Thought of the Week

May 10 2024

"As I paddle, I watch the trees come to life, and my muscles grow stronger with every pull.  The island trees start first.  They are the last to change color in October, and the first to bud in May.  A few weeks after the buds, the coastline explodes in green.  Wildlife takes over the marsh.  Birds nest in the grass.  Gulls swoop overhead.  Deer gallop past me along the side of the creek.  Sometimes the beauty is so overwhelming that I have to stop, hold my boat still, and let it all soak in." 

Beth Alison Maloney in "Saving Sammy"

May 3 2024

“Today is the day when bold kites fly,

When cumulus clouds roar across the sky,

When robins return, when children cheer,

When light rain beckons spring to appear.

Today is the day when daffodils bloom,

Which children pick to fill the room,

Today is the day when grasses green,

When leaves burst forth for spring to be seen.”

Robert McCracken, “Spring”

April 26 2024

“I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts.” Robin Wall Kimmerer in “Braiding Sweetgrass”

April 19 2024

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” Pablo Picasso

April 12 2024

"There is nothing more practical, in the end, than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals to the higher emotions in mankind". 

Theodore Roosevelt

April 5 2024

"In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours." – Mark Twain.

March 29 2024

 “No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”

Hal Borland

March 22 2024

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Mark Twain

March 15 2024

“May you have the hindsight to know where you've been,
The foresight to know where you are going,
And the insight to know when you have gone too far.”
  An Irish Toast

March 8, 2024

“In many of the journals (that he had studied for his book),” David McCullough noted, “people said that they had never worked harder in their life, and yet they were never happier.  Today we are setting the bar too low.  Happiness isn’t the ease with which we can do things, or the time off.  It’s meeting the challenges of what we want to be and what we want to accomplish in our life.”  From a talk for Graves Library about “The Greater Journey, Americans in Paris”

March 1, 2024

"By then experience had told him that sometimes he knew things he did not know he knew, until he dared them, so to speak, to reveal themselves.  How he knew those things, he knew he would never know."  Wendell Berry in "A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership"

February 23, 2024

“If the moon still moves the deep blue sea and rules the hearts of men

If the world keeps turning quietly, here we go again

If the winter grass turns April-green when the rain begins to fall

If there's water flowing from the stream

there's hope for one and all

There's hope for you and me my friend, with our backs against the wall

If there's water flowing from the stream

there's hope for one and all 

David Mallett in “Hope for One and All”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcALDAI7Mtc

February 9, 2024

“For what it’s worth…it’s never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you’ve never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.” Eric Roth in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

February 2, 2024

"Sometimes when seeing the end of our present, our past looms ever larger, because it is all we have or think we know. I feel myself falling back into the past now, hoping to have more and more past as I have less and less future." Alistair MacLeod, The Road to Rankin's Point" in "Island, The Complete Stories"

January 26, 2024

“What you don’t know, and what may mean nothing to you if you do know it, is that there’s no house in this town—not one house—that hasn’t a seaman living in it. There are more master mariners along our river road and the Saco road than there are Frenchmen in your English town of Quebec. In some houses you’ll find five and six and seven sons, all captains. What’s more, they’re deep-water captains, born with salt in their noses and the feel of the sea in their bones; and you can believe it or not, but it’s the truth: there’s something about these New Englanders that makes it possible for them to sail their craft into places where the captains of other nations won’t go.” Kenneth Roberts in “The Lively Lady”



January 19, 2024

“My grandmother liked to say that snow was “healing”—that it healed everything. A typical Yankee point of view: if it snows a lot, snow must be good for you.” John Irving in “A Prayer for Owen Meany”

January 12,2024

“you couldn’t stand up and rail against the weather. That was exactly the point of so many stories. Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, confidence swaggering into the storm: Man against Nature. Of all the possible conflicts, that was the one that was hopeless. Even a slim education had taught her this much. Man loses.” Barbara Kingsolver in “Flight Behavior: A Novel”

December 29, 2023

“Yesterday is gone, Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”

Mother Teresa

December 22, 2023

“What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.” Agnes M. Pharo

December 15, 2023

“Life must have joy. It’s supposed to be fun”

Barbara Bush

December 8, 2023

“I don’t care if the house is packed

Or the strings of light are broken

I don’t care if the gifts are wrapped

Or there’s nothing here to open

Love is not a toy

And no paper will conceal it

Love is simply joy that home.

I don’t care if the carpet’s stained

We got food upon our table

I don’t care if it’s gonna rain

Our little room is warm and stable

Love is who we are

And no season can contain it

Love would never fall for that.”

Sara Bareilles in “Love is Christmas”

December 1, 2023

“May you have the gladness of Christmas - which is hope;

the spirit of Christmas - which is peace;

the heart of Christmas – which is love.”

Ada V. Hendricks

November 17, 2023

“Fall crisps the air again, leading in the winter. How has a year passed so swiftly? Woodsmoke hangs in the orchard, a blue haze caught among the dry, rattling leaves that still cling to the branches.”

Olivia Hawker in “The Ragged Edge of Night”

November 10, 2023

"In the winter, birds increase by fifty percent the number of feathers on their bodies, adding insulative power to their plumage.  On cold days, muscles at the base of the feathers tense, puffing the bird and doubling the thickness of the insulation." 

David George Haskell, "The Forest Unseen"

November 3, 2023

“He said, ‘Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.’” Ralph Waldo Emerson.

October 27, 2023

The Prayer of St. Francis

Lord make me an instrument of your peace

Where there is hatred let me sow love

Where there is injury, pardon

Where there is doubt, faith

Where there is despair, hope

Where there is darkness, light

And where there is sadness, joy

O divine master grant that I may

not so much seek to be consoled as to console

to be understood as to understand

To be loved as to love

For it is in giving that we receive

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen

October 20, 2023

"For this is a story, really, of two stories.  It is about several people, including me, who lived through a great change, for we were born in the last years of one story and lived into the beginning of another." 

Wendell Berry in "A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership"

October 13, 2023

"'We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed.  As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at least one which makes the heart run over.'" 

Ray Bradbury in "Fahrenheit 451: A Novel"

October 6, 2023

“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Wendell Berry

September 29, 2023

“During the two hundred and thirty-two years between the arrival of Martin Pring in 1603 and the year 1835, entering this harbor must have been hazardous for a stranger at any time, and at night even for a native, except in clear weather and with a calm sea. The channel is deep enough, but very narrow, and opposite a concealed ledge called Old Prince about a quarter of a mile from the entrance. In 1834 Congress was persuaded to do something about this hazardous situation at the chief port of call between Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Portland, Maine. Six thousand dollars was then appropriated to build a lighthouse on Goat Island to light the channel into the harbor as well as provide an additional beacon on a dangerous coast where many a ship has been wrecked. The tower was built in 1835 and a small stone house for the light-keeper. In 1860 the lighthouse was remodeled and a new residence built with a covered corridor leading to the light. Whale oil was the fuel for the lantern until the 1860’s, then lard oil replaced this fuel until the appearance of reliable kerosene. From the day it was first lighted this light has never failed to send its beams across the sea.”

Melville C. Freeman in “History of Cape Porpoise” 1955

September 22, 2023

“We all have something to give.  So, if you know how to read, find someone who can’t. If you’ve got a hammer, find a nail. If you’re not hungry, not lonely, not in trouble, seek out someone who is.  Join the community of conscience.  Do the hard work of freedom.” 

President George H. W. Bush (State of the Union Address, January 29. 1991)

September 15, 2023

“The longest nights are seldom seen approaching. Storms may not be heard until they break. Like life itself, challenges and change are there to be confronted and we must weather them, alone or together.”

Heidi Thomas in “Call the Midwife”

September 8, 2023

“I like the assumption that everyone is trying his best, and we should all just be kind to each other.”

Christina Baker Kline in “Orphan Train”

September 1, 2023

“From the first day I went to sea my father had told me again and again: ‘Be sure you see what you look at, whether it’s clouds or a lee shore or a man’s face: there’s nothing so useful to a sea captain.’”

