McElligot’s Pool
Dr. Seuss
If I wait long enough, if I’m patient and cool,
Who knows what I’ll catch in McElligot’s pool?
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Menopausal Midwife
Margo Spellman
Each year for the past 15 years I’ve taken a week or two off in the summer to paint. I use this time to grapple with personal issues such as mortality, infertility, pain and transformation. Healing occurs for me when I authentically paint my truth, but also when others find personal healing in my work. –Margo Spellman
View more artwork by Margo Spellman on her website
It’s Better to Receive
Jackie Hugh
Photo by asaenat29
People are naturally altruistic creatures and have an innate need to be needed. A feeling I once thought was mine and mine alone.
Everyone just go away and leave me alone, I wanted to scream. As these words bubbled up in the back of my throat, friends hovered over me like vultures waiting to swoop in and devour decaying remains. I wasn’t dying!
“Jackie, stop being so stubborn,” my dear friend, Linda, admonished. “You’re facing major surgery. You’re going to need help.”
Linda and I met 29 years ago in the crying room of St. Simons Catholic Church. What started off as an acquaintance soon developed into a lifelong relationship. Over the following three decades, we had seven children between us, spent much time celebrating each other’s joys or feeling one another’s pain. We had become extended family and I reveled in the happiness that comes from the love unconditional friendship provides. But her nagging insistence to commiserate with my situation was crossing the line.
“Linda,” I said firmly. “I can handle this. I don’t need anyone’s help.”
Read the rest on Jackie Hugh’s Blog
Shaking the Tree
Peter Gabriel with Youssou N’Dour
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin’ the tree
Souma Yergon, Sou Nou Yergon, We are shakin’ the tree
Turning the tide, you are on the incoming wave
Turning the tide, you know you are nobody’s slave
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More from Peter Gabriel and Youssou N’Dour
Youtube Post by RockPopInfo
Lobocraspis Griseifusa
Ted Kooser
Photo by Andreas Kay
This is the tiny moth who lives on tears,
who drinks like a deer at the gleaming pool
at the edge of the sleeper’s eye, the touch
of its mouth as light as a cloud’s reflection.
In your dream, a moonlit figure appears
at your bedside and touches your face.
He asks if he might share the poor bread
of your sorrow. You show him the table.
The two of you talk long into the night,
but by morning the words are forgotten.
You awaken serene, in a sunny room,
rubbing the dust of his wings from your eyes.
From Delights & Shadows
More works by Ted Kooser, United States Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
Visit American Life in Poetry
Perfume Dreams
Andrew Lam
Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora
In this powerful collection of essays, Lam, a syndicated columnist and National Public Radio commentator, explores his identity as a Viet Kieu (a Vietnamese national living abroad) residing in the United States. On April 28, 1975, 11-year-old Lam and his family fled Saigon aboard a crowded C130 cargo plane just two days before the fall of Saigon to Communist forces (a day Lam would come to know as an “American rebirth”). His father, a respected South Vietnamese general, followed soon after, reuniting with the family in California, where they would begin at the bottom rung as they struggled to fulfill the American Dream.
Looking deep within himself and his fellow Viet Kieu, Lam seeks to “marry two otherwise dissimilar and often conflicting narratives.” He cites cultural critic Edward Said as he shows that to transcend one’s national limits one must not reject attachments to the past but work through them. Lam, who grows to realize that home is “portable if one is in commune with one’s soul,” embraces the journey of self-discovery and concludes that one’s identity is not fixed but “open-ended.” What results is a cohesive presentation with broad appeal, allowing non-Viet Kieu to understand Lam’s experiences. –Library Journal
Small Victories
Angella Lister
Photo by Gary H. Spielvogel
I reached to help her out of the bath. “No,” she said. “I have to do this. You won’t always be around so I have to keep doing for myself, or I’ll lose the ability.”
Yesterday morning, while my 86-almost 87-year-old mother was bathing, I went into the bathroom to help. Really, I went in there because company was ringing our doorbell, and even though it was one in the afternoon on a Saturday, I was still in my nightgown. My husband, already dressed for the day, went to answer the door and I escaped into the bathroom with my mother, thinking I’d help her dress and then shower myself.
Read the rest at 37 Paddington
Cold Water
Tamara Power-Drutis
There’s nothing so pure and nothing quite so free
Cold water pours over me
There’s nothing like water to give
The strength we need for to live
From the album Pacificana. Reimagined songs of the Pacific Northwest
Visit the website of Tamara Power-Drutis
Healing Quote of the Day
Photo by Richard Schneider
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. — Mary Jean Irion
From the book Yes, World: A Mosaic of Meditation