The Friendly Cow...

The friendly cow all red and white,

      I love with all my heart:

She gives me cream with all her might,

      To eat with apple-tart.

She wanders lowing here and there,

      And yet she cannot stray,

All in the pleasant open air,

      The pleasant light of day;

And blown by all the winds that pass

      And wet with all the showers,

She walks among the meadow grass

      And eats the meadow flowers.

The Cow, by Robert Louis Stevenson


*I painted this cow in acrylic on canvas*

The Clod and The Pebble

   Hello everyone! Every week, I study a poet and some of his/her poetry in my school. This week, I wanted to write a little bit about a poem that I have been studying this week. It is called The Clod and The Pebble, by William Blake. 

       The Clod and The Pebble is a short poem written in iambic tetrameter. The poem addresses some of the world's biggest topics: love and bitterness. Blake starts the poem by saying:

'Love seeketh not Itself to please,

Nor for itself hath any care;

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.'

So sung a little Clod of Clay,

Trodden with the cattle's feet;"

The original printing of
The Clod and The Pebble

       A clod of clay is a lump of soft, malleable clay, trodden, as Blake says, by the feet of cattle and animals. This clod obviously has suffered: he has been trampled, flattened, and squished by passers-by. Though he has been broken, he still has love. He is not hardened into hatred, but continually humbled and broken. Despite his suffering, he has joy! How can this be? 

       Sometimes, I think, we mistake an easy life to be equal to true joy. However, the two are quite different. Though having an easy life can make us happy, true joy only comes from God. How does he give us joy? Well, Ann Voskamp (author of The Broken Way) says that true joy only comes from being broken. To yield grain, the field must be plowed and broken. To yield wheat, the kernel must break open. To yield bread, the wheat must be ground and broken. Brokenness is a natural part of life, and we must accept it and become stronger. Just like the only way to build your muscles is to break them, so to build our love and peace, we must be broken. And out of that love and peace comes joy.

William Blake

The little clod has found the true meaning of happiness, the true meaning of love, by being broken.

"Maybe wholeness is embracing brokenness as a part of your life." 
-Voskamp

                           But a Pebble of the brook,

                               Warbled out these metres meet

                             'Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to Its delight
Joys in another's loss of ease,

And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.'

       The pebble, hardened by the rocks of the brook, is blind to love. He does not understand what real love is, because he has not been broken. When we are broken, the true meaning of love becomes clearer. Love becomes about the other person, not about ourselves. It becomes about giving, not taking.

Who do we want to be: the clod, or the pebble? 

Amelia Earhart | Setting Your Own Goals

       Over one-hundred years ago, Wilbur and Orville Wright built the first plane that sparked the imagination of the whole country, including one little girl from Kansas, whose name was Amelia Earhart. Outgoing, cheerful, and committed, Amelia was loved all over the world because of her determination and heartfelt love for her craft: aviation. Amelia Earhart was a truly heroic woman, overcoming gender barriers, and standing up for what she knew was right. Her actions have inspired hundreds of people, and her work was truly a blessing to the aviation field. 

       Amelia was born to Edwin and Amy Earhart on July 24, 1827. She was born in Atchison, Kansas, were she lived with her grandparents until she was about 12, when her father (who had recently lost his job due to drinking problems) got a new job in Des Moines. After a somewhat tumultuous childhood, Amelia graduated in 1916. She attended a finishing school for a few years, and then went to a nursing school, thinking that she would one day become an army nurse. However, that dream was cut short when Amelia went to her first airshow. At this airshow, Amelia was allowed to ride in the plane. The thrill of flying (which must really be astonishing to someone who has never seen a commercial airplane or helicopter!) immediately convinced her that flying was her dream, and she set about to realize it. Amelia bought a Lockheed Electra (which she named The Canary) and began flying lessons with Neta Snook. 

       So began Amelia's flying career that eventually made her famous. During her lifetime, Amelia was the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo, she set the women's altitude record of 14,000 feet, she set the women's record speed of 181 miles per hour, and she was the first woman to make a solo round-trip flight of the US. Though some of these things sound trivial in the light of today's accomplishments, they were huge milestones for pilots in the twentieth century. "Lady Lindy" as she was called, was universally respected and loved. 

       One cool March morning of 1937, Amelia and her copilot, Fred Noonan, set out to circumnavigate a flight around the world. Crowds cheered as they took off. However, they had only flown about two-thirds of the way before the unfortunate partners lost connection with local coast guards and, supposedly, crash landed into a pacific island. No one really knows what happened to Amelia, though, and her hapless death is a mystery to us all.
        Amelia Earhart had a tough life. Her father was unable to support his family, and, as a result, she often had to step in and help out. She never had much money for flying lessons or her own plane. She had numerous trials and battles to fight in her life, but notwithstanding, she accomplished her dreams. Not only did Amelia perform some amazing aerial feats in her own age, she also overcame many boundaries that were setbacks in the day. Though today women can do anything that they want, in Amelia's time, gender prejudices and the fact that not much was known about flying greatly held some people back. She refused to let gender restriction rules confine her dreams, though. She refused to agree that some things just couldn't be done, gender restrictions set aside(she was the first person to fly solo). I think that the reason that Amelia succeeded is because she set her own goals. She chose not to listen to the negative voices surrounding her, and instead she just set her own personal goals, and achieved them. I think that this is a really crucial part of succeeding in anything that we want to do. If we set our own goals, not worrying about what other people will think of them, our chances of success will be higher, and we can spend more time enjoying our passion and doing the things that we love.

Some of my favorite quotes from Amelia Earhart:

"Everyone has oceans to fly, if they have the heart to do it. Is it reckless? Maybe. But what do dreams know of boundaries?"

"The most effective way to do it is to do it."

"Experiment!... By adventuring, you become accustomed to the unexpected. The unexpected then becomes what it really is- the inevitable."

"No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves."