This sentence resonated with me today and I think that anyone working on a new approach to their work or a new creative endeavor will feel the same way!
“Whatever the medium, there is the difficulty, challenge, fascination and often productive clumsiness of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials.”
HELEN FRANKENTHALER
Helen Frankenthaler in her studio photographed by Gordon Parks
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.
Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast;
They always must be with us, or we die.
Therefore, ’tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being, and each pleasant scene
Is growing fresh before me as the green
Of our own valleys: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city’s din;
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I’ll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm’d and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finish’d: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end.
And now, at once adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.
A nation, he heard himself say, consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual’s morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nation’s laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn’t a nation.
WILLIAM GIBSON
(excerpt from SPOOK COUNTRY)
“Totalitarianism, at its essence, is an attempt at transforming reality into fiction.”
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling) i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true) and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
The rise of the keyboard, and smart technology, has seen the tradition of handwriting fall by the wayside in most modern classrooms.
A woman in Scottsdale, Arizona, continues to keep the art of cursive writing alive, however, more than 20 years after officially retiring from teaching.
Marilyn Harrer, 91, began teaching cursive writing in 1951; after teaching for some years, she officially retired in 1997.
“When I retired from full time teaching, my teacher friends said they always liked the way the children in my class wrote and so they wanted to know if I wouldn’t come back and work in their classrooms,” said Harrer, azfamily.com reported.
After her retirement, she began volunteering her cursive writing instruction services at Anasazi Elementary in north Scottsdale.
Like using a computer, handwriting is a whole-body exercise.
“We talk about how to sit, how to hold your paper, how to write at a slant, how you hold your pencil,” explained Harrer.
After so many years honing her handwriting craft and passing it on to her students, she’s garnered from them the title “Cursive Queen.”
Harrer has racked up a number of accomplishments from her cursive teaching, sending forth 35 students to carry home the state handwriting title in Arizona, with two others becoming national cursive champions.
“Well I just expect the best from all children, and they respond,” she said.
Meanwhile, when volunteers were barred from institutions to curb the spread of the CCP virus, it did not stop Harrer from carrying out her usual instruction.
“We didn’t let COVID stop us,” she said. “I would go over to my daughter’s house and eat a nice dinner, and my grandson Grant would film me teaching the lessons.”
While cursive teaching has long been excluded from the curriculum in many schools, Harrer has a passion to keep the tradition alive.
To support her mission, she began a pen pal project that matches seniors with students, with some success.
“This is our third year, and we now have a surplus of people who want to be pen pals,” she said. “And they really look forward to doing it.”
Harrer has a plan to continue teaching cursive for as long as she can manage it, adding that research has proven a link between cursive handwriting and brain activity.
Flavia Masson 