Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

“The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.

Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second we can turn the tables on Resistance.

This second, we can sit down and do our work.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Steven Pressfield

“It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Stephen Spender

“Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.”
― Stephen Spender

“I'm struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoring youth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion.”
― Stephen Spender

“Although Poets are vain and ambitious, their vanity and ambition are of the purest kind attainable in this world. They are ambitious to be accepted for what they ultimately are as revealed in their poetry.”
― Stephen Spender

“All that you can imagine you already know.”
― Stephen Spender

“When you read and understand a poem, then you master chaos a little.”
― Stephen Spender

Eric Maisel

Fearless Creating
TEXT
by Eric Maisel

Steven Pressfield

Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates the strength of Resistance. Therefore, the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.
-Steven Pressfield

source

13 Degrees, Wind Chill -2

Romeo-dog is on my lap. Sammy-cat is on Bill's lap. The wind is so cold the animals are looking for our body heat. The air is so dry we have static electricity sparks when touching everything.

Stephen Pressfield

There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us. Step one is to recognize this. This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours.”
- Stephen Pressfield
source

Dusty Blankets

After much sneezing I decided to wash all of my blankets to get the dust out. I hung them up to dry in my boiler room. When the weather is this cold the boiler room is warm and things dry fast. It felt like a good end of the year task and a way to make use of the extreme temperatures.

Dream

I dreamed I was eating an orange Halloween candy I found on the sidewalk and I was about to eat a half a sandwich I found on the outside stairs.

I dreamed my mother had died and in her possessions there was a box of half a dozen blank sketchbooks. I considered taking one.

Boiler Man

Rich, my favorite boiler man came for the annual tune up the other day. I tried to introduce him to Romeo but Romeo got spooked and ran upstairs. "I'm sorry, I should have introduced you outside. He didn't expect to suddenly see a person in the boiler room," I said. "Don't take it personally. He's a bit shy with men. We adopted him from the shelter in October. He's a sweetie but sometimes it takes a few minutes for him to feel safe," I said.
"I love animals. My daughter lives with me and she has two beagles. She takes them for walks on the bike path. Here's a photo of them in their winter coats," he said, showing me on his phone.
"I recognize that spot at the entrance."
"Yes, that's where they are. My daughter spoils them," he said. "She made them a dog bed from an old baby crib. She sawed off the legs and kept the mattress and made the railings into swinging double doors. They love it. She even has a sound machine hooked up in there that plays nature sounds."
"Birds?" I asked.
"Waterfalls," he replied. "Otherwise they'll go nuts when they hear me come home. I told her if she ever has kids she won't be able to spoil them like this."

12 Degree Rage

I was in my yard letting my dog have a quick pee when I heard a man yelling and banging. I looked over and saw him kicking and pounding the metal door of a nearby tenement building. He was shouting, Let me in! Then he kicked off the side mirror of a nearby parked car, shattering it. A woman inside the vehicle said, Great, you just smashed your own car mirror. It was about 12 degrees out and over the next few minutes he stormed around waving his arms and yelling. Eventually the freezing weather cooled him down. A police officer arrived and got out of his vehicle so they could have a nice chat. Holidays, divorces, poverty, stress, full moon. I felt for the man.

Unmoored

When my regular life changes abruptly due to holidays, weather or moods I have to work hard to find the things that keep me from becoming unmoored. Swimming and walking and writing are a good place to start. When I am in receive-mode holidays and weeks-off are a nightmare. It's a difficult time for introverts.

Ice Cream Brain Freeze to Rid Headache

Article

Great Small Works

https://greatsmallworks.org/about/index.html

Brené Brown

“You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”
― Brené Brown

Brené Brown

“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.

Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Brené Brown

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
― Brené Brown

Authenticity

“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
― Brené Brown

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”
― Brené Brown

“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Brené Brown

“What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.”
― Brené Brown

“I now see how owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.”
― Brené Brown

“Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.”
― Brené Brown

“If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.”
― Brené Brown

“Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we're all in this together.”
― Brené Brown

“When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Ram Dass: Circle

“I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as I work on myself and I work on myself to help people.”
― Ram Dass

Ram Dass

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
― Ram Dass

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.”
― Ram Dass

“The next message you need is always right where you are.”
― Ram Dass

“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”
― Ram Dass

“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”
― Ram Dass

“Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.”
― Ram Dass

“As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be you can't see how it is.”
― Ram Dass

“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”
― Ram Dass

“We're all just walking each other home.”
― Ram Dass

“We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.”
― Ram Dass

“The most exquisite paradox… as soon as you give it all up, you can have it all. As long as you want power, you can't have it. The minute you don't want power, you'll have more than you ever dreamed possible.”
― Ram Dass

