I don’t know about you, but Christmas always catches me by surprise. How can that be? It always arrives every year on December 25, sandwiched between Thanksgiving and New Years. And yet, most years December 1 rolls around and I go into my annual holiday panic. Not this year.
This year, I’m getting a jump on the whole gift giving scene, and you can too. Our friends at Oregon Plum organics are launching a gift-givers dream of aromatherapy eye-pillows. . .by offering the product at a crazy discount. They’re offering 12 hand-crafted, organic silk, lavender and flax seed eye pillows just in time for holiday shopping with free shipping ($19.99 value) each. What’s the catch, you say? Because you know there is one.
Um, no. These are hand-crafted aromatherapy eye pillows, luxurious silk, filled with organic lavender and flax seeds. Channel your inner Santa and think about everyone one your holiday gift list. Naughty? Nice? Doesn’t matter. This is one gift that truly fits all. This year, gift the gift of rest, relaxation, and aromatherapy. (Only 12 items available: offer good while supply lasts.)
I gave a talk about executive coaching this week to a group of nonprofit professionals and it was crazy cool! Nonprofit execs work too many hours with too few resources, and practically no strategic support. I want to change that. This means helping nonprofit leaders be more successful — and more fulfilled. Yum!
Important note: 1) transformative change is AMAZING, and, 2) success comes with a price. Stepping into your power can be a radical act, but it can also be a thrill-ride, so if you sign on with a coach, buckle up, baby! On the other hand, if you’re sort of meh about becoming a shinier, brighter version of you, do not, under any circumstances, engage a coach. You won’t like it, not one bit.
ONE SIZE FITS ALL
WARNING! Do Not hire a coach, if you are:
Unprepared to experience transformational growth
Unwilling to invest the time and energy to achieve it
Not open to considering new perspectives
Unwilling to experience fulfillment
Unprepared for honest feedback, as your coach will often goad you
Now get out there and get on with your fabulous life!
“Your story, that story that keeps replaying, the interaction of your expectations and what happens, the narrative, the disappoinments and the way you process it. . .it’s all invented.
“Ambien, the popular sleep aid, doesn’t actually help people sleep much more. No, the reason it works is that it’s an amnesiac. Ambien makes your forget that you didn’t get a good night’s sleep.
“. . .[our story] it’s all invented. It’s still real, the pain is real, the frustration is real, but the story that’s causing it all is something we made up, and something we can change. The pain is real, and so is a path to changing it.”
–Seth Godin
The thing is, what is your story? What is the thing you repeat to everyone who will listen, about that thing that happened to you. The Course in Miracles says that we are all operating under a shared illusion and the fact that it’s shared, doesn’t make it any more real.
So what about it, cookie? What is your story? For goodness sake, make it a good one!
Happy International Women’s Day! Show the amazing women you know, including yourself, a little well-earned appreciation!
“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.” Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Inspiration comes in the most interesting places. Donna Tartt talks about hers, and what it took to write The Goldfinch. Watch the interview here and leave a comment!
Fiction is a beautiful way to stick a finger in the eye of complacency, don’t you think? In a debut novel that is both funny and disturbing, Stephan Eirik Clark jumps feet first into a pool of what mightbe satire, taking a lingering look at how, as consumers of unnatural “food,” we might unintentionally be the makers of our own undoing. Is it possible? Is industrial food safe? Or is it just funny?
The time we’re most familiar with is a unit of measurement and the way in which we experience the advancement of our lives. Religious pundits have for centuries described time as a circle, ever evolving upward. Yet every year we experience a birthday, an anniversary, a holiday, making our perception of time both circular and linear. Confused yet? If so, then you need to read Fractal Time: The Secret of 2012 and a New World Ageby Gregg Braden. Braden’s perception of time is more like an ever-repeating, ever expanding circle that ripples out into infinity, both a wave and a spiral, like Fibonacci, where each rotation looks very much like the last, but more of it.
I got the counter-top compost bin I ordered, and have put it to good use; filling it and hauling it out to the green waste wagons at the curb. I continue to recycle what I can, even the smallest strips of plastic and unwanted paper. And guess what? The actual basket of trash that goes to the landfill has shrunk substantially. I mean Duh, right? And still. I didn’t expect it but there it is. The largest part of my household trash is either recycle- or compost-able. Yay!
I’ve reduced my personal carbon foot print by at least two-thirds, which I consider a personal best, and therefore pretty awesome. If I can do this kind of recycling on a weekly basis, I can redistribute my annual trash impact on the planet significantly, and that’s just crazy cool!
