Welcome to Gratitude Watch.- Gratitude Watch is an eye on the internet for news, articles, videos, and other items, all focusing on the subject of gratitude. For more on my intent on these postings, see About Gratitude Watch.
- Since I was out last week, let’s see if I can make up for it with today’s installment. So … let’s rock!
• Something Visual •
Get out the Kleenex for this one: Youtube user neteinstein gives us “Team Hoyt – Dick and Rick Hoyt,” combining news coverage and internet video on a father’s devotion to his son with Cerebral Palsy, and the love that transforms them both.
Thanks to Twitter Prodigy for pointing me to this one:
•
Sue Tiritilli, Youtube user tiritilli2, Twitter user @SueTiritilli (and a Facebook user, too) gives us a solid gratitude message and some gratitude ear candy with “Sue’s Gratitude Message”
•
Jo Englesson, member of my “League of Gratitude,” founder of TOFA (“Token OF Appreciation”) — and Twitter user @JoEnglesson — gives us “Giving Year Day 82 – Double Down,” where two people receive Tokens of Appreciation in the same day.
• (The Rest of) the “League of Gratitude” •
Brenda Arnall at It’s a New Day gives us a twofer (because I missed a week): from August 21: “Sunshine And Sweetness,” some appreciate for peaches, the summer fruit, and from August 14, “Bargain Blessings,” about serendipity and finding just the right towels at just the right price. Brenda also shares the latest installments of her 52 Blessings gratitude journal craft project.
•
The prolific Maya, of The Gratitude Journal, has given us a veritable hoard of gratitude over the last two weeks: “I Am Thankful We Found the Puppy;” “40 Years Ago Today, Heading to Woodstock” (in which we discover that this hippy Earth Mother participated in that giant leap for hippy-kind); “I Am Thankful that Oliver Returned (and Everyone Left)” — the ongoing saga of the orange cat, among other things; “I Am Thankful for Being a Meddlesome Old Lady,” in which Maya shows that the members of a community can give a damn about each other, successfully; “I Am Thankful for This Video Laugh (from a Friend),” in which some of our friends in the jungle get plowed by fermented fruit; “I Am Thankful for Little Minds and Big Ideas;” and “I Am Thankful for Old People with Young Minds.”
Maybe I should just post a link to her blog every week.
(That would simplify it.)
• This is The New Stuff •
From Ian Aspin (Twitter: @IanAspin Facebook: Ian Aspin) at Really Good Thinking, “Gratitude. Perhaps the most powerful mental quality we can develop!” — some excellent reflections on missing the boat while we’re waiting for our ship to come in.
•
Dragos (twitter user @dragosroua) at Dragos Roua – The choice of a personal path gives us “100 Ways To Live A Better Life.” It may be hard to find in that huge list, but gratitude, like the bay leaf in Prego, is “in there.”
•
From the New Zealand Herald: “Freed dolphin splashes out in gratitude,” which tells us at least some of the animal kingdom “get it” too. Maybe someday we’ll catch up.
• Oldies but Goodies •
Not really about gratitude, but more like the abuse of it: Sam Levin in his “I am Annoyed and Disappointed” at the East Bay Express gives us an inside look at the Café Gratitude company, which leaves us thinking thoughts like “coersion” and “brainwashing.”
(Harsh? I think not. Any organization that holds itself up as a higher standard should be held all the more accountable. “Lu-see … you got some ’splainin’ to do.”)
•
From Tricycle: the Buddhist Review, “Beyond Religion,” a discussion with Rev. Dr. Alfred Bloom on Jodo Shin school of Buddhism, and the part that gratitude plays in undercutting the ego.
•
Stay tuned for the next Gratitude Watch.
• • •
If you have a substantive original posting about gratitude (please see my “About Gratitude Watch” page) feel free to email me a link through my contact page, or “tweet” me on Twitter.
© 2009, by Daniel Brenton. All Rights Reserved.
My name is 
