tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32783737076748841772024-03-17T23:02:41.808-04:00moxie, love & pizzazzthoughts on living, loving and workingchristiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.comBlogger3530125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-68606516660344134962022-08-30T05:58:00.001-04:002022-08-30T05:58:00.205-04:00an object of vision<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9xdc7kZcZf5lq9ar68JBltfBkyB-dSSPttymXfv08qkh_FoiXlT_-EFx2maHovM6lH4zqEIdkNX3NO6lqIUmiASX2-ZuXZSbdMC983gowMQw0G5K9ShOPXu5-R4DHRbRq5BxYRBztJtihhgbHvpJIf89ZuA0E_4GnuiHPfmW2YGtkWj-lX_TdQO7PYA/s600/299117011_10159974860275552_5164421190419783317_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9xdc7kZcZf5lq9ar68JBltfBkyB-dSSPttymXfv08qkh_FoiXlT_-EFx2maHovM6lH4zqEIdkNX3NO6lqIUmiASX2-ZuXZSbdMC983gowMQw0G5K9ShOPXu5-R4DHRbRq5BxYRBztJtihhgbHvpJIf89ZuA0E_4GnuiHPfmW2YGtkWj-lX_TdQO7PYA/w400-h320/299117011_10159974860275552_5164421190419783317_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so <span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><a style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit;" tabindex="-1"></a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another....</span><p></p><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">"One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.” </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard;">John Berger, </span><span style="font-family: -webkit-standard;">Ways of Seeing (1972)</span></div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Paintings by Paul Delvaux</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159974860295552&set=pcb.10159974860610552">Rebecca Solnit</a>}</div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-5451539987351442912022-08-28T05:56:00.005-04:002022-08-28T05:56:00.185-04:00Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWyE8TBADw0xsc7oY13x5-jaJ0kd3FREVHiB4pd3WT0zbbX0qygpjWykVPnfOY6GkGXSmB1YoNTfPK-v1SZ-L0QiEJuauGkzlBX7Tw61IM7_i2HxzHZX2bOx8NnqJzig0vmZxsapPkvN2YtOIFwcNwVG8bbcIRrzwJ28djdkARom4GZRw7p4lKWGIEiA/s720/301317596_463990005776836_7554428963912382781_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="720" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWyE8TBADw0xsc7oY13x5-jaJ0kd3FREVHiB4pd3WT0zbbX0qygpjWykVPnfOY6GkGXSmB1YoNTfPK-v1SZ-L0QiEJuauGkzlBX7Tw61IM7_i2HxzHZX2bOx8NnqJzig0vmZxsapPkvN2YtOIFwcNwVG8bbcIRrzwJ28djdkARom4GZRw7p4lKWGIEiA/w400-h266/301317596_463990005776836_7554428963912382781_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">China is enduring a truly remarkable heatwave—by some accounts “the worst heatwave known in world climatic history.” (Its main competitor for the title may be last year’s insane ‘heat dome’ that ran Canadian temperatures up to 121 Fahrenheit). The heat just never lets up over some of the most densely populated land on planet earth: It hit 113 degrees Fahrenheit in Chongqing Thursday, the highest temperature ever recorded in the country outside of desert Xinjiang. </span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><a style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit;" tabindex="-1"></a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">It hit 110 in Sichuan, which is a province of…80 million people, or two Californias. When it gets that hot, water just evaporates—Sichuan is 80 percent dependent on hydropower, but the reservoirs behind the great dams like Three Gorges are falling nearly as fast as Lake Mead and Lake Powell. The province has cut power day after day, including to Tesla and Toyota factories, and to many of the firms that supply the planet’s auto parts; the EV revolution is being held up by the effects of the problem it is trying to solve.</span><p></p><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Once that water has evaporated up in the air, it’s going to come down—the average residence time for water vapor in the atmosphere is barely seven days, and so flooding rains have been pouring down on the western edge of the heat dome—the rains have been so extreme that some rivers in Qinghai province have run so high that they changed course.</div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">None of this is unique to China, of course. In Europe the drought is so deep that Nazi gunships have resurfaced along the Danube near Serbia, still fully loaded with the ammunition that was onboard when the Germans sunk them to prevent their capture by the advancing Russians. In America, this summer has seen the warmest nights ever recorded here; the ongoing drought and evaporation have forced the federal government to order states to come up with plans for cutting consumption, a mandate the states have so far not managed to meet.</div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But of course the damage is deepest in the poorest places. Somalia, and the surrounding region in the horn of Africa, are in the fifth straight rainy season without rain, and the toll is almost unimaginable. A million people have been internally displaced; the ones who haven’t managed to move to grim camps will soon starve. “They have no chance,” one refugee explained. “It is just a matter of time until they die. Even here we might die because we have nothing”.</div></div><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">There are a dozen factors at work here—from governmental incompetence to the remnants of colonialism, from inertia to greed. But basically it’s physics. Warm air holds more water vapor than cold, and from that the main events of post-modern twenty first century will descend. Some of them won’t be so bad: in suburban America, swimming pool owners are beseeching maintenance companies to find the leaks in their backyard oases, not understanding that the leaks are called ‘evaporation.’ But most of them will be terrible. We live on a different planet than we used to, and the most obvious change is the way that water moves, or doesn’t, across our earth.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">via {<a href="https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/water-water-nowhere?r=9dxl9&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwAR2sSeRrFCKj64He_qKag2EnGiAKY3Kr8aONidUEPUg51NPhozNRuLM3AfE">Bill McKibben</a>}</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">photo via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=463990019110168&set=a.360010452841459">nasa</a>}</div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-9947763412634073002022-08-26T05:38:00.000-04:002022-08-26T05:38:00.203-04:00Fire<p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">Fire </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirlewXCCEl2nH_RUfpwHZOqkO_oyRe5y2i0Y3u0s68EE4wvEi1HHtmwfHbw-CSEMIm3OxJo0Ep9X9lCpf2F2DzA6Kw0Dmr4ehNaYiFz0JnJv5YmwbGtdO1Gbo7Jcn2wiVEQ7qZ5izrM8jKRqguFJasU3RE6gDZQ3CwixG_SU9un27VcVBnfTPtvyK6Gw/s1440/299510703_480188920599352_8722459593239316113_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirlewXCCEl2nH_RUfpwHZOqkO_oyRe5y2i0Y3u0s68EE4wvEi1HHtmwfHbw-CSEMIm3OxJo0Ep9X9lCpf2F2DzA6Kw0Dmr4ehNaYiFz0JnJv5YmwbGtdO1Gbo7Jcn2wiVEQ7qZ5izrM8jKRqguFJasU3RE6gDZQ3CwixG_SU9un27VcVBnfTPtvyK6Gw/w480-h640/299510703_480188920599352_8722459593239316113_n.jpg" width="480" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">a woman can’t survive</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">by her own breath</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit;" tabindex="-1"></a></span>alone</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">she must know</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">the voices of mountains</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">she must recognize</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">the foreverness of blue sky</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">she must flow</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">with the elusive</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">bodies</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">of night wind women</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">who will take her into</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">her own self</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">look at me</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I am not a separate woman</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I am a continuance</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">of blue sky</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I am the throat</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">of the sandia mountains</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">a night wind woman</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">who burns</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">with every breath</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">she takes</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">by Joy Harjo</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">photo via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=480188923932685&set=a.386776863273892">Yellowstone</a>}</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: normal;">Sunset over the Yellowstone Revealed Lighted Teepees: Resiliency of the People by Pretty Shield Foundation and Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council in collaboration with </span><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: normal;"><a class="qi72231t nu7423ey n3hqoq4p r86q59rh b3qcqh3k fq87ekyn bdao358l fsf7x5fv rse6dlih s5oniofx m8h3af8h l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk srn514ro oxkhqvkx rl78xhln nch0832m cr00lzj9 rn8ck1ys s3jn8y49 icdlwmnq cxfqmxzd pbevjfx6 innypi6y" href="https://www.facebook.com/mountaintimearts/?__cft__[0]=AZWUF46wcUC2qGMQqMhQqRJQf4yQYvW-ZMDhDkHB3NSLbaXkmW3dWyxF0C_BL8JKZ9Ns2eOMvsUMcRm4byEzBp8CTwE8OzdMnG_RYWqAIdITkETf5cLQbXB0445BHVoUH5NictXTn6u-bfcGnRFzU1NNCFB3jSzIjOUWziYVmhWIYwQWyAf0CxMwz3MdomX1zv-PpeDpsD3bVU4_ZtPF2U8p&__tn__=kK*F" role="link" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--primary-text); cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: inherit; font-weight: 600; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation;" tabindex="0"><span class="rse6dlih" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mountain Time Arts</span></span></a></span><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: normal;"> in Gardiner, Montana. One part of the celebration of the historic and continued presence of Indigenous people in the Yellowstone region alongside Yellowstone’s 150th. Thank you sincerely, Mountain Time Arts. </span><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: normal;">The teepees will be up through 8/27. </span></div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-61433039024504621602022-08-24T05:45:00.002-04:002022-08-24T14:46:36.802-04:00Growth potential<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi31DvaRIrf034WRj1wfO0Z5jBI1vlLfIQdnY7a-MvpdvZv5S4NFEzF0fxunhwN5azXVciHWqrQcPQFhZhPuSb2NwJl_XIqRzlkB08e-6VNwSgwg9OhTsbCiQDGMcJ4Oq0-kvXRSz0tCVzKLYJD6v9Ev9RfwNwEMsTnTP4BdoUugQhctpqFcM52nLvksQ/s1620/299798519_6032253766791235_608114316784670208_n.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1620" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi31DvaRIrf034WRj1wfO0Z5jBI1vlLfIQdnY7a-MvpdvZv5S4NFEzF0fxunhwN5azXVciHWqrQcPQFhZhPuSb2NwJl_XIqRzlkB08e-6VNwSgwg9OhTsbCiQDGMcJ4Oq0-kvXRSz0tCVzKLYJD6v9Ev9RfwNwEMsTnTP4BdoUugQhctpqFcM52nLvksQ/w426-h640/299798519_6032253766791235_608114316784670208_n.jpg" width="426" /></a></div><p><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">An adult ocean sunfish compared to their size at birth.</span></p><p><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=6032253580124587&set=gm.3316044611965018&idorvanity=1912763425626484">nature</a>}</span></p>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-28080457859323532512022-08-22T05:47:00.003-04:002022-08-24T14:49:19.157-04:00a pair<p>"L<span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">ately I’ve been writing poems in conversation with / in opposition to each other."</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB7THr6yqx_R_N7jE1x5oyxXyStur0fdlNQNB2TumYT728j9bu3JRbfJuYNN4PN5TXbquW4WrMthRm0DK8iUlumzY9MDl7Uii6x9K13eddDqpGdNWBbFblhArEctCGyPo1GqOeURvkflWpCubSYvwU6-VsjNdcs_M9byD7HKfacNl-g7DV-tmhe_YfwQ/s1278/300655008_10161966614463642_8288345528612732434_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1278" data-original-width="960" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB7THr6yqx_R_N7jE1x5oyxXyStur0fdlNQNB2TumYT728j9bu3JRbfJuYNN4PN5TXbquW4WrMthRm0DK8iUlumzY9MDl7Uii6x9K13eddDqpGdNWBbFblhArEctCGyPo1GqOeURvkflWpCubSYvwU6-VsjNdcs_M9byD7HKfacNl-g7DV-tmhe_YfwQ/w300-h400/300655008_10161966614463642_8288345528612732434_n.jpg" width="300" /> </a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Hgdn5FOFtX6JIfPKLhCHwghd3mgYKwXHji_367101Ap8Z-NPlOejfcFflPJn3nCR5pBwXezprhzhs2_y8LcN-BFkr2LQlSOQbubKeGRDUvQAr7DVF5v_6OW8pLPOL8Kck7SvINVnnHPzW8Qan4rLjNn9jcLgnsfbhSz8a3-CuDMLcgtw1u-DzXkKIQ/s1254/300279531_10161966614393642_1130682711642692034_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1254" data-original-width="960" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2Hgdn5FOFtX6JIfPKLhCHwghd3mgYKwXHji_367101Ap8Z-NPlOejfcFflPJn3nCR5pBwXezprhzhs2_y8LcN-BFkr2LQlSOQbubKeGRDUvQAr7DVF5v_6OW8pLPOL8Kck7SvINVnnHPzW8Qan4rLjNn9jcLgnsfbhSz8a3-CuDMLcgtw1u-DzXkKIQ/w306-h400/300279531_10161966614393642_1130682711642692034_n.jpg" width="306" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"> </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10161966612938642&set=pcb.10161966614258642">Ben Gucciardi</a>}</span></p>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-9315001384909357882022-08-20T05:50:00.003-04:002022-08-24T14:52:59.344-04:00berry picking<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9AresyjNveT6mhF3tzrn1MaIdfbeyn7EcJexodn1exuLUR56eAw1mMYCLchHqKAKunChxToQqte7jEVZgPyY2FebeTBm1yqf2SJ6J6l9NBrpEbonyHrTqrD2HYMS7E-9E-d70d8rQ6j_c9jDSSI8UOen2XwzsraLkD3e8Q9IUNVnWeFMIpMygmd_e6Q/s393/299866149_10227810629387904_6145883406577579525_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="391" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9AresyjNveT6mhF3tzrn1MaIdfbeyn7EcJexodn1exuLUR56eAw1mMYCLchHqKAKunChxToQqte7jEVZgPyY2FebeTBm1yqf2SJ6J6l9NBrpEbonyHrTqrD2HYMS7E-9E-d70d8rQ6j_c9jDSSI8UOen2XwzsraLkD3e8Q9IUNVnWeFMIpMygmd_e6Q/s320/299866149_10227810629387904_6145883406577579525_n.jpg" width="318" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><p><span style="background-color: white; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">One</span></span><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of my big summer discoveries in the Hudson Valley has been berry picking (thanks to Gabes' inspiration for strawberry picking earlier this summer). I have been cooking up jams and freezing berries for later. But I have to disagree with Thoreau on waiting until he is done (what a moralist!): nothing is as good as a sun-warmed berry in the field, </span></span><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">juice running down my fingers amidst the sweat and grit of the good, clean dirt. </span></span></span></p><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"When I used to pick the berries for dinner on the East Quarter hills I did not eat one until I had done, for going a-berrying implies more things than eating </span></span></span><span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><a style="color: #385898; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit;" tabindex="-1"></a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">the berries. They at home got only the pudding; I got the forenoon out of doors and the appetite for the pudding."</span><p></p><div class="l7ghb35v kjdc1dyq kmwttqpk gh25dzvf jikcssrz n3t5jt4f" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">-From Thoreau's Journal; August 22, 1860</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10227810629427905&set=gm.10159092742229422&idorvanity=52618154421&__cft__[0]=AZVKgGna789rgzzAMwlKS_NAS4fNOdwWhpDmeMRVrBi_Sm5Lo1kzE4EQi12vrsJv4a4WE1zpvKc1VB8U6zKRVrRIIUXxnP1tWTqiN7BTo8B5mxP34-jGRBMIlpqHnl7RuXOw-mvFZBwByYhp78XGnKCNocIRccoLKgpnArl4wIXX-JhPUvvgmyMRqJJ_hzbQj6Tt21hJyzXZwaX3Sfyw-UtL&__tn__=EH-y-R">the Thoreau Society</a>}</div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-12750964059888019192022-07-31T14:43:00.003-04:002022-07-31T14:43:34.325-04:00the moment <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkrjVkabT24l4QfJ41Ubm7kby66kdF0EG238Rh-yMLQgFykc5wlWanWlxELahTUw9GfgjYWzl9N7sLeKEhrdr9-YLABhiqGGrYPmShrRK2UGHoHX4ZC9q55Vs4dnjR7m3m7S4fjTiM-Nt1EhpGuZ_nlEsE56MJn_M5wOnwVv5BUwBxxniA2KE6B92TcA/s667/each-day-anew-lourry-legarde.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="667" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkrjVkabT24l4QfJ41Ubm7kby66kdF0EG238Rh-yMLQgFykc5wlWanWlxELahTUw9GfgjYWzl9N7sLeKEhrdr9-YLABhiqGGrYPmShrRK2UGHoHX4ZC9q55Vs4dnjR7m3m7S4fjTiM-Nt1EhpGuZ_nlEsE56MJn_M5wOnwVv5BUwBxxniA2KE6B92TcA/w640-h384/each-day-anew-lourry-legarde.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: large; font-weight: bold; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><p><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: large; font-weight: bold; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p>THE MOMENT</span><p></p><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">We passed the ice of pain</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">And came to a dark ravine,</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">And there we sang with the sea:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">The wide, the bleak abyss</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">Shifted with our slow kiss.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">Space struggled with time;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">The gong of midnight struck</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">The naked absolute.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">Sound, silence sang as one.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">All flowed: without, within;</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">Body met body, we</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">Created what's to be.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">What else to say?</span><br /><span style="font-family: Times;">We end in joy.</span><br /><br /></span><br />Theodore Roethke<br /><br />"The Moment," Mysticism Through the Senses<br /><br />Poesis V. 7, No. 3, 1986, 38-46</span><div><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">image via {<a href="https://fineartamerica.com/featured/each-day-anew-lourry-legarde.html">lourry legarde</a>}</span></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-4284287711358104042022-07-30T05:53:00.003-04:002022-07-31T14:55:02.726-04:00carl larsson<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLM5Zp7h7iDjnwl7JnHilspSzbR8iEPqKlIX8PJIXogaIX9nlR2XNdcrhLVbx6vS4llSvTbqb8pqDKYC7BBYBHOQBokFlCWutlSxQ23dUk3EdMiYMAnZWAF-0qHncZI95rzzfRBAeVjG3jp2Rd8nAq3p2IZUrVAleSCPLmpRI4FvXstc8l0vwEM8O-7Q/s1024/296200316_592710082225579_4892500027987625013_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="713" data-original-width="1024" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLM5Zp7h7iDjnwl7JnHilspSzbR8iEPqKlIX8PJIXogaIX9nlR2XNdcrhLVbx6vS4llSvTbqb8pqDKYC7BBYBHOQBokFlCWutlSxQ23dUk3EdMiYMAnZWAF-0qHncZI95rzzfRBAeVjG3jp2Rd8nAq3p2IZUrVAleSCPLmpRI4FvXstc8l0vwEM8O-7Q/s320/296200316_592710082225579_4892500027987625013_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">*Woman Lying on Bench* (1913) </span><p></p><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">Carl Larsson</div><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">Swedish Artist/Illustrator~ b. in Stockholm</div><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">His parents were extremely poor and his childhood a misery. His father was a casual labourer and an abusive alcoholic. The family moved from rooming house to rooming house; when Carl was thirteen he was encouraged by a teacher to apply for a scholarship to the 'Swedish Academy of Arts.' There he eventually, gained confidence and upon graduation, became an illustrator for various magazines and news papers. He moved to Paris in 1877, worked for several years but was not eager to follow the 'Impressionist Movement.' However, he met his future wife there, Karin Bergoo, a designer and artist. They returned to Sweden, married and moved to 'Little Hyttnas' in 'Sundborn.' They had eight children together and this is when and where he painted his most important works. He and Karin were extremely happy and Carl continued to paint his family and surroundings, until his failing eyesight prohibited him from painting. He is considered to be one of Sweden's greatest artists and the house is currently a museum filled with his beautiful paintings.