With the penning of the Declaration of Independence on this date in 1776, and the ratification of the United States Constitution beginning in 1787, the Founding Fathers and their political and intellectual progeny set in motion one of the greatest social experiments ever undertaken by a society: a democracy of, by and for the people, as Abraham Lincoln recalled in his now famous Gettysburg Address. It has never been easy, this little love affair we have with individual vs. societal rights, and if events of the last few years are any indication, it’s not going to lighten up anytime soon. As we continue our forward roll into the 21st century where conventional definitions of all we have known and held dear seem to be rapidly falling by the wayside, we’d be wise to remember that the Founding Fathers didn’t have all the answers either. What they did have was the courage, the vision, and the tenacity of spirit to ask the right questions, and to strive for answers that would benefit the many, not just the few. United We Stand. It’s always been the best and brightest version of us. Happy 4th of July, America!
The Grand Budapest Hotel, directed by Wes Anderson is chock full of Hollywood A-listers in both cameo and substantial roles and with Anderson at the helm, the result is a film so quirky and brilliant that you’ll want to see it more than once. The Grand Budapest Hotel is Anderson’s best film to date, a wry, exceptionally well-structured 5-act Shakespearean dramedy. If you liked any of Anderson’s prior movies, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums, or The Darjeeling Limited, to name a few, then The Grand Budapest Hotel will satisfy you in a way that these previous gems just narrowly missed.
First there’s the superb M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), impeccably dressed with such dizzying attention to detail that Coco Chanel would be jealous. Gustave runs the GBH, set amid a coniferous-lined mountainside, always gorgeously blanketed with a light dusting of snow, so breathtakingly beautiful it looks like CGI. Anderson used more than one locale for the filming to get just the right feel for the distinguished and sumptuous backdrop to the movie. At the GBH, Gustave not only runs a tight, elegantly appointed ship, he has a cadre of patrons, all older, almost all female, who return to the GBH to partake of the amenities that only M. Gustave can provide. The young Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), so called, he says, because after losing his family and home in the war — the movie is sandwiched between the first and second World Wars — he is nothing and has no one. Zero is hired by M. Gustave to maintain a specific role at the hotel, the actual description of which is unclear for while Gustave has a list of “don’ts”, it seems the lobby boy’s biggest “do” is to be Gustave’s personal assistant. Throughout the movie, we see Zero’s allegiance to Gustave unfold and grow in a variety of wry and often hilarious ways.
The entire story is told in flashback by the enigmatic owner of the hotel, a much older Zero (F. Murray Abraham), to the Young Writer (Jude Law), who is a patron of the current GBH. With it’s halcyon days behind it, a skeleton crew running it, and very few guests, the GBH is still going, maybe not strong, but going. Abraham invites Law to join him for dinner and over many courses, unravels the beguiling history behind the hotel. After one of Gustave’s favored patrons, Madame D. (a sublime Tilda Swinton) is murdered, Gustave travels to Madame D’s side because, “she needs me,” meaning, he needs to make sure 1) she looks good and 2) to find out whether she left him a little something in her will. At the reading, the lawyer, Deputy Kovacs (Jeff Goldblum) announces to the family that Madame D. has left Gustave the priceless painting, “Boy With Apple” which, according to Gustave, they had admired together many times. Chaos ensues as the heirs, led by Madame D’s son, Dmitri (Adrien Brody) along with his henchman, Jopling (Willem Dafoe), try to reclaim what they believe is rightfully the family’s. The film is full of fabulously quirky observations such as when Gustave views the dead body of Madame D, examines her nail polish and expresses approval for the new color because even in death, style and elegance are paramount.
My favorite line in the movie is Gustave’s, spoken during a moment when he and the Lobby Boy are trying to puzzle out the mystery behind the dilemma Gustave finds himself in:
“The plot thickens, as they say. Why, by the way? Is it a soup metaphor?”
I absolutely will not tell you what mess they are in as the film is all to methodical to spoil, but I will say that I frequently laughed out loud throughout the movie. Anderson’s usual themes of abandonment, trouble with authority, and overarching loyalty in the face of adversity are all present. The cast goes on and on: Harvey Keitel, Ed Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, and a host of others makes this film feel like summer camp for A-Listers The Grand Budapest Hotel is not for everyone. My mother thought it was weird, but she’s 80 and subtle, facetious humor is often lost on her. Me, I thought it was brilliant.
by Gregg Braden. Braden’s perception of time is more like an ever-repeating, ever expanding circle that ripples out into infinity, both a wave and a spiral, like Fibonacci, where each rotation looks very much like the last, but more of it.
persephone's step-sisters 