Greek Proverb
Oh, master grant that I may never seek
so much to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love with all my soul.
The wishbone legend began with the ancient belief that chickens were fortune tellers. The tradition of wishing on their clavicle, or “wishbone,” was passed down through generations and brought to America by the Pilgrims. They adapted it to the turkey, making it part of the Thanksgiving festivities.
Tecumseh,
Native American leader of the Shawnee and a large tribal confederacy that opposed the United States during Tecumseh’s War and the War of 1812
Patrick
from 10 Things I Hate About You
“Merope - The missing one or Lost Pleiades. This is the seventh of the sisters. She alone, married a mortal man; Sisyphus, and she repents of it, she hid her face in shame at being the only one not married to a god and from shame at the deed, she alone of the sisters hides herself in the sky (there is some dispute over whether it is Merope or Electra that hides herself, i.e. the star does not shine). Her husband, Sisyphus, son of Æolus, grandson of Deucalion (the Greek Noah), and great-grandson of Prometheus. Sisyphus - Merope’s husband - founded the city of Ephyre (Corinth) and later revealed Zeus’s rape of Ægina to her father Asopus (a river), for which Zeus condemned him to roll a huge stone up a hill in Hades, only to have it roll back down each time the task was nearly done. “
John Adams. December 1770
‘Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,’
you can always find your way home.
Up on Tuesday morning,
up against the wall,
the skeeters and the bedbugs
were playing a game of ball.
The score was 19-20.
The skeeters were ahead.
The bedbugs hit a homerun
and knocked me out of bed,
singin’
“Eeny-meeny and a-miney-mo,
catch a whiffer-whaffer by its toe.
And if it hollers, hollers, hollers,
let it go,
singing eeny-meeny
and a-miney-mo.”
FUDO
from the McCormack Bonsai Collection in the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens
Legend has it that this tree, already with many centuries of life behind it, was removed from its mountain home above the Itokawa River by an old man, Tahei, in 1858. It eventually became part of the famous collection of the world-renowned Bonsaiman, Mr Kyuzo Murata, in Omiya, Japan. Sadly the tree died in 1971, some months after arriving from Japan. As a conservative estimate of its age, arrived by counting its annual growth rings, “FUDO” lived some 800 years.
One of my favourite songs. Maybe it’s the idea of continuum, but hearing it always gives me a sense of peace … that today’s sunlight is the same as it was yesterday, as the same as it was decades ago. It’s the same sunlight that shines on my loved ones today as it did my ancestors before.
Often I say I had the idyllic childhood because, well, I did. Certainly, I didn’t know it then, but now that I look back with eyes that have gotten to see so much more of this world, I’m grateful to have those days as my history. In these memories, a variety of different places serve as backdrops, many of which were on my parents farm. No place, however, can be found that is as special to me as “The Big Hill.”
It lies no more than a few acres away from our house, set nearly in the middle of the farm. At its foot blossoms a woods necklaced by a ring of streams flowing from the cattail-filled marsh. Too steep to cultivate, in the summer wildflowers flourish. As a child, I would climb up into my appletree, which sat just east of the “The Big Hill,” and stare happily at the field dotted with Queen Anne’s Lace and Black-eyed Susans (These flowers have always given me a sense of tranquility as they make me think of my dad’s mom Susan, who had beautiful dark eyes and I’d come to associate their presence, especially on “The Big Hill,” as a sign that she would be watching over me).
I remember Winter arriving like a happy old man dishing out snowfall like gifts he’d collected on his journeys. And when the fluffy powder finally stuck, it was “The Big Hill” that held the perfect bed of snow for hours of sledding and snowmobiling. Sometimes, somehow, if the wind blew just right as the flakes fell, drifts and cliffs would form, adding a new dimension to our personal mountain top.
Mark Twain
