The Celebration Tree

The Celebration Tree

      We have a Celebration Tree in our house, and it gives us great pleasure.  We think others may enjoy having a Celebration Tree---it could be put up for their family, school, social group, reading group or for a single person.   We started the tree when I had been diagnosed with a disorder that meant I spent most of the day in bed. I had started making things, mostly of paper.  But when we had brought a manufactured Christmas tree into my room and I had put on it the beautiful decorations I had inherited from my mother, we didn't feel we could take the tree down after Christmas.  We wanted to continue celebrating, celebrating holidays from other countries, celebrating our friends and family when they had their birthdays, celebrating famous people who had contributed to all of us, and celebrating animals, plants, people and actions that had been given their own special days, as in the famous Ground Hog Day.

We found it surprising how much celebration and how many national holidays there were around the world, and enjoyed making decisions about what should go on the tree.  The next step was to use our creative bent to make decorations for everything we had chosen to put on the tree.  Finally there was pleasure of putting the whole tree together.If you are interested in making a Celebration Tree, here is the way we do it.  Of course, you would find your way to do it, and I think children would especially enjoy and learn from a tree.

The Tree  

We started with a manufactured  tree.  The one we use is about 4 feet tall and we got it at Target.  It has many boughs on which to hang note cards with pictures, and symbols of celebration.  You can make little play dough pictures and hang them for decorations or use already made up decorations.

We like to decorate the tree month by month, and then keep all the month’s decorations up until the month is over.  At the same time we also start preparing decorations for the next month so that the tree won’t ever be bare.  As we add new decorations, we take off the ones that have been on the tree the longest. The tree for the next month is usually done by the end of the first week of the next month.

Birthdays

We celebrate birthdays of friends and family on the tree.  We also celebrate the birthdays of famous people who have contributed to our lives.  Often we celebrate with little cards having the picture of the birthday person on it and often decorate them to fit the person as best we can.  The people on the tree are those famous ones whose birthdays are in a given month, as well as the birthdays of family and friends in that month. 

Working on our tree for this December, for example, included Emily Dickinson the poet, Henri Matisse the artist, Margaret Mead the anthropologist, Jeff Bridges, the actor, I. F. Stone, the journalist, and Jean Ritchie the folk singer.  We will have more people to add for December of next year.  If several people are involved with the tree, each may pick a person they would like decorate for the tree.

Special Days

  

We are also interested in all the plants, animals, activities and groups of people who have “their day” in a given month.  We already knew Groundhog Day and Talk Like a Pirate Day. We knew that there would be a Dr. Seuss Day and a Mister Rogers Day and a Charles Darwin Day.  This month for our Dec. tree we are  making decoration cards for the International Day of the Monkey and the National day of the Horse.  We are also getting ready for January’s days: day of the penguin, day of the squirrel, day of the bird, and day of the hat. 

For making decorative cards for these days, there are photos available, or drawings can be done.  You can also find coloring pages that show the honored animal or activity.  Little sculptures, banners and drawings  and other ornaments are also used to decorate the tree.

Holidays from around the World

On the tree we celebrate the holidays that we have grown up with, along with holidays  from many other countries.  Here we learn about life in other countries and often find that many countries celebrate much the way we do.  Holidays tend to be similar within a season,  having to do with Autumn's harvest time and Spring, the time of new life in planting and new beginnings.  Some months, especially Spring, seem to have more holidays than other months.  Autumn marks Thanksgiving and other celebrations of harvest being taken in.  Winter solstice marks the day we have the most darkness, and we celebrate that we will now be having more and more light.  Summer solstice marks the day when we have the most light, and all that light is also celebrated.

This gives a new view of the holidays.  For example we can say Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy Solstice Season all at the same time.

Some holidays are held on the same day every year.  Others vary in when they are held, and often are related to lunar calendars.  Still others are held, for example, on the third Thursday of a particular month, and these too will vary.

The New Year is very interesting because we can celebrate it several times a year, depending on when calendars mark the beginning of the new year.  The Chinese New Year and several other Asian new years depend on a lunar calendar and give us more than one exciting New Year to  celebrate.

Holidays often are connected with special meals, special new clothing, cleaning the house, bonfires, noise-makers, parades, costumes and many more. We have included on our tree pictures of people who are  dressed up, their big meals, bonfires or candles, garlands, noise makers, dragons, hats, masks, costumes, visits to elderly family members, doing good deeds and other ways to celebrate a holiday.  The holiday is often celebrated in a story or in songs, which we can listen to or sing, and sometimes we will make decorations that are too big to put on a tree, like a dragon, and they will be put elsewhere in the room.

Other Sources of Information for the Tree

I have put together several boards in Pinterest that have been especially chosen to give information about holidays and celebrations, and information and free photographs are usually available on the web for famous people.  I have also made boards on the visual artists who will in turn be decorated on the tree, along with animals, plants, the oceans and the land.  

There are discouraging things happening in the world today and more and more boundaries are made with one group of people on one side and another on the other.  Celebrations bring us all together and bring the happiness that we can be grateful for. 

The Budget: the Military and the rest of us

Please look carefully at this pie chart.  The budget axe is coming out, and as usual its wielders will do their best to destroy government programs that could actually help all of us. Programs and public services can either be directly cut or given a slower death by privatization.  In privatization, a governmental service is starved of funds so they are prevented from doing a good job, or we are told the service is failing even though it’s not. The next step is making what is owned by the public private, allowing corporations to make even more money with their acquisitions while cutting services and paying employees less.

At the same time, the profiteering corporations and intelligence agencies are given more and more taxpayer money though the military budget.  Currently, adding 30 billion to the budget is being proposed, and the president has indicated that the budget needs to be used in war.  To get an idea of how much is currently given the military, the budget pie above gives an idea.

 Many of the axe wielders have worked over the years to convince us that the government is no good, while they lived off the government's paychecks and worked to create the worst government ever.  They were also in a position to make this a government the rich could buy, consistently legislating for the benefit of the wealthy interests and for the public's pain.  And they have been quite successful.  We pay their wages as they tear the country and the world apart.

The budget axe is one way to destroy programs that actually help the people of our country.  People are said to be asking for,  "Free health care." "Free Social Security" "Free Medicare".  But  THEY ARE NOT AND NEVER HAVE BEEN FREE!  THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN GIFTS TO THE UNWORTHY.  THEY ARE PROGRAMS THAT HEALTHY SOCIETIES AROUND THE WORLD HAVE HAD FOR YEARS.

We refuse to pay for what the rest of the civilized world has in part because we are giving such huge amounts of tax payers money to the military and defense. t

The American taxpayer pays for the budget through taxes.  Any program funded by the government will be paid for by the public.  In a democracy, this means we should have a major say in what we give our money for.

In the US budget and other payout programs, at least 55% of the taxpayers’ money goes each year to support war, covert military actions and spying on the American people, weaponry and the support of nuclear weapons set on hair trigger that can destroy the world.  We support hundreds of  unneeded military bases across the world, a number of which come equipped with golf courses. And corporations are being paid for all variety of military functions.  Richard Cheney and his friends are feeding well from the government trough, while men, women and children, including our troops, are being killed and maimed in the pre-emptive wars of America.  Paid for by us, the taxpayers.

Meanwhile the infrastructure of the country is falling apart, we have new jobs but most are not jobs with living wages, we have broader health care but it is still designed to offer a big gift of wealth to insurance companies and big pharma.  And the government is getting ready to sell off more of our land and infrastructure to private big business.

It is mind boggling to learn that over half the federal budget goes to the Military Industrial Complex and intelligence.  We pay for weapons, we pay military salaries (though nothing compared to the MIC), we pay for wars, we pay for nuclear weapons, we pay to have ourselves spied upon.  Does this seem crazy to you?  It does.

Worse still, when government decides to cut the budget, where do they cut?  The very programs that make our lives livable.  And why?  Because we are spending too much.  And where are we spending it? For the military and intelligence.  And there is the possibility that we may be spending it on even more terrible wars than the ones we are currently involved in.

Maybe the issue is that some US citizens are very afraid that ISIS will get them or their families.  They fear what might be underneath a headscarf even though they have never feared a nun in a habit. They think Mexicans are rapists. The news scares them.  The government scares them.  

Paying over half the government budget for the military makes sense to them.  The reduction in fear that this expense gives them is much more important to than their families receiving medical care. It is more important that having an good public education for their children.  It is more important than dealing with climate change and the death of the planet.

I really don't think there could be many who are that afraid, but I could be wrong.  There might also be a group of citizens who like the idea of having 800 mostly ineffectual military bases around the world because it makes them feel strong, or they are hoping that our  wars and weapons of destruction might bring on the apocalypse.

But do we really want to have our tax pockets picked by the wealthy who benefit from the Military Industrial Complex?  When the axe comes out, do we really want to destroy programs for the people of our country and pay instead for war?

Dostoevsky and Self-delusion

Dostoevsky, Self-delusion, and taking offense

Unable to fathom today’s events, we turn to books for some understanding of what is happening.  And the great author, psychologist and philosopher, Fyodor Dostoevsky, as he often does, obliges us with insight. Here, the disreputable father of the Karamazov family asks Father Zossima how he can reform, and Zossima’s reply concludes:

“Above all, do not lie…  A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea — he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility”… Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

photo credit: jimforest <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/78953420@N00/5447915133">Dostoevsky</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(license)</a>

There's happiness

There’s happiness

There’s happiness in the deep water exercising pool.

At first you cannot make it out

The place is noisy, slippery

The showers may not work

And danger lurks

Wet swimsuits have been known

To seal themselves onto their owners’ bodies

creating makeshift prisons

But stay a while.

The competition you had known at work

Is missing here

You come to realize

You’re not here for the exercise

You’ve come to feel the warm embrace

of women who have lived enough

to lose the fear of love

The pool’s a place of wonder

where love can live

without embarrassment

And where the beauty of the women’s faces

Is reflected in the water