Monthly Archives: April 2017

(one of my ongoing processes: connected consciousness and connected sensibility with my daughter) E. M. Forster’s “Only connect” is probably the truest two-word statement ever uttered. And one can connect on many levels: between oneself and others, between one and … Continue reading →

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.“–Albert Schweitzer

(Rick, 17, gr. 12 English class, lost in a book) “Oh, the glory of growth, silent, mighty, persistent, inevitable! To awaken, to open up like a flower to the light of a fuller consciousness!”–Emily Carr, “Hundreds and Thousands”. The Journals … Continue reading →

A drowsy fly trembled on the worn wooden window screen. The April breeze was cool and, looking down to the breaking ice on the river below, I wondered how many times both my cancer-stricken parents had stood there, by day … Continue reading →

April and a black fly at my window slugs his dormant buzzz against the blue pane Heavy, fat & unloved he was spent from his vented life embalmed by winter Hibernation kept him safe a while & then it killed … Continue reading →

Aristotle wrote that “Man is by nature a social animal.” Similarly, poet John Donne wrote, that “No man is an island entire of itself.” And there is, indeed, truth that we are connected to others, living in social contexts daily. … Continue reading →

(Frank Lloyd Wright–The greatest architect of all time who had no use for ‘pig-piling’– what he said most of society does, conformingly) “The boughs of no two trees ever have the same arrangement./Nature always produces individuals.”–Lydia Maria Child, Letters from … Continue reading →

(one of several illustrated books on George Orwell’s life and work) (a vintage 1950 paperback version of Orwell’s classic) (the excellent, harrowing, faithful-to-the-text movie-adaptation of Orwell’s book, starring John Hurt as a vulnerable Winston and Richard Burton as a nasty O’Brien, … Continue reading →

Quotes from Walden, “Walking”, and Reflections at Walden (replica of Thoreau’s cabin near Walden Pond which I visited in twice in the fall) -I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts … Continue reading →

and the most prophetic book about reading in our time– The Gutenberg Elegies: “I believe that what distinguishes us as a species is not our technological prowess, but rather our extraordinary ability to confer meaning on our experience and to search … Continue reading →