I've seen people happier getting a root canal.......

The Stroll............................................................1958

Nope..............................

via

It is that time of the year..........................

.....to re-post my all-time favoritist poem.   Enjoy.


    TWO TRAMPS IN MUD TIME

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of oak it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
The judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right--agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

-Robert Frost

Still one of my most valued possessions......

Some smart person in the Intertunnel, whose opinion I value, suggested reading Things Worth Fighting for:  Collected Writings by Michael Kelly.  Wanting to accept said recommendation, my natural first step was to check with the nice people at Amazon.  Oops, $209.99.  Not going there.

My natural next step was to check with the public library.   Not finding it anywhere in their system, I checked with the nice man behind the desk.  He explained that the Newark Library was part of SEO, a consortium of 87 library systems sharing resources.  Usually one of those libraries will have a requested book, but if they did not, well....that did not mean we couldn't find it somewhere.  He promised to check other options, and if successful, would send a signal.  The signal arrived, as did the book.   It is a wondrous world.

                                                                                                     

Fifty years ago................................

Shirley Ellis.............................................The Nitty Gritty



Despite the YouTube label that says "1964,"  The Nitty Gritty
charted in 1963.  It says so here.

Say it ain't so..........................

Jonathan Winters dead at age 87.  Passing of an amazing mind.

Rubbing salt in the wound................

...............in a funny and good-natured kind of way.

Really, really faithful readers might remember that on this blogger's bucket list sits the ambition to travel and watch, live and in-person, all four of golf's Major Tournaments plus the Player's Championship, preferably in the same year.  No progress has been made on that front, even though several entreaties have gone forth, through various channels, seeking tickets to the Masters.  So you might imagine the whimsical smile that crossed my face when I found this in my mail yesterday afternoon.  Stapled to the cover was this note:  "22nd next best thing to being here!  Doug".   Did I mention that one of the various channels used in seeking tickets was through that rascal operative of the "Mastersticity" blog?

Anyway........................................

Rod Stewart..........................Maggie May

A will and a won't...................

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
-Henry Ward Beecher

Blip.......................

         The Leaky Faucet

All through the night, the leaky faucet
searches the stillness of the house
with its radar blip:  who is awake?
Who lies out there as full of worry
as a pan in the sink?  Cheer up,
cheer up, the little faucet calls,
someone will help you through your life.

-Ted Kooser

image

What a difference this might have made.......

via

Fifty years ago.........................

Barbara Lewis...........................Hello Stranger

This is known as a "good thing"..........

"Life is actually far better than it is in the movies. And it takes longer."
-Seth Godin, as excerpted from this post

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

Scott Thompson looked at his watch.  He was running behind.  He had a long list of to-dos to complete by the end of the week, and it was already Thursday.  Thompson is a busy guy.  As president and former chief technology officer of PayPal, the largest Internet payment system in the world, he runs the Web's alternative to checks and credit cards.  But he'd promised to give twenty minutes to a kid who claimed to have solution to the problem of online payment scams, credit card fraud, and electronic identity theft.
Dan Senor and Saul Singer, Start-Up Nation:  The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle

Oops...................................

via

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

via

Not a particularly happy song..............

The Rolling Stones..........................Paint It Black

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

Lest you forget.................

.......that smooth economic sailing is not a feature of American history, check out this list from the folks at Wikipedia:

• Crisis of 1772
• Panic of 1792
• Panic of 1796-1797

• Panic of 1819, a U.S. recession with bank failures; culmination of U.S.'s first boom-to-bust economic cycle
• Panic of 1837, a U.S. recession with bank failures, followed by a 5-year depression
• Panic of 1847
• Panic of 1857, a U.S. recession with bank failures
• Panic of 1866
• Long Depression (1873–1896)
• Panic of 1873, a US recession with bank failures, followed by a four-year depression
• Panic of 1884
• Panic of 1890
• Panic of 1893, a US recession with bank failures   
• Panic of 1907, a U.S. economic recession with bank failures
• Wall Street Crash of 1929 and Great Depression (1929–1939) the worst depression of modern history
• OPEC oil price shock
• Black Monday (1987)
• Savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s in the U.S.
• Late-2000s Financial Crisis or the Late-2000s recession, including:
• 2000s energy crisis
• Subprime mortgage crisisUnited States housing bubble and United States housing market correction

You can go here to review a history of recessions.

You may be asking yourself what occasioned such cut-and-pasting on my part.  Good question.  It all started when I was led through the maze that is the Intertunnel (don't remember how, sorry) to this essay by Robert N. Solow.  Solow's essay, How To Save American Finance From Itself, points out the Federal Reserve was created by Congress in 1913 to reduce the financial turbulence.  Solow then suggests that, over the passage of time, Central Bankers have been asked to do often contradictory (and impossible) things.  He believes that Ben Bernanke was the right man doing the right things during the most recent unpleasantness.  Solow concludes with this question:

All of which leads to a broader issue that Chairman Bernanke could not possibly mention in these lectures or elsewhere, but that I wish Professor Bernanke would think about whenever he leaves office. Any complicated economy needs a complicated financial system: to allocate dispersed capital to dispersed productive uses, to provide liquidity, to do maturity and risk transformation, and to produce market evaluations of uncertain prospects. If these functions are not performed adequately, the economy cannot produce and grow with anything like efficiency. Granted all that, however, the suspicion persists that financialization has gone too far.

What would that mean? It would mean that the last x percent of financial activity absorbs more resources (especially intellectual resources) and creates more potential instability than its additional efficiency-benefits can justify. This charmingly subversive suggestion is easy to make, but it is extremely difficult to validate. Yes, it is hard to imagine that the Hedge Fund Operator of the Year does anything that is remotely socially useful enough to justify the enormous (and lightly taxed) compensation that results; but that is not really an argument. Much more significant is the fact that the bulk of incremental financial activity is trading, and trading, while it may provide a little useful public information about market opinion, is largely a way to transfer wealth from those with inferior information and calculation ability to those with more. There is no enhancement of economic efficiency to speak of. This is, you might say, the $64 trillion question. Maybe I shouldn’t wish it on Ben Bernanke.

Not being a trained economist, or a trained historian for that matter, I do have a few observations.  History would seem to suggest that as long as human nature is involved, economies will alternate between stability and turbulence.  When things get too good, they are about to get bad.  When things are too bad, they are about to get good.  Governments can help and governments can hurt.  Even the really smart people are guessing most of the time.  Avarice and sloth are still numbered among the seven deadly sins.  The truth is elusive, even for us history majors.  

Cosmology........................

From the remarkable Brain Pickings blog comes this wee video about  the origin, and expansion, of the Universe.  From Edwin Hubble's observation that galaxies are moving away from each other came the theory that, at conception, the Universe started as a "monumental explosion of an infinitely small and infinitely hot point."  In other words, The Big Bang.   I don't have any trouble accepting the theory.  I can even get my mind wrapped around the concept of that infinitely small and hot point.  Where is lose my way is, where did the field (space) that all these celestial bodies are expanding across come from?  Just wondering.  Enjoy the video.

Fifty years ago............(It was a different time)

The Ran-Dells..................................Martian Hop

One less thing to worry about.............

The younger generation is doing just dandy, thank you.  Should you ever doubt it, tune into the latest release from Unorganized Hancock and be amazed at the growth.  Backstory is here.  Seriously people, go to the YouTube library and check out a few of their dozen or so songs.  I'm a fan.  Consider becoming one yourownself.

Unorganized Hancock............................So What

The Comma........................

As a public service to all you Grammarians out there, I am suggesting you read this essay at McSweeney's.   Opening salvo is here:

1. If nothing else, one ought to know how to treat a comma. Abandonment or abuse of the comma muddles discourse, and this lack of respect is akin to neglect, to a lack of appreciation, to an unreasonable rejection of the very foundation of all worthy human interactions.

Ain't that the truth.....................................

via

Beyond my imagining.................

           NGC 3132:  The Southern Ring Nebula via APOD

Billie Holiday and friends demonstrating happy blues and sad blues............................

Billie Holiday..............................Fine and Mellow

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

thanks jonco

Must have been the opposable thumbs............

