Month: July 2015

You the oldest sibling? Just say Bollocks to new research.

Live & Learn36 Comments

children, memories,

Dear Brothers (both younger, adults, but needing direction):

Remember the research on margarine vs. butter? This falls on the same playing field. Don’t believe everything you read.

ScienceDaily, July 15, 2015:
Massive study: Birth order has no meaningful effect on personality or IQ:
For those who believe that birth order influences traits like personality and intelligence, a study of 377,000 high school students offers some good news: Yes, the study found, first-borns do have higher IQs and consistently different personality traits than those born later in the family chronology. However, researchers say, the differences between first-borns and ‘later-borns’ are so small that they have no practical relevance to people’s lives.

~ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

If you missed the prior post on my Brother Rich, here’s the link; “New Research. Bull. It’s the natural order.

Notes: Photograph: Thank you Emily RC Photography

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

Live & Learn20 Comments

art-digital

Angry Owls by giovannag (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)

It’s hot. It’s time.

Live & Learn22 Comments

creamsicle-ice-cream-art

chocolate-vanilla-ice-cream-art

“Pennsylvania native Oriana Kacicek, 29, spent her early years in a nurturing environment of great art, dance, music and literature. Inspired and encouraged by her mother, also a painter, she began painting and drawing at the age of one and continued the practice throughout her teenage years. Influenced by the light and color of the European Impressionist and Dutch painters, Oriana’s hyper-realist style is infused with wit and energy. “I’ve discovered that all art forms are fundamentally the same; they are about revealing truth and beauty, demand the utmost in time and attention, and must be grounded in good technique. I aspire to create paintings that are full of joy, color and light.” (Source: Oriana Kacicek)

Source: My Modern Met

 

Feel the breath of its song

Live & Learn12 Comments

fox-sparrow-bird

A clear, sharp, whistled voice peals up from the salmonberries. I follow it back along a narrow trail and find its maker: a fox sparrow twenty feet up in an elderberry tree. Wholly engaged in its performance, the bird takes no notice as I ease in below. It looks very plain – reddish-brown on the back, speckled on the breast and sides. Perhaps most of its evolutionary energy went into perfecting this ambrosial song. Every note is like a beam of brilliant light, woven into a complex, shimmering web. And with each sound, a tiny plume of steam puffs from the sparrow’s opened beak, rings and wreathes and curls outward, and dissolves into the crystal morning air. I can almost feel the breath of its song against the bare flesh of my face and fingers. Rich phrases pour down, and the leafless thicket trembles with its own living voice.

~ Richard Nelson, The Island Within

Notes:

Sunday Morning: Be a Seashell

Live & Learn4 Comments

seashell-close-up

I take the seashell from my jeans pocket and rub my fingers across its silken, indented surface, shallow as my own open hand. This chalice, subtly shaped by some divine intelligence to allow water to flow in and out with ease, is what I aspire to become: a vessel through which feelings can pour in and spill right out again, without all the grasping and holding that obstructs the flow. Can I be as serene and simple as this bleached shell, rubbed smooth by wind and water, receiving and releasing, filling and emptying and filling again, eternally receptive to the currents of life?

~ Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment

Photograph: Crones