In March of 1973, E. B. White — the author responsible for such books as Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web — received a letter from a Mr. Nadeau, who sought his opinion on what he saw as a bleak future for the human race. White responded with the following, beautifully written letter.

(Source: Letters of E. B. White, edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth; Image: E.B. White, courtesy of Wikimedia.)

North Brooklin, Maine

30 March 1973

Dear Mr. Nadeau:

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society—things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

Sincerely,

(Signed, ‘E. B. White’)

Now, readers, if you would, please, run like bloody hell over to Letters of Note,  and feast on it.  While you’re there, get Shaun’s Twitter  and tell him you love him.  And that next Thursday, we’re having meatballs and brown rice.

Mom and Dad interacted with us, just enough to make it special.

I do NOT, however, recall my parents being at my beck and call. I knew kids whose parents were at their beck and call, and we made fun of them – both kids and parents.  Even when we were really little, we knew such a relationship just wasn’t, well, RIGHT.

When my parents got down and played with me, it was a big deal, partly because it was such super extra fun, and partly because it was rare enough to be a genuine treat.

Mom was busy. I remember her ironing in front of the tv while the kids played all around her. Was she playing with them? No, she was busy. But it was all right, because we knew where she was and what she was doing, and we knew if we needed her she would drop everything and come.

We played outside in the yard. Our house was on a VERY busy corner, and the wide street was dangerous. We did not go near it because we had been told not to. Period. We played with each other and with the neighbor kids. If a parent had tried to play with us, we would have been frightened and we would have gone into the house. I mean, jeepers. All the parents in the neighborhood, however, watched over us and never hesitated to tattle if there was something they thought another parent would want to know.

I did not expect my parents to play with me constantly; why should they? The world is not supposed to be a 100% blend of adult-child things; there is an adult world and there is a child’s world. Frequently, they interact; mostly, they do not.

Nowadays, however, I guess I should phrase that last: mostly, they SHOULD not. Because in many households today, the children are in charge.

“Play wif me, watch Barney wif me, sit wif me, stack blocks wif me. . . .” And the parent drops everything and lets the child be the person in charge of the household, because to deny a child immediate pleasure is to be a bad, bad parent.

Children do NOT need a parent to play with them every minute of the day. Children need to be forced to acquire the inner resources to entertain themselves. Most kids own enough toys to stock a store; put the kid in there and tell him he’s on his own because you’ve got grown-up things you simply must do. Be sure you can keep a close eye on him, if he’s tiny, but make him do some exploring on his own, for crying out loud. And speaking of crying out loud, don’t fall for THAT one, either.

A child who doesn’t have the inner resources to entertain himself becomes an adult who requires outside stimulation (shut up) at all times because they don’t have what it takes to sit quietly and dream, or think, or draw, or read, or open the damn toy box and find something to play with. Requiring your children to learn to entertain themselves encourages them to become imaginative and creative. Being at your child’s beck and call discourages these things.

Far too many parents give up and turn on the tv for hours, every day.   That creates yet another generation of adults who can’t entertain themselves; it has to come from OUTSIDE themselves. How many adults do you know who MUST keep the tv on pretty much 24/7 because they CAN’T function without some sitcom or show on, always? I know several. Listening to background music isn’t the same thing at all, because there is no picture – often not child-friendly – for a kid to be captivated by.

Do not become your child’s on-call playmate. Make your child entertain himself. Whenever you can, sit down and play with him, but honestly? Your kid does not need a grownup play buddy. Your child needs to learn how to figure out how to play by himself.

Is your child more important than housework or yard work or home office work, etc? Absolutely. But your child also needs to learn that Mommy or Daddy is NOT at their beck and call, 24/7.

“Playpen” is a dirty word for many parents, but the fact is, with a playpen, you can put your tiny tiny toddler in there with some toys and get some work done. “But he cries when I put him in there!” So what? Let him cry a while, and eventually he’ll see he’s getting nowhere and he’ll start to play, by himself. This isn’t a sad pitiful thing, poor lonely child, etc; it’s a step towards independence and a step towards becoming a person who has what it takes to keep himself occupied and entertain himself, and become resourceful, so he won’t grow up to become a person so in need of outside stimulation and affirmation and so “entitled” to attention in all aspects of life that he talks out loud in the theater, bellows in a restaurant, talks on his cell phone in public, is at a loss if he finishes a test early and is told to just sit there and read for ten minutes, doesn’t have any homework and can’t handle the free time in study hall, etc.

Play with your kids whenever you can. But don’t let your kids rule your home, and don’t deny yourselves your share of the “adult” world you are so very much entitled to by reason of your ever-advancing age. And yes, those ARE grey hairs and yes, they appeared AFTER you had kids.

Seriously? There is something sad and creepy about a parent so involved with her kids and their activities that her feelings are hurt when the kids don’t invite her to play, too. It’s almost as creepy as the kids who have no conception of figuring anything out themselves because a parent is ALWAYS there to explain every. single. little.thing.

The children’s novel “Understood Betsy,” which is one of my favorites, has this to say:

“. . . Elizabeth Ann had always before thought it an essential part of railway journeys to be much kissed at the end and asked a great many times how you had ‘stood the trip.’

She st very still on the high lumber seat, feeling very forlorn and neglected. Her feet dangled high above the floor of the wagon. She felt herself to be in the most dangerous place she had ever dreamed of in her worst dreams. Oh, why wasn’t Aunt Frances there to take care of her! It was just like one of her bad dreams – yes, it was horrible! She would fall, she would roll under the wheels and be crushed to. . . She looked up at Uncle Henry with the wild eyes of nervous terror which always brought Aunt Frances to her in a rush to ‘hear all about it,’ to sympathize, to reassure.

Uncle Henry looked down at her soberly, his hard, weather-beaten old face unmoved. “Here, you drive, will you, for a piece?” he said briefly, putting the reins into her hands, hooking his spectacles over his ears, and drawing out a stubby pencil and a bit of paper. “I’ve got some figgering to do. You pull on the left-hand rein to make ‘em go to the left and t’other way for ‘other way, though ’tain’t likely we’ll meet any teams.”

Elizabeth Ann had been so near one of her wild screams of terror that now, in spite of her instant absorbed interest in the reins, she gave a queer little yelp. She was all ready with the explanations, her conversations with Aunt Frances having made her very fluent in explanations of her own emotions. She would tell Uncle Henry about how scared she had been, and how she had just been about to scream and couldn’t keep back that one little. . . But Uncle Henry seemed not to have heard her little howl, or, if he had, didn’t think it worth conversation, for he. . . oh, the horses were CERTAINLY going to one side! She hastily decided which was her right hand (she had never been forced to know it so quickly before) and pulled on that rein. The horses turned their hanging heads a little, and, miraculously, there they were in the middle of the road again.

