Enfold Yourself in Small Comforts

This is just beautiful and Margaret Renkl expresses what many of us are feeling perfectly. It’s about appreciating the little things, being creative and never taking each other for granted. I love this. Thanks to David Kanigan for posting this. I hope you enjoy it too.

Live & Learn

The scent of sun-dried sheets fresh off the clothesline can completely change my state of mind. Like the sense of well-being that comes over me when a song from my youth is playing on the radio, the smell of line-dried sheets takes me home to Alabama, back to a time when all my beloved elders were still alive, still humming as they shook out a wad of damp bedsheets and pinned them to the line.

This summer I have repeatedly washed not just our sheets but also our 20-year-old matelassé coverlet, whose scalloped edges are now beginning to fray. I have washed the dust ruffle for possibly the first time in its entire existence. Once the linens are reassembled, I crawl between the sheets, breathe in, and feel the muscles across the top of my back begin to loosen. As my friend Serenity’s mother is fond of saying, “There are…

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The Library Book

This is wonderful and makes me smile. Thanks again to David Kanigan for this post. The comments are great too. I hope you enjoy.

Live & Learn

I grew up in libraries, or at least it feels that way…Throughout my childhood, starting when I was very young, I went there several times a week with my mother. On those visits, my mother and I walked in together but as soon as we passed through the door, we split up and each headed to our favorite section. The library might have been the first place I was ever given autonomy. Even when I was maybe four or five years old, I was allowed to head off on my own. Then, after a while, my mother and I reunited at the checkout counter with our finds. Together we waited as the librarian at the counter pulled out the date card and stamped it with the checkout machine—that giant fist thumping the card with a loud chunk-chunk, printing a crooked due date underneath a score of previous crooked due…

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Summer afternoon—summer afternoon

A beautiful post from David Kanigan’s blog.

Live & Learn

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon,” Henry James wrote late in his life, repeating the phrase with evident relish, as if to squeeze the full pleasure out of it, “to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” It’s easy to see his point, to follow him into the meadowland that those two words conjure effortlessly. Surely “summer afternoon” suggests a lovely aimlessness, with time as a friendly spirit guide, not a haunting, hectoring ghost. Lemonade, ice beading the glass, comes to mind, and a fat 19th-century novel that you’ll never actually finish but can drift into, and then let fall open on the grass, as you get lost (you’re in a hammock under a big shade tree) in a drift of clouds passing overhead, shaping and reshaping themselves. That’s “summer afternoon” for you. It gathers you up, paradoxically, when you give up hunting for it. Keep…

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Taking Our Time

One of my greatest pleasures in life is having a day to take my time. Those are rare days.

People in this world always want us to rush. Everyone is always in a hurry. Time is money but maybe we have it backwards. Maybe we would get more satisfaction in life if we didn’t have to rush for everything. If we put value in quality rather than quantity.

I’ve always done things slower than most people. I like to savor things in life. I eat my meals slowly. I like to read every word in a book and not skim. I like to take my time to make sure I am doing something right.

And while the world makes us rush, I know that I can make myself rush. Like when I have a whole day to do as I please, I find myself running around trying to cram in everything. That takes away from enjoying it. I end up jumping out of bed and rushing to get to as much as I can. There is something much different about rushing because you want to rather than outside influences forcing you to do something your heart isn’t into. Yet even when we rush ourselves, we are missing something. That isn’t the best way to go about things.

At the same time it seems time is limited and if we want to do all the things we want to do in life, we have to hurry. There is a sense of urgency to life. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to take our time?

My best days are when I wake up in the morning with a clear picture of what I want to get done that day and make a point of doing each thing at my own pace. My own pace is the key. Then I can relax and enjoy whatever I’m doing.

I feel like time favors those who are truly in it and appreciate exactly what is going on; really being in the here and now. The entire feeling of time seems to shift. That feeling of being in the flow happens and isn’t that what life is really about? Being and enjoying exactly where and when you are and what you are doing? Appreciating every breath? Looking around and realizing that there is no place else you would rather be?

I wish I could do that all the time. It’s harder than is sounds which seems silly.

Maybe hobbits have it right and we should just have more mealtimes? Good food with good company makes time just right.

Do you like to take your time? Do you get to?

Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929-2018

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy was one of the first and biggest influences for me and my love of the fantasy genre. I think I was only around 12 or so when I first read these books. I was in awe of the new world that her writing opened to me. I was transported to the world of Earthsea and (the main character). I had never read anything like it.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing went far beyond fantasy and I loved how her writing expands ours minds and always will. She introduced me to ideas and worlds I had never imagined and showed me how to explore new ways of thinking. She has left behind a large amount of writing to still explore.
She passed away on January 22. She will be missed but her writing lives on and that is a tremendous gift to this world.
Here is a link to more information about her books and great suggestions for new books to read:
http://link.bookriot.com/view/57f720272ddf9c4c130557b975pn0.a2p/9e3deed3

Live & Learn

Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

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Notes: Quote – Thank you Beth @ Alive on all Channels. Photo: Scientific American

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This Chicks Sunday Commentary: Christmas Book Tree’s

This post if full of great creative ideas. Has anyone else done this?

The Reading Chick

I was in Columbia, TN this week wandering around their downtown and wandered my way into a bookstore. Funny how that happens!  What drew me in was this beautiful Christmas book tree in the window of the store. (I’ll be honest, the books did too!)

I took a picture and turned to the guy at the counter and asked him how many books it took to make this tree. He said “I dunno.” Very disappointing answer! I can’t imagine I’m the first person to walk into the store and ask that question. Anyway, I took a picture and marveled at how high it stood, wondering if I had enough books at home to make one.  I probably do, but it would leave my bookshelves absolutely empty! As well as the thought of putting all of those books back on the shelves persuaded me to not build a tree quite that…

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Happy Summer

Hello. It was a really busy spring and today I am sinking into the warm breezes of summer. What have I been up to? There were gardens to plant. 

 

 

 

We went on vacation for ten days. Our first big trip in a long time. We camped in the mountains of Virginia,visited family in North Carolina

 

 

 

 

and explored the Luray Caverns.

 

 

 

We met our new grand kids. Literally. Kids!

We are also into our busy season at work with Summer Reading programs. Whoever says that kids aren’t reading sure hasn’t been to our library lately! They are checking books out by the armful which makes me very happy. And more than reading they are also talking about the books they are reading. That is a lot of fun.

I have been doing some writing. Not as much as I should but I’m making progress.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Some for myself and some for work.

Today I am getting caught up in the blog world. I have been seriously lax about that. It’s nice to visit again.

How is your summer going?

Brain Holiday

I hope this makes you smile. Please enjoy.

wordsthatserve

Just stumbled across this , which I originally wrote and posted three years ago, but it’s that holiday time of year again, so thought you might enjoy. Written after reading The Lorax by, who else, the inimitable fantabulous most marvexellent … Dr Seuss!

(LOL – I think I just gave my spell checker a heart attack…maybe IT will take a holiday…)

I’ve thought and I’ve thunk

And I’ve tickled my brain

I’ve chased all the thinkylink

Thoughts you could name

I’ve just about caught

Every thought the world has

But they’re all just too big

Or too small or too sad

So I told my brain, ‘Go!

Have a holiday friend,

Find a beach or an island

A planet, a star

Go further than the furtherest

Everest star

And please don’t come back

For a few years or more

‘cos me and that drum

Playing musical chest

Where it beats…

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Quiet spring meditation in the woods

Even if you can’t get out into the woods today, enjoy this meditation. You will feel like you did go outside thanks to this wonderful post and photos.

30 Interesting Facts about Books

This is a great post for book lovers from Interesting Literature.

Interesting Literature

30 fun facts about books, in honour of World Book Day 2015

SF writer Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) is the only author to have published a book in all ten Dewey library categories.

When asked what book he’d like to have with him on a desert island, G. K. Chesterton replied, ‘Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.’

Hugh Lofting, author of Dr Doolittle, thought books should have a ‘senile’ category to complement the ‘juvenile’ section.

Dickens’s house had a secret door in the form of a fake bookcase. The fake books included titles such as ‘The Life of a Cat’ in 9 volumes.

Playwright Joe Orton went to prison in 1962 for defacing library books. One of the cartoons he drew shows an elderly tattooed man in trunks.

The first book bought on Amazon was called Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.

Author…

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