I was reading a poem online by the 19th century American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar. The last stanza of the poem, titled, Sympathy, is the inspiration for the title of Maya Angelou's masterpiece, I Know Why The Caged Bird SingsI know why the caged bird sings, ah me ( Read more... )

I was thinking today about one of my most favorite movies ever, The Color Purple starring Whoopi Goldberg as Ms. Celie, Danny Glover as "Mister" (a.k.a. Albert), and Oprah Winfrey as Sofia.

I am a big fan not only of the movie, but of the actual color. I have always loved purple (the color), and later, I learned to love The Color Purple. I know ( Read more... )

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.
- Richard Bach

Below is a beautiful time-lapse video of the night sky from somewhere in Hawaii, accompanied by an equally-as-beautiful sound track. The video is about a minute long, but you get to see so much in that one minute!

The creator of the video is a person named "Charles" from a website called Vimeo, which describes itself as a respectful community of ( Read more... )

Note: I have made a couple of corrections from my original post. Apparently women who have had sex with MSMs are banned also, though I am not sure it is a lifetime ban. Also the states or party affiliation of some the Senators who signed the letter were listed incorrectly. Sorry for any inadvertent wrong info I may have provided

The stupid, ( Read more... )

Ann & Michael Hathaway
Actress Anne Hathaway (of Brokeback Mountain and The Devil Wears Prada) has revealed that, after her brother, Michael, came out as gay, her family basically excommunicated themselves from the Catholic Church, and most of them have since taken up with the Episcopalians ( Read more... )

One of my newest LJ pals, a college-bound 17-year-old American female, whose screen name is everlastingway, and who proclaims proudly in her online profile that Jesus is my Lord hasn't been around LJ for long, so she hasn't written much yet, but I read her most recent post which included a poem by Scott Cairns titled, Possible Answers to Prayer, which you can ( Read more... )

The loss of Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican was very disappointing & sad, obviously, and I personally believe that--in a way--it dishonors the memory of a true statesman & champion of millions of Americans who have felt for too long that they had no voice in their own government. Ted Kennedy reminded not just this country, but the world, that ( Read more... )

Just...WOW!

Click to view

I read an Op-Ed written by syndicated columnist Maureen Dowd in the online version of this weekend's New York Times wherein she writes about a conversation she had recently with Ted Olson (formerly the United States Solicitor General under Bush Jr. Olson's former wife, Barbara Olson, was killed on 9/11/01 when the plane she was on crashed into the ( Read more... )