A Summary Of The World

If we could, at this time, shrink the Earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this:

  • There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere (North and South) and 8 Africans.
  • 70 would be non-white; 30 white.
  • 70 would be non-Christian; 30 Christian.
  • 50 percent of the entire world wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people. All 6 would be citizens of the United States.
  • 70 would be unable to read.
  • 50 would suffer from malnutrition.
  • 80 would live in sub-standard housing.
  • Only 1 would have a college education.

When one considers our world from such an incredibly compressed perspective, the need for both tolerance and understanding becomes glaringly apparent.

~ Forrest Felling

filers, pilers, and impulse buyers

Today I am thankful that I am by nature a filer rather than a piler. It’s not that I believe one is superior to the other. It’s just that I am also a world-class impulse buyer.

If it’s cute / pretty / interesting / shiny / red, I am immediately compelled to Get It Now.   I shudder to think of the state my house, not to mention my bank account, would be in if I had no equally powerful impulse to Put It Away.

While I am not exactly austere in my home decor, clutter does drive me insane. The knowledge that I have only so much space in my home is often the only thing keeping me from scooping up all those “little gorgeous things”1.

Occasionally even the threat of insanity isn’t enough. I don’t really need the knitted hat I bought today, but it’s so cute!

  1. as Patsy and Edina would say []

your grope ends where my tits begin

For all of the “unhealthy”, repressed, Puritan laws against sexual harassment in my country, and the women and men with brains enough to enact them, I am thankful.

Inspiration for today’s Gratitude Post brought to you by an American Asshat in Paris Freed from the Idea of “Consent”, and its only-slightly-less-depressing rebuttal, The Sexual Reality of Being a Parisian Woman.

creatures great and small

Kevin and I walked through Coulon Park yesterday. It was cold and icy and almost empty. As we approached the beach, a bald eagle appeared overhead. We stopped to watch as the huge bird soared in a big, slow circle above us before returning to a nearby tree. A moment later, only a few feet away, a female eagle with a tiny fish in her beak launched herself from the water’s edge into the sky.

Eagles mate for life.

I find that the more willing I am to be grateful for the small things in life, the bigger stuff just seems to show up from unexpected sources, and I am constantly looking forward to each day with all the surprises that keep coming my way!

~ Louise L. Hay

someone saved my life tonight

A friend of mine confided once that he felt a little guilty about being an actor. That playing pretend seemed a shallow way to spend his time when there are so many serious problems in the world that need fixing.

My response was that those problems would be infinitely worse in a world without art. Art is creation, and creation keeps everyone sane in a world that seems hell bent on destroying itself.

How many times has a book, poem, film, photo, play, painting, drawing, sculpture, song, brought me down off the ledge? Too many to count. Humor in particular has stayed my hand. “Laughter is carbonated holiness”1.

I’m not talking only about what’s disseminated by the entertainment industries or approved by the self-referential art world. If art is “the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty”, then it is everywhere and doesn’t need to be validated.


There may be many social and psychological “functions” of art, I don’t know. I just know that it has more than once kept me from the abyss. That shouldn’t be a revelation because the root of creation is always love. Love, even when it looks or feels like hate or pain or sorrow or rage. And love is always beautiful, and always heals.

  1. Anne Lamott []