Wednesday Musings

As we struggle with shopping lists and invitations, compounded by December's bad weather, it is good to be reminded that there are people in our lives who are worth this aggravation, and people to whom we are worth the same.


-- Donald E. Westlake


Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.

-- Hamilton Wright Mabie


Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.

-- Oren Arnold


Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.

-- Calvin Coolidge


Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.

-- Laura Ingalls Wilder


The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. Wishing you happiness.

-- Helen Keller


This is my wish for you: peace of mind, prosperity through the year, happiness that multiplies, health for you and yours, fun around every corner, energy to chase your dreams, joy to fill your holidays!

-- D.M. Dellinger

Wednesday Musings

Will you love me in December as you do in May,
Will you love me in the good old fashioned way?
When my hair has all turned gray,
Will you kiss me then and say,
That you love me in December as you do in May?

-James Walker



How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

-Dr. Seuss



How like a winter hath my absence been. From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What old December's bareness everywhere!

-William Shakespeare



A Merry Christmas this December - To a lot of folks I don't remember

-Anonymous Toast

Shall we liken Christmas to the web in a loom? There are many weavers, who work into the pattern the experience of their lives. When one generation goes, another comes to take up the weft where it has been dropped. The pattern changes as the mind changes, yet never begins quite anew. At first, we are not sure that we discern the pattern, but at last we see that, unknown to the weavers themselves, something has taken shape before our eyes, and that they have made something very beautiful, something which compels our understanding.

- Earl W. Count, 4,000 Years of Christmas


I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.
'We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,'
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.

- Oliver Herford

Wednesday Musings

I've decided to do my own personal musings this week. For those bored with me, you can check next Wednesday's musings for my usual musings post.

I can hardly believe yesterday was the end of November. I've always liked November. Perhaps it is the whole huge feast toward the end of the month. Maybe it is because it is the longest official holiday time off in the U.S.

But now it is December. December is a mixed month from me. I love Christmas, of course and it's always nice to look forward to whatever a new year will bring.
December is also the month when my dad's birthday was and since he's been gone many years now I can't help but feel the loss even now years later. Growing up I knew Dad's birthday was two weeks from Christmas. It was a special day because I was such a Daddy's girl. Also December was the month of PD's mom's birthday and she passed away just this year, so this will be the first December without her birthday celebration.

Still the holidays make it a wonderful month and I am reminded at this time that life is precious and we should enjoy each holiday season with our hearts full of joy and kindness.

And December has me looking back over the year and thinking about what I have accomplished, what I have yet to accomplish, who I have lost, who is still with me, what I have to be thankful for, and what I can hope for next year when everything is new again.

So Happy December and Happy Holidays

Wednesday Musings - Thankful

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.
Buddha

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.
Oprah

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
Albert Schweitser

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
Dante Rossetti

Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude.
E.P. Powell

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy

What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?
Erma Bombeck

It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.
Alistair Cooke

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.
O. Henry

Thanksgiving is America's national chow-down feast, the one occasion each year when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty.
Michael Dresser

O Lord that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.
William Shakespeare

Wednesday Musings

“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”
Oscar Wilde

“Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.”
Dan Greenburg

“A catless writer is almost inconceivable. It's a perverse taste, really, since it would be easier to write with a herd of buffalo in the room than even one cat; they make nests in the notes and bite the end of the pen and walk on the keys.”
Barbara Holland

“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”
Joseph Heller

“A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns.”
P.L. Travers

“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”
William Saroyan

“Asking a writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp post how it feels about dogs”
Ann Landers

“Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.”

Wednesday Musings

“Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils”
Cyril Connolly

“And the days dwindle down To a precious few, September, November - And these few precious days I'd spend with you. These golden days I'd spend with you”
Maxwell Anderson

"How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.
At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow."
Elsie N. Brady, Leaves

"I saw the lovely arch
Of rainbow span the sky,
The gold sun burnin
As the rain swept by."
Elizabeth Coatsworth, November

"November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.
With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.
The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring."
 Elizabeth Coatsworth

"When the trees their summer splendor
Change to raiment red and gold,
When the summer moon turns mellow,
And the nights are getting cold;
When the squirrels hide their acorns,
And the woodchucks disappear;
Then we know that it is autumn,
Loveliest season of the year."
Carol L. Riser, Autumn

Wednesday Musings

As I went out walking this fall afternoon,
I heard a whisper whispering.
I heard a whisper whispering,
Upon this fine fall day...


As I went out walking this fall afternoon,
I heard a laugh a' laughing.
I heard a laugh a' laughing,
Upon this fine fall day...

I heard this whisper and I wondered,
I heard this laugh and then I knew.
The time is getting near my friends,
The time that I hold dear my friends,
The veil is getting thin my friends,
And strange things will pass through.
- The Veil is Getting Thinner

How innocent were these Trees, that in
Mist-green May, blown by a prospering breeze,
Stood garlanded and gay;
Who now in sundown glow
Of serious color clad confront me with their show
As though resigned and sad,
Trees, who unwhispering stand umber, bronze, gold;
Pavilioning the land for one grown tired and old;
Elm, chestnut, aspen and pine, I am merged in you,
Who tell once more in tones of time,
Your foliaged farewell.
- Siegfried Sassoon, October Trees

October's the month
When the smallest breeze
Gives us a shower
Of autumn leaves.
Bonfires and pumpkins,
Leaves sailing down -
October is red
And golden and brown.

Wednesday Musings

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf's a flower.
- Albert Camus
 
All those golden autumn days the sky was full of wings. Wings beating low over the blue water of Silver Lake, wings beating high in the blue air far above it . . . bearing them all away to the green fields in the South.
- Laura Ingalls Wilder

Believe in yourself, your neighbors, your work, your ultimate attainment of more complete happiness. It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in Autumn.
- B. C. Forbes

Change is a measure of time and, in the autumn, time seems speeded up. What was is not and never again will be; what is is change.
- Edwin Way Teale

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
- John Muir

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
- George Eliot

I saw old autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like silence, listening
To silence.
-- Thomas Hood

Wednesday Musing

Autumn Song by Daniel Gabriel Rossetti

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the heart feels a languid grief

Laid on it for a covering,

And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain

Falters because it is in vain,

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf

Knowest thou not? and how the chief

Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?


Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the soul feels like a dried sheaf

Bound up at length for harvesting,

And how death seems a comely thing

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

Wednes Musings

I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
Plutarch

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.
Thomas A. Edison

It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.
Mignon McLaughlin

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
Oprah Winfrey

Wednesday Musings

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.
Ingrid Bergman


Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Can miles truly separate you from friends... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?
Richard Bach

How absurd and delicious it is to be in love with somebody younger than yourself. Everybody should try it.
Barbara Pym


If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.
A. A. Milne


Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.
David Grayson


Love is always bestowed as a gift - freely, willingly and without expectation. We don't love to be loved; we love to love.
Leo Buscaglia

Wednesday Musings

If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you're doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It's tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on.
- Lou Holtz

If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won.
- Louisa May Alcott

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows. There is no code of conduct to help beginners. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent.
- Sophia Loren

Love me, please, I love you; I can bear to be your friend. So ask of me anything ... I am not a tentative person. Whatever I do, I give up my whole self to it.
- Edna Saint Vincent Millay

I don't care a damn for your loyal service when you think I am right; when I really want it most is when you think I am wrong.
- General Sir John Monash

If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.
- Michael Evans

Wednesday Musings

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
John Barrymore

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
T. E. Lawrence

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
William Faulkner

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.
Elias Canetti

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Alfred Lord Tennyson

I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
Rene Descartes

I tell people I'm too stupid to know what's impossible. I have ridiculously large dreams, and half the time they come true.
Debi Thomas

I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night.
Bill Watterson

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
Terry Pratchett

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
Robert Kennedy

Wednesday Musings

Stars by Robert Frost

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keenness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

Wednesday Musings

The Bridge by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o'er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.

