"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]


Saturday, June 19, 2021

Whooo Was Dr. Seuss ??


The Story of Dr. Seuss




Theodor Seuss Geisel: The Real Dr. Seuss




8 things you didn’t know about Dr. Seuss

Canvas Arts | Jul 22, 2015


A long-lost manuscript from the beloved author and illustrator Dr. Seuss will be released next week, marking a quarter-century since his swan song “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” empowered us to move mountains. The posthumous “What Pet Should I Get?” arrives July 28, two years after the author’s widow unearthed the story’s text and sketches. It features the siblings from “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish” on a trip to the pet store, which we know is never that sensible with a Seuss book.

Philip Nel, author of “Dr. Seuss: American Icon,” and Guy McLain, director of the Wood Museum of Springfield History, discuss how the author’s advertising beginnings gave way to Zooks and Zummers, pulling children’s literature away from the tsk-tsking of the Dick and Jane books and obliterating the boring belief that young readers ought to be prim and proper.

Thing 1. He got his sense of poetry from his mother.

Theodor “Ted” Seuss Geisel was born on March 2, 1904 in Springfield, Massachusetts, and years before his middle name became synonymous with rhyming whimsy in children’s books, “Seuss” was also his mother’s maiden name.

In their 1995 biography of the author, Judith and Neil Morgan said that connection carried significance for Seuss, who credited his mother with inspiring his well-known rhymes. Henrietta Seuss would chant softly to her children at bedtime with rhymes she memorized from her time working in her father’s bakery: “Apple, mince, lemon … peach, apricot, pineapple … blueberry, coconut, custard and SQUASH!”

“[Seuss] later said that, more than anyone else, his mother was responsible ‘for the rhythms in which I write and the urgency with which I do it,’” the Morgans wrote.


An early cartoon from Geisel in 1920 that was published in
The Central Recorder, a newspaper of Central High School
in Springfield. Image courtesy of Wood Museum of Springfield
History Archives, Springfield Museums





Thing 2. He never had any biological children.

The popular children’s author was childless. When asked why a writer of children’s books has no children of his own, Nel said Seuss had a response ready: “You make them, I’ll amuse them.”

Seuss wrote his first children’s book, an unpublished A-B-C book of creatures, in 1931, around the same time his first wife Helen Palmer learned she could not biologically carry children, according to the Morgans’ 1995 biography.

“I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” Nel said. “In some ways, he wrote for children to speak to that need in himself.”

After Helen died by suicide in 1967, Seuss eventually remarried to Audrey Dimond, who had two daughters, in 1968.


Seuss at his drawing table. Photo courtesy of Elizabeth N. Cahill


In more than 40 books to his name, including “The Cat in the Hat” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!,” strange vehicles and animals and nonsense were the author’s way to communicate with children in general.

Unlike the didactic Dick and Jane books that preached Victorian morals, Seuss’ stories did not tell children how to behave, McLain said. He simply made children’s literature a lot more fun, he added.

Compare the Cat’s chaos to lines like “Look. Look. Oh, look. See Jane.” The made-up words and insistent rhymes did not diminish the Lorax’s environmental message or dampen the anti-discrimination story of the Sneetches. He took children seriously, Nel said.

When asked about writing for children, Seuss has said: “I don’t write for children. I write for people.”

3. The pen name “Dr. Seuss” began as a way to escape punishment in college.

In 1925, in the midst of the Prohibition Era, Seuss and his friends were caught drinking gin in his Dartmouth dormitory dorm, Nel said. As punishment, Seuss was stripped of his editorship at the college’s humor magazine, Jack-O-Lantern. However, he continued to publish work under a variety of pseudonyms, including “T. Seuss.” Several other varying monikers, such as “Dr. Theophrastus Seuss,” appeared over the years, which he eventually shortened to “Dr. Seuss” as his go-to professional pen name.

In 1961, with his book “Ten Apples Up on Top!,” Seuss began collaborating with illustrators for books he wrote. For these, he used the pseudonym “Theo. LeSieg,” which is “Geisel” spelled backward. He also published one book, 1975’s “Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo!!”, under the pen name “Rosetta Stone.” And although there’s no known evidence to support the claim, Nel said that Seuss meant to save his real name for the Great American Novel that he would one day write.

Instead, Seuss debuted the Cat and the Grinch the same year in 1957, two of his most famous characters. The Cat and the Grinch were also facets of the man, Nel said. The rule-breaking, mischievous Cat spoke to the author’s sense of play, while the Grinch represented the cantankerous part of Seuss’ personality.

He had a vanity license plate that read, “GRINCH,” Nel said.

4. He joined the war effort.

Beginning in 1941, Seuss produced political cartoons for the left-wing newspaper PM in New York. In those pages, he criticized the U.S. policy of isolationism, urging the country to enter World War II. He also lambasted anti-Semitism and racism, although his depictions of Japanese people with exaggerated racial features proved problematic.


“Insure your home against Hitler!”, a July 28, 1942
political cartoon from Dr. Seuss. Image courtesy of
Special Collection & Archives, UC San Diego Library


“Cages cost money!”, a Dec. 15, 1941 political cartoon from Dr. Seuss.
Image courtesy of Special Collection & Archives, UC San Diego Library


By 1942, Seuss was keen on joining the navy, but was instead asked to make war propaganda films with Oscar-winning director Frank Capra. Joined by P.D. Eastman of “Go, Dog. Go!” fame, Mel Blanc and Chuck Jones among others, Seuss co-created Private Snafu (“Situation Normal, All Fouled Up”), a cartoon dolt in a military uniform meant to teach new recruits how to be a good soldier.

The black-and-white cartoon series was also off-color — and a hit with soldiers.

“It’s so cold, it would freeze the nuts off a jeep,” one cartoon begins.


WWII CARTOON Private SNAFU
Dr. Seuss / Chuck Jones WARNER BROS. ANIMATION
Video by Periscope Film



Seuss ended up writing most of the cartoons. The series proved a training ground for his rhymes, story development and working with limited vocabulary.

5. He was a successful ad man before a children’s author.

Seuss’ first foray into children’s literature was with “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” in 1937. Before then, he had a successful career in advertising. He wrote copy and drew advertisements for companies such as Standard Oil and Flit bug spray, which, in particular, became his most lucrative work.

Seuss had his first taste of contributing to the American vernacular in 1928 when the catchphrase “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” from one of his ads for the Flit insecticide became popular. The ad campaign was such a hit that Seuss continued to produce work for the company for 17 years.


A Flit bug spray advertisement proof, between 1930 and 1940.
Image courtesy of Special Collection & Archives, UC San Diego Library


A Standard Oil Company – Essolube advertisement, between 1930 and 1940.
Image courtesy of Special Collection & Archives, UC San Diego Library


“The only good thing Adolph Hitler did in starting World War II was that he enabled me to join the Army and finally stop drawing ‘Quick, Henry, the Flit!’” Seuss is quoted as saying in Thomas Fensch’s biography of the author.

6. His all-time best-selling book was created on a bet.

Dr. Seuss’ editor Bennett Cerf bet him he couldn’t write a book using 50 or fewer words. The result is 1960’s “Green Eggs and Ham.” Although the Cat and the Grinch are among Seuss’ most iconic characters, the story of Sam-I-Am trying to convince an unknown character to eat green eggs and ham has sold more than eight million copies since publication, according to a 2011 Publishers Weekly list.
Can you craft a best-seller with these 50 words?

a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you

7. He gifted the English language with “nerd” and redefined “grinch.”

In 1950’s “If I Ran the Zoo,” a kid rattles off a list of fantastical creatures that rival the animals found in the zoo: “I’ll sail to Ka-Troo and bring back an It-Kutch, a Preep, and a Proo,/A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too!”
In the book, a sign identifies a “nerd” as a red and yellow and white-haired sourpuss. It appears to be the first documented instance of the word, which has since morphed into a put-down for bookish people.
Writing for The Boston Globe, Ben Zimmer said the word “nerd” has no one particular historical source, but it is a credible theory that Seuss played a role in popularizing it.

And while Seuss didn’t invent “grinch,” the word’s meaning — a grouchy person — is all him, Nel said.

“He actually changed the language,” Nel said. “There are poets that do that, but it’s not common.”

“Nerkle,” however, has yet to catch on.

8. He wrote two adult books, one with nude drawings.

“The Seven Lady Godivas: The True Facts Concerning History’s Barest Family” was a flop when it came out in 1939. The book featured the unclothed sisters throughout the book in a decidedly unsexy story.

“[Seuss] would like to say he felt it was a flop because he couldn’t draw sexy, naked ladies,” Nel said. “And he has a point. Imagine naked ladies drawn by Dr. Seuss. Not particularly erotic.”

On subsequent reissues, there was a claim on the books that “Lady Godivas” was “reissued by multitudinous demand,” “which is a lie because no one wanted it,” Nel said.

Besides being an interesting failure, a book of naked illustrations also upset the people’s notion of Dr. Seuss, Nel said.

His other adult book was the picture book “You’re Only Old Once,” published in 1986 about the indignities of growing older.

---

By — Joshua Barajas

A Tribute to Dr. Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

 



From the Archives: Theodor Geisel dies at 87;
wrote 47 Dr. Seuss books

September 26, 1991
Reporting from San Diego
[abridged by R.E. Slater]


SAN DIEGO — Theodor (Ted) Geisel, whose whimsical, humorous books written under the pen name of Dr. Seuss confounded the literary establishment but entertained generations of children and parents, died Tuesday night at the age of 87.

Geisel, who never had any children of his own and who would quip, “You have ‘em, I’ll amuse ‘em,” died at his hilltop home on Mt. Soledad with his wife, Audrey, at his side.

Geisel had undergone massive radiation and chemotherapy for cancer of the palate over the past nine years but still lost part of his jaw to cancer and, in recent weeks as his health slipped because of several maladies, he was given more to scrawling notes on paper than speaking.

A family spokeswoman said that there will be no funeral services, and that Geisel’s remains will cremated. A memorial service will be held, she said, but has not been scheduled.

Geisel, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize citation in 1984 for his contribution to children’s literature, was one of the best known, most imitated and prolific children’s writers. His 47 books were translated into 20 languages and have sold more than 200 million copies.

Of the top 10 best-selling hard-cover children’s books of all time, Geisel contributed four: “The Cat in the Hat,” “Green Eggs and Ham,” “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish,” and “Hop on Pop,” according to Publishers Weekly.

His latest title, “Six by Seuss,” released this year, was a collection of six previous children’s stories, including his first, published in 1937: “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.”

His last new story was published in 1990: “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” The book, about moving through the highs and lows of the human experience, has proven as popular among kindergartners as college graduates and corporate executives.

It is not only the longest-running among the current fictions on the New York Times bestsellers’ list, but concurrently crowned Publishers Weekly’s children’s bestseller list. The feat brought Geisel his greatest professional pleasure.
“Finally I can say that I write not for kids, but for people ,” he told friends of the tandem accomplishment.

 


Chuck Jones

Animator Chuck Jones first met Geisel when the two were making sometimes slightly profane Army training films during World War II.

Twenty years later, Jones recalled Wednesday, he suggested that Geisel take “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” to television. There, it proved to be a classic that will run for the 26th consecutive year this holiday season.

Jones, who now lives in Orange County, said he took the “Grinch” storyboards to 24 prospective sponsors before a group of bankers agreed to put it on the air.

“It cost $350,000 and paid for itself in its first year,” he said.

Jones also remembered how “Green Eggs and Ham” came to be a book:
Publisher “Bennett Cerf bet him he couldn’t write a book using fewer than 50 words. There are 49. Count ‘em.”
At his death, Geisel was developing a screenplay for “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” on behalf of Tri-Star Productions, said his agent, Bob Tabian. Although his characters have appeared on television, this would would have been Geisel’s first full-length animated release.

Seuss had no other books in the works at the time of his death, Tabian said.

His books were forays into the world of nonsense and fantasy, with characters who captivated children through humor, rhyme and mischief--especially mischief--but laced with contemporary social and moral messages.