“I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.”
― Ram Dass

“The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back.”
― Ram Dass

“In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.”
― Ram Dass

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”
― Ram Dass

“The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.”
― Ram Dass

“What you meet in another being is the projection of your own level of evolution.”
― Ram Dass

“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”
― Ram Dass

“Let's trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let's lay down our righteousness and just be together.”
― Ram Dass

“Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.”
― Ram Dass

“We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.”
― Ram Dass

“A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there's work to be done.”
― Ram Dass

“I'm not interested in being a "lover." I'm interested in only being love.”
― Ram Dass

“The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody.”
― Ram Dass

“Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.”
― Ram Dass

“We're here to awaken from the illusion of separateness”
― Ram Dass, How Can I Help? Stories and Reflection on Service

Dalai Lama XIV

“Choose to be optimistic, it feels better.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness

“When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways--either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness: An Anthology of Writings By and About the Dalai Lama

“If you can cultivate the right attitude, your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience and understanding.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Look at children. Of course they may quarrel, but generally speaking they do not harbor ill feelings as much or as long as adults do. Most adults have the advantage of education over children, but what is the use of an education if they show a big smile while hiding negative feelings deep inside? Children don't usually act in such a manner. If they feel angry with someone, they express it, and then it is finished. They can still play with that person the following day.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“There is only one important point you must keep in your mind and let it be your guide. No matter what people call you, you are just who you are. Keep to this truth. You must ask yourself how is it you want to live your life. We live and we die, this is the truth that we can only face alone. No one can help us, not even the Buddha. So consider carefully, what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives. I’m not talking about the short-term gratification of pleasures like sex, drugs or gambling (though I’m not knocking them), but something that will bring true and lasting happiness. The kind that sticks.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

Love and Compassion

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness

Dramatic Winter Pond Rescue

Article

Compassion vs Confidence

“The first and most important thing to do is to notice that voice in your head – that running commentary we all have as we go about our lives,” Mr. Barker said. “Often that voice is way too critical. You beat yourself up for every perceived mistake. To be more self-compassionate, you need to notice that voice and correct it.”

That doesn’t mean lying to yourself, Mr. Barker says, but rather changing the way you talk to yourself. It may help to imagine the way a loved one would talk to you about your mistakes, then switch that voice out for a more supportive one. Keep in mind, however, that the harsh critic in your head is not your enemy. This is a common misconception that can make things worse, Dr. Neff said, because that voice is a survival mechanism that’s intended to keep you safe.

“Don’t beat yourself up for beating yourself up,” she said. “We just need to learn to make friends with our inner critic.”

Article

Dalai Lama XIV

“There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.'
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

Adam Gerstacov

It’s about the audience and me sharing a moment together.”
-Adam Gerstacov
source

Erin Dunkerly

Op-Ed Contributor
The Gun Lobby Is Hindering Suicide Prevention

By Erin Dunkerly NYT
Dec. 26, 2017
Article

Neil Gaiman

This is everything I have to tell you about love: nothing.
This is everything I've learned about marriage: nothing.

Only that the world out there is complicated,
and there are beasts in the night, and delight and pain,
and the only thing that makes it okay, sometimes,
is to reach out a hand in the darkness and find another hand to squeeze,
and not to be alone.

It's not the kisses, or never just the kisses: it's what they mean.
Somebody's got your back.
Somebody knows your worst self and somehow doesn't want to rescue you
or send for the army to rescue them.

It's not two broken halves becoming one.
It's the light from a distant lighthouse bringing you both safely home
because home is wherever you are both together.

So this is everything I have to tell you about love and marriage: nothing,
like a book without pages or a forest without trees.

Because there are things you cannot know before you experience them.
Because no study can prepare you for the joys or the trials.
Because nobody else's love, nobody else's marriage, is like yours,
and it's a road you can only learn by walking it,
a dance you cannot be taught,
a song that did not exist before you began, together, to sing.

And because in the darkness you will reach out a hand,
not knowing for certain if someone else is even there.
And your hands will meet,
and then neither of you will ever need to be alone again.


And that's all I know about love.

source:http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2017/10/wedding-thoughts-all-i-know-about-love.html

Neil Gaiman

Be kind to yourself in the year ahead.

Remember to forgive yourself, and to forgive others. It's too easy to be outraged these days, so much harder to change things, to reach out, to understand.

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

Meet new people and talk to them. Make new things and show them to people who might enjoy them.

Hug too much. Smile too much. And, when you can, love.

- Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman

“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Neil Gaiman: Dreams

“People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.”
― Neil Gaiman

Bookstore

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Everybody

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman book 5 A Game of You

Fairy Tales

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

Neil Gaiman

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”
― Neil Gaiman

William Shakespeare

“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Deb Caletti

“When what you want is a relationship, and not a person, get a dog.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

National Treasure: Paul Krugman

America is not yet lost.

Chef Michael's Slow and Silky Salmon

Canadian Chef Michael Smith's Pink Salmon
My favorite Chef's recipe

http://chefmichaelsmith.com/recipe/slow-baked-salmon-honey-mustard-glaze/

Since salmon is a fatty fish, it’s often cooked quickly with high, searing heat that gives it a crispy crust. But salmon is just as delicious when it’s cooked slowly. Gentle, patient heating gives it a tender, melt-in-your-mouth texture that is truly memorable - especially when it’s brightened with a simple honey mustard glaze.

Yield: Serves 4
Ingredients

2 tablespoons (30 mL) of honey
2 tablespoons (30 mL) of your favourite mustard
1 tablespoon (15 mL) of soy sauce
1 teaspoon (5 mL) of your favourite hot sauce
4 centre-cut salmon fillets (each about 6 ounces/175g), skinned and patted dry
Procedure

Preheat your oven to the low, low temperature of 225 °F (110 °C). Lightly oil a roasting pan.

Whisk together the honey, mustard, soy sauce, and hot sauce. Arrange the fillets in the roasting pan skin side down, leaving an inch or two of space in between each one. Spread the glaze evenly over the salmon. Bake until the salmon is cooked through and opaque but still juicy, about 30 minutes.

Serve and share!

© Chef Michael Smith
Variation

The gentle heat of this cooking method gives the salmon an incredibly luscious texture that you may not have enjoyed before. It’s a delicate way to show off the fish’s natural flavours while revealing a smooth luxurious mouth feel.

Lap Dog

My 60 pound dog Romeo is draped across my lap and he is nice and warm.

Kale and White Bean Soup

We just bought six bunches of kale and after rinsing them and chopping them up I started steaming them in my stock pot. Then I quick rinsed soaked and boiled a one pound package of dried Northern white beans for a few minutes to plump them up. I let them rest for an hour before I pressure cooked them for 20 minutes with a few bloops of olive oil. I chopped fresh garlic cloves and sliced huge chunks of ginger and added it to the pot. I dissolved a bunch of Maggi chicken bullion cubes in a cup of boiling water and added a splash of cheap port and more olive oil and a few sprinkles of red chili flakes and some dried parsley. I added this all to the pot with more water and brought it up to a simmer. It tastes fantastic.

Oscar Wilde

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

Spread Love

“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
― Mother Teresa

“Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.”
― Mother Teresa

“Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.”
― Mother Teresa

A Simple Path

“The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.”
― Mother Teresa, A Simple Path: Mother Teresa

“Peace begins with a smile. Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.”
― Mother Teresa

“Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”
― Mother Teresa

“I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, 'How many good things have you done in your life?' rather he will ask, 'How much love did you put into what you did?”
― Mother Teresa

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
― Mother Teresa

“Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
― Mother Teresa

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”
― Mother Teresa

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
― Mother Teresa

“It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.”
― Mother Teresa

“At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done.
We will be judged by "I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.”
― Mother Teresa

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”
― Mother Teresa

Gandhi: When I Despair

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections

“Where there is love there is life.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“God has no religion.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Hate the sin, love the sinner.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:

- I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
- I shall fear only God.
- I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
- I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
- I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The future depends on what you do today.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

Dhruv Khullar

Loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early: Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.

The evidence on social isolation is clear. What to do about it is less so.

Loneliness is an especially tricky problem because accepting and declaring our loneliness carries profound stigma. Admitting we’re lonely can feel as if we’re admitting we’ve failed in life’s most fundamental domains: belonging, love, attachment. It attacks our basic instincts to save face, and makes it hard to ask for help.

I see this most acutely during the holidays when I care for hospitalized patients, some connected to I.V. poles in barren rooms devoid of family or friends — their aloneness amplified by cheerful Christmas movies playing on wall-mounted televisions. And hospitalized or not, many people report feeling lonelier, more depressed and less satisfied with life during the holiday season.

