Take your pick. Talk with you later................

courtesy of cartoonchurch.com

The glory that is the English language....

David Kanigan points the way to a grammar lesson covering
twenty common mistakes.  If correct grammar is your thing,
please visit his source, Jon Gingerich.

The following is the best I could do on short notice.  Please note
that sometimes the correct word is in parenthesis and sometimes
it is not.  What a wondrous (wonderful)  language.  Enjoy:

A disinterested (uninterested) person might (may)
wonder if I was anxious (eager) for the golf tourney to begin. 
I had vowed the outcome was going to be different than
(different from) last year.  Since (Because) I had been
continuously (continually) practicing, I was hitting the ball
further (farther) and was using fewer (less) strokes tee to
green.   The new putter which (that) Santa gave me, has
made putting easier.  One affect (effect) of playing better is
that my Sweetie, who (whom) I love very much, let
(allowed) me to bring (take) my clubs on our weekend get
away.  Ironically (coincidentally) the question of 
whether (if) I should play or not was moot as I felt
nauseous (nauseated) after the bumpy plane ride and
never left our hotel room.  Anyway, back to the tourney.  
All that practice has been impactful.  I hope you will not be
upset nor jealous (envious) when I tell you, I  could win this
thing.

This is almost enough to make me........

...............want to Twitter - but not quite.  From Merlin Mann
comes a noteworthy collection of tweets.  To wit:

thanks Nicholas

Opening paragraph...........

The stories began a thousand years ago, but as stories they
hardly survive at all.  In Chaco Canyon, in what we now call
New Mexico, the remains of massive pueblos dominate the
landscape.  In the greater Mississippi Valley, what seem small
natural hills are in fact massive earthen mounds raised a
millennium ago by human hands.  Who built these places and
why are questions that remain shrouded in mystery.  The
structures in Chaco Canyon are attributed to those called
Anasazi (a Navajo slur meaning "Ancient Enemies") or, more
neutrally, "Ancestral Puebloans."  The creators of the eastern
earthworks are known only by the popular term
"Moundbuilders" or by the scholar's label "Mississippians." 
Fragmentary memories of these people survive in Native
American stories about past migrations and conflicts, but the
lack of clear references to the creators of such dramatic
structures is striking.   It is almost as is some trauma led to
cultural amnesia among those who came later.  Traditions
recited at Acoma Pueblo in the early twentieth century speak
of long-ago folk who were unhappy in their homes and
migrated to the south.  "It is not known how far they went,"
the story says, "but finally they stopped at a place where they
went through the ceremony of forgetting....and left their
sickness and trouble behind.

Daniel K. Richter,  Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts

This is interesting....................

An approximation of the Consumer Price Index from 1800 until
2007.  The past forty years have established quite a trend. 
Source (and more legible graphic) is here,

"How To Profit From The Coming Boom In Apartment Real Estate"

While waiting for an afternoon appointment, I scanned through
our office library and found this so-titled gem of a pamphlet.
Written by Milton Klein, it was published by the Apartment
Management Newsletter.   The year was 1980.  It starts out
like this:

                         WHY THERE WILL BE A BOOM IN
                         APARTMENT RENTAL PROPERTY

     In the last 10 years, the economic rules under which we
live and work have changed.

     The average American can no longer expect his standard
of living to improve annually.  He must beware lest his hard
earned savings - perhaps his plan for a comfortable retire-
ment - are devoured by the ravening beast of the new
inflation.

     The "new" inflation is to the old as a raging tiger is to a
kitten.  This fierce inflationary spiral claws away at the
financial security of each American in ways most of us only
dimly perceive.

     Don't expect Big Government to tame our inflationary
tiger.

Thirty some years later, many plans for comfortable retirement
have been ravaged.  Partly because us folks fully bought into the
notion that real estate values always, and only, go up.  Ooops.

By way of full disclosure, for the past four years, our concern
has been deflation not inflation. 

Regardless,  Milton is correct in the essential argument.  For
many reasons it is a good time to invest in apartment real estate.   

Call us.

On gardening.............

A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild: but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth.  If no useful seed are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.
-James Allen, As A Man Thinketh

Happy Anniversary Sweetie!

