TCC: The Value of Bright Shiny Objects and The Meaning of We

Good Morning!

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“We make a living by what we get.
We make a life by what we give.”

Winston Churchill,
UK Prime Minister during WWII

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“Human kindness has never weakened
the stamina or softened the fiber of
a free people. A nation does not
have to be cruel to be tough.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
U.S. President (1933-1945)

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TCS: Once the World Was Perfect

Good Morning!

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“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr, author of
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve
our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men
reading more good books
in more public libraries. These libraries
should be open to all—except the censor.
We must know all the
facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the
criticisms.
Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors.

For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of
our security as well as our liberty.”

John F. Kennedy,
Saturday Review, October 1960 issue

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TCS: Robots Playing Soccer With Your Soul

Good Morning!

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“There are times in life when people must know when not to
let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”
Terry Pratchett

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“How does one grow up?”
I asked a friend the other day.
There was a slight pause; then
she answered, “By thinking.”
― May SartonJournal of a Solitude

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TCS: Awed By the Power of Words

Good Morning!

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“We live and breathe words …. It was books that made
 me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone.
They could be honest with me, and I with them …”
Cassandra Claire, ‘Clockwork Prince’
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“Read, read, read. Read everything —
trash, classics, good and bad, and
see how they do it. Just like a carpenter
who works as an apprentice and studies
the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.
Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out.
If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner

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TCS: Oh to Walk My Way With Kindness

 

   Good Morning!

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It is easier to oppose evil from
the beginning than at the end.
Leonardo da Vinci

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“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are
not proving him a liar, you’re only telling
the world that you fear what he might say.”
― George R.R. Martin, 
A Clash of Kings

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TCS: Everything That Can’t Be Owned

   Good Morning!

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Poetry has never been the language of barriers,
it’s always been the language of bridges.
Amanda Gorman

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“Once a government is committed to the principle
of silencing the voice of
opposition, it has only one
way to go,
and that is down the path of increasingly
repressive measures, until it becomes a source of
terror to all its citizens
and creates a country
where
everyone lives in fear.”
Harry S. Truman,
  33rd U.S. President

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TCS: Choose Your Bread and Your Company

    Good Morning!

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“If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech,
there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it.
But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities
will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”
George Orwell

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“For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments
on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming
consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind,
reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be
taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led,
like sheep, to the Slaughter.”
— George Washington,
Address to the Officers of the Army, March 15, 1783

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TCS: Anything Could Be Real … All the Frontiers End With a Question

Good Morning!

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“People have only as much liberty as they have
the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
― Emma Goldman

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“Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what
books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is
thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens?
Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be
cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall
a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the
rule of what we are to read, and what we must believe?”
Thomas Jefferson,
‘Founding Father’ and Third U.S. President

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TCS: The World of the Knowing

    Good Morning!

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“The only valid censorship of ideas
is the right of people not to listen.”
― Tommy Smothers

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“Few people have to watch their country die. I have had that
dubious privilege, and I can tell you that it comes not as a
rebel shout but as a sly whisper. The cracks creep in, insidious
as anything I’ve ever seen. It can start as rumblings about an
unreliable press and rumors about political enemies that will
threaten your family, your children. It can deepen with each
disdainful remark about science and art and literature in a pub
on a Friday night. It comes cloaked in patriotism and love
of country, and uses that as armor against any criticism.”
― Brianna Labuskes, from 
The Librarian of Burned Books

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TCS: How I Became a Woman – Poems for Women’s History Month

    Good Morning!

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“… this bullet had no innocence, did not wish anyone well, you
can’t tell us otherwise
by naming it mildly, this bullet was never
the friend of life, should not be granted immunity 
by soft saying
— friendly fire, straying death-eye, why have we given the wrong
weight to what we do?”                   
                 –  from For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15”
                                         by Naomi Shihab Nye

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“Censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect
anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes
them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.
Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld
from them.”
                                  – Laurie Halse Anderson, author of
                    Shout, Catalyst, and The Impossible Knife of Memory

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