From Cultural Offering comes the saga of the Gray Fox:

He also watched and listened for trouble, consisting mostly of humans, who were never hard to hear or spot as they tromped clumsily through the woods, breaking every stick they came across, whistling and jabbering and making a horrible racket.  How did humans ever catch anything in the woods, Gray Fox often wondered  How on earth did they survive with such poor creeping skills?  

We are now left to anxiously await the next installment:

But the circumstances being what they were, Gray Fox saw no other option today.  So he watched and listened and hoped the little girl would be along before the others figured out what he was up to.

Yeow........................

You can find some fun quotes in the Intertunnel.  To wit:

"Political nitwitery is best served with dupery."

Said quote was the conclusion to a post commenting on the idea that some of those in leadership positions have forgotten the real nature of  insurance.  To wit: 

“At a White House briefing Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said some of what passes for health insurance today is so skimpy it can't be compared to the comprehensive coverage available under the law. "Some of these folks have very high catastrophic plans that don't pay for anything unless you get hit by a bus," she said. "They're really mortgage protection, not health insurance." 

You can read the full post here.

thanks mungo

Almost enough to make me root for Nebraska....

"Jack Hoffman is a 7-year-old brain cancer patient, but that didn’t stop him from scoring a touchdown in Nebraska’s spring game Saturday afternoon. Jack, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 and is currently on a break from his chemotherapy treatment, came into the game for a fourth-and-1 on the 31 yard line. With the help of some blockers, Jack ran the ball all the way into the end zone in front of more than 60,000 fans."



thanks jonco

Fifty years ago.............................

Sunny & The Sunglows.......................Talk To Me

Vexatious obstacle................................

"...and the idea that the ends of government justified the means employed was worked into the system by Machiavelli.  He was an acute politician, sincerely anxious that the obstacles to the intelligent government of Italy should be swept away.  It appeared to him that the most vexatious obstacle to intellect is conscience, and that the vigorous use of statecraft necessary for the success of difficult schemes would never be made if governments allowed themselves to be hampered by the precepts of the copy-book.

     His audacious doctrine was avowed in the succeeding age by men whose personal character stood high.  They saw that in critical times good men have seldom strength for their goodness, and yield to those who have grasped the meaning of the maxim that you cannot make an omelette if you are afraid to break the eggs.  They saw that public morality differs from private, because no Government can turn the other cheek, or can admit that mercy is better than justice."

-Lord Acton, as excerpted from his collected works

image from here

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

     The coach rolled through the small iron gates, up the slight rise, toward massive white columns.  Lee had not seen Arlington for nearly three years, saw again the pure size, the exaggerated grandeur.  It was the home of George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington and Lee's father-in-law, and the old man had built the mansion more as a showplace for the artifacts of President Washington than as a home for a living family.  The design was cold, impractical, but to Custis, the impression was the important thing, the shrine to his revered ancestors.  But now Custis was dead.
-Jeff Shaara, Gods and Generals

From your blog to my kid's ears.............

"Ladies, please think twice before you get that tacky tattoo**. Invest in some nice clothes instead. You'll thank me later."

Bilbo riffs wisely on "tattoo regret" and the "permanent reminder of a temporary feeling."  Full essay is here.

This calls for a re-run of this dandy cartoon.

Everything (almost) you wanted to know about 1968.............

Jeannie C. Riley..................Harper Valley P.T.A.

O-H-I-O.........................

Walter Russell Mead seems a tad upset with the "meritocracy."   Full post here.  As an Ohio taxpayer and the father of a senior biology major at The Ohio State University, I'm liking this excerpt:

At Via Meadia, we strongly believe that this elite needs its wings clipped and that America needs to become a more open society with more power at the grass roots and less concentrated among a small group of smug narcissists from the “right” schools with the “right” ideas. We think some kind of “national bac”, a set of exams that could allow students from all over the country to compete on the basis of what they actually know as opposed to which admissions officers they were able to impress at age 17, would help reduce the Ivy League bias that is poisoning American society. The kid who goes to Princeton and “networks” for four years sucking up to famous professors and polishing the “right ideas” and making the “right” friends currently has an almost infinite advantage over the poor schmuck who goes to Ohio State and studies hard; there ought to be a way that the Princeton kid can be exposed as an empty polo shirt and the Ohio State kid get recognized as a serious person.

Effects................................

     "True, while humans self-repair, they eventually wear out (hopefully leaving their genes, books, or some other information behind - another discussion).  But the phenomenon of aging is misunderstood, largely fraught with mental biases and logical flaws.  We observe old people and see them age, so we associated aging with their loss of muscle mass, bone weakness, loss of mental  function, taste for Frank Sinatra music, and similar degenerative effects.  But these failures to self-repair come largely from maladjustment - either too few stressors or too little time for recovery between them..."
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile:  Things That Gain from Disorder

cartoon via

Fifty years ago.........................

Frank Sinatra............................I Have Dreamed



This song comes from the 1951 Rogers and Hammerstein classic musical, The King and I.  It has been covered more than fifty times.  Sinatra did his cover in 1963, released on The Concert Sinatra album.  Obviously, this video is more recent.  For some of us, enjoying Frank is one of the benefits of aging.

Bah-humbug........................

 “The political and economic environment of my youth stands revealed as a paradise lost, an exceptional moment in our nation’s history …”
-Paul Krugman

The above quote comes from Ed Driscoll's The Paradox of the Nostalgic Progressive post.  What got me there was this Craig Newmark post.

cartoon via

Self-help..............................

     Drew began business on his own account, with a capital of a few shillings; but his character for steadiness was such that a neighboring miller offered him a loan, which was accepted, and, success attending his industry, the debt was repaid at the end of the year.  He started with a determination to "owe no man anything," and he held to it in the midst of many privations.  Often he went to bed supperless, to avoid rising in debt.  His ambition was to achieve independence by industry and economy, and in this he gradually succeeded.  In the midst of incessant labour, he sedulously strove to improve his mind, studying astronomy, history, and metaphysics.  He was induced to pursue the latter study chiefly because it required fewer books to consult that either of the others.  "It appeared to be a thorny path," he said, "but I determined, nevertheless, to enter, and accordingly began to tread it."
-Samuel Smiles, as excerpted from his book, Self Help; With Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance.  The Drew being discussed is Samuel Drew.

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

Jimmy Sharp stepped back from the curb and impatiently waved the car by, waved it like a big shot, like he couldn't be bothered to assert his rights to the pedestrian crosswalk.
-John Sanford, Mad River: A Virgil Flowers Novel

(Ed. Note:  Sometimes one sentence paragraphs are a good thing)

Ouch. I feel their pain....................................

Advertising revenue generated by this blog has never been lower (of course, it has never been higher either).

In cases you are wondering what the chart would look like with on-line advertising  included - here goes:

Back story here.  I'm curious if these trends vary between mega, large, and small market papers.  Not curious enough to research it though.  Any help out there?

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

Gioachino Rossini.......................The William Tell Overture




More than you wanted to know about the Overture - here.

This is the full version (12:05).  The best know part, The Finale,
which clocks in at 3:09, is here

Undazzled........................

A mosaic of William Tell at the Swiss National Museum

     The first descent of Freedom to our modern world, the first unfurling of her standard on the rocky pinnacle of Europe, is here celebrated in the style which it deserved.  There is no false tinsel-decoration about William Tell, no sickly refinement, no declamatory sentimentality.  All is downright, simple, and agreeable to Nature; yet all is adorned and purified and rendered beautiful, without losing its resemblance.  An air of freshness and wholesomeness breathes over it; we are among honest, inoffensive, yet fearless peasants, untainted by the vices, undazzled by the theories, of more complex and perverted conditions of society.
-Thomas Carlyle, the opening paragraph of his An Introductory Essay to Friedrich Schiller's 1804 play William Tell

William Tell...............................

Kuoni               Quick, ferryman, and set the good man over.

Ruodi                Impossible! A storm is close at hand.
                            Wait till it pass!  You must.

