Collectanea - American History - Art and Sculpture - Finger-Ring Draw - Food and Cooking - Humor - Natural Science - Philosophy - Politics and World Affairs - Word Play - On Writing
\Col`lec*ta"ne*a\, n. pl. [Neut. pl. from L. collectaneus collected, fr. colligere. See {Collect}, v. t.] Passages selected from various authors, usually for purposes of instruction; miscellany; anthology. Webster's 1913
From a passage selected at random
After the dinner our hosts conducted us to the beach. Among the presents was a large supply rice for the fleet. It was put up in straw sacks or bales containing about 125 pounds each. By the pile stood a company of athletes or gymnasts chosen from the peasantry for their strength and size and trained for the service and entertainment of the court. At a signal from their leader, who was himself a giant of muscle and fat, a sort of human Jumbo, they began transporting the rice to the boats. It was more frolic than work. Some of thembore a bale on each hand above their heads, some would carry two laid crosswise on the shoulders and head, while others performed dextrous feats of tossing, catching, balancing them, or turning somersaults with them. I saw one nimble Titan fasten his talons in a sack, throw it down on the sand still keeping his hold, turn a somersault over it, throw it over him as he revolved, and come down sitting on the beach with the sack in his lap. Beat that who can. If you imagine it "as easy as preaching," try it the next time in a gymnasium. But let me advise you, first make your will.
The Logbook of the Captains Clerk, John J. Sewell, Lakeside Press, 1995 pg 256
Mother's habit of clipping stuff rubbed off on me early and it stuck. She clipped mostly recipes but I'm more of a generalist. I'll clip anything that grabs my fancy.
No indeed, the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me. I lived a public life and attempted to function under the assumption that the world was solid and all the relationships therein. Now I know men are different and that all life is divided and that only in division is there true health. Hence again I have stayed in my hole, because up abovethere's an increasing passion to make men conform to a pattern.
.... Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway? - diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that were to happen. .....Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, p498
clipped December 21, 2002
Collection: Philosophy
I Ain't What I Was
Alex Can Spell
Alex Can Think
Beware of Hypnotic Media
When Hope Dies
Commitment is the Glue that Binds
The Credential of the Dominant
Defenestrate
Lifestyle's Supports and the Difficulty of Understanding
Digging Your Toes
Do We Really Mean What We Say
Emergent democracy
That's the Point of Emotions: Survival
Emptiness
Ever Tried, Ever Failed
Finding the Words to Fit It
First Find What's Truly Significant
Fit In Better
Float Your Ideals
From Knowledge to Wisdom
Genetic Determinism and Human Nature
God made mud. God got lonesome.
Growing up... it never stops
Skepticism is Helpful
How Do You Know
Haunted Until his Humanity Awakens
Gets Me Into My Boots
It's Time to Go Home
It was the Crickets
Life is Strange
Life is to be Lived, Not Controlled
Make No Little Plans
Mix With the World
Monopoly Money
More Toward Realism than Fantasy
I Mourn the World in Which I Live
Normal Damage
There is Nothing a Man Will Not Do for Another
Now, Dazzled
Transcript of Barack Obama's Speech on Race and Politics
Observational Learning
One Forgets
Others Choose the Path of Healing
Our Peripheral Existence
Over Fifty
Passing Time in Byzantium
Our Past is Written Deep
People are Themselves
Persistent and Ineradicable Instinct
Playing and Learning and Loving
Politics and the English Language
Primary and Secondary Emotions
Privileges
Proficiency in Knowledge of the World
Questions
Relive Your Traumas
Running With the Pack
Scarcity
The SEEKING Circuit
Shopping for sensation
Sincerity Itself is Bullshit
Or So I Feel
The Speed of Wisdom
Stay What You Always Were
That Ideas Should Freely Spread
The Bottom Line
A Theory of the State
The Speed of Darkness
Our Three Brains
Tools for Communicating
To Remember Safely
I Tremble for my Species
Truth and Story
Something Useful Can Be Artful
The Value of Notebooks
Vision, Novelty and Fear
Visual Thinkers
Waiting
Walk Humbly
Walking the edge, I am. ...
Was Love Then
What a Deale
What I've Learned
Ask What Surprised Them
Words Get in the Way
Writing From the Inside Out
Collectanea - American History - Art and Sculpture - Finger-Ring Draw - Food and Cooking - Humor - Natural Science - Philosophy - Politics and World Affairs - Word Play - On Writing