It's That Day Again !

Sla'inte is ta'inte !

(pron. slawn-chuh iss tawn-chuh)

If you've never heard this quote, you will if you ever celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. For many years now the Irish have made their way to New York to celebrate because the type of celebrating we make here in the States was so different than what they allowed on their own shores. That's of the past now since they recently voted for an official holiday in Ireland making a St. Patrick's Day to rival our own.

You're probably thinking that I have a wee bit of Irish in me and you would be right- on both sides of my parentage. I think that makes it official.

Something I have never understood- until recently- is how words like hooligan came to be thought of as Irish. The ironic part of this is that it came from an Irish name which was originally O' hUallachain. In English we say Houlihan which eventually morphed into hooligan when a rowdy street gang run by a family of that same name terrorized London during the 1890s. Even a song was circulated in the pubs making that name stick officially for any hoodlum.

The English probably knew how to deal with a slew (sluagh, Gaelic for crowd or army) of hooligans. Just break their pints of ale to smithereens ( from Gaelic, smidirini) and put the kibosh (from Gaelic, cie bais) on their drinking galore. (from Gaelic, gu leor)

Now here's a word you might not expect and it even surprised me! Cairn is an Irish word you don't hear very often and possibly not at all on American shores. A cairn is a pile of stones set up as a landmark, monument or possibly even a grave. St. Patrick is buried along with another saint underneath such an edifice. I wrote very recently about these curiosities on my Castlelady Live Space in January. If you read the entry which was titled "Castlerigg, Stonehenge and other Stone Circles" you'll recall that I mentioned Carnac in Brittany, France.

The similarity of the words did not escape my attention and I'm sure you noticed it, too. What you may not know, however is that Ireland and Brittany do not belong in the same branch of Celts. I can hear you ask, "There's more than one?" yes. The Celts are, in fact, made up of two families. The Irish, Scottish Highlanders and the Manx (Isle of man) are of the Goidelic branch,- the true Gaels. The Welsh, Bretons and Cornish are of the Brythonic branch who spoke the Briton language. You will find variations between the Brythonic languages which make these quite different even amongst their own but what you normally don't see are the words that suddenly appear quite alike- such as cairn and carn- outside their respective branches.

You learn something new everyday !

Happy Saint Patrick's Day everybody !

Running Out of Patience?

I receive regular e-mails from the DCCC on a regular basis and the last one I received caught my attention because it contained words that struck me as a Bushism. (For the uninformed, a Bushism is a mangled quote and is a trademark of the former Bush administration and, of course, Bush himself.) In it, Michele Bachmann ( a republican Congresswoman) is quoted as saying, "We're running out of rich people." This is such an ignorant remark that now I'm wondering if she actually meant to say, "All the rich people are running out of this country." Now that would be truthful but we know that there has been a clear trend for quite some time now of deception coming from the GOP so we're left not knowing if she's just ignorant or can't really see what's been going on for more than eight years now. It's quite possible that she refuses to see.

You see, the U.S. economy has been taking serious hits ever since a policy was instituted in this country of giving tax breaks to businesses that took their industries out of our borders. Outsourcing has been one of the most harrowing economic blunders ever to hit this country in its wallet. Just to illustrate this for everyone, fiscally, it is like giving your child an allowance for feeding your neighbor's dog while ignoring your own. So how do we fix the problem?

Well, first we need to take away that ridiculous tax break they've been giving to these businesses who don't care about Americans or their livelihood or how they're going to pay for all that stuff pouring in from Asia. The second action is to institute a special import tax for all those goods coming from our outsourced supply which comes from many countries. The tax break should go to those who are investing and banking on our own fiscal health right here in the good ol' USA.

I have had several people ask me, if I went into politics, what my own key issues would center on. Several ideas come to mind including the one above but in all honesty I have felt that the insurance industry is one that has needed serious reform for decades. The reason why insurance is such a financial burden on this country's citizens is because the office that was supposed to regulate the agencies and companies does nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, if you call the Insurance Commission on most issues you will find that they work in close alliance with the insurance companies-not with the people, who they were instituted to represent.

