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
Will never love you no matter how kind you are to them
Never happy to see you
Wants to dominate the room you’re in
Comes with claws
May provoke severe allergic reactions
Appears suddenly, when you least expect it
Spies on you
Sabotages your home décor and tries to make it look like an accident
Sees you as its servant
Will attempt to suffocate you in your sleep
A mother-in-law is one cat you don’t want to let out of the bag!
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.”
HANNAH ARENDT
“Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told me in my childhood than any truth that is taught in life.”
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 