She was under the illusion that differences over the Eucharist could be solved as she had been solving the quarrels of Bourbon and Guise in the last nine months – by bringing the quarrelsome people together and persuading them to be friendly. She meant well; she laboured hard; she failed. Fundamental differences of principle are not to be resolved by mediators who have no principles.

II. The Social and Political Background, in The Age of Catherine de Medici by J.E. Neale, original publication date 1943 by Jonathan Cape Ltd., London

Now, there are certain essentials for prolonged and successful rebellion; and the chief is organization... If I am inclined to stress organization over against doctrine or anything else, the reason is my profound conviction of its vital importance.

I. The Religious Background, in The Age of Catherine de Medici by J.E. Neale, original publication date 1943 by Jonathan Cape Ltd., London

Syracuse Airport

Clean jeans and comfortable shoes
I need no secrets here     at home
in this echoless light
I spread my papers out
around me.

Opposite   alert
a grey-eyed lady takes fire
one pale nostril quivering
we both know women
who take up space
are called sloppy.

Audre Lorde, in The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems 1987-1992

Did you ever hear of Mickey, how he heard a racket in the night and shouted QUIET DOWN THERE! and fell through the dark, out of his clothes past the moon & his mama & papa sleeping tight into the light of the night kitchen?

Maurice Sendak, In the Night Kitchen

Time is linear to the Western world and attached to it are assumptions of time as a progressive transformer. Concepts of intelligence are based on linear forward movement over time. There is no evidence, and certainly no proof, that the longer humans live the more human or the more intelligent they become. According to the Western world the farther backward in time people travel the less intelligent the humanity, as though having travelled through two millennia of arbitrary clock ticking somehow makes us more or less intelligent. It doesn't occur to Western science that perhaps the Neanderthals used their whole brain; it is already a matter of record that current humans do not. While the Neanderthals' brain size may have occupied less space, their realization or thoughtfulness might have been much greater than we imagine.

"Sharing Space and Time," in Memory Serves: Oratories by Lee Maracle