I’m surprised (may be not too surprised) and delighted to hear that the French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le-Clezio is the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature.

 

My long essay which earned me a Bachelor of Arts degree (First Class) in French Literature from the University of Port Harcourt in 1992 was a study in race relations in Le-Clezio’s 1991 novel Onitsha. The late world-renowned professor of Comparative Literature Willfried F. Feuser supervised my work.  

 

J-M.G Le-Clezio tells a semi-autobiographical story in which a 12- year- old British-Italian boy and his mother travel by sea from France to meet the boy’s father in Onitsha, Nigeria.  Fintan enjoys his visit to Africa where befriends Bony, a Nigerian boy who opens his eyes to new ways of seeing the world.  Fintan’s mother finds out that her lover had changed after their long separation.  She has to confront the injustices of colonialism adapt to a foreign culture.  Fintan’s father worked for the United Africa Company but he becomes interested in the myths and origins of the Igbo people among whom he lives.  Much of the novel describes Fintan’s father’s journeys in the dream world where he receives insights about the migration of the Igbo people from Egypt to Southeastern Nigeria where they now live.

 

Onitsha opened my eyes to the possibilities of multi-cultural friendships, the reality of color-blind justice as well as the evocative power of language.

 

Congratulations, J-M.G Le-Clezio for this well-deserved honor!

The Republican Bush Administration came to power with the slogan of compassionate conservatism. In essence, Americans were led to believe that the Bush Administration would tamper conservative ideals with kindness.

Eight years later, the administration is almost running out of time and it is leaving behind a social and political legacy that is neither compassionate nor conservative. Loss of lives in the War of Iraq and Afghanistan,  America is now the greatest debtor nation while the country is the leading debtor nation and its citizens enjoy the unenviable title as the greatest debtors in the world. And with the big financial institutions failing, isn’t it time to call for a Jubilee Year for all Americans?

The concept of the Jubilee Year derives from the wisdom of the Hebrew Scriptures. At the end of every 49 years, a new cycle of landownership, property and economy begins.  The Holy laws required that land and property be returned to its original owners. Slaves were to be freed and all debts forgiven.

As the US Government continues to bail out the big financial institutions considered too big to fail, this Administration has a wonderful opportunity to bequeath a legacy of true compassion. In this case, it can find ways to implement a modern Jubilee for all Americans, not just the wealthiest who got us into this mess, launching this country on a new cycle of prosperity. Otherwise, bailing out the big institutions without propping up the base from which that wealth is generated is a one-sided solution and it wont work in the long run. A proclamation of an American Jubilee Year will redeem this Administration and give it a most favorable legacy.

I have purposefully kept this cryptic. I am only going to give hints. These are some of the new tools or strategic actions that are shaping the elections behind the scenes. I have also purposefully hidden some of the tools.

1. Apply distilled political and historical wisdom, but go beyond Machiavelli.

Rules that May Tip The Balance

2. Use symbolism and images to appeal to the unconscious instincts of voters.

3. Corollary of 2: Downplay the rhetoric. Dumb down the message.

4. Trick the masses.

5. Ad-Sense: Talk to the great guys on Madison Avenue.

6. Build and leverage the power of a nationwide invisible quasi-monolithic hierachical network of supporters

7 Identify and use mythical auspicious times to nominate, give speeches and debates

8. I keep this to myself

9. I keep this to myself

10 I keep this to myself

 

One of the most profilic American mystics of the 20th century, Joel S. Goldsmith, demonstrated extraordinary healing abilities. But he also had power over the weather. Once while on a flight in Europe, the weather was so bad that he had to influence it by clearing the fog for safe landing.

 

Some Huna practitioners as well as others who work with nature spirits claim that they, too, can control hurricanes such as Gustav and Katrina.  With their intention, they are able to divert the hurricane’s path so damage can be as minimal as possible. They can also reduce the overall strength and duration of the storm.

 

In the Christian scriptures, we read that Jesus of Nazareth calmed a storm. One day he felt asleep in a little boat on the sea with the disciples. A heavy storm came. The big-eyed frightened and red faced disciples asked him to stop the storm. Jesus calmed the storm.

 

In Africa, powerful medicine men and women wield power over the weather as well. While I was growing up, I was told that those who have the ability had a price to pay. For example, when you stop a powerful storm or if you make the rain fall you lose some number of days or years you can live. That way you restore the balance that you disrupted by affecting the natural order of things.

Hurricane Gustav AP Photo

 

Of course, it makes sense to use all we know to have power over nature. But what do you think about the unintended consequences people have when they influence nature? Would you stop a hurricane if you knew how? When would you will you not?

Two years ago this week, I lost a dear friend. A farmer’s wife, a mother and homemaker, artistically and musically gifted, Campfire Girls’ leader and Job’s Daughters choir director, Elizabeth Bergen Peters died on August 24 2006, a week  before she turned 93. I was friends with Elizabeth in the last thirty months of her life.

I found this extract of her life story and thought a good way to remember her is to share something about her on my blog. Although she is no longer with us in the way we knew her, she lives on. Her greatest wish was that friends and family remember her as a good person who did her best. And it was in cooking and hospitality that she did her best.

Those of us who knew her and others who didn’t can always meet her. Here is how. In the words of the English poet Samuel Butler (1835-1902): “Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again, Where dead men meet, on lips of living men.”

        Elizabeth Bergen Peters: On Cooking.

Another thing I learned to do pretty well was cooking.  When I was first married I didn’t know how to cook.  My husband, who had been a bachelor and on his own for a few years, knew more about cooking than I did, so he taught me the basics. 

One of my daughter’s boyfriends once said that I had enough recipes to last two lifetimes.  It’s true.  I always cut out recipes that sounded interesting.  I would try a lot of them, but I still had eight or ten shoe boxes of untried interesting recipes when I moved to B…. Court in July 2004 in my 90th year. 

I would often experiment with a new dish for Sunday dinner.  After one of these creative endeavors my husband and the children and I sat down for the dinner.  I was full of anticipation about how the new dish would be received. 

We all took bites, but nothing was said.  More bites, still nothing said.  Finally I asked my husband if he liked it. Whatever it was escapes me now.  He said, “Well, I like it…….but not very much.”  We just howled. 

My mother had a recipe for verenike which are filled dough pockets that are boiled and then fried.  In Russia they are filled with cottage cheese or meat, but we always made them with cottage cheese. 

A favorite Elizabeth made for her grandchildren

They are not very exciting, really, but my grandson and granddaughter just love them.  If I ask them what they would like me to fix for their birthday dinners, they always say verenike.  My grandson once volunteered me to make enough for his entire class when they were studying ethnic foods. He and I made them together. 

Did you notice that when Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin, Michael Phelps and most Olympic Athletes are about to begin their performances they close their eyes? Have you wondered why they do that?

 

Well, although I haven’t interviewed them personally, my guess is that much of the training of an Olympic Athlete involves an inner practice in addition to the obvious physical training.

 

In the 1970′s, a former US Navy officer and Harvard graduate W. Timothy Gallwey wrote the national bestseller The Inner Game of Tennis.  Tim’s central idea is that two arenas of activity influence everything we do: the external arena is where we play the outer game as we confront outside challenges to achieve our goal. Most people consciously work only at this level to attain their goals. Tim’s book drew people’s attention to the fact that it is impossible to achive any worthwhile goal without mastery of the inner game as well.

 

“There is always an inner game being played in your mind no matter what outer game you are playing. How aware you are of this game can make the difference between success and failure in the outer game,” Tim Gallwey says.

 

You can see how this fits in sports psychology. Given the level of excellence we see at the Olympics, it is the athlete that has best mastered the inner game in addition to the outer game that wins. And as we saw Michael Phelps won one of the medals with fractions of a second lead over the silver medal winner.

 

The Chicago Tribune reported this about a champion swimmer Tracy Caulkins almost thirty years ago:”. . . I’m able to concentrate and to think positively. Before big races, I visualize [mentally rehearse] them over and over; I think of them just before going to bed. You know at the international level everyone’s in just about the same physical condition, so how the race ends depends on you mentally . . . ” .

 

So if you have been wondering why these great athletes close their eyes, here is the reason. What is more, you, too, can rehearse your daily goals in the mental arena first before you actually carry them out on the physical plane.

 

This web site tells you about some of the things that have been written about this topic just in case you want to go down the rabbit hole with this. http://coachsci.sdsu.edu/csa/vol26/table.htm

 

And Here is Tim’s web site: http://www.theinnergame.com/index.html

And Watch this YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9T-JQgdmgs

I watch the Beijing Olympic Games in awe. I am one of four billion people glued to our TV sets watching Chinese, American and Russian gymnasts dancing in the air, seasoned swimmers frolicking in water and players of various sports displaying their skills.

 

The limits of human endurance amaze me. And I ask myself: “If Olympic Athletes perform these incredible feats, what other demonstrable human abilities now hide from public view?”

 

If there were an Olympic Medal For Remembering AJ would have won a Gold Medal

Take the case of AJ, the 42-year-old married woman from California.  She recollects everything about her life. For several years scientists studied her secretly.

 

Many researchers are reporting mind-blowing discoveries about the physical world, human nature and how the brain works. For example, brain scientists can now read your mind. I mean literally and metaphorically. Machines now detect roughly what people are thinking and feeling. 

 

All over the world today, scientists are performing experiments on individuals with paranormal abilities. Unfortunately, some scientists deny the findings in parapsychology. The ability to read minds, see a distant location without being there in the physical body and knowing about future events before they actually happen are too far fetched for some to believe because they have not experienced these abilities themselves. 

Many skeptical scientists aren’t known for performing gymnastic exercises. But does that mean they are humanly impossible? The Olympic Games point to hidden human abilities not in the marketplace for all to see. 

That world records are set at every Olympic Game is no news. What is less known is the implication for previous title-holders who are still alive.

For example, Mark Spitz, an American aquatic athlete, holds the world record for an individual who has won the highest number of gold medals at one Olympic Game.

In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, Mark Spitz became one of the most acclaimed world athletes as he won seven gold medals with seven world records to match. He was 22 years old then.

For 36 long years that record has remained unshaken.

World records are set to be broken. But what happens to past record holders?

Now, at 58, there is a good chance that  Michael Phelps, another American swimmer, will break that record with nine gold medals. Michael Phelps won his third gold on the fourth day of the Olympics in Beijing. He, too, had broken the world records set for the 200-meter freestyle,  the 400 individual medley, and the 4×100 free relay he took part in.

As I reflect on the careers of these two amazing athletes, I begin to wonder how it would feel like for a world champion to no longer parade himself as a world record holder. 

Sooner or later, someone achieves the possible impossible. A world record is set for others to break.

We are part of some four billion people watching the extraordinary performances of athletes from more than 200 countries at the Beijing Olympic Ganes. Over 300 gold medals will be won and carried away to different parts of the world. 

Records will be broken. New talents will come to limelight. Athletes will be immortalized. We the spectators will watch on our couches as history unfolds before our very eyes. We are merely spectators.

Maybe not.

It seems to me that there are two Olympic Games– the public summer and winter Olympics and our personal though publicly played Olympic Games. Our Olympic Game is even harder because we practice and play at the same time. Daily.

We are all aiming unknowingly every day for an insubstantial gold medal

Olympic athletes work with determination to win medals others have designed. We who are everyday Olympians design our own medals. We play by the universal laws of life. TSynchronicities reward us.  We have countless opportunities to lose and a million chnces to win a symbolic medals of life.
 There is a prize greater than gold to which we other Olympians whose field of play is our every day world. A prize winnable every second of every day although some believe such a prize is reserved for some last day. Like an epitath that summarizes what we lived and died for of which the following are fitting examples:

• Edgar Allan Poe: Fly Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore”  
• Alexander the Great “A tomb now suffices for him whom the world was not enough.”
• Anthony, Susan B. “Liberty, Humanity, Justice, Equality”

How might your life be different if you treated life as your own Olympic Games, more significant than any Summer and Winter Olympics you have witnessed or will ever watch?

The Olympic Games began today in China on a day most Chinese people believe is the luckiest day of the year. Eight is a lucky number and so 08-08-08 is a super lucky day.

Most people I have met don’t believe in luck. They say you’ve got to work hard to breakthrough and make luck happen to you. You can’t just sit there and trust in luck.

So what do you think? Do you believe in a lucky day? Do you think you are going to be lucky today? Or if you visit this site after 08-08-08 did anything lucky happen to you on that day? Share your thoughts.

The phot shows dancers in greenlight at the Olympic Games opening ceremony.