Happy 4th of July!

Holy Kaw! via Happy America Day (aka 4th of July)! [infographic].

A Fourth Of July PSA

This fireworks/firecrackers FAIL compilation is brought to you by World Wide Interweb. Be careful out there, kids!

via A Fourth Of July PSA.

Happy bday, #2 son…

Kindergarten days…

My #2 son was a Father’s Day gift in 1989. He was the first birth I ever witnessed and I’ll never forget the experience and what it — and he — has meant to me!

Colin and his lovely girlfriend Kelsey…

Is This the Last Father’s Day?

Not the best picture of my ‘other dad’, but it will have to do…

The title comes from Randy Taran who writes:

My father is requesting that all family members come by… no, not for a typical family reunion, but for Father’s Day. They say that people sometimes get a sense about things, and I have a feeling that my dad knows the end is near.

I am not complaining. I have had the amazing good fortune of having him around for longer than most. He is 95.5 and pretty darn present.

It has me thinking about the various roles we play in life: child, parent, parent to our inner child, parent becomes child, and child becomes parent’s parent… it’s endless in all the possible permutations.

I recently asked my dad for his five top life lessons, and this seems like a perfect time to share them:

1. Lead your own life. Know who you are and be true to yourself.

2. Be satisfied with what you have. Don’t go looking to other people for validation or compare yourself to others — that goes nowhere.

3. Be very grateful for what you have. Appreciate everything, from nature to relationships to waking up another day. Looking at things with the right perspective allows you to see that what you have is all you need, and more.

4. It’s all about family. That is what is important, that everyone is happy and lives a good life.

5. Love is what matters most. After all the ups and down that life sends our way, after all the careers and hopes and dreams, what stands out and will always remain is love.

This may or may not be his last Father’s Day; he has surprised us before. No matter what, I will always cherish my dad’s life lessons and pass them on to my own children as the cycle continues. Happy Father’s Day to all.

For more by Randy Taran, click hereFor more on happiness, click herevia Randy Taran: Is This the Last Father’s Day?.

I curated this article for multiple reasons; not the least of which is that it makes me think about my father-in-law who is getting on in years. Throughout our marriage, my relationship with my in-laws has been strained for reasons too complicated to go into; only recently, however, I have gained a special appreciation for my father-in-law…

My ‘other Dad‘ is a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for almost 50 years. The more I dig into my own ’emotional sobriety’ and recovery from codependence, the more I appreciate him as a person and his contribution to the world — especially his example as he lives out the 12th step daily. Recently, when my wife was in Italy we connected a couple of times by phone and I had a chance to tell him for the first time that I loved him as a ‘dad’ — and I don’t say that lightly; dad is a title of honor in my life — and that I appreciate his example. There are things around ‘recovery’ that he gets that my first dad will never understand and I appreciate his testimony more with each passing day…

My second dad is now 79 and time is catching up with him. I cherish the help he has given me in my recovery and his lack of judgment toward me. Whether this is the last Father’s Day or the first of many we have in this ‘new’ relationship — God knows there are no guarantees in this life — I’m glad we had a chance to connect in his living years…

Christmas Tree Ship Presentation

The Door County Maritime Museum has a special event coming up that I’m sure I’ll be attending, being from Algoma and all. Why don’t you join me?

Join us to hear Rochelle Pennington, the author of The Christmas Tree Ship.

Pennington’s verbal presentation will focus on many of the little-known facts surrounding the story including the ship’s mysterious disappearance, clues washed ashore in the decades following the vessel’s demise, ghost ship sightings of the phantom schooner, and mysterious omens believed to have cursed the ship immediately before it set sail on its final voyage on November 22, 1912.

