Saturday, April 18, 2015

Some songs just need to be played over and over...

Kathy Troccoli & The Beach Boys.........................I Can Hear Music

Born this day in 1857........................

....................................................................Clarence Darrow.




















"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free."
-Clarence Darrow

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

Herman's Hermits...........................I'm Henry the Eighth I Am

On creating a legend..............................






















Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

cartoon via

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

1:50 of messing around with harmonicas, then...

Neil Young.............................................................Heart of Gold

It's that time of the year.............................

























all cartoons via

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






















"Here is a good way to explain federal taxes.  I call it The Care and Feeding of the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs.  It's so important to feed the goose - not to abuse the goose or tear off its wings - but to feed and care for it.
      "What's that you say?  The goose eats too much?  That's probably true.  But then, don't we all eat too much?   If so, let not one appetite accuse another.  If you step on the scales and you're ten pounds too heavy, you've got to say, 'Yes, the government and I are each about ten pounds too heavy.'"
-Jim Rohn, as excerpted from here

Each and every one...................................























"Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's"
-Matthew 22:21

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

Shirley Bassey........................................................Goldfinger

On the fetishizing of credentials............

He was a peerlessly elegant orator, a better strategist than his generals, a gifted politician—the savior of his country. And by our lights, he was completely unqualified.
-from The American Interest

On memory.............................................

The grandchild remembers what the father never learned, a Yiddish proverb has it; Lincoln, the grandchild of the American Founding, remembered what the preceding generation had forgotten. That offers us a modicum of hope in an age which has forgotten how to remember.
-Spengler

Always good advice.................................






















courtesy of

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

With a very cool video...........................

Bob Dylan............................Don't Think Twice It's All Right

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

Have you ever had blackjack tea, Michael?
     The real stuff, I mean.  One of my patients gave me these, cured sassafras root from Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana.  Something mysterious and potent about it.  Clears the head.  You can stay up all night with your brain so lucid it almost feels transparent.  Smell the earth in it?  Something about tea from roots, as opposed to leaves.  Something deeper, more connected to the source.  I remember that rooty, woodsy smell from winter mornings as a boy.  My mother said only a Yankee or a fool sweetened blackjack tea with sugar,  It had to be molasses.  And no milk.  The farthest afield she'd stray was to serve it au citron, like the Creoles.  But I'm wandering already, and you've barely even sat down.
     How are you, young man?  No doubt you're expecting a lecture, but I promise that's the last thing I intend.  Your decision to leave medical school is your own entirely.  I can even understand and sympathize.  Around the third year, when exhaustion and nausea have taken up permanent residence in you bones, the healing profession seems less like a calling and more like an exercise in expedience and venality.  I understand that brand of despair better than I wish.  But it's a different decision you've made that troubles me more deeply.
     I mean your choice to give up golf.

-Steven Pressfield,  The Legend of Bagger Vance:  Golf and the Game of Life

Straightforward............................................


"Once there was a man of limited imagination who considered the progress of life to be straightforward."
-M. Scott Peck

Dreams come true.................................


Thanks to the kind thoughtfulness of Doug Fine (and only a wee bit of begging on my part), my Sweetie and I were able to be patrons at the 2015 Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia  As an extra bonus, Ray Visotski had us over for a most wonderful dinner at his home in nearby Aiken, South Carolina.   It was a splendid weekend.  We are truly grateful

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

The Wonder Who.......................................Don't Think Twice

Where can you go to find 50,000...................

........................people without one cell phone amongst them?

Here is a clue:













The good folks who put on the Masters Tournament are generous to a fault.  However, they do like their rules and are serious about enforcing them.  Near to top of the rules list is NO CELL PHONES.  I'm guessing there were no cell phones at Augusta National on Sunday.  Kind of cool actually;  nobody texting, nobody checking their e-mail, nobody taking selfies.  Everybody doing what they came to do, watching great golf.  Life the old fashioned way.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Just an old sweet song............................

Ray Charles........................................Georgia On My Mind

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


A brief visit with Aldous Huxley.................

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach."

“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”

“All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.” 

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” 

“The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.”

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” 

“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.” 

“It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.” 


More about Huxley here.  A boatload of quotes here.

A sign of the times.......................................























thanks michael

Simple...........................................





























via

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

Bobby Goldsboro..................................................Little Things

Working on it....................................................




















via

On the impossibility of lists........................

One of my favorite bloggers points to this list of the Best Ten Movies of the 1970's. It is a good list.  Amazing as it seems, none of these made the cut:

The French Connection
Jaws
Star Wars
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
Blazing Saddles
The Sting
American Graffiti
Animal House
The Day of The Jackal

So, here are twenty pretty fair 1970's movies and not one Clint Eastwood among them.  How can that be?  I suspect you could create a few more completely different lists.  Have at it.

But, it's such hard work.........................