Laughter's The Best Prescription & It's Free

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. - Mark Twain

A NOTE taped to the front door made me laugh when I came home from shopping and realized I'd forgotten my keys. My husband wrote it. He hasn't lost his wit despite dealing with health issues. Life is unpredictable ... of that we can be sure. We count on the sun coming up every morning but the day can hold surprises and not all of them are nice. Life can rob us of many things but hopefully not our humour. It's no joke that a tickled funny bone can see us through. The smiling Buddha (below) sitting in a garden and the note got me thinking about infectious giggles and big belly laughs.

Even the stuck kite (below) seemed comical later during my walk.

These spring flowers (below) seemed to be in on a joke of their own. It's as if the buds were saying, "See ... we fooled you ... you thought we were gone but here we are again ... uncrinkled and good as new."

This post is linked to signs, signs.

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Tethered To A Cloud

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18

I ONCE WAS A bud so new there was nothing of "me" to contemplate. Although I couldn't put my earliest moments into words, they're stored in my memories somehow. Perhaps I was still tethered to the "unseen" as an infant, an intangible place beyond the realm of ticking clocks. This eternal place, as impossible to grasp as a cloud, came up at the funeral of former first lady Barbara Bush who lived a full and generous life. Sights and sounds, hot and cold, kindness and meanness were rudimentary senses in the first weeks of her life as they are for us all. Now, after ninety-two years, she is beyond such concerns. While she rests in peace, her positive influence will remain and grow like a flower in the "seen" world of circling seasons.

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Clean Meat Clear Conscience

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. Linda and Paul McCartney

Something called “clean meat" came to my attention recently. It has me excited about a better future for farm animals living under harsh conditions and slaughtered on mass for human consumption. As someone who throughout the years has had minor success but mostly failures eating vegetarian meals exclusively, I’m heartened and in awe of this development. This radical new approach uses the cells of animals, without killing or harming them, to grow the meaty fibers separately in a lab. I can easily imagine this concept broadening to eventually grow human body parts for those in medical need. All we would need is a seed (the cell in this case) and the right nurturing brew to produce a chicken breast or a human kidney. It all sounds weirdly Frankensteinian, doesn't it? But it also sounds doable and wonderfully life sustaining and even healing should it come to pass. If the ornament pictured on my kitchen counter could applaud the idea it surely would. You can learn about the process HERE and HERE.

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It's A Non-refundable World

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. Henry David Thoreau

EARTH DAY is coming and I’ve been thinking about the billions-of-years-old blue marble we call home. It’s clear that in this current wink of time humankind is the biggest biological threat to all life on the planet. Ravaging resources and hooked on cheaply made products, polluting chemicals, fast fashions and throwaway plastics, it’s a disposable mentality in a non-refundable world. We are literally choking on our own over-consumption, compromising the very air and water that make existence possible. If we keep it up, sooner rather than later, Earth could be as barren and oxygen deprived as the moon or Mars. A serious mind-shift needs to happen where there is value in having less and treasuring more of what we already have. Are we up for the task? Can we reverse damage done? I wonder as I go for my walks and catalog the fragile beauty. Some say those who concern themselves with such matters are Chicken Little crying, “The sky is falling.” I say hat’s off to the environmentalists/scientists and common folk who pursue ways to turn things around. Even if a reusable bag at the grocery store seems like spit on a battleship … a whole lot of similar small steps can result in a heap of difference and extend this magical moment in time.

I heart this planet is what the (above) art at the bottom of 1001 Steps in Ocean Park seems to say. Traces of humanity are everywhere.

On bright breezy days kites share the sky with the birds.

Several little known stairways lead to the beach in the South Surrey area.

The stairs over the train track at the end of 24th Avenue are covered in mesh.

Couples attach padlocks there to insure their relationships, perhaps imagining they're in Paris where there are so many love-locks attached to bridges that they're banned now in some places.

Mysterious pools form at low tide. They come and go without making a splash.

When the sun peeks through the clouds the ocean sparkles like fairy dust.

Shells are collected off the beach floor. Some creatures leave their homes unwittingly while others dig in. Some never leave, yet willingly make their homes uninhabitable, even when it's the only home they've got.

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Copyright by Penelope Puddlisms