Best Internet Finds of the Day

1) The Snuggie for Two: Now I'll be the first to say I LOVE my ridiculous blanket-with-sleeves (or, as my roommate likes to call it, "blanket with holes"), this is getting out of hand. Particularly when they suggest it as appropriate marriage-proposal-garb. Potential suitors, please DO NOT take note. Everyone else, please enjoy.

Snuggie for Two on Youtube

2) The Small Story: This is a blog about everyday life in Massachusetts, and the past two entries have featured a family with three students at our school. The writer, Cara Solomon, came and visited our school and met with both teachers and students, particularly focusing on this one family. It's been so fun to follow this story and read an "outsider's" perspective on our kids and our school. What I particularly love is how Solomon manages to interweave one student's personal story with a broader story about a failing education system that affects many more students and families. Furthermore, she manages to tell the story in a way that realistically acknowledges the challenges but still demonstrates enormous respect for the hard work of the students and the families is hopeful that kids like the one featured don't have to fall through the cracks. Next week the blog will be featuring one of my awesome colleagues. Check it out!

The Small Story

Motivation

You know how great poets frequently turn intimate details of their lives into titles for their poems, giving you just enough detail to realize that this was inspired by a true event but not enough detail to satisfy your curiosity, so that you are left salivating for the actual details behind the rhymes? ("To His Mistress Going to Bed" by Donne comes to mind.)

Well, I am not a great poet; I write a blog. And no one really salivates for details of my life, particularly since they don't have to even know me for 5 minutes before I'm already oversharing. Nevertheless, if I were to title this blog post like a Renaissance poem, it would be called, "To Myself, When I Need Motivation to Keep Working at 9:36 PM on Monday Night, February 1, 2010."

Like I said -- oversharing is the downfall of my poetic genius. Certainly not the fact that my life is totally unsexy. I prefer to think it's oversharing.

Long tangent aside, I love this quote. I found it hanging in a laundry room at a camp where I worked (and if any task would seem to require extra divine motivation, it would be washing pee sheets!) and it's stuck with me ever since. Enjoy.

Troubled soul, thou art not bound to feel, but thou art bound to arise. God loves thee whether thou feelest or not. Thou canst not love when thou wilt, but thou art bound to fight the hatred in thee to the last. Try not to feel good when thou art not good, but cry to Him who is good. He changes not because thou changest. Nay, he has an especial tenderness of love towards thee for that thou art in the dark and hast no light, and his heart is glad when thou dost arise and say, “I will go to my Father.” For he sees thee through all the gloom through which thou canst not see him. Will thou his will. Say to him: “My God, I am very dull and low and hard; but thou art wise and high and tender, and thou art my God. I am thy child. Forsake me not.” Then fold the arms of thy faith, and wait in quietness until light goes up in thy darkness. Fold the arms of thy Faith I say, but not of thy Action: bethink thee of something that thou oughtest to do, and go and do it, if it be but the sweeping of a room, or the preparing of a meal, or a visit to a friend. Heed not thy feelings: Do thy work.

--George MacDonald