Reasons I like living in Newark and Licking County..........................

Reason 47A:   The renovation and re-dedication of the "anti-flooding" totem pole.

      The back story is here.   Anyway, the totem pole has been MIA for the past several years.  The wood totem pole was originally erected in 1962.   Did you know that the average life span of a wood totem pole is about seventy years?   After that,  Mother Nature has her way.  Rather than wait until it was too late to save the totem pole, some bright and caring folks (thank you, Dave Fryman!) decided to repair and rehabilitate it.   It has spent the last two years first thoroughly drying out and then being brought back to its original glory.   Today was the unveiling and re-dedication ceremony.   Very timely since our county is receiving 3-6 inches of rain this weekend.  More than 100 folks braved the rain to watch and listen.  Lots of smiles.

A puffball populist.....................?

Actually, I despise Trompe, and am opposed to almost everything he is doing, but I’m not going to give the slightest satisfaction to his “progressive” opponents, whom I despise more. He is no reactionary, and no “conservative,” either, only a puffball populist; why would I like him? (Example: Trompe thinks everyone should have more money; I think they have too much already.)

He has unusual virtues in a politician, however. He is candid about his intentions, and is passing honest, however sloppy with the details; robust in his flattery, as too in his abuse. His self-seeking is open, not disguised. He is the dead opposite of a Machiavellian schemer. This is brave because, while it charms his stiff-necked supporters, the majority in any democratic electorate demand to be lied to. Should the entire media say one thing, and Trompe says another, I would think Trompe more likely to be telling (some aspect of) the truth.

-David Warren, as lifted from this post

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

The Supremes....................Some Things You Never Get Used To

 

Mistakes.............................

     "Everyone makes mistakes.  The main difference is that successful people learn from them and unsuccessful people don't.  By creating an environment in which it is okay to safely make mistakes so that people can learn from them, you'll see rapid progress and fewer significant mistakes."

     "Mistakes will cause you pain, but you shouldn't try to shield yourself or others from it.  Pain is a message that something is wrong and it's an effective teacher that one shouldn't do the wrong thing again."

-Ray Dalio,  Principles

Probably both..................

I’m sure everyone would love to retire in their 50s, travel the world, and sip Mai Tais on the beach. Unfortunately, reality won’t match up with those expectations. This is why I believe we’re not necessarily facing a retirement crisis in this country, but an expectations crisis.

-Ben Carlson, as extracted from here

Uh-oh.............................

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” 

-Joseph Campbell

I don't always read Malcolm Gladwell........

..........but when I do, it's because he writes something like this:

A genius is a genius, Simonton maintains, because he can put together such a staggering number of insights, ideas, theories, random observations, and unexpected connections that he almost inevitably ends up with something great. “Quality,” Simonton writes, is “a probabilistic function of quantity.”

Simonton’s point is that there is nothing neat and efficient about creativity. “The more successes there are,” he says, “the more failures there are as well”— meaning that the person who had far more ideas than the rest of us will have far more bad ideas than the rest of us, too. This is why managing the creative process is so difficult.

Way.............................

“Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.” 

-Roy M. Goodman

Except the essential..................

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comforts of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things -air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” 

-Cesare Pavese

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

The Moody Blues......................................The Best Way To Travel



And you can fly
High as a kite if you want to
Faster than light if you want to
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel

It's all a dream
Light passing by on the screen
And there's you and I on the beam
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel

We ride the waves
Distance is gone, will we find out?
How life began, will be find out?
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel

And you can fly
High as a kite if you want to
Faster than light if you want to
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel

A light from the shadows..............

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

-J. R. R. Tolkein, The Riddle of Strider

Never mind...............................

from the wide, wide world of XKCD

Maps.................................

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.” 

-Herman Melville, from Moby Dick, as he describes Queequeg's home island

Say it isn't so..............................

......................................................................Burt Reynolds passes

 

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

Paul Revere and The Raiders.......................Don't Take It So Hard

 

This works pretty well......................

.........................................if you are a long-term thinker:

"I don’t fool a lot around with negotiations. If they name a price that makes sense to me, I buy it. If they don’t, I was happy the day before, so I will be happy the day after without owning it."

-Warren Buffett, as culled from here

Ah, science...........................

We’ve a new little report, piece of scientific research, telling us that cheese and red meat are good for us. This in entire opposition to everything governments have been telling us about diet for decades now. This telling us that government is a seriously bad way of doing anything.

-Tim Worstall, from here

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

Wilson Pickett....................................................She's Lookin' Good

 

And we're making more every day.....

"The commercial real estate market is roughly the same size as the U.S. stock market."

-taken from here

Within......................................

In a justly ordered universe, where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual responsibility must be absolute.  A man's weakness and strength, purity and impurity, are his own, and not another man's;  they are brought about by himself, and not by another;  and they can only be altered by himself, never by another.  His condition is also his own, and not another man's.  His suffering and his happiness are evolved from within.  As he thinks, so he is;  as he continues to think, so he remains.

-James Allen,   As A Man Thinketh

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

The Cowsills.................................................................We Can Fly

Convictions.................................

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.  The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson,  from his essay Self-Reliance

Well yeah...............................

via

Bruce shares the stage..............

............................................with the great Sam Moore.

via

This sounds..............................

...................................................................very familiar.

You mean it's not "opposable thumbs".....?

The ability to engage in large-scale cooperative activity is what makes humans as a species unique. It is the secret of our success as a species. It is certainly the secret of the productivity of modern developed economies.

-John Kay, as culled from his recent review of Joseph Henrich's The Secret of Our Success

Copying............................

Nobody is born with a style or a voice.  We don't come out of the womb knowing who we are.  In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes.  We learn by copying.  We're talking about practice here, not plagiarism - plagiarism is trying to pass someone else's work off as your own.  Copying is about reverse-engineering.  It's like a mechanic taking apart a car to see how it works.
      We learn to write by copying down the alphabet.  Musicians learn to play by practicing the scales.  Painters learn to paint by reproducing masterpieces.
      Remember:  Even The Beatles started as a cover band.

-Austin Kleon,  Steal Like An Artist:  10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

Wait.....................What?...............

It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego.  In fact, it is the best question you could ask.  There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present.

-The Course In Miracles, Text: 4.II.1-3

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

Etta James.......................................................................Tell Mama

 

Facts............................

via

thanks michael

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

Ray Stevens.........................................................Mr. Businessman