We really aren't a democracy, you know.....

thanks mungo

The Heart of Ethics

I believe that we have lost our sense of the importance of
morality because we have lost our bearing on what ethics is
all about.  Stephen Hawking has said that it is every
physicist's dream to some day discover one law of nature that
will ultimately explain absolutely everything, a law so simple
that it could be printed on a T-shirt, a bumper sticker, or a
business card.  In philosophy, we sometimes pursue similar
dreams.  It would be wonderful if we could come up with a
single characterization of ethics sufficient to explain what it's
really all about, and yet also simple enough for a T-shirt, a
bumper sticker, or a business card.
     Let me give it a try.  Ethics is all about:

                 SPIRITUALLY HEALTHY PEOPLE
                     IN SOCIALLY HARMONIOUS
                              RELATIONSHIPS

-as excerpted from Tom Morris's If Aristotle Ran General
Motors: The New Soul of Business

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

In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.  The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valor.  The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces.  Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury.  The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence:  the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government,  During a happy period (A.D. 98-180) of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines,  It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth,

-Edward Gibbon,  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
Volume I

Hey Kurt......time for one more?

thanks jonco

Hmmmmmm.............

Come on people, believe in your product.

We have often said we need a few more companies doing what
we do around here.  Rather than splitting a not-so-big pie, we'd
all be forced to bake a bigger one. Your basic win-win.

The sound of a whip cracking....................

The Execupundit highlights early TV shows that offered a history
lesson - some more accurately than others.  The major theme
appears to have been the rugged individualist and the opening of
the American west.  I had forgotten how much the genre of
"Westerns" dominated my early TV watching.  Michael suggested
we would probably be familiar with at least seven of the shows on
his list. I can remember thirty of them.  Perhaps that is a sign of a
misspent youth, but I don't think so.   Full list is here.

 

The crisis of unleadership.............

Mike Myatt ponders the "cheap imitation of the real thing by
those who are role playing, but are clearly not leading" and
the damage that follows poor leadership. 

Full post is here.   Excerpts here:

"Put simply, true leadership isn't about the leader"

"Society has allowed the practice of leadership to be
commoditized, which has made it all too common for non-
leaders to assume leadership positions thus continuing the
devolution of leadership as a practice."

"When it comes to leadership, it's not enough to be all you
can be, you must focus on helping others become all they
can be."

Thanks David

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

It was a provincial version of the grand entrance.  On June 20, 1775, Thomas Jefferson arrived in Philadelphia in an ornate carriage, called a phaeton, along with four horses and three slaves.  The roughly three-hundred-mile trip from Williamsburg had taken him ten days, in part because the roads were poor and poorly marked - twice he had been forced to hire guides to recover the route - and in part because he had dawdled in Fredericksburg and Annapolis to purchase extra equipment for his entourage.  As the newest and youngest member of Virginia's delegation to the Continental Congress, he obviously intended to uphold the stylish standard of the Virginia gentry, which the Philadelphia newspapers had recently described, with a mixture of admiration and apprehension, as those "haughty sultans of the South....."
-Joseph J.  Ellis
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

On the importance of systems.....

     "Every human being is born to be a creator.  During a lifetime each is able to create far more than he or she consumes.  When in any nation the aggregate of individual creativity is greater than the aggregate of individual consumption, the wealth of that nation increases.  The cause of wealth of nations is human creativity."

"......those who wish to liberate human beings from poverty within their nation should look to its primary resource, the minds and spirits of the citizens at the bottom of society.  The cause of wealth of nations is the empowerment of such persons.  To empower people is the indispensable first step toward rapid economic development."

".....Everywhere on earth human beings are capable of creativity.  But the systems that liberate that creativity are not so universal.  Whether a system of political economy liberates human creativity or inhibits it is the crucial factor."

-Michael Novak, This Hemisphere of Liberty

A funny thing happened on the way to the lecture...............

The Stand-up Economist explains the world:  sh*t happens.
More than several smiles, or your money back.



thanks greg

No...................

     Here's a key to understanding the management of time. 
Either you run your day or your day will run you.  It's really
a matter of deciding to be in charge.  You see, it's much too
easy to relinquish control, to hand over the reins of authority
and lose the ability to direct time.
     One of the best ways to start regaining control of our
time is to learn the most effective time-management word. 
Do you know what it is?  The word is "no."  Learn to say "no."

-Jim Rohn,  Seven Strategies for Wealth and Happiness

Being confronted with questions.........

