Let your colors fly................

The Beach Boys..............................Be True To Your School

Soundtracks.........................

I think it is the "or what"....................

Be careful what you wish for..................

Opening paragraph.....................

"It was Niccolo Moretti, caretaker of St. Peter's Basilica, who made the discovery that started it all.  The time was 6:24 a.m., but owing to a wholly innocent error of transcription, the Vatican's first official statement incorrectly reported it as 6:42.  It was one of the numerous missteps, large and small, that would lead many to conclude the Holy See had something to hide, which was indeed the case.  The Roman Catholic Church, said a noteworthy dissident, was but one scandal away from oblivion.  The last thing His Holiness needed now was a dead body in the sacred heart of Christendom."
-Daniel Silva, The Fallen Angel

Hate it when that happens......................

Testing....................

The best years..................

thanks Todd

Travel day.......................

Willie Nelson......................................On The Road Again

He IS a dynamo................

Sippican Cottage demonstrates the proper use of  rugged individualism - here.  Excerpts here:


"Dynamism is what happens when politicians aren't paying attention."


"The industrial revolution in England happened because the landed gentry wasn't paying attention. They scoffed at the importance of guys with grease under their fingernails right up until the greasy guys' clout --political, monetary, cultural-- eclipsed their own, and there was nothing they could do to put the genie back in the bottle. It was the same in America. When we just paved the roads and didn't worry too much about what was going on in all the sheds, America ran wild economically."

Too much of the wrong kind of smarts?

Have we lost our nerve?

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

"The custodian at St. Marks had just scrapped three inches of snow off the sidewalk when the man with the cane appeared.  The sun was up, but the winds were howling; the temperature was stuck at the freezing mark.  The man wore only a thin pair of dungarees, a summer shirt, well-worn hiking boots, and a light Windbreaker that stood little chance against the chill.  But he did not appear to be uncomfortable, nor was he in a hurry.  He was on foot, walking with a limp and a slight tilt to the left, the side aided by the cane.  He shuffled along the sidewalk near the chapel and stopped at a side door with the word 'Office' painted in dark red.  He did not knock and the door was not locked.  He stepped inside just as another gust of wind hit him in the back."
-John Grisham,  The Confession

Craftsmanship....................

An important part of any successful family vacation is making memories  for the kids to savor and enjoy.  I think we added one on Wednesday.  All three wanted to go deep sea fishing.  Now Dad is susceptible to  motion related feelings of ill-health, so it would not have been my first choice, but...............Dramamine was available so off we went.  Captain Mike and Crewman Dave worked hard to engage us all, asking a myriad of questions, remembering the answers, and generally being good conversationalists.  It was a four hour trip. The first hour and a half were for naught.  Then, in a stroke of genius, Captain Mike suggested that our luck would change if the kids would each bite the head off of one of the bait fish.  For the next ten minutes a lively "you go first" - "I will if you will" discussion raged between the kids.  Crewman Dave, an experienced hand, stepped up to the plate and went first.  Then all three kids met the challenge.  A video of  Connor's face-to-face interaction with the bait fish is now somewhere on Facebook.  I would send you there if I knew how.  Not only were great new memories created, but our luck changed and in quick succession all three of the kids hooked and landed rays and small sharks.  For what it is worth, Dramamine lasts four hours.  I should have taken another one at about the three hour mark.  Next time, I will remember.  Anyway, Captain Mike seemed to know that, while catching fish is an important part of the venture,  what he is really selling is the experience and the memories.  Mission accomplished.

Howdy neighbors................

For all its vastness, the Intertunnel is actually comprised of many "small" neighborhoods where people can get to know and like each other.  Two of my neighbors are Doug Fine, aka Eclecticity, and Ray Visotski, the not-so-simple village undertaker.  They hale from Augusta, Georgia and Aiken, South Carolina, yet seem more than willing to meet with this Ohio boy whenever he visits the Palmetto State.  About halfway between Hilton Head and Aiken is the small burg of Allendale.  Allendale is home to the Lobster House.  Now the Lobster House has not seen a lobster in probably thirty years, but the folks there are welcoming and friendly and offer scrumptious appetizers (assuming you are ok with deep frying) and a pretty fair cheese burger.  Oh, and the beer is cold.  Anyway, we held our second annual convention there Wednesday evening.  A fun evening with friends well met.  Same time next year?

An open competition.........

"Those who worry about radicalism in our schools and colleges are often either reactionaries who themselves do not bear allegiance to the traditional American principles, or defeatists who despair of the success of our own philosophy in an open competition."
-James Bryant Conant

Angry drums.......................

Phil Collins.....................................In The Air Tonight

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

"In shirt-sleeves, the way I generally worked, I sat sketching a bar of soap taped to an upper corner of my drawing board.  The gold-foil wrapper was carefully peeled back so that you could still read most of the brand name printed on it; I'd spoiled the wrappers of half a dozen bars before getting that effect.  This was a new idea, the product to be shown ready for what the accompanying copy called 'fragrant, lathery, lovelier you' use, and I had the job of sketching it into half a dozen layouts, the bar of soap at a slightly different angle in each.
     "It was just exactly as boring as it sounds, and I stopped to look out the window beside me, down twelve stories at Fifty-fourth Street and the little heads moving along the sidewalk.  It was a sunny, sharply clear day in mid-November, and I'd have liked to be out in it, the whole afternoon ahead and nothing to do; nothing I had to do, that is."
-Jack Finney, Time and Again

It's a good thing, too...................

Save aggressively.................

Walter Russell Mead, who writes more insightfully and thoughtfully about current world events than the next ten pundits combined, continues to sound the alarms on the overly-generous and grievously underfunded public pensions.  Essay is here.  Money quote is here:

"The only one who really cares about your retirement is you: plan prudently, save aggressively, and if something sounds too good to be true, don’t believe it."

Good advice for kids of all ages.

And good for you too..............

"Laughter is a fabulous side-effects free drug."
-Nicholas Bate

One hearty laugh....................

"A very wise old teacher once said:  'I consider a day's teaching is wasted if we do not all have one hearty laugh.'  He meant that when people laugh together, they cease to be young and old, master and pupils, workers and driver, jailer and prisoners, they become a single group of human beings enjoying its existence."
-Gilbert Highet

Vacating.........................

Play us a tune....................

Traffic..................................Dear Mr. Fantasy

I am.........................

Intransigent.................

"Living consciously means accepting that whatever is, is.  Our desires don't obliterate uncomfortable facts about the way things are.  No matter how much we may wish things were different, reality is intransigent.  Acknowledging this is part of growing up."
-Alexander Green, beyond Wealth

Checking in with the Ragamuffin.....

thanks nicole

This feels about right................

"History does not unfold; it piles up."
-Robert M. Adams

Tiny specs.........................

Hmmmm................this doesn't appear to be Ohio