- Dhruv Khullar
NYT Article

Gail Caldwell

“I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. ...We tell the story to get them back, to capture the traces of footfalls through the snow.”
― Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

“Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive.”
― Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

“Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.”
― Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

“Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation.”
― Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

“Grief is what tells you who you are alone.”
― Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

“The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course. Until Caroline had died I had belonged to that other world, the place of innocence, and linear expectations, where I thought grief was a simple, wrenching realm of sadness and longing that gradually receded. What that definition left out was the body blow that loss inflicts, as well as the temporary madness, and a range of less straightforward emotions shocking in their intensity.”
― Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

“It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur, and epiphany of one-way dialogue. Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part-- time and space and heart's weariness are the blander executioners or human connection.”
― Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

“If writers possess a common temperament, it's that they tend to be shy egomaniacs; publicity is the spotlight they suffer for the recognition they crave.”
― Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home

Michel de Montaigne

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

Emerson

“You are constantly invited to be what you are.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Eye Contact

“Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don't want to make eye contact while doing it."

― John Green, Thoughts from Places: The Tour, Nerdfighteria Wiki, January 17, 2012”

Perfume Life

If we did not perfume life with love, as much love as possible, darling, as we put sugar into drugs for children, nobody would care to take it just as it is.”
― Guy de Maupassant

To Write...

“To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Pale Blue Dot

A cosmic reflection by Maria Popova. Read

Ice Storm

The bushes look like they are made of glass.

How to Remove Water from an Ear

Article

Glad to be Inside

I ran into Mike yesterday on my walk downtown. He was wearing a big furry Russian-style hat and carrying bags of empty cans. "Good to see you," I said. "I love your hat, it looks great with your beard."
"Thanks, it's warm," he said. "Wow, Romeo has calmed down so much. Remember how he was when you first got him?"
"Now he's totally chilled out in his little red winter coat. What love can do," I said. "How are you?"
"I just received a card from my parents it read, Good luck with your recovery. We pray for you. We have a little gift for you when we see you. I haven't seen them since February. Do they think that's going to bring me forward? This pushes me back," he said.
"Do they live around here?"
"Yes, on Magnolia Street. I'm going to see my caseworker tomorrow and I'll bring the card to show her. Then I'll throw it away. When my cat Minky had to be put down in September my father said, get over it. I live alone. That cat was my child," he said. "You know, you had Lily and now you have Romeo. My father has his Min-Pin Brutus and when Brutus dies what am I going to say?" I looked at Mike. "I would never say get over it," he said.
"Of course not, you are a sensitive, smart, caring, person. Sadly, your father is not. Sometimes we don't get the love and acceptance from our parents and siblings and it hurts like hell but there are smart kind people who do understand. Let me say right now, I think you are a lovely person."
"But I pick up cans to pass the time of day. Isn't that sad?"
"You pick up cans to clear your head and be healthy and perform a job," I said.
"When I turned on the TV and saw all these guys being fired for sexual abuse it gave me PTSD. I had abuse from a teacher and again when I was 35 living at Water's Edge Apartments. A guy came in and went to town on me down there," he said. "So I get out and walk and I walk all the way to Wrentham, about ten miles a day, and then when I go back home I am tired and I am glad to be inside."

Happy Birthday Robert Bly

Article about a recent documentary on Robert Bly.

Chuck Palahniuk

“Remember this. The people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.

We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact. So don't fuck with us.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Tina Fey

“But I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyoncé and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I was ten. I had noticed something was weird earlier in the day, but I knew from commercials that one's menstrual period was a blue liquid that you poured like laundry detergent onto maxi pads to test their absorbency. This wasn't blue, so...I ignored it for a few hours.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

ROMEO

On October 2nd we adopted a new pup from dog orphans of Douglas Massachusetts. He's about 2 years old. He stole our hearts from day one. We named him ROMEO because he is so handsome (and muscular). He is a medium sized dog, a black lab-pitbull mix and he is always dressed for dinner in a tuxedo. He is a snuggle bunny, sweet smart lovely and a little goofy. He quickly learned basic commands and how to walk on a leash and live in a house. Our cat Sammy loves to tease him. They are friends.

Easy Eggnog Ice Cream

Here's a simple way to make eggnog ice cream.
If you have it... grate some fresh nutmeg on top!

Buttermilk and Sourdough Combined

I had some leftover buttermilk and decided to add it to my sourdough batter for my latest semolina bread. Stay tuned. Meanwhile I found a recipe for buttermilk sourdough rolls when hunting to see if anyone else has done the same.
Update: It came out great. It is both chewy and springy.

Dalai Lama: Simple Kindness

“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple. Your philosophy is simple kindness.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“If a problem is fixable, if a situation is such that you can do something about it, then there is no need to worry. If it's not fixable, then there is no help in worrying. There is no benefit in worrying whatsoever.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

Locker Room

The locker room at the YMCA pool smells like the elephant pen at the zoo. This ripe urine smell is a HUGE problem and it's creating another problem; discouraging people from joining the YMCA. All someone needs is to have a tour of the facilities with this dreadful stench, and they will not join. We need to close off the locker room for 20 minutes during the daytime hours so it can be cleaned. If the janitor is afraid of law suits filed by nude people walking in on him, have him put up those yellow CLOSED FOR CLEANING signs. I googled and learned that this is a nationwide problem in YMCA locker rooms. Perhaps we can be the first to SOLVE it!

Dalai Lama XIV

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Love is the absence of judgment.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.'
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness

More Soup!

I took my leftover German potato salad and the salad's pressure cooker steaming and marinade liquid and used it as a base for my kale soup. The potato salad marinade consisted of cooked olive oil, red wine vinegar, prepared mustard, salt, sugar, and potato water. For the soup I added 2 cans of red kidney beans, a pound of frozen corn niblets, a few quarts of water, 4 cubes of chicken bullion, Adobo, olive oil, red chili flakes, parsley, cheap port wine, and chunks of ginger root and fresh garlic oops, and three rinsed chopped one pound bunches of fresh kale. It was fantastic.

Deborah Feldman

Indeed, books and literature played an existential role in Ms. Feldman’s life from early on. As a girl, she was forbidden to read books, but did so anyway, risking punishment to sneak into public libraries. Young adult novels like “Anne of Green Gables” and “Little Women” inspired her. In the main characters, she saw the possibility for self-determination. She taught herself English with the help of homemade vocabulary lists: peccary, pecuniary, perspicacious. “I really liked words,” she said. “For me, the biggest problem was that I had never heard the words spoken out loud.”

She is reveling in this new voice that writing in German, rather than English, has opened up for her. In rededicating herself to writing, she says she credits the literature that gave her hope in her darkest hours. “When everything in your life is bleak, and you see someone writing lovingly about this bleakness,” she added, “it’s so legitimizing.”

Article

Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice explained

The word “solstice” comes from the Latin words sol sistere, which means “sun standing still.” On the December solstice, the sun’s daily southward movement in the sky appears to pause, and we see the sun rise and set at its southernmost points on the horizon before reversing direction. It’s a yearly astronomical turning point that humans have celebrated for millennia (just think Stonehenge or the ancient Maya).

Antidote

“I believe in the power of laughter and tears as an antidote to hatred and terror.”
― Charlie Chaplin

Life

“I suppose that's one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.”
― Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin

“Actors search for rejection. If they don’t get it they reject themselves.”
― Charlie Chaplin

Tragedy + Comedy

“Think about yourself at least once in your life otherwise you may miss the best comedy in this world.”
― Charlie Chaplin

“In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature - or go insane”
― Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography

“In this desperate way, I started many a comedy.”
― Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography

Charlie Chaplin

“I have no further use for America. I wouldn't go back there if Jesus Christ was President.”
― Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

“All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl.”
― Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography

Despair

“Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.”
― Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

“Life is a play that does not allow testing. So, sing, cry, dance, laugh and live intensely, before the curtain closes and the piece ends with no applause.”
― Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin: Interviews

Egos

“In the light of our egos, we are all dethroned monarchs.”
― Charlie Chaplin

Courage + Imagination

“That's the trouble with the world. We all despise ourselves.”
― Charlie Chaplin

“Life can be wonderful if you're not afraid of it. All it takes is courage, imagination ... and a little dough”
― Charlie Chaplin

“What do you want meaning for? Life is desire, not meaning.”
― Charlie Chaplin, My Life In Pictures

“Perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because it is more than one can express.”
― Charlie Chaplin

“Like everyone else I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of ancestral promptings and urgings; a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, all of which I am the sum total.”
― Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography

Imagination

“Imagination means nothing without doing.”
― Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

“Your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul.”
― Charlie Chaplin

Love

“You need Power, only when you want to do something harmful otherwise Love is enough to get everything done.”
― Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

“As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY”.

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody if I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call it “RESPECT”.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it “MATURITY”.

As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance, I am in the right place at the right time, and everything happens at the exactly right moment. So I could be calm. Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE”.

As I began to love myself I quit stealing my own time, and I stopped designing huge projects for the future. Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm. Today I call it “SIMPLICITY”.

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF”.

As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right, and ever since I was wrong less of the time. Today I discovered that is “MODESTY”.

As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worrying about the future. Now, I only live for the moment, where everything is happening. Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILLMENT”.

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But as I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally. Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART”.

