Mini-sabbatical over...................?

 

After 15 years and more than 24,000 posts, a brief vacation from blogging was in order.  Needed a break and took one.  Guess we will see what happens next.

What we did on vacation: Part 1...........

 

Flew to Calgary from Columbus, Ohio (note to future self:  avoid O'Hare if at all possible), got on a coach and drove to Banff.  From Banff we went to Lake Louise.  At Lake Louise we boarded the Rocky Mountaineer and rode the rails to Kamloops and then on to Vancouver.   Other that a handful of people who shared our coach wearing buttons that said "I didn't vote for him" and two signs in Calgary, politics never intruded on our travels.  Blessed relief.   In case you were wondering, the Canadian Rockies and British Columbia are among the most beautiful places on earth.  A few snapshots:

Iconic Banff view

Not a shabby place to stay

Bow River Falls in Banff

Lake Louise

More Lake Louise

Even more Lake Louise

The right traveling partner is important

The Rocky Mountaineer arrives

Vacation, Part 2.........................

 

Spent the first week of October in Lake Keowee, South Carolina with twelve friends of fifty+ years. An amazing blessing.  Our fraternity pledge class in 1970 was 31-strong.   We had a more than a few leave us before graduation and at least four have died post-graduation.  We (averaging 12 attendees) have been gathering in the fall annually for the last 15 years.  My Sweetie, bless her soul, will not let me miss it.  As we age, hanging out with old friends has to be one of the most important, and joy-inspiring, parts of life.

I didn't go either...........

 

     Trudeau briefly worked for a Broadway producer, and when that project fizzled out, he volunteered to do some graphic art for the reelection campaign of the New York City mayor,  John Lindsay.  "I knew his nephew George from St. Paul's," he tells me.  "That summer is memorable for one thing I didn't do—drive up to Woodstock with everyone else in Lindsay's office.  I'd heard it was going to rain."

-Joshua Kendall, Trudeau and Doonesbury: A Biography:  The Cartoonist Who Turned The News Into Art

reversing........................

 

     Our world, and each of our lives, quite suddenly became overwhelming technocratic, sucking millions into the simulation.  Scientists like to say that human knowledge is doubling every twelve months.  That is explosive, exponential growth.  But let's clarify that:  Complicated knowledge is doubling every twelve months.  Complex knowledge, which must be lived in real time and can't be discovered or stored by computers, is not increasing at all.  This asymmetry explains why we're bombarded with ingenious solutions to age-old problems but never seem to make progress toward greater happiness.  In fact, it's the reverse:  We are losing our sense of life's meaning faster and faster.

-Arthur C. Brooks,  The Meaning of Your Life

decided............................

 

      The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also of life.  Once the lave slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil—rich, fertile soil.

     She wasn't a black hole, she decided.  She was a volcano.  And like a volcano she couldn't run away from herself.  She'd have to stay there and tend to that wasteland.

     She could plant a forest inside herself.

-Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

thank you, David

heavy responsibility..................

 

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp.  The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

-Ursula K. Le Guin

technically speaking....................

 

     As an adult, I'll have to come to comprehend the fact that the world, technically speaking, is too vast to be conveyed by language.  It's too grand and too horrific, to complex; too full of love and weather and brutality and governments and movies, to name the first phenomena that come to mind; too overwhelmed by its own history (The Great Vowel Shift! Shintoism! The invention of gunpowder and the printing press and electricity!), not to mention its hopes and fears for the future.

-Michael Cunningham, Unsayable: A Life in Writing

Life.....................

 

      Life, he decided, was never a question of accumulating material things, nor in the struggle for reputation, but in the widening and deepening of perception, increasing the sensitivity of the faculties, of an awareness of the world in which one lives.

-Louis L'Amour, Flint

Trying to learn......................

 

...............................something every day.

Vacation.......................

 

...............................appears to be over.

Good questions all...............

