Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell

In Hawaii, it was forbidden -- kapu -- for men and women to eat together…. Breaking a kapu was a crime, often punishable by death.

By 1826 a committee of Mikanele and Native Hawaiians got together and voted B, D, R, T, and V out of the alphabet, leaving us with a modern Hawaiian alphabet of twelve letters A, E, I, O, U, H, P, L, K, M, N, W.

Harvard did not drop compulsory Hebrew for all students until 1755.

Until the first petroleum well was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, whale oil was oil.

Processing a whale takes a couple of days and "could yield up to 2,000 gallons of oil".

A Hawaiian word can have so many meanings and associations that each noun becomes a portal into stories and beliefs, like how the word for wealth, waiwai, is just the word for water spoken twice.

Among the high chiefs, the nineteenth-century death rate was as high as the birth rate was low.

Time Alive: Celebrate Your Life Every Day by Alexandra Stoddard

Saying no is central to freeing up time and space in order to live well. 

Time is not ours unless we’re able to think constructively and clearly about the importance of our short lifetime.

Being happy at home is an accomplishment.

Live by the trinity of what is true, good and beautiful.

Deal with life from the highest perspective.

Celebrating should be a daily habit, not saved up for special events.

The goal should be to take such good care of ourselves that we’re happy, healthy, and productive.

Resist the temptation to equate ceaseless action with productivity.

Life is not lived evenly.

Aim high.  Continue to be a blessing.

Meditation is focus, and its enemy is rushing.

In meditation, we learn to center ourselves on the precise moment we are experiencing.

No matter what stage you are in on your life’s exciting journey, this is your time.

Our actions should echo the innermost depths of our being.

Practicing active virtue takes courage because you have to act out your convictions without giving up.

Time is life…. Only time can give us the opportunity to deepen our sense of purpose.

Reach out to live the life that encourages you to do what you love.

Everything in our lives has more meaning than we can possibly imagine.

Carry on an inner conversation with your conscience.  Question: is this good?  Is this good for me?  Is this good for others?

Inside us is the intelligence of the universe waiting to be realized.

Our task and responsibility is to find the truth in our soul.

The Way of the Happy Woman: Living the Best Year of Your Life by Sara Avant Stover

Today I will choose happiness no matter what happens during the day. 

"Self-care opens the pathways for the energy, insight, and determination we need to face up to our global plight and find our particular way to make a difference".  Jennifer Louden

"I learned a long time ago that the only problem with self-improvement is… it doesn’t work.  What does work is honoring ourselves, trusting ourselves, celebrating ourselves, meeting ourselves where we are, how we are".  Jennifer Louden

The Truth About Style by Stacy London

The idea is to take what life has given you, accept it wholly, and then build on that.  Accept and create.

When I say “accept”, I mean accept: no more judgment, just pure dispassionate observation.

You have to see it all to work with any of it.

“Yes” is acceptance; “and” is advancing to the next step.

Negative thought-loops are self-perpetuating. 

You can’t fix what you don’t allow yourself to see. Identify the problems and you are halfway there.

With each breath, you have another chance to do things differently.

We can’t see our blind spots until we learn a new way to see.

“Failing” takes you to unexpected places. The less fear we have of failing, the more open we are to the possibilities of the unknown.

Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles by Bruce H Lipton

At the atomic level, matter does not even exist with certainty; it only exists as a tendency to exist.

The universe is an integration of interdependent energy fields that are entangled in a meshwork of interactions.

Consider the human body as a television set.  You are the image on the screen.  But your image did not come from inside the television. Your identity is an environmental broadcast that was received via an antenna.

Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart by Dr James R Doty

Neuroplasticity is not only a reality but an inherent part of how the brain functions.

One thing every human has in common is the first sound we hear.  It's the heartbeat of our mother.  That steady rhythm is the first connection each of us knows, not with our minds, but the knowing is there in our hearts.  The heart is where we find our comfort and our safety in the darkest of places. 