We no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others. Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born. Today I know “THAT IS LIFE”!”
― Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

“I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying.”
― Charlie Chaplin

“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.”
― Charlie Chaplin

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”
― Charlie Chaplin

“Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself”
― Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

“I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!”
― Charlie Chaplin

Quotes

“Being an artist means not having to avert one’s eyes.”
— Akira Kurosawa

“Time stays long enough for those who use it.”
— Leonardo da Vinci

“Don’t think of it as art, think of it as work.”
—Paddy Chayefsky

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
— Pablo Picasso

“The angels are the director’s thoughts. The lighting is his philosophy.”
— Douglas Sirk

“To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing… When I find myself facing a blank page, that’s always going through my head. What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.”
— Picasso

“There is only one type of story in the world — your story.”
— Ray Bradbury

“Starting tonight, every night in your life before you go to sleep, read at least one poem by anyone you choose. Poetry and motion pictures are twins. You’ll get more out of reading poetry than you will get out of any other kind of reading. You are people with eyes. You must find ways of extending this vision and putting it on film. As an experiment all of you could get out of here and shoot a cinematic haiku. Just go through a book of Japanese haiku and shoot a thirty-second film. They’re purely cinematic, very visual. You must read poems every night of your life in order to enable yourself to refresh your images. In forty years you’ll thank me for telling you this.”
— Ray Bradbury, Conversations with The Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute.

“That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives. All the attendant hoopla about it, the success over it or the critical rejection—none of that really matters. In the end, the thing will survive or not on its own merits. Not that immortality via art is any big deal. Truffaut died, and we all felt awful about it, and there were the appropriate eulogies, and his wonderful films live on. But it’s not much help to Truffaut.”
— Woody Allen for The Paris Review, 1985

“Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.”
— Ray Bradbury

“This is, if not a lifetime process, it’s awfully close to it. The writer broadens, becomes deeper, becomes more observant, becomes more tempered, becomes much wiser over a period time passing. It is not something that is injected into him by a needle. It is not something that comes on a wave of flashing, explosive light one night and say, ‘Huzzah! Eureka! I’ve got it!’ and then proceeds to write the great American novel in eleven days. It doesn’t work that way. It’s a long, tedious, tough, frustrating process, but never, ever be put aside by the fact that it’s hard.”—Rod Serling

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Junot Díaz

“But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Libba Bray

“And for a moment, I understand that I have friends on this lonely path; that sometimes your place is not something you find, but something you have when you need it.”
― Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

“People always think they know other people, but they don’t. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won’t eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don’t know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel fucked up and sad for no reason at all.”
― Libba Bray, Going Bovine

“I'm like everyone else in this stupid, bloody, amazing world. I'm flawed. Impossibly so. But hopeful. I'm still me.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

Libba Bray

“What happens if your choice is misguided?' I ask, softly.
Miss Moore takes a pear from the bowl and offers us the grapes to devour. 'You must try to correct it.'
'But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?'
There's a sad sympathy in Miss Moore's catlike eyes as she regards my painting again. She paints the thinnest sliver of shadow along the bottom of the apple, bringing it fully to life.
'Then you must find a way to live with it.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

Libba Bray

“We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“To those who will see, the world waits.”
― Libba Bray

Libba Bray

“These are hard times. The world hurts. We live in fear and forget to walk with hope. But hope has not forgotten you. So ask it to dinner. It's probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation.”
― Libba Bray, Going Bovine

Shed Tears

“There is an ancient tribal proverb I once heard in India. It says that before we can see properly we must first shed our tears to clear the way.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

Libba Bray

“And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“You can never really know someone completely. That’s why it’s the most terrifying thing in the world, really—taking someone on faith, hoping they’ll take you on faith too. It’s such a precarious balance, It’s a wonder we do it at all. And yet..”
― Libba Bray

“In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We’ve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.”
― Libba Bray

“I should never be left alone with my mind for too long.”
― Libba Bray

“We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it's like chasing clouds.”
― Libba Bray

Libba Bray

“Sometimes we seek that which we are not yet ready to find.”
― Libba Bray, Rebel Angels

Libba Bray

“Shall I tell you a story? A new and terrible one? A ghost story? Are you ready? Shall I begin? Once upon a time there were four girls. One was pretty. One was clever. One charming, and one...one was mysterious. But they were all damaged, you see. Something not right about the lot of them. Bad blood. Big dreams. Oh, I left that part out. Sorry, that should have come before. They were all dreamers, these girls. One by one, night after night, the girls came together. And they sinned. Do you know what that sin was? No one? Pippa? Ann? Their sin was that they believed. Believed they could be different. Special. They believed they could change what they were--damaged, unloved. Cast-off things. They would be alive, adored, needed. Necessary. But it wasn't true. This is a ghost story remember? A tragedy. They were misled. Betrayed by their own stupid hopes. Things couldn't be different for them, because they weren't special after all. So life took them, led them, and they went along, you see? They faded before their own eyes, till they were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. With what can't be. There, now. Isn't that the scariest story you've ever heard?”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

Garden

“I know because I read...Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.”
― Libba Bray

Libba Bray

“I just read this great quote by Junot Diaz, he was talking about true intimacy, and he was saying that it was the willingness to be vulnerable and to be found out. That’s what I felt that YA did. It wasn't pretentious, and it wasn’t hiding its heart. It wanted to be found out...

