A touch of the blues...........................

B. B. King.......................................Woke Up This Morning



#14 on this list

Tough love......................................

..............................................from The Epicurean Dealmaker:

"There is no cure for adolescence but to grow up. There is, however, a cure for adolescent trauma: get over it. And don’t use it as an excuse to oppress or traumatize others."

Just a reminder.....................................

thanks hugh

Begin........................................

      Success doesn't come out of nowhere.  It can't be conjured up out of thin air, brought to you by the genie from Aladdin's lamp simply because you rubbed it and thought good thoughts.  Success does come from a small beginning, often a beginning so tiny that it seems invisible and most people miss it.  But there has to be a beginning.
-Jeff Olson.  The Slight Edge:  Turning Simple Disciplines Into Massive Success & Happiness

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

      "The fumes which rise from the bottom of a swamp produce frogs, ants, leeches, and vegetation ... Cut a groove into a brick, fill it with crushed basil, and put another brick on top to seal the groove.  Within a few days the vegetable matter will have turned into scorpions."  So claimed a seventeenth-century savant called Jean-Baptiste Van Helmont.  But although Van Helmont lived in the seventeenth century, he belonged far more to its past than its future, for he was one of those whose understanding of the world relied on ideas developed centuries before his own time.  The ideas in question belonged to an intellectual tradition that encouraged belief in miracles, spontaneous generation, and phoenixes rising from ashes.  In this tradition it was an unquestioned fact that the sun and stars go round a stationary earth, with God's heaven above and hell-fire at the earth's centre.  Yet even as Van Helmont premised this notions in his writings, a new world of ideas was coming into existence around him.  One of the chief of those bringing about this change was Rene Descartes.
-A.C. Grayling,   Descartes:  The Life and Times of a Genius

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

Dave Clark Five.......................................I Like It Like That

Keys............................................

"Success is not the key to happiness.  Happiness is the key to success."
-Albert Schweitzer

Oranges........................................

"You can't compare an apple to an orange. It will cause a lot of self-esteem issues."

-Craig Sheffer

About softness..................................

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
-Kurt Vonnegut

via    thanks nicholas

Music for a lazy holiday afternoon.................

The Allman Brothers..................................Mountain Jam

Quote of the Day................................!

" ... That 3rd string QB for Ohio State could probably take out ISIS too."
-from this comment section

I feel so unashamed.....................................

Peter Frampton..............................................Show Me The Way

Old.........................................

"I love everything that's old:  old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines."
-Oliver Goldsmith

Sifting..................................

"The one thing technology doesn't provide us with is a sense of how to make the best use of technology.  Put another way, the ability to gather information, which use to be so crucial, is now far less important than the ability to sift through it."
-Pico Iyer,  The Art of Stillness:  Adventures in Going Nowhere

Imagine..............................................

      "Can you imagine if every first grader was required to start reading ten pages of a good book a day?  How would their finances, their health, their relationships change as adults?"
-Jeff Olson,  The Slight Edge:  Turning Simple Disciplines Into Massive Success & Happiness

Studying American history is easier..........

My favorite optimist says, "800 years after Magna Carta and 200 after Waterloo, the UK's in good shape."

Years ending in 15 (or 65) have often been good ones to be British. In January, we celebrate 750 years since Simon de Montfort first summoned Parliament to Westminster. In June, we mark the 800th anniversary of making kings subject to the law in Magna Carta. Three days later it’s off to Waterloo for the 200th birthday of the battle.

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

The Beach Boys.....................................Do You Wanna Dance?

Strange..............................................

“It is very strange that the years teach us patience - that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.” 
-Elizabeth Taylor, A Wreath of Roses

image via

Someday...........................

Someday, when I have the time................................

Have I got some sobering news for you:  "some day" doesn't exist, never has, and never will.  There is no "some day."  There's only today.  When tomorrow comes, it will be another today, so will the next day.  They all will,  There is nothing but today.

-Jeff Olson,  The Slight Edge:  Turning Simple Disciplines Into Massive Success & Happiness

Confusion rains.....................................