Saturday, July 8, 2017

It's A Garden Party! - Have A Rosy Saturday, All


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This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.



 If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me - large or small, inside or out - 
I would love to see them.
Just leave a link to your post in the comments.


My Roses started blooming early this year too. In fact, my bushes were full before the last frost hit. (Sorry, I was out of commission, so no pics.)

As the weather warmed up they continued to flower, but something strange started to happen. (Now I'm sounding like all those click bait headlines. Lol) As the weather continued to warm, the flowers stayed fine and abundant, but the bushes lost most of their leaves.

At first I thought something was wrong with my irrigation, (a not infrequent occurrence) but they were getting plenty of water. Then . . . dun dun dun . . . I found that others were having the same issue.

Turns out that, best guess is they are shedding their leaves to better tolerate the dry, relentless heat.

Smart of them, no?

Anybody else having similar issues?

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Oh . . . Hi there!


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-xUMMwSRLBzNqkDj1hoiMMOg61KugUQuJWUBnEG-1_m2wBLd74_9Uz9oADi1UU-hIy8NZoTRYX73-CFzNKv4fMLteW3RirhdKpAiXzQptfFUoj8eb-Uuetdp0XUHg-yY2qoTxmLK0gfA/s1600/P5050138+c.JPG
This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.



 If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me - large or small, inside or out - 
I would love to see them.
Just leave a link to your post in the comments.


Hope all is well and everyone is enjoying their Summer so far.

Remember,
think happy thoughts
- and stay hydrated!

Friday, June 30, 2017

How many years has it been now . . . somewhere around 200?


( I couldn't find an attribute for this image when I posted it, but I have since found it's owner.)

If you go to Etsy, you will find a shop called ButterTogether
belonging to a very talented Kim Keitner
She offers an assortment of sweet greeting cards with hand drawn designs.

Please . . .

Let America Be America Again 
- Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Quote of the Day


A tragedy has taken place on our land, and even though it did not take place on our watch, we are its inheritors, and the earth remembers.

 - Dan, Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

If only we could learn by example . . .


How happy is the little Stone 
- Emily Dickinson

How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn't care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears -
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity -

Monday, June 26, 2017

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,
Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.


Sunday, June 25, 2017

Saturday, June 24, 2017

It's A Garden Party! - Super!


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-xUMMwSRLBzNqkDj1hoiMMOg61KugUQuJWUBnEG-1_m2wBLd74_9Uz9oADi1UU-hIy8NZoTRYX73-CFzNKv4fMLteW3RirhdKpAiXzQptfFUoj8eb-Uuetdp0XUHg-yY2qoTxmLK0gfA/s1600/P5050138+c.JPG
This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.



 If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me - large or small, inside or out - 
I would love to see them.
Just leave a link to your post in the comments.


We've had a super bloom of native wild flowers all over the state this year. 

My California Poppies started blooming before Spring was actually here, and they are still going strong. In fact, we actually had to pull some that were getting trampled under the Plum tree and some that were filling in my herb patch.

Friday, June 23, 2017

A Cradle Song

- William Blake

Sweet dreams form a shade,
O'er my lovely infants head.
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,
By happy silent moony beams

Sweet sleep with soft down.
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweet sleep Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.

Sweet smiles in the night,
Hover over my delight.
Sweet smiles Mothers smiles,
All the livelong night beguiles.

Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,
Chase not slumber from thy eyes,
Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,
All the dovelike moans beguiles.

Sleep sleep happy child,
All creation slept and smil'd.
Sleep sleep, happy sleep.
While o'er thee thy mother weep

Sweet babe in thy face,
Holy image I can trace.
Sweet babe once like thee.
Thy maker lay and wept for me

Wept for me for thee for all,
When he was an infant small.
Thou his image ever see.
Heavenly face that smiles on thee,

Smiles on thee on me on all,
Who became an infant small,
Infant smiles are His own smiles,
Heaven & earth to peace beguiles.


Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Quote of the Day


Let us put our minds together and see what kind of life we can make for our children.

 - Sitting Bull I, 
as qtd. in: Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder
by Kent Nerburn, 

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Poetry & Politics . . . a familiar pairing



Habeas corpus
And that pesky Bill of Rights
Who needs ’em? Wink. Wink.


- Jean Hall, Norwood, MA.


Monday, June 19, 2017

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,
Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.
 

Saturday, June 17, 2017

It's A Garden Party! - and . . . We're back (I hope)

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-xUMMwSRLBzNqkDj1hoiMMOg61KugUQuJWUBnEG-1_m2wBLd74_9Uz9oADi1UU-hIy8NZoTRYX73-CFzNKv4fMLteW3RirhdKpAiXzQptfFUoj8eb-Uuetdp0XUHg-yY2qoTxmLK0gfA/s1600/P5050138+c.JPG
This feature, originally known as Saturday Farmer's Market, was created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and was then hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.



 If anyone would like to share their own gardening adventures with me - large or small, inside or out - 
I would love to see them.
Just leave a link to your post in the comments.


My garden has never been one to follow along with the crowd, and this year is no different. 
So, from my garden to you:

Happy Easter, 2017!

Friday, June 16, 2017

Factory of Souls

 
It takes just two people to bring the world
to ruin. So goes the history of love.
At the end of the day we tally the casualties
of war, victory for the one who gets wounded
 
the least. You say it’s time for a change
but I don’t know to what end, change being
just the skin of some incandescent creature
whose grotesque beauty is what we adore,
 
whom some people call love, whom we
venerate because it consumes us, slim pickings
for its huge soul. My people say, don’t look
or you’ll go blind. You say the end was always
 
just around the bend. I say all we have
is unconditional surrender to the future.
So unreliable is the past that I feel compelled
to leave unmourned the blind, relentless loves
 
that may have scorched into our hearts
the way the saints accepted stigmata. My people say,
look back or lose your way. Or, walk backwards,
if you can. So I found myself on a bus to New York City
 
to lose myself completely. Past Hunters Point
we hit the factory of souls—a thousand tombstones
from which a silk-like canopy of smoke rose to meet
God knows what—a spacious emptiness, the end.
 
I’ve heard the world’s never going to end.
I’ve heard it will go on and on, and we will be
as nebulous as Nebuchadnezzar, our live
not worth a footnote, our grandest schemes
 
no more than feeble whispers, all memory
shifting like the continental plates. In the future,
all science will finally come around; genetic
engineering, I’ve been told, will be all the rage,
 
and we will be a super race in a world
infallibly perfected, where trains run on time,
love never dies, and hope can be purchased
by the pound. It’s called immortalization
 
of the cell lines. We will choose what will survive.
Our destiny made lucid, we will find the world
contemplating itself, like the young Narcissus,
one hand about to touch the pool, his body
 
lurched towards that marvelous reflection.
I suppose we’ve always felt compelled
to desensitize our failures. My people say,
to go unnoticed, you play dead. I myself
 
may have chosen to forget a face, a name,
some cruel word uttered carelessly, but not,
after all the harm is done, intending any pain.
And many others may have chosen to forget me.
 
It works both ways. My people say, nasa huli
ang pagsisi: regret is the final emotion.
It’s what you see when you look back.
It’s what’s no longer there.

from: Zero Gravity, Copyright 1999.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Quote of the Day

-->

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.


- Attributed to George Orwell 
(Post by: Robert Reich)

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

For your contemplation. . .


Summer night -
even the stars
are whispering to each other.

- Isaa


Monday, June 12, 2017

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,
Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.


Friday, June 9, 2017

The Philosopher Did Not Say

- Jennifer Franklin

What secret had Nietzsche discovered
when he walked the Turin streets
before he flung his arms around
a horse being beaten and collapsed
into a decade-long coma? Clinging
to the cowering brown beast, he said
Mother, I am stupid. Wild hair and a three-
piece tweed suit constrained the body
that held the mind that knew too much.
Why am I mining dead men for answers
when they were all as mad as I am?
The horse, his eyes hollow as those
of the Burmese elephant that Orwell shot
decades later, had the look of every
betrayed creature. Perhaps Nietzsche
saw the shock in the animal’s eyes—
how every human contains the capacity
to inflict cruelty. The look that turns
to recognition, to resignation, to an eye
reflecting a field full of fallen horses.

Copyright © 2016 Jennifer Franklin

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Quote of the Day


Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - 
not in pity or patronizingly, 
but as human beings
 who have learnt how to turn our common suffering 
into hope for the future. 

- Nelson Mandela

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

hate blows a bubble of despair

- e.e. cummings

hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young
 
pleasure and pain are merely surfaces
(one itself showing,itself hiding one)
life's only and true value neither is
love makes the little thickness of the coin
 
comes here a man would have from madame death
nevertheless now and without winter spring?
she'll spin that spirit her own fingers with
and give him nothing (if he should not sing)
 
how much more than enough for both of us
darling.  And if i sing you are my voice.

