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Gaelic Blessing

Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.

Deep peace of shining stars to you.

Deep peace of the gentle night to you.

Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.

Deep peace to you. Deep peace to you

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Dec 18, 2022·edited Dec 18, 2022

A quartet sang this beautiful blessing at my husband's memorial service last month. Here are the Cambridge Singers and the London Sinfonia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8MKEpXqGko

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Thank you for sharing that link, Mary. Condolences on the loss of your husband.

As an instrumentalist, I was only just made aware of John Rutter (his arrangement of Prayer for Ukraine was made available for public use; I arranged it for tuba quartet for a fundraiser for medical supplies to Ukraine that we played in this fall..)

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Thank you MaryB, this is so beautiful. John Rutter's arrangements are amazing to sing and be heard.

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Rutter's arrangements are spectacular.

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Thank you Mary; I didn't know this blessing and now I've posted on FB and Twitter. Can't share the energy of pease enough. May you find some comfort in the full response to your sharing.

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Peace and solace to you, MaryB

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MaryB, sincere condolences!

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Love and Light to you, MaryB.

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A most beautiful blessing.

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Thanks Mary. This was magical and so calming.

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Thank you, Mary! I was just about to look this up and saw your link. I can’t sing this without crying, every darned time. Just now listened to the first voice notes and had to stop the recording. I think it is unbridled peace/beauty/purity. Hah! Maybe like when in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the ark is opened and the Light melts the Nazis. Adore this piece.

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Slainté, mo chara.

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Thank you for this peaceful blessing. So evocative of all that is truly restful.

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A favorite hymn in my Quaker meeting. Thank you for sharing.

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Thank you for this. So very touching.

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Beautiful, Beth. Thank you

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Thank you so much for this blessing, which I have saved

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Rest. You have your Village and we’re keeping watch.

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What a perfect observation and I am so glad for the truth of it, Sharon 🌿

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Rest well, Professor. It’s been a week!

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That photograph is just a perfect depiction of what lies beneath to be discovered and uncovered this week. Thank you, Professor.

Salud, Ally. Healing going ok, you hipster?

🗽💜🌲

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Good tidings, my friend. Been praying your new "hip" is performing well for you!

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Recovery is going on apace. I’m surprised at how quickly progress is happening. I get to resume playing my timiba (oh good grief, TUBA!!!) this weekend, although I’m going to need a tuba Sherpa for a few months.

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I missed that you were having a hip replacement (we've been fighting COVID in this household since 12-1, perhaps that is why), Hope that you recover swiftly!

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Hope the COVID is mild in your household, Miselle, and fingers crossed that it's soon to end.

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Sorry to hear, Miselle; we’ve had a LOT of local Covid in our area, and two “Framily” who’ve come down with nasty non-Covid respiratory viruses.

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Yeah, husband and I both had 5 shots and I continued to mask up everywhere. Go figure. Christmas cards and messages coming and I'm hearing the same thing from like minded friends, besides some adults with the RSV.

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So glad that you’re on the mend!

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You can do it! I just read a t-shirt that said: "I play the tuba; therefore, I am awesome!" So there.

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Awesome. Please take care of yourself. We need you and your “art” more than ever.

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Take care Heather. Abeyance is something we all need sometimes. I love the Blue Heron.

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Me too, Karen.

Blue Heron: Solutions for Environmental Management, listed this information:

According to North American Native tradition, the Blue Heron brings messages of self-determination and self-reliance. They represent an ability to progress and evolve. The long thin legs of the heron reflect that an individual doesn't need great massive pillars to remain stable, but must be able to stand on one's own.

Blue Herons have the innate wisdom of being able to manoeuvre through life and co-create their own circumstances. Blue Herons reflect a need for those with this totem to follow their on unique wisdom and path of self-determination. These individuals know what is best for themselves and need to follow their hearts rather than the promptings of others. Those with the Medicine of the Great Blue Heron may sit until the rest of us loose patience. And, when they follow the promptings of the heart, they are one of the most magnificent when they choose to soar.

