[Image description: A teaser screenshot of this week’s Insight from the Oracles, with just a hint of the cards and runes showing.]

Absolute
—Jacqueline Woodson

The summer I was ten a teenager
named Kim butterflied my hair. Cornrows
curling into braids
behind each ear.
Everybody’s wearing this style now, Kim said.
Who could try to tell me
I wasn’t beautiful. The magic
in something as once ordinary
as hair that for too long
had not been good enough
now winged and amazing
now connected
to a long line of crowns.
Now connected
to a long line of girls
moving through Brooklyn with our heads
held so high, our necks ached. You must
know this too – that feeling
of being so much more than
you once believed yourself to be
so much more than your
too-skinny arms
and too-big feet and
too-long fingers and
too-thick and stubborn hair
All of us now
suddenly seen
the trick mirror that had us believe
we weren’t truly beautiful
suddenly shifts
and there we are
and there we are
and there we are again
and Oh! How could we not have seen
ourselves before? So much more
We are so much more.

Songs for the People
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Let me make the songs for the people,
Songs for the old and young;
Songs to stir like a battle-cry
Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres,
For carnage nor for strife;
But songs to thrill the hearts of men
With more abundant life.

Let me make the songs for the weary,
Amid life’s fever and fret,
Till hearts shall relax their tension,
And careworn brows forget.

Let me sing for little children,
Before their footsteps stray,
Sweet anthems of love and duty,
To float o’er life’s highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged,
When shadows dim their sight;
Of the bright and restful mansions,
Where there shall be no night.

Our world, so worn and weary,
Needs music, pure and strong,
To hush the jangle and discords
Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow,
Till war and crime shall cease;
And the hearts of men grown tender
Girdle the world with peace.

My friend Tamara and I did a bead exchange from the various beads we each are using to make our treasure strands.

This is the one I created with the beads she sent me:

[Image description: A strand of beads of many colors and sizes.]

It’s a fabulous mix of amber, jasper, moonstone, glass beads, metal beads, and beads that I don’t recognize and she can’t remember what they are.

It’s now the longest strand! Since I have to re-string the strand for Loki that came undone at PantheaCon in February, I will make it a bit longer to keep a proper symmetry with this one.

First, though, I need more jump rings—somehow, I only have tiny ones that aren’t the right size for attaching to the brooches. Pictures to follow once that happens!