Profound Category Archives :: Consider This

Five Lessons of Winston Churchill's Life

Winston Churchill led a full life, and few people are ever likely to equal it—its amplitude, variety, and success on so many fronts. But all can learn from it, especially in FIVE ways.
~ The first lesson is: always aim high.
~ Lesson number two is: there is no substitute for hard work.
~ Third, and in its way most important, Churchill never allowed mistakes, disaster—personal or national—accidents, illnesses, unpopularity, and criticism to get him down.
~ Fourth, Churchill wasted an extraordinarily small amount of his time and emotional energy on the meanness of life: recrimination, shifting the blame onto others, malice, revenge seeking, dirty tricks, spreading rumors, harboring grudges, waging vendettas.
~ Finally, the absence of hatred left plenty of room for joy in Churchill's life.
—Paul Brown

Source: Churchill by Paul Johnson. Viking 2009 ISBN: 978-0-670-02105-5

Magical Things

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits
to grow sharper.
—Eden Phillpotts

Source: Inspired Quote of the Week email subscription from Compendium, Inc.
See also: > Eden Phillpotts on Wikipedia

You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink", sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone --
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
—Rudyard Kipling in his poem Gunga Din

Source: Everypoet.com's Poetry of Rudyard Kipling Gunga Din.
> it is the birthday of Rudyard Kipling who was born in Bombay, India in 1865. He died on January 18, 1936 in London England.

Waiting for Sunday?

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.
—Robert Bly from his unpublished poem Call and Answer

Source: New and Unpublished Poems by Robert Bly: Call and Answer
> It is the birthday of Robert Bly, born on this day in 1926 in Madison, Minnesota.
> See also The Chesapeake Men's Gathering.

Ah, Life!

Never, my heart, is there enough of living.
—Leonie Adams

Source: The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor for Wednesday, December 9, 2009.
> It's the birthday of the American poet Leonie Adams. She was born on this day in 1899 in Brooklyn, New York. She died on June 27, 1988 in New Milford, Connecticut.

The Snipes' Lament

The Snipes Lament
Now each of us from time to time, have gazed upon the sea.
We watched the warships pulling out, to keep this country free.
Most of us have read a book, or heard a lusty tale,
about the men who sail these ships, through lightning, wind and hail.
But there’s a place within each ship, that legend fails to teach.

It’s down below the waterline, it takes a living toll...
A hot metal living hell, that sailors call the “hole.”
It houses engines run by steam, that makes the shafts go round.
A place of fire, noise and heat that beats your spirit down.
The engines are molded by gods without remorse, that are nightmares in a dream.
Whose boilers threat that from the fires roar and superheated steam.
Makes the "hole" like living hell, that at any minute, with tormented scorn, escape the pipes and crush you out.

Where turbines scream like tortured souls, alone in the ships bowels,thinking of being lost in hell.
As ordered from Bridge above, to the Snipes a duty to answer every bell.
The men who keep the fires lit, and make the engines run,
are strangers to the world of day light, and rarely see the sun.
They have no time for man or God, no tolerance for fear.
Their aspect pays no living thing, the tribute of a tear.

For there’s not much that men can do, that these men have not done.
Beneath the decks deep in the hole, to make the engines run.
And every hour of every day, they keep the watch in hell.
For if the fires ever fail, their ship’s becomes a useless shell.

When ships converge to make war upon the sea.
The men below just grimly smile, at what their fate might be.
They’re locked in below like men for doomed, who hear no battle cry.
It’s well assumed that if they’re hit, the men below will die.
For every day’s a war down there, when the gauges all read red,
Twelve hundred pounds of heated steam, can kill you mighty dead.

So if you ever write their sons, or try to tell their tale.
The very words would make you hear, a fired furnace’s wail.
And people as a general rule, don’t hear of men of steel.
So little’s heard about the place, that sailors call the “hole.”

But I can sing about this place, and try to make you see.
The hardened life of men down there, cause one of them is me.
I’ve seen these sweat soaked heroes fight, in superheated air,
To keep their ship alive and right through no one knows they’re there.

And thus they’ll fight for ages on, till warships sail no more.
Amid the boiler’s mighty heat, and the turbines hellish roar.
So when you see a ship pull out, to meet a warlike foe,
Remember faintly if you can, THE MEN WHO SAIL BELOW,
that call the HOLE their home.
—Author unknown shared by a commenter "Black Shoe Snipe."

Source: From the deep bowels of the USS Donald B Beary FF-1085 "Mission Sailors Always" offered by a commenter, "Black Shoe Snipe" on my blog entry Snipes A Poem and Tribute for April 10, 2006. Thank you, Black Shoe Snipe! Remember, 30 and NO smoke! Only economy haze!

Use Me Thoroughly Up!

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
—George Bernard Shaw

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Monday, November 2, 2009.

Fears of Some People

The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.
—George Bancroft

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, October 3, 2009.
> Today is the birthday of George Bancroft born this day in 1800 in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was an historian and statesman, and was acting Secretary of the Navy when the US Naval School (later, the US Naval Academy) was established on October 10, 1845 on the Severn River in Annapolis, Maryland. He died on January 17, 1891 in Washington, D.C.
> Bancroft Hall at the US Naval Academy was built in 1901–06 and is named in honor of George Bancroft.

