Road tripping..............................

The kids are doing just fine......................................

Unorganized Hancock.............................Lisztomania




Unorganized Hancock is the house band at Sippican Cottage.  They have been featured here many times before.  Read part of the back story here and be hopeful for the future.

An interesting idea..................................

.......on how to get rid of outdated, outmoded and otherwise silly governmental rules and regulations can be found at The Spirit of Enterprise blog.

It is fairly easy to bash Congress for their failure to act responsibly.  We've done that a time or two here.  And the notion that some independent BRAC-like entity is required to do the necessary pruning, would seem to add fuel to that particular fire.  Why can't they just do their job?

Congress doesn't really need me to defend them, but that's about what's going to happen next.

You may remember that a delegation from Licking County journeyed to the Capital back in the Spring.  Our purpose was to encourage the Central Ohio legislative contingent to continue their political support for the defense work being accomplished at the privatized-in-place former Newark Air Force Station.

One of the things that struck me at the time was the sheer volume of demands, often conflicting, being placed on Congress by We The People.  Until the American people begin to accept the responsibility for their own lives and stop seeking/demanding a governmental action to cure every ill,  real or perceived, we will be getting a Congress that is pulled, tugged, and hamstrung in every which way.  Considering some of the alternatives, I'm okay with that.

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

The Mississinawa Valley High School class of 1997 voted me Best Dressed Guy.  This isn't something I usually share with people.  You should feel privledged I told you.  Don't be too impressed; there were 51 members of the class of 1997, only 29 were guys, and rural Ohio isn't exactly the fashion capital of anywhere.
-Kelsey Timmerman,  Where Am I Wearing?:  A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People that Make Our Clothes

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

Duane Eddy and the Rebelettes.....(Dance with the) Guitar Man

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote....................................

" The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

Kevin Drum writes:

"You might not know this if you subsist on a diet of cable news shouting matches, but it really is possible to believe two things at once:

• Intelligence agencies are a necessary fact of life and governments have a legitimate interest in keeping their operations secret. Anyone who works in the intelligence community knows this, and knows that security breaches are a serious business that will lead to prosecution.
• Americans have recently learned a lot about how pervasive our surveillance operations are, and it's laughable to think we would have learned any of it if Snowden hadn't done what he did. In the end, even if he's made some mistakes along the way, he's done a public service.

I believe both these things."

Me too.

On why a mind is a terrible thing to waste.....

Markets, private property, and profits do not make a modern economy.  And they certainly do not add up to capitalism.  Virtually all precapitalist economies have these necessary, but not sufficient, characteristics.  What is distinctive about the capitalist economy is its original discovery that the primary cause of economic development is mind.  The cause of wealth is invention, discovery, enterprise.
-Michael Novak,  This Hemisphere of Liberty:  A Philosophy of the Americas

The wonders of the Intertunnel..................

Newark, Ohio is located about 30 miles due east of Columbus.  Last evening, Ray (the not-so-simple-village-undertaker) Visotski stopped by to say hi to some blogging friends.  He was on his way home from delivering his youngest daughter to Marquette University.  As the map tells the story, Newark is only about three or four hours out of his way.  What does three or four hours matter when good friends, good beer, and good cigars are involved.  Thanks for the mighty effort Ray.

Ray Visotski, Kurt Harden, and assistant managing editor of
Cultural Offering, David Morrison pose for the camera man.

Good song, painful video..................

Billy Joel...................................We Didn't Start the Fire

Ouch...................................

"Indeed, the US Presidential election is a sort of quadrennial Olympics for con men. The odds of of a randomly selected untrained amateur winning the Olympic 500m race are poor when hundreds or thousands of professionals train for years for the event. The probability of a decent human being winning the White House when competing against hordes of amoral grifters whose skills are honed to a razors edge by years of competition are even lower."
-Perry Metzger, as excerpted from this fun blog post

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

On April 27, 1962, Muslims gathered for the Friday evening prayer service at Muhammad's Temple No. 27 in South-Central Los Angeles, east of Culver City and west of Watts.  Some two hundred followers of Elijah Muhammad sat in folding metal chairs, separated by sex - the women wearing head coverings and floor-length dresses, generally white, and the men in distinctive dark suits with suspenders and bow ties, their heads closely shaved.  Facing them from the podium, a blackboard posed in large letters the thematic question of the Nation of Islam:  "WHICH ONE WILL SURVIVE THE WAR OF ARMAGEDDON?"  To the left, framed by a cross, and American flag, and a silhouette of a hanging lynch victim, the blackboard offered a grim choice labeled "Christianity, Slavery, Suffering, Death," in pointed contrast to the alternative proclaimed on the right:  "Islam, Freedom, Justice, Equality."  Thus, explained the quick-witted Minister John X Morris, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad answered one of the central puzzles of all religion - how to reconcile unmerited suffering with the presence of a benevolent God.  Allah had permitted the Christian nations to bring Africans into slavery - "chewing on men's bones for three hundred years," as Muhammad put it - to test the will of the victims to reestablish their religious dignity.
-Taylor Branch,  Pillar of Fire:  America in the King Years  1963-1965

Truer than true..............................

"In politics an absurdity is not a handicap."
-Napoleon Bonaparte

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

Susan Maughan.....................................Bobby's Girl

(lips and words get a bit out of sync, but..................)

Being a fan of "unintended consequences".....

Christopher Hitchens, a very quotable man, said, "Unintended consequences aren't always disastrous."   Surely, one thinks, this must be true.  Then, lo and behold, I stumbled over this blog post proving the point:

"The baguette as we know it dates to the 1920s and was a byproduct of a protective labor law that prevented French bakers from working between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. That made it impossible to prepare traditional round loaves by breakfast time. Bakers had to turn to a new kind of bread, whose thin shape made it faster to prepare and bake. The baguette—French for "little stick"—quickly became a breakfast essential throughout France."

Growth anyone.......................?

Picture post card kind of look at Shanghai, circa 1990

About the same view of Shanghai, twenty years later

Randomness..........................................

all pictures above were saved on my computer from the following contributing blogs:  here, here, here, here, here, and here

Heeere's Johnny.........................

Steve Martin and Johnny Carson from a long time ago.......

On the virtue of "not doing"........................

“Anything not worth doing is worth not doing well.”    -Robert Fulghum

To see what is worth "not doing,"  check out this list of 51 "Don'ts" from The Execupundit.

Don't let it get away....................................

U2..........................................................Beautiful Day

Pure democracy....................................

Mystery and delight............................................

“This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer, ‘Scientific humanism.”  That won’t do.  A poor show.  Life is a mystery, love is a delight.  Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e. God.  In fact, I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less.”

-Walker Percy, from Questions They Never Asked Me (Lord John Press, 1979)

via

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

On TV.................................The New Phil Silvers Show

(Watch the first minute.  Hard to believe the year was 1963)

Embracing uncertainty.................................

No matter what your creative endeavor is, uncertainty will be lingering around every corner. Embrace it and channel it, and you’ll gain the confidence to lead your team down a foggy path that always changes.
-Scott Belsky, as excerpted from this blog post.

cartoon via

On copping an attitude........................

Noted philosopher Kenny Rogers once wrote, "every hand's a winner, and every hand's a loser."  The brain trust in Washington, D.C. seems to have misplayed their hand here of late in the Middle East.  Not so sure that I could have done better, but then I don't get paid to.  Stuart Schneiderman weighs in on our efforts to date in this essay; excerpt here:

An attitude makes you feel good. It makes you feel virtuous. It makes you feel as though you are on the side of the angels. A policy allows active management of a crisis. It helps you to direct events toward the best outcome. To cop an attitude you can stand on the sidelines or in the audience and watch the play unfold. To conduct a policy you have to be actively engaged.

More from the good old days.............

Here is a list of things you don't hear parents say too often these days, including........

If you get a spanking in school and I find out about it, you’ll get another one when you get home.

Ego, Ergo.................................................

It is not to late to celebrate.......................

It says so here.  Not to be confused with International Bacon Day

Again..........................................

James Taylor........................................Fire and Rain

A mighty big IF...................................

"If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.  As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.  This is the divine mystery supreme.   A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness.   We need not wait to see what others do."
-Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

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

     Nearly seven hundred Negro communicants, some wearing white robes, marched together in the exodus of 1867.  They followed the white preacher out of the First Baptist Church and north through town to Columbus Street, then east up the muddy hill to Ripley Street.  There on that empty site, the congregation declared itself the First Baptist Church (Colored), with appropriate prayers and ceremonies, and a former slave named Nathan Ashby became the first minister of an independent Negro Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama.
-Taylor Branch,  Parting the Waters:  America in the King Years  1954-63

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

Bobby Darin......................You're The Reason I'm Living

Looking and seeing............

Brain Pickings reviews On Looking:  Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes.  In it, the author, Alexandra Horowitz, creates "a record of her quest to walk around a city block with eleven different 'experts,' from an artist to a geologist to a dog, and emerge with fresh eyes mesmerized by the previously unseen fascinations of a familiar world.  The "art of seeing has to be learned," but, if it is, we can blend "the mindfulness of Sherlock Holmes with the expansive sensitivity of Thoreau."  Hmmm.  Sounds like a book for the shopping cart.

In the hands of children.......................

