Yeah...and so, anyway...

I was going to enter NPR's 3 minute short story contest, but I got mixed up on the deadline--I was supposed to submit the story by 11:59 September 23, not the 24th. The story had to have a protagonist who is an American president, either a fictional one of a real one. Of course, I chose a fictional one. I think there's been enough fiction written about many of the former (and present) presidents.  I wrote a 600 word version that I wanted to enter  in the contest, and an over 1,200 word version that I will save for future contest entries. I haven't written anything here on Blogger for such a long time that I decided to post the short version of the story here. A note to Baha'is: Does anything seem vaguely familiar in this story? It might not be so obvious in the short version, but it's definitely there in the longer one. And the name of both stories is May 27, 2045. The walk from the Oval Office to the North Lawn was faster than Candace would have liked. She was ...

(Note: I was going to write something specifically about my mother, but I found that I needed to take some more time to do that. I've read Isabel Wilkerson's phenomenal book, The Warmth of Other Suns , and it has given me new insights into the life my mother had to live in Leesburg, Lake County, Florida. I need more time put my thoughts together about all this.) I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions since the beginning of April. They were pretty uncomfortable, but not debilitating. I kept doing the breath exercises I had learned in Lamaze classes. The baby was due June 1, 1981, but I had been to the hospital three times, thinking I was going into labor. I walked around the grounds of the University of California at Davis Hospital, breathing and wondering how I could tell "real" labor from "false" labor. "No, Mother, it's too early," the RN told me. "You're only 2 centimeters dilated".  I was sent hom...

Well, I did it. After living in Sacramento for 38 years (and the closely surrounding areas of Fair Oaks and Rancho Cordova for a total of seven years), I moved 92 miles southwest to Oakland.  The reason? Well, my daughters and my grandson live in the East Bay area. I missed being close to my them.  Right now, I'm temporarily living with my oldest daughter until the current tenant of the "mother-in-law" cottage behind her house moves out, hopefully on the first of February. Until then, I am grateful that my daughter and grandson are sharing their small two-bedroom, one bath house with me.  It hasn't been easy for any of us.  I have habits that I've developed over the years that are not conducive to living with other people. There are these awful periods of embarrassingly persistent obsessive behaviors, specifically, isolating in my room where I get lost in writing, reading or watching movies/documentaries for hours and sometimes days while eating stuff that I know ...

The place:United States Air Force base, which was named Itazuke Air Base back in 1959. The date was probably sometime in July of that year; I can't be totally certain because I'm getting the second hand version of the courtesy of years of re-telling through both of my parents. But I was a fifteen month old inquisitive toddler, according to Mom, and my sister Tam was four months old. As the story goes, a colonel and his wife took care of Tam as my exhausted mother slept on the very long flight from Travis Air Force to Itazuke, where we were to join my father and live on the base. Apparently, the colonel's wife still held Tam in her arms as we exited the plane. My father approached the couple and this was the dialog that he says took place: Dad: Give me my baby! Colonel's wife: How do you know she's your baby? Dad: Because I would know my stuff anywhere! Dad, in his millionth re-telling of this story, says everyone cracked up laughing. I don't think I did. A...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy I found this little item on Rachel Maddow's website via Twitter...you know, doing the social media scoping and snooping (hereby known as SMS&S, only on this blog) and I promptly forgot about the story I was originally looking for. This was far more diabolical, provocative, so...Star War-ish, that I had to check it out. Yes, I wrote "Star War-ish", with a nod to comedian Jaime Foxx's stand up routine. Come on now, if you watched the video you have to admit, there are similarities--think of a miniaturized, non-lethal Death Star, or those energy bolts streaming from Emperor Palpatine's hands that tortured poor Luke Skywalker. The difference is that the rays are invisible (Isn't it a shame that CG effects don't work in real life?), and as far as I know, they do not kill. At least for now they don't, although I suspect that someone is working feverishly to produce a terminatin...

Apparently, there are more than five people reading this blog, which is something I didn't know before. Quite frankly, I've been neglecting this piece of the blogosphere for other writing ventures, such as the Sacramento Baha'i Examiner , Angela's eHow page and BerthaButtNoMore , not to mention one story for Associated Content and another for Bukisa.com. Then there's the social media thing, you know, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg...good grief, there are so many ways to get lost (or addicted) on the Internet! I've been feeling a lot of guilt about my attention deficit for this site, especially since it was my initial foray into the world of blogging on the Internet. But quite a few of you haven't forgotten about it, and for that reason, this four year old mashup of my foibles, reflections and always evolving perspective of the Baha'i Faith was voted as one of the top 100 Baha'i blogs by Online University . When I was notified of the award, I ...

'Abdu'l-Bahá on Suffering and Tests "Does the soul progress more through sorrow or through the joy in this world?" `Abdu'l-Bahá. -- "The mind and spirit of man advance when he is tried by suffering. The more the ground is ploughed the better the seed will grow, the better the harvest will be. Just as the plough furrows the earth deeply, purifying it of weeds and thistles, so suffering and tribulation free man from the petty affairs of this worldly life until he arrives at a state of complete detachment. His attitude in this world will be that of divine happiness. Man is, so to speak, unripe: the heat of the fire of suffering will mature him. Look back to the times past and you will find that the greatest men have suffered most." Paris Talks: Addresses given by `Abdu'l-Bahá in Paris in 1911-1912, 11th ed. (London: Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1979), pp. 178-79. I never think about personal suffering, in fact, I have trouble accepting the concept of su...