If you don’t pray for me… you are part of the problem says convicted Detroit council woman & wife of Judiciary Chairman www.freedomOK.net/wordpress

Pray for Monica or you are part of the problem..
Pray for Monica or you are part of the problem..
Fine! Monica Conyers, council woman from Detroit, asks us to pray for her. She says that if we do not pray for her then WE are part of the problem. Oh? Ok, Monica. Let’s pray that you go to jail for the crimes you committed. Something wrong with praying that justice rolls down from the hills? When government officials do dasterdly, illegal acts – let them pay with time in jail. And yes, let’s visit you in prison. And pray with you there. That you learn to change your ways when you get out.

Monica Conyers, the wife of the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., pleaded guilty to one count of bribery in a federal court in Detroit, this morning.

Wife of Judiciary Chairman Conyers Pleads Guilty to Bribery
In this Sept. 5, 2005 file photo Monica Conyers sits with her husband, Democratic U.S. Rep. John…
In this Sept. 5, 2005 file photo Monica Conyers sits with her husband, Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers at a Labor Day rally in Detroit.

Prosecutors on Friday, June 26, 2009 charged Detroit City Council member Monica Conyers with accepting cash bribes in exchange for supporting a sludge contract with a Houston company. Collapse
(AP Photo)

According to court documents, in late 2007, Mrs. Conyers, president pro tem of the Detroit City Council, twice accepted envelopes filled with cash, once in the parking lot of a Detroit McDonalds.

Below is another article on this issue:

Monica Conyers and a call to prayer

In the absence of other connectors, Monica Conyers is the glue that holds us together in these down times.

“She’s the Detroit city councilwoman who inspires 10,000 eye-rolls. The one whose every public comment gets 100,000 heads turning side to side.

Whether in Hart Plaza or the center court at Somerset North, her name evokes an instant mix of wonder, horror and plain fascination. Comic andtragic, professional and astonishingly not, she is riveting to watch in a way that her more upright and buttoned-down colleagues are not.

Even while the feds circle, and Synagro associates pleaded guilty to bribing an unnamed Council Member A, Conyers took to the airwaves to deliver the latest in a series of instantly famous, mercurial moments: And she delivered, using a formula that was two parts calm professional, one part kook.

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“If you’re not praying for me, you’re just adding to the problem,” she said cryptically on WHPR-TV (Channel 33), which might want to change its name to The Monica Network.

What problem? Why should we be praying?

Nobody has yet leveled charges against Monica Conyers, but — give her credit for staying in character here — instead of ducking the issue entirely, she called in her public and God.

Wouldn’t any other — make that any ordinary — official issue a terse statement, or say absolutely nothing, then get out of the way?

Instead she’s blaming the non-prayers for “adding to the problem” — undefined but lurking. Is she playing narcissist Monica here, saying if you’re not with me, you’re contributing to societal collapse? Or is she feeling humble, suggesting that mass prayer can resolve the crisis swirling around her? We will likely never know.

But I do know that Councilwoman Conyers sees normalcy and reason where most of us see contradiction, irrationality and chaos.

“I have a marriage that’s different from everyone else’s,” she once said of her marriage, and that explains something about the way she perceives herself — different, and comfortable with being so.

Different is interesting, even when daffy. It applies to Conyers’ City Council tenure, which has helped tip the city into crisis.

It applies to her praising the excellence of Detroit schools while sending her son to a private school in a police-driven car.

Good, bad, never indifferent. It is the way she copes with a figurative noose that seems to be tightening around her neck.

By all means, let us pray.

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The Word Shop: Come for books, discuss books & share cup of tea

 

The Word Shop and Alliee DeArmond
The Word Shop and Alliee DeArmond

Alliee DeArmond, with the help of many volunteers, operates  The Word Shop in Aptos, CA.  As of 2016, this book shop has been operating for 21 years.   831 688-6607   Monday – Fridays  10-6 most days.

Alliee recently applied to be on the Board of Directors for St. John the Baptist  Episcopal Church in Aptos, CA. Alliee write regularly for a newspaper.  Her column In the Spirit publishes in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.  Various activities related to books occur routinely at The Word Shop.

Quite an accomplishment for all the women and men who have been  involved.

Back in 2009  — when this post was first  written -there were Literary Parties.  What’s going on is always changing — but always about books.

“These Literary Parties are a real blast! We choose a genre–mystery this month–everyone brings a book or two in that genre and we take turns waving the books around and saying why we like them. Then people usually have comments and conversation ensues until I bellow, “next.” We’ve done one every month since January–usually somewhere between a half-dozen and a dozen folk crammed into our back room. Quite fun.”

