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My neighbor up the street has the most phenomenal oriental poppies. In full open mode a blossom is about nine inches across. Watching the phases of a blossom is like watching an egg hatch. Here’s part of the sequence:

I just returned from Nashville where I was celebrating my mother’s 94^th birthday.

Mom has lived for the past five years with my sister and brother-in-law in an apartment they built onto their home so she wouldn’t have to move to an assisted living facility. She is still in robust health and, in the instant, seems totally present and sharp. She carries on a conversation, responds appropriately to questions, laughs heartily at jokes.

When I come to visit this is where we start:

“So, tell me what you’ve been up to lately…” she asks. “How are you spending your time these days?”

The first time she asks this, I give her the full rundown of my five most interesting activities.

She nods approvingly, asks a couple of questions, which I answer.

However, two seconds after the conversation has ended, its content has disappeared without a trace into a hole where her memory used to be.

“So, tell me what you’ve been up to lately….”

We go through several iterations of this, and each time my answers get shorter and a little wackier.

Finally my sister rescues me. “Mom, we’ve already covered this. She TOLD you what she’s doing.”

Mom is embarrassed for about two seconds then immediately forgets that she’s been chastised. Fortunately my sister has become so skillful at managing her that she is ready with some potatoes: “Here. Sit and peel these.”

This is the least of what my sister has to put up with though. Mom can no longer follow the long arc of a magazine article or TV show nor does she do any handicrafts so she gets bored easily. She meanders into the kitchen every few minutes to ask when the next meal is happening, or if we’re going to the store, or if there’s any tea in the pot.

These are minor annoyances compared to the question she asks at least a dozen times a day: “May I be of any use?”

My sister saves up little tasks for this question. Setting the table, cutting up celery, washing lettuce, refreshing the flowers in a bouquet, wiping off a counter. But it’s like having a two-year-old – without the pleasure of seeing him grow ever more skillful as the months pass. I can’t believe how patient she is. Her husband too. So kind.

I’d have killed Mom by now.

I appreciate my sister’s saintliness especially because our mother was never one of those wonderful parents for whom no payback is too great. On the contrary, she was supremely focused on our dad and on her music career – we three kids were an afterthought – a duty she never got into, except as we reflected positively on herself. In fact looking over her scrapbooks – you’d hardly know she had kids. (Ditto grandkids.) They’re all about her.

Perhaps that’s why my sister and I have been such attentive parents. Our other sister was wiser than my mother and knew right off the bat that she wasn’t cut out for motherhood and chose to have no kids.

Of course if Mom had made the childless choice, I wouldn’t be here to write this blog.

I am thrilled that Obama did so well in yesterday’s primaries. What was especially interesting to follow was the pollsters’ predictions. They were all over the map, of course. My favorite pollster (and political writer) is Markos Moulitsas, the guy behind DailyKos. He always says he pulls his numbers from a very special place, which I’ll let him describe for you below:

Prediction performance by kos

Wed May 07, 2008 at 08:57:48 AM PDT

According to SurveyUSA’s pollster scorecards, which track 8 different measures of scoring polling results:

North Carolina: PPP was the most accurate by five measures, Zogby by three.

Indiana: PPP was the most accurate by five measures, InsiderAdvantage by three.

Overall, Research 2000, who does polling for Daily Kos, was second best in North Carolina (out of 13) and fourth best in Indiana (out of 10).

Meanwhile, here are the results of my last three predictions:

My prediction —-Actual —-Margin of error
PA C:54.0 O:46.0 —-C:54.6 O:45.6 —-1.0 point
NC C:43.9 O:56.1 —-C:41.5 O:56.2 —-2.5 points
IN C:51.1 O:48.9 —-C:50.7 O:49.3 —-0.8 points

Damn NC burns me up, since I was one tenth of a percent off on Obama, but forgot to account for “no preference” and Mike Gravel on the ballot. Combined, they got 2.4 percent. I would’ve guessed 1 percent, so that would’ve brought my margin of error to under 2 points. But that’s just me being greedy.

Given that I pull these out of you-know-where, it seems my ass is more accurate than the pollsters! I jest, I jest. The polling composites were a big part of my prediction system.

Poppycock: senseless talk; nonsense. From the Dutch word pappekak - (from Middle Dutch: pappe, perhaps from Latin pappa, food) + kak, dung (from kakken, to defecate, also from Latin cacāre).

My astrological forecast for the day, in its entirety, was this:

There is power and prosperity in precision. Roll up the change lying on your dresser in paper rolls and parlay it into useful bills at the bank.

I have actually found astrology to be helpful in my life, but never from the daily paper. Pure poppycock. However, this writer evidently shows a similar affinity for P-words, so I can’t entirely discount her.

I started this blog of P-words because so many words beginning with the letter P are Problems for me.

Procrastination, Perfectionism, Productivity, Potential.