Be the Change

We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.
—Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Source: WikiQuote's Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
> WikiQuote says of this quote:
"As quoted in "Arun Gandhi Shares the Mahatma's Message" by Michel W. Potts, in India - West [San Leandro, California] Vol. XXVII, No. 13 (1 February 2002) p. A34; Arun Gandhi indirectly quoting his grandfather. See also. "Be the change you wish to see: An interview with Arun Gandhi" by Carmella B'Hahn, Reclaiming Children and Youth [Bloomington] Vol.10, No. 1 (Spring 2001) p. 6"
> Today is the birthday of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, born this day in Porbandar, a coastal town in present-day Gujarat, India, on 2 October 1869. On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot while having his nightly public walk on the grounds of the Birla Bhavan (Birla House) in New Delhi.
> See also Wikipedia's Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
—Robert Frost Mending Wall.

Source: Published in Robert Frost's book of poems North of Boston in 1915.
> Found on the Web at Jeff Ketzle's Mending Wall

Blinding Ignorance

Blinding ignorance does mislead us.
O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!
—Leonard da Vinci

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works.
You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it.
Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.
—Leonardo da Vinci

Source: BrainyQuote.com's Leonardo da Vinci Quotes
> It is the birthday of Leonardo da Vinci, born in Vinci, Italy in 1452. He died on May 2, 1519 in Cloux, France. Legend has it that King Francis was at his side when he died, cradling Leonardo's head in his arms.

Presidential Leadership

Roosevelt's point was plain: Government counts, and in the right hands, it can be made to work. Strong federal action, not just private voluntary efforts and the invisible hand of the marketplace, was required to help those stricken in an emergency. The American people expected and deserved leadership in addressing their hardships, not just from state and local authorities, but from the White House. This fundamental insight would guide politicians and help millions of people in the years ahead, but it was lost on others, who ignored the lessons of Franklin Roosevelt at their peril.
—Jonathan Alter

Source: The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope by Jonathan Alter page 299 Simon & Schuster Paperbacks 2006 ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-4600-2.
See also:
> The White House.
>: The White House.gov > Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt Thirty-Second President of the United States.

Change Has Come to the USA

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
—Barack H. Obama, President of the United States, extract from his First Inaugural Address

Source: President Obama's Inaugural Address at WhiteHouse.gov and a copy of his Inaugural Address published in the Washington Post, January 20, 2009.
See also:
> President Obama's first proclamation, A National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, January 20, 2009, Washington, DC, USA
> Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural Poem Praise song for the day.

Recognize and Respect Differences

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.
—Arnold Bennett

There are no little events in life, those we think of no consequence may be full of fate, and it is at our own risk if we neglect the acquaintances and opportunities that seem to be casually offered, and of small importance.
—Amelia Barr

Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nothing is ever lost by courtesy. It is the cheapest of pleasures, costs nothing, and conveys much. It pleases him who gives and receives and thus ... is twice blessed.
—Erastus Wiman

Source: The Little Book of Positive Quotations compiled by Steve Deger and Leslie Ann Gibson. 2006 Fairview Press ISBN-13: 978-1-57749-158-3

Growing a Great Society

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
—Greek proverb

Source: Tuesday, December 2, 2008 Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes 2008 Calendar by Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN-13: 978-0-7407-6680-0

Dedicated to President-Elect Barack Obama

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that "all men are created equal"

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow, this ground -- The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
—Abraham Lincoln November 19, 1863

Source: U.S Library of Congress's Transcript of the "Nicolay Draft" of the Gettysburg Address
See also:
> University of Oklahoma Law Center's U.S. Historical Documents Collection
> Read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on this blog, Consider This.
> My Nov. 19, 2005 entry on this blog Path of American Destiny.
> My Nov. 19, 2006 entry on this blog Gettysburg Address Anniversary
> The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor for Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The Year of Jubilee is Come

Blow ye the trumpet, blow!
The gladly solemn sound
Let all the nations know,
To earth's remotest bound:

The year of jubilee is come!
The year of jubilee is come!
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
—Charles Wesley's hymn Blow ye the trumpet, blow

Source: In Our Lifetime by Henry Louis gates, Jr. published Nov. 4, 2008 on TheRoot.com wherein Mr. Gates considers the meaning of the Presidential election of Barack Obama on Nov. 4, 2008.

The Monkeys Stand for Honesty

Somethin' tells me
It's all happening at the zoo.
I do believe it,
I do believe it's true.

The monkeys stand for honesty,
Giraffes are insincere,
And the elephants are kindly but
They're dumb.
Orangutans are skeptical
Of changes in their cages,
And the zookeeper is very fond of rum.
Zebras are reactionaries,
Antelopes are missionaries,
Pigeons plot in secrecy,
And hamsters turn on frequently.
What a gas! You gotta come and see
At the zoo.
—Paul Simon from the lyrics of At the Zoo

Source: PaulSimon.com's lyrics online of At the Zoo
> It is the birthday of Paul Simon born in Newark, New Jersey in 1941.
> See also "The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor for Monday, October 13, 2008

Complete Satisfaction Does Not Exist

Realize that complete satisfaction does not exist.
Set your sights on being generally satisfied and generally happy, not expecting every aspect to be perfect. Complete satisfaction does not exist because everything can be improved upon. Those who accept this can appreciate what they have. Those who do not accept this can never appreciate what they have even as their circumstances improve. Strive to improve. Don't try to be perfect.
—David Niven, Ph.D. in Realize that complete satisfaction does not exist: Number 89 of The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

Those who believe they will fail to achieve their goals are unhappy, but so too are those who believe they will exactly meet their goals. Those who are the happiest believe they will meet some of their goals and will receive satisfaction from multiple aspects of their lives..
—Chen N. 1996. "Individual Differences in Answering the Four Questions for Happiness." Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.

