Women's Well: Let's Discuss All Topics, Hosted by Oiseau

Took this on Wednesday.

The Flow of the Universe

The flow of the universe moves through everything. It is in the rocks that form, get pounded into dust, and are blown away. It is in the blossoming of a flower born from a seed planted in the spring. The growth cycle that every human being goes through is part of this natural flow, which is also the current that takes us down life’s paths. When we move with it rather than resisting it, we are riding on the universal wave that allows us to flow with life.

Many people live struggling against this current. They try to use force or resistance to will their lives into happening in the way they think it should. Others move with it like a sailor using the wind, trusting that the universe is taking them exactly where they need to be at all times. This flow is accessible to everyone because it travels through and around us. We are always riding it—it is just a matter of whether we are willing to go with it or we resist it. Choosing to go with the flow is often a matter of relinquishing the notion that we need to be in control at all times.

The flow is always transporting you where you need to go. It is merely a question of deciding whether you plan on accepting the ride or having it take you there with your feet dragging. Learning to step into it can help you feel a connection to a force that is greater than you and is always there to support you. The decision to go with the flow takes courage because you are surrendering the belief that you need to do everything by yourself. Riding the flow of the universe can be effortless, exhilarating, and unlike anything you ever expected. When you are receptive to being in it, you open yourself to possibilities that exist beyond the grasp of your control.

As a child, you were naturally swept by the flow. Tears of sadness falling down your face could just as quickly turn to tears of laughter. The mere tiniest wave carrying you forward off the shores of the ocean could transport you into peals of delight.

Our souls feel good when we go with the flow of the universe. All we have to do is make the choice to ride its currents.

(This is an excerpt from the new DailyOM Book. To order the book, click the link below.

For more information visit dailyom.com

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants… have patience and indulgence toward the people, take your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

- Walt Whitman

Dan Steckenberg

Tue, 1 Apr 2008 09:25:00 -0500 Subject: Registration System Changes

Hi,

My apologies for being out of touch for a few weeks. There simply wasn't any big news to report for a while, but I do have some news for you now.

Because the new site will be based on a completely different programming language than the current site, we need to update our registration system. Now, I know that all of you have usernames that you use in the Discussion area, and which you may have used for Chat and Homepages as well. We want to make sure that you'll still be able to use those usernames even as we overhaul the back end of what we call the user management system.

If you go to http://www2.thirdage.com/user, you'll be able to reserve your current username for the new system. Simply type in your current information in the username/e-mail and password fields and follow the on-screen instructions. When it tells you that you're logged in, you should be all set for the new system. When we move over to the new site, this username and password will get you into all the new member areas, including, of course, the discussions area. Unfortunately, if you currently have multiple usernames for your e-mail address, you will have to choose just one username per e-mail address.

In the meantime, you should still be able to post on the current discussion boards with no problems. Let me know if you experience any difficulties.

Dan

Hello Valerie, If you can access TA would you please wish our friends a Happy Easter, please? I click 'til my fingers turn Blue :-) to no avail. I recall, years ago, that hackers would play on the weekend. We may be experiencing the same nonsense.

In case anyone is interested, lol, Our home will welcome family and neighbors to share a meal for Easter of ham and all the trimmings, table decorated with wee chicks and chocolate money.

All the best to you

xoxoxoxox Irene

The History of Valentine's Day

Every February, across the country, candy, flowers, and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But who is this mysterious saint and why do we celebrate this holiday? The history of Valentine's Day -- and its patron saint -- is shrouded in mystery. But we do know that February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite? Today, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.

One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men -- his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.

According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first 'valentine' greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl -- who may have been his jailor's daughter -- who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed 'From your Valentine,' an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It's no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.

While some believe that Valentine's Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine's death or burial -- which probably occurred around 270 A.D -- others claim that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to 'christianize' celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival. In ancient Rome, February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and a type of wheat called spelt throughout their interiors. Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification.

The boys then sliced the goat's hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goathide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage. Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine's Day around 498 A.D. The Roman 'lottery' system for romantic pairing was deemed un-Christian and outlawed. Later, during the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds' mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of February -- Valentine's Day -- should be a day for romance. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. The greeting, which was written in 1415, is part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England. Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

In Great Britain, Valentine's Day began to be popularly celebrated around the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers in all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. By the end of the century, printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one's feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine's Day greetings. Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began to sell the first mass-produced valentines in America.