Kenneth Roberts in “Rabble in Arms”

August 25, 2023

“there were eight shipyards between our house and the new toll bridge, all busily engaged in turning out the schooners, sloops and brigs that made our town of Arundel the busiest and the wealthiest in the province of Maine, next to Portland.”

Kenneth Roberts in “The Lively Lady”

August 18, 2023

“Every window he looked out from had a view and here on the porch the landscape kind of blew your mind. The sun, low in the sky, lit up the water: sparkling, clear, calm. It almost looked warm—could that be possible, in Maine?”

Brenda Bowen in “Enchanted August

August 11, 2023

“Dorothy (President Bush 41’s mother) was born in Kennebunkport in 1901. . Dorothy Walker adored her father. And somehow she managed to inherit his best qualities while sanding off his rough edges.  Eventually she passed those traits on to her son George Herbert Walker Bush. Like her father, my grandmother had an insatiable competitive streak.  My mother once dubbed her ‘the most competitive living human,’ a title she earned in pursuits from tennis (she was a nationally prominent player in the small world of women’s amateur tennis) to tiddlywinks.  She once challenged a friend to swim from Walker’s Point to the Kennebunk River Club, over a mile away. Thinking she was joking, the friend quit after a few hundred yards.  My grandmother swam the full distance in the frigid Atlantic waters.  In her most legendary feat, she played in a family softball game while nine months pregnant, swatted a home run in her final at bat, and then announced that she had started labor as she crossed the plate.”

George W. Bush in “41 A Portrait of my Father”

August 4, 2023

“Go in peace, speak the truth, give thanks each day. Respect the earth and her creatures for they are alive like you. Care for your body; it is a wondrous gift. Be gentle with yourself. Live simply. Be of service. Be guided by your faith and not your fear. Go lightly on your path. Walk in a sacred manner.”

Gary Kowalski

July 28, 2023

“Looking behind, I am filled with gratitude,

Looking forward, I am filled with vision,

Looking upwards, I am filled with strength,

Looking within, I discover peace.”

Quero Apache Prayer

July 21, 2023

"You only live once--but if you work it right, once is enough." 

Joe E. Lewis

July 14, 2023

"The holiest of all holidays are those

Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;

The secret anniversaries of the heart. . ."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

July 7, 2023

“Yes, summer was rituals, each with its natural time and place.  The ritual of lemonade or ice-tea making, the ritual of wine, shoes, or no shoes, and at last, swiftly following the others, with quiet dignity, the ritual of the front-porch swing.”

Ray Bradbury in “Dandelion Wine”

June 30, 2023

"They watched fireworks in a field in Kennebunkport, sitting on an itchy blanket in a crowd of families sitting on itchy blankets of their own.  They brought a picnic dinner--turkey sandwiches, cheese and crackers, a thick slice of chocolate cake, and a bottle of wine.  Children ran here and there, shaking glow sticks in the darkness, eating Popsicles that melted too fast and dribbled red, white, and blue down their chins.  When the display started, a young father near them lifted his excited daughter up onto his shoulders, while his wife consoled a fearful younger brother, bribing him with a whoopee pie.  'That'll be us someday,' Gabe had said.  She had felt joyful at the thought." J. Courtney Sullivan in "Maine"

June 23, 2023

“Rivers do not drink their own water; trees do not eat their own fruit; the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. Living for others is a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other. No matter how difficult it is…Life is good when you are happy; but much better when others are happy because of you.” 

Derived from a Hindu Proverb

June 16, 2023

“Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they are not always wrong. But there is also an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made of people who can never fully know the good that they have done.”  Tracy Kidder

June 9, 2023

“The way to know life is to love many things.”

Vincent Van Gogh

June 2, 2023

“If ever there was a haven for a retired seafarer, it was our house at the mouth of the Arundel (Kennebunk) River; for it stood on a twenty-acre oblong of fertile ground, with the river running snug along the easterly end of it, a sheltered creek for its northern boundary, and the ocean and a long beach of hard gray sand bordering the side to the southwest.”

