A life in words

  • Forests Real and Imagined

    Forests. Lots of plants, big and small, living together on land. Animals dwell there. Hunters hunt there. Recluses and far-away grandmas live in cabins there. How many fairytales take place in a forest? How many books you’ve read? Is the forest good, evil, or both or neither? When was the last time you sat on…

  • Susan

    I keep postponing this post, but the postponed, post-pondering, shall now be posted! By the way, thanks to everyone who reads this blog and comments on it. I’m not so sure I would read this stuff if one of my friends was putting it out; you all are very good to me. Okay, here goes….…

  • A Happy Feeling

    I don’t know why, but I’ve had a happy feeling in my heart the last few days. Whenever that happens I wonder, “Why do I feel this way?” I never really find an exact reason, but of course it still makes me feel glad. Here’s one cool thing: I turned off the little thing that…

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech … Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the right of another: and this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know. … A free People will be shewing that they are so, by their freedom of speech. … Freedom of speech is ever the symptom, as well as the effect of a good government. … Guilt only dreads liberty of speech, which drags it out of its lurking holes, and exposes its deformity and horror to daylight.Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood no. 8, 1722 (orthography and spelling modernized)