Bewilderment......................

Love is the ark appointed for the righteous, 
Which annuls the danger and provides a way of escape. 
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. 
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment intuition.

-Rumi

Developing.......................

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

The Butterfield Blues Band...............................In My Own Dream

I'm hoping........................

.................................................this one makes the cut.

Does he think we are deaf and blind.......?

Paul Krugman opines:

True, Kavanaugh is at least getting a hearing, which the tax bill never did. But he’s bobbing and weaving his way through, refusing to answer even straightforward questions, displaying an evasiveness utterly at odds with the probity we used to expect of Supreme Court justices.

Wow.

Do yourself a favor..................

...........by scrolling through the Astronomy Picture of the Day site on a regular basis.  The only thing better than the pictures is reading their guess at what the picture really means.  We are blessed to be living in the age of the Hubble SpaceTelescope.

The beautiful game.......................

..................my favorite part is the classy nonchalance of the scorer.

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

Marty Robbins...................................................I Walk Alone

 

Reasons I like living in Newark and Licking County..........................

Reason 47A:   The renovation and re-dedication of the "anti-flooding" totem pole.

      The back story is here.   Anyway, the totem pole has been MIA for the past several years.  The wood totem pole was originally erected in 1962.   Did you know that the average life span of a wood totem pole is about seventy years?   After that,  Mother Nature has her way.  Rather than wait until it was too late to save the totem pole, some bright and caring folks (thank you, Dave Fryman!) decided to repair and rehabilitate it.   It has spent the last two years first thoroughly drying out and then being brought back to its original glory.   Today was the unveiling and re-dedication ceremony.   Very timely since our county is receiving 3-6 inches of rain this weekend.  More than 100 folks braved the rain to watch and listen.  Lots of smiles.

A puffball populist.....................?

Actually, I despise Trompe, and am opposed to almost everything he is doing, but I’m not going to give the slightest satisfaction to his “progressive” opponents, whom I despise more. He is no reactionary, and no “conservative,” either, only a puffball populist; why would I like him? (Example: Trompe thinks everyone should have more money; I think they have too much already.)

He has unusual virtues in a politician, however. He is candid about his intentions, and is passing honest, however sloppy with the details; robust in his flattery, as too in his abuse. His self-seeking is open, not disguised. He is the dead opposite of a Machiavellian schemer. This is brave because, while it charms his stiff-necked supporters, the majority in any democratic electorate demand to be lied to. Should the entire media say one thing, and Trompe says another, I would think Trompe more likely to be telling (some aspect of) the truth.

-David Warren, as lifted from this post

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

The Supremes....................Some Things You Never Get Used To

 

Mistakes.............................

     "Everyone makes mistakes.  The main difference is that successful people learn from them and unsuccessful people don't.  By creating an environment in which it is okay to safely make mistakes so that people can learn from them, you'll see rapid progress and fewer significant mistakes."

     "Mistakes will cause you pain, but you shouldn't try to shield yourself or others from it.  Pain is a message that something is wrong and it's an effective teacher that one shouldn't do the wrong thing again."

-Ray Dalio,  Principles

Probably both..................

I’m sure everyone would love to retire in their 50s, travel the world, and sip Mai Tais on the beach. Unfortunately, reality won’t match up with those expectations. This is why I believe we’re not necessarily facing a retirement crisis in this country, but an expectations crisis.

-Ben Carlson, as extracted from here

Uh-oh.............................

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” 

-Joseph Campbell

I don't always read Malcolm Gladwell........

..........but when I do, it's because he writes something like this:

A genius is a genius, Simonton maintains, because he can put together such a staggering number of insights, ideas, theories, random observations, and unexpected connections that he almost inevitably ends up with something great. “Quality,” Simonton writes, is “a probabilistic function of quantity.”

Simonton’s point is that there is nothing neat and efficient about creativity. “The more successes there are,” he says, “the more failures there are as well”— meaning that the person who had far more ideas than the rest of us will have far more bad ideas than the rest of us, too. This is why managing the creative process is so difficult.

Way.............................

“Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.” 

-Roy M. Goodman

Except the essential..................

“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comforts of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things -air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” 

-Cesare Pavese

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

The Moody Blues......................................The Best Way To Travel



And you can fly
High as a kite if you want to
Faster than light if you want to
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel

It's all a dream
Light passing by on the screen
And there's you and I on the beam
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel

We ride the waves
Distance is gone, will we find out?
How life began, will be find out?
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel

And you can fly
High as a kite if you want to
Faster than light if you want to
Speeding through the universe
Thinking is the best way to travel

A light from the shadows..............

