From one of the finest writers on Open Salon, Emma Peel:

I want to pay a brief homage to today, the day set aside to honour the many millions of war dead. I didn’t venture out to attend a ceremony on this cold, wet morning. Instead, I held my own small memorial for all the soldiers and civilians who’ve died, and continue to die, in too many wars.

The scale of the slaughter in the First and Second World Wars is unimaginable to most of us. The First World War was particularly horrific; the “war to end all wars” in which a whole generation of men was lost. Imagine if nearly every man you knew was killed or terribly maimed in a four-year period. That was the reality of Europe in 1914-1918. And in some ways, the ones who died were luckier than those who survived. They didn’t have to re-live the nightmares of trench and mustard gas warfare, they weren’t shellshocked, and their mental and physical health wasn’t destroyed.

Tragic events often create great art, and many of my favourite poets and authors hail from that era. Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Edmund Blunden, Siegfried Sassoon, Erich Maria Remarque, Herman Hesse, John McCrae (In Flanders Fields), and Vera Brittain are but a few of them.

Vera Brittain

Brittain has impressed me since I was a girl, and the BBC-TV mini-series, Testament of Youth, based on her memoir, remains one of the best indictments of war that I have ever seen. Brittain, a war nurse, was the only one of her “set” growing up to survive the First World War; she lost her fiance, and was nearly killed herself. I still have trouble comprehending that kind of personal loss and devastation, and an even harder time knowing that it continues as I write this.

Wilfred Owen

A poem by Wilfred Owen, whose parents received word of his death at the same time as the first Armistice bells were ringing on Nov. 11, 1918, sums up my thoughts as only a great poet can.

My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity. — Owen

Futility

Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, – still warm, – too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

Judith Lang takes her jewelry making very seriously. She uses found objects on the beach such as plastic and metals and creates amazing pieces of artwork from it. To her, its a small step in reversing the damaging effects we are having on our planet:

Judith Selby Lang is an artist who never pays for material for her jewelry or artwear. This bright plastic junk is forever washing up on shore at her beloved Kehoe Beach in Marin County.

“The environmental situation is so dire, the plastic pollution is enormous, it goes back to what can I do? As one individual, where can I begin?” said Judith.

One of Judith’s bracelets is made of discarded flip-flops. It’s all stuff we can relate to, like a bouquet of popped balloons still strung together, soon to be a necklace.

“I hope to engage people in the idea that they can take a bag to the beach and they can pick up some plastic and make stuff of their own and that’s a way we can get the beach clean also,” she said.

There are lots of disposable lighters out there and some may be about to light up someone’s wardrobe.

There is no sitting around waiting for these pieces to sell. At studios, like the Donna Seager Gallery in San Rafael, this artwear is on display and selling. A bracelet is made of milk carton pull tops now selling for $45. The plastic necklace worn by the gallery owner is $300.

“I think they get an especially big kick out of it because it looks good. I don’t think they would be so impressed if it didn’t, but it has both qualities,” said Donna Seager Liberatore.

And Judith is now adding a twist to her trash collecting, moving from the beach, to the high seas. She has received her first shipment from the North Pacific Gyre, a massive circulating pile of plastic trash out of both sides of Hawaii. She has big plans for a fishing line and may turn it into a necklace.

“Not only will it be a great reminder of what’s going on about ghost nets and the gyre, but I think it will also make a beautiful piece of work,” she said.

With many more loads from the gyre to follow, a world’s worth of trash is one woman’s treasures.

What can you do that matches this woman’s efforts? Can you turn a piece of trash into a treasure? Can you reuse something or repair something you were ready to discard? Can you visit a second-hand store for a “found treasure” instead of buying something new?

Remember, change starts with you.

Source: ABC7 (Take a look at the video for her amazing work.)

Never underestimate our youth. They replace our jadedness with enthusiasm. They replace our apathy with energy.

In President Obama’s address to the Muslim world delivered from Cairo last June, he called for the creation of an online network so “a teenager in Kansas can communicate instantly with a teenager in Cairo.”

These teens heard the call and came together from Jordan and America to make a difference:

AMMAN - High school students from Jordan and the US have called for an increased use of environment-friendly technology and alternative sources of energy to combat climate change.

In a two-way dialogue via digital video conferencing on Wednesday, 22 high school students from Amman and Washington, DC pointed out that there is “a lot” they could do in day-to-day life to tackle global warming.

Transportation, IT and other technologies are domains where people can reduce energy consumption and the production of greenhouse gases, the students noted during the one-hour conference, which was led by Minister of Education and Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Walid Maani and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

“I feel we should encourage more recycling and educate the younger generation about the danger posed by climate change on their future,” noted Zaki, from Jordan.

He highlighted the importance of using hybrid cars, bikes and motorcycles, as well as promoting the use of public transportation to lessen the negative impact on the environment by the collective effect of each person using a private car.

American students agreed, noting that school buildings normally waste significant amounts of energy that can be saved.

“I’ve noticed that we usually leave the computers open after using them,” remarked a female student from Washington. She warned students and teachers about the harm they cause by forgetting to turn off in the classroom lights after lessons.

School administrations could buy energy-efficient computers and use timers on electrical lights, she proposed.

Source: Jordan Times

Last week, while getting a free mammogram, a friend speculated, “What good is this free mammogram? What if they find something? It’s not like I have any resources.”

Then almost magically, that same day, I heard about Marisa Acocella, who must have heard my friend’s pleas.

