Happy Diwali!

Good morning world!   

Happy Diwali!

 

Popularly known as the Festival of Lights or "the awareness of the inner light" (read more about that below), Diwali (also: Divali and Deepavali) is a very meaningful five day festival of Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism.  An official holiday in many countries, Diwali marks and celebrates the triumph of good over evil, the word Diwali derives from the word Deepavali which translates into "row of lamps," which is why Hindus, Jains and Sikhs light clay oil filled lamps throughout the five day festival to celebrate this triumph. 

I really love the significance of this holiday, in fact there was so much stuff I wanted to paraphrase from Wikipedia that I just gave up, I want to post it all, so here goes...

This explains the specific significance of the holiday in each religion that celebrates it:

"Diwali commemorates the return of Lord Rama along with Sita and Lakshman from his fourteen year long exile and vanquishing the demon-king Ravana. In joyous celebration of the return of their king, the people of Ayodhya, the Capital of Rama, illuminated the kingdom with earthen diyas (oil lamps) and burst crackers.^[4] In Jainism, Diwali marks the attainment of moksha or nirvana by Mahavira in 527 BC.^[5][6] In Sikhism, Deepavali commemorates the return of Guru Har Gobind Ji to Amritsar after freeing 52 Hindu kings imprisoned in Fort Gwalior by defeating Emperor Jahangir; the people lit candles and diyas to celebrate his return."  (via Wikipedia)

This explains the spiritual significance of the holiday, which I really love [read: bold text]:

"In each legend, myth and story of Deepawali lies the significance of the victory of good over evil; and it is with each Deepawali and the lights that illuminate our homes and hearts, that this simple truth finds new reason and hope. From darkness unto light — the light that empowers us to commit ourselves to good deeds, that which brings us closer to divinity. During Diwali, lights illuminate every corner of India and the scent of incense sticks hangs in the air, mingled with the sounds of fire-crackers, joy, togetherness and hope. Diwali is celebrated around the globe. Outside India, it is more than a Hindu festival, it's a celebration of South-Asian identities.^[4]

While Deepavali is popularly known as the "festival of lights", the most significant spiritual meaning is "the awareness of the inner light". Central to Hindu philosophy is the assertion that there is something beyond the physical body and mind which is pure, infinite, and eternal, called the Atman. The celebration of Deepavali as the "victory of good over evil", refers to the light of higher knowledge dispelling all ignorance, the ignorance that masks one's true nature, not as the body, but as the unchanging, infinite, immanent and transcendent reality. With this awakening comes compassion and the awareness of the oneness of all things (higher knowledge). This brings Ananda (joy or peace). Just as we celebrate the birth of our physical being, Deepavali is the celebration of this Inner Light.

While the story behind Deepavali and the manner of celebration varies from region to region (festive fireworks, worship, lights, sharing of sweets), the essence is the same – to rejoice in the Inner Light (Atman) or the underlying Reality of all things (Brahman)." (via Wikipedia)

 

Ommmmmm..... :)

I really think every person in the world should celebrate the message of Diwali, regardless of their religion.  Why?  Because it's a very good message and something we must always remember within ourselves.  Besides, the world could use more joy and peace. especially these days!  The world needs more people to self reflect, to overcome ignorance and issues of race and religion in order to come together and attain true love, peace and happiness.

(All information about DIwali is from Wikipedia.org and images are via a Google image search)

Daphne the Gay Ninja

One of the Boys - Mott the Hoople (mp3)
Divine Thing - Soup Dragons (mp3)

Massive positive buzz abounds for a blog entry from a mother whose 5-year-old preschool son dressed up as Daphne for a Halloween party at his school. Here’s the intro, but I highly encourage you to read the entire piece:

My son is gay. Or he’s not. I don’t care. He is still my son. And he is 5. And I am his mother. And if you have a problem with anything mentioned above, I don’t want to know you. I have gone back and forth on whether I wanted to post something more in-depth about my sweet boy and his choice of Halloween costume. Or more specifically, the reactions to it. I figure if I’m still irked by it a few days later, I may as well go ahead and post my thoughts...

I find myself uncomfortably conflicted by her post. Perhaps my reaction speaks poorly of me, but the devil's advocate can't stand the absolute onslaught of warm fuzzies she's receiving. A bajillion people have commented how much they adore this woman’s post, and my reaction wasn’t nearly that simple.

