Happy Thanksgiving

Thanks for being here,

for making a difference,

and for doing work that matters.

Thanksgiving Prayer

A Thanksgiving Prayer

by Alexis C Jolly

(Rhythmically, it's modeled off the Christian "Lord's Prayer," primarily out of laziness, but please modify it to fit your own religious, spiritual, skeptical, or atheistic beliefs.)

Our Universe, which is everywhere:

Man, we are really, really small compared to you.

I hope we learn to stop killing each other and live in peace,

because that would be awesome.

We're so lucky to have this food, and each other,

even though we've all acted like real jerks before--to strangers and, even more inexplicably, to each other.

But I hope we learn to act less crappy

and instead learn to appreciate the gifts and the love that surround us, each and every day.

Dig in.

Believe

Believe...

in the goodness of others.

...that all things are possible.

...in the hope of a new day.

...the best is yet to come.

1st anniversary

For what it's worth...

Today is the one-year anniversary of this blog.

... and so I continue in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.

What's your contribution?

I AM CERTAIN THAT AFTER THE DUST OF CENTURIES HAS PASSED OVER OUR CITIES, WE, TOO, WILL BE REMEMBERED NOT FOR VICTORIES OR DEFEATS IN BATTLE OR IN POLITICS, BUT FOR OUR CONTRIBUTION TO THE HUMAN SPIRIT.

-John Fitzgerald Kennedy

thirty-six

the following is an excerpt from the book

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life

"From our first years in the educational system, society has ways of discouraging the expansive, questing mode of attention that’s essential to creativity and personal rebirth. In one poignant indication of what happens when young children learn to switch off active focusing and just go through the motions, second-graders from different schools were given a problem to solve: “There are twenty-six sheep and ten goats on a ship. How old is the captain?” Nearly 90 percent of students from traditional classrooms answered “Thirty-six”. Not one pointed out that the problem didn’t make sense, compared to almost a third of the kids from less conventional, more mindful classrooms."

— Winifred Gallagher

Yesterday I gave this problem to my kids to solve...

Victoria laughed and laughed.

Harry said, "That's not even a real question."

Later that night Harry asked me if I had any more of those "funny questions". I told him, "No. It's just something I read in a book."

Then he said that he made up a question for me...

"If a man is 82 and a woman is 42 and their cat is the same age as the woman, how old is the cat?" he questioned me.

"42" I said.

"Wrong!" he said with glee. "Cat years are like dog years, each year is 7 years. So, the cat is 6." he explained, as a matter of fact, and then he went to bed.

I have to say, I do love their school.

:)

a happy holiday

"Eddie Murphy, Michael Jackson, Mos Def, Mayor Bloomberg, and Barack Obama would like to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving."

This is, hands-down, my No. 1 favorite Thanksgiving card!

check out more of Michael Pellews pop culture art