Quote of the Week

“Action is the antidote to despair.” – Joan Baez

Quote of the Week

One more “love” quote: “Maybe sometimes [we] take each other for granted. But once in a while, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met.” –Johnny Cash to June Carter Cash

A Book of Love

While cleaning house the year I was preparing to move, I came across a box buried within another box, in the bottom of a chest. Not recognizing it, I assumed it was taken from my mother’s apartment when she passed away decades ago. I opened it up to discover greeting cards. There was a whole stack of them that my dad had given her over the course of many years. I proceeded to sit down and go through them noting how each was romantic using words like “my darling”, “you make my life so wonderful”. Phrases I had never heard my prosaic dad use! And that my mother would keep these baffled me because there relationship was anything but romantic. However, after reading through all of them I realized that this was perhaps the only way my dad could relay tender sentiments to her. I will never know as he, too, is long gone.

I have always kept a journal. They now take up 2+ shelves on my bookcase. These cards from dad made me wonder who would read my journals when I passed away. I have no children, so would I want a friend or maybe a stranger to read through my life? I don’t really know at the moment, but it got me to thinking about that old-fashioned form of writing that today no one seems to do. Yes, things in cyberspace seem to live forever, but is it the same as, say your child or spouse, discovering a journal detailing your life when you are no longer there with them?

After reading an article about a couple where the husband kept a journal that he wrote in only once a year on their anniversary, I cannot help but believe that the handwritten remains of a loved one would have more impact than anything else left behind. Remember the stories we’ve all read about Victorians and their love letters? How those treasured letters kept and reread gave solace to a loved one after the passing of its author. You can’t get that emotional feeling from a collection of tweets or even e-mails!

This week is Valentine’s Day. I would suggest that instead of a card or a bouquet of flowers, write your loved one a nice romantic letter and give a beautiful journal. You’ll not only surprise the receiver, but you will have sown the seeds that in a future day will bloom into the flowers of remembrance.

 

Quote of the Week

From a passionate love letter of Prince Albert to Queen Victoria: “Your image fills my whole soul. Even in my dreams I never imagined that I should find so much love on earth.”

Quote of the Week

“I felt something go inside me, like an old-fashioned TV set being turned off, the picture collapsing to a pinpoint of light before vanishing.” – Adam Green writing in Vogue Nov 2017 about the death of his beloved dog.

Reach For the Stars

In 2013, Roselle Park, New Jersey planted a little seedling (which had been grown from seeds they had taken into space on a previous mission) on the lawn of their library to honor the astronauts who perished in the Feb 1, 2003 Columbia disaster. I wrote this poem and, as the town’s Poet Laureate, read it at the planting ceremony. This Thursday is the 15th anniversary of their deaths so I thought I would share it with you:

You were lifted up, up, up on a chariot of fire

To where up had no meaning;

Where you could look upon your home

A tiny blue/green globe shrouded in clouds,

Framed by the velvety blackness of space.

You were astronauts, selected humans who explored

The depths of the unknown, space, our last frontier.

Secure in the belly of your giant bird, we earthbound mortals

Were privileged to see your smiling faces

across the thousands of miles of dark inhospitable space.

To see the delight you took in conducting your experiments.

Sending us pictures of stars,

twinkling like holiday lights on velvet

And views of that blue/green globe shrouded in clouds

that left us breathless.

You seven and the orbiter Columbia, stole our hearts.

 

Then came that cold winter’s morning

When like a meteor you streaked across the sky

Of  your/our  blue/green planet shrouded in clouds.

Becoming dust, turning into the stardust from whence we all come.

Like Icarus, you fell to earth, nevermore to fly among the stars.

 

Where once we counted down, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 to liftoff

We now count up 6,7,8,9,10 from that morning.

The orbiters fly no more, they now are earthbound

Giving homage to the time when courage and curiosity lifted

Humankind up up up to the stars.

 

So how do we never forget your heroism and your courage?

To honor your memory

We take a seedling whose seed traveled

In the belly of your orbiter where up had no meaning.

And plant it in the soil of this blue/green shrouded in clouds planet.

So that it may send its roots down, down deep into the earth.

As it grows, it will lift its leafy arms up

Up to the sky, saluting the constellations,

The stars, of which you are now a part.

For if we are to remember you,

Honor you,

Give meaning to your sacrifice,

Then we must work to make this world, our blue/green planet shrouded in clouds,

A better place.

And we must always…keep reaching for the stars.

2013 Leona M Seufert,