A song pops into my head most mornings as I wake up.  For today it is "Wichita Lineman."   I consider it a message from my soul, and try to figure it out.  "And I need you more than want you...and I want you for all time...and the Wichita lineman is… Read full post »

 You know what they say about "growing old gracefully?"  How about instead, "growing old passionately!"   

My favorite movie of all time, the indie documentary, You… Read full post »

When he  left, the girls and I thought it would have been easier if he had died.  We would have been able to mourn, but know that he still loved us and had to leave.  Instead, he moved out.  He said he couldn't do this anymore.  He was sobbing.  I was… Read full post »

 Sylvia Steeper Berg with two of her beloved granddaughters, Natalie and Mandi, circa 1984.

I am fifty-eight.  In the past year I have lost two people close to me;  my father and my mother-in-law, Sylvia.  Their deaths were both expected.  They were the same age… Read full post »

                           "A Mirror Morning" in Port Townsend, Washington taken when I visited there for a Writing It Real Workshop with Sheila Bender.(c) 2007 CVBerg

In this picture, I walk along the beac… Read full post »

                                Guatemala Highway at Dusk  (c) April 2007 CBerg

So, enough with the depression.  I guess that's why in Buddhism there is "non-attachment"  and  awareness.  I have all kinds of quotes from the Dalai Lama that I put up around my house to remind me of what works.  It would be good to read them to myself more often.

When… Read full post »

 Carted off by Police, and in trouble again.  Before you see me on FOX NEWS or in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, let me tell you what REALLY happened at the Loebsack's Town Hall Meeting in Cedar Rapids that left me with a twisted knee and crying as I left the meeting.… Read full post »

This is me, standing alone beside a live volcano near Antigua, Guatemala. 

If your heart is a volcano,

how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

Kahlil Gibran 

I… Read full post »

I wake up to a gray day, with a drizzle sliding from the sky.  It threatens to leave a coating of ice over the world.  My mind at night usually tells me what I did with the last day in my life.  Sometimes I wake up with an internal songI that… Read full post »

I like men.  I've always liked men.  

I am the oldest of four siblings, and the only girl.  My playmates were my brothers.  We had lots of fun playing in the timber as my dad did his logging.  We climbed on the fallen trees and in general had a great… Read full post »

             Windmills in fog on the Oklahoma prairie...sometimes it's hard     to see… Read full post »

So.  Valentines Day.  Mixed messages from my heart on this day.  

I think of the years of Valentine boxes at school....paper covered cereal boxes, decorated with doilies and red construction paper hearts.  The little "penny" valentines that were selected so that everyone in the cl… Read full post »

 My farm...Mira, Talisman, Debonaire in the pasture.  C. Berg

The sky turned purple as the sun behind storm clouds set tonight.  The air was heavy all day today.  I did my chores, and went around taking picture records of the spring that has finally decided to open up to th… Read full post »

Poster in Times Square, the only picture I got of the Dalai Lama in my visit to New York.  c.  C.Berg 2009 

Friday, May 1st.   The plane was doing a little rock and roll coming into our  Detroit layover of twenty minutes (oops!).  Our decent into Laguardia… Read full post »

Amma brings unconditional love of Mother to Coralville, IA.  In her selfless devotion she hugs and comforts all of her "children," sick, sad, happy, disfigured, normal by the thousands, by the millions.  All are welcomed with love.  Sri  Mata Amritanandamayi picture,… Read full post »

Today, I am flunking weather.  I have had it.  This is just nuts.  More nuts that nuts.  I was in Southeast Kansas,  approximately 200 miles to the south, and it was 68 degrees fahrenheit this weekend.  I leave there, and it's cooler, in the thirties or forties, and I ge… Read full post »

In every Now there is a thousand yesterdays.  

As much as we want to isolate the present, to appreciate it for what it is, the past follows us.  If our mother was mean, we can only be conscious about that self-talk she put in our minds, refuting it with positive,… Read full post »

 Me and shadows at Buddah Rock, Shoshoni Ashram, Boulder, Colorado (c)Aug.2007

From H.H. The XIVth DALAI LAMA:

 Every day think, as you wake up,

"Today I am fortunate to have woken up.

I am alive, I have a precious Human Life.

I am not going to waste it.… Read full post »

I am learning to be honest and direct.  I have always been honest, but not always forthcoming.  Honesty was valued to a fault in my family.  As each of four siblings became twelve, my father insisted on paying the adult price of the movie and insisted that we pay the adult… Read full post »

Who are you anyway?

Really good question.  I've been trying to figure that out.  When I was the new kid in my tiny Kansas community, the other junior high girls made fun of me calling me "Miss America" behind my back.  What an insult!  It was an insult wasn't it? I… Read full post »

1.  Barak Obama is President

2.  A warm house 

3.  Friends who forgive me even when I make an ass of myself

4.  Headaches from too much drink because they remind me that drinking kills brain cells

5.  Being able to walk because it is such an efficent way to manuver… Read full post »

Am I still in Iowa, or has Missouri moved north?   When I lived in Columbia, this range of weather was normal.  Bright and sunny one day, snow and ice the next.  We prided ourselves in the saying, "If you don't like the weather, just wait and few hours and it… Read full post »

Letter to My Family, and all Conservative, Liberal, and Indifferent Americans:

I personally am committed to health care reform, not because of politics, but because I see what our current system has done to health care. 

Please LOOK at it rationally from your own experience.

Remember when we r/… Read full post »