Quotes of the week
· Many experts lose the creativity and imagination of the less informed. They are so intimately familiar with known patterns that they fail to recognize or respect the importance of the new wrinkle.~ Gavin de Becker
· I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who
~Rudyard Kipling
Meditation of the week
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. [1953] Dwight D. Eisenhower:
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war. Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes. General Douglas MacArthur:
I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war. George W. Bush:
Poem of the Week
“the unbearable lightness of brushing teeth that aren't all there”
Before the Trip
When old people travel, it's for relieffrom a life that they know too well,
not routine but the very long slope
of disbelief in routine, the unbearable
lightness of brushing teeth that aren't all
there, the weakened voice calling out
for the waiter who doesn't turn;
the drink that once was neither here
nor there is now a singular act of worship.
The sun that rises every day says
I don't care to the torments of love
and hate that once pushed one back
and forth on the blood's red wagon.
All dogs have become beautiful
in the way they look at cats and wonder
what to do. Breakfast is an event
and bird flu only a joke of fear the world
keeps playing. On the morning walk
the horizon is ours when we wish.
We know that death is a miracle for everyone
or so the gods say in a whisper of rain
in the immense garden we couldn't quite trace.
Author of the week
It was on this day in 1945 that American troops entered the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. About 56,000 prisoners died there. Even though many of the American soldiers had fought in the worst battles of WWII, they were unprepared for the horrors they saw there. Edward R. Murrow was one of the reporters covering the event, and he was so disturbed that he couldn't even talk about it for days. One of the inmates in the camp that day was a teenager named Elie Wiesel, (books by this author) who went on to write more than 50 books, including his memoir, Night (1958). In 1986, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He said: "The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."
Good Idea of the week
Earth Day — April 22
Earth Day is a great opportunity to celebrate environmental progress and cultivate new strategies to continue protecting the Earth. On Earth Day and the other 364 days of the year, we can all help to foster a healthier environment through our actions, including:
- Saving energy
- Reducing, reusing, and recycling
- Conserving water
- Planting trees
- Teaching kids to respect the environment
Video of the week
Are you lonesome tonight
Websites of the week
This I believe-Mohammad Ali
100 meters of existence
Stranger Photos Have Happened
Advertised Food vs Real Food
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
A million free books http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
And free audio books http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/categories/1#a2747
