Last Wednesday Wisdom for February 2017

Valentine's Day is over, but can't we all still use some love? I think we can, so I'm offering quotes about love in this installment of Last Wednesday Wisdom. And because HeartWood and I both celebrated birthdays this month (guess who's older), I'm throwing in some about age and experience, as well.

In the spirit of love and celebration, I'll even give you a treat at the end: photos from a recent concert and exhibit by local luthiers (stringed-instrument makers).

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.
-- John Lennon

​Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Airman's Odyssey

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.
​-- Madeleine L'Engle

How many slams in an old screen door?
Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live 'em.
How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give 'em.
― Shel Silverstein

​Tell myself:
Trust in Experience. And in the rhythms.
The deep rhythms of your experience.
-- Muriel Rukeyser

No matter what you're feeling, the only way to get a difficult feeling to go away is simply to love yourself for it. If you think you're stupid, then love yourself for feeling that way. It's a paradox, but it works. To heal, you must be the first one to shine the light of compassion on any areas within you that you feel are unacceptable.
​-- Christiane Northrup

​Imagination has no expiration date.
-- Paula Whyman, author, in article on debut authors over age fifty, Poets & Writers magazine, November-December 2016

​Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination. 
-- Voltaire

We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
-- Paul Bowles

If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. 
-- Maya Angelou

If I had known when I was twenty-one that I should be as happy as I am now, I should have been sincerely shocked. They promised me wormwood and the funeral raven.
-- Christopher Isherwood

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Our friend Eldon Howe with the guitar he made. He's sharing a table with his father, Elon Howe (in cap), an award-winning maker of violins and violas.

Eldon shows off one of Elon's instruments.

Elon Howe

Fascinated by a harp guitar

Chester Winowiecki with some of his "junkstruments," fashioned from boxes, cake pans and wash tubs

Winowiecki with his washtub bass.

Guitar detail

Eleven-year-old luthier Cyanne Schuitema (with braids) practices before taking the stage with her grandfather Don Benson

Keith Caldwell, Jerry Roberts, Gene Calkins and Ian Tronsen play instruments from Keith’s workshop

Makin' music

Mark Swanson of Swanson Stringed Instruments

Singer, songwriter and luthier Don Benson with granddaughter Cyanne Schuitema, who's playing the ukulele she built

Chester Winowiecki and "Bearded Ladies Men" (Lisa Ziemelis, Adrian Schuster, Karl Ziemelis)

Bearded Ladies Men

Chester Winowiecki

Fiddlers Isaac Smith and Katie Springer play Elon Howe creations

Isaac Smith