![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
1. Oh dear, it's only January, and already the political environment couldn't be more toxic.
Shout out though to my elected reps who are doing a great job - Jerry Nadler (who I keep voting for), Hakeem, and Chuck Schumer. Go team. [Yes, the Impeachment Trial starts next week...this is going to be painful, no matter which side of the divide you are on. But I knew it was going to happen the day after the election. It was just a matter of when and how. I do not know the result.]
The whole thing gives me a headache. So, I try to stay away from it. With mixed success. So say we all, right?
Anyhow, the Washington Post has a quiz to show which of the current candidates agree with you the most.
No surprises for me. It's pretty much as I expected.
Bloomberg, Warren, Steyer, Klobavech agree with me the most. Gabbard and Saunders - the least. Bloomberg is surprisingly close to Warren in his views.
[ETA: It's probably worth noting that I changed my political affiliation back to Democrat so that I could vote AGAINST Bernie Saunders and Biden in the primaries. Was discussing with Tonya at work.
Tonya: Bloomberg would be the ideal candidate if he was just more well-known.
ME: Well, I agree -- although he does have an advantage right now, most of his competitors are benched for the Impeachment Hearings.
Tonya: Oh, true.
ME: I don't mind Warren, although she has a few crazy ideas that can't work.
Tonya: She won't get elected.
ME: I'm worried about Saunders.
Tonya: He's not electable. There's no way.
Me: He makes my skin crawl. If it's between him and what's his name, I'm not sure what I will do. I don't think I can vote.
Tonya: Wouldn't worry about it. Not electable. He's too crazy. ]
2. How one librarian tried to squash Goodnight, Moon
3.
Freedom from noise and goal-directed tasks, it appears, unites the quiet without and within, allowing our conscious workspace to do its thing, to weave ourselves into the world, to discover where we fit in. That’s the power of silence.
Noora Vikman, an ethnomusicologist, and a consultant on silence for Finland’s marketers, knows that power well. She lives in the eastern part of Finland, an area blanketed with quiet lakes and forests. In a remote and quiet place, Vikman says, she discovers thoughts and feelings that aren’t audible in her busy daily life. “If you want to know yourself you have to be with yourself, and discuss with yourself, be able to talk with yourself.”
“Silence, Please” has proven to be the most popular theme in Finland’s rebranding, and one of the most popular pages on VisitFinland.com. Maybe silence sells because, so often, we treat it as a tangible thing—something easily broken, like porcelain or crystal, and something delicate and valuable. Vikman remembers a time when she experienced the rarity of nearly complete silence. Standing in the Finnish wilderness, she strained her ears to pick out the faintest sounds of animals or wind. “It’s strange,” she says, “the way you change. You have all the power—you can break the silence with even with the smallest sounds. And then you don’t want to do it. You try to be as quiet as you can be.”
This is true. I've started meditating, not to think about things, but to NOT think about anything. To quiet my brain. I don't need to analyze or ponder my life, I do that too much already. I will never be accused of thinking too little or not enough, if anything I think too much or overthink. I have an over-active brain or busy brain.
Headspace and mindfulness meditation and sometimes yoga are the only ways I've found to quiet it. And as a result of this -- I sleep better. I'm less compulsive. Less prone to angry outbursts. And not bothered by things as much. It's helped quiet the nervous energy -- that had bubbled out of control due to perimenopause -- which is pure hell. I've been suffering from perimenopause since I was 35. I think I've finally managed to figure out how to cope with it. It only took fifteen years. Just in time for menopause -- which will hopefully start this year. Yes, I'm looking forward to menopause. That's how shitty perimenopause truly is.
4. The British Once Built a 1, 100 mile hedge through the middle of India?
In 1878, W.S. Halsey, Commissioner of Inland Customs, reported on the state of British India’s giant hedge. The hedge had grown to more than 1,100 miles long, he wrote, long enough to stretch from Berlin to Moscow. More than half of the barrier, Halsey reported, was made up of “perfect and good green hedge” or “combined green and dry hedge.” In parts, it was 12 feet tall and 14 feet across.
The British Empire had been working on this giant hedge for at least 30 years. It had, at long last, reached “its greatest extent and perfection,” wrote Roy Moxham in The Great Hedge of India. It was an impressive monument to British power and doggedness. One British official wrote that it “could be compared to nothing else in the world except the Great Wall of China.”
As he reported on the extent and health of the hedge, though, Halsey knew its time was coming to an end. That same year, the empire stopped all funding for the mad project, and it was not long before the hedge had disappeared entirely. When Moxham, an English writer, went looking for it in 1996, he couldn’t find a trace.
Shout out though to my elected reps who are doing a great job - Jerry Nadler (who I keep voting for), Hakeem, and Chuck Schumer. Go team. [Yes, the Impeachment Trial starts next week...this is going to be painful, no matter which side of the divide you are on. But I knew it was going to happen the day after the election. It was just a matter of when and how. I do not know the result.]
The whole thing gives me a headache. So, I try to stay away from it. With mixed success. So say we all, right?
Anyhow, the Washington Post has a quiz to show which of the current candidates agree with you the most.
No surprises for me. It's pretty much as I expected.
Bloomberg, Warren, Steyer, Klobavech agree with me the most. Gabbard and Saunders - the least. Bloomberg is surprisingly close to Warren in his views.
[ETA: It's probably worth noting that I changed my political affiliation back to Democrat so that I could vote AGAINST Bernie Saunders and Biden in the primaries. Was discussing with Tonya at work.
Tonya: Bloomberg would be the ideal candidate if he was just more well-known.
ME: Well, I agree -- although he does have an advantage right now, most of his competitors are benched for the Impeachment Hearings.
Tonya: Oh, true.
ME: I don't mind Warren, although she has a few crazy ideas that can't work.
Tonya: She won't get elected.
ME: I'm worried about Saunders.
Tonya: He's not electable. There's no way.
Me: He makes my skin crawl. If it's between him and what's his name, I'm not sure what I will do. I don't think I can vote.
Tonya: Wouldn't worry about it. Not electable. He's too crazy. ]
2. How one librarian tried to squash Goodnight, Moon
3.
Freedom from noise and goal-directed tasks, it appears, unites the quiet without and within, allowing our conscious workspace to do its thing, to weave ourselves into the world, to discover where we fit in. That’s the power of silence.
Noora Vikman, an ethnomusicologist, and a consultant on silence for Finland’s marketers, knows that power well. She lives in the eastern part of Finland, an area blanketed with quiet lakes and forests. In a remote and quiet place, Vikman says, she discovers thoughts and feelings that aren’t audible in her busy daily life. “If you want to know yourself you have to be with yourself, and discuss with yourself, be able to talk with yourself.”
“Silence, Please” has proven to be the most popular theme in Finland’s rebranding, and one of the most popular pages on VisitFinland.com. Maybe silence sells because, so often, we treat it as a tangible thing—something easily broken, like porcelain or crystal, and something delicate and valuable. Vikman remembers a time when she experienced the rarity of nearly complete silence. Standing in the Finnish wilderness, she strained her ears to pick out the faintest sounds of animals or wind. “It’s strange,” she says, “the way you change. You have all the power—you can break the silence with even with the smallest sounds. And then you don’t want to do it. You try to be as quiet as you can be.”
This is true. I've started meditating, not to think about things, but to NOT think about anything. To quiet my brain. I don't need to analyze or ponder my life, I do that too much already. I will never be accused of thinking too little or not enough, if anything I think too much or overthink. I have an over-active brain or busy brain.
Headspace and mindfulness meditation and sometimes yoga are the only ways I've found to quiet it. And as a result of this -- I sleep better. I'm less compulsive. Less prone to angry outbursts. And not bothered by things as much. It's helped quiet the nervous energy -- that had bubbled out of control due to perimenopause -- which is pure hell. I've been suffering from perimenopause since I was 35. I think I've finally managed to figure out how to cope with it. It only took fifteen years. Just in time for menopause -- which will hopefully start this year. Yes, I'm looking forward to menopause. That's how shitty perimenopause truly is.
4. The British Once Built a 1, 100 mile hedge through the middle of India?
In 1878, W.S. Halsey, Commissioner of Inland Customs, reported on the state of British India’s giant hedge. The hedge had grown to more than 1,100 miles long, he wrote, long enough to stretch from Berlin to Moscow. More than half of the barrier, Halsey reported, was made up of “perfect and good green hedge” or “combined green and dry hedge.” In parts, it was 12 feet tall and 14 feet across.
The British Empire had been working on this giant hedge for at least 30 years. It had, at long last, reached “its greatest extent and perfection,” wrote Roy Moxham in The Great Hedge of India. It was an impressive monument to British power and doggedness. One British official wrote that it “could be compared to nothing else in the world except the Great Wall of China.”
As he reported on the extent and health of the hedge, though, Halsey knew its time was coming to an end. That same year, the empire stopped all funding for the mad project, and it was not long before the hedge had disappeared entirely. When Moxham, an English writer, went looking for it in 1996, he couldn’t find a trace.