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Showing posts with the label reading

Welcome, 2016

Once again, we have been given another chance, another attempt to get it right, another calendar with blank pages that will be filled, one way or another. How can we fill them? With a lot of laughter and crying, some compassion, and more than a little kindness. We can stand boldly for what is right. We can buy some seed, Plant something, anything, and watch it grow.    We can share what we know and what we grow, green happiness.   We can do something we have never done before; something so far outside of our comfort zone that no one believes you can make it.    But you will.   We can go somewhere we have never been before, in a car or a train or a ship or a book.    We can use our minds to soar through the stars and come home again.   We can pray for wisdom and apply the gifts we are given. We can listen, we can linger, we can love, and we can hug. It can be the best that'...

To Kill A Mockingbird

It has been big news--the announcement that a new Harper Lee book, Go Set A Watchman , will be released this summer.  There has been quite a stir from people who think Ms. Lee is being taken advantage of.  I wasn't there, so I won't comment on that, but I have to admit that I'm looking forward to the book. I have read To Kill A Mockingbird several times, including the last time just a few weeks ago.  It never gets old, and I find new treasures every time I read it.  Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book: It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.   Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.  Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s...

Celebrate Saturday: Some Good Books

I am an avid book lover. From the time I learned to read, there has been one close to me. My bedside table is piled high with the ones I just have to read next. Here are some of my favorites: In 2000, Sam Venable of Knoxville published this beautiful book. I was privileged to meet the author at the fall festival held each year at the Museum of Appalachia. Since then, I have read the rest of his books, but this one is still my favorite. Our country is blessed with an abundance of wildflowers. I have enjoyed and appreciated the ones in Alabama with the help of this book and some good teachers! Sharyn McCrumb is another author from Appalachia that I adore. Her stories transport you to the mountain peaks and hollows and the life contained there. Her Rosewood Casket book is good enough to read over and over. What can I say? I'm a Southern girl. This book should be read at least every decade. James Michener is one of the great American authors. I have devoured his books, Alaska, Chesape...