Even if you don’t sail, you probably understand the freedom and magic that comes with such an airy pursuit. Sail in your mind today, even if you’re stuck somewhere with nary a breeze!

If you live a life of make-believe, your life isn’t worth anything until you do something that does challenge your reality. And to me, sailing the open ocean is a real challenge, because it’s life or death. - Morgan Freeman

I keep sailing on in this middle passage. I am sailing into the wind and the dark. But I am doing my best to keep my boat steady and my sails full. - Arthur Ashe

I use filming as an excuse to take classes. I got my certification in sailing for ‘Wedding Crashers,’ and now I can handle a 26-foot boat. I played a seamstress once, so I took sewing classes. I love dipping into these other lives. - Rachel McAdams

I have no interest in sailing around the world. Not that there is any lack of requests for me to do so. - Edward Heath

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous. -Thomas Merton

This might be a difficult sell as a purely positive news story. There are politics involved, ecological concerns as well as complicated logistics. But underneath it, something very positive remains: Iceland is teeming with geothermal energy garnered from volcanic action underneath the earth. What will happen with that energy is another question…but there are smart alternatives that other countries are utilizing that hopefully we can learn from:

Krafla [power plant] is today a showcase of Iceland’s peerless mastery of renewable energy sources, another problem that has dogged its energy calculations for decades still remains: what to do with all the electricity that the country — which literally bubbles with steam, hot mud and the occasional cloud of volcanic ash — is capable of producing. In a nation with only 320,000 people, the state-owned power company, Landsvirkjun, which operates the Krafla facility, sells just 17 percent of its electricity to households and local industry.

“This is a very promising project,” said Mr. Hordur Arnarson, the power company’s chief. “We have a lot of electricity for the very few people who live here.” Compared with the rest of the world, he said, Iceland produces “more energy per capita by far, and it is very natural to consider connecting ourselves to other markets.”

Read full story at The New York Times.

I’m dogsitting for my friend. And boy, its a load of responsiblity. But the pay-off is amazing. She makes me laugh, suprises me with her goofy ways and is, simply put, a tremendous source of love. So today is a dog day. Let’s read what others have to say:

“Happiness is a warm puppy.”
- Charles M. Schulz

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
- Groucho Marx

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.”
- Milan Kundera

“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”
- Josh Billings

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
- Will Rogers

“Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.”
- Dave Barry

It doesn’t take me much to lift my spirits. Sometimes its the sound of a beautiful piece of music. Or walking outside in the glistening sunlight and crystalline air. Sometimes its watching an animal in motion, playing, sleeping. When I saw these images in The Huffington Post this morning, it brought a smile to my face. I hope it does the same for you.

It is the quokka, a marsupial native to a small corner of southwestern Australia. The animal is currently listed as “vulnerable,” according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Let’s send some collective love their way and hope they continue to thrive and be happy on this planet.

Diagnoses in hospitals can be wrong. Medical miracles do happen. And people, deep in a coma state, can awake to say, “Hi Mom.” This moving story reminds us that even in the grimmest of situations, there is hope:

A Bay Area man who was shot in the head last month at a Halloween party in San Francisco reportedly awoke from his coma, giving his family something to be thankful for over the holiday weekend.

A month ago, when 21-year-old Benjamin Pessah was rushed to the hospital, doctors said there was a 25 percent chance that  he would survive the gunshot wound to his head; they weren’t’ optimistic at all. But that negative outlook took a sharp turn last week when Pessah woke up from a medically induced coma in his San Francisco hospital room and said “Hi, Mom.”

According to ABC News, Pessah continued to delight his family on Thanksgiving when he took his first steps. “I was speechless. I didn’t really know what to say, it was very unexpected,” said his older brother brother, Nick Pessah.

Benjamin Pessah doesn’t recall the shooting, but he does remember other important things in his life, including account passwords and his address, his family told ABC News.

Read more at SF Weekly.

So I’m sitting a bar playing Scrabble with my friend. She says the following:

“I’m going to get a massage tomorrow. Or Monday at the latest. I keep waiting to do things for myself, like there’s this perfect time in the future. But it’s now that I need the massage. I should get it now. Or damn soon.

