The hopeful birth.........................

 ................of a subdivision:  Episode 23:

We have had a rainy spring.  Hard to put pipe in the ground when it is soaking wet.  Having said that, progress is being made.  The sanitary sewer main lines have been installed and we are about halfway through the installation of the storm sewer system.  Nothing wrong here that a few dry weeks won't cure.

Preparing the ground for a storm structure

Work completed about an hour ago

Lifting the storm structure

Attention to detail: cleaning mud off the bottom of the structure

Put it right about there

Right where it belongs

D. R. Horton building out the 49 first phase lots

customers.................

      The reach and power of Giannini's branch banking empire in California was extraordinary, beyond the comprehension of people living outside the state.  "I still can't realize that in forty years a man has built something out here that compels the awe—that's the right word, awe—of all New York," said an East Coast financial writer on his first trip to San Francisco in the late 1940s.  With 504 branches and four million individual customers, Bank of America held the savings deposits of one out of every three Californians, or 40 percent of the state's total bank deposits. . . .

      Giannini always remained the bank's most energetic booster.  He would go to extremes to attract new depositors and to keep them as customers.  He did this partly to reaffirm Bank of America's relentlessly promoted images as a "people's bank" and  partly out of his own fierce competitive urge; there was no such thing as an unimportant customer.  "When you sell people," he was fond of saying, "keep them sold."

      As successful as Giannini was, nothing generated more public comment than his disregard for his own wealth.  He saw no point in accumulating money or in surrounding himself with the signs of material success.  The home in which he lived until the end of his life was the one he had purchased when he was selling fruits and vegetables on the San Francisco waterfront. The wardrobe of the man whom Fortune would include in its Hall of Fame of America's ten greatest businessmen consisted of four off-the-racks suits, three pairs of shoes, and a handful of shirts and ties.  "My hardest job," he said on one occasion, "was to keep from becoming a millionaire."

Felice A. Bonadio, A. P. Giannini: Banker of America

a common effort....................

      The socialist Robert Nisbet once lamented that no great state can really long endure without a common effort to create unity and a collective belief that it is exceptional or at least better than the alternative: "No government can hope to achieve anything of a political, social, and economic character that rises much above the level of a written statute unless there is present a sense of veneration for that government that is but another way of expressing patriotism."  In other words, a state that does not exalt common citizenship itself loses credibility.  Cynical citizens see no need to heed its rules.

-Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen

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

On the television............David Carradine in Kung Fu

 

Steady as she goes...............

 Hard money in the long run is more sustainable than easy money in the short run.

-Ben Carlson, as he looks to John Candy as an investing role model

Wisdom............................

 ...........................follow the three R's.

mind-body learning..............

       Tightly constrained by risk-averse, health-and-safety-obsessed society, many children are unable to light fires, paddle canoes, make shelters, use knives or cope with darkness.  Further, children are discouraged from acts of physical courage and this is more serious than it appears, for we learn with our bodies as well as our minds—or rather we learn with the mind-body—and when we see our physical selves modelling bravery, our sense of moral courage, political courage, emotional courage or intellectual courage is heightened.

-Jay Griffiths, A Country Called Childhood

The adventure-monitor creeps up .......

      The risk-averse society denies the very idea of freedom's role, it stops chance throwing a wild card, it kills the free play of luck.  The adventure-monitor creeps up. pouring cold water on every fire-pit, banning people from bringing home-made cakes to school fetes.  In the otherwise important UNICEF report into childhood well-being in 2007, the authors comment that health and safety "did not feature highly in children's priorities".  Who knew?

-Jay Griffiths, A Country Called Childhood

heart...........................

 When your heart is filled with gratitude for what you do have, your head isn't nearly so worried about what you don't.

-Douglas Pagels

fund-raising...............

      War is, by far, the most expensive of all government operations.  And both the Confederate and United States governments faced unprecedented financial stresses in funding the Civil War.  How each of them met the challenge helped determine, in no small way, the outcome of the war.

     Governments have only three ways to fund operations.  They can tax, they can borrow, and they can print.  Both governments did all three, but the particular mix was very different.  The northern states had a much more advanced economy and a well-established financial system in place.  As a result, the U. S. was able to throw much of the cost of the war onto the future.  In 1860, the national debt had stood at $64 million.  By 1866, it was at $2.7 billion, and about five percent of the North's population has invested in federal bonds.  So the North was able to raise two-thirds of its revenues by borrowing. . . .

     The South had to meet fully 50 percent of its revenue by printing money.  State and City governments also printed money.  And because the South lacked good paper mills and state-of-the-art printing facilities, counterfeiting flourished.  Altogether, the South printed about $1.5 billion in that money, three times as much as the North, despite having only twelve percent of the circulating currency before the war and 21 percent of banking assets.

     The result was catastrophic inflation.  Prices rose 700 percent in the South in just the first two years of the war.  As the war continued, the inflationary spiral deepened and the southern economy began to spin out of control.  Living standards fell sharply while hoarding, shortages, and black markets spread, eroding popular support for the war.

-John Steele Gordon, from his essay Inflation in the United States

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

At the cinema.....................................The Godfather

 

George gives a spelling lesson....

 via

a special term.................

      Money is just another commodity, no different from petroleum, pork bellies, or pig iron.  So money, like all commodities, can rise and fall in price, depending on supply and demand.  But because money is, by definition, the one commodity that is universally accepted in exchange for every other commodity, we have a special term for a fall in the price of money:  we call it inflation.  As the price of money falls, the price of every other commodity must go up.

     And what causes the price of money to fall?  The answer is very simple: an increase in the supply of money relative to other goods and services.

-John Steele Gordon,  from his essay, Inflation in the United States

a work-in-progress............

      Happiness comes from solving problems.  The keyword here is "solving."  If you're avoiding your problems or feel like you don't have any problems, then you're going to make yourself miserable.  If you feel like you have problems that you can't solve, you will likewise make yourself miserable.  The secret sauce is in the solving of the problems, not in not having problems in the first place.

     To be happy we need something to solve.  Happiness is therefore a form of action; it's an activity, not something that is passively bestowed upon you, not something that you magically discover in a top-ten article on the Huffington Post or from any specific guru or teacher.  It doesn't magically appear when you finally make enough money to add on that extra room to the house.  You don't find it waiting for you in a place, an idea, a job—or even a book, for that matter.

     Happiness is a constant work-in-progress, because solving problems is a constant work-in-progress—the solutions to today's problems will lay the foundations for tomorrow's problems, and so on.  True happiness occurs only when you find the problems you enjoy having and enjoy solving.

-Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

melting-pot ethos......

      America, which survived a gory civil war among political and geographical factions, has become so far one of history's few exceptions.  The ultimate rationale of America's unique Constitution led Americans eventually to define themselves by their shared values, not by their inconsequential appearances.  Eventually, most who were willing to give up their prior identities and assume a new American persona were accepted as Americans.  The United States has always cherished its universally applicable melting-pot ethos of e pluribus unum—of blending diverse peoples into one through assimilation, integration, and inter-marriage in the manner that diverse colonies united to become one nation.

-Victor Davis Hanson,  The Dying Citizen

On finding out........................

 We are by now so accustomed to the cult of expertise that the very notion of honoring and paying heed to our directly felt experience of things—of insects and wooden floors, of broken-down cars and bird-pecked apples and the scents rising from the soil—seems odd and somewhat misguided as a way to find out what's worth knowing.

-David Abram, Becoming Animal:  An Earthly Cosmology

conceptually malevolent................

      This is why the risk-averse attitude of modernity is not only annoying but conceptually malevolent.  It works against the correct instinct children have that they must find a working relationship with chance and risk . . .

-Jay Griffiths, A Country Called Childhood

In the background.................

The Beach Boys..........................Endless Summer

 

Traits for successful investing............

 In fact, most of Buffett’s pithy aphorisms boil down to the same basic message: “Just be sensible.”

This may be easier said than done.

-from this HumbleDollar post

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

 Mark Twain said kids provide the most interesting information, “for they tell all they know and then they stop.” Adults tend to lose this skill. 

