Tag Archives: communication

Beautiful discovery

“The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” — Elisabeth Foley One year ago today, I quoted from a wonderful book written by my friend Ellis Anderson, whom I met at college nearly 40 years ago.  Ellis and I were different in many ways, but we also …

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Language of the imagination

“ ‘They are all beasts of burden in a sense,’ Thoreau once remarked of animals, ‘made to carry some portion of our thoughts.’ Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech.” ― Rebecca Solnit I’m not sure I understand …

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Captured and preserved

“But in a jar put up by Felicity, The summer which maybe never was Has been captured and preserved…” — John Tobias, from his lovely poem The beautiful cherry blossoms pictured above were on display inside the Sackler Gallery weeks before the local trees were in bloom.  I asked staff there “are they real?” and …

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If you look close enough

“Even the most ordinary life is a mystery if you look close enough.” — Kennedy Fraser It seems to me one of the saddest aspects of modern culture that people get a lot of their reality from television shows.  Admittedly I know very little about it since I’ve shunned television for over 25 years now, but …

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I’ve tried

“I’ve tried talking to animals, but it’s no use – their minds are usually already made up.” —  Ashleigh Brilliant Since I’ve featured dogs, birds and other animals here, I thought it was about time to include a cat.  This is my sister’s cat, named Kit Kat after the cat we had as children. Kit …

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What really knocks me out

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” — J. D. Salinger Who comes to mind when you read this quote?  …

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No such thing

“There is no such thing as gratitude unexpressed. If it is unexpressed, it is plain, old-fashioned ingratitude.”  — Robert Brault One of the great blessings to come from this blog has been the ongoing task of reading many wise and inspiring words from all sorts of people, all over the world, from the earliest recorded eras up …

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The power to speak

“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.” — Martin Buber On a highway near Skagway, Alaska, we noticed a few people stopped alongside the road and quickly found what attracted their attention: a baby bear had ambled right up to the guard rail, looking at everyone with friendly curiosity.  It was raining lightly …

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