Crazy love...................................

"Maybe the most that you can expect from a relationship
that goes bad is to come out of it with a few good songs."

-Marianne Faithfull

OK, Coach.............................

"A teacher is never too smart to learn from his pupils. But
while runners differ, basic principles never change. So it's a
matter of fitting your current practices to fit the event and
the individual. See, what's good for you might not be worth
a darn for the next guy."

-Bill Bowerman

Opening paragraphs...........

     "The education of John Adams was effectively complete by the time he reached the presidency, but his conduct during his four-year term served to exhibit the dominant features of the Adams personality in all their full-blown splendor.  It was quite likely, in short, that he would succeed in the area of policy but fail politically.  Which is to say that he could do  what was right for the country, but arrange events so that his personal fate suffered as a consequence.  This was the established Adams pattern: to sense where history was headed, make decisions that positioned America to be carried forward by those currents, but to do so in a way that assured his own alienation from success."

-Joseph J. Ellis
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams

Coming full circle........................

thanks Jonco

Someday.......................

The Five Stairsteps..............................................Ooh Child

Battle of the Bands........................

Bob Dylan............................Knocking on Heaven's Door




Eric Clapton.........................Knocking on Heaven's Door






Guns n Roses.........................Knocking on Heaven's Door





And the winner is........................

Father and Son.......................

Winston was often right, but when he was wrong, well,
my God.....
-Lord Randolph Churchill





"Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -
in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in,
except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield
to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might
of the enemy.
-Sir Winston Churchill


Editors Note:  Winston was 21 when his 45 year old father
died.  We are left to assume that either the Lord Randolph
quote is inaccurate or that it refers to Winston's rather
undisciplined youth, not his political career.

OK, Coach..................

 "Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts."

"The 1st period is won by the best technician. The 2nd period is won by the kid in the best shape. The 3rd period is won by the kid with the biggest heart."

-Dan Gable

She's pretty smart...................

thanks Jessica

Happy Black Friday. Enjoy your shopping....

thanks Will

Opening paragraphs................

     Sometime in the late 1870's, a Parisian obstetrician named Stephane Tarnier took a day off from his work at Maternite de Paris, the lying-in hospital for the city's poor women, and paid a visit to the nearby Paris Zoo.  Wandering past the elephant and reptiles and classical gardens of the zoo's home inside the Jardin des Plantes, Tarnier stumbled across an exhibit of chicken incubators.  Seeing the hatchlings totter about in the incubator's warm enclosure triggered an association in his head, and before long he had hired Odile Martin, the zoo's poultry raiser, to construct a devise that would perform a similar function for human new borns.  By modern standards, infant mortality was staggeringly high in the late nineteenth century, even in a city as sophisticated as Paris.  One in five babies died before learning to crawl, and the odds were far worse for premature babies born with low birth weights.  Turnier knew that temperature regulation was critical for keeping there infants alive, and he knew that the French medical establishment had d deep-seated obsession with statistics.  And so as soon as his newborn incubator had been installed at Maternite, the fragile infants warmed by hot water bottles below the wooden boxes, Tarnier embarked on a quick study of five hundred babies.  The results shocked the Parisian medical establishment:  while 66 percent of low weight babies died within weeks of birth, only 38 percent died if they were housed in Tarnier's incubating boxes.  You could effectively halve the mortality rate for premature babies simply by housing them like hatchlings in a zoo.

Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

One piece of pie too many.....................

Kiss your tears away...................

Eddie Holman..................................Hey There Lonely Girl

Battle of the Bands.............................

The Righteous Brothers.................................Unchained Melody




Willie Nelson..........................................Unchained Melody






And the winner is.........................

Lincoln's Proclamation..............

An excerpt:

Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste
that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field;
and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented
strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of
years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand
worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of
the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for
our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be
solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one
heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore
invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States,
and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in
foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of
November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our
beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

OK, Coach....................................

“A life of frustration is inevitable for any coach whose main
enjoyment is winning.”

“The thrill isn't in the winning, it's in the doing.”

"Never make a major decision based solely on money."

"We will get worse before we get better. Because I'm going
to force you to play the right way."

-Chuck Noll

Enjoy the day.................

Grateful.......................

image courtesy of

KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?"

Arlo Guthrie.........................................Alice's Restaurant

Battle of the Bands..................

Sarah Brightman.........................................Whiter Shade of Pale




Procul Harum...........................................Whiter Shade of Pale





And the winner is.................

On reading......................

"Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we
ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books."
-John Ruskin

"I would rather read something inferior than nothing at all. 
Sometimes the reader is not interested in being enlightened,
uplifted, or even entertained.  He wants merely to escape
for a brief interval from the world which is suddenly too
much with him."
-Jerome Weidman

image courtesy of

OK, Coach......................

“In our program, the truth is the basis of all that we do. There is nothing more important than the truth because there’s nothing more powerful than the truth. Consequently, on our team, we always tell one another the truth. We must be honest with one another. There is no other way.”

“Too many rules get in the way of leadership. They just put you in a box . . . . People set rules to keep from making decisions.”

“Erect no artificial walls that might limit potential, stifle creativity, or shackle innovation.”

“A leader has to be positive about all things that happen to his team. Look at nothing in the past as failure.”

-Mike Krzyzewski

Out hunting with the boys.............

thanks Jonco

Opening paragraphs............

     If, as they say, the threat of the hangman's noose has a
powerful way of focusing one's attention, the same can be
said of pregnancy."

-Walter Cronkite,  A Reporter's Life

Prognostication revisited..................

Understanding cycles.  File under the heading:

         "You pays your money, you takes your chances"

Hurting my head..................

Bee Gees..................................................I Started a Joke

About that "Super Committee"............

My favorite economic futurist laments...............

given the enormous financial pain and dislocation resulting from the Great Recession which ran from December 2007 to June 2009—anyone you know who might have been required to reduce their annual spending by a whopping three percent?

As noted many times, we are not talking about “spending cuts.” We are talking about slowing the future growth rate of government spending. Again, only in Washington DC can you spend more money every year on a program…and call it a spending cut!


But notes:

If we learned anything in recent days it is that the November 2012 elections, now less than a year away, will be primarily focused on 1) the size and growth pace of the federal government, and 2) who pays for it.  Every major election cycle is adorned with the “most critical ever” label.  This time it is as true as ever before.

Battle of the Bands...........................

Classics IV..............................................................Stormy






Santana.........................................................Stormy




And the winner is.......................

Aptly named....................

(Original, easier-to-read copy, is here)

Source: Frugaldad.com

Thanksgiving................

It is the thoughtful writing, like this, that makes Cultural Offering
such a special place.   Thanks Kurt.

"Don't miss it in a hurry to get somewhere or somewhere else."

OK, Coach.............................

“If you treat every situation as a life and death matter,
you'll die a lot of times.”

-Dean Smith

Last time we visited the price of gold.......

............its trajectory was closing in on vertical:

The ride now appears to have become bit bumpy for those late
to the party:

Opening..................

"Minds are like parachutes.  They only function when they
are open."
-Thomas Dewar (attributed)

Father and son..................

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he
wants so long as it is black."
-Henry Ford, circa 1909

"We've got some work to do."
-Edsel Ford, circa 1927

yes...........forgotten............

Bobby Vinton..........................................Mr. Lonely

And we didn't see this coming.....?

thanks Mark

Battle of the Bands...............................

Bobby Fuller Four..........................................I Fought the Law




The Clash.......................................................I Fought the Law




And the winner is..............................

A Poem for Monday

         Hymn to the Night

I heard the trailing garments of the Night
Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by it's spell of might
Stop over me from above:
The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
The manifold, soft chimes,
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night
Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
My spirit drank repose;
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,-
From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care
And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breath this prayer!
Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
The best-beloved Night!

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 
 
Thanks Rob

OK, Coach....................

“By your own soul, learn to live. If some men force you,
take no heed.  If some men hate you, have no care. Sing
your song, dream your dreams.  Hope your hopes, and
pray your prayers.”

-Bo Schembechler

Recovery........................

Jeff celebrates the fourth anniversary of his last radiation treatment:

"I have no profound statements to make about cancer. But
one thing I discovered is I pay more attention to details. A
sunrise isn’t just a sunrise anymore. An egg isn’t just an egg."

View From The Ledge is not your run-of-the-mill blog.  If the
important things of life are important to you, do go visit.  Please.

Fear...........................

cartoon courtesy of

On Reading......................

Reading in general is one of my methods of recuperation;
consequently it is a part of that which enables me to escape
from myself, to wander in strange sciences and strange
souls...."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

.....up like a rocket ship..............

Freddy "Boom Boom"  Cannon.......................Palisades Park

Battle of the Bands..........................

The Beatles..........................With a Little Help From My Friends




Joe Cocker...........................With a Little Help From My Friends





And the winner is...................

A better way to live than most....................

Bon Jovi..................................................Livin' on a prayer

Good news...............

image courtesy of

OK, Coach..................

"You can't be common, the common man goes nowhere;
you have to be uncommon."

"You know, Willie Wonka said it best: we are the music
makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."

"This team isn't talented enough to win on talent alone."

"Write your own book instead of reading someone else's
book about success."

-Herb Brooks

The wheel.................

11.  Our subconscious tendencies depend upon cause and effect.
       They have their basis in the mind, and they are stimulated by
       the sense-objects.  If all these are removed, the tendencies
       are destroyed.

     Karma can only operate and produce tendencies as long
as certain causes are present.  These causes are ignorance,
egoism, attachment, aversion, and the desire to cling to life.
The effects of these causes are rebirth, a long or a short life,
and the experiences of pleasure and pain.  Basically, karma
is rooted in ignorance of the Atman.  Remove this ignorance,
and you destroy karma.
     "This vast universe is a wheel," says the Swetaswatara
Upanishad.  "Upon it are all creatures that are subject to
birth, death, and rebirth.  Round and round it turns, and
never stops.  It is the wheel of Brahman.  As long as the
individual self thinks it is separate from Brahman, it revolves
upon the wheel....But when through the grace of Brahman it
realized its identity with him, it revolves upon the wheel no
longer.  It achieves immortality.

-How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali
Chapter IV, Verse 11

Sunday's Verse

14.  The Master said, To demand much from oneself and little
from others is the way to banish discontent.

20.  The Master said, The demands that a gentleman makes
are upon himself; those that a small man makes are upon
others.

23.  Tzu-kung asked saying, Is there any single saying that
one can act upon all day and every day?  The Master said,
Perhaps the saying about consideration: 'Never do to others
what you would not like them to do to you.'

26.  The Master said, Clever talk can confound the workings
of moral force, just as small impatiences can confound great
projects.

29.  The Master said, To have faults and to be making no
effort to amend them is to have faults indeed!

Book XV
The Analects of Confucius

About books.................

"Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than
a book! - a message to us from the dead - from human souls
whom we never saw, who lived perhaps thousands of miles
away; and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to
us, amuse us, vivify us, teach us, comfort us, open their
hearts to us as brothers........."

-Charles Kingsley

Do I stand a chance with you....?

Don and Juan.......................................What's Your Name?