“What if you can’t get an appointment?” I query.
“I’ll get a massage from someone. Even if its a 5-minute chair deal. The touch I need is now. I don’t have to wait for touch.”

Perhaps it was that second glass of cheap wine, but her point really struck home. Why delay? Why be in a constant state of wanting when you can dare to ask for something now? When it comes to touch, why can’t it be as much of a priority as paying a bill or going to the doctor?

Can you get a massage day? In some sort of way?

(And yes, self massage and a hot bath counts…but only if all other resources have been checked.)

It’s late at night. I can’t sleep so I turn on the old computer and search the Web for a positive story to share with our audience.

I find one about a cheeta cub who stumbles in the lives of a group of humans who take exemplary care of her. And while Sheeba (the cheetah’s name) is eventually released into the wild, I’m filled with a sense of peace and confidence in humankind. And will once again fall back asleep.

Once you begin this story, you will want to reach the rest about this precious little cub:

Every parent knows the bittersweet ache of watching their children grow and leave the nest, but what happens when your baby is not yet two years old and can already run as fast as a car?

No one knows exactly how a one-month-old cheetah cub made her way under the fence of the Ol Pejeta chimpanzee sanctuary in Kenya in October of 2010. It’s no small miracle that sanctuary workers spotted her before the apes could make a meal out of her, yet great concern set in after an extensive search turned up absolutely no trace of the cub’s natural mother. With nowhere else to turn, sanctuary staff loaded the little cheetah onto a jeep and they set off together on a journey into the world of mankind.

“We have added a new member to the family and we are trying to make friends,” explained Sue Roberts of the Sirikoi game lodge in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in her very first blog post about her latest wild orphan. As foster mom to all forms of wildlife including a baby giraffe and an infant porcupine, Sue was well prepared to be patient in bonding with the cub.

Read more about this amazing cub!

Along with the millions of people who were affected, thousands of pets were also touched by the ravishing effects of Hurricane Sandy. Many emergency shelters did not allow pets, forcing owners to leave their pets at homes that were in peril. Some simply lost their pets in all of the chaos and confusion.

Here’s a few inspiring shots of pets saved and back in the hands of their relieved owners. Click on to enlarge:

Here’s more at the Huffington Post.

Yesterday, I felt a bit badly. I had made plans with a group of friends and frankly, I just didn’t want to do it. Instead I wanted to go home, eat dinner and watch a movie, drinking in the quiet of an early Fall evening. Which is exactly what I did.

Sometimes retreating is just what one needs to do to feel centered and calm and ready to take on the world…tomorrow!

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.
Douglas MacArthur

Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.
Norman Mailer

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat. - Oscar Wilde

In politics… never retreat, never retract… never admit a mistake. - Napoleon Bonaparte

How does life become totally painful? By total retreat. Total noninspection becomes total pain. - L. Ron Hubbard

A good retreat is better than a bad stand.- Irish Saying

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. - Marcus Aurelius

I struggle with being calm. There. I said it. I try, I really do…but it always seems like a state of mind I plan on acquiring when I get home. My affliction is probably like many others who can’t always find that peace of mind. So here are a few quotes to lead us in the right direction:

A desire arises in the mind. It is satisfied immediately another comes. In the interval which separates two desires a perfect calm reigns in the mind. It is at this moment freed from all thought, love or hate. Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves.
Sivananda

Affliction is the wholesome soil of virtue, where patience, honor, sweet humility, and calm fortitude, take root and strongly flourish.
David Mallet

Am I calm all the time? That is a question to ask my mother. I am very happy in my home. I have a good family, that gives me something extra.
Jean Alesi

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus

Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy.
George Herbert

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.
Michael Caine

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.
Martin Luther

Before, I was so stupid. But, you know, when you have friends who died on the street, you say, okay, let’s calm down. It’s not the kind of energy I want to have in life. I want to go slower, and longer.
Olivier Martinez

But when I lose my temper, I find it difficult to forgive myself. I feel I’ve failed. I can be calm in a crisis, in the face of death or things that hurt badly. I don’t get hysterical, which may be masochistic of me.
Emma Thompson

Calm self-confidence is as far from conceit as the desire to earn a decent living is remote from greed.
Channing Pollock