“You Gave Me Dignity”

Jimmy Freeman and Tommy White at the scouting jamboree. Slept in the same sleeping bag. “Color didn’t rub off either one of them.”
When Jimmy returned to visit Pop he told him, “You gave me dignity. I can stand up with anyone and be proud.”

Sunflower Journal Led Me to Sunflower Festival

Sunflowers grace the front of my journal and now that I’ve come and gone from the Mountainaire sunflower festival I notice this correspondence.
The Heritage House sitting room/parlor. Silver tea set on oval tea table. Golden light filtered through curtains. parquet floor.A sense of peace, contentment and fulfillment, satisfaction from completing my New Mexico visit. So [...]

Scott Sharot’s Performance Tips

“Live Poet’s Society.”
Exposure. Feel safe. Choose your audience.
Surprise pink special light–a theatre light that makes you look good.
Skating on fast ice.
Janet: “I feel terrible before, during, and after. Don’t know why I do it.”
(a shame attack?)

Hi, Honey! I’m Home! …as Civil Rights Dreaming Comes Into Its Own

And, what a homecoming it is…with the athletic olympics ending and the political olympics getting more heightened with the conventions in full gear.
On this day in 1963, 200,000 people participated in a peaceful civil rights rally in Washington, D.C., where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in front [...]

Parents Transfer Country Upbringing to City Life

I talked to a 6-year old girl after watching TV. She said, “TV sucks my brains out.”

I talked to parents who grew up in the country and small towns. They told me:
1) They’d identified core values they received through their country and small town childhoods.
2)They committed to transferring those values
3) They’d updated these [...]

From Floods to Flames…series on Mississippi Floodstage starts tomorrow just as I go towards the firestorms.

For those of you who know your geography and follow the news, you know that for the past month we’ve had flooding here in Missouri and Southwestern Illinois. Some of you have emailed me asking for updates since I haven’t posted about the flooding on Riehlife. My feeling was that I wanted to wait until [...]

July 4th poem: “I am the Declaration of Independence,” by Genie Keller

July 4, 1976, the United States celebrated its Bicentennial. In 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. As the N Y Times board blog says: “It makes sense to think of the Fourth of July as the start of a season and not as a one-day holiday moored off by itself. But [...]

Stuck in Stuff? A Guy named Dave can help.

Ready to get rid of all that “stuff”? A guy named Dave Bruno has some great ideas for you on how to “reduce, refuse, rejigger” at his blog & and a cause “Stuck in Stuff”.
He regularly runs a 100 Things Challenge.
This way of living—”quieting the noise of consumerism”—is the way I was raised….taken to [...]

Calculate Gas Prices for Summer Travels!

Riehlife contributor Judy Tart sends this gas calculator from an AAA website. It allows you to calculate gas prices for a trip anywhere in the US, but only calculates between large cities. It does help compare between specific models of cars, which is very informative.
Judy calculated the gas cost for a round trip from [...]

Walk Score…fight rising gas prices…Walk!

My friend Judy Tart (woman of wide-ranging intelligence and heart) has appeared on Riehlife several times in the Village Commons category. She is, in effect, one of the contributors to the Riehlife Blog-Magazine.
Today she writes about a site that gives you a WALK SCORE.
“You enter your address (or where you are thinking of moving), [...]