“Yertle the Turtle” narrated the turtle king’s fall, caused by overweening ambition. “Horton Hears a Who!” tackled narrow-mindedness. The Sneetches paid for a lesson in class prejudice, and Horton came back to hatch the egg and learn about the rewards of acting with honor. Other themes addressed the doomed environment, the insanity of the nuclear arms buildup--and, in “Green Eggs and Ham,” the virtues of tasting food that looks yucky.

But, although many children’s authors lectured children to behave, Seuss gave children vicarious thrills as they followed the antics of the Cat in the Hat who refused to obey the rules of the house.
They loved his loraxes and yopps, grinches grouching in grickle-grass, sneetches lurking in lerkims, the green-headed Quilligan quail.

 


Geisel was the illustrator first, writer second

He would tack his drawings onto the corkboard of his studio walls in storyboard fashion, muse over them, then write the appropriate nonsense couplets to accompany them. Sometimes an illustrated story line would befuddle him for two years before he could marry it to words; other times, he’d crank out his verses in just a few days.
“He wrote from a graphic point of view,” said Janet Schulman, publisher of the children’s book division at Random House and his personal editor. “He would leave his drawings up there on the wall, and, if he was blocked, he’d move on to another story.

“If all our authors were as he was, we wouldn’t need editors,” Schulman said. “Occasionally he’d give us a rhyme that was a little off, or a word that might not work. He’d think about it and sometimes he’d change it--but usually he wouldn’t, and that was fine.

“There will never be another Ted Geisel.”
Personal friends said Geisel painstakingly separated his close-knit social life from his book work--literally a self-disciplined 9:30 to 5:30 job where he would sequester himself in a studio that provided him with a 180-degree view of the Pacific coastline from Mexico to Oceanside.

What linked Seuss and Geisel was humor.

“He never, quote, told jokes, but he’s funnier and more spontaneous than anyone I’ve ever known,” said close friend and fellow author Jeanne Jones. “He was, without a doubt, the brightest person I’ve ever known.”

It was through his ability to finesse nonsense and humor that Geisel helped introduce a new order to traditional children’s literature.

In an interview in 1984, Geisel pulled off the shelf “The Riverside Reader,” a dusty, dog-eared primer he used in 1909 when he was in the first grade. As he turned the pages, he pointed out the dull passages and mundane story line.
“I wanted to get rid of primers like this,” he said. “I feel my greatest accomplishment was getting rid of Dick and Jane and encouraging students to approach reading as a pleasure, not a chore.

“The old readers were the most stultifying, stupid way to teach kids. That constant repetition just turned them off to reading. I tried to turn them on.”

riverside reader series - premier

riverside reader series - no. two

   


riverside reader series - no. five







Geisel's Impact

Geisel had a tremendous impact on children’s reading habits and the way reading is taught. He never wrote a textbook per se--he wanted nothing to do with a book that children were forced to read--but his works have been used as supplementary readers for decades.

“He’s one of the pillars in children’s literature,” said Isabel Schon, a professor of children’s literature at California State University, San Marcos, and a consultant to children’s book publishers.

“Education today is embracing what we call a ‘whole language approach,’ in which children read books they enjoy, versus books they’re told to read for teaching’s sake, and Geisel’s books are central to that theory.”

Geisel won acclaim from his audience long before he received it from the critics.

“He went through a long period of being a bit condescended to by the children’s literature critical establishment,” said John Donovan, president of the Children’s Book Council, a New York-based national trade association of children’s book publishers.

“For a long time, there was a kind of dismissive view of him because he was too popular . . . and because his vocabulary was so simple. But, as time has worn on, they’ve done a complete about-face.

“Today, there’s a deep appreciation that his popularity is rooted in his clear ability not just to please kids--and also adults--but to also reach them at some meaningful level. His books weren’t simple-minded.”


Oddbits

Geisel never published a book under his real name. The “Dr.” title he added as a farce to amuse his friends. Seuss is his middle name, and he was saving his own name for the great American novel. But when he finally wrote his novel--"The Seven Lady Godivas"--he was dissatisfied. That book, published in 1937, was his only commercial flop.
“I had no ability as a novelist,” Geisel said. “I spent all my time trying to get rid of extraneous words and boiling the thing down to the essentials. But a novelist’s technique is putting those extraneous, nonessential things back in.”
That was Geisel’s style even when giving speeches to conventions of librarians or book sellers.

