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

6. If you think that the media likes bad news, then they are bound to like either stagnation story (or both simultaneously, even though they contradict one another). The media deck is stacked against optimists. I would say that it is even stacked against realists.
-As excerpted from this Arnold Kling post

Traffic concerns.....................................

via

Our loss..............................................

 “Today’s Democrats have no more in common with Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson,” notes author Michael Lind, “than today’s Republicans have in common with Abraham Lincoln or Dwight Eisenhower. “
-As excerpted from this post by Joel Kotkin

Pour yourself a smooth one......................

David Sanborn.........................................Rain on Christmas

Christmas fun.......................................

Straight No Chaser...........................12 Days and a bit more

...standing in belief he scarcely can believe...

Remembering that it happened once,
We cannot turn away the thought,
As we go out, cold, to our barns
Toward the long night’s end, that we
Ourselves are living in the world
It happened in when it first happened,
That we ourselves, opening a stall
(A latch thrown open countless times
Before), might find them breathing there,
Foreknown: the Child bedded in straw,
The mother kneeling over Him,
The husband standing in belief
He scarcely can believe, in light
That lights them from no source we see,
An April morning’s light, the air
Around them joyful as a choir.
We stand with one hand on the door,
Looking into another world
That is this world, the pale daylight
Coming just as before, our chores
To do, the cattle all awake,
Our own frozen breath hanging
In front of us; and we are here
As we have never been before,
Sighted as not before, our place
Holy, although we knew it not.

-Wendell Berry
Sabbaths, 1987  VI

Listen more and talk less..........................

Rearrange the letters in the word "listen," and you get "silent," Branson points out. The only way to listen to the other person is to be silent, without interrupting them or planning what you want to say before they're done.

Branson never goes anywhere without a physical notebook so that he can write down things that other people say and remember them. It's his secret business weapon, he says, as it also leads to new business ideas as he goes.

-One of 23 bits of business wisdom from Richard Branson

I don't always agree with........................

.............our President.  But when I do, it's because he has done something like this.

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

Jose Gonzales-Gonzales................................Pancho Claus

Commonalities................................

A few random signs found in the Intertunnel...

What a wonderful world...................................

Elvis Presley.....................If Every Day Was Like Christmas

Jesus Christ Superstar..........................

Last night my sweetie and I went to the Weathervane Playhouse to experience Jesus Christ Superstar on stage.  It was a take-your-breath-away kind of performance.  The staging, the voices, the choreography were all superb.  The quality of the shows at Weathervane continues to amaze.  Since most of you were not there, feel free to listen two of the songs from the show:  I Don't Know How To Love Him, and Everything's Alright.

Real life...........................................

We religious types, even those who detest organized religion, pray for deeper faith and a greater sense of oneness with God.  Once when I was about to fly to the other side of the world and asked my church for prayers, my pastor said, "By the time you get on the plane, it's too late for beggy prayers.  It's time for trust and surrender."  These two things are almost all I want, but unfortunately, neither is my strong suit.  I am very strong on blame, and wish this were one of God's values, but trust, surrender?  Letting go, forgiveness?  Maybe just after a period of prayer, but then when the mood passes and real life rears its ugly head again?  Not so much.  I hate this, the fact that life is usually Chutes and Ladders, with no guaranteed gains.
-Anne Lamott,  Help  Thanks  Wow:  The Three Essential Prayers

Careful what you wish for..........................

via

Walking to School, 1964

Blurring the window, the snowflakes' numb white lanterns.   

She's brewed her coffee, in the bathroom sprays cologne   

And sets her lipstick upright on the sink.   

The door ajar, I glimpse the yellow slip,   

The rose-colored birthmark on her shoulder.   

Then she's dressed—the pillbox hat and ersatz fur,   

And I'm dressed too, mummified in stocking cap   

And scarves, and I walk her to the bus stop   

Where she'll leave me for my own walk to school,   

Where she'll board the bus that zigzags to St. Paul   

As I watch her at the window, the paperback   

Romance already open on her lap,   

The bus laboring off into snow, her good-bye kiss   

Still startling my cheek with lipstick trace.

-David Wojahn

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

Jerry Vale..................................I'll Be Home For Christmas

Ho-ho-ho..................................

near-vacant state.............................

      It was the 18th hole at Lundin Links, the end of my round with the "Fairway to Heaven" people.  Tim said nothing when he offered me his driver because this was our elected Silent Hole, when no one would speak from stepping onto the tee till we left the green.
      I noticed how silence intensified awareness - of my partners, of the light, the course gleaming like a reflective surface, so dried out it was, lying under a vast sky, by an impossible bright Firth of Forth.  Despite being brought up only ten miles away, I'd not played Lundin Links before.  It had been a revelation, a true championship course.  I knew again the sheer spacious naturalness of a links course, and the release and uplift that arises there.
      The 18th green shimmered palely in the distance by the clubhouse as I took out my driver for the last time.  Tired now, sore back, knees, legs, but I'd entered that happy, near-vacant state where there are no nerves and few thoughts left, and the golf flows easily.  A pleasing run of birdie and four pars;  I wanted just one more, then into the cool dim clubhouse to rest and talk with these interesting people.
-Andrew Greig,  Preferred Lies:  A Journey to the Heart of Scottish Golf