The insurance companies claim fraud eats into their companies' coffers when, as a matter of fact, they spend more money on investigating fraud than the so-called fraudulent claims cost. The real issues are on the amounts of money it exacts from consumers while giving nothing in return and, with the help of the Insurance Commission, making it impossible for many people to get the money entitlements they deserve. You won't see any commercial for that on T.V. It's not fair for an insurance company to penalize those people who pay their insurance premiums faithfully and don't make any false claims. State Farm and all the rest would have you believe that they have no choice but they do.

If the average person looked at the insurance budget he is on currently and the policies he's signed, he'll find he is over insured in many areas- including his automobile insurance. Not only that, he'll find that any amount of income he could have used as truly discretionary (i.e. to buy luxuries) is sunk into insurance premiums which are never returned to him in any amount. To me, this is almost feudal and somewhat like having to deal with the Mafia.

A more honest system of insurance would be rebating. What do I mean by that? Well, in essence, any and all policyholders who pay for their insurance in installments would, after a certain time period, have a portion of their premium money returned if they have made no claims on their insurance. This could jumpstart the economy in a way never before seen just by putting money back into the hands of the person who earned it. This is the only fair way to reward someone who has managed to live in a responsible way. I would call it the 'good citizen' rebate. I would like to see this happen with every type of insurance with the possible exception of life insurance which works on a completely different basis.

In conclusion, I'd like to mention that an economic recovery for this country is going to take time and a lot more effort if we really want to turn every aspect of the problems around. It may take more than four years of Obama's administration but if we all work together on the issues a lot can be done in four or eight years. The Clinton administration proved that so let's get to work. Okay?

The Castle Lady with lots of love !

Brainstorms in the Dead of Night

     I have a book that I would recommend to any writer for its comradely support. It was published specifically for this reason and there is one entry in there I have read a couple of times now. The book title is : Rules of Thumb- 73 Authors Reveal Their Writing Fixations. The entry by Samantha Hunt reminds me of my similar experience with inconvenient inspirational moments:

Knock, Knock, Knock

 

     Sometimes if I'm lucky, I'll wake up in the middle of the night with a phrase or sentence echoing in my head. I have never felt responsible for these words plucked from an unconscious reservoir, but rather imagine that they have arrived here, in the dead of night from some exterior source, possibly even off the lips of someone I was talking to in a dream. The phrases rarely make sense. "You weren't going to do all that you nosy queen of habitat," I remember one of them saying.

     Despite the lack of meaning gleaned from the phrases, I feel that to ignore these words would show a terrific lack of respect for mystery, and so it is my one writing rule that I force myself to get up in the wee hours and record these ( really often very dumb) messages so that I might remember them in the morning. "Into the forest I walk with the good bear. Goodbyes and lacerations." What the heck does that mean? I haven't the slightest idea, but I wrote it down anyway. It's the rule.

     Perhaps these phrases are the lowliest of words, the desperate beggars that come knocking at midnight wanting to be put to use in a story. Maybe they are ghost phrases destined to wander in ambiguity until some mortal tries to make sense of them. Or perhaps they are stern warnings that I am just too dense to decode. Or else maybe they are gifts , gifts of nonsense. It doesn't seem to matter. All I know is that were I to ignore these foolish words I would somehow cheapen the value of all words. So in the dark I obey these voices, these midnight inconveniences, not out of superstition but because they connect me to that which is most crucial to my writing: the gloriously inadvertent, the perfectly unintended.

 

     While I may not be able to relate to everything she wrote I have had moments where I have woken up with a paragraph burning to roll off my pen. I also have obeyed these voices and been pleasantly surprised at the revelations and wise words which seemed to come out of nowhere. I feel that this is spiritual and must not be ignored. I believe all writers should practice this because we are a special breed and we certainly know who we are, don't we? Ms. Hunt takes it seriously and I think we all should. The truth is that if we are dyed-in-the-wool writers we can't help it anyway!

     There are times when I am in the park walking and then a couple of divine sentences overwhelm me and I know that one of those rare moments is upon me. The perplexity is being caught without pen and paper to jot them down as quickly as possible. I have also woken up in the wee morning hours grappling for any pen and paper in the room. At one time I started carrying a mini-cassette player around with me when I had one of these inspirational moments in the car. These revelations can come at any time so it is imperative to get them recorded, somehow, as soon as possible. I've also been without means only to find out later when I could get to writing materials that my memory had lapsed by then and those fleeting gifts of wit were gone and irretrievable.

      If you get these one-offs occasionally or even frequently- and it's okay if you don't, it won't make you any less a writer- then by all means make sure you keep something handy to be able to jot down these ideas, crazy witticisms and outright nonsense ( if you will !) as quickly as possible. It's for a very good reason you were chosen to hear it. 

 

Just me, The Castle Lady with inspirational hugs and kisses !    

 

 

A Good Marriage

     Of all the types of advice we receive in a lifetime I think the most attentive you'll find a recipient is on marital advice. I've seen enough Phil Show segments myself and gotten my fair share of seeing the negative side of what can go wrong with a marriage, that a positive spin on such a subject is always a welcome change. Since I have never been married I figure it's quite a job sifting through all the aspects- good and bad- that are said but I am not sure the advice has prepared me for the (hopefully) inevitable.

     The following quotes are from a short segment on marriage by Wilfred Arlan Peterson. I thought these were very good with a few amendments of my own:

•          You are never too old to hold hands.
•          Never go to bed angry with each other.
•          Don't take your spouse for granted. Keep the courtship going perpetually and learn to be romantic.
•          Keep a mutual sense of values and common objectives.
•          Stand up for each other when facing down or to the world.
•          Do things for each other in a spirit of joy not an attitude of duty.
•          Your independence should be equal, dependence mutual and your obligations, reciprocal.
•          Don't expect perfection in each other and have compassion for failings and faults.
•          Speak words of appreciation and demonstrate gratitude in thoughtful ways of your own.
•          Learn to forgive and forget.
•          Don't forget the words "I love you" and say them as often as you feel necessary- or more often.
•          Half of marrying the right partner is being the right partner.

     The last one is so true and the most important one of all, I believe. I once read those words on a bumper sticker and it impressed me so much that I have worked on that more than all the advice I have ever received. No one is ever really ready for marriage- at any age- until they get that one right. All the rest of these pointers are much easier to execute in a relationship if you take care of that last one first!

 

Just pointing the way to marital bliss-

with a kiss!

 

 

The Castle Lady   

 

All for One and One for All

     Today I was reading a section of the newspaper which had a wonderful article written by David Shribman on our past president's inauguration speeches. It mentioned the quotable quotes of Lincoln, FDR ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself") and JFK's immortal words- "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". The article goes on to show how many of the presidents who took office used the inauguration day to inact, through symbolism, what their primary aim would be while they were in office.

       An example is when Jimmy Carter, along with his wife, got out of the presidential limo and strolled down Pennsylvania Avenue, which was risky behavior for a president after the assassination of JFK. His point? It was to show that he was going to have an open book on his dealings in the White House- as opposed to the clandestine dealings of Nixon and the Watergate Scandal. There is more in the article dealing with the movers and shakers that have taken to the Oval Office and it really started my thinking processes along another line. Something I only thought about today.

        Obama has been speaking a lot about us basically taking our country back by using the privilege of being a citizen, taking on a responsibility we have not been exercising. This makes perfect sense to me and I believe he's right. We all need to do our part to help him make these changes effectively. Together we can make great achievements in the areas of obtaining affordable health care, securing our borders effectively, putting people back to work and making sure that each and every person who has put a portion of their work into social security will have this fund to fall back on when they most need it. Collectively we can get our economy and our greatest strengths back on track and going in the right direction.