“When others would make these long speeches, Ted would write a little poem that was appropriate for the occasion, one that would just take three or four minutes to read,” Donovan said.

“He was as brief and as cryptic as possible, and we’d listen to every word because he’d say so much in a very few words.”
Geisel said of his style: “I prefer to write just the essentials and then add the elaboration through a drawing. Once in a while, I have to write something in an adult magazine. I get so frustrated; I wish I could get rid of all the garbage of excess words; I could draw what I want to say in a second.”
He never attempted a second novel, although he did write a Seussian-like book on the travails of aging that he uncharacteristically directed for his older audience: “You’re Only Old Once!: A Book for Obsolete Children.”

You're Only Old Once! 📖❤️ By Dr. Seuss
READ ALOUD w/ PUPPETS ❤️📖


The book was inspired by Geisel’s own confrontation with mortality and of being subjected to a battery of medical tests--and staring too long at fish aquariums in hospital waiting rooms. He vented his frustration at the whole medical process this way:

“When at last we are sure you’ve been properly pilled, then a few paper forms
must be properly filled so that you and your heirs may be properly billed.”

The book quickly sold out a first printing of 200,000 copies and shot to the top of the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction.

Despite its success, Geisel still found writing children’s books “entirely satisfying.” Great literature never captivated Geisel anyway. His reading tastes were “trashy,” and he preferred a best seller or a Reader’s Digest condensed book to a well-written novel.

Geisel’s taste in painting was far more sophisticated, and he could discuss obscure British painters and French museums authoritatively. The one great regret of his career, Geisel said, was that he never refined his skills as a painter.

“I’m honest enough with myself to know I wouldn’t have written the Great
American Novel,” he said, “but I think I could have created some fine paintings.”

Not that Geisel the artist wasn’t recognized. Although he never was awarded the Caldecott Medal for illustration (he won it for writing), a Dr. Seuss retrospective exhibit at the San Diego Museum of Art in 1986 attracted 200,000 visitors. Although scorned by some serious artists, it was one of the most popular exhibits ever staged at the museum, officials there said.

Theodor Geisel aka Dr. Seuss 1986


Personal History

Geisel grew up in Springfield, Mass., where his father ran the park system, which included the town zoo. Many of his wild characters were born while he sat on a zoo bench and conjured up visions and variations of the exotic animals.

He studied literature at Dartmouth College, where he drew cartoons for Jack-O-Lantern, a humor magazine. He then attended Oxford University and planned to get a doctorate and teach English literature. But he soon tired of the academic life and decided to return home.

The famous Seuss verse and meter were born in the Atlantic Ocean on the liner Kungsholm. He became preoccupied with the rhythm of the ship’s engines and began experimenting with words to fit the meter. Those early scrawlings led to his first book, “Mulberry Street.” It was rejected by 27 publishers before it was picked up by Vanguard Press.

Geisel had a full career “writing for adults” before he began writing Dr. Seuss books full time. He was a political cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM, and during World War II was attached to a documentary film-making unit headed by famed director Frank Capra, who died Sept. 3[, 1991].

After writing and directing indoctrination movies for American troops, Geisel won an Oscar for best documentary short for a troop film that was released after the war by Warner Brothers. He won another Academy Award in 1947 for “Design of Death,” a documentary film about Japanese warlords. He received a third Oscar in 1951 for an animated cartoon: “Gerald McBoing-Boing.”

His finished his Hollywood work by writing the screenplay for the film, “The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T,” a fantasy about a crazed music teacher, a giant piano and 500 music students. Even though it became a cult hit, he distanced himself from it, angry over script changes after it left his typewriter.

Many of the techniques Geisel learned in Hollywood were useful when he began writing children’s books.
“I learned a great deal from Capra that still helps me in my writing,” he said. “He showed me how to edit a script. Anything that hastened the plot, or told the story, he underlined with a blue pencil. You’d be surprised how few blue pencil marks most manuscripts have. I’ve tried to ensure that the majority of my manuscripts merited blue pencil marks.”
After a brief, but successful film career, Geisel moved to La Jolla. He wanted to work alone and have the freedom of “making my own mistakes without the help of committees.”

