Perfect for a blustery Spring evening..............

Ella Fitzgerald.....................................................Summertime




Janis Joplin.........................................................Summertime




Billie Holliday............................................................Summertime

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

The Chiffons.........................................Sweet Talking Guy

Wax philosophic......................

“Look, I really don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive, you've got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy, colorful and lively.” 

-Mel Brooks

None percent.................................

“I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.”

-Louis CK

Choosing to believe....................

I hate that you can't prove the beliefs of my faith.  If I were God, I'd have the answers at the end of the workbook, so you could check as you went along, to see if you're on the right track.  But nooooooo.  Darkness is our context, and Easter's context:  without it you couldn't see the light.  Hope is not about proving anything.  It's about choosing to believe this one thing, that love is bigger than any grim, bleak shit anyone can throw at us.

-Anne Lamott,  Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith

Feeling mighty young this morning...............

At 98, she debuts on the Grand Ole Opry stage...........



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On apologizing like you are really sorry.......

"Note:  this one requires that you understand, accept, and are actually sorry for what you did … not just that you were caught doing it."

-John E. Smith, as excerpted from his "No Such Thing" post

Battle of the bands............

Scott has fallen in love with the Tedeschi Trucks Band.  Can't say I blame him.  Anyway, he recently posted this beauty.  Which reminded me of some others:

Tedeschi Trucks Band..............................................The Letter



Joe Cocker...............................................................The Letter



The Box Tops (mailing it in)..................................The Letter

Sorting it out...............................

Some core beliefs.........................................

Transitions..........................

What are the odds.........................

.........that this old thing has something to say about climate change?

It's been that kind of week............................

More proof that there is a God........................

.................................................(and that She loves us).

Firefall.........................................................You Are The Woman

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

The Monkees..................................................Let's Dance On

Everything you wanted to know...........

.......................................(and maybe a bit more) about Japan:

The first step is a doozy.................

After taking almost a half-a-year break, our friend Rick Platt re-surfaces in the blogosphere with this photo.  Can you guess where and what it is?   (A hint:  the feet pictured are 103 stories above the street level)

Welcome back, Rick.

Pretty sure he is not talking about Kasich...

 Now things almost seem to have reversed.  Now conservatives increasingly seem to rely on the “reptilian brain” (and a leading GOP candidate who will not be named (to avoid a horror show in the comment section) seems to rely on almost nothing but his reptilian brain.)

-as extracted from this Scott Sumner post, which sends warm regards to President Obama for his "cool, cerebral style" in responding to the Brussels bombing.

Virtuoso..................

The Allman Brothers..........................................Whipping Post

Not push, pull......................

via

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

Swingin' Medallions............Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)

On the inevitability of biochemistry............

Genetic determinism, or at any rate predisposition, can have detonative consequences.  If the conservative’s tendency toward paranoia and truculent tribalism (as distinguished from the liberal’s characteristic googooing inattention to realty) is innate, we will have wars as long as we have generals. (It would be interesting to do brain scans of four-star generals. I recommend Xanax and a double Scotch before looking at the results.)


-as culled from this pre-destined essay from Fred Reed

Contradictions............................

Brown’s minimum wage scheme will, of course, artificially raise the cost of hiring the most at-risk workers. Though the robots are not ready to take over quite yet, an onerous wage floor only incentivizes further research into automation. This whole situation is a bizarre illustration of the layered contradictions contained in the blue coalition: anti-inequality crusaders want a radical minimum wage hike, which will likely have the effect of raising unemployment (and welfare eligibility) among economically deprived blue constituencies. Meanwhile, those most likely to benefit down the line from these kinds of moves are the socially liberal Silicon Valley executives and venture capitalists, who bankroll the Democratic Party despite some of their dearly held libertarian beliefs.

And this is but one example of how the blue model functions as an engine through which savvy wealthy people use the illusions of the Left to extract profit from the poor and working class. Other examples include: Guild protections for elite professionals that raise prices and reduce opportunity for less-credentialed workers; finance regulations that give hedge funds a leg up on less-sophisticated investors; and a constellation of higher ed regulations that enrich top administrators while impoverishing adjuncts and sending students deep into debt.

-as excerpted from this The American Interest post

Chattered on....................

Still, my mind chattered on, as if the spider monkey had taken acid.  My mind is my main problem almost all the time.  I wish I could leave it in the fridge when I go out, but it likes to come with me.  I have tried to get it to take up a nice hobby, like macrame, but it prefers to think about things, and jot down what annoys it.

-Anne Lamott,  Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith

In case you ever needed proof................

.........that the kids are going to be just fine, allow me to offer Exhibit A:

              Unorganized Hancock's original song:  Go, Go, Go

As my favorite optimist might say, "The boys are evolving quite nicely."

I can't complain......................

Joe Walsh..........................................................Life's Been Good

Complex..........................

"Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them."
-Laurence J. Peter

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

Donovan...................................................Season of the Witch

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

"If I were more spiritually evolved, I would mail him a friendly card, because if you want to change the way you feel about people, you have to change the way you treat them."

-Anne Lamott,  Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith

Fun with the language...............

23 words that somebody once made up to put a name with a fleeting emotion.  Think maybe I'll work up my own list.   A few samples:

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Dizzy Gillespie & friends.................On The Sunny Side of the Street

The tenth rule of happiness.............

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

On the television.................................................The Iron Horse

Here's a radical idea...........................

..............................for fixing our "free enterprise" system.  Let's encourage more competition.

The Economist takes aim at what ails America's economy in this essay.  For my money the three most important paragraphs are as follows:

     Getting bigger is not the only way to squish competitors.  As the mesh of regulation has got denser since the 2007-08 financial crisis, the task of navigating bureaucratic waters has become more central to a firm's success.  Lobbying spending has risen by a third in the past decade, to $3 billion.  A mastery of patent rules has become essential in health care and technology, America's two most profitable industries.  And new regulations do not just fence big banks in:  they keep rivals out.
      Having limited working capital and fewer resources, small companies struggle with all the forms, lobbying, and red tape.  This is one reason why the rate of small-company creation in American has been running at its lowest levels since the 1970s.  The ability of large firms to enter new markets and take on lazy incumbents has been muted by an orthodoxy among institutional investors that companies should focus on one activity and keep margins high.  Warren Buffett, an investor, says he likes companies with "moats" that protect them from competition.  America Inc has dug a giant defensive ditch around itself.
      Most of the remedies dangled by politicians to solve America's economic woes would make things worse.  Higher taxes would deter investment.  Jumps in minimum wages would discourage hiring.  Protectionism would give yet more shelter to dominant firms.  Better to unleash a wave of competition.

If you are unhappy with our current economy, don't blame capitalism or free enterprise.  Without much fanfare, we seemed to have morphed into "crony capitalism," a very different, and not generally friendly, animal.  As The Economist essay says, "Two-thirds of Americans believe the economy is rigged in favour of vested interests."   Can we hope for change?

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

     When I was at boarding school, sent away during the war as a little boy, I had a sense of imprisonment and powerlessness, and I longed for movement and power, ease of movement and superhuman powers.  I enjoyed these briefly in dreams of flying and, in a different way, when I went horse riding in the village near school.  I loved the power and suppleness of my horse, and I can still evoke its easy and joyous movement, its warmth and sweet, hayey smell.

-Oliver Sacks,  On The Move:  A Life

Works.............................

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Fun with math......................

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The wiki for Euler's Identity is here, just in case you're curious.

Wouldn't you love to come up with a sentence like "Also, as a pragmatic matter it's very useful for shutting down emotional conversations that occur while gazing upon the vault of heaven in a mystic coalescence of wonder and fear"?   Genius.

On passion.......................

via

Sanctuary............................

"You take the action and the insight follows.  It was my mother who taught me how to wander through the racks of the Belvedere-Tiburon library, and wander through a  book, letting it take where it would.  She and my father took me to the library every week when I was little.  One of her best friends was the librarian.  They both taught me that if you insist on having a destination when you come into a library, you're shortchanging yourself.  They read to live, the way they also went to the beach, or ate delicious food.  Reading was like breathing fresh ocean air, eating tomatoes from old man Grbac's garden.  My parents, and librarians along the way, taught me about the space between words, about the margins, where so many juicy moments of life and spirit and friendship could be found.  In a library, you can find small miracles and truth, and you might find something that will make you laugh so hard that you will get shushed, in the friendliest way.  I have found sanctuary in libraries my whole life, and there is sanctuary there now, from the war, from the storms of our families and our own minds.  Libraries are like mountains or meadows or creeks:  sacred space.  So this afternoon, I'll walk to the library."

-Anne Lamott,  Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith

Twofer Tuesday....................

Al Jolson.........................Blue Skies (a cut from The Jazz Singer)




Willie Nelson.........................................................Blue Skies

Hell, I'll vote for you.................

via

Must fly..................................

It's A Beautiful Day..............................................White Bird

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

The Kinks.........................................Too Much On My Mind

It will be with us....................

Mr. Seefer:  Uh-huh.  Any views on the role of fraud, whether mortgage fraud or other types of fraud in the crisis?

Mr. Buffett:  Well, I mean, there was, obviously, a lot of fraud.  There was fraud on the parts of the borrowers and there was fraud on the part of the intermediaries, in some cases.
      But you'd better not have a system that is dependent on the absence of fraud.  I mean, it will be with us.

-As excerpted from Warren Buffett's testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

Secrets..........................

"One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day.  Another is that laughter is carbonated holiness."

-Anne Lamott,  Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith

On universal beliefs.................

Mr. Seefer:  Okay, lets move away from derivatives now and talk about - I mean, you talked about several areas already today about your views on causes, or contributing causes to the financial crisis....

Mr. Buffett:  Well, I think the primary cause was an almost universal belief, among everybody - and I don't ascribe particular blame to any part of it - whether it's Congress, media, regulators, homeowners, mortgage bankers, Wall Street - everybody - that house prices would go up.  And you apply that to a $22 trillion asset class, that's leveraged up, in many cases.  And when that goes wrong, you're going to have all kinds of consequences.  And it's going to hit not only the people that did the unsound things, but to some extent the people that did the semi-sound, and then finally the sound things, even, if it is allowed to gather enough momentum on its own on the downside, the same kind of momentum it had on the upside.
      I think contributing to that - or causing the bubble to pop even louder, and maybe even to blow it up some, was improper incentives - systems and leverage.

-As excerpted from Warren Buffett's testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

Unconditionally.........................

      When David insists you are fine exactly the way you are, you find yourself almost believing him.  When he talks about unconditional love, he gives you a new lease on life, because the way he explains it, you may, for the first time, believe that even you could taste of this.  As he explains it, in the Church of 80% Sincerity, everyone has come to understand that unconditional love is a reality, but with a shelf life of about eight to ten seconds.  Instead of beating yourself up because you feel it only fleetingly, you should savor those moments when it appears.  As David puts it, "We might say to our beloved, 'Honey, I've been having these feelings of unconditional love for you for the last eight to ten seconds.' Or, 'Darling, I'll love you till the very end of dinner."

-Anne Lamott:  Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith

Opaqueness.....................

Mr. Bondi:  You mentioned transparency earlier as well.  These CDO instruments were largely opaque in terms of compositions and the like to the investors, who were investing in them.  They were structured and created, though, around the ratings, and in connection with the ratings and the rating agencies.
     Do you think, though, that because of the opaqueness of these instruments, ratings became, in the minds of the investors, more important than perhaps maybe they should have been?

Mr.  Buffett:  Well, I would say that, you know, anybody that's investing in something they consider opaque should just walk away, I mean, whether it's a common stock or - you know, or a new invention or whatever it may be. ... You would think bankers, however, would - would have learned by the time they get to run a bank.

-Excerpted from Warren Buffett's testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

It's good to be a Dad...............

thanks Maggie

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared.

2.  And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb,

3.  but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

The Holy Bible
Luke 24:1-3

Peace and Joy...................

"... peace is joy at rest, and joy is peace on its feet."

-Anne Lamott,  Plan B:  Further Thoughts on Faith

Yvonne Elliman........................I Don't Know How To Love Him