The Sedona Method

There is a system of letting go of negative feelings that has been of profound benefit to me for years. It was discovered by a dying Jewish businessman from New York named Lester Levenson, and it saved his life and restored his health. His partner of many years, Virginia Lloyd, shaped it into a usable technique that people could learn, to release most of the pain they feel as they travel along the daily road of life. She also named it the Sedona Method, and it has other names, the Release Technique being one. It has helped me feel better from an allergy attack, calm down after getting angry at myself or others, and just feel good as I go along. It has to some extent helped me survive the storms of life. It helps me get over things, and get over lost loves, too. I live a lighter, smoother life because of it. Others have refined or remodeled it or combined it with related things to make it work better for themselves and others. Among them (first names only) are Ernie, Larry, Hale, Annrika, Michael, Eva, Janet, Rick, Jeanie, Kate, Ron. I confess to being a little unsure of exactly what good it may do to write about it here. It may serve to remind me to use it now--hey! Sounds good. Night before last I was almost exhausted about 8:30 at night. Spent before the day was spent. I went out and took a walk in the cool of the evening around my neighborhood and started looking at my varied feelings, and letting some of them go. I gained some momentum at it and kept walking and kept releasing. When I got back 25 minutes later, the exhaustion was gone. I felt peppy. I dug into my next project. I can't always release and make that kind of sudden, clear change, but I sometimes can. And yes, maybe it was partly the cool night air and the act of getting out of my four walls that renewed me. That's okay; I like that experience. Yet it was obviously more than that.

Two-Year-Old Note on Sonia Sotomayor

SUPREME COURT REPORT 2009 September 23, 2009 New Justice Sonia Sotomayor, up from the Second Circuit, may have this as her first visible work to do. Upon taking the oath of office, she became the 111th SC justice first Hispanic justice and the third female justice Here are a few lines about her adapted from that most reliable of sources, Wikipedia. Born in The Bronx, of Puerto Rican descent, she calls herself a “Nuyorican.” She lost her father when she was nine, and was raised by her mother. She graduated with honors from Princeton in 1976, did a J.D. at Yale, where she was an editor at the Yale Law Journal. She was an advocate for the hiring of Latino faculty at both schools. She worked as an assistant district attorney in New York for five years before entering private practice in 1984. She played an active role on the boards of directors for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the State of New York Mortgage Agency, and the New York City Campaign Finance Board. In 1991 President Bush nominated her as a federal district judge in NY. n 1995, she issued a preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball which ended the 1994 baseball strike. Sotomayor made a ruling allowing the Wall Street Journal to publish Vince Foster's final note. In 1997, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Her nomination was slowed by the Republican majority in the Senate, but she was eventually confirmed in 1998. On the Second Circuit, Sotomayor heard appeals in more than 3,000 cases and wrote about 380 opinions in ten years. Sotomayor has taught at the New York University School of Law and Columbia Law School. FINE PARTISAN LINES Editorial from Detroit Free Press, modified by me. Conservatives seem to love government interference when it's into people's truly private decisions, such as whom they might marry, whether they can use contraception, or whether they might carry a child to term. But when government attempts to regulate private behavior that affects one-sixth of the U.S. economy, it's somehow overreaching, despite Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce.

You Give Us 22 Minutes, We'll Give You The World

I float along in my private world about 94% of the time, and pay attention to the public and political world around me about 6% of the time. Yet most of what happens in my private world depends on that larger world staying stable, staying at least as good as it is now and has been for the last 50 years.

I guess I'd like to start my own little summary of the news, or of the world's week, whatever seems The Important Stuff to me. Every person who does a news list, a daily paper, a monthly newsmagazine, sorts out what they see as the first concerns, the main stories, the Big Deals at the time. Do I really want to join that club in some little "20 minutes now and then" way?

When I was in my 20s, Los Angeles had a news station that must have done 22 minutes of news each half hour, and 8 minutes of commercials, because their motto was "You give us 22 minutes, and we'll give you the world." Am I ready for my 22 minutes?

Maybe so.