"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist, poet (1803 - 1882)

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

~ R. W. Emerson

Emerson's essay, "Nature," identified four aspects of man's use of nature:  Commodity, Beauty, Language and Discipline ~ an influence on Henry Thoreau's writings, including Walden.

Excerpt from La Popessa * ~

"In the rapidly changing world of the 1960s, Pascalina saw her Church torn between excessive change and excessive resistance to change.  A time of social upheaval and public question was at hand, and violent convulsions were occurring throughout Catholicism.
"As she had warned long before, the Holy See was already in deep trouble.  Those after Pius, the hierarchy that attempted to bring the Church into the modern world, had destroyed most of the old Catholic culture.  In the clerical revolt against authoritarianism, tens of thousands of clergy and nuns throughout the world were defecting.  The seminaries were half empty, and one fourth of all priests requested Rome's permission to get married.  Catholics by the millions were staying away from the Church.  Only 50 percent of those who ordinarily went to Sunday Mass continued to attend.  Surveys slowed that nearly 90 percent of Catholic married couples were using Church-banned forms of contraception.
"The Holy See's treasure suffered as severely.  Donations to the Church were cut in half, and only 50 percent of those who once gave regularly to the Church continued to give.  The papacy was stunned by the extent of Catholic mutiny at the grass roots.
Eight out of every ten Catholics were disregarding Church laws governing birth control, divorce, and sex outside marriage."

p. 307 * The Controversial Biography of Sister Pascalina, the Most Powerful Woman in Vatican History, Paul I. Murphy, 1983.  Warner Books, Inc.

Picture-Books In Winter
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Summer fading, winter comes ~
Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs,
Window robins, winter rooks,
And the picture story-books.

Water now is turned to stone
Nurse and I can walk upon;
Still we find the flowing brooks
In the picture story-books.

All the pretty things put by,
Wait upon the children's eye,
Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,
In the picture story-books.

We may see how all things are,
Seas and cities, near and far,
And the flying fairies' looks,
In the picture story-books.

How am I to sing your praise,
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks,
Reading picture story-books?

~ A Child's Garden of Verses
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Platt and Munk Co., Inc., 1929

Winter-Time
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.

Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;

And shivering in my nakedness,

By the cold candle, bathe and dress.

Close by the jolly fire I sit

To warm my frozen bones a bit;

Or with a reindeer-sled, explore

The colder countries round the door.

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap

Me in my comforter and cap:

The cold wind burns my face, and blows

Its frosty pepper up my nose.

Black are my steps on silver sod,

Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;

And tree and house, and hill and lake,

Are frosted like a wedding-cake.

~Scottish novelist, poet. (1850 - 1894)

A Child's Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Platt and Munk Co, Inc., 1929

Closed Early Today ~
View on the Walk Home

Sorry for any inconvenience ~ lbw

"It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up."

~ W. Somerset Maugham

"You have to allow a certain amount of time in which you are doing nothing in order to have things occur to you, to let your mind think."

~ Mortimer J. Adler

"Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
~Mark Twain

"Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted."

~ John Lennon

Just Dogs ~

"Animals are such agreeable friends ~
they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms."
~ George Eliot

"The dog was created especially for children.
He is the god of frolic."
~ Henry Ward Beecher


"The good Lord in his ultimate wisdom gave us three things to make life bearable, hope, jokes and dogs,but the greatest of these was dogs."
~ Robyn Davidson

"I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better."
~ George Bird Evans

"To be without a dog is worse than being without a song."
~ Henry Beetle Hough
(Caption on a photograph of the British Beatles lounging with two dogs ~ one a very large long-haired breed; the other a small, perky-eared creature.)

"Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole."
~ Thomas McGuane

"Dogs' eyes speak a special language that comes directly from their souls."~Anonymous
(For larger image, click on photo)

"Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends."  ~ Alexander Pope

Source:  1000 DOGS, Raymond Merritt & Miles Barth, Taschen, 2002.