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- TCC: The Value of Bright Shiny Objects and The Meaning of We
- TCS: Once the World Was Perfect
- TCS: Robots Playing Soccer With Your Soul
- TCS: Awed By the Power of Words
- TCS: Oh to Walk My Way With Kindness
- TCS: Everything That Can’t Be Owned
- TCS: Choose Your Bread and Your Company
- TCS: Anything Could Be Real … All the Frontiers End With a Question
- TCS: The World of the Knowing
- TCS: How I Became a Woman – Poems for Women’s History Month
- TCS: Sounds We Cannot Hear But Understand in Motion
- TCS: I Heard This Morning On The News
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TCC: The Value of Bright Shiny Objects and The Meaning of We
“We make a living by what we get.
“Human kindness has never weakened
TCS: Once the World Was Perfect
Good Morning!
______________________________
“Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.”
― Henry Louis Gates Jr, author of
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross
________________
“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
Posted in Poetry, The Coffee Shop
Tagged Once the World Was Perfect, Poets born in May, TCS
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TCS: Awed By the Power of Words
Good Morning!
______________________________
“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’
________________
“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
Posted in Poetry, The Coffee Shop
Tagged April is National Poetry Month, Awed By the Power of Words, Poets born In April, TCS
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TCS: Oh to Walk My Way With Kindness
Good Morning!
______________________________
It is easier to oppose evil from
the beginning than at the end.
—Leonardo da Vinci
________________
“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
Posted in Poetry, The Coffee Shop
Tagged April is National Poetry Month, Oh to Walk My Way With Kindness, Poets born In April, TCS
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TCS: Everything That Can’t Be Owned
Good Morning!
______________________________
Poetry has never been the language of barriers,
it’s always been the language of bridges.
– Amanda Gorman
________________
“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
Posted in Poetry, The Coffee Shop
Tagged April is National Poetry Month, Everything That Can't Be Owned, Poets born In April, TCS
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TCS: Choose Your Bread and Your Company
Good Morning!
______________________________
“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
________________
“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
Posted in Poetry, The Coffee Shop
Tagged Choose Your Bread and Your Company, Poets born in March and April, TCS
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TCS: Anything Could Be Real … All the Frontiers End With a Question
Good Morning!
______________________________
“People have only as much liberty as they have
the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
― Emma Goldman
________________
“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
Posted in Poetry, The Coffee Shop
Tagged Anything Could Be Real … All the Frontiers End With a Question, Poets Born in March, TCS
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TCS: The World of the Knowing
Good Morning!
______________________________
“The only valid censorship of ideas
is the right of people not to listen.”
― Tommy Smothers
________________
“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
Posted in Poetry, The Coffee Shop
Tagged Poets Born in March, TCS, The World of the Knowing
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TCS: How I Became a Woman – Poems for Women’s History Month
Good Morning!
______________________________
“… 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
________________
“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
Posted in Poetry, The Coffee Shop
Tagged How I Became a Woman, Poems for Women’s History Month, Poetry, Poets Born in March, TCS
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