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

-J. R. R. Tolkein, The Riddle of Strider

Never mind...............................

from the wide, wide world of XKCD

Maps.................................

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.” 

-Herman Melville, from Moby Dick, as he describes Queequeg's home island

Say it isn't so..............................

......................................................................Burt Reynolds passes

 

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

Paul Revere and The Raiders.......................Don't Take It So Hard

 

This works pretty well......................

.........................................if you are a long-term thinker:

"I don’t fool a lot around with negotiations. If they name a price that makes sense to me, I buy it. If they don’t, I was happy the day before, so I will be happy the day after without owning it."

-Warren Buffett, as culled from here

Ah, science...........................

We’ve a new little report, piece of scientific research, telling us that cheese and red meat are good for us. This in entire opposition to everything governments have been telling us about diet for decades now. This telling us that government is a seriously bad way of doing anything.

-Tim Worstall, from here

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

Wilson Pickett....................................................She's Lookin' Good

 

And we're making more every day.....

"The commercial real estate market is roughly the same size as the U.S. stock market."

-taken from here

Within......................................

In a justly ordered universe, where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual responsibility must be absolute.  A man's weakness and strength, purity and impurity, are his own, and not another man's;  they are brought about by himself, and not by another;  and they can only be altered by himself, never by another.  His condition is also his own, and not another man's.  His suffering and his happiness are evolved from within.  As he thinks, so he is;  as he continues to think, so he remains.

-James Allen,   As A Man Thinketh

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

The Cowsills.................................................................We Can Fly

Convictions.................................

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.  The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson,  from his essay Self-Reliance

Well yeah...............................

via

Bruce shares the stage..............

............................................with the great Sam Moore.

via

This sounds..............................

...................................................................very familiar.

You mean it's not "opposable thumbs".....?

The ability to engage in large-scale cooperative activity is what makes humans as a species unique. It is the secret of our success as a species. It is certainly the secret of the productivity of modern developed economies.

-John Kay, as culled from his recent review of Joseph Henrich's The Secret of Our Success

Copying............................

Nobody is born with a style or a voice.  We don't come out of the womb knowing who we are.  In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes.  We learn by copying.  We're talking about practice here, not plagiarism - plagiarism is trying to pass someone else's work off as your own.  Copying is about reverse-engineering.  It's like a mechanic taking apart a car to see how it works.
      We learn to write by copying down the alphabet.  Musicians learn to play by practicing the scales.  Painters learn to paint by reproducing masterpieces.
      Remember:  Even The Beatles started as a cover band.

-Austin Kleon,  Steal Like An Artist:  10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

Wait.....................What?...............

It is reasonable to ask how the mind could ever have made the ego.  In fact, it is the best question you could ask.  There is, however, no point in giving an answer in terms of the past because the past does not matter, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present.

-The Course In Miracles, Text: 4.II.1-3

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

Etta James.......................................................................Tell Mama

 

Facts............................

via

thanks michael

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

Ray Stevens.........................................................Mr. Businessman

locked..........................

The movie Mr. Nobody examines the core belief that we can find happiness if we make the right choices in life.  We can't; it's impossible.  But the belief that we have real choices that can bring us what we want is cherished by the ego because it keeps us locked into a never-ending quest of looking for happiness where it can't be found.

-David Hoffmeister,  Quantum Forgiveness:  Physics, Meet Jesus

Yep...........................

"One of my goals is to be an ambitious 85-year-old."

-Michael Wade

The contemporary divide................

"People who believe that they are morally superior vs. those of us who will not acknowledge our moral inferiority."

-Arnold Kling

Self.................................

     Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.  Their whims, fancies, and ambitions are thwarted at every step, but their inmost thoughts and desires are fed with their own food, be it foul or clean.  The "divinity that shapes our ends" is in ourselves:  it is our very self.  Man is manacled only by himself:  thought and action are the jailers of Fate - they imprison, being base;  they are also the angels of Freedom - they liberate, being noble.

-James Allen,  As A Man Thinketh

Character qualities.................

