What is your earliest memory? Describe it in detail, and tell us why you think that experience was the one to stick with you.
These guys…
Hiding behind the couch…
Really scary…
Live on a mountain far from the sea…
When you were 10, what did you want to be when you grew up? What are you now? Are the two connected?
Source: Ballerina Fireman Astronaut Movie Star | The Daily Post
When I was ten, I wanted to be like these guys:
…build this:
…and operate a fleet of these:
When I was ten, I could never understand why people made it all so hard…maybe I inherited some of the 50s/60s ‘build it, then see if it flies’ philosophy ?
When I got a little bit older, I also wanted to have a say in the corporate dress code:
Due to inconvenient science and politics, we’re still waiting on decent alien defence organisation. I decided to join the Air Force. When the recruiter told me that my eyesight wasn’t good enough to fly, he was adroitly elbowed out of the way by his Army colleague. My 24 years in the Army was a great experience – six months after I retired from the Army, the Air Force called and said if I wasn’t doing anything else too critical to world peace, would I like to do a spot of work with them? So I did get to join the Air Force although all my flying involved new release movies and duty-free…
Bonus assignment: do you keep a notebook next to your bed? Good. Tomorrow morning, jot down the first thought you have upon waking, whether or not it’s coherent.
Inspires such confidence,
Rare as a huia .
I had seen this design when friend posted hers online. The huia now sadly extinct – or perhaps roaming with the moa in deepest darkest Fiordland – enshrined on the New Zealand sixpence, now also rare. Here, painstaking cut from the coin and mounted on pounamu, New Zealand greenstone…combined with other thoughts, things on my mind, sleep-addled? @ 0448 this morning…
The WordPress Daily Prompt: Khalil Gibran once said that people will never understand one another unless language is reduced to seven words. What would your seven words be?
Every once in a while the Doctor Who writers smack the nail fair on the head…
Blink was one episode so clever in its inception and execution; the one word test from The Snowmen another…subtle, challenging, provoking…
Seven words.
In no particular order.
Love.
Trust.
Help.
Feed.
Follow.
Lead.
Protect.
The challenge is not whittling a list down to seven but building it up…I stalled at four (not saying which four) for quite a while.
If eight words were allowed, the eighth might be ‘you’. But ‘you’ becomes redundant…
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Imaginary Friend.”
Many of us had imaginary friends as young children. If your imaginary friend grew up alongside you, what would his/her/its life be like today?
I had an imaginary friend once.
When I used to live here.
His name was Tom.
Tom wasn’t really much of a friend. 
He would do all sorts of horrendous things and then conveniently disappear, leaving this kid to take the rap.
Where is Tom now? Who cares? Probably prison, politics or big business….
Source: Treat | The Daily Post
This week’s photo challenge theme is “Treat,” an intentionally open-ended prompt. This week, share with us a photo of something that you consider a marvellous treat.
Doing dinner with my youngest daughter and her partner….
Any and all time with the twin terrors….
Kiwi sign outside the office…
About once a year…someone else gets a treat too…
Geeking out with my oldest daughter each once month when her Nerd Block fix arrives…
In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Happy Place.”
In a most happy place over Queenstown 1998
One of my all time favourite ‘desert island’ books is Wilbur Smith’s Eagle in the Sky. “He’ll be in the sky” are Debra’s words when he disappears near the story’s end…well, the book’s end anyway: Eagle is one of those tales that you hope never ends, that David and Debra go on and on…
As much as I love aviation, I never got round to learning to fly but when I need to go, I go for height, up a hill, onto a mountain, some place high and quiet where I can look down and think.
My other happy place is at a keyboard or holding a pen, using words to seek and maintain balance, to put my feelings some place where they become tangible and malleable. I can’t promise the words will always make sense or that later on I might not remember the emotion behind them but they lie as reminders of places I have been, journeys I have made, people I have been…words as much a sanctuary as a windy hilltop or craggy peak…
Happy place does not necessarily mean tidy place!!!
By Terry O’Neill.
Gradual improvements in practice continue on concussion issues with the horizon a far distant mirage. It sounds simple: “a temporary unconsciousness or confusion caused by a blow on the head” (Concise Oxford English Dictionary), and from the Latin concutere: to dash together or shake.
The issue’s always with me. Fifteen years ago our younger daughter was squashed and bashed in a vehicle collision and the devastating effects of her serious head injury will be with her, and the family, for the rest of her life. There’s no outward sign of disability, and her good looks mask her debilitating injuries within. She married and gave birth to two sons and fatigue dictates absolute rest daily after lunch with demanding tasks sometimes rescheduled next morning, and also she has to accept outside help with children and housekeeping – for a “normal” life that will never be normal again. Nevertheless, magnificent therapies, and all that love can do, means her confidence still improves and she “has a life”.
Concussion in sport may have additional dimensions.
