By Celia Coates I was reaching for a large book on my shelves when I noticed a small, rather ragged paperback with the title BETWEEN TWO WORLDS – and an author named Nandor Fodor. I opened it , saw that it had been published in 1964 (no wonder it was ragged) and then I read,…
Category: Wisdom
Wisdom From Fractals
by Celia Coates Last week Brenda Molloy sent an email that I wanted to open immediately. Brenda is an artist who works with fractals to create stunningly beautiful images. (You can find her two earlier posts by clicking on “By Author” at the top of the Home Page.) In the email she wrote, “This week…
What Is It Like To Be A Bat – Revisited
By Celia Coates First, I’d like to bring forward a post that was published in October of 2019. “What is it like to be a bat?” is the question headlining an editorial in a recent issue of NEW SCIENTIST. It continued, “Philosopher Thomas Nagel’s 1974 question has evolved to dominate our thinking on consciousness. Nagel’s point, simply…
What Do You Want?
by Celia Coates In this country we are in trouble with wanting. There are still too many people who are in want – they don’t have enough food, or safety, or health care, or the other basics of life in a rich country. Actually, they are in need. It’s more than want. Then there’s a…
The Spartans, The Stoics, and Harry Potter
by Celia Coates My mind was on a ramble the other day with my thoughts wandering from the question of what makes a good person, to what values are in fashion in this 21st Century, and then on to the story of the young Spartan who chose to die rather than face discovery. That’s a…
Breaking the Rules
By Celia Coates How can we know what is true and real these days? What is being hidden or masked or maneuvered? When did cheating to get what you want become so common? As I was puzzling over these questions, I remembered a post from 2018 that had surprised me. It had shown me something…
To See and To Care
By Celia Coates 100-year-old Hugh Van Ellis was in the news this past week. He’s the Tulsa Massacre survivor who said, “We are all one. We are all one.” Those are shining words from someone who was alive when white townspeople killed hundreds of African Americans and destroyed their homes and businesses. Peaceful unity certainly…
Lessons from Whales
by Celia Coates I don’t usually read books about animals, but recently I’ve been fascinated by BECOMING WILD by Carl Safina. He writes about two mammals and one bird with several separate chapters each for sperm whales, chimpanzees, and scarlet macaws. The whole book is delightful, but this post will look only at what he…
Reading WINN
By Celia Coates A few people in my family were concerned that I was addled in my thinking and had a foolish view of reality so, one reason I created WINN in 2016 was to set my views before them in a non-argumentative way. I’m not alone in my take on life. And, I believe…
“We Are All Connected”?
By Celia Coates This week in America, when we are more openly and ferociously divided than we have been in many decades, the idea that we are all connected can seem ridiculous. Still, it is an idea that goes back 3000 years or more to the earliest Vedic teachings in India, and it can be…
Winners and Losers
By Celia Coates Of course the fierce competition to decide who the political winner and loser would be has grabbed our national attention this week, but this post is not about the 2020 Election, or at least, not directly. There have always been divisions and differences in human communities, but this natural aspect of existence…
From Celia
A dear friend e-mailed me after reading last Friday’s pair of posts to say that she always looks forward to receiving WINN but this time she was sad and disappointed that I had published these “purely political articles.” For me these posts are not purely political. This is my response – not a full post – to…