Problems Need Energy to Live"

"Problems need energy to live."

– Tony Robbins.

 

Are you a blogger?

A writer, maybe?

Definitely, you are a reader—because you are here. And I am grateful you found me and are sticking with me.

With the plethora of words, podcasts, websites, Instagram, Facebook, Substacks, journals, and various publications available, it is a privilege that you take the time to read me.

I fluctuate between falling into a hole with brain-eating alligators with Jia Tolentino, who, on May 3, 2025, wrote in The New Yorker:

"My Brain Finally Broke."

"Much of what we see now is fake," she wrote, "and the reality we face is full of horrors. More and more of the world is slipping beyond my comprehension."

Yep, been there, done that.

I don't have to tell you things are bad, so I won't.

It is so easy to complain, to worry, to rail at injustices, and to be afraid most of the time. What if we stopped feeding the fears?

An old Native American saying goes like this: Two elders were watching two dogs fighting. One asked the other. "Which dog will win?"

Said the smarter of the two: "The one we feed."

 

As a writer, I often wonder what I am doing here.

 Am I boring you while I indulge myself?

This is a question every writer faces. What am I doing? And for whom? Does it matter?

Why do I feel compelled to write out my thoughts and put them out there?

(The Muse has us by the throat, imploring us to do the work, but she leaves the skill and practice to us.)

That's the journey.

 

Yet, if we don't share our thoughts and feelings, we are in deep do-do.

Our voices matter. You matter. Our government matters. Saving the animals matter. Saving the people from demagoguery matters.

If the light doesn't shine, the dark side wins. The little boy who spoke up when everyone else saw a naked Emperor and dared say: "The Emperor has no clothes," stood for truth.

Heavens, some are plenty happy to spew out filth, anger, hatred, bigotry, anti-this this, and anti-that. –See how loudly those voices are raging in our awareness, our consciousness, and probably burrowing into our subconsciousness.

So, speak up. We're tired as hell and not going to take it anymore. We're the people, for God's sake. We don't bow to tyrants.

If anyone ever blames you for being selfish or self-indulgent, blow them a raspberry and get on with it.

Where does the advancement of the species come from?

From those willing to put in the time face the repercussions, lay their hearts on the line, and thus change a civilization.

 "You're just a simple bricklayer," commented an adversary to a mason sitting beside an immense pile of brinks.

To which the mason replied, "I am building a Cathedral."

Saturday, June 28, 2025

"Inherit the Wind"

"Inherit the Wind"

 Lawdy, Lawdy, last night, I watched Inherit the Wind, starring Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott, and it was pure cinematic genius.

It was a made-for-television (1999) dramatized version of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925—my gosh, 100 years ago—when a high school teacher (Scopes) was arrested for violating the Butler Act by teaching evolution in a public school.  

Watching Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott, those two veteran actors, go at each other had me on the edge of my seat. I was afraid one of them would burst a blood vessel.

This version used fictitious names for the real attorneys Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, who were the attorneys in the actual 1925 Scopes trial.

When I was 21, I attended the play "Inherit the Wind," performed by the Thespians of Linfield College in Oregon. The actor who played Defense Attorney Clearance Darrel should have gone on to the New York stage. I came from a Protestant background, and when the Darrell character slammed the two books, the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species, together, stuck them under his arm, and walked off stage, I felt I had been hit by an anvil.

I went on to major in Biology in college, where evolution was considered a fact.  Hey, young Darwin was just a field researcher who went to the Galapagos Islands, observed the animals he found there, and took notes.  But when he published his findings, it stirred up a hornet's nest.

In school, if you wanted to debate the Creationists, they said to take it to the Theology department. Two professors did have a go at it, but they didn't have the skill of Lemmon or Scott.

Years later, I watched the 1960 version of the movie Inherit the Wind, starring Spencer Tracy and was unimpressed. (I still had the college play ringing in my ears and thought it couldn't be beat—until last night.)

Over the years, I didn't understand why the debate between Creationism and Evolution was such a big deal. I don't know how the Universe began or how life originated on Earth. It is an ongoing study. God is God; he doesn't need humans to defend him. Some people must think God doesn't know what a Quark is. Does He know how to smash an atom? Does He need constant admiration? Would you if you were God?

Some fundamentalists are so insulted they get blood in their eye if anyone says they came from animals. They should be so lucky. They are lucky to have life, no matter how it came about.

It's still a mystery.

This rendition of the play was apparently meant to be a parable against the McCarthy era, where beliefs were fanned to white hot intensity to believe there was a communist hiding under every rock. 

 I was encouraged last night at the end of Inherit the Wind to see that a great throng of people can champion a belief system; they can write laws to defend it. They can threaten opponents, and fight for their side. They can spread lies, propaganda, innuendos, and fear. Yet out of the morass will come an individual who will rise from the crowd and defend the right to think.

 

Inherit the Wind: 

"He who brings trouble on his house will inherit the wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise of heart."

Proverbs 11:29
 

Halfway Through

Help, It's the Dark Side

 

Blog June 24, 25

Well, last night, I made it halfway through the Star Wars Movie Prequel III: The Revenge of the Sith. The Supreme Chancellor Palpatine reminded me too much of our present Political administration; I didn't want to see Anakin Skywalker seduced to the dark side—I didn't want to see him turned into Darth Vader; I didn't want to watch Padme' die.

Did I give away too much? I don't think so; I believe you already know the plot. 

 We have too much darkness going on right now; I don't need to watch more, no matter how much angst a plot needs. I went to my office while the rest of my family finished the movie. (My Grandson had never seen the Star Wars series until the beginning of last month, so now he is going through them with his mother and us—when I choose to participate—and his mother has the evening off.) 

 

Once back in my office, I turned to the second item on Barbara Kingsolver's list of advice for writers.

Number one is "Give Yourself permission to write a bad book.

Done.

Number two is "Revise it until it's not a bad book."

Working on it.

I have written a novel: MADDIE, ALEX, AND GABE, Love, from the Cottage in the Vineyard.

Will that title stick? I don't know.

Madeline, 72, a widow, calls her daughter Alexandria in New York from California to tell her she is moving to Florence, Italy, for one year. (A retirement visa isn't easy to obtain, but one can get it for a year.) Her daughter has a fit for a 72-year-old woman to go traipsing off alone and to be out of the country; what if something happens to her?

Madeline decides it's time to put aside the emotional barb that has plagued her for the past twenty years, and Italy is the place to do it.

Toward the end of the book, Madeline decides to blog and has this to say:

"I am writing backward, I know. However, I will begin at the beginning in a minute. Right now. I have a pregnant daughter, aged 40, who is unmarried. The boisterous Bernardi family, owners of our cottage and hosts of our wedding, have adopted us. Ninety-year-old Signora Francesca Bernardi has been my friend, confidant, and mentor. Their handyman wooed me; I rescued an injured pup, named him Little Bear, and he has become my forever dog. Beautiful Gabriel Brandon rescued me and has become my forever love.

"I thought I had come to Italy to take stock of my life and to lay to rest a carryover from my marriage. In the process, I found love.

"I love our cottage and our new house next to it. I love that I will be a grandmother. Gabe is so puffed up at being a grandfather that a flight crew couldn't deflate him. But what if Alexandria decides to go alone and be a single mother? Her love-sick suitor, son of the Bernardi’s, and whom we have grown to love, will be left with a broken heart."—Madeline Brandon.

Did I give away too much? Probably.

Charge ahead, dear writers. And readers, don't be afraid to read fiction or write a bad book; remember that the best writing often comes from rewriting. The fun is thinking it up in the first place.

Lucus must have been fried after writing Star Wars.

 

 

Five Rules for Writers*

 

 

And Read:

I would say that I keep a novel going all the time, but there is a moment between books where I'm searching for another.

I read, not because Steven King said, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write,' but because I love reading. And selfishly, I want to have beautiful phrases running through my head as encouragement, and with the hope that they will teach my brain how to write decent phrases and descriptions.

