Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be

I am a sucker for Buddhist DIY. I've got plenty of stuff to "get over" and what feels like very little time to do it, even though I plan to live to be at least 100. Girls, I gotta lotta karma to burn! Lama Surya Das, formerly Jeffrey Miller the Jew, is a Westerner who is a Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism lineage holder. He quips his mother calls him the "Deli Lama."

Surya's writing style is akin to your most honest and kindest friend reassuring you that it really is as bad as you think, and that it really will be okay anyway. Surya has written other books that are equally enjoyable...and none of them require you to be anything other than you are. You can be Christian and a Buddhist, you can be asleep and be Buddhist, you can be atheist and be Buddhist, you can be lactose intolerant and be Buddhist. You don't even have to be Buddhist. You do not worship in Buddhism..."Buddha never promised he would save you; you have to save yourself."

All I might encourage you to be is curious, and I'd be glad to lend the book if you are hesitant to purchase or even check it out at the library.

Good night and sweet dreams!
Robin

Again with the childhood favorites

My little girls are letting me read Laura Ingall's series to them, and it's been such fun. We're in the "House on the Prairie" book now, but they've brought me the "Golden Years" several times asking me to read it because it has some interesting pictures (like Laura pulling the knife out of the pinned braid of her student in her first school).

A lot of stuff is sticking out now that I don't remember--like she was just fifteen when she taught that first school, and three of the students were older than she!---but a lot of it is familiar and loved.

I picked up These Happy Golden Years last night and read it full through by myself. And I cried, a lot, inexplicably. I remember my mother crying over it and being unable to finish reading it aloud to me, but I didn't understand why. I did not cry when I read it on my own at whatever young age I was. But why is it so evocative for me as an adult? Is it just my weird genetic inheritance or does it affect lots of people that way?

Olga

Thank You, Amy!

Thanks for recommending Take Big Bites by Linda Ellerbee. I've always enjoyed her work, including NBC News Overnight (back in my pre-cable nightshift era) and her first book And So It Goes. Now I want to read Move On. She's as smart, witty and down to earth as ever. Can make you laugh and cry, all in the same sentence. Last year as I was turning 50, I went to Canelo, AZ by myself, camped in a tent and played in the mud all day. It was a transformative experience. Linda has given me ideas for other ways to mark the anniversary of my birth in the years to come. I can't wait!

To quote: I am as young as I ever will be. I am never going to be any younger than I am this minute. This second. Judy

PS: also great recipes

PUSHED

Not really a book review, but a reading review.

Michelle and I went to the reading by Jennifer Block, author of PUSHED: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care (read excerpts). The author is young, attractive and very trendy-urban-hip, unlike the proponents of physiologic birth of the 60s and 70s with their flowing cotton dresses, unshaven legs, trailing the scent of patchouli. What she read of the book was factual and told from a journalistic point of view devoid of the stridency of the previous era. She has obviously done her research and I noticed none of the awkwardness that sometimes comes in describing hospital birth. She could "talk the talk". I didn't walk out with a copy of the book for the same reason I haven't seen Sicko-I live it everyday. Just today I shared with a patient that if I were having a baby today, it would be born at the Birth and Women's Health Center. Not that what we do is bad, it's just not the best way, not the family-centered way and it's not what everyone wants or needs.

Real cheese smells ("like the feet of angels" as I've heard some described), can be strong, earthy, nutty, and is not always pretty. But when you bite into it, it touches every taste bud and the sensory neurons light up; you know you have something real, the flavor lingers you realize that food can be an experience. Much like birth.

Compare to Kraft cheese food: ingredients processed beyond recognition, squeezed out in uniform slices and packaged in nice shiny paper. That's what we do, the Kraft cheese food version-there's a market for it and I just try to make sure those purchasing our "product" get the safest and best cellophane wrapped "delivery" out there.

Give me a good Gorgonzola, pungent, crumbly with streaks of green mold! Now that's cheese.

As we looked around the room, Michelle whispered to me: "Looks like she's preaching to the choir." And she was right, those attending were already believers, there were no altar calls or converts that night. But it was an enjoyable evening rubbing elbows with some ghosts from the past

Just for fun, check out this site: Belly Tales

SUITE FRANCAISE (Parte Deux)

Here's a quick follow-up to Michaele's August review of SUITE FRANCAISE. I can't think of the last time I felt such ambivalence about a book. Absolutely nobody in this story is happy, but why would they be? Their country has been occupied by the enemy, their husbands and sons have been killed or captured, and those who are getting by are portrayed in all their human frailty, much of it not very flattering. Yet I CANNOT STOP READING because this book contains the kind of truth and excellent writing that makes a classic. Wonderful.

~Michelle