Solstices and Equinoxes

I'm not the only one who pays attention to the path our Sun takes during the year. In her recent post "The Dark Side of the Moon: There goes the sun", Slywy writes,

...the retreat of the sun into the southern sky, imperceptible at first, but now impossible to miss. The angled light is somehow softer—still bright, but not as harsh to the eyes.

The two Equinoxes don't mean as much to me. I'm more of a Solstice kind of guy. In the Winter, the Solstice gives me hope. It's the shortest day of the year. Even though the days are cold, and the sun is weak, and snow hampers our travels, I can count on the Sun getting stronger and stronger each day and setting later and later each evening.

Unfortunately, the Summer Solstice, which usually falls on June 21 in the Northern Hemisphere, has the opposite effect on me. The Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year. The Sun is high in the sky, and we have plenty of time after supper to enjoy the outdoors. This is as good as it gets. But after June 21, it's all downhill, and I feel sad. The Sun sets a little earlier each day. It moves further away.

As Slywy wrote, it's "imperceptible at first." But by the time the Autumnal Equinox arrives, the amount of light we enjoy during the day diminishes at its fastest rate. Noontime shadows creep northward every day.

I'm thinking now of the Rachel Field poem, "Something Told the Wild Geese".

Something tells me to start looking for a new snow plow service.

Issuing Trackback Pings From Blogspot

Andy Beard explains how to add the ability to issue trackback pings from Blogspot. It involves adding the Firefox add-on Greasemonkey and a script. It's a nicer solution than logging into Haloscan each time you want to issue a ping. But so far I haven't gotten it to work. I wonder if that's because the only trackback URIs I've tried so far have been hosted by Haloscan?

So the main purpose of this post is to test the solution against a non-Haloscan trackback URI, such as the one on http://andybeard.eu/2007/06/blogger-trackback.html.

And actually it doesn't work. It doesn't report "Sending trackback ping to..." at all. But maybe that's because I don't use del.icio.us.

Random Bits of Dyer Wisdom

My wife carries around a copy of Dr. Wayne W. Dyer's "Everyday Wisdom for Success." It's a little book that she carries in her purse, along with the wallet, makeup, and a miniature drug store. She likes to pull it (the book) out at restaurants after we order our food.

One each page, a wise sentence is printed. The idea is that you open the book to a random page. The sentence you get is your personalized bit of wisdom for success.

I'm not a fan of Dr. Dyer. I wasn't able to get through the first couple of chapters of "The Power of Intention." But so far I like this book.


Here are three bits of wisdom that I came across so far:

"If you are suffering in your life right now, I can guarantee that this condition is tied up with some kind of attachment to how things should be going."

Wow. I'll get bent out of shape at least a few times each day when some software doesn't do what I expect, or I get stopped by a few consecutive traffic lights, or when I have to enter my account number into the automated telephone system just to find out their mailing address.

"Alcohol, as well as all drugs -- legal and otherwise -- lower your body's energy level and weaken you. By retreating from these substances, you can achieve the level of success you crave."

Once I realized that caffeine is a drug, this bit of wisdom hit the bullseye.

"Try viewing everyone who comes into your life as a teacher."

I knew this one, but I forgot it! Sometimes it's fun and helpful to discuss with your friends and family what we can learn from one another. Don't forget the pets -- the animals in your life are probably your best teachers!

New Title Banner

I'm trying to jazz this site up a bit. Hence the new title banner. I hope you like it!

I created it myself, using Microsoft Word's WordArt and the free font set "Schizm," which was created by Astigmatic One Eye Typographic Institute. To give credit to AOETI, I'll be adding this image to my sidebar:

Brevity

Inspired by OneSentence.org:

My brain is like jambalaya -- sometimes long hidden things just seem to bubble to the surface.

The Power of Belief (part 2)

...continued from The Power of Belief (part 1)

When I read, "Yesterday I knew that god didn't like me - or at least enjoyed messing with me," on Square Peg Reflections I knew I would be tempted to comment with the equivalent of two long blog posts. But I restrained myself and saved them for you!

It's not a good idea to think that G?d enjoys messing with you. It might start happening more often.

It took me a long while to realize this. I grew up with a pessimistic mother. She'd be puttering about in the kitchen listening to us laugh at a great TV show. So she'd come to sit down with us, and a commercial would come on. And then she'd say, "Of course. As soon as I sit down, a commercial comes on." Then she get up and go back to the kitchen to putter about some more.

But I didn't start believing in a malevolent G?d, or a prank-filled Universe, until I was an adult. I'm sure I was greatly influenced by Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

When did I think the Universe was out to get me and not just Arthur Dent?

