Category Archives: Life

Jan15

humanity.

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our class of 3’s-4’s

met with their learning partners

a 4th grade class

and together

they read a book

learned about what Dr. King

stood for and fought for

in his own peaceful way

talked about

what love, fairness, equality

meant to them

then created

a lovely art piece together

each to become a square

in a large paper quilt

created by the whole school

a beautiful collaboration.

 

—

“make a career of humanity.

commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights.

you will make a better person of yourself,

a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  – March for Integrated Schools, April 18, 1959.

Jan12

michigan medicine.

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as michiganders

we grew up with detroit’s famous vernors ginger ale

not only was is good to drink and make floats and shakes out of it

but we used it as at least 80% of our medicine

if you felt

nauseous, had a virus, flu, unexplained itching, headache, were sore, tired, dizzy

or suffered from an unlimited litany of ailments

you were put to bed

and given cold vernors to sip on

but when the hot vernors showed up

on your bedroom tray

you knew your prognosis was much worse

and your days possibly numbered.

—

“there is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great,

and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.”

-orison swett marden

 

Jan11

collage.

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my class, getting into the collage style of art

—

not me, but very similar to how my house l0oks

when i’m happily immersed in my favorite way to create art,

collage.

—

“collage is more than just an art style.

collage is all about bringing different elements together.

once you form a sensibility about connection,

how different elements relate to each other,

you deepen your understanding of yourself and others.”

-bryan collier, american writer and illustrator

Jan8

real courage.

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seven year-old ernest hemingway, fishing at horton’s creek in michigan, 1906

—

“the thing is to become a master

and in your old age

to acquire the courage to do

what children did when they knew nothing.”

-ernest hemingway

Jan7

after the silence.

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treat yourself to something beautiful

watch this all the way through and feel the beauty of her voice move the audience to tears

-15 year old emma kok sings ‘voila’ – with andre rieu, maastrict 2023

 

—

“after silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

-aldous huxley

Jan6

tribute.

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during the wake

we all gathered inside

close together

to talk, eat, laugh, cry, listen to music, tell stories, remember

celebrate a life

the children from 4-10

all played together

went outside

chalk in hand

 wrote a beautiful welcome to all who would come

and loving tributes to the one who had left.

“tears are words that need to be written.”

-paul coelho

Jan5

time runs out.

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“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.

It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do the people we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.

We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”

—

in memoriam of r.s. – you will be greatly missed and thanks for the music

—

credits:

text: Matt Haig – The Midnight Library, 2020.

art: Grant Haffner – Into the night, 1978

Jan4

words on a page.

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ten  years ago

this surprise postcard

appeared in my mailbox 

from a former student

now far away

addressed to peaches

my affectionate nickname

sent to me

when she was seven not yet eight

her only message

a beautiful poem 

summed up

 life

in three lines

love is love

life is life

there is nothing else to it.

i knew way back when

she was just four not yet five

learning

how to hold a pencil to write

she was a beat poet and roller derby queen of adventure.

—

“one should write because one loves the shape of stories and sentences

and the creation of different words on a page.”

-annie proulx

 

 

 

 

Jan3

nondescript.

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my favorite shirt

lived in

worn to softness

 tissue paper thin

color gone

shapeless and frayed 

always feels like home.

 

—

“there is a special blessing in old clothes;

that aside from their comfort,

for which especially they are to be cherished.

they confer a certain  kind of anonymity on one who wears them gladly;

all their bright places rubbed in a uniform dullness,

they achieve an appearance so nearly nondescript

that only a close scrutiny could learn that ever they held shape at all.’

-maude meagher

Dec31

but now what?

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good riddance, but now what?

come, children, gather round my knee;
something is about to be.
tonight’s december thirty-first,
something is about to burst.
the clock is crouching, dark and small,
like a time bomb in the hall.
hark! it’s midnight, children dear.
duck! here comes another year.

-ogden nash.

 

 

 

—

art credit: ed gorey, the house