Freebies!

This week’s Freebie Friday is a quote from American writer, poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou. Her most famous work is almost certainly I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her powerful and literate coming-of-age story that begins when she was sent to live with her grandmother at the age of 3 in rural Alabama and ends when she becomes a mother at the age of 16 in California. She was raped at the age of 8, her attacker spent only 1 day in jail, and he was murdered 4 days after his release (likely by Maya’s uncles). She then...

This week’s Freebie Friday is a downloadable quote from Dr. Wayne Dyer, an author and motivational speaker. His first book, Your Erroneous Zones, is one of the best-selling self-help books of all time, spending 77 weeks in the New York Times Best Seller list in the late 1970s. While Wayne Dyer, Christina Romagnoli, and Audrey Hepburn never actually had an opportunity to get together (to the best of our knowledge!), this week’s Freebie Friday, Design Highlight, and Yogi Highlight all share the common theme of truly seeing other people, of seeing past their obvious, outward attributes and focusing on the...

To bookend our our big Earth Week celebration, it seemed only fitting that this week’s Freebie Friday quote be about Earth’s overshadowed twin sister. The song Fly Me to the Moon — originally titled “In Other Words" — was written by Bart Howard in 1954. Notable versions of this much-recorded song include ones by Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Connie Francis and Westlife. However, the most famous version is Frank Sinatra’s 1964 recording that was played on the Apollo 10 mission while it orbited the Moon. (It’s also the first music heard on the Moon when it was played on a portable...

For this week’s Freebie Friday, we’re celebrating Monday’s annual Earth Day event with a quote from environmentalist Rachel Carson (most famous for her 1962 book Silent Spring and her fight against the use of the pesticide DDT). Earth Day is a global celebration that occurs every April 22 with a peaceful push for environmental reforms. With over 1 billion people in 193 countries rallying together, it’s the largest civic-focused day in the world. It’s a day of political action and civic participation. People sign petitions, participate in tree planting and cleanup activities, meet officials to urge corporations and the government to...

This week’s Freebie Friday is a quote by the late gorilla primatologist Dian Fossey. She was murdered in Rwanda in 1985 for her conservation efforts, and it was the last entry in her diary. This ties in to this week’s Mat of the Week, Terry in His Heartland, my own personal tribute to my (rather hirsute) father. As with all of the mats in our Compassion collection, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of each of these mats will go to benefit a nonprofit foundation; in this case, The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.   Download When you realize...