Allan G. Hunter's Blog, page 89

Security and Love

Usually love means taking a step towards insecurity, at least to begin with….

So here's the story. My neighborhood is pretty safe, so I was surprised to see the local motorcycle cop cruising around here several days in a row. I wondered if there'd been a crime surge or something.

Then I noticed that a couple of times he'd gone by and stopped to talk to our new mail delivery person. Our new letter carrier is a slim, dark, and rather attractive lady, but I didn't put two and two together until ...

New things in the works

I'm just now putting the final corrections to 'Princes, Frogs and Ugly Sisters; The Grimm Brothers' Healing Tales'. The book looks at some of our best loved Fairy tales - the ones shamelessly altered by Disney and others - and asks what the real tales can tell us. As you'll discover, the tales are in some cases how-to manuals to help anyone heal from various traumatic and difficult situations, or to discover how to help those who have been hurt and confused by family discord.

The book is...

Helmet Head

I was tidying up one of my motorcycles for spring, and I read the label Mr Honda had put on the gas tank of this, and several million other such motorcycles.

It said: 'Conserve nature'.

Fair enough. A nice 'green' message. Good.

Below it was the same message in German and French, and in each case the meaning was slightly different. In German it said 'Think safety' and in French it said 'Preserve your life' (basic translations here).

These are radically different messages, although you can see t...

The level of debate….

I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed the level of debate around the Health Care bill. It seems to have devolved to some rather ugly name calling and irrational hatred. And this, mark you, is between our elected officials, for at least some of the time. Of course there are always the street demonstrators, overwhelmingly against the bill, who spit and taunt and use the n-word to our president. Then there are the chants of 'baby-killer' in Congress, and so on….

After we pass this Health...

Health Care

A friend of mine, who supports the Health Care bill, received a Facebook email from a third party that said "Look what you and your stupid democrat party have done."

I was interested by the logic. Any time someone uses the ad hominem argument I pucker my lips. Calling someone 'stupid' is well, simply name-calling of the lowest order, and personalizing it as 'you' and 'your party' is inaccurate. Perhaps the person was an independent. Or, God forbid, a Republican who had a mind of her own...

The Health Care vote - at last

This morning's news about the passing of the Health care bill was a huge relief. I'm not, actually, a big fan of many aspects of western medicine, but I am a fan of human beings. So, when a 'health care system' routinely refuses to insure people who are ill, and thus condemns them to poverty and early, painful, death, I tend to feel we live in a country that is not very humane.

That may change now.

And as for the cost $674 billion over ten years, that's tiny compared to what we have already...

The Hurt Locker

I saw 'The Hurt Locker' last night, and I can understand, now, why it took so many Oscars - and in my view it deserved to take a couple more, too.

I could go on about how it combined all the best elements of documentary, Memoir, and great film-making, but they would all boil down to the one thing: the movie had a sense of closely observed reality that is able to convey what is substantially true about emotions. This is what makes film powerful, what makes Memoir come alive, and what leaves...

Memoir - Eileen Caddy

I've been stocking my brain and imagination with memoirs, and I recently was given a copy of 'Flight into Freedom' by Eileen Caddy.

You may not know who Eileen is, so I'll say that she, along with her husband Peter, followed their intuition and inner knowing, and created, over a period of years, the organization that was to become the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland.

There are many remarkable things about this story, which is told with simplicity, total candor, and charm. The most important...

Memoir - the past is rarely over

One of the things about working on one's memoir is that it becomes forcibly obvious to each and every writer that the past is never over. It shapes who we are, and how we react, and how we make our lives work. Even when we'd like to think the past is safely behind us, small reminders come along to let us know we're not geting away with anything free today.

To some people that may seem like bad news. Behind it, though, exists a life lesson of some power. We are not separate. We are not...

Kitchen Kvetch

My dearly beloved has been out of town for a few days (promoting her book 'The Confident Creative' which you can see on www.theconfidentcreative.com) and that left me with the cooking.

I'm a moderately competent cook if I put my mind to it, in a basic kind of way. There are occasional forays into exciting gustatory treats when I have decided to do a dinner party or something. But I'm well out of practice.

This week has been a time of rediscovery for me. And what I learned is that there is...