September 13, , 2004

Today's Tune (On/Off)

"The Rose "

From the Inside Out...
A True Heart's Nature

Yes You Can!...
Be Close to Death,
Closer to Spirit

Far Horizons...
Aberdeen Harbor

Links That Shine...
SHY United

Fascinating Facts...
Code Breaking

Laughing It Off...
A Little Knowledge

Untangling the Web...
What a Site!
&
Computer Ease

Look at That!...
The Early Worm ...

Joyful Lifestyles...
Just the Facts, Folks

BE the World
You Want to See!

Renowned author and
psychologist Dr. Toni Grant tells a story about true friendship. An old friend arrived early to escort Dr. Toni to an event, so she had to greet him with no makeup and her hair in a mess. She apologized for this unsightly appearance ... whereupon the dear man replied, "Why, Toni, have you forgotten — I love you from the inside out!"

~ Chelle ~

From the Inside Out
A TRUE HEART'S NATURE

Six minutes to six, said the great round clock over the information booth in Grand Central Station. The tall young Army lieutenant who had just come from the direction of the tracks lifted his sunburned face, and his eyes narrowed to note the exact time. His heart was pounding with a beat that shocked him because he could not control it. In six minutes, he would see the woman who had filled such a special place in his life for the past 13 months, the woman he had never seen, yet whose written words had been with him and sustained him unfailingly. John Blanchard stood up from the bench, straightened his Army uniform, and studied the crowd of people making their way through Grand Central Station. He looked for the girl whose heart he knew, but whose face he didn't, the girl with the rose.

His interest in her had begun thirteen months before in a Florida library. Taking a book off the shelf he found himself intrigued, not with the words of the book, but with the notes penciled in the margin. The soft handwriting reflected a thoughtful soul and insightful mind. In the front of the book, he discovered the previous owner's name Miss Hollis Maynell. With time and effort he located her address. She now lived in New York City. He wrote her a letter introducing himself and inviting her to correspond. The next day he was shipped overseas for service in World War II.

During the next year and one month the two grew to know each other through the mail. Each letter was a seed falling on a fertile heart. A romance was budding. Blanchard requested a photograph, but she refused. She felt that if he really cared, it wouldn't matter what she looked like. 'Suppose I'm beautiful. I'd always be haunted by the feeling that you had been taking a chance on just that, and that kind of love would disgust me. Suppose I'm plain (and you must admit that this is more likely). Then I'd always fear that you were going on writing to me only because you were lonely and had no one else. No, don't ask for my picture. When you come to New York, you shall see me and then you shall make your decision.'

When the day finally came for him to return from Europe, they scheduled their first meeting — 7:00 PM at the Grand Central Station in New York City. "You'll recognize me," she wrote, "by the red rose I'll be wearing on my lapel." So at 7:00 he was in the station looking for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he'd never seen.

I'll let Mr. Blanchard tell you what happened:

"A young woman was coming toward me, her figure long and slim. Her blonde hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears; her eyes were blue as flowers. Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness, and in her pale green suit she was like springtime come alive. I started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was not wearing a rose. As I moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips, 'Going my way, sailor' she murmured.

"Almost uncontrollably I made one step closer to her, and then I saw Hollis Maynell. She was standing almost directly behind the girl. A woman well past 40, she had graying hair tucked under a worn hat. She was more than plump, her thick-ankled feet thrust into low-heeled shoes.

"The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away. I felt as though I was split in two, so keen was my desire to follow her, and yet so deep was my longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned me and upheld my own.

"And there she stood. Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible, her gray eyes had a warm and kindly twinkle. I did not hesitate. My fingers gripped the small worn blue leather copy of the book that was to identify me to her. This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which I had been and must ever be grateful.

"I squared my shoulders and saluted and held out the book to the woman, even though while I spoke I felt choked by the bitterness of my disappointment. 'I'm Lieutenant John Blanchard, and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad you could meet me; may I take you to dinner?'

