Fun loving

"Never say 'no' to adventures. Always say 'yes,' otherwise you'll lead a very dull life." -Ian Fleming
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Early Morning

"So many want to be lifted by song and dancing, and this morning it is easy to understand. I write in the sound of chirping birds hidden in the almond trees, the almonds still green and thriving in the foliage." -Linda Gregg
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Toe Talk

"He held the object up. 'That,' he grinned, 'would be your big toenail.'
I was mortified, then amused. How could I lose a toenail without knowing? ... He laughed and asked if he could keep it. I guess that's the kind of trophy a podiatry student keeps around the dorm." -Ultramarathon Man Dean Karnazes
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Elevation

"It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is always better from the top." -Arnold Bennett
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Livin'

"Why are we born? We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live." -Louis Terkel
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Need to Hydrate

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So True

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And Proud of It

Wondering if this kid's parents made him/her write this, or if it was voluntary?
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Seen at the Library

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Self

"The first person you have to inspire every day is yourself." -Marc Parent
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Piles

"Words are like leaves and where they most abound / much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found." -Alexander Pope
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Short lived

"Most dreams die a slow death. They're conceived in a moment of passion, with the prospect of endless possibility, but often languish and are not pursued with the same heartfelt intensity as when first born. Slowly, subtly, a dream becomes elusive and ephemeral. People who've let their own dreams die become pessimists and cynics." -Dean Karnazes, Ultramarathon Man.
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Go Forth

"You must always make the path for yourself... decide now to choose the hard path that leads to the life and the world that you want." -Stephen Colbert.

Also, good WaPo article here.
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Happy Graduation!

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X Marks the Spot

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Hope

"I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven." -Louis "Studs" Terkel
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A Classic

Watched this last night.
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A New

"I wish that there were some wonderful place
In the Land of Beginning Again.
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches
And all of our poor selfish grief
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door
and never put on again." -Louisa Fletcher
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Road Trip

"The dust of not sleeping drifts in my mouth, and five or six miles slur by uncounted." -William Matthews
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Literary

"I start every day by reading a little something." -Rosellen Brown
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Jealousy

"Jealousy is a terrible thing. It keeps you up at night, it demands tremendous energy in order to remain alive, and so you have to want to feed it, nurture it -- and by so wanting, you have to acknowledge that you are a bitter, petty person. It changes you. It changes the way you view the world; minor irritations become major catastrophes; celebrations become trials." -The Aviator's Wife
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ASME on Ice

"If you're not going to take a tequila shot, you might want to consider another place of employment." -a certain publisher of a certain ASME-winning magazine.
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Wild side

"I often wanted to be bolder than I was, and as I've got older it's bothered me less what people think ... I've been able to be much more outrageous, really." -author Alan Bennett
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New Balance on SNL

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Unique Nomenclature

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Old School

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The Bright Side

"Suffering, however, can be experienced as a curse or a blessing; the luckiest is the one who can experience it as a blessing." -Carolyn Forche
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Love Will Always Stay

From yesterday evening's hike to the natural arch.
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Grow a Beard

What is your biological age? Click here.
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Canyon Rim

"Running should be a lifelong activity. Approach it patiently and intelligently, and it will reward you for a long, long time." -Michael Sargent
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Stupendousness

"Yet how much we love one another.
It seems a miracle. Not mystical, nothing occult,
just the ordinary improbability that occurs 
over and over, the stupendousness
of life." -Hayden Carruth
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Boston Strong

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Two Weeks Later

Beautiful cover from Boston magazine.
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Words

"The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Old Fashioned

"...in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it." -Harper Lee
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But I Do Like Coffee

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Buh Bye

"Can you unfriend someone on Facebook without them knowing it?" -the editor of a certain magazine. Clearly, being up-to-date on social media was not a requirement for his job (unfortunately).
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Coexist

"Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake." -Robert Penn Warren
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Better Keep Drinking

"By drinking a cup more coffee than usual, people in a Tufts University study increased their ability to spot grammatical errors." -March issue of Family Circle magazine
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Like

"...and when the luck begins, it's like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything." -Alice Oswald
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Boston

