Monday, February 16, 2009

Secret of Happiness (Bold Title, Yes?)

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.” --Charles Kingsley, nineteenth century English minister who wrote The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, as well as being chaplain to Queen Victoria.

Quoted on The Happiness Project

(The very thought of water babies makes me both happy and enthusiastic. And I'm not even a huge fan of "cute," but I do find delightful the idea of chubby young things paddling about in exotic mysterious realms.)





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Deep Sea Explorer

How many women who graduated in 1955 wind up a full-half century later as National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, a founder of a company that is designing an undersea vehicle to allow "full working access to the world's oceans?"

Often referred to as "Her Deepness," Sylvia Earle is highly likely the only one. And she is an outstanding example of BOLD. She has:

*done research 100 feet underwater while pregnant
*led an all-female group of researchers who lived underwater for two weeks (after being shut out of an earlier expedition with men because the organizers couldn't handle the coed deepsea dorm idea)
*explored sunken battleships of the South Pacific
*in 1979, "walked untethered on the sea floor at a lower depth than any living human being before or since"
*raised three children and published a dozen-plus books

If you want to make a small bold move on behalf of protecting oceans (like the Atlantic at Wrightsville Beach where I grew up): here are ten actions to choose from. Or do them all.









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