The Cross of Iron.............................

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
-Dwight David Eisenhower, as excerpted from this speech

Consequences....................................

The thrill of hope....................................

Susan Boyle.........................................................O Holy Night

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

This book is first about how people pursue happiness in their lives, and then about how government can help in that pursuit.
     It is not a topic that is easy even to name, for "happiness" is an honorable word fallen on hard times.  We have gotten used to happiness as a label for a momentary way of feeling, the state of mind that is the opposite of sad.  Happiness is the promised reward of a dozen pop-psychology books on the airport book rack.  It is a topic for bumper stickers and the comic strips - happiness is a warm puppy.  A book on public policy about "happiness"?  Surely there is a sturdier contemporary term I might use instead.  "Quality of life," perhaps:  "This book is about personal quality of life, and what government can do to improve it."  Or more respectable yet:  "This book is about noneconomic indicators of perceived personal well-being, and their relationship to alternative policy options."  But there's no getting around it.  Happiness is in fact what we will be talking about.
-Charles Murray, In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government

Important..................................

"Just as war is too important to be left to generals, so is happiness too important to be left to philosophers."
-Charles Murray

So, that's how she did it..........................

........................low-stress Christmas tree decorating - here.

I'm liking our tree this year:

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

Hank Thompson......I'd Like To Have An Elephant For Christmas

'Tis the season...................................

from his archives

Making a difference....................................

.....................................................one person at a time.

"Today race is industrialized — a spectator sport driven by divisional politics, entitlement, false prophets, social media and white pundits with intellectually superior opinions who rarely have had a meaningful relationship with a person outside of their white inner circle."

"These days, both blacks and whites feel abandoned by Washington. So the solution to our nation's racial discourse should be handled by us individually, one person at a time — and not by exploiting bad deeds done by both sides that only further the hatred."

Full essay here.

via

Only at the History Blog.........................

The blog post starts:

The year was 1989. Milli Vanilli had three number one singles and a metal detectorist discovered a bronze dagger blade and a few rivets on Racton Park Farm, near Westbourne, outside Chichester, West Sussex.

The bronze dagger blade is over four thousand years old.  Perhaps the writer is a Milli Vanilli fan.  Full post is here.

On hating losing but not relishing competition...

      Three brothers triangulated and defined by their approach to golf.  If David was calm and naturally talented, and Sandy the swashbuckler, I was always intense and cautious in my game.  I didn't relish competition, but hated losing.  My main aim was to avoid making mistakes:  don't miss the fairway, don't miss the green, don't three putt.
      It sounds rather negative.  The fact is that if you avoid making mistakes you will never be an outstanding golfer, but you will score well and win your share of youth tournaments.
-Andrew Greig,  Preferred Lies:  A Journey to the Heart of Scottish Golf

For ever and ever..............................

The Royal Choral Society........................Hallelujah Chorus



Handel's full Messiah (2:38:22) is here.

The Breakthrough 52.........................

Nicholas Bate offers this list for us to ponder and work on.  A few samples:

1.  When you help someone you don’t weaken yourself. You don’t give away your power. You become a better version of you. Try it.  

8.  When you own the consequences of your actions you are finally liberated.

13.  The brain must be exercised just like the body. And just like the body without use it deteriorates. Unlike the body it needs no sweaty gym kit. Just a couple  of good books a week could open up whole new parts of the lobe.

20.  You can do anything but you can’t do everything. Trying for the latter just causes frustration which causes a low mood which means you can’t do anything. Daft, really.

30.  This is a great time to be on this planet: there’s so much to be done. You’re needed, really needed. Are you up for the job? One Planet: To Be Saved. From Idiocy.

35.  Love has many aspects. One is encouragement. One isn’t judgement.

36.  Make everyone you meet every day feel better. Their positive return vibes will flood your body. You’ll never get a cold nor sore throat again. Ever.

49.  If something isn’t working try again and again and again. Then try something different. But the thing is to try.

51.  All superheroes have a weakness. Otherwise they would be totally dull. That’s why we all have a few. Some of us have a lot. Makes us damn interesting.

Lessons......................................

When I turned thirteen, he'd produced his .22 rifle and said, "I think you're ready to learn to use this."  His expression then had been very similar, and I still can't read it.  All I know is he believed that life had stages and they needed to be marked.
      Our infrequent moments of closeness were always enacted like this, over ways of doing.  With the rifle I had to demonstrate I had the maturity to handle what he stressed was a lethal weapon, before he ever put a bullet in the chamber.  Which meant thinking about consequences, being heedful, doing things properly.  It was that, not numerical age, which earned the right to use it.
      Golf was the same.  The teaching he gave us was about more than grip, stance, swing.  He was passing on the ethos and etiquette of the game, which expressed his own deepest values.  They were iron laws.  Never to talk or move when someone else is playing.  Attend the flag for your partners.  Don't hold people up.  Watch your partner's ball, mark where it's gone, help search for it.  Win without gloating; lose without sulking.  Don't show off - but feel inferior to no one.
      There was one lesson even more elemental that these.
      "Bobby Jones several times called penalties on himself for infringements that no one but himself had seen.  He nearly lost the US Open because of it.  And when he was congratulated for his honesty, you ken what he said?"
      My father glanced at me as we drover over the hill to St. Andrews that bright, breezy afternoon.  I think even then I was aware days like this wouldn't come that often.  I shook my head.
      "He said, 'You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.' "
-Andrew Greig,  Preferred Lies:  A Journey to the Heart of Scottish Golf

Ed. Note:  This is a wonderful book.  If there is a difficult-to-buy-for golfer on your Christmas list, you can earn significant style points by buying this book for them.  There is still time.

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

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

The Beach Boys..............................................Christmas Day

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

On the second floor of a characterless hotel in the British Crown Colony of Gibraltar, a lithe, agile man in his late fifties restlessly paced his bedroom.  His very British features, though pleasant and plainly honourable, indicated a choleric nature brought to the limit of its endurance.  A distraught lecturer, you might have thought, observing the bookish forward lean and loping stride and the errant forelock of salt-and-pepper hair that repeatedly had to be disciplined with jerky back-handed shoves of the bony wrist.  Certainly it would not have occurred to many people, even in their most fanciful dreams, that he was a middle-ranking British civil servant, hauled from his desk in one of the more prosaic departments of Her Majesty's Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be dispatched on a top-secret mission of acute sensitivity.
-John Le Carre,  A Delicate Truth

Still searching.....................................

"A good government implies two things;  first, fidelity to the object of government, which is the happiness of the people;  secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained."
-James Madison

On controlling emotions....................

“Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.”
 -attributed to Publilius Syrus

If you would like to turn "negatives into positives" and thrive "amidst unthinkable chaos and turmoil," this Ryan Holiday post might be worth your time.

Concerning the Publilius quote:  Not sure he really said that, but his Maxim 891 reads:
"The greatest of empires, is the empire over one's self."

Close enough.

Christmas isn't for the faint of heart.............

Not sure where he finds these, but this one is pretty cold..........

Sprinkly things......................................

George Strait..................................................Christmas Cookies

To Hell With Commonsense................

More kicks than pence
We get from commonsense
Above its door is writ
All hope abandon. It
Is a bank will refuse a post
Dated cheque of the Holy Ghost.
Therefore I say to hell
With all reasonable
Poems in particular
We want no secular
Wisdom plodded together
By concerned fools. Gather
No moss you rolling stones
Nothing thought out atones
For no flight
In the light.
Let them wear out nerve and bone
Those who would have it that way
But in the end nothing that they
Have achieved will be in the shake up
In the final Wake Up
And I have a feeling
That through the hole in reason’s ceiling
We can fly to knowledge
Without ever going to college.

-Patrick Kavanagh

Some things never change........................

"Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits."
-Bernard Mandeville  (1670-1733)

Most threatened.......................................

“A free society is most threatened not by uses of government that are obviously bad, but by uses of government that seem obviously good.” 
-Charles Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian

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

Johnny Lytle Quintet...............................The Village Caller

On Economics..................................

      Economics helps you understand that money isn't the only thing that matters in life.  Economics teaches you that making a choice means giving up something.  And economics can help you appreciate complexity and how seemingly unrelated actions and people can become entangled.  These insights and others are sprinkled throughout The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  Money is nice, but knowing how to deal with it may be nicer.  A student once told me that a professor of hers said that economics is the study of how to get the most out of life.  That may strike some of you, even those who majored in economics, as an absurd claim.  But life is all about choices.  Getting the most out of life means choosing wisely and well.  And making choices - being aware of how choosing one road means not taking another, being aware of how my choices interact with the choices of others - that's the essence of economics.
-Russ Roberts,  How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life:  An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness

Some principles.........................

"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."
-Adam Smith,  The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Release...............................................

      So when we cry out Help, or whisper it into our chests, we enter the paradox of not going limp and not feeling so hopeless that we can barely walk, and we release ourselves from the absolute craziness of trying to be our own - or other people's - higher power.
      Help.
      We can be freed from a damaging insistence on forward thrust, from a commitment to running wildly down a convenient path that might actually be taking us deeper into the dark forest.  Praying "Help" means that we ask that Something give us the courage to stop in our tracks, right where we are, and turn our fixation away from the Gordian knot of our problems.  We stop peering and instead turn our eyes to something else:  to our feet on the sidewalk, to the middle distance, to the hills, whence our help comes - someplace else, anything else.  Maybe this is a shift of only eight degrees, but it can be a miracle.
      It may be one of those miracles where your heart sinks, because you think it means you have lost.  But in surrender you have won.  And if it were me, after a moment, I would say, Thanks.
-Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow:  The Three Essential Prayers

More than you want to know...................

........................................about Gordian knots - here or here

image via

Repeat the sounding joy.......................

Mannheim Steamroller..................................Joy To The World

The very meaning.................................

What are the benefits of freedom?  They are embedded in the very meaning of being human.  To be human is to be mindful:  conscious of living a life and trying to live a good one.  Freedom is the raw material for the choices that make up a life - the myriad choices that go into assembling your little platoons, exercising your realized capacities, and demarcating a place for yourself and your loved ones.  Responsibility, freedom's obverse, is the indispensable quality that allows us to carry through on our choices and take satisfaction from our accomplishments, whether they be making a living, realizing our gifts, caring for a family, or being a good neighbor.

-Charles Murray,  What It Means To Be A Libertarian:  A Personal Interpretation

Timing.....................................................

A worthy re-run...................................

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

The Beach Boys.........................................Johnny B. Goode

Cover the bases................................

via

The everyday china......................................

     But beautiful pre-assembled prayers - the the Merton, the Lord's Prayer, the Twenty-third Psalm - have saved me more times than I can remember. But they are for special occasions.  They are dressier prayers, the good china of prayers, used when I have my wits about me enough a) to remember that they exist, and b) to get into a state of trust.  This would be approximately seven percent of the time.
     Most good, honest prayers remind me that I am not in charge, that I cannot fix anything, and that I open myself to being helped by something, some force, some friends, some something.  These prayers say, "Dear Some Something.  I don't know what I'm doing.  I can't see where I'm going.  I'm getting more lost, more afraid, more clenched.  Help."
-Anne Lamott,  Help Thanks Wow:  The Three Essential Prayers

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

 As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.

3  The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

4  John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

5  And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.

6  And John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;

7  And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.

8  I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.

-The Holy Bible,  King James Version

Mark 1: 2-8

At Sensory Dispensary..........................

.......Warren Haynes channeling his inner Van Morrison.

Amazing............................................

via

Happy Consecutive Day.............................!

12-13-14.

The last "consecutive day" this century.  And you almost missed it.

Like you and me.........................

Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds.....................Christmas Song

Belief............................................................

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

Aretha Franklin....................................Runnin' Out of Fools

Where did it go......................................?

This feels about right............................

The national mood swing continues to.............

via

Everybody knows........................................

Ella Fitzgerald................................................The Christmas Song

Movement........................................

      The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-absorbed madness to spiritual awakening.  Gratitude is peace.  Maybe you won't always get from being a brat to noticing that it is an e. e. cummings morning out the window.  But some days you will.  You will go from being a Doug or Wendy Whiner, with your psychic diverticulitis, able to eat only macaroni and cheese, to remembering "i thank You God for most this amazing / day."  You splurge on a pint basket of figs, or a pair of great socks.  You begin to feel friendship with your flowering pear tree, an interspecies oneness with it, although we usually keep these thoughts to ourselves, lest they be used against us at the commitment hearings.  In fact, your are able to use the word "wonder" again, even feel it, without despair that the New York literati or your atheist friends will find out and send you into exile.
-Anne Lamott,  Help Thanks Wow:  The Three Essential Prayers

thanks David

On creativity..................................................

-attributed to Heraclitus, as excerpted from here.

An amazing voice from fifty years ago.............

Arthur Prysock (on American Bandstand)..........Close Your Eyes

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

The happiness of aging..........................

I'm feeling pretty chipper.  How about you?  I'm a firm believer that you don't actually need a reason to be happy, you can just be happy.  David Brooks, via this blog post from Stuart Schneiderman, weighs in on the subject:


I’d rather think that elder happiness is an accomplishment, not a condition, that people get better at living through effort, by mastering specific skills. I’d like to think that people get steadily better at handling life’s challenges. In middle age, they are confronted by stressful challenges they can’t control, like having teenage children. But, in old age, they have more control over the challenges they will tackle and they get even better at addressing them.

Original Brooks essay here.

It is an honor...........................................

...........................to have Kurt as a friend and to be on this list.

Forget about the HR part................................

........The Execupundit is an every day must-read for ALL.  A well deserved recognition Michael!

As we dream by the fire........................

Dave Koz..................................................Winter Wonderland

This would be cool...................................

.........................................energy going directly from a solar roof top to your very own storage battery.

You don't..............................................

via

Well, maybe a little.................................

via

Parable...................................

I read how Quixote in his random ride
Came to a crossing once, and lest he lose
The purity of chance, would not decide

Wither to fare, but wished his horse to choose.
For glory lay wherever he might turn.
His head was light with pride, his horse's shoes

Were heavy, and he headed for the barn.

-Richard Wilbur

art via

Just wondering..................................

"I wonder how society would be affected if there were a different speed limit for every day of the week or if we completely removed traffic signals."
-Michael Wade, more Random Thoughts here

Sometimes I Feel...................................

...........................Scott goes all Allman Brothers on us.

Says the Grinch...................................

Faith Hill............................................Where Are You, Christmas?

Do you think..........................

If you don't break your ropes while you're alive
do you think
ghosts will do it after?
-Kabir

Occupational hazard..................................

via

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

Martin Luther King Jr. accepts the Nobel Prize for Peace

When it comes to climate change..................

..............I don't consider myself a "denier."  Maybe I'm a "traditionalist."  As near as I can tell, change has been the tradition on this is wondrous spinning and revolving orb we call home for its entire four point five billion years.  Whether we want to talk about Pangaea, or asteroid strikes, rising or falling sea levels, or encroaching and receding glaciers, the one constant is that the Earth is in a state of flux.   I will confess to a fairly simplistic approach to the issue.  Our fair county has, as evidenced by it soils, twice been invaded by glaciers.  Must have been colder.  Those glaciers have retreated (twice) a long way.  Must have gotten warmer.  I prefer Licking County be glacier free thank you, so warming, on the face of it, doesn't scare me much.  The catastrophic (and man-made) warming, predicted by many, seems mostly to live in their computer models.  Maybe they will be proven correct, but so far - not so much.
      There are many who push the notion that there has been no warming in the past twenty years, yet we also hear that 2014 is the warmest year on record - and the year isn't even over yet.  How can that be?
      If questions like this interest you, do read the latest blog post from my favorite optimist.  In it, he despairs of the state of science today.  He seems to think science has become "politicalized."  Imagine that.  Read the whole thing, but here are a few key excerpts:

