Sixty years ago........Things were simpler back then

The Trashmen..............Surfin Bird' - Bird is the Word

 

not so neat and simple..........................

 Jesus was a rabbi, schooled by rabbis, who thought like rabbis.  Rabbis, upon being asked a question by a disciple, usually answered with a paradoxical inquiry or a story.  This can be annoying and time-consuming for those of us looking for neat, simple answers.  But truth is too wild and complex to be contained in one answer, so Jesus often responded with a question or a parable.

-Anne Lamott, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

One of the great ones...............

Michael Stanley Band..Stagepass/Let's Get the Show On the Road

 

The trouble with binary elections..................

....................is that one of them has to win.  If rants are your thing, enjoy Fred Reed's latest here:

 I despise Trump. He is a mean-spirited son of a bitch. His licking the boots of those revolting pseudo-Cubans in Miami and increasing sanctions, utterly unjustified, on Havana, are grounds enough for putting him behind bars. Trying to starve thirty million Venezuelans into giving up control of their oil, trying to assassinate Maduro are grounds for rehabilitating the guillotine. Beginning a cold war against China and driving a growing crop of countries into alliance against America gives new meaning to “stupidity.” This is Trump.  I wouldn’t use him for dog food. I like my dog.

But: He isn’t Biden. He has my vote.

On 'life support systems'...........................

      Today, almost the entire capacity of the Earth's 'life-support system for humans' has been provided not for us but by us, using our ability to create new knowledge.  There are people in the Great Rift Valley today who live far more comfortably than early humans did, and in far greater numbers, through knowledge of things like tools, farming and hygiene.  The Earth did provide the raw materials for our survival—just as the sun has provided the energy, and supernovae provided the elements, and so on.  But a heap of raw materials is not the same thing as a life-support system.  It takes knowledge to convert the one into the other, and biological evolution never provided us with enough knowledge to survive, let alone thrive.  In this respect we differ from almost all other species.  They do have all the knowledge that they need, genetically encoded in their brains.  And that knowledge was indeed provided for them by evolution—and so on, in the relevant sense, 'by the biosphere.'  So their home environments do have the appearance of having been designed as life-support systems for them, albeit only in the desperately limited sense the I have described.  But the biosphere no more provides humans with a life-support system than it provides us with radio telescopes.

-David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World

Awesome........................

 thanks Jessica

Three cheers for............................

 ...................................India's moon landing:

If you listen carefully..................

 

thanks Rob

Been obsessing over this one................................

Emma Kok - Voilà, with André Rieu and his orchestra

    

[Verse 1]
Listen to me, me, the half singer
Talk about me, to your loved ones, to your friends
Tell them about this little girl with black eyes and crazy dreams
What I want is to write stories that you will hear about
That's all

[Chorus]
Voilà, voilà, voilà, here is who I am
Here I am, even if I'm scared as I'm naked, yes
Here I am in the noise and in silence

[Verse 2]
Look at me, or at least what's left of it
Look at me, before I hate myself
What can I say that another hasn't already said?
I don't have much, but I place here what I do have
Voilà

[Chorus]
Voilà, voilà, voilà, here is who I am
Here I am, even if it's the end as I'm naked
That's my face, that's my scream, here I am, never mind
Voilà, voilà, voilà, voilà right here
Me, my dream, my will, how I'm dying from it, how I'm laughing at it
Here I am in the noise and in silence

[Verse 3]
Do not leave, I'm begging you to stay for a long time
It might not save me, no
But I don't know how to live without you
Love me how you would love a friend who's leaving forever
I want to be loved, because I don't know myself how to like the shape of me

[Chorus]
Voilà, voilà, voilà, here is who I am
Here I am, even if it's the end as I'm naked
Here I am in the noise and in rage too
Finally, look at me and my eyes and my hands
All I have is here, it's my face, it's my scream
Here I am, here I am, here I am
Voilà, voilà
Voilà, voilà

Voilà

-Barbara Pravi

Yep...............................................

 It turns out that a life lived conveniently isn’t always a better one. The cost of convenience ends up being too high.

-Seth Godin, from here

Probably true..............

 The world is careening toward a climate crisis, and by that we do not mean nasty weather or impending human extinction. The real challenge lies in adapting to a changing climate without undermining an already stressed global order, not to mention imperiling democracy. . . .

Perhaps the biggest obstacle lies in geopolitical realities. In China, India, Vietnam, and much of Africa, the demand for affordable and reliable power has clear priority over achieving “net zero” in the near future. Ultimately what the West does may matter more to its own self-righteousness than the planet itself.

-Joel Kotkin, from here

Retirement..........................

 .............................is for sissies.

pretending.......................

 One of my rules is to not forecast markets. Neither stock markets nor interest rates markets. Partly that’s because I will always be wrong and I don’t like being wrong. Partly it’s because it really bothers me when finance media people pretend they can predict the future. In reality, that specific habit of forecasting by otherwise supposedly serious finance media people should earn them a fortune-teller’s cap (with all the stars and lightning bolts) to signal their likely accuracy.

-as extracted from this Bankers Anonymous post

perpetual student...................

  In school, the people who never make mistakes are called “intelligent.” But after we grow up, it’s the people who make mistakes and learn that are truly “intelligent.”

-from this Barking Up The Wrong Tree post

Yes..................

 

image via

Truth................................

 You often feel tired, not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you.

-from this David Kanigan post

The journey is the point.....................

 Dorothy had the slippers all along.  The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion already possessed everything they needed to find happiness.  And the wizard didn't actually need a broomstick.  So why bother going on this perilous journey?

     The quest for the broomstick was a MacGuffin, of course, an illogical centerpiece that moved the story forward.  Illogical, and yet, The Wizard of Oz, eighty years later, remains one of the most remembered and beloved movies ever made.

     Corporate profits aren't at the center of Dorothy's journey in the Wizard of Oz.  Neither is selfish gain.

     The movie resonates with us because it's about connection and possibility.  It captures our desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves, to help others when, perhaps, there's not much in it for us.

-Seth Godin, as excerpted from The Song of Significance

except..................................

 He eschewed the spiritual life, except as his human spirit was sustained by nature, jazz, books, wine.  A role model isn't a mentor.

-Anne Lamott, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

To ask the question is to answer it........

 Spinoza, according to all the seventeenth-century interpreters, rejected all the traditional ideas about God, he was indisputably a heretic.  Yet his manner of living was humble and apparently free of vice.  then, as now, the philosopher seemed like a living oxymoron: he was an ascetic sensualist, a spiritual materialist, a sociable hermit, a secular saint.  How could his life have been so good, the critics asked, when his philosophy was so bad?

Matthew Stewart, Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

On culture.................

 When a culture is working wholesomely, beneficent pendulum swings—effective feedback—do occur.  Corrective stabilization is one of the great services of democracy, with its feedback to rulers from the protesting and voting public. . . .

     But powerful persons and groups that find it in their interest to prevent adaptive corrections have many ways of thwarting self-organizing stabilizers—through deliberately contrived subsidies and monopolies, for example.  Or circumstances may have allowed cultural destruction to drift to a point where the jolts of correction appear more menacing than downward drift. . . .

     The collapse of one sustaining cultural institution enfeebles others, making it more likely that others will give way.  With each collapse, still further ruin becomes more likely, until finally the whole enfeebled, intractable contraption collapses.  Beneficent corrections of deterioration are not guaranteed.

-Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead (2004)

bees.............

 If the hive be disturbed by rash and stupid hands, instead of honey, it will yield us bees.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay Prudence

Opening paragraphs........(plus a genealogy lesson)

 My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.

     Mathew Grant, the founder of the branch in America, of which I am a descendant, reached Dorchester, Massachusetts, in May, 1630.  In 1635 he moved to what is now Windsor, Connecticut, and was the surveyor for that colony for more than forty years.  He was also, for many years of the time, town clerk.  He was a married man when he arrived at Dorchester, but his children were all born in this country.  His eldest son, Samuel, took lands on the east side of the Connecticut River, opposite Windsor, which have been held and occupied by descendants of his to this day.

     I am of the eighth generation from Mathew Grant, and seventh from Samuel.

-Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters

In the background...........................

The Benoit/Freeman Project album

 

Vacation over................

................Cultural Offering is back in business.

Don't shout at the crops...................

 .................and six other important pieces of advice wisdom may be found here.

He wrote this in 1995................

 

more on the book can be found here.

Leave it to a sports writer......................

 ..................to capture the USA:

Messi has certainly lived up to the billing in America so far, taking this massive & slightly eccentric country and making them coo in the palm of his hand.

Full post here.  If you enjoy fun writing, read it.

Checking in...................

 ..........................with Montesquieu:

I have never known any distress that an hour’s reading did not relieve.

If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise.

I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.

History is full of religious wars; but, we must take care to observe, it was not the multiplicity of religions that produced these wars, it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

full of years.........................

The opinions of a young boy

     Without much experience in life,

May arise from thoughts that an old man,

     Full of years, might never comprehend.

-Rumi

Clarity.........................

      When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh went to work for three months at "the house of the dying" in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life.  On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa.  She asked, "And what can I do for you?"  Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.

     "What do you want me to pray for?" she asked.  He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: "Pray that I have clarity."

     She said firmly, "No, I will not do that."  When he asked her why, she said, "Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of."  When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, "I have never had clarity, what I have always had is trust.  So I will pray that you trust God."

-Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin's Path to God