Practice – as in establishing a regular writing practice (why I started this blog).

Publish – as in putting it out there (again, why I started this blog).

And the big one: PURPOSE.

What is my purpose? Why am I here? What is my special gift to the Planet this time around?

You’ve probably struggled with this question too - unless you are one of those maddening people who knew from the time you were eight years old that your purpose was to heal sick animals, or rescue people from burning buildings, or be the President that America has been waiting for – and you proceed steadily on that Path.

Many of us have been blessed and cursed with a wide variety of interests and talents, but none great enough to be the One True Thing our lives are all about. We charge down one path for awhile, then something more interesting pops up and we head off in another direction. That’s my life story.

Eckhart Tolle speaks extensively about purpose in his latest book, “A New Earth.” From pg. 258:

Our true and primary purpose cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do but what you are – that is to say, your state of consciousness… Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary….

Your inner purpose is to awaken…. Your outer purpose can change over time. It varies greatly from person to person. Finding and living in alignment with the inner purpose is the foundation for fulfilling your outer purpose.

What he says in a hundred different ways is that our purpose is to become conscious, egoless, present in this moment – and this moment and now this moment – no matter whether you’re washing dishes, paying bills, lying sick in bed, grieving a loss. When you’re present to it, anything is possible. Outer purpose is more easily revealed and moved towards.

OK. At the risk of disappearing up my own asshole, I’m going to stop.

Let me know how you found your purpose – and what it is.

Are you feeling stagnant? Stuck? Stale?

I just completed a feature article for a health magazine on losing the last ten pounds – and it’s all about how to get off that comfy plateau. Although weight loss is not my topic today, it does illustrate an important point with wider implications.

When we exercise, we tend to stick with a familiar routine. We walk a certain route in the neighborhood, we go to the gym and lift a regular set of weights, whatever. But the muscles get accustomed to that routine and get increasingly efficient at executing it – so the routine that a few months ago had the pounds peeling off is not doing much today.

The remedy is to wake up your muscles by giving them something different – if you swim, walk; if you walk, try a bike; if you run, try intervals.

The same thing goes with our minds. We are creatures of habit. We have carved out a set of daily rituals that make life simpler because we don’t have to think. What’s for breakfast: oatmeal. When to read the paper? As I eat my oatmeal. Which route to take to get to work? 78^th Street to I-5. Where should we go on our night out? the movies. But our minds go soft and stagnant, just like our bodies.

Turns out your brain needs novelty too. Brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, try new things or in new ways we create new synaptic pathways and increase our creative capacity.

The most important ingredients for stretching yourself are curiosity and wonder… when you look around yourself and ask: I wonder what would happen if?… I wonder how??? I have had the most delightful experiences when I’ve followed that instinct. It’s almost a physical sensation I call the brain tickle.

We live in three behavioral zones: comfort, stretch and stress.

• Comfort is the realm of existing habit
• Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond the comfort of our usual ways that we’re overwhelmed.
• Stretch is the sweet spot: where you’re doing things that are a bit awkward and unfamiliar but manageable. At first there is confusion – when you’re trying to fuse the old with the new. But then the brain sorts things out and gets stronger.

I know a guy who was bored with his life so he decided to spend a year doing one new thing every day. To keep himself honest, he started a blog where he writes about what he did that day and usually posts a photo as evidence. That’s one way!

Or you could take yourself on a weekly Artist’s Date as recommended in the creativity program, “The Artist’s Way.” You don’t have to spend money going to the theater or museum (although those are wonderfully inspiring), you can simply collect a bunch of leaves and make a collage, sit under a tree and listen to the birds, dance around the kitchen to an old rock and roll CD, take your camera on a walk around the neighborhood and take pictures of everything you see that is blue, try your hand at knitting or making something from modeling clay.

My favorite recommendation is to stretch yourself by joining Toastmasters. Simply getting over the fear of speaking to a group is the first major stretch – for some it’s life or death stress at first. The next stretch is coming up with a variety of speeches that will interest and inform your club members.

These skills are now in the realm of comfort for me, but delivering a speech without any notes is my stretch. My memory sucks and I don’t yet trust myself to just wing the general message.

Purchase: (need I tell you it means buy buy buy, the American pastime?)

Paroxsym: a fit, attack, or sudden increase or recurrence of symptoms

I need… No, I WANT to purchase a projector. I have a list of semi-rational reasons for “needing” this electronic gadget, only one of which would bring in any money.

• $$ I think I could usefully put it into service to promote my feng shui consulting services and to give classes. It would take four consultations to pay for itself.
• I could use it to show travel pictures – a couple of groups have asked for that.
• I could use it at Toastmasters for more professional presentations.
• I could use it for family gatherings to show family pix and movies.
• I could project DVDs if I wanted to watch with other people. Although home theater and gaming are what most folks use their projectors for, I play no games and watch few movies (and almost no TV), so this is not a selling point for me.