Having faith in the outcome is quite different from being attached to the outcome.

25 percent of Americans have no one that they feel close enough with to share a problem.

Floral Journey: Native North American Beadwork by Lois S Dubin

"In the Great Lakes region the development of the floral style can be interpreted as a subversion of the missionary-taught embroidery." David W Penney

Native women were able to embed important religious and cultural messages within floral images because flowers symbolized (and communicated) different cultural points of view.

The most important manitous are Thunderbird and Underwater Panther.  Earth world, upon which humans reside, is a island floating on a large lake.  Beneath the lake's waters dwell Underwater Panthers, mythic creatures with the body of a lynx and a long, scaly tail, feared for their ability to stir up large storms.  Underwater Panthers also have the power to move on land.  This provides them with vast knowledge of plants, including the herbs and roots used in plant medicine.

The earliest pouches, used for carrying personal medicine and tobacco, were made of whole animal skins, folded over belts or suspended from the neck by netted fiber cords.  After exposure to European bags and trade cloth, a new pouch style emerged.  These cloth pouches became known as "octopus bags" due to their eight dangling tabs (four on each side) resembling tentacles.  The four tabs replaced the four legs of the animal's skin; the pouch opening was the animal's mouth. 

Light Comes Through: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening to Our Natural Intelligence by Dzigar Kongtrul

If we possess no understanding of mind and how it works, we will be -- as the traditional example describes -- like someone without limbs trying to ride a wild, blind horse.

We need to work with our minds particularly during difficult times, when our mind is not friendly, when it frightens us to the point that we would rather not even associate with it.

Shenpa is a pervasive discomfort; it is the experience of "I, me, and mine" and all the wants, needs, aversions, hopes, and fears that come out of that.

Shenpa comes alive whenever there is a strong sense of self-importance.

Shenpa defines the quality of our emotional life, and not in a positive way.  It leaves us with only two choices in relating to our emotions: we can either reject or vent. 

Whenever there is aversion, a story line is produced. 

When we see clearly, we can understand that shenpa, ego, and the emotions ego generates are all part of the human mind, and we can work with them relating to emotions without the rejection and indulgence of shenpa, we can freely examine them because they are no longer personal.  This is emotional intelligence.

The jealous mind wants what others have, be it physical attributes, wealth, intelligence, someone else's spouse, their job, status, spiritual accomplishments, and so on.  Because it focuses on what it doesn't have, it feels impoverished and discontent all the time. 

The difference between the clarity we believe we have when angry and the clarity that results from actually seeing clearly is that aggression has its own narrow logic, which does not take into account the deeper level of causes and conditions that surround each situation.

People who have the most aggression are the most paranoid of all.

Kindness naturally provides others with a way to respond that is free of aggression and hatred.

Temporal pleasure is samsara's dangling carrot.

Genuine renunciation doesn't come from rejection or avoidance; it comes from letting go of grasping and attachment.

The arrogant mind never stops searching for identity, and this identity always defines itself through attributes: "the beautiful one," "the smart one", "the creative one", "the successful one".

Appreciation unleashes all the inherent positive qualities of mind.

Stupidity is a mind on cruise control.  A mind enveloped in stupidity is completely oblivious to the laws of cause and effect, seed and fruit.  It doesn't connect happiness with the causes of happiness or suffering with the causes of suffering.

While ignorance is simply the state of not knowing, stupidity is the dull state of mind that allows us to repeat the same thing over and over again despite its negative consequences.

When we are bound by the emotional needs of others, or simply afraid of our own, how can we entertain the idea of engaging a spiritual path?

If happiness could be achieved through self-cherishing, we would certainly be happy by now.  But when everything is in reference to "me", we naturally become a victim of our own aggression, attachments, and fears.

Doubt brings up meaninglessness and despair.  But rather than being an emotion itself, doubt has to do with wrong views, and this makes it especially difficult to overcome.

