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Ingrid Haring-Mendes's avatar

This is exactly what I needed to read! Thank you for uplifting! Love the quote: you can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming! Please let that be true.

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Ramya Vivekanandan's avatar

Thank you so much, Ingrid! I love that quote as well. I choose to believe that if it’s true in nature, so it must be true all around.

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Dr. Wendy Pabich's avatar

What a wonderful, uplifting piece! In art and words and community and flowers will we find a path forward. 🌸

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Dr. Wendy Pabich's avatar

P.S. it sounds like we might have crossed paths in Chicago!

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Ramya Vivekanandan's avatar

Thank you, Wendy! I hope you had a great time in Chicago as well - it’s such a fabulous city!

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Armand Beede's avatar

Ramya Vivekanandan: Your Spirit is guided by the Light of Freedom and Enlightenment of Thought, with the best current running through Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston through today's Jesmyn Ward.

One of the most shameful of book bannings was in Tennessee, which banned Art Spiegelman's "Maus" -- an allegorical art book about the Holocaust, the Shoah.

There is so much shameful in our history: Slavery, genocide against First-Nation Peoples, lynching, and even that an anti-lynching bill could not make it through Congress during FDR's otherwise progressive administration.

But the tradition through Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman through Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell is the Spiritual Heritage we can build our own intellect on.

Thank you for ALL that you do, Kindred Spirit!

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Ramya Vivekanandan's avatar

Armand, you name some of my favorite writers, all of whom are featured in the ‘Nation of Writers’ section of the APM. When I was walking through the space, I couldn’t help but to reflect on this rich literary tradition and the many ways in which the words and lives of these stalwarts give us food for thought and lessons for today.

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Trudi James Hawke's avatar

This reflection, and your images, stoke some hopefulness in my spirit this morning. Thank you.

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Ramya Vivekanandan's avatar

So glad to hear that, Trudi!

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BKE's avatar

SO glad you had an opportunity to visit the Writers Museum. Sorry we did not have a chance to catch up in person. Next time for sure! :-)

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Ramya Vivekanandan's avatar

Thank you so much for the recommendation - I loved it!

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