Mike Browne’s Blog

Ma and Pa Browne, pictured above with Carol and I, have been here since Thursday. They dropped in on their way back home to Nova Scotia from New Zealand. They’ve been a big help with prepping our house for sale. Dad loves the fix-it stuff so we’re taking advantage of it. I’ll get copies of Dad’s New Zealand photos and post some later on. If you’ve been trying to get in touch with me they’re the reason my phone’s been turned off. I only get to see them, if I’m lucky, once a year so call me on Monday.

How Easter eggs are made…

Whether you’re observing the first of spring by way of the Vernal Equinox, Easter or some other whacky holiday I wish you well. This guy has found a great way to celebrate by trying to do himself in with a feast of those horrifically sugary treats known as Peeps.

Wal-Mart sells T-shirts that appear to use the premier’s Maui mugshot… I love living in BC.

Steve McQueen would have been 75 today. I know you’re still dead, but happy birthday anyway Steve.

MSNBC – U.S. Supreme Court rejects Schiavo appeal

Appalling that Jeb Bush and crew would be trying to ‘take custody’ of Schiavo. The whole church and state line seems not to exist any more. The whole mess is just friggin’ bizarre. Interesting bit at the very bottom of the article:

“The custody request was based on the opinion of a neurologist working for the state who observed Schiavo at her bedside but did not examine her.

The neurologist, William Cheshire of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, is a bioethicist who is also an active member in Christian organizations, including two whose leaders have spoken out against the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube.”

Argh! If there’s one thing I’m learning from all this its that right now is a good time to have your wishes written down, witnessed and signed by a lawyer. I’m horrified at the thought that Carol would have to go through anything like Michael Schiavo is if I were incompacitated or vice versa. I don’t think our families would do what Terry Schiavo’s folks are, but you never really know what people are going to do with a stressful situation until they’re in it. I pray that me or anyone I know never have to find out how we would react. Yuck.

I’ll knock on some would just for you Dré.

Here is a top 20 list of Monty Python sketches from Entertainment Weekly. Thanks to Steve for the link.

I’m not sure how on Earth anyone could pick a top 20 Python sketches. You’d have to leave so many good ones out. Take one of my faves for example: upper class twit of the year. If you’re into reading more sketches from those crazy brits you can check out this site to read them online or to download all of them in zip format. Nicely done Bruce.

MSNBC – Court: Schiavo feeding tube won’t be reinserted
It’s the hot topic in the news. I don’t know all the facts in the case and have been staying out of the discussion on purpose. It’s interesting an intersting and challenging question to say the least and has people coming out staunchly in one camp or another. I’m not sure where I stand, but am leaning toward the ‘let her go’ camp.

What a mess. When congress gets involved in an issue like this things tend to get even messier. Mrs Schiavo as a thinking feeling person is for all intents and purposes not even there any more. Apparenlty the portion of her brain that identity and awareness existed in has been destroyed. I don’t envy the position her husband is in, having to make his wife’s wishes known without a written will. Her parents (as parents are rightly apt to) do not want to see their daughter pass away prior to them and are holding hope, apparently futily, that there is hope for Terry’s recovery. People say she is being ‘starved to death’ and that’s wrong. However, if there’s no ‘person’ left how can anyone but the people around her be suffering? In my opinion letting her go would help everyone to move along with their own lives.

The whole debacle makes me want to draw up a living will. I’ll state right now and publically so, I do NOT want to be kept alive by artificial means if the person I am now no longer exists.

I heard someone share this tonight:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” A Return to Love – Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles by Marianne Williamson

What a beautiful passage. I’ve heard and read it many times before, but it rang more truly than ever especially considering what I’ve been through of late. It comes, as things usually do, at exactly the time I needed to be reminded of it. Once again it affirms the spiritual truth that who we truly are is exactly who we are supposed to be and that we all have much to offer this world regardless of opinions (our own and other’s) to the contrary. I feel comfort in the knowledge that I truly aspire to this. As long as my behaviour matches my beliefs I’m on the right path. Spiritual integrity: What a concept.

Just a side note: This quote has been attributed Nelson Mandela as a part of his inaugural speech of 1994. Apparently, and surprising to me as I had believed it as well, incorrectly so. He did not, according to a little research, use the above in his speeches that year. Mandela’s actual inaugural speeches are at these links: speech 1 and speech 2

Confucious kept it a little shorter (and a little sharper): To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.

Here’s some more quotations on integrity that I’m finding comfort in. Especially:

Having integrity means… being completely true to what is inside you– to what you know is right… what you feel you must do, regardless of the immediate cost of sacrifice… to be honorable and to behave decently. – Samuel Goldwyn, 1960

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Losers make promises they often break. Winners make commitments they always keep. – Dennis Waitley

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. – Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

and finally:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Shakespeare, Hamlet

UPDATE: After reading Moselle’s remark below I thought I had better clear something up prior to more comments. Religiosity is not my intent, but spirituality. There’s a huge difference. The word ‘God’ tends to freak a lot of people out. When I speak of or relate to God I in no way mean anything near a ‘Christian’, ‘Islamic’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Hindu’ or any other religious God (which I can’t accept). The guiding tenets of all the religions I’ve studied are basically the same, but there are portions of each one that just drive me up a wall. The ‘God’ I speak of is my own personal conception of God. My God is more like ‘the Force’ in Star Wars. That’s the best way I can describe it. Today I choose the path of Obi-wan Kenobi rather than that of Darth Vader. If when reading spiritual literature you are stumped by a word like God just substitute it with what you’re comfortable with like spirit, good orderly direction, love, the light, the force, goodness, goddess or anything else.

Some more reading that has helped me:
Conversations with God and works by Joseph Campbell, Gary Zukav, Thich Nhat Hanh and Emmet Fox.

You can make one out of duct tape. I’d make one but I don’t have anything to put in it. I opened my wallet tonight and moths flew out. I think I found Jimmy Hoffa too. He’s not looking so hot.