Rhododendron getting ready to bloom

One of my recent photos from the garden......Rhododendron getting ready to bloom

I joined YouPic.com a couple of years ago and am making a concerted effort to upload photos to their site. Here is the link to the rhododendron photo:

https://youpic.com/image/10858557/


And here is the actual photo for those of you who would prefer to see it here:

Zig Ziglar--quotes from a smart man

• What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
• The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.
• With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.
• If people like you, they'll listen to you, but if they trust you, they'll do business with you.
• Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.
• When you catch a glimpse of your potential, that's when passion is born.
• Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome.
• When you encourage others, you in the process are encouraged because you're making a commitment and difference in that person's life. Encouragement really does make a difference.
• He climbs highest who helps another up.
• The person who dumps garbage into your mind will do you considerably more harm than the person who dumps garbage on your floor, because each load of mind garbage negatively impacts your possibilities and lowers your expectations.
• Try to look at your weakness and convert it into your strength. That's success.
• If you learn from defeat, you haven't really lost.
• Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.
• You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.
• If you want to reach a goal, you must 'see the reaching' in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.
• Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining - it bores everybody else, does you no good, and doesn't solve any problems.
• Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.
• People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.
• You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
• Outstanding people have one thing in common: An absolute sense of mission.

Being distracted by criticism and negativity

"Don't be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you".'
~ Zig Ziglar


Saw this quote recently and it made an impression. You could replace the word criticism with negativity--it also works. Criticism is fine, as long as it's constructive (but it so seldom is). Negative criticism is destructive; its aim is to squash initiative and motivation. That's where negativity comes in. By negativity, I mean the words and behavior of those who wish to discourage others at all costs from dreaming and achieving those dreams. They behave that way because they don't want you to get ahead (of them). Maybe they had dreams and were defeated, by themselves or others or both. Instead of learning from their experiences, they want to inflict them on others.

You've got to really weigh the words of the naysayers. A few of them have your best interests at heart and don't want to see you get hurt; those are the people who love you and whom you trust and go to for advice. So listening to them is not in and of itself a bad thing--you can weigh what they say and decide for yourself whether or not to take a specific risk. They'll discuss it with you and won't try to stop you or squash your dreams. It's the naysayers you meet in everyday life, the ones who say, 'why would you want to do that?', or 'I would never do that', or 'I would never do it that way' ('You should do it my way'). Or the ones who, no matter what your plans, goals, or dreams, always put a damper on them by saying 'I thought about doing that, but there were too many problems involved, so if I were you, I would forget about it'.

I bring this up today because I realized today that too many women simply never pursue their dreams and ideas. They will tell you that they are bound by family obligations, work, and other things. But the truth is somewhere in between. I think what happens is that many women turn to other people in their lives for support and encouragement when they have a dream or an initiative they'd like to pursue. Or they discuss a potential dream with colleagues. And maybe the majority of the people they talk to are naysayers. And so they give up on a dream before it even gets a footing. We've simply got to really listen to each other, to respect the dreams and goals of others, and to encourage them to achieve them. This way of thinking cannot just apply to children or teenagers; adults must also be encouraged to achieve. It's part of my way of thinking--that motivating others to achieve is a lifelong goal. We are never 'finished products', we are always seeking and searching for ways to grow and become better. We are always looking for outlets for our talents. We should be able to encourage others to do that, and to allow ourselves to do that as well. It is what our lives are really about.

What I see in the faces of others

I’ve been thinking about kindness and compassion, and how it is possible to see them in the faces of other people. It strikes me when I look at photos or live footage of powerful political figures, celebrities and the like, that there is a hardness in some of the faces that is indicative of their true characters. There is also something about the eyes that gives their true natures away. Who was it said—‘the eyes are the window to the soul’. If they are, then I’ve seen some pretty hard and merciless souls in my life. I’ve also had the misfortune of having crossed paths with a few psychopaths, and their eyes are often black and soulless—empty and actually rather frightening. So their empty eyes are the windows to their lack of souls. Luckily, the bulk of my experience with other people has shown me that kindness and compassion are still in abundance. Why is it such that we often let one bad apple spoil the bunch? We must try to guard against that happening, because if we let that happen, the wrong people win. One bad apple out of ten means that ninety percent are still good. Those are good numbers.

There is likely no hard scientific evidence to back up my observations about what I see in the faces of others. Nonetheless, I cannot help but look at the faces of Trump and Putin and observe hardness there. They look rigid, angry, formidable, and mean. They don’t look happy nor do they look relaxed. They look like plagued souls, and perhaps that is the reason for their bullying natures toward others. The current Pope is a contrast to them both. His face looks relaxed, not rigid, and he has kind eyes. My reaction to a photo of the current pope is visceral; I instinctively know that I could trust him to be kind. I could not say that about Trump or Putin or men like them.

I gravitate toward kind and compassionate people and tend to remove myself from the presence of hard, rigid and mean people if I can, including psychopaths. Not all people are so lucky. I can remove myself by choice, whereas others are perhaps trapped by virtue of the fact that they live in a dictator-led country, or in an abusive relationship, or that they work at a job they need and cannot leave.

I do not like hard, rigid, formidable and mean people, whether they are men or women. I do not like power- and control-hungry people, nor do I like boorish, loud, or narcissistic individuals. I am not interested in getting to know others if their behavior involves humiliating others, making them feel worthless, or actively trying to destroy them. I instinctively shy away from these types of people because I know they are no good for me. That is how my mother would have phrased it. She would not have been overly-judgmental; she would merely have said ‘be careful’ or ‘don’t cast your pearls before swine’. In other words, don’t waste your time on them. It’s a good way to live if one can manage it.

Understanding what employees want

I am going to plug a book in this post, a book about modern workplaces and what employees want. And why employers should make sure that employees get what they want. Because what employees want is respect. That is the basis of any good relationship, and it is essential for employee motivation and productivity.

The book is entitled What Employees Want And Why Employers Should Make Sure They Get It.  Check it out here:  http://tinyurl.com/yd3jtx6p

Raising strong women and my father's contribution to that

I sometimes wonder if my father knew what he was doing when he sat at the dinner table together with me after dinner, discussing the world news and debating with me about different topics of interest. I was a teenager at that time, in high school, and we did much of the same in our history and sociology classes. So it only felt natural to extend this behavior to the home arena. It was considered a sign of intelligence to be interested in society, in politics, in the life around you. It was considered a sign of intelligence to have a reasoned opinion about some of the important events that were happening around us, and important to impart that opinion in a reasonable manner. I credit my father with teaching me that it was important to use your brain, to use logic, to use reason, in order to argue and debate with others. He was no fan of the bully approach, and would probably have coined the phrase ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ if it hadn’t already been coined before him. He was a great reader, as I’ve written about in this blog before. An intelligent man, an intellectual, a peace-loving man who was uncomfortable with raw conflict. He had served in WWII and lived to tell about it. I know he was proud to have served his country, but he was no war-monger. When the Watergate scandal broke, he and I watched the drama unfold on TV and watched the Watergate hearings (1973-74) together. We discussed it all, from all sides. His requirement for discussions and debates was that we used logic and reason, not just feelings, to present our opinions. He was not the kind of man that tolerated utterances such as ‘he’s an asshole’ or ‘what a jerk’ as interesting contributions to a discussion, even though we both might have felt that way about certain politicians at the time. And so I learned from him that discussion, debate and even arguments had their place in daily life. Conflict and differences of opinion were part of life; it was how you handled them that mattered. He was not perfect, and even he at times could opine about his feelings rather than his thoughts on certain matters. Then I reminded him of what he had taught us. He was not afraid to tell me when my arguments didn’t hold water, and that infuriated me, enough so that I could storm away from the dining room table, but I retreated and did my homework and came back stronger the next time. He wanted facts, logic, reason and a civil manner on top of it all. God love him for it. He helped to create strong, independent-thinking, and rational women (me and my sister) who are proud of their intelligence and talents. I think he did that because he knew what we would face in the world. I wish he was still alive, because I know he would have discussed the role of women with me now, in 2017, and how terrible it is that the current president and his cronies want to return women to a time when their opinions and wishes did not matter. He would have been appalled at the language that the president uses about women, and appalled that the world had come to this point where women were reduced to objects, to be abused and attacked, bullied and mocked. He would have deplored the state of the world in 2017.

I bring up my father because I believe the world needs more men like him. He was ahead of his time, in so many ways. He was one of the first men I knew who would absolutely have preferred to spend more time with his children and less time at the office. He had a good career as chief technical librarian for a number of companies, but he never brought his work home with him. He never spent evenings immersed in work projects that could wait until the next day. He never complained about how busy he was or how little time he had for everything. He was a family man and he made time for his family. His evenings were spent talking to us about the world, helping us with homework, and testing us in preparation for exams the next day. He and my mother bought me my first microscope set at one of the science fairs in our local grammar school. My father would patiently sit with me as we looked at slides of amoebas and diatoms together. He was as interested as I was in the natural world, but he could not keep up with me once I immersed myself in science as a career. But he was proud of me and proud of my endeavors. He called me at work once to tell me that he loved me, and I never forgot that. He would clip out articles from the newspaper and send them to me (my mother did the same)—science-related and literature-related. Because after science, it is world literature that interests me. That is in my genes from both my parents. My father was interested and involved in our lives and God bless him for it. If your father is the first man who teaches you about men, I’m glad that he was the man who taught me what a good man is. I used to tell him he was cute, and that made him happy—he would smile that little smile he had (my mother said he had a particular way of pursing his lips). I never left my parents’ house without telling them that I loved them. Because I knew that my father could disappear from my life at any moment due to his poor health. Unfortunately, I made my mistakes when it came to choosing men to share my life with, as have many others. A failed first marriage was the result. Even then, my father was supportive. I remember walking around our neighborhood, he with his cane to steady himself after a stroke he had had, and we talked about my unhappy marriage and what to do about it. He and I both knew that it would never improve. He understood what it would cost me to divorce my first husband, and he understood that my life would never be the same. Sadly, he didn’t live to witness my divorce nor did he get the chance to meet my current husband. But I know that he wished (and wishes) me well, in that universe of parallel lives where he lives now, perhaps as a healthy man. I hope so. I do know that he is still a loving one. 

Very good article by New York Daily News writer Linda Stasi

Brainiac Miss USA Kara McCullough says some really idiotic things  by Linda Stasi
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/stasi-usa-kara-mccullough-idiotic-article-1.3167660


Very good article by Linda Stasi of The New York Daily News about nuclear scientist Kara McCullough who just became the winner of the Miss USA pageant. A pageant I care nothing about, just for the record; I agree with Ms. Stasi--an outdated pageant, part of the dinosaur era that should soon become extinct.

My photo of the Vikersund ski jumping hill was used on a Polish sports website

http://sportsinwinter.pl/ps-w-vikersund-loty-na-final-raw-air-padnie-rekord-swiata-lista-startowa/

I found out recently that my photo of the Vikersund ski jumping hill was used on a Polish sports website. They even credited the photographer, me, which is not always the case. So I thank them for that and for using the photo. After all, I make my photography public and available for use, and it's a matter of trust--that you trust and hope that the people who use your photos will credit you. I make a special point out of doing so when I refer to or use other's photos.

Every now and then it's nice to see that some of the things you pour your heart and soul into, like my writing and photography, get noticed. Good karma. Thanks, universe!

Some reflections on the status of women on Mother's Day

I have been preoccupied with balance between the sexes since I was a teenager, with an atmosphere of mutual respect and love as the foundation of a relationship. Over forty years later, I don’t see much of it in modern society and I find that immensely disappointing. I watched the women in my mother’s generation raise their children and live within the constraints of the times they lived in (1950s-1960s). Most of them did not work outside the home, and the few that did (in my neighborhood) were considered to be unusual. There always had to be an excuse for why they worked—they needed extra money to help with the mortgage, or they needed to supplement their husband’s income if he was sick or on disability, etc. In addition, many of them took care of parents and other family members who were old or sick, respectively (unpaid work). Rarely was it considered that a woman, a wife, a mother, would want to work because she enjoyed working, because she wanted to put her education to use, because she wanted to contribute to progress in society in this way, because she wanted to give something back in the form of her intelligence, diligence and hard work. It was not considered that she might want to be a part of the process, might want to make a difference, and might want to matter. Wanting to work, to pursue a career had and has nothing to do with wanting to abandon her role as a wife and mother. It had and has to do with honoring herself and her unique talents.