        Perhaps the most important lesson this country has learned in the wake of 9/11 is how important our people are- when we unite and pull together for a common cause but this is not to take away from each individual. I think about one president- perhaps the greatest president this country has had in modern times- being taken away from his post and out of the presidency in ill-timed fashion. This is, of course, John F. Kennedy, who by his absence has shown how important each individual is to the fabric of the common good. You don't have to be a president to make a difference, just someone with a strong vision and motivation to better yourself and others.

         Therefore, I propose that each and every one of us who want to see this country get back on its feet and once again lead all the nations in every aspect, to see Obama as the leader of our great citizens who will go on to do great things. Obama is the figurehead but our greatest strength will be ourselves working for the common good.

Here's a bear hug from The Castle Lady !  

What a Year !

This past year has been one for the records ! My work alone on Northumberland about did me in because it took seven separate entries just to cover all the castles in that county and I didn't get my additional North England material posted because I promised my Live Space readership to put up a few entries on countries I hadn't covered, Switzerland (Chateau de Chillon) and Luxembourg (Chateau de Bourscheid), Ile de France ( the area that surrounds Paris) plus many of the Treasure Houses of England and an area of Royal Palaces in London (St. James's Park).

In addition to those castle entries I posted up two pieces of Holy Spirit-inspired writs "To Pray or Not to Pray" and "The Nature of Love" that I am grateful to God for giving me to impart to my readership. In fact, I am always more awed by the inspirational writing I do than any other because the ideas and the methods, so often come to me in very unconventional ways. I feel the only way to get to this point is through diligent bible reading with prayer beforehand so that God will lock in with what you are doing. He will always answer a call to communion with Him especially concerning the Word. When you do this He helps you properly interpret His word for your edification. I often think of my inspirational writing as my confirmation back to God which edifies Him. I'll bet you didn't know that we also edify God but we do so by listening closely to what He is telling us through His Word.

If you haven't visited my official web site for awhile www.ilovecastles.com you may want to check it out because I've revamped the overall look before I start putting up the individual castles of England- county by county. You'll have to be patient but it will all be worth it! I will be posting a few more articles on North England's counties on my Castlelady blog

(http://castlelady.spaces.live.com/ ) while I am concurrently putting up England on my web site to fill in- with extra data- those castles I hadn't already covered back in 2006 and 2007.

Watch me put the pedal to the metal !

The Castle Lady ; )

Christmastime

     We all think of standards at this time of year which are thought of as normal. The economy has changed the usual volume of spending but even the most thrift conscious will most likely put up a Christmas tree, perhaps send out cards, make special holiday treats like cookies, make or buy gifts for loved ones and execute any number of habitual holiday traditions because they wouldn't dream of eliminating these traditions out of their lives.

      This may be the first year of my life that I have seriously pondered why I think these holiday customs are necessary to celebrate Christmas. For many years now I have involved myself in the usual machinations of yuletide customs. The reason I feel this way is because I did something completely different this year. I decided to join in a cantata given mostly in Welsh through the Colorado Welsh Society which I joined back in September. I am only familiarized with this language so it was good to have translations in English readily available. Some songs were familiar and then some of them were completely foreign to me but not to a native Welsh speaker. It certainly did me a world of good because it gave me a whole different perspective.

      If you don't already know this, I am a Christian and I have been most of my life. Quite a few movies and television specials for Christmas have a message that is clearly Christian with the exception of the most recent. In the Charlie Brown Christmas Special that is played every year the consensus of all these children is that it has become too commercialized and it's true that, for the most part, it has been. However, something even worse has happened systematically and without warning: Christmas has become too secularized.

       We, who are Christian, have allowed our most precious holiday to become a buying season, making merry, bribing kids into good behavior with it and partying along with all the rest of the world into an oblivious state of disillusion. According to what I've been reading for years, chronic sufferers of the debilitating mental state of depression plunge back into their old mental state more deeply at this time of year than any other.

       I am writing this as a challenge to all Christians to take our holy day back, start celebrating the real reason why we started this tradition and perhaps we'll see a change in the world we never expected. Maybe atheists will sit up and take notice when we tell them, "I'm celebrating Christmas at church." Buddhists may be surprised when we insist on all references to Santa, reindeer and gift buying to end. As far as lights and decorations go- they're all fine to a point because they cheer us up during a rather dreary time of year. However, I believe a manger scene should be at the front and center of all of them, not done away with because it makes reference to a specific religion. We are celebrating Christmas and I would challenge anyone to say differently. Well, let me put it this way: if we aren't then what exactly are we celebrating?

