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America’s Two National Goddesses by Barbara Ardinger
I bet almost no one knows this secret: the United States is being watched over by two goddesses! One of them stands on top of the Capitol dome in Washington, D.C. The other stands on an island in New York harbor.
The goddess standing above our congressional building is named Libertas, or Freedom. She’s a Roman civic goddess whose sisters are Concordia and Pax. Although the Romans hardly ever experienced freedom, civic harmony, or peace, they always kept their eyes on the possibilities. Libertas was sometimes merged with Jupiter, sometimes with Feronia, who was originally an Etruscan or Sabine goddess of agriculture or fire. In Rome, Feronia became the goddess of freed slaves. Libertas is shown on Roman coins as a matron in flowing dress and wearing either a wreath of laurel leaves or a tall pilleus, which is called a “liberty cap” and looks like a witch hat…
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a pinch of morphine and a whiskey chaser
I have no idea what this is – have never heard of the author or the title – but just reading this snippet makes me want to read more. THIS is how I want to write.
Nyx sold her womb somewhere between Punjai and Faleen, on the edge of the desert.
Drunk, but no longer bleeding, she pushed into a smoky cantina just after dark and ordered a pinch of morphine and a whiskey chaser. She bet all of her money on a boxer named Jaks, and lost it two rounds later when Jaks hit the floor like an antique harem girl.
Nyx lost every coin, a wad of opium, and the wine she’d gotten from the butchers as a bonus for her womb. But she did get Jaks into bed, and – loser or not – in the desert after dark that was something.
Kameron Hurley
God’s War
seduce me
Me too … me too
Sleep tries to seduce me by promising a more reasonable tomorrow.
Elizabeth Smart
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Why Little Women still matters: A review of Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy by Anne Boyd Rioux
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of a classic read by millions around the globe. Written by Louisa May Alcott, a writer under duress fulfilling the assignment of an insistent publisher, Little Women, in the words of Anne Boyd Rioux is the “paradigmatic book about growing up, especially for the female half of the population.” Her latest book, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters, tells the story of Alcott’s enduring work as well as its impact on the lives of millions of readers.
Unlike most readers of Little Women, I could not seem to grasp the significance of this book because of my focus on the Alcotts as historical figures. I did not read Little Women for the first time until I was fifty-five so I never had that childhood experience of the story. I…
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No Sympathy for the Devil. Evil Doesn’t Deserve Civility.
For what it’s worth, I always hated that song.
via No Sympathy for the Devil. Evil Doesn’t Deserve Civility.
writing
A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann
Essays of Three Decades
Hobbit House, New Zealand
Imagine living here
I’ve always lived in books
These days I can’t get over being old. It’s new to me, that my life like a book has to end. And because I’ve always lived in books, lines and phrases others have written stay close to me. Shakespeare’s ‘Love is not love/ Which alters when it alteration finds’ spoke as I tried to grasp how fragile a very old marriage is.
Myra Shapiro
Afterword to The Alteration of Love
#WorldRefugeeDay 2018
“you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land”
“Home,” by Warsan Shire
In the past few years I have had the privilege of meeting and hearing stories from many refugees and displaced people in different parts of the world. From the Sindh region of Pakistan to Northern Iraq, these are people who live out a stubborn resilience and will to not only survive, but thrive.
Brave.Resilient.Fierce.Tenacious.Creative.Strong. These are just a few of the adjectives I would use to describe the people who I’ve met. The stories I have heard include tragedy, humor, and everything in between. It’s a tapestry of the human spirit and a representation of the image of God in each woman, man, and child.
In the midst of the world wide crises another refugee/migrant crisis has been created on the borders of the…
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silverapplequeen 