It's actually the whole album................

The Moody Blues........................Days of Future Past

On the future.........................

The Future...........................

For God's sake, be done
with this jabber of "a better world."
What blasphemy!  No "futuristic"
twit or child thereof ever
in embodied light will see
a better world than this, though they
foretell inevitably a worse.
Do something!  Go cut the weeds
beside the oblivious road.  Pick up
the cans and bottles, old tires,
and dead predictions.  No future
can be stuffed into this presence
except by being dead.  The day is
clear and bright, and overhead
the sun not yet half finished
with his daily praise.

-Wendell Berry

The future.............................

"The reason you can't predict the future is the determinants of the future have not occurred yet.  The future will be determined by the decisions that are made by millions of people who haven't made them yet."
-David Hawkins

cartoon via

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

The Surfaris...........................................Surfer Joe

Sometimes.........................

...............it is hard to know who to root for.

The Epicurean Dealmaker..........

On the vicissitudes of Twitter.   “Twitter is a mirror disguised as a window.”

via

John..................................

On the essence of "valuable unreasonableness".  The man is a national treasure.

Matthew........................

Discusses the future of "fast food."   "Taco Bell succeeds best by being itself, not by trying to be Chipotle."

Fifteen minutes...................................

cartoons via

The New York Philharmonic.........................

Beethoven......................................Egmont Overture

Economic development, the old fashioned way....

Extremely faithful readers of this blog will remember the tale told of Southgate Corporation back in March. Southgate commenced construction of a 50,000 square foot speculative industrial building last winter.  In the March post, I opined that Southgate would likely find a user for the building before the year was out, and that maybe 50 new jobs were in the offing.  The word on the street is that they have found an unidentified user. It now seems that word is accurate, as workers today were busy making tenant improvements.  No word on the number of potential new hires. For those of us interested in economic development, this is very cool.

freshy completed spec 50,000 square foot industrial building

tenant improvements being added

the site of some new jobs

Now for more good news.  Buoyed by their apparent success with the above pictured speculative industrial building, Southgate has begun construction of a second spec industrial building.  These buildings are not inexpensive to build and hold.  The faith that Southgate is showing in our community is immense.  Thanks guys.

just getting started on a new 50,000 square foot building

Knives........................

Knives mattered.  No man should be without a pocket-knife, preferably gold-handled.  How else would you peel and orange, or cut a sprig of privet blossom for your second-youngest daughter?  A blunt knife was not just a bad way to hurt an onion, but sacrilege, and insult to God's creation, its beauty and its excellence.
-as excerpted from this obituary of Robert Capon

Capon.....................

Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013) was an Episcopalian priest, author, knife aficionado, lover of life and food, and an advocate of the radical grace of God.  Here are a few quotes attributed to him:

“I like a cook who smiles out loud when he tastes his own work. Let God worry about your modesty; I want to see your enthusiasm.” 

“Every real thing is a joy, if only you have eyes and ears to relish it, a nose and tongue to taste it.” 

“Man was made to lead with his chin; he is worth knowing only with his guard down, his head up and his heart rampant on his sleeve.” 

“What is good is difficult, and what is difficult is rare.” 

“We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great.  That is the inconsolable heartburn, the lifelong disquietude of having been made in the image of God.” 

“In the Bible, the opposite of Sin, with a capital 'S,' is not virtue - it's faith: faith in a God who draws all to himself in his resurrection.” 

“Why do we marry, why take friends and lovers? Why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course; but out of more than that, too. Half earth's gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become.” 

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.” 

"Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with Give us pasta with a hundred fillings."


"At the root of many a woman's failure to become a great cook lies her failure to develop a workmanlike regard for knives."

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

The Angels...................................................I Adore Him

Seth.................................

Seth Godin talks Talent and Attitude.  See if you can guess which he thinks is most important:

"More relevant and urgent, though, is that it's not really a search for talent. It's a search for attitude."

Full post is here.

Michael...............................

On the need for speed.  On the most toxic of the toxins. On the zen of meetings. On a great moment in advertising.

Nicholas..........................

On the importance of having a theme song.

David.......................

On the value of confession.

Kurt............................

On truth in economics.

Ray.............................

On the establishment of discipline.

Voices on the wind...........................

Al Stewart..................................Lord Grenville

Opening two paragraphs...................

Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi was born at Nice at six o'clock in the morning on 4 July 1807, which was the seventy-third birthday of his grandfather, Angelo Garibaldi.
     The town of Nice had for two thousand years played an important part in the history of Provence.  From 1388 until fifteen years before the birth of Giuseppe Garibaldi it had been in the territory of the independent sovereign state of Savoy, which stretched from the Lake of Geneva in the north to the territory of the Republic of Genoa in the south.  Nice was its chief seaport, and from there a busy trade was carried on with the other ports of the Mediterranean.  The Duke of Savoy was an important ally of the Holy Roman Emperor, and the Habsburgs in Austria and Spain, against the King of France.  In 1718 he was granted the island of Sardinia as a reward for his assistance to the Allies in the War of Spanish Succession, and took the title of King of Sardinia.  Henceforth the Duchy of Savoy was officially known as the Kingdom of Sardinia, though it was often referred to, informally, as Piedmont, where its capital, Turin, was situated.
-Jasper Ridley, Garibaldi

Just to help with the geography.....

The Duchy of Savoy, the early days...............................

The Kingdom of Sardinia, the later days.......................

Garibaldi..............................

A brief telling of the man's life can be found here or here.  He surely qualifies for inclusion on any list of the most important/interesting people of the nineteenth century.

Garibaldi statue in Washington Square, New York City

Garibaldi statue in La Spezia

U. S postage stamp

Hungarian postage stamp

Italian postage stamp

USSR postage stamp

Bulgarian postage stamp

Uruguayan postage stamp

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

Betty Everett.....................................You're No Good



Written by Clint Ballard Jr., this song was first released in 1963 on the Jubilee label by Dee Dee Warwick.  Soon after Betty Everett recorded it on the Vee-Jay label and it became Top 100 hit.  Most people will recognize it as the song Linda Ronstadt took to #1 in early in 1975.

Somebody want to explain how this is possible...?

As if all those tuition increases were not enough, those nice folks who operate our institutions of higher education have some serious explaining to do about textbook prices.   Many smart people have said that what can't continue, won't.  While I agree with that, pardon me while I bemoan the fact that by the time the inevitable correction hits, our kids will be out of school.

thanks mark

This sounds interesting.....................

AMSTERDAM — King Willem-Alexander delivered a message to the Dutch people from the government Tuesday in a nationally televised address: the welfare state of the 20th century is gone.

In its place a "participation society" is emerging, in which people must take responsibility for their own future and create their own social and financial safety nets, with less help from the national government.

Fuller story is here.  News article was from a week ago.  There must be an update somewhere. Film at 11:00.

thanks craig

A good question.......................

thanks jessica

Hmmm........................

Think about................................

Crosby, Stills & Nash..........................Southern Cross

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

It's early summer, and the sunflowers are about seven feet high in the garden off the kitchen.  I'm reminded that in the fifteenth century, Marsilio Ficino recommended that everyone turn toward the mystery of his own nature the way a sunflower turns toward the sun.  In all things, even the most recondite mysteries of the soul, nature is the first and finest of teachers.
-Thomas Moore,  The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life

Marsilio Ficino.........................

Marsilio Ficino     1433-1499

Somehow, through all those years of book learning, I missed the story of Marsilio Ficino.  Born in the small town of Figline Valdarno, located southeast of Firenze (Florence) in Tuscany,  Ficino was a philosopher, a teacher, a translator,  an astrologer, a tutor to the Medici, and, heaven help us, a neoplatonist.  You can read more about him here and here.  Here are some quotes attributed to him.

“In these times I don't, in a manner of speaking, know what I want; perhaps I don't want what I know and want what I don't know.” 

“The soul exists partly in eternity and partly in time.” 

“Why do we think love is a magician? Because the whole power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another because of a certain affinity of nature.” 

"Artists in each of the arts seek after and care for nothing but love."

"The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet."

"The fate of the poor shepherd, who, blinded and lost in the snow-storm, perishes in a drift within a few feet of his cottage door, is an emblem of the state of man."

"Smell, taste, and touch are entirely material, and rather titillate the sense-organs than penetrate the depths of the soul. But musical sound by the movement of the air moves the body: by purified air it excites the aerial spirit which is the bond of body and soul: by emotion it affects the senses, and at the same time the soul: by meaning it works on the mind: finally, by the very movement of the subtle air it penetrates strongly: by its contemperation it flows smoothly: by the conformity of its quality it floods us with a wonderful pleasure: by its nature, both spiritual and material, it at once seizes, and claims as its own, man in his entirety."

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

The Marvelettes..................As Long As I Know He's Mine

Patience................................

"Long is not forever."
-German Proverb

"Life on the farm is a school of patience; you can't hurry the crops or make an ox in two days."
-Henri Fournier Alain

"The secret of patience:  Do something in the meantime"
-Anonymous

"Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you, but not in the one ahead."
-Bill McGlashen

"I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end."
-Margaret Thatcher

"It is very strange...that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting."
-Elizabeth Taylor

"The woman who has never seen her husband fishing doesn't know what a patient man she has married."
-Ed Howe

"Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius."
-Benjamin Disraeli

"The future belongs to him who knows how to wait."
-Russian Proverb

"Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.  Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task again."
-Saint Francis De Sales

Off guard.......................................

                  Postscript
And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightening of flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully-grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park or capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open 

-Seamus Heaney

Parenting 101......................................

Growing up at Sippican Cottage:

"I used to make a joke when our first son was born: I was dissatisfied with the quality of humans available on this planet, so I made my own.  It doesn't seem like much of a joke to me anymore. I encourage everyone to make your own humans. Making a human involves much, much more than fifteen minutes in the back seat of a car. You've got to raise 'em up. Like the charming kids in the video, they'll help you raise themselves properly, if you'll just let them. Micromanagement won't produce a viable adult. Don't forget to sprinkle some  Laissez faire in there, dudes and dudettes."

