BZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzz!!

by African born native Michelle Yd Frost in Scotland

Crow's Feet

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Join us for BlogBlast For Peace Nov 4, 2011

Reason #42 to Blog4Peace ~ I Want More Monuments

Fountain of Time, or simply Time, is a sculpture by Lorado Taft and is situated in Washington on Chicago's South Side. The work was inspired by Dobson's poem, "Paradox of Time', with 100 figures passing before Father Time. The monument was created to honor the first 100 years of peace between the United States and Great Britain which resulted from The Treaty of Ghent in 1814.

 Reason #42 to Blog4Peace

I want more monuments like this one.

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Reason #43 To Blog4Peace ~ Annihilation

Reason #43 to Blog4Peace

I blog for peace because there has never been a more urgent time to annihilate the possibility of annihilation.

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Reason #44 To Blog4Peace ~ To see followers take the lead

When I read the words of well-known peace visionaries like Mahatma Gandhi, John Lennon, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Martin Luther King and many others, I'm always reminded that the energy they began in the world can only perpetuate if those who hear the message take up words with deeds. It is a good and honorable thing to be a peace pioneer and leader of men. But I'm beginning to understand that lasting change comes when one man's brilliant words have had time to saturate the soul of a generation...and another...and another....until the original message is finally acted out in humanity.

 *Peace globe by Security Is For Cadavers*

Reason #44 

I hope they are looking down on us and the progress we've made. Still much to do, but progress nonetheless. I blog4peace to give other visionaries a platform for peace.  It is nice to see the followers take the lead.

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Reason #45 To Blog4Peace ~ Born This Way

I blog4peace because in my heart of hearts I believe we were born to peace. Born to joy. 

Born to innocence. Born to love.

 Reason #45 to Blog4Peace

Born This Way

Photograph: Maldives sunset, Author Nattu

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Monday Mimisms ~ Bloggingham and Worlds Within A World

Come on. Follow me...

Early this morning in the dew and fog, I hid underneath a branch in Bloggingham's woods.

I found a secret world

of beauty

and danger

                                But really. Who could be afraid of lace on trees..

Shhhh....The spiders are sleeping

I hope.

*photography: Mimi Lenox*
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100 Reasons To Blog4Peace #46 ~ The Peace Corps

 President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961. When I was a young adult, I had a fleeting flirtation with the idea of joining the Peace Corps. I didn't follow through but I do remember entertaining the thought. When the Peace Corps began it was meant to be an exchange of cultural ideas between countries. Americans were to be ambassadors for promoting understanding between different cultures and offering assistance on a volunteer basis.

 The Peace Corps Act passed by Congress states the following as its purpose and mission:
To promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which shall make available to interested countries and areas men and women of the United States qualified for service abroad and willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower.

My reason to blog for peace is the inspiration from over 200,000 volunteers who have served in 139 countries since 1961.
Reason #46

 The Peace Corps

We salute.

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Reason #47 To Blog4Peace ~ The children might be on to something....

I blog4peace to engage peace within myself, to rattle the cages of complacency, and to war against indifference. Then and only then can I expect the world to do the same.

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Reason #48 to Blog4Peace ~ Pink Peruvian Dolls

So, I took them out of the box. One by one. A nurse, a dancer, an Indian man, two clowns, Spanish people, a ballerina, a little girl, a man speaking, a roping cowboy, a smiling cowgirl, a Buddhist monk, a Chinese man, a Mexican hat dancer, a Gypsy girl playing a tambourine, Bolero dancers, Little Bo Peep, all nationalities, all creeds, all expressions, all costumes of origin and a world of imagination at my fingertips ......a Peruvian girl, a small child playing ball, a colonial doll with a full skirt taking a bow. My favorite.

The Buddha man would twirl with the Peruvian woman while the little boy with the ball - perhaps it was a jack-in-the-box - sat quietly in the middle of it all. They all got along in my peaceful box universe. The dolls in my box lived in one world, dancing and spinning around.

 Reason #48 to Blog4Peace ~ 100 Dolls In A Box

100 Dolls in A Box - and what they taught me about life

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Reason #49 To Blog4Peace ~ Marbles in a Bowl

I blog for peace because a long long time ago, one significant man chose to impart the best of himself to me. I'd like to say I didn't know how remarkable he was at the time, that I learned that later on in life and took him for granted. But that would not be true. I did know. I always knew. And he never let me down.

From The Silence of Peace ~ Papa's Marbles) "One night he took me by the hand and led me to the altar with him. He knelt down on one knee, elbow resting on the other and silently voiced his heart. I was right there.
I heard the whole thing and he never said a word."

 Reason #49 to Blog4Peace
My Papa

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Shoes?

I laughed out loud when I heard myself say this morning, "I feel soooo much better being more organized. Where are my shoes?"

Sigh.

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Reason #50 To Blog4Peace ~ I am appalled by the needless suffering in my world

Where there is war there is suffering

Where there is war there is suffering

Where there is war there is suffering

I am appalled by the needless suffering in my world

Reason #50 to Blog4Peace

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Reason #51 To Blog4Peace ~ Da Nang, Vietnam 1965

I found this photo of a marine in the public domain national archives. It was taken by an unknown photographer in Da Nang, Vietnam. The year was 1965.
As much as I deeply respect those who served our country then and those who serve now to keep me free, my prayer is that not one more fresh-faced boy or girl has to die for that freedom.

