Seal Beach: December 31, MMX

The weather was fantastic (cold, but sincere), unlike the wind that was cold.
Still I got on my bike, and rode to Liberty Park,  Cerritos, where I worn my running shoes for about an hour. Then I continue my ride to the beach. Perfect weather, beach got cleaned from the mess after the storm. Took few pictures as the skies were crystal clear, so both the mountains (San Gabriel) and Catalina Island looked great. I finally got a clear shot of Downtown Long Beach and Signal Hill. It was harder to pedal back home ( stronger winds) but it was well worth the sweat: 30 extra miles to my odometer. It’s amazing what a human body can do with a little glucose and a protein shake. Happy New Year, and by the way I wouldn’t be worried about the end of the Earth, it’s just a new beginning: There is plenty of history on that starting with the turn of the first millenium, than that of the second millennium, then 2001, and 2002…Just be happy, each moment and kind and compassionate toward one another. That will do the trick.

Happy New Year MMXI

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Happy New Year 2011 🙂

Inside the Vatican

Colinda Fagaras 2010

Dor Transilvan (Cluj) Cantecele muntilor 2010

The Black Swan: Natalie Portman

Image via Wikipedia

I finally watched this beautiful movie yesterday evening and was, as in the past moved by the unequal expressivity brought to the film by Natalie Portman. 
There are many sacrifices to be made, to become again the princess one was, before being transformed into the swan, and only true love can do it: It’s a marvelous story, that has like all stories full grip on reality.  
Happy New Year Natalie, Happy New Year World!

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Melanie:Brand New Key

Melanie: Look What They’ve Done To My Song

Take This Waltz: Leonard Cohen

Image via Wikipedia

LEONARD COHEN
“Take This Waltz“

Now in Vienna there’s ten pretty women
There’s a shoulder where Death comes to cry
There’s a lobby with nine hundred windows
There’s a tree where the doves go to die
There’s a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws
Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallways where love’s never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and Death
Dragging its tail in the sea

There’s a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There’s a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They’ve been sentenced to death by the blues
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it’s been dying for years

There’s an attic where children are playing
Where I’ve got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I’ll see what you’ve chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lilies of snow
Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its “I’ll never forget you, you know!”

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz …

And I’ll dance with you in Vienna
I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
With the photographs there, and the moss
And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you’ll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist
Oh my love, Oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It’s yours now. It’s all that there is

The Great Gatsby,The Great Writing

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The Great Gatsby

Image via Wikipedia

The Great Gatsby? Ideals survive people: People live one moment at a time, with or without thinking of having ideals. People also die one moment at a time while their ideals linger around a moment or two longer, unless there is a novelist like F.Scott Fitzgerald around: them people’s stories live forever.
Does anybody learn there stories by heart or do we just reenact them, in eternity? Practice safe marriage: marry the one who truly loves you.

Vienna New Years Concert 2010, Die Fledermaus Overture, Johann Strauss

An der schönen blauen Donau (Danube Waltz) -Vienna 2010 – New Year Concert 2010

Dunarea Albastra (The Blue Danube)

New Year 2011: Ready Or Not…Here I come! And With It,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neujahrskonzert

The New Years Concert From Vienna début on December 31, 1939.

El Dorado Regional Park Northern Area: The Movie

I had the Park in exclusivity…almost, to myself. It’s a beautiful day, quiet, no cars, just few joggers, and bicycle raiders (including me). Carrying around the backpack with my photo equipment was a good exercise and a great idea. After the storm the underpass at Wardlow Str. was still flooded, adding to my decision to visit the park, in its undisturbed status (usually the scene is crowded, with cars , lots of noise, lots of people, etc.)  In one of the scenes you can hear the unmistakable shriek of the vultures and some noise coming from the lens cap: Sorry.
 In the distance there are cars passing on Wardlow:  You could hear the grass grow so quiet it was, calm, and serene.
Hope you enjoy the movie, at least as much as I enjoy making it and sharing it.

Happy New Year Friends!

A Lifetime In Few Days Of A Mushroom

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Seal Beach After Storm

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This movie was hard to make. It’s not because of the sea stars that we returned safely to the ocean. It is because of what, the ocean returned to us as not welcome, the trash that some poor excuses for human beings dump in the river, and the surroundings, as if they own it, as if it does not belong to all of us. This is not a new issue, but rather an ever expanding one. We got so good at intoxication the land and the water, that fish caught in the middle of the oceans, thousand of miles away from any shore line, is poisoned by the mercury we dumped everywhere. Every object dejected by the ocean: the 6 pack plastic wrappers, bags, medicine jars, Styrofoam and plastic cups,  they all tell the story of one individual, who took for granted the fact that nobody’s watching, they are getting away with such uncivilized acts. And then there are the bear, and soft drinks cans and especially the paint spray cans, floating toward the ocean, still containing hazardous organic solvents that end up in the water, and the tagging, and graffiti, and painting over, without consideration for the social unjustifiable cost to us, taxpayers. In one year of weekend biking I saw a police patrol car twice, community services once, and for the rest, the same issues brought forth by other concerned citizens, for decades are still present. Why?
Lack of respect by the law disobeying citizens toward the large majority, the rest of us who cherish, instead of destroying things that were made available for our joy. I saw school children volunteering to pick up somebody else’s cigarette buts, while fifty yards further shady characters look for the right size space between rocks, to dump their bear cans, knowing that nobody dare stop them.

I thought appropriate to whistle St. James Infirmary, as sad funeral parade background to this storm effect.

Thank You Pacific Ocean, for rejecting all that junk, it does belong to us, its rightful owner!

Streit’s German Bakery

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If you are close   to S-E corner of the of Imperial Highway and Paramount Blvd, in Downey, you can treat yourself to a unique experience, by visiting Streit’s German Bakery: I buy my bread from there, and it is the only place bread tastes the way it used to when I was growing up, back in Bucharest. The house I was born in was close to  the bread factory, and our teachers were finding several times each year reasons to revisit there: The taste of bread freshly baked, that was the reason. Many times the smell of bread from the factory would come downwind, some three quarters  of a mile, and into our classrooms.

But back to Streit’s Bakery: Beside the most delicious pastries, of French, Austrian, and German recipes, they make the most beautiful and delicious wedding cakes, and as you can see from the pictures, also Christmas gingerbread doll houses, all handmade, of fresh, all to the order. It is one of those places where is hard to comprehend how all these thinks are made: but they have great decorators, as you can see. Napoleons, cream puffs, eclaires, double chocolate fudge cakes…So delicious, they can compete with the finest european and continental deserts. Also they make Christmas walnuts rolls, just like my grandma used to make, long time ago.
I hope they will be there for many years to come.

Give it a try friends if it is in your way.

My Fair Lady With A Little Bit Of Luck

My Fair Lady – Why Can’t The English?

So that is the excuse: It all started in the old country, no?

My Fair Lady – The Rain In Spain

Not this past week: It felt like all the rain in the world stayed in California. 🙂

My Fair Lady – Just You Wait

Benedict XVI: Value Fraternity in Politics

Christmas: A Time to Rediscover the Faith

Pope: “Jesus Makes Us See the World Through the Eyes of God”

Andrea Bocelli – Alleluia (from oratory Messiah by George Frideric Handel)

George Frederick Handel’s Oratory Messiah, is one of the most majestic act of devotion at Christmas, and “Alleluia” is the part best known to many, celebration the birth of Jesus Of Nazareth, The Christ Our Lord.

Happy Christmas From Seal Beach

Happy Christmas!

George.

Dumitru Fărcaş – Du-te, Dor, În Munţi De Piatră (Go Longing In Rocky Mountain)

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Happy Holidays Friends:

The best water springs from barren rock…Only the One who’s really thirsty sees it: So be thirsty indeed when you’re searching for your spring or you may miss it.
One’s mission though is never the less to search for and find it…And then dig a well and build a fountain for the thirsty.

Notre Père

Les Marionettes: Christophe 1965

Si La vie est un cadeau

Michel Polnareff – La poupée qui fait non

Quand les roses: Adamo 1964

C’est ma vie: Salvatore Adamo

Vous permettez monsieur (1964): Salvatore Adamo

Tombe la neige: Salvatore Adamo

The Monologue of a leaf

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The monologue of a leaf, By George

I am one leaf
In autumn.
Hanging on wet branches is
Harder and harder to do

The cold wind reminds me of early spring
It’s not the same though:
The best of days is dark, and smell:
They say of snow…
Hmm, what snow is, I wouldn’t know,
I’m just a leaf, I come and go…”With the seasons”, I hear them say.
I heard some talk of places far away,
Where trees are painted white…I wouldn’t know,
I’m just a leaf, I come and go…

I know that I could use some warmth, now…
But on the wind
To go I have… To go.

Hotel California: The Eagles

Some things are made to last longer than other. Some when well preserved, like mummies…Others because they weren’t entombed in the first place, but rather reenacted, by me, you and them so they are still hot like baked potatoes, that one has to juggle from one hand to another to keep from burning their fingers: Such is, with many other the Eagles’ Hotel California…Yeahhhh, some things are meant to be right there, on many people’s tongues, in many people’s minds just to appear  as a sudden, naturally…

Hotel California 

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway, I heard the mission bell
Then I was thinking to myself this could be Heaven or this could be Hell
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor I thought I heard them say
“Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place
(Such a lovely place)
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the Hotel California
Any time of year
(Any time of year)
You can find it here”
Her mind is Tiffany twisted, she got the Mercedes-Benz
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget
So I called up the captain, “Please bring me my wine”

“Hotel California”:
What a beautiful composition and meaningful lyrics.
For what it was all about please access the following  Wikipedia article link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_California

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VIKI STEFANOVICI-TARA FAGARASULUI

Din AN In An: Romanian Christmas Carol

http://www.crestinortodox.ro/colinde-audio-colinde-craciun/colinde-corul-symbol/din-in-corul-symbol-1710.html

Christmas Carol:

Pe Sub Geamul Inghetat_Craciun 2010:

Depress the hyperlink on the presentation to activate the Carol.

To Your Health, Drink Green and Yerba Maté Tea: Your Body Will Thank You For It

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This Blog does not endorse, at this time any alternative medical treatment and  is based only on its author’s observations made as a result of consuming both green tea and yerba maté tea, following the popular search engines and articles available in the internet. These observations were confirmed by personal health care professionals. I hope you will check with your doctor too, and that consuming tea, will prove a beneficial to your general health

George.

Yes folks: You heard me blog about yerba maté, and green tea.
Why would I do that ?
I don’t sell it, I only try to bring the good news to  people, like back home, about it because of its therapeutic properties, when prepared right, and it is the most effective diuretic year around, while sugar-free, which is a great benefit for reducing the blood glycemic index and cholesterol level. So let’s say one suffers from diabetes, type II (adult Onset), and with all the medication administered the blood glucose levels are high. Yerba maté cleanses the blood (the lymphatic system, helping the kidneys to eliminate toxins, including extra amounts of glucose.) In few days you will experience a more restful sleep, a better blood circulation to the extremities, and a lighter body, just from the diuretic effect. At the same time, the tea has minerals and antioxidants so it is a good nutrient, both sugar and fat-free.

The big secret about preparing the infusion is this: Unlike black tea , for yerba maté tea, allow the water to cool 2-3 minutes before making the  tea.

Since I drink several cups of tea daily, I prefer ( so I learned from the videos on You-Tube) to make it in my 12 cups coffeemaker. Not only that, but i mix it with green tea Both loose, and benefit from the compounded health effects. The temperature of the coffeemaker is just right (180 – 185 °F), to avoid bitter taste and destruction of the antioxidants present in both green tea and yerba maté.

Just like with green tea there are several companies from South America commercializing Yerba Mate, I like Tarragui sin palo, because of the fresh aroma as the leaves are dried naturally and because it was the first brand I tried  about a year ago.
Have a cup of yerba maté tea, today.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, MD- 1926-2004: On Death And Dying

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“The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.”
– Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

One of the greatest thoughts put on paper, and in into our hands, to understand: read it again and again until the understanding of this simple statement reaches your action center, and then work to meet its goal: allow yourself to leave self-denial  and gilt behind: Love yourself unconditionally and then start loving the world unconditionally. Put aside self-defeating predicaments, and live within the moment, and make amends starting now.

I hope that a visit to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross foundation website will inspire you, as much as it inspired me, or more, as it is always the right time to find out more about our make, our nature, ourselves. especially the Near Death Experience phenomenon, is a domain of a reality experienced by many people, a life altering experience that help many people feel as if they were reborn, and of a more fulfilling life. Some consider that time as a second birth, The Moment of Enlightenment, of knowing more about the universe, and of their duty to humanity here on Earth. 

http://www.ekrfoundation.org/

All That Jazz, 1979: There Will Be Some Changes Made

To learn more about the film, please access the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_That_Jazz,

And to learn more about the five stages of grieving please access

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross‘ book “on Death and Dying” 1969, and follow her remarkable career, until her death in 2004

All That Jazz 1979- “Jagger & Gideon!”

The Little Match Girl: A Christmas Reality For Many…

A reality, not in a FAR OFF COUNTRY, but here on our doorsteps…Everyday of the year…

The Match Girl: A Christmas Gift

Remember the Lesser fortunate…Compassion

Many depend only on the kindness of strangers: Compassion can put the gift of love on an empty table:  Know that some fairy tales are factual, and they repeat again and again.

Christmas Gifts We Were Blessed to Receive

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Depress the  following link, to count some of the most wonderful gifts we already possess:  Christmas Blessings Are Many And So Are The Gifts You Already Received…

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