Agent Sonya + You Are a Miracle + Trying to Find a Happy Medium

Good Morning from Prince Edward Island, 

We landed home sweet home after spending a week in Kelowna, British Columbia visiting our daughter. I miss her already. Always nice to hit your bed after 16 hours of travel time. 

builds a home." ~ Anthony Liccione

Letting Millie out of her kennel the following day was like opening a jack-in-the-box with a heavy-duty spring behind it. It was so much fun! 

I found a creamer to add to my collection.

No luck finding used copy of When Elephants Weep. I may be in touch yet, Donna. Thank you for your kind offer. 

I finished reading two books this week. One about fighting fascism while spying for and in support of communism and one was about living our lives as we feel compelled given the freedoms we have through democracy and capitalism. 

You will take bits from books you’ve read and movies you’ve seen and conversations you’ve had and stories friends have told you, and half the time you won’t even realize you’re doing it. I am a compost heap, and everything I interact with, every experience I’ve had, gets shovelled onto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted by worms, and rots. It’s from that rich, dark humus, the combination of what you encountered, what you know and what you’ve forgotten, that ideas start to grow.

~ Ann Patchett

Agent Sonya by Ben MacIntyre is one heck of read. 

Ursula Burton, could have met her death at any moment during twenty years of espionage. The book reveals one woman's strength born out of her hate for fascism.  And her love for a concept of government; a utopia realized through communism. She lived to be 93 years old. And wrote many books under the name Ruth Werner. 

She was ambitious, romantic, risk-addicted, occasionally selfish, huge-hearted, and tough as only someone who had lived through the worst of twentieth-century could be. She was never betrayed.

The book is educational, exciting and entertaining. 

We all need to have the same passion she had; but not for her cause but the one we enjoy living now, democracy. 

Og Mandino’s book, You Are the Greatest Miracle in the World, was a short read but a fruitful reminder;  

“Most of us build prisons for ourselves and after we occupy them for a period of time we become accustomed to their walls and accept the false premise that we are incarcerated for life. As soon as that belief takes hold of us we abandon hope of ever doing more with our lives and of ever giving our dreams a chance to be fulfilled. We become puppets and begin to suffer living deaths. It may be praiseworthy and noble to sacrifice your life to a cause or a business or the happiness of others, but if you are miserable and unfulfilled in that lifestyle, and know it, then to remain in it is a hypocrisy, a lie, and a rejection of the faith placed in you by your creator." Og Mandino 

There were a number of highlights in the book that spoke truth and wisdom. 

The four laws of happiness and success.

-Og Mandino

Sharing 3 items from the world wide web. 

A love story. Their interracial romance ended painfully after college. They reunited 42 years later — and now live together. Washington Post

What do you do when a meteorite lands on your pillow? A meteorite crashes through a home in Canada, barely missing a woman's head. NPR

This is so cool. Engineers create plants that glow that might one day replace some electrical lighting.  ~MIT News

“Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous.” —Yehudi Menuhin

Listening to some lovely music by Steven Isserlis, one of the worlds best cellists. It would have been a real treat to sit in this cafe and take all this in. 

Have a wonderful weekend. 

With love from Prince Edward Island. 

Bruce + MIllie

ps. Your Morning Smile 

Went to see a psychic who was in a bad mood...then I saw a clairvoyant who was really grumpy. I'm just trying to find a happy medium