cleithart

At last

As the French say, “Christmas is talked of so long it comes at last.

Make Your Own Contemporaries

From So You Want to Publish a Magazine? by Angharad Lewis

Moscow [Idaho] has, according to reliable figures, a greater number of church people than any other city of like size in the United States.
Hiram Taylor French, writing in 1914

They Dream of Mars

RAY BRADBURY But as it turns out—and I love to say it because it upsets everyone terribly—[Edgar Rice] Burroughs is probably the most influential writer in the entire history of the world.

INTERVIEWER Why do you think that?

BRADBURY By giving romance and adventure to a whole generation of boys, Burroughs caused them to go out and decide to become special. That’s what we have to do for everyone, give the gift of life with our books. Say to a girl or boy at age ten, Hey, life is fun! Grow tall! I’ve talked to more biochemists and more astronomers and technologists in various fields, who, when they were ten years old, fell in love with John Carter and Tarzan and decided to become something romantic. Burroughs put us on the moon. All the technologists read Burroughs. I was once at Caltech with a whole bunch of scientists and they all admitted it. Two leading astronomers—one from Cornell, the other from Caltech—came out and said, Yeah, that’s why we became astronomers. We wanted to see Mars more closely.
via

Free Hand

And proud of it.

Bad roads, good people; good roads, bad people.
Mama Espinoza (via)

When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic, I cannot afford to be less than an artist.
Flannery O’Connor

Rage Against the Machine

The sensitive person’s hostility to the machine is in one sense unrealistic, because of the obvious fact that the machine has come to stay. But as an attitude of mind there is a great deal to be said for it. The machine has got to be accepted, but it is probably better to accept it rather as one accepts a drug—that is, grudgingly and suspiciously. Like a drug, the machine is useful, dangerous and habit-forming. The oftener one surrenders to it the tighter its grip becomes. You have only to look about you at this moment to realise with what sinister speed the machine is getting us into its power.
George Orwell

Ten Years

Samson He Weak

Samson be strong past every other man.
He be strong in him foot
He be strong in him leg
He be strong in him hip
He be strong in him back
He be strong in him arm
But—oh!
Samson he be weak,
He be weak for the woman palaver.
Lorenz B. Graham, How God Fix Jonah

This is from a book that retells Bible stories in West African dialect. The stories are fun, the illustrations phenomenal.

Elisha heals the Shunammite's son — Source