Not here. Not anywhere.

Not your child. Or mine.

He looks like my own son. All I know for sure is that he is somebody's son. And he should not be standing in a field with a gun strapped over his tender shoulder.
That is my reason #51 to blog for peace.

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Reason #52 To Blog4Peace ~ The book I keep on my table

 

In June of 1968, Robert F. Kennedy addressed university students at Cape Town, South Africa. Out of that speech came one of my favorite pieces of writing to ever grace the page...in my humble opinion.

I keep a vintage copy of his speeches on the table in my living room. There has not been a voice since....like these two men.

They knew the power of words.

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance......."  Robert F. Kennedy, June 1968

I blog for peace because I believe in the power of words. To heal. To change. To admonish. To lead.

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Reason #53 To Blog4Peace ~ Purpose

It's easy to get bogged down in the details of blogging peace and trying to make a difference. But when I get tired and overwhelmed, I remember this letter from a peace blogger.
She wrote, "I am so proud to be in this movement. I never thought I had a voice. Until now."

And that is what keeps me going. That is just one reason I blog for peace.

Reason #53 of......

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Some Seasons Seem To Never End

 I know it's been nearly two years. I know.
But today my mind wants to wander to the strength of the trees and the shortness of time.
It is the crispness in the air. The smell of fading honeysuckles.  Pumpkins and soup. Straw on a porch.  The turning of this life clock into fall transforms my heart into a timepiece of random recollection. In pieces. Short movies that run and replay when the weather gets foggy and the rain beats on my window.


I watched him go in a million ways that fall. My Dad. First his fighting. Then angry acceptance. More fighting...with me, and with covers, and with nurses, with his God and with himself.
Finally surrender.

The way he called me "sis" in those midnight hours on the third floor. Is it possible that I still smell the room? The hallway? The sterile?  The starkness of all that was still and waiting in that place where they wheeled people in, but no one got out. I wondered many times where his mind must be. And what he thought of lying in the bed of inevitable death. One night we watched a Braves game. I won't soon forget the look of contentment on his face. How proud he was to sit up and follow the bases one more time.  I found it full of grief.

 (The apples are lovely this time of year, don't you think?)

I wanted him to watch many more games in the field of his youth.

I didn't want to watch him watch his last one.

Oh why, oh why, am I drawn to apple trees in summer?

It is Fall.

 There is a memory I hold way back in the dark part of me. And still I can't write it. Maybe...oh maybe I never will.  It was during one of those times when the morphine raged and all the venom and pain came out in his words. Some locked away for years I'd never heard that seemed to escape and lay claim to his indignities.
And mine.

My mind is full of them.  Those words. That tree is full of them.

 But his chair....his chair is empty don't you see. I don't hear his voice in the dark anymore.

It went flying round the bases round the moon round the moon....

Some seasons seem to never end.

All I want to do is look at apples in fall where summer should be. 

Gatherings and preachers, baskets of carnations and.....

apples

Perhaps I am beginning to find comfort in the places he lived and not in the ways he died. Somehow the emptiness of the chair, the wideness of the meadow and the fullness of that tree

brings forth a word. 

A word I can't find. On the tip of my tongue. It's sitting there in my brain. Under the covers. And it is fighting with me. Perched on the portals of anger looking out from the room where words are held in confinement, knowing full well the surrender must come. And like my daddy's outbursts of chemical verbiage, it wants to scream all over this page. But not tonight. 
Daddy's apple tree has more fruit.
And I must be patient.
A good patient.









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Monday Mimisms ~ I See Pirates. I Doth Protest.

I protest!! In some parts of the world, it is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Ever since I found out that ITLPD has its own Wikipedia page and BlogBlast4Peace stiiiiillllll does not, I abstain from all pirating and boycott in utter disbelief. However, I will wear this lovely patch made just for me by my dear Lizza Capucion of the Philippines. But that doesn't mean I'm a pirate!!! 

Did you hear that, Wikipedia? I am NOT a pirate.

 Not once have I ever committed criminal acts at sea upon any large body of water.
Hot tubs don't count, do they?



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Reason #54 To Blog4Peace ~ Flaws

How can we all live on the same ball made of war and peace? What stops it from toppling through the galaxy out of sheer frustration? Why does Mother Earth continue to wage her birthing pains on the likes of us?

Isn't there anyone who still thinks our differences are cause for celebration? Our perceived flaws matters of choice? Our collective autonomy made of courage?
I do.

Reason #54 to Blog4Peace

What are your reasons?

Related post: The Globe
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100 Reasons To Blog4Peace #55 ~ A Measure of Hope

Back in the summer of 2008, I wrote a series of posts called Thirty Days Thirty Reasons to Fly A Peace Globe. I documented all the current conflicts and wars in the world, answering the who, what, when, where and why questions for all. It was an intensely emotional journey for me - AND my readers. The conflict in Chad, near the Sudan border which began in 2005, was Reason #25.

The five-year long Civil War in Chad ended with a peace treaty on January 15, 2010. Although there is still much suffering and displacement in the region as humanitarian efforts are ongoing with the help of the United Nations, the war has officially ended.
This should give all of us a measure of hope.

My reason #55 to Blog4Peace

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