NPR : When Ordinary People Achieve Extraordinary Things

NPR : When Ordinary People Achieve Extraordinary Things

Jody Williams is the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. For her efforts, she shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize with the Campaign. Williams previously worked to build awareness about U.S. policy toward Central America.

Inspiring story!

Birthday

So it's my birthday and my horoscope is as follows:

Doing a job properly takes more than hard work and concentration now, for you could also be required to juggle several balls in the air. Flexibility doesn't always come easily to you, but now it's the thing that will do you the most good. You may have to alter your plans and adapt to unexpected conditions on the job. Keep in mind that any task you start is likely to take more time than you planned. Smart thinking will get you further than extra effort.

And after reading this, I'm thinking.... what makes this different than any other day?

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional. ~Chili Davis

~

Thanks to modern medical advances such as antibiotics, nasal spray, and Diet Coke, it has become routine for people in the civilized world to pass the age of 40, sometimes more than once. ~Dave Barry, "Your Disintegrating Body," Dave Barry Turns 40, 1990

Writers Contest for Kansas Writers

El Dorado Times


17th annual Kansas Voices Writing Contest. Check link for details

Possible

Stark white


opens

possibilities

we might
Never Understand

Love in a Bottle

If it were that simple.

Still one company is sporting love poems in a bottle for Valentines Day. The going price is $39.95 but a trial offer is $24.99 plus shipping and handling.

They offer dozens of both classic and modern poems - including the romantic verse of Shakespeare's Top Ten Love Poems along with the Top Ten Classic Love Poems for Men & the Top Ten Classic Love Poems for Women. Additionally there are modern poems by award-winning poets as well as short love poems and sad love poems in case you need to tell someone they broke your heart.

I suppose this must say something about the state of poetry in today's culture.


poetry

On Journaling & Blogging

Thanks Cindy for getting the discussion going!

Saturday

A mixture of laziness and urgency makes for strange bed fellows. I feel urgency will win out and I suppose this is for the best. It is the more positive of the two virtues.

It must be my dry wit and the ear ring

You are Sharon Olds, master of the everyday,
explorer of the female body and family.

Which 20th Century Poet Are You?
brought to you by

Belonging

I got up this morning
Dressed the part for work
But beyond that point
I was a crippled man
With a low depression
Which moved in from the west
To a stationary pattern overhead.
Beyond the rank and file
Masses of Herculean will
That do the work of necessity,
The golden men and women
Which made this country whatever it is,
I sit estranged from the social climate,
Lost between being unable and uncaring
That the only thing that keeps me going
Is the bottle of Prozac with the orange lid
So the rest of the family knows
It belongs to me, or I to it.


tag: poem

The Red Room Company | Project | Toilet Doors

The Red Room Company Project Toilet Doors


Calling All Poets! Your Poems needed for the back of Toilet Doors.

Adding to the Sum of the Universe

"A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him." ~ Dylan Thomas


tags: Dylan Thomas poets

We Missed

An ivory cup,
With remnants of black coffee
And a rich brown ring,
Sat alone,
Stone cold,
To say
You came,
Stayed,
Then left.
I’m sorry.



tag: Poems

Friends Of The CU Libraries To Host Information Day Jan. 12 | News Center | University of Colorado at Boulder

Friends Of The CU Libraries To Host Information Day Jan. 12 News Center University of Colorado at Boulder


Among other things - participents at this free event will get to see letters written by Anne Sexton, Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and Langston Hughes that are housed there.


poets Anne Sexton Langston Hughes Emily Dickinson

Add a cup of imagination

Not all of what Emily Dickinson wrote was exactly straight forward. But how much more straight forward could you get then the:

"The Possible's slow fuse is lit

By the Imagination."~Emily Dickinson

This has to speak to the heart of every artist - not just poets or writers. Starting with a blank page staring back at you or a canvas... It is truly the imagination that lights that fuse of the possible. It is a necessary ingredient in the recipe of success for artists.

I am becoming more aware that my imagination has to be nurtured along and fed. It helps to be opened up to an environment that invites it to flourish. A scenic walk or drive, the right music, sometimes a quiet spot but other times not. Busy people on a crowded street can just a s well spark the fuse. My mind can be receptive even in a hectic environment if I allow myself to get into the mood. Free of a lot of the other mental process that normally goes on.

Imagination and persistence, I believe, are perhaps the two biggest ingredients of creative successes.

Choices

Approaching the cashier I’m asked, "paper or plastic?"
I’m a baby boomer- I’ve grown up liking choices.
I love Baskin-Robbins, the whole 31-flavor thing
Though I always get the same thing. I just like the choice.
Choices are good. Though sometimes confusing.
I struggle weighing the loss of trees with the use of synthetics.
When all the consternation is over, I’m a paper person
And say so. I’m careful to recycle and if worst happens
I can always write poems on the paper bags.
But what I don’t understand is what part of "paper please"
Says put everything in paper but the eggs. Or the milk.
It’s like they offer me a choice just so they can only partially
Grant my wish. Nine paper sacks later the guy asks,
"Did you want your eggs in plastic?"
You offer me a choice, I’m gonna be a man about it
And let you know what I want. I can handle it.
Don’t wimp out on me.

Independent Online Edition > Media

Independent Online Edition > Media

Good Lord do I need to learn some patience. This guy spends more than 40 years working on this piece of epic poetry work.

Journaling & Blogging

As I was journaling very early this morning I suddenly thought about journaling verses blogging. It occurred to me in the first instance that my journal could likely be the cause of death by boredom. Sometimes I suspect there are tid-bits that someone might find interesting. And I do these days, mix my journaling with many of my poetry first drafts, but it is likely the boredom would set in long before one found an interesting tid-bit.

Granted, I don't journal for the benefit of others. But blogging on the other hand has to be interesting or no one comes back a second or third or fourth time.

There are occasions when I may have a parallel theme running from a blog post and a journal entry but that is more often than not, the exception. So I am wondering about others who both blog and journal - and how they feel the two differ or not, as the case may be. Do you specifically have a different approach to your journaling and blogging? And what other characteristics are found in your journaling? Do you journal in first person? Always? How much self discovery do you find in journaling?

I know, I'm just about as bad as a toddler with all the questions today, but this is really bugging me.

Official Stick Poet - T now in "Poet Black"

The "Poet Black" official Stick Poet Superhero T

click here to order

The Woman

Sometimes the hush
Says so much more.
To see her in quiet
Is to hold her in awe

Of all that she is,
She need say nothing;
But when she speaks
This too opens up

A whole new realm
Of beauty. Still-
Sometimes the hush.
Hush!

Out with the old....

"For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning."

~ T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"