whence do we come? what …
… are we? where are we going?”
I’m going outside!
Quo vadis?
Where are we going?
Whence do we come?
What are we?
Great questions for these troubled times!
Has there ever been a better response?
I came from my room!
I’m a kid with big plans!
I am going outside!
See ya later!
Kinda sums it up for me.
And I even know who Paul Gauguin is!
I am going outside.
See ya later!
if feels unhelpful
completely at liberty
to stop at any point
In the UK and elsewhere, bibliotherapy – which also includes recommendations for non-fiction and self-help literature – has been soaring in popularity as a means of improving people’s wellbeing, help navigate tough life decisions, and even to treat specific mental health conditions.
For people wanting to try out bibliotherapy for themselves, Carney recommends trying to find a club for group discussions. Jolly recommends public libraries, where you can try lots of books for free – and if a book isn’t resonating with you, pick up another one instead, try something shorter, or a different genre like poetry. And if reading isn’t for you, Poerio adds, maybe there are other ways to improve wellbeing, like music or visual art. “If you feel it’s helping you, if you’re feeling the benefit… you’ll want to carry on,” Schuman says. “But if it feels unhelpful or intrusive, then [you] should feel completely at liberty to stop at any point.”
From the article, ‘It opened up something in me’: Why people are turning to bibliotherapy by Katarina Zimmer in BBC Books.
The idea or concept sounds good – improving people’s wellbeing, help navigate tough life decisions, and even to treat specific mental health conditions by reading.
BUT anything that needs the caveat … But if it feels unhelpful or intrusive, then [you] should feel completely at liberty to stop at any point …
Really?
I mean if I find something unhelpful or intrusive, something kicks in that makes want to finish everything in the bowl anyway.
Well, no that’s not true.
The truth of the matter, I go into any enterprise looking for any reason to bail out.
But what to do with that … And if reading isn’t for you.
Gosh.
Heard of those folks.
Glad its a complaint I have avoided all my life.
Of the many things I have written about, I am not so sure that the line, if reading isn’t for you, if it feels unhelpful or intrusive, then feel completely at liberty to stop at any point.
Boy Howdy but that sounds sad.
Don’t get me wrong on one part of that.
I have long felt that mature reader is someone who can pick up a book and after investing in a few chapters – pages – paragraphs – lines can feel that the book unhelpful or intrusive … or just a bad book and I feel completely at liberty to stop at any point.
Nothing makes me drop a book or a show quicker that a historical story told incorrectly or incompletely.
One feller I can think of wrote about the greatest College to NBA basketball transition of all time (the Ervin Johnson/Larry Bird era) and claimed to have grown up in East Lansing and knew most of the people in the book but couldn’t kept confusing Jay and Sam Vincent.
I found that book to be unhelpful or intrusive and into the bottom desk drawer.
Maybe one of the worst examples I came across was a book about Theodore Roosevelt where the author repeated a lot of writings and speeches AND CORRECT THE SPELLING of words like lite, thru and laf WITHOUT seemingly to know that Mr. Roosevelt embraced the concept of Simplified Spelling … oh well.
I digress.
I love to read.
I often find therapy thru what I read.
I hope you do it.
You can find a book and read about it.
have no incentive
to continue to do so …
desegregation
Students and teachers working in school districts today might be decades removed from the people who led the push for desegregation in their districts, but they still benefit from the protections that were long ago put in place. Without court oversight, school districts that were already begrudgingly complying might have no incentive to continue to do so.
From the article, Consent decrees force schools to desegregate. The Trump administration is striking them down by Adria R Walker.
Someone help me out.
What year is this again?
unforgettable
fury of light climbing in
the fabric of dawn
Sunrise from New and Selected Poems, by Mary Oliver
You can
die for it–
an idea,
or the world. People
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
man that is born of
a woman is of few days
and full of trouble
Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble.
Book of Job, Chapter 14, verse 1.
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.
From The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes As printed in The collected poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes (Knopf, New York, 1994).
No Haiku For You 