Perhaps it was right after I decided to take that out-of-state job offer, and was moving to my new apartment. I let the movers take all the furniture and boxes of durable items. I packed the delicate computer and stereo equipment in my car, and, a couple of hours later, crashed into another car on the highway whose driver had stopped because he missed his exit.

Or perhaps it was a few years later when my wife and I got married and we bought the House. This is the House whose oil burner broke before dawn on Christmas morning, the day after our daughter was born.

It wasn't long after that that I started to dread making plans. "Hi Bro. Sorry I can't come to your Christmas get-together. Our daughter is throwing up." I wish Sherre Hirsch had written her book "We Plan, God Laughs" several years earlier. I really needed it then.

Up until recently, even driving to work had been disturbing. How many consecutive traffic lights need to turn red just as you get to them before you wonder what's going on?

It was The Secret that made me realize what was going on. It made it clear that I had to stop expecting failure. I needed to reject this image of G?d snatching the cheese out of my maze just as I reach the end. I had to start thinking that I was loved and cared for by the Universe.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really am loved by the Universe. I have gotten through difficult situations without too much grief. I'm healthy and not in pain. I have even had random choices turn out surprisingly well.

Good things are in store for you. Believe it!

The Power of Belief (part 1)

Ever since I watched "The Secret" DVD and read the book, I've been incubating a post on it.

But then the ever inspirational "Square Peg Karen" wrote a post that tangentially related to my murky gestations, so I figured it was about time I get to work. Her post "god doesn't like me?" can be found here.

The idea behind "The Secret" is that we can use the Power of Attraction to get what we want. The author suggests that you try it out on something simple first. Attract some small object, not too common place but not altogether impossible to encounter. I instantly visualized a crystal doorknob, something I once saw when I was very small, perhaps in my grandmother's apartment. My wife, meanwhile, declared that her test object was a glove with about a half-dozen pompoms dangling from the wrist. She told me to be on the lookout for it.

If you're a believer in The Secret, you might want to know that we found the objects. And now you should stop reading. Please, just stop.


Well, I finally came across my doorknob in an antiques shop about four months later. But I might have missed it had I not been looking for it. (I was actually walking through the shop thinking, "If I'm ever going to find that crystal doorknob, it would be here.")

My wife's pompom glove was a bit less promising. She described it to me, but the only object that I could hold in my mind was a cat toy. When I told her this, she said, "No, I'm not thinking of a cat toy." Perhaps not, but I was. And we found the cat toy glove easily enough. So I was satisfied.

Except I'm not really Satisfied.

The thing that leaves me unsatisfied is this: Did I think of my crystal doorknob because I expected to find it? Or did my Power to Attract bring about my expectation to find it? There's a subtle difference here. In the first manner of thinking, I might have had a pre-cognitive notion that I would find that doorknob, and so I selected it to make the experiment a success. (I might've already seen one at an antiques store, although the store I did find it at was one I've never been to before.) In the second, by holding the doorknob in my thoughts, I actually drew it toward me or propelled myself toward it.

Guess which line of thinking I subscribe to?

It's not that I'm unwilling to believe in The Secret. I do believe in Shakti Gawain's "Creative Visualization," which pre-dates The Secret by about 30 years. So I believe the process can work. I just have a problem with the way in which The Secret tries to win over skeptics.

In fact, I'm having success with The Secret. For example, we needed a new container for our Q-Tips. The one we've been using for ten years is made of cardboard and has a flimsy plastic cover that has been ripped and dented for nine years. I imagined that we'd find something to replace it at an import store. So when I entered the store, I looked through it with a Purpose. And I found a container. (But not The Container, because the container we bought was carved out of a huge stalk of cinnamon, and it imparted a dusty residue to the Q-Tips we put inside it. It smells nice, though!)

Still on the lookout for a container today, I headed toward the Baby Products aisle in the drug store. "That's the baby aisle, dear. We don't need anything there," my wife said to me with the patience of one who looks after a senile grandfather. But I found The Container rather easily -- much more easily than I could ever hope to find the ketchup in our refrigerator. It helped immensely that The Container actually had Q-Tips in it. :)

I have another success story. But strictly speaking, it's a success story about Creative Visualization, because it happened before I heard about The Secret. I won't write about it here. Not now, not yet. I've rambled on long enough, and I must get to bed. And I still need to explain what this has to do with "Square Peg Karen's" post, "god doesn't like me?"

But perhaps you've already figured that out for yourself. If not, I'll let you meditate on it for a while.

(continued....)