W is for Work

W is for Work.  Raise your hand if you are itching to get back to work.

For every man's work, whether it be 

literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else

is always a portrait of himself.

Samuel Butler

Far and away the best prize that life offers

is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Theodore Roosevelt

If a man love the labor of any trade,

apart from any question of success or fame,

the gods have called him.

Robert Louis Stevenson

To do what you love and to feel that it matters,

how can anything be more fun.

Katherine Graham

V is for Volunteers

V is for Volunteers.  People are volunteering to help others at this time.  We thank them.

Help others.  There's no time like the present

and no present like the time.

James Durst

Volunteers are paid in six figures: S M I L E S.

Gayla LeMaire

Those who can, do.  Those who can do more, volunteer.

Author Unknown

Volunteers don't get paid, not because they're worthless,

but because they're priceless.

Sherry Anderson

Volunteers do not necessarily have the time. 

they just have the heart.

Elizabeth Andrew

Stay safe,

Thelma

Workshop on Zoom this Tuesday

You're Invited to

a Legacy Letter program

on Zoom

Session 1:  Tuesday, April 28 at 1:00

Session 2:  Tuesday, May 5 at 1:00

sponsored by

YMCA Houston

Leave a legacy for your children and theirs

Write a letter to share

your life experience, values, wisdom and love

This workshop will begin with exercises to get you started.

To register
Go to www.ymcahouston.org 
Click on the blue rectangle under Stay Connected,
scroll down to Tuesday, April 28 and find the workshop
Writing Your Life
Click on Description
A little square will come up with a link to register.
You don't have to be a member of the Y.  
List Weekley Family Y as your branch.
You don't have to be in Houston.

Hope to see you Tuesday.

U is for Understanding

U is for Understanding.  We need to be understanding of others and of ourselves in this stressful time.

All persons are puzzles until at last we find

in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman:

straightway all their words and actions lie in light before us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We can sometimes love what we do not understand,

but it is impossible completely to understand

what we do not love.

Anna Jameson

In the sick room, ten cents worth of human understanding

equals ten dollars worth of medical science.

Martin H. Fischer

How can you expect a man who's warm

to understand one who's cold?

Alexander Solzhentsyn

• 
  

T is for Television

T is for Television.  How much time do you spend watching television these days?  A lot, I imagine.

It is our latest medium--we call it a medium because nothing's well done.

Ace Goodman

It is a medium of entertainment which permits

millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time

and still remain lonesome.

T.S. Elliot

Television is a medium which permits you

to be entertained in your living room

by people you wouldn't have in your home.

David Frost

S is for Solitude

S is for Solitude.  We probably have more than we want now.

I love people.  I love my family, my children...
but inside myself is a place where I live all alone
and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.
Pearl Buck

Solitude is as needful to the imagination

as society is wholesome for the character

James Russell Lowell

Our language has widely sensed these two sides of man's being alone.
It has created the word "loneliness" to express 
the pain of being alone.
And it has created the word "solitude" 
to express the glory of being alone.
Paul Tillich

R is for Reading

R is for Reading.  Books have always been my pleasure, my education, my escape...and now more than ever.  I remember the poster on the wall of my elementary school library:

Books are keys to lands of pleasure.

Books are gates to wisdom's treasure.

Books are paths that upward lead.

Books are friends.  Come, let us read.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Joseph Addison

Reading is not an operation performed on something inert

but a relationship entered into with another vital being.

Clifton Fadiman

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself

a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

W. Somerset Maugham

I don't think we should read for instruction

but to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

Henry Miller

Happy reading, 

Thelma

q is for quotations

• 
• q (Sorry, my capital letter q doesn't work) is for quotations.  Hope you enjoy the one below.

Books of February and March

 I've been posting so much about the coronavirus that I thought I should write about something else today.  I have been reading a lot of very long books so I only have a few for the last two months.

Talking with Strangers.  I always enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's books.  They enourage you to look at things in a new way.  This one is about the difficulty of communication between people of different backgrounds or different cultures.  Worth reading.

The Silent Patient.  This has been on the best seller list for a long time.  Not sure why.  Didn't like it.

Baby Teeth.  About a "bad seed" kid who hates her mother and wants to kill her.  Scary.

Watergate Girl.  Memoir of a woman who was part of the Watergate hearings against Nixon.


Happy reading!

































Talking with Strangers.  I always enjoy Malcolm Gladwell's books. They give a reader new ways of looking at things.  This one is about misunderstandings that arise between people of different backgrounds and cultures when they try to communicate with one another.  Very illuminating.

P is for Patience

P is for Patience, and don't we need a lot of it these days.

Half the annoyances of life will disappear

if one is only patient under them.

Almost all the other half will go the same way

if one does not worry over them.

Frank A. DePuy

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, 

packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners and instant cameras

teach patience to the young?

Paul Sweeny

Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you

and scorn in the one ahead.