I don't tend to be flowery with words, and poetry boggles my mind, like someone writing music—how in the heck do they do it?  That Dolly Parton keeps perking them out. "I write the songs that make the young girl's cry," Oh, that wasn't her song. Bruce Johnson (1975) wrote it. And in 1977, it won a Grammy for Barry Manilow.

At first, Manilow didn't want to sing the song, for unless you really listen to the words, it sounds like an ego trip for the lyricist.

"I Write the Songs," wrote Joanna Landrum, "isn't just a self-aggrandizing anthem for the gifted songwriter; it's a poetic ode to the universal power of music. At its core, the song celebrates the emotional and transformative impact of music on humanity, suggesting that the essence of music itself is the actual creator of songs."

 

"I wrote the very first song." The MUSE. GOD, MUSIC?

 

Finally, in my search for novels, I decided to check out the best and found Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, a Pulitzer Prize nominee.  Over the years, I had heard of that book but didn't know what it was about — a scholarly book about Christianity or the Bible? No, it was a bestseller about the Congo, with religion, philosophy, and politics intertwined in a way that only a deft hand can achieve.

It deeply impacted me.

 Poisonwood has two meanings; one is a plant in the Congo that, when touched, will give a terrible rash. The other means Blessed.  There are many words, especially in primitive cultures, that have multiple meanings.

The Poisonwood Bible was set in the Eisenhower era when the US was trying to bring Democracy to the Belgian Congo. (Or force, and it looks as though they are trying again.) The Poisonwood Bible is about a Missionary family who move to the Congo to give them Christianity. The father, the Preacher, is so obsessed with bringing Christ and baptizing all the little heathens that he would let his family starve to do it. And starving is what the natives of their village are constantly on the verge of while trying their damnest to avoid.

The viewpoint is from the wife, the mother, and her four daughters. Each of the five has their own voice, which Kingsolver said she wrote their monologues over and over to get their tones and perspectives.

One point I took away was that democracy doesn't work when people rush to a vote without having a viable discussion and coming to some consensus. As an old chief said, "When a vote is 49 to 51, half the population is angry all the time.

Kingsolver lived in the Congo for a time, and she said she researches the devil out of her books. She wants to be honest and have her readers trust her. One point that surprised me is that Kingsolver isn't afraid to use cliches, idioms, and everyday speech in her writing, something writing teachers try to drum out of writers. "Your writing is too good to use convenient slang." Well well.

I also read Kingsolver's The Bean Trees, which I loved. It warmed my heart; it didn't tear it out. I got a kick out of her description of Oklahoma, where my husband and I attended school for two years. In The Bean Trees, I gained some insight into the Cheyenne Nation of Oklahoma.

And people read more non-fiction because it teaches them something. Hum.

Kingsolver won the Pulitzer prize for Damon Copperhead, which I've chosen not to read for I don't want to endure a little boy getting slapped around by a man his mother marries.

I can take just so much angst.

I read a sweet little book this past week titled The Family Journal by Carolyn Brown about a divorced mother who finds her 14 girl smoking marijuana and her little 12-year-old boy sneaking out at night to drink beer. She decided that tough love was in order and moved them to a small town where she had inherited her family's old house and rented it to an agriculture teacher. (Enter a hunk.) It's handy to have an inheritance, but then, that is the stuff of novels. It reminded me of how much fun it is to grow up on a farm, as well as how much work it entails. Children seldom get bored on the farm and often begin to love and care for the animals.

The kids hate her at first, of course.

When I closed the book, I said, "Now that was refreshing."

 

*Here are Barbara Kingsolver's five rules for writers:

1.     Give yourself permission to write a bad book.

2.     Revise until it isn't a bad book.

3.     Get cozy with your own company.

4.     Study something besides writing.

5.     If you're young and smoke, you should quit.

 

She goes on to say that you want to live to an old age, for it is then that you do your best writing.

There's hope for me yet.

 P.S. I'm listening, I don't hear you. Love you anyway.

