More than 10,000 people came out to celebrate recovery on Saturday September 12th, 2009 in New York City, including A&E President Bob DeBitetto, The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske and Deputy director Tom McLellan, Governor David Paterson and Smokey Robinson. Here are some photos of the event:
http://www.iamrecovery.com/albums/2009Rally/index.htm (My giant head is in photo # 5, top row, sixth from the left.)
“I have seen the very bottom of life. I was so afraid I wouldn’t be funny anymore. I just knew that I would lose my zaniness and my sense of humor. But I didn’t. Recovery turned out to be a wonderful thing.” Ann Richards, 1933-2006Quotes of the week
Not what we have, but what we use;
Not what we see, but what we choose;
These are the things that mar or bless the sun of human happiness.
Joseph Fort Newton
Not what we see, but what we choose;
These are the things that mar or bless the sun of human happiness.
Joseph Fort Newton
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
~Aldous Huxley
Don't hold to anger, hurt or pain. They steal your energy and keep you from love. -Leo Buscaglia.
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" Albert Einstein
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." H.G. Wells
Meditation of the week
To a large extent, the way we think determines who we are and what happens to us.
We cannot harbor poisonous thoughts without their effects visibly showing in our lives. If we dwell on our inadequacy and ineffectiveness, for example, circumstances will prove us correct because we will invite self-defeating events to us.
On the other hand, replacing destructive thoughts with hope-filled, optimistic ones brings peaceful and confidence-producing circumstances to us. We will radiate competence and joy.
We would be wise, therefore, to take the advice of twentieth century author Orison Swett Marden: "Stoutly determine not to harbor anything in the mind which you do not wish to become real in your life. Shun poisoned thoughts, ideas which depress and make you unhappy, as instinctively as you avoid physical danger of any find – replace all these with cheerful, hopeful, optimistic thoughts."
Today I will make it a habit to continually replace pessimistic thoughts with optimistic ones. I will dwell on what is uplifting so that I may increase my courage and confidence as well as better my circumstances.
Poem of the Week
It's the birthday of T.S. Eliot, (books by this author) born in St. Louis, Missouri (1888). His poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is one of the most anthologized poems in the English language. It begins:
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Eliot wrote most of the poem when he was only 22 years old. While it was a work in progress, he subtitled the poem "Prufrock among the women." The part "The Love Song of" came from a Rudyard Kipling poem, "The Love Song of Har Dyal." At the time, T.S. Eliot went by "T. Sterns Eliot." a formulation that he emulated in the title "J. Alfred Prufrock." When he was growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, there was a furniture store there named "Prufrock-Littau Company" — but decades after the poem was published, Eliot wrote to a friend: "I did not have, at the time of writing the poem, and have not yet recovered, any recollection of having acquired this name in any way, but I think that it must be assumed that I did, and that the memory has been obliterated."
The poem was published a few years after it was written, with the encouragement of Ezra Pound, who was serving as Poetry magazine's overseas editor. He wrote in 1915 to Harriet Monroe about T.S. Eliot: "He has actually trained himself AND modernized himself ON HIS OWN. The rest of the promising young have done one or the other, but never both." Aside from stuff that had appeared in school newspapers and magazines, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was T.S. Eliot's first published poem. In 1917, it appeared in book form, the first of 12 Eliot poems in Prufrock and Other Observations.
Other famous poems by T.S. Eliot include "The Wasteland," which begins "April is the cruellest month" — and "The Hollow Men," which concludes:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
Author of the week
September 21st was the birthday of horror novelist Stephen King, (books by this author) born in Portland, Maine (1947). He's the author of many novels, including The Shining (1977), Pet Sematary (1983), and From a Buick 8 (2002). His father, a merchant seaman, deserted the family when he was two. He has no memories of the man, but one day he found a boxful of his father's science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, including an anthology of stories from Weird Tales magazine and a book by horror author H.P. Lovecraft. That box of his father's books inspired him to start writing horror stories. After college, King worked jobs at a gas station and a Laundromat. His wife worked at Dunkin' Donuts. He said, "Budget was not exactly the word for whatever it was we were on. It was more like a modified version of the Bataan Death March."
His writing office was the furnace room of his trailer home. He sold a series of horror stories to men's magazines, and he said that the paychecks from these stories always seemed to arrive when one of his kids had an ear infection or the car had broken down. His first novel was Carrie (1973), about a weird, miserable, high school girl with psychic powers. The hard cover didn't sell very well, but when his agent called to say that the paperback rights had sold for $400,000, King couldn't believe it. He said, "The only thing I could think to do was go out and buy my wife a hair dryer."
Video of the week
Carl Sagan - 'A Glorious Dawn' ft Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed)
Websites of the week
Your weekly Presidential address and much more
And finally, the culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor
The World of the Future!
