Dr. T says...

Q&A after the lecture for Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s new book in June 2012.

Q: Philosophical question – would you rather die now or live forever?

Neil:

“I’ve kind of bought into the concept of a natural life.

“I know philosophers like having those kind of debates but I never believe that the options available to a creative person are ever limited by the choices offered by a philosopher.

“So, for example, if there’s a lifeboat and there’s only a certain amount of food for four, but there’s six people, so do you throw them overboard? Otherwise everyone dies, or do you eat them? So these choices…so I’m saying maybe we can invent a way to draw fish from the ocean so we don’t have to throw them overboard. See, I like solutions to problems rather than the blunt do A or B.

“And part of this, I think, is because we grew up in a multiple choice school system. Sometimes answers exist beyond the choices you have thought up as the person who wrote the exam.”

Winter quotes

Every winter,

When the great sun has turned his face away,

The earth goes down into a vale of grief,

And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,

Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay -

Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.

~ Charles Kingsley

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.

~ Andrew Wyeth

Winter came down to our home one night

Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,

And we, we were children once again.

~ Bill Morgan, Jr.

The color of springtime is in the flowers; the color of winter is in the imagination.

~ Terri Guillemets

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

~ William Blake

Purple ♥ Blue

So delighted. And still more to go -- borders, back, quilting, binding. Soon.

the deepest truth we know

Rewound the DVR to get it right and scribbled this in a notebook a couple years ago. The show is off the air by now. Ran across this quote, though, again this week.

“We’re not like those people that weren’t brought up with it. Clean slate – they can choose. So you and me, we’re cursed. We were brought up on fire and brimstone. And no matter how you try to read, study, talk to a holy man, you can’t get away from it. What got etched in our minds when we were six, seven years old – that’s the deepest truth we know: You don’t do the right thing, he’ll make you pay.”

Memphis Beat, Jason Lee’s character, Dwight Hendricks; Liz Garcia and Josh Harto, creators and writers; Sean Whitesell, writer

"My" tree

Turns out several other people on the train platform love this tree too. I was delighted to get a good "naked" shot of her last week when fog obscured the same-brown building behind her.

And here she is in her summer glory.

Purple Hearts Blue, a work in progress

Cannot believe how awesome my DH is: he found two half-yard cuts of a batik I first purchased in November 2010. Batiks are infamous as one-of-a-kind, can't-be-duplicated, I've heard. So, I have the fabric to forge ahead with finishing the top.

Also, I took advantage of his captured attention at my mother-in-law's this weekend -- and her impeccable eye and good taste as well -- and laid out the quilt top yet again. THIS I can live with.

Working title: Purple Hearts Blue

Itching to work on this quilt all day long, and too many things to do in the meantime. This quick post will scratch the itch long enough to let me focus on the day job!