Quotes of the week
“Here I am Lord, and here is my prayer: Please be there. I don’t want to ask too much—miracles and such—but I sure would be pissed if I should have been an atheist; oh Lord, please exist.”
“Republicans have perfectly nice manners, normal hair, pleasant smiles, good deodorants, but when it comes down to it, you don’t want them monitoring your oxygen flow.”
“Go to any inner-city emergency room and see suffering people filling out forms about their finances and waiting hour after hour after hour, a primitive caste system of medicine in a Christian country.”
“We are all equal in our dread of the end of this delightful life and our disbelief in our own mortality. It will be a great day in America when we finally see that everybody can come see the doctor as needed, not be shunted to the back door and the charity ward.”
“In this nation where tax-supported research propelled [great] advances, our denial of benefits to so many is downright stone-hearted.”
“You drive out of St. Paul and into the Republican suburbs and you see what the New Deal and Fair Deal and Great Society accomplished: they enabled people of modest means to get a leg up in the world and eventually become right-wing reactionaries and pretend that they sprang fully formed from their own ambitions with no help from anybody. And vote to deny others what they themselves were freely given.”
“Most Americans are not willing to let people die in the ditch or go hungry. Democrats aren’t, that’s for sure.”
Garrison Keillor
Meditation of the week
Love Versus Fear: Are you allowing hope to create the potential for change?
Most successful people have an attitude of hope. They aren't necessarily gifted with greater intelligence than others or have more than their share of luck. However, unlike people who remain fearfully stuck in old ideas – often held hostage by even the simplest of problems, never scaling very far up the ladder of success – people who do advance often possess a strong measure of willingness to believe that wherever they are, God has a message for them that will move them farther along their path. Trusting that they will go where God wants them to contribute next is the key that allows them to relinquish their fear.
It's so easy to get trapped by fear – fear about leaving a job, or a familiar neighborhood or city; fear about learning something new; fear about upsetting a relationship – the list is endless. We can get comfy even in situations that are actually detrimental, not because they are meeting our needs but because we are afraid to give up what we know. The trust we need to develop to move on requires love, particularly for ourselves. It doesn't mean loving the unknown itself, which is never easy; it does mean trusting in our readiness to cultivate hope and the belief that all is well, that each fearful situation presents us with the opportunity to develop our ability to build that trust. There is a definite rhythm within the evolution of our lives; nothing is happening out of sequence. We do have the power to disrupt the sequence, however, by choosing to stay stuck in fear. . . .
We don't ever have to wonder what our next right thought should be when we view all actions as symptoms of either the love or fear that's being felt. The guesswork is removed. Being hopeful for ourselves and one another is the remedy for all situations, large or small. It's the only solution that will promote peace.
Most successful people have an attitude of hope. They aren't necessarily gifted with greater intelligence than others or have more than their share of luck. However, unlike people who remain fearfully stuck in old ideas – often held hostage by even the simplest of problems, never scaling very far up the ladder of success – people who do advance often possess a strong measure of willingness to believe that wherever they are, God has a message for them that will move them farther along their path. Trusting that they will go where God wants them to contribute next is the key that allows them to relinquish their fear.
It's so easy to get trapped by fear – fear about leaving a job, or a familiar neighborhood or city; fear about learning something new; fear about upsetting a relationship – the list is endless. We can get comfy even in situations that are actually detrimental, not because they are meeting our needs but because we are afraid to give up what we know. The trust we need to develop to move on requires love, particularly for ourselves. It doesn't mean loving the unknown itself, which is never easy; it does mean trusting in our readiness to cultivate hope and the belief that all is well, that each fearful situation presents us with the opportunity to develop our ability to build that trust. There is a definite rhythm within the evolution of our lives; nothing is happening out of sequence. We do have the power to disrupt the sequence, however, by choosing to stay stuck in fear. . . .
We don't ever have to wonder what our next right thought should be when we view all actions as symptoms of either the love or fear that's being felt. The guesswork is removed. Being hopeful for ourselves and one another is the remedy for all situations, large or small. It's the only solution that will promote peace.
Poem of the Week
In Sickness and Health
My friend whose husband
will soon succumb to cancer
loves to lie next to him at night
to smell him and feel the warm
stomach and flanks through his pajamas
the two of them are glad
he can still walk the streets of New York
still get tickets to the Philharmonic on impulse
they never fight any more
will soon succumb to cancer
loves to lie next to him at night
to smell him and feel the warm
stomach and flanks through his pajamas
the two of them are glad
he can still walk the streets of New York
still get tickets to the Philharmonic on impulse
they never fight any more
Author of the week
Stewart took over as the host of The Daily Show in January 1999. For the previous 15 years — since he'd graduated from college with a psychology degree — he had worked as a bartender, busboy, shelf-stocker, construction worker, soccer coach, puppeteer for children with disabilities, and he'd been employed by the State of New Jersey and the City University of New York.
All this time Stewart was trying to make it on the New York comedy scene. He lined up a gig at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village but was jeered off stage halfway through his act. Then he got a nightly 1:45 a.m. slot at the Comedy Cellar; his audience at first consisted mostly of the place's bartenders and staff. He became a friend and frequent guest on David Letterman's Late Night and was a candidate to replace him on NBC when Letterman left for CBS. Conan O'Brien got Letterman's spot in 1993, but Stewart got his own MTV show, which had the second-highest ratings on the network but was cancelled after two seasons. In 1999, Comedy Central's The Daily Show picked up Jon Stewart.
In 2007 a Pew Research poll indicated that Jon Stewart ranked as the 4th Most Admired Journalist — tying with Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, Dan Rather, and Anderson Cooper. When Senator John Edwards announced his candidacy for president on The Daily Show, Stewart replied: "We're a fake show, so I want you to know this may not count."
Each morning on the day of the show, Stewart and the Daily Show team of writers gather for a morning meeting. They sift through material gathered via TiVo, Web sites, newspapers, and magazines looking for — as one show producer said — stories that "make us angry in a whole new way." In an article titled, "Is Jon Stewart the Most Trusted Man in America?" New York Times writer Michiko Kakutani reported on The Daily Show ritual: At lunchtime, Stewart is scrutinizing the jokes that will appear at the top of the night's show; by 3 p.m., a script has been written; at 4:15, there's rehearsal, followed immediately by rewrites; and then show is taped in front of a live audience in the studio at 6 p.m.
Stewart, who proposed to his wife through a crossword puzzle with the help of puzzlemaster Will Shortz, is also the author of a few books, including America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (2004), which held the No. 1 New York Times Bestseller spot for 18 weeks in a row. He hosted the Academy Awards in 2006 and 2008.
Video of the week
There weren’t any interesting videos on the internet this week.
Websites of the week
There weren’t any interesting websites on the internet this week,either.