                  Of History and Hope

We have memorized America,

how it was born and who we have been and where.   

In ceremonies and silence we say the words,   

telling the stories, singing the old songs.

We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.   

The great and all the anonymous dead are there.   

We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.   

The rich taste of it is on our tongues.

But where are we going to be, and why, and who?   

The disenfranchised dead want to know.

We mean to be the people we meant to be,   

to keep on going where we meant to go.

But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how

except in the minds of those who will call it Now?

The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?   

With waving hands - oh, rarely in a row -

and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.

Who were many people coming together

cannot become one people falling apart.

Who dreamed for every child an even chance

cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.

Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head   

cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.

Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child   

cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.

We know what we have done and what we have said,   

and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,   

believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become -

just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.

All this in the hands of children, eyes already set   

on a land we never can visit - it isn’t there yet -

but looking through their eyes, we can see   

what our long gift to them may come to be.   

If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

-Miller Williams

The good old days..........................weren't

We can whine and complain about life in this day and age, however.........careful what you wish for.  We could be living in Jane Austen's era.  Some nice people at the Huffington Post offer us 13 reasons why that would be a serious step backwards.  Austen (1775-1817) wrote, among other things, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park.  Enjoy the historical slideshow and be glad.

cartoon via

From scratch..........................

"If you want to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
-Carl Sagan

photo description and enlargement here

And it's a good thing......................

David Kanigan is chasing his bliss again.  Helpfully, he points to this article highlighting some simple steps to ease the onset of happiness.  I'm loving this one:

"As a final point, it’s interesting to note that as we get older, particularly past middle age, we tend to grow happier naturally."

If you don't keep up with David's blog, you will be missing a lot of smiles.

#5 on Kurt's Top 500.........................

"I wanted an electric train for Christmas but I got the saxophone instead."
-Clarence Clemons
 
The E Street Band......................................Jungleland

Fallible..................................

“The people who run corporations, heads of state, the person selling you food, you, me and every human being are all fallible and capable of using power to dominate other people. Liberty is not a pill that makes men angels."
-The Dread Pirate Roberts, as excerpted from here

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

The prairie in its loneliness and peace:  that was what came back to him toward the end of his life, after he had pulled the rug out from under all the literary nabobs, and fired off all his nubs and snappers, and sashayed through all the nations, and collected all his ceremonial gowns and degrees, and tweaked all the grinning presidents, and schmoozed all the newspaper reporters, and stuck it to all his enemies, and shocked all the librarians, and cried out all his midnight blasphemies, and buried most of his family.  The prairie was what came back to him as he wrote in 1987 - speaking, in his conceit, from the grave, and thus freely.  He remembered what had mattered the most, the earliest.  He thought not of the Mississippi River, which he encountered most fully later in his life, but of "a level great prairie which was covered with wild strawberry plants, vividly starred with prairie pinks, and walled in on all sides by forests" - a swatch of the great western carpet yet a decade from disfigurement by the grooves of the California gold rushers.  There his prodigious noticing had begun.  His way of seeing and hearing things that changed America's way of seeing and hearing things.
Ron Powers,  Mark Twain:  A Life

Abstractions...............................

"The federal government is there, carrying out various programs to assure that everybody will eat.  Under the circumstances, that is commendable.  But it is commendable only as a temporary expedient.  To be worthy of admiration in any final sense, government help will have to accomplish the result of making itself unnecessary.  It must be acknowledged by both the government and the people that the charity programs can do no more than the minimum - can only prevent starvation.  An agency or bureau or institution cannot exercise taste and judgment, cannot be motivated by love or compassion, cannot value a man for his industry or his art or his pride;  they are abstractions themselves and must deal with people as abstractions.
     "To give a man bread when he needs a tool is inept and unfeeling as to give him a stone when he needs bread, and this painful clumsiness is inherent in the generalizations of the social planners and the organized charities.  Their most "humane" endeavors almost necessarily involve an attitude toward humanity that debases it.  The tendency to deal with individual citizens exclusively in terms of the abstractions of their class or condition is to strike at the very foundation of American liberty, which was established to safeguard the possibility and the right of escape from such abstractions - the right to become exceptional."
-Wendell Berry, as excerpted from The Long-Legged House

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

Roy Orbison..............................................In Dreams

Bambi and Godzilla....................

A few excerpts from Walter Russell Mead's latest essay on the current mess in the Middle East:

"President Obama has had a rude awakening in the Middle East. The region he thought existed was an illusion built on American progressive assumptions about the way the world works."

