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Jimmy Fallon/Nicole Kidman Story

This is a cute story that defintely put a smile on my face. It made me realize once again that in this starstruck society of ours, celebrities are just people like you and me...with real human emotions and vulnerabilities. Both Jimmy Fallon and Nicole Kidman come across as delightful and real...Enjoy!

Nicole Kidman, **(Photo: Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images)**

**Jimmy Fallon, (Courtesy Getty Images)**

Even the Wall Street Journal is Talking About Past Lives!

I hope by now you are not rolling your eyes at last week's entry about the television series The Ghost Inside My Child and that you have at least kept somewhat of an open mind. So now here goes something that might just clinch it for you—and from the Wall Street Journal no less! Funny how this article entitled The Children Who Remember Their Past Lives just came out on May 2, 2024 (in one of the straightest business publications no less)-—should we chalk that up to coincidence or is it just another example of a synchronicity?…

I am encouraged that these ideas and discussions are becoming more mainstream….

P.S. After my husband Gert Mathiesen died, I visited a medium. Gert came through loud and clear and said that he was happy I believed in the idea that consciousness survived death. He said he hadn't believed that himself before but that he was happy that I did because it turns out I was right..."

Poem by Billy Collins

The Lanyard
BY BILLY COLLINS

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

“The Lanyard” from The Trouble With Poetry: and Other Poems by Billy Collins, copyright © 2005 by Billy Collins. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Painting of the Week

Tree of Life Series (Purple and Blue) 60” x 22” mixed media on paper

Charity of the Week:

About The Author

New York City based contemporary artist, Pam Smilow, began writing the creative lifestyle blog “things we love” in an effort to foster a sense of community during times of isolation and reflection. To read more about her and her art, visit her website and check out the essay written by Frank Matheis entitled The Sophisticated Innocence of Pam Smilow.