How to Make your Car Smell Good

Natural (and Surprising) Odor Removal Tips

• Baking soda. This is probably the most often recommended odor remover, and likely is one you've thought of using. However, there is a right and a wrong way to use baking soda in ridding your car of smells. First, take out all of the mats, and vacuum the carpet and seats. Next, feel around for any moisture on the carpets. If any spot feels damp, don't put baking soda on it, or it will turn to rock (and it won't work). Once dry, sprinkle the baking soda all around and leave it overnight. The next morning, vacuum it up and check for odors. You can also leave a little bit under the seat, where it won't be seen, but will still be working for you.
• Activated charcoal. In the same way that baking soda works to absorb odors, activated charcoal will too. Only with charcoal, the odor-absorbing properties are much stronger. It works better because there are millions of pores in each piece of charcoal that attract moisture and odors in the air, and trap them. Afterward, you can simply vacuum them out with a shop-vac or at the car wash.
• Orange peels. The natural oils in orange peels are not only pleasant to our sense of smell, but can also mask a variety of smells lingering in our cars. Try this in conjunction with the previous two techniques if you want to both absorb odors and introduce a better-and more natural-scent into your vehicle.
• Coffee grounds. Ok, so this one may sound a bit strange. Why would you want to replace one strong odor with another one? Especially if you aren't a fan of coffee. Well, as strange as it may sound, coffee can both absorb odors and it won't leave behind a coffee smell. Try putting some fresh coffee grounds into a paper bag and leave it open inside your car overnight. In the morning, take out the bag and give your car the sniff test. If any odor remains, do the same thing the next night, and you'll be pleasantly surprised at the results.
• Herbs. If you grow fresh herbs in your garden, try clipping a few sprigs and laying them in your car's back seat (on a towel of course). Strong smelling herbs like lavender, rosemary or sage work the best. You may need to leave the herbs in your car for a while to achieve the best effect since this is replacing bad odors with good ones, not absorbing any odors.

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. Rumi

The wound is the place where the Light enters you. Rumi

The desire to know your own soul will end all other desires. Rumi

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self. May Sarton

My interview is now live on Bold Journey!

https://boldjourney.com/news/meet-emily-lisker/

A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time—proof that humans can work magic. —Carl Sagan

Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial. The value of fairy tales lies not in a brief literary escape from reality, but in the gift of hope that goodness truly is more powerful than evil and that even the darkest reality can lead to a Happily Ever After. Do not take that gift of hope lightly. It has the power to conquer despair in the midst of sorrow, to light the darkness in the valleys of life, to whisper “One more time” in the face of failure. Hope is what gives life to dreams, making the fairy tale the reality. —L.R. Knost

1950's Fridge Restoration

Here

Colcannon Bender

I'm on a colcannon bender! IRISH SOUL FOOD!! I used olive oil instead of cream and butter. It was excellent. And grated carrots for color. Irish flag colors! I added onion and garlic powder when short on time.

recipe

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1016482-mashed-potatoes-with-kale-colcannon 

You can substitute extra virgin olive oil for the butter (in which case it will be more Mediterranean than Irish).

In Scotland, when made with cabbage, it is called rumpletythumps. It is a tradition at our house for every holiday. We sauté onions to add, as well as some grated cheddar.

This dish resembles an age-old Dutch dish called "boerenkool" stamppot.

More about that here. https://dutchreview.com/culture/stamppot-dutch-traditional-food/

Sewing a simple hem

I decided to iron the scrap of fabric I've come to love using as a tablecloth. I ironed it to fold the raggedy edges and then pin them so I could sew a hem. I used red thread in the bobbin because I had some and white thread for the big top spool, because it was there. Threading the bobbin was a trial of curses all aimed at myself. It kept falling out but I didn't give up. I took out the manual and tried again. On the 4th try it worked. I was so happy. To me sewing is like driving a car. I get a thrill even though all I have done is sew a hem. The fabric becomes alive because I made it into something and it keeps on giving off its magical charge when I use it.

Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning.

 Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination. Alice Hoffman

Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.

 Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?

Alice Hoffman, The Ice Queen 

Alice Hoffman, Here on Earth

“You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.”
― Alice Hoffman, Here on Earth

Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws. Alice Hoffman, The Ice Queen

The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be. Alice Hoffman, The Foretelling

running away

“My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances”

― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

“It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.”
― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

a legacy

It is the deepest desire of every writer, the one we never admit or even dare to speak of: to write a book we can leave as a legacy. And although it is sometimes easy to forget, wanting to be a writer is not about reviews or advances or how many copies are printed or sold. It is much simpler than that, and much more passionate. If you do it right, and if they publish it, you may actually leave something behind that can last forever.

ALICE HOFFMAN

Cabbage and Carrots are sauteed with fragrant ginger and garlic. This is usually served as a side dish to stews in Guyana and the Caribbean.

Add a splash of vinegar to cut through the sweet starchy taste, and some freshly ground black pepper for sparkle. Delicious with roasted peanuts or a peanut butter on home made bread. We grated the carrots this time.

Hornswoggled

The board of directors of our YMCA were seduced and HORNSWOGGLED into making lots of money. The nonprofit made their deal to sell us off in the middle of the night the day after the Y's fundraising campaign. The closing date was announced. The staff were sworn to secrecy and had to sign non-disclosure agreements as well as find new jobs. As you can imagine the board consisted of a gang of lawyers (and accountants). Everyone was told, "The buildings were too expensive to repair, we had to close," which was nonsense, lies, and secrecy, to cover their asses. Then after raping and pillaging our YMCA, they all left the board. Then this week the Y sent someone to take the digital pool clock and the new water fountain in the lobby. To make matters worse the organization is soliciting funds to stay open. The whole mess feels criminal to me.