In an earlier “As I See It” column I quoted Ireland’s Dr Barry O’Driscoll whose strong opinions lead to his resignation as a leading IRB medical advisor because the IRB introduced the controversial brief concussion bin, and this five minutes Pitch Side Concussion Assessment (PSCA) was later extended
Rugby players’ collisions vary in impact and severity but former All Black James Broadhurst has suffered a nagging headache for six weeks, and consequently, is ruled out of the remainder of the 2015 ITM competition. Broadhurst, a one test All Black, copped a couple of head knocks against Wellington in August and played until halftime. Broadhurst’s plea to players: “Don’t try to tough it out. I took a knock and thought I’d be all right. Two minutes later I copped another one that cost me my ITM season.” Now he wonders if his rugby career is in limbo.
While research continues on concussion after effects, it’s essential to also focus on causes of head knocks. Tackling in rugby needs to be redefined. The growing number of former rugby league players employed as defence coaches introduced the chest high tackle to control or slow ball distribution. This technique increases head to head clashes. Should rugby encourage the redevelopment of “around the legs tackling” with the head safely behind the opponents knees? Should we not examine the style of rugby whereby there are too many mismatches with bigger and heavier forwards consistently used as first receivers against lighter tacklers? Should supervision be more intense at the breakdown where players individually throw themselves head first into the fray?
Tentative moves are afoot whereby rugby tackling above the shoulder can earn a penalty. But wheels of change turn too slow.
Barry O’Driscoll insists the power of television, and the huge commercial influence, highlights the glory of the club, or the team, and not player welfare. Will only a fatality accelerate those wheels of change?
Parents won’t encourage their children to participate in any sport where the well-being of each player is not the paramount concern.
ENDS
Source: broken and ready ‹ Reader — WordPress.com click and read…trust me, it’s worth it…
I’ve taken a break from WordPress for most of the year and only today opted back into following my favoured writers. Most nights before flipping the lights out (or being thumped in the face by the volume I’m reading) I try to wade a little further through Stephen King’s Dark Tower epic (almost done with Book III)…tonight, I opened up WordPress’ Reader instead and found Rara’s latest post, the electrons still dripping…her words struck such a chord I am up and writing at something past twelve…
I don’t usually write when I’m upset. When something hurts me, or twists my truths, or shakes the core of my world– I phone a friend. I brew some tea. I ask my mother a question she couldn’t possibly answer, and I write a million notes down in one of my million notebooks.
I don’t usually write in the moment of a broken heart. I’m not ready.
I wait to digest my thoughts. I taste them– the flavor and texture– and then let the acids that fizzle inside of me break them down. I let the fire inside of me burn them up, until all that is left over are the indigestibles.
Right now, I can’t seem to process anything. My insides are completely full of huge, indigestible feels….
…They know my elevator pitch by heart.
You probably know it, too.
It goes like this:
You are loved.Every word I waste and every story I spend, all comes back to this….
Wow!! I’m speechless, at a loss, shaken by the power of Rara’s words, as unformed as she may think them to be…she’s been through tough times recently (read between the lines in this is not a test) I’ve followed her work for a long time and this post is one of her best…
If the sun goes down over a man in India, while he washes a pot big enough to bathe in, and he doesn’t know he is loved– what does it matter? If the sun rises on a woman as she piles veterinary books in a tote bag, somewhere in the middle of Illinois, and she doesn’t know she is loved– what does it matter?
What indeed? Not so long ago, someone I know got to a point in their life where they no longer felt valued, felt they were not loved, that they had got to a point where there was no way back, not even a tunnel for there to be a light at the end of…a very dark place…
Some of you may think you know who I’m talking about but, trust me, you probably don’t…no one sees all my faces and for now that’s good with me (I thought of using a house of cards to illustrate my many facets but now that Google search only returns four zillion pictures of Kevin Spacey…)…don’t play Sherlock, just pick up on the message…
When I heard, I was angry…
…angry at them, who I know would fight, kick, scratch, gouge, and bludgeon to help others, for not doing the same for themselves…it’s OK – it’s not selfish – to fight for yourself…for not calling emailing screaming calling for fire sending smoke signals cutting crop circles that said I need some help here, yes, me, over here, help me, help me, help me…
…angry at me for not reading the signs…if there were any…all too often we only see these through the lenses of 20-20 hindsight…and angry at myself for not being able to generate some sort of retroactive rescue mission to interdict that moment of uncharacteristic weakness and leave nothing but scorched earth behind (yep angry angry)…
…angry at all those insignificant casual/causal clumsy pin pricks that wear people down, the petty games that literally suck away the will to live…
…and just generally angry at a world which allows people with so much to offer to get to a place so dark and, let’s be honest, when I get like this I’m kinda an equal opportunity anger sort of guy…spreading the love as it were…
Angry’s good sometimes…it purifies and clarifies thought…and this story has a happy ending…helplessness haunts the dark places..and those around them…you can always do something…even teach a horse to sing…if nothing else…
I can sit in my folding chair and hear your message, and hope you’re hearing mine.
You are loved.
No matter where you’d be on a faded map, if you were just a scattered dot.
You are loved. You are valued.
I am loved. I am valued.
Today’s Rara badge of courage
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