2025, animals, Family, pets, Theatre

Broken, But Still Good

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Luna managed to rip a chunk out of her frisbee on Thursday. And that put me in mind of the quote “broken, but still good.”

Last Sunday we saw the musical ‘Parade’ at the Orpheum. Oh. My. Goodness. It’s a musical about the 1913 trial – and subsequent imprisonment and lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish American from New York, living in Georgia. A musical? Yes. One of those stories that needs to be told. That you probably never heard of. The entire production was fantastic. Look him up.

It was a beautiful week on the farm. I took Tuesday and Thursday off to prune fruit trees and do some outside stuff. My day went off the rails about 10AM, but it was still so nice to be home and outside. The chickens are loving it, I guess. We got 13 eggs on Thursday! Evidently, this batch is not so ‘winter hardy’.

Our bathroom is getting there. Floor tile installed and they’re working on the wall tiles. Monday they’ll set cabinets.

Our dog Luna. Boy she loves life. She’s an early bird, and really does not want to be touched after about 11 PM. That’s her sleep time.

But any time after 5 AM, she is excited to go. Wherever we’re going, whatever we’re doing, she’s going with. I call her my white shadow.
This week we’re back to the frisbee. As winter began, I had taken all the frisbees into the machine shed so they wouldn’t get lost in the snow, and that’s why we had moved onto sticks outside. For the time being, we’re back to frisbees. She gets a better workout because she must chase the frisbee further than I can throw a stick.


She doesn’t seem to have vertical observation. I’m not sure if she can’t, or she just doesn’t, and she’s lost the frisbee more than once because she’s looking the other direction when it comes back down. I’m guessing she’s only watching about 10 feet in elevation.
It was a pretty big deal on Thursday this week when she actually caught the frisbee at her head height. Twice! She’s come close a few times before and it may have been the combination of a lucky throw and timing on her part, but you could tell she was pretty excited about it.

These are heavy duty frisbees; they are very thick and the knobs around the outer edges give her a good place to grip, and they will hurt my fingers trying to get it back. We’re still working on the release part. Also Thursday morning she finally managed to tear out an entire chunk. And that’s how I got to the phrase from the movie ‘Lilo and stitch’, referring to family, “It’s little, and broken, but still good”.

It seems to fly just as well, even with a chunk missing.


If you haven’t seen the movie ‘Lilo and stitch’, I would highly recommend it. It originally came out in 2002, our son was ten, our daughter seven, and it is the story of an older sister trying to raise her younger sister. It provided us with many wonderful quotes and fits of laughter. We recognize the stubbornness on both their parts, and the older daughter screaming into a pillow in frustration, while the little girl also screamed into a pillow just about put Kelly and I on the floor in laughter.
The social worker, Mr. Cobra Bubbles (Once worked for the CIA. Convinced an alien race that mosquitoes were an endangered species. He had hair then.) He tells the older sister “Thus far, you have been adrift in the sheltered harbor of my patience. “
I love that line.

Reading the quotes on the IMDb website filled in so many lines that you don’t always hear in the movie. There are many very funny background lines that are almost throwaway lines. Sometimes it’s the tone of voice that’s used.
David Ogden Stiers plays an alien named Jumba. Partnered with a nerdy scientist alien Pleakley, the two of them are the comic relief.

JUMBA: “WHAT? After all you put me through, you expect me to help you just like that? JUST LIKE THAT?”

STITCH: [Alien language] “ih”

JUMBA: “Fine!”

PLEAKLEY: “Fine? You’re doing what he says??”

JUMBA: “He’s very persuasive”

PLEAKLEY: “Oh good! I was hoping to add theft, endangerment, and INSANITY to my list of things I did today!“

JUMBA: ”Haha You too?”

Lilo: “Oh good, my dog found the chainsaw.”

Of course the quote, ‘damaged but not broken’ can be a metaphor for so many things. There’s several books with the title of ‘damaged but not broken’ and it could be a battle of cancer, or it could be your relationship with God. One can make it even simpler and just apply it to everyday life.

