World Food Day

World Food Day is October 16.

A project in New York City called Yoga for Life is doing its part to fight global famine, which affects 800 million people worldwide, and right now is raising funds to spread awareness of World Food Day, which is sponsored by the World Food Programme. In a small clip in my Natural Health magazine, it says, "$50 might buy a tank of gas in America, in Bolivia it would provide school meals for two children for 100 days". Wow.

This really made me stop and think. That, together with the Nutrition Action Newsletter I got yesterday that makes a really strong case for eating vegan. I'm a little bummed out at all the disparity, and yet I also feel glad (and guilty that I feel glad) that I'm one of the lucky ones. We all feel the same way, I guess, but most of us don't admit it. There's a lot of denial going on.

I feel crappy today and I have yoga this afternoon. I'm going to go, because I'm sure I'll feel better afterward, but I can't muster up any enthusiasm.

Mom really is right

Every day I take apple cider vinegar, the organic, unfiltered, raw, kind. About two tablespoons in a half glass of water. It doesn't taste very good, but it's not so bad as to make me gag, either. My mom has taken it for years, and because acv is so good for immunity, she never really gets sick. Even if something does hit, it doesn't really manage to take hold. Same is true for me now. I took it years ago, and then like so many things good for us, I just sort of dropped it. Anyway, this stuff really is an elixir. Added to all the things I already knew it does (primarily it provides us with lots of potassium, which most of us are lacking in our diets), I just read yesterday that it can help rebuild lost bone. Apparently even if you live an active, healthy lifestyle, you can still lose bone mass very early in life. Researchers are saying that now people in their teens and twenties are tending towards having the bone mass of people in their eighties and nineties because they lead such sedentary lives and because of all the pop they drink. Vitamin D is also important to get more of because if you're diligent about sunscreen (I'm not, I will admit) then you may be prone to being deficient in Vitamin D, which will affect bone mass as well. Symptoms of declining bone mass are sore hips, a misaligned jaw, stiff joints, loss of posture, and sensitive teeth. So, drink up that apple cider vinegar, folks. Mom said it was so good for you, and she was right.

So Sorry ...

To all those affected by the shootings at Dawson College in Montreal on Wednesday, I grieve with you. Of the precious little innocence we have left, another little piece of it died that day. Please let's save the discussion about gun laws for a few days. Give the victims some time to cope. What's important now is the victims. Let's also not weigh and debate about the whole goth culture thing. It's easy enough to lay blame, and we all have our opinions, but right now, we need to simply show respect for the victims.

This is great

I don't read all the comics. I'm trying to be a bit more selective. And "Between Friends" isn't one of my super favourites (my absolute, hands-down, all-time favourite is Pearls Before Swine; I especially love Pig). Anyway, I do read this one daily, and sometimes I see myself in these cartoons.

When I was a little girl, we were friends with another family who had two daughters the same age as my sister and I. The one my age, Sylvia, and I, used to fight like cats and dogs, but we were thrown together (Capricorns & Saggitarians, I don't think, are the best mix), so what could we do but play?

This comic reminded me of something I used to do to Sylvia when we were little. One of the things we used to play at was creating pretend orders from the Sears catalogue. We'd turn the pages and write down all the product numbers, sizes, prices, etc., then total it all up. On occasion I'd run across a page that contained something my mother had bought at some time or that very much looked like something she owned. I'd pick that item, and then I'd accuse Sylvia of poor taste or of offending my mother, for not picking it. Of course, the poor girl had no idea that my mother owned this item. I don't think she ever did it to me, but eventually she complained to her mother about it, and I must have stopped at some point. Wow, that was mature, eh? The things we do when we're kids.

This is the same friend with whom I raided her mother's silver quarter collection, went shopping for stuff for our dolls, ate at McDonald's and then tried to lie our way out of it by saying we had "secret" money or it was money we'd "found". Boy, we got it for that one.

Blasted, &*#$%@!, junk mail Losers!

Oh, this makes me SOOOOOOOOOOOO mad. Why I should take it personally is beyond me. The excerpt below is from a very benign looking email that made it into my inbox, no doubt due to the "clever" insertion of periods, commas and apostrophes, so certain words wouldn't be picked up by the junk mail filter. I HATE these people. Moreover, do you they really expect me to take them seriously when they have to resort to these methods (they are as good as advertising that they are considered junk mail by all simply by employinng such methods) in order to make it through to people's inboxes. Can't folks make money the old fashioned way? Is an honest living somehow foreign to these people? Way to get me going on a Monday morning.

T.his qui'ck ris,ing s'tockk is a go,od lo,ng ter'm win.nerr. T`his s'tock has b,een steadi.ly climbi'ng, and
wi.ll con`tinue to c.limb the cha'rts due to s,uperb busines,s sol,utions and creat,ive partnersh.ips
in the busin`ess worl.d.

Check out the wording too. This person is a recent graduate of the saying nothing while saying a lot school of business (the same one politicians attend). I need to point out, however, in all my ranting, that I really don't get THAT many junk mails. I know some people get hundreds a day. I suppose one has to learn to be philosophical.

A Butterfly Beats its Wings

Apparently, in Mumbai, India, there is a predominantely Zoroastarian population who believe the only way to ensure their dead departed's souls leave this earthly plane is to leave them on a big mound for the local population of vultues to consume. There is, though, about 10% of the vulture population left; the rest have been decimated after eating cow carcasses which had been given a certain painkiller drug. The bodies are piling up, those in the morgue awaiting a place on the mound, have been waiting for up to a year in some cases (and the morgue is getting full), and the bodies are ... well, starting to smell bad. So what does a pharmaceutical company's marketing efforts have to do with Zoroasatarianism?

Apropros of Nothing ...

Our city is planting oak trees here and there on boulevards. This may not seem weird to many, but we live in an area with poor soil that supports cottonwoods well, but not hardwoods. It is semi-arid, freakin' cold in winter and summers are short. I found an oak branch while I was out walking one day, came home and shoved it in a vase, and kept in my kitchen for awhile. It was really pretty. And I wondered, where on earth did that come from? Who plants oak trees in Calgary. Then, today, I'm walking a stretch I don't normally walk and there's a little oak tree. I snipped off a cluster of leaves and brought them home. They're so pretty. Now I'm thinking (because I need to plant trees in my back yard) that I should select an oak or two and to heck with the fact that they only grow a foot a year.

That and I have a cold. Sheesh. But I had a massage this morning so I'm pleasantly relaxed and as I have no scheduled students until this evening and everything else can kind of wait, KIND OF, I think a nap is in order.

Dirty tomato jokes

Anyone know any? I have lots of tomatoes, but they're all green. A dirty joke or two might make them blush. :-)

Don't Worry, be Unhappy

This is the title of the current Yoga Journal's Editor's Letter. In it, the editor muses about the possibility that the obsession to be happy, often viewed as an obligation, and leaving us feeling as failures if we don't achieve it, opens the door to depression. We are depressed because we've "failed" at being happy. Huh. Sounds like begging the question, or something. The logic is perverse, in a way. Yet it makes complete sense. According to Dennis McMahon, author of Happiness, a History, the idea that we must strive for happiness, that we have come to expect it, is only about 200 years old. He traces this in part to the changes in religious and secular culture. Very interesting. The editor says "The idea that happiness may be oversold lessens the 'I'm a failure' facture and opens a doorway that allows self-compassion to enter. And that, say Buddhist psychologists, is the key to healing depression."

This makes a lot of sense when you think about all the way people chase after things they believe will make them happy: more money, shopping trips, love, sex; the way we parade what we have so that others will see: see! I'm not a failure. I've got all these things! How could I be anything but happy with all these things, this beautiful girlfriend, this brand new car.

I'm not a celebrity watcher, but perhaps people are looking at celebrities for clues that they're less happy than we perceive ourselves to be, leaving us the victor, and pushing away that feeling of having failed.

This holds a clue for Christmas depression, something which seems to hit me every year, no matter what I do, especially from Christmas Eve, about 6 pm and lasting until bedtime on Christmas Day. After that, I'm fine again. I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that I have no family living nearby.