G as in Good H as in Happy

Now that's a reality makeover!

November 16, 2004

The BBC reports that

A home makeover-style TV programme in Iraq that offers needy families the opportunity to have their war-damaged homes re-built from scratch has become a massive hit. Labour And Materials, broadcast on Iraqi satellite channel Al Sharqiya, does not merely redecorate a room, but reconstructs entire properties destroyed in the ongoing conflict in the country.

The programme makers select families whose homes have been made uninhabitable either during the war or since, and reconstruct it to the extent of supplying new furniture - and even shiny new kitchen gadgets - for free.

The producer reports that he is asking for help from NGO's and government sources. So far, he has received none.

I assume the usual advertisement or user fee-based method of financing television programs may not yet operate in Iraq. You'd think a US producer could find a market here.  At least as heartwarming as cosmetic surgery makeovers, with the exotic foreign locale too. And the sense that remedies for the war are appearing, one by one, would be welcome to most of us.

Not that different from Habitat for Humanity, with a media twist.

Thanks to relapsedcatholic.

Technical note:  Like so many Typepad customers, I am disoriented by  their technical changes.  Sorry about the varying type sizes.  I think "bigger" is "kinder," though Mozilla users can set their own browser's type size.

The bright spot here is that I will perhaps learn the tricks of splitting long posts, and to archive.  Any fellow bloggers who wish to offer a  few paragraphs of guidance, and any reader for any reason, are always invited to write me at good_and_happy "at" yahoo etc.

Simple things

November 10, 2004

Basic conversation about happiness, in the Wall Street Journal.

Key themes:

--Each of us seems to have a set-point of happiness level.  Setbacks, or advantages, affect us for a while, then we return to our usual level.

Within our set ranges, however, there is room to maneuver, says Gordon Parker, psychiatrist and executive director of Black Dog Institute, a Sydney-based facility for treating mood disorders.

Happier people, he says, tend to have a few key traits in common: they believe in causes larger than themselves; they are more optimistic; they don't look to material wealth for fulfillment; and they have many meaningful relationships. "They tend to be more resilient ... more flexible and more focused on the present and the future, not the past," says Dr. Parker.

--More money and things, for the most part, do not make us happier.  I know, I know, but they do keep telling us this.

--Simple habits, and making others happy, are good investments for our own happiness.

A carpenter's pencil

November 7, 2004

Colby Cosh  properly titles this "Mysteriously Poignant." A carpenter's pencil found in a 17th Century German house, the oldest pencil we know.

My father and my husband are both competent amateur carpenters. Drawing plans, and measuring and marking the wood, are all part of making it right. "Measure twice, cut once."  Vs. my style of "ready, fire, aim!"

Everything (except animals, plants, and mineral formations) in any human environment  has been planned and built by someone.  Perhaps a few folks in a mild climate can camp under the perfect spreading tree, but the rest of us require shelter, and furniture, and tools.

It's over. Almost. Soon. We hope.

November 2, 2004

In an age in which the media broadcast countless pieces of foolishness, the educated man is defined not by what he knows, but by what he doesn't know.

An epigram of the Colombian philosopher Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994). Courtesy Cella's Review.

In general, civilized happiness grows as much from not believing what dis-serves, as in believing in what does. Untangling the illogic of painful and confused stories, and luxuriating in happy ones.

What miserable assumption about me, or about you, or about life, can I question today?

What Men Really Want

November 1, 2004

Men turn first to search engines, not to girlfriends.

My own long-term experience with a representative of the male sex has taught me that he likes to orient himself about the context of what he is doing, "get the lay of the land." He's a map fanatic. I like to get a few Google or Teoma hits about a new subject, myself, before entering the conversation.

So, you tell me. What can we learn as friends and close-friends about being as useful as Google? It's unemotional. Offers a choice of factual orientations. A familiar context. Visual, not auditory. What can you add? It's a serious question. Interaction cartography in the making.

E-mail comments: good_and_happy [of course, use the @ sign] yahoo.com