Category Archives: Curiosities

Seats and Walls (Introduction)

For the next week or so the monastic community will be spending a lot of time meditating formally in the meditation hall. Postings here will continue with photographs, which were mostly taken within the monastery grounds.

It was a joy to revisit the hidden-in-plain-view sights. Have a good week and perhaps you can find a seat at home and join us as we all just sit, looking at a wall.

Many thanks once again to Iain at Little House in the Paddy for making the postings to Moving Mountains while I’m off-line for Sesshin.

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Animals (and Toads) Crossing Roads

A reader in Edmonton sent me this picture today. Too good not to share I thought. Thanks, and thanks to the photographer who ever she or he was.

This is the actual turnoff from Banff, Alberta, Canada to the #1 highway to Calgary.

They had to build the animals (especially the elk) their own crossing because that’s where the natural migration crossing is and after the highway was built there were far too many accidents. It didn’t take the animals long to learn that this was their “road.”

Meanwhile back in the U.K. the toads need to cross the roads.

The ‘Toads on Roads’ campaign is one of Froglife’s most established projects, promoting the plight of toads during migration, recruiting volunteers to help monitor toad crossing sites and working with other organisations to ensure pressure is put on planners and developers to consider local populations of amphibians.
“I wouldn’t say it was the most pleasant of jobs. Standing on busy roads on winter nights holding a bucketful of toads.” Life as a Toad Warden.

This is compassion for animals, and amphibians. Bless ’em all.

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Heart Broken Anybody?

If you have had one or know somebody who is in line for one it’s worth educating yourself.

A woman of my acquaintance has recently been diagnosed with this condition and while it is not good news she seems amused by the name, Takotsubo or Octopus Trap Syndrome. Tako-tsubo” is the japanese name for octopus traps that fishermen still use to catch octopus. In this syndrome, the heart (left ventricle) takes the shape of an octopus trap (tako-tsubo). How about that!

About 70-80% of cases of Tako-tsubo Syndrome (TTS) occur in post-menopausal women under some form of extreme, exceptional and prolonged mental stress,… with no good way out, no relief and often feeling deep resentment (such as the loss of a dear one…)

Well I must have been in my mid twenties when I took my first broken heart to the doctor. I bet you think you are having a heart attack, he said lightly. Here, take some of these. The pills worked. I doubt if I was suffering from Takotsubo, just a broken heart which mended rather quickly. Thankfully the more serious condition is rarely fatal and rights itself reasonably quickly too.

Thoughts for the woman who is in her mid 80’s and for her son, who took his own life. And also thoughts for an elderly woman with kidney failure. Winter is here, wrap up warm.

The takotsubo website is both informative and funny with great graphics.

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