Anna Billings's Blog (6)

When Great Trees Fall

To Fife that sleek and beautiful stallion majestic Morgan with a smooth chestnut coat who graced us with his quiet nobility for more than thirty years, whose presence took root in the deep earth of our everyday lives. We miss you. We miss your soulful eyes, your elegant, feisty prances your slow glides and silent surveys of the pasture your playful whinnies your intelligent kindness your patience your beauty We miss you. Here is a poem that says it best — When Great Trees Fall B… Continue

Added by Anna Billings on July 8, 2009 at 8:26pm — 1 Comment

Word Clouds — The Wonderful World of Wordle

Here's a fascinating website: Wordle, a tool for creating "word clouds" from text — visual configurations of your written material that are quite amazing. It's creator, Jonathan Feinberg, says this about the tool (which he calls a "toy"): "The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use how… Continue

Added by Anna Billings on January 29, 2009 at 12:48am — 35 Comments

Remembering John O'Donohue

One year ago, the sad news of a great teacher’s departure resounded around the world. John O’Donohue — author of Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom; Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong;… Continue

Added by Anna Billings on January 5, 2009 at 4:42pm — 7 Comments

Winter Solstice

In celebration of the shortest day of the year when the sun sits lowest in the sky, turned at its farthest angle from the Earth — the day that offers us the longest time in darkness. In the Northern Hemisphere, that day is today, December 21, 2008. This brings to mind reflections on our Earth’s relationship to the Sun. First of all, it’s fascinating that the Earth (with us on it) rotates daily (giving us night and day) and makes a complete circular journey around the sun every year. Then consid… Continue

Added by Anna Billings on December 21, 2008 at 2:33pm — 3 Comments

The Power of Communication in Learning

We humans have an incredible capacity to learn. More than the acquisition of skills, information, and knowledge, that capacity helps us mature and evolve — engaging our curious, creative minds, stretching our awareness, and deepening our understanding of the world and ourselves. One of the most potent vehicles for learning is communication, facilitated for us humans through language. Words are the tools of our species, a product of our undeniable interconnection. Language has the power to clari… Continue

Added by Anna Billings on July 13, 2008 at 12:53pm — 13 Comments

A Tribute to John O'Donohue — 1956 - 2008

When a great teacher departs this physical plane, his sudden absence resounds like a giant bell, rippling around the planet against the backdrop of a deep silence. First there is shock. How can one who brimmed over with such unbounded vitality, uproarious laughter, piercing wit and intellect, and a heart bigger than the sun and the moon, be dead? Gone? No, not gone. Impossible when we hear the long reverberation of his profound influence echoing through our soul, giving rise to an uncanny intens… Continue

Added by Anna Billings on January 30, 2008 at 5:38pm — 5 Comments

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