OMG — Jillian Gaye's 21 Years Are Up !!!

 
For a few weeks I have been sitting on this invitation and the pictures shown in the Flickr SlideShow embedded below, waiting for "the right time" to write about this… and it never seemed like the right time until today. Most likely it's because today is "Gaye's Day" that I have been thinking all day that today would be a good day to tell the story about Jillian Gaye's bonding celebration, the 21-year time capsule, and the fabulous celebration that we had for Jilli's 21^st birthday on Sept 1^st, 2008. First up, a little background and history…

When my sweetie and I called together our extended family on October 11th, 1987, we had the "bonding celebration" described in this invitation. Our baby girl was just barely 6 weeks old, and all of our loved ones came to bless her and us! Many of them left "keepsakes", for her, to be opened on her coming of age birthday, 21 years later. We salted them away in the wooden time capsule that you see pictured on the right.

What a joy it was to watch Jillian — now older than her Mom was when I married her (!!!) — as she enthusiastically opened and really appreciated the words of wisdom, remembrances, best wishes, grand gestures of love and support that had been stored for "a lifetime" in that wooden box. Before we knew it we had reminisced, laughed, cried, and walked down memory lane for more than 2 hours… and still hadn't gotten to the majority of treasures in the capsule.

The pictures in the Flickr album "Jillian Gaye turns 21" are basically her birthday party pictures, but most of that was the grand opening of the time capsule on the campus of NEU, Jilli's current home. Aside from my sweetie and I, in the pictures you see Roy, Jilli's God Father, and Sharisse, my God Daughter.

Further details are TBS.
 

So… what are YOU going to do about it?

 
I don't normally write about politics in my blog, and especially not world politics… but I just spent twenty minutes on this great educational web site called "The Story of Stuff" and it has moved me to speak out. So I am hereby speaking out. Admittedly, it was a somewhat painful twenty minutes, but I couldn't turn away because I care too much about leaving this world a better place for the next generation — for our children !!

Click on the image on the left, or just go to: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ and listen to Annie Leonard's description about what's happened to "our world" — the real story about what have been the driving forces in our world for the last 50 years.

And when, like me, you find yourself thinking "Oh, I've heard this all before…" and the little monkey in your head says "I don't have time for this"… ask yourself how much it's worth to you to sell your children out so that you can go "get one more task-for-the day accomplished". Consider that maybe the real reason is: you're in denial.

More important than "how we got here"… listen to what Annie Leonard says about the change in context that is the only way we're going to turn this ship around. In a nutshell, it's "Think Green" but way more than thinking is called for. After watching this I finally get a much better perspective on why this is important and why we really have to make the switch to a different way of thinking, a different way of living. Mankind's continued existence depends on it !