I discussed the proposed projector purchase with my daughter a couple of days ago.

“Mom,” she said, “that’s a dumb idea.”

Tonight I called my son-in-law for brand advice because he uses projectors often in his consulting work. “Well,” he said, “I just use whatever projector my client has. It’s just another thing to haul around; what would you do with one?”

I accused him of conferring with my daughter, but he pleaded innocent.

Nevertheless I went online to see what was out there.

Oy vay. There are about a million projectors ranging from $500 to $3500, with features that seem hard to distinguish. Even in the under $1000 range there are dozens to compare.

My eyeballs are totally spinning.

P.S.  I thought of the best reason yet to buy a projector.To support President Bush’s Economic Stimulus plan!!! He wouldn’t want me to SAVE my refund, would he?

As I look down my at my front garden from my home office window, it’s hard to stay focused on my work. May is a particularly distracting month.  Sap and hormones rising!  Right now the new leaves are still thin enough to follow all the floral and feathered action below.

My favorite bird, the brilliant Western Tanager arrives reliably in time for Cinco de Mayo.  In fact, his color scheme would fit right in with the festivities.

In the past few years I’ve just had a pair for a day or two, but this year I’ve got at least SIX, playing all week in the bushes, flitting and diving among the smaller trees, especially enjoying my red rhododendron. SInce their diet is bugs and small fruits, I didn’t understand what they might be finding there till I looked them up.

Turns out that the red pigment in the face of the Western Tanager is not manufactured by the bird, as are the pigments used by the other red tanagers. Instead, it must be acquired from the diet, presumably from insects that themselves acquire the pigment from plants. So maybe the birds in the rhodies were trying to eat red-fed bugs.

During breeding season the male’s head is much brighter red… and these males certainly had red heads.

Oh, and our American tanagers (Western, scarlet) are evidently not really tanagers any more – they’re members of the cardinal family.

Linda, a woman I knew only slightly (from an exercise class we both attended a few years ago) died last week after a two year fight against lung cancer. She called it “passing” and towards the end she was looking forward to being in an eternally better place.

She was a gal whose life had been challenging from the git-go. Poverty, bad marriages, poor health, kids with drug problems, grandkids who needed her care – on and on. Her siblings weren’t much better off.

In 2001 she began working in the accounting office at the YWCA– a local social services agency with a big heart – and finally felt safe and appreciated. When she got sick they kept her on through her many treatments. When she died they were the ones who offered to put together the memorial service because they knew the family couldn’t pull it off.

This was where I came in. My friends at the Y knew I had conducted several marriage ceremonies and assumed it would be no big deal to officiate at a memorial service. I had attended a number of Unitarian memorial services (something, by the way, that they do more meaningfully than any other religious organization) but her folks were a mix of unchurched and fundamentalist Christian… how would I pull that off?

Internet to the rescue. Found some great readings and some ideas for organizing the order of service while the Y staff pulled together the food and flowers. The service was yesterday afternoon.

I delivered my opening words, sniveling into my hankie every couple of sentences (not exactly professional!) but the effect of having the minister so weepy must have given the family members permission to come up to the mike without worrying about weeping themselves, because speak and weep they did.

For a group that hadn’t wanted to do anything, didn’t want to say anything, they truly opened up. By the end of the hour this sprawling brawling family had really come together through their mourning, their stories and their memories of Linda.

Her sister said, “I only wish Linda didn’t have to pass in order for us to get together like this. She would have loved this.”

For me the takeaway is that memorial services (or celebrations of life, as I prefer to call them) are REALLY important. It’s a tremendous opportunity for telling the stories that allow for grieving, healing and community building. Even if the dying person says “I don’t want a service,” it’s not for them; it’s for the folks who are left behind.

Pander: to cater to or exploit somebody’s weaknesses or questionable wishes; to pimp.

If he were the last candidate on earth I would never vote for John McCain, but Hillary took a plunge down to his level when she joined him this week in suggesting that Congress give us a summer moratorium on the 18.4 cents a gallon gas tax.

Talk about pandering to the electorate!

This is wrong in so many ways I don’t know where to start. In no particular order:

• It is an insult to our intelligence that they would offer such an irresponsible idea and hope that the voters would buy it and vote for them.
• At a time when we absolutely must cut carbon emissions, they’re saying “Drive on, maties; we totally support your gasoline addiction.”
• At a time when we’re hemorrhaging money in the Middle East and our national debt is in the stratosphere, they’re saying, “No problem, we’ll just borrow more money from China.”
• At a time when the public is crying for a leader with big ideas to help pull us out of a recession and find new ways to develop clean energy, they’re throwing out a liver treat.
• At a time that could be a teachable moment for all of us, only Barack Obama has said, “Houston, we’ve got a problem. It’s time for us to tell the truth about conserving energy.”

Thomas Friedman wrote today:

This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.