Take your time...................

Lynyrd Skynyrd................................Simple Man

Not feeling it today......................

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

The Sapphires.....................Who Do You Love



There is some question as to the release date on this song.  It charted in 1964, but for the sake of this blog we're saying it was recorded in 1963.

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

Jamie Meldon rubbed his eyes vigorously, but when he stared back at the computer screen it was still no good.  He glanced at his watch; nearly two in the morning.  He was toast.  At age fifty he couldn't pull these all-nighters consistently anymore.  He slipped on his jacket and pushed back his thinning hair where it had drifted down to his forehead.
-David Baldacci,  True Blue

Oh............................

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Delayed.......................................

     The rewards of a disciplined life are great, but they're often delayed until some time in the future.  The rewards for a lack of discipline, on the other hand, are immediate.  But they are minor in comparison to the immeasurable rewards of constant self-discipline.  An immediate reward for lack of discipline is a fun day at the beach.  A future reward of discipline is owning the beach.  Unfortunately, most of us would choose today's pleasure over tomorrow's fortune.
-Jim Rohn, as excerpted from Leading An Inspired Life

cartoon via

Figured out what happened to the lawn mower...

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Taking requests...................

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

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

How to mime a drum solo....................

Steppenwolf..............................Rock Me

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

He seemed incapable of creating such chaos, but much of what he saw below could be blamed on him.  And that was fine.  He was ninety-one, paralyzed, strapped in a wheelchair and hooked to oxygen.  His second stroke seven years ago had almost finished him off, but Abraham Rosenberg was still alive and even with tubes in his nose his legal stick was bigger than the other eight.  He was the only legend remaining on the Court, and the fact that he was still breathing irritated most of the mob below.
-John Grisham,  The Pelican Brief

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

Baby Washington...............That's How Heartaches Are Made

Safe..................................

The moon put her hand
over my mouth and told me 
to shut up and watch.

I surely understand paper and how poets
disappear despite it.  These days I write
so lightly I don't quite touch it.

A man pays court with his poems.
A women dismisses him with hers.

Monkeys search each other
and so do we.  Another sign 
of our advancement.

All those spin butchers drooling
public pus.  Save your first
bullet for television.

Rate the hours.  One and 5 A.M.
are fine while 3 is the harshest.
The fool always feels safe at noon.

I thought my friend was drinking 
too much, but it was the vodka
that was drinking him.

-Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry
Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison

back story here

A broken down power mower.................

............and grass to cut before Maggie's graduation party (y'all are invited by the way) at 2:00 on Saturday.  I'm thinking this should do the trick:

thanks

Speaking of drones................................

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What Sweeties do best.......................

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In other words..............................

Frank Sinatra.............................Fly Me To The Moon

God bless Windham Hill.........................

Shadowfax...............................New Electric India

Feels like Friday.......................

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

     To put the Wade/Nichols case in some kind of perspective:  it may have been the toughest one I've ever handled in my professional life of more than thirty years, and it wasn't even criminal.  I do criminal.  My name is Jerry Kennedy and I don't take civil cases.  This is widely known - I have made it so.  I refer civil matters out to civil lawyers, who very kindly don't do criminal and therefore thoughtfully refer such nasty stuff to me.  I am not myself uncivil, or try not to be, at least;  I just prefer to play it smart, which means: do what I'm used to doing, and therefore know how to do well - well enough at a minimum to convince civilians watching that I do know what I am doing.  So far, that's been good enough.  That may be criminal, but it's not forbidden by law.  So:  why did I take the mixed-breed Wade/Nichols case, the hardest case I never tried?  Which looked like it was civil but was really criminal?  And, when you came right down to it, de facto made me into what I'd never been before in my whole life, a fucking prosecutor?
-George V. Higgins,  Sandra Nichols Found Dead

Hey, wake up...............................

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

The Classics.....................................Till Then

Fun with architecture...............................

Some of the more unusual library and museum buildings...

Thinking Inside the Box,  The Central Library, Nice, France

The Universum Science Museum, Bremen, Germany

The Kansas City Library

The regional office for the National Fisheries Development Board
                       located near Hyderabad, India.  This four story building 
opened in April of 2012

The Geisel Library   University of California San Diego

 National Library in Astana, Kazakhstan

The Czech National Library in Prague 

And for those who believe that libraries are more about heart than architecture,  here is my favorite:

                              Westbury-sub-Mendip’s Phone Booth Library

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

"Taxpayers nationwide are staring down a swelling tidal wave of government pension debt. Recent estimates put the combined unfunded liability of state pension systems at $2.5 trillion."

More on the story can be found here.  

Ask..............................

Ask the world to reveal its quietude -
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.

-Sabbaths 2001,  III
Wendell Berry

Speak...................................

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Rest easy.................................

