The Bridge

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Julia Cain

“Oh, I’ve never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor edge of danger and must be fought for — whether it’s a field, or a home, or a country.”
(The Skin of Our Teeth, 1942)

“But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
(The Bridge of San Luis Rey, 1927)

— American novelist & playwright Thornton Wilder, born today in 1897

Every Opportunity

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Julia Cain

“As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.”

“To be free … to walk the good American earth as equal citizens, to live without fear, to enjoy the fruits of our toil, to give our children every opportunity in life — that dream which we have held so long in our hearts is today the destiny that we hold in our hands.”

— artist, scholar, and activist Paul Robeson, born today in 1898

A Spark

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Julia Cain

“There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.”

— French writer Emile Zola, born today in 1840

“Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.”

— German artist Max Ernst, born today in 1891

Have a creative month, Greater Washington!

The Right Place

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Julia Cain

[…] I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

— “Birches,” American poet Robert Frost, born today in 1874

In this spirit, learn more about DC SCORES — which combines physical activity (soccer) with a Power of Poetry program to inspire young people to lead healthy lives and be engaged students.

Elsewhere

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Julia Cain

In beginning to write The Giver, I created a world that existed only in my imagination — the world of “only us, only now.” I tried to make Jonas’s world seem familiar, comfortable, and safe, and I tried to seduce the reader. I seduced myself along the way. It did feel good, that world. I got rid of all the things I fear and dislike […] One child has pointed out, in a letter, that the people in Jonas’s world didn’t even have to do dishes.

It was very, very tempting to leave it at that.

But […] if I’ve learned anything through that river of memories, it is that we can’t live in a walled world, in an “only us, only now” world where we are all the same and feel safe. We would have to sacrifice too much. The richness of color and diversity would disappear; feelings for other humans would no longer be necessary. Choices would be obsolete.

And besides, I had ridden my bike Elsewhere as a child, and liked it there, but had never been brave enough to tell anyone about it. So it was time.

— author Lois Lowry, born today in 1937
Newbery Medal acceptance speech for The Giver, June 1994

Connectings

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Julia Cain

“He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings.”
— The Town and the City

“I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down.”
— Letter, 1950

— novelist Jack Kerouac, born today in 1922

Utopia of Life

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Julia Cain

[…] William Faulkner said, “I decline to accept the end of man.” I would fall unworthy of standing in this place that was his, if I were not fully aware that the colossal tragedy he refused to recognize thirty-two years ago is now, for the first time since the beginning of humanity, nothing more than a simple scientific possibility. Faced with this awesome reality that must have seemed a mere utopia through all of human time, we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.

— Nobel Lecture of Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, born today in 1927

Each Tomorrow

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Julia Cain

A Psalm of Life

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today. […]

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

— American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born today in 1807

Following Presidents Day

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Julia Cain

I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its hundred and thirty million people are at peace among themselves; they are making their country a good neighbor among the nations. I see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.

But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens — a substantial part of its whole population — who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. […]

It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope — because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous.

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The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

If I know aught of the spirit and purpose of our Nation, we will not listen to Comfort, Opportunism, and Timidity. We will carry on.

— President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Inaugural Address (1937)

My Bounty is as Boundless

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Julia Cain

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Still making your evening plans? Look through out Cultural nonprofits for some great, local offerings of music, theater, dance, and art.

First, rehearse your song by rote
To each word a warbling note:
Hand in hand, with fairy grace,
Will we sing, and bless this place.

— Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

And yet I wish but for the thing I have:
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

— Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

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