.....................worth pondering is what happens when you follow
Michael Wade's blog every day.  I especially appreciated this one:

As good a reason as any.................

Happy Valentines Day Sweetie

The Beatles............................................Michelle

Glad I did...........

artwork courtesy of

On idolatry.............

   So I say that when he quoted right, of course, he quoted the absolute truth.  "The love of money is the root of all evil."  He who tries to attain unto it too quickly, or dishonestly, will fall into many snares, no doubt about that.  The love of money.  What is that?  It is making an idol of money, and idolatry pure and simple everywhere is condemned in the Holy Scriptures and by man's common sense.  The man that worships the dollar instead of thinking of the purposes for which it ought to be used, the man who idolizes simply money, the miser that hordes his money in the cellar, or hides it in his stocking, or refuses to invest it where it will do the world good, that man who hugs the dollar until the eagle squeals has in him the root of all evil.
-as excerpted from Russell Conwell's Acres of Diamonds

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

The English language - so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully
unwieldy, so subtle, and now in its never-ending fullness so
undeniably magnificent - is in its essence the language of
invasion.  It was always bound to be so: geology and
oceanography saw to it that the British Isles, since long
before their populated time, were indeed almost always
islands, and the ancestors of all who ever lived there first
arrived by sea from beyond, bringing with them their customs,
their looks - and their languages.
-Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of
the Oxford English Dictionary

to blog, or not to blog............

On the importance of getting lost.........

"The closer man gets to the unknown, the more inventive he
becomes - the quicker he adopts new ways."
-Buckminster Fuller

To enter into the unknown (to partake in an experiment)
involves the willingness to full experience and study things we
don't understand, and to embrace that lack of understanding.

There are different ways of 'getting lost.'  There is the literal
lost, as in being lost in the woods unable to find your way
back to the starting point.  Or there are metaphorical
examples of being lost:  lost in one's head, a lost soul, lost in
time.  In the context of exploring we can think of it in terms
of 'existing in a state where you do not know exactly where
you are headed.'  In this sense we may choose to become
either literally lost, exploring a place we've never been before,
or lost in the sense that we enter into a relationship with
objects and ideas without knowing what the outcome will be.

-as excerpted from Keri Smith's How To Be An Explorer Of
The World:  Portable Art Life Museum

Continuous Education..........

Friend David has an extensive collection of The Teaching
Company's The Great Courses on CD.  He has been kind enough to allow me to dip into it from time to time.  Lately I've been listening to the Books That Have Made History: Books the Can Change Your Life series.  The authors of those life changing books included Plato, Mill, Malory, von Goethe, Thoreau, Gibbon, Acton, Cicero, Gandhi and Churchill.  Yeow.

So it was with great interest that I read this recent essay by Victor Davis Hanson (thanks to whoever led me there - my apologies for not remembering and crediting you). VDH reminds us that "the mind is a muscle.  Without exercise, it reverts to mush."  His solution - to read the great literature. 

"There is an arrogance of an age that comes with access always to better stuff. New technology prompts an assumption that there are always better things to come. Not true. Life was far better in Rome in AD 25 than in AD 425. Would you like to buy a house in Detroit today or in 1940? Me? I would rather drive down the central section of 101 in 1970 than tomorrow. Regress - material, intellectual, and moral - can be as common as progress, if each new generation proves a poor custodian of the laws, behavior, knowledge, and learning inherited from those now gone."

On friendship.............

     My definition of friendship varies with the friend, but certain traits are mandatory.  Friends can occupy the same room without robbing the space of solitude.  They appreciate the difference between conversation and pointless noise.  They don't snipe and bitch about other friends.  They do their share of the mundane tasks without prompting.  They seldom whine, are secure in their own purpose and don't anchor themselves to an energy-sapping cloud of defeat and ready-made excuses when a challenging project presents itself.
-Doc Ford, via Randy Wayne White's Dead Silence

Putting words in their mouths..............

Bottom-up change is a process.  A process that is difficult, often
dangerous, and time-consuming.  History makes me believe that,
when the most successful bottom-up changes have occurred,
those seeking the change occupied the high moral ground, and
further, they behaved in a manner that preserved their hold on
the moral high ground, while continually exposing those
defending the status quo as occupying the not-so-high moral
ground.  Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. come to
mind as practitioners of successful bottom-up change.