He met his first wife, Helen Marion Palmer, at Oxford, and they built their La Jolla workplace-retreat on 6 acres after moving from Los Angeles in 1948. She died in 1967 after nearly 40 years of marriage. Geisel and his second wife, the former Audrey Stone Dimond, were married 23 years.

He had no children in either marriage and professed no universal love for the younger generation. He said impatiently that children are no different from adults--he liked some and disliked others. For a man who had so many young readers, Geisel rarely spent time with children.
“I don’t think spending your days surrounded by kids is necessary to write the kind of books I write,” he said. “I don’t write for children, I write for people. Once a writer starts talking down to kids, he’s lost. Kids can pick up on that kind of thing.” 

 

To Tell the Truth - Dr. Seuss; PANEL
Joan Bennett (Apr 29, 1958)



Temperment

Geisel was described by acquaintances as a shy, sometimes cranky man, who had a pathological fear of audiences. He refused numerous speaking engagements and offers to appear on television talk shows--though he softened his resistance somewhat after winning the Pulitzer citation in 1984.
“I don’t like audiences,” he said. “I prefer to make my mistakes in private.”
Geisel was sensitive to the condescension that often is directed toward a children’s writer. He grew tired of defending his work to people who dismissed him as a “kid’s author.”

Most of his books were “mildly philosophical,” leavened with the trademark nonsense and humor. But occasionally Geisel grew irritated with the course of current events and wrote a children’s book with political overtones.

“The Lorax,” a tale about the evils of pollution, was his favorite book, he said--and one that was nearly removed from the second-grade reading list in the tiny Northern California logging town of Laytonville in 1989 because, critics said, it was a thinly veiled attack on the timber industry.

His 1983 “The Butter Battle Book” is a didactic tale of the Yooks and the Zooks, who have an inane disagreement and end up building increasingly complicated slingshots in their own private arms race.

“I enjoy making a statement, but I don’t think one has to always do so to feel worthwhile,” Geisel said. “I’ve never had a desire to save the world. My desire was simply to say something and express myself; to stimulate the brain cells of my readers and teach children something vitally important: to understand and appreciate the value of reading.”

Yet, on his deathbed, Geisel issued one final challenge, according to Neil Morgan, a close personal friend and editor of the Tribune in San Diego.

Morgan and his wife, writer Judith Morgan, had been tape-recording interviews with Geisel in recent months for a biography on the man and, having completed the oral history, asked Geisel if he had any final thoughts. Morgan said in an interview Wednesday:

“He smiled and said, ‘Let me think about it.’ Then he handed Judith a yellow piece of paper and scrawled this:

“Whenever things go a bit sour, in a job I’m doing, I always tell myself, ‘You can do better than this.’ The best slogan I can think of to leave with the U.S.A. would be, ‘We can . . . and we’ve got to . . . do better than this.’ ”


The Story of Dr. Seuss







Friday, June 18, 2021

R.E. Slater - The Wheel or the Anvil?


"Time and a Fox Turning the Wheel of Fortune with People of all Ranks to the Right" (c.1526)
Woodcut by Albrecht Dürer  (c.1471–1528)



The Wheel of Time
by R.E. Slater

The Wheel of Time turns,
as ages come and pass,
each leaving memories,
birthing legends long pass.

Legends fade to myths,
till myths were long forgot,
in Ages of long ago,
becoming legends once again.

R.E. Slater
June 19, 2021; rev August 9, 2021

*adapted fr. Robert Jordan

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved



* * * * * * * * * *





The Wheel or the Anvil?
by R.E. Slater

History has been shown
turning as a fated Wheel
when looking backwards,
steadily churning forwards,
slipping and grinding,
upwards or downwards,
on rising helical axial.


