Living in a subjective world............

thanks mmescherzo

Helping, fixing, or serving.....?

“Helping, fixing, and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul.”

-from the HeartMind blog

Covers.................

Quicksilver Messenger Service..................Who Do You Love
 


Bo Didley wrote and recorded Who Do You Love in 1956.  It
has been covered at least 35 times by artists well known, and
not so well known.  Quicksilver Messenger Service recorded
it in 1969.   Above  is a 1975 live version.  Below is the orginal:

 Bo Didley......................................Who Do You Love
 

A poem for Monday

One to the things I love about April is that I can once again post my favorite poem, Robert Frost's Two Tramps at Mudtime.  Enjoy:

Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of beech it was I split,
As large around as the chopping block;
And every piece I squarely hit
Fell splinterless as a cloven rock.
The blows that a life of self-control
Spares to strike for the common good,
That day, giving a loose my soul,
I spent on the unimportant wood.

The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You're one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake; and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn't blue,
But he wouldn't advise a thing to blossom.

The water for which we may have to look
In summertime with a witching wand,
In every wheelrut's now a brook,
In every print of a hoof a pond.
Be glad of water, but don't forget
The lurking frost in the earth beneath
That will steal forth after the sun is set
And show on the water its crystal teeth.

The time when most I loved my task
The two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You'd think I never had felt before
The weight of an ax-head poised aloft,
The grip of earth on outspread feet,
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps).
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
The judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax
They had no way of knowing a fool.

Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man's work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right - agreed.

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

image courtesy of

Winning and losing..............

"I try to do the right thing at the right time. They may just be little things, but usually they make the difference between winning and losing."
-Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Trying to talk with a human...........

About those "points of view".......

Felix Frankfurter......................

Felix Frankfurter   Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court  1939-1962

"The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it."

"Answers are not obtained by putting the wrong question and thereby begging the real one."


"I don't like a man to be too efficient. He's likely to be not human enough."


"The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards."


"As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard."


"Freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of achieving a free society."


"The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression” 

"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have been forged in controversies involving not very nice people."


"Fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling."

"All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them."


"It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals."

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes."

"Judicial judgment must take deep account of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today."

"Old age and sickness bring out the essential characteristics of a man."

"The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind."


-Felix Frankfurter

The small pleasures add up......

Most of us miss out on life’s big prizes.
The Pulitzer.
The Nobel.
Oscars.
Tonys.
Emmys.
But we’re all eligible for life’s small pleasures.
A pat on the back.
A kiss behind the ear.
A four-pound bass.
A full moon.
An empty parking space.
A crackling fire.
A great meal.
A glorious sunset.
Hot soup.
Cold beer.
Don’t fret about copping life’s grand awards. Enjoy it’s tiny delights.
There are plenty for all of us.


-an advertisement from the folks at United Technologies

Happy Easter............

image courtesy of

Sunday's Verse............

1.  The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.

2.  Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the LORD out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.

3.  Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre.

4.  So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.

5.  And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in.

6.  Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,

7.  And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.

8.  Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.

9.  For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.

10.  Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.

11.  But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,

12.  And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

13.  And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my LORD, and I know not where they have laid him.

14.  And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

15.  Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

16.  Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

17.  Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

18.  Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the LORD, and that he had spoken these things unto her.

The Holy Bible

John 20:1-18

King James Version

Covers................

The Byrds...........................................Turn Turn Turn
       (as always, click through to YouTube)




The song was adapted from The Book of Ecclesiastes
by Pete Seeger in 1959.  He recorded it in 1962.  The
Byrds made a huge hit with their 1965 cover of it - as lip
synced above.

 Pete Seeger..........................................Turn Turn Turn

Winning and Losing.........Round Two

Muhammad Ali   knocked down by Joe Frazier in March of 1971.  This was the
first of their three title bouts.  Frazier won this one, Ali won the second two

"I never thought of losing, but now that it' s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life"


"Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even."


-Muhammad Ali 

Opening paragraphs........

Earl Warren     Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court    1953-1969

   Earl Warren could not have become the man he was had he been raised anywhere but in the time and place of his upbringing.  He was a man for whom experience mattered - philosophy and reading influenced him less than the scratch of life - so geography left its mark.  And he grew up in  California, a state defined by its cultural and geographic extremism, where one's association with the industrious cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco or its vast agricultural valleys determined who one was.  Warren embodied a bit of each.  He was born in Southern California, raised in its San Joaquin Valley, and educated in the north.  By the time he was a young man, Warren was a Republican in the fashion of Los Angeles's leadership, a second-generation union man as one might expect of a San Franciscan, and a bit of Bakersfield rube.
-Jim Newton, Justice For All:  Earl Warren 
and the Nation He Made

Winning and losing.........

Jackie Robinson stealing home against Yogi Berra and the Yankees.
If you look real close, you can see the ball loose by Berra's right shin guard

“It kills me to lose. If I'm a troublemaker, and I don't think that my temper makes me one, then it's because I can't stand losing. That's the way I am about winning, all I ever wanted to do was finish first.”
-Jackie Robinson

Covers................

The Animals.............Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood


This song was written by Benjamin, Caldwell and Marcus 
for Nina Simone, who first recorded it in 1964.  The Animals
covered it in 1965


Nina Simone..........................Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

The Great Dissenter.............

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Associate Justice of the
U. S. Supreme Court 1902-1932

"In this symposium my part is only to sit in silence.  To express one's feelings as the end draws near is too intimate a task.  But I may mention one thought that occurs to me as a listener-in.  The riders in the race do not stop short when they reach the goal.  There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill.  There is time to hear the kind words of friends and to say to oneself:  The work is done.  But just as one says that, the answer comes:  The race is over, but the work is never done while the power to work remains.  The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest.  It cannot be while you still live.  For to live is to function.  That is all there is in living.  And so I end with a line from a Latin poet who uttered the message more than fifteen hundred years ago: "Death plucks my ear and says, 'Live - I am coming.'"

-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., from his nationally broadcast radio address on his 90th birthday, March 8, 1931.

Magic............

courtesy of waitingforthekarmatruck

Speaking of magic..................

The Lovin' Spoonful.......................Do You Believe In Magic
 

That rascal History continues to have its way...

Under the heading of "nobody promised us easy," WRM continues to bang his drum about the end of the "blue social model."  Full, read-worthy, "A Crisis of Civilization"  essay is here  (for a continuing education, read through the comments section).  An excerpt is here:

" There is no such thing as a developed country. No country on earth has reached a stable end state; there is no such thing as a comfortable retirement from the stresses and storms of history and of change. France, America, Germany, Japan: we thought we had found a permanent solution to all economic and social questions..........We hadn’t."

Perhaps I am just seeking confirmation of my own bias, but Mead's recent essays on the subject would seem to inform that, while it is broadly human nature to seek economic security and ease, history and experience tells us such security and ease cannot be permanent.  Neither can they be granted:  They have to be earned - daily.  Mead concludes:

"And it is raving lunacy to expect that there is some master plan that can reveal the shape of the new society and show us how to achieve it. That isn’t what life at the cutting edge of history is ever like. The challenge of our time is invention, not implementation. The future doesn’t exist yet; we have to make it up."

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

Covers....................

The Doors.........................................Backdoor Man



This song was written by Willie Dixon and recorded by 
Howlin' Wolf in 1960.  The Doors covered it in 1966.

Howlin' Wolf......................................Backdoor Man

Winning and losing.........

"You've got to get to the stage in life where going for it is more important than winning or losing."
-Arthur Ashe

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

Thurgood Marshall   Associate Justice
of the United States Supreme Court    1967-1991

Thurgood Marshall was born in 1908.  That year an African American named Jack Johnson knocked out Tommy Burns, the then world heavy-weight champion.  This was the first time a black man had taken the title away from a white man.  As soon as Johnson won, the search was on for the "great white hope" who could take the crown away from him.  For African Americans, Johnson's victory may have been the only joy they had that year.
-Howard Ball, A Defiant Life:  Thurgood Marshall
& The Persistence of Racism in America

Please....................

".....If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that time is surely not now.  In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity...."
-Abraham Lincoln, an excerpt from his Second Annual 
Message to Congress, December 1, 1862

A distinction with a difference....

These quotes come from the 1765 Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law by John Adams.  It almost seems as if he is sounding a prescient warning for those who believe that the original intent of the U.S. Constitution, i.e. limited government, has value:

    "The way to secure Liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is, to give them a power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice...."

     "The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true.  They are the worst conceivable, they are not keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body."

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

thanks swissmiss

Three chords and the truth...........

Junior Wells...................................Crying Shame



"The blues are easy to play and hard to play well"
-Junior Wells

thanks David

The view from the ledge.............

Friend Jeff once wrote:

"Norman Cousins had once said “panic, not pathology, is the greatest killer.” What I will seek to do here, is to use insight, information, and testimony to overcome that panic so that decisions can be made in the context of knowledge and not out of fear."


I suspect the art of being both fully human and fully awake is based on a clear headed acceptance of, and confrontation with, what is real.  We were never promised easy.  With his typical grace, Jeff shows us the path - here.


"For me, this is all at once strangely fascinating and a bit frightening. Like staring over that edge into the canyon."


Thanks, Jeff.

photo by Jeff Kopito

Muddled thinking............

The language used here makes one think they believe the money
belongs to the government.  If a taxpayer, whether corporate or
individual, follows the tax code and finds and applies credits
and deductions, thereby reducing their tax burden, how has the
government lost money?

The full post from Frugal Dad is here.  It is actually a fairly
interesting explanation of how the "monied interests " minimize
their tax burden, and could be used as a poster for the sanity of
a flat tax system.  Just think about the creativity and influence
peddling (now my bias is showing) that went into the creation of
 those tax credits and deductions.  It may seem counter-intuitive,
but surely, if the purpose of the Internal Revenue Code is to raise
revenue for the federal government (a rather large assumption), a
flat tax with a modest rate on net income with no deductions, no
credits, no havens, no exemptions, or no other loopholes will
raise more money.  As a side benefit, just think of the
 productivity gains for our country, as all those people who are
really smart about taxation and the mechanics of government
would have to find other ways of making a really good living.

