While searching deep in my photo archives,  I found an old photo quote ( guess you’d call it a selfie now) about friendship from 2, 3, 4 years? ago.  It wasn’t what  I was looking but timely. A twinge of remorse surfaced but not the gut-wrenching memory of losing six years of blog posts online. I still can’t believe it happened last summer during a migration to WordPress. There are a few permalinks floating around in the Wayback machine and I managed to salvage hundreds of screenshots but a good chunk of my work is gone.  I’d planned to cut and paste and repost but it proved too labor intensive, and life keeps propelling forward with new experiences to capture. It’s comforting to know I can dip into the inky salvage well on occasion and grateful how time muffled the anguish of the loss. And speaking of loss. Where is summer going? There are only 36 days left until fall.  I hope you enjoy it with a friend or two.

In the social media age we can count friends in 4,5, 6 or even 7 figures but honestly, we’re lucky to have a handful who accept us as we are. The hunger for quotes and photo quotes online continues unabated with errors of attribution rife as ever. I consider it good karma to right wrongs or at least offer correct attribution when I can.

The quote on friendship is widely attributed to George Eliot but is in fact from a novel by Dinah Maria (Mulock) Craik (1826-1887) A Life for a Life, published in 1859. The prose was later fashioned into a poem titled “Friendship”.

Oh, the comfort —
The inexpressible comfort of feeling
safe with a person,
Having neither to weigh thoughts,
Nor measure words — but pouring them
All right out — just as they are —
Chaff and grain together —
Certain that a faithful hand will
Take and sift them —
Keep what is worth keeping —
and with the breath of kindness
Blow the rest away.