Happy Birthday!

My move is going well, but moving is overwhelming, nonetheless. I cannot begin to tell you how wonderful it feels to be in my own space. No pressure. Just me to contend with. Love it!

Enjoy the day!

My friend, Tina Liza Jones wrote this one...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATrVhT7eB3Q]

Hope you have a great day!

to enjoy your special day.
An evocative story delving into the + and -
of life's rituals.

Cheers!

On a less pleasant note, we're reeling a little bit here from yesterday's Boulder mass-freedoming. One of my wife's best friends had a sibling who was murdered in a King Soopers north of Denver about 10 years ago (botched robbery), so there's a strong dose of PTSD active there. We're trying to do what little we can to help them cope.

I guess that it is the new American condition: sooner or later, everyone will have a close friend or relative who has been killed in a mass freedoming, just as everyone will have a close friend or relative who died of Covid, or in military service in the unending wars. There's been a lot of unexpected death very close at hand over the past year.

On a happier note, both my wife and I found the symptoms from the initial Pfizer jab to be very manageable- injection site soreness, chills the next night, low level fatigue for a day. So after the first week of April, we'll be immunized, for whatever that is worth.

We will still have to go to the grocery store now and then, though.

Going out to tea sounds like a great treat.
May this coming year be a terrific one in your life.

Thanks for the thought provoking accountability discussion. I'm going to ponder further a couple of the ideas you mentioned.

or perhaps 'a very unbirthday to you! (and us)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdsZT7WKjW8]

good on ya for down-sizing your possessions; they can start seeming as they own one instead of the reverse, can't they? back in the day, we used to have pot-luck give-aways, with one long table full of Very Nice Stuff. one to a person was the only rule, iirc.

Interesting that the poem posits worship of the marketplace as the polar opposite of wisdom, truth, and what is now called sustainability.

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

 
http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm

May it be wonderful!

Happy Birthday to you, CStMS!

So nice that you all were able to get out and do something special! That makes it memorable right there.

Seems like you are meeting your goals or standards, and that at coffee/accounting time, you are pretty darn pleased with yourself for the personal responsibility met and improvements made.
Enjoy your friends, make it easy to enjoy yourself!