Beethoven.......................................Moonlight Sonata

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

Renaissance...........................Carpet of the Sun

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

The night air was thick and damp.  As I drove south along Lake Michigan, I could smell rotting alewives like a faint perfume on the heavy air.  Little fires shone here and there from late-night barbecues in the park.  On the water a host of green and red running lights showed people seeking relief from the sultry air.  On shore traffic was heavy, the city moving restlessly, trying to breathe.  It was July in Chicago.
-Sara Paretsky,  Indemnity Only

About that "settled science".........................

“Has there ever in history been such an almighty disconnect between observable reality and the delusions of a political class that is quite impervious to any rational discussion?”

Has global cooling arrived?  Again?  Are we really fifteen years into a period of no warming?  Are computer models facts?  I get so confused.  For those willing to share my confusion, read this essay from Forbes.

Just for the record, while I'd prefer warming to cooling (the last two ice ages were tough on Ohio), the history major in me suspects that the Sun and the Earth are ever-colluding on climate change.  I highly doubt they are paying much attention to us humanoids and our infernal internal combustion engines.

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

Eddie Holland.................................Leaving Here

Doing............................

I've got a question for you.  Is the best you can do all you can do?  Strangely enough, the answer is no.  Imagine dropping to the floor right now and doing as many push-ups as you possibly can - and let's say for some reason you haven't been doing any push-ups lately, so the best you can do is five.
     But is five all you can ever do?  The answer is no.  If you rest a little, you can do five more.  And if you rest a little more, you can do five more.  How did we get from five to fifteen/  It's a miracle!
     If you continue that pattern, is it possible to get up to fifty push-ups?  Of course!  How do you go from five to fifty?  It's a miracle!
     So how do you get that miracle going?  It's all a matter of discipline.  And it begins with one simple step:  doing what you can do.  Once you have done that, you can keep working to bring your best to a higher level.  Each time you complete and activity and take a rest, you're preparing yourself for even greater accomplishment.  But, here's a note of caution:  don't rest too long.
-Jim Rohn,  Leading An Inspired Life

cartoon via

Woof..............................

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Hide...................................

             REVELATION

We make ourselves a place apart
    Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
     Till someone find us really out.

'Tis pity if the case require
     (Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
     The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
     At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away,
     Must speak and tell us where they are.

-Robert Frost

Made-for-TV rock.........................

The Monkees...................................I'm A Believer
(please click on through to YouTube and watch what
18,529,044 nice people have already watched)

Organists of the world, Unite.............

The Doors.........................................Light My Fire



While Jim Morrison had the fame, Ray Manzarek had the talent.  Ray died last week.  Sad news indeed.

This is one of the few times that your faithful blogger opted not to go with the live version of the song.  Maybe Jim Morrison is just a bit "off" for my taste, regardless, if you prefer live versions, go here or here

Beauty................................

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

Dionne Warwick.......................Anyone Who Had A Heart



Written and produced by Hal David and Bert Bacharach, this song was released in the fall of 1963.  It reached the #8 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964.

Codification.......................

   Forgetting to mind my own business, I find myself now on a committee charged with reviewing, and improving  - if possible, our town's property maintenance code.  Yikes, that'll learn me.  While reading the document, it gradually dawned on me that probably 94% of all property owners in Newark, me included, are, willfully or otherwise, violating said code.  At the last committee meeting, I mentioned that it was probably a mistake to create laws that casually make lawbreakers out of most of the citizenry.  The legal mind at the table suggested there are many rules for the breakage of which there is no enforcement or penalty, i. e. driving 57 miles per hour when the posted speed limit is 55, and that was just the natural order of things.  I was suitably chastened and temporarily silenced - but still feeling a bit of rebellion towards the idea. A thicket of government imposed rules and regulations for which there is no enforcement or penalty must certainly weaken the legitimacy of those more critical and important laws.  A government, whose foundation is based on the consent of the governed, delves into minutiae at its own risk.
     Friend Kurt catches the feeling with his posts (here and here) on "the codification of life."  Quoting Kurt quoting Aristotle, "Ideally, there should be few laws, seldom changed."
      Not sure what the outcome of our committee's work will be, but  I do know that an attempt will be made to de-criminalize at least 94% of the property owners in Newark.
   

Tax incentives and economic development......

Is it circular and perpetual or merely a beclowned merry-go-round?  Asks Bill Heasley, who is clearly exasperated by communities and states dangling carrots of incentives in front of prospective employers, as he  pens this interesting essay.  As someone who pays attention to such things I feel his pain, but fear he has missed a much larger point.  Although in danger of being totally swamped by the behemoth in Washington, Federalism still exists in the good old U. S. of A.  The fifty states are different.  The fifty states have different approaches to fund raising, regulations, and taxation.  Fifty experiments in governance if you will.  Major industrial employers, those to whom the dangled carrots are being offered, typically make huge capital investments when investing in a new facility.  It is only prudent of them to shop among the various fifty states to find the best strategic fit for their company.  States, who find that their existing fund raising, regulatory, and taxation techniques have put them at a competitive disadvantage in attracting and/or retaining such employers, begin to game their own system, thus creating the "beclowned merry-go-round."  I suspect Heasley would call this gaming a "vicious circle."  I'd call it a "virtuous cycle."   Said competition between states and communities works to keep the heavy hand of government lighter, and perhaps smarter.  It reminds those politicos, who think they are in charge, that the risk takers and employers (employees too) can, and do, vote with their feet.  Never a bad thing.  Just saying.