</div><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">1853 - 1919</div><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=592710088892245&set=a.228215818675009">under the white oak tree</a>}</div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-51180859903064069192022-06-24T10:41:00.003-04:002022-07-05T10:44:32.853-04:00Roe v Wade is dead<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7oOctJ_YfXm5gd4A1P5CxWqhk80VnvMQjVQu7qan2Z8FbZQnSmy40_2Ub0OnhMuGjVs5Yeu2bf5mCyruiMl5KRukSA_wcyboj6s8fjkQa7EYFYYreR2jB4u6Ahv4Hj6PbR9u1j9mHj0GbPyLg6JdTVp6ol3OBKPoid3dlqremoBWPK-iNiaa1PumVog/s1667/245075226_4393566494065355_1012656068208126108_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1094" data-original-width="1667" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7oOctJ_YfXm5gd4A1P5CxWqhk80VnvMQjVQu7qan2Z8FbZQnSmy40_2Ub0OnhMuGjVs5Yeu2bf5mCyruiMl5KRukSA_wcyboj6s8fjkQa7EYFYYreR2jB4u6Ahv4Hj6PbR9u1j9mHj0GbPyLg6JdTVp6ol3OBKPoid3dlqremoBWPK-iNiaa1PumVog/w400-h263/245075226_4393566494065355_1012656068208126108_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>This: <span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">THE FUNCTION OF THE WOMB IS TO PROTECT THE PARENT'S LIFE. </span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I think it's culturally time for us to re-frame how we think about the uterus.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">It's not a nurturing organ—it doesn't need to be. A fetus is frighteningly good at getting the resources it needs to nurture itself. If they are implanted anywhere other than the womb (most often the fallopian tube, but also sometimes the bladder, intestine, pelvic muscles and connective tissue, and the liver) placental cells will rip through a body, slaughtering everything in their path as they seek out arteries to slake their hunger for nutrients. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Fetal cells will happily grow in any of these places, digesting and puncturing tissue, paralyzing and enlarging arteries, raising blood pressure to feed itself more, faster; but it will be unable to be ejected. It's no coincidence that genes involved in embryonic development have been implicated in how cancer spreads.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Rather than a soft cozy nest, a womb is a fortress designed to protect the person from the developing cells inside them. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Because of our huge and (metabolically speaking) expensive brains, human fetal development requires unrestricted access to a parent's blood supply, which makes pregnancy (and miscarriage) incredibly dangerous for the carrier. The uterus has evolved to control and restrict whether placental cells can get that access, and to eject it before it develops enough to kill the host. THE FUNCTION OF THE WOMB IS TO PROTECT THE PARENT'S LIFE. The very structure of the womb very firmly prioritizes the life of the parent over the life of the fetus.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Even with modern medical care, at least 800 people die EVERY DAY from pregnancy (and childbirth-related causes). Among developed countries, the United States has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world, and Texas has one of the highest rates within that. The rate is even higher when viewed among BIPOC only.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Pregnancy may be necessary for the continuation of the species, but it is not a joke. It is a life-threatening event, a parasitic attack on a human body; just one we have romanticized and been desensitized to. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The "miracle" of birth is that we have a protective organ designed to, if all goes well, let us survive it. It doesn't always go well. It is life or death. Someone who chooses to get pregnant, stay pregnant, and carry a fetus to delivery is legitimately choosing to risk their life to do it. Nobody else has the right to make anyone do that, and nobody should be punished or vilified for not wanting to do it. Forcing someone to carry a pregnancy, ANY pregnancy, is attempted murder.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">—Anonymous </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">via {</span><a class="oajrlxb2 g5ia77u1 qu0x051f esr5mh6w e9989ue4 r7d6kgcz rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 nc684nl6 p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of lzcic4wl gpro0wi8 q66pz984 b1v8xokw" href="https://www.facebook.com/UniteWomen/?__cft__[0]=AZXxnTkm2rrHRHit7MrGujlmFZzTy7ENWrAeRtL5o6L2-2rYciL5PELeXpI3vQnIG5oqHv0tzIH--xBmU4TuAvwYeUrWBIfoONq-pidxgGjyXpHMCZXybSOgAbgQGMDIvJk&__tn__=kK-R" role="link" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--accent); cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation;" tabindex="0">UniteWomen.org</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">}</span></div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-14171200981249852522022-06-04T05:25:00.001-04:002022-06-04T10:33:20.025-04:00Darkness<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWceIDZGz9CzVpKpksblmf61EjCLsIL1OhxHzlAiAeEpd4d6G9pTUyVWSmP5ANfhXfvNpxa0ZJ_Iy4_uds-z7D0ykYZV1kQROWWl2zOb-fjXsd1Cx3zG5VhXnhIa4nLyEnZ-2Noz8H0Qj8Tp0W2NfnKr9jckUq-0fb8Y1zUc8Ml5HlIYlWrLgAS6g5zw/s940/285250167_552525026440970_2226358665780682924_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="940" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWceIDZGz9CzVpKpksblmf61EjCLsIL1OhxHzlAiAeEpd4d6G9pTUyVWSmP5ANfhXfvNpxa0ZJ_Iy4_uds-z7D0ykYZV1kQROWWl2zOb-fjXsd1Cx3zG5VhXnhIa4nLyEnZ-2Noz8H0Qj8Tp0W2NfnKr9jckUq-0fb8Y1zUc8Ml5HlIYlWrLgAS6g5zw/w400-h223/285250167_552525026440970_2226358665780682924_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>“Hello darkness, my old friend…” Everybody knows the iconic <span style="color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><a class="oajrlxb2 g5ia77u1 qu0x051f esr5mh6w e9989ue4 r7d6kgcz rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 nc684nl6 p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of lzcic4wl gpro0wi8 q66pz984 b1v8xokw" href="https://www.facebook.com/Paul-Simon-Art-Garfunkel-150004281702411/?__cft__[0]=AZUL4gC5C8GPDzXmybDOB3mJRDwbvOjqVQp3rB_afJShVnOh4zv0sV-OR7H9ZuVu1eLYtRLj7f_RmFh93JEwjhlp6W6-GvPx9RdXi1Wt8nFIas8hpK3hcrqJuozIKCYovWQdzuipkNv9SdQTH-ImYxK9RZd3sFVuT9akh9ftaSoF0H2w-Pu7wojPTl5pX_i6TawFc1310tPj7LGWira6hHe0&__tn__=kK-y-R" role="link" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--accent); cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation;" tabindex="0"><span class="nc684nl6" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel</span></a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"> song, but do you know the amazing story behind the first line of The Sounds of Silence?</span><p></p><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">It began when Arthur “Art” Garfunkel, a Jewish kid from Queens, enrolled in Columbia University. During freshman orientation, Art met a student from Buffalo named Sandy Greenberg, and they immediately bonded over their shared passion for literature and music. Art and Sandy became roommates and best friends. With the idealism of youth, they promised to be there for each other no matter what.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Soon after starting college, Sandy was struck by tragedy. His vision became blurry and although doctors diagnosed it as temporary conjunctivitis, the problem grew worse. Finally after seeing a specialist, Sandy received the devastating news that severe glaucoma was destroying his optic nerves. The young man with such a bright future would soon be completely blind.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Sandy was devastated and fell into a deep depression. He gave up his dream of becoming a lawyer and moved back to Buffalo, where he worried about being a burden to his financially-struggling family. Consumed with shame and fear, Sandy cut off contact with his old friends, refusing to answer letters or return phone calls. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Then suddenly, to Sandy’s shock, his buddy Art showed up at the front door. He was not going to allow his best friend to give up on life, so he bought a ticket and flew up to Buffalo unannounced. Art convinced Sandy to give college another go, and promised that he would be right by his side to make sure he didn’t fall - literally or figuratively.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Art kept his promise, faithfully escorting Sandy around campus and effectively serving as his eyes. It was important to Art that even though Sandy had been plunged into a world of darkness, he should never feel alone. Art actually started calling himself “Darkness” to demonstrate his empathy with his friend. He’d say things like, “Darkness is going to read to you now.” Art organized his life around helping Sandy.