Pennington’s power-point presentation will include many of the century-old photographs of Captain Schuenemann, his family, and the ship.  In addition, the author will have several artifacts along with her to share with the audience:  an axe used to chop trees down, dishes, a spittoon, a clay pipe, an ornament carved from one of the first Christmas trees raised from the sunken ship in 1971 when the vessel was discovered, and an actual Christmas tree from the cargo.  Underwater photos of the ship in its present state, with trees still visible in the cargo area, will be on display as well.

“Author Rochelle Pennington has written two books detailing one of the most well-known shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan‘s Christmas Tree Ship, which delivered holiday evergreens to the citizens of Chicago each Chirstmas season before it was caught in the “Great Storm of 1912″ and subsequently went to the bottom of the lake fully loaded with trees.”

She will be with us at 2:00 pm on June 24, 2012 at the Museum to do a presentation.  Pennington will also be signing books.  Copies of both Rochelle’s books, The Christmas Tree Ship: The Story of Captain Santa and The Historic Christmas Tree Ship: A True Story of Faith, Hope and Love are available in our Museum store.

Get more here: Christmas Tree Ship Presentation | Door County Maritime Museum.

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither. – C. S. Lewis

via Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and….

Just in case you missed this for 5/22/2012

A daily roundup of interesting stuff that didn’t quite make it as a blog post on its own.

  1. A massive wagon train, made up of 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle, sets off down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri. Known as the “Great Emigration,” the expedition came two years after the first modest party of settlers made the long, overland journey to Oregon.After leaving Independence, the giant wagon train followed the Sante Fe Trail for some 40 miles and then turned northwest to the Platte River, which it followed along its northern route to Fort Laramie, Wyoming. From there, it traveled on to the Rocky Mountains, which it passed through by way of the broad, level South Pass that led to the basin of the Colorado River. The travelers then went southwest to Fort Bridger, northwest across a divide to Fort Hall on the Snake River, and on to Fort Boise, where they gained supplies for the difficult journey over the Blue Mountains and into Oregon. The Great Emigration finally arrived in October, completing the 2,000-mile journey from Independence in five months.In the next year, four more wagon trains made the journey, and in 1845 the number of emigrants who used the Oregon Trail exceeded 3,000. Travel along the trail gradually declined with the advent of the railroads, and the route was finally abandoned in the 1870s.
    Mon, May 21 2012 16:47:52
  2. The current season of Springtime and it varied holidays that have themes of new beginnings, new life, freedom from old bondages and the potential for resurected aspirations provide the external prompts for each of us to self-reflect and re-work our life plans.
    Sun, May 20 2012 13:06:16
  3. I’ve always found it easy to start my day healthy. Greek yogurt and fresh fruit are incredibly satisfying at 8 a.m., punctuated by a carefully crafted cup of black coffee that revs my brain. But by 8 p.m., everything changes. I’m a ravenous satyr, craving the flesh of fatty charred meats and the comforting toasty bite of calorie-laden IPAs. Melted cheese has a particular flare that would nauseate my 8-a.m. self, and the same could be said about anything fried or coated in buffalo sauce.
    Sun, May 20 2012 13:02:29
  4. Top Tweets…

  5. toddlohenry
    I just ousted Lain S. as the mayor of Algoma High School on @foursquare! http://4sq.com/csmBZH
    Mon, May 21 2012 18:28:17
  6. toddlohenry
    ““Have you ever felt at a loss when you needed to draw the line with someone?Have you put yourself at a disadvantage w… http://bit.ly/KgdyzW
    Mon, May 21 2012 15:40:23

Happy Mother’s Day

“Without mothers, there might be stars

but no one to wish upon them

No lips to kiss, no hands to hold

No eyes to gaze upon sunsets gold

Without mothers, there might be a moon

but no harvest for which to light

No songs to sing, no voices to raise

No flowers to soak up the sun’s gentle rays

Without mothers, there might be love

but no one to hold it, and it might just slip away”

via Happy Mother’s Day « Positively Positive.

Happy Birthday!

via The Holidays.