"For Boston's not a capital,
And Boston's not a place;
Rather I think that Boston is
A sort of state of grace.
The people's lives in Boston
Are flowers blown in glass;
On Commonwealth, on Beacon,
They bow and speak and pass.
No man grows old in Boston,
No lady ever dies;
No youth is ever wicked,
No infant ever cries.
No orthodox Bostonian
Is lonely or dejected,
For everyone in Boston
With everyone's connected.
So intricate the pattern,
The barroom of the Ritz
Becomes a jigsaw puzzle
Each life a piece that fits."
-excerpt from "Boston is Like No Other Place in the World, Only More So," by E.B. White.
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Ghosts

"But when we are searching for an example of what we no longer have, we see it everywhere." -The Cat's Table.
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Math Minded

"My parents sent me to Wellesley. Halfway through I went to talk to the dean. I said why do I have to take courses I'm not interested in? I want to take math and physics. She said: 'You belong at MIT.' So I went to MIT for a year." -conversation with a little old lady in the locker room at the aquatic center.
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Run On

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Copley Square

"At that time, they heard a low, loud rumble -- almost like a thunder clap. They immediately looked at each other and then at the sky ... but nothing." -short recap of Monday's tragic events.
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Glad That's Over

"I constantly remind myself that resting takes confidence. Anyone can train like a mad man but to embrace rest and to allow all the hard training to come out takes mental strength." -Ryan Hall
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Marathon Monday

By a playground near our hotel in Boston.
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Eh

"It's just a run-of-the-mill book, and the awful thing is that it is absolutely the best I can do." -John Steinbeck on The Grapes of Wrath.
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Monticello

"From breakfast, or noon at the latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, Attending to My Farm or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, and affairs." -another good one by T.J., who's birthday is today.
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En Vogue

"In manners of style, swim with the current." -Thomas Jefferson
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Swedish Newspapers

Where was this when I wrote my thesis?!
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Powerhouse

"You have incredible calves." -a woman I ran with over the weekend. Thanks?!
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March Madness

"Whit, you may have noticed that you had the dubious distinction of coming in last place in the Hines NCAA tournament pool...but the good news is that the last place finisher gets his or her $20 back -- so you actually won! (but I'm keeping the $20)." -email from my dad
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Spring

"How beautiful the blossoms are -- emblems of the resilience of life." -Louise Gluck

Photo of the tree in our backyard (yes, in the desert!)
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Half full

Good advice from a professor...
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Sharp Shooter

Photo above by Annie Liebovitz of Annie Oakley's little heart target at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.
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Pepé Le Pew

"After this, I have to go to Animal Control to see about trapping a skunk." -woman ahead of me in line at the post office. Sounds about right for Los Alamos.


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Memories

"When the past is recaptured by the imagination, breath is put back into life." -Marguerite Duras
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A Squirrel's Ear

"...it was time to plant corn on our farm when the leaves on the bur oak tree were the size of a squirrel's ear. And so that would be April." -from an NPR story on the Big Tree in McBaine, Mo.
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The Life

"I loved, I was loved, my health was good...I was happy and I confessed it to myself." -Giacomo Casanova
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Sunny skies

"Something new in the air today, perhaps the struggle of the bud to become a leaf. Nearly two weeks late it invaded the air but then what is two weeks to life herself?" -Jim Harrison
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Happy Easter

1911.

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Piggies

What's in between Greek and Celtic?
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Pure

"A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity  At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes." -R.S. Thomas
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Now

"What is love? 'tis not hereafter,
Present mirth hath present laughter:
What's to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty:
Youth's a stuff will not endure."
-Shakespeare
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=

Also: good NPR story here.

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Sometimes It's Hard

"My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn." -Louis Adamic
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Early Mornings

"Awake the mind's hopeless so 
At a quarter to six I rise
And run 2 or 3 miles in
The pristine air of a dark
And windy winter morning
With light rain falling
And no sound but the pad
Of my sneakers on the asphalt
And the calls of the owls in
The cypress trees on Mesa Road
And when I get back you're
Still asleep under the warm covers
Because love is here to stay
It's another day and we're both still alive." -Tom Clark
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Live Bravely

"I have as much freedom as I take." -Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal
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Another Co-op Video!