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">One day, Art was guiding Sandy through crowded Grand Central Station when he suddenly said he had to go and left his friend alone and petrified. Sandy stumbled, bumped into people, and fell, cutting a gash in his shin. After a couple of hellish hours, Sandy finally got on the right subway train. After exiting the station at 116th street, Sandy bumped into someone who quickly apologized - and Sandy immediately recognized Art’s voice! Turned out his trusty friend had followed him the whole way home, making sure he was safe and giving him the priceless gift of independence. Sandy later said, “That moment was the spark that caused me to live a completely different life, without fear, without doubt. For that I am tremendously grateful to my friend.”</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Sandy graduated from Columbia and then earned graduate degrees at Harvard and Oxford. He married his high school sweetheart and became an extremely successful entrepreneur and philanthropist. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">While at Oxford, Sandy got a call from Art. This time Art was the one who needed help. He’d formed a folk rock duo with his high school pal Paul Simon, and they desperately needed $400 to record their first album. Sandy and his wife Sue had literally $404 in their bank account, but without hesitation Sandy gave his old friend what he needed.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Art and Paul's first album was not a success, but one of the songs, The Sounds of Silence, became a #1 hit a year later. The opening line echoed the way Sandy always greeted Art. Simon & Garfunkel went on to become one of the most beloved musical acts in history.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The two Columbia graduates, each of whom has added so much to the world in his own way, are still best friends. Art Garfunkel said that when he became friends with Sandy, “my real life emerged. I became a better guy in my own eyes, and began to see who I was - somebody who gives to a friend.” Sandy describes himself as “the luckiest man in the world.”</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Adapted from Sandy Greenberg’s memoir: “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life."</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=552525033107636&set=a.190120269348116">grateful music</a>}</div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-10021040996158213052022-05-27T05:35:00.000-04:002022-05-27T15:38:24.043-04:00internal tension<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKdTDba_Aqv4tiR9udx_vA2uhznLdPkj1bDjwc4Sflh6a-00efPqReBllVGlBORVCyOZHrIOtgXjCbrM3TORPsTDuV9WeZmmUmXk9HVpP8pESF4fMUWPjEzMssB_1uUOpkqVmmMz47yL4CS90xT9936lJlGNxRHN5ctshwgmim7zgOZwoMDSKreSMI4w/s560/yoga%20breathing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="560" data-original-width="560" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKdTDba_Aqv4tiR9udx_vA2uhznLdPkj1bDjwc4Sflh6a-00efPqReBllVGlBORVCyOZHrIOtgXjCbrM3TORPsTDuV9WeZmmUmXk9HVpP8pESF4fMUWPjEzMssB_1uUOpkqVmmMz47yL4CS90xT9936lJlGNxRHN5ctshwgmim7zgOZwoMDSKreSMI4w/w400-h400/yoga%20breathing.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Semi-permanent state since the pandemic started especially now that I am in a constant state of fear about an unvaccinate-able, unmask-able infant.<p></p><p>via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/newyorker/photos/a.430906773868/10158997843323869/">the new yorker</a>}</p>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-28179103694076410592022-05-26T05:16:00.007-04:002022-05-26T13:20:32.162-04:00all the hearts<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI0VsvKXtPNMSwamTKUbz5TgVITFYAnHeNegv33aLjlrb-EWFqGtSvcn3WJivcZGTTN9ch9-1x4li7rTvZzS0CMSp-huiwJNeQ5JP9QzWU7UJrgYh5qxPZp4yZsCPphHX5MIHitfeKbO_0FBLTssxrxZbUL3d3IDdSFJAK8YVtB333Z1td4YkqkAL7jg/s1448/282559940_559095975581484_3393893675244320993_n.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1448" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI0VsvKXtPNMSwamTKUbz5TgVITFYAnHeNegv33aLjlrb-EWFqGtSvcn3WJivcZGTTN9ch9-1x4li7rTvZzS0CMSp-huiwJNeQ5JP9QzWU7UJrgYh5qxPZp4yZsCPphHX5MIHitfeKbO_0FBLTssxrxZbUL3d3IDdSFJAK8YVtB333Z1td4YkqkAL7jg/w299-h400/282559940_559095975581484_3393893675244320993_n.jpg" width="299" /></a></div>Just 30 days since my last post, summer vacation finally begins tomorrow. I am so worn out and equally ecstatic not to have to juggle work with my little one, and that we have 3 months to hang out together. <div> <div>I am so disturbed by the back-to-back mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas. This anecdote from one of my favorite children's book authors articulates it so well for both children and yes, even those politicians (50 senators) who refuse to budge on any legislation.<p></p><p><br /></p><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I was down at the lake a few days ago, standing and admiring a gaggle of goslings, when a woman came and stood beside me.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Aren’t they beautiful?” she said.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“They are,” I said. “I can’t quite get over the perfection of them.”</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">We stood there, marveling together while an adult goose watched us in return.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The woman said, “You wrote The Tale of Despereaux, didn’t you?”</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“I did!” I said, turning to her.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“My son loved that book when he was small. He used to go around shouting, ‘Do you think rats do not have hearts? Wrong!’”</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Wow,” I said. “I don’t even remember that line.”</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“He’s grown up now,” said the woman. “An engineer. A lovely human being.”</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Tell him I said ‘hello,” I said. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“I will,” said the woman.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">When I got back home, I pulled a copy of Despereaux off the shelf and flipped through it, looking for the line about rats and hearts. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">It took me awhile, but I found it:</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“Did you think that rats do not have hearts? Wrong. All living things have a heart. And the heart of any living thing can be broken.”</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I read those lines and thought about the goslings and the goose parent and the woman and her young son who is now grown and oh, all of it.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">All the world, all the living things, all the hearts.</div></div><p><br /></p><p>via {Kate diCamillo}</p></div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-24491954959554127492022-05-11T05:21:00.006-04:002022-06-10T14:25:38.315-04:00hour of lead remembered<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbineulLaN9f592JxMHLi-5YPJyWb0cMrWfa8_A4ApwC8PqKdMJglJ6PUuk8smsPJoCxoWGYUn8lYdoY8M9n7Vn0mvbvRxJe8o_7KDT6enJzCGDT_-WJwz2JlYUBp8I53VYthAKh0OAZwdJh8dnvHzygF3gMhTwXt-0ApWW6hocAdT8VcHCWGCSoO4qQ/s680/cryheartbutneverbreak6.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="680" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbineulLaN9f592JxMHLi-5YPJyWb0cMrWfa8_A4ApwC8PqKdMJglJ6PUuk8smsPJoCxoWGYUn8lYdoY8M9n7Vn0mvbvRxJe8o_7KDT6enJzCGDT_-WJwz2JlYUBp8I53VYthAKh0OAZwdJh8dnvHzygF3gMhTwXt-0ApWW6hocAdT8VcHCWGCSoO4qQ/w320-h221/cryheartbutneverbreak6.png" width="320" /></a></div>AFTER GREAT PAIN, A FORMAL FEELING COMES – (372)<div><br /> After great pain, a formal feeling comes –<br /><br />The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –<br /><br />The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’<br /><br />And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?<br /><br />The Feet, mechanical, go round –<br /><br />A Wooden way<br /><br />Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –<br /><br />Regardless grown,<br /><br />A Quartz contentment, like a stone –<br /><br />This is the Hour of Lead –<br /><br />Remembered, if outlived,<br /><br />As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –<br /><br />First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –<br /><br /><br />EMILY DICKINSON</div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-18419807581104848172022-04-25T05:12:00.000-04:002022-04-25T05:12:00.231-04:00overcoming obstacles<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBQf5C8n8EAaLMKuZYVbiTZiYT79KH5lv0RFuBHSUIqhjrKT34-HCKLd5IHI35oiaKw-zYPym7S5wAXSbYlzp_l89euAGzMT5WxHNVzUvl9oGkL69qEhQNcdzsaUShQXEHQeEN4cRdUDurONFNrmRaelkVwGTdZxGXKEQvLkUVjwkt1LIc_l8QpDvH7g/s1000/shutterstock_722595979.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBQf5C8n8EAaLMKuZYVbiTZiYT79KH5lv0RFuBHSUIqhjrKT34-HCKLd5IHI35oiaKw-zYPym7S5wAXSbYlzp_l89euAGzMT5WxHNVzUvl9oGkL69qEhQNcdzsaUShQXEHQeEN4cRdUDurONFNrmRaelkVwGTdZxGXKEQvLkUVjwkt1LIc_l8QpDvH7g/s320/shutterstock_722595979.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">This cat's owner has WAY too much time on their hands, but this is sure entertaining especially for a Monday morning attempt to dodge work.</span><p></p><p><iframe allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="977" scrolling="no" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fmolly.gebrian%2Fposts%2F722017056527&show_text=true&width=500" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" width="500"></iframe></p><div><br /></div><div>via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/randomcatvideosoninternet/">we love animals</a>}</div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-1672579051605859952022-04-19T05:15:00.000-04:002022-04-19T05:15:00.232-04:00make your soul grow<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_eqMEw5LWkYQGvGnWxfNMjq91g6VTL_rxMpOkOfUw3bE7qqKFl6L16a0BqnVgX8mbAzGODCpWuEaVKo1GpxX5HaA07CZLU_vt83fSThESb9LJT9wN3wV3wyNRp7YinoIQxQ1OXSy3JF8HeFQT9lzPP4U9hPXlaH1uTdcR-Q-AcDD8pmvpolO1NMS0-Q/s386/277164270_10160087407447889_2310651172866699872_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="250" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_eqMEw5LWkYQGvGnWxfNMjq91g6VTL_rxMpOkOfUw3bE7qqKFl6L16a0BqnVgX8mbAzGODCpWuEaVKo1GpxX5HaA07CZLU_vt83fSThESb9LJT9wN3wV3wyNRp7YinoIQxQ1OXSy3JF8HeFQT9lzPP4U9hPXlaH1uTdcR-Q-AcDD8pmvpolO1NMS0-Q/s320/277164270_10160087407447889_2310651172866699872_n.jpg" width="207" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent:</span><p></p><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"> “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">God bless you all!"