According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine's Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.)

Approximately 85 percent of all valentines are purchased by women. In addition to the United States, Valentine's Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.

10 ways to beat the February blues

Have the February blahs struck again? Here are 10 ways to combat them this season.

1. Write down all the good things you've accomplished over the past year.

2. Establish realistic goals for the coming months. This exercise might alleviate your anxiety about the future and help lift your mood.

3. Change your routine. Even getting away for the weekend can arm you with the mental fuel to fight the grey weeks of winter still ahead.

4. Get more light. If you get a bit down when it's dark out, temporarily turn up the lights at home or buy a portable light that mimics the sun (but check with your doctor first).

5. Play your favorite music. What better choice than Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" – the Spring and Summer concertos. The melody will recharge your batteries.

6. Make sure you get enough physical activity. Study after study has shown that exercise boosts mood.

7. Throw a midwinter party with a tropical theme. Tell your friends to wear summer dresses or shorts, serve them pineapple and mango drinks and throw the Beach Boys on the CD player.

8. Pamper yourself. Luxuriate in aromatherapy bath oils or curl up in bed with a good novel and a glass of healthy, antioxidant-rich red wine.

9. Get a head start on feel-good Valentine's Day. Buy yourself a dark chocolate bar, for instance.

10. Lend a hand. Volunteer at a homeless shelter or food bank. Helping the disadvantaged is a ticket to cheerfulness.

Last Thursday I had a nice chat with Discussion hosts Lois and Valerie. James, a long-time employee of ThirdAge from our San Francisco office was kind enough to join us as well to help me out in the question answering department.

A big thanks to Lois and Valerie. Your comments regarding what you like and don't like about the current discussion system, and about which discussions you are particularly interested in saving versus which you wouldn't mind losing, were very helpful. We're going to do our best to honor your requests.

Here's a quick review of the main topics of our conversation:

- ThirdAge is going through a comprehensive redesign. The look and feel of the site will change some, and the way you use the Discussion system will more than likely change. We may even change the name of the Discussion section. However, active discussions will be brought over from the old site to the new site, and many inactive discussions will be brought over as well, assuming that they fit into ThirdAge's current areas of focus. Bottom line: all of the discussions that you take regular part in now are here to stay.

-Discussions that will probably not move over include anything focused on news/current events, or discussions that were focused around individuals who no longer participate at ThirdAge. I think the latter category is self-explanatory, and the first is simply because ThirdAge wants to focus on the content areas on the top of the Web site: Health, Relationships, Money, Work, Beauty and Fun.

- In the new system you will still be able to create new threads. The specifics haven't been worked out, but most likely it will entail a host working with someone on the ThirdAge editorial team.

- You will still be able to post photos in the discussion.

- You will still be able to either reply directly to another poster or to post a new comment to the end of the conversation.

-Though most likely you will not have the ability to use html in your posts, the text editor for posting will have tools for creating links and posting pictures and graphics.

- As everyone is aware, homepages are being shut down. But you will still be able to have a homepage of sorts on ThirdAge, in the form of a profile page. Once you create a profile, you will be able to post pictures, list some of your interests and your personal history, and let your friends on ThirdAge know what you're up to. In the future, if profiles prove to be popular, we may be able to allow video and audio posting. Though Profiles won't allow you the limitless possibilities of Home Pages, they will be much easier to set up for those less 'Net savvy than yourselves, and our goal here is to create a large, vibrant, inclusive community of ThirdAgers.

- Lastly, we discussed the best way for all of us to keep in touch. I certainly appreciate and understand the desire for me to post in the Hosts discussion, but, for a couple reasons, I think it makes more sense to stick to email for now. This way I can respond to a group of questions all at once. Some of you may have similar questions, so I think doing it this way will be the most efficient way to get the right information out.

More importantly, the ThirdAge Discussions is your space. It's been that way for many years, while I am still relatively new. The last thing I want to do is get in the way of your conversations. Finally, please know that my communicating with you via e-mail will not make me any less responsive, nor does it signal that ThirdAge is any less committed to keeping all of you in the fold.

Feel free to e-mail me with questions. I will be back to everyone with a progress report in a couple weeks, at the latest.

Dan

What is the history behind our current celebration of Groundhog Day?

Around the fifth century, the European Celts believed that animals had certain "supernatural" powers on special days that were half-way between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.

Folklore from Germany and France indicated that when Groundhogs came out of their winter dens too early, they were frightened by their shadow and retreated back inside for four to six weeks.

Australia Day: the First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove, carrying convicts; 22 babies were born during the 8-month voyage from Great Britain to Australia (1788)

miscellaneous words.

kerfuffle (kuhr-FUHF-uhl) noun

A commotion.

[Of uncertain origin, perhaps from Scots curfuffle, from fuffle (to disorder).]

Today's word in Visual Thesaurus: http://visualthesaurus.com/?w=

My PC is up and running and faster and in better shape then when brand new. My Tech added more memory so now have 3 GB's of Ram :) He will be installing a new hi tech game card he's ordering next week. So all is well on the home front !

I now have Spybot installed on my PC and it erased over 200 spyware programs that was jamming up and slowing me down. It's free and wonderful :)

Pc crashed typing this with my iPhone
.calling of repair this morning
hope it don't take 2 long 2 fix

Dg

Good going DG!

Saudi Arabia has been a U.S. ally and a key Middle East trading partner for decades, but it's not exactly the sort of country Uncle Sam would bring home to meet the founders. It's an absolute monarchy where mosque and state are thoroughly interwoven. And, along with lots of oil, it keeps producing terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 9/11 hijackers. Here's a look at Saudi Arabia, by the numbers.

Size Matters

830,000 – Saudi Arabia's total area, in square miles (2,150,000 sq km). That's a little larger than Mexico, a little smaller than Greenland, and roughly one-fifth the size of the United States. Saudi Arabia covers about four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula, which it shares with Oman, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. (Another small nation, Bahrain, is an island near Qatar.)

27,600,000 – Saudi Arabia's total population, including some 5.6 million non-nationals who call the kingdom home. That's more people than live in Texas, but not nearly as many as live in California. Take away the non-nationals, and Saudi Arabia would have just a few more people than Australia. Add in the more than 2 million Muslim pilgrims who visit each year, and it would have almost as many people as Canada.

4,700,000 – Population of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital and largest city. Riyadh gets more rain than many parts of Saudi Arabia, but it still relies on hundreds of miles of pipes to carry water from desalination plants on the Persian Gulf.

Religious Matters

100 – Percentage of Saudis who are Muslim. Sound impossible? Well, Saudi Arabia is Islam's birthplace and home to its two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. Its constitution is the Qur'an and Sunnah (the "trodden path" of the prophet), its legal system is based on Sharia (Islamic law), and its religious "police" enforce traditional values. Blasphemy is punishable by beheading. So is conversion from Islam to other religions, whose public practice is banned. Oh, and the government requires that citizens be Muslims.

0 – Number of drivers licenses issued to women. Despite a handful of recent reforms, it's still illegal for women to drive a car in Saudi Arabia. Human rights groups also regularly condemn the Saudi government for its treatment of political and religious minorities (including Islamic ones). The government generally brushes such claims aside.

Money Matters

264 billion – Barrels of oil in Saudi Arabia's proven reserves, according to the leading oil industry survey. That's around 22 percent of all of the world's proven crude. (For more on what "proven reserves" actually means, click here.)

90 – Percentage of Saudi Arabia's export earnings that come from oil. Much of that money flows from the United States. And much of it goes to fund generous social welfare programs. But times aren't as good as they once were. In 1980, oil exports raked in $22,589 for every man, woman, and child in the kingdom. Thanks to a population boom and a changing market, the number these days is around $5,000.

7,000 – Estimated number of members of the Saudi royal family. Some 200 of those are direct descendents of Abd al Aziz al Saud, the king who founded the country in 1932. The nation's current king, Abdullah, officially assumed the throne in 2005, but he's no newcomer to power. Abdullah has effectively run Saudi Arabia since 1995, when the previous king--his half-brother Fahd--suffered a stroke.

--Steve Sampson

Today's Word "algorithm"

algorithm \AL-guh-RITH-uhm\ (noun) - A step-by-step procedure for solving a problem in a finite number of steps that often involves repetition of an operation.

"Their latest innovation involved some kind of complex algorithm that made the eyes of anyone with an IQ of less than 200 glaze over with incomprehension but was reckoned by the company to be a surefire thing." -- John Connolly, 'The Killing Kind'

Algorithm is an alteration of algorism, possibly influenced by arithmetic. It comes to us from the Arabic name of a ninth century Persian mathematician and textbook author, via Old French and Medieval Latin: Muhammad ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi was from the Khwarizm region, an area south of the Aral Sea. Al-Khwarizmi wrote a book titled Kitab al jabr wa'l-muqabala ("Rules of restoring and equating") which is the source of the word algebra.

It sure makes sense to me...although there has been times in my life I'd wished I used my head first LOL

Hello friends - good one here;

Listening With Your Heart

Most of us were born and raised in cultures that value the head over the heart and, as a result, we place our own hearts below our heads in a sort of inner hierarchy of which we may not be conscious. What this means is that we tend to listen and respond from the neck up, often leaving the rest of our bodies with little or no say in most matters. This is a physical habit, which sometimes feels as ingrained as the way we breathe or walk. However, with effort and awareness, we can shift the energy into our hearts, listening and responding from this much deeper, more resonant place.

The brain has a masterful way of imposing structure and order on the world, creating divisions and categories, devising plans and strategies. In many ways, we have our brains to thank for our survival on this planet. However, as is so clear at this time, we also need the wisdom of our hearts if we wish to continue surviving in a viable way. When we listen from our heart, the logical grid of the brain tends to soften and melt, which enables us to perceive the interconnectedness beneath the divisions and categories we use to organize the world. We begin to understand that just as the heart underlies the brain, this interconnectedness underlies everything.

Many agree that this is the most important work we can do at this time in history, and there are many practices at our disposal. For a simple start, try sitting with a friend and asking him to tell you about his life at this moment. For 10 minutes or more, try to listen without responding verbally, offering suggestions, or brainstorming solutions. Instead, breathe into your heart and your belly, listening and feeling instead of thinking. When you do this, you may find that it’s much more difficult to offer advice and much easier to identify with the feelings your friend is sharing. You may also find that your friend opens up more, goes deeper, and feels he has really been heard. If you also feel great warmth and compassion, almost as if you are seeing your friend for the first time, then you will know that you have begun to tap the power of listening with your heart

For more information visit dailyom.com

Hail, Caesar! We who are about
to schedule salute you!

Happy New Year! Time to break open a brand new calendar and ask some age-old timekeeping questions.

For example, you know that "thirty days hath September, April, June, and November." But why? How'd we wind up with a calendar that has four months of 30 days, seven months of 31 days, and one of 28 (not to mention a leap year every four)? It's a long story--of lunar months, solar years, a caesar, and a pope. Here's the tale.

Lunar Months, Solar Years

Time may be relative, but ancient farmers liked to know when to plant, when to reap, and when to celebrate all that planting and reaping. So they looked up. Back then, the night sky provided the most convenient calendar. Even the dimmest of observers could see that the moon took 29 to 30 days (actually, 29.53) to turn from a thin crescent to a bloated orb and back again. That cycle told one lunar month.

More astute timekeepers noticed that roughly twice every 12 lunar cycles, there was a day with equal hours of light and dark. These days, the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, marked time for the seasons. The time between one vernal equinox and the next told one solar year (or 365.24 days).

The trick was to make a calendar that had lunar months and a solar year. Not so easy, as lunar months don't fit evenly into solar years. The best compromise was to fit 12 lunar cycles (a little more than 354 days) into one solar cycle. But that left 11 solar days outside time. After just three years on a lunar calendar, the months were off by 33 days. Gradually, June froze over and November got downright sultry. And no one knew when Mother's Day was.

The Merry Month of Mercedonius

The only way to fit the solar and lunar calendars together was to intercalate, or to add extra days or months. The Romans, who were the best at many things, were the worst at this. They just tacked on a "leap month" after February every other year, called Mercedonius.

Everyone liked Mercedonius. People got another paycheck and could wait to pay off their debts. But the officials who were supposed to regulate when Mercedonius started and stopped gleefully abused the extra month, often using it for personal and political ends. Need to keep a friend in office? Want to postpone a project? Just manipulate Mercedonius!

It was great fun, but lousy timekeeping. Even without the rampant calendrical abuse, the Roman calendar gained a day every year. A year with Mercedonius ran 377 or 378 days, while a normal Roman year lasted 355 days. Since that averaged out to 366.25 days, Roman time gradually pulled ahead of the solar year.

Reckon Unto Caesar

Julius Caesar put a stop to all the madness in 46 BC. With the help of a Greek astronomer, Caesar devised a strategy to standardize the Roman calendar. First, he added three months to the then-current Roman year, 707, to get things back into whack. Then, he made the Roman year 365 days long, with an extra day in February every fourth year.

He abolished Mercedonius. To make 12 lunar months fit into a solar year, Caesar simply added days to the non-February months until he had doled out 365 days across the year. That cratered the idea of having months that track the moon, but something had to give. For Caesar, it was time for the moon to bow to the sun.

It took a few decades to work out the kinks, but Caesar's calendar was actually pretty good--only 11 minutes off each year. To thank him, in 44 BC the Roman Senate named the seventh month of the new calendar July, after their exalted and time-sensitive leader. (His successor, Caesar Augustus, laid claim to August in 8 BC.)

The Pope's Command

But wait a second: what about those 11 minutes? By the 16th century, the Julian calendar had fallen behind the solar one by 10 days. The Catholic Church, which had used the Julian calendar for centuries despite its known faults, was getting anxious about how far the vernal equinox was creeping away from the "correct" date for Easter.

Early 4th-century Christians had decided that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. But every 130 years, the Julian calendar moved one whole day further off solar time. By the year 1500, the vernal equinox fell on the 10th or 11th of March (instead of nearer the 21st of that month).

So, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered everyone to go to bed on Thursday, October 4, and wake up on Friday, October 15. This 10-day adjustment worked well, so Gregory added another change. Century years such as 1700 or 1800 would no longer be counted as leap years unless they were divisible by 400 (like 1600 or 2000). The Gregorian calendar, which the western world still uses today, departs from the solar year by only 26 seconds. That's one day every 3,323 years.

Not all of Europe was quick to adopt the Gregorian calendar. Differences with Rome kept many countries from signing on. England and America held out until 1752, when an act of parliament required his majesty's subjects to skip 11 days in September, going straight from Wednesday, September 2, to Thursday, September 14. Mother Russia required a revolution to change its dated ways--the Gregorian calendar wasn't used there until 1918.

--Claire Vail

The Old Barn

Seeing Ourselves

Many of us do not take the time to notice and acknowledge how beautiful we are as humans. We may be great lovers of beauty, seeing it in the people, places, and things around us, while completely missing it in ourselves. Some of us feel that it is vain to consider our appearance too much, or we may find that when we look at ourselves, all we see are imperfections. Often we come to the mirror with expectations and preconceived notions about beauty that blind us from seeing ourselves clearly. As a result, we miss the beauty that is closest to us, the beauty we are. Sometimes we see our beauty in a shallow way, noticing how well we are conforming to social norms, but failing to see the deeper beauty that shines out from within and that will continue to shine regardless of how we measure up to society’s ideal.

If we can cut through all these obstacles and simply appreciate how beautiful we are, we free up so much energy. We also become less dependent upon the opinions and feedback of others since we become our own greatest admirers. Many of us know that after a great yoga practice or a long, deep meditation, we are more able to see how beautiful we are. This is because we have released some of our baggage, thus unburdening ourselves and summoning forth the spirit that dwells within us. It is the heady combination of the divine spirit and the human body that conveys beauty more accurately than anything else.

To keep ourselves in touch with our own beauty, we can surround ourselves with images that reflect our beauty back to us—photos of a relative or child who has our eyes, images of teachers who embody spirit, or self-portraits that capture our essence in a way that allows us to see ourselves anew. The best way to keep ourselves in touch with our own beauty is to keep looking deeply into our own souls and opening our eyes to the human being we see in the mirror every day

For more information visit dailyom.com

See ya Elfinius next year! :D