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Posts Tagged ‘change’

Out with the Old, In with the New

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Journeys, tagged , , , , on July 25, 2014| 8 Comments »

            “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”  — Lao Tzu

I just realized this morning that Pepper sort of looks like the dog token in Monopoly, which was always my favorite game piece.

I just realized this morning that Pepper sort of looks like the dog token in Monopoly, which is always my favorite game piece.

Change is Inevitable

            I recently learned that a cat token had replaced Monopoly’s iron token. I don’t know about you but I think it was about time.

I don't think so.

I don’t think so.

My iron went out with the first days of wash and wear. Before that, which was way back when I had growing children, by the time I got to the bottom of the basket that held clothes to be ironed, my children had outgrown them.

The change to Monopoly – a game I played for endless hours when I was a child – was a result of a popular vote to eliminate one icon and replace it with another.

It seems logical to me why the iron was displaced, but why not something more new age, like a computer or a space station, as the new token?

It gives us something to think about. So what token would you have replaced, what would your choice have been for a new icon, and which one do you like as your game piece?

I always play with the dog.

But I can’t think of a better choice than a cat for the new token.  If you own the right cat, or  more likely it owns you, as I have three out of four times, I found them to be almost as companionable as a dog. It’s OK Pepper. I said almost.

Change, I’ve come to learn in my old-broad wisdom, is often neither good or bad. It just is. And it’s inevitable.      

Blog pick of the day.

Blog pick of the day.

      Bean Pat: Worthy of Attention http://tinyurl.com/k8qbk8d  We all like compliments. And this blog reminds me to be freer with mine.

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Weekly Photo Challege: Change

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Favorite Places, Journeys, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , on April 15, 2013| 4 Comments »

Zion National Park 

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.” – Harold Wilson

When I took my canine traveling companion on her morning walk at Zion National Park, the view across from my RV glowed. -- Photo by Pat Bean

When I took my canine traveling companion on her morning walk at Zion National Park, the view across from my RV glowed. — Photo by Pat Bean

 

“If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” – Mary Englebreit

An hour later, when I was getting ready to leave the park, the view's intensity had changed significantly. I'm glad I' an early riser. -- Photo by Pat Bean

An hour later, when I was getting ready to leave the park, the view’s intensity had changed significantly. I’m glad I’ an early riser. — Photo by Pat Bean

 

“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” W. Edwards Deming

 

The Wondering Wanderer's blog pick of the day.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: http://tinyurl.com/chabzlm The first thing each morning… I make coffee, walk Pepper, and plan my day while I drink my coffee. What about you?

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A Woodpecker, Not a Raven, Came a Rapping

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on December 4, 2011| 4 Comments »

 “If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.” – J.M. Power

 

A pair of pileated woodpeckers -- Wikipedia photo

 

Travels With Maggie

I awoke this morning to a rapid knocking coming from outside my RV, which is now parked in the driveway at the home of my son, Lewis, who lives near the Texas Gulf Coast.

One side of Gypsy Lee faces my son’s house and the other a thick row of hedges and tall trees that daily host a vast variety of birds, squirrels, an occasional cat – and on the foliage-lined walkway every morning at 7 o’clock an elderly man walking his very vocal golden-red bloodhound.

Several small dogs on the far side of the woodsy public right of way, always bark when they hear the hound’s deep rumbling voice. Maggie, 14 and quite deaf, usually sleeps through the ruckus. Thankfully I’m almost always up at this time of morning.

 

Ivory-billed woodpeckers -- Painting by John James Audubon

I was still abed, however, although awake reading while waiting for daylight, when the knocking begin. It was deeper and more persistence than that of a downy woodpecker, which is the most frequent morning visitor that lets me know it’s hovering nearby by knocking on a tree. The sound always triggers my brain to the tapping and rapping at Poe’s door by a raven.

I suspected my bird this morning, however, might be a pileated woodpecker. A look through my binoculars, which are always handy, confirmed my suspicions. Even in the morning’s dim light, this large woodpecker’s size and shape can’t be missed.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen and heard this close look-alike of the more famous ivory-billed woodpecker, which was thought to be extinct until recently. Several respected ornithologists now say they have seen this bird, whose last documented sighting happened in the 1940s. Other, also respected ornithologists, are skeptical.

I just hope that we humans don’t do to the pileated woodpeckers what we did to the ivory-billed, which is to destroy its last remaining habitat.

The pileated survived because it adapted to change. It’s a good lesson for us all in this fast-changing world.

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9-11 Changed Everything

Posted in Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on September 11, 2011| 5 Comments »

  “I may never be normal again. But this is my life now. I have to live it.” — Manu Dhingra, 27, a securities broker who suffered burns over a third of his body on 9-11

A 10-year Perspective

The Twin Towers, March 2001 .. Wikipedia photo

How did 9-11 change your life, I was asked.

It was a question I found difficult to answer. No sudden revelations came to mind on how my life was different today than it was that horribly bad day in 2001. I lost no loved ones, although I mourned because of the senselessness that took so many innocent lives and disrupted so many families.

I continued living my life as before. My job went on, as did those of my children. My grandchildren continued graduating from school, marrying and having children of their own.

And then the “what if” questions hit me.

What if there had been no 9-11? Would we have still gone to war with Iraq? How many American soldiers and innocent civilians would still be alive today if 9-11 hadn’t happened?

Would the Patriot Act still have been passed, causing Americans to lose many freedoms on which this country was founded? Would our country’s leaders still have resorted to torture with the excuse of keeping America safe?

9-11 -- The horribly bad day that changed everything.

Nasty questions. Nasty answers.

Yes. I have changed. I’ve lost the mom-and-apple-pie image of America that I grew up believing in. My ever-optimistic attitude toward life has been charred. My trust in human nature has dimmed and my sense of security is dampened.

But life goes on, and I have no intention of giving into fears so as to turn the world over to the bad guys. I live my life as before. Perhaps that’s why on being asked how had 9-11 changed my life, the first thought that popped into my mind was “It didn’t.”

But of course it did.

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You Can Always Go Home, Just Don’t Expect to Find It Unchanged

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 22, 2011| 2 Comments »

 “He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.” — Harold Wilson

The looks nothing like the 25th Street I was first introduced to in the early 1980s. -- Photo by Pat Bean

*Travels With Maggie

Some say you can’t go home again. That of course is not true. What you can’t do is go home and find things exactly how you left then

For example, on March 31 of this year, I blogged about returning to my grandmother’s rural home on the outskirts of Dallas, where I lived as a young child. I found the small two-bedroom home condemned, the gardenia bushes outside her front door no longer there and another dilapidated house where her garden used to be.

It was exactly the opposite in Ogden, where I lived for 23 years before retiring seven years ago. I’ve returned yearly since and every time things have changed upward.

The downtown site where a mall was torn down, and which remained obscenely vacant for many years, is now a thriving hub of restaurants, theaters, small shops and bustling activity.

My friend, Kim, and I, and some of her friends had dinner this evening at the Sonora Grill, one of those chic new restaurants. Afterward we walked down the revived 25th Street, which when I first moved to Ogden, was a hangout for the homeless, motorcycle gangs, scary bars and a liquor store.

Colorful horse statues are now a common sight in downtown Ogden in recent years. -- Photo by Pat Bean

The bars have mostly up-scaled, the liquor store moved, restaurants and small business opened, and the street spruced up with fresh paint, charming statues, fresh facades and colorful flowers.

Our group ended up at The City Club, a private club serving food and booze that once had been one of my let-down-the-hair places I occasionally visited after a frustrating work day.

It was both the same and different. Beatles’ photos and memorabilia still covered every inch of the walls, but the place was no longer a private club where you had to be a member to enjoy a quiet drink, and I didn’t know half the people there this night.

It felt a little strange, but here I was sitting with my old and dear friend, Kim, and fast getting to know five new people whom I had only met earlier in the evening.

Life’s like that. Things change. Buildings come and go and people move on and new ones take their places. Even the people who stay in your life, like my friend, Kim, change with time.

Thankfully, although differently, the two of us had grown in ways that had enriched our friendship bonds. If either of us had not grown, we probably wouldn’t still be friends.

Life never stands still. And if you do, you get left behind.

*Day 19 of the journey, May 7,201

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Political Changes Need to Start Somewhere

Posted in Nature, tagged , , , , , , , on April 9, 2011| 4 Comments »

 

Perhaps a quiet walk beneath a blue sky filled with fast-moving clouds, such as here in Utah's Canyonland National Park, will invigorate the will of politicians to do what is right for the American people. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“America is a tune. It must be sung together.” — Gerald Stanley Lee

Just for Today

Talk these past few days about the government shutting down has been disturbing to me, and I’m sure to many other Americans. But I didn’t feel any relief this morning when I read that the shutdown had been averted.

Instead I felt angry with all the games too many of our politicians have been playing to booster their own parties, their own images, their personal agendas and their personal vendettas. I watch as we, the American people, try to elect leaders who will go against the current political grain, only to see the newly elected join it.

I don’t have all the answers on how we can change this ever-worsening situation, but I do have a few suggestions:

One-term limit of four to six years for all politicians so they can spend their days working for the people instead of working for re-election.

Salary and benefit packages of elected officials that are in line with those of the average wage earner of their constituents so they will be more in touch with those they were elected to serve.

Everyone, not just politicians, could benefit from taking time to smell the flowers, such as these in Maine's Scarborough Marsh. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Politicians who are more concerned with what is right then in staying loyal to their parties.

And, most importantly, a mandatory day once a month for politicians to walk a scenic landscape with Mother Nature to restore their souls.

These suggestions, in case you’re interested, come from an old broad who is proud to be a tree-hugger who yearns for world peace.

Perhaps, dear blog readers, you have other suggestions for changing the status quo in our nation’s capital. If you do, hopefully you’ll share. Change has to have a beginning.

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Will the Real David Hasselhoff Please Stand Up

Posted in Travel, tagged , , , , on February 17, 2011| 7 Comments »

 

David Hasselhoff as I remember him back in about 1989. -- Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

“There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place.” Washington Irving

Travels With Maggie

A text from a grandson last night took me on a journey down memory lane. It was the only traveling I did yesterday.

“So um, david hasselhoff is here in lake jackson (Texas) hosting a reality show, how random,” 16-year-old Dallas alerted me.

It was an opportunity for this former journalist to impress her grandson by informing him that I once interviewed Hasselhoff. Of course my grandson wanted to know the details. After a bit of brain scratching I told him as much as I could remember.

It was about 1989, after Hasselhoff’s stint on “The Young and The Restless” and his role as the “Knight Rider” had ended. When I met him he was the bare-chested life guard hero of Bay Watch.

His reason for appearing at the Layton Mall in Northern Utah was to promote his newly begun career as a singer. Tall and good-looking, and not yet 40, Hasselhoff’s appearance had the ladies there to see him all a giggle.

“Take off your shirt,” several of them urged him. He didn’t, however. He sang, and he joked with his mostly female audience, but remained gentlemanly and modest.

Thinking back on that day now, and comparing it to some of Hasselhoff’s more recent shenanigans, left me thoughtful. The years change us, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and sometimes a bit of both. You see Hasselhoff ‘s current reputation doesn’t take into account his long-standing charitable efforts with the Make a Wish foundation, or his numerous visits to children’s hospitals around the world.

It makes me glad to know that when I interviewed Hasselhoff , I got to see his better side.

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