Happy Birthday to me!

I was born 35 years ago today. This what else was happening that late spring day in 1968:

• Picasso paints the above picture
• Young soldier in Vietnam wrote home about losing his camera


• Nine people were killed by a tornado in Tracy, Minnesota


• A Day of Awareness, Day of Hope is held in Atlanta to combat poverty


• A helicopter crew dies in Vietnam when they collide with another plane


• Phelim O’Neil is expelled from the Orange Order in Belfast for attending a Catholic service


• The BeeGees record Indian Gin and Whiskey Dry


• The Shah of Iran speaks at Harvard University on the challenges of the developing world. He quotes Saadi, Coleridge, Confucius and the Bible


• The tanker World Glory spills 14.2 million gallons of oil in the Indian Ociean, 105 kilometres east of Durban, South Africa.


• A single Red Knot was spotted in the St. Croix River Valley in Minnesota


• Gloucestershire beats Cambridge University by an innings and 69 runs. Green and Shepard have centuries.


• Five days after he is imprisoned, Hussain Ibrahim’s house is blown up by Israeli solders in Ramallah because he is accussed of being a member of Fateh. His wife and sons are left homeless.


• Pope Paul VI gives an Audience during which he warns of the dangers of a lack on faith in an incresingly materialistic world.

I would like to say that having children is one of the greatest acts of faith anyone can commit. So here’s a resounding thank you to my parents for helping me to experience the Precious Human Birth:

Jack Ricchiuto posts some thoughts on happiness to which I responded with some of the following in his comments:

The greatest gift I can give my children is being with them.

Two days ago I spent two hours with my two year old son during which I said nothing. I simply sat on the grass with him, at his eye level and played whatever he wanted to play. I expressed no desires or needs of my own, I imposed no agenda on him. We laughed together and when our wrestling got out of hand and he got hurt I held him on my lap and placed my hand over the ear he mashed when he fell to the ground. He fell asleep on my lap and that is where his day ended. I sang to him and took him inside to bed.

My son offered me the gift of his presence, his joy and happiness and utter abandon of being a child. Children are our most precious dharma teachers.

Stonewall Place closes. What a wonderful documented adventure in the Aleutians that was.

Dervala Hanley rides the most dangerous road in the world and lives to tell the tale.

We switched to the left-hand side for the official start of the crazy Coroico road. Downhill traffic drove closest to the drop, and had to yield to vehicles going uphill to La Paz. This was terrifying. The edge of the road often crumbled to nothing, and often there was only room for one car, requiring slow backward creeps around blind corners. The locals weren’t bothered, blithely overtaking on these corners with Pachamama’s drunken blessing. The honks of the oncoming trucks, above and below, made me feel like jungle prey. The girl who had somersaulted right at the start joined us back on the bikes, despite her bandages. We congratulated her on her bravery.

‘You don’t understand,’ she said, ‘It’s much, much scarier on the bus.’