Top Ten things you should know about laughter


9.  It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli.


7. It is considered an expression of positive emotional states, such as joy, mirth, happiness, relief, etc.


5. Age, gender, education, language, and culture are all factors as to whether a person will experience laughter in a given situation.




1. Laughter is just out and out fun and it is the best medicine!


with thanks to wikipedia!

Top ten ‘A’ Goddesses (in alphabetical order)

‘A’ Goddesses as in Goddesses whose names begin with the letter ‘A’.  Who knew there were so many wonderful Goddesses round about our little world!  please feel free to suggest others to add to the list . . .

Aphrodite: Greek Goddess of love, lust and beauty.
A’akuluujjusi: The great creator mother of the Inuit people.
Andraste: a Celtic war goddess invoked by Boudica while fighting against the Roman occupation of Britain in 61 CE.
Angwusnasomtaka: The Crow Mother. a wuya, and a mothering kachina figure. She is considered the archetypal mother of all the , or of all kachinas. She also often leads other kachinas into a ceremony, often carrying corn kernels and bean sprouts as a symbol of fertility and good luck for the upcoming new planting season.
Artemis: Greek goddess of the hunt, daughter of Zeus and Leto and twin sister to Apollo. She is usually depicted bearing a bow and arrows. Artemis was known as the leader and chief goddess of the Amazons. Goddess of the moon, fertility, childbirth, and the hunt. She is the protector of children and maidens and she is also a virgin goddess.
Ashtarte: Greek Goddess of fertility, sexual love, and war.
Athena: Greek Goddess of crafts, strategy, wisdom and war. Athena is also a virgin goddess.
Atira: The Pawnee Sacred Earth Mother of every living creature.



Top Ten (plus two) Novels that taught me about Social Justice and Life


10. How Not to Save the World (Remi Austin #1)Jessica Yinka ThomasRemi Austin is a fundraiser for the African Peace Collaborative (APC), a conflict resolution nonprofit founded by her late mother. Frustrated by her inability to raise funds and faced with the imminent closure of the APC, Remi turns to a life of crime to keep her nonprofit afloat. With the help of her best friend, a designer and inventor who creates gadget-packed gowns, Remi eludes a dashing insurance agent and a terrifying stalker, all while redistributing the wealth of the world, one work of art at a time.
9. Forging JusticeMargaret Murray.In this restorative justice mystery, Claire Cassidy is a police detective in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who’s beginning to think she’s wasted the last fifteen years of her life. Claire meets Daniel Pierce, a vice principal at a local high school. Frustrated by an education system that throws kids out onto the street at the first sign of trouble, Pierce claims he knows a better way.
8. Just MercyDorothy Van SoestBernadette Baker lives through every mother’s worst nightmare when her adopted sixteen-year-old daughter, Veronica, is brutally murdered in a shocking and random act of violence. Ten years later the murderer, Raelynn Blackwell, is facing execution for her crime, and despite being united in their grief over Veronica, the Baker family is deeply divided on the subject of the death penalty. After Raelynn receives a last-minute stay of execution, a secret is revealed that changes everything and leads to an unlikely bond between Raelynn and Bernadette. This is a heart-wrenching, redemptive family drama of forgiveness, destiny, and the true nature of justice.
6. The Giving Tree.Shel Silverstein.”Once there was a tree…and she loved a little boy.” Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk…and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree, and the tree gave and gave and gave. This is a tender story, touched with sadness, aglow with consolation. A moving parable for readers of all ages that offers an affecting interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another’s capacity to love in return. For me it is a Rorschach test of my current level of openness and generousity.
5. Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)
Chinua AchebeThe classic tale of Nigerian tribal life before and after European colonialism. A short, powerful tragedy that examines the impact of European economic and cultural domination on traditional life in Nigeria.Reading this book got me thinking about colonialism!
4. Sarah’s KeyTatiana de RosnaySet in Paris in 1943 and 2002, this is the story of Sara who at ten is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family’s apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours; and of journalist Julia Jarmond who is asked to write an article about this black day in France’s past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl’s ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d’Hiv’, to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah’s past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
3. The Zoo Keeper’s WifeDiane Ackerman(A true story that reads like a novel) After their zoo was bombed, Polish zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski managed to save over three hundred people from the Nazis by hiding refugees in the empty animal cages. With animal names for these “guests,” and human names for the animals, it’s no wonder that the zoo’s code name became “The House Under a Crazy Star.”
1. Stranger in a Strange Land.Robert A. Heinlein.Valentine Michael Smith is a human being raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him, while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, watersharing, and love. This was one of my earliest introductions to hope for justice and a better life.
+1. The Alchemist
+2. The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-ExupéryMoral allegory and spiritual autobiography, it tells the story of a little boy who leaves the safety of his own tiny planet to travel the universe, learning the vagaries of adult behaviour through a series of extraordinary encounters. His personal odyssey culminates in a voyage to Earth and further adventures.  “it is only with the heart that one sees rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.” This is the book that taught me about human dignity and the responsibility of relationships.