Thoughts..............

“All that we are is the result of all that we have thought. It is founded on thought. It is based on thought.”

— The Dhammapada

from thejournelofanobody

Covers......................

The Byrds...............................Mr. Tambourine Man
(lip syncing at its finest)



 Bob Dylan...............................Mr. Tambourine Man
(a great video.........a blank screen. Only Bob)

 

Winning and losing...............

"I like trying to win. That's what golf is all about."

"I think I fail a bit less than everyone else."


"Professional golf is the only sport where, if you win 20% of the time, you're the best."


"Resolve never to quit, never to give up, no matter what the situation."


"This is a game. That's all it is. It's not a war."


"Nobody ever remembers who finished second at anything."


-Jack Nicklaus (the winner of 18 of golf's Major tournaments, and the second place finisher in 19 of golf's Major tournaments.)
------------------------------------------------------


"Always make a total effort, even when the odds are against you."


"I never rooted against an opponent, but I never rooted for him either."


"I've always made a total effort, even when the odds seemed entirely against me. I never quit trying; I never felt that I didn't have a chance to win."


"The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done."


"Winning isn't everything, but wanting it is."


"I don't look at it as a gamble, really. I just look at it as a harder shot. Why hit a conservative shot? When you miss it, you're in just as much trouble as when you miss a bold one."


"You must play boldly to win."


"Trouble is bad to get into but fun to get out of. If you're in trouble, eighty percent of the time there's a way out. If you can see the ball, you can probably hit it; and if you can hit it, you can move it; and if you can move it, you might be able to knock it in the hole. At least it's fun to try."


-Arnold Palmer (the winner of 7 of golf's Major tournaments, and the second place finisher in 10 of golf's Major tournaments.)

Speaking of golf.............

It's so ridiculous to see a golfer with a one foot putt and everybody is saying "Shhh" and not moving a muscle. Then we allow nineteen year-old kids to face a game-deciding free throw with seventeen thousand people yelling. 
 -Al McGuire

An all-star..................

Junior Walker..........................................Cleo's Mood

(As always, click through to YouTube.  Thank thee)
 

...the power of self-fulfilling...........

thanks Nicholas

Opening paragraphs........

Learned Hand, Judge, United States Court of Appeals
for the Second Circuit, 1924-1961

On January 27, 1872, a cold winter day, a second and last child was born to Lydia and Samuel Hand of 224 State Street in Albany, New York.  The Hands named their only son Billings Learned Hand.  Late in life, Hand would recall Albany as "a hick town up the river," but the Albany boosters of his youth would have challenged that description.  After all, Albany, less that 150 miles from New York City, was the state's capital; after all, its population of about seventy thousand in 1870 made it the fourth largest city in the state, the twentieth largest in the nation; after all, there was reason to hope that the post-Civil War industrial boom would spur growth in Albany as it was doing elsewhere.  At first, the local hopes seemed vindicated:  as its population rose to ninety thousand by 1880, Albany's rate of growth kept pace with New York City's, Buffalo's, and Boston's.  Yet soon growth ground to a halt; during the 1890's, sleepy Albany's population actually shrank; by 1900, it dropped from being America's twentieth largest city to only its fortieth.
-Gerald Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge

"extends its embrace.........."

    "Freedom, as Tocqueville sees it in the United States, is not enough to avoid tyranny.  While earlier writers show tyranny extending from a fault in the rulers, Tocqueville shows how modern tyranny - what we might call totalitarianism - results, in part, from a fault in the ruled.  He envisions a world in which men are 'circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures' while their government 'extends its embrace to include the whole of society.'  The irony here is that freedom is the driving force behind revolutions, as well as the numbing factor leading to tyranny.  Orwell shows this to be the case in Animal Farm, in which, after revolting against the humans, most of the animals forget why the revolution ever took place, this leaving themselves open for oppression by the pigs."
-Mortimer J. Adler, excerpted from his essay, Liberty, from 
his book, Great Ideas:  A Lexicon of Western Thought

Covers.......................

Seriously, this is way better than I thought it would be.
Having said that, I won't be playing it again.

Dolly Parton..................................Stairway to Heaven




Led Zeppelin....................................Stairway to Heaven

 

This I understand..............

     "I'm pretty sure of my facts here.  And if I could only put my hands on the book, I could be absolutely sure.  But is it shelved under U for Utz, or perhaps C for Chatwin?  Or is it in the unsorted pile on top of the radiator?  Or the heap of volumes that migrated from the living room to the dining room?  I am certain that I didn't lend it to anyone:  I am utterly miserly about letting any of my books out of my sight.  Yet my books don't seem to reciprocate by remaining within view, let alone within easy reach."
-Christopher Hitchens, as excerpted from his essay 
Prisoner of Shelves, which is part of his book, Arguably.

Winning and Losing...........

"Never let the fear of striking out get in your way."
-Babe Ruth