The Blame Trap

The Blame Trap 

“When you cast blame, you disempower yourself

and relinquish control of your destiny.”

Kirk Charles 

            Finding fault with others stops us from taking control and effectively handling difficult situations. It wastes our energy and time instead of exploring how we can positively influence the situation. We have chosen to be a part of the problem and not a part of the solution. In other words, blaming keeps us from imposing corrective action. Blame and fault finding serve no useful purpose in emergencies or our everyday lives. It involves finger pointing. Whenever we point our index finger at someone else we need to remind ourselves that three fingers are pointing back at us. So in essence we need to ask ourselves “What role did I play in this situation?” or “What did I do to perpetuate this situation?” Instead of finding fault, we can use our precious time to seek solutions. We will be moving forward instead of backwards.                                                                               

          When we hear ourselves blaming or finding fault with others we can be assured that we are still keeping ourselves infused in the grip of the blame trap and we are not fully accepting the vast amount of opportunities awaiting to unfold for us. We have been conditioned to compare, rate, score, judge, and assign value to movies, oranges, music, furniture, cars, people, animals,  professional sports teams, and so much more. We discuss good and bad, beautiful and ugly, skinny and fat. We notice gorgeous, awful, stupid, wonderful, nice, better, the worse and the best. Nothing seems to escape the critical, judgmental, evaluative mindset of this country.

            Blaming others is a good example of our conditioning which has provided us with a means of not taking responsibility. It is a way of using language to assign ownership to someone else for the choices we made. As a result of blaming others, we have given up our personal power. If we blame others, we put them in the driver’s seat. We give them the power, rendering ourselves powerless and out of control. When we blame others we train ourselves to focus on others preventing us from examining our role in any given situation and diverting responsibility to others.                       

Some examples to help us decide if we are residing in the blaming trap are: 

·         “It’s my parents’ fault. They were too abusive.”

·         “My spouse’s abuse ruined my life.”

·         “My boss is the boss from hell.”

            Self-criticizing will trap us in the blame game. Self-criticism comes in various forms: second guessing; self put-downs; and using adjectives to describe ourselves, such as “I am fat.” We need to move from describing ourselves to describing our behaviors. Think back to our childhoods. Many of us were called a bad kid because we did something like track mud into the house. It would have been better to be scolded for not taking our shoes off at the door? Another example, we could say “I am not fun” and change it to “I was not fun last night.” See the difference. We are not attacking our entire being, only one behavior. 

            Second guessing is very easy to recognize because we add shoulds and should nots to our conversations. Avoid using the word should. We can’t change the past so we may as well learn from each and every experience. 

            Accepting reality is one the goals of many healing modalities. Facing and coming to term with reality is beneficial. Acceptance is frequently the turning point for positive change. We have many things to accept through the course of any given day. Our present circumstances include who we are, where we live and live with, where we work, our mode of transportation, how much money we have, what our responsibilities are, what we may do for fun, and any existing problems. Sometimes accepting the things in our life can be a breeze when things are going well, then it is when things are not going so well.

            When dealing with unresolved trauma, we may feel overwhelmed by problems, losses or change. Even our healing journey can reveal losses we are struggling to accept. If some things in our lives have not been going well, we may have accepted a life filled with these problems. Without these challenges our lives may feel a little off balance.  We need to understand acceptance does not mean adaptation. It doesn’t mean resignation concerning the problems we are facing. It means we acknowledge and accept our circumstances, including ourselves and the people in our lives, as we are and they are. It is only from the state of acceptance we can achieve the ability to evaluate our present situation. 

            We have been conditioned to judge so many things that cross our paths from sport teams to cars. If we fall into the blame trap, we limit our opportunities to enhance our skills at handling difficult situations. We are no longer in the driver’s seat because we have failed to take responsibility for our own decisions and actions. Avoiding using the word should allows us to be in the present moment instead of hanging out in the past or our reaction to the past. We cannot change the past. Getting past our need to self-criticize ourselves will free us from our self-hatred prisons. We need to be careful to only judge our behaviors and not our entire being. Taking responsibility for everything life has to offer places us in control.   

 

Ten Steps to Coffee

From the Seed to the Cup

High on a lush, steep hillside covered with coffee trees, a picker carries a heavy bag filled with a long day's work. The bag contains ripe, red coffee cherries. Months from now, the beans from that day's harvest might be the very ones you purchase at your favorite store. Between the time that he picked them and you purchase them, the beans went through a series of steps very much like this.

1. Planting

A coffee bean is actually a seed. When dried, roasted and ground, it is used to brew coffee. But if the seed is not processed, it can be planted and will grow into a coffee tree.

Coffee seeds are generally planted in large beds in shaded nurseries. After sprouting, the seedlings are removed from the seed bed to be planted in individual pots in carefully formulated soils. They will be watered frequently and shaded from bright sunlight until they are hearty enough to be permanently planted. Planting often takes place during the wet season, so that the soil around the young trees remains moist while the roots become firmly established.

2. Harvesting the Cherries

Depending on the variety, it will take approximately 3 or 4 years for the newly planted coffee trees to begin to bear fruit. The fruit, called the coffee cherry, turns a bright, deep red when it is ripe and ready to be harvested. In most countries, the coffee crop is picked by hand, a labor-intensive and difficult process, though in places like Brazil, where the landscape is relatively flat and the coffee fields immense, the process has been mechanized. Whether picked by hand or by machine, all coffee is harvested in one of two ways:

Strip Picked - the entire crop is harvested at one time. This can either be done by machine or by hand. In either case, all of the cherries are stripped off of the branch at one time.
Selectively Picked - only the ripe cherries are harvested and they are picked individually by hand. Pickers rotate among the trees every 8 - 10 days, choosing only the cherries which are at the peak of ripeness. Because this kind of harvest is labor intensive, and thus more costly, it is used primarily to harvest the finer arabica beans.

In most coffee-growing countries, there is one major harvest a year; though in countries like Colombia, where there are two flowerings a year, there is a main and secondary crop. A good picker averages approximately 100 to 200 pounds of coffee cherry a day, which will produce 20 to 40 pounds of coffee beans. At the end of a day of picking, each worker's harvest is carefully weighed and each picker is paid on the merit of his or her work. The day's harvest is then combined and transported to the processing plant.

3. Processing the Cherries

Once the coffee has been picked, processing must begin as quickly as possible to prevent spoilage. Depending on location and local resources, coffee is processed in one of two ways.

The Dry Method
This is the age-old method of processing coffee and is still used in many countries where water resources are limited. The freshly picked cherries are simply spread out on huge surfaces to dry in the sun. In order to prevent the cherries from spoiling, they are raked and turned throughout the day, then covered at night, or if it rains, to prevent them from getting wet. Depending on the weather, this process might continue for several weeks for each batch of coffee. When the moisture content of the cherries drops to 11 percent, the dried cherries are moved to warehouses where they are stored .

The Wet Method
In wet method processing, the pulp is removed from the coffee cherry after harvesting and the bean is dried with only the parchment skin left on. There are several actual steps involved. First, the freshly harvested cherries are passed through a pulping machine where the skin and pulp is separated from the bean. The pulp is washed away with water, usually to be dried and used as mulch. The beans are separated by weight as they are conveyed through water channels, the lighter beans floating to the top, while the heavier, ripe beans sink to the bottom.

Next they are passed through a series of rotating drums which separate them by size.

After separation, the beans are transported to large, water-filled fermentation tanks. Depending on a combination of factors -- such as the condition of the beans, the climate and the altitude -- they will remain in these tanks for anywhere from 12 to 48 hours. The purpose of this process is to remove the slick layer of mucilage (called the parenchyma) that is still attached to the parchment; while resting in the tanks, naturally occurring enzymes will cause this layer to dissolve. When fermentation is complete the beans will feel rough, rather than slick, to the touch. At that precise moment, the beans are rinsed by being sent through additional water channels. They are then ready for drying.

4. Drying the Beans

If the beans have been processed by the wet method, the pulped and fermented beans must now be dried to approximately 11 percent moisture to properly prepare them for storage. These beans, still encased inside the parchment envelope (the endocarp), can be sun dried by spreading them on drying tables or floors, where they are turned regularly, or they can be machine dried in large tumblers. Once dried, these beans, referred to as 'parchment coffee,' are warehoused in sisal or jute bags until they are readied for export.

5. Milling the Beans

Before it is exported, parchment coffee is processed in the following manner:

Hulling
Machines are used to remove the parchment layer (endocarp) from wet processed coffee. Hulling dry processed coffee refers to removing the entire dried husk -- the exocarp, mesocarp & endocarp -- of the dried cherries.

Polishing
This is an optional process in which any silver skin that remains on the beans after hulling is removed in a polishing machine. While polished beans are considered superior to unpolished ones, in reality there is little difference between the two.

Grading & Sorting
Before being exported, the coffee beans will be even more precisely sorted by size and weight. They will also be closely evaluated for color flaws or other imperfections.

Typically, the bean size is represented on a scale of 10 to 20. The number represents the size of a round hole's diameter in terms of 1/64's of an inch. A number 10 bean would be the approximate size of a hole in a diameter of 10/64 of an inch and a number 15 bean, 15/64 of an inch. Beans are sized by being passed through a series of different sized screens. They are also sorted pneumatically by using an air jet to separate heavy from light beans.

Next defective beans are removed. Though this process can be accomplished by sophisticated machines, in many countries, it is done by hand while the beans move along an electronic conveyor belt. Beans of unsatisfactory size, color, or that are otherwise unacceptable, are removed. This might include over-fermented beans, those with insect damage or that are unhulled. In many countries, this process is done both by machine and hand, insuring that only the finest quality coffee beans are exported.

6. Exporting the Beans

The milled beans, now referred to as 'green coffee,' are ready to be loaded onto ships for transport to the importing country. Green coffee is shipped in either jute or sisal bags which are loaded into shipping containers, or it is bulk shipped inside plastic-lined containers. Approximately seven million tons of green coffee is produced worldwide each year.

7. Tasting the Coffee

At every stage of its production, coffee is repeatedly tested for quality and taste. This process is referred to as 'cupping' and usually takes place in a room specifically designed to facilitate the process. First, the taster -- usually called the cupper -- carefully evaluates the beans for their overall visual quality. The beans are then roasted in a small laboratory roaster, immediately ground and infused in boiling water, the temperature of which is carefully controlled. The cupper "noses" the brew to experience its aroma, an integral step in the evaluation of the coffee's quality. After letting the coffee rest for several minutes, the cupper "breaks the crust" by pushing aside the grounds at the top of the cup. Again the coffee is nosed before the tasting begins.

To taste the coffee, the cupper "slurps" a spoonful with a quick inhalation. The objective is to spray the coffee evenly over the cupper's taste buds, and then "weigh" it before spitting it out. Samples from a variety of batches and different beans are tasted daily. Coffees are not only analyzed this way for their inherent characteristics and flaws, but also for the purpose of blending different beans or determining the proper roast. An expert cupper can taste hundreds of samples of coffee a day and still taste the subtle differences between them. 

8. Roasting the Coffee

Roasting transforms green coffee into the aromatic brown beans that we purchase, either whole or already ground, in our favorite stores. Most roasting machines maintain a temperature of about 550 degrees Fahrenheit. The beans are kept moving throughout the entire process to keep them from burning and when they reach an internal temperature of about 400 degrees, they begin to turn brown and the caffeol, or oil, locked inside the beans begins to emerge.

This process, called pyrolysis is at the heart of roasting. It is what produces the flavor and aroma of the coffee we drink. When the beans are removed from the roaster, they are immediately cooled either by air or water. Roasting is generally performed in the importing countries because freshly roasted beans must reach the consumer as quickly as possible.

9. Grinding Coffee

The objective of a proper grind is to get the most flavor in a cup of coffee. How coarse or fine the coffee is ground depends on the method by which the coffee is to be brewed. Generally, the finer the grind the more quickly the coffee should be prepared. That is why coffee ground for use in an espresso machine is much finer than coffee which will be brewed in a drip system.

10. Brewing Coffee

Before you brew your coffee, take a moment to look carefully at the beans. Smell their aroma. Think of the many processes that these beans have gone through since the day they were hand-picked and sorted in their origin country. Consider the long way they have traveled to your kitchen. Prepare your coffee thoughtfully and enjoy it with pleasure. Many people have been instrumental in bringing it to your cup!

