Awwwe I like a lot of these! Thank you, missadventurous!
Here's a quote from a poem by Sara Teasdale (I can't think of what the name of the poem is, I just heard it in a musical setting once: "Lover of beauty, knightliest and best; when I think of you, I am at rest."
“Thinking is hard. Therefore most people judge.” - C G Jung
@QueensCurryPuff I love that!❤️
“Vision of the Future" published by German margarine company, Echte Wagner in 1930. It came with the following caption: "Wireless Private Phone and Television. Everyone now has their own transmitter and receiver and can communicate with friends and relatives. But the television technology has also improved so much that people can speak to each other in real time. Transmitters and receivers are no longer bound to their location, but are always placed in a box of the size of a camera."
If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes to wash the dishes.” What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can’t wash the dishes, the chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future—and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life. ~Thich Nhat Hanh
(Book: The Miracle of Mindfulness https://amzn.to/3OGcWv7)
(Art: Painting by Anna Ancher)
Mushrooms are fascinating organisms that have many shapes, colors, and sizes. They belong to the kingdom of fungi, which is different from plants and animals. Fungi do not have chlorophyll, so they cannot make their own food from sunlight. Instead, they decompose organic matter and absorb nutrients from their environment.
The main part of a mushroom is the mycelium, which is a network of fungal threads that grows inside or on top of different materials, such as wood, straw, or compost. The mushroom that we see is only a fruiting body that the mycelium makes when it wants to spread its spores.
Some mushrooms have edible fruiting bodies, such as button mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, and oyster mushrooms. Others are poisonous, such as death cap mushrooms and fly agaric mushrooms. And some are medicinal, such as reishi mushrooms and lion’s mane mushrooms.
Mushroom cultivators use agar, a gel-like substance from red algae, to grow the mycelium in petri dishes and watch how it develops. Agar helps them to isolate pure cultures of mycelium and avoid contamination from other microbes.
By using agar, mushroom cultivators can clone mushrooms, germinate spores, and experiment with different strains and species.
Text credit: Earth Unreal Image credit: Aimee Cornwell
It is widely believed that in the past, fans were used for relying messages. Drawing the fan across the cheek supposedly meant ‘I love you’, while twirling it in the left hand signalled ‘We are watched," and dropping it was a suggestion to just be friends.
Duvelleroy, a fan maker and retailer founded in Paris in 1827, published a leaflet explaining the language behind the use of the fan. It has been theorised that this so-called fan etiquette was invented in order to boost the sale of fans in the 19th century, after they had fallen out of fashion following the French Revolution.
Via: https://www.sothebys.com/.../the-secret-language-of-fans
I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. I have tried this experiment a thousand times and I have never been disappointed. The more I look at a thing, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I want to see. It is like peeling an onion. There is always another layer, and another, and another. And each layer is more beautiful than the last.
This is the way I look at the world. I don't see it as a collection of objects, but as a vast and mysterious organism. I see the beauty in the smallest things, and I find wonder in the most ordinary events. I am always looking for the hidden meaning, the secret message. I am always trying to understand the mystery of life. I know that I will never understand everything, but that doesn't stop me from trying. I am content to live in the mystery, to be surrounded by the unknown. I am content to be a seeker, a pilgrim, a traveler on the road to nowhere. ~Henry Miller
(Book: Black Spring https://amzn.to/3q66B1C)
Don’t Hassle the Hoff
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GNU Sir Terry Pratchett
When Tina Turner left her first husband - who was also her boss, captor, and brutal tormentor - she snuck out of their Dallas hotel room with a single thought in her mind: "The way out is through the door."
From there she fled across the midnight freeway, semi-trucks careening past her, with 36 cents and a Mobil gas card in her pocket. As soon as she decided to walk out that door, she owned nothing else.
When she filed for divorce, she made an unusual request. She didn't want anything: not the song rights, not the cars, not the houses, not the money. All she wanted was the stage name he gave her - Tina - and her married name - Turner. This was the name by which the world had come to know her, and keeping it was her only chance to salvage her career.
Things could have gone a lot of ways from there. She could have labored in obscurity for decades, maybe making records on small labels to be prized by vinyl connoisseurs in Portland. She could have stayed in Vegas, where she first went to get her chops back up, and worked as a nostalgia act. And, of course, given what she had been through, she might have ... not made it. What happened instead is that Tina Turner became the biggest global rock star of the 80s. I'm old enough to barely remember this, but if you aren't, it was like this: The Rolling Stones would headline a stadium one day, and the next day it would be Tina Turner.
A middle-aged Black woman - she became a rock star at 42! - sitting atop the 1980s like it was her throne. She managed this because of whatever rare stuff she was made of (this is a woman whose label gave her two weeks to record her solo debut, Private Dancer, which went five times platinum); because she decided to speak publicly about her abusive marriage and forge her own identity, and in doing so give hope and courage to countless women; and also because - in a perhaps unlikely twist for a girl from Nutbush, Tennessee - she had her practice of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism, to which she credited her survival. She remained devout until the end.
Tina's second marriage - to her, her only marriage - was to Edwin Bach, a Swiss music executive 16 years her junior. Of him, she said, "Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, has never been the least bit intimidated by my career, my talents, or my fame."
In 2016, after a barrage of health problems, Tina's kidneys began to fail. A Swiss citizen by then, she had started preparing for assisted suicide when her husband stepped in. According to Tina, he said, "He didn't want another woman, or another life."
He gave her one of his kidneys, buying her the remainder of her time on this earth and perhaps closing a cycle which took her from a man who inflicted injury upon her to a man willing to inflict injury upon himself to save her from harm.
Born into a share-cropping family as Anna Mae Bullock in 1939, she died Tina Turner in a palatial Swiss estate: the queen of rock 'n roll; a storm of a performer with a wildcat-fierce voice; a dancer of visceral, spine-tingling potency and ability; a beauty for the ages; a survivor of terrible abuse and an advocate for others in similar situations; an author and actress; a devout Buddhist; a wife and mother; a human being of rare talent and perseverance who, through her transcendent brilliance, became a legend.
Credit: Will Stenberg
"...he that knows all that Learning ever writ, knows only this -- that he knows nothing yet."
-Aphra Ben, Emperor of the Moon
If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.
Slavoj Žižek
Did you know that carrots are a biennial? This means that if you leave a carrot to overwinter in the ground, the following season, it will flower and give you a Bajillion seeds. Leave the flower heads on the plant until they are completely brown and dried, and you will never have to buy carrot seed again!
If, like me, you harvest the seed flowers without containing the flower heads in a bag or other means of catching them, you will inevitably drop 1000 or so in the garden surrounding your harvest spot. This is a great way to plant early season carrot seeds without having to do a thing!