Tag: Miracle

Miracle. All of It.

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When the nurse brought her, all swaddled up, to the glass-panelled door outside the operating theatre to show her to me, tears projectiled on to the glass, signalling the single most miraculous moment of my life. If there’s a nanosecond’s worth of choice when you fall in love, there was no measure of time between seeing Oilly and feeling the most profound, life-changing love imaginable. Beyond all counting! Our longed for, miracle, baby.

— Richard E. Grant, A Pocketful of Happiness: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, August 1, 2023)

Notes:

  • Photo of Richard E. Grant & his daughter Olivia in The Sun, Feb 15, 2019
  • Book review by Amy Bloom in NY Times: Richard E. Grant Fights Grief With ‘A Pocketful of Happiness’. The Oscar-nominated actor’s new memoir is at once a Hollywood air kiss and a moving tribute to a happy marriage that ended too soon.
  • Post Title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.”

 

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it’s hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts.

—  Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and The Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions, September 16, 2013) (via acti-veg)

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call. (If you think your commute is too long…)

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If you think your commute is too long, be glad you’re not a godwit.Each year around this time, tens of thousands of bar-tailed godwits migrate from Alaska to New Zealand and Australia. The 7,000-mile journey — the longest nonstop migration of any land bird — is completed in eight to 10 days of continuous flapping without stopping to eat, drink or rest.

The godwit’s ordeal is so extreme that, as one recent paper put it, it challenges “underlying assumptions of bird physiology.” Before the bird takes off, its organs shrink, its pectoral muscles grow, and it gobbles up insects, worms and mollusks to store fat for the long journey. One scientist called the godwits “obese super athletes.”

— Matthew Cullen, Evening Briefing, NY Times. September 20, 2022. 

Walking. In Pursuit of Stalker.

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4:40 a.m. Daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. 788 consecutive (almost) days. Like in a row.

Yesterday, Eric (#1 Son; #1 on most days) and I were at the kitchen table having lunch.  Popeyes Spicy Chicken Sandwiches (and Cajun Fries). If you haven’t tried it, it is absolutely the best.  (And yes, it easily tops Chick-fil-A, Shake Shack, McDonald’s and Wendy’s. I know.)

Now, what isn’t as easily digested, are the calorie counts.  Chick-fil-A @ ~ 500 calories.  Popeyes sandwich tops 1200 calories. Add 800 calories for the fries, and what you have here is FDAs maximum calorie intake for an entire day, in a matter of < 10 minutes.

So, I step on the digital scale this morning…flashing, flashing, flashing, measuring, measuring, measuring, weighing, weighing, weighing…an interminable wait, that couldn’t have been more than 2 secs,….Then boom it locks in: + 2 lbs, day over day. WTH!

Mind races through yesterday’s meals.  Ah yes, Popeyes. Plus, 1760 mg of Sodium in the fries.  Another 1460 mg of sodium in the Chicken Sandwich = 3220 mg in < 10 minutes, a whopping 1000 mg over what FDA recommends daily.

That’s what we have here. An, old, fat, nearly retired, giant Salt Lick.  Disgusting.  Disgusted. So, was it worth it? You work so hard to cut weight and then blow it all up in < 10 minutes of food porn lust. 

I think about this while I’m standing on one leg, balancing, wondering if I have another 5 years to live. Yep, I’d have Popeyes again today for lunch, identical order. Saliva builds.

So, back to yesterday’s lunch.  Eric tells me that his Buddy was chatting with a friend of his who happened to mention that she walks at Cove Island Park each morning to catch the sunrise.  Buddy proceeds to tell her about his best friend’s Dad and his daybreak walks at Cove Island Park.  Eric, continues, “I think she said something like: ‘You know, I see this older guy at the park every morning. Backpack. Camera gear.  Doesn’t ever say anything. Really keeps to himself. Strange guy.'”

“She said that? Exactly that?” Continue reading “Walking. In Pursuit of Stalker.” →

Black Sun (Miracle, All of It)

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“Beautiful, dramatic and a little bit scary’: Danish photographer captures starling murmurations” (WBUR.org, June 13, 2022).  A photo of starling murmurations from Soren Solkaer’s “Black Sun.”

“If you’re lucky enough to have watched it, it’s a sight you’ll likely never forget: hundreds of thousands of starlings covering the sky, undulating, shifting, forming giant fluid patterns that morph from second to second. The technical name is a murmuration. But in Denmark, where the birds fly above the northern stretches of the Wadden Sea, it’s called the Black Sun. That’s where Danish photographer Soren Solkaer first saw these mysterious patterns as a child — but it wasn’t until more recently that he pointed his camera at the phenomenon, spending the last five years following the birds on their migrations around Europe.”

Notes:

  • Thank you Lori for sharing!
  • Post title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.