Category Archives: Life

Feb7

read aloud.

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*celebrating  world read aloud day

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“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

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*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.

 

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art credit: ‘gnome’ by rien poortvliet, illustrator

Feb3

learned.

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

-walt whitman

 

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art credit: olga soldo 

Feb1

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

 

 

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art credit- L Józef Wilkoń – Leopanter

Jan30

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.

 

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what are some of your annoyances?

 

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

-marquis de custine

 

Jan29

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.

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“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

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image/film credits:  netflix, lea pictures, sikelis productions, amblin entertainment, fred berner films
Jan27

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

Jan24

reports.

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

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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.

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*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.

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

-jim carrey

 

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credits: newsweek magazine uk, alice gibbs

Jan21

riotous.

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warmth and soul-seeking

winter below the surface

life continues on.

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“and don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. it’s quiet down there but the roots are riotous.”

-rumi

 

 

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photo credit: science hub  (nodules on the roots of the white clover)

Jan20

snow very happy.

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“well, I know now.  know a little more how much a simple thing like a snowfall can mean to a person”
― sylvia plath

 

 

Jan19

for peanut.

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peanut on the farm – rip, old girl and world champion

Peanut, the world’s oldest chicken, dead at twenty-one: The Chelsea, Michigan  clucker, certified as the oldest living chicken by Guinness last January at age twenty, died of natural causes on Christmas morning, according to its owner, Marsi Parker Darwin of the no-kill farm Darwin’s Eden. In an article last year, Darwin credited her neighbor, Todd Gillihan, with bringing global attention to the hen she rescued from a cold, abandoned egg. He “pestered me,” she said, to go for the world record, resulting in coverage in publications as far flung and prestigious as the Smithsonian Magazine’s website, Washington Post, and the Times of London. A retired librarian, Darwin authored a picture book, “My Girl Peanut & Me,” which is available for on the Darwin’s Eden site.

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“if i hadn’t started painting, i would have raised chickens.”

-grandma moses

 

 

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source credits: ann arbor news, smithsonian.com, ann arbor observer