Welcome to Ask Gail–a place to share questions and answers about what matters to us most: family, friends, community, health, peace, books, favorite resources, what feeds our soul… Ask Gail is also where we can create and share very important information like my “Gail’s Guide to Going to the Hospital.” Stay tuned for more…
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Post-election awareness…
Posted By askgail on November 7th, 2012
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone. You are the one who gets burned.” ~ Buddha
The life you are living is enough!
Posted By askgail on October 28th, 2012
From my friend and colleague Laura Marciano who arranged for us to spend a day at Enders Island off Stonington, CT yesterday writing our hearts out.
Ubuntu speaks of the very essence of being human. [We] say “Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu.” Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. We belong is a bundle of life. A person is a person through other persons.”
A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.
Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness
May Peace Prevail on Earth
Posted By askgail on September 20th, 2010
Clear sky, cool breezes: and hundreds of students and their teachers gathered to dedicate a peace pole at Longfellow School in Bridgeport in honor of International Peace Day, Tuesday, September 21st.
Mayor Finch and students around the peace pole.
Posted in PEACE
Remembering on Memorial Day
Posted By askgail on May 31st, 2010
“Memorial Day” by Dennis Caraher
High school band. Memorial Day.
Country cemetery. Marched all the way.
We stood in formation, took off our caps.
Stood with the nation, we played taps
Year before Kennedy, year before King.
Last year I cared about anything.
But for that moment, we were one.
Honoring soldiers
At Arlington.
Notes drifted across the plains.
Swallows signaled oncoming rain.
Station wagons, pickup trucks
Rescued us then turned to rust
We put on new uniforms
Crisp, creased. Tattered, well-worn
Some forget where we come from
Some come to rest
In Arlington
When he was twelve, took my only son
Lost ourselves in the Smithsonian
Then Abraham, above the Mall.
Then raised our hands, touched the wall.
Headstone horizon, eternal flame
Unknown lie with familiar names
Sacrificed daughters and sons
So I could cry
At Arlington.
From memory to action: what you do matters!
Posted By askgail on April 10th, 2010
This is the time of Yom Ha’Shoah, when we honor the memory of those who died in the Holocaust and we listen to survivor stories and we try to imagine what we would have done. Would I have helped someone even though it put me and my family at risk? Would I have lived to tell others what happened in the hopes of “never again?”
This is the time to ask: what can I do, in this moment, to make the world more about peace and tolerance and less about hate and war?
Esther Nisenthal Krinitz (1929-2001) survived and at the age of 50 began creating fabric art that tells the story of her family, home, and survival. Watch and be inspired.
Visit Art & Remembrance to learn more.
A mother who made war on the Vietnam War…
Posted By askgail on December 28th, 2009
Peg Mullen’s first-born son, Michael, was killed by friendly fire in Vietnam in 1970. From that moment on, she protested the Vietnam War and supported other families whose sons died there or returned damaged beyond repair. She lived long enough to protest both Iraq wars. We are all mothers. Why are we not protesting? Read the full New York Times article here.
Peg Mullen with newborn Michael
