Saturday, March 2, 2019

Friday, March 1, 2019

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

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


Stevie Wonder...............................................For Once In My Life

Feeling vaguely fluish.........................


...............Dusted off Granny's secret elixir, which provided relief but not a cure.  The old body has forgotten how to regulate its core temperature.  Disconcerting.  Be back when survival is assured.

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Monday, February 25, 2019

Ah, history.............................


More than any other previous occupant of the White House, Roosevelt understood that the way to manipulate reporters was to let them imagine they were helping shape policy.  A "consultation" here, a confidence shared there, and the scribe was transformed into a pen for hire.

-Edmund Morris,  Theodore Rex  (the year was 1906)

The human touch...........................




In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.  It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.  We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.

-Albert Schweitzer

Refuge............................




"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."

-Albert Schweitzer

What if.....................................


     The question that drives this book is, how would our relationships change, and how would we change, if we approached every situation with the intention of listening first?  What if we approached our relationship with God as listeners?  What if we viewed our relationship with nature as one of listening?  What if we approached our relationships with our ears rather than our mouths?  What if we sought to listen to our emotions before we preached to them?

-Adam S. McHugh,  The Listening Life:  Embracing Attentiveness in a World of Distraction

On the value of earned respect..............


     Roosevelt the modern statesman clearly owed much to his youthful cultivation of, and acceptance by, frontiersmen of the hardest and most violent sort.  A man who could earn the respect of such "desperadoes," and write about them with such unsentimental empathy, was unlikely to be fazed by the eruptions of the primitive in the behavior of senators, or for that matter, of plenipotentiaries.  His youth in the Badlands had been an education in essentials:

       He was able to observe there, in its absolute nakedness,
       the perpetual phenomenon of existence on this planet:
       human life consisting of the rhythm and friction of two
       parallel dynamics, inextricably interlaced, twin 
      instincts eternally directing its course, the struggle for 
      existence and the acceptance of existence.  Both of them 
      are positive forces, fertilizing and appropriate, the 
      complete and final fusion of which will probably coincide 
      with the ruin of humanity and the reign of silence around 
      the world.

-Edmund Morris,  Theodore Rex, quoting Leon Bazalgette

On the virtue of stress...................


To live, for him, has no meaning other than to drive oneself, to act with all one's strength.  An existence without stress, without struggle, without growth has always struck him as mindless.  Those who remain on the sidelines he sees as coward, and consequently his personal enemies.

-Edmund Morris,  Theodore Rex, quoting Leon Bazalgette

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


Tommy James & The Shondells....................Crimson and Clover

Sunday, February 24, 2019

Verse.........................


27  But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
28  Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
29  And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.
30  Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.
31  And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
32  For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.
33  And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
34  And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
35  But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
36  Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
37  Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven:
38  Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
The Holy Bible, Luke 6: 27-38

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


The Foundations.....................................Build Me Up Buttercup