UPDATE:

A Pawtucket YMCA representative just showed up while I was swimming today and photographed everything that can be moved. He said it was all going to be taken out in a U-HAUL tomorrow. Lifeguard chairs, starting blocks, lanelines, watercooler, bathingsuit driers, lifeguard vests, pool noodles, you name it. 

 

It seems wrong especially since GRANTS were written to obtain these items. Most of these expensive items are needed for safety and operation of the pool. How is Pawtucket going to run our pool without the proper equipment? 

 

Perhaps this is good news, if we can finally be free of Pawtucket YMCA's corruption and claim and run our own City of Woonsocket Municipal pool. 

 

City of Woonsocket this pool was built for us! We deserve good things!

Ray Bradbury didn’t drive a car, but he was often out and about in Los Angeles, browsing bookstores, his bicycle propped outside.

mass mind control: television

“It is pretty awesome and life-changing,” Beverly said. “Just the spectacle of it. I don’t know what it does to the human brain.”

Birds, bees and even plants might act weird during the solar eclipse

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/03/26/total-solar-eclipse-animals-react/

$1 Billion Donation Will Provide Free Tuition at a Bronx Medical School Ruth Gottesman, a longtime professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is making free tuition available to all students going forward.

$1 Billion Donation Will Provide Free Tuition at a Bronx Medical School

Ruth Gottesman, a longtime professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is making free tuition available to all students going forward.

Ruth Gottesman is giving $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.Credit...David Dee Delgado for The New York Times

By Joseph Goldstein

Feb. 26, 2024

The 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier has donated $1 billion to a Bronx medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with instructions that the gift be used to cover tuition for all students going forward.

The donor, Ruth Gottesman, is a former professor at Einstein, where she studied learning disabilities, developed a screening test and ran literacy programs. It is one of the largest charitable donations to an educational institution in the United States and most likely the largest to a medical school.

The fortune came from her late husband, David Gottesman, known as Sandy, who was a protégé of Warren Buffett and had made an early investment in Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate Mr. Buffett built.

The donation is notable not only for its staggering size, but also because it is going to a medical institution in the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough. The Bronx has a high rate of premature deaths and ranks as the unhealthiest county in New York. Over the past generation, a number of billionaires have given hundreds of millions of dollars to better-known medical schools and hospitals in Manhattan, the city’s wealthiest borough.

Dr. Gottesman said her donation would enable new doctors to begin their careers without medical school debt, which often exceeds $200,000. She also hoped it would broaden the student body to include people who could not otherwise afford to go to medical school.

While her husband ran an investment firm, First Manhattan, Dr. Gottesman had a long career at Einstein, a well-regarded medical school, starting in 1968, when she took a job as director of psychoeducational services. She has long been on Einstein’s board of trustees and is currently the chair.

In recent years, she has become close friends with Dr. Philip Ozuah, the pediatrician who oversees the medical college and its affiliated hospital, Montefiore Medical Center, as the chief executive officer of the health system. That friendship and trust loomed large as she contemplated what to do with the money her husband had left her.

In an interview on Friday at the Einstein campus in the Morris Park neighborhood, Dr. Ozuah and Dr. Gottesman spoke about the donation, how it came together and what it would mean for Einstein medical students.

The Friendship

Dr. Gottesman became close friends with Dr. Philip Ozuah, who oversees the medical college and its affiliated hospital, Montefiore Medical Center.

In early 2020, the two sat next to each other on a 6 a.m. flight to West Palm Beach, Fla. It was the first time they had spent hours together.

They spoke about their childhoods — hers in Baltimore, his, some 30 years later, in Nigeria — and what they had in common. Both had doctorates in education and had spent their careers at the same institution in the Bronx, helping children and families in need.

Dr. Ozuah described moving to New York, not knowing a single person in the state, and spending years as a community doctor in the South Bronx before ascending to the top of the medical school.

Leaving the airport, Dr. Ozuah offered his arm to Dr. Gottesman, then not quite 90, as they approached the curb. She waved him off and told him to “watch your own step,” he recalled with a chuckle.

Within a few weeks, the coronavirus brought the world to a grinding halt. Dr. Gottesman’s husband, in his 90s, became ill with the new pathogen, and she had a mild case. Dr. Ozuah sent an ambulance to the Gottesman home in Rye, N.Y., to bring them to Montefiore, the Bronx’s largest hospital.

In the weeks that followed, Dr. Ozuah began making daily house calls — in full protective gear — to check in on the couple as Mr. Gottesman recovered. “That’s how the friendship evolved,” he said. “I spent probably every day for about three weeks, visiting them in Rye.”

About three years ago, Dr. Ozuah asked Dr. Gottesman to head the medical school’s board of trustees. She had done the job before, but given her age, she was surprised. The gesture reminded her of the fable about the lion and the mouse, she told Dr. Ozuah at the time, explaining that when the lion spares the mouse’s life, the mouse tells him, “Maybe someday I’ll be helpful to you.”

In the story, the lion laughs haughtily. “But Phil didn’t go ‘ha, ha, ha,’” she noted with a smile.

The Money

Dr. Gottesman’s husband left her a large stock portfolio with instructions to “do whatever you think is right with it,” she said.

Dr. Gottesman’s husband died in 2022 at age 96. “He left me, unbeknownst to me, a whole portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock,” she recalled. The instructions were simple: “Do whatever you think is right with it,” she recalled.

It was overwhelming to think about, so at first she didn’t. But her children encouraged her not to wait too long.

When she focused on the bequest, she realized immediately what she wanted to do, she recalled. “I wanted to fund students at Einstein so that they would receive free tuition,” she said. There was enough money to do that in perpetuity, she said.

Over the years, she had interviewed dozens of prospective Einstein medical students. Tuition is more than $59,000 a year, and many graduated with crushing medical school debt. According to the school, nearly 50 percent of its students owed more than $200,000 after graduating. At most other New York City medical schools, less than 25 percent of new doctors owed that much.

Almost half of Einstein’s first-year medical students are New Yorkers, and nearly 60 percent are women. About 48 percent of current medical students at Einstein are white, 29 percent are Asian, 11 percent are Hispanic and 5 percent are Black.

Not only would future students be able to embark on their careers without the debt burden, but she hoped that her donation would also enable a wider pool of aspiring doctors to apply to medical school. “We have terrific medical students, but this will open it up for many other students whose economic status is such that they wouldn’t even think about going to medical school,” she said.

“That’s what makes me very happy about this gift,” she added. “I have the opportunity not just to help Phil, but to help Montefiore and Einstein in a transformative way — and I’m just so proud and so humbled — both — that I could do it.”

Dr. Gottesman went to see Dr. Ozuah in December to tell him that she would be making a major gift. She reminded him of the lion and mouse story. This, she explained, was the mouse’s moment.

“If someone said, ‘I’ll give you a transformative gift for the medical school,’ what would you do?” she asked.

There were probably three things, Dr. Ozuah said.

“One,” he began, “you could have education be free —”

“That’s what I want to do,” she said. He never mentioned the other ideas.

Dr. Gottesman sometimes wonders what her late husband would have thought of her decision.

“I hope he’s smiling and not frowning,” she said with a chuckle. “But he gave me the opportunity to do this, and I think he would be happy — I hope so.”

Einstein will not be the first medical school to eliminate tuition.

In 2018, New York University announced it would begin offering free tuition to medical students and saw a surge in applications.

The Name

Dr. Gottesman was reluctant to attach her name to her donation. “Nobody needs to know,” Dr. Ozuah recalled her saying at first. But Dr. Ozuah insisted that others might find her life inspiring. “Here’s somebody who is totally dedicated to the welfare of others and wants no accolades, no recognition,” Dr. Ozuah said.

Dr. Ozuah noted that the going price for getting your name on a medical school or hospital was perhaps a fifth of Dr. Gottesman’s donation. Cornell Medical College and New York Hospital now include the surname of Sanford Weill, the former head of Citigroup. New York University’s medical center was renamed for Ken Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot. Both men donated hundreds of millions of dollars.

But it is a condition of Dr. Gottesman’s gift that the Einstein College of Medicine not change its name. Albert Einstein, the physicist who developed the theory of relativity, agreed to confer his name on the medical school, which opened in 1955.

The name, she noted, could not be beat. “We’ve got the gosh darn name — we’ve got Albert Einstein.”

Joseph Goldstein covers health care in New York for The Times, following years of criminal justice and police reporting. More about Joseph Goldstein

The Sun was Out

We heard this loud noise as we walked through the North End neighborhood last Sunday. It sounded like ripping like someone was tearing off the cover of their swimming pool but it was repetitive. Then I saw it. A little blue Toyota parked in a driveway with the wipers on squeaking over the dry windshield and the motor was running. The sun was out but it had rained the night before.

When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities. Matt Groening

Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun. Matt Groening

The scary thing about the future... there will be tiny cameras everywhere, and they'll be flying around like mosquitoes and drones. That will be bad. Drones are scary. You can't reason with a drone. Matt Groening

Families are about love overcoming emotional torture. Matt Groening

God often gives nuts to toothless people.

 Matt Groening

Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn't mean only artistic creativity, although that's part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people. Matt Groening

A lot of people believe that if everybody just did what they were told - obeyed - everything would be fine. But that's not what life is all about. That's not real. It's never going to happen. Matt Groening

The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression.

 Gary Larson

Sometimes I'm convinced that one day I'm going to draw the cartoon that offends everyone, and that'll be the end.

 Gary Larson

You know those little snow globes that you shake up? I always thought my brain was sort of like that. You know, where you just give it a shake and watch what comes out and shake it again. It's like that.

  Gary Larson

I've gotten a lot of livid letters about the awfulness of my work. I've never known what to make of it. Why do people bother to write if they hate what I do? Lynda Barry

My mom didn't want me to go to college. She didn't want me to read - when I read, I may as well have been holding a pineapple. Lynda Barry

I listen like mad to any conversation taking place next to me just trying to hear why this is funny. Women's restrooms are especially great. I wash my hands twice waiting for people to come in and start talking. Lynda Barry

I need to be cheered up a lot. I think funny people are people who need to be cheered up. Lynda Barry

My strips are not always funny, and they can be pretty grim at times, and I know I lose readers because of it, but I can't do anything about it - my work is very much connected to something I need to do in order to feel stable. Lynda Barry

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it. Ray Bradbury

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things. Ray Bradbury

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities. Dr. Seuss

Your life may be cut short at any time; therefore, your life should have a deep purpose, a significance that will not depend on whether it is short or long. Leo Tolstoy

Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head.

Today is the birthday of the poet and classical scholar A.E. (Alfred Edward) Housman, born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England (1859). He only published two books of poetry during his lifetime, but one of those was the 63-poem cycle A Shropshire Lad (1896). It includes the lines "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now / Is hung with bloom along the bough, / And stands about the woodland ride / Wearing white for Eastertide."

A.E. Housman, who said, "Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders and brains, not pudding, in your head."

John Waters: That’s the only thing you have to do with your kids. Make them feel safe. A kid can be crazy; they can be everything. But they have to feel safe. And it’s hard. My parents did that, and it’s why I never really went off the deep end.

 https://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/3399/john-waters-youth-manifesto

What year is it in your imagination?

Lynda Barry, What It Is 

You have to be willing to spend time making things for no known reason.

 Lynda Barry, Picture This: The Near-Sighted Monkey Book

any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all

“The groove is so mysterious. We're born with it and we lose it and the world seems to split apart before our eyes into stupid and cool. When we get it back, the world unifies around us, and both stupid and cool fall away.
I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.”
― Lynda Barry, One Hundred Demons

We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay.

“There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairytale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it.

I believe there is something in these old stories that does what singing does to words. They have transformational capabilities, in the way melody can transform mood.

They can't transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable.”
― Lynda Barry, What It Is

Lynda Barry — 'In the digital age, don't forget to use your digits!'

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.

 Flannery O'Connor

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.

 Flannery O'Connor

Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo

There are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone. Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

 I had to put that book down because I got parentheses poisoning!

There's this amplification that happens anytime you tell a story. You let it go out into the world. It's the most beautiful thing. All I can do is look at it in wonder and amazement. Kate DiCamillo

If you sit down and read with your kid, either having your child read to you or you reading to your child at a regular time each day, it deepens the relationship. You don't have to talk about stuff; the story will do that work for you. Kate DiCamillo

Whenever I am with a group of kids, I always ask them, 'How many of you know about the summer reading program at your library and how many of you know it's free?' Spreading that sort of message comes very naturally to me. Kate DiCamillo

Kate DiCamillo

How do you make your kids read more? It needs to be presented as a joy and a privilege to get to do it, and the kids should get to see you as a parent reading for your own pleasure. It's not something you send your kids off to do, 'Go into your room and read for 15 minutes or else.' It becomes a task then.

Kate DiCamillo

You have to learn how to write each book.

Kate DiCamillo  

If you read, the world is your oyster. It truly is. Reading makes everything possible.

I always have a notebook with me, I eavesdrop; I write down what people say. It's very rare that one of those things will provoke a story, but I think that that kind of paying attention all the time, and keeping everything open, lets the stories come in. But where they come from is still a mystery to me.     

If you read, the world is your oyster. It truly is. Reading makes everything possible.

Kate DiCamillo   

Treasure Reading

It distresses me that parents insist that their children read or make them read. The best way for children to treasure reading is to see the adults in their lives reading for their own pleasure.  Kate DiCamillo 

What I discovered is that each time you look at the world and the people in it closely, imaginatively, the effort changes you. The world, under the microscope of your attention, opens up like a beautiful, strange flower and gives itself back to you in ways you could never imagine.

Because of Winn-Dixie is the result of that effort. It is a book populated with stray dogs and strange musicians, lonely children and lonelier adults. They are all the kind of people that, too often, get lost in the mainstream rush of life. Spending time with them was a revelation for me. What I discovered is that each time you look at the world and the people in it closely, imaginatively, the effort changes you. The world, under the microscope of your attention, opens up like a beautiful, strange flower and gives itself back to you in ways you could never imagine. What stories are hiding behind the faces of the people who you walk past everyday? What love? What hopes? What despair?

Trey Greer did know what he was talking about. Writing is seeing. It is paying attention.

I think of it this way: my characters sing songs and I stop to listen to them and when the song is done I give them my money and they say, “God bless you, baby.”

And I feel that I have been blessed. Over and over again.

Kate DiCamillo

Where do you get your ideas?

Every writer in the world gets asked the question. And the answer is so obvious! We get our ideas from listening and looking and eavesdropping and imagining. Stories are everywhere. All you have to do is pay attention.

Kate DiCamillo

"Everything will be all right in the end. If it's not all right, it is not yet the end" Patel, Hotel Manager, 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'

Shepherd's Pie

https://www.thewholesomedish.com/the-best-classic-shepherds-pie/

Colcannon Waffles

 https://sugarstuff.wordpress.com/2015/03/15/colcannon-waffles/

Colcannon Again!

Tonight I made colcannan with about two and a half pounds of russet potatoes and carrots and garlic and kale (everything chopped before loading into the pressure cooker Instant pot with a cup of water cooked for 5 minutes. Then I mashed it with a cup of half and half and added salt and pepper. It was glorious.

Next I will try this https://www.thefoodblog.net/irish-mashed-potatoes-colcannon/

Save our Glorious Woonsocket Pool!

 

a picnic indoors

 

“Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea!”
― Agatha Christie

“Making tea is a ritual that stops the world from falling in on you.”
― Jonathan Stroud, The Creeping Shadow

 

“Tea to the English is really a picnic indoors.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple  

The Seasonal

“The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.”
― Helen Bevington, When Found, Make a Verse of 

Confusing Messages or Raiding the Tomb

Our City of Woonsocket pool is a magnificent TEMPLE to swimming although I am quite confused by the recent fundraiser since the PAWTUCKET YMCA board of directors SOLD THE POOL. 

How do we know the FUNDRAISING MONEY will go to the Woonsocket pool by giving it to PAWTUCKET YMCA, the very organization that sold us and ditched us from their system?

As of yesterday our digital clock in the pool area and fancy new water fountain have been ripped off the wall in the lobby. 

They could have waited until the body was cold before raiding the tomb.

This is Pawtucket YMCA folks! 

Do you want to do business with them? This is not the core values they preach and post in big letters on the glass windows; respect, honesty, and responsibility.

Oh and where's all the money from selling the buildings? Hey Pawtucket, you had to come and steal the water fountain and clock. What's next? The light bulbs and toilets? This is like a bad divorce!

https://www.woonsocketri.org/press-releases/news/help-save-woonsocket-ymca-pool-fundraiser

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.

 

Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own? P. L. Travers

More and more I’ve become convinced that the great treasure to possess is the unknown. P. L. Travers ,"P. L. Travers, The Art of Fiction No. 63" an interview by Edwina Burness, The Paris Review No. 86, Winter, 1982.  

There are worlds beyond worlds and times beyond times, all of them true, all of them real, and all of them (as children know) penetrating each other. P. L. Travers

A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns. P. L. Travers

Could it be ... that the hero is one who is willing to set out, take the first step, shoulder something? Perhaps the hero is one who puts his foot upon a path not knowing what he may expect from life but in some way feeling in his bones that life expects something of him. P. L. Travers "The World of the Hero". Book by P. L. Travers, 1976.

With the word creative we stand under a mystery. And from time to time that mystery, as if it were a sun, sends down upon one head or another, a sudden shaft of light - by grace, one feels, rather than deserving, for it always is something given, free, unsought, unexpected. P. L. Travers

Children's books are looked on as a sideline of literature. A special smile. They are usually thought to be associated with women. I was determined not to have this label of sentimentality put on me so I signed by my initials, hoping people wouldn't bother to wonder if the books were written by a man, woman or kangaroo. P. L. Travers

Trouble trouble and it will trouble you. P. L. Travers (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.198, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 

Stories are like birds flying, here and gone in a moment. P. L. Travers

I hate being good. -Mary Poppins P. L. Travers

When I was a child, love to me was what the sea is to a fish: something you swim in while you are going about the important affairs of life. P. L. Travers

Perhaps we are born knowing the tales of our grandmothers and all their ancestral kin continually run in our blood repeating them endlessly, and the shock they give us when we first bear them is not of surprise but of recognition. P. L. Travers 

Once we have accepted the story we cannot escape the story's fate. P. L. Travers 

Child and serpent, star and stone — all one. P. L. Travers (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.175, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Tea is balm for the soul, don't you agree? P. L. Travers

For me there are no answers, only questions, and I am grateful that the questions go on and on. I don't look for an answer, because I don't think there is one. I'm very glad to be the bearer of a question. P. L. Travers 

The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories. P. L. Travers,  "No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People". Book by Evan T. Pritchard, 2001.

I don't think that children, if left to themselves, feel that there is an author behind a book, a somebody who wrote it. Grown-ups have fostered this quotient of identity, particularly teachers. Write a letter to your favorite author and so forth. When I was a child I never realized that there were authors behind books. Books were there as living things, with identities of their own. P. L. Travers

You can ask me anything you like about my work, but I'll never talk about myself. P. L. Travers

You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for, if you are honest, you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one. P. L. Travers

What I want to know is this: Are the stars gold paper or is the gold paper stars? P. L. Travers (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.138, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 

If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is ask the Policeman at the cross-roads. P. L. Travers (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The same substance composes us--the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star--we are all one, all moving to the same end. P. L. Travers (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.174, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It may be that to eat and be eaten are the same thing in the end. My wisdom tells me that this is probably so. We are all made of the same stuff, remember, we of the Jungle, you of the City. The same substance composes us-the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star-we are all one, all moving to the same end. Remember that when you no longer remember me, my child. P. L. Travers (2014). “Mary Poppins: 80th Anniversary Collection”, p.174, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I think the idea of Mary Poppins has been blowing in and out of me, like a curtain at a window, all my life. P. L. Travers

there is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea

“Okay, this is the wisdom. First, time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted. Second, almost anything can be improved with the addition of bacon. And finally, there is no problem on Earth that can't be ameliorated by a hot bath and a cup of tea.”
― Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey

 

“Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?”
― Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture

 

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“I don't want tea," said Clary, with muffled force. "I want to find my mother. And then I want to find out who took her in the first place, and I want to kill them."
"Unfortunately," said Hodge, "we're all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it's either tea or nothing.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

“I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."
"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."
"Nobody asked your opinion," said Alice.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.

In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.

I liked the Irish way better.”
― C.E. Murphy, Urban Shaman

“Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.”
― Bill Watterson, The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book

“A cup of tea would restore my normality."

[Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Screenplay]”
― Douglas Adams

“Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.”
― Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty

“When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment?”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was.

"Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Dad was at his desk when I opened the door, doing what all British people do when they're freaked out: drinking tea.”
― Rachel Hawkins, Demonglass

“The bodies in my floor all trusted someone. Now I walk on them to tea.”
― Victoria Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“If you are cold, tea will warm you;
if you are too heated, it will cool you;
If you are depressed, it will cheer you;
If you are excited, it will calm you.”
― William Ewart Gladstone

“As far as her mom was concerned, tea fixed everything. Have a cold? Have some tea. Broken bones? There's a tea for that too. Somewhere in her mother's pantry, Laurel suspected, was a box of tea that said, 'In case of Armageddon, steep three to five minutes'.”
― Aprilynne Pike, Illusions

“There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.”
― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

“There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.”
― Gary Snyder

“What kind of tea do you want?"
"There´s more than one kind of tea?...What do you have?"
"Let´s see... Blueberry, Raspberry, Ginseng, Sleepytime, Green Tea, Green Tea with Lemon, Green Tea with Lemon and Honey, Liver Disaster, Ginger with Honey, Ginger Without Honey, Vanilla Almond, White Truffle Coconut, Chamomile, Blueberry Chamomile, Decaf Vanilla Walnut, Constant Comment and Earl Grey."
-"I.. Uh...What are you having?... Did you make some of those up?”
― Bryan Lee O'Malley, Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life

“Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea! How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.”
― Sydney Smith, A memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith

“Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.”
― Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

“But indeed I would rather have nothing but tea.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“Tea is the magic key to the vault where my brain is kept.”
― Frances Hardinge

“Tea ... is a religion of the art of life.”
― Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea

“In Britain, a cup of tea is the answer to every problem.
Fallen off your bicycle? Nice cup of tea.
Your house has been destroyed by a meteorite? Nice cup of tea and a biscuit.
Your entire family has been eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex that has travelled through a space/time portal? Nice cup of tea and a piece of cake. Possibly a savoury option would be welcome here too, for example a Scotch egg or a sausage roll.”
― David Walliams, Mr Stink

“Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea.”
― Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret

“Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims

“If leeches ate peaches instead of my blood, then I would be free to drink tea in the mud!”
― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.”
― Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea

You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat.

