I’ve been blogging about hope, concern, peace and attitude.

When I come across little-known books, music, documentaries and new research it’s a pleasure to share them.  

I admit to feeling bashful when my publ… Read full post »

Mom was right.

The older I get the more I recognize the wisdom my mother applied in parenting. For example, she believed that traditional games held their value. We played croquet in the back yard----a lawn game that went out of fashion soon after the Victorian era.… Read full post »

 Our neighbor beat a snapping turtle to death. The life taken stays with me.

Every spring we see snapping turtles near our pond. We’re glad to see them return. Perhaps their presence tells us that our farm is bountiful and feeds them well. Or perhaps their yearly return is… Read full post »

 As humans get fatter and use ever more energy to remain comfortably numb, we seem to be losing our sense of irony. And our humanity.

 Latest evidence, cow-powered "treadmills."

Supposedly an eco-friendly source of energy production, the device invented by William Taylor of Northern… Read full post »

When my order arrived I was alarmed. Dark vegetation loomed over my plate. The leaves looked quite a bit like thistle, nettle and other invasive weeds.

read more at http://dreamofthings.com/vegetation-attack    Read full post »

He lowers himself
on a seat they call a cradle, rocking
in harnesses strung long-armed
from the roof.

read the rest at http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Poetry/2010/0223/Why-the-Window-Washer-Reads-Poetry  Read full post »

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."    Einstein

The world is full of ordinary, wonderful people.

Ever since I learned about Randy Stang in Regina Brett’s Plain Dealer column  his examp… Read full post »

Fear sells. Blood and guts sell even better. What really grabs our attention? Out and out panic. That largely explains today’s so-called news channels, talk radio, actually much of commercial media. The worse it sounds, the greater audience share they grab and the more money they make. T… Read full post »

All day, every day video game based schooling. Great.

A Popular Science article (print version, Jan 2010) extolls the virtues of a recently opened school in Manhattan designed around spanking new videogame curricula. Called Quest to Learn (Q2L) the school is heavily funded by intere… Read full post »

"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" Steven Wright

 When times are hard, my husband and I tend to quote a few lines from an old movie called “The Jerk.” Lines like, “All I need is this lamp and this chair, that’s all I… Read full post »

We haven’t gotten this far through brutal force or greed.

Nope. It has taken cooperation, curiosity and cleverness.

Ninety-nine percent of our time on earth as a species has been spent as hunter-gatherers. Our ancestors wouldn’t have survived without collaborating t… Read full post »

Who isn’t busy all the time? But around the holidays we’re crazy busy. At least women are, and those lights in our lives we call children make the pace even more frantic.

Sure we make all sorts of efforts to simplify and de-stress but for most of… Read full post »

Okay, maybe not the world, but these guys are trying.

I started making sock monsters a few weeks ago in hopes of earning some money for the holidays. The monsters require little in the way of new materials other than stuffing and socks. Their features are created… Read full post »

I’m a terribly flawed human being.

I don’t steal. I’m not greedy. But falling strikes me funny. Friends tell me their falling stories to see me snort with the sort of uncontrollable laughter that continues to erupt well after the conversation has moved on. They also send me… Read full post »

"Repurposing" is a strangely awkward word. Our ancestors didn't need a name for the frugal and often creative uses they found to reuse objects. 

My grandfather set a door across file cabinets to use as a worktable. When making repairs he did calculations on an old p/… Read full post »

French: "L'oisiveté est la mère de tous les vices" ( Idleness is the mother of all vices ).

Portuguese Cabeça vazia é oficina do diabo (An empty head is the devil's workshopEgyptian Arabic
 

Finnish:  Laiskuus on kaikkien paheiden äiti.  (Laziness is th… Read full post »

“Small town values” have been endlessly chanted into the glare of TV cameras by folks who don’t know straw from hay or truth from spin. I may live in a township too tiny to warrant a single stoplight, but I do know that values have… Read full post »

We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. ~Shirley Abbott


A cousin visited from Maine recently. She asked for updates on… Read full post »