“The best-laid plans…”

Despite the fact that I had no plan to post today, something delightful occurred yesterday and I wish to share it.

While sitting with my coffee and a worn copy of Ayn Rand’s THE VOICE OF REASON, music began to permeate my thoughts. There is often a delight or two to be noticed at the Place de Ville in Narbonne. I was sitting a few yards away from the Via Domita when I heard the charming sounds of old France. 

The time had come to close my book and allow the coffee to grow cold as my attention was riveted to the strains of her squeezebox, her voice and the French tunes from the 1890s and into the turn of the last century.

I approached her and searched for somewhere to deposit a few coins. The laughter in her eyes followed by “I have all I need.” and I knew that she meant it. She laid down her squeeze-box and opened a portfolio that contained many fliers. Her mission was to call attention to a Nuclear Disarmament Rally to be held at the Narbonne Mediathequé. Activities commence at 10:45 on the 29 February and everyone participating is asked to bring an umbrella or parasol. At noon the umbrellas/parasols will be opened in unison and based on personal experience I know a march around the town will factor into the event.  The demonstration will culminate in the Place de Ville in front of  L’hotel de Ville which contains the office of the mayor. Both locations on a Saturday promise that many will be able to see and join in. Having reached into her portfolio, she gave me fliers for my village and some decals to share. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The world is over-armed and peace is underfunded.”  – Ban Ki-Moon

“It’s useless to disarm the hands, if the heart remains armed.” – Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom

“Ultimately the success of any nonproliferation strategy requires a universal standard. Washington’s “Do as I say, not as I do” approach lacks moral authority and is seen as hypocritical. It is like preaching temperance from a barstool.”                – David Cortright

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank

In some countries, elections are in the near future. Do your candidates and politicians know where you stand?

 

Paix et Bisous,

Léa

 

 

 

Buy For Happiness (A Short Story By Erwin Wensley)

Cyberspace has done it…

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficent means for going backwards.” – Aldous Huxley

“I know there’s a proverb which says ‘To err is human,’ but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.” – Agatha Christie

 

Cyberspace has done it

 

Cyberspace – has eaten my poem

Two pages- copy, sans paste

Without a trace

The shortcut copied

But wouldn’t paste

Said nothing was there

 

Anger at an inanimate object

As useful as catching waves

Yet time away might save it

From my temptation to destroy

That which stole from me

 

So patiently it waited

Fumbling to copy it all

No, of course it wasn’t – being

Extremely technically challenged

Can’t I just blame the new PC?

My MAC, saved as I typed

 

This old dog – slow but steady

Never wins the race

Technology I’ll never conquer

It keeps me in my place

Humble, frustrated and confused

 

In the deepest despairs of

Cyberspace, my ire is raised

About to trash it, not my fault

When technology is granted

A royal reprieve – F.F.T.T.

Feline Focus Therapy Training

 

 

In the immortal words of

E.M. Forster – “I don’t know

What I think, till I read what I said”

Two pages, a poem in the ether

No ropes to pull it back

I stare at a blank page

 

Bisous,

Léa

 

 

Suit of armour

“Quiet people have the loudest minds.”  Stephen Hawking

“Don’t underestimate me because I’m quiet. I know more than I say, think more than I speak and observe more than you know.”  Michaela Chung

“Opinion is the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose, larger than the self kind of understanding.” Bill Bullard

 

Suit of armour

 

Hard to believe

She choses to wear her

Hair as though the wind

Has had its way

 

Who would want

To dress so casual

Borderline slovenly

As if it is a uniform

Others cast aside

 

 

Her shoes, worn

No, pathetic

So out of date

Lacking style, fashion unconscious

 

If you even notice her

She is off in a corner

Back to any available wall

Book, journal, alone 

 

Sometimes she is joined by others

Pulled from her pages

She holds them in her gaze

Square on, silent

 

 

Nodding her head, offering a hand

Armed with hugs

A quiet word as needed

She holds up the mirror

Offers a different view

 

Her mask keeps frivolity at bay

But those in need

Always seem to find her

Even seek her out

 

 

And for them, she is there

Telling no tales

 

 

Bisous

Léa 

 

 

 

Thank you Barb! I won’t tell a soul… just a few blogging friends.

Fair open discussion or gender stereotyping? He has a PhD from Harvard in Systems Biology, and quotes generalities from Wikipedia. He says he understands that overall differences between men and women may not apply to differences between individual men and women, and yet he urges Google to make sweeping policy changes based on those group […]

via WTF? #Googlemanifesto — Barb Taub

Lumières d’étoiles, maison du futur?

“Without followers, evil cannot spread.” – SPOCK, Star Trek ‘And The Children Shall Lead’

“Beam me up Scotty. There’s no intelligent life here.” – SPOCK

*

Lumières d‘étoiles, maison du futur?

In another world

kepler-452b?

Or perhaps

one of the other

habitable planets

–

one-hundred-billion galaxies

each with as many as

three-hundred-billion stars

lumière d’étoile, étoile brillante

this planet, this star

home to future generations?

–

we are not alone –

never have been

the rush to find

a ‘new earth’ – frantic

as nature rebells

man’s use up and dispose

mentality

–

the race heats up

those who have –

demand to stake their claim,

colonize, control, manipulate,

it will go to the highest bidder

even a larger planet

can take only so much abuse

–

Bisous,

Léa

Magical smart phone

“Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.” – Steven Spielberg

*

Magical smart phone

Only two apps I think
Invisibility cloak
And time traveling

*

No, I do not have a ‘smart phone’ and am technically challenged. But if I had the above two applications to choose from, I will admit there would be temptation. I would start at The Algonquin Hotel and search out Mrs. Parker and friends then off to visit with Jonathan Swift… Where would such applications take you? What apps would you want or create and where would they take you?

* 

Bisous,

Léa

malevolent

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that the automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”  – Bill Gates

“All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal information.”  – Carl Sagan

“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.”  – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday.”  – Dennis Gabor

malevolent

kindle

the name

evokes something

warm, fuzzy

huggable

yet there is nothing

comforting

about a hard

plastic case

which requires

batteries

frequent recharging

and ends its days

heaped among

other must haves

that litter the

planet

eroding

contaminating

all that nature

has placed in

trust

cannot be passed down

to subsequent

generations

or shared with

friends

kindle old

before his time

already outdated

before leaving

the manufacture

global footprint

nightmare

there will be no

used kindle shops

where poets linger

wistfully

over coffee

paperbacks

and HOWL

*

bisous,

léa

Technology

“Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.”  -Sinclair Lewis

“In science as in love, too much concentration on technique can often lead to impotence.” – P.L. Berger

Technology

Technology

Wonderful inventions

Improving our lives

Saving us time

And money

Like spellcheck

Which lets me know

Every time

That I have misspelled

My name

Bisous,

Léa

“image is everything”: literary sensibilites

“All good and true book-lovers practice the pleasing and improving avocation of reading in bed … No book can be appreciated until it has been slept with and dreamed over.”
― Eugene Field, The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac

literary sensibilites

if image is “everything”

does that not judge

the book by the cover

so many books

have nestled snugly

in my grip

from the tattered

paperback

to the pristine

hardback

in a designer

jacket

truth be told

the smoothly worn

paperback

well loved by

a previous reader

dog-eared pages

notes penciled in

make it evident

the love shared

with another reader

kindle be dammed

intimacy with words

demands pages I can turn

kindle will not

soak up my tears

nor dribbles of café

and will not sit quietly

on a shelf

awaiting discovery by

future generations

it will lie in a landfill

with other toxic “disposables”

a casualty to latest technology

bisous,

léa