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

The Moody Blues..................................................Fly Me High

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

     By the arrival of the twentieth century in the western Massachusetts city of Springfield, there was a mood of such robust swagger that nothing seemed impossible,  Her citizens considered themselves uniquely energetic, optimistic, and self-reliant.  They bragged about their Yankee ingenuity.  Factories were pioneering in mass production, yielding a torrent of moving things; guns, watches, machine parts, bicycles, motorcycles, tires, toys, ice skates, roller skates, railroad and trolley cars, and both Duryea and Knox gasoline-powered automobiles.  Such a pace encouraged eccentrics and inventors, and, as the population passed sixty-two thousand, tinkering was everyman's pastime, and patents a common dream.


-Judith and Neil Morgan, Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel

Volume up......................

Foghat...........................I Just Want To Make Love To You

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

Richie Havens...................................Handsome Johnny

It really is a choice................

Rule 7: So much of what you want, including happiness, love, affluence, wisdom, authenticity, good health and longevity is available to you now. Seize it.

-Nicholas Bate, as lifted from here

Where would we be without irony...........

"California's establishment (a large club) cannot fix potholes but they want to build a bullet train. I get that."
-as culled from here

The more things change.....................

     The Democratic press, led by the Washington Globe, constantly stressed the fact that the difference between the two parties was the difference between "the poor and the rich."  And some Whig newspapers openly conceded that they had no problem with this simplistic explanation;  only they insisted upon more accurate definition of the word "rich."  Asked the New York American on June 20, 1834:  "Who are the rich men of our country?  They are the enterprizing mechanic, who raises himself by his ingenious labors from the dust and turmoil of his workshop, to an abode of ease and elegance;  the industrious tradesman, whose patient frugality enables him at last to accumulate enough to forego the duties of the counter and indulge a well-earned leisure."  Merchants and traders and mechanics - these are the Whigs, proclaimed the New York American, and they maintain written law and legitimate authority against sycophancy and arbitrary rule by one man.

-Robert V. Remini,  Henry Clay:  Statesman for the Union

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

"Peace is absolutely a choice and a decision, although not a popular one in our society, despite the rhetoric about the term.  The decision to overlook the seeming inequalities of life instead of reacting to them is certainly a choice."

-David R. Hawkins