Elizabeth Ann drew a long breath of relief and pride, and looked to Uncle Henry for praise. But he was busily setting down figures as though he were getting his ‘rithmetic lesson tor the next day and had not noticed. . . OH, there were were going to the left again! This time, in her flurry, she made a mistake about which hand was which and pulled wildly on the left line! The horses docilely walked off the road into a shallow ditch, the wagon tilted. . . help! Why didn’t Uncle Henry help! Uncle Henry continued intently figuring on the back of his envelope.

Elizabeth Ann, the perspiration starting out on her forehead, pulled on the other line. The horses turned back up the little slope, the wheel grated sickeningly against the wagon-box – she was SURE they would tip over! But there! Somehow there they were in the road, safe and sound, with Uncle Henry adding up a column of figures. If he only knew, thought the little girl, if he only KNEW the danger he had been in, and how he had been saved. . . ! But she must think of some way to remember, for sure, which her right hand was, and avoid that hideous mistake again.

And then suddenly something inside Elizabeth Ann’s head stirred and moved. It came to her, like a clap, that she needn’t know which was right or left. If she just pulled the way she wanted them to go – the horses would never know whether it was the right or the left rein!

It is possible that what stirred inside her head at that moment was her brain, waking up. She was nine years old, and she was in the third A grade at school, but that was the first time she had ever had a whole thought of her very own. At home, Aunt Frances had always known exactly what she was doing, and had helped her over the hard places before she even knew they were there; and at school her teachers had been carefully trained to think faster than the scholars. Somebody had always been explaining things to Elizabeth Ann so carefully that she had never found out a single thing for herself before. This was a very small discovery, but it was her own. Elizabeth Ann was as excited about it as a mother-bird over the first egg she hatches.

She forgot how afraid she was of Uncle Henry, and poured out to him her discovery. “It’s not right or left that matters! she ended triumphantly; “it’s which way you want to go!” Uncle Henry looked at her attentively as she talked, eyeing her sidewise over the top of one spectacle-glass. When she finished – “Well, now, that’s so,” he admitted, and returned to his arithmetic.

It was a short remark, shorter than any Elizabeth Ann had ever heard before. Aunt Frances and her teachers had always explained matters at length. But it had a weighty, satisfying ring to it. The little girl felt the importance of having her statement recognized. She turned back to her driving.”

If you’re not familiar with Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield, run out and get it immediately! It’s a charming story, full of delight.

Parents, you also don’t need to tiptoe around the house and speak in whispers when the baby naps. Let the baby learn to sleep through the natural noises of a busy household, and you’ll save yourselves and everyone who lives with you YEARS of tip-toeing and whispering. You’ll also end up with a child who has learned not to wake up every time a feather falls to the floor.

I remember when Mom was teaching my brother to stay in his own bed all night. That first night, his crying broke all of our hearts, and it lasted pretty much all night, too. The next night, he went right to sleep and stayed in his bed all night.  Today, he is a highly successful university professor.  I see no signs of own-bed-trauma in his life.

They test us. They test us constantly. As they get older, the tests get harder. During the first years, they cry a lot to try and break us. As they get older, we cry a lot because sometimes, they do. But we can’t let it show, or we’ve lost.

Oh, and that curse all mothers put on their kids, the one that goes “I hope, when you grow up and get married and have kids, that you have a kid who is JUST LIKE YOU.”

That curse works.

By the way, the biggest problem with childrearing advice is that the best advice often comes from someone who has learned these things the hard way and wants to spare young parents from the same battles. The second biggest problem with the best childrearing advice is that young parents don’t know what these old people could possibly know about raising children.

Times change. Babies don’t.

Unless, by “change,” you are referring to diapers, in which case, starting saving your money now. Oh, and if you’ve got a sensitivity to bad smells, buck up and get over it.

My point? Do I have to have one?

You are not obligated to play with your children every waking minute. You are an adult and you have things to do, too. Kids will learn if you give them no choice. Make sure they know you’re nearby and can hear them, but require them to learn to develop inner resources for themselves. We’ve already got more than enough adults who don’t have what it takes to keep themselves internally entertained; we certainly don’t need any more.

One of them usually sits by me on a plane.

P.S. I’m not talking about newborns here; heck, I used to wear my newborns,  although I also used to put them in the playpen to keep the cat off them when I went downstairs to do laundry.  I was glad to have that playpen when the big snake got into the house, I’m tellin’ ya.

(Rerun.  Yes.)

1.  To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. — George Washington (1789–1797)

2. I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house (the White House) and on all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof! — John Adams (1797–1801)

3. That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves. — Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809)

4. I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. — James Madison (1809–1817)

5. It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. — James Monroe (1817–1825)

6. If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. — John Quincy Adams (1825–1829)

7. As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending. — Andrew Jackson (1829–1837)

8. The less government interferes with private pursuits, the better for general prosperity. — Martin Van Buren (1837–1841)

9. A decent and manly examination of the acts of the Government should be not only tolerated, but encouraged. — William Henry Harrison (1841)

10. Let it be henceforth proclaimed to the world that man’s conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God. — John Tyler (1841–1845)

11. No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. — James Knox Polk (1845–1849)

12. I have no private purpose to accomplish, no party objectives to build up, no enemies to punish—nothing to serve but my country. — Zachary Taylor (1849–1850 )

13. May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not. — Millard Fillmore (1850–1853)

14. The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded. — Franklin Pierce (1853–1857)

15. I like the noise of democracy. — James Buchanan (1857–1861)

16. America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. — Abraham Lincoln (1861–1865)

17. If the rabble were lopped off at one end and the aristocrat at the other, all would be well with the country. — Andrew Johnson (1865–1869)

18. Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. — Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877)

19. It is now true that this is God’s Country, if equal rights—a fair start and an equal chance in the race of life — are everywhere secured to all. — Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1881)

20. Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained. — James A. Garfield (1881)

21. I may be president of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damned business. — Chester A. Arthur (1881–1885)

22. It is the responsibility of the citizens to support their government. It is not the responsibility of the government to support its citizens. — Stephen Grover Cleveland (1885–1889)