With thanks to Good Reads for the book descriptions!

Top Ten Hannah Arendt Quotes on Forgiveness

So, yes, Hannah Arendt can be a little abstruse, but she says stuff that other folks don’t. And I come away from reading her thinking just a little differently, a little more deeply, a lot more compassionately. So, give these a read!


10. Forgiveness is the exact opposite of vengeance, which acts in the form of re-enacting against an original trespassing whereby far from putting an end to the consequences of the first misdeed, everybody remains bound to the process, permitting the chain reaction contained in every action to take its unhindered course.
6. The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility──of being unable to undo what one has done──is the faculty of forgiving. The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises. Both faculties depend upon plurality, on the presence and acting of others, for no man can forgive himself and no one can be bound by a promise made only to himself.
5. Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.
4. . …only love has the power to forgive. For love, although it is one of the rarest occurrences in human lives, indeed possesses an unequaled power of self-revelation and an unequaled clarity of vision for the disclosure of who, precisely because it is unconcerned to the point of total unworldliness with what the loved person may be, with his qualities and shortcomings no less than with his achievements, failings and transgression.
2. Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.


Top Ten (plus two) Quotes on Friendship




Top ten reasons to want to get married

10. you can get your picture in the paper without doing anything illegal

9. you get lots of engagement presents

8. you get lots of fabulous wedding presents

7. you get access to the 1138 benefits detailed in federal law

6. married people live longer

5. you will always have someone to share two-fer deals with

4. knowing someone will always have your back

3. having someone to laugh with

2. having someone who knows you, and loves and likes you anyway

1. because you are head over heels in love with your best friend and want to celebrate it!

Top Ten plus Two Quotes on Marriage Equality and Marriage


8. There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as a married couple, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends. Homer
4. I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights. Dr. Seuss, Yertle the Turtle and Gertrude McFuzz
+1. To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up. Ogden Nash


Top Ten Plus Two Quotes on Justice

9. If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine. Che Guevara


7. To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.  Pearl S. Buck

6. We educated, the privileged have a professional and moral duty to represent the underrepresented in our society, to ensure that justice exists for all, legal, social and economic justice. Sonia Sotomayor

5. Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.  Dorothy Day



2. The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place. Marian Wright Edelman


+1.  Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. You must take it. Malcolm X



so, Share Friends!  what are some of you favorite quotes on Social Justice?


Top ten plus two quotes on human rights


Top ten plus two quotes on human rights



9. The biggest road block to action on genocide and other human rights crimes is ignorance. Most people just don’t know that such things are happening, and often, if they have a vague idea they are happening, there is a feeling that there is nothing that can be done to stop these crimes. John Prendergast




5. If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right? Paul Farmer



2. ‘Freedom from fear’ could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights.Dag Hammarskjöld

1. To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. Nelson Mandela


+1.  Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer world to live in.  Martin Luther King, Jr.

+2.  Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. Human Beings, indeed all sentient beings, have the right to pursue happiness and live in peace and freedom. 14th Dalai Lama


Top Ten (plus two) quotes on Gratitude

10. Joy is the simplest form of gratitude. Karl Barth

9. Gratitude is the memory of the heart. Jean Baptiste Massieu

8. Gratitude takes less energy than anger. Kristin Cashore

7. Gratitude is exultation awaiting between the cracks of normalcy. Frederic Potter





2. Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder. Thomas Merton


+1. Gratitude is liberating. It is subversive. It helps us to realize that we are sufficient, and that realization frees us. Joanna Macy

+2. I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her generosity. E.B. White


With thanks to Wisdom Commons.


So, share friends! What are your thought and favorite quotes on gratitude?