Ben Linus standing before the frozen donkey wheel of time at
the center of the Island of eternity, disrupting its fated grind, LOST


John Locke slipping the donkey wheel back into place upon its timeful axis
after Ben had purposely dislodged it, sending it skipping off in all directions, LOST


The Anvil too has been
a hardened, useful tool,
smashing and grinding,
unmade and made,
till all is remade
the reflecting pools
of one's Creator.







Myself, I wish to grow
life as it becomes, natural-like,
taking what is, or isn't,
forming what could be
from what can be, raising
what lies hidden within,
blazing passion's beauty.

R.E. Slater
June 19, 2021; rev August 9, 2021

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved












A Tribute to Loved Ones


Corinn Linkowski



Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen (cover) by Genavieve FEAT. MY SIS
Jan 4, 2019




The Prayer - Celine Dion & Andrea Bocelli (cover) by Genavieve FEAT. MY DADDY
Nov 30, 2018




Corinn Linkowski Tribute
Mar 11, 2019




You Never Said Goodbye
by Unknown

You never said I'm leaving
You never said goodbye.
You were gone before I knew it,
And only God knew why.

A million times I needed you,
A million times I cried.
If love alone could have saved you,
You never would have died.

In life I loved you dearly,
In death I love you still.
In my heart you hold a place,
That no one could ever fill.

It broke my heart to lose you,
But you didn't go alone
For part of me went with you,
The day God took you home.




Kevin Costner´s emotional speech in full at Whitney Houston´s funeral
Dec 22, 2013







I Can Only Imagine
Song by MercyMe

Lyrics

I can only imagine
What it will be like
When I walk by Your side
I can only imagine
What my eyes would see
When Your face is before me
I can only imagine
Yeah

Surrounded by Your glory
What will my heart feel?
Will I dance for You Jesus
Or in awe of You be still?
Will I stand in Your presence
Or to my knees, will I fall?
Will I sing hallelujah?
Will I be able to speak at all?
I can only imagine
I can only imagine

I can only imagine
When that day comes
And I find myself
Standing in the Son
I can only imagine
When all I will do
Is forever, forever worship You
I can only imagine, yeah
I can only imagine

Surrounded by Your glory
What will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you Jesus
Or in awe of You be still?
Will I stand in your presence
Or to my knees will I fall?
Will I sing hallelujah?
Will I be able to speak at all?
I can only imagine, yeah
I can only imagine

Surrounded by Your glory
What will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you Jesus
Or in awe of You be still?
Will I stand in your presence
Or to my knees, will I fall?
Will I sing hallelujah?
Will I be able to speak at all?

I can only imagine, yeah
I can only imagine
I can only imagine, yeah-yeah
I can only imagine
I can only imagine
I can only imagine

I can only imagine
When all I will do
Is forever, forever worship You
I can only imagine

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Millard Bart Marshall
I Can Only Imagine (iTunes Originals) lyrics © Warner-tamerlane Publishing Corp., Culture Beyond Ur Experience Publishing, What A Publishing Limited, Lslx Music, Artist Publishing Group East, Songs Of Universal Inc., Young Money Publishing, Inc., Hipgnosis Songs Fund Limited







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Every mother-daughter relationship isn't perfect.
by Sherry A. Innes
October 2, 2005

A must-read for every mother with a teenage daughter. Margaret Johnson's description of Kathi's emerging independence and how it affected their relationship is honest. Kathi's boundless energy and determination, so cute in the little girl, was exhausting when the adolescent Kathi continually clashed with mom. Her choice of a best friend was a huge blow to her parents, especially her mom. It was more than the usual teenage "stuff"; there was a serious personality conflict between them. Before the book is over, Kathi has a life-changing experience that profoundly improves the relationship with her mother. Sadly, Kathi's life was cut short, leaving Margaret to sort things out. This great little book was the result. If she had lived, Margaret might never have shared Kathi's story.

When I read the book in the early 70s, it didn't occur to me that one day I would relate to so much of it. My tiny daughter and I had enjoyed a special relationship so I was unprepared for the clashes that surfaced during adolescence. Re-reading the book during that experience gave me encouragement to pray and keep being the mom. It helped! My daughter is now happily married to a mild-mannered guy who truly appreciates her strong opinions and independence.