How we spent Friday night.......

Friend Mike invited a few friends over for house concert / fund raiser for the Foundation for Hospice of Central Ohio. The very warm, friendly, and talented Barbara Bailey Hutchinson performed for us. A great night.  Thanks Mike and Connie.

Reflections...........................

The Marmalade...................................Reflections of My Life

The value of experiments............

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment:  that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.  He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.  In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.  Now put a foundation under them."
-Henry David Thoreau


photo courtesy of

Wish I had said that.................

"It is not my purpose here to flense his critique point by point, only to 
note that his intellectual malnutrition is, of necessity, determined by
what he feeds his head."
-Gerard Vanderleun


I will confess to reaching for my Webster's New World College 
Dictionary to look up the word "flense."  I knew I knew it, but......
Flense (flens)  vt.  to cut blubber skin from (a whale, seal, etc.). 
Then it all came back to me.  Sophomore year.  English class.
Sitting with Patty and Susan,  where, under Dom Consolo's 
tutelage, we learned to hate Moby Dick.  But I digress.


The quote above comes from Vanderleun's well-worth-reading essay,
The American Argument.  Bonus quote is here:


"There are many ways of stating the American Argument with itself -- 
indeed, it is many arguments -- but one of the most straightforward 
is 'How shall men be free and how shall a society of free men then 
be structured?'"

breakthrough....................

On henbane and spinach............

     "Prosperity rests upon a moral foundation.  It is popularly supposed to rest upon an immoral foundation - that is, upon trickery, sharp practice, deception, and greed.  One commonly hears even an otherwise intelligent man declare that 'No man can be successful in business unless he is dishonest,' thus regarding business prosperity - a good thing - as the effect of dishonesty - a bad thing.  Such a statement is superficial and thoughtless, and reveals a total lack of knowledge of moral causation, as well as a very limited grasp of the facts of life.  It is as though one should sow henbane and reap spinach, or erect a brick house on a quagmire - things impossible in the natural order of causation, and therefore not to be attempted.  The spiritual or moral order of causation is not different in principle, but only in nature.  The same law obtains in things unseen - in thoughts and deeds - as in things seen - in natural phenomena.  Men sees the processes in natural objects, and acts in accordance with them, but not seeing the spiritual processes, he imagines that they do not obtain, and so he dos not act in harmony with them."
-James Allen, (1864-1912)  Eight Pillars of Prosperity

Enstupidation..............

One of the many benefits of having the Mighty E.back, fulfilling his blogging destiny, is that he reminds me to check in on Fred Reed.  Fred's latest rant on education (full essay here) concludes with this beauty:

"In schooling, perhaps 'from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs' isn’t a bad idea. If a child has a substantial IQ, expect him to use it for the good of society, and give him schools to let him do it. If a child needs a vocation so as to live, give him the training he needs. But don’t subject either to enstupidated, unbearably tedious, pointless, one-size-fits-nobody pseudo-schools to hide the inescapable fact that we are not all equal.

On happiness...........

"It reminded my of John Stuart Mills' theory of happiness in his book Utilitarianism.  He said that those only are happy who do not seek happiness directly, but who spend their time helping others, who are engaged in some art or pursuit followed not as a means but as itself an ideal end.  Doing something else, they find happiness along the way."
-Earl Nightingale,  The Essence of Success

Speaking of genies.............

Awesomeness................

All you need is
All you want is
All you need is love.


Dave Mathews Band....................................Everyday




if you liked this video, go see David and give him a hug

About gratitude...............

"Gratitude is not always instantaneous.  There are some things that take time to reveal what was gained, when there can be insight.   Many times a lack of gratitude can be a powerful blow back on course.  There have been many times that I have wandered too far from my heart and grown dissatisfied; these were signs that a change needed to be made, and that unhappy event became a turning point, a shift back in the direction of love and gratitude."
-Michele Gold, excerpted from her essay Gratitude Is a 
Sanctuary in Louise L. Hay's Gratitude: A Way of Life

photo courtesy of

A Thousand and One..............

"Grandpa told me all about the genie in the lamp...........The lamp is always hidden in plain sight he says.  Men go prospecting all over the landscape for the easy riches but they're generally lying right there on the ground for you to step over in your hurry and scurry to look for them."
-Sippican Cottage, The Devil's In The Cows

A silent movie about fracking..............

New technology has the potential to actually allow the dream of "energy independence" come true in America.  Looks from here that the only missing piece in the puzzle is how to dispose of - or clean - the water/sand/chemical mix that is used to frack the wells.  Hopefully smart people are working on it.  Below is a short video showing horizontal drilling.  Additional video, with more explanation, is found here.



thanks craig

On paying attention.............

"Be open to your own spirit and its directions (you might even consider asking it!)—then take the risk to move on your best guess, pay attention to the results, and course-correct as you keep moving along...."


full post about keeping track of priorities is here.
Thanks Kurt

On blind worship.................

"Reasonable - that it, human - men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them enemies of life."
-Alan Watts, The Way of Zen

Letting go...............

"We must let go before we take hold.  Progress in any direction demands that in some sense we quit the place where we are.  If we put one foot forward, we must lift one foot from the ground.  If we wish to take a book in our hand, we must first let go of the book already in that hand.  Before taking hold of anything new, we must first let go of something old.
-John S. Bunting, The Secret of a Quiet Mind

art courtesy of gapingvoid

When words lose their meaning...............

Much like us Americans, the Europeans now apparently
consider "austerity" to be the slowing of the rate of growth
in spending.

The chart, and more commentary, comes from the
Marginal Revolution - here

Hope as an obstacle..............

"Hope is important, because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear.  If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.  But that is the most that hope can do for us - to make some hardship lighter.  When I think deeply about the nature of hope, I see something tragic.  Since we cling to our hope in the future, we do not focus our energies and capabilities on the present moment.  We use hope to believe something better will happen in the future, that we will arrive at peace, or the Kingdom of God.  Hope becomes a kind of obstacle.  If you can refrain from hoping, you can bring yourself entirely into the present moment and discover the joy that is already here."
-Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step:  The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

The interditch.........................?

Rob Firchau hangs a new moniker on this connectivity thing or place we all seem to enjoy.

Rational optimism.....................

Matt Ridley, the author of The Rational Optimist, posts 17 reasons to be cheerful - here.  Excerpt here:

12. We are the luckiest generation

This generation has experienced more peace, freedom, leisure time, education, medicine, and travel than any in history. Yet it laps up gloom at every opportunity. Consumers do not celebrate their wonderful field of choice and, according to psychologists, say they are "overwhelmed." When I go to my local superstore, I do not see people driven to misery by the impossibility of choice. I see people choosing.

Prior comments about Ridley's book here, here, here, here, and here.  There are more, but these should give you the general idea - I liked his book, a lot.

thanks craig