Part of my difficulty in seeing much good coming out of the recent
Occupy Wall Street movement was the seeming incoherence of
the message being delivered.  One of my early teachers instructed
that there is little power in being against something.  The power
comes from being for something bigger than yourself.  That sort
of power was not clearly on display last fall.

So, it was with great interest that I read the Business Pundit's
recent post, 10 Clearest Demands of Occupy Wall Street.  The
full post is here.   Rationale for the post here:

"One of the chief criticisms leveled at OWS by detractors
wasthat its message was garbled, incoherent, and the type
of socialism we hate except when its our Medicare.  On the
opposite side of the argument, there's the opinion that maybe
there is just so much wrong that it doesn't easily distill itself
down to a CNN-bullet point.  It may take some reading
between the lines, but here are the most salient points that
emerged from the admittedly schizophrenic protests."

a poem: for monday)

a total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me -

who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self  he was

- but now that fiend and i are such
immortal friends the other's each

-edward estlin cummings

Happy Valentine's Eve Sweetie......

Righteous Brothers......................................Unchained Melody

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

Eldridge Tyler was driving a long straight two-lane road in
Nebraska when his cell phone rang.  It was very late in the
afternoon.  He was taking his granddaughter home after
buying her shoes.  His truck was a crew-cab Silverado the
color of a day-old newspaper, and the kid was flat on her
back in the small rear seat.  She was not asleep.  She was
lying there wide-awake with her legs held up.  She was
staring fascinated at the huge white sneakers wobbling
around in the air two feet above her face.  She was making
strange sounds with her mouth.  She was eight years old. 
Tyler figured she was a late developer.
-Lee Child,   Worth Dying For

A paean to Julian Simon.........

Julian Simon was the optimist's optimist.  His belief in better
things to come was directly tied to his faith in the creativity and
problem solving capacity of us humans.  Yesterday would have
been his 80th birthday.   The blog at Bleeding Heart
Libertarians asks us to remember his message - here. 

Excerpt here:

"What he demonstrated is that freedom is the precondition for human progress, and that this progress uplifted not just those at the top but particularly the least well off among us.  It also shows that the increasing wealth of the Western world has not, and need not, come at the expense of the poorer parts of the world.  Economic growth is a positive sum game and leads not to an increasing scarcity of resources and more difficulty in improving the lot of humanity, but to a world of abundance and longer, better, lives for all."

Blogging..................

I have absolutely no idea...............

thanks jonco

A path..................

thanks Jessica

The madness of the herd..............

More about burdens.............

No burden is he....................

The Hollies............................He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

A verse for Sunday..................

21  Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not
been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood
from the foundations of the earth?

22   It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its
inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the
heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to
dwell in.

23  He brings the princes to nothing; He makes the judges
of the earth useless.

24  Scarcely shall they be planted, scarcely shall they be sown,
scarcely shall their stock take root in the earth, when He will
also blow on them, and they will wither, and the whirlwind
will take them away like stubble.

25  “To whom then will you liken Me, or to whom shall I be
equal?” says the Holy One.

26  Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these
things, who brings out their host by number; He calls them
all by name, by the greatness of His might and the strength
of His power; not one is missing.

27   Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel: “My way
is hidden from the Lord, and my just claim is passed over by
my God”?

28   Have you not known?  Have you not heard? The
everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the
earth, neither faints nor is weary.  His understanding is
unsearchable.

29   He gives power to the weak, and to those who have no
might He increases strength.

30  Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young
men shall utterly fall,

31  But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and
not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

The Holy Bible
New King James Version
Isaiah 40:21-31

A few snippets.......................

..................from the Ox Herding blog

The person no one wants to meet is very close to you.
It lives right inside your own skin.

I alone determine how I experience the world.

On faith.................

Is faith not the sense of the heart just as sight is the sense
of the eye?
-Kahlil Gibran, The Eye of the Prophet

Despotism over the mind.........

"The objections which are urged with reason against State education do not apply to the enforcement of education by the State, but to the State's taking upon itself to direct that education; which is a totally different thing.  That the whole or any large part of the education of the people should be in
State hands, I go as far as anyone in deprecating.  All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education.  A general State education is a mere contrivance for the moulding of people to be exactly like on another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government - whether this be monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation - in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body."

-John Stuart Mill,  On Liberty

artwork  is Edvard Munch's 1893  painting, The Scream

Your father's bankers.....................

We have returned to an era of standards.  While it may be
old-fashioned and inconvenient, it certainly seems prudent and
responsible for a lender to make sure the borrower can repay. In
the long run, both parties, and their neighbors, are better served.

Latest evidence of tightening lending standards:

"At the same time, lenders today have tightened the requirements that potential homeowners must meet to qualify for mortgage loans. Real estate columnist Kenneth Harney, writing for the Washington Post, reported early this year that home loans originated for purchase or guarantee by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now carry average FICO credit scores in the 760 range. That’s a record-high. Loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration now have average credit scores just above 700.

"There was a time when lenders considered FICO scores of 620 to 640 good enough. In fact, that time wasn’t even that long ago - try the housing boom years of 2004 through 2006."

thanks REJblog

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

Mr. Satterthwaite sat on the terrace of Crow's Nest and watched his host, Sir Charles Cartwright, climbing up the path from the sea.  Crow's Nest was a modern bungalow of the better type.  It had no half timbering, no gables, no excrescences dear to many a builder's heart.  It was a plain, white, solid building, deceptive as to size, since it was a good deal bigger than it looked.  It owed its name to its position, high up, overlooking the harbor of Loomouth.  Indeed, from one corner of the terrace, protected by a strong balustrade, there was a sheer drop to the sea below.  By road, Crow's Nest was a mile from the town.  The road ran inland and then zigzagged high up above the sea.  On foot it was accessible in seven minutes by the steep fisherman's path that Sir Charles Cartwright was ascending at this minute.
-Agatha Christie,  Murder in Three Acts

excrescence................

This word for the day is brought to us by Mr. Webster and the
Third Edition of his New World College Dictionary:

excrescence           n.       1.  a normal outgrowth, a natural
                                               appendage, as a fingernail
                                              2.  an abnormal or disfiguring
                                              outgrowth or additions, as a bunion

as in:

Most builders I know would not like having their gables
characterized as excrescences.

Bebe..............

As I grow older part of my emotional survival plan
must be to actively seek inspiration instead of passively
waiting for it to find me."

"Discipline is the servant of inspiration".

“The important thing is not to point a finger at flaws
but to attempt to correct them!”

-Bebe Moore Campbell

On gratitude..............

"Gratitude conserves the vital energies of a person more
than any other attitude tested."
-Hans Selye

Music on the radio........................

Rolling Stones.........................................Beast of Burden

About burdens......................

      "My forebear, Green-Eyed Devil, was asked the same
question by the Great and Honorable Jin-qua when he was
beset by his enemies, Tyler Brock and his scum, and he just
laughed and said, 'Neng che to lao' - an able man has many
burdens.  As I am abler than most I have to sweat more
than most."   
     Tip Tok-toh smiled with him.  "And are you sweating,
Mr. Dunross?"
     "Well, let me put it this way," Dunross told him cheerfully,
I'm trying to avoid the eighty-fourth.  As you know, Buddha
said that all men have eighty-three burdens.  If we succeed
in eliminating one we automatically acquire another.  The
secret of life is to adjust to the eighty-three and avoid at
all costs acquiring the eighty-fourth."
     The old man smiled.  "Have you considered selling
part of your company, perhaps even 51 percent?"
     "No, Mr. Tip.   Old Green Eyed-Devil forbade that."
The lines around Dunross's eyes crinkled.  "He wanted
us to sweat."
     "Let us hope you don't have to sweat too much.  Yes."

-as excerpted from James Clavell's Noble House

We try not to break these..............

Joe Stampone's A Student of the Real Estate Game blog brings
us Sam Zell's Fundamentals.  Zell has the reputation of being
one to the all time great, and hard-nosed, real estate and business
investors.  Here he offers his rules for investing:

Rule #1 - Operate on the condition of no surprises

Rule #2 -Everyday that you’re not selling an asset in your
portfolio, you’re choosing to buy it

Rule #3 - Ensure management’s interests are aligned with
shareholders

Rule #4 - Look for good companies with bad balance sheets

Rule #5 - Nothing should stand between a company and its
fiduciary responsibility to shareholders

Rule #6 - Look for opportunities in markets with pent-up
demand

Rule #7 - The definition of a partner is someone who shares
your level of risks

Rule #8 - Liquidity = value

Rule #9 - Sentimentality about an investments leads to lack
of discipline

Rule #10 - Take meaningful positions so you can influence
your own destiny

Rule #11 - When everyone is going right, look left

Rule #12 - Understand the downside

Rule #13 - It all comes down to Econ 101 – supply and
demand.

