Lomography Brightens Emails With Eastern Philosophy

Recently, we ordered an Diana mini camera

Lomography.com

for my enthusiastic 18-year-old photographer's birthday. A whimsical automatic message immediately appeared in my Inbox from Lomography:

"We're seriously committed to making sure your Lomographic order arrives in the best possible condition. At the moment our holistic shipping experts are busy preparing your treasured cargo psychologically for the journey that lies ahead. After a bit of chanting and chakra balancing our packaging architects will set to work making your goods as comfortable as possible. Under the cover of darkness a no-messing security troop will escort your package to the post depot to ensure it departs without a sniff of trouble. It's at this point we release two pigeons of peace as a symbol of thanks for another successful shipment."

"chanting"..."chakra balancing"..."pigeons of peace"??? I have to say, I appreciated this message far more now than I would  have a month ago before my Ayurvedic weekend in northern Vermont...I am even learning Indian chanting now, not intending to outdo my teenager who is incidently learning Chinese...

CNN's Christiane Amanpour's Final Sign Off

This video turns out to be a touching walk down memory lane.


To quote Queen Rania: " It's not enough to get children into school, it's what they get out of school."

Sounds like the proverb, "if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well" or a paraphrase of a statement widely attributed to Edmund Burke, British statesman and philospher 1729-1797, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" (also known as "evil prevails when good men and women do nothing.")

Burke also supposedly said: "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it" a phrase worth remembering and reminding others.

American Healthcare Reform ~ Historic Quotes From President Obama and Speaker Pelosi

“Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made ... And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”   -President Barack Obama

President Barack Obama

“We will go through the gate,” [Nancy Pelosi] vowed in late January. “If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn't work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health-care reform passed.”    -House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

America's Most Critical Issue?

Healthcare Overhaul: This Weekend

Financial Reform to End "Banks Too Big to Fail"

The National Debt: "The most critical issue facing our country, Christopher Buckley

 Immigration Reform: Rally Today in Washington

War with Al-Qaeda: See bedrooms of boys, fallen soldiers killed in action.


This high-density resolution (HDR) photo site has beautiful photos to browse while, or instead of, despairing of all these problems.

Political and Social Attitudes in the United States and Canada

Political writer James Fallows, on Marty Moss-Coane's show, Radio Times, said today Republicans and Democrats have become almost completely separated by ideology and aren't communicating with each other. The Republican obstructionist policy could be turned around, he says, by televising the upcoming "Bipartisan Summit on Health Care" this month with President Obama.

Petesearch

America and Canada are already regional generally according to an American and a Canadian in two recent articles.  Petesearch, the blog of Pete Warden, describes seven distinct American regions with data from 210 million Facebook profiles:

• Stayathomia: People in this Northeast region, stretching from New York to Minnesota, form very tight geographic connections, with most friends living in neighboring cities.
• Dixie: A fairly intuitive “Old South” grouping, with Atlanta as the network’s hub. 
• Greater Texas: Places like Missouri, Louisiana, and Arkansas are connected more to this Dallas-centric group than the South.
• Nomadic West: In this huge region, even small towns are strongly connected to distant big cities.
• Mormonia: A slice of tightly-knit Utah and Eastern Idaho towns inside, but isolated from, the Nomadic West.
• Socalistan: LA is king here, linked to almost everywhere in California and Nevada—and many exterior cities, too. Outside the big cities though, Californians form very tight clusters.
• Pacifica: This Seattle-centric area has surprisingly few connections outside of Washington.

Canada, too, has different regions and serial entrepreneur Jennifer McNeill describes them in an excerpt of this article in Toronto's Globe and Mail:

"Is it different selling to Canadians than Americans?

 

It is. It is even different selling to geographies inside Canada. In the Maritimes, you sell based on relationship. In Toronto, it is strictly business - delivery, price - and Calgary is very much about who you know, and those relationships. As you get to the West Coast, it is a matter of how much patience you have. They're like snails, very slow, a very different mind.

In the U.S., there are different geographies but they all buy the same...based on price and value and they have to believe there is some credibility to the company. They have to perceive value." 