Here’s her story found on the Home page of her most wonderful and creative site:

May 15, 2004, just three weeks before I was about to get marrried for the first time at 43 to the wonderful Silvano Marchetto, owner of Da Silvano restaurant, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

A bad situation was made even worse when I realized I had let my insurance lapse. As a freelance artist it is extremely difficult not only to get, but to keep your insurance. (FACT: 47 million people in this country don’t have health insurance. And that number keeps going up.)

Well, Silvano and I did get married. (I had bandages from the lumpectomy underneath my wedding dress.) Fortunately, before I started chemotherapy, my husband was able to put me on his insurance plan. Yes, I realize how lucky I am. But I’m even luckier than you think.

While writing my graphic memoir Cancer Vixen, I came up this fact: 49% of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer and don’t have insurance have a greater risk of dying from the disease. I also added up the cost of treatment I would have paid out of pocket. The total? $192,702.04. Who the heck has $192,702.04? I certainly don’t.

On National Mammography Day that October, I personally funded 38 mammograms at the Breast Center at St. Vincent’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, where I had my treatments. This was the beginning The Cancer Vixen Fund.

Some of us make the most of our time, no matter how limited. Such was the case of Elena Desserich, a little girl with a serious problem. When Elena was only five years old, she was diagnosed with pediatric brain cancer.

“They told us at the very beginning that she had 135 days to live,” Elena’s father, Keith Desserich, told WLWT News.

Elena and her family made the most of that time. She spent the long days in the hospital working on her paintings, which were full of hearts, fairies, and smiling families. One of her artworks was displayed in a local gallery in Cincinnati, right next to a Picasso painting. As the tumor grew larger and she lost the use of her voice, she began to communicate with her family by writing notes.

Elena died in 2007, just nine months after her diagnosis, lying in bed beside her parents.

Even though they’d known Elena’s death was inevitable, her parents Keith and Brooke were devastated by the loss. But they soon discovered that she had left a gift behind for them.

Not long after her death, Elena’s parents were sorting through her things when they began to find notes that she had written to them. “They would be in between CDs or between books on our bookshelf,” said Keith.

All through her final days, Elena had been writing love notes to her family, and hiding them in secret places throughout the house.

“We started to collect them and they would all say ‘I love you Mom, Dad and Grace.’ We kept finding them, and still to this day, we keep finding them.”

While Brooke and Keith treasure all of the notes from Elena, each of them has left a single envelope unopened. “We always want to know that there’s one more note that we haven’t read yet,” said Keith.

Elena’s parents Keith and Brooke recently published a book about Elena’s short but inspiring life, called Notes Left Behind. All proceeds from the sale of the book go towards The Cure Starts Now, the non-profit they founded to help find a cure for cancer.

Source: Gimundo

Let it not be said that pumpkins aren’t taken seriously. VERY seriously. People who compete each year, hoping to win the title of the “world’s biggest pumpkin” work very hard on it and get quite competitive.

Nick and Christy Harp of Jackson Township, near Canton, brought a pumpkin weighing 1,725 pounds to the annual Ohio Valley Giant Pumpkin Growers weighoff last Saturday, making them a shoo-in for the biggest pumpkin title - and possibly a Guinness-certified World Record.

“I kind of knew I had a good shot at the world record, but when it hit the scale, it was just happy, I was crying, thought I was gonna pass out,” Christy Harp told Cleveland’s Fox News affiliate, as reported on Fox8.com. She has been growing pumpkins since the eighth grade, and has a friendly rivalry with husband Nick.

“Last year he beat me by 200 pounds. This year I beat him by 400 pounds,” Christy said. “Very good year! My pumpkin, my side of the patch! We separate the patch and never step foot on the other side!”

At one point in August, the massive pumpkin was growing 33 pounds a day, Christy told Fox News. She kept it going by plying the soil with a mix of compost, coffee grounds and cow manure, though seeds with good genetics are also key.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/food/2009/10/07/2009-10-07_recordbreaking_pumpkin_thought_to_be_worlds_largest_weighs_in_at_.html#ixzz0VnoC0jN3

Professor Robert Emmons recently lectured to students at Chico University to talk about what he knows best:

Psychology has long followed the medical model, focusing on what’s wrong with a person and how that could be fixed, he said. In the last decade, proponents of positive psychology have added something new: an emphasis on the person’s strengths and potential.

For instance, someone who has lost his or her job and feels depressed might seek help from a psychologist, he said. A practitioner of positive psychology might, in addition to considering the depression, also explore the person’s capacities. The client might be very compassionate and/or persistent. Perhaps a new career in a field more “congruent” with those qualities can be found, Emmons said.

Positive psychology isn’t a starting point with someone who is severely depressed, he acknowledged. “You have to stop the bleeding first.”

But after the severe problem has been treated successfully with psychotherapy and/or drugs, there is often room for positive psychology to help even more, he said.

So how can you integrate some positive psychology in your life today? It all comes back to gratitude again. Interestingly Emmons points out that negative thinking may have an evolutionary reason for existing. It’s for survival. Negative thinking can warn you that things could wrong again so you better be prepared.

Gratitude is a way to train yourself away from that negative trend. So even if you’re feeling blue or downright depressed, most of us can muster a few things we are grateful for. That simple process often has a positive cyclical effect. Our minds become used to viewing our lives with a more positive lens. So count your blessings - nothing new but somehow, revolutionary!

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

- G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton