August 28, 2011

Quotes of the week

"Almost everything: all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure. These things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose." Steve Jobs

Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.

Cherie Carter-Scott, "If Love Is a Game, These Are the Rules"

“Kindness is like snow - it beautifies everything it covers”
French Proverb

Websites of the week

·       What are you going to do with you life?

·       So, you’re a Republican that hates taxes? Well, since you do not like taxes or government, please kindly do the following.

·       100 Things You Can Say To Irritate A Republican.

·       The quiet place

·       Normandy then and now

Dear Photograph of the week

Dear Photograph,
Over 25 years later, the house is still blue and my mother is still looking over me.
Alexandra

http://dearphotograph.com/archive

The culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

Centers for disease control; DC zombie posters

Poem of the Week

IX.

by Wendell Berry

I go by a field where once
I cultivated a few poor crops.
It is now covered with young trees,
for the forest that belongs here
has come back and reclaimed its own.
And I think of all the effort
I have wasted and all the time,
and of how much joy I took
in that failed work and how much
it taught me. For in so failing
I learned something of my place,
something of myself, and now
I welcome back the trees.

Video of the week

The Lost 1984 Video: young Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh

August 21, 2011

Quotes of the week

“Consider well the proportion of things. It is better to be a young June bug, than an old bird of paradise.”
Mark Twain

“What was hard to suffer is sweet to remember.”
Seneca

 (585): He set an alarm on my phone to an infant screaming and puking to make sure i take my pill. It’s working. Textsfromlastnight

Websites of the week

Dear photograph of the week

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be

A practical wedding but I can’t show it to you

The culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

Matthew James Gets Bionic Hand, Courtesy Of Formula One Team

Meditation of the week

That's what happens when you're angry at people. You make them part of your life.
--Garrison Keillor

Our problems with anger and our problems in relationships go hand in hand. Some of us have held back our anger, which led to resentment of our loved ones. Some of us have indulged our anger and become abusive. Some of us have been so frightened of anger that we closed off the dialogue in our relationships when angry feelings came out.

Some of us have wasted our energy by focusing anger on people who weren't really important to us. Do we truly want them to become so important? Yet, perhaps the important relationships got frozen because we weren't open and respectful with our anger. It isn't possible to be close to someone without being angry at times. We let our loved ones be part of our lives by feeling our anger when it is there and expressing it openly, directly, and respectfully to them - or by hearing them when they are angry. Then, with dialogue, we can let it go.

I will be aware of those people I am making important in my life and will grow in dealing with my anger.

You are reading from the book:

Touchstones by Anonymous

Poem of the Week

Running on the Shore

by May Swenson

The sun is hot, the ocean cool. The waves
throw down their snowy heads. I run
under their hiss and boom, mine their wild
breath. Running the ledge where pipers
prod their awls into sand-crab holes,
my barefoot tracks their little prints cross
on wet slate. Circles of romping water swipe
and drag away our evidence. Running and
gone, running and gone, the casts of our feet.

My twin, my sprinting shadow on yellow shag,
wand of summer over my head, it seems
that we could run forever while the strong
waves crash. But sun takes its belly under.
Flashing above magnetic peaks of the ocean's
purple heave, the gannet climbs,
and turning, turns
to a black sword that drops,
hilt-down, to the deep.

Reasonableness of the week

How Rich is Too Rich? By Sam Harris

I’ve written before about the crisis of inequality in the United States and about the quasi-religious abhorrence of “wealth redistribution” that causes many Americans to oppose tax increases, even on the ultra rich. The conviction that taxation is intrinsically evil has achieved a sadomasochistic fervor in conservative circles—producing the Tea Party, their Republican zombies, and increasingly terrifying failures of governance. More here

August 14, 2011

Quotes of the week

“A man that keeps riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles.” Unknown

“Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage which we did not take, towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden. T. S. Eliot

"Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as "suits."" Paul Graham

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right. Hannah Whitall Smith

Websites of the week

19 most visited sites on the internet

The culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

This is your life

Poem of the Week

Crossing the Gap

by Travis Mossotti

Try asking Ernie Watts, a local bricklayer,
to explain how after a long day of work
and league night at the Lucky Strike
he can glide across the kitchen floor,
Old Style hovering like a ghost on his breath,
bowling shoes slung over one shoulder,
singing fly me to the moon to his wife Cheryl.
And when he dips her over the linoleum
like it was their first homecoming all over again,
ask him to put into words what that sinking is,
that shudder in his chest, as he notices
the wrinkles gathering at the corners of her mouth.
He'd rather tell you about the time they rode
the Tail of the Dragon the year after they'd married,
crossing Deals Gap at the Tennessee state line
on his '77 Triumph Silver Jubilee.
How they heard talk of a young couple
dying on that same stretch of road a week before,
and how hard she held onto him that day—
curve after potentially deadly curve.
Afterwards, in bed, she'll reach for the Virginia Slims
on the nightstand, and he'll open
the windows behind the headboard
as a summer breeze creeps past the lithesome curtains—
wild grass and honeysuckle mixing with the tobacco.
If the drone and flicker of a gathering storm should disrupt
the silence of the room, she'll tighten the wing nut
of her body behind his, so close that when her lips
brush against the nearly imperceptible hairs
on the back of his neck he'll be convinced
there is no other life but this.

Song of the Week

Lyle Lovett: Church

http://youtu.be/zZI0zO2TS1Y

(thanks Lee!)

August 7, 2011

Quotes of the week

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. Benjamin Franklin

“Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land, And don't criticize What you can't understand”
Bob Dylan

“If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.”
Marcus Garvey

Websites of the week

10 Interesting Things About The Human Body

http://www.fakeiphonetext.com/

http://www.demotivation.us/newest.html

The culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor

Lincoln Assassination Eyewitness (Feb 9, 1956)

My father told stories of seeing Civil War veterans when he was a boy.

Meditation of the week

Help is available - we don't have to go it alone.

Together we can do it - we can recover. Disorders are habits of loneliness and isolation. To get well we need help, and that help is always available.

Those of us who belong to a Twelve Step support group have a list of phone numbers. We know we can call people who will be there for us. We go to meetings and share. We find that other people have similar problems, and we stop feeling lonely and isolated.

Some of us are in therapy, some of us have strong family support systems, and some of us have friends and colleagues we can talk to when the going gets rough.

We can get help through our spiritual center. We may define it in various ways, but when we become aware of this center, we have an ever-present source of support.

I will spend some quiet time today paying attention to the help that comes from my spiritual center.

You are reading from the book:

Inner Harvest by Elisabeth L.

Poem of the Week

The bee is not afraid of me

by Emily Dickinson

The bee is not afraid of me,
I know the butterfly;
The pretty people in the woods
Receive me cordially.

The brooks laugh louder when I come,
The breezes madder play.
Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists?
Wherefore, O summer's day?

Video of the week