Nobody feels like working.............

New Riders of the Purple Sage.............Panama Red

Thanks...........................

via

Tao.............................

"What's this you're writing?" asked Pooh, climbing onto the writing table.
     "The Tao of Pooh," I replied.
     "The how of Pooh?" asked Pooh, smudging one of the words I had just written.
     "The Tao of Pooh,"  I replied, poking his paw away with my pencil.
     "I seems more like the owl of Pooh," said Pooh, rubbing his paw.
     "Well, it's not," I replied huffily.
     "What's it about?" asked Pooh, leaning forward and smearing another word.
     "It's about how to stay happy and calm under all circumstances!" I yelled.
     "Have you read it?" asked Pooh.
-Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

Been there, done that..................

Jeff has his hands full.  Full post here.  Excerpt here:

"Then multiple projects at work suddenly went into 
gridlock at the intersection of calendars and cash."

Sense.................................

"I had no explanation for Laura.  I don't think there is an explanation.  My belief in Jesus did not seem rational or scientific, and yet there was nothing I could do to separate myself from this belief.  I think Laura was looking for something rational, because she believed that all things that were true were rational.  But that isn't the case.  Love, for example, is a true emotion, but it is not rational.  What I mean is, people actually feel it.  I have been in love, plenty of people have been in love, yet love cannot be proved scientifically.  Neither can beauty.  Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light and by light see all things.  There are plenty of things that are true that don't make any sense.  I think one of the problems Laura was having was that she wanted God to make sense.  He doesn't.  He will make no more sense to me than I will make sense to an ant."
-Donald Miller,  Blue Like Jazz

Everywhere you go...............

Michael Buble.....It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Broken escalator......................

WRM notices that law school is not the attractive option it once was.  Full essay here.  Excerpt here:

American economic life used to be full of escalators; if you got on one, your income would gradually and almost unavoidably rise. Now it is more like a rock climb, where everyone has to find their own way to the top. Lawyers were among the country’s most dedicated escalator riders, moving from associate to partner and up the scale in income and prestige. These days that strategy works for fewer and fewer people at fewer and fewer firms; the next generation of lawyers will have to reinvent their profession, and the reshaping of the profession will also transform the field of legal education.

Relaxing........................

via

Friends.........................

Song is in the air..........................

The Allman Brothers Band........................................Revival

The Christmas lights around the County Courthouse are looking pretty good this year........

Cronies......................

Peter Gordon talks government, money, and cronies - here.   Excerpt here:

There is no "good" vs "bad" crony capitalism. There is only big money flowing in and out of big government with predictable results.  One of the most amazing disconnects in modern America is in the minds of those who rationalize big government but who cringe at the money flowing into politics.

Each and all.....................

     "Everyone needs other people to help them in achieving their dreams.  We all need each other.  In the business world we need each other's market and ideas.  In the personal world we need each other's inspiration and cooperation.  The attitude of other people affects each of us and the attitude of each of us has the capacity to affect all of us.
     "The American Pledge of Allegiance, and its thirty-one words that we often repeat as an expression of our loyalty, begins with 'I' and concludes with 'all.'  That is what America is about; you and I working together to create greatness.  We are uniquely influenced and affected by each other in our pursuit of the American Dream.
     "We become a powerful force when each of us understands how powerful all of us are and when all of us understand how valuable each of us is."
-Jim Rohn

Good question........................

Swift............................

Jonathan Swift, satirist and author of Gulliver's  Travels, was born this day in 1667.  He also said some neat stuff.  To wit:

May you live every day of your life.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle. 

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday.

There is nothing in this world constant, but inconstancy.

But nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.

Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing. 

It is impossible that any thing so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

Reason is a very light rider and easily shook off.

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible to others.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.

Men are contented to be laughed at for their wit, but not for their folly.

Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold, which the owner knows not of.

Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age…

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

Don't set your wit against a child. 

Lincolnesque........................

Joel Kotkin, a very bright man, suggests that Republicans re-focus their efforts on being for prosperity, not for plutocrats.  Full post is here.  Excerpts here:

"To reclaim its Lincolnesque transformation, the GOP needs to fundamentally pivot on the role of government. Laissez-faire ideology has its merits, but cannot compete successfully with a population weaned on the welfare state, whose members are keenly attuned to their vulnerability in our volatile era."

"As generational chroniclers Morley Winograd and Mike Hais have suggested, most younger people support government action to solve problems but generally dislike the kind of top-down solutions often supported by Democrats. As these voters age, seek to buy homes and start businesses, they might listen to a sensible alternative that does not seek to enhance the left-wing clerisy’s ambition to control all aspects of their lives."

Thanks Rick

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

via

See, the dog did eat my homework.....

This is SO COOL............................

............100,000 stars.  Your own guided tour.  Enjoy.

thanks craig

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

Lynyrd Skynyrd.................................Free Bird

Tell................................

"Fairy tales are more than true — not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten."
-G. K. Chesterton

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Saying...........................

"'My country, right or wrong' is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.' "
-G. K, Chesterson

image via

Clever.......................

"Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?"
-G. K. Chesterton

via

Affection.........................

"When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children.  We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations."
-G. K. Chesterton

Born...........................

"To be born into this earth is to be born into uncongenial surroundings, hence to be born into a romance."

"Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait."
-G. K. Chesterton

image via

Eye.............................................

"There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. Men do not quarrel about the meaning of sunsets; they never dispute that the hawthorn says the best and wittiest thing about the spring."
-G. K. Chesterton

Truth...................................

"Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it."
-G. K. Chesterton

image via

Love..............................

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people."
-G. K. Chesterton

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Hanged..................

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
-G. K. Chesterton  (1921)

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Custom................................

I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.
-G. K. Chesterton

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See............................

"It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem."
-G. K. Chesterton

image via

Your basic super-group...................

Traveling Wilburys...............................End of the Line

(Ed. Note:  Grrrrr.  You have to click through to Youtube and be subjected to a commercial before viewing this.  I thought about deleting it and posting something else, but............I really like it, and maybe you will too. So - here it is.)

Uh-oh.........................

via

Measurable.........................

"That is the great challenge of life - making measurable progress in a reasonable amount of time.  That is what creates both purpose and value in our lives."
-Jim Rohn

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

"My worst dreams have always contained images of brown water and fields of elephant grass and the downdraft of helicopter blades.  The dreams are in color but they contain no sound, not of drowned voices in the river or the explosions under the hooches in the village we burned or the thropping of the Jolly Green and the gunships coming low and flat across the canopy, like insects pasted against the molten sun."
-James Lee Burke,  The Tin Roof Blowdown

Eight+ minutes of fun with guitars and drums......

The Ventures.............Wipe Out/House of the Rising Sun/Telstar

Calmed............................

Do you imagine the universe is agitated?
Go into the desert at night
and look out at the stars.
This practice should answer the question.

The superior person settles her mind as
the universe settles the
stars in the sky.
By connecting her mind with the
subtle origin, she calms it.
Once calmed, it naturally expands, and
ultimately her mind becomes as
vast and immeasurable
as the night sky.

-Verse 5
Hua Hu Ching:  The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu
Brian Brown Walker

image via APOD

Truth........................

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
-Albert Einstein

Twofer..................................

Alison Kraus and Jerry Douglas............Carolina In My Mind





James Taylor......................................Carolina In My Mind

Feeling my age...................

courtesy of

More fun with signs................