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" In the sort of screen dappled with different states of mind which my consciousness would simultaneously unfold while I read, and which ranged from the aspirations hidden deepest within me to the completely exterior vision of the horizon which I had, at the bottom of the garden, before my eyes, what was first in me, innermost, the constantly moving handle that controlled the rest, was my belief in the philosophical richness and beauty of the book I was reading, and my desire to appropriate them for myself, whatever that book might be. "
― Marcel Proust , Swann's Way
8
" May 4, 2006
Blog Entry #1
There once was a girl who took everything for granted.
She had friends.
She had good friends—friends who saw her geeky exterior but loved her anyway, friends who had known her since before she knew herself. But she wanted more.
She had people who loved her. She had a huge house on a hill. A bedroom as big as a studio apartment. But she still wasn't satisfied. She moved to the ends of the earth … Long Island, New York.
She thought it would be exciting. And for a little while it was. But she soon found that life in the “city” wasn’t everything she hoped for. Before long, all the shops and landmarks were meaningless, and she realized that all the parties in the world meant nothing—especially if she didn't have the people to share them with. She decided to make a distress call. She lined up coconuts.
H–E–L–P
She spent one and a half years on her “deserted island.” Then, a moving truck finally answered her call.
But little did she know that she was returning to her home as a different person. She was returning with lessons of contentment that would stick with her forever. Lessons of gratitude, integrity, faith, and love. Exposure to things and ideas she would have never seen in Snellville, Georgia.
How she could be and how her life could be…
She drove back down only to find that she wasn't the only one who had changed. "
― Jacquelyn Nicole Davis , Trace The Grace: A Memoir
14
" On March 12, 2015, the AIM Development Company, that deals in scrap metal, met to discuss demolishing the now defunct Verso Paper Mill in Bucksport, located at the head of Penobscot Bay. The paper mill was first built by the Maine Seaboard Paper Company in 1930. Demolition of the mill is expected to be completed in 2016. However, company representatives and town officials did not discuss what AIM might do with the 250-acre waterfront site once the demolition work is complete. Originally it was believed that a recycling facility, using the deep-water port access to export salvaged metals, would be the most likely thing to be built on this site; however this plan has now been scrapped. In 1980 this mill employed more than 1,350 workers and was the largest employer in Bucksport, a town of about 5,000 residents.
The demolition and removal took much longer than anyone expected and as salvage crews continued working, a fire broke out on March 19, 2017. Apparently the fire erupted at about 8:30 a,m. as workers using cutting torches, cut into the metal exterior wall of the mill. Spreading to the roof of the building, it was debated as to the feasibility of allowing the fire to destroy the remaining structure. Considering the safety involved firefighters from Bucksport and surrounding towns extinguished the fire. It is expected that the remaining remnants will be demolished by the middle of 2017 in fact the company has open rail cars in position, waiting to remove whatever is left of the mill. "
― Hank Bracker
15
" We are, on earth, two distinct races. Those who have need of others, whom others amuse, engage soothe, whom solitude harasses, pains, stupefies, like the movement of a terrible glacier or the traversing of the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom others weary, tire, bore, silently torture, whom isolation calms and bathes in the repose of independency, and plunges into the humors of their own thoughts. In fine, there is here a normal, physical phenomenon. Some are constituted to live a life outside of themselves, others, to live a life within themselves. As for me, my exterior associations are abruptly and painfully short-lived, and, as they reach their limits, I experience in my whole body and in my whole intelligence an intolerable uneasiness. "
16
" As the connections have been broken by the fragmentation and isolation of work, they can be restored by restoring the wholeness of work. There is work that is isolating, harsh, destructive, specialized or trivialized into meaninglessness. And there is work that is restorative, convivial, dignified and dignifying, and pleasing. Good work is not just the maintenance of connections - as one is now said to work " for a living" or " to support a family" - but the enactment of connections. It is living, and a way of living; it is not support for a family in the sense of an exterior brace or prop, but is one of the forms and acts of love. (pg. 133, The Body and the Earth) "