Let Freedom Read Week - Grief in all its colours

 “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

—Oscar Wilde

There are family situations in life when there is no resolution possible … So acknowledging that has a great value …

A famous lecture given in 1982 by computer science pioneer Grace Hopper, “Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People”, has long been publicly unavailable but is now on YouTube

Let Freedom Read Day

Banned books Week – On September 28, 2024, we’re asking everyone to get ready to vote for the freedom to read or to take at least one action to help defend books from censorship and to stand up for the library staff, educators, writers, publishers, and booksellers who make them available! Show us how you’re taking action on social media by using the hashtags #LetFreedomReadDay and #BannedBooksWeek! And don’t forget: Censorship won’t stop just because Banned Books Week does — you can take action any day of the year! Bookmark this page for future reference.

• Download the voting one-sheet to print & share
• Download the action one-sheet to print & share
• Social Media 

The 365 Most Famous Quotes of All Time

What Have You Compiled Here? This is a list of what I believe to be, to the best of my knowledge and ability, the 365 most famous quotes in human history. The quotes are grouped into 27 categories, with each category containing between 10 and 25 quotes. There’s also a bonus category of proverbs and sayings with 30 entries. You’ll also find:

• A complete list of sources for each quote
• A detailed breakdown of my methodology
• A list of 100 images of the top quotes for saving/sharing
• A convenient PDF download of this entire thing

There's a scene in Richard Linklater's 2004 film, Before Sunset, where protagonists Jesse and Céline drift past Notre Dame on a Paris riverboat. Taken by the cathedral's beauty, Jesse tells a story of its near-destruction. Occupying Nazis filled Notre Dame with explosives and intended to blow it up during World War II, he says, but the German soldier tasked with detonating the cathedral couldn't bring himself to do it.

"That's a great story. But you have to think that Notre Dame will be gone one day," Céline replies. "There used to be another church, a cathedral, at the same [spot]. Right there."

A Czech Clock's Forgotten Pasts

Cloves: The Spice that Enriched Empires JSTOR Daily

 I Am!

BY JOHN CLARE

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; 

My friends forsake me like a memory lost: 

I am the self-consumer of my woes— 

They rise and vanish in oblivious host, 

Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes 

And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed 

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, 

Into the living sea of waking dreams, 

Where there is neither sense of life or joys, 

But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems; 

Even the dearest that I loved the best 

Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest. 

I long for scenes where man hath never trod 

A place where woman never smiled or wept 

There to abide with my Creator, God, 

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, 

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie 

The grass below—above the vaulted sky.