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The Grandest of Not-so-Grand Gestures

I've been working feverishly on a Stars and Stripes quilt for the 4th of July. Nothing like waiting till the last minute, eh? That's a story not fit for telling. I'm holed up in my beautiful English-speaking sweat shop and just cranking out the last of this project, glutting myself with podcasts and audiobooks. This morning, I listened to an Inklings podcast about being good to each other and living in an attitude of perpetual belonging, perennially sending the inviting messa

Laureen Simper

2 hours ago5 min read

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The Grandest of Not-so-Grand Gestures

I've been working feverishly on a Stars and Stripes quilt for the 4th of July. Nothing like waiting till the last minute, eh? That's a story not fit for telling. I'm holed up in my beautiful English-speaking sweat shop and just cranking out the last of this project, glutting myself with podcasts and audiobooks. This morning, I listened to an Inklings podcast about being good to each other and living in an attitude of perpetual belonging, perennially sending the inviting messa

Private Lessons

Laureen Simper

2 hours ago5 min read

Gifts from Dad

Let me tell you about my dad. While my mother was growing up west of 5300 South, in smelter homes behind what would become the future site for Murray High School, Dad was growing up in a charming little house just off State Street on 48th South. His mother moved back in with her parents after divorcing my grandfather; my dad was only 5 or 6 years old. My grandmother's parents helped with her children so she could go back to work to provide for them. They had recently moved in

Family

Laureen Simper

2 days ago4 min read

Seeing Past Disguises

I had the great fortune to grow up across the street from a mentally handicapped boy a few years older than me. We always knew Brad was different, but we didn't really care. He was just one of the neighborhood gang, and allowances were always made for the fact he couldn't do everything the rest of us could. Brad was smart in a different way - he was far more socially aware of tension in a group dynamic than you might expect. He had an hysterical sense of humor, and could keep

Laureen Simper

Jun 125 min read

No Such Thing as a Good Idea

Dudley was right. Cary Grant played the part of Dudley - an angel - in the 1947 Christmas film, The Bishop's Wife. This photo shows Dudley him talking to Debbie, the bishop's daughter (also Su-Su in It's a Wonderful Life). He's telling her the story of David, a young shepherd - who, thanks to an angel, gets the idea of how to save one of his lambs and kill an attacking lion. While there's no account of an angel in this story in the Bible, the idea that an angel gave David an

Private Lessons

Laureen Simper

Jun 94 min read

FAVORITE QUOTES

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

― Viktor Frankl

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

― Aristotle

"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started...and know the place for the first time."

― T.S. Eliot

"To you women of today, who are old or young, may I suggest to you that you write, that you keep journals, that you express your thoughts on paper. Writing is a great discipline. It is a tremendous education effort. It will assist you in various ways, and you will bless the lives of many―now and in the years to come, as you put on paper some of your experiences and some of your musings."

― Gordon B. Hinckley

“A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself. You have a chance to select from pretty elegant furnishings.”

― Louis L'Amour

"Words are the dress of thoughts; which should no more be presented in rags, tatters, and dirt than your person should."

― Philip Dormer Stanhope

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