This is the message that Blue Heron brings.

Source: http://www.blueheronenv.com/meaning.htm

Unita!

🗽

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Thank you for this quote, Christine. Meaningful for our beloved professor, I'm sure, but also for many others such as myself. I'm in FL also and truly appreciate when my friend Mr Blue shows up. I stare at his stillness and grace with wonder and awe. It has become one of my totems since I've been here.

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Mr. Blue is wise. Always shows up when I need to be reminded of resolve.

Salud to you! Great week ahead!

🗽✨

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Thanks for sharing this.

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Even though you’ve been sick, you kept us up to date every single day without fail! The heron is beautiful and a good symbol of you. Look at the tarp! That is a symbol of all the political intrigue you will continue to uncover for us this coming week. Please get well soon!!

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Delighted that you’re on the mend!

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The boat is as visually interesting as the bird. Imagining how it took being stopped in your tracks to get a good look at the photograph. Wishing you a restful weekend and all of US a politically fruitful week. We are in bad trouble. A pandemic with climate change is more than we are up for. The national myth does not prepare us for the ravages of climate change.

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"The national myth does not prepare us for the ravages of climate change"

i felt your line deserved repeating.

for, in any picture of any heart touching image lies our key, to be held more dear than our national myth

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Dec 18, 2022·edited Dec 18, 2022

Glad you're in abeyance, a word and condition we all need from time to time.

We enjoyed some wine and cheese with an emergency doctor friend last night. Asked him the inevitable question: what's it like at your hospital with the triple whammy of Covid, flu, and RSV? By far the worst conditions he's ever seen. Absolutely overwhelmed.

Maybe Ron DeSantis will investigate.

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It is really bad in our Portland hospitals Michael. We are bursting at the seams and in crisis staffing.

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Dec 18, 2022·edited Dec 18, 2022

He works at one of the Portland (OR) hospitals and cited staffing. Another factor: elderly patients who have recuperated well enough to move into nursing facilities can't get in because the staffing crisis is even worse.

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Yes, that is a huge issue too. It is so frustrating. Our ED has been boarding sick patients that are unable to get a room because they are full. And we can’t transfer patients out that need skilled nursing facilities because they don’t have the staff. It’s very challenging and everyone is exhausted.

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You forgot strep. Or maybe that hasn’t reared its ugly head where you are. Here in MN, its one of the worst of those you mentioned. Four Horseman of the apocalypse thinning the herd among the un vaxxed and unmasked in my back yard.

A close friend, who is a family doc at a low income clinic in St. Paul, very quietly mentioned retiring yesterday. She’s 70.. Loves her work. Abhors the politics that kill. Glad our professor is smart enough to go down and stay down....

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Oh my! I haven't heard of strep for a while, as my kids are older now and their kids (ages 1-7) have not yet contacted that - but certainly have everything else, including RSV. Hope your friend continues to stay healthy. I intend to keep going way past 76, but more as a consultant and of course, caregiver but minus the daily grind, which means I'm just as busy! Once one - a medical person/politician/server, hard no to keep going! Kind of like politics...Still blows my mind that people believe the non-medical stuff and are unvaxxed and unmasked. Not me! covid virgin! I may have paid physically for the first shots, but the boosters, no problem...and keep Vit D3, Zinc, etc. boosting immune system...yes, glad our documentarian has sense to stop when needed!

.

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Janet, my friend Kathy mentioned that there had been several deaths in CO from strep - she has family there. The thing that keeps her going is that MN has MNcare, an Obamacare program that covers many folks who couldn’t otherwise afford health insurance. As you know, some of those kids would die of: COVID, RSV, strep or the flu without treatment. And many of those she treats are recent immigrants and she understands how to communicate with those unaccustomed to Western medical protocols. Does a world of good; just tired of the ignorant, racist bullies. Gah!

