“Cousins, friends, books, songs, poems, trees . . . anything that brings meaning into our lives counts.”  “A poem is a swallow in flight.  You can watch it soar through the infinite sky, you can even feel the wind passing over its wings, but you can never catch it, let alone keep it in a cage.  Poems belong to no one.” There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

 

Elif Shafak (née Bilgin; born 25 October 1971) is a Turkish-British novelist, essayist, public speaker, political scientist and activist.  Shafak writes in Turkish and English, and has published 21 books.  She is best known for her novels, which include The Bastard of Istanbul, The Forty Rules of Love, Three Daughters of Eve and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.  Her works have been translated into 57 languages and have been nominated for several literary awards.  She has been described by the Financial Times as "Turkey's leading female novelist", with several of her works having been bestsellers in Turkey and internationally.  Her works have prominently featured the city of Istanbul, and dealt with themes of Eastern and Western culture, roles of women in society, and human rights issues.  Certain politically challenging topics addressed in her novels, such as child abuse and the Armenian genocide, have led to legal action from authorities in Turkey that prompted her to emigrate to the United Kingdom.  Shafak has a PhD in political science.  An essayist and contributor to several media outlets, Shafak has advocated for women's rights, minority rights, and freedom of speech.   Shafak was born in Strasbourg, France, to Nuri Bilgin, a philosopher, and Şafak Atayman, who later became a diplomat.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elif_Shafak 

 

John Harvard is an 1884 sculpture in bronze by Daniel Chester French at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  It honors clergyman John Harvard (1607–1638), whose substantial deathbed bequest to the "schoale or Colledge" recently undertaken by the Massachu­setts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that the Colony resolved "that the Colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shalbee called Harvard Colledge."  There being nothing to indicate what John Harvard had looked like, French took inspiration from a Harvard student collaterally descended from an early Harvard president.  The statue's inscription‍—‌JOHN HARVARD  •   FOUNDER  • 1638‍—‌is the subject of an arch polemic traditionally recited for visitors, questioning whether John Harvard justly merits the honorific founder.  According to a Harvard official, the founding of the college was not the act of one but the work of many, and John Harvard is therefore considered not the founder, but rather a founder, of the school, though the timeliness and generosity of his contribution have made him the most honored of these.  Tourists often rub the toe of John Harvard's left shoe for luck in the mistaken belief that doing so is a Harvard student tradition.  John Harvard's gift to the school was £780 and‍—‌perhaps more importantly—‌his 400-volume scholar's library.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_John_Harvard  

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.  Saint Francis de Sales  https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/saint_francis_de_sales_193305   

Charles Dickens:  “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.”  https://www.motherearthnews.com/natural-health/a-loving-heart-is-the-truest-wisdom/   

If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love friends for their sake rather than for our own.  Charlotte Bronte  https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/charlotte_bronte_121434   

Old English literature refers to poetry (alliterative verse) and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England.  The 7th-century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.  Poetry written in the mid 12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English.  Adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th-century work, and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_literature#:~:text=The%207th%2Dcentury%20work%20C%C3%A6dmon's,History%20of%20the%20English%20People.  

bumper sticker category:  Bark less and Wag more  Thank you, Muse reader!    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2935