The Castle Lady, keeping Christ in Christmas this year!

People Who Need People

     Where do friendships go? Does anyone know why so many friendships end? It has seemed to be an ethereal and elusive commodity in my life and through the years I have had occasion to reflect on past alliances and wondered why they don't exist anymore.

     I have not truly forgotten anyone I have palled around with through my several decades of life and the saddest part is that I cannot say that even 95% of those people are active participants in my life today. I don't know how other people feel about this issue but it truly concerns me and even those who have only briefly touched my life, if I remember them, cause me to wonder how they are doing. Have they solved that problem? Did they follow their dream? If they consciously rejected my friendship, without explanation, I can only sit and ask myself why and more often than not I come up without an answer.

     More recently I have ventured to make up a mental list of people I have come to know well enough to consider friends. Having worked in a service-related field for many years, the bulk of this list would be clients, but this list would also include people I have helped who had temporary or quickly-solved problems. The list also includes people I have attended church with for many years and friendships I have made in passing such as those who I see when I walk in the park each morning. I believe the average person most likely strikes up at least two hundred friendships in their lifetime.

     At one time, starting in my teens, I started writing to pen-pals all over the world. Eventually I had twenty-four pen-pals in twenty different countries. Now the list is about five in five separate countries. I certainly don't remember ever being the one who quit writing. Probably I've written about six times as many letters as I've received. What is most interesting is that these ex-correspondents have no idea how they impacted my life. When I look through their photos, the eyes pierce something in me and I think, "Where in the world are you, now?" I met a few of them through international travel and some I still correspond with and others I do not. A Parisian pen-pal quit writing some months after I met her and dined with her family, visited Versailles with her and her cousin and toured a lot of Montmartre where she lived. We had corresponded for five years before I met her. Why did she stop writing? I may never know.

      All types of reasons can go through your mind. Did this person get offended by something? Did something happen in this person's life that caused him/her to drop out of sight? Did they have to move for political or personal reasons that they could not relate to anyone? Was there a real friendship to begin with or some deception they could not continue? Did the person succumb to envy or hatred?

      Before we start to apply all the superficial reasons for this problem, merely explaining it away, perhaps we should stop and ponder why friendship has come to have so little value in our world today. There is nothing in our friendships that we can take to the bank. Materialistically, if the the friendship is genuine it is a bust. A real friendship doesn't contain a capital gains clause or anything like that if we are honest. 

      Without true, lasting friendships life is impoverished and it can never be what it ought to be if we don't connect to people outside our sphere of experience. Too often we exclude people out of envy, disinterest or wrong assumptions. The other side of this dilemma is that far too many of us value livelihood and material aspects of our lives over people. We don't have to be entrenched in greed so much as the fact that we are essentially a materialistic society. Nearly everyone can get caught up in the 'game' of existence and feel trapped by it.

      Perhaps our most important activity should be to occasionally put away our balanced checkbooks, put the bills aside and try to reassess our values. Your values exist in how you spend your time. Working, shopping, gardening, and watching T.V. are all activities that may not involve other people at all unless we make a point to include someone in those activities.

     In the Bible a verse in Proverbs (18:24) states: A man who has friends must himself be friendly, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. According to Chinese philosophy, Plato is my friend but a greater friend is truth. I have felt for most of my life that my best and greatest friend was Jesus Christ. Once I understood the sacrifice he made for me it only made sense to consider him so. I have never had anyone stand up for me and say they would die for me. I have never heard any person say they would take the blame for anything I've done wrong. I have never had anyone say that they would build a house for me that is indestructible which I can live in for the rest of my life. That is, except for one person. His name is Jesus and you can read about him in the Holy Bible. He's my best and greatest friend.

 

People who need people, need Jesus!