Source: National Coffee Associate, USA. Retrieved on March 6, 2015 from http://ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=68

 

I-500 International Snowmobile Race

 

I-500 International Snowmobile Race

Since 1969, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan has hosted the I-500 International Snowmobile Race. It was classified as an endurance race. This even is one of the largest ones held in Michigan annually. The event receives support from the governor, House of Representatives and the Senate. Snowmobiling is a popular sport in Michigan and this event brings many spectators and participants to the area. Motels and hotels are already fully booked for next year’s event. Corporations such as Choko and Woodies support this event. The oval one mile track is the only one of its kind in Michigan. 38 teams are allowed to participate. For the 2015 race, 60 teams tried out for the race. The I-500 board of directors and volunteers do not have any trouble filling the team slots. The event is covered in snowmobile magazines such as Snow Tracks. CBC purchases 10 seats in the VIP Room each year. They use these seats for drawings and other activities. These seats cost $300. per person. Over 200 volunteers help pull off the race. People from all over the world travel to the Sault to attend and compete in this event.

            To set up for the race, two million gallons of water is poured on the track prior to the race. The volunteers and board of directors start preparing for the race soon after the annual race is held. They advertise all over the state. Someone mentioned that more advertisement needs to occur in the Sault right before the race so community members in the Sault would know what’s going on. Ric Federau, Director and Spokesperson and Race Chairman for the I-500 stated he plans on enhancing the media announcements for the Sault. Ric is in charge of setting safety standards. Part of preparation for the race involves flying Nascar officials from Atlanta and they use their transponders to track laps, speed, time and driver’s name for the entire race. One bunker building from the Brady Army Base is left standing near the track and 3,000 bales of hay are stored to put around the track to provide cushion in the event if snowmobilers are thrown off their machines. People in prominent positions were starting the race; however, it was decided to ask disabled veterans to start the race. As part of their community involvement campaign, the board decided to invite and include the disabled veterans program in Michigan and the I-500 race is advertised in the Disabled Veterans magazine which has over 75,000 readers.

            In order to demonstrate the importance of volunteers, all volunteers are fed during the week of activities associated with the I-500 race. Ric’s wife decided to take on that task and she is given a budget of $3,000 to do so. The I-500 association receives a lot of in-kind from local businesses concerning the food provisions. The board works with a lot of charitable organizations. The elementary school children in the community of the Sault participate in a competition involving the buttons for the race. The winner receives $50. and the child’s family is given the opportunity to attend the race for free. Buttons cost $10 to $15 and are good for the entire week’s events.

            Concerning teams, each team brings 14 members. There are two drivers and the others work in the cockpit. The cockpit is run just like the ones in major car races. They repair anything that is wrong with the machine in a few seconds and fill the machine with gas. Each entry pays $10. Drivers are switched after 70 laps. Ric was wondering what happens if they have to go to the bathroom. I am wondering the same thing. The race starts at 10:00 a.m. sharp and the race is usually held during the first week in February. If weather is a problem, they try to get in at least 250 laps to constitute as a full race. One year the weather was unseasonably warm and the drivers ended up driving on mud. Things got very messy. Gary Moyer tried out for the 2015 race and did not qualify. He’s a world champion. He’s coming back next year. Everyone who wants to race has to provide a resume. The resume needs to include what races they participated in.

            A Miss I-500 pageant is held each year. In 2015 there were 60 contestants. Each entry pays $10.  This year they worked with the Pink Ribbon Riders which supports breast cancer awareness. The Queen and her court attend functions throughout the year around the state. The pageant contestants have to provide an essay about specific topics and perform in a talent contest.

            During race week, there are activities scheduled from Monday night to Saturday, the day of the race. On Monday, families are invited to participate in public skating. There were 200-250 skaters enjoying the ice. Tues. and Wednesday time trials are scheduled. Wednesday night a Rookie race is held. On Friday night, one of the largest children’s race is held. The children are on their little 120 machines and family members become their race crews. Officials judge the race. A big bon fire is held. Every child receives a trophy and pizza is served to the families and children.

            A beer tent is provided for those who want to drink and this is supervised to make sure no one is driving him intoxicated. Security is provided during all race functions.

             There are 390,000 registered snowmobiles in Michigan and 70% of the snowmobiles are trailored to the north of the state. The trail from Sault Ste. Marie to Tahquamenon Falls is one of the most traveled in Michigan. My husband and I traveled on that trail several times. The scenery  is gorgeous and when you get to the end of the trail, many snowmobiles are parked at a popular restaurant and brewery which serves phenomenal food. Ric stated that there is a need for more involvement with Lake Superior State University and Canada. Snowmobiling can be a very fun sport in which the whole family can enjoy and the I-500 race is set up for family enjoyment.