What does Christmas mean to you? Is it the sound of excited squeals on Christmas morning? Is it the smell of freshly baked cookies? Is it the sight of twinkling fairy lights around your Christmas tree? Or perhaps that satifying feel of a bloated belly after you’ve tasted every gourmet delight! Here are a few […]
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Blog: Perpetually Adolescent (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Book News, peace, Santa, Christmas, togetherness, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jane Godwin, New Book Releases, Festive season, Anna Walker, Scholastic Australia, Louis Shea, Jay Laga'aia, Yasmeen Ismail, Book Reviews - Childrens and Young Adult, Laine Mitchell, Penguin Random House, Romi Sharp, What Do You Wish For?, Christmas For Greta and Gracie, Haven Gillespie, Himan Nature, J Fred Coot, Nosy Crow UK, We're Going on a Santa Hunt, Add a tag
Blog: Imagination-Cafe Blog (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Dalai Lama, togetherness, self-help books, combat loneliness forever, Add a tag
Most likely we've all experienced loneliness at one time or another and it goes away. However, when the feelings of despair, depression and sadness consume our entire being it's time to seek help.
Never Be Lonely Again - The Way Out of Emptiness, Isolation, and a Life Unfulfilled is a must read for anyone feeling hopeless.
Inspired by the teachings of the Dalai Lama (and a personal visit with), authors Pat Love, Ed.D. and Jon Carlson, Psy.D., Ed.D. have left no stone unturned in their quest to help you.
This book will teach readers how to:
~ Find the necessary time to maintain friendships
~ Reach out to people when in need
~ Be truly present for a partner
~ Develop healthier behaviours that will nurture relationships
~ Be open to lasting, personal connections
In addition, Never Be Lonely Again asks five questions, when answered open and honestly, will change your life:
1. Who am I?
Your core values reflect who you are. Think about how you want the people you love to remember you, and then live each day demonstrating these characteristics and your life will take on a new direction and energy.
2. Am I connected?
You need three to five people in your close circle of contact—people who know you and pay close attention to you; in whom you can and do confide. If you improve the quality of your connections, comfort and contentment will greatly increase.
3. Am I living in community?
Invest in people outside your close circle of friends/family and you feel a true sense of well-being and belonging.
4. Are my talents being utilized in meaningful work?
Work doesn’t have to be the activity for which you get paid. Talents are something you enjoy doing—when you use them to benefit others you feel productive and useful, like you are earning your keep here on earth.
5. Am I living out the purpose of my life?
Chances are, if you concentrate on the other four questions you will answer yes to this question but it bears asking. Am I doing what I was put here on earth to do? What could I do that would make the answer to this question yes? Do it and your life will improve in every possible way.
Don't spend another moment caught in the loneliness trap, grab a copy of Never Be Lonely Again and let the healing begin. You'll be glad you did.
Never Be Lonely Again is available at HCI Books and Amazon

Blog: It's My Life and I'll Blog if I Want To! (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: germany, berlin, sachsenhausen, checkpoint charlie, Add a tag
Due to Internet problems, column deadlines, and general exhaustion from an action packed sightseeing schedule, I’ve got very behind on my blogging. However, I shall now attempt to catch up, one day at a time.
On Tuesday the_webmeister and I headed to Orianenburg, a leafy suburb about the same distance from the center of Berlin as Greenwich is from Manhattan. At the end of a tree-lined street is Sachsenhausen concentration camp, one of the first concentration camps started by the Nazis in the 30’s.
It’s the utter normalcy of the street that completely freaked me out. Citizens of Orianenburg were tending their gardens on one side of the wall, while on the other underfed prisoners were being forced to run for 12 hours a day carrying heavy packs in order to test the soles of boots for the Germany army.
Sachensenhausen was originally used for political prisoners (namely anyone who disagreed with the Nazis, especially Communists) and “anti-social elements” (such as gypsies, homosexuals, transvestites, etc). Jews were also imprisoned there, although not after 1942 when Himmler decided to make Germany “Juden frei” and the Jews were shipped “to the East”.
Over 100,000 people died at Sachsenhausen. It was also a major training center for the SS; over 3,000 SS were billeted there for training. The average age of the soldiers in the Death’s Head unit of the Waffen SS was 20.7 years old. The head of the concentration camp inspectorate said that they purposely selected young men so that they could “indoctrinate them to readily sacrifice that little bit of themselves, so if necessary they could carry out their duty without scruples and with all necessary determination.”
Later in the war Russian POW’s were murdered at Sachsenhausen, which makes it seem doubly ironic that post-1945 the East German regime used the camp for political prisoners.
While we were there, I saw this guy wearing what I considered a particularly tasteless sweatshirt and a belt made of bullets.
Then I noticed the badge on his cap, with Hebrew lettering and “World Burns to Death.”
I googled it when I got back to the hotel, and it turns out World Burns to Death is a punk rock band whose “aesthetic preference is for derivative bland holocaust imagery: t-shirts, posters, and record covers stick to this formula. These images mirror the lyrical themes of the band, which detail crimes against humanity, religious hypocrisy and religion's effect on society, class oppression, nationalism, and man's general inhumanity to man.”
Guess that teaches me not to judge a guy by his sweatshirt. Still, I would have preferred if he’d left the “Gas Mask” sweatshirt at home.
Oh, and just in case you’re under any misapprehension that anti-Semitism in Europe isn’t still alive and well, the Jewish barracks at Sachsenhausen were firebombed back in the 90’s, a few days after a visit from the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. They rebuilt the barracks using the charred materials as a reminder:
Later that evening, we visited the site of a different form of totalitarianism. The night before we’d been to Potzdammer Platz to view a few remaining fragments of the Berlin Wall, which used to run right through the center.
In the 90’s, following the fall of the Wall, Potzdammer Platz was the biggest building site in Europe. We had an overpriced dinner at the Sony Center, with it’s cool, color changing roof , and then strolled down to the Brandenburg Gate.
Tuesday evening we followed up our Wall tour with a visit to Checkpoint Charlie
and the Haus Am Checkpoint Charlie , a museum started by Ranier Hildebrandt in 1962, right by the Berlin wall overlooking Checkpoint Charlie. The exhibition chronicles the attempts at escape to the West, both successful and tragically unsuccessful. There are cars with hiding compartments and hollowed out surfboards and example after example of the ingenuity people have when they want to be free.
It wasn’t just the exhibits that I found fascinating. My alter-ego, saramerica found this bathroom graffiti interesting as well.
Pretty sad that someone visiting a museum dedicated to freedom and tolerance would make a comment like, “We’ll stop the wall when you stop the illegal immigration.”
It was a thought provoking and emotional day, which we ended with a fantastic meal at a French restaurant right down the road from Checkpoint Charlie.
I wanted to stop by and say hi and thank you for following my blog today. Oh My Heartsie
I have become an avid blogger, and besides following a lot of blog hops, I manage 13 blogs,
some are mine and most for others, I post to their blogs, I manage their blog, writing posts, adding gadgets,
restyling, creating banners to be shared & generally making tweaks and to better help them to get traffic.
I love Twitter, and love reading the messages
I find a lot of information and love to Retweet messages.
I post all blog hops I find on the social network I created at "Live Laugh Love To Shop", and if you have an on going
blog hop I would love to hear from you.... Email me at: ohmyheartsie (@) gmail.com