God spoke today in flowers, and I, who was waiting on words, almost missed the conversation.

 Ingrid Goff-Maidoff

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold.

Turkish proverb

The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them. Turkish proverb

When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace becomes a circus.

  Turkish proverb

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead

Henry Miller

The wisdom of age constitutes the ability to accept reality, which is the knowledge of certain death--substantial, personal, individual extinction. It no longer seeks to disguise the fundamental cruelty and terror of life because it is too weary for further struggle. It is not the acceptance of destiny so much, as the succumbing to it... It's not pessimism but a joyous acceptance of life!

Henry Miller

10,000 Starlings

10,000 starlings have gathered in my bare maple tree over the past few weeks. My car, which gets parked under this tree, became completely covered in bird poop. 

Today my husband Bill and I finally decided to find a car wash. I knew of one in my area - Thundermist on Pulaski Boulevard. It was completely automated from payment to wash and rinse. The big cobalt blue rag brushes twirled on metal arms passing back and forth along both sides of the vehicle giving the illusion that we were moving. Then there was a sudsy rinse and a blow dry that felt like a hurricane. It was my first amusement park ride.

When we arrived back home and got out and inspected the clean car I noticed my rear driver's side red plastic taillight cover was gone. Bill suggested that we go back to the car wash and see if it was there. I imagined that if it was it would be crushed, driven over by patrons. My husband was more optimistic.

There was a man at the car wash with a pickup truck off to the side tending to the grounds and I walked over and told him what happened. He asked me which bay of the two and then walked right into the car wash to look around for it while it was spraying water on a customer's car. He's going to get completely soaked, I thought. My husband followed him and, Mr. Physics that he is, thought to check the corners and guess what? He found the tail light cover and it was intact. We thanked the man who turns out was the manager. He said, Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Bill dismantled the whole tail light from the vehicle and it was clear that it had been glued on in the past, probably by the previous owner. Now we have glued the cover back on with special glue that we purchased at the neighborhood auto parts shop.  We now have to wait 30 minutes for the glue to set before we it reattach it to the car.

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around. Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Less Anxious

Many people drink a mug of coffee first thing in the morning because caffeine gives them energy. However, caffeine also stimulates the body’s fight-or-flight response, leading to symptoms such as nervousness, stress, anxiety, low mood, heart palpitations, and panic attacks. Quitting caffeine can make you less anxious, especially if you are prone to anxiety or a depressed mood. source

I am striving to make order out of chaos

I am striving to make order out of chaos, which is the sweetest pleasure I know. When I succeed, I have a thing, this story, to offer. It isn’t me. It isn’t even a facsimile. I have used my life — rather than my life using me — to make something more beautiful and refined than I could ever be.

Dani Shapiro

Josh Marshall

Beautiful!

The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful. H.L. Mencken

H.L. Mencken

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."

― H.L. Mencken

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable... H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. H.L. Mencken, Prejudices First Series

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

Books Help

Books help to form us. If you cut me open, you will find volume after volume, page after page, the contents of every one I have ever read, somehow transmuted and transformed into me. Alice in Wonderland. the Magic Faraway Tree. The Hound of the Baskervilles. The Book of Job. Bleak House. Wuthering Heights. The Complete Poems of W H Auden. The Tale of Mr Tod. Howard''s End. What a strange person I must be. But if the books I have read have helped to form me, then probably nobody else who ever lived has read exactly the same books, all the same books and only the same books as me. So just as my genes and the soul within me make me uniquely me, so I am the unique sum of the books I have read. I am my literary DNA.
― Susan Hill, Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home

Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit

 Fabulous book!

troglodyte; plural noun: troglodytes (especially in prehistoric times) a person who lived in a cave. a hermit. a person who is regarded as being deliberately ignorant or old-fashioned.

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. Jean-Luc Godard