ORANGE you going to give 101 SECRETS!  a chance to make your tween or teen's life happier and more purposeful?                     

Please click below to find out about Joe's latest Ebook:        

http://booklocker.com/books/6026.html

101 SECRETS! IS ON THE BEST SELLER LIST

101 SECRETS! has made it to the Best Seller List at Booklocker!
See it at... http://booklocker.com/ When you get there, scroll down on the left side until you get to #9! This really is a good book to buy if you are a parent, uncle, aunt, grandparent, teacher, principal or a mentor to children. 

Ship ahoy! Follow the Light!

I really enjoy collecting quotes. I started as a very young writer by writing down quotes from Reader’s Digest that was delivered to my parent’s household. Here is one by Robert Penn Warren:

“Insofar as writing goes, the writer’s fundamental attempt is to understand the meaning of his own experiences. If he can’t break through to those issues that concern him deeply, he’s not going to be very good.”

NPR’s Gregory Orr

I discovered to my delight the following quote in the poetry quote section of YourDailyPoem.com, which is run by poet Jayne Jaudon Ferrer. It’s a great site, rich in the poetry experience. You have to give the poetry that she selects a poetry try—that is, poeTRY. That’s where I found what NPR’s Gregory Orr has to say about reading poetry. What he says is a big reason why I love poetry so much…

Whenever I read a poem that moves me, I know I'm not alone in the world. I feel a connection to the person who wrote it, knowing that he or she has gone through something similar to what I've experienced, or felt something like what I have felt. And their poem gives me hope and courage, because I know that they survived, that their life force was strong enough to turn experience into words and shape it into meaning and then bring it toward me to share. The gift of their poem enters deeply into me and helps me live and believe in living. ~Gregory Orr, from "The Making of Poems," broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered, 2/20/06I 

Take Me Out to the BALLGAME!

Okay, here are some baseball quotes that I like, and tonight I am going to a Red Wing game...What does the writing say next to the baseball? "The harder I work, the luckier I get." That's a good one, and there are plenty more...  

You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.  ~Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970


If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base.  ~Dave Barry


People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball.  I'll tell you what I do.  I stare out the window and wait for spring.  ~Rogers Hornsby


Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.  ~Ted Williams


I'm convinced that every boy, in his heart, would rather steal second base than an automobile.  ~Tom Clark


A hot dog at the ballgame beats roast beef at the Ritz.  ~Humphrey Bogart


You gotta be a man to play baseball for a living, but you gotta have a lot of little boy in you, too.  ~Roy Campanella


No game in the world is as tidy and dramatically neat as baseball, with cause and effect, crime and punishment, motive and result, so cleanly defined.  ~Paul Gallico


There are three things in my life which I really love:  God, my family, and baseball.  The only problem - once baseball season starts, I change the order around a bit.  ~Al Gallagher, 1971


A baseball game is simply a nervous breakdown divided into nine innings.  ~Earl Wilson


Baseball was made for kids, and grown-ups only screw it up.  ~Bob Lemon


What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game.... There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability.  ~George Bernard Shaw


I see great things in baseball.  It's our game - the American game.  It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism.  Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set.  Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.  ~Walt Whitman


Baseball is a fun game.  It beats working for a living.  ~Phil Linz


When they start the game, they don't yell, "Work ball."  They say, "Play ball."  ~Willie Stargell, 1981

10 Tips on Giving and More

“There is no happiness in having or getting, but only in giving.” ~ Henry Drummond

A poet gives words a place on a page or electronic screen; he or she captures a moment of sunshine or pain; laughter or seriousness; clarity or mysteriousness; simplicity or complexity; mind or heart; funny bone, or a piece of the soul. A poet gives. So, if you’re a poet, live your passion, and…


1. Give.


2. Give more.


3. Give even more.


4. Give even more than that.


5. Give when you don’t want to.


6. Give when you do.


7. Give when you have something to say.


8. Give when you don’t.


9. Give every day.


10. Keep giving.


(My apologies to Brian Clark who wrote 10 tips something just like this on another topic.)

Courage Does Not Always Roar

I love this quote. Sometimes courage is a quiet voice that says, "Keep on doing what you are doing, and things will eventually get better." It could be doing a job that you really don't like, but you give it your best, and you're pleasant and positive with all the people that you meet at your job. That takes courage. To fight a serious illness, takes a vast amount of courage. To watch your spouse's hand shake, knowing that the medicine to stop the shaking causes more problems than it's worth, takes courage. We are never "innocent" bystanders to the pain of the ones we love. We see their pain, and we feel their pain, even if we hardly ever verbalize it. That is the nature of true love.

Here are three quotes that I like a lot...

A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror. ~Ken Keyes

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. e.e. cummings

Certain people come into your life and an innate instinct kicks in, telling you that it was meant to be, that some divine purpose is at work.

Break Through!

I really enjoy collecting quotes. I started as a very young writer by writing down quotes from Reader's Digest that was delivered to my parent's household. Here is one by Robert Penn Warren:

"Insofar as writing goes, the writer's fundamental attempt is to understand the meaning of his own experiences. If he can't break through to those issues that concern him deeply, he's not going to be very good."