Take a look at those big ears
Mottoes to live by
Dunno if this counts as a motto, but I still like it: “Duma Luma!” From a private cartoon to me, evolving into an earlier incarnation of my novel Subway Visions. Here are ten more.
- “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free” – Nikos Kazantzakis, “Japan, China,” 1963
- “Abide in me”– Jesus of Nazareth
- “Jesus is the unseen guest in this house” – as inscribed over a Quaker family’s doorway in Belmont County, Ohio, followed by, “He listens to every conversation.”
- “The closer we get to our hopes, the closer we get to our fears” – artist Lita Albuquerque
- “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for mankind” – Horace Mann
- “Mind the Light” – old Quaker counsel
- “I make dreams … I don’t see clothes, I see the world” – Ralph Lauren
- “Everyone wants to reach for something a little higher. … Part of Ralph’s genius is he understood life’s aspirational” – Michael Gould, Bloomingdale’s buyer
- “Randomness invites the universe to speak” – James Bartolino
- “You better be good to toads,” Cassia in What’s Left
~*~
Yay!
We’re all ears for any you might want to share.
How tightly are they bound together?
Cassia and her brothers and cousins face a crucial decision. Do they continue to jointly hold the family business as a resource for future generations, requiring them to keep working for a living, or do they divvy up their shares and then live independently wherever and however they desire?
Put yourself in Cassia’s shoes.
How would your life be different if you didn’t have to worry about how you’d make ends meet? What would you dream of doing?
~*~
Kinisi 67
Shasta, with its implied immensity
Tomato time
An ongoing internal tension
Trying to strike a satisfying balance:
Between my local Meeting and serving the wider world of Friends.
With my writing, finding a wider audience for my existing work.
With the rest of my life – householding, exercise, reading, etc.
It just never seems to come together neatly!
So just what, exactly, holds it all together?
Banzai, Zeke
to know a good life is not easy just look at all that’s broken here knowing you miss so much is to concede abundance and blessing as well until the eyes move away from what’s harmonious see, a house wrapped in leaves repeats marriage and even the compost unassumingly transforms to its own succulence while the children expect everything before attaining focus, at last requited by frugal exercise where we may be generous
A few facts about the cruise boat Mount Washington
For 149 years, a New Hampshire vacation tradition has been the big cruise boat that plies scenic Lake Winnipesauke in the mountains in the middle of the state.
Here’s the dope.
- It started out as a paddle steamer in 1872, built by the Boston & Maine Railroad Company to transport passengers and cargo around the lake.
- It soon became a tourist attraction, drawing 60,000 passengers a year, a figure that continues.
- That vessel burned in 1939 while tied up at dock and a fire spread from a train station.
- The current incarnation of the M/S Mount Washington is 230-feet long and has four decks. Maximum capacity is 1,250.
- The current vessel started out in 1888 as an iron-hulled sidewheeler on Lake Champlain. In 1940, it was cut apart in Vermont and shipped by rail to Lakeport, New Hampshire, where the hull was reassembled in a new twin-screw vessel design. It was powered by two steam engines (since replaced by diesel) taken from an ocean-going yacht.
- There are three dance floors. It seats 500 for dining or serves one thousand for a reception. Two-hour dinner-dance cruises are popular.
- It has five ports of call – Weirs Beach, Wolfeboro, Center Harbor, Meredith, and Alton.
- The M/S stands for motor ship.
- The views include the summer homes of many billionaires as well as mountains and at least 264 islands.
- The line also runs two smaller vessels, one of them a mail boat where the envelopes are actually sorted en route.
Asparagus memories
When adventure called
In my novel What’s Left, there’s one big subject Cassia couldn’t ignore — not if she truly wanted to understand her father. It’s the whole hippie thing.
As he noted, in a sentence no longer in the text:
Will any of our inner music — our desires and activity — ever come into a reliably ongoing harmony?
As was this tidbit:
This is all new to him. The language, unfamiliar, even after the sporadic trips of his youth. The music, profoundly moving.
Take his hitchhiking. As her aunt Nita explained in yet another deleted text:
As for your body, well, you could go about anywhere on your thumb. Maybe not the Deep South or some of the big cities. But adventure called. Out in the countryside. And in the heart of the metropolis. There were moments when everything turned utterly surreal. It was a wild time, wasn’t it? You’re forgetting Nixon got reelected to the White House? If you were a freak — a hippie — you were part of a stream of kindred souls. You saw the world askew. You wanted to explore and discover new vistas, many of them psychedelic. You knew there was more — much more — than what your parents had ever imagined. The entire world was spiraling, about to go out of control, or so it seemed. And what difference does any veracity of hitchhiking in the subways make? Aren’t those some wild stories? Where does the line fall between what’s real and what’s imaginary? Didn’t your Baba land here after all? Return to build on earlier connections? Who cares how he got here as long as he did? You believe this is where he was destined, don’t you?
Admittedly, it’s a lot to take in. More than we needed, in fact. Even this flash:
Angels as hitchhikers! As subway riders! As candy store clerks!
~*~
These days, I’m left with mixed feelings.
Where do you think the hippie movement missed the boat? And what do you think it got right?
~*~
Jnana's Red Barn 