23. We Americans have no commission from God to police the world. — Benjamin Harrison — (1889–1893)

24. Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters. — Grover Cleveland (1893-1897)

25. Unlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law. It is sometimes sneeringly said by those who do not like free government, that here we count heads. True, heads are counted, but brains also . . . — William McKinley (1897–1901)

26. The only man who makes no mistake is the man who does nothing. — Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909)

27. Politics, when I am in it, makes me sick. — William Howard Taft (1909–1913)

28. If you want to make enemies, try to change something. — Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921)

29. Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. — Warren G. Harding (1921–1923)

30. Character is the only secure foundation of the state. John Calvin Coolidge (1923–1929)

31. Absolute freedom of the press to discuss public questions is a foundation stone of American liberty. — Herbert Clark Hoover (1929–1933)

32. Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. — Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–1945)

33. We need not fear the expression of ideas—we do need to fear their suppression. — Harry S. Truman (1945–1953)

34. There is nothing wrong with America that the faith, love of freedom, intelligence and energy of her citizens cannot cure. — Dwight David Eisenhower (1953–1961)

35. If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. — John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1961–1963)

36. You ain’t learnin’ nothin’ when you’re talkin’. — Lyndon Baines Johnson (1963–1969)

37. Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you. Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself. — Richard Milhous Nixon (1969–1974)

38. A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. — Gerald Rudolph Ford (1974–1977)

39. We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles. — James Earl Carter, Jr. (1977–1981)

40. We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And that makes us special among the nations of the earth. — Ronald Wilson Reagan (1981–1989)

41. The United States is the best and fairest and most decent nation on the face of the earth. — George Herbert Walker Bush (1989–1993)

42. There is nothing wrong in America that can’t be fixed with what is right in America. — William Jefferson Clinton (1993–2001)

43. Recognizing and confronting our history is important. Transcending our history is essential. We are not limited by what we have done, or what we have left undone. We are limited only by what we are willing to do. — George Walker Bush (2001-2009)

44. My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington. — Barack Obama (2009 – present)

Now, here are some trivia questions for you and your students:

Obama, our 44th president, is actually our 43rd president.  Why?

Kennedy, at 43,  was our youngest elected president, and the oldest was Reagan, who was 69. However, Kennedy was not our youngest president; who was?

Assassination attempts were made on nine presidents, but only four attempts were successful.  Which presidents were were actually assassinated, and which presidents survived the attempt?

Four presidents died in office, besides those who were assassinated.  Can you name them?

For which president’s wife was the term “First Lady” first used?

Has the U.S. ever had an unmarried president?

How many divorced presidents have we had?

What president was not elected by the people?

Have we ever had a president who was not a U.S. citizen?

Several 19th century presidents were not college graduates, but were there any 20th century presidents who never attended any college?

Let’s talk height:  Lincoln was tallest at 6’4″, and Madison was the shortest at 5’4″.

How many of our presidents had also been vice president?

How many presidential wives gave birth while living in the White House?

We assume that most deceased presidents are buried in Arlington Cemetery.  How many presidents are buried there?

Only one president was elected unanimously.  Who was it?

Who was the first White House bride?

James Madison was the first president to wear a certain type of clothing.  What was he the first president to wear?

Which president liked to go skinnydipping in the Potomac River? (He was also the first president to be photographed!)

Which president and first lady always spoke Dutch at home?

The first vice president to become president upon the death of a president never made an inaugural address, and never ran for that office.  He also had the most children – 15!  This presidents second wife started the tradition of playing “Hail to the Chief” whenever a president appeared. Which president was he?

Which president’s wife hosted the first annual White House Thanksgiving dinner?

Who was the first president to have a Christmas tree in the White House?

Which president’s wife taught him to read and write?

Which president held the first annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn?

Which president liked to answer the White House phone himself?

After the White House was wired for electricity, which president was afraid to use it?

The first president to campaign by telephone was also the first president to ride in an automobile. Who was he?

What was the original name of the White House?

Who was the first president to own a car?

Who put a flock of sheep on the White House lawn, and sold the wool to make money for the Red Cross?  He was also our first president to earn a PhD.

Which president wore size 14 shoes?

Which president donated his salary to charity and approved “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem?

Which president served his entire presidency without the use of his legs?

Which president was first to travel in a submarine and first to give a televised speech?  He used to get up at dawn to practice the piano for two hours.

Which president, while playing football at West Point, was injured when he tried to tackle Jim Thorpe?

Which president once worked as a fashion model and a Yellowstone park ranger?

This speed-reading president was the first president born in a hospital. Who was he?

Who was our first Rhodes Scholar president?

Who is our only president to have won a Grammy Award?

18 presidents never served in Congress.  Who are they?

Eight of our presents have been left-handed.  Which ones?

Fourteen presidents were once vice presidents.  Name them.

Enjoy.

Since I stand firmly with Albert Einstein’s “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” this Saturday’s theme is “imagination.”

Take the word apart.  Do you see it?  IMAGE.  People with imagination can take their whims, dreams, and fancies and turn them into images.  I know that there are people who have no imagination.  I used to pity them, and I still do to some extent, but really, such people are an awful inconvenience, and are responsible for a lot of injustice, and these days, when I consider unimaginative people, I’m mostly just disgusted.

Unimaginative people are the ones who tell a daydreaming child to stop wasting time, thus interrupting the cure for cancer and rocket fuel made of sewage.

I know people who wouldn’t care if they never learned another new thing. I pity them, because when learning stops, stagnation begins. Those stinky little ponds all over southern Indiana, covered with scum and mosquitoes? They stopped moving, and now they are dead and dead things stink. When people stop learning, they might as well be buried and get it over with, for they are as good as dead. I consider a person who is content to allow his/her head to be stuffed full of other people’s opinions as good as dead, also. Echoes have no imagination.

Thinking can be hard. Some people just aren’t willing to put forth the effort. Besides, thinking sometimes makes us question our choices, values, and beliefs. Can’t have that. Many so-called “religions” encourage people to stifle their imaginations. I find this horrific beyond words. Then again, genuinely imaginative, creative, and intelligent people aren’t easy to stifle. Sheep are easy to boss around, but imaginative people aren’t so easily led. Even as a small child, I assumed a lot of churchy people were dumb as a sheep, because so many of them accepted whatever the preacher or rule book said, without a single comment, question, or raised eyebrow.