Source: The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It. by David Niven, Ph.D. 2000 HarperCollins ISBN: 0-06-251650-7
See also: Country Inns & Suites by Carlson Read & Return It program.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 34-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Dent the Universe!

Let's make a dent in the universe.
—Steve Jobs

Source: Saturday/Sunday, September 20/21, 2008 Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes 2008 Calendar by Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN-13: 978-0-7407-6680-0

Only Love! (Again)

There are only 4 questions of value in life, Don Octavio:

What is sacred?
Of What is the spirit made?
What is worth Living for? and
What is worth Dying for?

The answer to each is the same: only Love!
----Don Juan DeMarco (played by Johnny Depp) to Don Octavio (played by Marlon Brando)
in the film Don Juan DeMarco

Source: Elise's Wonderful, Inspirational Collection of Quotes, and Poetry, and Sayings
> Because this resonants so strongly with me, this is the second posting of this quote. See my earlier (2004) post, Only Love!

How Sweet It is To Love Someone...

How right it is to care...

John Denver sings "Poems, Prayers and Promises."
How we miss you so, John.

Lyrics: Poems, Prayers and Promises

Your Wild and Precious Lfe

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver from her poem, The Summer Day

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Monday, June 30, 2008.

Why Do You Do Good?

If people are good only because they fear punishment and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
—Albert Einstein

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8

Focus on the World's Hope

Focus not on the world's tragedies, but on the world's hope.
Many sad things happen in our world, but rather than focusing on them, have hope for the future. Think of the world's potential. Perhaps the future holds the curing of diseases, the end of violence, the amelioration of poverty and hunger.
—David Niven, Ph.D. in Focus not on the world's tragedies, but on the world's hope: Number 84 of The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

Over nine in ten Americans are uncomfortable or worried about aspects of the world and society. The difference between more and less happy people is what they do with that discomfort. Less happy people wallow in the problems they see, while happier people focus on potential improvements in the future.
—Garrett R. 1996. "Wisdom as the Key to a Better World." In Contemporary Issues in Behavior Therapy New York: Plenum.

Source: The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It. by David Niven, Ph.D. 2000 HarperCollins ISBN: 0-06-251650-7
See also: Country Inns & Suites by Carlson Read & Return It program.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 34-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Do You Keep the Channel Open?

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
—Martha Graham

Source: Garr Reynold's blog: Presentation Zen, April 12, 2008 entry Ichi-nichi issho: Each day is a lifetime
See also:
> The incredibly inspiring The Last Lecture | Randy Pausch and the lecture itself :
(about 76 minutes you can't miss!)

Update: July 25, 2008
Randy Pausch, 47, Dies; His ‘Last Lecture’ Inspired Many to Live With Wonder
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: July 26, 2008 (NY Times Online)
Dr. Pausch was the Carnegie Mellon University professor whose “last lecture” made him a Lou-Gehrig-like symbol of the beauty and briefness of life.

Happy Birthday William Shakespeare

The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea,
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence 'gainst the merchant there.
—Portia in Shakespeare's The Merchant Of Venice Act 4, scene 1, 180–187

Source: Shakespeare Quotes at enotes.com The quality of mercy is not strained.
> Also: The Merchant Of Venice Act 4, scene 1, 180–187
> It is the believed to be birthday of William Shakespeare, born in Stratford-on-Avon, England in 1564. He died on April 23, 1616.
> See: Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, April 23, 2008

A Friendship Blessing

May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.
May you be able to journey to that place in your soul
   where there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.
May this change you.
May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you.
May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging.
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good to them and may you be there for them;
   may they bring you all the blessings, challenges, truth,
   and light that you need for your journey.
May you never be isolated.
May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam cara.
—John O'Donohue

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O'Donohue Harper Perennial 1998 & 2004 ISBN-13: 978-0-06-092943-5

Light Within You

The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be.
—Shakti Gawain

Source: Spirit window card series, by Compendium, Inc.
See also: Shakti Gawain's Web site

Love: Not Perfect Caring

Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.
—Fred Rogers

Source: The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers 2003 ISBN 1-4013-0106-1
Today is the birthday of Fred Rogers, producer, writer, puppeteer, composer, lyricist, ordained minister and devoted student of child development. Mister Rogers was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania in 1928. He died on February 27, 2003 at his home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
See also:
> Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Thursday, Mar. 20, 2008
> Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
> About Fred Rogers

They Shall Not Grow Old

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
— Laurence Binyon, from his poem For the fallen

Source: Australian War Memorial page: Commemoration
See also:
> Laurence Binyon's For the Fallen.
> ANZAC Day (25 April) is the most important national day of commemoration for Australians. This poem is one poem traditionally read on ANZAC Day commemorations. See the Australian War Memorial's ANZAC Day.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 59-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Who, if not I?

