It happens every Spring (so far).............

Ingenious beams of speculation..............

     Well, in an effort to cope with the incomprehensibility of infinite reality, we ever-curious, ever-pondering, compulsively controlling Homo sapiens create theoretical models.  These models are ingenious beams of speculation that we use to penetrate and define the dark mysteries of boundless existence.   Sometimes elegantly structured, usually self-confirming, our models are like the headlights of a car, designed to light our way.  Whatever is illuminated becomes our truth, and we organize our lives around it.  But this light we create can also blind us.   Too often we are blinded into believing that our models are the whole reality, forgetting that they are simply useful fact/fantasy coping devices.

-Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting The Giant Hairball:  A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving With Grace

Us Boomers............................

.....................................................is there nothing we can't do?

via

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

He sticks to this traditional custom because he knows from experience that the preparations for working put him simultaneously in the right frame of mind for creating.  The meditative repose in which he performs them gives him that vital loosening and equability of all his powers, that collectedness and presence of mind, without which no right work can be done.  Sunk without purpose in what he is doing, he is brought face to face with that moment when the work, hovering before him in ideal lines, realizes itself ass if of its own accord.  As the steps and postures in archery, so here in modified form other preparations have the same meaning.  And only where this does not apply, as for instance with religious dancers and actors, are the self-recollection and self-immersion practiced before they reach the stage.
     As in the case of archery, there can be no question but that these arts are ceremonies.  More clearly that the teacher could express in words, they tell the pupil that the right frame of mind for the artist is only reached when the preparing and the creating, the technical and the artistic, the material and the spiritual, the project and the object, flow together without a break.

-Eugen Herrigel,  Zen in the Art of Archery

archer via

Well, yeah..............................

via

Observations...................

4.   Think more of your habits than of your plans.

-Michael Wade, as borrowed from this list of 10

Gone, but not forgotten.....................

Mitch Miller................................................Sing Along With Mitch

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

The Music Explosion........................................Little Bit O' Soul

Gone, but not forgotten....................

Billy Preston..................................................Nothing From Nothing

Life goes on...........................

............................in this parallel universe.  Thank God for whimsy.

Awfully expensive pencils...................

...................................................................and myths that die hard.

via

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

Scott McKenzie/San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)

Self-appraisal.......................

I'm not a great actor - let's face it. I don't have a great deal of scope. There are certain things I can do, but when I'm bad, I stink. There's something about my shaggy dog eyes that makes people think I'm good. I'm not all that good. 

-Steve McQueen

photo via

The primer.......................

.....................................you always wanted on Pigovian taxes.

Gone, but not forgotten..............

Fontella Bass.............................................................Rescue Me

On liking Mark Cuban...............

.......................................................more now than I used to:

Question:  Do you have a list of books that you would recommend for them to read?

Answer:  In terms of books that I would recommend - all of them.

Me too...........................

"I’ve always thought it’s insane how personal finance isn’t a mandatory subject taught in every school to our young people."

-Ben Carlson, as extracted from here

Of course, if I'm honest, I also think I should have done a better job teaching money to my own kids.

There is no accounting for people.............

 "It was nevertheless shocking to learn this weekend that Trump ordered a $54 dry-aged strip steak well done, with ketchup. At every step, this is tragic."

-as culled from here

via

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

The Supremes.........................................................Reflections

Bootlegging soda pop..........................

.......................(and here you thought entrepreneurism was dying):

That will likely drive two changes in consumer behavior. First, Philadelphia consumers who are mobile will be able to avoid the tax and purchase the sweetened beverages they demand from retailers outside Philadelphia. Second, the gap between the retail cost of beverages with and without the tax is such that it will encourage bootlegging, where beverages purchased legally outside of Philadelphia will be transported into the city and resold at a profit without having Philadelphia's beverage tax imposed upon them, further reducing taxed beverage sales in the city. And that latter activity is only just getting started....

-as culled from this post which contains lots of fun graphics