Franklin, the garden gnome, has found a home in my daughter's garden. German folklore claims gnomes in your garden are good luck. I wonder how long Franklin will stay in one place before someone takes him home for good luck?

It's called a lily. I'm not sure if it's the magic lily or something else I planted over 10 years ago in the front garden.

This house is protected

This door mat has seen better days.

This California Daisy, growing in Maine, is part of a large clump of daisies that are over 7 feet tall.

What I saw today

The turtle watches the pool area from the shed.

Expand your business network through social media

Expand your business network through social media

Following people on Twitter can be a great source of information for your business. By connecting with, and creating relationships with these virtual connections, you can greatly expand the reach of your business. Take the online relationship created between myself and Toby Bloomberg. After several tweets and e-mails, Toby agreed to write an article for the Sun Journal’s newspaper supplement, Women’s Journal, which published today.
http://www.sunjournal.com/index.php?t=8&storyid=300880&subpub=168
Please contact Toby to let her know you read her article. She’s a great writer.
You can’t ask for better editorial content than that which is written by an expert in a certain field. Please feel free to comment here. I can also be reached via e-mail or on Twitter. http://twitter.com/specialdee
I look forward to hearing from you.

Misunderstood language

When I was about five years old, I visited New York City with my family to see my father at work. My father worked in the Burroughs building, which is a skyscraper. The word "skyscraper" was not part of my vocabulary at the time. We were standing on the sidewalk and my mother pointed upwards and said, "Look at the skycraper." As she said this, a jet flew overhead with a tail of smoke behind it. I thought she was pointing at the jet and that the jet was scraping the sky. It was years - many years - before I learned that "skyscraper" refers to a tall building and not a jet. Obviously, I'm embarrassed about this misunderstanding.

The need for immediate answers

Do we need immediate answers to many of our problems today? Which problems?

When did this immediate need arise? Did our grandparents have the same need for immediate answers? Do our children?

How do we know that feeling and intuition are almost instantaneous? Do feeling and intuition ever take a while to provide answers?

Is reasoning painfully slow in a physical way?
In order to answer these questions, we would need to know what the problems are. I can think of some problems that any reasonable person would consider needing an immediate answer, such as what happens if I take this cold medicine with my asthma medication?

On the other hand, there are problems that don’t need immediate answers, such as, if one were having guests over for dinner in two weeks and knew that one guest was lactose-intolerant or vegetarian, then what could be included in the dinner menu to satisfy everyone?

I can’t answer the question of when this “immediate need” arose. However, I can deduce that this immediate need has to do with the fact that communication has improved greatly over the last one hundred years and continues to rapidly improve today: Internet, cell phones, pagers, etc. Many people expect to be able to communicate via these methods to get immediate answers.

History will show whether or not our grandparents had the same need for immediate answers, as well as predicting if our children will, too.

The definitions of feeling and intuition will help us understand their spontaneity.

Perhaps “painfully slow” in reference to reasoning infers stress. Stress can be explained as causing chest pain and high blood pressure.

The definitions from this one source indicate that feeling and intuition are not the same thing, although I perceive them to be closely related.

Feeling vs. intuition

From Creative Critical Inquiry, Fall 2008:

1. Are feeling and intuition better guides to behavior than reasoning? Are feeling and intuition the same thing? How are feeling and intuition different from reasoning?
The first question cannot be answered with a yes or no answer (based on the information given in this assignment) because no evidence is offered, such as laboratory experiments, surveys, and statistics.

The second question can be answered by definition. Merriam-Webster Online defines intuition as: “1: quick and ready insight. 2 a: immediate apprehension or cognition b: knowledge or conviction gained by intuition. c: the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.”

Feeling is defined as:

“1 a (1): one of the basic physical senses of which the skin contains the chief end organs and of which the sensations of touch and temperature are characteristic : touch (2): a sensation experienced through this sense b: generalized bodily consciousness or sensation c: appreciative or responsive awareness or recognition

2 a: an emotional state or reaction b: susceptibility to impression : sensitivity

3 a: the undifferentiated background of one's awareness considered apart from any identifiable sensation, perception, or thought b: the overall quality of one's awareness c: conscious recognition : sense

4 a: often unreasoned opinion or belief : sentiment b: presentiment

5: capacity to respond emotionally especially with the higher emotions

6: the character ascribed to something : atmosphere

7 a: the quality of a work of art that conveys the emotion of reason, the artist b: sympathetic aesthetic response.”

Reasoning, on the other hand, is defined as: “2 a (1): the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly rational ways.”

So the difference between reasoning and feeling and intuition is that during the process of reasoning one is aware that one is using one’s knowledge to make a judgment whereas with feeling and intuition one is unaware of where one’s response comes from.

Power of attraction

My wonderful cousin called me this afternoon just to chat. Her calls are always a reminder to reflect on all the good things in our busy, hectic lives. She calls it living with an attitude of gratitude. Our discussion included the power of attraction and how like attracts like. POA. Remember that acronym. Write it down and post it somewhere as a reminder to adjust your attitude when needed. We all need reminders, or at least I do!