"The President and his team have been taken in by two very old American mistakes about the rest of the world. One is to confuse the end of history with the morning news. The other is to exaggerate America’s importance to the rest of the world. The President is in good company here; most of our political and policy class is deeply steeped in these beguiling fantasies about how the world works, and most of his critics on both the left and the right are as deeply and fatally confused about the region as he and his advisors have been."

"As a result, there are many countries in the world where the dish Americans most want to eat just isn’t on the menu."

"In such situations, American diplomacy is generally ineffective and often unites a whole country against us, frustrated by the mix of arrogance and cluelessness that we generally bring to such situations. We issue orders that cannot be fulfilled, judge people and movements by unrealistic standards, form strategic partnerships with individuals and groups who don’t understand their own country very well, set unobtainable goals and fail to grasp the most basic facts of political and social life. We do this over and over again; President Obama has followed a well worn trail into his current predicament."

Full essay is here.

On equality.......................

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition."
-Timothy Leary and/or Marilyn Monroe

33 Guidelines for investing in real estate...

A review of the 33 Guidelines.....................

1.   Do it.

2.   Know why.

3.   The money is made when you buy.

4.   Value is derived from usage.

5.   Location, location, location.

6.   Know what you are, and are not, buying.

7.   There is no bad real estate, only wrong owners.

8.   Survive your first investment.

9.   If it is too good to be true, it probably isn't.

10. These are business relationships, not friendships.

11.  Good management makes good investments.

12.  Budget for management.

13.  Budget for vacancy/credit loss.

14.  Cash flow sometimes equals deferred maintenance.

15.  Roofs leak, just a matter of when.

16.  Budget for taxes, income that is.

17.  What you do, or don't do, matters.

18.  Have a professional team.

19.  Read the fine print.

20.  Leverage is a two-edged sword.

21.  Pyramiding is not to be undertaken lightly.

22.  Don't borrow just because they will lend you the money.

23.  There is a lot of land.

24.  Pay attention to your financing.

25.  It is an investment, not a tax shelter.

26.  Hold it, or add value.

27.  Flipping is speculating, not investing.

28.  Don't sell, exchange.

29.  Don't eat your seed corn.

30.  Don't sell the little piece before you sell the big piece.

31.  Have a plan for the future in mind.

32.  Cash flow is king.

33.  The IRS always bats  last.

Retirement planning.................?

via

A little slice of heaven for Sunday night.............

David Sanborn..............................................Pearls

Gets my vote as best rock and roll song ever....

The Eagles...........................................Hotel California



I don't care that the Rolling Stone magazine had it ranked 49th all-time.  They are often wrong.

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

"When I was a very small boy indeed,"  Dickens recalled in his 1853 essay "Gone Astray," "I got lost one day in the City of London."  It is hardly an unusual childhood memory, especially at a time when the churning crowds of Britain's cities made it all too easy for individuals to lose their moorings and be set adrift in a sea of strangers.  In 1849, commenting on the number of children "left inefficiently attended" in Manchester, the journalist Angus Reach claimed that every year "more than 4,000 go annually astray and get 'lost' in the streets," while newspapers like the Times regularly carried notices pleading for information about those who had gone missing.  They included a nine-year-old boy last seen with a man who had promised him "lots of sugar - a great many basins full," and a seven-year-old who disappeared wearing "a blue jacket, black trousers, blue waistcoat, old brown pinafore, cloth cap, and hob nailed boots" - a heartbreakingly precise description of clothes so common they would have worked like a cloak of invisibility in the bustling city streets.
-Robert Douglas-Fairhurst,  Becoming Dickens:  The Invention Of A Novelist

Wait, isn't that a good thing..................?

"Every day one reads meretricious babble about 'globalization' and the abolition of frontiers, the most of it amounting to little more that celebration of the world-wide availability of Wheel of Fortune."
-Christopher Hitchens,  as excerpted from "A Subverting Sensualist", 1996

A verse................................

4.  Where no oxen are, the manger is clean.
     But much increase comes by the strength of the ox.

Proverbs 14:4
The Open Bible
New American Standard

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

Eydie Gorme...........................Blame It On The Bossa Nova

33 Guidelines for investing in real estate..........

Guideline #33:   The IRS always bats last.

You never truly know how well any financial investment has performed until you have sold it and paid the tax on any gain.

One of the interesting things about investment real estate is that the IRS captures the tax that was sheltered by depreciation at the time of the sale.  One should not enter into a contract to sell an investment property that has been owned for a long time without first consulting with one's accountant.  Please.

Never forget - the IRS always bats last.

Fortune cookie wisdom........................

I cant believe I missed it......................

National Apostrophe Day was August 16th!

To belatedly celebrate, take this handy apostrophe quiz.   Miss Francis would be disappointed (or maybe surprised I didn't miss more) that I got two wrong.  Oh well.

Thanks Mark