We have spent a lot of time in nature during the last couple weeks.  As some of you know, Krista, our daughter-in-law experienced a "thalamic vascular lesion" ~ better understood by most of us as a stroke.  Krista is recovering remarkably well.  As one of her colleagues said, "Her huge personality and vibrant spirit hasn't been lost or diminished."

Krista is thanking everyone for their love and support and asking everyone to forgive her for not being able to respond right now.  She is taking a break from email, phone calls, internet, etc.  We have all learned from Krista that the harmony found in nature is healing.

In James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy, [a book that Krista introduced to me], he discussed how certain environments radiate more energy than others, such as old natural environments, especially forests.  His third insight elaborated on the beauty of nature, "When you appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of things, you receive energy."

Ruth Fishel refers to James Redfield's writings in her book, Precious Solitude*, and quotes Edward O. Wilson as believing that "the love of living things" ~ plants, wildlife, and the great outdoors is genetic, encoded in human beings to ensure balance, harmony, and preservation."

*Ruth Fishel, Adams Media Corporation, 1999.

 

 

 

 [I don't have a telephoto lens.  You can see that I was close to this little fox.  Among wind turbines and solar panels, he manages to survive. lbw]

 

"...What's water but the generated soul?"

Upon the border of that lake's a wood
Now all dry sticks under a wintry sun,
And in a copse of beeches there I stood,
For Nature's pulled her tragic buskin on
And all the rant's a mirror of my mood:
At sudden thunder of the mounting swan
I turned about and looked where branches break
The glittering reaches of the flooded lake.

Another emblem there!  That stormy white
But seems a concentration of the sky;
And, like the soul, it sails into the sight
And in the morning's gone, no man knows why;
And is so lovely that it sets to right
What knowledge or its lack had set awry,
So arrogantly pure, a child might think
It can be murdered with a spot of ink.

. . .
~William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939) Irish poet
Many thanks to our friend who sent the poem to us.

"Being solitary is being alone well; being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others, because solitude is an achievement."

~ Alice Koller, author of The Stations of Solitude and An Unknown Woman.

"When something is intolerable is in my life, I head for the water.  It leavens me in some way.  Some middle-most part of me is soothed and silenced by it." ~ Alice Koller

 

 

 

Information Processing

Neologism:  "The key phrase, 'information processing,' was coined by Marshall McLuhan, who was asked by IBM to explain to them, in succinct language, what computers are all about,"  according to Peter Bishop in Fifth Generation Computers (1986).

"The microchip will take its rightful place among history's four greatest inventions--the others being fire, the wheel, and hotel room service." ~ Peter C. Newman, Canadian Journalist, "The Dawn of a New Millennium." Maclean's, 30 Dec. 1996.

"In terms of, say, a computer technology we are headed for cottage economics, where the most important industrial activities can be carried on in any individual little shack anywhere on the globe."  Marshall McLuhan, communications pioneer, observation made in 1970. The Essential McLuhan (1995) edited by E. McLuhan & F. Zingrone.


"Thought:  one day the word 'gigabits' is going to seem as small as the word 'dozen.' ~ Observation of the narrator of Douglas Coupland's novel Microserfs (1995)."

[Source:  John Robert Colombo's FAMOUS LASTING WORDS/ Great Canadian Quotations, Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 2000.

Who said that?

"Birds of a feather will gather together."

"Penny wise, pound foolish."

"Be not solitary, be not idle."

"No rule is so general, which admits not some exception."

~
~Robert Burton (1577 - 1640)  English scholar, best known for his The Anatomy of Melancholy.

[Photo: from files Neat Little Bookshop 11B Cayuga Street.]