The Easter Song

Rare live footage of my favorite Christian group singing the ultimate Easter song…

Here’s the same song from Keith Green…

Crank it up! Happy Easter…

E-cards for your Easter inbox

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Funny Easter Ecard: Happy Easter from one lapsed Catholic to another.

E-cards for your Easter inbox – Holy Kaw!

Go to the source if you’d like more! Or, go directly to someecards.com to send your own…

Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion

Here’s another of my favorite Easter pieces — all three hours are contained in these two videos! Amazing performances — especially tenor Peter Schreier; he’s the dude with the glasses that appears around 11:58…

Dykes of courage…

We must constantly build dykes of courage to hold back the flood of fear. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

via March 21, 2012 – Today’s Gift from Hazelden « cmmacneil.

Decluttering your mental clutter

Minimalist Mac OS X Desktop

Good stuff from Ryan Nicodemus at The Minimalists

Those voices inside your head won’t be quiet. All you can hear is your boss telling you to have those reports done by Friday or your daughter reminding you that there’s soccer practice this Saturday or a parent’s voice telling you that they’re going to need you to help them drop off their car at the mechanic’s.

Most of us have somewhere to be each day, not to mention the everyday fire drills we get put through at work or at home. It can feel very overwhelming, and our minds can get noisy. Some of us even have echoes of voices from experiences of many years ago.

How do you deal with all of that internal mental clutter?

Mental clutter is something I’ve worked on my entire life. I used to feel like, no matter what, I constantly had some sort of mental clutter—I always had something going on in my mind. If it wasn’t something new causing that anxious cluttered feeling, it was something from the past creeping back into the present to haunt me. Some days were worse than others, but it was there every day.

And then, after fixing several other parts of my life, I was able to cut down on the mental clutter…

Source: The Minimalists | Decluttering Your Mental Clutter

Go to the source if you want to know more about the parts Ryan fixed. Me? I am a huge fan of David Allen and his “Getting Things Done” principles and I use a tool called Evernote to get things out of my head and into a foolproof system where I will never lose them. You can read my take on these ideas over at my business blog…

Related articles from http://e1evation.com

"How Do I Avoid Be Dragged Down By Difficult People?"

Gretchen Rubin has some good thoughts on the topic over at The Happiness Project

If you want to read more about this resolution, check out…

Quiz: Are you a “Tigger” or an “Eeyore”?
Quiz: Are you the one that everyone finds difficult?
9 tips for dealing with difficult relatives.
Make people happier by acknowledging that they’re not feeling happy.

Source: The Happiness Project: “How Do I Avoid Be Dragged Down By Difficult People?”

Great use of video blogging as well, wouldn’t you say?

Valentine’s Day

Valentine postcard, circa 1900–1910
Image via Wikipedia

For children, Valentine’s Day means candy hearts, silly cards, and excitement in the air. How different Valentine’s Day can be for us as adults. The Love Day can be a symbol that we have not yet gotten love to work for us as we would like. Or it can be a symbol of something different, something better. We are in recovery now. We have begun the healing process. Our most painful relationships, we have learned, have assisted us on the journey to healing, even if they did little more than point out our own issues or show us what we don’t want in our life. We have started the journey of learning to love ourselves. We have started the process of opening our heart to love, real love that flows from us, to others, and back again. Do something loving for yourself. Do something loving and fun for your friends, for your children, or for anyone you choose. It is the Love Day. Wherever we are in our healing process, we can have as much fun with it as we choose. Whatever our circumstances, we can be grateful that our heart is opening to love. I will open myself to the love available to me from people, the Universe, and my Higher Power today. I will allow myself to give and receive the love I want today. I am grateful that my heart is healing, that I am learning to love.

Beattie, Melody (2009-12-15). The Language of Letting Go (Hazelden Meditation Series) (pp. 43-44). Hazelden. Kindle Edition.

