What does “home” mean to you?

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Home, postaday2011

Home, for me, means safety and knowing my space inside out. I know that I’m home when I feel so comfortable that noises don’t bother me. When I can identify each creak, squeak and floor board movement, I feel completely at home. For some reason, hearing and knowing what goes on in the house makes me feel very safe.

I should also point out that since safety and knowing my space intimately defines “home” for me, my house here, isn’t the only place that I call home. My mother’s house is another one of my “homes”. I can navigate my mother’s house blindfolded and I can tell you the reason for every noise that goes on at night.

My aunt and uncle’s house in France feels like “home” even though I haven’t been there since 2005. My vivid childhood memories accumulated and reinforced year after year of long wonderful summer vacations, still makes their house, home for me. It just feels like a big part of me and informed a large piece of my character and personality. Essentially the same ease of nocturnal navigation and noise identification. The big difference, and this is a huge positive in the plus column, is my home in France also has the distinct smells emanating from my aunt’s kitchen of wonderful simmering vegetable soups and roasting pheasant and potatoes. My nose would be leading the parade back to my aunt’s kitchen. Sigh.

I have a confession to make, I, at one point during the year 2006, considered a hotel to be a “home”. My husband and I were in New York doing business as usual for the whole week. I can’t remember why we didn’t want to go home to our apartment in Jersey, something about having to be on the job site for 5:00 a.m. or some crazy hour. So my husband charged me with finding a hotel in the city so we would be more or less immediately available for the crews on the job site. All the hotels were sold out, some event in New York, but what else is new. The only hotel that had an availability was the Pierre Hotel on Fifth avenue. I so wanted to stay there, because my great-uncle, who I adored as a child, had been a chef there when he lived in New York, my great-aunt, whom I adored as well, was a seamstress for a designer boutique on Madison Avenue, this was during the 50’s and 60’s. I don’t know why nut those little facts made me feel a connection to the Pierre. My husband acquiesced to the hotel and when we arrived, the hotel manager herself, escorted us to the Escoffier Suite. We ended up spending a week there. I felt at home, the staff called me Mrs Nichols, I felt a little like “Eloise at the Plaza”. It was a vacation, a fantasy, old world luxury, it was pure decadent fun, I don’t regret it in the least.

Anticipating Autumn

Pumpkin Pie

I look forward to making cold weather fare such as lasagna with homemade tomato sauce, homemade chicken pot pie, banana walnut bread, homemade pumpkin pie, butternut squash soup. Anyone getting hungry?

The Third Industrial Revolution: Toward A New Economic Paradigm (EXCERPT)

Finally, I found what I’ve been trying to say over the past several months. Not the part of looking to Europe for the answers, though I always think that it makes very good sense to look around to see what others are doing and not to be so insular and limit ones options. I am speaking to a new economic paradigm and a new industrial revolution­, I particular­ly like the idea of lateral power sharing and not the stale old top down approach. This is exciting however, in our toxic political environmen­t how long will the train wait for us at the station or at the rate we are going, are we going to miss it?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Can Europe Be Spared Cascading Collapse?

If I remember correctly it was the bank that I think I hate the most that was heavily involved in the Latin American sovereign debt crisis, Citigroup, back then it was known as Citibank. Once Glass-Stie­gal was repealed, Citibank merged with I forget who and became Citigroup. Robert Rubin, the man who I think bears a huge responsibi­lity in transformi­ng Wall Street once again into the casino of the 1920’s, was head of Citigroup. He and his gang, Larry Summers was in there did this country a great disservice but made themselves vastly rich in the process. I think that the Euro sovereign debt crisis can be solved but the heads of state will need to explain it very clearly and carefully. When you are deep in the red, getting help in small doses prolongs the agony and doesn’t allow for any room to actively invest and get ahead. You need a full on infusion to clear up debts that are only draining you and then you can implement the correct strategies for sustainabl­e growth. The banks will have to eat some losses, small price they have to pay since they are waist deep in the whole Greece sovereign debt debacle. That is the lesson to be learned, any type of debt crisis and you are guaranteed to find greedy bank C.E.O’s saying “oops I did it again. Bail me out”
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Would you rather laugh with the sinners or cry with the saints?

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Laughter, postaday2011, Saints, Sinners

If I simply ignore the words, sinner and saint, I’d always rather laugh than cry, sometimes I laugh so hard that I cry and get a two for one, very satisfying indeed. However, the question isn’t whether I would rather laugh or cry? The dilemma is would I still rather laugh if it meant that I would be sharing company with sinners? Conversely, would I still want to be in the company of saints if it meant crying all the time?

I am strong in my own beliefs and personality that being around “sinners” wouldn’t lead me down the wrong path. Often, it seems that the “sinners” do have a lot more laughs, but what exactly do we mean by sinners? On the flip side, how does one define a saint?

I love Billy Joel as a song writer, but his black and white depiction of dull and staid saints juxtaposed against fun and flamboyant sinners, doesn’t do justice to either group, but it still is a great song. “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. Only the good die young.”

I want my cake and eat it too, laugh with the sinners and the saints and cry as little as possible. I think that I would make it a point to help the saints laugh, as it has been proven that laughter is good for the body and good for the soul. I than would have the sinners examine their conscious so that if tears were needed to cleanse some guilt, they would be accessible. The most that we can hope for is a balance, not too much crying or sinning yet as much laughter as possible, with as much goodness as we can manage.

The Funniest TV Show

Modern Family billboard on Disney California Adventure soundstage

Modern Family is amazingly well written and the chemistry between the cast members combined with the writing makes for a ton of laughter. However, I have to acknowledge that the BBC's Top Gear is a hilarious show, educational as well, especially what not to do with your cars if you are not a professional. The three hosts are given challenges to accomplish with the segment's vehicle and than hilarity ensues.

Government Shutdown Looms As Gridlock Over Federal Budget Grips Capitol Hill

If they were bickering over something less dire than disaster relief, that would be one thing but to continue to insist that disaster relief be passed only through offset spending cuts elsewhere in GOP favorite whipping boy of programs the green technology sector is wrong because they are blatantly abusing people who are really hurting for ideologica­l purposes.T­he irony is that this leads to the issue of climate change, people who have been wrecked because of mother nature’s increasing­ly savage outbursts and people who seeking jobs in the green technology sector would both be hurt by the GOP insistence that spending cuts must be done at whatever the cost, why not offset the costs at the doorstep of big oil?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Obama Congressional Black Caucus Speech: Stop Complainin’ And Fight

Actually the middle class, working class, Americans all across the board need to follow the President’­s call and we should go out and peacefully protest for our economic self-inter­ests meaning calling for manufactur­ing in America, investment­, research and developmen­t in green technology­, financial transactio­n taxes on Wall Street, fixing the housing crisis for the home owners instead of focusing only on the banks. We need to shout out to congress that there has to be a change and that they work for us. Enough of being the little cronies of corporate America, congress works for us.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Is all fair in love and war?

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Love, postaday2011, War

Is all fair in love and war? No, rules of civilization still apply. Rules of conduct, the moral code, gentlemen’s code of conduct, code of honor. These rules don’t get thrown in the rubbish bin simply because love or war are involved. Well, war is tricky because the whole point of war is to beat the other side. In the olden days before the introduction of technology, where the damage could be done from far away and the combatants were able to destroy their opponents food sources, ammunition and weaponry depots and demoralize them by attacking their civilians, war was basically limited to battlefields and soldiers. Is there any honor or fairness in two opposing armies meeting each other on a battlefield and fighting until either one side surrenders or they almost all die? I think some battle veterans would say yes, keep the women, children, the infirm safe. Nowadays, there is no honor in war and I have to say there has never been fairness either, which is why war is horrible.

Invent a new Olympic sport.

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Olympic, postaday2011, Sport

I say nay to the idea. There are more than enough Olympic sports in both the Winter and Summer versions. What I find to be sad about the Olympics and why I wouldn’t want to try to add a new sport to the roster is because in this day and age there is too much money and too much technology involved. I know that having the Olympics go back to its origins of the game is not possible. I don’t foresee the Olympic committee ever sanctioning nudity but at least getting back to basics would thereby level the playing field and that would be nice. I just can’t help but think that the Olympics have gone too far away from just the love, dedication, will and talent of the sport, whichever sport it is, to the more money behind the athlete, the farther he will go whereas the less monied athlete might never make it to the Olympics regardless of the love, dedication and talent. I find that to be a shame.