Sunday, May 31, 2009

Wild Winter Weather - May 31, 2009

We experienced some pretty wild weather on the afternoon of May 31 2009. The day started warm but a sharp cold front came through beginning at about 2:00 pm. Brisk winds carried in rain, hail, and sleet which changed over to heavy snow squalls by about 3:00 pm. Once the ground cooled, the snow accumulated over the green grass and on the trees. When it was all over, the sun came out and brightened up the whole scene!

SLHS Pre-Prom Party

Here is a very short video from a Saranac Lake High School pre-prom gathering

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Gardener's Supply

I get tired of having online companies not only deciding to send me email "newsletters" because I've purchased stuff from them, but also sharing my information with other companies so those companies can send me "special offers." I never asked you for it, you never asked me if its okay

So, with Gardeners Supply, I started getting newsletters and offers from other companies using the unique email I used with them. I went to the unsubscribe links, but after, annoyed, I decided to check out their privacy policy.

If you are in the business of selling things online, it would seem that good customer relations would be prime directive. So Privacy Statements with terms such as this are really mind-boggling: "This Privacy Policy and Security Statement is part of our Terms of Use, which governs your use of gardeners. By using gardeners you agree to this Privacy Policy and Security Statement and Terms of Use."

The rest of the policy is the usually bullshit. I don't care what you do to enhance my shopping experience so long as you don't spam me or enable others to spam me. And regarding that "use our website & you agree to all this crap," can you imagine that language on a brick & mortar storefront? "By entering our store, you agree to blah blah blah."

I don't agree to shit from you. You want my business, you and your ridiculous lawyers certainly have it all backwords.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Thoughts on the American Educational System

The single greatest disservice we do to the children of this country is to teach them that each is so special that they should be showered with accolades simply for being, for showing up, for "trying." Let every kid have his chance on the team, equal minutes on the playing field to all. And so they go unprepared for the iniquities of adult life. Each of us has our strengths & weaknesses. While the strong, the bright, the gifted will always find their way, the majority are left to flounder on the false assumptions instilled by our idiotic educational system.

Are parents and educators so detached that they seek to avoid having to teach the tougher lessons of life? I'm not saying we should be cruel, but to stand gutted by the angry God of Self-Esteem at All Costs is to deny responsibility for holistic learning.

Don't even get me started on special education at the primary level, where parents of bright children must fight for special ed for the advanced child because funding programs don't cover the advanced child. Its a travesty when a first grader comes home and tells her parents she is bored because she has to be taught at the same level pace as everyone else, while the school must provide one on one "teaching" to those unable to keep up. No child left behind is fine as long as it doesn't equate also to no child advances ahead.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

On Earth & Recovery

There is no such thing as planetary recovery. The earth was, is, and always will be changing - with or without us.

We silly humans don't handle change well. River dwellers battle against its natural change of course. Lake swellers rail against the natural changing shape of the shoreline, the natural alteration of water level. Did I say silly humans? I think I meant conceited humans.

Even nature shows on the National Geographic Channel talk about suvh things as "will the planet recover if humans disappear today?" Recovery presumes there is a static, ideal state. And in earthly terms, there is no such thing as chemical, biological, or physical stasis.

Silly, selfish humans.

~~~
Michael R. Martin, CLM
LakeStewardship.org (non-profit)
lakestewardship.blogspot.com
michael@lakestewardship.org
Cedar Eden Environmental LLC, Saranac Lake NY
cedareden.com | 518.572.2104
michael@cedareden.com

Early Morning

Approaching 5 o'clock Sunday morning. The sky is bright enough to highlight and shadow the thick and billowy cloud ceiling. I can distinguish yard from trees but little else. All is still in that no-color zone of perception.

I hear an early bird singing, perhaps a robin's rain song. Or maybe its a thrush. So hard to tell through double panes of glass keeping sound along with the intended cold air.

I open the slider to smell the air & hear the birds. Cold air streams through the small opening and seems to run down my bare legs like water from a spring. Now I hear the wind in the pine as well as the birds. Surely that's a thrush's melodious call from within the cedar swamp. And the robin somewhere higher and closer.

I love this time of day, but you already know that. Driven here by a bitchy partner complaining about how close to the middle of the bed I am, I think I'll just stay here, now laying on a comfy couch under a soft & warm blanket, and watch the sky lighten.

There is a science that studies the patterns of an author's writing style and can tell with a fair bit of certainty whether a contested piece was written by him or her or by someone else. In Stephen King's book, "UR," he talks about this a bit. The premise is that a magic, pink Kindle can access and million alternate realities and download the books of well-known and obscure authors from those realities. So in one UR world, Hemingway lived a longer life, wrote different books as well as some familiar in our world. King, as narrator of the story, or perhaps its a character - doesn't matter - talks about the staccato writing style of Hemingway being clear in his books from other realities now on the Kindle and goes on to describe the recognizable traits in other author's work - at least the main trait an without too much detail.

I bring this up because it came to mind as I was typing well on in another long sentence that any english teacher in primary or secondary education would order you to break it up, BREAK IT UP, MAN! So my writing style is long sentences. At least when in a tired state or a pained state, or a drugged (ie., medicated) state of being. Right now I am the first two and more the second than the first. I'd love to be in the third but I've a church service to sing and some of my meds make my voice deeper and raspy, not a side effect a singer needs. Its tough enough singing so early in the morning.

So, I doubt anyone has read this far. If you have and you are NOT an acquaintance, please comment so I'll know my crazy rambling have reached other living souls on the planet.No need for names, first names/nicknames only please, kinda like Car Talk. Where you from? What do you do for a living? Do you come here often? Do you have ypur own blog?

I feel like I should say maxi-blog or something since the new word and trend is "micro-blogging," which," for those who don't know, refers to systems set up to reach an audience in brief bursts. A good example would be twitter, which allows only 140 characters in each posting ("tweet").

So, anyway, I was trying to sign off then put a whole nother paragraph in, and now two! Read above aboit commenting and some questions you might consider answering in your comment. Guess I am too lazy to set up a survey form, but I really think commenting is best for this type of media. Ohan yeay, a few more questions: -s this your first time to Cedar Eden: The Blog? How often do you come? Or Will you be coming back? For the newcomers, how much do you like Cedar Eden: The Blog. For the seasoned vets, why do you keep coming back? And for all, rate the blog on a scale of 1 - 10 with ten being highest for content, voice, and overall experience. (Being kinda facecious here, poking fun at or parodying other outreach methods, but answer that last one anyway.)

So there it is, a string of questions you can answer if you like, by commenting on this submission. Question ideas are in the paragraph above and the second paragraph above that one (third from here,

Funny how this all started with an insight piece on the beauty of the earlt morning. I'll fimish by noting the melodious charms of the wind chimes ringing away like prayer bells in a howling wind. The howling wind is directed towards the wind chimes ratjer than the prayer bells. Oh, never mind. It is over - fun while it lasted but I got nothing left in me

More to Love YouTube Video

Hello everyone. Will you please help my friend and author/illustrator, Elizabeth Patch? Go check out her YouTube video about her More to Love book. The links is below in her email to me. Also check out her websites at moretolove.net and elizabethpatch.com for more entertaining uplifting free things. An, you could buy her book, for you, for friends. Here illustrations are wonderful and I have to think that her uplifting message to women of all sizes has to make feel good. Fat or Thin, woman are forced in our culture to always obsess about the way they look. And so More to Love is for you or the woman in your life!