 

You only get one life and you’re going to burn the days either way, so the real question is: What excites you and interests you? What makes you feel curious and alive, perhaps even joyful? What is so "worth it" that you're not worried about the tradeoffs, the hard work, the hassle?

-James Clear, from here

a baseline.................

 

Best practices guarantee average performance. They are literally the prescriptions of others that limit variation and get you to a baseline of performance. Following them virtually ensures that you will be working harder and harder just to "keep up." To be the best, you have to do things that no one can prescribe.

-Shane Parrish, from here

Fun times in downtown Newark this evening.....

..................as thousands of folks lined the streets to meet and greet the Budweiser Clydesdales.

many thanks to Matesich Distributing

curve balls.....................

 

      This cartoon perfectly encapsulates the conflict that occupies nearly every financial decision you make in life.  The essence of successful investing, retirement planning and life in general is balance.  You have to plan for the future but live in the present.  You have to enjoy the moment but plan for old age.  You have to invest for the long run but survive the short run.  It's difficult to balance enjoying life now and ensuring you have the resources to enjoy life later.

     There is no ideal balance for everyone because we all have different goals, needs, resources, expectations, and desires.  The hardest part about planning for your financial future is the simple fact that you don't know what will happen.  No one has it all figured out because no one knows what various curve balls life is going to throw at them.  So you do the best you can.

-Ben Carlson, Risk & Reward: How to handle market volatility and build long-term wealth

On complexity and complications........

 

     One way to understand the numinous right hemisphere is that it manages life's complexity.  Complex challenges in life are easy to understand but impossible to solve, so they can only be lived and understood.  This is in contrast to the complicated parts of life (managed in the left hemisphere), which can be hard to understand but are solvable once and for all.

     Life is full of both kinds of challenges.  I need to understand others' emotions (a complex challenge), but I also need to make smart decisions, which in many cases means acting in spite of these emotions (a complicated challenge).

-Arthur C. Brooks, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness

More things I never knew..............

 

     Many Frenchmen served in America during the Revolution.  There were more French combatants at Yorktown than Americans.*  Lafayette personified all his countrymen in the American mind because he had come early, before the formal alliance, and stayed late.  His French comrades were professionals and, to the extent they had opinions, realpolitikers, serving in obedience to orders and to advance French interests, Lafayette was a volunteer and an enthusiast.  He had the ability to engage and impress people, which might be called a talent if that did not suggest skill and practice, whereas with him the effect was as artless as his intentions were sincere.

-Richard Brookhiser, The Hero Returns: Lafayette and the Legacy of Revolution

*If one queries ChatGPT, one reads that the numbers of foot soldiers at Yorktown were fairly even between French and American (and, combined, significantly outnumbered the British).  When adding the number of French sailors, who blockaded the British and prevented their escape, then ChatGPT says the statistic is correct.

worthy......................

 

     After which, satisfied with the way in which he had conducted himself at Meung, without remorse for the past, confident in the present, and full of hope for the future, he retired to bed, and slept the sleep of the brave.

-Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

Good question.................

 

We all become stories. The question becomes how will yours end?

-Tony Isola, from his post, On The Clock

Just another one of those things I've never given much thought about............

 

The underlying idea here is energy and power aren’t the same. Energy is how much you’ve got. Power is how fast you can use it.

-as culled from today's Stephen McBride post

unlearning............................

 

. . . economics professor Roberto Serrano gave his class a take-home midterm, the way he had for years. The class average came back at 96% in a course where midterms historically averaged 65 to 80. Suspicious that the students were using AI, he made the final exam in-person. The average collapsed to 48.6%, the lowest he’d ever seen. Dozens of students had likely used AI on the midterm, and the final exam revealed how little they actually knew. These are Ivy League students holding the most powerful learning tool ever built, and instead of using it to learn, they used it to skip learning because thirteen years of school didn’t teach them how to learn, or even why it’s important.

-Austin Scholar, from this episode