Praying Hands

Kneeling and looking very closely, one sees the two lower leaves on each stalk gently approach one another like little hands that were going to clap but thought better of it, and at last lie folded quietly as though for prayer. --Anonymous

Source: Thoughts from the Mountains (Heartland Samplers, Inc., 1992)

Praying Hands by Albrecht Durer

Can You Solve This Brainteaser?

"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin." So begins the children's book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926).

Which letter in the word BEAR can be added to the word ANIMAL to form, when the letters are rearranged, the seven-letter first name of the wife of a president of the United States? What are that first lady's first and last names?

English author of Winnie-the-Pooh in 1922.

(The seven letters of that author's name can be rearranged

to form the first name of a first lady of the United States.)

The Final Say

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars.
       HENRY VAN DYKE (1852-1933)

Come, everyone! Clap your hands!
    Shout to God with joyful praise!
For the Lord Most High is awesome.
    He is the great King of all the earth.
       THE BIBLE
       Psalm 47:1-2 (New Living Translation)

A Quotation from "John of the Mountains"

Here is a quotation from Scottish-born American naturalist John Muir (1838-1914).

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

Source: Thoughts from the Mountains (Heartland Samplers, Inc., 1992)

John Muir c. 1902

Special Knowledge about Daisies

The first paragraph in a letter that American poet Anne Sexton wrote to American poet Stanley Kunitz on February 17, 1971, reads: "I have special knowledge about daisies. They last and last as both you and I will. They are my favorite flower. There is something innocent and vulnerable about them as if they thanked you for admiring them."

Photo credit: Monty Gilmer

Copyright 2019 Monty Gilmer. All rights reserved.

Here is a short poem, a quatrain, about daisies from English poet Christina Rossetti's Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872).

     Where innocent bright-eyed daisies are,
        With blades of grass between,
     Each daisy stands up like a star
        Out of a sky of green.

Below is a video of American singer and songwriter Jud Strunk singing "Daisy a Day," a love song for which he wrote both the lyrics and the music.

An untitled poem ("My heart leaps up when I behold") by William Wordsworth

[My heart leaps up when I behold]

My heart leaps up when I behold
    A rainbow in the sky;
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old.
    Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

English poet