Category Archives: Life

india, take the wheel!

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Wake County Bookmobile driver and librarian India White, July 1966.

White drove the Bookmobile all over the county for over 20 years. Her route changed daily but rotated monthly, visiting mostly rural locations in the county and homes of the elderly or disabled. She had dozens of assistants over the years, many either not able to learn the routes or drive a manual transmission (one of the crucial prerequisites for the job). A life-long resident of Raleigh, she devoted her entire career to the Wake County Library. White died in 2000 at the age of 92.

“literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. it is a tool for daily life in modern society.

it is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development.

for everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right..

literacy is finally, the road to human progress

and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.”

-kofi annan

 

 

 

credits: vintage america uncovered, state archives of north carolina, news and observer

everything is funny.

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if you want to smile

possibly even laugh out loud

spend 40 seconds

 watching the clip below

i dare you not to guffaw.

https://x.com/buitengebieden/status/1787924727052251191

 

‘everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to someone else.’

-will rogers

unexpected places.

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just curious

when waking up in the morning

at my friend’s house

why there was a large frying pan

on the bottom shelf of the nightstand

next to where i had been sleeping?

was this a hint that i was expected to chef our breakfast?

was this a self-defense weapon to use as needed?

had someone forgotten where they set down their pan?

had someone gone on a late-night eating in bed food bender?

when i inquired, one answered:

‘oh, is that the one that is usually hanging in the closet?’

what, there’s one usually hanging in the closet?

another answered:

‘what frying pan?’

host woke up and said,

‘ i was going to give that one away.’

oh, of course.

that’s the perfect place to leave it to remember to give it away.

 i loved waking up with a surprise, a mystery, and a smile.

(and there really was an even larger frying pan hanging in the hall closet.)

“there are almost unlimited possibilities for making discoveries and to uncover the unknown.

it is in the nature of the discovery that it can not be planned or programmed.

-on the contrary, it consists of surprises and appears many times in the most unexpected places.”

-bengt i. samuelsson

living forest.

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waking up early 

sitting in the stillness of the lake

 with the birdsong

of 9 different birds

captivated. 

“your head is a living forest full of song birds”

-ee cummings

 

art credit: beth conklin –  Song Birds

booksellers.

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72-year-old bookseller, Mohamed Aziz, in Rabat, Morocco, spends 6 to 8 hours a day reading books. Having read over 5000 books in French, Arabic, and English, he remains the oldest bookseller in Rabat after more than 43 years in the same location. When asked about leaving his books unattended outside, where they could potentially be stolen, he responded that those who can’t read don’t steal books, and those who can, aren’t thieves.

 

in honor of independent bookstore day, yesterday, and every day

 

 

credits: s. kahn

no work?

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meeting of some sort

with a group of people

who i don’t know

outside of my classroom window

engineers, landscapers, randoms, arborists, cement people, pokemon go players?

here to meet about ?

the lawn, the building, weather, cafeteria menu, fantasy football, favorite colors?

ideas?

 

“we are going to continue having these meetings, every day, until i find out why no work is getting done.”

*richard moran

*Richard A. Moran is a San Francisco based speaker, investor, venture capitalist, author and president emeritus of Menlo College. He is known for his series of business books beginning with, Never Confuse a Memo with Reality that established the genre of “Business Bullet Books.”