The Castle Lady

 

    

      

Silence is Golden

    How many times have I stood in a check-out line or window-shopped in a writer's reverie and had the spell broken suddenly by some person loudly yapping a mile a minute to their other self- only to see that they have a cell phone plastered to their head or one of those blue tooth contraptions? More times than I care to think about.

     What is the rudeness level on this bit of nonsense? On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd estimate about an 8 ! I hardly think my right to think quietly in peace should be violated by a cell phone speaker. Who's to say what's more important anyway? I don't care whether they remembered to buy razorblades to shave off that awful beard even if the person on the other end of the conversation does, to tell you the truth. I'm concerned about my next novel, article or story and I don't think it's fair for Mr. Whatshisface to break my concentration.

     Remember what life was like without cell phones? Well, I do and it was better and I mean that most sincerely. Quite a few years ago I worked, briefly, as a lobby teller in a bank and one regular customer would come in always yakking away on that thing and he never stopped talking for more than a few seconds at a time. You could barely converse with him about his transactions and it was especially annoying to have several transactions messed up and to have to re-do them because he said things to people on the phone that actually sounded like instructions to the teller! Not a single teller wanted to wait on him including myself. Being treated like a non-person was bad enough without the complications of having more problems than was necessary. He was complained about constantly to the head teller. Are you surprised ?

     I believe people are becoming increasingly annoyed by the constant chatterer on wireless devices. I've had dinners in restaurants messed up by such people. I've also had legitimate one on one conversations interrupted by sudden ringing and loud banter by a person close by who hasn't the decency to take the phone someplace private. I've been driven out of public libraries, seen people driving erratically around me trying to talk on a cell phone and have you tried to get the attention of  teenagers who do just about  everything while texting each other ?

     Remember that song Silence is Golden ? I'm thinking of singing this song the next time someone cuts me off in a supermarket with their basket and talking to the air- or is there really someone else on the other end? Who knows? Who cares? These people are not nice anyway, usually. Once you actually do have their attention- assuming that can actually happen- they stare blankly at you like they're watching TV. Yes. I am a real person standing here waiting for you to pay and move along so I can finish and go home too!

     The most dangerous cell phone users are those who insist on driving and talking or even texting ! With all the horrific accidents that have already occurred because of cell phones you would think people would wise up and stop that lunacy. Instead, I see an increase of them and they almost always drive erratically. Here is where we must draw the line and it should be enforced more rigidly than traffic violations because it's actually the most serious violation of all. It's worse than not buckling your safety belt and they've already passed a law on that in Colorado.

      If they get a cell phone law passed I'd like to go one better and maybe write a book on cell phone etiquette. I think we all need one.

 

 Back atcha! The Castle Lady

       

Predicting the Weather ? Don't Second Guess Yourself !

Back sometime in the summer I decided to predict when the first snow would come to Denver this year. I chose November 14th off the top of my head and put a little announcement on my French blog- http://matite.over-blog.com/ to be posted on that date and then proceeded to just sit on it. It has been set to post ever since- sporting a little elf sliding down a snowy mountain- and for quite awhile I didn't even think twice about it.

Well, last week I looked at the pre-set drafts I had lined up to post in the near future and thought about what the weather has been like. Up to this morning, Denver has had the most beautiful autumn weather I can recall ever and I suddenly felt that I should at least put that entry off into a further future date. So I casually changed it to the 29th and figured that was as good a prediction as any because of the numerous times that it has snowed in Denver the day after Thanksgiving.

This morning I got the shock of my life when I got up and it looked like our first snow was going to be a blizzard. I did a mock konk on the head and said to myself "Why....why....why??? Why did you change that date?" I have done this more times than I can remember and I wonder if I am ever going to stop questioning my judgment and be more confident about these little victories.

Let this be a lesson to one and all. That little voice inside your head that gives good advice which we often do not heed is there for a reason. Teach yourself to trust it and I believe we may just see humankind start to improve in a very vital area. Listen to your heart. It's wiser than you think !

The Castle Lady listens to hearts!