Tintinnabulation

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
~Edgar Allan Poe

Rang by bfick

Edgar Allan Poe might have been a pretty dark guy, but apparently he had positive feelings about wedding bells and sleigh bells.

In the first stanza of The Bells, Poe extolls the merriment of sleigh bells:

Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells...

The whole work really swings in a bell-like fashion. We have another bell poem today, one named in honor of Poe's. Thank you, Sarah, for giving me permission to share this!

Tintinnabulation
by Sarah Hina

We had bells in our mouths
back then
we did

and every word
was a clang to the ribs

and every conversation
with you
a wedding

Where the brides
wore laughter

and the grooms
were clappers

and every guest
inside a mile
smiled

Because bells
are contagious

And so were we

***********

Kathryn Apel has the Poetry Friday round-up this week. Thanks, Kat!

Animations of physics

Physics is the only profession in which prophecy is not only accurate but routine.
~Neil deGrasse Tyson

For Art Thursday, we have hypnotic, beautiful science. Animations of physics, specifically:

Lunar libration

Animated phenakistiscope disc - Running rats Fantascope
by Thomas Mann Baynes 1833

Ambigram of SAY YES, radial pattern (animation of motion, classical mechanics)

Animation representing the two-dimensional flow patterns behind a rounded obstacle, known as a Von Kármán vortex street
by Cesareo de La Rosa Siqueira

Anti-Twister
A set of 96 fibers are anchored both to the environment on one end and a rotating sphere on the other. The sphere can rotate continuously without the fibers becoming tangled.
by Jason Hise

Printable Posters

Images adorn our inner life and carry great power there.
~William Shirley

For Wellness Wednesday, sharing some printables that could be good for putting up in classrooms, next to your desk, on your fridge, wherever. Kicking things off with Sage Cohen's free "Write Fierce" digital poster:

More free printable wall art:

All things are difficult before they are easy (+ a free template for making your own)

You deserve to have your dreams come true

We are most alive in this world, when we bloom with total abandon

There is loveliness in ordinariness

Cake it til you make it

15 Free Wall Art Printables

Amber

For Music Monday, Siddhartho Poddar:

Talavera Pottery

Each day is a branch of the Tree of Life laden heavily with fruit. If we lie down lazily beneath it, we may starve; but if we shake the branches, some of the fruit will fall for us.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Talavera pottery from Mexico for Art Thursday:

Tree of Life depicting the history of mole and Talavera pottery of Puebla
by Alfonso Castillo Orta

Jar with intricate butterfies
Alfonso Castillo Orta
photo by Thelmadatter

Jars in the window of workshop "Taller Armando"
photo by Danielllerandi

Small Kindnesses

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness.
~George Sand

A poem from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection, edited by James Crews. Hat tip to Jeanne for the introduction to this poem!

Small Kindnesses
by Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Snakes and Silence

I think there is a song out there to describe just about any situation.
~Criss Jami

These videos look similar at first (two guys' backs), but in one, the only thing that moves is drops of water and in the other, he removes his (outer layer of) skin. It's my favorite part of that video, tbh.




Harry Styles
Evan Konrad

Trees

At night I dream that you and I are two plants
that grew together, roots entwined,
and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,
since we are made of earth and rain.
~Pablo Neruda

In honor of Christie's tree Poetry Friday round-up, here are three tree poems...

To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian
by Ross Gay

Tumbling through the
city in my
mind without once
looking up
the racket in
the lugwork probably
rehearsing some
stupid thing I
said or did
some crime or
other the city they
say is a lonely
place until yes
the sound of sweeping
and a woman
yes with a
broom beneath
which you are now
too the canopy
of a fig its
arms pulling the
September sun to it...

read the rest here

*******

Schrödinger's Tree
by Madeline Sebastian Burtenshaw

If it were dead,
you'd burn it.
Scatter ash to the winds, to the sea,
silent life buried in a shroud of earth.

If it lived, you'd take
the harvest in a black bowl:
first fruits, sweet and sustaining,
blood and honey for juice...

read the rest here

*******

I AM ROTTING LOG OF WOOD
by Marlena Chertock

not thin, healthy twig.
My branches creak and groan
under gravity’s weight.
My bark is full of termites
eating away my pith-cartilage.

I can’t stand a full day
in the forest like the other trees,
so straight, so tall.
A few minutes in the forest
and the fire ants start
chewing my bark...

read the rest here

*******

Thanks, Christy, for hosting the Poetry Friday round-up today!

Travel Posters

Designing posters, for me, is not only a commercial pursuit but also a philosophical endeavor.
~Fang Chen

Elena and I are watching The Durrells in Corfu (nearly done with the third season), so I thought it would be nice to share images of Corfu, but I got side-tracked by these vibrant travel posters. I think they are all from the 1920s and 30s. I don't know the artists for the others, but the last two are by Vittorio Grassi (1878–1958).

Matrix of Options

Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don't have any problems, you don't get any seeds.
~Norman Vincent Peale

Today's Wellness Wednesday post was inspired by my son. This morning, Dash was celebrating that he figured out something regarding his college scholarship and his class schedule. He had been working out how to have a full-time job, take the right classes to graduate, and take enough classes not to lose his scholarship.

When I wondered how long he'd been trying to solve this problem, he said that he hadn't thought of it as a problem but as a "matrix of options." Spoken like a kid who is planning on working full-time (because he wants to, not out of necessity) while he goes to school! I just like the phrase, so here we are:

Kina Grannis

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.
~Kina Grannis

Hi folks! Hope you're well. We had a good time in New Hampshire. For Music Monday, Kina Grannis: