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Holistic Health-Mind, Body, Spirit February Tarot by AnnaMarie White With the month of February being all about love, it is an ideal time to take a look at the 4 courtly archetypes of love in your Tarot Deck: the Page, Knight, Queen, and King of Cups. Whether you date your Tarot History from Medieval Times or from ancient Egypt (from whence the Medieval-ers based their game), these 4 Personified Cards of Love hold the same metaphors even now. As royalty of Cups, they all support the Empress, that Grand Dame of Abundance, Fertility, and Environmental & Emotional Lushness, but they hold increasingly complex emotional meaning... |
505 Mercer Street: Memories of Muz and Gran by Mimi Ruth My grandmother, Emma Haupt Rusin (Mrs. John Rusin) was affectionately called Gran by me and her other grandchildren, and Muz (for Mother Rusin) by her sons- and daughters-in-law. Grandmother Rusin was the matriarch of a colorful clan that included eleven children, nine who survived infancy. My mother, Mildred Eloise, nicknamed "Mocha" for her love of coffee, was the second eldest daughter. Gran reigned at 505 Mercer Street, her home, for many decades. I grew up as a Navy junior, which meant that I lived in numerous homes as a child as my father was transferred on many assignments from naval stations throughout the US and to and from England. The family legend is that my mother and father moved 34 times--I no longer know whether that number is fact or fiction. That meant that the central home for my mother's side of the family at 505 Mercer Street was my anchor place, or home away from home, a place where I experienced constancy as we moved across the US and traveled to and from Great Britain and Nova Scotia...
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GROOMIN' AROUND THE TOWN by Marci As a mobile dog groomer, I enter the homes of the rich and famous along with the "not" so rich and famous. Let me explain how mobile dog grooming works. I come to your home and try to find a place to park this nine foot high van. It never ceases to amaze me, that people know I am coming and wait until I get out of my van, drag my 100 foot cord and plug it into their homes and then yell, "Hold on I have to move my car first." So I have to unplug, get in my van, back out, let them move their car...you get the picture. Once inside I am usually greeted by "Fifi" who wants to be petted and then makes a mad dash under the bed with the owner running a close second yelling, "No, not under the bed." Then they have to get the broom handle and give "Fifi" a nudge to come out. We then enter the grooming van; "Fifi" is shaking so hard, you would think she is going to be tortured!! After about 5 minutes she stops and I pet her and tell her it will be all right. I start to clip her and smell something very aromatic. As I look down, I have noticed that "Fifi" has done her business on my table. "How thoughtful," I say, "that she waited until she was in my van to leave me a present." I now have to stop what I am doing, clean up the mess and disinfect the table, before I can begin again. I finish grooming her and put pink bows in her hair and take her in. Her owner takes one look at her and says, "She looks so nice, BUT I really wanted red bows in her hair because I am having a card game here and I am having a red table cloth, I want her to match." Well you can just imagine how happy I am that she is having a card game with a red table cloth. Why doesn't she go out and buy a pink table cloth? I change her bows and "Fifi" is good for a month! I have been a mobile groomer for about 13 years now and I could not ask for a more fullfilling job. My love of animals and their love for me is something I cherish every day. If you have a grooming question, I would be happy to answer it for you. Just e-mail me at mfkstc@netscape.com. |
An Encouraging Word It is never too late to be what you might have been Prill Boyle, author of Defying Gravity: A Celebration of Late-Blooming Women, offers twelve portraits of women who chose to pursue their dreams at midlife and in their later years. For example, Linda Bach becomes a medical doctor at 50, Evelyn Gregory becomes a flight attendant at 62, and Jane Work earns a Ph.D. and becomes a licensed psychologist at 57. Boyle gives us extracts from her own journal describing her hopes and fears of becoming a published writer as she approaches 50. She shares the stories from her in-depth interviews with ordinary women who seem extraordinary because they chose to pursue their dreams, despite the fact that they and others might consider themselves too old, or not "[good] enough" to pursue work, education, and other goals they want. In addition to the twelve stories, Defying Gravity also includes mention of examples of notable women who made their mark in later life, such as Grandma Moses, who began painting in her late seventies, Julia Child who hosted the PBS series, The French Chef, beginning at age 51, and Lillian Carter who joined the Peace Corps at age 68 and worked for two years in India. This book is a source of inspiration for baby boomers, yet it also offers hope to people of any age who want to make a difference in the world, and who choose not to settle for the circumstances and limiting conditions they faced as children or younger adults. Boyle reminds us that since it may be now possible for more of us to live to be one hundred- or at least far beyond an expiration date in our seventies- we may wish to follow the thinking of a centarian who was asked if she had any regrets about her life and responded, "If I had known I would live to be a hundred, I would have taken up the violin at forty. By now I could have been playing for sixty years!" |
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Every creature is full of God and is a book about God Winter: Light and New Life out of Darkness One winter morning, I awoke to see magnificent lines of frost stretching across my window panes. They seemed to rise with the sunshine and the bitter cold outside. They looked like little miracles that had been formed in the dark of night. I watched them in sheer amazement and marveled that such beautiful forms could be born during such a winter-cold night. Yet, as I pondered them I thought of how life is so like that. We live our long, worn days in the shadows in what often feels like barren, cold winter, so unaware of the miracles that are being created in our spirits. It takes the sudden daylight, some unexpected surprise of life, to cause our gaze to look upon a simple, stunning growth that has happened quietly inside us. Like frost designs on a winter window, they bring us beyond life’s fragmentation and remind us that we are not nearly as lost as we thought we were, that all the time we thought we were dead inside, beautiful things were being born in us. --Joyce Rupp, from Praying Our Goodbyes © 1988 by Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana. Printer Friendly Version of Inspiration Corner Visit The Doggone Archives | Email the Editor Created by Designer Sites. |
