Fives

Madcap Mum (at maison madcap) has yelled "Tag! You're all it," and set this meme out for anyone who wants to play. Sort of like those boxes of tomatoes I see in every porch this fall. "Help yourself, any time..."

I've changed some headings back toward an earlier version at Earth Home Garden. Here goes:

Five Pet Peeves:

1. Wads of newsprint printed with anything but news and dumped in my mailbox and on my doorstep just because I exist
2. The claim that gasoline taxes should only go to building more and better roads so we'll have even more incentive to burn more gasoline (when they could also go to mitigating the impacts of roads and CO2 emissions, or go into a refunded tax system (scroll down in the first comment) that rewards fuel efficiency, giving even more incentive to burn less gasoline)
3. Rising speed limits
   
4. Straw-man labels like "eco-communists" and "compassionites"
5. The ban on private and community posters on the Arcola post office bulletin board, which has killed our one and only way to inform the whole community of events that help keep the whole community alive (Psst - somebody - let's see if the folks at Arcola Building Supplies would be willing to put up an outdoor bulletin board on their south wall, right next to the post office sidewalk. Plexiglass sliding doors on it to keep the posters dry. A few donations for materials, volunteers to build it...)

Five Wild Creatures I'd Like to See (in the wild) Before I Go:

1. Surprise me!
2. and if I get to see a big predator up really close, in the wild, right before I go, I pray that I be able to appreciate the wonder of the moment.
3. Sage grouse
4. Black-footed ferret
5. Small white lady's-slipper

- and I'd like to see them all here in Saskatchewan, please.

Five Moments in My Life that Have Changed Everything I've Done Since

1. Whenever it was that my parents decided to move to Saskairie (Outdoor Education Centre)
2. Starting piano lessons
3. Deciding that even though I had had almost no friends in school, I was going to have friends in university. Period.
   
4. A waking vision of a vertical board with a row of round holes up the middle, and a peg in the very bottom hole, representing my worth; realizing that it was I who put that peg in that bottom hole; seizing hold of it and putting it up where it belongs
5. A dream in which I saw a mansion with light pouring out of the upper windows, where there was a party going on; I tried to get to the party by building a staircase to the windows out of strawbales and blue boxes; I couldn't get there because the staircase squished and sagged under my weight; and someone told me gently, "You have to come in through the stable."

Five Books (Not Movies) that Changed My Course

1. That little New Testament that the Gideons gave me in elementary school
2. The textbook for Biology 200 (which was biology for non-biology majors), because it took me out of pre-journalism and into biology
3. "Happiness Is a Choice" by Barry Neil Kaufman (enough said)
   
4. "For Christ's Sake" by Tom Harpur, because it stripped away the doctrine and gave me confidence to read the bible for myself
   
5. "Emotional Infidelity" by M. Gary Neuman, because it got me out of a very close call (which could have been #6 on the list above), and primed me for Marriage Builders.
   

And as Madcap Mum said: "Anyone who likes may feel free to steal the meme and apply it to him/herself. Consider yourself tagged!"