Live my life...........................

The Seeds.....................................Pushin' Too Hard

Teach.......................

"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
-Socrates

A higher standard..................

"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody 
else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. 
Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else."
-Henry Ward Beecher

image via

Change........................

"The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions."
-Stephen Covey

Victory...................

Movement.........................

"Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates.
There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's
going to be forward, backwards, or sideways."
-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.


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Conquer...............................

"You can never conquer the mountain. You can only conquer 
yourself."
-Jim Whittaker

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Yourself...................

"Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to 
be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."
-Thomas á Kempis

Clouded..................

"There are no short cuts to any place worth going."
-Beverly Sills

The one quality.................

Self-Discipline...................

Napoleon Hill..............................Think and Grow Rich

Fill your head.......................

Art Garfunkel............................................Disney Girls

Need to get at it......................

thanks Jessica

Well, yeah....................

Or lose it...........................

Absolute differentness.............

Goldwater on The Conservative.......................

    "The first thing he has learned about man is that each member of the species is a unique creature.  Man's most sacred possession is his individual soul - which has an immortal side, but also a mortal one.  The mortal side establishes his absolute differentness from every other human being.  Only a philosophy that takes into account the essential differences between men, and accordingly, makes provisions for developing the different potentialities of each man can claim to be in accord with Nature.  We have heard much in our time about 'the common man.'  It is a concept that pays little attention to the history of a nation that grew great through the initiative and ambition of uncommon men.  The Conservative knows that to regard man as part of an undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery."

-Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative

Our company's new motto is...................

"We just want to live long enough to put all the lessons we've learned in the past four years to good use."

One of these days, posts will appear that encapsulate those lessons from a real estate development and investment point of view.  For now, however, we will rely on the ever-brilliant Nicholas Bate.  I can remember advising a contractor friend back in 2007 to "hunker down."  It is advice like that that reminds me not to give advice.  Five years is a tad long to be hunkered down.  Next time the urge to give advice strikes, I'm going to hand them this:

Dream big...........................

"If the dream is big enough, the facts don't count."
-Dexter Yager


thanks jokeroo

And a good time was had by all...............

Jimmy Page as a youngster...........

The Yardbirds................................The Shape of Things to Come

Tough day at the beach...........

Quite enough.....................

"Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action.
Twice would have been quite enough."
-Confucius

In conclusion..................

"A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
-Arthur McBride Bloch

Madmen and saints.....................

"'Love one another.'  These words were spoken more than two thousand years ago.  Powerful though this command is, many of us have succeeded in ignoring it for these many years.  We all give lip service to it but few of us expect anyone to really practice it.  We leave that to madmen and saints."
-Leo Buscaglia

Truths....................

Welcome..........................

Wasis Diop                       Everything (Is Never Quite Enough)

A fanciful exercise......................

     "Indeed, one of the chief points on the agenda of the S. E. C. has been to work toward the ideal of a 'completely informed investing public.'  This is in every way laudable, and progress, though necessarily slow, should be assured.  However, just as a fanciful exercise in paradox, let us consider what would happen if on some miraculous dawn the entire investing public work up to find itself 'completely informed.'  That would certainly be the end of an orderly market, for a panic, either bull or bear, would ensue.  Everybody would know whether to buy or sell, and whichever it was, everybody would be trying to do the same thing at once. And there would be no one to complete the other side of the trade!  Orderly markets, like horse races, exist on difference of opinion.
     "Wall Street needed the S. E. C., just as baseball needed Commissioner Landis.  But people who are interested in baseball are more realistic than people interested in Wall Street..  The fans did not expect that Judge Landis would do more for the game than keep it reasonably honest.  They did not expect him to improve the quality of the fielding and hitting.  Nevertheless, a considerable part of the public seems to be expecting that the S. E. C. will make speculation and investment safer.
     "These hopeful individuals are reminiscent of the benevolent soul who said at the beginning of the poker game, 'Now, boys, if we all play carefully we can all win a little.'"
-Fred Schwed, Jr., Where Are the Customers' Yachts? (1940)

Fortunately...............

"I am not young enough to know everything."
-Oscar Wilde

Paradoxes...........................

From the pen of G. K. Chesterson:

"There is no way out of danger except the dangerous way."

"It is easy to be solemn; it is hard to be frivolous."

"It is of the new things that men tire - of fashions and proposals and improvements and changes.  It is the old things that startle and intoxicate.  It is the old things that are young."

"Charity to the deserving is not charity."

"The self is more distant than any star."

The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy."

Nature worship inevitably produces things that are against nature."

"Men can always be blind to a thing so long as it is big enough.  It is so difficult to see the world in which we live."

"He has always cared more for truth than for consistency.  If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them."

Well, yeah..................

Fair warning..................

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Wouldn't try to run................

Chi Coltrane..........................Thunder and Lightning




The summer of 1972.  The Main Point, Bryn Mawr, Pa.  Wow!

Entropy..................

"Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which
it takes as a sign of virtue and intellect."
-Lionel Trilling

The usual crisis..................

Remember.......................

Tomorrow........................

The buds are shouting:
"The Gardener is coming!
Today he picks the flowers,
tomorrow us!"

-Kabir

Less.........................

thanks mark

Can I get an amen............

thanks jonco

Sublime...................

Stan Getz................................................Autumn Leaves

Getting schooled................

Walter Russell Mead opines on the debt-driven "education bubble" here.  Excerpt here:

"In the housing bubble and in the higher ed bubble we are getting some very expensive crash courses in how federal cash, good intentions poorly thought through and bad incentives for both public and private actors can lead to disaster. "

Both...................

"To do great work, a man must be very idle as well as very
industrious."
-Samuel Butler

Recognize......................

"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole
cause of all our adversities."
-Sophocles

Raising expectations.................

"Everybody wants to be somebody.  Nobody wants to grow."
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Some guys just refuse to follow the rules.......

photo courtesy of

Alan Jackson............................Midnight In Montgomery

A pop quiz..................

From the delightful tome, Match Wits With Mensa:

2.  A snail is climbing out of a well.  The well is twenty feet deep.  Every day the snail climbs up three feet.  Every night he slips back two feet.  How many days will it take for him to get out of the well?

Saturday at the Horseshoe............

My sweetie and I enjoyed a lovely Saturday outing at the Horseshoe.  The Buckeyes beat Central Florida in a highly entertaining game.  Pre-game, TBDBITL showed off their double Script Ohio.  It is hard to top the atmosphere of college football.

O-h and working on the "i"

  Dotting the "i" is an honor.  Hanging in after losing
both your hat and the mouthpiece to your sousaphone
while bowing to the crowd is  true grace under pressure

Population 412...................

Small town America can be an experience worth savoring.  On our way home from the football game, we stopped by the village of Hartford (better known locally as Croton) for their annual celebration of their village.  The highlight was the parade:

The VFW Honor Guard

Grand Marshall,  94 year old Lawrence Bishop

The Northridge High School band

Our hard-working State Representative

Your basic vintage tractor

No parade is complete without the volunteer firemen

tests......................