I am the wind on the sea.
I am the ocean wave.
I am the sound of the billows.
I am the seven-horned stag.
I am the hawk on the cliff.
I am the dewdrop in sunlight.
I am the fairest of flowers.
I am the raging boar.
I am the salmon in the deep pool.
I am the lake on the plain.
I am the meaning of the poem.
I am the point of the spear.
I am the god that makes fire in the head.
Who levels the mountain?
Who speaks the age of the moon?
Who has been where the sun sleeps?
Who, if not I?
—The Song of Amergin

Source: Speaking of Faith Public Radio show of Feb. 28, 2008 (and repeated on Sunday, Mar. 2, 2008) The Inner Landscape of Beauty | Program Particulars, a program interviewing the late Celtic poet John O'Donohue.
See also:
> Amergin, Amirgin, Amairgen by Dedanaan: Myth Is What We Call Other People's Religion.
> Short biographical sketch of John O'Donohue.

The Future - Tomorrow

The future will be better tomorrow.
—Dan Quayle

Source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Wednesday, February 6, 2008 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN-13: 9780-7407-6680-0

To Be Not Afraid

I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use - silence, exile, and cunning. ... I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.
—james Joyce

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Wrtier's Almanac for Saturday, February 2, 2008
> Today is the birthday of James Joyce, born in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin (1882). Joyce died on January 13, 1941 in Zürich.

Who is What and What is Who

On Wednesday, when the sky is blue,
And I have nothing else to do,
I sometimes wonder if it's true
That who is what and what is who.
—Pooh (from Winnie-the-Pooh)

Source: books and writers bio of A(lan) A(lexander) Milne (1882-1956
It is the birthday of A.A. Milne born London, England on this day in 1882. He died in Hartfield, Sussex, on January 31, 1956.
See also:
> Garrison Keillor's The Wrtier's Almanac for Friday, January 18, 2008

Hate Corrodes - Hate Destroys

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Source: The Quotations Page – Martin Luther King Jr. Quotes
Today, Jan. 15^th is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia, USA in 1929. He died in Memphis, Tennessee having been assassinated on April 4 , 1968.
See also:
> Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2008.
> New York Times Obituary Martin Luther King Jr.: Leader of Millions in Nonviolent Drive for Racial Justice by Murray Schumach published April 5, 1968

Falling from High Places

A fall from the third floor hurts as much as a fall from the hundredth. If I have to fall, may it be from a high place.
—Paulo Coelho

Source: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better. Herter Studio. Running Press. 2006 ISBN 13: 978-0-7624-2514-3
See also:
> Official site of Paulo Coelho

Living Our Own Life

We must all live our own lives, in our own time, and learn what is true for us, because very few truths prove valid for all people all the time.
—extract from DailyOm for Thursday, January 3, 2008

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM Suffer And Sacrifice: False Beliefs published Thursday, January 3, 2008.

Not Made Any of Us Safer

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.
—New York Times Editorial Staff

Source: The New York Times editorial Looking at America [free subscription required] published Monday, Dec. 31, 2007.

Experience is the Bitterest

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius

Source: Confucius Quote on Wisdom on BrainyQuote.com.

Purpose: What?

Your purpose is always about giving, loving and serving in some capacity.
—Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Source: Everyday Wisdom by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer published by Hay House 1993 ISBN 1-56170-076-2
See also:
> Dr. Dyer's Official Web site

Scrooge on the Eve of Christmas

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.' Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
—Charles Dickens, the beginning of A Christmas Carol

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Monday, December 24, 2007
See also:
> Biographical sketch of Charles Dickens
> Wikipedia's A Christmas Carol

Don't Dwell on Unwinnable Conflicts

Move on. The problems you spend your time and energy on should both be important and improvable. Otherwise, you are better off moving on to things you can change.
—David Niven, Ph.D. in Don't Dwell on Unwinnable Conflicts: Number 82 of The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

Many people experience conflict in balancing their time between work and home. Studies find that people who want to spend more time in both settings wind up feeling decreased satisfaction at home and at work. Those who recognize that their limited time is a conflict without a readily available solution are one–more likely to feel comfortable with themselves than those who do not.
—Caproni p. 1997. "Work/Life Balance: You Can't Get There From Here." Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 33: 46.

Source: The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It. by David Niven, Ph.D. 2000 HarperCollins ISBN: 0-06-251650-7
See also: Country Inns & Suites by Carlson Read & Return It program.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 43-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Thousands of Small, Routine Tasks

And tragically, since the onset of the scientific and technological revolution, it has seemingly become all too easy for ultrarational minds to create an elaborate edifice of clockwork efficiency capable of nightmarish cruelty on an industrial scale. The atrocities of Hitler and Stalin, and the mechanical sins of all who helped them, might have been inconceivable except for the separation of facts from values and knowledge from morality. In her study of Adolf Eichmann, who organized the death camp bureaucracy, Hannah Arendt coined the memorable phrase "the banality of evil" to describe the bizarre contrast between the humdrum and ordinary quality of the acts themselves—the thousands of small, routine tasks committed by workaday bureaucrats—and the horrific and satanic quality of their proximate consequences. It was precisely the machinelike efficiency of the system that carried out the genocide which seemed to make it possible for its functionaries to separate the thinking required in their daily work from the moral sensibility for which, because they were human beings, they must have had some capacity. This mysterious, vacant space in their souls, between thinking and feeling, is the suspected site of the inner crime. This barren of the spirit, rendered fallow by the blood of unkept brothers, is the precinct of the disembodied intellect, which knows the way things work but not the way they are.

It is my view that the underlying moral schism that contributed to these extreme manifestations of evil has also conditioned our civilization to insulate its conscience from any responsibility for the collective endeavors that invisibly link millions of small, silent, banal acts and omissions together in a pattern of terrible cause and effect. Today, we enthusiastically participate in what is in essence a massive and unprecedented experiment with the natural systems of the global environment, with little regard for the moral consequences. But for the separation of science and religion, we might not be pumping so much gaseous chemical waste into the atmosphere and threatening the destruction of the earth's climate balance. But for the separation of useful technological know-how and the moral judgments to guide its use, we might not be slashing and burning one football field's worth of rain forest every second. But for the assumed separation of humankind from nature, we might not be destroying half the living species on earth in the space of a single lifetime. But for the separation of thinking and feeling, we might not tolerate the deaths everyday of 37,000 children under the age of five from starvation and preventable diseases made worse by failures of crops and politics.
—Al Gore, Earth in the Balance, 1992

Source: Quotations Collected by David Conner, Part 2

More Nothing Than Something

An atom (and thus all matter) is mostly empty space.
—Encyclopedia Britannica

Contrary to our perception and belief, there is more nothing than something, even in things that appear to have more something than nothing.
—Peter McWilliams

Everything is always in motion, even things that don't appear to have moved in millions of years.
—Peter McWilliams

The perception that things are solid and stationary is an illusion.
—Peter McWilliams

Source: The Portable Life 101: 179 essential lessons from the New York Times bestseller Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned in Life In School—But Didn't by Peter McWilliams 1995 ISBN: 0-931580-41-2

THE Something I Can Do

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something I will not refuse to do the something I can do.
—Helen Keller

Source: Because of You series window card by Compendium, Inc.

Service

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?
—George Eliot

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8

No Mistakes; No Discoveries

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.
We often discover what will do by finding out what will not do;
and probably he who never made a mistake, never made a discovery.
—Samuel Smiles

Source: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better. Herter Studio. Running Press. 2006 ISBN 13: 978-0-7624-2514-3

Human Doing?

You are not a human doing but rather a human being.
—Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Source: Everyday Wisdom by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer published by Hay House 1993 ISBN 1-56170-076-2
See also Dr. Dyer's Official Web site

Point of Philosophy

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
—Bertrand Russell

Sourrce: 50 philosophy ideas you really need to know by Ben Dupré. Quercus 2007 ISBN-13: 978-1-84724-149-8

Our Own Behavior

We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
—Henry Miller

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8

Change My Mind?

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
—John Kenneth Galbraith

Source: The Portable Life 101: 179 essential lessons from the New York Times bestseller Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned in Life In School—But Didn't by Peter McWilliams 1995 ISBN: 0-931580-41-2

Wasting Our Brains

That image of a $6 million high-tech U.S. helicopter with a highly trained pilot blowing an insurgent off his bicycle captures the absurdity of our situation in Iraq. The great Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi said it best: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

That is where we are in Iraq. We’re wasting our brains. We’re wasting our people. We’re wasting our future.
—Thomas L. Friedman

Source: Iraq Through China’s Lens by Thomas L. Friedman. Published Sep. 12, 2007 in the New York Times. [Requires subscription]

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age | 36-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Horse Leaps

Half the failures of life arise from pulling one's horse as he is leaping.
—August Hare

Source: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better. Herter Studio. Running Press. 2006 ISBN 13: 978-0-7624-2514-3

Heaven Longs To Be Here On Earth?

Perhaps heaven really does long to be here on earth, and perhaps that is why we are here–as conduits between the divine and the earthbound. As we drink the morning dew in with our eyes, our skin, our breath, it is easy to imagine that it really is a magical potion, a gift from heaven, a reminder of our true purpose, and a daily opportunity to be transformed.
—extract from the DailyOM for Monday, August 27, 2007

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM A Magical Potion: Morning Dew published Monday, August 27, 2007.

Gather Rosebuds While You May

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
—Robert Herrick

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Friday, August 24, 2007
⇒ Today is the birthday of Robert Herrick, born in London in 1591. He was buried at Devon on October 15, 1674.

Okay to Make Mistakes?

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
—George Bernard Shaw

Source: Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better. Herter Studio. Running Press. 2006 ISBN 13: 978-0-7624-2514-3
⇒ See also: George Bernard Shaw

Is There Good Judment in Politics?

Good judgment in politics, it turns out, depends on being a critical judge of yourself. It was not merely that the president did not take the care to understand Iraq. He also did not take the care to understand himself. The sense of reality that might have saved him from catastrophe would have taken the form of some warning bell sounding inside, alerting him that he did not know what he was doing. But then, it is doubtful that warning bells had ever sounded in him before. He had led a charmed life, and in charmed lives warning bells do not sound.

People with good judgment listen to warning bells within. Prudent leaders force themselves to listen equally to advocates and opponents of the course of action they are thinking of pursuing. They do not suppose that their own good intentions will guarantee good results. They do not suppose they know all they need to know. If power corrupts, it corrupts this sixth sense of personal limitation on which prudence relies.

