I first saw the phrase in an old pharmacological text which I repaired. The original old blog entry about that is here.
Technically, spirit of bees was an ancient curative made in medieval times from extract of bees. But I was charmed by the sound of the phrase, the rhythm of the words. It brought to mind the buzzing of the swarm, the activity of the hive, the busy-ness of bee-ness. As a person who always has many different things going on all the time, and who is very much engaged in the busy-ness of being, I could relate to those words.
Acting with energy and purpose; this is the Spirit of Bees.
For the last week or two, it feels like I have been engaging in Total Internet Immersion (TII).
It all began when I followed a link to Twitter back in October. It seemed innocuous enough at first. Little messages between groups of people. Kind of like passing notes in class. Easy enough to do in between other online tasks. Initially, I found it interesting as a tool to use to follow little updates about the election through news media tweets and through political Twitterers.
At first, I couldn’t figure out how people got all those followers, or even why they would want all those strangers on their Twitter lists. But, as I began to explore some of the links other people shared, I moved further and further out into the Twitter stream, until I found a bunch of links leading me to people who are focused on using social media to their best advantage as a business tool as well as personally.
One of these links I followed was via @problogger leading to this TwitTip post, Ten People All Twitter Beginners Should be Following. It included a list of ten social media types, and, just for the heck of it, I decided to follow them all. That generated a lot of tweets, some not all that interesting to me, but others often with good links.
Guy Kawasaki @guykawasaki was on the list. Among many other things, he’s the author of Reality Check Through his tweets I found his Alltop site. It collects pertinent and/or most relevant sites in all manner of topics in individual categories all on one page. Cheese, for example. Better yet, go read his explanation of this alternate type of search engine here here
Somehow I got from Alltop to posterous I think posterous is a great little site that could be very useful to bloggers of any type. It’s got an easy to understand interface which makes it very convenient to email a post which can also be routed on to your blogs, facebook, flickr or twitter. Check it out, I think you might like it. Believe me if this non-techie gramma can get it, it has to be easy.
I’ve also found links to other useful little sites like bit-ly , a nice little url shortener, much nicer than tinyurl, and from bit.ly you can also post directly to Twitter. And also to BrightKit another little application which allows you to manage your twittering in a more comprehensive way.
So, as you can tell, I’m suffering from TII, absorbed for the moment in following links like mad, and just getting more and more twitterpated every day. Why not follow me @jowho on into oblivion?
I don’t plan to make a regular practice of Granny-blogging here. For one thing there is another daycare plan in the offing; they’re just waiting for a space to open up, so I won’t be babysitting forever. Thank goodness. So I’ll only have an occasional Granny-blog entry, and today is another of those days.
Ahh… but today is a much better day so far. The Papaya is in a better mood; whatever was bugging her yesterday seems to have passed.
That, and the mothership arrived at grammas to take her away…from boredom, that is. Well, it’s really the saucer! We actually found one at a thrift store for $2.90. I gave it a full clean up and sanitizing wash, and it’s going to be a great help.
Up until now we’ve only had the Gymini, the swing, and a little baby rocking chair thingie with “calming vibrations.” These days everything comes as a sort of self contained entertainment unit, with it’s own group of toys attached, Or, as C. calls them, various versions of little baby prisons with toys.
Back in the day, I recall mostly using a play pen, some sort of baby bouncing thing, and a walker. Play pens were still just another version of baby prison, only with real bars, containing loose toys which eventually always ended up being thrown over the rails for mom to constantly pick up. Vintage baby walkers would be far too dangerous to use today.
So prison or progress, I am very glad to have the saucer, with it’s permanently attached amusements, I’ve got containment for a contented baby, and no wheels, so I don’t ever have to worry about it going anywhere it shouldn’t.
When I think about it, I sometimes wonder just how kids managed to make it to adulthood, and I’m talking about kids born in the 60s and 70s, not the last century…umm, er..oh, yeah, that was the last century.
When my kids were little, what served for a car seat was a little upholstered chair, kind of like a restaurant booster seat, which hooked over the back seat with metal hooks and had a padded bar which came across the waist in front with a thin cloth strap that went from the bar between the legs attaching under the seat. And we had an infant seat into which you strapped the baby using flimsy plastic buckle straps, and then you could also use a seat belt to tighten around the whole thing. That is, IF, you even had a seat belt in the back seat. They weren’t required.
Nothing really held the older children in, and any kid who could climb could get out of the booster style seat anytime they wanted to and they did, believe me, which allows me to make the segue into this story…
I had taken my both of my kids, ages barely three and 18 months, out to the grocery store. Grocery stores where I lived were not open past 6pm so you couldn’t shop in the evening and leave the kids home. It was such a hassle that I usually went once a week and bought as much as I could.
Mission acomplished, I loaded up several bags of groceries into the back of the VW station wagon and the kids into their booster style car seats. On the way home, a moth started flying around inside the car. My 3 year son old got all excited about this and kept yelling, “Mommy, mommy a bug, a bug!”
Next thing I know he is out of his car seat and over the seat into the back with the grocery bags yelling, “I get it, Mommy, I get it!”
My daughter is struggling to try get out of her seat now and get in on the action. I’m in the middle of traffic, and my son is going through the bags. He grabs a package of braunschwieger from one bag, wielding it over his head like a club, now yelling, “I hit the bug, Mommy!”
I’m beside myself, I can’t stop yet and I can’t get the kid back in his seat. I find myself just yelling “Get back in the seat! Get back in the seat! Don’t hit the moth with the sausage!”
And that, my friends, is the exact moment that the title of Jean Kerr’s book, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies,made perfect sense to me.
Spirit of bees? I first saw the phrase in an old pharmacological text whihc I repaired. Entry about that can be found here in an entry from my original old blog. Technically, it was an ancient curative made from extract of bees. I just like the sound of the phrase, the rhythm of the words. Spirit of bees. The buzzing swarm, the activity of the hive, the busy bee-ness going on all the time. Acting with energy and purpose, this is the spirit of bees.