 Margaret Atwood

Springy Sourdough

 A few days ago I mixed up a sourdough rye with wheat berries and barley that I ground in the coffee grinder, rolled oats, coarse cornmeal and bread flour. I also added water starter yeast, salt and the spontaneous experiment was that I added half and half. I baked it today and it's fantastic and very tender and springy from the milk fat. Delicious even un-toasted!

Wind Chill 17°F A Few Clouds 28°F -2°C Humidity 51% Wind Speed NW 13 G 30 mph

 Romeo insisted on the mile downtown walk and the wind was painful but the sun was warm. The house is creaking from the wind.

A good day to bake bread. I just shaped the sourdough --a blend of rye barley oat corn wheat & bread flour.

Spring Rituals

snowman burning

To Banish Winter in This Tiny Wisconsin Town, Burn a Swiss Snowman

The burning of the Bӧӧgg is like a fiery version of Groundhog’s Day, but with fireworks and sausages.

by Tea Krulos May 2, 2023

 

welcoming snakes

The Italian Town that Welcomes Spring with Live Snakes

It’s a good omen if the reptiles wrap themselves around the head of San Domenico Abate.

by Dania Rodrigues May 5, 2023

 

I was a bookworm and a poetry lover. When I think of myself and what I would have liked to have found in books those many years ago, I remember being depressed by all the neatly tied-up, happy-ending stories, the abundance of winners, the themes of winning, solving, finding — when around me it didn't seem that easy. So I write with a different feeling when I write for young adults. I guess I write for myself at that age.

 Marijane Meaker

We’ve forgotten how to be alone with our thoughts.

Article  Constant craving: how digital media turned us all into dopamine addicts

[Dr. Anna Lembke's] new book, Dopamine Nation, emphasises that we are now all addicts to a degree. She calls the smartphone the “modern-day hypodermic needle”: we turn to it for quick hits, seeking attention, validation and distraction with each swipe, like and tweet. Since the turn of the millennium, behavioural (as opposed to substance) addictions have soared. Every spare second is an opportunity to be stimulated, whether by entering the TikTok vortex, scrolling Instagram, swiping through Tinder or bingeing on porn, online gambling and e-shopping.

“We’re seeing a huge explosion in the numbers of people struggling with minor addictions,” says Lembke.

Although we have endless founts of fun at our fingertips, “the data shows we’re less and less happy,” she says. Global depression rates have been climbing significantly in the past 30 years and, according to a World Happiness Report, people in high-income countries have become more unhappy over the past decade or so. We’ve forgotten how to be alone with our thoughts. We’re forever “interrupting ourselves”, as Lembke puts it, for a quick digital hit, meaning we rarely concentrate on taxing tasks for long or get into a creative flow. 

Squirrel

I just spotted a squirrel on his back in my yard. I assumed he was dead but noticed his chest moving. He's breathing! 

He moved to hide under our brush pile. Perhaps he was just in shock.

I hope he can recover. 

We contacted wildlife rehabilitation. Stay tuned.

This morning he's gone. I hope it's because he recovered and not eaten by another creature.

Black Fleece Hat

One of the things that makes me edgy is when I can't find my hat. I have worn my periwinkle hat most of the winter but it was time to wash it so I searched for my black fleece hat, the hat that I've worn for 29 years.

Thanks to the committee of sleep, in the shower this morning I suddenly remembered that I wore my black fleece hat under my huge red fleece hat during the long cold wait for our participation in the Brockton Christmas Parade. I had changed into my milkman hat at the last minute so the fleece hats were stashed with the band hats. I'm so happy! I will keep them in the winter hats and gloves drawer where they belong.

In Vermont, ‘Town Meeting’ is democracy embodied. What can the rest of the country learn from it?

 “Forced civility.” Frank Bryan, a retired University of Vermont professor who wrote a book about town meetings, coined that term to describe the way people dealing with disagreements in person are compelled to recognize each other’s common humanity in a way that larger-scale political interactions do not allow.

Article

Spring Equinox: An equinox is an event in which a planet’s subsolar point passes through its Equator.

Article

Although the equinoxes are as close to this phenomenon as happens on Earth, even during the equinoxes day and night aren’t exactly equal. This is largely due to atmospheric refraction. Atmospheric refraction describes the way light seems to bend or deviate from a straight line as it passes through Earth’s atmosphere. Atmospheric refraction is a result of increasing air density, which decreases the velocity of light through the air. Due to atmospheric refraction, we are able to see the sun minutes before it actually rises and sets. 

Big Soup: Collard Greens Garlic Onion Ginger Celery Carrots Corn Shredded Pork Wine Chipotle Sauce Olive Oil

My soups are improvisations made from what I have on hand...

This is what I used: two bunches of collard greens, clove of peeled garlic, 5 sprouted onions, whole ginger root, chopped head of celery, chopped pound of carrots frozen corn (added after),  frozen shredded pork, splash of jug Chianti, chipotle sauce, olive oil, salt.

I loaded it all into a big 10 quart Instant Pot (pressure cooker) with water and leftover frozen block of pork stock and cooked it for an hour. We had some for supper. It was delicious.

There is only one way: Go within.

There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: Does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart? Can you avow that you would die if you were forbidden to write? Above all, in the most silent hour of your night, ask yourself this: Must I write? Dig deep into yourself for a true answer. And if it should ring its assent, if you can confidently meet this serious question with a simple, “I must,” then build your life upon it. It has become your necessity. Your life, in even the most mundane and least significant hour, must become a sign, a testimony to this urge.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

Corn or Clam Chowder

We have a quart of half and half and I use 2 tablespoons once in a while! I froze it and recently defrosted it. Now we need to use it.

https://www.culinaryhill.com/corn-chowder-recipe/

https://www.culinaryhill.com/new-england-clam-chowder-recipe/

Shepherd's Pie & Colcannon

Shepherd's Pie Recipe from Recipe Tin Eats 

Colcannan recipe (friends used buttermilk in place of half and half)

John Birt's Irish Soda Bread 2024

4 c. Einkorn flour

1 T. Salt

1 t. Baking soda 

3/4 t. Baking powder 

1/4 c. Coconut sugar

4 T. Butter

1/2 c. Currants

1 1/2 c. Buttermilk 

 Bake @ 375 (F)  35-45 mins.

Fault Lines by Karl Pillemer

Achieving the reconciliation taught her critically important lessons about how to meet her own needs while accepting differences and showing compassion to others.

― Karl Pillemer, Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them

 

The premise is that real people who have been through a challenging experience are extraordinary sources of advice.

 ― Karl Pillemer, Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them

Human nature is such that our happiness depends on reliable, secure, and predictable social relationships, and without them we feel lost.
― Karl Pillemer, Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them

Interview Dany Laferrière: a life in books

 Article

(excerpts)

Laferrière was back in Haiti for a literary festival in the capital Port-au-Prince when the earthquake struck on 12 January 2010, killing tens of thousands and reducing the city to rubble. He was waiting for lobster in a hotel restaurant, and began scribbling "15 minutes after the first tremors," he says in French. "It's not often you see your city falling down in front of your eyes. People are screaming in pain all around you. Children are running in the streets. Some people start talking about the end of the world. But writing, for me, was as important as taking care of the injured." Though he believes the great novel of the Haitian dictatorship was Graham Greene's The Comedians (1966), he says, "I didn't want it to be an American or British writer bearing witness, because they'd see the dead, but not know how they were when they were alive." He adds: "It's not all authors who get a chance to test literature and their relationship to it. I no longer ask myself if it has any use."

***

For him, moving between the two biggest French-speaking populations in the Americas was a revelation. French, he says, was the "language imposed on Haitians, whereas it's what Quebecers want to preserve as the core of their identity … It showed it's not the language that's the problem. That freed me in my own relationship to French."

The Enigma of the Return moves fluidly between free verse and prose, partly in homage to the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire. It begins in 2009 as the narrator, Windsor Laferrière Jr (the author's real name), receives a phone call about his father's death in a Brooklyn hospital. Windsor had moved from one island, Hispaniola, to another in the St Lawrence river ("We always forget that Montreal is an island"), from fire to ice. As he journeys to New York, then Haiti, the book reflects on the father "whose absence shaped me," and how both their lives were rent by the Duvaliers, father and son.

The novel is "not only my return, but the return of all those who had to leave because of the dictatorship; those who could return only in their dreams; and those who hope their children will return in their stead. Many people had to leave – those who opposed the Duvaliers and, after the dictatorship, those who were for them. I don't deal with the reasons, but the fact of being away." In his books, "almost all details and anecdotes are true. But what's important is to communicate what I felt at the time, and what I feel as I'm writing. Writing, for me, is the layering of these two emotions."

His own father didn't really interest him in real life. "He was the most important person in my mother's life, but he left when I was too young. I was brought up by seven women: my mother, her mother, and five aunts. I didn't feel I was missing anything. But I thought it was important to dig into this emotion, because many people in the same position as me had an absent father." The true exile, he says, is the "one who stays behind, with the absence of those they love".

It's not often you see your city falling down in front of your eyes

It's not often you see your city falling down in front of your eyes. People are screaming in pain all around you. Children are running in the streets. Some people start talking about the end of the world. But writing, for me, was as important as taking care of the injured.

On writing immediately after the 2010 earthquake in “Dany Laferrière: a life in books” in The Guardian (2013 Feb 1)

it was important that someone who knew them write about the event…

They were human beings who had a life, who had a lineage, who had parents, who had children, who had lives. They were not poor or rich. They were people and these people had humanity. So it was important that someone who knew them write about the event…

On reporting about the 2010 earthquake in Haiti in “An Interview with Dany Laferrière” (WWB Daily, 2016)

How I began to write is different than how I became a writer. They are two different things.

How I began to write is different than how I became a writer. They are two different things. Many people write but they do not become writers. To become a writer is a job. It involves planning and it affects all parts of your life. Even what you eat—being a writer means not eating food with too much rich sauce to avoid taking a long afternoon nap! It’s like being a professional athlete. And a writer must choose between being a sprinter who writes a book, and being a writer who creates an oeuvre. If you want to create an oeuvre, you have to be careful not to put all your energy into the first book. You have to have a vision for the long term...

On how he became a writer in “An Interview with Dany Laferrière” (WWB Daily, 2016)

The Dictionary

The dictionary doesn’t have individual contributions. It’s like building a cathedral. The workers are unknown. But one of the things I tend to do is suggest that it might be interesting to have examples of things that aren’t from France. 

If it’s a wind, which we worked on recently, does it always have to be the mistral? What about the winds of elsewhere? How about zephyrs or siroccos? 

In French, there exists an enormous variety of classifications, proverbs, and witticisms about winds. There are winds that push ships as well as winds that come from the gut—the noisy, bodily winds of Rabelais. 

All shadings have to be in the dictionary.

On working on a French-language dictionary as part his duties at the Académie française in “Dany Laferrière, The Art of Fiction No. 237” in The Paris Review (Fall 2017)

Dany Laferrière OC, OQ (born Windsor Kléber Laferrière April 13, 1953) is a French-writing Haitian-Canadian novelist and journalist.

The cold numbs before it kills.

 Dany Laferrière, L'Énigme du retour

The wounds of which we are ashamed cannot be healed.

 Les blessures dont on a honte ne se guérissent pas. Dany Laferrière, L'Énigme du retour 

I could never share the fate of a civilization that ostracizes rice. In no way could I trust people who believe yogurt is superior to rice.

 Dany Laferrière, How to Make Love to a Negro

But I treasure those nightmares. They’re the only thing that’s left of my life from before. Dany Laferrière, L'Énigme du retour

To Learn

I admit that it’s easier
To learn than to relearn.
But harder still
Is to unlearn.
― Dany Laferrière, L'Énigme du retour

Lost to the North

I felt
I was
Lost to the North when
In the warm sea
In pink twilight
Time suddenly became liquid
― Dany Laferrière, L'Énigme du retour

To Blend

I would like to lose
All awareness
Of my being
To blend
Into nature
And become a leaf
A cloud
Or the yellow of the rainbow
― Dany Laferrière, L'Énigme du retour

We always think of what’s missing. Dany Laferrière, L'Énigme du retour

Nous pensons toujours à ce qui manque.

We always think of what’s missing.   

 L'Énigme du retour

The Riddle of the Return

People are unhappy when they get something too easily. You have to sweat--that's the only moral they know.

 ― Dany Laferrière, I Am a Japanese Writer: A Novel

Illness is a luxury you can't afford

“Before the earthquake, medicine was hard to find. When you went to the hospital, you had to bring your own. In this country, you don't go there until the pain becomes unbearable. Otherwise, you don't consider yourself sick. It's better not to be sick if you can't pay for the medicine. That way, you go from being in good health to being dead. Illness is a luxury you can't afford if you don't have the means. So you die without ever having been sick.”
― Dany Laferrière

J'écris à voix haute dans mon coeur. Dany Laferrière

“I write out loud in my heart.”
― Dany Laferrière

You’re born at dawn.

A day here lasts a lifetime.
You’re born at dawn.
You grow up at noon.
You die at twilight.
Tomorrow you change bodies.
― Dany Laferrière, L'Énigme du retour

I realize I didn’t write those books to describe a landscape, but to continue being part of it.

Dany Laferrière, L'Énigme du retour 

For me, writers are what the priest has been throughout history, this person we pay to talk about spirituality. Dany Laferrière

The Ghost-Busting ‘Girl Detective’ Who Awed Houdini As an undercover investigator, Rose Mackenberg unmasked hundreds of America’s fake psychics.

Article

Mary Black - Colcannon (Song)

 Mary Black - Colcannon (Song) 

A St. Patrick's day favorite, colcannon is an Irish potato recipe, a mixture of creamy mashed potatoes and usually kale or cabbage.

An Irish Halloween tradition is to serve colcannon with a ring and a thimble hidden in the dish. Prizes of small coins such as threepenny or sixpenny bits were also concealed inside the dish.^[6] Other items could include a stick indicating an unhappy marriage, and a rag denoting a life of poverty.^[7] The dish champ is similar but made with scallions, butter, and milk.^[2] It was traditional to offer a portion of champ to the fairies by placing a dish of colcannon with a spoon at the foot of a hawthorn.^[8]

 

The song "Colcannon", also called "The Skillet Pot", is a traditional Irish song that has been recorded by numerous artists, including Mary Black.^[6][10] It begins:

Did you ever eat Colcannon, made from lovely pickled cream?
With the greens and scallions mingled like a picture in a dream.
Did you ever make a hole on top to hold the melting flake
Of the creamy, flavoured butter that your mother used to make?

The chorus:

Yes you did, so you did, so did he and so did I.
And the more I think about it sure the nearer I'm to cry.
Oh, wasn't it the happy days when troubles we had not,

 

We are Not Machines (song)

Oct 20, 2020 “To offer this collaboration (across space and time!) with friends and family and mentors means the world to me: especially at this moment.. 'Let us all unite'! This song started in a dream I had a couple years ago a few weeks after watching a Charlie Chaplin movie. In the dream I walked into an empty, run-down warehouse to play a show. There was no one there. No crew. No one. There was no gear. No microphones. But, I remember I walked up and out to the middle of an old stage, looked out at the empty room and started singing. And I kept singing this phrase ‘we are not machines" over and over. Somehow, people started coming in the warehouse slowly, and then all of the sudden I was hearing voices singing with me. ‘We are not machines…we are not machines’. The warehouse filled up with people...in a blur…all kinds of people. Many people had umbrellas, and they kept opening them...and I realized it had started to rain in a little bit through the crumbling ceiling…but everyone just kept singing. And here we are still singing. And here I am still dreaming." - Pieta Brown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmTxfqopYBI

Let it Be

I woke up at 5 am with LET IT BE (song) by the BEATLES playing in my dreams. I think my mind was trying to tell me to calm down and chill out about the long process of adopting my friends car.

Now I'm listening to LET IT BE album.

And Abbey Road full album here by The Beatles.