A prudent leader will save democracies from the worst, but prudent leaders will not inspire a democracy to give its best. Democratic peoples should always be looking for something more than prudence in a leader: daring, vision and — what goes with both — a willingness to risk failure. Daring leaders can be trusted as long as they give some inkling of knowing what it is to fail. They must be men of sorrow acquainted with grief, as the prophet Isaiah says, men and women who have not led charmed lives, who understand us as we really are, who have never given up hope and who know they are in politics to make their country better. These are the leaders whose judgment, even if sometimes wrong, will still prove worthy of trust.
—Michael Ignatieff

Source: Getting Iraq Wrong [requires paid subscription] by Michael Ignatieff published August 5, 2007 in the New York Times Magazine.

Serve and Thou Shall Be Served

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself ... Serve and thou shall be served.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: The Power of Intention: Learning to Co–create Your World Your Way by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. Hay House 2004 ISBN 13: 978-1-4019-0216-2 (tradepaper)

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 37-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Children Never Listen

children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they never fail to imitate them.
—James Baldwin

Source: A Hand to Guide Me: Legends and Leaders Celebrate the People Who Shaped Their Lives by Denzel Washington, Meredith Books 2006 ISBN 13: 978-0-696-23049-3

Sleep, Perchance to Dream

All our dreams are going to come true,
so we better have some good dreams.
—Joe Davis, biotech artist associated with MIT

Source: Java House counter on July 3, 2007.
Java House
210 W Evergreen Blvd # 400
Vancouver, WA 98660
(360) 737-2925
See also:
⇒ Viweing Space's Joe Davis: Genetics and Culture

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 36-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

My Chief Duty

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
—Helen Keller

Love Will Never Put You Down

Love ..........

Love will never put you down,
won't cheat or mess around.

Love won't criticize or scorn,
won't leave you forlorn.

Love won't knock you to the ground,
or make you fear certain sounds.

Love won't verbally berate you
or accuse you of not being true.

Love will not make you powerless
or increase your stress.

When you're in love, love will accept you for you,
for it respects you and allows you to stay true
to yourself and doesn't make you change.
—Unknown

Source: Weekly email "humorous" subscription, Humor -- 26 June 2007; Subject: Love.... by Robert E. Karas.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 36-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

Give & Take in Life

The idea that life is take, take, take (learn, learn, learn) needs to be balanced with the idea that life is also giving (teaching). Receiving and giving (learning and teaching) are two parts of a single flow, like breathing in (receiving) and breathing out (giving). One cannot take place without the other.
—Peter McWilliams

Life is something like a trumpet.
If you don't put anything in,
you won't get anything out.
—W. C. Handy

Source: The Portable Life 101: 179 essential lessons from the New York Times bestseller Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned in Life In School—But Didn't by Peter McWilliams 1995 ISBN: 0-931580-41-2
See also:
⇒ University of North Alabama Library's W. C. Handy Biography
⇒ Memorial for Peter McWilliams, 1950—2000

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 34-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

As I Grow Older

The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't talk much.
—Germain G. Glien

Source: Java House counter on June 8, 2007.
Java House
210 W Evergreen Blvd # 400
Vancouver, WA 98660
(360) 737-2925

Is This the Best Part of Your Life?

We hear that youth is wasted on the young. People who say this are accepting the myth that only the young can enjoy life to the fullest. The truth is that older people do not consider their young days to be their best days; most enjoy their senior years more than any other part of their life.
—David Niven, Ph.D. in You have not finished the best part of your life.: Number 98 of The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

Researchers conducted a long-term study of Northern Californians, interviewing subjects multiple times over three decades. When asked when they had been the happiest in their lives, each time eight out of ten answered "right now."
—Field D. 1997. "Looking Back, What Period of Your Life Brought You the Most Satisfaction?." International Journal of Aging and Human Development 45: 169.

Source: The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It. by David Niven, Ph.D. 2000 HarperCollins ISBN: 0-06-251650-7
See also: Country Inns & Suites by Carlson Read & Return It program.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By age: 33-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

My daughter, Jennifer, celebrates her thirty-third birthday this month.

Looking for Love in All the Right Places

Real love is identifiable by the way it makes us feel. Love should feel good. There is a peaceful quality to an authentic experience of love that penetrates to our core, touching a part of ourselves that has always been there. True love activates this inner being, filling us with warmth and light. An authentic experience of love does not ask us to look a certain way, drive a certain car, or have a certain job. It takes us as we are, no changes required. When people truly love us, their love for us awakens our love for ourselves. They remind us that what we seek outside of ourselves is a mirror image of the lover within. In this way, true love never makes us feel needy or lacking or anxious. Instead, true love empowers us with its implicit message that we are, always have been, and always will be, made of love.
—extract from the DailyOM for Monday, June 4, 2007

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM The Real Thing: Love Should Feel Good published Monday, June 4, 2007.

We the People

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
—Preamble to the United States Constitution

Source: The National Archives US Constitution Transcript.
⇒ It was on this day in 1781 that the Constitutional Convention convened in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the time, Independence Hall was the Pennsylvania State House.
See also:
⇒ The National Archives Constitution of the United States: A History.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age / 24-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Fear Thought?