Michael

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: 
suzette martin 
Date: Sat, May 16, 2009 at 1:23 PM
Subject: More to Love YouTube Video
To: 

Hello Family & Friends!

I need a favor from you all (again...) and this won't cost you a penny!

Adam & I just finished the book trailer for More to Love!!
Its so adorable, he did such a great job!
PLEASE go to this link

1. Watch the video 
2. Leave a comment!


and then PLEASE
3. send the YouTube link to everyone in your email contact list, and ask them to pass it along too.

the more people watch it, the more "popular" it becomes and the more people will watch it.
trusting in the power of friends & family to get the snowball rolling...

thanks so much for all of you support!

Suzette Martin and  Elizabeth Patch


Thursday, May 14, 2009

Amazing night

Boy, its amazing to be out here. The smell of new, damp grass, the stars sparkling through trees just beginning to set their leaves. There is a light breeze and the distant sound of tree frogs & spring peepers calling for mates. The dogs are happily grazing on the new grass, and sniffing at the damp ground. The air . . . The air smells of new life, fresh life, a new, fresh start we call spring.

Glorious night that it is. I could stand out here for hours, letting the breeze set the smells and sounds upon my senses, my memories, my emotions.

I sit on the bottom step of our entrance deck, the dogs circling and occasionally dropping their heavy noses upon my knee for a little attention. They, too, are pleased with the night, happy for it. Bruiser, the old dog, takes it in stride. This is likely his last spring, and he enjoys all that the night air brings forth. Sadie, young Sadie, treats the night as a novelty, something new and wonderful, and bounds from here to there, to sniff, to nibble, to take it in.

The dogs begin to stare towards the neighbor's yard, wondering if their dogs are out to bark at. They come to me as I call and whistle, panting, tails wagging, happy eyes sparkling. And as I continue to write, typing on this little computer called the Blackberry Curve, they drift off again to revel in the sensory explosion of spring.

It is, perhaps, a little cool for the great amphibian migrations, yet the little frogs are calling, quietly, slowly, from their vernal pools.

But, alas, my reverie is broken as the dogs begin to bark, mine here, and the neighbors' over there. So we retreat, back inside, where we are once again completely removed from the explosion of spring happening without us right outside these walls, windows, and doors. No smells on breezes, no peeping frogs. Nothing but the sound of passing cars can penetrate this fortress.

Who knows the night as this?! How can we live so insulated from life that surrounds us, the awakening earth, the expanse of the night sky, the universe outside our very doors. We have but to step out, look up, and take it all in.

Good night. And I mean, it is a good night.

Late night or rather early morning

My mom says I've inherited this from here, this inability to sleep more than 4 - 5 hrs a night. On the upside, we function quite well on that amount. The downside is many a lonely night. I either go to bed early w/my other and get up at 1 or 2 AM or stay up real late and maybe wake up at a normal time.

I think perhaps my circadian rhythm is synched to a different planet. If I do go to bed at 1 or 2 I will often sleep the normal 8 hours or so, but that puts me waking in late morning. And as much as I like the night, I love the early morning even more.

I love few things more than starting a drive to somewhere in the wee hours of the night and driving thru those hours of sky lightening and sun rising.

Monday, May 04, 2009

Life, Another Way

I am no longer going to live my life passing the time waiting between events, whiling away the hours. I am going to live all that life in between and when an event rolls around its going to be a big, happy bonus.

I sure hope to see you in the betweens!

Life really is all that time that passes between waiting for things to happen. Stop waiting. Start living.

Maybe we should stop marking our calendars with the where's and what's of the near future. Let's just mark them with the moments spent listening to birds calling before the sun rises, watching new leaves burst forth from gray and brown buds into brightly green vibrance.


(But I do have to speak of exciting events, none the less.)
• I hear tell that there may be an unheard-of August performance by the Whompers!
• There's also an early summer trip planned to UNC Greensboro to get oriented with our incoming freshman!
• And a July Island bash with high school friends.
• And another trip to NC in August to move her in for her first semester.
• AND, after a 1 year hiatus, Meadowlark Music Camp will once again be serenading the loons of Washington Maine at the end of August!

I'll get a lot of practice filling in the betweens and letting the events just roll on by.