Category Archives: Life

shared.

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 a delightful surprise

getting back into the car

thinking of my next stop

  a gentle knock on my window

opened to hear a smiling stranger say,

‘i just wanted to give these to you, have a beautiful day.’

 holding this lovely little bouquet

making my way back into the day

made all the sweeter with this gift.

 

“happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower.”

john arrigan

tree huggers.

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 the kinder were very worried about a tree that had lost some of its bark

they spent a long time finding little chunks of bark lying on the ground

trying to piece it back together and fill it in like a puzzle.

some had questions about how it might have fallen off.

‘was it a big, big storm?’

‘did something hurt it?’

‘did it get sick?’

some had thoughts about the tree.

 ‘i remember this tree from when we played here.’

‘that’s kind of sad.’

‘don’t worry, i saw in a book that it will be okay.’

try as they might, they couldn’t get the bark 

to stick back on the bare part of the trunk

they left the pieces nearby on the ground around it

 used a stick to mark where it was

 gave it a hug before we walked back to our classroom.

“there’s nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.”

-bob ross

hungry.

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“the war against hunger is truly mankind’s war of liberation.”

-john f. kennedy

read aloud.

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*celebrating  world read aloud day

“we have an obligation to read aloud to our children. to read them things they enjoy. to read to them stories we are already tired of. to do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.”

-neil gaiman, english author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and screenplays

*World Read Aloud Day is celebrated on the first Wednesday in February.  This is a day dedicated not just to reading, but to the art and practice of reading aloud. Stories were passed down from generation to generation even before writing was invented. Oral forms of storytelling were the earliest way of preserving human knowledge, insight, and creativity. This day helps us bring this tradition back to reading while promoting literacy.

 

art credit: ‘gnome’ by rien poortvliet, illustrator

learned.

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“i have learned that to be with those i like is enough.”

-walt whitman

 

art credit: olga soldo 

best way.

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“the best way to get along with people is not to expect them to be like you.”

-joyce meyer

 

 

art credit- L Józef Wilkoń – Leopanter

so annoying!

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a found list of annoyances above

i really love these so much

i really love that someone wrote them down

i am not annoyed by found lists

a few things i am annoyed with:

-mosquitoes

 

-cold coffee

 

-wet wool touching me

 

-trying to undo an old roll of tape that tears into tiny strips

 

-most technology when it refuses to work correctly

even if 97% of the time it is due to something i am doing or not doing

 

-yodelers, unless i am in the alps.

 

what are some of your annoyances?

 

“what annoyances are more painful than those of which we cannot compain?”

-marquis de custine

 

maestro.

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 a beautiful, beautiful film

in every way

it will bring you

great music

great joy

great love

great passion

and

will break your heart.

early in the film

felicia, later to be leonard bernstein’s wife

asks him –

“you don’t even know how much you need me, do you?”

and he answers –

“i might.”

through all they endured

together and apart

around the globe and back

they found

the greatest love of their lives

in each other.

brava.

“a work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them;

and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”

-leonard bernstein

image/film credits:  netflix, lea pictures, sikelis productions, amblin entertainment, fred berner films

white on white.

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the kinder painted

using play feathers and real fingers

and colors they mixed and made

 one

chose to paint

only white on white paper

 to see what it would look like

 it was a beautiful painting

all nuance and shade and texture.

“renoir said once that nothing was so difficult, and at the same time so exciting, to paint, as white on white.”
– ambroise vollard

reports.

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*frank the 6-month-old puppy with his report card that hailed him as the “life of the party.”


spending the recent past writing report cards
for the kinder
 always a fascinating trip down memory lane
seeing how far they’ve come already

an unlimited distance still to go
the good, the bad, and the unexplained
all the good hearts, dramas, tears, and laughs
each their very own person
learning as we go.

all of us.

*more of frank the puppy’s report card:

“We sent him there because he is truly the most energetic puppy I have ever met,” his mom told Newsweek. “Our older dog needed a break,” she joked.

When Frank came home with the report card, she was in stitches. “I thought it was hysterical when I saw it because I can only imagine that Frank is probably the class clown that’ll do anything for a laugh and that’s definitely his idea of the best time,” she said.

Described on the card as the “life of the party,” the report also says that Frank loved wrestling with his buddies.

“It makes my heart so happy to know that he has so many pals at preschool,” said Spahr. Working on etiquette skills in his preschool class, the report also told Frank’s owners that his best friends are Daisy, Cooper, Vader, Hudson, and even a dog named Angus Beef.

“my report card always said, ‘jim finishes first and then disrupts the other students.”

-jim carrey

 

credits: newsweek magazine uk, alice gibbs