I write this today, on Mother’s Day (in the USA), because I find it astounding that women haven’t come further in the USA than they have when it comes to childcare and working outside the home. I find it astounding that Europe is light-years ahead of the USA when it comes to federally-funded childcare centers. I find it astounding that we are still arguing about the importance of providing childcare for women in 2017 in the USA. I find it astounding that women still find that they need to defend themselves when they have children and want to work, whether part-time or full-time. It is not that they cannot work, no, there are jobs for them. Of course there are jobs for them; this is 2017. But there is still a limited support system in place to make it easier for them to do those jobs. So most of the women I know who raised their children during the past thirty years worked part-time or relied on family members to help them juggle it all. The few wealthy ones found nannies that they relied on while they pursued their careers. I am not going to argue for or against working full-time or pursuing a career for women who have children. I believe that feminism gives us the possibility of choice, and each person must choose wisely and live with her choice. But if women choose to work, then they should not be subjected to the subtle critical judgment that still exists—that she is a bad mother for wanting to leave her children and be part of the workplace. You might say that I am wrong, that this is not the case. But it is. Just take a look at the current president surrounded by his cronies who want to return the USA to a time when women had little or no say in society and in their relationships. They are white men of privilege who view women and children as their possessions and their trophies. Many of them behave like hypocritical banal evil men, not unlike many of the men in Hitler’s regime, who were married with their family lives intact while they broke up Jewish families and destroyed their lives. These men spout the importance of family values while doing exactly the opposite—they do what they want, when they want, and how they want. They promote a culture of attacks against women, they bully women, they diminish women (think Trump’s behavior toward most women he dislikes)--in short, they do not respect women, no matter what they say. They are not nice men. Some of them have been accused of spousal abuse (e.g. Steve Bannon http://www.snopes.com/2016/11/14/steve-bannon-was-accused-of-domestic-violence/). So these are not men you would want your daughters to marry. These are men who purport to know what is best for women and children. These are men interested only in power, control, money and prestige; they cannot really love their wives or their children, because real love is not about controlling others or using them as trophies. If you are interested in controlling others, you do not love them. These kinds of men I simply cannot abide. I want nothing to do with them. I do not believe in dialoguing with them, because you will simply be shouted down, squished under their thumbs, bullied, diminished, disrespected, told you are stupid, dismissed, ignored, frozen out (in the workplace), told you are ‘too emotional’, too difficult. The list of abusive terms and behaviors is endless. These men should teach a course—How to keep women down. Even in the church, women’s roles are limited; men rule the roost. It simply has become boring to consider that old men in funny hats in Rome are telling us how to live our lives. While I respect the current Pope for his kindness and compassion for others, I have little use for the hierarchy of the church. I am more preoccupied with having a personal relationship with Christ. I remember back in the 1980s when I was young and foolish and didn’t grasp the depth of men’s power in the world, that I argued with a priest about the phrasing “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her…..” There was so much emphasis on the first part of this statement when I was growing up, that wives should obey their husbands. I argued with the priest that the latter part of the statement was just as important, and that I had no interest in obeying a husband unless he loved me as Christ loved the church. That put an end to that discussion, since most men simply cannot hold a candle to Christ. I guess I could have been considered a smart-ass at that time; I say now—good. More power to me. But after a lifetime of fighting injustice toward women in the workplace, and there is plenty of it, I am tired. I am leaving it over to the next generation. You’ll find me in my garden now.

It is astounding that in 2017 that women are still subject to abusive behavior publicly and privately. I applaud the women who stand up against these men, who fight them, who challenge them, who sue them, who take them to court (e.g. for spousal abuse), who call out their behaviors. I applaud the women who do all these things while raising their families, working full-time, and taking care of aging parents. I applaud the women I know today, on Mother’s Day, because without them, the world would simply not be a place worth living in. But I believe that the time has come to take another route toward changing the world. I believe that women should turn their backs on the type of world many of these men stand for. They should not marry them, they should not have children with them, and they should ignore them. I hope the younger generation of women will find it in their power to defeat these kinds of men. I will support them even if I cannot lead them. I cannot wait for these dinosaurs to die out.