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Choosing chaos.........................

thanks Jessica

More about the chaos theory..............

From our Wiki friends:
Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.

Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

From 30-Second Theories:
You leave the house five minutes late - and miss your train to the airport.  Then when you reach the airport, you have missed your flight and discover the next flight is not until tomorrow.  A five-minute overrun has ballooned into a whole day's delay.  This is an everyday example of what mathematicians  call a non-linear phenomenon, where small effects do not necessarily have small consequences.  Chaos Theory focuses on such situations, the outcomes of which are often neither totally random, not totally predictable.

'Nuff said.

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Blame shifting........................

Fats Domino..........................Ain't That A Shame

Beautiful.........................

Quit f#%@*>! calling me..............

Apparently us Ohioans have forgotten (or never learned) our manners.  Full story here.  The almost conclusion here:

"You could also argue Ohioans are simply transparent, passionate people. Maybe we do curse a little more and maybe we don’t mind our Ps and Qs as much as we should. So what? At least you know how we feel."
via
cartoon via

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

Ronnie Dio and the Prophets...........Gonna Make It Alone



Song was co-written by Dion DiMucci.  Recorded and released on the Lawn Records label in 1963.  Guessing the photo above dates later than that.  For you trivia buffs, Ronnie Dio (nee Ronald James Padavona) joined Black Sabbath in 1979, replacing Ozzie Osbourne.

As a parent, there have been more than a few times that I wished I had another "mulligan".......

"A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can."
-John Stuart Mill,   from The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill

Remembering the difference.......

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."
-Mark Twain

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Long way from home............................

Dave Van Ronk.....................He Was A Friend Of Mine

Pretty sure it is.......................

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

The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn't dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood's at all.  He came in mid-term without an interview - late May, it was, though no one would have thought it from the weather - employed through one of the shiftier agencies specialising in supply teachers for prep schools, to hold down old Dover's teaching til someone suitable could be found.  "A linguist," Thursgood told the common-room, "a temporary measure," and brushed away his forelock in self-defence.  "Priddo."  He gave the spelling, "P-r-i-d" - French was not Thursgood's subject so he consulted the slip of paper - "e-a-u-x, first name James.  I think he'll do us very well till July."  The staff had no difficulty reading the signals.  Jim Prideaux was a poor white of the teaching community.  He belonged to the same sad bunch as the late Mrs. Loveday, who had a Persian-lamb coat and stood in for junior divinity until her cheques bounced, or the lat Mr. Maltby, the pianist who had been called from choir practice to help the police with their enquiries, and as far as anyone knew was helping them to this day, for Maltby's trunk still lay in the cellar awaiting instructions.  Several of the staff, but chiefly Marjoribanks, were in favor of opening that trunk.  They said it contained notorious missing treasures:  Aprahamian's silver-framed picture of his Lebanese mother, for instance;  Best-Ingram's Swiss army penknife and Matron's watch.   But Thursgood set his crease-less face resolutely against their entreaties.  Only five years had passed since he had inherited the school from his father, but they had taught him already that some things are best locked away. 
-John le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

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

The Beach Boys.........................In My Room



This classic was written by Brian Wilson and Gary Usher.  It was recorded in July of 1963 and released, as the B-side to Be True To Your School, in October of 1963.  It peaked on  the pop charts at #22 but is listed as #212 on The Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (published in 2004).  The video dates to 1964.

Verse.............................

9 Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars:

² She hath killed her beasts; she hath mingled her wine; she hath also furnished her table.

³ She hath sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the highest places of the city,

⁴ Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither: as for him that wanteth understanding, she saith to him,

⁵ Come, eat of my bread, and drink of the wine which I have mingled.

⁶ Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding.

The Holy Bible

Proverbs 9:1-6

King James Version

A graduation address worth reading.....................

Full Jon Lovett address is here.  A few excerpts designed to make you want to follow the link - here:

"One of the greatest threats we face is, simply put, bullshit. We are drowning in it. We are drowning in partisan rhetoric that is just true enough not to be a lie; in industry-sponsored research; in social media's imitation of human connection; in legalese and corporate double-speak. It infects every facet of public life, corrupting our discourse, wrecking our trust in major institutions, lowering our standards for the truth, making it harder to achieve anything."

"Life tests our willingness, in ways large and small, to tell the truth. And I believe that so much of your future and our collective future depends on your doing so. So I'm going to give you three honest, practical lessons about cutting the BS."

"I believe we may have reached "peak bullshit." And that increasingly, those who push back against the noise and nonsense; those who refuse to accept the untruths of politics and commerce and entertainment and government will be rewarded. That we are at the beginning of something important."