Thursday Thirteen - 132 - 13 Ways to Say Happy 40th Birthday to Gerard Butler

As many of you know, I'm rather partial to Scottish actor Gerard Butler.

On Nov. 13th he turns the big 4 - 0. Here are 13 wishes for him on this milestone birthday. He's the inspiration for a fictional character that I'm currently writing about during NaNoWriMo, a month-long writing marathon.

Thanks, Gerry.


- 1


"If you count all your assets, you always show a profit."

- Robert Quillen










- 2











"Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned."

- P. T. Barnum


- 3











"It's being able to take it as well as dish it out. That's the only way you're going to get respect from the players."

- Larry Bird


- 4









"A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself."

- Jessamyn West


- 5















"Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again."

- James Cook


- 6















"The lion is most handsome when looking for food."

- Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Photo by Patrick Fraser


- 7















"The higher the hill, the stronger the wind."

- John Wycliffe

Photo by Debra Hurford Brown


- 8










"When you reach the top, that's when the climb begins."

- Michael Caine

Photo by Dagblat (Norway)


- 9















"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."

- Erich Fromm

Photo by Amanda De Cadenet


- 10










"Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other."

- Carlos Castaneda

Photo by Martin Pope


- 11









"Twelve highlanders and a bagpipe make a rebellion."

- Scottish Proverb

Photo by Fotogramas.es


- 12















"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Genius will not. Education will not. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

Calvin Coolidge


- 13















"The face you have at age 25 is the face God gave you, but the face you have after 50 is the face you earned."

- Cindy Crawford

Almost Wordless Wednesday - 125

This photo was taken by the daughter of my good friend at work. When I saw it, I knew I had to post it for my Remembrance Day Wordless Wednesday. And she graciously said yes.

"My husband and I were living in England through the Canadian Forces," my friend's daughter writes. "We took a trip with my husband's parents to France & Belgium to tour around Canadian WWI & WWII sites, specifically Normandy D-Day beaches, Vimy Ridge and Ypres. While visiting the Vimy Ridge memorial we also visited several of the landmark's cemeteries. You'll see that I caught a picture of a wild bunny on the grave of a Royal Marine, just two down from an Unknown Canadian Solider."

- Brenda Fancey

Through the Opera Glasses - 36 - ZOS - Zone of Separation

As we head towards Remembrance Day, I'd like to mention a Canadian series we just started watching on The Movie Network.


















ZOS follows 'the absurdist reality of living in a violent Zone of Separation, as well as the real costs to the peacekeepers dropped in to police it.'

A Canadian production, this series features top Canadian talent as well as featuring an international cast in the spirit of United Nations peacekeeping.

Canadians Enrico Colantoni
Lolita Davidovich
Nick Mancuso
and Nicholas Campbell

join Irish Colm Meaney
and Slovenian Larissa Drekonja
plus many Canadian actors born in other countries such as Portugal, Latvia and the actual setting for the series, the former Yugoslavia.

This is an extremely gritty series with copious amounts of swearing, blown-off body parts in living colour as well as frank depictions of battle zone prostitution and drug dealing.

It paints a transparent picture of the lunacy faced by so many Canadian peacekeepers who served in Bosnia, only to return home suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was a combination of exposure to gruesome combat conditions as well as the frustrations of trying to serve a mission with contradictory goals and chains of command.

For anyone familiar with the story of Romeo Dallaire and his doomed Rwandan peacekeeping mission, the warning signs of what was to come are woven eerily throughout this series.

Poetry Train Monday - 126 - A War Against War

Today's found poem is taken from all of the peace quotes I posted during the lead-up to the Blog Blast for Peace, which took place on Thursday, Nov. 5th.

I got the idea for this from Travis, who reposted all of the peace quotes he'd featured in his tireless promotion of the Blog Blast while the originator, Mimi Lenox, was keeping vigil with her father as he passed away.

There are so many Peace Globes launched into the blogosphere, I'm still visiting them all. Even though the Blog Blast officially occured on the 5th, I encourage you to visit them because it's not physically possible to get to everyone on one day.


















A War Against War

If we are to teach real peace
Real peace
Here in this wondrous way we keep
We shall have to begin with the children

This is how change happens
No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place
When we need some relief
Where Mercy, Love and Pity dwell

We teach
Someone picks it up
Action is eloquence
A real war against war

If we are to carry on
If we do our part of the race
When I can’t find my feet
Pass it on. It keeps going

Begin with the children
It's a relay race
Snowflakes falling
Mercy dwelling

This world
These haunts of ancient peace
Goals are dreams with deadlines
We usually get what we anticipate

Let us go there again
Oh,
When I need rest and sleep
There God is dwelling too

Our job really is to
Pass it on
We're very conscious
We usually get what we anticipate

It's a real war
A war against war
These haunts
This peace

And that is how it is


- William Blake / Claude M. Bristol / Mahatma Gandhi / Diana Scharf Hunt / Van Morrison / William Shakespeare / Alice Walker / Zen

For more poetry, Ride the Poetry Train!

Blog Blast for Peace - Dona Nobis Pacem 3 - Grant Us Peace - Scroll down for Thursday Thirteen

Click to enlarge Peace Globe



Welcome, brothers! ((hug)) Welcome, sisters! ((hug))

It's Blog Blast for Peace Day in the blogosphere.

Bloggers from all over the world are sending their desire for peace into the universe today. Join us by visiting the hundreds of bloggers taking part in this beautiful event.

Just CLICK on Blog Blast for Peace and you will discover
a world where hope reigns,
hands reach across the globe in friendship
and voices rise in glorious harmony.

At the main site, you'll find a Complete Alphabetical List of Participants in the left-hand sidebar - click on the 'plus' sign and this will open up to links to every post taking part in the Blog Blast.

For my Peace Globe today I'm featuring a band who epitomizes my own philosophy regarding world peace.

If you're busy playing music, dancing, singing and celebrating life, there is no room for aggression, destruction and suffering.

As this band likes to sing: Party! Party! Party! Party! Party! Party! After party!

Gogol Bordello is a band made of members from all around the world:

Ukraine
Russia
Ethiopia
Ecuador
Israel
United States
United Kingdom

They come from a wide assortment of ethnic and religious backgrounds, including Eastern European, Gypsy or Romani, African, Indigenous people of the Americas and Asian.

There are men and women.

Their ages range from 30 years old to 54.

If you watch the clip, you'll catch the infectious delirium of joy this group exudes. The crowd is jumping!

Lead singer Eugene Hutz sings in a mixture of English, Ukrainian and Gypsy/Romani. Here are the lyrics from the song that I offer to the Blog Blast today:

Mishto means "Good"

Sha bu'et kruto blya! Sha bu'et kruto! means "This is gonna kick ass!"

T´aven saste taj baxtale means "You should be healthy and lucky"

Is this what we really need?

What if this is my only chance?

What if this is my holy war?

What if this is my stupid dance?

What the f#%k you waiting for?

Let's go!

Thursday Thirteen - 131 - 13 Ways to Say Peace

As you know, I'm travelling across the blogosphere for Blog Blast for Peace today.

Not only that, I'm in the thick of NaNoWriMo.

So on Tuesday I mentioned to my friend Tracy at work that I hoped I'd be able to put together my Peace Globe the way I was hoping to, because I also had a choir rehearsal just to make things interesting.

Tracy, being the marvellous friend that she is, offered to make me a back-up Peace Globe in case I ran into trouble with my own. This is the one she made for me - I love it!

For today's Thursday Thirteen, in honor of Blog Blast for Peace, here are thirteen ways to say Peace:

1 - Fred - Swedish

2 - Mir - Russian

3 - Der Frieden - German

4 - La Paix - French

5 - Pace - Italian

6 - Shaanti - Hindi

7 - Salam - Arabic

8 - Shalom - Hebrew

9 - Tai Ping - Chinese

10 - Ukuthula - Zulu

11 - Aio - Maori (indigenous people of New Zealand)

12 - Wôntôkóde - Mi'kmaq (the First Nations people of eastern Canada)

13 - Sìth - Gaelic

Wordless Wednesday - 124

On Nov. 5th I'm taking part in the Blogblast For Peace. Won't you join me?


"We usually get what we anticipate."

- Claude M. Bristol