As somebody who has championed science all his career, carrying a lot of water for the profession against its critics on many issues, I am losing faith. Recent examples of bias and corruption in science are bad enough. What’s worse is the reluctance of scientific leaders to criticise the bad apples. Science as a philosophy is in good health; science as an institution increasingly stinks.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics published a report last week that found evidence of scientists increasingly “employing less rigorous research methods” in response to funding pressures. A 2009 survey found that almost 2 per cent of scientists admitting that they have fabricated results; 14 per cent say that their colleagues have done so.

      
last week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a supposedly scientific body, issued a press release stating that this is likely to be the warmest year in a century or more, based on surface temperatures. Yet this predicted record would be only one hundredth of a degree above 2010 and two hundredths of a degree above 2005 — with an error range of one tenth of a degree. True scientists would have said: this year is unlikely to be significantly warmer than 2010 or 2005 and left it at that.

Jim Rohn......................................

Faithful readers of this blog will know that Jim Rohn has long been a favorite of mine.  Last week I stumbled across Twelve Pillars, a book he co-wrote.  They call it a novel, but really is just a vehicle for easily conveying his philosophy for living a better life.  If you get interrupted twice, it might take an hour and a half to read.  Of course, one might benefit from re-reading it weekly.
      The hero of the tale says at one point, "Formal education will make you a living.  Self-education will make you a fortune."  He then offers up a reading list, "Books Everyone Should Read," as a pretty good starting point for self-education.  See if you agree:

1.   The Bible
2.   How to Read A Book,  Mortimer Adler
3.   My Utmost for His Highest,  Oswald Chambers
4.   As A Man Thinketh,  James Allen
5.   Seeds of Greatness, Denis Waitley
6.   Seasons of Life, Jim Rohn
7.   The Pursuit of God, Acden W. Tozer
8.   Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
9.   Power of Positive Thinking, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
10. Magic of Thinking Big,  David Schwartz
11. Greatest Salesman In the World, Og Mandino
12. How to Win Friends and Influence People,  Dale Carnegie
13. Atlas Shrugged,  Ayn Rand
14. Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl
15. Acres of Diamonds,  Russell Conwell
16. See You at the Top,  Zig Ziglar
17. Seven Habits of Highly Successful People,  Stephen R. Covey
18. Lessons in History, William James Durant
19. The Richest Man in Babylon,  George S. Clason
20. The Story of Philosophy,  William James Durant

Ed.Note:  Ran out of time to link you to all of the books on Amazon, but please find your own way.

What I Can Do.......................................

The television has two instruments that control it.
I get confused.
The washer asks me, do you want regular or delicate?
Honestly, I just want clean.
Everything is like that.
I won't even mention cell phones.

I can turn on the light of the lamp beside my chair
where a book is waiting, but that's about it.

Oh yes, and I can strike a match and make a fire.

-Mary Oliver

More fun with lights...............................

Mannheim Steamroller............................................Pat A Pan

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

Not far from the Turin Cathedral, which houses the famous but now disputed Shroud, there is, in the Biblioteca Reale, the least contested self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci.  It is a drawing in red chalk on a medium-sized sheet of paper (33.3 x 21.4 centimeters), highly detailed and finished.  Below the portrait, an unknown hand - but certainly one from the sixteenth century - has written, also in red chalk, the painter's name:  Leonardus Vincius, with a further notation, in black: "portrait of himself in fairly old age" (ritratto di se stesso assai vecchio)  The words have become almost illegible, and the paper is covered with red blotches.  Like the Shroud this self-portrait is rarely exhibited in public;  ravaged by time, it is stored away from the harmful effects of air and light.
      One might say it is Leonardo's destiny, or at any rate it comes close to his spirit, to remain both celebrated and secret, a legendary jewel, buried in the dark.  One of his notebooks contains the following  sentence from Ovid's Metamorphoses:  "I doubt, O Greeks, that my exploits can be written down, although you know of them, for I accomplished them without witnesses, with the shades of night as my accomplice."
-Serge Bramly,   Leonardo:  Discovering the Life of Leonardo da Vinci

Opening paragraphs........................Part Two

       Toward the middle of the sixteenth century, the prolific Giorgio Vasari, a mediocre painter but a respectable architect (he designed the Uffizi in Florence), began to document the lives of the greatest Italian artists.  The idea came to him in Rome, during a conversation with the historian Paolo Giovio.  Giovio had begun to write in Latin some "eulogies" of famous artists, but since he knew little about painting, he hesitated about continuing.  Vasari immediately undertook the task in his place.  He had already amassed a quantity of notes on his illustrious contemporaries and had collected anecdotes, drawn up lists of works, and purchased sketches and drawings, which he kept in bulging portfolios.  He extended his research, drew on new sources, and expanded his catalogue;  a few years later, in 1550, Torrentino published Vasari's Vite de piu eccellenti archittori, pittori e scultori italiani, containing one hundred twenty biographies.  It told of the great adventure of Italian art, from the primitives to the "moderns," and sought to distinguish three styles and three periods:  the age of emancipation (of which the foremost representative was Giotto);  the age of maturity (attained with Masaccio); and the age of perfection (begun by Leonardo and completed, according to Vasari, by Michelangelo).  He was inventing art history.
-Serge Bramly, from the introduction to Leonardo: Discovering the Life of Leonardo da Vinci

Not in our neighborhood...............................

via

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

The Beatles........................................a Christmas message?

Christmas is in the air...............................

..........and the Licking County Courthouse is doing its part.

Courage.............................................

via Swiss-Miss

A dangerous situation...............................

..................................................................................averted.

Got a call this morning from Columbia Gas Company.  Apparently one of their gas mains buried in the road right of way developed a significant leak, and said escaping natural gas decided to migrate underground into this empty building of ours. A 30,000 square building can hold a scary amount of natural gas.  By the time we arrived on the scene, the Newark Fire Department was fully deployed.  Four hours or so later, the leak was repaired, building was aired out and the gas dispersed.  A potentially dangerous situation rendered safe.  Kudos to both Columbia Gas and the Newark Fire Department for their professionalism and commitment to community safely.

Let there be lights.....................................

Trans Siberian Orchestra...........................Wizards in Winter

A thing to love about the Intertunnel.................

The above quote has obviously been attributed to Seneca The Younger (4 BC-65 AD).  If you read many quotes by Seneca, you might question if he really said this. The wonder of the Intertunnel is that, by making so many original works available, it becomes possible, and is an interesting exercise, to track down the source quote.  Sometimes, it is just not there.  Then what?  Consider this page from a Doubting Thomas at Wikiquote.  Here are a few things did Seneca did say (with the original Latin and the source identified).

Non qui parum habet, sed qui plus cupit, pauper est.

• It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Nulli potest secura vita contingere qui de producenda nimis cogitat.

• No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.

Recede in te ipse quantum potes; cum his versare qui te meliorem facturi sunt, illos admitte quos tu potes facere meliores. Mutuo ista fiunt, et homines dum docent discunt.

• Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.

sciant quae optima sunt esse communia.

• The best ideas are common property.

Prope est a te deus, tecum est, intus est. Ita dico, Lucili: sacer intra nos spiritus sedet, malorum bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos...

• God is near you, with you, and in you. Thus I say, Lucilius: there sits a holy spirit within us, a watcher of our right and wrong doing, and a guardian...

sic cum inferiore vivas quemadmodum tecum superiorem velis vivere.

• Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters.

errant consilia nostra, quia non habent quo derigantur; ignoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est.

• Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

Saepe aliud volumus, aliud optamus, et verum ne dis quidem dicimus.

• We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

Satius est supervacua scire quam nihil.

• It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

A gift that keeps on giving...............................

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

'Tis the season.............................................................

Spengler.........................................

Amid the stack of unread books rests David Goldman's, aka Spengler, It's Not the End of the World:  It's Just the End of You.  One of these days I will be reading it.  Until then, from his latest blog post:

"Every nation that ever has existed considered itself holy in some way. It is impossible to have a nation except on the premise of the sacred. Men cannot bear mortality without the hope of immortality, and it is the continuity of our nation that vouches for this hope. We are not immortal as disembodied spirits playing harps on clouds, but concretely, in our earthly form. Nations that give up their hope of immortality roll over and die, often through infertility, for example today’s Germans, Italians, Spaniards, Hungarians and Poles."

"I am concerned first of all with America’s strength, and we have weakened our position materially, perhaps decisively, by misreading Russia. Hurling insults at Putin will have all the impact of a small child displaying his courage in front of the lion cage at the zoo. How many disasters will befall us before our policy-making elite stops to consider the basic flaws in its thinking?"

Keep looking.........................................

“By the time the average person finishes college, he or she will have taken over 2,600 tests, quizzes, and exams. The right answer approach becomes deeply ingrained in our thinking. This may be fine for some mathematical problems where there is in fact only one right answer. The difficulty is that most of life isn’t this way. Life is ambiguous; there are many right answers - all depending on what you’re looking for. But if you think there is only one right answer, then you’ll stop looking as soon as you find one."
-Roger Von Oech

A perfect tree topping..............................

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That actor doing the introduction seems familiar...

Dinah Washington.............What A Diff'rence A Day Makes



#56 on this list.    Studio version is here.

Happy Birthday Maggie..................

Pharrell Williams and a whole bunch of happy kids...Happy Song



thanks Nicholas

Same tune, very different lyrics......................

 Cloverton...........................................................Hallelujah

The original..........................................

Leonard Cohen........................................................Hallelujah

We took...............................................

......................................our annual turn ringing bells for the Salvation Army last evening.  It was seasonally brisk in the north end of Newark.  We were reminded, once again, of the extreme generosity of this community.  As always, one of the fun things is watching parents teach their little ones about charity by having them put the money in the kettle.  Very cool!

Attention spans.........................................

“Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.”
-Susan Sontag

“Education is every day and everywhere, the only thing you have to pay is attention.” 
-Tim Fargo

"Pat Moynihan could write books with one hand and legislate with the other. I can't; I have a short attention span. The slightest distraction would take me away from writing."
-Barney Frank

Ed. Note:  Considering Dodd-Frank, one might wish he did more writing and less legislating.  Just saying.

"The average attention span of the modern human being is about half as long as whatever you're trying to tell them."
-Meg Rosoff

“Walk slowly through the world and pay attention” 
-Marty Rubin

Fun with statistics.................................

Yesterday, I cast doubt on the prediction that the 2015 norm for work hours would be 9:00 to 5:00,   "and work will contract to fit the time available."   Today, courtesy of Mark Perry, comes this chart indicating that the average hours worked per week does seem to be declining.  Not seeking to be argumentative, but perhaps the shrinking number of work hours is due to the enormous number of folks who have vacated the wide world of work, what with us baby boomers retiring and all.   In my little corner of the world, 9:00 to 5:00 does not seem to be gaining traction.  Your results may vary.

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

John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers.........Crawling Up A Hill

'tis the season...........................................

GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

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Stuff like this...........................................

......................is why I follow A Wealth of Common Sense.

Can I get an Amen.......................................?

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