This wonderful Seattle summer actually had what the meteorologists call measurable precipitation. Rain in Seattle means the air gets cleaned. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is clean air.
Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.
Albert Camus
“The use of sea and air is common to all; neither can a title to the ocean belong to any people or private persons, forasmuch as neither nature nor public use and custom permit any possession therof.”
Elizabeth I Tudor, Letters
“oxygen
Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine
stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a
stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your
right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a
beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know
where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except
everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles
to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.”
Mary Oliver, Thirst
“What keeps earth air breathable? Not oxygen alone. The earth is a freer place to breathe in, every time you love without calculating a return — every time you make your drudgeries and routines still more inefficient by stopping to experience the shock of beauty wherever it unpredictably flickers.”
Peter Viereck, Unadjusted Man in the Age of Overadjustment: Where History and Literature Intersect
“To keep the air fresh among words is the secret of verbal cleanliness.”
Dejan Stojanovic
“Water belongs to us all. Nature did not make the sun one person’s property, nor air, nor water, cool and clear.”
Michael Simpson, The Metamorphoses of Ovid
“The demons don’t like fresh air. What they like best is if you stay in bed with cold feet.”
Bergman, Ingmar
drwilda 
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