Emily Dickinson – Plain and Fancy

Purple Passages in Rainbow Colors

July 18, 2015July 17, 2015 marianbeaman37 Comments

Calm Thoughts, Relax Here

Where we relaxed at the home place, counting cars on a Saturday night, swinging on the porch and eating watermelon!

* * *

Be grateful for calm skies . . .

Forever is composed of nows.
(# 690)

Emily Dickinson

* * *

I’m going to enjoy every second, and I’m going to know I’m enjoying it while I’m enjoying it. Most people don’t live; they just race. They are trying to reach some goal far away on the horizon, and in the heat of the going they get so breathless and panting that they lost sight of the beautiful, tranquil country they are passing through; and then the first thing they know, they are old and worn out, and it doesn’t make any difference whether they’ve reach the goal or not.

Jean Webster, quoted in GoodReads

* * *

It’s bed time, don’t over do the studying business – take time to live.

Excerpt: Letter from Grandma Fannie Longenecker to me at college, dated May 10, 1962

Art and Love

The truly great artist has the eyes of a child and the vision of a sage. Pablo Casals, cellist

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s palette, which provides the meaning for life and art. It is the color of Love.

Marc Chagall

Chagall’s stained glass windows are displayed in Fraümunster Church in Zurich, Switzerland. His images often seem to tumble, but always stay airborne. Floaty and flexible.

Floaty and flexible. Try that feeling on for size right now . . .

* * *

Butterflies are self-propelled flowers.

Robert Heinlein in Goodreads

We love words. Here’s where to share a relaxing thought, a quote, a suggestion.

Up next: Remembrances of Mother: A Year Later

Ice is Nice but Snow Glows

January 31, 2015January 27, 2015 marianbeaman30 Comments

Do you have winter fun – sledding, tobogganing, ice skating, even skiing? Maybe now it’s a vicarious experience with kids or grandkids. I wrote about it last year in another post. Since then, I’ve paged through albums to find photos of our Floridian family having fun in the ice and snow.

For author Patricia Hampl, The Florist’s Daughter, winter fun was ice skating:

In winter, skating was even better, the whole body thrown into orbit. Ice-skating was my sport, the only athletic passion of my piano-playing, book-reading, indoor girlhood: A northern pleasure, a cold-weather art form (129).

SKATING

Grandson Ian wobbly at first on cold ice on a warm day in St. Augustine, Florida. Outside temperature was almost 70 degrees, the ice got slushy, maybe a good thing for beginners.

SKIING Gliding, sliding down a hill, that’s what skiing is under the best possible circumstances.

Before they left the nest, Joel and Crista with parents in Snowshoe, WV

Hilarous fun: Helen and Charles Blankenship warming up with us after a cold day on the slopes at Lake Tahoe, Utah — What’s so hiliarous?: Helen and Charles Blankenship warming up with us after a cold day on the slopes at Lake Tahoe, California

SNOWFLAKES

Do you remember cutting out paper snowflakes like this?

For detailed instructions with a video, click here.

Snowflakes make Emily Dickinson want to dance a jig, so she says!

Snow Flakes

I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town,
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down.
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig,
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!

Your turn: What is your winter fun? Sledding, tobogganing, ice skating, even skiing? Maybe now it’s a vicarious experience with kids or grandkids. We’re dying to find out.

Coming next: Teaser of Cuppa Coffee?

Purple Passages: December 2013 edition

December 7, 2013January 6, 2014 marianbeaman16 Comments

HOPE

Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul. Emily Dickinson

Hope is like a road in the country. There never was a road, but when many people traveled it, it came into existence. Lyn Yutang

Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate. G. K. Chesterton

There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides. John
Stuart Mill

CHANGE

Change means something good is coming, — even if I don’t yet understand all it will mean. Joe Sherer, Missionary Messenger, November 2011

Until God opens the next door, praise him in the hallway. Orebela Gbenga

PROGRESS

You’ll be amazed how much distance you can cover taking [life] in increments. Little things add up; inches turn to miles, We string together our efforts like so many pearls, and before long . . . you have a whole string!”

Staying the Course by B. J Gallagher quoted in Wednesday, October 12, 2013 entry in Daily Devotional: The Word for You Today

DISTANCE

“Distance lends enchantment to the view,” explaining why events of our youth are enveloped in such a rosy cloud. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Ozarks

Travel helps one see “how [American] ways look from a distance.” Molly Hughes, A London Family (1870-1900)

STRESS-BUSTER

“. . . concentrate on breathing to quell the mind’s restless forays into the past and future.” Geoffrey Cowley, “Stress-Busters: What Works” Newsweek, June 14, 1999.

Quiet zone low light, deep breaths . . . ah! — Quiet zone, low light, deep breaths . . . ah!

Try to let go of being in a state of readiness. Yoga instructor, October 2, 1999.

NIGHT-CAP

Have courage in the great sorrows of life, and patience for the small ones. And when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake. Victor Hugo

‘Tis the Season:

from It’s a Wonderful Life. Clarence the Angel leaves a reminder for George Bailey: “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.”

Add a quote or respond to one you’ve just read. I look forward to your comments! And I will always reply.

Below is the link to my entry in the Gutsy Story Contest now in progress on the website of awarding-winning memoirist Sonia Marsh:

My Gutsy Story: Rising Above the Pettiness to Focus on the Positive

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