Gold Mind

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Downed by Leyendecker “It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.”

~ Jonathan Swift

(Image: "Downed" by J.C. Leyendecker)

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Thank God for Friends Who Flip You Back Upright...

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I'm going through the most painful time in my life... And I'm sorry that I haven't been really writing or posting for a long, long time on a regular basis... It's because my life has been crumbling around me (crashing and burning, really). Will and I are getting divorced. And I just haven't been able to bring myself to say much about it... I can say, I had absolutely NO IDEA as to the depth of pain involved in divorce... I've been humbled. Truly.

I've just really been grateful for some wonderful friends and family who've checked in with me regularly, to make sure I'm not naked in a ditch.

Again.

(So, don't underestimate, or hesitate in just checking in with a friend or family member... A text, an email, a hand-written letter, a phone call, flowers... Or just stopping by... Just to know you're there. It's everything. It means everything.)

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Above Everything, Be Kind...

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I've often said that "Art makes the unbearable, bearable." And while that certainly helps, I've come to realize that it's kindness that truly does so... Kindness makes the unbearable, bearable. The world would be a pinball machine without it.

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Finding Your Light... (and letting others find theirs...)

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"Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too." ~ Voltaire

(Gasherbrum II, Pakistan Photographer Cory Richards and his climbing team endured hurricane-force winds and subzero temperatures to achieve the first winter ascent of this peak in Pakistan.) *source*

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There ARE Other Ways...

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New Town to Newtown: How ’96 Massacre Spurred Gun Laws in Australia — and No Mass Shootings Since In the wake of the Newtown killings that left 27 people dead on Friday, we go to another New Town — in Australia — the home of a mass shooting that killed 35 people in 1996. Just 12 days after what became known as the Port Arthur massacre, Australia’s government responded by announcing a bipartisan deal to enact gun control measures. There have been no mass killings since. We’re joined by Rebecca Peters, an international arms control advocate who led the campaign to reform Australia’s gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre. She also produced the landmark report, "Gun Control in the United States: A Comparative Survey of State Firearm Laws," with the Open Society Institute in New York.

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Bound

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"If you cannot make yourself what you would like to be, how can you expect to have another person exactly to your wishes? We want to see others perfect, yet our own faults go unattended." ~ Thomas a Kempis

Michelangelo, Unfinished Bound Slave (1519-36) Marble, height 208 cm Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence

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