Category: quote

One-Liner Wednesday: Gloria Steinem on storytelling

“Please tell your own story. This is the most important thing we can do for each other: to know each other through stories, and I hope so much that whoever you are, listening right now, you are able to do what you love, to be also the unique person you are.”
~~~ Gloria Steinem, from an interview for Netflix’s Famous Last Words, released after her death was announced last week

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/09/09/one-liner-wednesday-not-a-clue/

One-Liner Wednesday: Dolly Parton’s goal in life

When Dolly Parton was asked about her ultimate goal in life, she answered:
“Just to be happy, to be as productive as I can be, make as many people happy as I can, make as much money as I can, so I can do for more people. And I just want the freedom to work, and everybody else can have the money.”

Mission accomplished, Dolly. Rest in peace. The good you have done in the world will live on for generations.

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/09/02/one-liner-wednesday-getting-old/

SoCS: baldness

When I was a child, my dad was bald. I didn’t think anything of it. It was just Dad – or as his first grandchild named him, Paco, which is how he is known here at Top of JC’s Mind.

Tucked in a corner of the large mirror over the dresser in my parents’ room was a card that read, “God made just so many perfect heads. The rest He covered with hair.”

When I was in my thirties, a friend was being treated for breast cancer. We were speaking on the phone one day when she told me that so much of her hair had fallen out that her husband was going to shave the remaining strands off later in the day.

I told her about my dad’s card and she laughed about revealing her perfect or maybe not-so-perfect head.

Later that week, she posted a photo of herself, bald with temporary tattoos of butterflies scattered across her scalp.

There was also a saying, “Bald is beautiful.”

She certainly was.
*****
The prompt for Stream of Concsiousness Saturday this week is “bald, balled, bawled.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/08/14/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-15-2026/

One-Liner Wednesday: what leads to strongmen

“Gross inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity fuel the gross inequalities of political power that lead to strongmen who destroy both democracy and freedom.”
~~~Robert Reich

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/05/06/one-liner-wednesday-is-that-indiana-jones/

Baltic concert

Last Sunday, I sang a concert of music from the Baltic region with the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton under the direction of John M. Vaida.

It was a great experience for us and for our audience. We got to perform pieces by composers that were new to most of us. I added languages to my personal list of sung texts, Swedish and Estonian. We also welcomed the Fair Winds Quintet as our guests, made possible by a grant from the United Cultural Fund of the Broome County Arts Council. They played a set before the sung concert and another to begin the second half of the program after intermission. It was wonderful to have these talented local artists join us for the concert.

One of my favorite pieces on the program was “Cantate Domino”, a setting of part of Psalm 98 by the Lithunian composer Vytautas Miškinis. Another highlight was Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Bogoroditse Devo” from his All-Night Vigil. I had first sung this under the direction of Dr. Bruce Borton with the University Chorus. Bruce had prepared a new edition of the Vigil for us to use and we later sang this movement in later programs, so it always reminds me of him. Bruce also became the second artistic director of the Madrigal Choir a few years before his retirement from Binghamton University. After the pandemic shutdown and the end of University Chorus, Bruce welcomed me to Madrigal Choir. Shortly after I joined, Bruce fell ill. I wrote about the last concert he conducted with Madrigal Choir here and about singing at his funeral and Madrigal Choir tribute here. This Rachmoninoff piece was part of a concert dedicated to Bruce at the University. I was grateful for the opportunity to sing it again, especially at Trinity Episcopal Church where Bruce had sung and volunteered for many years as a congregant.

I particularly loved the final piece of the program, a newly written hymn by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, set to the tune “Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius. Rev. Gillette is a local Presbyterian pastor and hymnist with over 500 hymns to her credit. This poem, “O God of Love, This Is a Time of Turning”, was written in January, 2026, after speaking with a seminary friend serving in Minneapolis. We printed the words in the program and invited the audience to join us in singing – and they did!

We sang, “May we stand firm for truth and peace and justice;
May we leave fear and hatred far behind.”

May it be so.

One-Liner Wednesday: for Earth Day

“A vibrant, fair, and regenerative future is possible — not when thousands of people do climate justice activism perfectly but when millions of people do the best they can.”— Xiye Bastida

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/04/22/one-liner-wednesday-decisions-decisions-2/

One-Liner Wednesday: change

 As St. John Henry Newman said in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, “To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.”

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Learn more here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/03/18/one-liner-wednesday-why-3/

One-Liner Wednesday: fact-check

On “Morning Joe” today, commenting on Trump’s State of the Union address yesterday, Ed Luce, US National Editor for the Financial Times, said, “There were so many lies that at one point I thought should we fact-check whether, you know, the men’s hockey team really did win a gold because it was just sort of a flood the zone with it.”

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/02/25/one-liner-wednesday-plans/

One-Liner Wednesday: facts

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
~~~John Adams, second president of the United States

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2026/02/04/one-liner-wednesday-i-hates-the-bots/

hearing differently

Those of us who attend Christian churches that follow the common lectionary are hearing 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 and Matthew 5:1-12a (the Beatitudes) this Sunday.

These passages struck me differently this year because of what we are seeing in Minnesota and across the country where people are standing up to the powerful for the sake of justice and mercy.

In I Corinithians, we hear “God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong.”

In Matthew, we hear:
“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.”
“Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

I know it will be a long haul and take a lot of work and witness, but these passages give me hope that the millions of us – of all faith traditions or none at all – who are not powerful individually will be able to re-establish a society that respects human dignity and rights for all the people.