Gratitude

My niece, Chaunine, posted this on Facebook this morning: "Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings." ~William Arthur Ward. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges in this time of instant gratification, is to find time to be grateful for all the things that we enjoy. As I read about other nations and times, I cannot believe how fortunate we are to live in a country and time that offers us so much when others have so little. Thanksgiving is a time to express gratitude to a Heavenly Father who gives us so much as well as to our family and friends (and acquaintances), who all teach us to become our better selves. So, this holiday season, let's give thanks!

How Does Your Blog Measure Up?

My colleague, Gideon, talks about how blogs should be evaluated. How does your blog measure up? :)

The Digital Writer: Criteria for Evaluating Research Blogs

thedigitalwriter.blogspot.com

Meditation

"Remember that your Mindfulness Meditation takes effort, especially at the beginning. But as the practice grows and deepens, it becomes more and more beneficial to you and supports your efforts in whatever you do in your life. You might think of the practice as planting a tree which requires a lot of care as a small plant, but which will, because of your efforts as the gardener, grow into a large, strong tree, no longer needing any service, but instead offering shade, bearing fruit and giving to you and those around you for the rest of its life."

From my meditation teacher and friend.

Healthcare Pains

I have been following the latest American media circus--the newly written healthcare legislation which no one has read, it seems, but which is going up before Congress this weekend (who will be there to vote, by the way on a weekend?). And it is discouraging, to say the least. After listening to the President, I felt as uninformed about the ramifications of the trillion dollar bill for our children's futures and frustrated with a political system that is so opaque in its legislation. Who will read the darn thing? How can we live in such an affluent society that does not take care of its aging and poor populations? And I don't mean the government. . . we are as individuals ultimately responsible for those who live around us. The Book of Mormon cautions us against neglecting the vulnerable in our society. Hmm . . . I suppose that I am fired up while I am reading "Education Denied" by Katarina Tomasevski, about what it really means to uphold human rights, and hope that someday people will want to do random acts of social kindness every day. What a difference it would make.

Reading Forwarded Emails

Among many interests, I love history. This first blog contains my personal lesson for the day. Don't blithely read and forward what you receive, no matter who the sender might be. I was confused when I received an email of "History Unfolding," a blog purportedly by David Kaiser, a historian from Jamestown, RI, and after looking up his name to see if he was legitimate, forwarded it to some family and friends to ask their opinion. The response from one astute reader was the following link where Kaiser has posted a disclaimer about the piece on Saturday April 18, 2009 on his real Blogspot: http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/. Read his well-formulated ideas; as a professor of critical reading, I should have known better, but now know to go to sites such as Snopes.com to check the source--something I always caution my students to do. Kaiser reported on April 11th that:

"During the past seven days this blog has had about 1100 hits, which may be a record. I do hope some of my new patrons will return, but the reason for the outburst of interest is quite ironic: the fraudulent attribution to myself of a piece of right-wing hysteria which continues to circulate around the net. Snopes.com, a site which specializes in exposing fraud, published this almost immediately when I called it to their attention, and during the past ten days 168 hits on historyunfolding.com have come from there. They have traced it to an anonymous comment on a right wing blog last November. It has been misattributed to a couple of other people since then. "

Live and learn . . .