A good thought

Every relationship--husband and wife, parent and child, best friends, colleagues--is dependent on trust.  It is not possible to have a relationship with someone you cannot trust.  The only thing you can have with someone you can't trust is a strategy.    Sheri Dew,  Saying It Like It Is

Photo Credit:  Nicolas Moulin

The World is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. . . .  

                    -William Wordsworth

My beautiful friend, Mamie Webb, who died at the splendid age of 99, gifted me with the love of this poem (I'll give you Mamie soon, in another post-you'll love her!).  Try this trick: Chant Wordsworth's first two lines whenever you enter a mall. His wisdom will help you leave relatively unscathed, and thankfully burdened with no more than what you first intended to buy.  I credit my aversion to shopping to Wordsworth's pen, and my love of nature to Mamie.  Here's the Skinny: This weekend, instead of going to the mall, go for a walk outside.  The mountains, the beach, the park, your garden.  Shhh. Listen. They're calling to your hungry soul. 

Photo: Google Images, Nature 

Watch out for this Pigeon!

If you have a child in your life, or one hiding inside you somewhere, you deserve to meet Pigeon and his creator, Mo Willems.  Mo and his menagerie (Knuffle Bunny, Edwina, Elephant and Piggie) have won enough honors and awards (yes, Caldecotts) to collapse many mantels, and after just a little time with them, you'll understand why.  My present favorite is Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! in which Pigeon whines, cajoles, begs, canoodles, and screams like a three-year-old, trying to get the reader to let him drive the bus.  Your three to seven-year-olds will giggle themselves silly as they scream "Nooo!" to Pigeon's increasingly zany bargaining.  "I'll tell you what: I'll just steer," or "I never get to do anything," and even the old standby "No fair! I bet your mom would let me."  Ultimately, we all see ourselves in this crazy, conniving pigeon, and keep laughing ourselves all the way to wisdom.  Here's the Skinny:  It never hurts to start early in giving our kids fun ways to learn to just say "Nooooo!"