Mount St. Helens VolcanoCam

Mount St. Helens in early morning sunlight

Today is the 27th anniversary of the Sunday morning eruption of this Cascade Mountain range volcanoe in Southwest Washington. Photo grabbed 0748 May 18, 2007.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more than ruin—more even than death. ... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
—Bertrand Russell

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Friday, May 18, 2007.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age / 22-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Accept Our Family

Some families are better than others at preparing us for the world. What we learn from our families, even if they are simply blank spots on our family trees, becomes the basis of our identities as individuals. Rather than denying our connections, we can choose to accept their presence in our lives. Acceptance does not mean we have to like them; we simply acknowledge that we are connected to them and honor that connection for like it or not, there is a reason. When we can embrace all that they bring into our experience, we may be grateful for all we have learned from them and have to learn, while we experience everything that comes with family fully and completely.
—extract from the DailyOM for Thursday, May 17, 2007

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM Gifts From The Universe: Accepting Your Family published Thursday, May 17, 2007.

You Count

When you become part of something, in some way you count. It could be a march; it could be a rally, even a brief one. You're part of something, and you suddenly realize you count. To count is very important.
—Studs Terkel

Source: BrainyQuote.com's Studs Terkel Quotes.
It is the birthday of StudsTerkel, born Louis Terkel in the Bronx, New York City in 1912.
See also:
⇒ Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, May 16, 2007.
⇒ Wikipedia.org's Studs Terkel

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age / 21-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Tears and Sweat

All I have to offer is blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
—Winston Churchill, Acceptance Speech, 1940

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, May 10, 2007
⇒ It was on this day in 1940 that Winston Churchill took power as the prime minister of Great Britain, a position he would hold for the rest of World War II. He came to power at a very dark moment for Europe. In less than two years, almost all of Western Europe's mainland was either controlled by or allied with Nazi Germany. And then, on this day in 1940, Churchill became the prime minister.
⇒ See also: NobelPrize.org's Winston Churchill – Biography, Churchill was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature for 1953

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age / 20-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

The Universe: Infinite?

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
—Albert Einstein

Source: I've Got The Secret: What happened when I followed the best-selling book's advice for two months. by Emily Yoffe, Posted Monday, May 7, 2007, at 5:17 PM ET
⇒ Her column is "human guinea pig: Humiliating myself for fun and profit" on Slate.com

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Age / 19-year-olds
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Pleasure of Reading

The pleasure we derive from the written word is unique in that we must labor for it. Other forms of art provide us with stimulus and ask nothing more than our emotional response. Reading is an active pastime that requires an investment of emotion as well as our concentration and imagination.
—extract from the DailyOM for Thursday, May 3, 2007

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM A Whole New World: Reading For Pleasure published Thursday, May 3, 2007.

Religion: Man-Made

The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the "meaning" of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them. And yet—the believers still claim to know!
—Christopher Hitchens

Source: Slate.com's blog Fighting Words: from: Christopher Hitchens Religion Poisons Everything; excerpt from Christopher Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Army National Guard
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Man Separated From Another Man

A branch cut off from the adjacent branch must of necessity be cut off from the whole tree also. So too a man when he is separated from another man has fallen off from the whole social community. Now as to a branch, another cuts it off, but a man by his own act separates himself from his neighbour when he hates him and turns away from him, and he does not know that he has at the same time cut himself off from the whole social system. Yet he has this privilege certainly from Zeus who framed society, for it is in our power to grow again to that which is near to us, and be to come a part which helps to make up the whole. However, if it often happens, this kind of separation, it makes it difficult for that which detaches itself to be brought to unity and to be restored to its former condition. Finally, the branch, which from the first grew together with the tree, and has continued to have one life with it, is not like that which after being cut off is then ingrafted, for this is something like what the gardeners mean when they say that it grows with the rest of the tree, but that it has not the same mind with it.
—Marcus Aurelius

Source: MIT's The Internet Classics Archive Book Eleven &ndash The Meditations By Marcus Aurelius
⇒ It is the birthday of Marcus Aurelius born in Rome in A.D. 121. He died in A.D. 180.
⇒ See: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, April 26, 2007
⇒ Read a short sketch biography of Marcus Aurelius

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Navy
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

ANZAC Day, 2007

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
—John McCrae

Source: Australian War Memorial's Commemoration customs of ANZAC Day, April 25^th.
⇒ ANZAC Day - 25 April - is probably Australia's most important national occasion. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as ANZACs, and the pride they soon took in that name endures to this day.

When war broke out in 1914 Australia had been a federal commonwealth for only fourteen years. The new national government was eager to establish its reputation among the nations of the world. In 1915 Australian and New Zealand soldiers formed part of the allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli peninsula to open the way to the Black Sea for the allied navies. The plan was to capture Constantinople (now Istanbul), capital of the Ottoman Empire and an ally of Germany. They landed at Gallipoli on 25 April, meeting fierce resistance from the Turkish defenders.
See: Australian War Memorial The Anzac Day Tradition [Australian War Memorial]

⇒ On this Anzac Day, April 25, 2007, I honor the memory of my Uncle Fred, my Mom's brother, who served in the RAAF during World War II and his service to Australia. Years later on a visit to the states, Uncle Fred and my Dad (who served in the US Army in the Pacific Theater) comparing notes discovered that they had been in the same place in New Guinea at the same time during the War. A small world indeed!
⇒ I also honor the service of all the men and women who served in the defence of Australia, particularly the RAN naval officers and RAN public servants I had the privilege of serving with in the late 1980's at Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, DC.

