Skywatch Friday: Spring's Asleep

Kind of grim....



...until you step back and see that spring is here....



but she is yet asleep.

Skywatch Friday

Wisdom: The Book

THE NATURE OF WISDOM:

It's not about brains.
It's not about the accumulation of knowledge.
It's about being decent.
(Bryce Courtenay)

You can't get to wonderful
without passing through all right.
(Bill Withers)

You cannot control people by fear
because their ultimate essence is constantly craving dignity.
The human being has a need for dignity like water, like air.
(Wole Soyinka)

You don't have to be rich.

You don't have to be an army.
If you find yourself in a situation that needs to be changed,
if you're willing to offer your life for it,
you might actually get something done.
(Bernice Johnson Reagon)

We've got to learn to love something deeply.
Sounds sentimental as hell,
but I think [wisdom is] love.
(Andrew Wyeth)

"Inspired by the idea that wisdom is the greatest gift one generation can give to another, award-winning photographer and filmmaker Andrew Zuckerman interviewed, photographed and filmed 50 of the world’s great writers, actors, artists, designers, politicians, musicians and religious and business leaders of our time. He posed seven questions to each of his subjects—all over 65 years of age—and their candid responses offer uniquely inspirational and often surprising insights.

"Thoughts from Nelson Mandela, Frank Gehry, Judi Dench, The Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Clint Eastwood, Ted Kennedy, Robert Redford, Vaclav Havel, Terence Conran, Buzz Aldrin, Lou Reed, Willie Nelson, Madeline Albright, Jane Goodall, Burt Bacharach, Andrew Wyeth, Vanessa Redgrave, Nadine Gordimer and many more reveal lifetimes of adversity and triumph, and present intimate insights into very public lives."

Talk about an impulse buy! When my friends at Wisdom House sent me a link to the video trailer promoting it, I watched the thing .5 times before I needed whatever it had to offer. If you have five or so minutes, have a look at the trailer here and enjoy this work of art.

Wordless Wednesday: Monkeying Around with Tracey the Tree at the Rainforest Cafe

Wordless Wednesday

My World Tuesday: A Walk in the Snow

This was the view on Day 2 of 2009 when my daughter and I stopped at my parents' home in Newtown, Connecticut. They live near a brook along which there once ran a rail line. The tracks are still visible in some places; where they are not, the straight lines of where they used to be persist. The clouds muffled all sound on a very peaceful day that brought snow showers and plenty of reasons to stay inside and enjoy heat and light and the company of my family. Days like this always bring to mind Christina Rossetti's 1872 poem "In the Bleak Midwinter" about the birth of Christ into the metaphorical cold of this world:

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ....

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

My World Tuesday

Weekend Snapshot: Shrug

We stopped at the Rainforest Cafe for lunch on Saturday. The food was good, the decor was over the top, the people traffic was non-stop. What's a golden boy to do but shrug?

Weekend Snapshot

One Single Impression: Skin

So often words fail
To close the gap,
Fail to name
The truth of love.

Then must our skin
Speak for us
Until there is

No space, no silence
Nothing between
Your pulse and mine
But skin
Hand to hand,
Heart to heart,
Cheek to cheek
All pulse and breath
That is life
That becomes a dance,
Your life and mine, one life
One gesture that begs
All language to blow out the lights
And be gone;

All will be well.

One Single Impression

The Rising Blogger: Thank You

Thanks to Viola Jaynes for nominating my post, "Kill Yourself and I'll Feel Bad." as Post of the Day at The Rising Blogger.

According to this blog, "The Rising Blogger is devoted to finding and spotlighting the best of the blogosphere in order to help bloggers find, enjoy, appreciate, and validate the work of other bloggers. The Rising Blogger Post of the Day Award is bestowed upon original content that is insightful, inspiring, newsworthy, educational, informative, touching, creative, interesting, humorous or..."

Thank you, friends.

Blog Your Blessings: One Swift Kick

For the length of a family Christmas party, a first-grade boy wears a hard plastic Rudolph nose that lights up.

At the end of the evening, an older cousin says to him with a laugh, "Sorry, but I just have to do this," and plucks the nose away from the little boy's face and snaps it.

To say "ouch" would be to say the least.

"No problem," the first-grader responds. "I just have to do this!" And he delivers a swift kick straight into the shin of the older boy.

End of conversation. "Nobody chastised A---," his father later says with a smile of pride. [I have deleted my nephew's name to protect the proactive, of course.]

Damn right they didn't, I think to myself, and I smile and laugh out loud, too. That swift kick said it all. I am an indulgent aunt; this child can do no wrong in my eyes. Nosireebob, he is perfect in every way.

Yet he assaulted a child who was only having a bit of fun at Christmas.

Right?

Isn't that right, Sandy? You do, after all, teach kids many of whom spend more time with their parole officers than with you precisely because they cannot control their anger. Your students sometimes leave school in manacles because they forget to use their words when they are angry and resort to physical violence, instead. They forget justice is a way of thinking rather than a way of behaving nowadays. What, oh what, will become of a nephew who takes justice in his own hands?

I think he will accompany my daughter when she goes out on dates. He will keep an eye on her husband one day. He will keep his aunt safe so she doesn't have to put bars on the windows someday.

He will perhaps grow up to wear adult-sized Marine fatigues not unlike the junior version he prefers to all his other pants. He will perhaps put his prompt thinking, his respect for fair play, and his refusal to tolerate abuse to good work for the good of the rest of us someday.

Right now I am grateful he takes care of himself, that he knows he is worthy of respect. And the next time some older kid tries to mess with him, the older kid will do well to remember what his first-grade teacher should have told him--"Use your words, dear."

Tonight, though, I'm going to sleep well knowing my nephew is in this world. The world needs this little man of action!

PS No sooner did I draft this than I read this: If we ever, God forbid, manage to make each child succeed with his peer group, we will produce a race of bland and faceless nonentities, and all poetry and mystery will vanish from the face of the earth. Somehow I am not worried. Surely every teacher must want each child to succeed...must hope to help him find a self, but this self must be a nonconforming self. And surely there will always be the occasional prickly child who rejects all efforts, who kicks the other children, bites teacher's hands, is unloving and unlovable, and yet who will, one day--perhaps out of this very unloveliness--create a work of art which sings of love. Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet)

Blog Your Blessings

Skywatch Friday: Happy New Year

Skywatch Friday