Family issues

English: Lorenz family members.
Image via Wikipedia

We can draw a healthy line, a healthy boundary, between ourselves and our nuclear family. We can separate ourselves from their issues. Some of us may have family members who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs and who are not in recovery from their addiction. Some of us may have family members who have unresolved codependency issues. Family members may be addicted to misery, pain, suffering, martyrdom, and victimization. We may have family members who have unresolved abuse issues or unresolved family of origin issues. We may have family members who are addicted to work, eating, or sex. Our family may be completely enmeshed, or we may have a disconnected family in which the members have little contact. We may be like our family. We may love our family. But we are separate human beings with individual rights and issues. One of our primary rights is to begin feeling better and recovering, whether or not others in the family choose to do the same. We do not have to feel guilty about finding happiness and a life that works. And we do not have to take on our family’s issues as our own to be loyal and to show we love them. Often when we begin taking care of ourselves, family members will reverberate with overt and covert attempts to pull us back into the old system and roles. We do not have to go. Their attempts to pull us back are their issues. Taking care of ourselves and becoming healthy and happy does not mean we do not love them. It means we’re addressing our issues. We do not have to judge them because they have issues; nor do we have to allow them to do anything they would like to us just because they are family. We are free now, free to take care of ourselves with family members. Our freedom starts when we stop denying their issues, and politely, but assertively, hand their stuff back to them—where it belongs—and deal with our own issues. Today, I will separate myself from family members. I am a separate human being, even though I belong to a unit called a family. I have a right to my own issues and growth; my family members have a right to their issues and a right to choose where and when they will deal with these issues. I can learn to detach in love from my family members and their issues. I am willing to work through all necessary feelings in order to accomplish this.

Beattie, Melody (2009-12-15). The Language of Letting Go (Hazelden Meditation Series) (p. 5). Hazelden. Kindle Edition.

Why Letting Go Is The Best Way To Hold On!

Mastin Kipp of The Daily Love shares this thought on letting go of 2011…

I love this time of year. This post-Holiday, pre-New Year time. It’s a quiet time, a reflective time when the hustle of the Holidays is winding down and the dawn of a New Year is imminent.

Now, it’s true that we can make a change at any time; it doesn’t take a New Year to have to change – but with a New Year at hand, our minds naturally reflect on where we were a year ago and where we want to be a year from now! And then we think about the things we want to do to change our life circumstance – we call these resolutions. We can resolve to change at any time, but I love this time of year because there is a momentum, a wave, a global event that we can use and harness it’s power.

Tomorrow I will write about how to change and what to do if you want to change, but I want to leave that for tomorrow. Today, on the last day of the year, I just want to encourage us all to look back at the year and reflect on it, learn from it, and let it go.

What did you learn this year? What mistakes did you make? What stories did you create about what’s possible for you? What stories did you create about what’s impossible for you? This time last year, were there changes that you wanted to make, but didn’t? Why not? Did you love yourself just a little bit more this year than you did last year? What’s one habit that you DON’T want to bring into 2012? Can today be the LAST DAY of that habit? When would now be a good time to let it go?

We are all moving ahead into 2012 – it’s close enough. But for this moment, let us think back about the year, let us reflect, take a moment to pause and really give 2011 a conscious goodbye – and with it – the habits, stories and beliefs that should stay with it. The first step to creating something new is letting go of what no longer serves you. What no longer serves you?

This is what I mean when I Tweet that “Letting go is the best way to hold on”. We try to control, we agonize over feeling powerless – but all that stress, anxiety and worry leaves us when we remember that we are truly guided by The Uni-verse. When you let go of what pains you, of what no longer serves you, you step into and tap into an energy that we do not still understand – and probably won’t ever truly fully comprehend. But this Energy, this Force, this Creative Uni-verse is guiding us ever so compassionately, ever so diligently, ever so mindfully to a greater and greater outcome. When we let go of the negatives, we leave room for even more awesomeness to enter.