It felt like those moments when you go to a party and you're standing around for a long time, going, I don't fit in here, what am I going to talk to these people about? And everybody's getting drunk, and then you find this one person, and you end up sitting in some corner talking about all these arcane things.

And then before you know it you're having a conversation about the meaning of life and it's four o’clock in the morning. That kind of feeling, that kind of intimacy — I felt like that's what I got from YA.”
― Libba Bray

Junot Díaz

“We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn't for our longing for these things, I doubt the novel or the short story would exist in its current form. I'm not going to say much more on the topic. Just remember: In dictatorships, only one person is really allowed to speak. And when I write a book or a story, I too am the only one speaking, no matter how I hide behind my characters.”
― Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz

For me, words that you can’t understand in a book aren’t there to torture or remind people that they don’t know. I always felt they were to remind people that part of the experience of reading has always been collective. You learn to read with someone else. Yeah you may currently practice it in a solitary fashion, but reading is a collective enterprise. And what the unintelligible in a book does is to remind you how our whole, lives we’ve always needed someone else to help us with reading.”
― Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz

“You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.”
― Junot Díaz, [Becoming a Writer/ The List, O Magazine, November 2009]

“What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”
― Junot Díaz

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”
― Junot Díaz

Haruki Murakami

“Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.”
― Haruki Murakami

Andrea Gibson

"Forests may be gorgeous, but there is nothing more alive than a tree that learns how to grow in a cemetery."
- Andrea Gibson, Titanic

"Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling like they're falling in love with the ground. And the trees are naked and lonely. I keep trying to tell them new leaves will come around in the spring, but you can't tell trees those things. They're like me, they just stand there and don't listen."
- Andrea Gibson, Photograph

"I can't live here. In my body, I mean. I can't live in my body all the time, it feels too much. So if I ever feel far away know I am not gone. I am just underneath my grief, adjusting the dial on my radio faith so I can take this life with all of its love and all of its loss."
- Andrea Gibson, Royal Heart

"That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth, and you can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out."
- Andrea Gibson, Yarn

Junot Díaz

“But back then, in those first days, I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

Omar Khayyám

“To wisely live your life, you don't need to know much
Just remember two main rules for the beginning:
You better starve, than eat whatever
And better be alone, than with whoever.”
― Omar Khayyám, Rubaiyat

The Madness Vase: By Andrea Gibson

“The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness lives.

The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”

The first psycho therapist told me to spend
three hours each day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking
about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.

The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.
Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness
when they care more about what they give
than what they get.

The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”

The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poems.”
― Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase: By Andrea Gibson

Brave the Day!

Trapped

The thing I am terrified of is getting cornered with questions in the changing room at the pool. It puzzles me that this is almost enough to keep me home. I fear the swim ladies could pick me apart like hawks feasting on road-kill. In my thoughts I practice responses to imagined questions. I usually decide to stay in the pool and keep swimming. Eventually they go home even if they do stop to use the hair-dryer.

King

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons

King

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

King

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
― Stephen King

Virginia Woolf

“Really I don't like human nature unless all candied over with art”
― Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Four: 1931-1935

Woolf

“They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort.”
― Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

“Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf

“For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

A Writer's Diary

“To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is...at last, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away...”
― Virginia Woolf

“I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary

Six Books

“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Three, 1923-1928

Mrs. Dalloway

“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Madness

“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Virginia Woolf

“The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity. ”
― Virginia Woolf

The Waves

“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Woolf

“When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.”
― Virginia Woolf

Vast Views

“Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

Virginia Woolf

“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”
― Virginia Woolf

Flow

“I am rooted, but I flow.”
― Virginia Woolf

Wild Books

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.”
― Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Why are women... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?”
― Virginia Woolf

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”
― Virginia Woolf

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own / Three Guineas

Darrell and Elisabeth Hyder

Article on Elisabeth Hyder's hand-crafted decorative papers.

