Beautiful Day

It's a beautiful day today! Blue sky, breezy, 75 deg. I wish I could be working outside today but, alas, I will have no time.

Fun Mark Twain Quotes-He's the best!

We are all erring creatures, and mainly idiots, but God made us so and it is dangerous to criticise.
- Letter to the President of Western Union, New York, 1902

...among human beings jealousy ranks distinctly as a weakness; a trademark of small minds; a property of all small minds, yet a property which even the smallest is ashamed of; and when accused of its possession will lyingly deny it and resent the accusation as an insult.
- Letters from the Earth

The only very marked difference between the average civilized man and the average savage is that the one is gilded and the other is painted.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
- Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar

I really like this one-very pertinent to our times.

An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war.
- "Glances at History," 1906

Yay - Rain!

I took a long nap this afternoon and when I woke up it was raining so nicely. Tim said it had been raining for a couple of hours. The flowers are smiling! Weeds too, but who cares about them? Thank you, God, for the perfect steady rain!

Home front

Tim took the boys and a friend to Baltimore for Games Workshop "Games Day". I'm sure they are having a blast. They made it in about 2.5 hrs. That is good time from Richmond. The boys are such homebodies. B went to a friend's around 3:00 yesterday and came home at 5:30. Another friend called to invite him over and he became so upset. He was overwhelmed and wanted to be at home. His friend had a lot of other kids in his neighborhood from his class and I think B. was extroverted out. He needed some time with other introverts (Brother and Dad).

This morning I went to Lowe's and Strange's (greenhouse) and got some gardening stuff. I'm turning over a new leaf and keeping my gardening tools together and clean, so I got a 5 gal bucket with organizing pockets to store my stuff. Then when I walk to the bed I just bring the bucket and don't have to keep coming back for stuff. I planted some black-eyed Susans (rudbeckia) and some of those annuals I had bought a week or so ago. I forgot what they were called. I planted a ton of pink petunias this spring and I am so glad because it has been dry for about 3 weeks. Petunias are so forgiving. I can't believe I've had to water in May! I love being outside and I love flowers.

I rediscovered Ranier Rilke tonight..

"...let happy memories sustain you if your strength fails you, they are always there, and their current does not run backwards, even across foggy country it floats toward the future."
-Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

"Oh purity: Is it still possible? Is it possible still to be pure again? Is there a spring that would not be polluted by washing away one's shamefulness? Can such stained water still show itself in nature, which knows waste and ordure, but no evil, nothing opposed to herself, for she encompasses even what is most alien within her."
-Rilke and Benvenuta: an Intimate Correspondence

"Oh, how I believe in it, in life. Not that which makes up our time, but that other, the life of little things, the life of animals and of the great plains."
-Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

"...in life there is an immanent justice that fulfills itself slowly but without fail."
-Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

"Life is very singularly made to suprise us (where it does not utterly appall us)."
-Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke

"I could give you no advice but this: to go into yourself and to explore the depths where your life wells forth."
-Letters to a Young Poet

And there is so much more. I haven't been writing because I don't think anyone reads my blog. I hope you do because these quotes from Rilke are jewels. Blessings!

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | The role of religion in the Deep South

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | The role of religion in the Deep South

This is a really special article about racial healing and true Christianity at work. And it is especially nice because the BBC reported on it. It's nice to read something nice about the US from a foreign reporter. It is a pleasure to have a nice thing reported upon. I'm all warm and fuzzy now. Hee Hee!

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there. Mine has been a blessing.

Violence Begets Violence

I saw this on the NY Times website, I think I saw the headline elseware.

MILITARY's report of SEXUAL ASSAULT CASES Military investigators received 1,700 reports of sexual assault in 2004 involving at least one service member, the Pentagon said. This includes cases in which a service member was either an alleged assailant or a victim. It is the first year the military has tracked this statistic. But the number of military members claiming they were victims has been tracked. The data showed 1,275 cases involved at least one member of the military saying he or she was a victim of sexual assault in 2004, up from 1,012 in 2003. (AP)

Religious Tolerence

Here's a quote from religioustolerance.org -

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Blaise Pascal

Here's another one - (religious intolerance?)

You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them" Pat Robertson, Fundamentalist Christian tele-minister.

Here's another good one 'Remember the Golden Rule'

Christianity's main rule of human behavior, the Golden Rule, tells its followers to treat other people as they would wish to be treated. This is called the "Ethic of Reciprocity" and is found in various forms in almost all other world religions. Yet, even a casual examination of today's newspaper will show that religion is often a cause of intolerance, hatred, mass crimes against humanity, and genocide. In the past decade, such behavior has occurred in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Cyprus, Nigeria, Sudan, Middle East, Iraq/Iran, Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Philippines, and other countries. Even the United States is not free of religious hatred. In recent decades, there were three remarkable events -- all perpetrated by Fundamentalist Christians: a lynching of a Wiccan, a call for the napalming of all Wiccans, and an attempted mass stoning of demonstrators advocating for religious freedom.

This is something I have been thinking about for a long time. I am glad to find something about it on the internet.