grandma obviously wants him to grow up too fast.

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

But do not ask the price I pay

For I must live with my quiet rage

Tame the ghosts in my head

That run wild and wish me dead

Aqui & Aqui

Hold on to what you believe.

Source, Source

spring spring spring

hahahaha i just love this interview. charlene is the best.

Charlene Yi Show Her Heartbreaking Range on Conan

California Redwoods... they are calling me.

so hard to "take the other to lunch" when "the other" thinks this way

46% of Mississippi Republicans Want Interracial Marriage Banned

(click link for full article)

A new poll gauging Mississippi Republicans' preferences going into the 2012 election ended up revealing something more startling: 46 percent of GOP voters in the state think interracial marriage should be illegal.

Results were announced Thursday by Public Policy Polling, a polling firm based in North Carolina. The company asked 400 Republican primary voters about their preferences for candidates for state and national offices, as well as their views on interracial marriage.


A whopping 46 percent of likely GOP primary voters said they think interracial marriage should be illegal, while only 40 percent said they think it should be allowed. Another 14 percent said they were unsure.

It was only 45 years ago that Mississippi legalized interracial marriage, and this poll indicates it continues to be a controversial subject.

what happens to bad little boys?

What a challenging idea, but one I'd like to attempt

Some exercises in feeling good

"You never have to tell yourself how maahvelous you are again. These three exercises from Six Seconds, a California-based international nonprofit organization that offers training in emotional and social intelligence, are designed to develop a core of competence—and an earned sense of confidence.

Paper Quilt:One of the keys to making good decisions is developing emotional literacy—that is, tuning in to your own reactions and noticing that you may have many feelings at once. Take a small piece of paper, fold it twice (you'll make four squares), and unfold it. Think of a big moment that happened yesterday. In one of the squares, enter a symbol or design showing how you felt. What else did you feel? Write it in another square. Repeat for the last two squares. Now that you can see the range of emotions you had, which one got the most attention? Was it the most useful one to focus on? Did you ignore some of them?

Integrity Pennies:Learning to manage your reactions more carefully is crucial to self-mastery. First thing in the morning, put 10 pennies in your left pocket. Each time you say or do something other than what you genuinely intended (maybe you softened a response too much or were harsher than you meant to be), transfer one penny to your right pocket. Keep practicing to reduce the number of right-pocket pennies.

The Silent-Movie Game:This exercise helps you use the power of your feelings for the greater good. With a friend at lunch, on the bus, or in an airport, pick a few people and guess what's going on inside their minds. Then compare notes on what you glean the subjects are thinking, feeling, and doing, and what each most needs now from a supportive ally or friend."

i want to live in maui and learn to play the ukulele

but the only song i would learn is The Bare Necessities from The Jungle Book :)

this version is my favorite, the words are a tad different but i like it:

8 secrets of success in 3 minutes

MMMmMmmm my favorite vice.

 

(painting by sarah joncas. http://www.teapartylove.digitalinkz.com/)

And just for kicks here's two more of my favs from her:

 

*sigh*

e

tell it like it is

"'There's no question you get the best results with highly contingent praise and criticism,'"says Baumeister. 'That means praising exactly what you did right and criticizing exactly what you did wrong. Just praising kids regardless of how they do contains very little useful information; if anything, it has a negative effect on learning. I've had to revise my opinions about self-esteem several times; I'm kind of done with it. I don't think it can deliver much of what we want. Self-control, self-regulation—these give a whole lot more bang for the buck, deliver a lot more in practical results. I think self-esteem is relegated, if not to Siberia, at least to the Urals.'

"Perhaps the final banishment of the idea comes from Carol Dweck, PhD, a well-respected professor of psychology at Stanford University, whose latest book is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. 'People think that self-esteem is the most important thing in the world, that you can give it to children, almost on a silver platter, by shielding them from criticism and praising their skills and talents,' says Dweck, who has been studying how kids succeed and fail for nearly 40 years. 'It's a very common and harmful belief. In the old days, the parents would be driving kids home from Little League saying, 'When you struck out, you didn't keep your eye on the ball.' Now they say, 'The ref robbed you.' The parents think they're helping them, protecting them from injury. In fact, they're making them so vulnerable that they're not resilient.'

"'What's really effective is praising the process that the child is engaging in,' Dweck explains. "Effort, strategy, perseverance, improvement—these things tell them what to do next time." In one recent experiment, junior high students took a workshop in study skills, but only one group got two 25-minute lessons about how intelligence can be developed, learning that the brain grows new neurons when challenged. In a single semester, that group improved their grades, motivation, and study habits compared with the other. 

"The shift in thinking by researchers like Dweck and Baumeister dovetails with a revolutionary educational philosophy called social and emotional learning, or SEL, which takes the eminently sensible position that if students are going to be intellectual risk takers, they need to feel safe, and teaches a wide range of skills to help them navigate the world. Psychologist and science writer Daniel Goleman's best-selling 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, made popular the idea that children, not to mention adults, can and should be instructed about empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, establishing positive relationships, making responsible decisions, and handling challenging situations constructively.

'Self-esteem or self-efficacy has to do with a realistic assessment of your strengths and weaknesses,' he says, 'but SEL includes other things: how you manage stress and mobilize paralyzing emotions. Self-esteem is much better reframed as self-mastery.'"



src: http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Groundbreaking-Research-on-Self-Esteem/1

Letter to N.Y. (for Louise Craine) by Elizabeth Bishop

In your next letter I wish you'd say 

where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:


taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,


and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,


and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,


and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.


—Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.

Outside-of-the-Box Lips

source: goooogle

My Bootleg Horchata Recipe

Ingredients:

(I made ONE single mug. Obviously double, triple, quadruple recipe depending on how much you want to make.)

-Left over rice water (the stuff you strain out when you have too much water in the pot after the rice is cooked)

-Soy milk (Sweetened, plain, or vanilla)

-Cinnamon

-Sugar


Mix ratio 1:1 of rice water and soy milk (I used semi-sweetened, I think vanilla would be best) in a mug.

Zap in microwave until it boils (or over stove..but in that case put it in a pot..).

Add one to two teaspoons of sugar depending on the sweetness of your soy milk.

Shake as much cinnamon as you'd like there. I did 5 shakes.

Let cool and taste. Adjust sugar and cinnamon if something is lacking. Cool in fridge, then add ice and enjoy! Use a straw. It makes it last longer.

PS: I drank it warm, but only because it's cold here... and I couldn't wait.


Inspired by:  http://appetiteforchina.com/recipes/homemade-horchata-recipe