Talk to joshappytrails@gmail.com 

The 3.5% Rule

 

From France:

 

Thank you France
 

 

 "Non-violent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change."

Really?

I didn’t know that. A blog reader suggested I look into the 3.5% rule, and I did.

Viola’, good news.

I didn’t walk in Eugene, Oregon’s No King’s Parade, but I, in my trusty pickup, crossed the bridge spanning the Willamette River to pick up my kids who did. Protestors lined the bridge, friendly waving, signs waving, people cheering, thumbs up upping. It was great. I was in a parade of cars.

Today, I found the 3.5% rule, which gave me hope. Way to go, Thank you, dear reader!

“The “3.5 rule” is a set of conclusions from research conducted by Erica Chenoweth and Matthew Stephan, authors of “Why Civil Resistance Works.” They reviewed historical data and found support for the notion that a government could not successfully withstand a challenge when 3.5% of its population actively mobilized against it.”

--Richard Seifman, June 11, 2025, former World Bank Health Advisor and U,.s. Senior Foreign Service Officer.

 

Non-violent protests such as the No King March held yesterday, June 14, 2025, allows people who are empathetic to a cause bring their voices to the table in a non-violent way. It also fosters solidarity among diverse groups.

When a government or establishment portrays demonstrators as violent or aggressive, riling them with tear gas or the military instead of letting local authorities handle a violent outbreak—which can happen when people get seriously riled, it tells the world this is serious--It is a desperate attempt to squelch dissent.

Remember the 50s’ and 60s’ when individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr. championed non-violent tactics such as boycotts, sit-ins, and marches. They were met with resistance too, but they persevered. They changed people’s opinions. When people coalesced behind their leadership, legislative change happened. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 came into effect.

The anti-apartheid movement in South Africa’s success, was mainly due to the non-violent strategies employed by Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. Their approach built a domestic coalition and garnered international support. That pressured South African leadership to end Apartheid rule.

In India, Mahatma Gandhi led several peaceful protests that encompassed “Satyagraha,” a philosophy of non-violent resistance emphasizing truth and love force over violence.

Watching tanks roll by? Spending 45 million dollars to do it? “Peanuts,” said the President.

Hey, I like peanuts. The people could use a few.

 

From San Francisco:

 Cool

 

"Never Talk Religion or Politics."

 

 

A rule of etiquette—in business, at the dinner table, at the barbershop, and elsewhere. This phrase, “Never discuss religion or politics with those who hold opinions opposite to yours,” has been cited in print since at least 1840.

And what do I do? I break the rule. (Family member—I wasn’t at the barbershop.)

Here was the rebuke: “If catastrophe befalls you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”—

Whoa.

What if you really do want to know what they think? I read about the Ancient Egyptians, so the story went that when a stranger came to their village, they asked them what their religion was, for they were receptive to all kinds, and really wanted to know what this new person brought to the table.

Linus, from the Peanuts comic strip in 1961, said, “There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people…religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.”

I’ve only broken two of the three.  

 I looked up the author of the quote at the top of the page.

It was Richard Bach. I love that man. He wrote Illusions, my most-read book. (Also Jonathan Livingston Seagull.) I found this:

 

Okay, Dokey, guys that lets me off the hook. I will continue to read, learn, wonder, and invite others to jump in whenever they take a notion.

Hop in and tell me what you think.

Comment

I should let Peaches, the Pink Party Poodle for Peace, do the speaking for a while.

dogblogbypeaches.blogspot.com/

See ya later,

Jo

"To wonder and invite others to wonder with me."

Are You Struggling to Keep Up?/Hold Your heart in Both Hands

 "And God didn't make little green apples..."

 

Hold Your Heart in Both Hands.

Place your hands on your chest; for women, place your hands under your breasts, lift strongly so you feel like you are lifting your heart, and while holding your heart in both hands, say a prayer to your heart.

The heart-holding exercise was the advice of an elder to his younger generation.

I tried it, and it's peaceful, sweet, and uplifting.

 

Think of this: Sixteen days after conception, your heart began beating for you.

