I did lots yesterday but napped in the afternoon.  I put my storm shutter up on the window outside my office since it’s my only window without a burglar bar.  I like the bars because they catch the flying branches before they hit the window.  Even in just quick storms here during the day, lots of deadfall branches come down from the pines and oaks outside, so I wanted to be safe.  I like the storms, because they bring the dead limbs down so I don’t have to pay to get them cut.  I’m enjoying more personal interaction (well phone) and helping people Like Lisa A. for her new magazine and website.   I like helping folks do things like that. So I created her a mock 13 page magazine, and left a cd of it out at the mailbox, so she could go home and try to play with it until I had more time to give her on it.

Since each page is laid out differently, I wanted her to get used to seeing the page as a variety of frames and objects you learn to bend to do your bidding.  Like the cover is just one 8×11 pdf file, the table of contents has several “text frames” in it, as well as images.  The Classified Ads are two columns, with a header of one column.  The Phone Directory is 3 columns, with a one column header on the first page.   I wanted her to recognize the elements that make each page cohesive, such as the footer that says Horizons Magazine by subscription $26/12 issues  Visit horizonsmagazine.com.

So her first homework was to, using inDesign, on each page replace the name horizons magazine with her mag name, replace my name with her name, replace the address, just basically make a sample page.  use my table of contents as a starting point for what regular monthly features she might want to include.  Use my ad rates as a starting point to figure her own out, she wants the magazine to be her income source.

I told her about Virtual Merchant and told her she’d get much more income if she had a website.  I told her I use Webstudio.com (Webstudio 4) to create websites, and I’d teach her to do it herself.  This is the stuff I love to do, let people know how easy it is to get started doing basically anything they want to do, plus how to promote it and make money from it.

I connected today with Miguel Gomez who grew up on my street when we were kids. He was my brother Bobby’s best friend. It was so good to connect with him and catch up. His mom still lives in the childhood home. I Googled a satellite view and found my old home 980 E. 27th Street in Hialeah. It’s all concrete now and looks so small I can’t believe we all lived there. We had dozens of trees front and back and the fence was a tight privacy hedge of Surinam cherry, and now I see none. I barely recognize it.

Yesterday at New Way the choir sang Jesus Christ Superstar and the crowd went wild; people jumping and dancing and singing along; we got an encore at the end, it was awesome, I had tears just spurting out of my face 🙂    I was listening to Fred Migliore’s FM Odyssey radio show yesterday on WFIT 89.5 and emailed him:  Your project about “Songs that changed my life” interests me.  The particular focus that interests me is your belief that we can change our thoughts using words and the importance of thoughts and words.  I believe singer/songwriters can be powerful poets who sing our tomorrows into being, since the words of their songs resonate in our heads over and over and over.   I’d like to run an article about that and along with it we can plug any personal projects you want to promote.  I’d like to know some songs that changed your life or changed your thinking processes.  I ideally have 800 words worth of space.  But that could expand because I think it’s important what we choose to listen to; what we allow into our life as even background sounds. Let me know your thoughts.  Email is always best for me.    Continue reading →

I’ve been working on the Sept Horizons.  I went to Cali Pho for lunch, the Vietnamese place I go in Melbourne, and had a salad with grilled chicken on it, and a veggie pho with cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli with rice noodles.  I was a good girl, I barely ate any of my noodles.   Cali Pho is a fave place of mine, I go several times a week.  I am a big soup eater, I like soup with every meal, it’s my comfort food.  So having a giant soup is a giant comfort.  Plus when it comes down to it, all I am eating is a low or no fat broth and a cup of vegetables.  When I eat the fresh vegetarian spring rolls, all I’m eating is a no fat rice paper wrap of bean sprouts, carrots and vermicilli noodles with spices. So these are already two real lowfat and low calorie and filling dishes.  Then I get a salad and sometimes the chicken salad, and even that is grilled so it’s low fat.  And that big giant lunch is way low fat and low calorie and real filling and only like $12.  I love the dressing they use for the salad, it’s a dipping sauce made of fish sauce and vinegar and palm sugar, I dip my spring rolls in it instead of the peanut sauce.  I was glad to discover Cali Pho because I am so used to eating most meals out my whole life and can no longer just eat anywhere.  So I learned to satisfy my food addictions by changing what kind of taste satisfied me.  Instead of a heavy fatty meal giving me the most comfort, now the idea of it is just oily to me.  Now I like to feel I am filling my body and bloodstream with clear, light foods, foods that have a lot of water in them, that I am continually flushing out my system so the energy can flow through me unimpeded.  That’s the feeling I go for.   Continue reading →

I have a friend who takes a combination of prescribed medication that has taken away his sex drive the past several years, and he’s into unconventional sex. I wrote to him:  When I was meditating today, I had a thought.  We meditate to bring ourselves to a stillpoint several times a day, in order to refine our perception and enable us to grasp the more subtle nuances of sensory input via our neuro physical makeup.  The more we are able to bring ourselves to a place of detachment from external stimulation, the more subtly our nervous system will become attuned to respond to the nonphysical environment around us.   If someone is in a habit of bombarding themselves with ever increasing modes of external stimulation, they are likely to lose the subtleties entirely and that could keep them from reaching certain altered states of consciousness.  Since they likely find physical life too subtle and that is why they seek more and more stimulation.   So just think of that anytime you feel you need to tie someone up or spank them in order to feel pleasure 🙂

Hello, I LOVE LOVE LOVE your wit and the courage to speak it.  I have listened for decades.  The most memorable show?  Father’s Day 1987, the “last” show.  I would so miss your company every weekend.  It was the end of an era in more ways than one for me.  You see I began driving home from Miami as the show started, having just left my father’s bedside where I signed for him to be taken off life support.  His wife didn’t want to sign without me, so I signed and within minutes he had passed.  I drove the 3 hours north along highway AIA, the ocean drive, and caught the show on various public radio stations all along the way up.  It was memorable indeed.

Thanks for all you do, I’ve been a fan from the first time I heard your show.  I wish you luck and lots of love in your life.
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Wow, I just sat down and reflected on my day (and my crossed-off “to do” lists) and realize I got a lot done today.  For a day that began real unfocused, I sent 50 emails, read and processed 68 emails, and am down to only 88 emails to go.  My desk is cleared off, my bookkeeping is up to date, my mail is opened, I have money in the bank, my bills are paid, I ran 8 credit cards and deposited 15 checks.  I returned 2 calls.  I took 3 calls.

Dang, I’m good.

Email to Becky Bolt: Is Fred (Migliore of FM Odyssey radio show WFIT 89.5) getting good response from his request for “songs that changed your life”?  If I was truly fearless, I might write a story of circa 1970, hearing George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord at a friend’s home while tripping on Orange Sunshine.  Looking for the bathroom, I went into the master bedroom where a small Hindu (I learned later) altar was.  Baby Krshna began dancing on the altar and the mantra resonated in my head for days before I caught up with the friend whose house it was and asked him who the blue baby on the altar was.  ha! I spent the next decade in and out of the Hare Krshna.  But do I want to go on public record with that?  Maybe not, but I thought you might appreciate the story 🙂

RELATED: My 1970 “My Sweet Lord” Experience

I’d like to voice an observation and a few comments here: Sometimes we make calls for advertising and I encounter some who don’t want to advertise thinking they have to give an excuse for saying no. Bear with me here, this is not a chastisement! I’m sure they don’t realize what they’re doing by stating that “business is slow right now,” or “we’re not doing so well.” What kind of positive affirmation is that?  You can’t put off the bill collectors and say “I can’t afford to advertise right now,” and “business has been slow and the summer is always a bad time,” and expect the Universe to deliver abundantly to you.  The Universe is abundant and is delivering to you all the time; you either allow it or not, by your thoughts to yourself and by your words to others. Every time you say, “I can’t afford that,” or “I don’t get any sales from the last ad,” you are pushing financial gain away from yourself.   Instead, if you – for any reason – choose not to advertise when asked, simply say “not this time, thanks,” period, end of story.  End of conversation. Continue reading →

Email to a friend who submitted an article and is working on a book. The article had to do with looking at Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper from a yogic point of view. His talk on the topic was excellent.   I wrote: “Your story of how you were trained to think and how you re-programmed yourself is very powerful.  The story itself is a bridge to understanding.    Yes, I know many people feel compelled to write and never get anything in print, and I used to be one of those.  Getting it published never seemed to matter at the end.  I finally figured out I just wanted to be a writer and not a bookseller.   I say this because let’s don’t look at this project as: How fast can we produce a book to sell and who would we market it to and etc, etc.  Let’s look at it as, every day as part of your practice, sit with the intention to type for as long as it flows out of you, asking first something like, “what can I write about that will be most helpful in this moment”.  Whatever comes to mind, follow it and see where it takes you.  Maybe what is “most helpful” one day is simply to write down what you ate and where you biked and how you feel about everyone you know.    Maybe what is “most helpful” another time is writing about the works of other great masters as seen through the yogic eye.   Maybe what is “most helpful” another time is to contemplate what areas of your life have been sort of rewritten in history as a result of your later contemplation in light of the yogic view.