Boys and girls, pay attention. We are living in a time of transformation, a time that will be viewed as a turning point in history. And you and I have the privilege to experience firsthand one of the great men in history as he moves through his life. Barack Obama, history will show, is a good and honest man, facing one of the most difficult times in history and is doing so with grace and honor, intelligence and courage, vision and wisdom. And the changes he oversees will influence the multitude for decades, perhaps centuries to come. Pay attention, not everyone gets to live in such times.
Quotes of the week
Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.
~Theodor Reik
A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. -Michael Pollan
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process." Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Meditation of the week
--Mary Casey
We must let go of people, places, memories, and move on to new experiences. The doors of the past must be closed before we can enter those that are opening to us today. However, no experience is gone forever. All of our experiences are threaded together, each one contributing to the events that claim our attention now.
Recovery has offered us a chance to be aware of our process of becoming. With each day, each experience, each new understanding, we are advancing along the path of personal growth. Let us remember that each of us has a particular path, like no other. Thus, our experiences are ours alone. We need not envy what comes to someone else.
Life is unfolding for us. The pain of the present may be necessary for the pleasure of tomorrow. We can accept the unfolding. Our inner selves have a goal; experiences of the past must be left in the past; experiences at hand will lead us to our destination today.
I am moving and changing and growing, at the right pace. The process can be trusted. What is right for me will come to me. I will let the joy of becoming warm me.
You are reading from the book:
Poems of the Week
Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.~ Allen Ginsberg
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
∞∞∞∞∞∞
Reverence
The air vibrated
with the sound of cicadas
on those hot Missouri nights after sundown
when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn,
sank into their slung-back canvas chairs
tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat
and we sisters chased fireflies
reaching for them in the dark
admiring their compact black bodies
their orange stripes and seeking antennas
as they crawled to our fingertips
and clicked open into the night air.
In all the days and years that have followed,
I don't know that I've ever experienced
that same utter certainty of the goodness of life
that was as palpable
as the sound of the cicadas on those nights:
my sisters running around with me in the dark,
the murmur of the grown-ups' voices,
the way reverence mixes with amazement
to see such a small body
emit so much light.
with the sound of cicadas
on those hot Missouri nights after sundown
when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn,
sank into their slung-back canvas chairs
tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat
and we sisters chased fireflies
reaching for them in the dark
admiring their compact black bodies
their orange stripes and seeking antennas
as they crawled to our fingertips
and clicked open into the night air.
In all the days and years that have followed,
I don't know that I've ever experienced
that same utter certainty of the goodness of life
that was as palpable
as the sound of the cicadas on those nights:
my sisters running around with me in the dark,
the murmur of the grown-ups' voices,
the way reverence mixes with amazement
to see such a small body
emit so much light.
Author of the week
May 3rd was the birthday of novelist Larry McMurtry, (books by this author) born in Wichita Falls, Texas (1936). His novel Lonesome Dove came out in 1985, the story of a former Texas Ranger named Augustus McCrae who persuades two friends to ride with him to Montana to find his one true love, Clara Allen, the only woman who could ever beat him in an argument. At the time the novel came out, most critics agreed with McMurtry that the Western was dead, but Lonesome Dove revitalized the genre. It became a huge best seller and a TV mini series, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Good Idea of the week
Memoirist and journalist Jim Knipfel, (books by this author) in his third memoir, Ruining It for Everybody (2004),begins with: "Whenever I hear the word 'spiritual' I reach for my revolver.'"
Video of the week
Websites of the week
Harpers index ---Number of American children conceived with donated sperm and/or carried to term by surrogate mothers: 250,000
http://www63.wolframalpha.com/ Computational knowledge engine-suck it, Google!
