A Touch-Me-Not after it’s been touched…did you know the seeds are edible and have an almond taste?
“There is much pleasure to be gained
from useless knowledge.”
Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970
English philosopher and historian
Monthly Archives: April 2010
A Song or An Answer?
“A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.”
Chinese Proverb
Ugly Duckling
“There’s something almost perfect in the ugly duckling syndrome.
Because a sensitivity is tattooed on a part of you
no one else can see but can somehow guess is there.”
Stephanie Klein,
“Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp”
Immediately and Forever
“There are people whom one loves immediately and forever.
Even to know they are alive in the world with one is quite enough.”
Nancy Spain, 1917-1964
English broadcaster and journalist
Stitch in Time
Hosta bloom
“A stitch in time would have confused Einstein.”
Unknown
Do It Again
Unaka Mountains
“It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun;
and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon.
It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike;
it may be that God has never got tired of making them…
The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence;
it may be a theatrical encore.”
G. K. Chesterton
Silence
Trillium about to bloom, surrounded by Bloodroot
“Silence is more musical than any song.”
Christina Rossetti, 1830-1894
English poet
A Heart Opened to Beauty
Roan Highlands, viewed from Flat Rock, Blue Ridge Parkway, m. 307
“O GOD, we thank you for this earth, our home;
for the wide sky and the blessed sun, for the ocean and streams,
for the towering hills and the whispering wind,
for the trees and green grass.
We thank you for our senses by which we hear the songs of birds,
and see the splendor of fields of golden wheat,
and taste autumn’s fruit, and rejoice in the feel of snow,
and smell the breath of spring flowers.
GRANT US a heart opened wide to all this beauty;
and save us from being so blind that we pass unseeing
when even the common thornbush is aflame with your glory.”
Unknown
Fallacies or Fashions
“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies
because they become fashions.”
G. K. Chesterton, 1874-1936
Complain, Complain
“I can’t complain,
but sometimes I still do.”
Joe Walsh, b. 1947
Musician
Least Favorite Quality
Dutchman’s breeches
“Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism.
For the record, it’s my least favorite quality.
It doesn’t lead anywhere.”
Conan O’Brien, b. 1963
Final Tonight Show Speech, 2010
Hours At A Time
“There was a definite process
by which one made people into friends,
and it involved talking to them and
listening to them for hours at a time.”
Rebecca West, 1892-1983
Get Up
“Never face facts; if you do,
you’ll never get up in the morning.”
Marlo Thomas
Feeling Run Over
“We know what happens
to people who stay in the middle of the road.
They get run over.”
Aneurin Bevan, 1897-1960
Tempting Moment
“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place,
but far more difficult still,
to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790
Completion
“We begin to see that the completion of an important project
has every right to be dignified by a natural grieving process.
Something that required the best of you has ended.
You will miss it.”
Anne Wilson Schaef
Easter: Start Over
“The resurrection gives my life meaning and direction
and the opportunity to start over
no matter what my circumstances.”
Robert Flatt
Blossoms or Blight
Bloodroot
“I love better to count time from spring to spring;
it seems to me far more cheerful
to reckon the year by blossoms than by blight.”
Donald G. Mitchell
Express It All
Trout Lillies
“I like to express certain things that happen in my life,
the joy of spring, the birds singing
and young babies coming into the world.
You know, the whole thing
as well as the part I’m not happy with, the sad part.”
Roy Haynes, b. 1925
Jazz drummer
