Never thought of.........

...........................................Seth Godin as a pessimist, but this feels dangerously pessimistic:

Because even though it doesn’t make compelling TV, the long-term challenges ahead of us aren’t going to respond to politics.

The Blue Ribbon........................

...........................................................................pie is right here. 

The eggplant at the farmers' market looked too good to pass up.  Slated for Sunday supper.  Any recipe suggestions?

Consider the possibilities.............

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

The Beach Boys..................................................All I Wanna Do

Experiment (life long learning)....

…………………………....with what works for you.   Scott Adams helps us remember that our own happiness is our own responsibility.

Us self-employed types.................................

………………...have only passing familiarity with this concept of "paid time off."  I think the last paycheck I received, that wasn't signed by me, was in February of 1977.  Still, reading Althouse is such a delight:

Not one word about the environment in that article. Why not celebrate the status quo? If we were traveling, WaPo should shame us for the impact on climate change, so why is the failure to travel treated like a problem? Maybe people like their day-to-day life — working, living at home, near friends and family, doing what is familiar. Isn't that what most people have done throughout human history and prehistory? 

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

Sammy Davis Jr..................................................I've Gotta Be Me

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

Tony Joe White................................................Polk Salad Annie

The private world.................

Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each one of us. To build for man a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just. And how can we fight for liberty if we are not free in our own minds? How can we ask others to sacrifice if we are not ready to do so?

-Dag Hammarskjold

Checking in with.....................

...............................................Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.

The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.

If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

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

The Lettermen..........................................................Hurt So Bad

By blogging........................................?

Concerning magnification.................

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

On the TV................................Dick Clark's American Bandstand

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

Marvin Gaye.......................Too Busy Thinking 'Bout My Baby

Time: the great leveler.....................

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said:  Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

Better than not doing any at all...........

             via

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

Gestures are all that I have;  sometimes they must be grand in nature.  And while  I occasionally step over the line and into the world of melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively.  In order to make my point understood without question.  I have no words I can rely on because, much to my dismay, my tongue was designed long and flat and loose, and therefore, is a horribly ineffective tool for pushing food around in my mouth while chewing, and an even less effective tool for making clever and complicated polysyllabic sounds that can be linked together to form sentences.  And that's why I'm here now waiting for Denny to come home—her should be here soon—lying on the cool tiles of the kitchen floor in a puddle of my own urine.
      I'm old.  And while I'm very capable of getting older, that's not the way I want to go out.  Shot full of pain medication and steroids to reduce the swelling of my joints.  Vision fogged with cataracts.  Puffy, plasticky packages of Doggy Depends stocked in the pantry.  I'm sure Denny would get me one of those little wagons I've seen on the streets, the ones that cradle the hindquarters so a dog can drag his as behind him when things start to fail.  That's humiliating and degrading.  I'm not sure if it's worse than dressing up a dog for Halloween, but it's close.  He would do it out of love, of course.  I'm sure he would keep me alive as longs as he possible could, my body deteriorating, disintegrating around me, dissolving until there's nothing left but my brain floating in a glass jar filled with clear liquid, my eyeballs drifting at the surface and all sorts of cable and tubes feeding what remains.  But I don't want to be kept alive.  Because I know what's next.  I've seen it on TV.  A documentary I saw about Mongolia, of all places.  It was the best thing I've ever seen on television, other than the 1993 Grand Prix of Europe, of course, the greatest automobile race of all time in which Ayrton Senna proved himself to be a genius in the rain.  After the 1993 Grand Prix, the best thing I've ever seen on TV is a documentary that explained everything to me, made it all clear, told the whole truth:  when a good is finished living his lifetimes as a dog, his next incarnation will be as a man.

-Garth Stein,  The Art Of Racing In The Rain

Recommended..................

At the cinema....................................The Art of Racing in the Rain

Rx: Banjo music..............................

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

The 1910 Fruitgum Company..............................Indian Giver