Mindful speech

I picked up a Clean Speech St. Louis Workbook in the lobby yesterday, discovered it had a page for each day in March 2022, and started reading.  Page 5 shows that Crown Center for Senior Living is one of 37 participating organizations.  Here are the weekly topics:

Week 1:  Is it important to care about "clean speech"?

Week 2:  Talking about how we talk

Week 3:  Talking about how we listen

Week 4:  Sometimes you have to speak up

Week 5:  The end

Here are the daily subjects this week:

Day 1:  It's a Beautiful World

Day 2:  Words Create Reality

Day 3:  No Band-Aid Big Enough

Day 4:  Learn to Argue

Day 5:  Judge Others Favorably

Day 6:  Practice

Day 7:  What a Legacy We Have

I like the first sentences for the first day:  "This is not a book about speech.  It's a book about us.  Clean Speech St. Louis is not just about what we say.  It is about who we are. . . . If we remove negativity, gossip, slander, and divisiveness from our vocabulary, we automatically and dramatically improve our own lives and the lives of everyone around us" (p. 8).

Talking and reading ~ the usual stuff

"Thank you for calling....Loved it"

Yesterday, I called one of my two best friends, and we talked for two hours and twenty minutes.  For part of the time we were in school together at Emory University, I lived with their family — she has a husband and four children.  After our talk, I sent her a link to something we discussed, and she emailed back:  "Thank you for calling....Loved it."

I later called my other best friend, who returned my call after lunch.  We talked a long time, too.  What?  Why can't I have two best friends?  One lives hundreds of miles east of me, and the other lives hundreds of miles west of me.  I wish we could get together and talk for hours.  Phones are the next best thing, but I can't get a hug over the phone.

Clean Speech St. Louis

I picked up a 2023 workbook for Clean Speech St. Louis (Volume 2) in the lobby recently and brought it home to read.  Crown Center for Senior Living is one of 32 participating organizations.  Last year's subject was about harmful or hurtful words said about a third party who is not present; this year's focus is on the verbal mistreatment of the person with whom you are speaking (p. 12).  The third day suggests we review what we learned last year.  They'll be happy to send a link to download the curriculum from last year, if you missed it:  <https://cleanspeech.com/stl/>.  Examples from the book:

Day 1 example

"Steve wakes up one morning to a text message from his brother, berating him for not being more helpful with their elderly parents.  In a foul mood, he complains to his wife Beth that there's no coffee creamer.  Feeling criticized, Beth is short-tempered with their teenage daughter, Sarah, who goes off to school in a huff, silent and moody in her carpool.  Over dinner that night, they sit at the table and describe their rotten day, before retreating from the tension into separate corners of the house on their devices."

Day 2 example

"Steve wakes up one morning to a text message from his brother, thanking him for being so helpful with their elderly parents.  In a cheerful mood, he compliments his wife Beth on the outfit she's wearing.  Feeling loved, Beth is more patient with their teenage daughter, Sarah, who[m] she encourages to speak more confidently with the challenging girls in her carpool.  Over dinner that night, they sit at the table and share small victories from their day, enjoying each other's company a little longer than usual."

What a difference a kind, positive word makes!  I'm sure we've all seen this in real life.

2022 = Lashon hara (Hebrew: לשון הרע) means "evil tongue" for speech about a person or persons that is negative or harmful to them, even though it is true.

2023 = Onas devarim (Hebrew: דְּבָרִים) is the prohibition against saying hurtful words to a person.

With Her in Ourland ~ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1915, utopian fiction, 123 pages

This is the third book in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's utopian trilogy which begins where Moving the Mountain and Herland left off.  Gilman masterfully compares our modern male-dominated world with an imaginary perfect society comprised of only woman. Gilman was a well known and deeply respected sociologist and this trilogy holds an important place in feminist fiction. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

A blogger had this to say about the book:  "With Her in Ourland reads less like a story and more as philosophy."  That's okay with me, since philosophy was part of my double major undergraduate degree.

In response to my St. Patrick's Day post a couple of days ago about being Irish, a friend sent me this photo.  I love it!  Hmm, I'm taller than most of my friends around here, even though I've shrunk a couple of inches in my old age.  Does does that make me less Irish?