Clearly, in America and Canada, political differences and friendly relationships are dividing the land invisibly. They always have, but let's hope modern communications improve the situation.

Urgent: Solutions Needed for America and Canada

Looking at a wonderland of snow outside near Princeton, New Jersey, today, all is calm and quiet. The Washington National Cathedral had a fine service which I saw online this morning. In words to the audience, Cathedral Leaders were constantly mindful of the snow and grateful to those who did show up. Amidst all of this peaceful loveliness are those who look around at Canada and the United States and find fault. 

Two websites  have  recently listed in great detail the shortcomings of America and Canada. Citizens will criticize their own countries; just get them started, and the results are astounding to behold. Perhaps listing them is helpful to contain the issues, rather as meterologists summarize weather and archivists survey inventory. The point surely is, we need solutions and fast.

Orville Schell, a China scholar and former UC Berkeley Dean, now at the Asia Society in New York City, has assembled a list of strong and weak features of America.

Orville Schell - orvilleschell.com

America's strengths:

1) biotech

2) technology

3) civil society

4) American philanthropy

5) the American military

6) small-town life

7) the arts, both high-culture and pop

America's weaknesses:

1) public education "driven into the ground" from budget cuts

2) national energy system grid update needed

3) court system "struggling"

4) national park system "teetering above the abyss"

5) federal and state governments - "busted", essentially

6) interstate highway and water system updates needed

7) transportation updates of planes and trains essential

8) finance "system overhaul needed"

9) media over-commercialized, except the internet

10) overweight population

11) basic manufacturing "headed to China" or oblivion

12) American cities - "hollow and broken"

13) prison system - "pits of hopelessness"
14) global warming

Alas, my precious international readers, many of these, including climate change (#14) are common not only to America but to countries around the world.

Meanwhile, Canadians in Facebook blame politicians, especially Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, on breaking promises of all kinds, especially to cut taxes. He has also been taken to task on foreign policy, business policies, healthcare issues and job creation. All of these are issues with which the average citizen has little if any expertise or inside knowledge to referee. Canadians are free to criticize anyway, unfairly or not, but when will their issues be addressed?

Stephen Harper, Canadian Prime Minister - wikimedia

Many deep, long-standing problems in Canada are being blamed on the current Prime Minister, but Harper is also taking heat for proroguing Parliament and his criticism of a judiciary of "left-wing ideologues." For more, read this Facebook page: Canadians United Against Stephen Harper.

At the very least, as Americans and Canadians, we can console ourselves that all countries can find fault with themselves if given the opportunity. Listing disparate, incomparable issues can help put them in perspective; concrete form can organize them into a discrete space. What ultimately matters is whether we can find and implement solutions before we get more problems to solve.

Whoopi Goldberg: Pat Robertson is Wrong

As someone who considers myself spiritual, when famous so-called Christians say incendiary opinions and pass them off as facts, I get embarrassed and ashamed.

One has to wonder whether Pat Robertson's heart is in the right place. His recently televised views on Haiti sound nothing short of insane. How can anyone say as a fact an entire country, in this case Haiti "made a pact with the devil" and is cursed? Saddens me he professes to hold a Christian view. Christian myself, I don't agree with him. What he says goes against much of Christian teaching. Many have lost those they loved and everything in Haiti and will have to work hard to rebuild their lives.

Haiti presents a grave, humanitarian disaster, and it just seems to me that effort, compassion and care are the appropriate reactions to take as they recover.

As Whoopi Goldberg said today on "The View": Pat Robertson is wrong! And here is an article by a Christian man who agrees with us.

Definition of Old School: "You Do Your Bidding And You Do It Well"

- quote by Fen Hampson of Arthur Menzies in Carleton University's Alumni Magazine

Related sayings:

Whatever your life's work is, do it well. 

Martin Luther King, Jr.


Whatever you are, be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln

Be the labor great or small

Do it well or not at all.

Anon.

Know your job. Do it well. 

U.S. Army Reserve

This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature. Take the power to control your own life. No one else can do it for you. Take the power to make your life happy.

Susan Polis Schutz

Finally,

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.

Bessie Stanley