Darrell Hyder
Sun Hill Press

Printers/publishers

23 High St.
N. Brookfield, MA USA 01535
Tel (508) 867-7274

“What we do is printing, of course. But quite as much, we also design most of the work that goes out our door… our letterpress printing looks, feels, and is different: comfortable, legible, and humane. What do we produce, and for whom? Our work includes brochures, broadsides, announcements, notices, letterheads, certificates, cards, envelopes, booklets, labels, posters, folders, memorial publications, and books. Among our customers are clubs, individuals, publishers, other designers and printers, libraries, museums, societies, and corporations.”

Dopamine and Serotonin

Article:10 Ways to Boost Dopamine and Serotonin Naturally

Martin Luther King Jr.

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies. (from "Loving Your Enemies")”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., I Have A Dream

“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

“I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

The Complexities

“Those who understand the complexities of human nature know that joy and pain, ugliness and beauty, love and hate, mercy and cruelty and other conflicting emotions often blend and cannot be separated from each other.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Faith

“The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Wheels

“Where do the wheels of history lead? How can you be so sure that the wheels of history won't get bogged down in blood and marrow again?”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Penitent

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“A soldier who serves an emperor has to have a uniform, and this also applies to a soldier who serves the Almighty.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Penitent

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“A rock was sticking out of the water, jagged and pointed, covered with moss--a remnant of the Ice Age. It had withstood the rains, the snows, the frost, the heat. It was afraid of no one. It did not need redemption, it had already been redeemed.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Story

“When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day. The whole world, all human life, is one long story.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Naftali the Storyteller and His Horse, Sus and Other Stories

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Even the worm that crawls in the Earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter your God.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Dictatorships, wars, and cruelty drive whole countries to madness. My theory is that the human species was crazy from the very first and that civilization and culture are only enhancing man’s insanity.
A Tale of Two Sisters”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Shoulders are from God, and burdens too.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories

“Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Of all the blessings bestowed on man, the greatest lies in the fact that God's face is forever hidden from him.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises. ”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“One thing I found out then was that pity is a form of love and, actually, its highest expression.
A Tale of Two Sisters”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

“One prays for life , life means free choice and freedom is mystery . If one knew the truth how could there be freedom”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Literature can very well describe the absurd, but it should never become absurd itself.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Every human character appears only once in the history of human beings. And so does every event of love.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Love and Exile

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“If you believe in God, then He exists.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“The wastepaper basket is the writer’s best friend.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Story Teller

“We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Life is God's novel. Let him write it.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

500 Reasons

“There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Kindness

“Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

Thank You, Paul Krugman

Passing Through to Corruption
by
Paul Krugman

Laura Ingalls Wilder

“We who live in quiet places have the opportunity to become acquainted with ourselves, to think our own thoughts and live our own lives in a way that is not possible for those keeping up with the crowd.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our every-day duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome; besides, others are apt take us at our own valuation.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“We'd never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, By the Shores of Silver Lake

“The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds could make it flicker because it would not give up.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter

“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“Home is the nicest word there is.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“There's no great loss without some small gain.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie

“As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness -- just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Writings to Young Women from Laura Ingalls Wilder: On Wisdom and Virtues

“Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is how I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don't remember me at all.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“There is no comfort anywhere for anyone who dreads to go home.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little Town on the Prairie

“Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“Remember well, and bear in mind, a constant friend is hard to find.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“As you read my stories of long ago I hope you will remember that things truly worthwhile and that will give you happiness are the same now as they were then. It is not the things you have that make you happy. It is love and kindness and helping each other and just plain being good. ”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks

“A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?"
"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods,…
She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

“The trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention to the organization than to what they're organized for.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

Supper Veggies

Last night I roasted cauliflower and sliced carrots at 550 in my big 12" cast iron skillet. I drizzled olive oil Adobo and kosher salt on top and added lots of fresh cloves of garlic. Then I pressure cooked my German potato salad. I used 5 pounds of potatoes chopped into cubes and made an olive oil mustard wine vinegar salt sugar Adobo dressing along with additional water for steaming. The potato salad is especially good cold. I always save the steaming liquid and add it back into the potatoes because that is where the best flavors are.

Hide

This time of year I just want to hide under the frozen earth.

Warren and Sanders

Op-Ed Contributors
Warren and Sanders: Who Is Congress Really Serving?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/17/opinion/warren-sanders-congress-serving.html

Dear Abby...

I like the layout of the girls room at the pool and it's underused so I have privacy from the nosy talkative ladies. But there's a problem. It reeks of urine. Some sad lady has unchecked incontinence and the maintenance man can't keep up. So now I use the ladies room and I try to hide because when I come out of the pool I like to enjoy the calm afterglow and not fill up on annoying inquiries or gossip. What can be done?

Charles Bukowski

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell