Monthly Archives: December 2017

January 1st

Soon we will have completed our annual list of good intentions. Across the country there are millions of cigarettes waiting to be stomped out, tons of fat waiting to be lost, miles to be run, lives to be organized, selves to be improved.
Once again, we will pass resolutions as if we were our own Congress, legislating changes in our lives. On a million scraps of paper, we will publish an updated catalog of promises to be filed on the shelf of the self….
But I have a feeling that our resolutions have more to do with controlling our lives than enriching them….
We spend Jan. 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a punch list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. We decide that it’s time to get a painful grip on ourselves….
But life improvement is not just a matter of discipline, self-control. It’s a matter of expansion, the deliberate pursuit of happiness….
We ought to walk through the rooms of our lives a second time, not looking for the flaws, but for potential.
~Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe, December 1982

Winter Quote ~ Ogden Nash

Winter is the king of showmen,
Turning tree stumps into snowmen
And houses into birthday cakes
And spreading sugar over lakes.
Smooth and clean and frosty white,
The world looks good enough to bite.
That’s the season to be young,
Catching snowflakes on your tongue.
Snow is snowy when it’s snowing,
I’m sorry it’s slushy when it’s going.
~Ogden Nash

Winter Afternoons

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are….
When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death.
~Emily Dickinson, c.1861

100 Word Story

He: Did he do it?
She: What did he do?
He: I’m asking you, did he do it?
She: What did he do?
He: You know what he did.
She: I have know idea what you are talking about.
He: I think you do.
She: You think, but you don’t know for sure.
He; Well, back to the question. Did he do it?
She: I still have no idea what you are try to see.
He: You do, and I am 99.9 percent sure.
She: Still there is that .1 percent tells me that you are not sure about it.
He: Oh.