Kenneth Roberts in “The Lively Lady

May 26, 2023

“Cape Porpoise, Nov. 10, 1918: Dear Earl, Just a few lines tonight to let you know we are all well and hope you are.  Your mother is up every morning to see if there isn’t a word from you.  She gets awfully discouraged when she don’t get a letter, but no news, no bad news. I would like to get one myself.  Hope you have received some from home long ere this.  I tell you there was some excitement here last Friday when the news came that the Kaiser had surrendered. Over to the “Port” they rang the Bell all night until 6:30 in the morning, but it was all a fake. But today’s paper says how the “Revolutionists Capture Berlin” so we are awful anxious to see tomorrows Post.“ A letter excerpt from Abbie Fletcher (Whose husband, Luman Fletcher, owned Fletcher’s Market, now Bradbury Bros. Market in Cape Porpoise) to Earl Stone (Tom Bradbury’s grandfather).

May 19,2023

“We must be able to recognize Kindness as the single most important ingredient for a healthy, connected, and conscious world. Kindness is not the Band-Aid. It’s the cure.”

Houston Kraft in “Deep Kindness”

MAY 12, 2023

“It does feel like spring today—real spring, with leafy trees and blooming daffodils, air so warm you don’t need a sweater.”

Christina Baker Kline in “Orphan Train”

May 5, 2023

"...What happens to me when I cross the Piscataqua and plunge rapidly into Maine at a cost of seventy-five cents [1955] in tolls? I cannot describe it. I do not ordinarily spy a partridge in a pear tree, or three French hens, but I do have the sensation of having received a gift from a true love.” 

E.B. White in “Home-Coming”

April 28, 2023

"each man, every day, should leave the world a better place than he found it."

Bernard Cornwell in "Battle Flag: Starbuck Chronicles

April 21, 2023

“It’s a warm April morning. The ground is spongy with melted snow and rain, but today is one of those rare, almost balmy days that hint at the glorious summer ahead. The sky is luminously blue, with large woolly clouds. Clumps of crocuses seem to have sprouted everywhere.”

Christina Baker Kline in “Orphan Train”

April 14, 2023

“The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.”

Carl Sandburg

April 7, 2023

"Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever."

Horace Mann

March 31, 2023

“And yet in looking back I see

From topmost part of farthest tree

A land as bright, beloved and blue

As any Yeats found to be true.”

Ray Bradbury in “Dandelion Wine”

March 24, 2023

“Kindness doesn’t have the strings attached. It doesn’t wait for something to happen; it makes things happen. It goes out of its way to look for people who need help, and then figures out the best way to help them. You shouldn’t have to have someone be nice to you first before you are Kind to them. You shouldn’t even have to agree with someone to show them they are worthy of your Kindness.”

Houston Kraft in “Deep Kindness”

March 17, 2023

"There are good ships and there are wood ships that sail the sea, but the best ships, are friendships, and may they always be!" 

An Irish Toast

March 10, 2023

“Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?” 

Clarence in “It’s a Wonderful Life” 1946

March 3, 2023

“We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to be joyful, to be loving. And that is what the world needs most.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

February 24, 2023

“The past is our only real possession in life.  It is the one piece of property of which time cannot deprive us; it is our own in a way that nothing else in life is.  In a word, we are our past;  we do not cling to it, it clings to us.”

Grace King (1852-1932)

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

“Evening was fast approaching. The light hung low and sideways, slanting down to the earth through a threadbare patch of cloud. The colors lay warm across the snow—soft, pale orange like the skin of an apricot, the yellow of goldenrod but wan and diluted by cold. The hour of sunset had almost come.” Olivia Hawker in “One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow”

February 10, 2023

“. . . every day. . .should inspire us to save the land we love, to realize that global problems do have local solutions, and to make the preservation of the planet a personal commitment.”  George H. W. Bush

February 3, 2023

“Reading takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.”

-Hazel Rochman

January 27, 2023

“During the night a great snow had fallen, covering the gritty remains of past snowfalls. The trees hung rich and heavy with fluffy down.”

Jean Shepherd in “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash”

January 20, 2023

“We must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future.”