The Word Shop is located at 246 Center St. # A. This is a small book store located near entrance to Seacliff Beach. For more info contact Alliee DeArmond at adbooks@aol.com    831-688-6607

The Word Shop
The Word Shop with Alliee DeArmond

Use the SEARCH function (top right) to find more information about The Word Shop.  Live near or around Aptos?    Join  #aptosia

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Gitmo is a country club and some members do not want to leave. www.freedomOK.net/wordpress

Step up to the plate Muslims worldwide! There must be some Muslim communities who can take in a handful of Chinese origin Gitmo detainees.

What does a released convict do when life in prison looks better than life outside? He/she commits another crime and goes back to prison. Simple. But what kind of criminal act? The usual one that got them to prison. It is easy to do familiar acts. For Gitmo detainees, terrorism is a familiar act.

That’s why these detainees no longer enemy combatants will need a very short leash. The best Big Brother is their own Muslim religious community. They need a loving Muslim religious community where justice rolls down from the hills. Where Muslims are required to love mercy, do justice and walk humbly with their God.

One hundred nations have refused to take any Gitmo detainee.
These 22 Ughurs refuse repatriation back to China. They refuse the few offers made: to Algeria, Tunisia, Syria and Uzbekistan.

Twenty-two Chinese Ulghurs detainees have been de-classified as enemy combatants, some as early as 2003. These are Chinese Muslims combatants picked up in Afghanistan.

Where have they gone? Four went to Bermuda which sits in the Atlantic east of North Carolina. Bermuda, a territory of England. Now Palau, a tiny South Pacific country, has offered.

The ones assigned to go to Palau refuse to go. Palau has no Muslim community. As they have to Palauan blood they cannot be a citizen. As Palau has not ratified the international refugee conventions they cannot get travel documents.

So where are some loving, structured Muslim communities that will step up to the plate? Who will take in these Men without a Country?

And if not Muslim, then any religion that teaches love, not war, peace not enmity, justice not injustice, rights for all persons,not just a few. But them those Muslims would have to convert from their radical brand of Muslim faith. Would they do that? Not likely.

Until some Muslim or other religious community offers refuge or some country is willing to take our dime to support them – they stay in Gitmo. Gitmo is a country club. A rather nice one.

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St. John’s moves from Capitola to Aptos ….

Services were held for the first time in St. John’s new building in Seascape. St. John’s is located near the entrance to Seacliff Beach.

ALL are welcome! Services are at 8 am, 10 and 11 on Sundays. For youth activities and more information go to: St. John’s Episcopal Church

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Last reading of last service on Depot Hill for St. John’s episcopalian church moving to Aptos

Portions of second reading read by Alliee DeArmond last Sunday:

“So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord – for we walk by faith, not by sight….For all of us must appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil….

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view, even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation, everything old has passed away; see everything has become new! from 2 Corinthians 5: 6-17

For information about The Word Shop go to Company of Saints Alliee DeArmond is on Twitter

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Blue & warm day tomorrow at Aptos beach? www.freedomOK.net/wordpress

Memorial Day weather?
Memorial Day weather?

Blue day tomorrow, Memorial Day at Aptos beach? Hope so. Nice day for a backyard barbacue? Hope so. Remember what Memorial Day is all about.

Remember to keep faith with those who died in Flanders Field, World War I.

“In Flanders field, the poppies blow…

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
In Flanders Field.

A lot of young people have died to keep America safe and the world safe from terrorists. How best to keep faith with them?

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Aptos psychologist: In memory of those who died to keep our country safe…”In Flanders fieds the poppies blow..Between the crosses, row on row… www.freedomOK.net/wordpress

In Flanders field poppies blow
In Flanders field poppies blow
The Memorial Day Poppy

“In Flanders Field the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders Field.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies blow
In Flanders Field.

John McCrae, 1915.

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Aptos psychologist: visualize your best possible self, help others and practise gratitude can increase your happiness? YES! go www.freedomOK.net/word press

Happiness Enhancing Activities With Evidence They Work
PsyBlog by Jeremy Dean www.spring.org.uk

“The ‘How to Be Happy’ article has become a staple of newspapers, magazines, books and, increasingly, of websites. We should ‘accept reality’, or ‘take a break’, or ‘be honest with ourselves’, or ‘surround ourselves with happy people’.

“These things are unlikely to do us any harm but that doesn’t stop them reading like a list of platitudes – the kind that people are always doling out but never follow themselves.

“We can all create our own lists of happiness enhancing activities and argue endlessly about which is better and for whom. While that’s fun for a bit, I always want to ask: which activities have evidence to back up their claims for increasing happiness?

“Psychologists have only started investigating this question relatively recently, so there’s not a very long list and it is obviously far from exhaustive, but at least there’s some research to back them up. The activities psychologists have investigated are gratitude, helping others, and firstly, visualising your best possible self.

1. Visualising your best possible self
Visualising your best possible self may sound like an exercise in fantasy but, crucially, it does have to be realistic. Carrying out this exercise typically involves imagining your life in the future, but a future where everything that could go well, has gone well. You have reached those realistic goals that you have set for yourself.

Then, to help cement your visualisation, you commit your best possible self to paper. This exercise helps draw on the proven benefits of expressive writing.

The effectiveness of this activity was tested in a study by King (2001). Students were asked to write about their best possible future selves for 20 minutes over 4 consecutive days. This group was compared with one writing on a neutral topic, one writing about traumatic life events and another writing about both traumatic events and their best possible future selves.

The results showed that those who had only written about their best possible selves showed greater improvements in subjective well-being compared to all the other groups. The benefits of the exercise could even be measured fully five months later.

Since the results were so encouraging after only a four-day exercise, two other studies have investigated longer periods. Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) and Dickerhoof et al. (2007) carried out studies over 4 and 8 weeks respectively. Both of these backed up the previous findings.

It’s not hard to speculate on why this exercise might be effective, it probably helps to:

Create a sense of efficacy, meaning and purpose.
Foster optimism.
Set written goals and plan means of achieving them.

2. Helping others
Even if you haven’t come across the ‘best possible selves’ exercise, you’ll almost certainly have heard the idea that helping others is beneficial to the self. Helping out at a soup kitchen, volunteering on a helpline, visiting shut-ins – all are certainly virtuous activities. But isn’t helping others for no tangible personal benefit too much like self-sacrifice?

Actually, the research suggests there’s a very good selfish reason to help others – it really does seem to make us happier. In one study students were asked to perform five acts of kindness each week for six weeks (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon & Schkade, 2005). These were things like writing a thank-you note, giving blood or helping a friend with their work. Students were told either to perform one act each day or all five acts on one day.

Both experimental groups showed a better outcome than the control group whose well-being declined over the six-week period (perhaps exams were looming!). Those who performed their acts of kindness each day showed a small increase in well-being.

But the highest well-being was seen in those students who carried out all their acts of kindness on one single day on each of the six weeks of the study. Their well-being increased by an impressive 40%.

Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade (2005) suggest the reason for the difference is that a single act of kindness each day doesn’t make an appreciable difference to the everyday routine, especially as these were only small acts.

3.Practicing gratitude
I’ve already covered the third activity that has shown promise in increasing happiness: practicing gratitude. A study conducted by Emmons and McCullough (2003) found that sitting down weekly to write about five things we are grateful for increased happiness levels by 25%. If you’re short of ways of practicing gratefulness, this list of ways to be grateful culled from Dr Emmons’ book will be useful.

You might also be interested in my review of Dr Robert Emmons’ book ‘thanks!’ which details his experiments and expands on practicing gratitude.

Reasons to be cheerful
I’m sure these are only a tiny subset of the ways we can increase our happiness. At the moment, though, these are some of the ones that have the research to back them up.

In many ways these findings are encouraging. None of these activities involves spending vast amounts of money (or any money really!), none take up that much time and they are all within almost everyone’s reach.

The real challenge they present is in making changes to our daily routines, our standard ways of thinking and behaving. Compared to what we often perceive as a long and winding road to happiness, this trip looks like a doddle, if only we’d open our eyes and look.

» Discover more articles in this series on the new science of happiness.

» Read more evidence on the power of gratitude.

References

Dickerhoof, R., Lyubomirsky, S., & Sheldon, K. M. (2007). How and why do intentional activities work to boost well-being?: An experimental longitudinal investigation of regularly practicing optimism and gratitude. Manuscript under review.

Emmons, R. A., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(2), 377-389

King, L. A. (2001). The health benefits of writing about life goals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 798-807

Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 111-131.

Sheldon, K. M., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2006). How to increase and sustain positive emotion: The effects of expressing gratitude and visualizing best possible selves. Journal of Positive Psychology, 1, 73-82.

Tkach, C. (2005). Unlocking the treasury of human kindness: Enduring improvements in mood, happiness, and self-evaluations. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Riverside.

Psy Blog by Jeremy Dean

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Aptos psychologist: On Mother’s Day & Step-Mother’s Day: Who is “family”?

There are numerous mother-in-law jokes and step-mother jokes. Remember the wicked step-mother in Hansel and Gretel?

I over-heard recently: At a family re-union the step daughter (who has two children) said to her step mother over lunch hearing that a half-brother and wife were soon to have a child: “Oh, now you can finally be a grandmother!”

That comment, certainly insensitive, probably sums up how the step-daughter views her step-mother. Dad is Dad and she comes to see her father. She brings him a card for his birthday. But she does not view her step-mother as a grandmother figure for her children. Overtures, conversation, gifts and contact may occur. But the step-daughter only thinks of her biological mother as the one and only grandmother.

And why those feelings? I know the family fairly well. What the step-mother says is that many, many years ago stories were taught to that step-daughter Not true stories. Just stories. And those stories get passed on through the generaltions. Through stories passed down from biological mother to daughter those children are taught who is kin and who is not.

Maybe that’s something that Christian churches and other faiths can offer people: a way to see “family” much more broadly. Family is more than blood ties.

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Aptos: Aptos dad creates site to remember young daughter and raise money for rare cancer

Father designs Internet game in memory of daughter
By John Sammon
Posted: 04/26/2009

APTOS — Dave Wardle, in struggling to come to grips with the loss of a beloved daughter to a rare cancer-like disease, thought he could best serve her memory by designing a free online computer game that would spread awareness of hystocytosis and raise money to fight it.

“Sofia passed away six months ago,” Wardle said. “This is a rare disease, with 1,500 cases a year reported in the U.S. It’s like cancer, and it’s a blood-born illness produced in the bone marrow.”

“Wardle, 39, a computer programmer originally from England, moved to Aptos after meeting his wife Rebecca in 1992.

Doctors first diagnosed Sofia’s illness as leukemia. It would later appear to be in remission, but instead develop into histiocytosis.

“It started on the skin,” Wardle recalled. “Sofia developed these huge lesions, and they were very painful. She had them on her feet and couldn’t walk around.”

“Up until then, she had been a normal first-grader, a loving child who embraced life, a big sister and friend to her classmates at Rio del Mar Elementary School. A curly-headed child, she played the usual games, dress-up, stickers, music and dancing. She could hip-hop dance, too.

“But that ideal world shattered. “Just before Christmas of 2003, Sofia developed a fever, and her stomach was distended and firm to the touch,” Wardle said. “We took her to the doctor and were immediately sent to Dominican Hospital for blood tests. That was the beginning of our ordeal.”
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“Only 2 years old, she was one of the youngest patients at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto. She would be ill for five years.

“The disease progressed slowly, and during the treatments there seemed to be successes. “It was a rollercoaster for us,” Wardle said. “At one point in 2008, the skin symptoms were getting better, or they seemed to be. But the disease was attacking other parts of her body.”

“The parents had insurance. However, the medical bills ran into the thousands of dollars as the child had to undergo an agonizing round of treatments, including chemotherapy and radiation. Though the pain at times was enough for her to cry out, her father said she bore it with courage and determination. She wanted to get dressed up for school, and go back and be with her classmates. Toward the end of her life, she was planning to become a singer, and had an iPod filled with her favorites: Hannah Montana, Hilary Duff and music from the theatre production, High School Musical.

“It’s amazing how much courage she had, and with good humor,” Wardle said of his daughter. “She taught us the meaning of bravery.”

Sofia was 7 at the time of her death. Her parents have a son Quinn, 5.

Wardle said the loss of his daughter was a blow that had him searching for a way to not only remember her, but to do something to try to find a cure for the disease so future children would not have to experience it. “I had to take an extended sabbatical from work,” he said.

Wardle called being Sofia’s father both a blessing and a tragedy, a struggle full of love and heartache. But, he noted, his daughter will always be an inspiration for him.

He created a Web site in Sofia’s memory called “Sofia Maze.”

An interactive challenge,
the game involves helping Sofia navigate a multi-stage picture maze, from her home in Aptos, to the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. The game combines beautiful images, with jokes, visual humor and whimsical distractions.

“Low-tech gaming can be just as compelling as the latest offering from Sony or Nintendo,” Wardle said.

The game created by Sofia and her dad went live Friday. The site will promote sponsorships and raise funding through donations to fight histiocytosis, the money going to the Histiocytosis Association of America and Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support Services.

People wishing to donate to fight histiocytosis can call Sofia’s father at (831) 332-1021 or visit sofiamaze.com Sofia’s Maze.

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