Seeing Red

Redhawk logo designed by Eric Wahlquist

I have lately had the privilege of simultaneously seeing both a big and small town way to resolve controversy over the name of a sports team.

Getting High

One of the clinical support jobs I perform when not taking x-rays is drug testing.  We have different kinds of kits, ones that test urine and ones that test saliva.  There’s also a portable “breathalyzer” to check for alcohol consumption.  Some local companies hire us to go to their location a few times each month to do random tests.  Others send employees to the clinic.  The employer specifies what drugs are to be tested for, and in what situations to test.

Graduation Day

The Visitors Center @2010 lindabenson.blogspot.com 

Our second guide dog puppy, Spice, was the first one to complete her work to become fully certified.  Guide Dogs for the Blind operates two campuses on the West coast, one in Oregon where we were going, and one in California.  Mary and I (the puppy raisers) and the Brodys (former playmates) drove down the night before.  We had the same kind of joy and anticipation parents get when their children graduate from college, ready to enter the working world.

Cast These Words Into Unseen Waters:

(Back by Popular Demand! Thanks for the requests.)

Invisible Mikey

Kindergarten was awful at first, then wonderful.

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Review: 10 Steps to Finding Your Happy Place

(The BOOK)

 (The cover has an inviting painting of a happy place.)

Letting Go of the Books

It has taken a week, but I moved 50 boxes of books from storage back to the house and put them in piles by subject.  In order to be freer from materialism, you have to free yourself of material (duh).

Therapy Pup

I realized a new reason I love raising our new “guide-dog-in-training” Lila early this morning.  She’s a clean slate.  She doesn’t share the neuroses my wife and I have

The Post LESS Challenge

As I surf around WordPress and other blogging communities, all I see is encouragement about posting MORE.  How many times must I re-assert that more is not better? 

Act Three

Because her mother has moved to the area, that baby (my Brother’s Granddaughter) from a previous post (here/) visited my home last weekend.  She’s nine months old already, and she says “BAP-fff!” with specific emphasis.

The legends about the members of my tribe have something in common.  If you look at the life stories of those in my extended family as if they were plays, there’s a similar arc of development.  We all have chaotic first acts.

Shape Up, Mrs. Black

Selling out for fame isn’t a new phenomenon.  Neither is dumbing-down music to increase popularity.  Pop music is often dumb on purpose.

My Trigger

I was reading Zeenat’s post about daily methods for reinforcing your inner upside (http://positiveprovocations.com/2011/02/21/top-9-ways-to-be-positive-and-happy-everyday/).  The first one listed was to Carry a positive Trigger.  She was writing about having a token of something that makes you happy with you at all times.  When you get sidetracked, you can use it to get back in the game of life.  She did not realize that by saying this she reopened a beautiful memory from my early childhood.  I’ve had a positive trigger inside me since I was three!  It’s Trigger

Deluxe Gift Baskets (#1)

Partially sage, I rose merrily, on time.  Fluffy snowflakes have erased the borders between roads and yards.  The coffee’s warm, and the fireplace glows.  What a fine time for reading.  In addition to my regular peeps (they’re on the Blogroll), here are some blogs that I’ve been enjoying lately.

Valentines in Kindergarten

(When I re-read what I posted this time last year, I realized I can’t say it any better.  So, here it is again.  Maybe this will become my annual “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus”.)

Kindergarten was awful at first, then wonderful.

Deep River

The Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1877

The musical song form known as spirituals began as a beautiful union between American slaves’ desire for freedom, their identification with Old Testament stories, and a post Civil War embrace of European choral harmonization in Black colleges like Fisk University.

“If You’re So Smart…

…why aren’t you rich?”

That’s what they used to say to me back in the Midwest, in response to my being an insufferable know-it-all.  I am a more sufferable know-it-all these days, so I am rarely asked this question, which is disappointing since I now have many good answers for it.

Caged

The warehouse of unopened boxes in Citizen Kane (1941).

I’ve been thinking about a kind of imprisonment many of us struggle against – the cage of material possessions.

Be Safe Out There

When my wife and I went through our decade-long decision process about where to live in retirement, we tried to examine large factors influencing quality of life.  One of those factors was travel from where our house was to where we need to go most often.

The Bad Art War

Once upon a time we lived next door to a couple who had specific ideas about what should or shouldn’t be done with a garden box.

Carry That Weight

I’m performing without a net.  My wife’s pension documents are still screwed up.  I’m working quick turnarounds, a brutal test of stamina.

Game Changer

Some humans like competition.  I’m a mutant.  I have no sports gene whatsoever.  If I’m forced into a competitive situation and I win, I feel bad