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz

hosts The Sunday Salon.

Clean Speech St. Louis

Our communities are torn apart by division and strife.  The way we speak is both the problem and the solution.  Clean Speech St. Louis is a community-wide education and awareness campaign to unite us in the practice of Jewish mindful speech, to build a more positive, respectful, and peaceful world.  People at the Crown Center for Senior Living are taking part in this program, and that includes me.  I have done this since the beginning, so it's my third time to participate.  Here are my posts for 2022 and 2023.

A book and a dozen things I'm grateful for

Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks ~ by Diana Butler Bass, 2019, sociology, 256 pages

We know that gratitude is good, but somefind it hard to sustain a life of gratefulness.  Bass takes on this “gratitude gap” and offers up surprising, relevant, and powerful insights to practice gratitude.  She explores the transformative power of gratitude for our personal lives and in communities, showing how we can make change in our own lives and in the world.  She says gratitude as a path to greater connection with others.  It’s time to embrace a more radical practice of gratitude — the virtue that heals us and helps us thrive.

What am I grateful for today?

1. I'm grateful for my friends.
2. I'm grateful that my eyes are not as itchy as they were recently.
3. I'm grateful that I can walk to our Café without going outside at all.
4. I'm grateful for sunshine.
5. I'm grateful for blue skies, when they come.
6. I'm grateful for the Clean Speech St. Louis booklet, which this year trained our brains to be grateful.  It's why I ordered the book above.
7. I'm grateful that I can read and explore the world of ideas.
8. I'm grateful for the friend who forgot to meet me for lunch in the Café yesterday, wondering if and when she'll remember.
9. I'm grateful for my bed when I want to nap mid-day.
10. I'm grateful for my easy chair in the corner, where I can blog or read while sitting beside my window.
11. I'm grateful for that window, where I can see the world go by, as people walk or jog or carry home bags of groceries.
12. I'm grateful that I can close my door and be alone.  (I am an introvert, though some don't quite believe me because I'm friendly.)

Active April

I haven't posted a calendar from the Action for Happiness folks in a long time.  Having just finished a month of Clean Speech St. Louis, this seems like a good time for me to continue focusing on making our world a better place.  Click on the calendar to enlarge it, and see the words along the bottom that say:  "Happier, Kinder, Together."

Are you happy?

March 20 is International Day of Happiness, and it also happens to be the first day of Spring.  After a rough winter, I imagine lots of folks are happy to see the arrival of spring.

I have a copy of Clean Speech St. Louis, Volume 4.  It encourages us to speak words of kindness during the month of March this year.  Each year has a slightly different focus.  It reminds us (daily during March) that what we say makes a difference.

I noticed some trees between me and the highway are turning white.  I wonder if they are dogwoods.  I would go check, but my spring allergies say "no" to that.

See Rock City

I was surprised to find a 38-page Rock City advertising booklet in our Crown Center's tiny library this past week, so I checked it out and read it, grinning all the way.  For those who don't know, Rock City is located on Lookout Mountain just outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee.  And that's my hometown.  I raised my children on Signal Mountain, on the other (the north) side of the Tennessee River that runs between the two mountains.

I remember seeing bird houses painted red with "See Rock City" on the black roof and barns with the same color scheme.  This barn says, "See 7 states from Rock City."  Are those still part of their advertising?  I didn't see bird houses or barns in this little booklet, so neither may be part of the current advertising.

I have no idea who may have donated the booklet to Crown Center (many hours away in St. Louis), but I had fun reading it and remembering actually visiting the place.  Lookout Mountain is also famous for the Civil War's Battle above the Clouds, another tourist draw.

A quote from the Clean Speech reading for today:  "If you were dealing with some crisis, like a stolen car or a sick child, wouldn't you expect your friends to have a little bit of compassion for you?  Of course you would.  So if you recognize that everyone around you is in the midst of some challenge of their own, shouldn't you have a little bit of compassion for them? . . . Everyone struggles" (p. 27).  Everyone needs compassion.

Deb at Readerbuzz hosts the Sunday Salon