No suits here................

From the web page of Sam Zell's Equity Group Investments

Us bloggers don't eat donuts......?

thanks tina

Three things I know.............

I know I've played this before and before.

I know it is not Summertime and I am not wishing it to be
Summertime. After all, we've barely had glimpses of winter
here through the temperate climes of Central Ohio.

I know that, for reasons not fully comprehended, this
performance moves me.  Janis Joplin.....Summertime.

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

   When I visit the back corners of my life again after so long
a time, littlest things jump out first.  The oilcloth, tiny blue
windmills on white squares, worn to colorless smears at our
four places at the kitchen table.  Our father's pungent coffee,
so strong it was almost ambulatory, which he gulped down
from suppertime until bedtime and then slept serenely as a
sphinx.  The pesky wind, the one element we could count
on at Marias Coulee, whistling into some weather-cracked
cranny of this house, as if invited in.
-Ivan Doig, The Whistling Season

That's a relief............................

".......Nevertheless, this new research demonstrates that for a
certain segment of the population, distractibility can actually
be a net positive.  Although we think that more attention can
solve everything - that the best strategy is always a strict
focus fueled by triple espressos  - that's not the case. 
Sometimes, the most productive thing we can do is surf the
Web and eavesdrop on that conversation next door."
-excerpted from Jonah Lehrer's essay Don't Pay Attention in
the Domino Project's End Malaria

A gift............

"I bring you the gift of these four words:
I believe in you."
-Blaise Pascal

The creative processs..............

"In a 1960's IBM film about the computer there is a good
description of the creative process............
The narrator states that the artist is never bored.  She looks
at everything and stores it all up.  She rejects nothing.  She
is completely uncritical.  When a problem confronts her she
goes through all the stuff she has collected, sorts out what
seems to be helpful in this situation, and relates it in a new
way, making a new solution.  She prepares for leaps by
taking in everything."
                                           -Corita Kent

-excerpted from Keri Smith's How To Be An Explorer of the
World:  Portable Art Life Museum

Systematic risk..................

"The fundamental and ancient relationships that underlie credit, going back to passages in Deuteronomy - that borrower and lender enter a relationship that carries obligations on both ends - were severed by firms originating mortgages, taking the front-end profit, and selling the mortgages off into investment pools, defined mostly by their yield, that were then sold far and wide by the great marketing and influencing machines of Wall Street.  Prudence, even common sense, had been bled out of the equation."
-Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington,
and the Education of a President

We claim no original insights into the popping of the housing bubble and the great financial meltdown post 2006.  But, let me relate a vivid memory:

When I first borrowed money to invest in real estate,  the year was 1979 and the place was Park National Bank.  I was a youngster with no visible financial wherewithal and could only borrow because my broker - and mentor - was willing to co-sign the note with me.  While sitting and waiting to talk to the bank's main commercial lender, I got to watch and listen to him work.  He was on the phone, in a no-nonsense kind of way, working his not-very-long list of customers who had missed a loan payment.  It was very clear to me that he took the business of lending, and re-paying, seriously and that there were consequences for both the lender and the lendee when things did not go as planned.

By 2004, it was becoming pretty obvious that the financial industry (except for Park National Bank) had changed dramatically.  Distracted by other things, we did not quite connect the dots in a useful way, but the biggest change to us seemed to be this gaping disconnect between those in charge of lending the money and those in charge of collecting the re-payment of money.  Lenders (many, not all) were being compensated for shoveling money out the door, with no negative consequences if that money was not repaid.  Standards got tossed out the window.  A far cry from 1979.

The writer of Deuteronomy would have been appalled.  Our economy has been reaping the consequences for the past four years.

For a previous post about Park National Bank go here.

Waiting for........................

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

Years ago, in state documents, Vachel Carmouche was always
referred to as the electrician, never as the executioner.  That
was back in the day when the electric chair was sometimes
housed in Angola.  At other times it traveled, along with its
own generators, on a flatbed semitruck from parish prison to
parish prison.  Vachel Carmouche did the state's work.  He
was good at it.
-James Lee Burke,  Purple Cane Road

Hmmmmmm...............

 Chris Guillebeau asks some good questions........

Did I use this time well?  Did I feel alive, and did I do
something that mattered?

Full post is here

Same as it ever was.......................

Talking Heads...............................................Once in a Lifetime

Always with the goals................

Joy is a myth that we seek.  And when we find joy, it angers us, just as the river which hastens towards the plain slows down and darkens when it arrives there.
     For men are only happy through their aspiration to the heights.  And when they achieve their aim, they become disillusioned and aspire to other, longer journeys.
-Kahlil Gibran,  The Eye of the Prophet

A little and a lot...................

"Do a little more than you're paid to.  Give a little more than
you have to.  Try a little harder than you want to.  Aim a
little higher than you think possible, and give a lot of thanks
to God for health, family, and friends."
-Art Linkletter

Learning to learn.........................

The Furniture Guy's heirs are being home schooled.  Looks like it's
working out pretty well.   Full post, with some fun guitar work
thrown in, is here.  Money excerpt is here:

"Technically, I'm his, and his little brother's, music teacher.
But in reality, he's just his own music teacher. He has learned
how to learn -- the only important thing in this life."

Can I get an Amen?

He's talking about the end of "peak oil".......

.............but his conclusion is way more important:

"As Julian Simon taught us, the ultimate resource is human
ingenuity and the human imagination coupled to the human
spirit, which is infinite and will therefore never reach a finite
peak."

Full post from Carpe Diem is here

Calling the bottom.................

From Bill McBride's Calculated Risk blog, which tracts the
world of residential real estate better than most, comes this word:

"And it now appears we can look for the bottom in prices.
My guess is that nominal house prices, using the national
repeat sales indexes and not seasonally adjusted, will
bottom in March 2012."

Full post is here

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tracking the rising sun................7

The only version that really counts.....  The Animals

Quizzes.....................

My sweetie forwarded me an e-mail with two quizzes.  One could
Google the answers to the first quiz, but I suspect that is not the
point here.  

Quiz One:

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Name the last five Heisman Trophy winners.
3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America Pageant.
4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.
5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best
Actor and Actress...
6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series Winners..

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday.
These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their
fields. But, the applause dies, awards tarnish, achievements
are forgotten, accolades and certificates are buried with their
owners

Here's Quiz Two. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few favorite teachers who aided your journey
through school.

2. Name three friends who helped you through difficult times.

3. Name five people who have taught you something
worthwhile.

4. Think of a few people who have made you feel
appreciated and special!

5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

6.  Name a half dozen heroes whose stories have inspired
you.

Easier?    The Lesson:  The people who make a difference in
your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most
money, or the most awards. They simply are the Ones who
care the most!

This arrived under the heading of "Charles Shultz Philosophy." 
Googling Charles Shultz Philosophy, we are led to the snopes
site that tells us that Charles Shulz, the creator of Peanuts, did
not in fact write this.  With the Intertunnel being what it is, who
knows?  And..........does it really matter anyway?

Thanks Sweetie!

Deliberately...................

Standards................

"Each of us will one day be judged by our standard of life,
not by our standard of living; by our measure of giving,
not by our measure of wealth; by our simple goodness,
not by our seeming greatness."
-William Arthur Ward

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

    The Russians call their Kamov-50 helicopter gunship
Chernaya Akula - Black Shark.  The name suits it, because
it is sleek and fast, and it moves with cunning and agility,
and, above all, it is a supremely efficient killer of its prey.
-Tom Clancy (and/or Mark Greaney), Locked On

Back to the drawing board.............

On the virtue of asking Why?..............

......................or the role of curiosity in saving this cat.

"I had seen some of the most reputable physicians in my area 
- ENT surgeons, ophthalmic surgeons, neuro-ophthalmologists,
and neurologists. The arrogance of reputation and education
may have been in the mix. But it was the lack of curiosity,
ignoring the question of what else might this be, that limited
them in a proper diagnosis."

Full post with satisfying conclusion is here

Independency..............

"Nothing tends so much to corrupt and enervate and debase
the mind as dependency and nothing give such noble and
generous notions of probity as freedom and independency."
-David Hume

Tracking the rising sun.....................6

Sinead O'Connor...........................The House of The Rising Sun

This makes as much sense as anything else.....

On writing good.............

(To see the entire post, please visit MmeScherzo)

On abundance................

"Reason and understanding are not like the merchandise that is sold in the market, whose value goes down with abundance; quite the contrary, the more abundant they are, the more their value increases.
-Kahlil Gibran,  The Eye of the Prophet

It's a buyers' market.....................

But maybe not this much of one..............

Choose wisely.............

"The history of free men is never really written by
chance, but by choice; their choice!"
-Dwight David Eisenhower

Tracking the rising sun.............5

Frijid Pink............................................House of The Rising Sun

pretermit................

This word for the day is brought to us by Mr. Webster and the
Third Edition of his New World College Dictionary:

pretermit           v.       1.  to leave out or leave undone, neglect
                                           or omit.  2.  to let pass unnoticed.

This blog has pretermitted the outcome of last evening's
Super Bowl.

A poem for Monday............

           Another Spring

The seasons revolve and the years change
With no assistance or supervision.
The moon, without taking thought,
Moves in its cycle, full, crescent, and full.

The white moon enters the heart of the river;
The air is drugged with azalea blossoms;
Deep in the night a pine cone falls;
Our campfire dies out in the empty mountains.

The sharp stars flicker in the tremulous branches;
The lake is black, bottomless in the crystalline night;
High in the sky the Northern Crown
Is cut in half by the dim summit of a snow peak.

O heart, heart, so singularly
Intransigent and corruptible,
Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,
And moments that should each last forever

Slide unconsciously by us like water.

-Kenneth Rexroth

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

If, as they say, the threat of the hangman's noose has a
powerful way of focusing one's attention, the same can
be said of pregnancy.
-Walter Cronkite,  A Reporter's Life

Folk wisdom.....................

"All work and no blogging  play makes Jack a dull boy."

The Execupundit asks us to recognize the truth, and the not-so-
much-truth, behind much of what passes as "folk wisdom."

A word to the wise:  check in with Michael every day.  You
can't help but learn something.

Burdens..................

A verse for Sunday............

41  Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how the people put money into the treasury. And many who were rich put in much.

42  Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, which make a quadrans.

43  So He called His disciples to Himself and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the treasury;

44  for they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood.”

Mark 12:41-44
The Holy Bible
New King James Version

The widow's mites..........take two

     There is the story about Jesus and some of his disciples who were watching the people come to offer their contributions to the temple.  Some came with large amounts.  Others gave smaller amounts.  Finally a little old woman came and carefully put two pennies in the treasury.  Jesus pointed to the woman and said, "Look at this wonderful woman who gave her two pennies,"  The disciples were puzzled.  "Two pennies!"  they exclaimed.  "Of all the magnificent donations given here today, why are you pointing to this poor woman as an example?"   Jesus said, "You don't understand, but she gave more than anyone else."  They said, "Two pennies - more than anyone else?  Explain that to us, Rabbi."  He said, "Yes, for her the two pennies represented all she had."
     How remarkable!
     But let's examine the story further.  Sometimes what is not told has a more profound lesson that what is told.  Consider what Jesus did not do.  He did not take the two pennies out of the treasury and return them to the old lady, saying, "Here, old woman, we have observed that you are so poor and so pitiful that we are going to give you back your two pennies."   What an insult that would have been!  She would surely have said, "What's the matter, aren't my two pennies good enough?  They represent a considerable portion of what I own.  Would you take away my dignity?"   Of course, this scene did not occur.  And therein lies the most profound lesson.

-Jim Rohn, Seven Strategies for Wealth and Happiness,
an excerpt.

Tracking the Rising Sun...................4

The House of the Rising Sun......................Nina Simone




Nina Simone has a multitude of verions on YouTube. They are all
a bit different, but all very good.  Try here, here or here

Opening paragraphs

     There are no hundred percent heroes.
-John MacDonald, Cinnamon Skin

Pretty short opening paragraph.  Just for good measure, here is
the second:

     Every man can be broken when things happen to him in a certain order, with a momentum and an intensity that awakens ancient fears in the back of his mind.  He knows what he must do, but suddenly the body will not obey the mind.  Panic becomes like an unbearably shrill sound.

Location, location, location............