The important qualities you need are intelligence, patience, and interest, but the biggest thing is to be rational. In ‘97-8, people weren’t rational. People got caught up with what other people were doing. Don’t get caught up with what other people are doing. Being a contrarian isn’t the key, but being a crowd follower isn’t either. You need to detach yourself emotionally. You need to think about what is going on around you. Being in Omaha helps me in that regard. When I was in NYC, I had 50 people whispering in my ear before noon. It’s hard sometimes, like when the Internet craze hit. Nobody likes to see their neighbor doing stupid things and getting rich. It was like Cinderella’s ball, I think I’ll just have one more dance, it’s not midnight yet. Sounds simple – but it is hard to leave the party. The problem with stocks is they don’t have clocks. You don’t know when it will be midnight so you can leave the party. My partner Charlie Munger and Tony Nicely at Geico are always rational. 160 IQs can say stupid things that sound good. People do silly things, whether they have 120 IQ or 160. You can always improve your rational thought. Rationality is the only thing that helps you. One thing that could help would be to write down the reason you are buying a stock before your purchase. Write down “I am buying Microsoft @ $300B because…” Force yourself to write this down. It clarifies your mind and discipline. This exercise makes you more rational.

Warren Buffett, from here

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

The Unifics...............................................................Court of Love

The ordinary....................

“The great lesson is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's backyard.”

-Abraham Maslow

It just might...........................

“If stupidity got us in this mess, how come it can't get us out?”

-Will Rogers

Organic and messy..................

Relationships bring us everything from joy to sadness to angst - sometimes the same relationship on the same day can bring all those!  Give your relationships attention and they will be the better for it:  more joy, less haste;  more up times, fewer difficult times.  As organic, messy human beings we cannot predict the consistency of our relationships, nor should we try and control them.  We should simple do our best to care for them.

-Nicholas Bate,  as excerpted from here

Don't try this at home..................

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

The Rolling Stones................................................Jig-Saw Puzzle

 

Filling a vacuum.......................

       The most bizarre part of the whole story is that having done what we intended to do in our narrow, purist teenage brains at the time, which was to turn people on to the blues, what actually happened was we turned American people back on to their own music.   And that's probably our greatest contribution to music.  We turned white America's brain and ears around.  And I wouldn't say we were the only ones - without the Beatles probably nobody would have broken the door down.  And they certainly weren't bluesmen.
      American black music was going along like an express train.  But white cats, after Buddy Holly died and Eddie Cochran died, and Elvis was in the army gone wonky, white American music when I arrived was the Beach Boys and Bobby Vee.  They were still stuck in the past.  The past was six months ago;  it wasn't a long time.  But shit changed.  The Beatles were the milestone.  And then they got stuck inside their own cage.  "The Fab Four."  Hence, eventually, you got the Monkees, all this ersatz shit.  But I think there was  a vacuum somewhere in white American music at the time.

-Keith Richards,  Life

Simple, but not easy.................

 Start with a small circle of competence, things you can understand. [Look for] things that are selling for less than they’re worth. Forget about things you can’t understand. You need to understand accounting, which has enormous limitations. [You need to] understand when a competitive advantage is durable or fleeting. Learn that the market is there to serve you, not instruct you. In the investing business, if you have an IQ of 150, sell 30 points to someone else. You do not need to be a genius. You need to have emotional stability, inner peace and be able to think for yourself, [since] you’re subjected to all sorts of stimuli. It’s not a complicated game; you don’t need to understand math. It’s simple, but not easy.

-Warren Buffett, from here

This is almost a given..........

The "We must DO something!" people are, as usual, making things worse.

-as lifted from here

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

The Magic Lanterns...............................................Shame, Shame

 

Unfortunately.....................

"Don’t people learn?   What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history."

-Warren Buffett

It doesn't hurt to remember............

..................................that the veneer of civilization is mighty thin.

"Hammurabi and the American Founding Fathers alike imagined a reality governed by universal and immutable principles of justice, such as equality or hierarchy.  Yet the only place where such universal principles exist is in the fertile imagination of Sapiens, and in the myths they invent and tell one another.  These principles have no objective reality."

-Yuval Noah Harari,  Sapiens:  A Brief History of Humankind

On the wise use of power................

"No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don't have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have."

-Seneca, Moral Letters, 123.4, as quoted here

About diversification........................

“Students learn corporate finance at business schools. They are taught that the whole secret is diversification. But the exact rule is the opposite. The ‘know-nothing’ investor should practice diversification, but it is crazy if you are an expert. The goal of investment is to find situations where it is safe not to diversify. If you only put 20% into the opportunity of a life-time, you are not being rational. Very seldom do we get to buy as much of any good idea as we would like to.”

-Charlie Munger, as quoted here

Bridgewater's...........................

