March 8, 2009

Quotes of the week

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office
--Aesop (~550 BC)

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

--Plato

First secure an independent income, then practice virtue.
--Greek Proverb

There's nothing certain in man's life except this: That he must lose it.

--Aeschylus

What you get by reaching your goals is not nearly as important as what you become by reaching them.

Meditation of the week

Battles we've won or lost

Even the continuous recovery we're enjoying is no shield from traps we seem to set for ourselves. At times, we can find ourselves in the foolish game of continuing to fight battles we've won or lost.

One losing battle is the attempt to win the approval of someone who has always disliked us. That person may be gone, but we still fight - and lose - the same battle when we find ourselves in a similar situation.

We also may have won some battles without knowing it. This can happen when we've set our goals unrealistically high. We may be fairly successful in our work, for example, but still feel that we have failed because a high goal we set eluded us. That goal, however, may have been all but impossible to attain, and while we mourn our perceived failure, we ignore the successes we may have achieved in the meantime. Consequently, we should never let any of these battles interfere with our plan for sobriety. We must stay sober at all costs.

This day, I'll not strive to impress people who may always disapprove of me. I will also accept my successes even if they fall short of my highest dreams.

Poem of the Week

I Love the Way Men Crack

by Ellen Bass

I love the way men crack
open when their wives leave them,
their sheaths curling back like the split
shells of roasted chestnuts, exposing
the sweet creamy meat. They call you
and unburden their hearts the way a woman
takes off her jewels, the heavy
pendant earrings, the stiff lace gown and corset,
and slips into a loose kimono.
It's like you've both had a couple shots
of really good scotch and snow is falling
in the cone of light under the street lamp—
large slow flakes that float down in the amber glow.

They tell you all the pain pressed into their flat chests,
their disappointed penises, their empty hands.
As they sift through the betrayals and regrets,
their shocked realization of how hard they tried,
the way they shouldered the yoke
with such stupid good faith—
they grow younger and younger. They cry
with the unselfconciousness of children.
When they hug you, they cling.
Like someone who's needed glasses for a long time—
and finally got them-they look around
just for the pleasure of it: the detail,
the sharp edges of what the world has to offer.

And when they fall in love again, it only gets better.
Their hearts are stuffed full as éclairs
and the custard oozes out at a touch.
They love her, they love you, they love everyone.
They drag out all the musty sorrows and joys
from the basement where they've been shoved
with mitts and coin collections. They tell you
things they've never told anyone.
Fresh from loving her, they come glowing
like souls slipping into the bodies
of babies about to be born.

Then a year goes by. Or two.
Like broken bones, they knit back together.
They grow like grass and bushes and trees
after a forest fire, covering the seared earth.
They landscape the whole thing, plant like mad
and spend every weekend watering and weeding.

Author of the week

It's the birthday of the novelist Khaled Hosseini, (books by this author) born in Kabul, Afghanistan (1965). His first novel, The Kite Runner (2003), was a word-of-mouth best-seller, and it's now sold more than 8 million copies.

Hosseini was the son of an Afghani diplomat. His family moved to Paris, and one night they turned on the TV during dinner and saw Soviet tanks rolling into Afghanistan. Hosseini's father applied for political asylum in the United States, and the family moved to San Jose, California, in 1980.

In Afghanistan, Hosseini's family had been wealthy and respected, and he'd grown up surrounded by servants. But in San Jose, they survived on welfare and food stamps. The only job his father could find was working as a driving instructor.

Hosseini wanted to be a writer, but he realized that he needed a more practical profession. So he went to medical school, and it was 10 years before he had time to start writing again. He would get up at 4 a.m. and write for two hours every morning before he went to the hospital. Even though Hosseini's family knew many people in Afghanistan who had been killed or imprisoned under Soviet or Taliban rule, his memories of Afghanistan were all pleasant. Whenever he thought about his childhood, he remembered flying kites over the city in an annual competition.

He wrote a story about one of these kite competitions, and his father encouraged him to expand it. He did, and that story became The Kite Runner.

Just before The Kite Runner was published, Hosseini took his first trip back to Afghanistan in 27 years. The neighborhood where he had grown up was full of collapsed buildings, piles of rubble and bullet-scarred walls.

In 2007, he published another big best-seller, A Thousand Splendid Suns. The novel begins in 1975 and continues to the present time. It tells the story of two women in Kabul who are both wives of the same cruel man.

Good Idea of the week

The War on Drugs Is a Failure

We should focus instead on reducing harm to users and on tackling organized crime.

Drug Legalization Isn't the Answer

Countries that have experimented with a permissive approach have always turned back.

Please leave a comment if you have an opinion or agree with the writers

Video of the week

Websites of the week

Enterprising ideas like City Fresh and Green collar jobs and More

Yeah, right, we have it sooo bad! Photographs from the last time the financial shit hit the fan

Chartbook: Update on the American Dream

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

The funniest show on TV is www.thedailyshow.com

And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

Christmas idea for that special moron in your life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h05ZQ7WHw8Y(Language alert! WTF!!!))