thought for your thursday

I love this little embroidered quote from Allicoate on Etsy.

everywhere you look is life

Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp -- everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs. From the edge of the woods, the white-throated sparrow (which must come all the way from Boston) calls, "Oh Peabody, Peabody, Peabody!" On an apple bough, the pheobe teeters and wags its tail and says, "Phoebe, phoe-bee!" The song sparrow, who knows how brief and lovely life is, says, "Sweet sweet, sweet interlude; sweet, sweet, sweet interlude." If you enter the barn, the swallows swoop down from their nests and scold. "Cheeky, cheeky!" they say.

In early summer there are plenty of things for a child to eat and drink and suck and chew. Dandelion stems are full of milk, clover heads are loaded with nectar, the Frigidaire is full of ice-cold drinks. Everywhere you look is life; even the little ball of spit on the weed stalk, if you poke it apart, has a green worm inside it. And on the underside of the leaf of the potato vine are the bright orange eggs of the potato bug.

--E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

words for your weekend

“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package, I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”

--Joan Didion,

in a commencement address at the University of California, Riverside,

in 1975.

Image via Flickr.

thought for your monday

"Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being 'with it,' yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation."

— Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society)

Artwork by James Jean.

thought for your monday

"Of course, a child may not know what he may need to know in ten years (who does?), but he knows, and much better than anyone else, what he wants and needs to know right now, what his mind is ready and hungry for. If we help him, or just allow him, to learn that, he will remember it, use it, build on it. If we try to make him learn something else, that we think is more important, the chances are that he won't learn it, or will learn very little of it, that he will soon forget most of what he learned, and what is worst of all, will before long lose most of his appetite for learning anything."

-John Holt, Teach Your Own

thought for your monday

Found here.

say it hot

From here, via here.

thought (and poster!) for your monday

"This is your life. Do what you love, and do it often. If you don't like something, change it. If you don't like your job, quit. If you don't have enough time, stop watching TV. If you are looking for the love of your life, stop. They will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love. Stop over analyzing, life is simple. All emotions are beautiful. When you eat, appreciate every last bite. Open your mind, arms, and heart to new things and people, we are united in our differences. Ask the next person you see what their passion is, and share your inspiring dream with them. Travel often. Getting lost will help you find yourself. Some opportunities only come once, seize them. Life is about the people you meet, and the things you create with them, so go out and start creating. Life is short. Live your dream and share your passion."

--The Holstee Manifesto, 2009.

Order the poster here.

three things for your weekend

1. Quote via this must-read blog.

2. Image from this guest post I wrote this week.

3. Shoes available here. Found here.

We have a busy, exciting weekend leading up to the Gala on Monday night! I'll see you back here on Tuesday or Wednesday. Ciao.

thought for your monday

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”

- Chuck Close

Photo found here, quote found here.

thought for your wednesday

“The most common way people give up their power

is by thinking they don't have any."

--Alice Walker

Image via HipZach's photostream.

the manifesto of encouragement

Photo found here.

Needing a little mid-week boost, I am reminded of this lovely piece forwarded to me several days ago by my good friend, Nancy. Originally posted on White Hot Truth, The Manifesto of Encouragement was written by Danielle LaPorte. It totally made my day better, so I had to share:

Right now:
There are Tibetan Buddhist monks in a temple in the Himalayas endlessly reciting mantras for the cessation of your suffering and for the flourishing of your happiness.
Someone you haven't met yet is already dreaming of adoring you.
Someone is writing a book that you will read in the next two years that will change how you look at life.
Nuns in the Alps are in endless vigil, praying for the Holy Spirit to alight the hearts of all of God's children.
A farmer is looking at his organic crops and whispering, "nourish them."
Someone wants to kiss you, to hold you, to make tea for you. Someone is willing to lend you money, wants to know what your favourite food is, and treat you to a movie. Someone in your orbit has something immensely valuable to give you -- for free.
Something is being invented this year that will change how your generation lives, communicates, heals and passes on.
The next great song is being rehearsed.
Thousands of people are in yoga classes right now intentionally sending light out from their heart chakras and wrapping it around the earth.
Millions of children are assuming that everything is amazing and will always be that way.
Someone is in profound pain, and a few months from now, they'll be thriving like never before. They just can't see it from where they're at.
Someone who is craving to be partnered, to be acknowledged, to ARRIVE, will get precisely what they want -- and even more. And because that gift will be so fantastical in it's reach and sweetness, it will quite magically alter their memory of angsty longing and render it all "So worth the wait."
Someone has recently cracked open their joyous, genuine nature because they did the hard work of hauling years of oppression off of their psyche -- this luminous juju is floating in the ether, and is accessible to you.
Someone just this second wished for world peace, in earnest.
Someone is fighting the fight so that you don't have to.
Some civil servant is making sure that you get your mail, and your garbage is picked up, that the trains are running on time, and that you are generally safe. Someone is dedicating their days to protecting your civil liberties and clean drinking water.
Someone is regaining their sanity. Someone is coming back from the dead. Someone is genuinely forgiving the seemingly unforgivable. Someone is curing the incurable.

You. Me. Some. One. Now.

Quote of the Day

"If I had my child to raise all over again,

I'd build self-esteem first, and the house later.

I'd finger-paint more, and point the finger less.

I would do less correcting and more connecting.

I'd take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.

I'd take more hikes and fly more kites.

I'd stop playing serious, and seriously play.

I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.

I'd do more hugging and less tugging."

— Diane Loomans

Via Daisy Yellow

Photo: Lazareva Valeria

Quote of the Day

Design by Shirley-Ann Dick, via Studio Overland and Underwood

Modersohn-Becker on Breastfeeding

"I sketched a young mother with her child at her breast, sitting in a smoky hut. If only I could someday paint what I felt then! A sweet woman, an image of charity. She was nursing her big, year-old bambino, when with defiant eyes her four-year-old daughter snatched for her breast until she was given it. And the woman gave her life and her youth and her power to the child in utter simplicity, unaware that she was a heroine."

--Paula Modersohn-Becker

Quote and painting via a wonderful gem

of a little book I recently discovered, called

The Art of Motherhood.

Not-Back-To-School Quote of The Day

Photo via tous les jours dimanche

"...Being the smartest or most accomplished kid in class has never had any bearing on being the happiest. We are so caught up in trying to give our children 'advantages' that we’re giving them lives as multi-tasked and stressful as ours. One of the biggest advantages we can give our children is a simple, carefree childhood."

--Excerpt from the must-read post, "What Should A 4-Year-Old Know?" on the wonderful blog, A Magical Childhood.

Thought For The Day

Original, handmade papercut available at MrYen's Etsy shop.

Toddlerisms

J: "Mom, is this a wornycorn or a horse?"

Me: "Um, that's a UNICORN."

J: "No it isn't. it's a horse with a party hat on."

Indeed.

Thought for the Day

Photo by Liz Rubincam

"Love is a verb. People change when they are loved. Birth is a verb. People change when they are birthed or birth. When love and birth are united, powerful movement and change are inevitable. When the wind passes over the still pond, we see ripples on the water, but we do not see wind. Love passes over us continuously. We do not see love, but we experience its effects, its movement. We cannot stop Love or the changes loving brings about any more than we can stop the wind from blowing. And we cannot stop birth or the changes birth brings about."

-Deborah Allen, Spirituality and Birth

Thought For the Day

"Clutter and mess show us that life is being lived...Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation... Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. What people somehow forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here."

— Anne Lamott

Quote via Daisy Yellow

Photo via WeHeartIt (no trackback)