To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. – Atticus Finch
Find To Kill a Mockingbird on Goodreads
Totem Walk at Sitka
Emily Carr
Emily Carr (1871 – 1945) was born in Victoria, British Columbia to a well off British family. Throughout her life, she would continually push the boundaries of artistic, cultural, societal and gender based expectations. Carr was orphaned while still a teen, and left for San Francisco to study art. A decade later, she would learn the newest painting techniques in Paris. She used her artistic talents to study and document the art and culture of the indigenous peoples of British Columbia. Unable to earn a living through her art, she ran a boarding house she called “The House of all Sorts.” She later traveled and painted for months at a time in a trailer she dubbed “The Elephant” due to its size. Her travel companions were an assortment of animals, including a monkey. After suffering from heart problems in 1937, Emily turned her attention toward writing. Her mostly autobiographical works are a testament to an enduring pioneer spirit.
Find out more a the Emily Carr House Website.
Put Something In
Shel Silverstein
Flickr photo by <p&p>
Draw a crazy picture, Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-grumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
‘Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain’t been there before.
More about Shel Silverstein
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Michael Dorris
A fierce saga of three generations of Indian women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of kinship. Starting in the present day and moving backward, the novel is told in the voices of the three women: fifteen-year-old part-black Rayona; her American Indian mother, Christine, consumed by tenderness and resentment toward those she loves; and the fierce and mysterious Ida, mother and grandmother whose haunting secrets, betrayals, and dreams echo through the years, braiding together the strands of the shared past.
From Goodreads
Her Heart Touched by Hummingbirds
Patricia Wyatt
I have been a printmaker, a textile designer and a painter. I have come to understand that making art is a fluid process that is constantly being refined. The many different materials I use create both physical and emotional depth. My paintings offer each of us a quiet moment to consider our paths, to remember our place at the circle and to know that we are the individual threads that complete one fabric. –Patricia Wyatt
Learn more about Patricia Wyatt on her website.
The Door
Deborah A. Miranda
Photo by Michael Rosenstein
The door stood fast, though it remembered the power of a storm that felled its tree quite well, remembered the horrific pull and lift and surge and the momentary sensation of flying through stars.
The wind blew through the tops of the trees and arrived at the door.
But the door would not open. Its thick boards were made of a weather-hardened oak that had grown to full maturity before falling in a great storm, one hundred years before. That oak had sworn never to give in to wind again.
The wind piled up in thick ripples all along the skin of the door, pressing and pressing against the wood. Please, let me in, please door, please oak, please wood, let me in!
The door stood fast, though it remembered the power of a storm that felled its tree quite well, remembered the horrific pull and lift and surge and the momentary sensation of flying through stars.
The wind tried softness. It tried stroking the grain, gentle as a butterfly’s wings. It tried tickling, small fingers under the rough splinters. It tried kisses from one end to the other of the tall old boards.
Nothing worked. The door would not give.
The storm wrapped itself around the little house and shook it with fury. You will open! and sent its voice through the cracks and into the very pores of the wood.
The door remembered being an oak, being felled, thick roots upended, broken like string. The door remembered a wind it could not resist, a wind that took advantage of full summer, the heavy canopy of green leaves, the dry earth that could not hold on. No, said the door. Not again.
The wind blew and screamed, battered the door with fists and knees and feet and even its own stubborn head, but though the door creaked and sighed, it did not give way.
In the morning, the wind was gone, exhausted, into the North. It had swept the leaves around the little house clear, revealed bare ground. Out of the moist earth crept little green shoots, the spear-points of crocuses and daffodils.
Inside the house, a woman rose from her solitary bed and stretched out her hand to the handle of that old door, the door that remembered being an oak tree, that remembered being felled. The door held fast for a moment, still swollen with fear and anger. Then it released, and swung open.
The woman stood in cold sunlight and said a prayer of thanks to doors, to oaks, to survivors of storms.
– Reposted with permission from Bad NDNS. Deborah A. Miranda is a writer, poet and author of Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir.
Ku’u Home O Kahalu’u
Olomana
Change is a strange thing
it cannot be denied
It can help you find yourself
or make you lose your pride
Move with it slowly
as on the road we go
Please do not hold on to me
we all must go alone
I remember days when we were smiling
When we laughed and sang the whole night long
And I will greet you as I find you
With the sharing of a brand new song
Last night I dreamt I was returning
and my heart called out to you
To please accept me as you’ll find me
Me kealoha ku’u home o Kahaluu
More music by Olomana
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Healing Quote of the Day
Photo by Swamibu
When you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it’s a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect.