Peace And Quiet

Hello World, Happy Labor Day weekend! Here is normally where I would invoke the spirit of the late labor activist, Samuel L. Gompers, and wish everyone a wonderful long holiday weekend and rest from their various labors, and blah and blah and even more blah. Anyway, there's nothing new in that after all these years, heaven knows, so please consider yourself suitably invoked, wished, and it goes without saying, plenty of rest. Speaking of rest, I got a note from my sister enjoying the rustic charms of Willsboro Bay at Lake Champlain for a week of relaxing, fishing, kayaking, and boating in the serene wilderness. It concluded with this rather arresting remark: "Many people have died on our vacation." (!!!) This would not necessarily be my vacation of choice, if that were the case, I don't mind saying. Not so fast! Apparently they were all reading murder mysteries in their spare time, and the vacation victims were all literary fictions, rather than actual casualties, so that was a genuine relief. As a public service, I was just about to very much un-recommend Willsboro Bay as a vacation destination, on the theory that life is dangerous enough without killing the tourists, after all. Something that you would not expect to be dangerous is the Workman 365 Cats Page-A-Day Calendar, which has an adorable kitty picture on each day, plus a brief tidbit of interest about their habits, health, grooming, safety, toys, or different breeds. One day last week featured a cat chewing on a tortilla chip, along with the following admonition: "Is it good for him? No way! People treats are NOT good for cats. One could argue that they're not good for us, either." Spoilsports! And speaking of sports, there was a front-page story in the Sports section about beloved defensive end Osi Umenyiora announcing his retirement from the NFL after 12 impressive seasons. His first 10 years were spent terrorizing offenses in the swamps of East Rutherford with the New York Giants, before moving on to Atlanta at the end. So it made sense for him to sign a one-day contract with the team so he could retire as a Giant. The retirement was three weeks in the making, prompting the defensive legend to quip: "I've been in negotiations with Jerry Reese about the terms of this one-day contract. I wanted a two-day contract. You know, obviously Jerry wasn't going for that. So we finally settled on the one-day contract and I'm here." Somewhere off in The Great Beyond, after the Giant's woeful 6-10 record last year, Branch Rickey is saying, "We could have done that without you, Osi." In other numerical news, I admit that I'm having a tough time summoning up any sympathy for the financial nabobs wringing their hands over the recent stock market turbulence, where the wailing and gnashing of teeth on Wall Street has reached mythic proportions usually reserved for whole economies collapsing and people jumping out of windows on an epic scale. On its worst day of plunging shares, the jittery market still closed above 10,000 points - an impossible achievement that would have been unthinkable just 20 years ago. And the economic prognosticators keep trying to convince me that falling oil prices are a very bad thing, but frankly, I couldn't be more delighted to see the results at our local service stations, where gas prices are finally going in the right direction at long last, if I do say so myself. The Sunoco on the corner lost 15c in one fell swoop, going from $2.99 to $2.84 overnight, and two days later, it was down another nickel to $2.79. My apologies to the market gurus, but those are numbers that I can live with, and to be honest, if it continued to go lower, I wouldn't mind a bit. Call me a voodoo freakonomics guerilla (don't you dare!) but as they say at McDonald's, "I'm lovin' it!" And while we're asking the musical question, "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?" I'd like to close with the following from a colleague who delivered a keynote address at the World Peace and Prayer Celebration in August, still going strong in its 20th year, and this time around, lovingly ensconced at the bucolic Howard Prairie Lake Resort in Oregon. I think we can all agree that there's no such thing as too much peace - or prayer, for that matter - and there's certainly no lack of rhetoric on the subject, heaven knows, although very little of it worth sharing. I believe this is one of the exceptions, and I pass it along in a spirit of tolerance, common sense, and optimism for a brighter future that we all hope to see. Here, I defer to the eloquence of the author's own words: ============================================================== Albert Einstein once said, "The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." His words seem to be coming true, and when World Peace and Prayer Day came to Southern Oregon I wondered what words it would be possible to say that might change our modes of thinking and steer us away from the brink and towards Peace (a tall order indeed!!) What I came up with I call the "Prerequisites For Peace" speech which I delivered at the World Peace and Prayer Day celebration. I recorded that speech and put it together with a collage of photos that I took. My speech may not have been well and forcefully delivered (the word "clumsy" comes to mind) and the writing might have been a little better, but I believe (if I may be so bold) that I accurately covered what we are missing as a society, where we need to go and what we need to do if we are going to avoid the unparalleled catastrophe of which Einstein spoke. Here is a link to the video: http://youtu.be/F10ndzQ5wig/ I hope you enjoy it. ================================================================ Elle