a process of elimination..........

 

Brooks asks Hughes what he most would like to have more of than an average person: power, money, pleasure, or honor. They go through a process of elimination. What does Hughes care least about having in excess of the average person? Power. Then what? money. Then what? pleasure. So Hughes cares most about honor. He wants to be respected by people who are important to him. I also would have eliminated power first and ended up caring most about honor, but I care more about money than pleasure. Money to me represents security for my wife and family.

-Arnold Kling, from here

Memorial Day........................................

 

this mode of love....................

 

When I was brought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy between two policemen, Robbie waited in the long dreary corridor, that before the whole crowd, whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence, he might gravely raise his hat to me, as handcuffed and with a bowed head I passed him by.  Men have gone to heaven for smaller things than that.  It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stooped to kiss the leper on the cheek.

-Welty/Sharp, The Norton Book of Friendship, Oscar Wilde from De Profundis

But for reconciliation to take place..........

 

.....................................there must first be truth.

Showing up.......................

 .............................on Kurt's radar is an honor.

On being useful.....................

      The scope of the economic crisis is still uncertain as I write this; it may turn out to be a mere disturbance, soon forgotten.  But, however briefly, we are experiencing a genuine crisis of confidence in our most prestigious institutions and professions.  This presents an opportunity to reconsider some basic assumptions.  The question of what a good job looks like—of what sort of work is both secure and worthy of being honored—is more open now than it has been for a long time.  Wall Street in particular has lost its luster as a destination for smart and ambitious young people.  Out of the current confusion of ideals and confounding of larger hopes, a calm recognition may yet emerge that productive labor is the foundation of all prosperity.  The meta-work in trafficking in the surplus skimmed from other people's work suddenly appears as what it is, and it becomes possible once again to think the thought, "Let me make myself useful."

-Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

People don't talk like this much anymore.....

 I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

-Theodore Roosevelt, as he concludes this speech

I'm old enough to remember...........

...............................when we were always on the honor system:

Honor...............................

     Our earnest eyes scan the busy groups on the opposite slopes, breaking camp for the last time, taking down their little shelter-tents and folding them carefully as precious things, then slowly forming ranks as for unwelcome duty.  And now they move.  The dusky swarms forge forward into gray columns of march.  On they come, with the old swinging route step and swaying battle-flags.  In the van, the proud Confederate ensign - the great field of white with canton of star-strewn cross of blue on a field of red, the regimental battle-flags with the same escutcheon following on, crowded so thick, by thinning out of men, that the whole column seemed crowned with red.  At the right of our line our little group mounted beneath our flags, the red Maltese cross on field of white, erstwhile so bravely borne through many a field more crimson than itself, its mystic meaning now ruling all.
      The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply.  I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms.  Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least.  The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union.  My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness.  Before us in proud humiliations stood the embodiment of manhood:  men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve;  standing before us now, thing, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond' - was not such manhood to be welcomed back into the Union so tested and assured?
      Instructions had been given;  and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds out the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry" - the marching salute.  Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe;  then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the  same position of the manual, - honor answering honor.  On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum;  not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing against the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as it were the passing of the dead!

-Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain,  The Passing Of The Armies, excerpting from the chapter "Appomattox"

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