Author Archives: beth

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About beth

Ann Arbor-ite writes about enjoying life with all of its ironies and surprises.

wedding.

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such a beautiful wedding celebration

lots of love, and dance, and music, and friends. and food, and flowers

and a bride i’ve known

since she walked into my school in kindergarten. 

 

“growing up, I had one very specific idea of what a wedding should be,

and that was the wedding of Fraulein Maria and Captain von Trapp in ‘The Sound of Music.”

-ellie kemper

awake again.

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even if your day was a bit crazy or didn’t go as planned or was tiring or..

here you are again

awake in a new day.

“yesterday ended last night”

-john maxwell

under the rainbow.

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my classroom is chock full of

multi-age kinder (3s-young 5s)

who stay with us for two years.

one of the very best things

is watching the older kinder

who were the younger kinder

just one year before

as they quite naturally and organically grow

to become the leaders/teachers/helpers/mentors

to the new group of younger kinder

who were at home

just one year before.

what a joy it was to watch someone older

spend a very long time

finding all the special markers she needed

to create an easy to see linear rainbow

for someone younger

who wanted to create

her very own rainbow picture

in her very own style

using all the special colors.

judging by their faces

when she finished her very own rainbow

they were both equally proud of the results.

 

“nine tenths of education is encouragement.”

-anatole france

bueno come il pane.

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“buono come il pane.”

this Italian idiom refers to someone who is “as good as bread.”

that is, someone who is caring and loving and a person of the heart.

i really, really love this phrase and am definitely going to start using it. such the perfect words.

no joke.

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not me, but the same look i get when i realize i’ve forgotten a part of my only joke, yet again.

i love to tell stories, laugh, talk, improv, and share amusing tid-bits

but for the life of me

i absolutely cannot tell a joke

forgetting a line

mixing up the order

messing up the punchline delivery

all that

and

i only have one joke

 and that’s no joke.

“i don’t know how to tell a joke. i never tell jokes.

i can tell stories that happened to me… anecdotes.

but never a joke.”

-lucille ball

 

image credit: pinterest

“even if not one person read my blog, i’d still write it every day.” -seth godin

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(a happy note from WP yesterday)

Happy Anniversary with WordPress.com!

You registered on WordPress.com 11 years ago.

Thanks for flying with us. Keep up the good blogging.

 thanks to all who have taken this flight with me

11 years in the blink of an eye

faster than the speed of write. 

“even at eleven, he had observed that things turned out right a ridiculous amount of time.”

-stephen king

 

 

agreeable friends.

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when walking on a path in the park today

i noticed 5 different dogs, with 4 different owners

coming from all directions

lots of jumping and friendly barking

wondering how they would all get along

 soon saw

it was a planned play date

a dog party

 so thrilled to see each other

immediately falling into joyful play

just like in one of my very favorite books

go, dog, go!

with the surprise dog party at the end.

(sorry for the too late spoiler alert)

 

“animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.”

-george eliot

 

 

image credit: p.d. eastman, ‘go, dog, go!,” random house publishing

read when right.

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if like me

you find yourself

 collecting  more and more books to be read

never catching up

it’s time for a change in perspective

 relax and let your book guilt go. 

“think not of the books you’ve bought as a ‘to be read’ pile.

instead, think of your bookcase as a wine cellar.

you collect books to be read at the right time, the right place, and the right mood.”

-luc van donkersgoed

 

 

 

photo credit: food and wine magazine

construction delay.

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tools and toys and trucks wait in winter

for the children to return

to see what new ideas

they can create together come spring.

 

“never worry for the delay in success compared to the others.

because the construction of wonders takes more time than other buildings.”

-author anonymous

ypsilanti?

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the city of ypsilanti, only 7 miles from ann arbor

home of eastern michigan university

 was named for greek patriot, general demetrus ypsilanti,

a heroic figure in the battle the Greeks were fighting against Turkish tyranny

– a struggle for freedom that many Americans likened to our own.

but there has been another long-fought struggle at work here-

as people have endlessly tried to spell the city’s name correctly

the post office has worked tirelessly to decipher and deliver mail in the city

 i’ll bet even the general has had his name misspelled more than a few times over the years

 

“my spelling is wobbly. It’s good spelling but it wobbles,

and the letters get in the wrong places.”

s.s. milne

 

source: washtenaw literacy, the daily times archives, 1904