Make up a story… For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.
Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993
Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the creative bug is just a wee voice telling you, ”I’d like my crayons back, please.”
-Hugh MacLeod
“You know, my motto is ‘Excelsior.’ That’s an old word that means ‘upward and onward to greater glory.’ It’s on the seal of the state of New York. Keep moving forward, and if it’s time to go, it’s time. Nothing lasts forever.” – Stan Lee
“When you go through hell, your own personal hell, and you have lost – loss of fame, loss of money, loss of career, loss of family, loss of love, loss of your own identity that I experienced in my own life – and you’ve been able to face the demons that have haunted you… I appreciate everything that I have.”
– David Cassidy
“All human happiness or misery takes forms of action…character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions, what we do, that we are happy or miserable.”
– Aristotle
The deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.
“But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell:the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois
“I know where I’m going and I know the truth. I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.” – Muhammad Ali
I guarantee that the seed you plant in love, not matter how small, will grow into a mighty tree of refuge. We all want a future for ourselves and we must now care enough to create, nurture and secure a future for our children.”
– Afeni Shakur
“When I’m writing [songs], some days the pen just goes. I’m not in charge and I’m almost listening outside of it. That’s when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It’s like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete.”
– Prince
Clemenceau McAdoo Givings is the son of Noel Givings and nephew of my great-grandfather Francis Givings. Known by many as Clem, he was born in Richmond, Virginia in the year 1919. He served as 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) as part of the Tuskegee Airmen program during World War II from 1941 to 1944.
Clem graduated from flight training on May 28, 1943, under the Air Force Specialty Code M 1055-Pilot, Single-Engine Fighter and deployed to Italy in December 1943. He was a member of the 332nd Fighter Group, 100th Fighter Squadron. The squadron flew its first combat mission on February 5, 1944.
According to Capt. Samuel Curtis, in an article (Veterans Magazine 2007), “We were going into battle and we were really going to show them. Then we had our first casualty.” On March 18, 1944, while flying a P-39 Airacobra on a routine mission, Clem’s plane experienced mechanical failure forcing him to eject from the cockpit, over Naples Harbor. Unfortunately, he became tangled in his parachute causing him to drown. His body was recovered by an Italian fisherman.
Per Capt. Curtis, “He was a lively kind of guy and he was the first one lost. One day we came back and they said ‘Clem got killed,’ and it came as a real shock. It was then we realized we were really in a war zone.”
Clemenceau M. Givings is buried at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Italy. He received the following: the Purple Heart (1944), the World War II Victory Medal (2003), the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal (2003), the American Defense Service Medal (2003), the Army Good Conduct Medal (2003), and the American Campaign Medal (2003).
“The privileges of being an American belong to those brave enough to fight for them.” – Benjamin O. Davis Jr.
“Some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.”
― Charles Bukowski (War All the Time)
These moments reek of untold stories.
Obscure trinkets in time both shiny and dull.
Lessons slipping beyond our reach.
Rare opportunities to reflect and remember.
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“The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.” – David Bowie
“Be careful who you tell your secrets to because when situations change… sometimes, so do people.”
― Gwen Ro
“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“But there’s a beginning in an end, you know? It’s true that you can’t reclaim what you had, but you can lock it up behind you. Start fresh.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds
“No, this is not the beginning of a new chapter in my life; this is the beginning of a new book! That first book is already closed, ended, and tossed into the seas; this new book is newly opened, has just begun! Look, it is the first page! And it is a beautiful one!”
― C. JoyBell C.
“Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. Then when you hit puberty they take the crayons away and replace them with dry, uninspiring books on algebra, history, etc. Being suddenly hit years later with the ‘creative bug’ is just a wee voice telling you, ‘I’d like my crayons back, please.”
– Hugh MacLeod
Write Now and Later 
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