Everyone is Photogenic

I've been busy with house guests for a few days, but now it's all quiet and sort of lonely here and I'm back. I'll ease my way back in by sharing this little gem. It's message is so beautiful and so true. We all emit our own special light. It's so sad that we often do not accept this fact about ourselves or look for the special light in others. I can remember my grandmother saying about someone, "She  hides her light under a bushel basket."  I don't remember who she was talking about or why she was talking about them.  I was very young.  But, I knew she meant that person was good, that person was special, that she recognized that specialness and she respected it. Perhaps watching and listening to this video will remind us all to remove our bushel baskets and let our real selves shine through more often.

Willful Blindness

Willful blindness (sometimes called ignorance of law, willful ignorance or contrived ignorance or Nelsonian knowledge) is a term used in law to when an individual seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting himself in a position where he will be unaware of facts that would render him liable.

For example, in a number of cases, persons transporting packages containing illegal drugs have asserted that they never asked what the contents of the packages were and so lacked the requisite intent to break the law.

Such defenses have not succeeded, as courts have been quick to determine that the defendant should have known what was in the package and exercised criminal recklessness by failing to find out.

 Hopefully, at this point in the post, you're asking yourself, "What does the legal concept of 'Willful Blindness' have to do with a music video of 'Stand By Me'?"  Of course, now I'm going to tell you.  A few days ago I was watching a Ted Talk about Willful Blindnessand how it related to an environmental issue that led to abnormally high incidence of Asbestoses among citizens of a small Montana mining town.  The speaker told of the part an  everyday woman in that town became a Whistle Blower and involved the federal government in the situation. 

Then, this morning, a Face Book friend shared the video above.  We all know the song, Stand By Me, but this was a new spin on it.  As I watched and listened, I was moved by the video's message.  Then, the concept of Willful Blindness slammed into my brain...hard, like a jack hammer into concrete, breaking through the concrete, breaking it into small pieces of rubble. 

I thought about how much I have, how well I live, what fabulous medical care I receive, what freedoms are guaranteed to me...all the things I take for granted.  Then, I thought, "I did nothing to deserve to have any of this.  It was dumb luck, that's all.   I was born in the most powerful country in the world.  I was in the beginning of the most prosperous decades our country ever enjoyed.  I was born white.  I was born healthy.  I went to wonderful suburban schools.  I completed university degrees through scholarships and grants.  I did nothing special.  I was just born in the right place at the right time to the right people.  EXCEPT for those things, I am just like every person in that video."

After all of that thinking, then, by no free will of my own, the idea of Willful Blindness,wiggled itself into my thoughts.  I thought about how every time we pass a homeless person and look away, we're practicing Willful Blindness.  When we drive through the ghettos/slums and think, "these people live like animals, they're disgusting" and drive a little faster, we are being willfully blind.  How about when we're at the store and see a parent screaming at their child and yanking the child by the arm and we avert our eyes.  Is that Willful Blindness?  What about that couple next door with their loud arguments and screaming matches?  The couple we whisper about to each other guessing that there is domestic abuse over there, but we do nothing, we say nothing, we don't reach out.  Willful Blindness for sure.  What about the kids in foster care and their damaged parents?  Who really in the general public thinks much about them and their futures much less their presents.  We practice Willful Blindness by thinking, "They're trash.  They're not like us. ."  Our proficiency at Willful Blindness protects us from not only realizing they are like us but, truthfully, there by the grace of whatever higher power you choose in which to believe, the ARE us.  Willful Blindness prevents us from helping.  It makes it easier for us to cocoon and remain comfortable away from the fray, away from the need, away from sharing the pain and the struggle of "the others" whomever they may be, whatever needs they present to our world.

So there you have it...from a Ted Talk about the legal concept of Willful Blindness and environmental whistle-blowing to a video of an old Ben E King classic song re-configured and re-recorded by musicians around the world and shared by a Canadian friend of mine on Face Book to me connecting those dots and sharing my thinking here with you.  They are indeed interesting times in which we live.

What It's Like to Hear Voices in Your Head

This woman and what she has to say are absolutely incredible. For me, minute 12:10 to the end are worth hearing over and over. Her insights apply to ALL of us. Do yourself a favor and invest 14 minutes listening.

We're Not There Yet...

Restaurant on the Rails

  Only a fellow Foodie would understand that the entire "food experience" is what counts, the ambiance, the companionship (or not), the service. This morning's UK Telegraph brought me an article by Michael Portillo who can often be seen on PBS. Portillo offers us an insiders look at dining while riding the rails between Paddington Station in London and Plymouth, a distance of just under 200 miles.

American George Pullman may have perfected the concept luxurious overnight train travel depicted in all those 1950s film noir movies I love, love, love, but I bless the Brits for preserving it's heritage as only a nation and culture steeped in tradition can understand.

We head over to London on October 16th. While there, I think I'll book us tickets for a trip to Plymouth or Exeter for a day just so I can have that 1950s dining on the train experience as the gorgeous English countryside rolls by outside the window. On our honeymoon we took the Eurostar 1st class London to Paris. We sat at a small table with one of those little lamps with a pink glass shade like you see in movies about the orient express and ate breakfast served by a white gloved waiter going over and nibbled baby lamb chops for dinner going back a week later. It was a wonderful experience; but, there is little scenery to watch as the Eurostar speeds along at an average speed of 106 mph through the Channel Tunnel and across the English and French countryside. It's all a big blur and there is no clickety-clack of the rails. It's all modern and high tech. I'm ready for a good old-fashioned train ride. I'll pretend I'm Audrey Hepburn and that John is Cary Grant. Yeah, that will work for 190 miles. Wouldn't it be great if we could all get on that train together?

 

 

What is it about trains that makes food taste so good? Some of my happiest memories are of prolonged lunches between St Moritz and Zurich, Bordeaux and Paris, and even between Coimbra and Salamanca. Of course, it’s partly the scenery. No restaurant, however brilliantly situated, can give you the constantly changing views that you can see from a railway. Revolving restaurants at the tops of tall buildings try to compete, but spinning around is no substitute for speeding along.

Part of our brains must tell us that much effort goes into producing excellent food while hurtling along at high velocity. Certainly, we sense that there’s a particular luxury to dining on the move. The proffered bread basket, the vegetables presented on a salver and the uncorking of the wine, all acquire a special value, even significance, in a dining car, compared with a dining room. And while I defer to nobody in my love of train travel, let’s be honest: it can grow wearisome. Plymouth to London is more than three hours, well beyond the lifespan of a newspaper or cheap novel: but in the Pullman dining car, lunch extends to fill the journey, so that the arrival at Paddington comes as an almost rude surprise. “Excuse me. You’re hurrying my chocolate mints and espresso!”

I had thought the “proper” meal extinct on British trains. My youthful memories of rail travel carry a delightful (or certainly strong) smell of kippers, a miraculous hangover cure provided by breakfasts between Oxford and London. But in recent years, meals have been commodified, packaged and microwaved. The cork has given way to the screw top, the table cloth to the laminated mat.

Imagine my delight, then, at discovering the Pullman restaurant car running in either direction between Plymouth or Exeter and Paddington. It was like encountering that endangered giant tortoise in the Galapagos. Was there hope that from the surviving DNA of this West Country restaurant car we might clone fine dining across the network?

When you board, the dining car is being prepared. You catch a glimpse of wine glasses being polished, but you are ushered at first to a regular seat until the call for lunch or dinner, essential time in which the taste buds and enzymes do their anticipatory work. Then, at last, the summons! Whether you have a standard or first-class ticket, you are welcomed in the Pullman car, but hurry, because only the first 35 will secure a seat.