-Morgan Housel, from this post

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

The Eagles............................Peaceful Easy Feeling

 

Checking in...............................

 ..........................with Matt Ridley:

Market failure is a favourite phrase; government failure is not.

To put my explanation in its boldest and most surprising form: bad news is manmade, top–down, purposed stuff, imposed on history. Good news is accidental, unplanned, emergent stuff that gradually evolves. The things that go well are largely unintended; the things that go badly are largely intended.

Life is a Sisyphean race, run ever faster toward a finish line that is merely the start of the next race.

Random violence makes the news precisely because it is so rare, routine kindness does not make the news precisely because it is so commonplace. 

At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal.

. . .simplicity piled upon simplicity creates complexity.

. . .time always erodes advantage

But if there is one dominant myth about the world, one huge mistake we all make, one blind spot, it is that we all go around assuming the world is much more of a planned place than it is. As a result, again and again we mistake cause for effect; we blame the sailing boat for the wind, or credit the bystander with causing the event.

American presidential politics is entirely based on the myth that a perfect, omniscient, virtuous and incorruptible saviour will emerge from the New Hampshire primary every four years, and proceed to lead his people to the promised land.

"Social media is induced insanity.".....................

...............Checking in with Martin Gurri:

 On average, Americans spend 24 hours a week online—but a sizeable minority, 31%, exist almost entirely as virtual replicas of themselves. As with most addictions, the experience is at once compulsory and unbearable. The young internet was an adventure: users roamed the open spaces, surprised and delighted by what could be found there. Now, the flow of content resembles the ramblings of a disordered mind—except these are actual formulas, algorithms imposed by the inscrutable oligarchs of Silicon Valley.

Good advice......................

 No man, no bank, no business, should put itself into the grip of anyone else.

-A. P. Giannini

via

Day trading...........................

 Going to the protest of the day, performing acts of slacktivism, hopping from urgency to emergency–this is how people who day trade in our culture are whipsawed. But the people who are consistently and actively changing the culture are not easily distracted. One more small action, one more conversation, one more standard established.

-Seth Godin, from here

Civilization.....................

 The highest form a civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust.

-Charlie Munger, as quoted here

but...................

 more fun here

melting......................

      America, which survived a gory civil war among political and geographical factions, has become so far one of history's few exceptions.  The ultimate rationale of America's unique Constitution led Americans eventually to define themselves by their shared values, not by their inconsequential appearances.  Eventually, most who were willing to give up their prior identities and assume a new American persona were accepted as Americans.  The United States has always cherished its universally applicable melting-pot ethos of e pluribus unum—of blending diverse peoples into one through assimilation, integration, and inter-marriage in the manner that diverse colonies united to become one nation.

-Victor Davis Hanson:  The Dying Citizen

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

Three Dog Night.................Freedom For The Stallion

 

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

 To live through the last two years and still rebel at uncertainty is ridiculous, isn’t it?

-Morgan Housel, from this "Endless Uncertainty" post

Prerogatives..................

 Fred Siegel pointed out how the longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer some seventy years ago could see the future contours of a working class regulated, controlled, and yet ridiculed by a new intellectual and bureaucratic elite.

      "The masses are on the way out," he wrote.  "The [elites] are finally catching up with us.  We can hear the swish of leather as the saddles are heaved on our backs.  The intellectuals, and the young, booted and spurred, feel themselves born to ride us."  Hoffer foresaw the New Class that would try to govern the working people much as the colonial officials governed the natives.  "They are," he wrote, "an army of scribes clamoring for a society in which planning, regulation, and supervision are paramount and the prerogative of the educated.

-Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen:  How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America

Checking in............................

..................................Eric Hoffer:

 It's disconcerting to realize that businessmen, generals, soldiers, men of action are less corrupted by power than intellectuals... You take a conventional man of action, and he's satisfied if you obey. But not the intellectual. He doesn't want you just to obey. He wants you to get down on your knees and praise the one who makes you love what you hate and hate what you love. In other words, whenever the intellectuals are in power, there's soul-raping going on.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.

In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.

Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.

Nonconformists travel as a rule in bunches. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone. And woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength.

The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than of deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.

Please...........................

 So let’s stop the hyperventilation and get back to democracy. Persuade people, if you can. Get them out to vote. Stop demonizing those you disagree with and compromise with them in office, however difficult that may be. What Roe did was kickstart the extreme cultural polarization that has defined and blighted the last few decades of American politics. Maybe the end of Roe can mark the beginning of a return to living together, and negotiating a way to make that bearable.

The center, in other words, is now wide open. Will anyone — anyone — occupy it?

-Andrew Sullivan, from here

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

Life Magazine's   April 14, 1972 isssue

Still true seventy years later.........

 To frame a philosophy capable of coping with men intoxicated with the prospect of almost unlimited power and also with the apathy of the powerless is the most pressing task of our time.

-Bertrand Russell

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

J.J. Cale.....................................Call Me The Breeze

 

Wars.......................

      So wars: what does it mean to win, what does it mean to lose?  And the wars, of course, against yourself.  I certainly am always at war one way or another with myself, and some of them are wars I must fight to try to slay the demons, to kill the dragon, to lay the ghost to rest.  But there are other wars you fight with yourself to be more, to do more that you have it in you really to do or to be.  I think of that wonderful line from one of the poems of my  beloved Gerard Manley Hopkins whare he says, "My own heart let me more have pity on."  My own heart let me more have pity on.  That's a lovely phrase.  Be merciful to yourself, stop fighting yourself quite so much.  Maybe what you are asking of yourself, what you're driving yourself to do or to be, what you put a gun to your own back to make yourself do, is something at this point you needn't have to think about doing.  So, think back at the end of the day to the wars you're involved in.  How are they going?

Frederick Buechner,  The Remarkable Ordinary

hereafter kind...................

My own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,

Charitable; not live this tormented mind

With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

I cast for comfort I can no more get

By groping round my comfortless, than blind

Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find

Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise

You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile

Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile

's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies

Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins

An early disbelief in democracy..........

      The word "aristocracy" tends to be used rather loosely.  In the modern world, it is calculated by multiplying wealth by snobbery.  During the early republic, on the other hand, it reflected the division of society into distinct ranks.  Until the Revolution, wrote historian Bernard Bailyn, Americans had assumed "that a healthy society was a hierarchical society in which it was natural for some to be rich and some poor, some honored and some obscure, some powerful and some weak."  Perhaps most important, "it was believed that superiority was unitary, that the attributes of the favored—wealth, wisdom, power—had a natural affinity to each other, and hence that political leadership would naturally rest in the hands of social leaders."  In New York in particular, these natural leaders came from a closed set of families distinguished by an inherited prestige. . . .

     Property requirements for suffrage under New York's constitution of 1777 hardened the culture of rank into law.  Two distinct levels of wealth were required to vote: one for the state assembly, and a second and higher level for the state senators and governor—establishing a "three-tiered scaffolding of society," as Bruegel writes.  In 1790, four of ten adult white men could not cast a ballot of any kind, in some places only one out of four could vote for the assembly, and one out of five for governor.

-T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Pretty sure this applies........................

..................to more than investing: 

It’s uncomfortable to say “I don’t know” but sometimes when it comes to investing that’s the safest place to be.

-Ben Carlson, from here

Opening paragraphs

 Marriage was once represented as a field of battle rather than a bed of roses, and perhaps there are many who may still support this view; but just as Dr Maturin had made a far more unsuitable match than most, so he set about dealing with the situation in a far more compendious, peaceable and efficacious way than the great majority of husbands.

-Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission

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

 

Some questions never go out of style.  Note the price.

One trait Reagan and Trump..................

.................................shared:  they understood the power of positive psychology and unleashed it.

 If you thought that the economic news was crazy during the first half of 2022, just wait until we get to the second half.  So many of the problems that we are experiencing now are going to continue to intensify, and Americans are becoming more pessimistic about economic conditions with each passing day.  In fact, as you will see below, a whopping 85 percent of us believe that it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that the economy will go through a recession at some point during the next year.  Of course the truth is that if all we have to suffer through is a “recession”, we would be extremely fortunate.  Our leaders have lost control of the economy, and many of us are extremely concerned about what is coming next. 

-from this Zero Hedge post

Incomparable.................

   more fun here

Rising........................

 Think about that for a minute. The worst decade [the 70's] since the Great Depression, one defined by high prices, poor equity and bond returns, and an overall malaise led to the creation of four of the strongest businesses this country has ever seen and the dynamic industry that shaped the American economy over the past four decades.

It’s likely still too early to even be asking this question, but are we going to endure a repeat of the 1970’s? I don’t believe so, but even if we do, there will be opportunities to rise from the fall. There always are.

-Ted Lamade, from this post

Comprehensive.............

 

via

the inward detachment............

 “To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery (the media) that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed”

-Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History  (1928)

In the background................................

Bruce Springsteen.....................................The Rising

The hopeful birth..........................

 ...................of a subdivision:  Episode 22

Faithful readers will recall that we completed developed the 49 lots in Phase 1 of Conor's Pass sub-division late last fall.  This past April we sold all of the lots to D. R. Horton, who is busily constructing houses on those lots.  Horton asked us to start the 64 lot Phase 2 as soon as possible.  While the weather could have been more cooperative, we are making progress.  In a perfect world, we will be done laying the sanitary sewer mains next week.  

The top of the photo shows the houses coming out
of the ground in Phase 1.  Phase 2 work is at the bottom
of the photo

On our active imaginations...........

 The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

-Friedrich August von Hayek

Checking in ................

........................................Louis L'Amour 

Do not let yourself be bothered by the inconsequential.  One has only so much time in this world, so devote it to the work and the people most important to you, to those you love and things that matter. One can waste half a lifetime with people one doesn't really like or doing things when one would be better off somewhere else.

A book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.

“Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, "This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.

The more one learns, the more he understands his ignorance.

Actually, all education is self-education.  A teacher is only a guide to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you an education.  What you receive is like the outlines in a child's coloring book.  You must fill in the colors yourself.

The sunset was spectacular.  The sky streaked itself with rose and the region of the sun became an indescribable glory.  All my life I have used words, and yet I find times when they are totally inadequate.

Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.

The Wilds..................................

Not too long ago, my Sweetie and I took a day off and communed with the wild animals at the Wilds in Cumberland, Ohio.  Occupying more than 10,000 acres of reclaimed coal strip mines, The Wilds is a jewel worth visiting.  Just as a head's up: go after mid-May.  They keep the giraffes indoors until the weather gets into the 60's.

View from our Yurt's porch

Inside of "our" Yurt

Bactrian Camel

Persian Onager

A hillside of Sichuan Takins

Can't tell my rhinos apart

Sichuan Takin

Rhinos

More rhinos

some variety of deer

Simitar-Horned Oryx

Cheetahs

even more cheetahs

Grevy's Zebra

                                                                                             

Elands

African Painted Dogs

When we arrived home, the rookie camera operator shot these guys in the back yard:

Ah, experts.......................

 But there are mistakes that only an expert can make. Errors – often catastrophic – that novices aren’t smart enough to make because they lack the information and experience needed to try to exploit an opportunity that doesn’t exist.

-Morgan Housel, from here

Ah, complexity..............

 Everywhere you look in the universe, you see systems attaining greater complexity as they evolve.  This is true in astrophysics.  It is true of a puddle.  Leave rainwater alone in a low spot and it will grow more complex.  Advanced systems of every variety are complex adaptive systems without an authority in charge.  Every complex system in nature, of which the market economy is the most evident social manifestation, depends upon dispersed capabilities.  Systems that work most effectively under the widest range of conditions depend for their resilience upon spontaneous order that accommodates novel possibilities.  Life itself is such a complex system.  Billions of potential combinations of genes produce a single human individual.  Sorting among them would confound any bureaucracy.

-Davidson and Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual:  Mastering the Transition to the Information Age

Truth telling.........................

 My theory is that money spent on books and music is never wasted.

Some words to live by...............

 He has sniffed out interesting data, but some of it does not smell right to me.

-Arnold Kling, as cut and pasted from here

In the background.......................

The soundtrack from American Graffiti

 

More fun with the language..........

 The good-intentions industry does seem especially busy these days, there being so much that is wrong with the world, a point on which everyone agrees while thinking to themselves of different wrongs.

-as taken from this essay on the New Language Police

From the always readable Chris Lynch.............

      The slogan for the year 2022 should be "If Ayn Rand and George Orwell had a baby".

      There's roughly 6 billion people in the world. You'd go crazy if you tried to make all their problems your own. Yet that's exactly what we often emotionally do when watching or reading "the news." Do yourself a favor - ignore the news and work on your own problems and issues. And when possible help out your friends, family and those around you. You'll be much happier for the change.

     Local Socrates would be a good name for a band or backhanded insult to the guy at the bar who has an opinion on every subject.

     Would be interesting to see a list of A-list celebrities and billionaires who attended the Kentucky Derby on Saturday and then the F1 race in Miami on Sunday traveling to both by private jet. Then to take that list to see what those people had to say publicly about climate change in the past.

     The word for the day is "Akrasia" - a Greek word translated as a "weakness of will" but in practice means to know what should be done but still not doing it. I like this word.

-more fun here

If I could have after-dinner cigars and drinks........

 .................with ten people I only know from the Intertunnel, Martin Gurri would be on the list.

And, when you think about it, the news media itself is something like an anxiety dream being dreamed by the articulate classes. Nobody should confuse the news with reality. Attention is fixed steadily on the predatory violence of the human animal, the record of war, crime and exploitation: with journalism, we are always a moment away from snapping awake, screaming. Sometime during the Trump years, that mood swallowed the internet. Once the gathering place of a peasant revolt, the web took on the rage, pettiness and mendacity of elite media and has since degenerated into the dictatorship of the rant.

-Martin Gurri, as culled from here

Easy to miss............................

     The phrase "still, small voice" comes from the King James Version's rendering of the "sheer silence" in the Elijah story, an interpretation that isn't the best translation of the Hebrew but that does represent well the nature of God's communication with us.  The sovereign King of the universe, to our surprise, does not often trumpet his message to his subjects.  God's volume knob is rarely turned all the way to the right; his voice in our ears is subtle, restrained, even easy to miss.

-Adam S. McHugh, The Listening Life

A pilgrim on a journey.......................

      A loud, overcrowded, hyperactive life is the antithesis of the listening life. The hyperactive life is so often trying to prove its worth, make its mark, and justify its existence. The listening life waits, quietly and humbly, for God to make his mark on us. 

       John Coltrane, legendary jazz saxophonist, made his mark on the jazz world by improvising at breakneck speed. No one had ever seen a musician who could play and move his fingers so feverishly. Soon he was playing gigs with the superstars of his day and changing the way people understood the genre. Unfortunately, much of the frenzy that marked Coltrane's style was the result of the substances in his system. In 1957, his system ravaged by drugs and alcohol, and his career and life on the brink of collapse, Coltrane went to his mother's house and sought God in the quiet of his room. According to pastor and jazz aficionado Robert Gelinas, "Four days later, he emerged a changed man, for—according to him—God had met him in a most unusual way. It was a sound, a droning resonance, a reverberation, unlike anything he had ever heard." God's presence came to John Coltrane as a sound. 

      Not only did this divine groove change his life, it changed the way he played. The frantic improvisation was replaced by a slow, soulful style, in which Coltrane listened for the God sound to come again and tried to replicate it on his sax. Gelinas explains that "he came to believe that if he could play that sound for others, the they, too, could experience what he had experienced during those four days in his bedroom. For the rest of his life, Coltrane sought to find that music that had healed him, and while he was never able to rediscover it, he recorded one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time, A Love Supreme,  during this musical pilgrimage.  The four parts of A Love Supreme follow a pilgrim on his journey toward God.

-Adam S. McHugh, The Listening Life