</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Kurt Vonnegut</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10160087407457889&set=gm.10158966530743871">wild revolution</a>}</div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-62527909599693522442022-04-18T05:36:00.015-04:002022-04-18T05:36:00.219-04:00Easter stories<p><span face=""Gotham SSm", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: -0.00625em; orphans: 2; widows: 2;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU6Auumi7EgaJ6eBN9z3y-LxNHCQAvlK0PqwmN8-mdTZFEfgEJziQHZwZK9calC-UmvFk60VUMowVa809GnntE6YWFAqgGgl6D01X7gNL46lq3-y6ErGpx35ZZNa1vRs5eedbthI6wizPc6wcsaXAGCtwWgxQk6m2bIzWa6Q1HWWdozaWS2IBUqPgjng/s2400/ukrainian-easter-eggs.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1831" data-original-width="2400" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU6Auumi7EgaJ6eBN9z3y-LxNHCQAvlK0PqwmN8-mdTZFEfgEJziQHZwZK9calC-UmvFk60VUMowVa809GnntE6YWFAqgGgl6D01X7gNL46lq3-y6ErGpx35ZZNa1vRs5eedbthI6wizPc6wcsaXAGCtwWgxQk6m2bIzWa6Q1HWWdozaWS2IBUqPgjng/w400-h305/ukrainian-easter-eggs.png" width="400" /></a></div><i>What you didn't know about what you already know about Easter</i><p></p>Through centuries and across cultures, the holiday's iconic customs have been built upon with the help of storytelling. And the cotton-tailed creature that leaves us chocolate and eggs has a longer tale.<div><br /></div><div><br />1. Pagan beginnings<br /><br />The story of Easter is as much rooted in paganism as it is in Christianity. The holiday owes its name to Eostra, the Germanic goddess of spring and fertility.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.recess.ufl.edu/transcripts/2007/0405.shtml">University of Florida's Center for Children's Literature</a> traced Easter's origins to pre-Christian Germany. An Easter Bunny character first hopped up in a Germanic myth. CCL recounts the tale:<br /><br />A little girl found a bird that was close to death and prayed to Eostra for help. Eostra appeared, crossing a rainbow bridge — the snow melting before her feet. Seeing the bird was badly wounded, she turned it into a hare, and told the little girl that from now on, the hare would come back once a year bearing rainbow colored eggs.<br /><br />But because Easter's namesake is held up exclusively by this myth and by <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=yFsw-Vaup6sC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=eostre&f=false">Bede's The Reckoning of Time</a>, it continues to be a contentious scholarly debate.<div><br /></div><div><br />2. The Bunny Tale<br /><br />Legends featuring bunny imagery associated to Easter continued to be written down in 1500s Germany and the first story about a rabbit hiding eggs in a garden was published in 1680. As many Southwestern German immigrants settled in America, the Easter Bunny lived on in Pennsylvania Dutch tales of the Bunny as the "Oschter Haws," where Germantown, Pa., children were gifted with eggs in their Easter bonnets that, today, are replaced by Easter baskets.<div><br /></div><div><br />3. Cracking open the egg<br /><br />Egg decorating is at least a <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/egg-cetera-6-hunting-for-the-world%E2%80%99s-oldest-decorated-eggs">60,000-year-old</a> activity, practiced by the likes of Egyptians, Persians, Greeks and Kalahari Bushmen, who engraved ostrich eggs. Before giving colored eggs found its way into the modern Christian tradition, early Mesopotamian Christians <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=TinZAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA558&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false">dyed eggs red</a> to symbolize the blood shed by Christ during his crucifixion.<br /><br />An "Easter egg," as it relates to hidden symbols or messages planted in a pop culture medium by its creator, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20101122075921/http:/arthurshall.com/x_adventure.shtml">was first coined</a> by the Atari programmer Warren Robinett, who designed a secret room in the 1979 video game, Adventure.<div><br /><div><br />4. Less than humane<br /><br />It wouldn't be Easter if we didn't eat candy animals. Easter bunnies turned edible in 1800s Germany when they were first made of pastry and sugar.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUxj5r1ShxZtIlZc8tf_LI4A7omjK2y70wfNXNqp_WM5ovIYUXPP1JWx3luCOPkfBJcR7yk1ejG2YiNqZbuzSncUoAXdixXU7jzNdnz_p58nH1xX8Yc04g6aQoHNJB8qJG-xRvGd4dAeRd6yfq7ImrRvTJLBM0veXfuA6aYLbPTOLYeM-vr8fftVKZJA/s720/0fe10b2fadf9c9fdc584066f8b68a8e3--ukrainian-easter-eggs-faberge-eggs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUxj5r1ShxZtIlZc8tf_LI4A7omjK2y70wfNXNqp_WM5ovIYUXPP1JWx3luCOPkfBJcR7yk1ejG2YiNqZbuzSncUoAXdixXU7jzNdnz_p58nH1xX8Yc04g6aQoHNJB8qJG-xRvGd4dAeRd6yfq7ImrRvTJLBM0veXfuA6aYLbPTOLYeM-vr8fftVKZJA/w334-h400/0fe10b2fadf9c9fdc584066f8b68a8e3--ukrainian-easter-eggs-faberge-eggs.jpg" width="334" /></a></div><br />Animal rights activists have protested against the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/us/dyeing-easter-chicks-raises-concerns.html">ritual of coloring chicks</a> by infusing dye into the embryo before it hatches.</div><div><br /></div><div><br />5. For Peeps' sake<br /><br />Speaking of dyeing chicks, one of the reasons Peeps keep coming back every year is because they are so resilient and multi-purpose. Unless you're <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-ijrF86FbE">gulping down</a> the marshmallow birds for a challenge, a common practice is to microwave Peeps. If you think that's inhumane, some enthusiasts even take it further with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMmyQF35e8U">Peep jousting</a> tournaments.<br /><br />Just Born, the company who makes the marshmallows, even <a href="http://www.peepresearch.org/">conducts research</a> with Peeps. All Peeps are told the potential risks before voluntarily submitting to testing, of course.<br /><br />A niche <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/european-sugar-sculptures-victorian-miniatures-and-the-peeps-diorama">Peep diorama culture</a> merges fine art history with the sugar-coated goodies. The first Peep diorama contest was <a href="http://www.twincities.com/peeps/ci_20213601/cmon-peeple-we-had-first-diorama-contest">held in 2004</a> by the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Take a look at the winner of this year's <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/lifestyle/peeps-diorama-contest/2015/?tid=sm_tw">Washington Post </a><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/lifestyle/peeps-diorama-contest/2015/?tid=sm_tw">'Peep Show' diorama contest.</a><br /><br />Because, who actually eats them?<br /><br />Now, I wonder how future generations will adopt the American tradition?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br />via {<a href="#">npr</a>}</div></div></div></div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-76623136188909409562022-04-17T05:29:00.012-04:002022-04-17T10:36:19.914-04:00Easter traditions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglCBrVsdzR3ciX4CtEHh5msP45f0EWOoPSK3IV_vtPXjpZ21HdZmuW97scUmZTgStAqR80XDIIj5h8xQqaODUdRK6hiHtUz1TcWp8OPuQ0Zz1sgHdVWEhwm7oXKPM7VIsBowOUX3QNqmtWgf3gQ6wWyDuFyCGwhDJL5yO-tofuTkCWy6b9iuXiNkeQ4w/s590/oldest-easter-egg-Austria-hand-carved-902776.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="365" data-original-width="590" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglCBrVsdzR3ciX4CtEHh5msP45f0EWOoPSK3IV_vtPXjpZ21HdZmuW97scUmZTgStAqR80XDIIj5h8xQqaODUdRK6hiHtUz1TcWp8OPuQ0Zz1sgHdVWEhwm7oXKPM7VIsBowOUX3QNqmtWgf3gQ6wWyDuFyCGwhDJL5yO-tofuTkCWy6b9iuXiNkeQ4w/w400-h248/oldest-easter-egg-Austria-hand-carved-902776.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><h1 style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Gotham SSm", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.00625em; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 15px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; vertical-align: baseline; widows: 2;"><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-ligatures: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. 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 makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”</span><br style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-ligatures: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;" /><span style="color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-variant-ligatures: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial;">― G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy</span></span></h1><h1 style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Gotham SSm", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.00625em; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 15px; orphans: 2; padding: 0px; text-decoration-thickness: initial; vertical-align: baseline; widows: 2;"><br /></h1>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-14109452977228163122022-04-16T05:04:00.001-04:002022-04-17T10:06:00.352-04:00the future is female<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinjAVN98PLtD4X1GdRgxP1h7xQeYG0-oOz7-8hWEB-4m5rOo1aPTEhdSjUbJWVnLtsBx4TEaWuLN3aMxdZzU_Z0D6gLwFFebmWa8nXs_rBxKqjGN2lXxvGYNp4HLdT7FrjiicMNj6q7aMIoWYsc32DOuTts7gl5eEZNp1IkuY2kJT1L-_X9XSFAtew2A/s960/141547290_4301491703199369_9052720301582664845_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="946" data-original-width="960" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinjAVN98PLtD4X1GdRgxP1h7xQeYG0-oOz7-8hWEB-4m5rOo1aPTEhdSjUbJWVnLtsBx4TEaWuLN3aMxdZzU_Z0D6gLwFFebmWa8nXs_rBxKqjGN2lXxvGYNp4HLdT7FrjiicMNj6q7aMIoWYsc32DOuTts7gl5eEZNp1IkuY2kJT1L-_X9XSFAtew2A/s320/141547290_4301491703199369_9052720301582664845_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />When folks don’t understand why it’s a big deal that Kamala Harris is the Vice President (no matter your political affiliation), it’s helpful to use a simple visual aid. <p></p><p>See the red box? Until then, she would have been enslaved. </p><p>See the blue box? Until then, she couldn’t vote. </p><p>The yellow box? Until then, she had to attend a segregated school. </p><p>And see the green box? Until then she couldn’t have her own bank account.