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Lol Michael ! As they said on Sesame Street, paraphrased - "These two things do not go together" Ironic and unlikely juxtapositions !

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HAHAHA, THANKS for the laugh at the end of your comment! It's times like these than I'm almost glad I'm retired! I kept thinking of going back to help during COVID, then remembered I was in the wrong age bracket...yes, I fear all emergency rooms are being hit hard.

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Sometimes sarcasm is a defense mechanism to the outlandish. DeSantis, Trump, and many other deserve the blame to this troubling statistic based on a new Kaiser Family Foundation survey:

"About 35% of parents now say childhood vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella should not be mandatory, up from 23% in 2019," U.S. News reported, citing the survey. "Overall, 28% of adults nationwide say parents should be able to say no to vaccinating their children for measles, mumps and rubella."

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-12-16/more-than-a-third-of-u-s-parents-now-oppose-routine-school-vaccinations

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Polio, Smallpox, Measles and the list goes on. Thank Science for vaccines. I am an RN who saw first hand the devastation of Covid. The vaccine is proven to prevent hospitalizations and death from Covid. The conspiracy theories against masks and vaccines are killing their believers as well as the innocent immune compromised. The highest death rates from Covid are in the red states where the plandemic conspiracy theories abound. Walk a mile in a nurse’s shoes in a Covid ICU and then you can express an opinion on this. Until then stop spreading misinformation that kills.

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I’m a stem cell transplant patient. Six months after transplant, I was given all the vaccines small children receive, including the Covid vaccines & boosters, and I thank God for it.

BTW, I met many nurses during this journey and we should be thanking them for their service just as we do the military. They were our lifelines when hospitals banned family visits the last couple years. It was the nurses who spent extra time to listen, hold a hand and make us laugh. Thank you for your dedication and service.

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Yes! Yes!Yes!

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When I blessed to be a mother in 2005 I was shocked at the number of people who asked if I planned to vaccinate my beautiful babe. My reply was "Of course! Have you ever walked through an old cemetery? They are filled with babies and children for the lack of vaccines!"

What on earth is wrong with people?

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Propaganda works

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My great-grandmother had a sister who died of measles shortly after she and her parents came to the U.S. in 1903 or so. Sadly, people have forgotten that these diseases killed large numbers of children not that long ago.

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FEw years back, we were in Gatlinburg and toured an old church and cemetery in (I think it was) Cade's Cove area. Beautiful sunny day but the many tourists walked through the cemetery in silence; it was sobering to see the headstones and see the parents and a slew of their children laid by them, some only days old, some no more than 2-3 years. Heartbreaking.

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Well said Tamara

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Nurses and Doctors in this storm of ignorance are the heroes. My son is one of the ignorant, and his family is not vaccinated. I do not know what happened to him to fall for the bullshit of far right. I grew up with shot records. Do they have to be shown in schools anymore?

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Thank you. Local yokels in my neck of the woods claim “my family and I -5 of us- never have had covid and have not vaccinated for it. Proves the shots don’t work”. What science are we teaching these days?

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Karen, thank you for all you do, have done, and will do for others.

In my former agency, our Chief Deputy (Assistant "Chief" to the Sheriff) is a local boy, who became an explorer scout, who became a deputy, and rose through the ranks (as is our current Sheriff; both are from the same small town where I finished my career.) His two sons are following in his path, and were sworn in as deputies in the past two years. His daughter? Going to Eastern Oregon College to get a BSN in nursing. I cannot say how proud I am of that family, as Carl rode with me as an explorer and I did his background investigation when he applied to be a reserve.)

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That’s wonderful Allie. They sound like a great family. And happy to hear his daughter is working towards her BSN. We are so in need of new nurses entering the profession.

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That was my response to the Plandemic antivaxer

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This is just nuts. I believe we need a public push - a well funded powerful long lasting campaign to educate the public to the value of vaccines and the horrors created by anti-vaxx, anti-science denial. Those who are using the vaccine story as a political football are gaining ground and killing people. I see a few ads here and there, but it should be dominating media.

When it became clear that millions of Americans were smoking themselves to death with the encouragement of Philip Morris, the government began a multi-pronged campaign to demonstrate the dangers of smoking. It took quite a while, but it eventually worked. Now smoking cigarettes is viewed as stupid and suicidal.

Christmas has always had a melancholy aspect to it for me. In 1954 I realized I couldn't walk down stairs to the Christmas tree to feast on all those presents. My Dad had to carry me. I was dealing with polio. Over many months and years I recovered. But I was always struck by the fact that on April 12, 1955 the vaccine developed by Jonas Salk was licensed after extensive trials in Canada. Timing is everything. Everyone scrambled to get vaccinated. Everyone. Salk was worshiped. Science was embraced and loved.

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Something has disappeared - an understanding of the importance of vaccines. In New York there are reported cases of polio in the U.S.. Too many decades of too many people not having experienced crippling or death causing diseases.

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I agree with you, Bill, on the need for a public campaign to educate the public on the value of vaccines. It should include information how these now-preventable diseases cut short the lives of so many people.

Like you, a close friend of mine had polio before the Salk vaccine was available. She has had many health problems over the years and now suffers from post-polio syndrome.

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Unf**kingbelievable. My Mom spinning in her grave. She remembered deaths of infants and young children before vaccinations. Cemeteries are full of the bones of the unfortunates. Chump and Rupert are as guilty of mass murder as any tyrant.

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It's amazing that, with masks, so many can avoid hospitalization or possibly death, but don't.

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My response to the person that recommended Plandemic and DeSantis as an expert I Copied and Pasted and it got separated from my other post. I didn’t want you to think it was directed towards you Gailee ❤️

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On another Substack post that I subscribe to we were discussing the importance of vaccines and masking again with the RSV/Influenza/Covid epidemic hospitalizing so many now. Especially babies and Children. Someone posted a recommendation to read Plandemic and a link to a publication that cited Ron Johnson and DeSantis as Covid experts and other antivax articles. I was of course livid. So here was my response m. Hope I got through to her but

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Here in Spain, it is the same. I don't understand why more Americans don't get that DeSantis owns stock in Regeneron.

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Yes he does! 💰💰for DeSatan

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Dec 18, 2022·edited Dec 18, 2022

The deliberate misinformation and outright lies are deliberate and calculated. Our “free speech” focus just gives license to the many “Goebbels” wannabes who see power as did the Nazis - within their grasp. And it seems to be, since the cult is growing, not waning…. Idiots are killing their own voters, along with innocents.

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If Putin wanted to conquer America...

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He does plenty of damage from his corner but evil going national is devastating, as has been made painfully clear.

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Republicans can always find a worse one, no matter how bad the current evil is.

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Ssssshhhhh....go back to sleep.

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Agreed.

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Yes, need to chill & recover before the dory is unpacked ...

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“Too sick to do much of anything,” yet you wrote your Letters every night and shared your video on Thursday. Thank you for service above and beyond the call of duty. I hope you keep feeling better every day. Hugs.

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When I read that she is sick, I immediately thought of all she has given us this past week and felt so ashamed because as much as we look to her letters, we need to be respectful of her time and health.

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It looks so restful—thank you and Peter.

So glad to hear that you’re on the mend.

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May your dory be laden with laughter, joy and love❣️ To you with boat load of gratitude🤗♥️

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Please feel better soon, and thank you for turning us on to Peter’s beautiful photography. I’m blessed to have his “Thankful” and “Camden Harbor from Mt Battie” and his stories about them make them even more wonderful to me!

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Please feel better! We ALL need you!

Davi-Ellen Chsbner

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Buddhists say to savor sickness when it can bring relief from daily tumult, just as sleep brings peace. Please feel better and don’t forget to breathe.

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This is wonderful. Thank you David.

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