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