-Martin Luther King Jr.

January 13, 2023

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” Calvin Coolidge

January 6, 2023

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

- C.S. Lewis

December 30, 2022

The Night After Christmas

 “When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

. . .To find the lost, To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among brothers,

To make music in the heart.”

Howard Thurman

December 23, 2022

“I will light candles this Christmas, Candles of joy, despite all sadness, Candles of hope where despair keeps watch. Candles of courage where fear is ever present, Candles of peace for tempest- tossed days, Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens. Candles of love to inspire all my living, Candles that will burn all the year long.” - Howard Thurman

December 16, 2022

"Nature reserves some of her choice rewards for days when her mood may appear to be somber."

Rachel Carson in "The Sense of Wonder" "A Place Called Maine"

December 9, 2022

"[Christmas is] the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. Charles Dickens "a Christmas Carol" December 1843.

December 2, 2022

"It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!" Charles Dickens

November 11, 2022

“We don’t say much. Mostly we look. We’ve been up and down this road hundreds of times, and while we haven’t gotten to the point where we take it for granted, our appreciation for it is never articulated.” Dana Pearson in “The Muralist”

November 4, 2022

“In the world outside it is a mellow time. The harvest is done, the apples are ready to fall, the mists on the bare fields a damp reminder to men to gather in all they can as the sun begins its gradual recession towards the ending of the year.” Edward Rutherfurd in “The Forest”

October 28, 2022

Sometimes only when bonds are tested do we understand their strength… we can step into the future, blessed and stronger than before because when faced with change our love held fast and didn’t break. Heidi Thomas in “Call the Midwife”

October 21, 2022

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, And the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 – 1971)

October 14, 2022

“’Look for a balance. But know that nature will find a better one.’ He looked straight into her eyes. ‘I think that’s how to live, really. Don’t you?’” Edward Rutherfurd in “The Forest”

October 7, 2022

“To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.” Terry Tempest Williams

September 30, 2022

“The ocean stretched out before her, with nothing in the distance but a lone sailboat. Behind her, the cottage and the big house next door sat quiet and still. This place had been one of the few constants in her life.” J. Courtney Sullivan in “Maine”

SEPTEMBER 23, 2019

“Horseback on Sunday morning, harvest over, we taste persimmon and wild grape, sharp sweet of summer's end. In time's maze over fall fields, we name names that rest on graves.

We open a persimmon seed to find the tree that stands in promise, pale, in the seed's marrow. Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear in the ancient faith: what we need is here.

And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye, clear. What we need is here.” Wendell Berry

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

“Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence.” Wendell Berry, “the Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays”

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

“My friends, we are not the sum of our possessions. They are not the measure of our lives. In our hearts we know what matters. We cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account. We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend; a loving parent; a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood, and town better than he found it." President George H. W. Bush, Inaugural Address: January 20, 1989

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

KCT Thought of the Week: “Freedom is not simple, for it always is involved with responsibility. The relation between freedom and responsibility is not a ‘balance’ to be expediently adjusted by governments of citizens, who without both can have neither.” Wendell Berry in “Our Only World: Ten Essays”

AUGUST 26, 2022

“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty by the water, and the great heron feeds.  I come into the peace of wild things. . .I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”  Wendell Berry

AUGUST 19, 2022

“In the evenings they sit on the porch in Vivian’s old wicker chairs as the sky turns pink and lavender and red, the colors seeping toward them across the bay, a magnificent living watercolor.” Christina Baker Kline in “Orphan Train”

AUGUST 12, 2022

“We are nothing without others. In their presence, we unfold. A smile exchanged, a confidence shared, a joining of forces as we make our way. These are the things that unite us and enable us to thrive. Perhaps, above all else, we are what we share – a glance, a task, a passion, a child…our happiness, our home.” Heidi Thomas in “Call the Midwife”

AUGUST 5, 2022

“She is often sharply impatient of any demand upon her time that takes her away from simply gazing at the water and letting her thoughts float upon its surface.” Anita Shreve in “Fortune’s Rocks”