Mac McCleary

An ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains

Dutch proverb

Stay safe, 

Thelma

O is for Optimism

O is for Optimism.  We have to do our best to be optimistic now. As they say, "This too shall pass."

Optimism is the sunshine of the soul.

Old saying

To know the disillusionments of life,

and to come enchanted still.

Muriel Strode

An optimist is the human personification of spring.

Susan J. Bissonnette

I have matured into someone I never dreamed I would become,

an unbridled optimist who sees the glass as always full of something.  It may be half full of water, precious in itself,

but in the other half there's a rainbow

that could exist only in the vacant space.

Alice Walker

Stay safe,

Thelma

N is for Nurses

N is for Nurses.  Perhaps in the past we haven't appreciated them enough, but now we know how important and brave and dedicated they are.

Nursing is an art and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit?  It is one of the Fine Arts:  I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.

Florence Nightingale

Nurses are angels in comfortable shoes.

Unknown

When you're a nurse, you know that every day you will touch a life or a life will touch yours.

Unknown

A nurse is compassion in scrubs.

Terri Guillemets

Stay safe,

Thelma

M is for Metaphor

In case you're wondering where I get all these quotations, they're from a book called Metaphors Be with You.

So here are some quotations about metaphors.

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

Orson Scott Card

 A metaphor is both detour and destination,

a digression that gets to the point.

James Geary

Metaphor is the energy charge that leaps between images,

revealing the connection.

Robin Morgan

Stay safe,

Thelma

L is for Loneliness and L is for Langyage

Today I have quotes for 2 words:  loneliness and language

I know many people hunkered down at home are lonely, and since I've spent my entire professional life working with language disorders, I had to add that one, too.

L is for Loneliness

Loneliness comes about  when I am alone

without being able to keep myself company.

Hannah Arendt

Loneliness is the way 

by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.

Hermann Hesse

Loneliness is the poverty of self;

solitude is richness of self.

May Sarton

L is for Language

(See above: Language in the age of social distancing)

Language is the roadmap of a culture.

It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.

Rita Mae Brown

Language is the amber in which

a thousand precious and subtle thoughts

have been safely embedded and preserved.

Richard Chenevix Trench

My favorite language quote below:

The limits of my language

are the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

K is for Kindness

  Amid all the anxiety of the past weeks, there have been many acts of kindness.  Enjoy these Kindness quotes:

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

Aesop

Kindness is love in action.

Henry Drummond

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground,

but a kind word is never thrown away.

Arthur Helps

Constant kindness can accomplish much.

As the sun makes ice melt,

kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust 

and hostility to evaporate.

Albert Schweitzer

Stay safe, be kind. 

Thelma

Coronavirus Notebook continued

A to Zers don't add letters on Sundays so I'm back to thinking about the coronavirus again.

Another week has crept by, a holy week with both Passover beginning Wednesday night and Easter today.  These are holidays we'll never forget.  Instead of gathering around the table with our family for the Passover seders, we've watched or participated in virtual seders.  Instead of Easter sunrise service, we've listened to a streamed service online.  Regardless of how they;re celebrated, these holidays confirm our faith and bolster our courage.  We will get through this; we will survive.

This week a church in North Carolina sent our senior facility a large number of homemade masks.  Mine is a purple print--my favorite color.  An act of kindness from people far away.

Our memoir class had its final meeting on Tuesday via Zoom.  We hope to have another class in the summer.  Not surprisingly, most of us have written about the virus and how it affects us.  I did that the last few weeks but this week I responded to the prompt about games with an essay about two games that are inextricably linked in my mind:  canasta and baseball.  They remind me of summers sprawled on the floor of my friend's bedroom, playing canasta and listening to Brooklyn Dodger baseball games on the radio.

Zoom has been our ticket to the outside world.  My Mah Jongg group meets every day at 4:00 to catch up on each others' pretty dull lives and to share tips on grocery shopping, making masks and the new Mah Jongg card.  On Tuesdays we play at realmahjongg.com with our phones on so we can talk, too.

Weird things I've seen this week: 1. An online add for a pair of silver earrings in the shape of rolls of toilet paper.  And who wouldn't love to have these as mementos of our stashes of toilet paper during the pandemic?
 2. The Houston Chronicle had a virologist answering questions that had been sent in.  Here's my favorite:  If you're home alone and have no symptoms, is it okay to pick your nose?
3. A cartoon of Van Gogh with a facemask hanging down from his one remaining ear.  "Damn!" he says.

And here's an interesting and rather weird podcast in which they interview inanimate objects.  It's called Everything is Alive, and they've interviewed a bar of soap, a pillow and my favorite, a can of cola.

We need to find something to laugh about during this time.  I hope you find something, too, and that you'll share.

J is for Joy

J is for Joy.  In this time of isolation, I'm trying to find joy in little things:  my cat's purr, the view of the night sky out my window and, of course, ice cream.

Here are today's quotes.

When large numbers of people share their joy in common,

the happiness of each is greater

because each adds fuel to the other's flame.

Saint Augustine

For happiness one needs security,

but joy can spring like a flower even from the cliffs of despair.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

When the great joys are stilled, the minor ones must sing.

Margaret Lee Runbeck

Stay safe,

Thelma

I is for Internet

Okay, I've used Computers for letter C but here are some quotes for the world we reach through them.

The Internet is becoming the town square

for the global village of tomorrow.

Bill Gates

Getting information off the Internet

is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.

Mitch Kapor

The Internet is just a world passing around notes 

in a classroom.

Jon Stewart

BT

H is for Humor

H is for Humor...and don't we need that now!

Humor is a social lubricant

that helps us get over some of the bad spots

Steve Allen

Humor is an affirmation of dignity

a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

Romain Gary

Humor is an antidote to isolation.

Elizabeth Janeway

Humor is hope's companion in arms.

It is not brash. It is not cheap. It is not heartless.

Among other things, I think humor is a shield,

a weapon, a survival kit.

 Ogden Nash

Stay safe.

G is for Generosity

 G is for Generosity.  We've
seen many acts of generosity these past
few weeks. One small example: a church in North Carolina sent our apartment masks they made, enough for all of us!

That's what I call true generosity;

you give your all and yet you feel as if it costs you nothing.

Simone de Beauvoir

Generosity is the most natural expression

of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness.

The 14th Dalai Lama

Generosity lies less in giving much

than in giving at the right moment.

Jean de la Bruyere

Stay safe,

Thelma

F is for Friends

Now more than ever we need friends.  They give us courage and tenderness and a reminder than life is worth living even in perilous times.

A friend is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Artistotle

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friends are God's apology for relations.

Hugh Kingsmill

Friends do not live in harmony merely as some say,

but in melody.

Henry David Thoreau

Stay safe and cherish your friends,

Thelma

E is for Experience

The experience we're all living through now is scary and sad, but someday it will end.  Will we be stronger for what we've lived through?  I don't know.  I hope we'll remember the heroes who've given so much to others.  Meanwhile, let's appreciate our friends and family even though we can't be with them in person.

Experience is a good teacher

but she sends in terrible bills.

Minna Antrim

Everything you experience is what constitutes you 

as a human being

but the experience passes away and the person's left.

The person is the residue.

A strong and well-constituted man digests his experiences

just as he digests his meals,

even when he has some tough morsels to swallow.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Stay safe!

Coronavirus Haikus

For one of my memoir classes I wrote some haikus (3-line poems: 5 syllables, then 7, then 5:

I'm washing my hands.

Happy birthday, Happy birth--

I need a new song.

Cat's head on my arm.

She looks up at me and purrs.

We aren't lonely.

Play Mah Jongg online;

Can't cough at each other.

Technology's great.

A champagne party,

Drinks and snacks at our doorways.

We toast from afar.

We're all on lockdown.

Imprisoned by the virus, 

We gaze at empty streets.

A game of Scrabble.

But are we six feet apart?

Who cares?  I got Z.

Check the Dow hourly,

Watch my finances dwindle.

Will I need welfare?

I loo--ove ice cream.

My kids sent me three flavors.

What a sweet surprise!

Suggestion:  Try your hand at Haikus.  Good exercise for the mind  and oen.

Stay safe.

D is for Difficulties

D is for Difficulties, and isn't the world facing them now?

As we advance in life, it becomes more and more difficult

but in fighting the difficulties,

the inmost strength of the heart is developed.

Vincent Van Gogh

The habits of a vigorous mind

are learned in contending with difficulties.

Abigail Adams

What is required to us 

is that we love the difficult

and learn to deal with it.

In the difficult are the friendly forces,

the hands that work on us.

Rainer Maria Rilke

C is for Computers

C is for Computers (and what would we do without them these days?

What a computer is to me

is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with.

It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

       Steve Jobs

Your computer is a backup of your soul

 oa multilayered, menu-driven representation of who you are,

who you care about and how you sin.

Michael Marshall

With the internet, a computer is a door 

rather than a box.

Clay Shirrey

Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy,

we experience widespread feelings of emptiness,

of disconnection, of the unreality of self.

And here the computer, a companion without emotional 

demands offers a compromise.

You can be a loner but never alone.

Sherry Turkle

B is for Boredom

Are we all bored these days from sheltering-in-place?  Here are some quotes about boredom.

Boredom is the fear of self.

Comtesse Diane de Beausacq

Boredom is the self being stuff with itself.

Walter Percy

I am never bored anywhere;

being bored is an insult to oneself.

Jules Renard

Blogging A to Z

April is Blogging A to Z Month. I will be blogging each day except Sundays, going through the alphabet.  My theme this year is quotations.

is for Adversity 
(Seems appropriate for
 times like these.)


Gold is tried in fire, 

and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.

Ecclesiastics

If we had no winter, spring would not be so pleasant;

if we did not sometimes taste of adversity,

prosperity would not be so welcome.

Anne Bradstreet

There is no education like adversity.

Benjamin Disraeli

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents,

which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.

Horace