You have two feet and one mouth. Dance more. Moan less.
Welcome to November. Welcome to falling leaves, wet sloppy
weather, plunging temperatures. Some people’s idea of sheer heaven.
Remember that when you’re freezing your outer & inner
& nether regions to bits….remember that to some people this is BLISS. Also
remember that as yucky as November is, it’s NOT February.
Even though I’m an ex-pat, even though I’ve lived in the
land of spotted dick and dodgy coalition governments for 22 years, I still
revere Thanksgiving as my favourite childhood holiday (after my own birthday of
course!). Starting today, in honour of all things turkey & family &
comforting, I am doing a daily gratitude blog to remind myself and anyone who
cares to join in, that there are MILLIONS of things to be grateful for.
DAY ONE:
I am grateful for TECHNOLOGY!
1.
I have Multiple Sclerosis & find it really
hard to hand write more than 30 or so words before it becomes painful and
illegible.
2.
My family & many friends live in the USA, I
live in the UK…skype, Facebook, e-mail….total Godsends. Total.
3.
I am a writer (no duh!) and the process is so
much quicker/cheaper/easier now that submissions & researching & networking
are widely available online!!
4.
Diagnosis and care of my MS has leapt into the
stratosphere with technological advances.
5.
Downloading music online..***sigh*** …YouTube …yay!!
and and and…you get it.
6.
Kindle. I am a reading addict & have a
verrrrrrry small house. I still prefer hard copy, but what a blessing.
7.
Paperless society??? Well, not quite. Still, it’s
getting better all the time.
Are
you grateful for technology? Why?
DAY
TWO:
I
am grateful for TEACHERS!
1.
I love to read. Love to read. LOVE to read. I learned HOW in school. I learned the WHY in school & at the feet of my dad.
2.
History & other cultures are fascinating
& I learned to love them in AP European History in year 12. My teacher was
a dapper little man called Mr Gullo who used to be a Jesuit Priest & spoke
several languages. He would put his shiny little shoes on the desk and read
PRAVDA to us when we were 17 yrs old. He opened my eyes to a world outside of
my tiny, tiny rural upstate NY town.
3.
Ted Spooner was my English Teacher when I was
14. One day he shut all the blinds, turned out all the lights, and crawled
under a thick blanket. Then he proceeded to read Ray Bradbury’s Kaleidoscope.
It made me shiver, made me feel claustrophobic, made me want to cry. But more
importantly, it made me WANT TO BE A WRITER. That's a great teacher.(does anyone have any idea where he is btw?)
4.
My children go to a great high school. The
teachers are positive, fun, engaging. They make me wish I could do it all again
and go to THAT school.
5.
I have a few family members and friends that are
teachers. Think about your kids on their WORST DAY. WORST, WORST, WORST day.
Multiply that by at least 20 kids. Every day. Interspersed by pockets of
willingness, engaged brains, delightful imagination. Just enough to make it
worthwhile. Now halve your pay. Halve your resources. Multiply your hours by
half or a third. Go.
Be grateful for teachers!!!
DAY
THREE:
I’m
grateful for BOOKS!
1.
I literally could not tell you how much I love
to read. In an alternate universe I spend all day & night reading &
writing. Getting lost in the worlds
created by someone else’s imagination is such a great pleasure. Being
enlightened to new cultures and histories wakes up your brains, your heart,
your empathy.
2.
Reading teaches us to think, builds new neural
pathways in our brains, makes us wonder:
WHAT IF? HOW’S THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? WHAT WOULD I DO IF THAT WAS ME? HOW WOULD
I DO IT DIFFERENTLY? WHAT THE HELL WAS WRONG WITH THOSE PEOPLE? Or even better:
WOW! HOW BLOODY COOL WERE THOSE PEOPLE? All those thoughts are the beginnings
of something called CRITICAL THINKING. It’s needed in all areas of life, allows
us to evaluate and assess events and information and informs our ability to
make decisions. And you thought you were just reading about vampires…or spies….or real life famous shipwrecks (look up
http://gillhoffs.wordpress.com/, her upcoming book about Victorian shipwrecks
off the Scottish coast will astound you. I have learned so much, honestly it opened
my eyes to matters of history covering class differences, sexism, health & safety…loads
of things!!)
3.
This year I have discovered two authors
that have become fast favourites:
Patrick Ness and Erin Morgenstern. I read Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go
& its follow ups, The Ask and The Answer & Monsters of Men early this
year. I have badgered just about everyone I know to read them and the rest of his
catalog. The books are thoughtful, powerful, the best of YA writing. I
kind of love him quite a bit. Then, just
a few months ago my friend Zoe, who is the absolute best judge of books to
share, loaned me The Night Circus. I’ve read hundreds of books, people, several
of them debuts. Erin Morgenstern’s first book blew me away completely. Her command
of language is lyrical, to say the least. The book is magical, layered with lush
descriptions, mysterious characters, beautiful mystical settings. I could read
it over and over again. You should read it at least once. I almost cried when I
contacted her on Twitter and was informed that it would be ages before I could
expect anything more. But she has a pretty awesome blog as well…
READ people. PLEASE read, it will
make so much of your life better. I promise.
DAY
FOUR:
Today
I’m grateful for CREATIVITY!
I
feel really blessed by my own creativity, but even more by the creativity of
others. Art in almost any form. Beautiful architecture makes me weak at the knees.
Sculpture, paintings, music, landscape gardening, fashion designs, writing,
dance, engineering…it’s all art. It’s all creativity. It lifts me and it lifts
others. It inspires me, makes me wonder all sorts of things. How did they think
of that? Why did they use that particular form/material/word/colour? What were they thinking when they created it?
What did they think that I would think?
But
most of all I love it when I see, hear, touch or read something and I think…OMG
I really want to meet this person. I want to learn at their feet. I want to
hang out with them. I want to bake banana bread for them. I want to be their
friend. You know why? Because they made
me FEEL something.
That’s
what creativity is all about.
DAY
FIVE:
Ooooh
what are we grateful for today? LANGUAGE!
I
am a word weirdo….I love the way they sound, the way they feel in my mouth when
I say them.
Squish,
squelch, pummel.
Amanuensis
(no I’m not telling you, look it up)
Hiss
Engorge
Linger
Prang
Kibosh
Ruminate
And
on and on and on…..
Try
it. Open up a dictionary. Find words you don’t know. Roll them around in your
mouth, shout them around the house a few times.
Play
with them. Words are soooooo fun. I promise. They are. Go on, try it.
You’ll
be glad you did.
DAY
SIX:
Plants,
baby. Today I am grooving on the wonder and variety, beauty and usefulness of
plants. Plants feed us, they are a feast for our eyes, noses and fingers (have
you ever felt a Lamb’s Ear Plant? It’s a weenie little comfort blanket in pale
green. When I was a kid I sat on our front lawn gently rubbing it’s leaves
between my fingers in unashamed joy). They heal us through our eating of
them as well as their medicinal benefits (seriously, eat better and you’ll be shocked
what it does for your body.) Plants were here long before pharmaceuticals and
they were the way your grannie’s grannie treated her sick animals and her sick
children.
This
TEDtalk discusses the surprising health benefits of introducing plants into a
work environment. In what was deemed a ‘sick building’ due to overall employee
health and days off work sick, scientists introduced 3 readily available house
plants throughout the space and reaped astonishing results.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmn7tjSNyAA
If
it can do that to an office building, just think about your home, your family’s
brains, their health.
Scientific
studies will tell you that a daily half an hour walking outside in nature will
go a long way to curing depression, in addition to the fact that added oxygen
levels improve thought processes, and the exercise will improve your health. The
beauty of a stand of woods, spring flowers, your neighbours vegetable garden…all
of it is a treat for the eyes and the soul.
Go
feed your soul. Breathe some healthy air. Appreciate the free beauty all around
you.
DAY
SEVEN:
Today
I’m appreciating Architecture!!!!
It
all started with Mrs Nixon’s house when I was growing up. She lived five houses
away from us in what I always thought of as the ‘mini-White House’. Her name wasn’t really Mrs Nixon, but I remember
when we used to go trick or treat to her house, on a stand in her hallway there
was a picture of her deceased husband shaking hands with Richard Nixon, so that’s
how I remember her. Her house had a sweeping porch, white pillars, was set way
off the road with Chesnut trees in the yard. Every year my mom had to crawl
under our front porch and dig baby chesnut trees out of the ground as we
gathered up garbage bags full of conkers in the Fall and threw them under the stairs. I
adored her house, at ten years old I coveted it in a major way. I used to dream
about the bedrooms, the sweeping stairways, wonder what her back yard looked
like.
The
house I grew up in had 2 living rooms, a small library, a huge dining room, and
beautiful, fluted dark wood pillars separating the wide, open plan doorways. A carved, fruit and bird laden fireplace surround, bay windows, white
hydrangeas all down the side of the porch, lilac bushes lining the drive. It was
a gem. I still dream about it even though it was torn down years ago to make
way for a parking lot at the doctor’s office.
In
Rochester, our nearest city, I nearly bust a vessel seeing the huge beautiful
homes on and near East Avenue, The George Eastman House, houses near Harley
Allendale school. The Mushroom House at Powder Mill park….I was an addict & spent hours driving around getting lost on purpose just to find another gem.
In
college, I wanted to be an architect but had a fatal relationship with math, so
I studied Interior Design instead. I went to Chicago and toured every single
Frank Lloyd Wright building possible. I drooled. I coveted. Now I look online at
his Pennsylvania house, Falling Water repeatedly. In an alternate reality I am
an architect, and I’ve built a whole universe full of fantastic houses. Ask me,
I’ll let you stay in one if you like. (take off your shoes first)
Nearly
40 years later, I still feel my pulse race when I see a beautiful building, old
architecture or new, I appreciate it all. I fantasize about building my own
home someday. The play of light spilling down a stairwell, piercing a canopy of
trees just outside the living room window. A little nook where a clever book
case is built. An enormous expanse of windows that look out over a storm swept
lake. I watch Grand Designs.
I
dream.
I’m
glad I’m not a cave woman.
Thus endeth week one! Join me next Friday for week two!!!
