Pamela Leavey

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Category: Massachusetts

Back to Square One

Sometimes you just need to go back to square one.

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The Dalai Lama Stresses Ethics and Values at MIT

Last week, I drove down to Massachusetts so that I could attend the inaugural event at MIT’s Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values.

My interest in attending the event was two fold:

  • First —  To hear the Dalai Lama speak because I feel he is one of the great spiritual leaders of our times.
  • Second — Because I feel strongly about the objective and mission of the Center, which is to “inspire a new generation of 21st century leaders with compassionate responsibility for the global and long-term social, economic, and environmental impacts of their decisions.”

The Center’s inaugural event at MIT was quite different from the large event at Gillette Stadium on Saturday that drew a diverse crowd of nearly 16,000.

Dalai Lama

Peppering his talk on promoting ethics and compassion, with his wonderful sense of humor, my first impression of His Holiness, was that he possesses a quality of pure happiness and joy, that I would liken to the happiness that is reflected in a small child. When we are young we are far more open and joyful than we are as adults, because we are not burdened and encumbered with the problems that age and responsibility set upon us. (more…)

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Heading to Boston to Hear the Dalai Lama Speak at MIT

I’m heading to the Boston area tomorrow morning for a 3 days so that I can attend the inaugural event at The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT on Thursday, April 30. 

center-for-ethics

I’ve been granted a press pass from The Center, so I will have a substantial piece on the event when I return from Boston which will be published on The Democratic Daily. I’m very excited about the opportunity to hear His Holiness, The Dalai Lama speak on the topic of Ethics and Enlightened Leadership. I believe The Dalai Lama is one of the great spiritual leaders of our time and in my quest for inner peace his teaching have always resonated with me.

The Center “will promote the Dalai Lama’s vision of a better world by sponsoring interdisciplinary programs and deliberations on ethics.”

A collaborative think tank, the center is supported through the generosity of friends who recognize its potential to help shape tomorrow’s leaders. It will invite distinguished researchers, educators, entrepreneurs, policymakers, artists and others from diverse cultural, religious and educational backgrounds to contribute to its objectives through workshops and lecture series.

There’s more info on The Center here.

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Gardening with First Lady Michelle Obama

I grew up with a large vegetable garden (which was all organic) in our yard in West Newbury, Massachusetts. Every year my father would till the soil and we would all go out and help with the planting, weeding and then when the time came, the picking. The memories of the taste of the just picked vegetables is still ingrained in my mind and now that I have moved back to rural New England, I am anxiously awaiting the last frost so that I can plant my own little vegetable garden here in Eastport, Maine.

Needless to say, I think it’s awesome that the Obama’s are planting a White House kitchen garden, in effort to promote healthy eating.

09blog-garden

Today at the White House, First Lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack helped a group of school children, from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, plant seedlings in the White House Kitchen Garden. (more…)

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A Little Night Music

Carole King performs “Up On The Roof”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MopbhuZ2Bh0

I’ve thought often since moving here to Eastport how much I would love a place with a cupola or a widow’s walk on the roof. Years ago, I lived in a place in Newburyport that had both. It was a fantastic place to escape to, and the views of the city and the coast were wonderful.

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Plum Island Washes Out to Sea

There’s a natural flow of tides that causes erosion on all beaches. Add to that storms and other natural effects and the landscape of a beach is constantly changing. I can remember as a child camping on Sandy Point on Plum Island (Newburyport, MA) and claiming a rock as my own. Much to my chagrin my rock was no where to be founf the following summer when my family set up camp on the Point for the summer.

While I was down in Newburyport last weekend I drove down to Plum Island because I had heard there had been problems there with homes built on the water front being at risk. The photo below is of the jetty at the Center Beach on Plum Island:

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North Shore Magazine has an article about the situation on Plum Island: Last Days of Plum Island?

The romance and tranquility of Plum Island has lured homeowners to its long stretch of open shores for decades. But could the natural forces that spawned an entire community now threaten its very existence?

I’ve always been an ocean person, which is part of the reason I moved from Los Angeles, after nearly years there, back to the East Coast, to Eastport, Maine. (more…)

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