..............................................self-reinforcing evolutionary spiral:

1.   We went from on independent thinker who wanted to achieve audacious goals to a group of independent thinkers who wanted to achieve audacious goals.

2.   To enable these independent thinkers to have effective collective decision making, we created an idea meritocracy based on principles that ensured we would be radically honest and transparent with each other, have thoughtful disagreements, and have idea-meritocratic ways of getting past our disagreements to make decisions.

3.   We recorded these decision-making principles on paper and later encoded them into computers and made our decisions based on them.

4.   This produced our successes and failures, which produced more learnings, which were written into more principles that were systemized and acted upon.

5.   This process resulted in excellent work and excellent relationships that led us to having well-rewarded and happy employees and clients.

6.   That led us to be able to bring n more audacious independent thinkers with more audacious goals to strengthen this self-reinforcing upward spiral.

     We did that over and over again, which produced the evolutionary looping behind Bridgewater's forty-plus years of success.

-Ray Dalio, Principles:  Life and Work

Data over dogma................

"The best investment advice often comes from books that have little to do with money."

-Tony Isola, as culled from here

The magic ring of myth...................

     Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished;  and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and  mind.   It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation.  Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

-Joseph Campbell,  The Hero With A Thousand Faces

The whole world is watching........

Chicago Transit Authority...............................Prologue/Someday

Trifecta........................

Go here for further instructions.

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

From Chicago.............................The 1968 Democratic Convention

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

Two men passed under the wooden arch that led into Campo Santo Stefano, their bodies harlequined by the coloured Christmas lights suspended above them.  Brighter light splashed from the stalls of the Christmas market, where vendors and producers from different regions of Italy tempted shoppers with their local specialities:   dark-skinned cheeses and packages of paper-thin bread from Sardina, olives in varying shape and colour from the entire length of the peninsula;  oil and cheese from Tuscany; salami of all lengths, compositions, and diameters from Reggio Emilia.  Occasionally one of the men behind the counters shouted out a brief hymn to the quality of his wares:  'Signori, taste this cheese and taste heaven';  'It's late and I want to go to dinner:  only nine Euros a kilo until they're gone';  Taste this pecorino, signori, best in the world.'

-Donna Leone,  Blood From A Stone

Maybe the answer................

.....................is that people don't believe what they say anymore?

Paging John E. Smith................

"However, for the first time in my working life, I am tasked with literally making my living through using whatever enterprising skills I have to create relationships.  No paycheck occurs, unless I sell, first myself, then a “deal” to others."

Hoping you're having massive success!   Please check in.

Merged.........................

"An individual human existence should be like a river - small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls.  Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being."

-Bertrand Russell, from his essay How To Grow Old from here

Alter.................................

     A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life.   And as he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his conditions, and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts;  ceases to kick against circumstances, but begins to use them as aids to his more rapid progress, and as a means of discovering the hidden powers and possibilities within himself.
       Law, not confusion, is the dominating principle in the universe;  justice, not injustice, is the soul and substance of life;  and righteousness, not corruption, is the molding and moving force in the spiritual government of the world.   This being so, man has but to right himself to find that the universe is right, he will find that as he alters his thoughts towards things and other people, things and other people will alter towards  him.

-James Allen,  As A Man Thinketh

Romantic consumerism..................

      Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order.  Let's consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad.  There is nothing natural or obvious about this.  A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighboring chimpanzee band.  The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building pyramids and having their corpses mummified, but none of them thought of going shopping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia.  People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism.
       Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experience as we can.  We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions;  we must sample various kinds of relationships;  we must try different cuisines;   we must learn to appreciate different styles of music.   One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routines, leave behind the familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can 'experience' the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people.  We hear again and again the romantic myths about 'how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life'.
     Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible.  If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes).  Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better.
      Romanticism, which encouraged variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism.  Their marriage has given birth to the infinite 'market of experiences', on which the modern tourism industry is founded.  The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms.  It sells experiences.

-Yuval Noah Harari,  Sapiens:  A Brief History of Humankind

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

Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons...Will You Love Me Tomorrow

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

The New Colony Six.................I Will Always Think About You

 

Recommended.................

      via

Dig...................................

School is one thing. Education is another. The two don’t always overlap. Whether you’re in school or not, it’s always your job to get yourself an education.

You have to be curious about the world in which you live. Look things up. Chase down every reference. Go deeper than anybody else – that’s how you’ll get ahead.

-Austin Kleon, from here

Focus..............................

"Whatsoever he had to do at all, he put his whole mind into it and held it there until that was done.  That makes men great almost anywhere."

-Russell Conwell, discussing Abe Lincoln in his Acres of Diamonds lecture

The generous long game..............

"If you show up and show up and show up, and care enough to learn to connect, you will have a skill for life."

-Seth Godin, as culled from here

Subsidiarity..............................

"People should learn to deal with a world, which since the Fall of Man has been demonstrably imperfect.  They should  'cultivate their gardens.'"

-David Warren, as extracted from this Too Big to Succeed essay

subsidiarity defined here 

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

Paul Revere and The Raiders..................................Too Much Talk

Learned something new today.......

Twist ties have meaning.  Who knew?   Back story here

via

For the most part, yes..................

via

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

Paul Revere and The Raiders.....................................Happening '68

 

Recipe............................

After the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep, so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3:00 A.M. in reading popular science.  I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old.  This, I think, is the proper recipe for remaining young.  If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective, you will have not reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the number of years you have already lived, still less of the possible brevity of your future.

Bertrand Russell, discussing his maternal grandmother in his essay, How To Grow Old.  Published here

Seeds...............................

     All the eventful year of 1793, which witnessed the execution of Louis XVI and the outbreak of the war between France and England, the decline of Danton and the rise of Robespierre, was passed quietly by Talleyrand in London.  It was probably during this year that he wrote the treatise on the Duke of Orleans which forms part of his published memoirs.  He offers no defence for, and indeed strongly condemns, the character and conduct of Philippe Egalite, but acquits him of any responsibility for the outbreak or the course of the Revolution.  "If historians strive to attribute the blame of having caused, or directed, or modified the French Revolution, they will be wasting their time.  It had no authors, nor leaders, nor guides.  The seed was sown by writers who, in a bold and enlightened age, wishing to attack prejudice, overthrew the principles of religion and of social life, and by incompetent Ministers, who increased the embarrassment of the treasury and the discontent of the people."  Whether Talleyrand wrote these words in 1793 or at a later date they can be taken as giving his considered opinion, the soundness of which few historians will be inclined to dispute.

-Duff Copper, Talleyrand

Bring forth.............................

     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 seeds 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

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

The Beach Boys............................................................Darlin'

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

The Marvelettes............................My Baby Must Be A Magician

 

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

Canned Heat................................................On The Road Again

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

Leapy Lee..................................................................Little Arrows

 

Brushing up on my.........................

..............................................................................................Yiddish

A readiness..........................

     A readiness to adapt oneself to the facts of the real world is often praised as a virtue, and in part it is.  It is a bad thing to close one's eyes to facts or fail to admit them because they are not welcome.  But it is also a bad thing to assume that whatever is in the ascendant must be right, that regard for fact demands subservience to evil.  Even worse than conscious subservience to evil is the self-deception which denies that it is evil.  When I find individual liberty being everywhere lessened by regimentation, I will not on that account pretend that regimentation is a good thing.  It may be necessary for a time, but one should not on that account acquiesce in it as part of any society that one can admire.

-Bertrand Russell, from his essay "Hopes: Realized and Disappointed", as contained in this fine little tome.

Points of view...........................

        If you're like most people, you have no clue how other people see things and aren't good at seeking to understand what they are thinking, because you're too preoccupied with telling them what you yourself think is correct.   In other words, you are close-minded;  you presume too much. This closed-mindedness is terribly costly;  it causes you to miss out on all sorts of wonderful possibilities and dangerous threats that other people might be showing you - and it blocks criticism that could be constructive and even lifesaving. 

-Ray Dalio,  Principles

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

Booker T & The M.G.'s..........................................Soul-Limbo

Doesn't always seem that way.......

Endless house cleaning..............

via

Connections.........................

“No matter what you look at, if you look at it closely enough, you are involved in the entire universe.” 

-Michael Faraday

image via APOD

Yep..................................

"Yet Trump’s apparent success, flawed as it is, offers one more illustration of how the corruption of ruling U.S. elites created a vacuum that opened the door to Trumpism."

-as cut and pasted from here

Grace under pressure....................

    via

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

Interesting sentences.............

     Lele smiled his crooked smile, one side of his mouth turning down, the other up, a smile Brunetti had always thought best expressed the Italian character, never quite sure of gloom or glee and always ready to switch from one to the other.

-Donna Leon,   Acqua Alta

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

Joe Tex.....................................................Skinny Legs and All