Foremost, some of her zingers are absolutely awesome and righteous, particularly this line:

If you think that me allowing my son to be a female character for Halloween is somehow going to ‘make’ him gay then you are an idiot. Firstly, what a ridiculous concept. Secondly, if my son is gay, OK. I will love him no less. Thirdly, I am not worried that your son will grow up to be an actual ninja so back off.

Good stuff, that. She makes some great points, and most of them have Ka-Chow!

Admittedly, however, I have problems with her overall spiel. First, I don’t really believe someone capable of writing this well can be as clueless as she purports. If she didn’t see these reactions coming -- which officially makes her more socially naive than her 5-year-old -- then she doesn’t get out much. Besides, if she didn't see the negativity coming, then why were all her pals high-fiving her down the hallway?

Therefore, I question her motives. Was she really out to make her sweet precious Boo happy, or was she willing to use her son for her own combative lust? (And, if the answer is a little of both, is that OK?)

Third is my reaction to her conclusion:

And all I hope for my kids, and yours, and those of Moms ABC, are that they are happy. If a set of purple sparkly tights and a velvety dress is what makes my baby happy one night, then so be it. If he wants to carry a purse, or marry a man, or paint fingernails with his best girlfriend, then ok. My job as his mother is not to stifle that man that he will be, but to help him along his way. Mine is not to dictate what is ‘normal’ and what is not, but to help him become a good person.

I’ve got bad news for you, honey. Instant happiness and long term happiness are almost entirely unrelated. One of today's biggest cultural problems is that making your child happy has superseded making them good people, and you are clearly and admittedly in that Insta-Happy Camp. (Happy: first sentence. Good person: last sentence.)

Your son might be "happy one night" taking a dump in his pants. He might be "happy one night" biting dogs. He might find "joy one day" eating maggots off the couch and without utensils or his hands. He might be happy doing lots of things that aren’t “right.” I’m not saying purple tights and purses are wrong, but I’m saying that we as parents are charged with raising and educating our children about that very cruel world this mom seems to have magically discovered on Halloween 2010, several decades into her life.

Five-year-olds aren't soldiers. They shouldn't be used to fight our battles. If she'd encouraged her son to dress as Papa Smurf rather than Daphne, she didn't somehow kill his soul. He's FIVE.

Being a parent isn’t always about making our children happy in the now. Happiness is not a goal you can reach by aiming for it. Happiness is the desired by-product of other meaningful pursuits.

Let me be crystal clear here, because this is important: When your first goal as a parent is your child's constant and immediate happiness, you are at best a naive parent, and at worst a horrible one.

Cross-dressing, marrying someone of a different race or religion, moving to Pakistan to become a Christian missionary, opening a medicinal marijuana farm. These are not the same kinds of decisions as whether to brush your teeth at night. I’m not saying any of these life choices are Wrong, because I'm a lib'ral relativist. But in our time and in our culture, to suggest that parents don’t have a responsibility to educate and prepare our children for the world that might not approve of everything they do or want to do... to let your children ride their bikes into traffic without at least informing them of the risks and dangers... well, that’s shitty parenting.

Evangelize to cannibals in the Amazon. Cross-dress. Marry a lovely Hindu man. Whatever. As your parent, I’ll love you regardless, but I do have the responsibility to make sure you are aware what you might be getting yourself into.

Again, I admire at least 80% of what this mom says. And I admire the ferocity with which she defends and loves her son. But to say the moms are bullies? Get over yourself. Snotty? Callous? Condescending? Insensitive? Sure, to all of ‘em. But when we start labeling their behavior as bullying, we have watered down the term so much it’s meaningless. It’s like calling a kitchen knife a WMD.

Her claims of social cluelessness and her prioritization of quick happiness, however, are worth questioning. If she didn’t know it might be controversial, why were all her pre-warned pals giving her high-fives down the hallway like she was about to enter a WWE wrestling ring? Don’t couch it like your toddler has more social awareness than his mother.

And here's the last part for this mom and all her cyber-huggers. Kids are more resilient than any of you seem to realize. Her precious Boo won't remember a thing about his Halloween party in two weeks, because nobody ever said anything to him or did anything to him.

Her blog isn't about her precious Boo. It's about her.

It takes a self-absorbed blogger to know one.

Humiliation Sells

Guided By Voices--"How's My Drinking" (mp3)

Man is spending Saturday or Sunday afternoon watching football, enjoying self, relaxing in the den, and there is a break in the action. Then man watches television beer commercial and thinks to self, "Well, I certainly don't want to be like that dork. I'd better start drinking the right beer."

This is the mind set of today's male that advertising is trying to develop. Make the wrong purchase choice, and there is some good-looking woman out there waiting to make fun of us. There's also a pretty good chance that some other hotties are hanging out waiting to chip in, too.

Or maybe even one of our own pals.

Really, though, it's even more complicated than that. Because it quickly emerges that there is a kind of cosmic cause-and-effect at play here. The beer humiliation is merely the icing on the cake, if you will, or, perhaps better said, a fait accompli, because the victim has already take a number of wrong turns in his life that guarantee he will make the wrong choice in the first place--he's a "Momma's Boy," he wears a European swimsuit, he carries a man purse.

So it won't just be the beer choice that will bring on the humiliation. That's just the beginning. The sheer matter of who you happen to be outside the norm will cause everyone to heap it on.

It's enough to make a guy wish he could order a Schmidt's Gay and hang out with some people who will actually treat him well.

Of course, this doesn't come as that much of a surprise. The humiliation of the American male has been the main source of humor in television sitcoms at least as far back as Married...With Children and probably as far back The Jackie Gleason Show. Emasculation is apparently funny. And life inside of beer commercials has portrayed various utopian visions for decades--racial harmony, the twins, skiing, lobsters and Lowenbrau, impossibly beautiful bartenders.

By contrast, the female bartender that waits on us on Monday nights could easily find work as a zombie extra on The Walking Dead. Only my blogmate Billy can get her to crack the slightest smile.

Often have I longed to live inside of a beer commercial, at least for a little while. All of the guys would be cooler and buffer than my real friends; all of the women that intangible notch below supermodels. We'd just hang out at the beach, the slopes, the game, the perfect urban setting or suburb. Until now. Because now, the beer commercial life has turned downright mean. Maybe it started with that "Real Men Of Genius" series, which seemed kind of funny at the time, but is just a different kind of mockery.

And let's face it: all light beers kinda blow. Just like light cheeses and skimmed milk and Baked Lays. Some blow less than others because they have a little more taste. If you're drinking one, you're choosing it for different reasons than taste. If you choose one with too many calories, the people in the light beer commercial with the fewest calories will make fun of you.

But it isn't only beer. The one that gets me, because I cook, is the "Guys Don't Bake" commercial where the male host brings out a tray of fresh, hot biscuits for his friends watching the game and everyone acts like he's a member of the castrati or something.

Advertisers got ahold of women a long time ago by convincing them that a) they could never be pretty enough and the only hope was to keep trying by buying, and b) that their favorite clothing was always just days away from going out of style. So Madison Avenue needed a degrading counterpart to reel the males in. The solution? Intimate that something that you do or are will make women not want to be with you--you stink, your beard is too rough, you can't get it up, you drink the wrong beer, you wear man thongs, you do women things.

But they also took it a step further. Stray outside the norm, and even your own friends won't want to hang out with you. And that's the cruelest cut of all, because then you don't even have anyone to commiserate with about all of your other failures. I'm sorry, my friend, it could have gone so much better for you, had you simply chosen the proper light beer. Heck, you even had a shot at being the world's most interesting man, but, just like that, wrong beer, buddy, and you blew it.

Collections Part I

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos  of memories.

~ Walter Benjamin

...Well ain't that the truth!  I wanted a quote that would pair up with this blog post and I must say, I found the perfect one!  Don't you think??...

I am a collector, no doubt...  I collect things from my travels mainly because of the memories they carry, including train and plain tickets, post cards, maps, brochures and especially coins, souvenirs and other trinkets I find along the way.  Apart from things I find on my travels I like to collect owl figurines, milk glass, art, salt and pepper shakers, brass figurines, Moroccan decor, Matryoshka dolls, pretty glass bottles, McCoy pottery, California pottery, antique table lighters, coins, cacti and succulents and well, the list goes on forever!  So, the quote above definitely applies, at least to me and Mr. Benjamin!  What about you?

 

Displaying a collection of items can create amazing visual interest and personality in any space.  Collecting everything is not necessarily a great idea, but collecting a few special things that you love and tastefully displaying them together in your home is a great way of expressing your interests through interior design/decorating.  

I've collected all of the images in this post because each shows some type of collection or another in an eye pleasing vignette...  Whether it's books, plates, tea cups, art, vases, world globes, keys, bottles, buttons, or whatever else your heart desires... bring it all together in a creative display and you've got insta-art! Get inspired, walk through your home and see if you can make a collection from your decor and trinkets....  ;)

 

(All images in this post are sourced via a Google image search, some are from the Better Homes and Gardens and Sunset websites.  I do not claim ownership of any of these photographs)

Blood-Stained Badges In The Dirt

Michelle Rhee is a hated woman. She went into a system almost paralyzed under the weight of politics and pressures and stirred the genesis of a revolution.

I have no doubt that she made a lot of mistakes. Outwardly, she has all the warmth and compassion of a Transformer. In her and Adrian Fenty's amazing Wall Street Journal "Education Manifesto," Rhee admits she should have done a better job at communicating her goals, her hopes, her intentions, to the parties most invested and at risk under her fiefdom. Rhee might have failed to win them over no matter what, but she should have tried harder regardless.

What is already clear, however, and what cannot be reasonably denied, is that Michelle Rhee has forever changed the educational landscape in what has long been the worst educational district in this country. She is a modern-day Pale Rider or the Wyatt Earp of Tombstone, and I wouldn’t be surprised if ol’ Clint one day directs a movie about her.

Rhee (1) is brilliant; (2) was convicted about her responsibilities; and (3) was willing to put her career on the line. She walked into the saloon, a big ol’ 10-gallon hat shading her face, a steady hand on the butt of her trusty six-shooter, and politely told the drunkards she was the new sheriff in town.

Before she showed up, the numbers were in all ways horrifying. The numbers indicated the educational equivalent of a post-apocalyptic landscape of bandits, marauders, and hopeless helpless innocents hiding in their homes and eating scraps the mice left behind.

Today, the numbers are still horrifying. But noticeably and indubitably less horrifying than they used to be. It went from the Black Knight without arms and legs and bleeding to death to a Black Knight with one arm, more confidently asserting that “I’m getting bettah.” And Rhee is the catalyst for those improvements.

Michelle Rhee is an old school classic hero of the sort the 21st Century doesn’t accept and might not even want. She chose a thankless career.

Three years later, she is (temporarily) unemployed. Go to any story about Rhee on educationweek.com, and you will most certainly find dozens of teachers across the country – good, dedicated, intelligent people – writing about her as if she might well be the Antichrist. They question her motives. They question her “success.”

And good for them. She deserves scrutiny and skepticism. But in a decade, the educational history books will point to this moment and her role in it and say, “Rhee’s tenure in D.C. was the tipping point of what would become largest educational reform movement in over a century.”

Part II:

Take everything I just wrote about Michelle Rhee and education, and you can replace her with Barack Obama, and you can replace education with health care.

Thirty years from now, the way our government and our corporations handle health care will be drastically different from what it is today. It will be almost nothing like the plans Obama’s legislation intends for it to become.

Barack Obama was elected captain of the Titanic. When it comes to health care in this country, we’ve been aiming straight at an iceberg for 50 years. Almost every sane person in this idiotic country admits that the system is powerfully flawed and getting worse. A dude finally comes along and turns the steering wheel, and everyone screams at him.

They say the plan is flawed. Fine, and true.

But what they hate about Obama is that his solution isn’t their solution. Nevermind that they never had a solution until he forced them to make some shit up on the fly.

Thirty years from now, when health care in this country is drastically and measurably better than it is today – more affordable, no longer the responsibility of employers, and probably less tolerant of high-cost end-of-life treatments – we will look back at Obama’s health care law as the catalyst. They will say, “He got a lot of things wrong, but damn if he didn’t force the evolution to begin when no one else had the guts. And if he didn’t take that first step, we never get to where we are today.”

In reality, heroes don’t get everything right. In reality, heroes rarely get medals or adulation until after they’ve been martyred or marginalized. Real heroes are willing to risk more than the rest of us to achieve what everyone says they want but no one has the balls to do. Neither of these people did it alone, but they were the cornerstones of the effort, and their sense of conviction is what pulled many to their cause.

I don’t have to admire every detail of Rhee’s education reform to exalt her courage to spearhead it in the first place. I don’t like half of Obama’s health care legislation, but I absolutely glorify his risking a career’s worth of political capital to force change.

Rhee and Obama are currently facing the fate of heroes. They are being castigated, stoned, and despised by the very people they aim to help.

Such is the cost of heroism in the real world.