The truth of this has been tested.............

via 

On becoming epic..........................

............................................................through personal connection.

Creative extremists..............

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.,  Letter from Birmingham Jail

Do your work...........................

Do your work - not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishing's sake;  that little more which is worth all the rest.  And if you suffer as you must, and if you doubt as you must, do your work.  Put your heart into it and the sky will clear.  Then out of your very doubt and suffering will be born the supreme joy of life.

-Dean Briggs, as quoted here

More and better...................................

      The only certain means of success is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.  This is a habit followed by all successful people since the beginning of time.  Therefore I saith the surest way to doom yourself to mediocrity is to perform only the work for which you are paid.
-Og Mandino,  The God Memorandum

Extremism..........................

"If you wish to go to extremes, let it be in sweetness, patience, humility and charity.”  
-Saint Philip Neri

On machines and men.................

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.  No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
-Elbert Hubbard

The Right Stuff......................

Friend Jeff posted a clip, from the movie version of The Right Stuff, in which Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier for the first time......Inspired me to reach for my copy of Tom Wolfe's book.  Just happened to open it to this passage:
     "My God! - to be a part of Edwards in the late forties and early fifties! - even to be on the ground and hear one of those incredible explosions from 35,000 feet somewhere up there in the blue over the desert and know that some True Brother had commenced his rocket launch.......in the X-1, the X1A, the X-2, the D-558-1, the horrible XF-92A, the beautiful D-558-2....and to know that he would soon be at an altitude, in the thin air at the edge of space, where the stars and the moon came out at noon, in an atmosphere so thin that the ordinary laws of aerodynamics no longer applied and a plane could skid into a flat spin like a cereal bowl on a waxed Formica counter and then start tumbling, not spinning and not diving, but tumbling, end over end like a brick....In those planes, which were like chimneys with little razor-blade wings on them, you had to be 'afraid to panic,' and that phrase was no joke.  In the skids, the tumbles, the spins, there was, truly, as Saint-Exupery had said, only one thing you could let yourself think about:  What do I do next?  Sometimes at Edwards they used to play the tapes of pilots going into the final dive, the one that killed them, and the man would be tumbling, going end over end in a fifteen-ton length of pipe, with all aerodynamics gone, and not one prayer left, and he knew it, and he would be screaming into the microphone, but not for Mother or for God or the nameless spirit of Ahor, but for one last hopeless crumb of information about the loop:  'I've tried A!  I've tried B! I've tried C!  I've tried D!  Tell me what else I can try!'  And then that truly spooky click on the machine.  What do I do next?  (In this moment when the Halusian Gulp is opening?)  And everybody around the table would look at one another and nod ever so slightly, and the unspoken message was:  Too bad!  There was a man with the right stuff."

The race is on.............All bets are off..................... Or, the ecstasy of agony..............

thanks Michael

Hmmmmmmm.................

The lonely walk along the extra mile.......

"There are two types of people who never achieve very much
in their lifetimes.  One is the person who won't do what he or
she is told to do, and the other is the person who does no
no more than he or she is told to do."

-Andrew Carnegie

It's about the people...............

I flew Southwest Airlines from Columbus, Ohio to Greenville/
Spartansburg, South Carolina and back this weekend. Actually, I
had to change planes a few times, so side trips to BWI and
Midway were included at no extra charge.  While the rapping
flight attendant was not part of the experience, there is just
something different about Southwest.  While transferring planes
in BWI, I passed  a gate attendant entertaining waiting passengers
with a trivia game, and giving out prizes to boot.  On all four legs
of my journey, the flight crews were having fun and into amusing
us passengers.  I paid a tad more money that I could have if I
had booked United via Orbitz.  It was worth it.  Air travel on
crowded planes is not always fun.  Every seat was taken on each
of the four legs of the trip, yet everyone arrived in good spirits.
That is a tribute to the good people at Southwest.