The Mindful Way Workbook: An 8-Week Program to Free Yourself from Depression and Emotional Distress by John Teasdale, Mark Williams, Zindel Segal

Our reactions to unhappiness can transform what might otherwise be a brief, passing sadness into persistent dissatisfaction and unhappiness.  

Our emotional reactions reflect the interpretations we give to situations rather than the situations themselves.

Cashflow Cookbook: $2 Million of Financial Freedom in 60 Easy Recipes by Gordon Stein

Carrying debt is like something stealing your ingredients as you try to cook.  The interest on debt means you are going backwards when you are trying to move forwards.

Being Aware of Being Aware by Rupert Spira

The activities of seeking and resisting are an inevitable expression of the sense of lack or suffering that underlies them.

We become addicted to the endless cycle of lack, seeking and temporary fulfillment that characterizes most people's lives.

Happiness is not a temporary experience that alternates with unhappiness. It is not the opposite of unhappiness, any more than the blue sky is the opposite of the clouds.  Just as the clouds are the veiling of the blue sky, so unhappiness is the veiling of happiness. 

The known always changes; knowing never changes. 

All there is to thought is thinking, and all there is to thinking is knowing. 

In the form of the mind, awareness moves without moving.

Most of us are so fascinated by the content of experience -- thoughts, images, feelings, sensations and perceptions -- that we overlook the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are known.

Awareness cannot be discovered; it can only be recognized.

Mind is the self-colouring activity of awareness.  Meditation is the fading or dissolving of this self-colouring activity and the subsequent revelation of the colourless essence of the mind, pure awareness itself.

It is not because awareness is so far that it seems to be unknown or missing; it is because it is so close.  It is closer than close.  If someone were to ask us, relatively speaking, to stand up and take a step towards ourself, in which direction would we turn?

Mind is the activity through which and as which awareness knows objective experience.  Therefore, in awareness's knowledge of itself -- being aware of being aware -- there is no need or room for any movement or activity of the mind.

If we are suffering we are, by definition, seeking.

Doing nothing is not an option for one who considers himself to be a separate self.

For most people, meditation, self-enquiry or contemplative prayer will seem, at least initially, to be an activity that they as a separate self practice, and only gradually, as their understanding matures and their practice is redefined, will self-enquiry give way to self-abidance, self-resting or self-surrender.

Meditation is what we are, not what we do.

The separate self or finite mind is what we do, not what we are.

The finite mind is not an entity in its own right.  It has no existence of its own.  It is the activity that awareness assumes in order to know objective knowledge and experience.

All in Good Taste by Kate Spade

Pick one thing and do it en masse: string a thousand fairy lights above the garden.

"Wouldn't it be amazing if we spent as much energy investing in experiences as we do investing in things?" Ruzwana Bahir

RSVP tout de suite: always respond to an invitation within three days.

A toast in a pinch: Here's to (name), my (adjective, relationship), who (accomplishment).  May you (verb) with (noun) and (frequency, verb, noun).  Cheers!

"Be pretty if you can.  Be witty if you must.  But be gracious if it kills you." Elsie de Wolfe

A book swap brunch: invite friends to clear out their shelves and coffee tables and exchange their gently used art tomes, memoirs and mysteries over a leisurely buffet and lively raffle.  [every book brought equals one ticket]

It's not the night before the party that a good night's sleep matters. It's two nights before.

When it comes to food, making something from nothing is a very good skill to have.

"The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star." Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

When a recipe calls for red wine, use a young, full wine such as a zinfandel or a chianti.  For white, grab one that's dry and full bodied, such as a sauvignon blanc.  Or, use a dry white French vermouth instead.

Daily Life of the Aztecs by Jacques Soustelle

It may be observed, in passing, that water-transport was by far the most effective kind, in a country that did not possess a single pack-horse, cart-horse, cart or any other land-vehicle, nor any creature that could take the horse's place.

Everyday a thousand men were employed in the cleaning of the public thoroughfares, which they swept and washed with such care that according to one witness you could walk about without fearing for your feet any  more than you would for your hands.