SHARE EXAMPLES OF BROKEN BUT STILL GOOD. OR “CAN’T vs. WON’T”?

32 thoughts on “Broken, But Still Good”

  1. The United States. Broken by that $%@# currently holding the office of President. The damage is severe and will get worse. Some are/will affect the whole planet. And then there are the silly ones like renaming the Gulf Of Mexico. Coming soon, the geese, formerly known as “Canadian”, are now labeled “American” and the swan, formerly known as “Trumpeter”…

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    1. Unfortunately, you are probably correct. My question…
      After allowing muskie to disconnect financial servers, how do the feds collect taxes. It is tax season and all that!

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        1. It’s not only government contract. Musk’s people now have names and addresses of everyone who has received a tax refund in recent years. It’s quite possible the next step will be to demand social security numbers and ITIN’s for everyone in that category.

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  2. A couple come to mind – our 2008 Prius – got some dings and imperfections at this point, but has so far been repairable!

    And post-stroke from 2021 – Husband’s mind. He has aphasia, which slows down and limits how much he is able to get out when speaking, but when he really has something to say, he will find a way to get it across, if given enough time.

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  3. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Ben, your Luna who seemed to have found you a while back, seems like such a delightful dog. She looks comfie in the picture. She knows a good thing when she has it.

    I feel like I am missing a bite just like the frisbee. This will be a surgery year. Next up: cataracts. Then probably a new hip. Too much.

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  4. Ben, now I will have to watch Lilo and Stitch, after avoiding it for many years.

    Broken but still good–as people who hate to throw things away, Husband and I have a lot of things that are broken but still “good.” A favorite is a little wooden figure I inherited from my dad. It’s from Africa and depicts a man with a spear/sword and shield, with coiled wire embellishments. I don’t know why, but the figure fascinated me as a child and I took it with me when I moved out. It stood proudly with other keepsakes until one day it was knocked over, and the base that held it upright was broken. Now it needs to be propped up but I still love it and keep it on the shelf near my desk.

    A few years ago, I read a memoir by the author Jenny Lawson called “Broken,” in which she writes about her struggles with depression. In one chapter, she writes about finding beauty in brokenness, and mentions the Japanese art of kintsugi, which is mending broken pottery with a golden lacquer, making a thing of beauty out of something that was broken.

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  6. sometimes I say about my foot / leg, that’s it’s been broken for 45 years, it’s wearing out, but I can still
    Walk on it.

    Daughter. It’s not that she CANT go to bed, it’s that she WONT go to bed.

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    1. It’s not that I CAN’T put my phone down, it’s that I DON’T put my phone down…
      It’s not that I CAN’T sleep, it’s that I DON’T? WON’T? sleep.

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  9. I have a decades-old soap dispenser that I got at the Renaissance. Several years ago, it fell off the counter and a big chip out of the rim broke off. I love this dispenser and it kind of matches my ivy design so I just turn the broken bit to the back wall. I think YA would prefer that I get a new one, but I have never found anything I like better, especially if I have to cough up cash for it!

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  11. when I was a kid before wall insulation was a thing we’d wake up on winter mornings, and it would be frosty windows on the inside because of the cool air and we would have to make a decision on getting out from under the blankets and heading over to the wall vent where the heat came out from the basement it wasn’t a matter if we couldn’t get up and get going in the morning it’s that we chose not to. It was too cold.

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      1. I remember the photo well. It was the hands of an old friend (and former coworker) holding an old, well-worn Bible. The two of them were avid readers and shared a love of books. Her tiny apartment was crammed full of them.

        He took me to see her once, on the way back from visiting the Noerenberg Gardens near his parents’ cottage on Crystal Bay. We did not stop in to visit his sister who lives there now, although we did pause briefly by her driveway so I could get a peek of the house.

        We did have a lovely visit with his old friend. She lived in a tiny apartment in a huge complex full of senior citizens. It was the last time he saw her.

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