Harsh? Sure. But it’s how I roll. One of the many things I despise about most of our public schools is the fact that they pretty much beat the curiosity and imagination out of our children. Often, children are punished for wanting to know MORE and refusing to stop once ONE answer or solution is reached. Of course, as Professor Umbridge says, the important thing about school is taking tests, and tests are concerned only with predetermined answers, not curiosity. “Next year, Billy,” a teacher might promise. But when next year comes, Billy soon learns that the new year is just like the old year: day after day of sitting and waiting for other kids to catch up, with never anything for the kids who already know, and detention or worse for the child who dared experiment with his lunch or the ink in his pen or the clay or a poem or story or the paints in the art room. Sigh.

Curiosity. Imagination. Dreams. Let’s encourage them in our children, for the curious thinkers and scientists and writers and dreamers are the hope of the universe.

As for unimaginative and uncurious adults. . . . I should be a lot sorrier for them than I am, but it’s their own fault. Life is full of choices, and there’s more than one kind of Easy Street.

1.  Logic will get you from A to B.  Imagination will take you everywhere.  — Albert Einstein

2. The key to life is imagination. If you don’t have that, no mater what you have, it’s meaningless. If you do have imagination… you can make feast of straw. — Jane Stanton Hitchcock

3. A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

4. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. — Edgar Allan Poe

5. Trust that little voice in your head that says “Wouldn’t it be interesting if…” And then do it. — Duane Michals,

6. Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun. — George Scialabba

7. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. — Albert Einstein

8. Anyone who can be replaced by a machine deserves to be. — Dennis Gunton

9. I remembered a story of how Bach was approached by a young admirer one day and asked, “But Papa Bach, how do you manage to think of all these new tunes?” “My dear fellow,” Bach is said to have answered, according to my version, “I have no need to think of them. I have the greatest difficulty not to step on them when I get out of bed in the morning and start moving around my room.” — Laurens Van der Post

10. Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. — Albert Szent-Györgyi

11. I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant. — Ursula K. Le Guin

12. If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. — George S. Patton

13. So you see, imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. — Brenda Ueland

14. Most technological achievements were preceded by people writing and imagining them. I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books. — Arthur C. Clarke

15. He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet. — Joseph Joubert

16. As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope. — Ursula K. Le Guin

17. We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. — Maria Mitchell

18. One of the virtues of the very young is that you don’t let facts get in the way of your imagination. — Sam Levinson

19. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.– Henry Ward Beecher

20. When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microspically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.– Cynthia Heimel

21. There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. — Gilbert Keith Chesterton

22. It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. — Henry Thoreau

23. I like nonsense — it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope… and that enables you to laugh at all of life’s realities. — Dr. Seuss

24. If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in. — Rachel Carson

25. Anyone who thinks the sky is the limit, has limited imagination. — Unknown

26. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. — Albert Einstein

27. A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself. — Alexander Graham Bell

28. Reality can be beaten with enough imagination. — Unknown

29. Let your mind alone, and see what happens. — Virgil Thomson

30. Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. — Pablo Picasso

31. Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. — John Dewey

32. It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated. –Alec Bourne

33. Reporting facts is the refuge of those who have no imagination. -–Marquis de Vauvenargues

34. No course of life is so weak and foolish as that which is carried out according to rules and discipline. -–Montaigne

35. Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is? -–Frank Scully

36. Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. -–G.K. Chesterton

37. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. -–Albert Einstein

38. What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible. -–Theodore Roethke

39. There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream – whatever that dream might be. -– Pearl S. Buck

40. Nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectations unless he or she begins with some wild expectations. -– Ralph Charell

41. I learned that there were two ways I could live my life: following my dreams or doing something else. Dreams aren’t a matter of chance, but a matter of choice. When I dream, I believe I am rehearsing my future. -– David Copperfield

42. In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities. -–Janos Arany

43. Dreams come in a size too big so that we may grow into them. -–Josie Bisset

44. Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. -–Gloria Steinem

45. Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. -– Harriet Tubman

46. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails Explore. Dream. Discover. -– Mark Twain

47. It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. — Einstein

48. Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly. — Arnold Edinborough

49. I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity. — Eleanor Roosevelt

50. Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision. — Aldous Huxley

Imagination should be encouraged, not discouraged.  Everything in the universe is fodder for the imagination, and any teacher who doesn’t know this, and doesn’t try like mad to make sure he/she encourages dreaming in all students, is a. . . well, you know.  Paging Auntie Em.  Of course, there are, sadly, always people who aren’t interested and whose life goal seems to be to prevent everyone else from dreaming and reaping gold from any lesson.  More sadly still, our schools often cater to this lowest common denominator instead of showering the imaginative and eager learners with opportunities.  sigh.

“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings” has become “Every time a bell rings, a child has to force himself/herself NOT to think about yet another subject that should rightly be fascinating but which has been edited and censored and otherwise beaten down to fit inside that little box lest it inspire someone to greatness.” (Whilst trying to ignore and dodge the antics, bullying, disruptions, hands, tantrums, etc, of the uninspired kid in the next seat over. . . .) (and likewise trying not to draw attention to himself lest he be told to take Butch and Woim out in the hall to help them with their spelling.)

Because we can’t have any individual greatness, you know; it’s not fair to the OTHER students who wouldn’t recognize greatness if it bit them on the ass and called them by name.

I might dare to remind whoever crosses my path – and aren’t y’all LUCKY – that, in the words of Madeleine L’Engle (see, you’re getting your famous quotation after all – “Like” and “equal” are not the same thing!!!!!

I might also dare to remind you that the entire universe is a big game of “Six Degrees of Separation” and that those who don’t know enough to make any connections are losing.

The answer isn’t really “Kevin Bacon,” you know.

The answer is “42.”  And if you don’t know why, be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Today has been lovely, truly lovely.  My family, all together again, with food and conversation and games and candles and trees bedecked with twinkling stars . . . . People laugh and say that Christmas is a magical time, but for me, it really is magical.  Somewhere inside my head, I’m seven years old, and I still believe.

1.  The only real blind person at Christmas-time is he who has no Christmas in his heart.  — Helen Keller

2.  Off to one side sits a group of shepherds.  They sit silently on the floor, perhaps perplexed, perhaps in awe, no doubt in amazement.  Their night watch had been interrupted by an explosion of light from heaven and a symphony of angels.  God goes to those who have time to hear him – and so on this cloudless night he went to simple shepherds.  — Max Lucado

3.  Probably the reason we all go so haywire at Christmas time with the endless unrestrained and often silly buying of gifts is that we don’t quite know how to put our love into words.  – Harlan Miller

4.  Of course, this is the season to be jolly, but it is also a good time to be thinking about those who aren’t.  — Helen Valentine

5.  When we recall Christmas past, we usually find that the simplest things – not the great occasions – give off the greatest glow of happiness.  — Bob Hope

6.  What is Christmas?  It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future.  It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.  — Agnes M. Pharo

7.  We should try to hold on to the Christmas spirit, not just one day a year, but 365.  — Mary Martin

8.  Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won’t make it “white.”  — Bing Crosby

9.  There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.  — Erma Bombeck

10.  May we not “spend” Christmas or “observe” Christmas, but rather “keep” it.  — Peter Marshall

11.  A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.  –Garrison Keillor

12.  Late on a sleepy, star-spangled night, those angels peeled back the sky just like you would tear open a sparkling Christmas present.  Then, with light and joy pouring out of Heaven like water through a broken dam, they began to shout and sing the message that baby Jesus had been born.  The world had a Savior!  The angels called “Good News,” and it was.  — Larry Libby

13.  I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day.  We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year.  AS for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year.  And thus I drift along into the holidays – let them overtake me unexpectedly – waking up some fine morning and suddenly saying to myself:  “Why, this is Christmas Day!”  — David Grayson

14.  . . . God’s visit to earth took place in an animal f\shelter with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn king but a feed trough. . . For just an instant the sky grew luminous with angels, yet who saw the spectacle?  Illiterate hirelings who watched the flocks of others, “nobodies” who failed to leave their names. . . . . -Philip Yancy

15.  Christmas isn’t just a day.  It’s a frame of mind.  — Valentine Davies

16.  Christmas, my child, is love in action.  Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas.  — Dale Evans

17.  Remember: if Christmas isn’t found in your heart, you won’t find it under a tree.  — Charlotte Carpenter

18.  To the American People:  Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind.  To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.  If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.  — Calvin Coolidge

19.  My first copies of Treasure Island and Huckleberry Finn still have some blue spruce needles in the pages.  They smell of Christmas still.  — Charlton Heston

20.  They err who thinks Santa Claus comes down through the chimney; he really enters through the heart.  — Mrs. Paul M. Ell

21.  The perfect Christmas tree?  All Christmas trees are perfect!  — Charles N. Barnard

22.  This is the message of Christmas:  We are never alone.  — Taylor Caldwell

23. My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple:  loving others.  Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?  — Bob Hope

24.  Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body.  It warmed your heart. . . filled it, too, with melody that would last forever. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

25.  Christmas gift suggestions:  To your enemy, forgiveness.  To an opponent, tolerance.  To a friend, your heart.  To a customer, service.  To all, charity.  To very child, a good example. To yourself, respect.  — Oren Arnold

26.  Which Christmas is the most vivid to me?  It’s always the next Christmas.  — Joanne Woodward

27.  Christmas is a necessity.  There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves.  — Eric Sevareid

28.  One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day.  Don’t clean it up too quickly.  — Andy Rooney

29.  Christmas is the keeping place for memories of our innocence.  — Joan Mills

30.  Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.  — Hamilton Wright Mabie

31.  So here comes Gabriel again, and what he says is “Good tidings of great joy. . . for all people.”  That’s why the shepherds are first: they represent all the nameless, all the the working stiffs, the great wheeling population of the whole world.  – Walter Wangerin Jr.

32.  Christmas is the day that holds all time together.  — Alexander smith

33. A Christmas candle is a lovely thing.  It makes no noise at all.  But softly gives itself away, while quite unselfish, it grows small.  –Eva K. Logue

34.  Christmas is not an eternal event at all, but a piece of one’s home that one carries in one’s heart.  — Freya Stark

35.  The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men, who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger.  They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.  — O. Henry

36.  Perhaps the best Yuletide decoration is being wreathed in smiles.  — Unknown

37.  Christmas is the time to let your heart do the thinking.  — Patricia Clafford

38.  I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six.  Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.  — Shirley Temple

39.  Christmas is for children.  But it is for grownups, too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts.  — Lenora Mattingly Weber

40. Christmas Day is a day of joy and charity.  May God make you very rich in both.  — Phillips Brooks

41.  The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.  — Burton Hillis

42.  So if a Christian is touched only once a year, the touching is still worth it, and maybe on some given Christmas, some quiet morning, the touch will take.  — Harry Reasoner

43.  A scientist said, making a plea for exchange scholarships between nations, “The very best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person.”  That was what happened at Christmas.  The idea of divine love was wrapped up in a Person. — Halford E. Luccock

44.  As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December’s bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same.  — Donald E. Westlake

45.  Ask your children two questions this Christmas. First:  “What do you want to give to others for Christmas?”  Second:  What do you want for Christmas?”  The first fosters generosity of heart and an outward focus.  The second can breed selfishness if not tempered by the first.  – Anonymous

46.  Christmas has lost its meaning for us because we have lost the spirit of expectancy.  We cannot prepare for an observance.   We must prepare for an experience.  — Handel H. Brown

47.  In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it “Christmas” and went to church; the Jews called it Hannukah and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank.  People passing each other on the street would say “Merry Christmas!” or “Happy Hannukah!” or, to the the atheists, “Look out for the wall!”  — Dave Barry

48.  Nothing’s as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.  — Kin Hubbard

49.  Selfishness makes Christmas a burden.  Love makes it a delight.  — Unknown

50.  Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe.  But maybe, by raising my voice I can help the greatest of all causes – goodwill among men and peace on earth.  — Albert Einstein

51. The joy of brightening other lives, bearing each others’ burdens, easing others’ loads nad supplanting empty hearts and lives with generous gifts becomes for us the magic of christmas.  — W.C. Jones

52.  There has been only one Christmas.  The rest are anniversaries.  — W.J. Cameron

53.  Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.  — Laura Ingalls Wilder

54.  Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish.  Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself.  — Francis C. Farley

55.  Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.  — author unknown

56.  The message of Christmas is that the visible material world is bound to the invisible spiritual world.  — Author Unknown

57.  The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C.  This wasn’t for any religious reasons.  They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.  — Jay Leno

58.  The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young.   — Phillips Brooks

59.  Christmas – that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance.  It may weave a spell of nostalgia.  christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance – a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.  — Augusta e. Rundel

60.  Christmas is not just a day, an event to be observed and speedily forgotten.  It is a spirit which should permeate every part of our lives.  — William Parks

61.  Christmas isn’t a season.  It’s a feeling.  — Edna Ferber

62.  Mankind is a great, an immense family. . . . this is proved by what we feel in our hearts at Christmas.  — Pope John XXIII

63.  There is no ideal Christmas; only the one Christmas you decide to make as a reflection of your values, desires, affections, traditions.  — Bill McKibben

. . . if I don’t stop now, I never will.