What a magical machine. It has tissue that wants to pulse. It wants to beat so badly that if it is shocked out of life, another shock will reestablish its pulse.

Now, how magical is that?!

Your heart began beating while it was still a tube and continued beating as it morphed into a chambered vessel.

The beating of our hearts is so constant that we don't think of it most of the time.

But think about it: the heart is like a momma ewe caring for her baby lamb; it is there nourishing all the body parts that are coming into being and then continues to beat for sometimes 100 years.

The heart has been used in prose, poetry, and love since, probably, the beginning of literature. It is associated with characteristics such as courage, honesty, perseverance, loyalty, and, of course, love.

The heart has taken a beating recently. It has always been so, but more recently, the pressure on it has been relentless. Usually, in life, stress comes and goes; illness and strife come and go. Then strife lets up; it gives our hearts, minds, and bodies a chance to recuperate. Lately, the unrest has been upon us like a storm that won't stop.

I came across a comment by a writer this morning who felt like her brain had become broken. She thought she could hardly write a coherent sentence.

What are our world conditions doing to us?

Are You Struggling to Keep Up?

It feels as though we are on a treadmill.

AI wants to write and think for us, and Pilot butts in every chance it gets.

Young people (especially) don't like the sex they were born into; people prefer to go it alone rather than enter into a relationship, and women have to hold fast to the freedoms they fought for, while hearing that they deserve to be "spanked."

Race seems to be an issue when I thought we were making giant strides to eradicate our resentments against people different from us. The government wants to pass laws regulating morality and books, and ensuring that authors use the correct words. Medical care has become controlled until the poor doctors must not know which way to turn and give us so many tests (to cover their butts) that the "Art" has virtually disappeared from "The Art and Science of Medicine."

We've put a person in control of our health who, it appears, wants Nature to take its course with viruses, germs, and communicable diseases that regularly pass through a population. (The use of the diphtheria vaccine, that horrible disease that strangled many infants and children in the 1700s  (One out of every ten children infected died from this disease) became eradicated by 2009. This shocked me; I thought it was long before.)

I see some who brush off the present concerns, others are overwhelmed with it. Some have felt that our establishment is so rotten that it deserves to be torn down and begun anew. There are so many rabbit holes we are tripping over them. And therapists are so overwhelmed some are leaving their profession.

Let me know if I'm wrong, but I am tired of conspiracies—yes, there are some—but come on, give us a break. Talk of aliens used to be fun. They aren't anymore.

I try to find a happy spot, but I struggle with the search.

I have heard that the heart has an electrical field that extends beyond the body. Our electrical fields interact with the electrical fields of others.

How is that affecting us?

Choose wisely.

And give that divine heart of yours a chance to be happy.

Jo

What Fills You with Liveliness?

 

“What fills you with so much liveliness that you want to do the work yourself?”—Jane Friedman

 

 Hawaii house

  

This morning as I stood at the sink with my hands in soapy dishwasher, an image flashed in my head. It was another day with my hands in soapy dishwater.

I was in Hawaii and worried that we were on the verge of running out of water. It freaked me so much that I get images of it to this day—and I’m not in Hawaii. I’m in Oregon where everyone in the family would laugh when I say I conserve water, for I have left the water running more than once, but hey, that’s when I left my mind someplace else.

In Hawaii we used a water catchment system where rainwater was collected from the house’s roof, shuttled into a pipe, and carried to a storage tank in the backyard. From the tank it flowed magically into faucets in the house. We had hot water too, after we replaced the rusted-out water heater with a new on-demand Propane heater that gave us instant hot water. On the first day on our new property, though, I took a cold shower in the sunshine in the yard on the glorious green grass.  (Using plastic tubs of cold water.) I left invigorated as though I’d had a brisk swim. However, I didn’t want to do that every day, and Daughter Dear said, “One of the great pleasures of life is soaking in a hot bath.”

All this water shortage was El Nino’s fault.

El Nino is a complex weather condition related to the wind and the ocean water. During an El Nino, California gets the rain, and Hawaii gets the drought.

Hawaii has a solution:

They provide a free water fill station with enormous nozzles that will fill a tank quickly—that is if you have the capability of hauling water. We put a small tank in the back of the pickup for that purpose. See why I love our pickup truck—for moving, hauling garbage to the free dump, and for being my office on wheels. It’s a general work horse.

During the rain shortage, I heard the rattling of a gigantic water truck delivering water to the neighbors on the ten acres next to ours. They had horses and thus a great need for water. That showed that you can have water delivered by the truck load to fill your tank.

We added a second storage tank on our property which Husband Dear and a helper built. After leveling the ground, adding a sand base and a plastic liner, Husband Dear and assistant built the tank up to eight feet. Husband Dear worked from inside the tank, and with the helper outside, they built up the tank using metal panels. That left Huband Dear inside a tank with a ladder being the only way out. Or a helicopter.

The ladder worked.

I wrote about our experience on the Big Island in a small book, The Frog’s Song, published by Regal Publishing. It should have a subtitle like “Living off the grid for one year.”

No, The Frog’s Song is not a children’s book. It is the story of one husband, one daughter, one seven-month-old grandson, two dogs, and two cats, who took leave of their senses, put their house up for sale, and moved to a tropical Island.

Pila of Hawaii calls moving to the Island a “Sojourn of Rejuvenation and Discovery.” 

Pila was convinced that Hawaii is where an individual must physically connect within a kind of initiation to prepare for the turbulent years ahead.

Daughter Dear and I felt “called” to the Island, we didn’t know anything about the sojourn, it simply seemed imperative that we move there. A year later, it seemed imperative that we leave. We moved to California for two years recovering from our “Sojourn,” before moving back to Oregon. We kept questioning what we felt on the Island, why we had such energy shifts, and why some places felt good while others felt odd. And then we learned that the Island is often called the Dirty Laundry Island because your issues come up to be healed. Whoa!

 (It turned out that leaving the Island was necessary for my husband’s health—more in the book.)

At the City of Refuse—one of the most tranquil places I have ever encountered, we heard an elder tell his story. As a child an elder sat down a few children and asked them, “What lies beyond the horizon?

“The sun, the water, nothing.”

To them the Island was their entire world.

“No,” said the elder, “There is life beyond the horizon.”

 I took that as a message and another reason to leave the Island, especially with a year-old child. Don’t stay cooped up on an Island when there is life out there.

More on The City of Refuge in the book.

I wanted to use The Frog’s Song as a title for my book after drawing the frog card three times from the Medicine Cards deck and learned that “The frog’s song calls the rain that settles the dust for our journey.”

To our surprise, the Coqui frogs of Hawaii sang us to sleep at night by singing their name, “Co-Qui.” To me they sounded like birds. Others on the Island consider them to be “Noise pollution,” and I guess in large numbers they can be quite loud, but I loved ours.  And I had to laugh when we returned to Oregon where at night, we heard the booming sound of a Bullfrog. (Trumpeting our return?)

“On the Big Island,” wrote Pila, “you are on ‘new turf,’ and the comfort zone known as your ordinary world no longer applies…You are at one of the few doorways in your reality where the Earth liquefies, and nothing is as it may seem.”  That is why Pila feels it is paramount for individuals to come to the Big Island and experience the energy in person at least once.

When Captain Cook asked the natives where they lived, and they said Hawaii, he thought they were ignorant savages. What they meant was that I live in Hawaii, “The Breath of the Creator.”

“Ha” = breath

“Wai” = life force, the water

“I” = I

“I live in the supreme wellspring of the life force of creation which is within me and all I behold is Paradise.”

Some say that Hawaii is not an easy place to live, for if you go there to run away from something, that something will present itself. Yep. And I know that the “call” to Hawaii, is a call not so much to a physical place, but to home—to the breath of the creator.

 

To say “ALOHA” is to stand in the presence of the breath, spirit and light, and to acknowledge and recognize all of this in another.” Pila of Hawaii.

Aloha,

Jo

All this from washing dishes this morning. 

 

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