A boy-child was dedicated to war at his birth.  His umbilical cord was buried together with a shield and some little arrows, and in a set speech he was told that he had come into this world to fight.

One of the most frequently-mentioned crimes of sorcery consisted of theft -- fifteen or twenty magicians would combine to rob a family.  They would come to the door by night, and by means of certain charms they would strike the people of the house motionless.  "It was as if they were all dead, and yet they heard and saw everything that happened".

There was military service; although no Mexican thought of this as a burden, but rather as something that was both an honour and a religious rite.

All children were born free, including those both of whose parents were slaves.  No inherited shame was attached to this state; and the emperor Itzcoatl, one of the greatest in Mexican history, was the son of a slave-woman. 

Any slave who was about to be sold could try to regain his liberty: if he escaped from the market, nobody except his master and his master's son might stop him without being enslaved himself; and if once he succeeded in getting into the palace the royal presence instantly released him from all bonds and he was a free man.

A royal household would consume no fewer than a hundred turkeys daily.

Sacrifice was a sacred duty towards the sun and a necessity for the welfare of men: without it the very life of the world would stop.  Every time that a priest on the top of a pyramid held up the bleeding heart of a man and then placed it in the quauhxicalli the disaster that perpetually threatened to fall upon the world was postponed once more.

The custom of staining one's teeth black or red was general among the Huaxtecs and the Otomi, and some Mexican women had taken to it.

Law and court cases had a large place in everyday life.  The Indians were of a litigious nature, and they kept the lawyers busy.

The Mexicans had the reputation, even among their near neighbours -- those of Texcoco, for example, of being so religious that it was impossible to know how many gods they honoured.

In 1511 the Aztecs took the fortified town of Icpatepec on the top of a precipitous mountain by climbing the cliffs with ladders that were made on the spot.

The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business by Elaine Pofeldt

You can build a million-dollar, one-person business around a passion that only ten people on the planet share, unless you have achieved such elite status in your niche that people will be willing to pay you very high prices.

Most solo business owners do almost everything themselves. There's nothing inherently wrong with being hands-on if you love the work you're doing, but that approach won't get you to $1 million in revenue.  What will help you break into the seven figures is to expand your capacity beyond what one person can do.

As many entrepreneurs on tight budgets discover, professionals who have expertise at what they do often take far less time to accomplish a goal than a novice who charges a rock-bottom hourly rate.

Running a million-dollar, one-person business isn't about toiling for long hours.  Unlike in a traditional job, where your pay may be closely tied to the hours you put in, your own business income stems from how smart and selective you are about how you use your time.

The Fruitful City: The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest by Helena Moncrieff

With the exception of berries and other very small fruits, most of what we put on our tables in Canada originates from somewhere else.  Plums, pears, peaches and even the lunch bag staple sweet apple are not native to this country.

More than 860,000 pedestrians pass through Yonge and Dundas every day.

Samuel de Champlain planted apples in Quebec early in the 1600s.

More than two hundred small fruits are native to Canada.  That might sound like plenty, but most don't appear in our pantries.

Indigenous people used silver buffaloberries to flavour, as the name suggests, buffalo meat.

The gingko is considered a living fossil because it has remained unchanged (the only member of its genus, family and order) since before the time of the dinosaurs.

Japan is home to a tree-climbing school and has led the way in using trees for a lot of therapy.  Through a Tree Climbing Japan program called TreeHab, a 57-year-old woman left her wheelchair in 2001 and became the first paraplegic person in the world to climb 78 metres up a Sequoia tree.

Forest bathing can activate human natural killer cells, a part of the immune system that works against cancer.

A few days ago, I picked up a pint box of blueberries from the large farmers market at Halifax's seaport. It's the oldest continuous market of its kind in North America, established by Royal decree in 1750.

The number of cars in Canada went from roughly 1.5 million in 1945 to 2.6 million in 1950.

The growth of fast and processed foods from the '60s on, while convenient, fed food illiteracy.  What's followed is a jump in type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.