See the original here:


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Not Exactly Promising...

"The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer ... Make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repair but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you." -a recently discovered letter from Oscar Wilde to an aspiring writer.
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Prepsters

"I went and got khaki pants, a crew neck sweater, button down shirt, topsiders and a headband...ready to walk around." -Katie Couric and Tina Fey talk about attending UVA. Wahoowa.
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Stretch

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Bold Boulders

Not sure which is more surprising: that boulders is misspelled, or that boulders have character.

Seen on Diamond Drive in Los Alamos.
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Dinner

"I know you're happy in the kitchen and the meal you're cooking is the best meal we ever ate together. I know  you would scald yourself and not complain. I feel the greatest peace and joy sitting in the dining room listening to you rustling about..." -Henry Miller
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SW

"The wind whips through the canyons of the American Southwest, and there is no one to hear it but us - a reminder of the 40,000 generations of thinking men and women who preceeded us, about whom we know almost nothing, upon whom our civilization is based." -Dr. Carl Sagan
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St. Pat's

"Here's to you and yours and to mine and ours. And if mine and ours ever come across to you and yours, I hope you and yours will do as much for mine and ours as mine and ours have done for you and yours."
-Irish toast
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Just Gum

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Change

"Well, that was life. Gladness and pain...hope and fear...and change. Always change! You could not help it. You had to let the old go and take the new to your heart...learn to love it and then let it go in turn. Spring, lovely as it was, must yield to summer and summer lose itself in autumn. -Anne of Ingleside.
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Holy Cow

33 days?! Yikes.
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Context

"Somewhere along the path, running became the canvas upon which I documented my life." -Dagny Scott

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Little by Little

"But, you know, you put an ounce in a bucket each day, you get a quart." -writer John McPhee
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Amends

"It was easy to forgive, so much harder to be forgiven." -Stephen Dunn
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Fascination

"You would fall quite flat before her charm and personality ... she dresses quite atrociously. At first you think she is plain; then a sort of spiritual beauty imposes itself on you, and you find a fascination in watching her ... she is both detached and human, silent till she wants to say something, and then says it supremely well." -Vita Sackville-West's description of Virginia Woolf.


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Free

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is not reason not to follow your heart." -Steve Jobs


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Subtle

"We had a conversation years ago," [Sally] Jenkins says. "I asked Pat if she was a feminist. And she said, 'No, I'm not a sign carrier.' And I said, 'Well, I know what you are -- you're a subversive.' And she said, 'That's exactly right.' I think Pat took the concept of athletics that was used to define confidence and excellence for men, and stole it and gave it to women." -an NPR story about legendary Tennessee basketball coach Pat Summitt and her struggle with Alzheimer's.
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Go go go

"Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person's physical, emotional, and mental states." - Carol Welch
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. , : ; !

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Like

"Natural disasters are great for social media," -conclusion of our editorial meeting (our Facebook page got more likes after our two recent snow storms).
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Vocation

"Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing -- I suppose that's what a vocation means -- at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction." -Robert Lowell
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T/F

True/False weekend ... Stories We Tell is among the best so far (five down, lots more to go).
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Report from the West

"I won't listen to the weather report. I'll let the question of snow hang. Answers only dull the senses." -Tom Hennen
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Love

"First -- if you are in love -- that's a good thing -- that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.
Second -- There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you -- of kindness and consideration and respect -- not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had." -John Steinbeck in a letter to his teenage son.
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Cross Country

"...and the golden time in the West was one dream." -John Steinbeck
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Remote

"The morning is the conscious time, but the afternoon is a time in which we should deal much more with the hinterland of the consciousness." -Anthony Burgess
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Late Night

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Perception

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." -Anais Nin
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Dependent

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Summit

"It's easier to go down a hill than up it, but the view is much better at the top." -Henry Ward Beecher
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Self

"Running is the classical road to self-consciousness, self-awareness, and self-reliance." -Noel Carroll, Irish middle distance runner
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Happy Place

Maybe this explains why we eloped in Napa?!

(Also, go Santa Fe -- No. 4 most happy city!). Read the full article from The Atlantic here.



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Litany

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Presidents' Day

"It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing." -Thomas Jefferson
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Distance

"I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is really just a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become." -Vita Sackville-West
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A Rose

"For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all." -Shakespeare
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Read

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Happy Valentine's!

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Mind Over Body

"Your body will argue that there is no justifiable reason to continue. Your only recourse is to call on your spirit, which fortunately functions independently of logic." -Tim Noakes
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Be Where You Are

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Valentine

"The day you say 'I love you less,' will mark the end of my love and the last day of my life. If my heart were base enough to love without being loved in return I would tear it to pieces." -Napoleon Bonaparte to his love Josephine
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A Modern-day Indiana Jones

"For a robbery, I thought it was pretty amiable." -just a day in the life of Maya researcher Dr. Ed Barnhart. Read the full Q&A here.
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Pretty Much

Click to enlarge.
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Daffodils

"Certainly they must be the most exhibitionistic flowers there are / trumpeting their presence in yellow -- by far the most visible colour." -Gavin EwartD
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Westward

"I like a destination which pulls
true, deliberate,
but at great distance."
-Bruce Willard
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Need for Speed

"Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death!" -credo of the shovel racer. Read my article here.
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Uncomfortable

"I want to move people out of the suburbs of their mind." -John Callahan
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Beyond Self

"My own life isn't terribly interesting, even to myself, and that... [is] why I write about people and places so different from the ones I know." -Stewart O'Nan
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Historical

"I always wanted to be historical, from almost a baby on, I felt that way about it." -Gertrude Stein
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Missouri foal

The little baby Clydesdale was born right down the road in Boonville, Mo.
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This Side of Paradise

"January finally drags into February and one fumbles with numb fingers at the ordinary knots and hooks of life. People are irritable, difficult. Some days you want to stay in bed with the covers over your head and dream of paradise." -Louis Jenkins
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Sustenance

"For me, a day without running is like a day without eating. It's like going without food." -Haile Gebrselassie
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Direction

"My needle...always settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted an richer on that side." -Thoreau
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Man Up

"There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation." -W.C. Fields
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Lake Katherine

"My love for you tonight is so deep and tender that it seems to be outside myself as well. I am fast shut up like a little lake in the embrace of some big mountains. If you were to climb up the mountains, you would see me down below, deep and shining - and quite fathomless, my dear. You might drop your heart into me and you'd never hear it touch bottom." -Katherine Mansfield
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Noted

"Music, in even the most terrible situations, must never offend the ear but always remain a source of pleasure." -Mozart
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Who knows?

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what's next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." -Agnes de Mille
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Romance

"...and if, wherever you touch me, a heart beats under your touch, and if, when you hold me, and I don't speak, it's because all the words in me seem to have become throbbing pulses, and all my thoughts are a great golden blur..." -Edith Wharton
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Light

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it." -Edith Wharton
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Let Me Be

"Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere -- be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost." -Francie Nolan, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
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Asexual

"All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would appear proper and becoming for a man." -Anne Bronte
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How to Pet a Cat

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Intolerance

"Intolerance...is a thing that causes war, pogroms, crucifixions,  lynchings, and makes people cruel to little children and to each other. It is responsible for most of the viciousness, violence, terror and heart and soul breaking of the world." -Francie, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
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Nuts

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Lips Sealed

"Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment." -Benjamin Franklin
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Moving On

"The unease, the sadness, the almost instantaneous nostalgia for events as they happen -- each day on the mountain now elicits a wave of feeling centered around the knowledge that my stay here cannot last." -Philip Connors in Fire Season.
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Free

"Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be. In running the mind flees with the body, the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms." -Joyce Carol Oates

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Pararle

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Stepping Stones

"You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space." -Johnny Cash
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Now

Saw this phrase on a bumper sticker in St. John...
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Hello, Cold

"Now winter nights enlarge
This number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers." -Thomas Campion
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Outdoors

"There is a limit to the number of lands of shore line on the lakes; there is a limit to the number of lakes in existence; there is a limit to the mountainous areas of the world, and in each one of these situations there are portions of natural scenic beauty which are God-made, and the beauties of which of a right should be the property of all people." -Forest Service architect Arthur Carhart
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Pararle

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