December 2011
13 posts
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happy new year
Thank you to all the amazing tumblr bloggers who share your ideas, your poetry, your images, your humor, your lives. Thank you to those who follow this little blog. May the next year bring all of us more peace, the willingness to accept grace where we find it, and the ability to see the hopeful promise of each person we encounter.
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sometimes. all water is blue. like my mondays.
Listening to a little Zoe Keating this morning, thinking about all manner of things, and reading poetry written by children. Here are two that moved me. Both are from participants in the Writers in the Schools (WITS) project in Houston, Texas.
My Past in a Magic Box
I will put in my box
New York City streets,
A trip back in time,
And my Grandpa’s rhymes.
I will put in my box
My cousin’s...
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Well, today is my birthday.
According to family lore, I was born in the midst of an icy, wintry early morning. The temperature was in the 20s, the winds gusting nearly 20 mph. The ride to the hospital was replete with police escort, given the fact that my father had been pulled over for driving far too fast for conditions. But my mother, having already been through this twice before, was...
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Remember
This December,
That love weighs more than gold!
~Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon
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first day of winter ...
First Day of Winter
Like the bloom on a grape is the evening air
And a first faint frost the wind has bound.
Yet the fear of his breath avails to scare
The withered leaves on the cold ground.
For they huddle and whisper in phantom throngs,
I hear them beneath the branches bare:
We danced with the Wind, we sang his songs;
Now he pursues us, we know not where.
(Robert Laurence Binyon...
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The Orient No.2 Coal Mine Explosion - 60 years ago...
On December 21, 1951 there was an explosion in the Orient No. 2 Coal Mine in West Frankfort, Franklin County, IL. At that time, the Orient No. 2 was the largest shaft mine in the country.
Although 133 miners escaped, 119 men were killed “when death flew over and hurled them into the last portal.” They left behind 111 widows, 176 children without fathers, and a region that has never...
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Isn’t it funny that at Christmas something in you gets so lonely for - I don’t know what exactly, but it’s something that you don’t mind so much not having at other times. (Kate L. Bosher)
One teacher's approach to preventing gender...
Note: I am a teacher, I work with university students planning to be public school teachers. This essay shows a teacher who reflects thoughtfully, deeply, and carefully about how best to teach each child in her classroom. How could we want any less for our children?
I believe this is the crux of Ms. Bollow Tempel’s philosophy:
“My job is not to judge, but to teach, and I can’t teach if...
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a little e.e. cummings for a dark monday afternoon
[love is more thicker than forget]
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail
it is more mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and...
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To all my writer friends ...
I much prefer Carl Sandburg’s take on poets: ‘Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.’
What the Chairman Told Tom
By Basil Bunting
Poetry? It’s a hobby.
I run model trains.
Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.
It’s not work. You dont sweat.
Nobody pays for it.
You could advertise soap.
Art, that’s opera; or repertory—
The Desert...
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gaudete - joy - joie
“Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife.
The first question was,”Did you bring joy?”
The second was, “Did you find joy?”
(Leo Buscaglia)
.
(photo credit: A. Cunningham; Embassy Row: Heart of the Parisian Disapora)
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Thinking about the mysteries of the divine, of free will, of the hand that forges good and evil .
THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)
By William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare...
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Pensées: creating chaos via castigation of...
“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” (Blaise Pascal)
I would rephrase this as “Men never do evil so completely and hurtfully as when they do it from self-righteous conviction.”
Recently I have observed the energy expended by individuals who believe their “rightness” can only be affirmed by proving how terribly...