Merry Christmas, my dear ones.  I hope this day was memorable for all the right reasons.

Thanksgiving isn’t really just one day, you know.  It’s just the one day wherein we are all reminded that EVERY day is a day of thanksgiving in one way or another.

Some people consider this official Thanksgiving Day to be politically incorrect, but I think it’s all in one’s perspective.  Don’t think of this day in terms of clueless pilgrims  in buckled shoes and dull clothing – which is not correct, by the way; pilgrims were quite colorful in more ways than one – who didn’t know how to plant gardens and were starving to death out of sheer ignorance, and stereotypical Native Americans in loincloths who sighed, put down their scalping tomahawks, and taught the newcomers how to plant corn so they wouldn’t drop dead of starvation.  Think of this day as the symbolic Day of Gratitude.

Think back on your life; there was always something to be grateful for, even in the midst of horror, and there still is.  There always will be. Thanksgiving Day is a good time to be retrospective.

I hope we have all taught and encouraged our children to be grateful; few things are uglier than a person of any age who takes for granted all the blessings – small, medium, large, and XXlarge – that make up the pattern of our days.

A simple “thank you” can make or break us, sometimes.

Now, get out there and cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude.  It’s contagious, you know.

1. God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” –William A. Ward

2. Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone. –G.B. Stern

3. If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. –Meister Eckhart

4. There is no such thing as gratitude unexpressed. If it is unexpressed, it is plain, old-fashioned ingratitude. –Robert Braul

5. Gratitude is the memory of the heart. –Jean Baptiste Massieu

6. When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? –G.K. Chesterton

7. The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. –John E. Southard

8. If you have lived, take thankfully the past. –John Dryden

9. As each day comes to us refreshed and anew, so does my gratitude renew itself daily. The breaking of the sun over the horizon is my grateful heart dawning upon a blessed world. –Adabella Radici

10. I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. –G.K. Chesterton

11. You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. –G.K. Chesterton

12. If a fellow isn’t thankful for what he’s got, he isn’t likely to be thankful for what he’s going to get. –Frank A. Clark

13. The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! –Henry Ward Beecher

14. Grace isn’t a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It’s a way to live. –Attributed to Jacqueline Winspear

15. Praise the bridge that carried you over. –George Colman

16. If you count all your assets, you always show a profit. –Robert Quillen

17. He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. –Epictetus

18. What a miserable thing life is: you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t good enough. –Bertolt Brecht

19. Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.–Oprah Winfrey

20. Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou are not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude.–William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

21. Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.–Brian Tracy

22. Eaten bread is forgotten.–Thomas Fuller

23. Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.–William Arthur Ward

24. For today and its blessings, I owe the world an attitude of gratitude.–Clarence E. Hodges

25. For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received.–Storm Jameson

26. Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.–Cicero

27. Gratitude is the memory of the heart.–Massieu

28. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.–Melody Beattie

29. Gratitude takes three forms: a feeling in the heart, an expression in words, and a giving in return.–John Wanamaker

30. Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don’t unravel.–Anonymous

31. If one could only learn to appreciate the little things…
A song that takes you away, for there are those who cannot hear.
The beauty of a sunset, for there are those who cannot see.
The warmth and safety of your home, for there are those who are homeless.
Time spent with good friends for there are those who are lonely.
A walk along the beach for there are those who cannot walk.
The little things are what life is all about.
Search your soul and learn to appreciate.–Shadi Souferian

32. If you never learned the lesson of thankfulness, begin now. Sum up your mercies; see what provision God has made for your happiness, what opportunities for your usefulness, and what advantages for your success.–Ida S. Taylor

33. In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.–Albert Schweitzer

34. Keep a grateful journal. Every night, list five things that you are grateful for. What it will begin to do is change our perspective of your day and your life.–Oprah Winfrey

35. No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.–Saint Ambrose

36. No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.–Elie Wiesel

37. None is more impoverished than the one who has no gratitude. Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy.–Fred De Witt Van Amburgh

38. Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.–W. T. Purkiser

39. Of all the “attitudes” we can acquire, surely the attitude of gratitude is the most important and by far the most life-changing.–Zig Ziglar

40. One can never pay in gratitude; one can pay “in kind” somewhere else in life.–Anne Morrow Lindbergh

41. One of life’s gifts is that each of us, no matter how tired and downtrodden, finds reasons for thankfulness.–J. Robert Maskin

42. Part of growing up spiritually is learning to be grateful for all things, even our difficulties, disappointments, failures and humiliations.–Mike Aquilina

43. Pride slays thanksgiving, but an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.–Henry Ward Beecher

44. Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some.–Charles Dickens

45. Seeds of discouragement will not grow in the thankful heart.–Anonymous

46. A sensible thanksgiving for mercies received is a mighty prayer in the Spirit of God. It prevails with Him unspeakably.–John Bunyan

47. Silent gratitude isn’t very much to anyone.–Gertrude B. Stein

48. So often we dwell on the things that seem impossible rather than on the things that are possible. So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.–Marian Wright Edelman

49. Somebody saw something in you once – and that is partly why you’re where you are today. Find a way to thank them.–Don Ward

50. Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,
The bee’s collected treasures sweet,
Sweet music’s melting full, but sweeter yet
The still small voice of gratitude.–Thomas Gray

51. There is no better opportunity to receive more than to be thankful for what you already have. Thanksgiving opens the windows of opportunity for ideas to flow your way.–Jim Rohn

52. We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.–Sacred ritual chant

53. When eating fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.–Vietnamese proverb

54. When we are grateful for the good we already have, we attract more good into our life. On the other hand, when we are ungrateful, we tend to shut ourselves off from the good we might otherwise experience.–Margaret Stortz

55. . . . .when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present–love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure–the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth. –Sarah Ban Brethnach

56. Who does not thank for little will not thank for much.–Estonian Proverb

57. Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving. –W.T. Purkiser

58. We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. –Thornton Wilder

59. Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all. –William Faulkner

60. If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily. –Gerald Good

61. Gratitude is the least of the virtues, but ingratitude is the worst of vices. –Thomas Fuller

62. There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance. –Joseph Addison

63. I feel a very unusual sensation – if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude. –Benjamin Disraeli

64. There is no greater difference between men than between grateful and ungrateful people. –R.H. Blyth

65. Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart. –Henry Clay

66. A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues. — Marcus Tullius Cicero quotes

67. Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed. — Mark Twain

68. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Abraham Lincoln

69. Each day offers us the gift of being a special occasion if we can simply learn that as well as giving, it is blessed to receive with grace and a grateful heart. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

70. Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. — Garrison Keillor

71. But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. Thomas Jefferson quotes

72. Who does not thank for little will not thank for much. –Estonian Proverb

73. Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, – a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
– George Herbert

74. The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. — Eric Hoffer

75. Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul. — Henry Ward Beecher

76. When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep? –George Canning

77. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. –John Fitzgerald Kennedy

78. We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude. –Cynthia Ozick

79. Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things. –Horace

80. The grateful person, being still the most severe exacter of himself, not only confesses, but proclaims, his debts. — Robert South

81. Grow flowers of gratitude in the soil of prayer. –Verbena Woods

82. Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors. — François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

83. Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. — Aldous Huxley

84. When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them. –Chinese Proverb

85. Thanks are justly due for boons unbought. –Ovid

86. In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. — H.L. Mencken

87. Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. — William Arthur Ward

88. Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life. –Robert Louis Stevenson

89. To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude. — Albert Schweitzer

90. Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty. — Doris Day

91. Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines. — Leroy (Satchel) Paige

92. Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary. — Margaret Cousins

93. Kindness trumps greed: it asks for sharing. Kindness trumps fear: it calls forth gratefulness and love. Kindness trumps even stupidity, for with sharing and love, one learns. — Marc Estrin

94. There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it. — Seneca

95. What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving? –Erma Bombeck

96. Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action. –W.J. Cameron

97. Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day. — Robert Caspar Lintner

98. Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds. –Theodore Roosevelt

99. It is literally true, as the thankless say, that they have nothing to be thankful for. He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire. Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient. But a thankful heart hath a continual feast. — W.J. Cameron

100. In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. — Albert Schweitzer

You’re welcome.

And, of course, other people’s words are far more powerful than mine. Funnier, too.

“There never was a rule that didn’t have to be broken at some time, and the man who doesn’t know when to break a rule is a fearful pain in the neck.” –William Feather

“The price one pays for pursuing any profession or call, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.” –James Baldwin

“Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.” –West African Proverb

“Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.” –Mary Wollstonecraft*

“So live that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.” –Will Rogers

“. . . he who does not increase his knowledge diminishes it; he who refuses to learn, merits extinction.” –Talmud

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.” –Tagore

“I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.” –Ezra Pound

“I hasten to laugh at everything for fear of being obliged to weep at it.” –Pierre De Beaumarchair

“You don’t look in the mirror to see life; you gotta look out of the window.” –Drew Brown

“We do not really know anything at all until a long time after we have learned it.” –Joseph Joubert

“Happiness is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.” –Anonymous

“Do not assume that the other fellow has intelligence to match yours. He may have more.” –Terry-Thomas

“He who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security, and not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft.” –J.R. Lowell

“Do not fear when your enemies criticize you. Beware when they applaud.” –Vo Dong Giang

“Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.” –Van Wyck Brooks

“It’s the most unhappy people who most fear change.” –Mignon McLaughlin

“Eccentricity is like having an accent. It’s what “other” people have.” –Oliver Sacks

“Some people crave baseball. I find this unfathomable; however, I do understand how someone could get excited about playing a bassoon.” –Frank Zappa

“Sometimes I think war is God’s way of teaching us geography.” — Paul Rodriguez

“A headline is not an act of journalism; it is an act of marketing.” –Harold Evans

“Take a rest; a field that has rested gives a beautiful crop.” –Ovid

“If a man does not work passionately – even furiously – at being the best in the world at what he does, he fails his talent, his destiny, and his God.” –George Lois

“All of us are mad. If it weren’t for the fact that every one of us is slightly abnormal, there wouldn’t be any point in giving each person a separate name.” –Ugo Bette

A good quotation is an education, isn’t it. Sometimes, a really good one can make my skin tingle and my brain light up in one of those big areas we never use. Maybe a really good combination of words is the spark we need to heat up those empty lobes and see what’s going on in there.

*Bonus points if you know what she wrote!

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

Fortunately, as John Donne liked to remind us, no man is an island.  This is the key to all education, no matter what our age.  No man is an island, and that means CONNECTIONS.

Education is about learning to make connections.  Understand that one point and you’ll know how to keep on learning until they carry you out feet first.  The sooner we learn it, the better off we are.

We are human, and humans mess up.  That doesn’t mean – it NEVER means – that we should give up when we mess up.  No, no, no, no, no.  No matter how many times we mess up, we must try to pull ourselves up and try again.  And if it’s just too hard to pull ourselves up, we need to give our families and friends the privilege of helping us do it.

Never give up, and never surrender.  No matter what “it” is, never give up.  We can do it.  Life likes to hit us below the belt sometimes, but we don’t have to let it get by with that.  Never give up.  Never surrender.  And it doesn’t matter how many times we’re down, either.  Each time, get back up and vow again to never surrender.  Eventually the lesson will sink in.  And if it doesn’t  happen soon, or when we think it should, well, keep on trying anyway.

We are all surrounded by people who love us, in real life or online – and what does that say for social media that some of our best friends are online friends – and together we will always be stronger than anything that doesn’t love us.  We might have to wait for it.  It might be late.  We might worry that it’s not coming at all.  But be patient, for love really does conquer all.  It does.  Never give up.  Never surrender.

1. Superman’s not brave. You can’t be brave if you’re indestructible. It’s every day people, like you and me, that are brave knowing we could easily be defeated but still continue forward. — Unknown

2. No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara ever turned light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined. –Harry Emerson Fosdick

3. People are hungry for messages of hope and life. What are you broadcasting? — Morgan Brittany

4. Whoever you are, there is some younger person who thinks you are perfect. There is some work that will never be done if you don’t do it. there is someone who would miss you if you were gone. There is a place that you alone can fill. –Jacob M. Braude

5. Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. –Thomas Edison

6. Shame is guilt in overdrive. If it helps, think of the difference between shame and guilt as this: shame says “I’m bad, I’m flawed,” and guilt says “What I did was harmful to myself and/or others, and I can do better than that.” Thoughts of healthy, unbiased guilt are how you converse with your conscience, while feelings of shame don’t even let the conversation begin. — Renee Bledsoe

7. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. — Dale Carnegie

8. Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget about everything except what you’re going to do now – and do it. — William Durant

9. If we did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves. –Thomas Edison

10. You don’t have to control your thoughts; you just have to stop letting them control you. — Dan Millman

11. Ninety percent of the world’s woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailities, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves. — Sydney J. Harris

12. If you are aware of your weaknesses and you are constantly learning, your potential is virtually limitless. — Jay Sidhu

13. You can come out of the furnace of trouble two ways: if you let it consume you, you come out a cinder, but there is a kind of metal which refuses to be consumed, and comes out a star. — Jean Church

14. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time. — Og Mandino

15. Facing it, always facing it; that’s the way to get through. Face it. — Joseph Conrad

16. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. — Carl Bard

17. Life is very interesting. In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths. — Drew Barrymore

18. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. — Ambrose Redmoon

19. Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life, as by the obstacles one has overcome trying to succeed. — Booker T. Washington

20. You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. — Margaret Thatcher

21. Determination, patience and courage are the only things needed to improve any situation. — Peter Sinclair

22. Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing. — Abraham Lincoln

23. Fall seven times, stand up eight. — Japanese proverb

24. Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new. — Brian Tracy

25. It’s never too late to be what you might have been. — George Eliot

26. We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. — Martin Luther King Jr.

27. Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think, there are no little things. — Bruce Barton

28. Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was. — Richard L. Evans

29. Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town. — George Carlin

30. How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway. And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness! — Anne Frank

31. Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born. — Helen Keller

32. Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings. — Elie Weisel

33. To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe. — Anatole France

34. When everything seems like an uphill struggle, just think of the view from the top. — Unknown

35. He who has hope has everything. — Arabian proverb

36. Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it. — Bill Cosby

37. History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. — Maya Angelou

38. When you’re going through hell, keep going. — Winston Churchill

39. Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. — Jacques Prevert

40. Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle, and a victory. — Ghandi

41. Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they’ve stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments. — Kevin Costner

42. It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

43. What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other? — George Elliot

44. A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives. — Jackie Robinson

45. The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. -–John E. Southard

46. In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.–-Albert Schweitzer

47. No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.–-Elie Wiesel

48. Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. — Calvin Coolidge

49. When life knocks you down you have two choices- stay down or get up. — Tom Krause

50. Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. — Unknown

* Bonus points if you know the source.  Kudos, too, because it’s a cool source.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I hate it when the grass gets high.  I feel as if I’m drowning.  There are places in the low parts of the lawn that are mashed down sideways flat, where the ponds and creeks have overflowed.  We usually see a big snapper or two in weather like this, but so far even the animals have had sense enough not to try to come out in the rain.  Even the deer are huddling under the trees.

1. A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in. — Frederick The Great

2. A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning. — James Dickey

3. I do pity unlearned people on a rainy day. — Lucius C. Falkland

4. I love to walk in the rain, because nobody can see my tears. –Charlie Chaplin

5. It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent. — Dave Barry

6. We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket. — George Carlin

7. Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots. — Frank A Clark

8. There’s always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down. — Don Delillo

9. Do not, on a rainy day, ask your child what he feels like doing, because I assure you that what he feels like doing, you won’t feel like watching. — Fran Lebowitz

10. Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.– Satchel Paige

11. Some people walk in the rain; others just get wet. — Roger Miller

12. Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. — John Ruskin

13. The drop of rain maketh a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling. — Hugh Latimer

14. The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

15. I’m singing in the rain
Just singing in the rain
What a glorious feelin’
I’m happy again
I’m laughing at clouds
So dark up above
The sun’s in my heart
And I’m ready for love
Let the stormy clouds chase
Everyone from the place
Come on with the rain
I’ve a smile on my face
I walk down the lane
With a happy refrain
Just singin’,
Singin’ in the rain

“>One of the best movies of all time.

Back in the days of Greek mythology, the ancients understood the connection between what we now call “science” and “literature.”  One of the nine Muses was Urania, who was in charge of astronomy.  No one can study astronomy without also studying the stories behind each of the constellations, planets, and stars; anything that can be seen by the naked eye was charted and named by the ancients, named after a hero, god, goddess, creature, or storyline that the pattern of stars reminded these ancient celestial map-makers of.  A good, imaginative instructor will combine these two; a poor, unimaginative one will believe they are separate entities.

I am sharing with you quotations about the stars.

1. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. — Mark Twain

2. I have … a terrible need … shall I say the word? … of religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars. — Vincent van Gogh

3. If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I’ll bet they’d live a lot differently. — Bill Watterson

4. If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

5. For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. — Vincent van Gogh

6. I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, his cloak was out at the elbows, the water passed through his shoes, – and the stars through his soul. — Victor Hugo

7. I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star. — Carl Sagan

8. I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. –Galileo Galilei

9. Set your course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship. — Omar N. Bradley

10. What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? — E. M. Forster

11. I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly – or ever – gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe. — Brian Greene

12. The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago… had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands. — Henry Ellis

13. There they stand, the innumerable stars, shining in order like a living hymn, written in light. — N.P. Willis

14. Metaphor for the night sky: A trillion asterisks and no explanations. –Robert Brault

15. No sight is more provocative of awe than is the night sky. –Llewelyn Powys

16. Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel. –Samuel Johnson

17. Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another. — Plato

18. I think a future flight should include a poet, a priest and a philosopher . . . we might get a much better idea of what we saw. — Michael Collins

19. How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall, about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen. — Roger Ebert

20. What the space program needs is more English majors. — Michael Collins

21. To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit. — Stephen Hawking

22. Human interest in exploring the heavens goes back centuries. This is what human nature is all about. — Dennis Tito

23. I have a hunch the most important reason we’re going to space is not known now. — Burt Rutan

24. Two things inspire me to awe—the starry heavens above and the moral universe within. — Albert Einstein

25. I know that I am mortal and ephemeral. But when I search for the close-knit encompassing convolutions of the stars, my feet no longer touch the earth, but in the presence of Zeus himself I take my fill of ambrosia which the gods produce. — Ptolemy

26. We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens … The diversity of the phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment. — Johannes Kepler

27. Observing quasars is like observing the exhaust fumes of a car from a great distance and then trying to figure out what is going on under the hood. — Carole Mundell

28. Those who study the stars have God for a teacher. — Tycho Brahe (He was so in awe of
the Maker of the Universe that he put on his court robes whenever he went to his telescope.) (One eye was also larger than the other, from his years of star-gazing.)