June 28

Quotes of the week

      In life, as in chess, forethought wins. ~Charles Buxton

      We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize Winner, Soviet Writer and U.S. Citizen

      The curse of poverty has no justification in our age...The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

      The uncommitted life isn't worth living. ~Marshall Fishwick

      You punch me, I punch back. I do not believe it's good for ones self-respect to be a punching bag. ~Edward Koch

Meditation of the week

To err is human; to blame it on the other guy is even more human.
--Bob Goddard

We are on a path that leads us to become better people with greater insight and stronger character. A central theme on this path is learning to take responsibility for ourselves, our mistakes, and our choices as we deal with our situations. We can make progress on this path by noticing our defensive reactions when we make a mistake or when someone criticizes us. Our old ways were aimed at shifting the blame or counterattacking to get someone else off our case. Now we are learning how to take on the blame when it honestly belongs to us.

One of the first things we need to learn in taking responsibility is that there is no shame in making a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. But some people don't accept responsibility for them, and others do. We have much greater respect for someone who does. Admitting when we were wrong doesn't mean speaking in vague generalities, saying that "mistakes were made." It doesn't mean saying, "Yes, I did this, but only because you did that." It means saying what we did or didn't do and laying the facts out there for us and others to deal with. When we can do that, forgiveness almost always follows shortly.

Today I will hold back my defensiveness and admit the facts as they are.

Poem of the Week

Whose hands are these before me
wrinkled, dry and cracked
where for the longest time
there were another two, fair
young and supple?

Yet the same spirit inhabits both,
drives both sets to write
different songs
from the same heart.

Rob Seward
December 2008

Authors of the week

It was on this day in 1868 that the typewriter was patented, by Christopher Sholes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1873, he sold the patent to the Remington Arms Co., a famous gun maker, for $12,000. There had been typewriters before, but they weren't very practical — it took longer to type a letter than to write it by hand. The first commercial typewriter based on Sholes' design, a Remington Model 1, went on the market in 1874.
Ernest Hemingway, (books by this author) loved his Royal typewriter. He kept it in his bedroom so it would never be too far away, and he put it on top of a bookshelf and wrote standing up.
Hunter S. Thompson, (books by this author) wrote on a red IBM Selectric. One of his first jobs was as a copy boy for Time, and while he was supposed to be working, he used a typewriter and typed out, word for word, all of The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms, in order to learn something about writing style.
Jack Kerouac, (books by this author) was fast at typing, and it frustrated him to have to change the paper so often. So he took long sheets of drawing paper, trimmed them to fit in the machine, and wrote all of On the Road that way. When he taped them together at the end, the manuscript was 120 feet long.

Good Idea of the week and Video of the week

Faces of Healthcare Reform-Cathy

More stories Lisa   Russell  Cesar  Think this can’t happen to you?

President Obama - Your Turn: Join the National Online Discussion on Health Care Reform

Websites of the week

http://www.neatorama.com/

the effect of sounds waves on salt/ (Thanks to my son Rob for these sites)

Chicago Style Italian Beef Sandwich from http://www.thefoodinmybeard.com

100 Free Music Lessons You Can Take On YouTube

 

Your weekly address and much more is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/

The Interview PRoject of the Week

Two interviews this week, Clara and Clah

(Hey, if you haven’t yet, watch these interviews, they are really neat!)

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

http://www.whywashesad.com/

June 21

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY! Thanks dad, for being the man

in my life, year after year after year. 

Quotes of the week

Quotes from songs this week:

All lies and jest, still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. - Simon and Garfunkel, The Boxer

We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school. - Bruce Springsteen, No Surrender

You better start swimming or sink like a stone, cause the times they are a-changing. - Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin'

A line I used in group therapy this week, to describe the absolute egocentricity of addiction:

“I felt like I was the only colorized thing in a otherwise black and white world”- Dave Seward

Meditation of the week

"Thinking," said the little boy, "is when your mouth stays shut and your head keeps talking to itself."
--Arkansas Baptist

We need quiet times in order to develop peace and serenity in our lives. We spend most of our days speaking or being spoken to.  It's important to set aside time to speak to ourselves. We need to speak to ourselves gently and honestly each day. We need to spend quality time with ourselves to keep in touch with who we are and where we're headed. A diver takes the time for a deep breath and a quiet moment before he jumps, and so it is for us before we jump from one activity to the next. In this way we can honor ourselves and our actions by offering respect for what we've just done, and for what we're about to do.

Today I will have at least one quiet time for myself because I deserve it.

Poem of the Week

  Ron Padgett, (books by this author)

   The 2 f's
     in giraffe
     are like 2 giraffes
     running through
     the word giraffe
     The 2 f's
     run through giraffe
     like 2 giraffes

Solstice of the week

Today is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, the first official day of summer and the longest day (and shortest night) of the year. It's also the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere; it's the shortest day of the year today in countries like Australia, Argentina, and South Africa. Down there, the summer solstice is in December.

The term solstice comes from the Latin words for "sun" (sol) and "standing still" or "stoppage" (stice). On this longest day of the year, the sun appears as if it were standing still in the sky. There are big celebrations in Northern Europe today, many of which go back to ancient pagan times and incorporate bonfires, dancing, feasting, and staying up all night to welcome the dawn. One of the biggest destinations for the summer solstice is Stonehenge in England; today it is the place for New Agers such as neo-druids, neo-pagans, and Wiccans to gather, along with college-age revelers, wholesome families, romantic couples, and shoestring backpackers. And it's the only day of the year the park service offers free parking, free admission, and the opportunity to stay at the monument overnight.

The day is also celebrated in China by honoring Li, the Chinese Goddess of Light.

Song of the week

Sleep’s dark and silent gate by Jackson Browne

Then

And now

Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder
Where my life will lead me
Waiting to pass under Sleep's dark and silent gate

I found my love too late
Running around day after day
Looking for the time to play
While my old friends slipped away

Never should have had to try so hard
To make a love work out, I guess
I don't know what love has got to do with happiness
But the times when we were happy
Were the times we never tried

Sitting down by the highway
Looking down the road
Waiting for a ride
I don't know where I've been
Wishing I could fly away
Don't know where I'm going
Wishing I could hide
Oh God this is some shape I'm in
When the only thing that makes me cry
Is the kindness in my baby's eye

Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder
Where the years have gone
They have all passed under
Sleep's dark and silent gate

Video of the week

Steve Job’s 2005 Stanford commencement address

Websites of the week

The Top 10 Existential Movies of All Time

 The Tale of a Smarter City

Blue car

GOOD BEHAVIOR 21 ways to be a gentleman

Panoramic photos site

Your weekly address and much more is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/

The Interview PRoject of the Week

Gordon (hey, if you haven’t yet, watch these interviews, they are really neat!)

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

http://www.book-of-numbers.com/

June 14

Quotes of the week

The wise teacher...knows that fifty-five minutes of work plus five minutes' laughter are worth twice as much as sixty minutes of unvaried work. ~Gilbert Highet

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. ~Bill Cosby

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. ~Eden Phillpotts (thanks Alaska Susan!)

Poem of the Week

To Virgins, to make much of time

by Robert Herrick

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
   Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
   Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
   The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
   And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
   When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
   Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
   And while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
   You may forever tarry.

Author of the week

It's the birthday of Scott Adams, (books by this author) born in Windham, New York (1957). He created the Dilbert cartoon, and is the author of many books, including God's Debris: A Thought Experiment (2001), about God, the Big Bang, and free will.

Good Idea of the week

President Obama is committed to working with Congress to pass comprehensive health reform this year in order to control rising health care costs, guarantee choice of doctor, and assure high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans.  The Administration believes that comprehensive health reform should:

• Reduce long-term growth of health care costs for businesses and government
• Protect families from bankruptcy or debt because of health care costs
• Guarantee choice of doctors and health plans
• Invest in prevention and wellness
• Improve patient safety and quality of care
• Assure affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans
• Maintain coverage when you change or lose your job
• End barriers to coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions

http://www.healthreform.gov/

Video of the week

Canon in D - Anthony Deaton

Websites of the week

Best of Craig’s list- From your public defender

http://www.blatube.com/watch?v=RHQ0_Z47Yaw&feature=player_embedded

The Interview Project of the week

The interview project-Palmer Black

Your weekly address and much more is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

Don’t read this unless you are open minded about politics Letter to Red states

June 7

Boys and girls, pay attention. We are living in a time of transformation, a time that will be viewed as a turning point in history. And you and I have the privilege to experience firsthand one of the great men in history as he moves through his life. Barack Obama, history will show, is a good and honest man, facing one of the most difficult times in history and is doing so with grace and honor, intelligence and courage, vision and wisdom. And the changes he oversees will influence the multitude for decades, perhaps centuries to come. Pay attention, not everyone gets to live in such times.

Quotes of the week

Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.

~Theodor Reik

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. -Michael Pollan

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process." Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Meditation of the week

For all the sadness of closure, there is a new and joyful unfolding in the process of becoming.
--Mary Casey
We must let go of people, places, memories, and move on to new experiences. The doors of the past must be closed before we can enter those that are opening to us today. However, no experience is gone forever. All of our experiences are threaded together, each one contributing to the events that claim our attention now.

Recovery has offered us a chance to be aware of our process of becoming. With each day, each experience, each new understanding, we are advancing along the path of personal growth. Let us remember that each of us has a particular path, like no other. Thus, our experiences are ours alone. We need not envy what comes to someone else.

Life is unfolding for us. The pain of the present may be necessary for the pleasure of tomorrow. We can accept the unfolding. Our inner selves have a goal; experiences of the past must be left in the past; experiences at hand will lead us to our destination today.

I am moving and changing and growing, at the right pace. The process can be trusted. What is right for me will come to me. I will let the joy of becoming warm me.

You are reading from the book:

Each Day a New Beginning by Karen Casey

Poems of the Week

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.~ Allen Ginsberg

We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

∞∞∞∞∞∞

Reverence

by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

The air vibrated
with the sound of cicadas
on those hot Missouri nights after sundown
when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn,
sank into their slung-back canvas chairs
tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat

and we sisters chased fireflies
reaching for them in the dark
admiring their compact black bodies
their orange stripes and seeking antennas
as they crawled to our fingertips
and clicked open into the night air.

In all the days and years that have followed,
I don't know that I've ever experienced
that same utter certainty of the goodness of life
that was as palpable
as the sound of the cicadas on those nights:

my sisters running around with me in the dark,
the murmur of the grown-ups' voices,
the way reverence mixes with amazement
to see such a small body
emit so much light.

Author of the week

May 3^rd was the birthday of novelist Larry McMurtry, (books by this author) born in Wichita Falls, Texas (1936). His novel Lonesome Dove came out in 1985, the story of a former Texas Ranger named Augustus McCrae who persuades two friends to ride with him to Montana to find his one true love, Clara Allen, the only woman who could ever beat him in an argument. At the time the novel came out, most critics agreed with McMurtry that the Western was dead, but Lonesome Dove revitalized the genre. It became a huge best seller and a TV mini series, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Good Idea of the week

Memoirist and journalist Jim Knipfel, (books by this author) in his third memoir, Ruining It for Everybody (2004),begins with:  "Whenever I hear the word 'spiritual' I reach for my revolver.'"

Video of the week

The interview Project - This week-Tommy Holiday

Websites of the week

Harpers index ---Number of American children conceived with donated sperm and/or carried to term by surrogate mothers: 250,000

http://www63.wolframalpha.com/ Computational knowledge engine-suck it, Google!

Your weekly address and much more is at http://www.whitehouse.gov/

The funniest truth on TV is www.thedailyshow.com

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

Squirrel Launcher!