Serendipity: HEAR NO, SEE NO, SPEAK NO, YOU KNOW

8/15/11

HEAR NO, SEE NO, SPEAK NO, YOU KNOW

THEME: HEAR NO, SEE NO, SPEAK NO, YOU KNOW
Nothing baffles the schemes of evil people so much as the calm composure of great souls.~ Comte de Mira

FAIREST OF THEM ALL
ELLIE SEARL

The pressure for women to be skinny, gorgeous, tight-bottomed, de-wrinkled, balloon-lipped, and big-boobed is just plain evil. According to magazines, billboards, TV ads, and fashion gurus, every woman who isn't a Heidi Klum clone, or close to it, should wrap herself in cheese cloth and squeeze out the hideousness until all that's left is a plasticine replicant of her former self. Or if not that, then she should spend a month or two at a Human Reconstruction Institute until her body, hair, skin, and lips are taut, voluminous, porcelain, and pouty—respectively.MORE . . .

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MY THREE DAYS AS A CUBAN

CAROLYN B HEALY

The email fairly screamed: Please take it down. You could be placing people at risk. Give us time to look at it first.

Uh oh. All I’d done is set up an online chronicle of my trip to Cuba.* I had to do something with the barrage of images and stories that woke me up every morning, to the Afro-Cuban beat of the music that followed us everywhere and then followed me home.

As a courtesy, or maybe nagged by a vestige of the paranoia that hovers in the Cuban air, the first thing I did was send the link to my two tour leaders. And received this alarming reply. MORE . . .

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About Carolyn and Ellie

Carolyn B Healy is a therapist-turned-writer who has invested hundreds of hours listening to people as they rewrite their life stories. While her interests include serious things like grief, resilience and transformative change, her vantage point allows her to address them with insight and a certain dark humor. A lifelong Chicagoan, she grew up the only child of a single mom, which fueled her curiosity about how other people live, and strengthened her backbone. She has been a columnist for her local newspaper and is writing a book on finding the hidden gifts in grieving.

Ellie Searl writes of human nature - the ordinary and the eccentric - getting to the heart of life’s yearnings, idiosyncrasies, and ambiguities. The splendor of the Adirondack Mountains and Lake Champlain seeped into her being, as did the rhythms of small-town life. Her slice-of-life storytelling draws inspiration from rich experiences with diverse cultures, quirky personalities, and unusual encounters while living, working, and raising a family in New York, Delaware, Vermont, Ontario, Quebec, Ohio, and Illinois. Ellie’s stories reflect her passion for justice, equality, and freedom of the spirit. She taught the art of writing to Chicagoland middle-schoolers, whose curiosity, energy, and enthusiasm for life gave her insight into the dreams of the sometimes disregarded. When not writing, Ellie designs and formats books. She also creates and manages websites and blogs.