Sushi, Full of Surprises

• Location: entryway, Moritomo’s, Concord, New Hampshire
• Date: April 30, 2008
• Description: small yellow crane with two Dumbledore quotes

I had a lot of fun with this crane. I love Dumbledore, and used two of his quotes to fill this little crane. The first: “It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” The second: “Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.” While Dumbledore said them both, J.K. Rowling was the one to pen the words, and so the credit goes to her, really. Neither quote speaks directly to peace, but they’re both about change and acceptance, something we need to embrace if we’re to fully have peace.

Things just seemed to be falling into place before I left this crane. We went to Moritomo’s tonight, which happens to make the best sushi around. While we were there, I noticed that the fabric cushions all had a pattern of folded cranes on them. Neat! That was a nice surprise. Then, I went into the bathroom and saw this:

It seems like a strange thing to scribble on the wall of a sushi restaurant bathroom, but I was pleased to see it. So pleased that I loitered around the bathroom in order to take the picture. I’m sure the management was pleased to see me go.

Then, as we were walking out, I grabbed a mint — and there were mini cranes at the counter! Someone went through the trouble to fold mini cranes and leave them for customers, so I took one. I didn’t take a picture, though. And then we drove home.

That was my night. You find peace in the most unexpected places, but it’s not unwelcome. I love it.

The Big Cheese was a Peace Maker

• Location: windowsill, Bank of America
• Date: April 29, 2008
• Description: small blue crane with a bible quote written in red block letters.

You may have noticed something strange going on with my photo today. I wish I could say my camera did that all by itself, but that would be a lie. I left this very cute crane at the bank, and when I went to take a picture, I realized my camera battery was dead. So I decided in lieu of not posting a crane today, I would draw a reasonable facsimile of what the picture would have looked like. Isn’t it great?

The crane is posing on a windowsill. Outside the window you can see the road (black), the sidewalk (gray), the bottom part of the stoplight (those gray rectangular things near the top), and the start of a green patch where a tree once grew. Since it was raining today, I added in raindrops falling and splattering on the window. I’m so artistic.

Here’s the quote for today’s crane: “And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war” — Isaiah 2:4. Although I am not a religious person, I thought the quote very nicely illustrated the feeling of peace, particularly turning weapons into useful objects. I suppose a weapon has its uses too, and in that way it’s useful, but I like the image we can conjure with this quote: no more war means never again needing weapons. Ah, that would be the life.

Some people might argue that killing each other is a human instinct, and that we have always fought wars; therefore, we’ll always fight wars. The basis for this is that humans have been killing one another throughout the ages. If the bible was written about 2000 years ago, we can speculate that at least one person in that time period had the idea to think peace — maybe more! I don’t know the bible by heart. I’m sure there were others, though.

My car broke a little bit this morning. It’s all fixed now, thanks to some really great mechanics in this area, but I feel like this day is never-ending.

Peace and Love and Elephants

Finally! I have posted the new how-to page. It’s under the “Think Peace” tab along the top of the browser. Maybe you should check it out — and by “maybe” I mean “definitely.”

Something else exciting happened: Kate from the Elephant Sanctuary left me a comment on the Elephant Sanctuary page. If you haven’t read about my adventures at the Elephant Sanctuary, now is the perfect opportunity. I’m very excited.

Family Road Trip

• Location: Cracker Barrel, Mount Holly, NJ
• Date: April 27, 2008
• Description: small red crane with gold olive branch on one wing

I gave my brother and his wife this crane one or two months ago, and they ended up leaving it this weekend. I’m pretty excited. My whole family went to Delaware to visit with another brother and his family for my nephew’s third birthday. I’m not kidding — it was my whole family. Most of them live in Connecticut, so it’s wasn’t that far of a drive, only 4-5 hours. From here, it’s 7-8 hours, and I couldn’t justify driving all that way when I’d just seen them a few weeks ago. So they were all in Delaware. It’s probably good that I didn’t go. We drove each other crazy on the family car rides when we were kids. I can’t imagine it would be much different.

My sister-in-law placed the crane and took the picture, so if you think it’s bad, you’ll know who to blame (it’s not, if you’re reading this, sister-in-law). And apparently, the waitress was privy to the whole scene, so my brother and sister-in-law “greased her palm to keep her mouth shut.” Excellent. I wonder if she was the one to pick up the crane. If I saw some crazy couple taking pictures of their dirty dishes, I’d want to know what they were doing too.

I find that I’m incredibly sensitive to scenes of violence on TV and in the movies, particularly war scenes and sexual abuse. I usually get nightmares. (I always thought nightmares would stop as I got older. No such luck.) As you can imagine, this has affected my taste in movies to the point where I watch light and fluffy films all the time. It makes me a joy to be around in a group setting, let me tell you. Everyone loves a chick who enjoys “Enchanted” and has never seen “The Godfather.”

[Still holding off on the new page. It's coming, I swear!]

Close, But no Cigar

You may have noticed a suspicious lack of blogging on my part. I’ve been working on a new page for the blog, a how-to page for peace. It’s coming very slowly, though, since I do work at work instead of blog, and then I come home and don’t go on the computer. So if you’ll just pardon me for a few days, I’ll try to get the new page up as soon as possible. Then we can all party together. Sort of.