceremony and the planes. You walk around downtown and there are men and women in uniform everywhere. And every year, like so many others, I walk to the memorial to read the wearths, see the personal memorials and flowers citizens have left. I mentally catalogue all the flags at half-mast, including the one on the Peace Tower. I remember and think of my grandfather, a veteran tail-gunner from the RAF in WWII. I leave my poppy on the Tomb of the Unknown.
It feels lucky to be able to be here for Remembrance Day, to pass the day in our nation’s capital.
Today, is also another day of Remembrance. My stepfather passed away this spring. Today is his birthday. It’s ironic that I mentally mark it this year with a dream about him last night (I saw his ghost on the front porch of our house in Guelph. I asked him how the afterlife was — apparently all is well) and a call to my mother today. Kenny was a Jehovah’s Witness — he didn’t celebrate his birthday. But I thought of him today, and I thought of my mother who is still grieving.
Lest We Forget
Remembrance Day 2007
Remembrance Day 2007
Remembrance Day 2007