Baumgarten      Almighty Heavens!
                                I cannot wait; the least delay is death

Kuoni                (to the fisherman)
                                     Push out - God with you!  We should help
                          our neighbors;
                          The like misfortune may betide us all.
                          (Thunder and the roaring of the wind)

Ruodi                 The Southwind's up!  See how the lake is rising!
                            I cannot steer against both wind and wave.

Baumgarten       (clasping him by the knees)
                                        God so help you as now you pity me!

Werni                  His life's at stake.  Have pity on him, man!

Kuoni                  He is a father; has a wife and children.
                             (repeated peals of thunder)

Ruodi                 What! And have I not, then, a life to lose.
                            A wife and child at home as well as he?
                            See how the breakers foam, and toss, and whirl,
                            And the lake eddies up from all its depths!
                            Rightly glad would I save the worthy man.
                            But 'tis impossible, as you must see.

Baumgarten        (still kneeling)
                                         Then must I fall into the tyrant's hands.
                             And with the shore of safety close in sight!
                             Yonder it lies!  My eyes can see it clear.
                             My very voice can echo to its shores.
                             There is the boat to carry me across,
                             Yet must I lie here helpless and forlorn.

Kuoni                   Look!  Who comes here?

Ruodi                    'Tis Tell, ay, Tell of Burglen.  (Enter Tell with a cross-bow)

Tell                       What man is he that here implores for aid?

Kuoni                    He is from Alzellen, and to guard his honor
                              From touch of foulest shame, has slain the Wolfshot,
                              The imperial Seneschal, who dwelt in Rossberg.
                              The Viceroy's troopers are upon his heels;
                              He begs the ferryman to take him over,
                              But frightened at the storm he says he won't.

Ruodi                   Well, there is Tell can steer as well as I.
                              He'll be my judge, if it be possible.
                              (Violent peals of thunder - the lake becomes more tempestuous)
                                   Am I to plunge into the jaws of hell?
                              I should be mad to dare the desperate act.

Tell                       The brave man thinks upon himself the last.
                             Put trust in God, and help him in his need!

Ruodi                    Safe in port, 'tis easy to advise.
                             There is the boat, and there the lake!  Try you!

Tell                       The lake may pity, but the Viceroy never.
                             Come, risk it, man! 

Shepherd
and Huntsman    Oh, save him!  save him! save him!

Ruodi                  Though 'twere my brother, or my darling child
                           I would not go.  'Tis Simon and Jude's day,
                           The lake is up, and calling for its victim.

Tell                     Naught's to be done with idle talking here.
                           Each moment's precious:  the man must by help'd
                           Say, boatman, will you venture?

Ruodi                 No; not I.

Tell                    In God's name, then, give me the boat! I will
                         With my poor strength, see what is to be done!

Kuoni                 Ha, gallant Tell!

Werni                 That's like a huntsman true.

Baumgarten       You are my angel, my preserver, Tell.

Tell                    I may preserve you from the Viceroy's power,
                          But from the tempest's rage Another must.
                          Yet better 'tis  you fall into  God's hands,
                          Than into those of men.
                          (To the herdsman)  Herdsman, do thou
                          Console my wife if I should come to grief.
                          I could not choose but do as I have done.
                          (He leaps into the boat)

-Friedrich Schiller, as excerpted from his play, William Tell

art work is by Rafaello Busoni

Sweet and bitter-sweet..........

The high school our daughter attends (and son before) has a requirement that parents volunteer 35 hours per year at the school.  My volunteer activity of choice is working the bi-weekly bingo game.  It is a small school, and the bingo money makes quite a difference to their finances.  Yesterday's game netted the school $3,700.  After eight years, I have worked my last bingo game.  Sweet.

Last night we went to our daughter's last high school basketball banquet.  At 24-3, they had a very successful and league winning season. .  In the State tourney they won their District and lost in a very exciting, very close, almost come from behind, Regional final.  They played tenacious defense and team offense.  Fun to watch.  Maggie graduates in early June.  The end of our high school days are just around the corner.  Bitter-sweet.

Tried and true..........................

"All too often, the ones who are aggressively seeking the theory of the day don't have a lot to show for what they did yesterday."
-Seth Godin

art via gapingvoid

Fifty years ago...................................

The Beach Boys...........................Little Deuce Coupe

Leaning into chaos...................

The reverberations of that ONE good teacher:

I had one teacher in grade school that understood it – unable to control me and my constant questions, curiosities, and general class interruptions, she offered me a gold star for every day that I sat quietly and did my lessons without disturbing the rest of the class. If I felt I behaved properly, I would walk up to her desk with my black and white composition notebook and ask for my star. She never refused me. But I also knew when there were days that I didn’t ask and understood why.

What this teacher did was give me a way to control my chaos – the star was a container to put it in. I understand now that it was a way of creating self-reflection in a very curious young boy who these days would be branded ADHD and given drugs and counseling.

-Jeff Kopito, as excerpted from here

Staring.............................

“The person who reads too much and uses his 
brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking.” 
-Albert Einstein

cartoon via

Spengler..........................

............if feeling a bit grouchy:

No magic bullet — not the Fed, not the energy boom, not the modest improvement in home prices- — is going to get the U.S. economy out of what Nobel Prize laureate Edmund Phelps calls a “structural slump.” This isn’t a new depression. It’s not even a double-dip recession. It’s just a permanent headache.

Full post is here.  It contains this interesting chart of the Federal Reserve's recent purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities is below.  I wonder what happens next?

Nope..................................

via

Queen of Hearts.......................

Linda Ronstadt..........................Desperado

Well, it is................................

"People underestimate their capacity for change.  There is never a right time to do a difficult thing.  A leader's job is to help people have vision of their potential."
-John Porter

cartoon via

Megan McArdle's Three Rules for Investing.........

Sometimes the simplest things are also the hardest things.  McArdle's recipe works.  In fact, provided you don't wait until you are 55 to start, it is the closest thing to a guarantee in life that one can get.  The only thing that I would add, is that one could substitute  investment real estate for "index mutual funds" and get the same result.  It is #1 and #3 that are most important.  Her rules:

1) Save at least 15% of your income

2) Put the money in index mutual funds

3) Leave it there until you retire.

McArdle's full post is here.  As a card-carrying member of the "most spoiled" generation, I love these two parargraphs:

You guys have enough money to save, which I can scientifically prove because your grandparents almost certainly lived on a small fraction of what you now do.  And don't tell me things were cheaper, back in the good old days: in almost all cases their houses were smaller, less well heated, and entirely un-air-conditioned; their entertainment budgets were much leaner; their groceries heavier on the cheap and utilitarian and lighter on the tasty and expensive.  They literally had about a quarter as many clothes as the ones bursting out of your closet.  Their health care was cheaper because it sucked and they died quicker.

You have enough money to save and still live a rich, satisfying life.  What you maybe don't have is enough money to save while enjoying what you have come to think of as the minimal standard of living for your peer group.

Choices...........................

        Selecting A Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it.  She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having enough money for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf.  She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned."  And she will.

-Ted Kooser

Fifty years ago.............................

The Beach Boys...........................Surfer Girl



Recorded in June of 1963, this classic was released the next month.  It was on the Top 40 charts for most of the summer of 1963.  Brian Wilson wrote it.  Legend has it that it was his very first solo composition.  When released as a single, the B-side was Little Deuce Coupe.  Nice.  You can watch that one tomorrow.

A verse for Sunday.......................

⁴³  You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 

⁴⁴  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 

⁴⁵  that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 

⁴⁶  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 

⁴⁷  And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 

⁴⁸  Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Mathew 5:43-48
The Holy Bible
New International Version

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

cartoon via

Extend...................................

Men and women who wish to be aware of
the whole truth should adopt the
practices of the Integral Way.
These time-honored disciplines calm the
mind and bring one into
harmony with all things.

The first practice is the practice of
undiscriminating virtue:
take care of those who are
deserving; also, and equally,
take care of those who are not.

When you extend you virtue in all
directions without discriminating,
 your feet are firmly planted on the
path that returns to the Tao.

-Verse 2
Hua Hu Ching:  The Unknown Teachings of Lao Tzu
Brian Brown Walker

Cheese..............................

"Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer."
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb

cartoon via