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

LBJ addresses the UN General Assembly          12/17/63

A formula for happiness..................

...............can be found right here.  Secrets and formulas are nice, but the unfortunately reality is that happiness is an inside job.  Nobody has ever really improved on Lincoln's thought that we are about as happy as we make up our mind to be.  Still... read the essay, if only to put a context around this quote that was contained therein:

"Free enterprise does not mean shredding the social safety net, but championing policies that truly help vulnerable people and build an economy that can sustain these commitments. It doesn’t mean reflexively cheering big business, but leveling the playing field so competition trumps cronyism. It doesn’t entail “anything goes” libertinism, but self-government and self-control. And it certainly doesn’t imply that unfettered greed is laudable or even acceptable."
-Arthur C. Brooks

Simplicity............................

 Throwing Away the Mail

Nothing is simple,
not even simplification.
Thus, throwing away
the mail, I exchange
the complexity of duty
for the simplicity of guilt.

-Wendell Berry

Think and grow rich...............................

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence;  supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
-Sun Tzu, as channeled in James Clavell's version of The Art of War

art work from here.

Guide us.......................................

Kings College Choir...................We Three Kings of Orient Are

Cicero, on the how-to of public speaking.........

"A leading speaker will vary and modulate his voice, raising and lowering it and deploying the full scale of tones.  He will avoid extravagant gestures and stand impressively erect.  He will not pace about and when he does so not for any distance.  He should not dart forward except in moderation with strict control.  There should be no effeminate bending of the neck or twiddling of his fingers or beating out the rhythm of his cadences on his knuckles.  He should extend his arm at moments of high dispute and lower it during calmer passages....Once he has made sure he does not have a stupid expression on his face and or a grimace, he should control his eyes with great care, for as the face is the image of the soul the eyes are its translators.  Depending on the subject at hand they can express grief of hilarity."

Before movies and TV.............................

"In Rome reputations were made not only at public meetings and in the Senate but also in the law courts.  Ambitious young men in their early twenties often appeared as prosecutors in criminal trials in order to make a name for themselves, not just as lawyers but as potential future politicians.

     "Both rhetoric and the study of literature were also intended to give students an ethical grounding, a moral education which inculcated the virtues of fortitude, justice, and prudence.

     "Public speaking in this complex sense is extinct and it is difficult now to conceive of its power, immediacy and charm.  Just as Samuel Pepys in seventeenth-century England would spend a Sunday going for sermon to sermon for the sheer pleasure of it, so crowds of Romans would pack the Forum, where trials were held in the open air, to listen to and applaud the great advocates of the day as they presented their cases.  The 'Friends, Romans, countrymen' speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar gives a hint of how the real thing must have been."

-Anthony Everitt, as excerpted from Cicero:  The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician

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

Nancy Wilson....................That's What I Want For Christmas

Flow.................................

Cultural Offering nurtures the Art of Satisfying Conversation.  The only thing he left out was the importance of fine cigars and Wild Turkey American Honey over ice.

O-H-I-O...........................

Spent yesterday afternoon watching son Dan graduate from The Ohio State University.  The boy learned a thing or two.  Dad is proud and pretty sure he got his money's worth.

If you squint really hard.................................

He's freezing and just wants to go.......................

The Mighty E..........................

.............................................goes all zen on us.

Why he was (is) the greatest..............

Who else would have even thought of doing this, much less do it?  Successfully, I might add.

Did I mention we have tickets for this year?

Trans-Siberian Orchestra.......Wizards in Winter: a light show

Does it really matter why..........................?

"Why does the universe go through all the bother of existing?"
-Stephen Hawking

Where, Who, What, Why, and Whither?

"Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?"
-Soren Kierkegaard

The key.................................

"What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him — even concerning his own body — in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers? She threw away the key."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

non chicken cartoon via

I can understand that.......................

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

Alexander "Mudcat"  Thomas.................Mudcat's Blues

Cultural Offering.......................

..........................................goes all zen on us.

Jetboy and his dog Skip....................

............musically opening doors and broadening horizons.  Do go visit from time to time.