Lord knows I've sprinkled my share of laissez faire.  Hope it pays off.

Worth pondering.......................

“When you don’t have your health, you have one problem. When you do have your health, you have many problems.”
-as excerpted from here

Our best minds are working on it..........

"I'm an optimist, so I wonder if there is any future technology that will help citizens control their governments and neutralize the risks that stem from a total loss of privacy."
-Scott Adams, as excerpted from here

Real men can stand up to..................

Robin Williams and Johnny Carson................

 

Wake up momma............................

The Allman Brothers.......................Statesboro Blues

A cause for celebration...........................

The Mighty E. (heavy and light) passes the 10,000 blog post hurdle.   May there be 10,000 more.

If this is true..................................

...........then the possibilities are endless.

Us history majors believe this to be true..........

"Yet again, ignorance of history causes us to disparage the present."
-George Will, as excerpted from here

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

Dean and Jean.............................Tra La La La Suzy

Anarchy in action.......................

This is what happens when people are left to their own devices.

Thanks Glenn

A most productive morning's work.......

Peter Sellers at his finest:  "We do not, and cannot, accept the principle that incompetence justifies dismissal. That is victimization."




Thanks Patrick

When words lose their meaning..........................

via

A little night time music.........................

The Allman Brothers.............In Memory of Elizabeth Reed

Sooner or later...............................

Thunderclap Newman...........................Something In The Air

no unsacred spaces...............

     How To Be A Poet
     (to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down.  Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill - more of each
than you have - inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity.  Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly.  Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back the the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

-Wendell Berry

This one comes under the heading: All parents wound their children.....

via

While out driving one day................

Lunch was scheduled for noon.  Our tee  time was 1:00.  Arrived way early.  Noddled around the neighborhood for a while and  then happened upon this jewel.  After being heartily greeted upon entering, they handed me a map of the place and said, "We'll see you in two hours."  Only had a half hour, but to do it right would have taken a minimum of two hours. The map was necessary. Four floors, books everywhere, some 300,000 of them. Only bought two. It is a little slice of heaven.  If you are ever close to West Chester, PA., do yourself a favor..................

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

Neil Sedaka....................................Bad Girl

Some things beautiful...........................

The bay, from 99th Street in Stone Harbor, N.J.   Yesterday, 7:04 am

The ocean, from 99th Street in Stone Harbor, N.J.  Yesterday, 7:09am

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

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706, the fifteenth of the seventeen children of Josiah Franklin, and the eighth child of his father's second wife, Abiah Folger.   The Franklins lived on Milk Street, across from the South Church, where Josiah was a leading member of the congregation.  Ben was carried across the street and baptized there on the day of his birth.  The Franklins also ran a soap - and candle - making business, and Josiah was also active in the community; he had served as a constable of the town watch and also in the public markets, neighbors sometimes came to him for advice, and the son would recall that his father's "great Excellence lay in a sound Understanding and solid Judgment in prudential Matters, both in private and publick Affairs."
-Philip Dray,  Stealing God's Thunder:  Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Road and the Invention of America

Rules.....................................

From the wide, wide world of Goldman Sachs (?) comes this unofficial guide to being a man.  Conclusion is here:
Remember, “rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.” 

Ah, technology..................................

Head high.........................................

Argent.................................................Hold Your Head Up

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

     The land slips easterly from the High Plains and south from the Kansas line, toward the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico, the softly eroded hills of this geologic red-bed country cut by pecan-lined creeks and shallow washes flowing into the Deep Fork and Canadian Rivers.  In the rolling fields, the corn and cotton struggle from the spare topsoil, a rich loam once, but now worn thing by spring rains and autumn winds howling from the north and west.
-Ed Cray,  Ramblin' Man:  The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie

On Woody.........................

     "Woody Guthrie was, is, America's balladeer.  During the epoch of our greatest despair, the Great Depression, his were the songs that lifted the lowly spirits of the 'ordinary,' the millions of the dispossessed.  They may have lacked for bread, but he offered them something else:  self esteem, hope, and a laugh or two along the way.  Who was this bard?"

     "Dust bowl songs, hobo songs, children's songs, work songs, loafing songs, union songs, river songs, lonesome turtledove songs; songs infinite in their variety, celebrating the wonder of man.  For what is man to Woody? 'Just a hoping machine, a working machine.  The human race will sing this way as long as there is a human race.  The human race is a pretty old place.'"

-Studs Terkel, as excerpted from his Foreward to Ramblin' Man

Roamed and rambled.........................

Woody Guthrie.........................This Land Is Your Land

Woody Guthrie.........................

“Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.” 

“Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.” 

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.” 

"Love is the only God that I'll ever believe in."

“I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.”

"I cannot help but learn the most from you who count the least.  But I feel my best with you who need me the most.  I never did exactly know why this is, but that's just the way we're built."