Depression

A fixation of the human mind on unhappy thoughts and worries. Some say it can be triggered by the death of a loved one. Those who say "take me off your worry list" do not understand the nature of depression. The human will does not control and nothing can be just stricken from the list. Fight back and hopefully the gloom will soon leave and healthy optimism will eventually prevail.

Merry Christmas

I send my love to you all.

Christmas Eve

"O Christmas, Merry Christmas,
Has it really come again,
With its memories and greetings,
With its joy and with its pain!
Minor chords are in the carol
And a shadow in the light.
And the hush is never broken
By laughter light and low,
As we listen in the starlight
To the bells across the snow."
(Frances Ridley Havergal)

Arianna Huffington

"Our mistakes can be blessings from which we discover a lot about ourselves. The only thing that matters is not to repeat the same mistakes - but to make fresh ones all the time!"

Arianna Huffington

"Our mistakes can be blessings from which we discover a lot about ourselves. The only thing that matters is not to repeat the same mistakes - but to make fresh ones all the time!"

Mike Dooley

"There is no greater weapon --- than kindness. A smile, a compliment, encouragment, and compassion belong in the arsenal of every Time Space Adventurer. Today, may you crush, kill, and destroy the fears you encounter, in others and in yourself. En Garde!"
("Notes from the Universe")

Mike Dooley

"As powerful as you are --------- whose day are you going to make today?"
("Notes from the Universe")

Gil Schwartz

"Certain events in your life present you with a choice for which you get one chance only to do what should be done. We must seize those moments and hold them close, no matter how difficult they may be, for they are the stuff of which destiny is made."

Graham Greene

"Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim."

Snow!

Heavy snow overnight - about a foot - high winds causing drifting. Winter Storm Warning until 1pm. I'm sure my gravel county road is impassable as well as my lane which leads to it. Merry Christmas!

Edward Everett Hale

"I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do."

Lin Yutang

"Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do."

Henry Giles

"How mysterious is this human life, with all its diversities of contrast and compensation, this web of checkered destinies; this sphere of manifold allotment, where man lives in his greatness and grossness, a little lower than the angels, a little higher than the brutes."

"Faith is the sturdiest, the most manly of the virtues. It lies behind our pluckiest----strivings. It is the virtue of the storm, just as happiness is the virtue of the sunshine,"
(Ruth Benedict)

"It is by faith that poetry, as well as devotion, soars above this dull earth; that imagination breaks through its clouds, breaths a purer air, and lives in a softer light."
(Henry Giles)

"Faith is the little night-light that burns in a sick room; as long as it is there, the obscurity is not complete, we turn towards it and await the daylight."
(Abbe Henri Huvelin)

"God enters by a private door into every individual."
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Thank you Jane Forni and Carol Bucy for your beautiful comments about my Susan. I am so grateful and I appreciate them so very much. I was so proud of her.

Susan Scott Thompson (1946-2007)

She held many degrees from Indiana University;
She was a teacher of English Literature, Poetry, and Composition;
She was a trained professional counselor of the troubled and those with mental problems with a practice of her own at one time;
She was a poet of national recognition. Her poem (below) was recited on PBS-TV, Bill Moyer's program, shortly after the 9-11 disaster.

Waltzing the Spheres

We pulled each other closer in the turn
around a center that we could not see -
This holding on was what I had to learn.

The sun can hold the planets, earth the moon,
but we had to create our gravity
by always pulling closer in the turn.

Each revolution caused my head to whirl
so dizzily I wanted to break free,
but holding on was what I had to learn.

I fixed my eyes on something out there firm,
and then our orbit steadied so that we
could pull each other closer in the turn.

The joy that circles with us round the curve
is joy that passes surely as a peace,
and holding on is what we have to learn.

And if our feet should briefly leave the earth,
no matter, earth was made for us to leave,
and arms for pulling closer in the turn -
This holding on is what we have to learn.

And she was my beautiful daughter - and the mother of Kimberly, my beautiful grand-daughter.