</p><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=4301491699866036&set=a.235117943170119">fb</a>}</div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-2871849440778363102022-04-15T05:43:00.016-04:002022-04-16T13:48:30.459-04:00Leave the door open for the unknown... future fridays<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEwGSKu8pcXJhxZwj-Mk6dczcn-qeD-Xbu9JD150ud7METNpZVINVId6euxXduADCne5_eWdH5OPCIs0kJc572L_mPcyUavPnORzdOLDpVywlicrJfIC1Tq3TG64TCZTtfswE_q6dED7TbudceUPhP7q20sjgvEVW4KI2Hs9iYksqZrEXJZP39m8x4qw/s2016/278638918_10159749894960552_4335738894856207334_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEwGSKu8pcXJhxZwj-Mk6dczcn-qeD-Xbu9JD150ud7METNpZVINVId6euxXduADCne5_eWdH5OPCIs0kJc572L_mPcyUavPnORzdOLDpVywlicrJfIC1Tq3TG64TCZTtfswE_q6dED7TbudceUPhP7q20sjgvEVW4KI2Hs9iYksqZrEXJZP39m8x4qw/w300-h400/278638918_10159749894960552_4335738894856207334_n.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>Passover falls on Good Friday this year. And for the first time in the 5 years I have been here, I noticed that school ended at 3pm today. This story has been the motto of my last few years, as I am searching for professional fulfillment and personal balance: <div>"The things we want are transformative, and we don't know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation." <br /><div><br />The first time I got drunk was on Elijah's wine. I was eight or so. It was Passover, the feast that celebrates the flight from Egypt and more generally celebrates freedom. I was sitting at the grown-ups' table, because when my parents and this other couple joined forces there were five boys altogether, and the adults had decided that I was better off being ignored by their generation than mine. The tablecloth was red and orange, cluttered with glasses, plates, serving dishes, silver, and candles. I confused the stemmed goblet set out for the prophet with my own adjoining shot-glass of sweet ruby wine and drank it up. When my mother eventually noticed, I lurched and grinned a little, but when she looked upset, I imitated sobriety instead of tipsiness. </div><div><br /> She was a lapsed Catholic, and the other woman a former Protestant, but their husbands were Jews, and the women thought it good to keep up the custom for the kids. So the glass of wine was set out for Elijah. In some versions, he will come back to earth at the end of time and answer all the unanswerable questions. In others, he wanders the earth in rags, answering difficult questions for scholars. I don't know if the rest of the tradition was followed and a door left open for him to enter by, but I can picture the orange front door or one of the sliding glass doors into the backyard of this ranch-style house in a small valley open to the cool night air of spring. </div><div><br />Ordinarily, we locked doors, though nothing unexpected came down our street in this northernmost subdivision in the county but wildlife, deer tap-tapping on the asphalt in the early hours, raccoons and skunks hiding in the shrubbery. This opening the door to night, prophecy, and the end of time would have been a thrilling violation of ordinary practice. Nor can I recall what the wine opened up for me—perhaps a happier detachment from the conversation going on above me, a sense of limpidness in the suddenly tangible gravity of a small body on this middle-sized planet.</div><div><br /> Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That's where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. Three years ago I was giving a workshop in the Rockies. A student came in bearing a quote from what she said was the pre-Socratic philosopher Meno. It read, "How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?" I copied it down, and it has stayed with me since. </div><div><br />The student made big transparent photographs of swimmers underwater and hung them from the ceiling with the light shining through them, so that to walk among them was to have the shadows of swimmers travel across your body in a space that itself came to seem aquatic and mysterious. The question she carried struck me as the basic tactical question in life. The things we want are transformative, and we don't know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration—how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else? </div><div><br /> --opening of <i>A Field Guide to Getting Lost</i> (with photo of a slot canyon in Utah last summer)</div><div><br /></div><div>via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159749894985552&set=a.211581100551">rebecca solnit</a>}</div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-76336758334252415042022-04-14T05:57:00.011-04:002022-04-15T15:04:07.173-04:00tikkun olam - repairing the world<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJEmnEvv2IEupcyYLVzQwGepa88Ck-fNsB783naoWoa7CRXBVdsf5PsyupO76F91l3IZnmQZckvR8RgCdSx7gCADW7gqmfQJFyWWFOPIZ2q44JXDCrb0oBxBr376xe8FpnL_qjc7kYcnDXPYMNyjIW-AFC1VaxUxtC6jko5YQLXF2w8E8hZRqCQSKrLw/s600/278332218_10101806488714061_8764837289866242473_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="535" data-original-width="600" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJEmnEvv2IEupcyYLVzQwGepa88Ck-fNsB783naoWoa7CRXBVdsf5PsyupO76F91l3IZnmQZckvR8RgCdSx7gCADW7gqmfQJFyWWFOPIZ2q44JXDCrb0oBxBr376xe8FpnL_qjc7kYcnDXPYMNyjIW-AFC1VaxUxtC6jko5YQLXF2w8E8hZRqCQSKrLw/s320/278332218_10101806488714061_8764837289866242473_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>This stupid war of Putin's aggression is now over 50 days old. This statement of resistance is so powerful. It makes me wonder what I will model for my little human bean. I hope she can see this kind of bravery and commitment to <i>tikkun olam</i> as she grows up.<p></p><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Read the closing statement of Alla Gutnikova, one of the editors of the Moscow student journal DOXA, who are all facing prison sentences for "inciting minors to take part in illegal opposition protests”. But the speech is about so much more. (The translation was adapted from that of Michelle Panchuk.) Listen to Alla’s original here: <span style="font-family: inherit;"><a class="oajrlxb2 g5ia77u1 qu0x051f esr5mh6w e9989ue4 r7d6kgcz rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 nc684nl6 p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of lzcic4wl gpro0wi8 py34i1dx" href="https://doxajournal.ru/lastword-alla?fbclid=IwAR18E5QuWJfqPB8_IVcAkAZN5_oDSa2jKFTSXpjklHWDsF3DBnlssJUcC2w" rel="nofollow noopener" role="link" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--blue-link); cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation;" tabindex="0" target="_blank">https://doxajournal.ru/lastword-alla</a></span></div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">“I am not going to speak of the case, the search, the interrogations, the volumes, the trials. That is boring and pointless. These days I attend the school of fatigue and frustration. But before my arrest, I had time to enroll in the school of learning how to speak about truly important things.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I would like to talk about philosophy and literature. About Benjamin, Derrida, Kafka, Arendt, Sontag, Barthes, Foucault, Agamben, about Audre Lorde and bell hooks. About Timofeeva, Tlostanova and Rachmaninova. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I would like to speak about poetry, about how to read contemporary poetry. About Gronas, Dashevsky and Borodin. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But now is not the time nor the place. I will hide my small tender words on the tip of my tongue, in the back of my throat, between my stomach and my heart. I will say just a little.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I often feel like a little fish, a birdling, a schoolgirl, a baby. But recently, I discovered with surprise that Brodsky, too, was put on trial at 23. And, since I have also been counted among the human race, I will say this: </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">In the Kabbala there is the concept of tikkun olam - repairing the world. I see that the world is imperfect. I believe, as wrote Yehuda Amichai, that the world was created beautiful for goodness and for peace, like a bench in a courtyard (in a courtyard, not a court!). I believe that the world was created for tenderness, hope, love, solidarity, passion, joy. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But the world is atrociously, unbearably full of violence. And I don’t want violence. In any form. No teacher’s hands in schoolgirls’ underwear, no drunken father’s fists on the bodies of wives and children. If I decided to list all the violence around us, a day wouldn’t be enough, nor a week, nor a year. My eyes are wide open. I see violence, and I don’t want violence. The more violence there is, the stronger I don’t want it. And more than anything, I don’t want the biggest and the most frightening violence.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I really love reading. I will now speak with the voices of others.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">At school, in history class, I learned the phrases “You crucify freedom, but the soul of man knows no bounds” and “For your, and for our, freedom”. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">In high school, I read “Requiem” by Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova, “The Steep Path” by Evgeniya Solomonovna Ginzburg, “The Closed Theater” by Bulat Shalvovich Okudzhava, “The Children of Arbat” by Anatoliy Naumovich Rybakov. Of Okudzhava’s poems I loved most of all:</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Conscience, honor and dignity,</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">There’s our spiritual army.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Hold out your palm to it, </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">For this, one fears no fire. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Its face is lofty and wonderful. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Dedicate to it your short century. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Maybe, you will never be victorious, </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But you'll die as a human.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">At MGIMO [Moscow State Institute of International Relations] I learned French and memorized a line from Édith Piaf: “Ça ne pouvait pas durer toujours” [“It could not last forever”]. And from Marc Robine: “Ça ne peut pas durer comme ça” [“It cannot go on like this”].</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">At nineteen, I traveled to Majdanek and Treblinka and learned to say “never again” in seven languages: never again, jamais plus, nie wieder, קיינמאל מער, nigdy więcej, לא עוד. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I studied Jewish sages and fell in love with two proverbs. Rabbi Hillel said: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” And Rabbi Nachman said: “The whole world is a narrow bridge, and the main thing is to have no fear at all.” </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Later, I enrolled at the School of Cultural Studies and learned several more important lessons. First of all, words have meaning. Second, we must call things by their names. And finally, sapere aude, have the courage to use your own mind.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">It’s ridiculous that our case has to do with schoolchildren. I taught children the humanities in English, worked as a nanny and dreamed of going with the program “Teacher for Russia” to a small town for two years to sow intelligent, kind, eternal seeds. But Russia - in the words of the state prosecuting attorney, Prosecutor Tryakin - believes that I involved underage children in life-threatening actions. If I ever have children (and I will, because I remember the greatest commandment), I will hang a picture of the Judaean governor Pontius Pilate on their wall, so they grow up in cleanliness. The governor Pontius Pilate standing and washing his hands - such will be the portrait. Yes, if thinking and feeling is now life-threatening, I don’t know what to say about the charges. I wash my hands.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And now is the moment of truth. The hour of transparency. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">My friends and I don’t know what to do with ourselves from the horror and the pain, but when I descend into the metro, I don’t see tear-stained faces. I don’t see tear-stained faces.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Not a single of my favorite books - for children or adults - taught indifference, apathy, cowardice. Nowhere have I been taught the words:</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">we are small people </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">i am a simple person </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">it’s not so black and white </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">you can’t believe anyone </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">i am not interested in all that </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">i am far from politics </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">it’s none of my business </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">nothing depends on me</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">competent authorities will figure it out </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">what could i have done alone</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">No, I know and love very different words.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">John Donne says through Hemingway:</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">No man is an island, all by himself. Every person is part of the Mainland, part of Land; and if a wave sweeps away a coastal cliff into the sea, Europe will become smaller. And likewise if it washes away the edge of the cape or destroys your castle or your friends. The death of every person diminishes me as well, for I am one with all of humanity. And so, don’t ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Mahmoud Darwich says:</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">As you prepare your breakfast — think of others</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(don’t forget to feed the pigeons). </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">As you conduct your wars — think of others </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(don’t forget those who want peace). </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">As you pay your water bill — think of others </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(think of those who have only the clouds to drink from).</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">As you go home, your own home — think of others</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(don’t forget those who live in tents). </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">As you sleep and count the stars, think of others </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(there are people who have no place to sleep). </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">As you liberate yourself with metaphors think of others </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(those who have lost their right to speak). </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And as you think of distant others — think of yourself </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(and say, I wish I were a candle in the darkness).</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Gennady Golovaty says:</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The blind cannot look with wrath, </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The mute cannot yell with fury, </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The armless cannot take up arms, </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The legless cannot march forward. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But, the mute can look wrathfully, </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But, the blind can yell furiously, </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But, the legless can take up arms. </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But, the armless can march forward.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I know some are terrified. They choose silence. But Audre Lorde says:</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Your silence will not protect you. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">In the Moscow metro, they announce: </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Passengers are forbidden on the train heading to a dead end. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And the St. Petersburg [band] Aquarium adds: </div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">This train is on fire. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Lao Tzu, through Tarkovsky, says: </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">And most important, let them believe in themselves, let them be helpless like children. Because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it’s tender and pliant. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Remember that fear eats the soul. Remember the Kafka character who sees “a gallows being erected in the prison yard, mistakenly thinks it is the one intended for him, breaks out of his cell in the night, and goes down and hangs himself”.</div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Be like children. Don’t be afraid to ask (yourselves and others), what is good and what is bad. Don’t be afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes. Don’t be afraid to yell, to cry. Repeat (to yourselves and others): 2+2=4. Black is black. White is white. I am a person, strong and brave. A strong and brave woman. A strong and brave people. </div></div><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Freedom is a process by which you develop the habit of being inaccessible to slavery.”</div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-31986239648847427292022-04-13T05:42:00.015-04:002022-04-15T14:12:47.393-04:00Don't hesitate<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDTCAivTsJ4tW1RYpf-Rk9PErQ_CRgDfPSh-_RbWixc6-3OQsLyccIFudfbQszk_zMH-jbD1SG6TyWF3x7hVAeuZrCU5ZF2zrrtsM3h1oidiOzQ-B1kH1pecwkUfpL9uVttIZtB2g0QOuMp49hGiv2RZG2xyjTdrmGbWCqinZyG9c9QFqv32gA6MJjXw/s612/lifecycle%20of%20a%20crumb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="158" data-original-width="612" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDTCAivTsJ4tW1RYpf-Rk9PErQ_CRgDfPSh-_RbWixc6-3OQsLyccIFudfbQszk_zMH-jbD1SG6TyWF3x7hVAeuZrCU5ZF2zrrtsM3h1oidiOzQ-B1kH1pecwkUfpL9uVttIZtB2g0QOuMp49hGiv2RZG2xyjTdrmGbWCqinZyG9c9QFqv32gA6MJjXw/w640-h166/lifecycle%20of%20a%20crumb.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>To use the words of Brene Brown, we should stop dress-rehearsing tragedy. <div><br /><br />"If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives <div>and whole towns destroyed or about<br />to be. We are not wise, and not very often<br />kind. And much can never be redeemed.<br />Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this<br />is its way of fighting back, that sometimes<br />something happens better than all the riches<br />or power in the world. It could be anything,<br />but very likely you notice it in the instant<br />when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.<br />Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid<br />of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb."</div><div><br />– Mary Oliver</div></div>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-73106680776072846702022-04-12T05:33:00.001-04:002022-04-12T05:33:00.244-04:00new generations<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigpxFNxD4WJlN8hQu_5DKmrEjXxrgAytHEmBDe3The4QsVhAL7UOETk2Io1H_03UtIti7aODTRV8fUB71unM0zKzf1YsW2ZBmSGVA04dTWal6wNhkDh2UDtcKS5AXYnLqJfjh5ZGfzP1hRH31Sa03JOQda-ZQ3GEJtjiPmom_kYtfjIt9ZT7VEuX0ZOg/s1008/276078221_2014413385404338_5850040397545773791_n.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1008" data-original-width="1008" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigpxFNxD4WJlN8hQu_5DKmrEjXxrgAytHEmBDe3The4QsVhAL7UOETk2Io1H_03UtIti7aODTRV8fUB71unM0zKzf1YsW2ZBmSGVA04dTWal6wNhkDh2UDtcKS5AXYnLqJfjh5ZGfzP1hRH31Sa03JOQda-ZQ3GEJtjiPmom_kYtfjIt9ZT7VEuX0ZOg/s320/276078221_2014413385404338_5850040397545773791_n.png" width="320" /></a></div>Still thinking about Ukraine and this war of Russian aggression. I couldn't imagine the trauma of digging up mass graves in Bucha, and what this means for a country and a people. <p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;">Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and communism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag forced labor camp system. He was allowed to publish only one work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), in the periodical Novy Mir. After this he had to publish in the West, most notably Cancer Ward (1968), August 1914 (1971), and The Gulag Archipelago (1973). Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature"</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"><br /></span></p>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-59194126756283066842022-04-10T05:33:00.006-04:002022-04-10T14:37:01.694-04:00Vive le Difference<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCmrYSLtgPAeCvXApzBrcUY8NBVNIWubpmOwCJqB35cb3zMI3UzaecQ4oopWOQn36T8l2SPQH-ud-UHhisjIFPBjOskNPoEuUO-AB8OKlQA-et1K-H5AiqV1DP4VDVq87q0X2jYFhRXHxWLC8HvS1mlEtHEZ2z3SKYFf_1ETBhaksf_TCmzGKuHPnihQ/s1080/278081593_10158136991502396_1676527079615313378_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCmrYSLtgPAeCvXApzBrcUY8NBVNIWubpmOwCJqB35cb3zMI3UzaecQ4oopWOQn36T8l2SPQH-ud-UHhisjIFPBjOskNPoEuUO-AB8OKlQA-et1K-H5AiqV1DP4VDVq87q0X2jYFhRXHxWLC8HvS1mlEtHEZ2z3SKYFf_1ETBhaksf_TCmzGKuHPnihQ/w400-h400/278081593_10158136991502396_1676527079615313378_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Not many words needed for this week's history of the 1st black female appointed to the Supreme Court. <p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">In its more than 230 years, the Supreme Court has had 115 Justices. 108 have been white men. Just two Justices have been men of color. Only five women have served on the Court—and just one woman of color, Sonia Sotomayor.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626; font-family: -apple-system, system-ui, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">Not a single Justice has been a Black woman - until this week with the appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson</span></p><p><br /></p><p>via {<a href="https://www.instagram.com/dreasdoodles/?hl=en">dreas doodles</a>}</p>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-53108882099658562942022-04-09T05:21:00.001-04:002022-04-10T12:22:59.372-04:00connecting dots<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; orphans: 2; white-space: pre-wrap; widows: 2;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9haR0L4wUzhQTReujtsmovDk07K5mIs2IvyeW9yetPbW94KGS40kj3yQHjVh6w9JPAAbNANYwXLUtlqbciN9e6XTJ3mvFy_vx4DVfYXs2A6YpOl_60iPL363NjJZs3pT5fCXlT6d_ix1Y86-uXSqQLWzEKSU-qzN10dK2B-a3a-JT7rsgxFBc30F9Nw/s1254/277746995_10166341783460313_4464779051472535235_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1254" data-original-width="1014" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9haR0L4wUzhQTReujtsmovDk07K5mIs2IvyeW9yetPbW94KGS40kj3yQHjVh6w9JPAAbNANYwXLUtlqbciN9e6XTJ3mvFy_vx4DVfYXs2A6YpOl_60iPL363NjJZs3pT5fCXlT6d_ix1Y86-uXSqQLWzEKSU-qzN10dK2B-a3a-JT7rsgxFBc30F9Nw/w518-h640/277746995_10166341783460313_4464779051472535235_n.jpg" width="518" /></a></div>Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg turns 91 this week. This is one of the most fascinating and least known literary anecdotes of all time: How Beat/Zen poet Gary Snyder helped inspire Ellsberg's bold move. <p></p><p><br /></p><p>via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10166341783480313&set=a.226987130312">steve silberman</a>}</p>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3278373707674884177.post-54311294115852586462022-04-08T05:18:00.003-04:002022-04-08T14:20:17.038-04:00I think<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj898KZTXhZwFqmj82SHvH6DEJl2xVV1Jch_zNIehacPJPYoSbW8oOivQNFr1Zhk6WHWAXUpLnlIoeQl6LDHI5PSm3h64tPywXshYnm9Jjgq6eag2nlBrJXi0APo2mvS2-qM_goe2jNVXKhGfREpf6kvovi4Vop-t7Z1j-GXMRq6KI0jy_f1fynD-kNQw/s976/278085439_10159734635105552_6387418950557057194_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj898KZTXhZwFqmj82SHvH6DEJl2xVV1Jch_zNIehacPJPYoSbW8oOivQNFr1Zhk6WHWAXUpLnlIoeQl6LDHI5PSm3h64tPywXshYnm9Jjgq6eag2nlBrJXi0APo2mvS2-qM_goe2jNVXKhGfREpf6kvovi4Vop-t7Z1j-GXMRq6KI0jy_f1fynD-kNQw/w640-h360/278085439_10159734635105552_6387418950557057194_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> I love that historical heroes are also full of doubt! <p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">"I think." Darwin's stolen notebooks, which included this crucial drawing of the tree of life that was a key step on his coming to recognize the reality of evolution, have been returned.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">The BBC reports: Two "stolen" notebooks written by Charles Darwin have been mysteriously returned to Cambridge University, 22 years after they were last seen.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">The small leather-bound books are worth many millions of pounds and include the scientist's "tree of life" sketch.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">Their return comes 15 months after the BBC first highlighted they had gone missing and the library launched a worldwide appeal to find them.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">"I feel joyous," the university's librarian Dr Jessica Gardner says.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">The notepads date from the late 1830s after Darwin had returned from the Galapagos Islands. On one page, he drew a spindly sketch of a tree, which helped inspire his theory of evolution and more than 20 years later would become a central theory in his groundbreaking work On the Origin of Species.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">"The theory of natural selection and evolution is probably the single most important theory in the life and earth environmental sciences and these are the notebooks in which that theory was put together," says Jim Secord, emeritus professor of history and philosophy of science at Cambridge University.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">"They're some of the most remarkable documents in the whole history of science." </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;"><a class="oajrlxb2 g5ia77u1 qu0x051f esr5mh6w e9989ue4 r7d6kgcz rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 nc684nl6 p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of lzcic4wl gpro0wi8 py34i1dx" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fentertainment-arts-60980288%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR35XbI5A093GFbNqfY5jjskITyOPkvFRpy6yo1nELvgvqepw8kOmr5MK_c&h=AT3knaGFzfjknYqNqUg5Ow-2oda3JjpeWMq9nkhZB7BaEZk1CUDvHvBqUhJXr_jTma2mWRBKuNKLhgi3sQzVglIWcofrKNRQO0R38n8csjuJ4R9wfjCbAqY92t2Em8dDvbzQlZ1qZQE-b_3pPVSdQw&__tn__=-UK*F&c[0]=AT3HHYmx8khQVPuL0gGsm4hb6XlZjDh8mD0Qtb-zJtc_yzO3esNLWRzLvbgkoJDC97I-cejXmKU5C0GpnJ_4B1WwBmDIY6h9gDS-3Ad9tUXTF-QuQ6xZXbIidqgioUzlpsX1K75RwydIn-iwn6RjGyVqDjn0vn_Vtjg1R567_m5xIdtA6gAf6V_M7Q" rel="nofollow noopener" role="link" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--blue-link); cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: inherit; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-align: inherit; text-decoration: none; touch-action: manipulation;" tabindex="0" target="_blank">https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60980288</a></span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">From The Origin of Species:</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was small, budding twigs; and this connexion of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear all the other branches; so with the species which lived during long-past geological periods, very few now have living and modified descendants. From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these lost branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only from having been found in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; text-decoration-thickness: initial; widows: 2;">— Darwin, 1859</span></p><p>via {<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159734635110552&set=a.211581100551">BBC</a>}</p>christiana claudiahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11113519308993634773noreply@blogger.com0