Cryptic Wolfe

...I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Excerpt From The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Jan 1

tastefullyoffensive:

[via]

(via skywritingg)

aspergersissues:

Awesome t-shirt I saw.

(via semblanceofgrace)

kohenari:

“I donate to charity mostly for the tax breaks and I’m going to donate less now that the deal looks worse for me” is probably near the top of the list of things rich people would do better just keeping to themselves.

(via pantslessprogressive)

Dec 17

Time to profile white men?

“But the point here is that those tempered and nuanced conversations are only able to happen because the demographic at the center of it all is white guys. That is the one group in America that gets to avoid being referred to in aggregate negative terms (and gets to avoid being unduly profiled by this nation’s security apparatus), which means we are defaulting to a much more dispassionate and sane conversation — one that treats the perpetrators as deranged individuals, rather than typical and thus stereotype-justifying representatives of an entire demographic.”

Dec 16

lati-negros:

feminist77:

Pretty sure I already reblogged this but what the hell. Love this campaign.

campaign bringing awareness to homeless youth

(via stfuconservatives)

southcarolinaboy:

These are pretty interesting, i guess

(via skywritingg)

(via damnthatswhatshesaid)

skywritingg:

““Depression is humiliating. It turns intelligent, kind people into zombies who can’t wash a dish or change their socks. It affects the ability to think clearly, to feel anything, to ascribe value to your children, your lifelong passions, your relative good fortune. It scoops out your normal healthy ability to cope with bad days and bad news, and replaces it with an unrecognizable sludge that finds no pleasure, no delight, no point in anything outside of bed. You alienate your friends because you can’t comport yourself socially, you risk your job because you can’t concentrate, you live in moderate squalor because you have no energy to stand up, let alone take out the garbage. You become pathetic and you know it. And you have no capacity to stop the downward plunge. You have no perspective, no emotional reserves, no faith that it will get better. So you feel guilty and ashamed of your inability to deal with life like a regular human, which exacerbates the depression and the isolation. If you’ve never been depressed, thank your lucky stars and back off the folks who take a pill so they can make eye contact with the grocery store cashier. No one on earth would choose the nightmare of depression over an averagely turbulent normal life. It’s not an incapacity to cope with day to day living in the modern world. It’s an incapacity to function. At all. If you and your loved ones have been spared, every blessing to you. If depression has taken root in you or your loved ones, every blessing to you, too. No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. You cannot imagine what it takes to feign normalcy, to show up to work, to make a dentist appointment, to pay bills, to walk your dog, to return library books on time, to keep enough toilet paper on hand, when you are exerting most of your capacity on trying not to kill yourself. Depression is real. Just because you’ve never had it doesn’t make it imaginary. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart. Judge not lest ye be judged.””

— (via fiuactiveminds)

Why We Let the School Shootings Continue

Our son Galen, who was 18, and a teacher were killed on Dec. 14, 1992, by a deranged student who went on a shooting rampage at Simon’s Rock College in western Massachusetts. Galen was a gifted kid, and Simon’s Rock seemed like the perfect place for him. He’d never been happier. The killer had a vastly different reaction to this environment. After run-ins with college officials, he vowed to “bring the college to its knees.” He bought an SKS at a gun shop down the road, and obtained oversize clips and ammunition through the mail.

In the wake of Galen’s murder, I wrote a book about the shooting. In it I suggested that we view gun crime as a public health issue, much the same as smoking or pesticides. I spent a number of years attending rallies, signing petitions, writing letters and making speeches, but eventually I gave up. Gun control, such a live issue in the “early” days of school shootings, inexplicably became a third-rail issue for politicians.

I came to realize that, in essence, this is the way we in America want things to be. We want our freedom, and we want our firearms, and if we have to endure the occasional school shooting, so be it. A terrible shame, but hey — didn’t some guy in China just do the same thing with a knife?

(via skoomabooty-deactivated20130413)

crackerhell:

goodstuffhappenedtoday:

How A Middle-School Principal Persuaded Students To Come To School

by David Kestenbaum

Shawn Rux took over as principal of MS 53, a New York City middle school, last year. At the time, 50 or 60 kids were absent every day. You could understand why they stayed away: The school was chaos.

Twenty-two teachers had quit, the entire office staff had quit, and hundreds of kids had been suspended. The school was given a grade of F from the city’s department of education.

“It was in a bad place,” Rux says.

Rux decided he needed to create incentives for kids to come to school. Incentives that were more obvious to middle-school kids than, “If you come to school you’ll be better off 20 years from now.”

He handed out raffle tickets to anyone who showed up to school on time. One of the prizes was an Xbox. And he threw in an element of randomness: The first kids in line when the doors opened might get 20 tickets.

It worked. Kids started showing up early.

“It was … like, ‘Get out of my way, I’m trying to get into school,’ ” Rux says. “It was nice.”

Rux also created his own currency. He called it Rux Bux. Teachers hand them out when kids are well behaved. They can be traded in for school supplies, or special lunches. A sixth-grader named Wander Rodriguez is trying to save up 5,000 Rux Bux — enough for a personal shopping spree with Rux.

The principal also stands outside school every morning, greeting the students as they show up. This recognition is another, subtler incentive to come to school.

“I like this school,” Wander Rodriguez says. “They treat me like home, they treat me nice, they always give me stuff. … They always say ‘hi’ in the mornings.”

The school went from an F to a C. Daily attendance went up to over 90 percent. Then the hurricane hit.

The school is in Far Rockaway, Queens — one of the areas hardest hit by the storm. Some kids’ homes were destroyed. One student who stayed at home through the storm told a teacher, “My apartment complex was in the middle of the ocean.” Rux’s car was destroyed. The first floor of his house was flooded.

After the storm, after school started up again, Rux’s goal was to get attendance back to 90 percent. Every day, his staff texts him the attendance numbers. The day I visited last week, 89.2 percent of students attended school. Close, but not close enough for Rux.

The storm has been tough on everyone, he says. But that’s no excuse. Kids have to be in school.

not going to see this man in no news nowhere

(via 40h4error)

Dec 9

(via shortformblog)

thedailywhat:

GIF of the Day: Death of Pebbles

Original footage filmed by Jan Svankmajer / GIF created by Valentin

So Friday I came home from an office outing in the early afternoon and found I had been robbed. Which totally sucks.

← Older posts Page 1 of 233