When we see that EVERYTHING is happening FOR US and never TO US, we see the tremendous amount of Grace that our lives are filled with and we can nestle into that knowing that – indeed, every-little-thing-is-gunna-be-alright – and even better than that, everything is PERFECT as it is! So for today, leave the goal setting aside, leave the achieving at the door and just reflect – reflect on this year that is gone.

What can you let go of? What would feel SO GREAT to be free of? What are you most terrified to admit? Then – step into it and let it go!

Source: Why Letting Go Is The Best Way To Hold On!

All the best for you and me in 2012…

How You Can Use Negative Emotions To Create Massive Positive Change!

We are heading straight into the New Year! 2012 is almost here. If you’re like me and a lot of folks, this time of year can bring up all different types of emotions. The space away from work and the normal routine may put you in touch with emotions you may not feel the rest of the year.

So, if those emotions are there – it’s up to YOU to choose what to do with them. You see, emotions are like fuel. They push us to act – or not act. Many times the emotions we feel influence us to do things, either consciously or unconsciously. Today is a great day to get in touch with the emotions you are feeling. Take a second, breathe, stop what you are doing, try to stop thinking and just feel. Notice what emotions you are feeling. What are you feeling right below the surface? Anxiety? Worry? Joy? Happiness? Fear? Worry? Doubt? Elation? Positive Expectation? Negative Expectation? Whatever it is, notice it.

Now, take a moment and write down what you are feeling. Then ask yourself, why am I feeling this way? If an answer doesn’t come right away, that’s ok. Just sit with the question for a moment.

Now comes the critical choice that up until now you may not have been making consciously. I know that until I discovered I could use the fuel of emotion for good or for bad, I wasn’t consciously deciding to use it for good.

Source: How You Can Use Negative Emotions To Create Massive Positive Change!

Why This Is A GREAT Time Of Year To Kick The B/S To The Curb!

Britney Spears

As we step into the New Year, let’s step into it with a clean slate. That is to say, the stories we’ve been telling ourselves about why we can’t have what we truly want – let’s kick those to the curb.

Let’s take a moment, pause, think and feel our way towards our greatest good and the greatest good for all. What if it were true that your biggest fear was actually total BS? What if it were true that the things that you think are your greatest weaknesses are actually what makes you strong? What if it were true that from this moment forward life would never have to be the same again?

What if it were as simple as simply changing your mind about what you want and what you know you deserve? What if we made it our intention to Love ourselves as much as we Love the thing we Love most in life? And then, what if we went about sharing that Love with others and found that where we thought we would die, be destroyed or that life would come to an end – we actually came to life?

My friend, I’m here to remind you – what was, is GONE and what will be is up to YOU! We get the privilege to decide our way in and out of circumstances! No dark night of the soul lasts forever; but what can last forever is if you get stuck in the story of being in the dark night.

So let us take a moment and think about what would bring us so much joy to create in 2012. Not just for ourselves, but also for others. How can we add value and Love to other people’s lives? What are our gifts? Are we expressing them? Or are we letting them lay dormant? Are we truly walking our Faith and our beliefs or are we letting fear get the best of us? Let’s look over who is in our lives and why? Is there anyone in our life who is there with a hook? Are all of our relationships clean? Are we entering into each relationship with integrity, truth and with the intention to serve? Or are we emotional vampires? Or do we have emotional vampires in our lives that we are allowing to drain our energy?

This is the time to make that change. Sure, we can make the change at any time, but with the symbolic power of the New Year and the collective focus on being brand new, the power of this time of year is huge.

So what changes would you like to make in 2012? And – is there anyone in your life you would like to let go of? And is there anyone in your life that you would like to spend more time with? Are you making the best of life or are you letting fear get the best of you? And what new decision would you like to make now?

Source: Why This Is A GREAT Time Of Year To Kick The B/S To The Curb!

Twas the night before Christmas…

…in celebrity voices!

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