"The woman's face broadened into a tolerant smile. 'I don't know what this is about, son,' she answered, 'but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat. And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test!'"

It's not difficult to understand and admire Miss Maynell's wisdom. The true nature of a heart is seen in its response to the unexpected. "Tell me whom you love," Houssaye wrote, "And I will tell you who you are."

~By Sulamith Ish-Kishor( 1896-1977)
First Printed in Collier's Magazine, 1943

Yes You Can!
BE CLOSE TO DEATH, CLOSER TO SPIRIT

"You are going to die."

"What?.." I said, slightly dazed.

"If you don’t take these chemo treatments, you are going to die," he barked.

I listened to the fear in his voice. He was trying to scare me into it. Here I am paralyzed from the waist down by a tumor and I'm thinking to myself, doctors are supposed to be healing people, not shouting at them. I hung up the phone as he was yelling.

This was not my first meeting with cancer. This was my second, only one year after I was supposedly cured. Now all they could offer was chemo.

When the realization sets in that this could mean the end of your life, there is a break that occurs. Everyone reacts differently. After the fear turned into anger and frustration at a life out of control, I sat alone and wept like a baby. Not so much for the end of life itself – I had always had a strong belief that physical life was just a time of lessons and that death was a walk through a door to the real life. No, it wasn’t sorrow for leaving. I had no family, no children, no unfinished obligations. I was rebelling. I just didn't want to be forced to go through this torturous disease process again.

After accepting that this may be a life or death situation, I made up my mind. I chose to stay. I wanted to live. There was more to do in this life. I felt I had not accomplished what my spirit had set out to do. I was sure I wanted to stay, but inside I knew. In the back of my mind, I knew the possibility that I may have run out of time.

This was now June of ‘89 and I had been going downhill since March, slowly losing control of my legs until I required a wheel chair. (I now have a new-found respect for the handicapped after trying to maneuver around my little apartment and negotiating with friends for rides.) I had plunged myself into a regimen of alternative healing treatments including acupuncture, Reiki (a hands-on healing technique), macrobiotics, herbs, visualization and anything else I thought might work, but it wasn’t reversing it. There were small gains, but I felt myself slipping away.

I decided to go for chemo for a while, but it didn’t seem to be helping either. My friends had to walk up to my second floor apartment and carry me down like a sack of potatoes and drive me to treatments. They had to cook and clean for me. I saw the look in their eyes behind their cheerful smiles and well wishing. They too were thinking what the doctors were: it’s just a matter of time.

Each chemo session was a procedure of mental and emotional discipline. The stifling chemical smell lay thick in the air as I waited, pillow on my lap, until they pumped the drugs into me through the small plastic receptacle which was embedded in the top of my hand. Just to sit in the little room at the clinic with all the other ill people was hard enough. Then I knew what was coming.

I can’t explain the feeling that follows a treatment. It is like my body is racing and I am wide awake, my stomach always on the verge of giving up my breakfast. All I wanted to do was sleep until the strange, uncomfortable feeling wears off, but it was impossible. So I lay there switching channels on the TV for hours to take my attention off of it, until I was feeling human again.

This went on for about three months. I did half the treatments recommended and stopped. Despite the doctor’s dire warnings, I knew that I just couldn’t do any more.

The last time I wheeled into the clinic for a treatment, something strange came over me. I was really not wanting to be there. The feeling built and built until I grabbed the wheels on my wheel chair and just bolted. I took off for the front door of the hospital, the nurses shouting and chasing me down, until I was stopped because I didn’t have the strength to roll myself up the incline leading to the front door, to freedom. It was quite a hilarious scene amidst the gravity of the situation. I was sobbing about not wanting any more. When they caught up with me, they told me something that I had not thought of before, that it is my body and I can do what I want with it. Yes. It was so simple. This is my body, my life.

That December, I left my decaying relationship with my girlfriend, all my friends – everything – packed up a few things and moved down to my father’s apartment in Florida. My mother had passed from this place just last year and I'm sure he thought I would too. I know it was hard for him.

I pretended to see the doctors so he wouldn’t worry. Then I took all my pills, said another prayer – "your will, God" – and flushed them down the toilet. I really didn't know if I could live, but I had to believe. That’s all I had, my belief. It was a great leap of faith, a gamble with the highest of stakes. Although I was aware of my spirituality, this was my greatest spiritual test, one which would determine just how committed I was to what I felt was the truth.

Something happens when you are in the whirlwind of a crisis, when you are so concentrated on healing and believing. It is as if it triggers a mechanism that denies you from thinking about the worst possible scenario. It’s what prevents you from collapsing on the floor in a heaving mass of jelly. This concentration kept my energy focused on living, not dying. It was more than positive reinforcement, it was an absolute necessity for healing. For without the daily, hourly, even minute-to-minute thoughts creating a mantra of life, love and God, I would succumb to the human fears that would bring to me what I feared. That I knew. We attract to us what we concentrate on.

Every day at my father’s apartment, I would read inspiring material, eat healthy food, sit in the sun. Every day I would get up, get myself dressed and walk as best I could. At first it was just moving slowly down the narrow hall of the apartment over and over, slinging my legs with all my might, steadying myself with my hands. So much so, my handprints started to show on the walls. Then I moved to a walker and was able to go outside for periods at a time. Slowly, the life force was coming back to my legs. Finally I was walking on my own, slightly hunched, like a little old man, or a toddler tentatively taking his first steps… my rebirth.

By May of 1990 I was walking pretty well. By June I was ready to leave Florida and resume my life in Rhode Island. I had gone from completely paralyzed to fully walking in six months. I was skinny, but I was alive – at least for the time being. I showed myself to the doctors who said before that I would not live. They weren’t impressed. But I was.

Every now and then I look back at the whole ordeal. When someone wonders aloud how I ever got through it, I silently wonder how, also. I try to picture myself going through it to try to understand what it took to make it, but even that is too hard. The only things I will never forget are the lessons I learned.

There were many revelations in my healing process. The biggest of them all is forgiveness – both of self and of others – and acceptance. Acceptance of who I am, how the world is and how others are. When these hurdles fell, I started to heal. You can't measure it on a graph, you just know it’s true.

Being once so close to death, I am now closer to Spirit than ever before. In an intimate way, every day, I am grateful for the new life that I have. I am also more aware that I am a part of God and a part of all things. To live life with this knowing and strong belief is a blessing. It keeps me centered and calm, even in the midst of crisis and confusion. It keeps my heart open and helps me in sensing my spiritual self at all times.

The soul that is here now telling this story is a far different person than before. The old me is gone, the new and hopefully improved version remaining with another test under my belt, another living testament to the strength of Spirit, the willingness to release old ways and the free will to choose to survive. Another soul still here working through the earthly experience.

I try to catch myself when I waste my time being angry or regretful. I take full advantage of all that I can to express my creativity and to work through all my obsessions, anxieties and fears. I am still scared and uncertain about many things, but I face them more bravely now. I try to live each day as if it were the last. Sometimes this means just sitting alone in silence or walking in the woods. But most times it means a lot of activity, as I am anxious to experience as much as I can, and to contribute as much as I can, and learn as much as I can. For at any time when I least expect it, Spirit could sneak up behind me, tap me on the shoulder politely and quietly say, "It’s time....," and I want to be able to honestly reply, "I’m ready."

Craig Howell is a New Age writer, musician, composer, poet and publisher.
He is the director of The Eyes of Kwan Yin, a spiritual work located online at
www.MyKwanYin.com. He is part-owner and founder of Sun Sprite
Publishing, a metaphysical book publishing company which just published a
new gift book called "A Flower Unfolds," spiritual teachings in verse
from Kwan Yin with beautiful Asian art, channeled by Marjorie Musacchio.
He can be reached at kwanyin@ureach.com or by toll free voice mail at 877-883-4798.

Hong Kong

One of Hong Kong's oldest sights is the floating
village in Aberdeen Harbor, a natural typhoon shelter at the south side of Hong Kong Island. It was a pirates’ den two centuries ago and later the main fishing and entrée port of pre-colonial Hong Kong. This fascinating fishing port is only indirectly connected with Aberdeen in Scotland: it was named after Lord Aberdeen who was Foreign Secretary from 1841 to 1850. The first British sailors who used it as a watering place called it 'Waterfall Bay', a name now given to another place. Where a rocky stream discharges into the harbor was the village of' Heung Kong Wai, which means 'the Walled Village of the Fragrant Lagoon'. The sailors learned this name, pronounced it Hong Kong and applied it to the whole island. Aberdeen is a true cultural experience, full of bright colors, strange sounds and mystifying aromas. Take a sampan ride to see what it's all about, then enjoy a sumptuous seafood dinner at one of the large floating restaurants in the harbor. The sampan travels beside the Jumbo Restaurant, a giant eatery comprised of three huge boats permanently anchored in that harbor, worthy of some colorful photos and video.

GLOBAL ARCHIVES:

Fascinating Facts
CODE BREAKING

WHAT ARE THE INTERNET COUNTRY CODES WORLDWIDE? FIND OUT HERE:

Laughing It Off
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE ...

The following are actual answers given on history tests and in
Sunday school quizzes by children between 5th and 6th grades.
They were collected over a period of three years by two teachers ...

Ancient Egypt was old. It was inhabited by gypsies and mummies who all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Desseret. The climate of the Sarah is such that all the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

During the first Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled biscuits, and threw the java. The games were messier than they show on TV now. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a young female moth.

Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up to Mount cyanide to get the ten commandos. He died before he ever reached Canada but the commandos made it.

Solomon had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines. He was a actual hysterical figure a and it sounds like he was sort of busy too.

Socrates was a famous old Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. He later died from an overdose of wedlock which is apparently poisonous. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.

Karl Marx was one of the Marx Brothers. The other three were in the movies. Karl made speeches and started revolutions. Someone in the family had to have a job, I guess.

Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking.

The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter.

Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes, He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Since then no one ever found it.

Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backward and also declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." He was a naturalist for sure. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.

Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.

~Contributed by Bern in Indianapolis, Indiana
HUMOR ARCHIVES: ...

Untangling the Web

WHAT A SITE!

"Your Amazing Brain"
This site is broken into sections: Brain and Body, Super Senses, Inside Your Brain, Love and Sex, Your Memory, and Test Yourself. "Super Senses" has an Optical Illusion section and An Upside Down Face section. At "Inside Your Brain" you can learn what your brain looks like, what your dreams might be about in comparison to other people, and what your brain waves mean. Go to "Your Memory" and test your memory with games and quizzes that will let you know where you stand as far as memory capacity goes. Learn what memory chunking is and how it affects you. If you want to skip all the information and just play games, take quizzes then go to "Test Yourself".
www.YourAmazingBrain.org
(Contributed by Jane at TheCatsMeow.com )

COMPUTER-EASE

Want to stop Auto-connection?
Would you like to stop your computer from connecting to the Internet without your permission? With Internet Explorer go to Tools / Internet Options, then under the "Connections" tab select "Never Dial a Connection". ~WorldStart.com

Photo: REUTERS /Alexandra Winkler

A woman holds the new "Max, der Wurm"...
"Max the Worm" kids shoe from sportswear maker
K2 Munich is being tried out on cost-conscious German shoppers. By pushing the silver button the concertina panel can be lengthened between the toe and heel to accommodate quickly growing children's feet and bring relief to frustrated parents who want to avoid buying their children countless pairs of new shoes. Bernadette Lingg, a spokeswoman for K2, an American firm, said on Tuesday it was targeting Germany where shoppers' keen eye for a bargain has been sharpened by economic worries that prompt many to think twice before opening their wallets. ~REUTERS