sunnyme

(no subject)


Dear friends and family,

I regret to inform you of Frank's untimely passing. Funeral services will be held on Wednesday October 1, 2008 in Pensacola, Florida. He will be laid to rest at the National Cemetary in Pensacola.

I will send further information regarding his memorial service when available.

If you want to contact me, please email me at lincolnanddouglas@yahoo.com
Our mailing address is    P.O. Box 896  Lawrenceville, GA 30046

Thank you each and everyone who has ever had the pleasure of meeting him (or even read or responded to his words) and touched Frank's life. He was fantastic at telling a tale or two and I loved hearing each and everyone of them.

Sincerely and lovingly,
Patricia Vuittonet aka Pam aka his Noldie ~his forever sweetie pie~

Also, I will pass on any info to his brother and rest of the family if you need me to. Thank you.





sunnyme

(no subject)

 In the ocean
Cut, swim, deep the sky
Like there, I don't know why
In the forest, there's a clearing
I run there towards the light
Sky...
It's a blue sky

In the awful holding deep decide
If I could, I would
Up for air to swim against the tide
Hey, hey, hey
Up toward the sky
It's a blue sky

To lose along the way
The spark that set the flame
To flicker and to fade
On this the longest day

So wind blow through to my heart
So wind blow through my soul 

You give yourself to this the longest day
You give yourself, you give it all away

Two rivers run too deep
The seasons change and so do I
The light that strikes the tallest trees
The light that waits for I
The light...waiting
Up toward the sky
It's a blue sky

To lose along the way
The spark that set the flame
To flicker and to fade
On this the longest day

So wind go through to my heart
So wind blow through my soul

You give yourself to this the longest day
You give yourself, you give it all away
sunnyme

And I missed ilenebook's birthday on August 2nd...I miss her online presence

So for her, I offer this Khalil Gilbran poem on prayer:

Prayer XXIII by Khalil Gibran
Then a priestess said, "Speak to us of Prayer."

And he answered, saying:

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether?

And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart.

And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing.

When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet.

Therefore let your visit to that temple invisible be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion.

For if you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking you shall not receive.

And if you should enter into it to humble yourself you shall not be lifted:

Or even if you should enter into it to beg for the good of others you shall not be heard.

It is enough that you enter the temple invisible.

I cannot teach you how to pray in words.

God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.

And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains.

But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart,

And if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence,

"Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth.

It is thy desire in us that desireth.

It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also.

We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us:

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all."
sunnyme

Strange how events miles away can still be so close....

Below is an excerpt from an email that Jane Summerlin sent to me.  I worked with her in Atlanta, and then she moved to Minneapolis/St. Paul.  She was on CNN because she took some of the first video from the bridge collapse.  Thank God for high gas prices or else she might have had a full tank and been a few minutes too early.

If I hadn't stopped for gas on the way home, I might not be here now.
 
I was on my way home from work on West River Parkway, which runs alongside the Mississippi River, when all of a sudden there was a huge obstruction in front of me.  I didn't know what it was.  At first I thought it was a huge barge. 
 
I grabbed my camera, got out of my car, and started walking towards the obstruction. 
 
I then realized a bridge across the river had just collapsed.  It was approx. 6:13 PM.  From what I've heard, the bridge collapsed just after 6:00.
 
There were no emergency vehicles at the scene yet.  People were still in their cars, and were crawling out of their cars, and crawling off the bridge.  
 
There are many bridges across the river in Minneapolis - I can see at least eight from my apartment.
 
I then overheard someone say that the bridge was I-35.  That sent a chill down my spine, knowing it was rush hour, and knowing how many cars must have been on the bridge when it went down.
 
The bridge collapsed directly onto the West River Parkway on which I was driving.  I was the third car that didn't make it under the bridge before it collapsed.  I'm so glad I had to get gas when I left work.
 
Soon afterwards the emergency vehicles began arriving, and a tractor-trailer rig on the bridge began to burn.  That was the first fire.  The photos I took with the fire in them were all of that first fire.
 
I was shaking at the point, and the hair was standing up on my arms.  It was surreal.
 
I talked to several people who had escaped from their cars - tourists from Houston, a teenager and his grandma, and a very distraught man. 
 
One of the Houston tourists was being interviewed by some TV station and she said "Thank God for seat belts".  Their car collided with the one in front of them on the bridge, and the car behind them collided with their car.
 
The distraught man had just rescued all the kids off an overturned school bus, and said they were all OK.  A crying woman came up to him and asked about the school bus - I guess her kid may have been on the bus.  The man assured her that all the kids were safe - he had rescued them.
 
Then he was crying and asked me to talk to his wife on his cell phone to tell her how to come get him.  I gave her instructions on how to get there, although I did offer to take the guy home.
 
For the record, the distraught man told me the bridge collapsed in a harmonic wave - like they do in earthquakes.  No one on the news has said that.
 
When the tractor-trailer started burning, I tried to move my car farther from the bridge.  By then several fire trucks and police had arrived, and my car was blocked in by emergency vehicles.
 
One of the police cars finally moved, and I was able to move my car farther from the collapsed bridge.  I parked farther away, stayed about 30 more minutes, took more photos, then had enough of the carnage and tried to leave. 
 
I was able to weave my little car around the fire trucks and escape.  I had to take a circuitous route home because so many roads were blocked, so many pedestrians were walking towards the scene, and so many emergency vehicles were still arriving.  As I left, I saw smoke billowing from the scene, which was another fire besides the tractor-trailer whose fire had already been put out.
 
I had left just in time because that smoke was getting thick in the rear-view mirror.
 
When I got home I went out on my balcony.  The bridge is about 1/2 mile downstream of my apartment.  A big storm with lightning was headed my way.  Luckily the storm bypassed the carnage.
 
I just saw the teenager and his grandma whom I talked to on Fox News.  Needless to say, my phone has been ringing off the hook.
 
I am totally puzzled as to the reason for the collapse.  The work on the bridge was resurfacing - there was no structural work that could possibly explain the collapse.
 
Well, that's my story.  I'll never forget this day unless I get Alzheimers.
 
I'm attaching photos and videos - this is the first set, three more to follow.

 a few minutes too early, the link to her interview can be found on:  

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/i…
.summerlin.cnn

Snowdarth

This is why I need to stay the hell away from the news...

Look at the trash I come across.

INDIANAPOLIS -- IndyGo bus passengers are getting a crash course in airport-like security.

Some passengers were a bit surprised Wednesday morning to see federal security workers at a bus stop along Ohio Street, near Meridian Street.

Transportation Security Administration agents, similar to those working at airports, worked the bus stop, screening passengers and checking the bus.  Officials said the security is part of a community outreach program.

TSA and IndyGo said the security presence will continue on Thursday in downtown Indianapolis. 



Yeah, that's right....just a "Community Outreach" coming to a city near you.  That's like saying that Stalin's Ukranian Famine was just a state-wide diet.  Come on, people!

What part of "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." is so darned hard to understand?

sunnyme

Very intersting perspective...

"It seems as though the rivers of craving are running in every direction," said Ajita, "How can we dam them and hold them back? What can we use to close the floodgates?"

The Buddha said: "Any river can be stopped with the dam of mindfulness. Caring and thoughtfulness are the flood stoppers. With wisdom you can close the floodgate."

-Sutta Nipata
sunnyme

I'm at the department of labor with my sponsor...

Both looking for a job and helping him stay a little motivated.

Today's been fruitful in both cases.  My life is still, well, on the ragged edge although there is no reason for it.

The cataclysmic downhill slide of a month ago seems to have halted and for that I am sooo grateful. 

There have been some losses.  A guy I knew in treatment killed himself early on last month.  And a wonderful lady that befriended me when I was losing my mom and my mind over a year ago finally succumbed to cancer. 

I avoid most of the news concerning Iraq and politics.  The whole thing leaves a sour taste in my mouth.  Come election year, I'm going to have to vote with my feet so I don't dirty my hands.

I don't really know if I'm ready to go back to work, but as Francois Villon once wrote "the lack of money assails me".  No truer words have been written by a poet.

But a note to let you all know that I'm doing alright and will hopefully be back posting my usual line of BS for all to enjoy.

sunnyme

With the exception of my family (of course)....this is the first time

Scientists breed world’s first mentally ill mouse

 

Jonathan Leake Science Editor

SCIENTISTS have created the world’s first schizophrenic mice in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the illness.

It is believed to be the first time an animal has been genetically engineered to have a mental illness. Until now they have been bred only for research into physical conditions such as heart disease. It will allow researchers to study the disease and develop treatments using a limitless supply of laboratory animals.

Animal rights campaigners have condemned the research, saying that it is morally repugnant to create an animal doomed to mental suffering.

The mice were created by modifying their DNA to mimic a mutant gene first found in a Scottish family with a high incidence of schizophrenia, which affects about one in every 100 people. The mice’s brains were found to have features similar to those of humans with schizophrenia, such as depression and hyperactivity.

“These mutant mice may provide an important new tool for further study of the combinations of factors that underlie mental illnesses like schizophrenia and mood disorders,” said Takatoshi Hikida, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a leading researcher.

The egg cells of mice were genetically modified by inserting a gene associated with schizophrenia into their DNA. The eggs were fertilised and grown into viable baby mice using surrogate mothers.

Animal Aid, a campaign group, said rodents were not a reliable way of modelling human disease.