Monday, June 5, 2017

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,
Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.
 
 

Saturday, June 3, 2017


Grief
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy dead in silence like to death—
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go.

Friday, June 2, 2017

Spring to Summer



Beauty and Beauty
- Rupert Brooke

When Beauty and Beauty meet
   All naked, fair to fair,
The earth is crying-sweet,
   And scattering-bright the air,
Eddying, dizzying, closing round,
   With soft and drunken laughter;
Veiling all that may befall
   After—after—
Where Beauty and Beauty met,
   Earth’s still a-tremble there,
And winds are scented yet,
   And memory-soft the air,
Bosoming, folding glints of light,
   And shreds of shadowy laughter;
Not the tears that fill the years
   After—after—

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

I think we have a new quote of the millennium . . .


I used to think the world was broken down by tribes, by black and white. 
By Indian and white. 

But I know that isn’t true. 

The world is only broken into two tribes. 
The people who are assholes and the people who are not.

- Sherman Alexie, 

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Haiku Tuesday








The thief failed to take it -
The moon shining
At the window.

                                             - Ryokan









Monday, May 29, 2017

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,
Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.


Friday, May 26, 2017

Something appropriate from Anne Sexton in this, the month of both Mother's Day & Mental Health Awareness ...


The Double Image


1.

I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,
flapping in the winter rain,
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I’d never get you back again.
I tell you what you’ll never really know:
all the medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never be as true as these
struck leaves letting go.

I, who chose two times
to kill myself, had said your nickname
the mewling months when you first came;
until a fever rattled
in your throat and I moved like a pantomime
above your head. Ugly angels spoke to me. The blame,
I heard them say, was mine. They tattled
like green witches in my head, letting doom
leak like a broken faucet;
as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet,
an old debt I must assume.

Death was simpler than I’d thought.
The day life made you well and whole
I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
I pretended I was dead
until the white men pumped the poison out,
putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole
of talking boxes and the electric bed.
I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel.
Today the yellow leaves
go queer. You ask me where they go. I say today believed
in itself, or else it fell.

Today, my small child, Joyce,
love your self’s self where it lives.
There is no special God to refer to; or if there is,
why did I let you grow
in another place. You did not know my voice
when I came back to call. All the superlatives
of tomorrow’s white tree and mistletoe
will not help you know the holidays you had to miss.
The time I did not love
myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove.
There was new snow after this.


2.

They sent me letters with news
of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.
When I grew well enough to tolerate
myself, I lived with my mother. Too late,
too late, to live with your mother, the witches said.
But I didn’t leave. I had my portrait
done instead.

Part way back from Bedlam
I came to my mother’s house in Gloucester,
Massachusetts. And this is how I came
to catch at her; and this is how I lost her.
I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said.
And she never could. She had my portrait
done instead.

I lived like an angry guest,
like a partly mended thing, an outgrown child.
I remember my mother did her best.
She took me to Boston and had my hair restyled.
Your smile is like your mother’s, the artist said.
I didn’t seem to care. I had my portrait
done instead.

There was a church where I grew up
with its white cupboards where they locked us up,
row by row, like puritans or shipmates
singing together. My father passed the plate.
Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said.
I wasn’t exactly forgiven. They had my portrait
done instead.


3.

All that summer sprinklers arched
over the seaside grass.
We talked of drought
while the salt-parched
field grew sweet again. To help time pass
I tried to mow the lawn
and in the morning I had my portrait done,
holding my smile in place, till it grew formal.
Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit
and a postcard of Motif number one,
as if it were normal
to be a mother and be gone.

They hung my portrait in the chill
north light, matching
me to keep me well.
Only my mother grew ill.
She turned from me, as if death were catching,
as if death transferred,
as if my dying had eaten inside of her.
That August you were two, but I timed my days with doubt.
On the first of September she looked at me
and said I gave her cancer.
They carved her sweet hills out
and still I couldn’t answer.


4.

That winter she came
part way back
from her sterile suite
of doctors, the seasick
cruise of the X-ray,
the cells’ arithmetic
gone wild. Surgery incomplete,
the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard
them say.

During the sea blizzards
she had here
own portrait painted.
A cave of mirror
placed on the south wall;
matching smile, matching contour.
And you resembled me; unacquainted
with my face, you wore it. But you were mine
after all.

I wintered in Boston,
childless bride,
nothing sweet to spare
with witches at my side.
I missed your babyhood,
tried a second suicide,
tried the sealed hotel a second year.
On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed and this
was good.