I saw her bright reflection
In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
And sinking into the sea.

And far in the hazy distance
Of that lovely night in June,
The blaze of the flaming furnace
Gleamed redder than the moon.

Among the long, black rafters
The wavering shadows lay,
And the current that came from the ocean
Seemed to lift and bear them away;

As, sweeping and eddying through them,
Rose the belated tide,
And, streaming into the moonlight,
The seaweed floated wide.

And like those waters rushing
Among the wooden piers,
A flood of thoughts came o'er me
That filled my eyes with tears.

How often, oh, how often,
In the days that had gone by,
I had stood on that bridge at midnight
And gazed on that wave and sky!

How often, oh, how often,
I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away on its bosom
O'er the ocean wild and wide!

For my heart was hot and restless,
And my life was full of care,
And the burden laid upon me
Seemed greater than I could bear.

But now it has fallen from me,
It is buried in the sea;
And only the sorrow of others
Throws its shadow over me.

Yet whenever I cross the river
On its bridge with wooden piers,
Like the odor of brine from the ocean
Comes the thought of other years.

And I think how many thousands
Of care-encumbered men,
Each bearing his burden of sorrow,
Have crossed the bridge since then.

I see the long procession
Still passing to and fro,
The young heart hot and restless,
And the old subdued and slow!

And forever and forever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;

The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.

Wednesday Musings

Give All To Love by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.

'Tis a brave master,
Let it have scope,
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope;
High and more high,
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But 'tis a god,
Knows its own path,
And the outlets of the sky.
'Tis not for the mean,
It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending;
Such 'twill reward,
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;—
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, for ever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
Vague shadow of surmise,
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free,
Do not thou detain a hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho' her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.

Wednesday Musings

A Summer Day By The Sea by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The sun is set; and in his latest beams
Yon little cloud of ashen gray and gold,
Slowly upon the amber air unrolled,
The falling mantle of the Prophet seems.
From the dim headlands many a light-house gleams,
The street-lamps of the ocean; and behold,
O'erhead the banners of the night unfold;
The day hath passed into the land of dreams.
O summer day beside the joyous sea!
O summer day so wonderful and white,
So full of gladness and so full of pain!
Forever and forever shalt thou be
To some the gravestone of a dead delight,
To some the landmark of a new domain.

Wednesday Musings

Reluctance by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

Wednesday Musings

I'm going with quotes today instead of poems. Oh...and a pretty.



A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world.
Leo Buscaglia

A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.
Arnold H. Glasow

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
Buddha

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
George Washington

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
C. S. Lewis

Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.
Dag Hammarskjold

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
Henry Ellis

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Anton Chekhov

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Wednesday Musings

How still, how happy! by Emily Bronte

How still, how happy! Those are words
That once would scarce agree together;
I loved the plashing of the surge -
The changing heaven the breezy weather,

More than smooth seas and cloudless skies
And solemn, soothing, softened airs
That in the forest woke no sighs
And from the green spray shook no tears.

How still, how happy! now I feel
Where silence dwells is sweeter far
Than laughing mirth's most joyous swell
However pure its raptures are.

Come, sit down on this sunny stone:
'Tis wintry light o'er flowerless moors -
But sit - for we are all alone
And clear expand heaven's breathless shores.

I could think in the withered grass
Spring's budding wreaths we might discern;
The violet's eye might shyly flash
And young leaves shoot among the fern.

It is but thought - full many a night
The snow shall clothe those hills afar
And storms shall add a drearier blight
And winds shall wage a wilder war,

Before the lark may herald in
Fresh foliage twined with blossoms fair
And summer days again begin
Their glory - haloed crown to wear.

Yet my heart loves December's smile
As much as July's golden beam;
Then let us sit and watch the while
The blue ice curdling on the stream -