Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Daffodils Nodding in the Cheese

Daffodil:  good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy. – from the surrealist dictionary definition generator.  Windy today so lots of daffodils nodding and bobbing about in the cheese. Here’s something from the Oulipo Compendium that’s not quite Wordsworth: The Imbeciles I wandered lonely as a crowd That floats on high o’er valves and ills When all at once I saw a shroud,…

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Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Wordsworth on the Rail Trail

There’s a drainage ditch runs alongside the rail trail where we often take our morning stroll. It runs with water after rain and provides an excellent damp environment for the cardinal flower (lobelia cardinalis). It’s a showy deep red spiky flower native to the US. Apparently most insects find it difficult to navigate the long tubular flowers so the cardinal…

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Books, Education, Poetry, RattleBag and Rhubarb

“Knowledge not purchased by the loss of power!”

Children: How will they ever know who they are? The question is the last line of  “The Things we Steal from Children” by Dr. John Edwards. You can read the whole below. I found it via Leading and Learning – a blog and website from New Zealand that I have long found valuable. In a different time and context William …

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Books, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Nature Deficit Disorder

One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. William Wordsworth makes this assertion in his 1798 poem “The Tables Turned”. In the poem he is continuing a dialogue with a fictional friend who has urged him to study more, read more and spend less time…

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