5.

I checked out for the last time
on the first of May;
graduate of the mental cases,
with my analyst’s okay,
my complete book of rhymes,
my typewriter and my suitcases.

All that summer I learned life
back into my own
seven rooms, visited the swan boats,
the market, answered the phone,
served cocktails as a wife
should, made love among my petticoats

and August tan. And you came each
weekend. But I lie.
You seldom came. I just pretended
you, small piglet, butterfly
girl with jelly bean cheeks,
disobedient three, my splendid

stranger. And I had to learn
why I would rather
die than love, how your innocence
would hurt and how I gather
guilt like a young intern
his symptoms, his certain evidence.

That October day we went
to Gloucester the red hills
reminded me of the dry red fur fox
coat I played in as a child; stock-still
like a bear or a tent,
like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox.

We drove past the hatchery,
the hut that sells bait,
past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall’s
Hill, to the house that waits
still, on the top of the sea,
and two portraits hung on the opposite walls.


6.

In north light, my smile is held in place,
the shadow marks my bone.
What could I have been dreaming as I sat there,
all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone
of the smile, the young face,
the foxes’ snare.

In south light, her smile is held in place,
her cheeks wilting like a dry
orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown
love, my first image. She eyes me from that face,
that stony head of death
I had outgrown.

The artist caught us at the turning;
we smiled in our canvas home
before we chose our foreknown separate ways.
The dry red fur fox coat was made for burning.
I rot on the wall, my own
Dorian Gray.

And this was the cave of the mirror,
that double woman who stares
at herself, as if she were petrified
in time — two ladies sitting in umber chairs.
You kissed your grandmother
and she cried.


7.

I could not get you back
except for weekends. You came
each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit
that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack
your things. We touch from habit.
The first visit you asked my name.
Now you stay for good. I will forget
how we bumped away from each other like marionettes
on strings. It wasn’t the same
as love, letting weekends contain
us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name,
wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying.
You call me mother and I remember my mother again,
somewhere in greater Boston, dying.

I remember we named you Joyce
so we could call you Joy.
You came like an awkward guest
that first time, all wrapped and moist
and strange at my heavy breast.
I needed you. I didn’t want a boy,
only a girl, a small milky mouse
of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house
of herself. We named you Joy.
I, who was never quite sure
about being a girl, needed another
life, another image to remind me.
And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure
nor soothe it. I made you to find me.

from: The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton, Copyright 1981.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Toby Allen shows us some Real Monsters


Toby Allen's Real Monsters | The monsters we fight with. [Psychology - Illustration - Character Design]:

They are much easier to read if you go to Toby's site,



Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Quote of the Day


The Flat Earth Society actually does claim to have members all around the globe.

- Bruce Norbeck. Take all the time you need . . .

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Once Again . . . Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes.*



* from: Tears, Idle Tears, by Alfred Lord Tennyson

BookRiot has published a list of 100 Must-Read books on mental illness.

I've found BookRiot to be a wonderful source for inspiration and information for readers. And the original post on BookRiot contains helpful links for information on and purchase of each book.
  100 Must-Read Books About Mental Illness - BookRiot
  1.  72 Hour Hold – Bebe Moore Campbell
  2. All the Bright Places – Jennifer Niven
  3. All the Things We Never Knew: Chasing the Chaos of Mental Illness – Sheila Hamilton
  4. Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  5. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
  6. Awakening Kali – T. S. Ghosh
  7. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
  8. Beloved – Toni Morrison
  9. The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide – David Miklowitz
  10. Bleeding Violet – Dia Reeves
  11. The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating – Kiera Van Gelder
  12. By the Time You Read This, I’ll Be Dead – Julie Ann Peters
  13. The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives – ed. Vanessa Hazzard
  14. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
  15. Crazy – Han Nolan y
  16. Darkness Visible – William Styron
  17. Dragonfish – Vu Tran
  18. Every Last Word – Tamara Ireland Stone
  19. Everything, Everything – Nicola Yoon
  20. The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – David J. Morris
  21. Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng
  22. Fangirl – Rainbow Rowell
  23. Find You in the Dark – A. Meredith Walters
  24. Flowers From the Storm – Laura Kinsale
  25. Franny and Zooey – J. D. Salinger
  26. Furiously Happy – Jenny Lawson
  27. Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder – Rachel Reiland
  28. Girl, Interrupted – Susanna Kaysen
  29. Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life – Melody Moezzi
  30. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
  31. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
  32. Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened – Allie Brosh
  33. Imagine Me Gone – Adam Haslett
  34. Impulse – Ellen Hopkins
  35. It’s Kind of a Funny Story – Ned Vizzini
  36. The Last Time We Said Goodbye – Cynthia Hand
  37. Keep Me Still – Caisey Quinn
  38. Let the Tornado Come – Rita Zoey Chin
  39. A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara
  40. Look Straight Ahead – Elaine M. Will
  41. Looking for Alaska – John Green
  42. Loud in the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl – Stacy Pershall
  43. Made You Up – Francesca Zappia
  44. Madness: A Bipolar Life – Marya Hornbacher
  45. The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie – Jennifer Ashley
  46. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination – Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
  47. The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought
  48. Manic: A Memoir – Terri Cheney
  49. Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me – Ellen Forney
  50. The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides
  51. The Memory of Light – Francisco X. Stork
  52. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
  53. More Happy Than Not – Adam Silvera
  54. The Museum of Intangible Things – Wendy Wunder
  55. My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind – Scott Stossel
  56. My Heart and Other Black Holes – Jasmine Warga
  57. The Nest – Kenneth Oppel
  58. The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression – Andrew Solomon
  59. Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
  60. Not Alone: Reflections on Faith and Depression – Monica A. Coleman
  61. A Note of Madness – Tabitha Suzuma
  62. Ophelia Speaks: Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self – Sara Shandler
  63. Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Mental Illness – Rebecca Shannonhouse (ed.)
  64. Paperweight – Meg Haston
  65. Polarity – Max Bemis
  66. Prozac Nation – Elizabeth Wurtzel
  67. Psychiatric Tales: Eleven Graphic Stories about Mental Illness – Daryl Cunningham
  68. The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness – Lori Schiller
  69. Reasons To Stay Alive – Matt Haig
  70. The Round House by Louise Erdrich
  71. The Salt Eaters – Toni Cade Bambara
  72. Shadows in the Sun: Healing from Depression and Finding the Light Within – Gayathri Ramprasad
  73. She’s Come Undone – Wally Lamb
  74. The Silver Linings Playbook– Matthew Quick
  75. Skinny – Donna Cooner
  76. Sparks Off You – Anita Felicelli
  77. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy – Sonya Sones
  78. Stranger – Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith
  79. The Surrendered – Chang-rae Lee
  80. Swallow Me Whole – Nate Powell
  81. A Tale for the Time Being – Ruth Ozeki
  82. Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide – Darryl “DMC” McDaniels
  83. Therapy – Kathryn Perez
  84. Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher
  85. Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament – Kay Redfield Jamison
  86. The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath – Sylvia Plath
  87. The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B – Teresa Toten
  88. An Unquiet Mind – Kay Redfield Jamison
  89. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
  90. Your Voice is All I Hear – Leah Scheier
  91. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia – Marya Hornbacher
  92. When Reason Breaks – Cindy L. Rodriguez
  93. When We Collided – Emery Lord
  94. White Oleander – Janet Fitch
  95. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
  96. Willow – Julia Hoban
  97. Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey through Depression – Meri Nana-Ama Danquah
  98. Wintergirls – Laurie Halse Anderson
  99. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
  100. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I'm surprised to find that I've only read ten of the books on this list, even though I have been reading books dealing with mental illness for many years. (The ones I've read are in bold type.) This leads me to believe that the list could easily be expanded.

Here are a few suggestions for books that I would add to the list: 

  1. His Bright Light - Danielle Steele
  2. The Flight of the Mind: Virginia Woolf's Art and Manic Depressive Illness - Thomas C. Caramagno
  3. Poets on Prozac - Richard M. Berlin, Ed.
    On Being Ill - Virginia Woolf
  4. Sunbathing In The Rain - Gwyneth Lewis
  5. I Never Promised You A Rose Garden - Joanne Greenberg
  6. The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds - Paul Zindel
  7. Feeling Good - David Burns
  8. A Brilliant Madness - Patty Duke
  9. Moodswing - Ronald R. Fieve, M.D.
  10. Manic Depression: Illness or Awakening - Robert E. Kelly

How about you? How many books on this list have you read? And which books would you like to add to the list?

 (Photo: Pinterest)

Monday, May 22, 2017

Kilt Monday!

'Cause let's face it,
Mondays can be so rough, hard, difficult.

Saturday, May 20, 2017

We can overcome.




Also,
World Health Organization: