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Nonetheless, he posits the parallel existence of what he calls “memes”—units of cultural transmission or units of imitation—that, like genes, are “replicators.”

But unlike genetic transmission, when memes are transmitted, they always change, for they are subject to “continuous mutation, and also to blending”, in part to adapt for survival in the “meme pool."

— A Theory of Adaptation by Linda Hutcheon (Page 32)

One night the landlord came by to fix the leak in the bathroom pipe and was surprised to find Minnie, Rupert and Onna, Sarah and Elsie, Shar and Dar all singing around the drum next to the big stove in the kitchen and even a baby named Lester who smiled waving a big greasy piece of dried fish.

He was disturbed he went to court to evict them he said the house was designed for single-family occupancy which surprised the family because that's what they thought they were

— When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through by Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster (Page 219)

Treebeard is Fangorn, the guardian of the forest; he is the oldest of the Ents, the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth.

— The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (the Hobbit / the Fellowship of the Ring / the Two Towers / the by J. R. R. Tolkien (Page 89)

We guard the spot where steeples rise In stately grandeur to the skies; We mark the place where altars shine, As hallow'd, sainted, and divine; And just as sacred should we hold The turf, where peasants blithe and bold, Can plant their footsteps day or night, In free, unquestioned, native right.

...

But every English heart will tell It loves an "English common" well; And curse the hard and griping hand That wrests away such "hallow'd" land; That shuts the green waste, fresh and wild; From poor man's beast and poor man's child!

— Poems by Eliza Cook (Page 180)

Hawai'i '89

The way it is now few streams still flow through lo'i kalo to the sea. Most of the water where we live runs in ditches alongside the graves of Chinese bones where the same crop has burned in the fields for the last one hundred years.

On another island, a friend whose father was born in a pili grass hale in Kahakuloa, bought a house on a concrete pad in Hawai'i Kai. For two hundred thousand he got window frames out of joint and towel racks hung crooked on the walls.

He's one of the lucky ones. People are sleeping in cars or rolled up in mats on beaches, while the lū'au show hostess invites the roomful of visitors to step back in time to when gods and goddesses walked the earth. I wonder what she's talking about.

All night, Kānehekili flashes in the sky and Moanonuikalehua changes from a beautiful woman into a lehua tree at the sound of the pahu.

It's true that the man who swam with the sharks and kept them away from the nets full of fish by feeding them limu kala is gone, but we're still here like the fragrant white koki'o blooming on the long branch like the hairy leafed nehe clinging to the dry pu'u like the moon high over Ha'ikū lighting the way home.

— When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through by Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe, Jennifer Elise Foerster (Page 210)