Truth: Truth?

Say not, 'This is the truth' but 'So it seems to me to be as I now see things I think I see.'
—Unknown – Above a doorway at the German Naval Officers School, in Kiel

Source: John McPhee Annals of the Former World, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG), New York, 2000, p.356 ISBN-13: 978-0-374-51873-8
⇒ www.johmmcphee.com
⇒ John McPhee's page for Annals of the Former World.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: By Date / 2007
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Women and the Glass Ceiling

Mr. President, I don't know why it took us 200 years for one of us to get the job [of ambassador].
—Shirley Temple Black

Source: Creative Quotations from Shirley Temple Black
⇒ Shirley Temple Black was born on this day in 1928 in Santa Monica, California.
⇒ See WikiPedia's Shirley Temple.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Air Force
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

On Being Old

The other day a young person asked me how I felt about being old. I was taken aback, for I do not think of myself as old. Upon seeing my reaction, he was immediately embarrassed, but I explained that it was an interesting question, and I would ponder it, and let him know.

Growing Older, I decided, is a gift. I am now, probably for the first time in my life, the person I have always wanted to be. Oh, not my body! I sometime despair over my body ... the wrinkles, the baggy eyes, and the cellulite. And often I am taken aback by that old person that lives in my mirror, but I don't agonize over those things for long.

I would never trade my amazing friends, my wonderful life, my loving family for less gray hair or a flatter belly. As I've aged, I've become more kind to myself, and less critical of myself. I've become my own friend. I don't chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn't need, but looks so avaunt garde on my patio. I am entitled to be messy, to be extravagant, to smell the flowers. I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.

Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 a.m. and then sleep until -- ?

I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 50's & 60's, (and for some of us the 70's & 80's) and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love, I will.

I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the bikini set.

They, too, will get old (if they're lucky). I know I am sometimes forgetful. But then again, some of life is just as well forgotten and I eventually remember the important things.

Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when a beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.

I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turn gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver. I can say "no," and mean it. I can say "yes" and mean it.

As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong.

So , to answer your question, I like being older. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day...(if I want).

Today, I wish you a day of ordinary miracles.
Love simply.
Love generously.
Care deeply.
Speak kindly.

LIVE WELL - LAUGH OFTEN - LOVE MUCH
—Unknown

Source: Daily email "humorous" subscription, Wednesday's Humor -- 18 Apr 2007; Subject: Old Age.... by Robert E. Karas.

Oh, Such Sorrows

All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story.
—Isak Dinesen

It's all I have to bring today (26)

It's all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget—
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.
—Emily Dickinson

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, April 17, 2007.
See also:
⇒ Online biography of Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen.
⇒ Poets.org's Emily Dickinson.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Navy Reserves
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Friday, the 13th?

Houston, we've had a problem.
—James A. Lovell, CAPT, USN RET, Monday, April 13, 1970

Source: Wikpedia's Apollo 13.
See also:
⇒ NASA's page devoted to Apollo 13.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Army Reserves
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Lee Surrenders to Grant

On April 9, 1865 after four years of Civil War, approximately 630,000 deaths and over 1 million casualties, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, at the home of Wilmer and Virginia McLean in the rural town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
—Appomattox Court House National Historical Park

There is nothing left for me to do but to see Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths.
—General Robert E. Lee, CSA

Source: Appomattox Court House National Historical Park.
See also:
⇒ Fordham University's Modern History Sourcebook: Terms of Lee's Surrender At Appomattox, 1865

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Air Force
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

End of Triumph

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
...
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of triumph.
—Jack Gilbert in his poem Failing and Flying

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Friday, April 6, 2007. The poem, Failing and Flying is included in Gilbert's book, Refusing Heaven.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Army
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Universe Out of Control

Understand that the universe
is forever out of control,
and that trying to dominate events
goes against the river's current.
If you believe in yourself,
will you need the belief of others?
If you are content with yourself,
will you need the approval of others?
If you accept yourself,
who will not accept you?
—Tao Te Ching

Source: Professor Frank Pajares Home at Emory University, and specifically, his Tao Te Ching page.

WashingtonPost.com's Faces of the Fallen: Coast Guard
U.S. Service members who died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom

Seeking Truth

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

I think, therefore I am.
—René Descartes

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, March 31, 2007.
See also: René Descartes short bio

Found My Tribe

Part of being human is the search for an individual identity. Bound to this strong need to establish a unique persona, however, is an equally intense desire for acceptance. It is when we find our individual tribes that both are satisfied. Our tribe members are those people who accept us as we are without reservation and gladly accompany us on our journeys of evolution. Among them, we feel free to be our imperfect selves, to engage unabashedly in the activities we enjoy, and to express our vulnerabilities by relying on our tribe for support. We feel comfortable investing our time and energy in the members of our tribe, and are equally comfortable allowing them to invest their resources in our development.
—extract from the DailyOM for Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM Your Allies On Life's Journey: Finding Your Tribe published Tuesday, March 27, 2007.
⇒ This entry is in honor of my tribe, the men of the Buffalo Gap Annual Gathering and the Men's Council of Greater Washington, see MensWork.org. Thank you, Brothers all, for being my tribe. I am honored to be included.

Nothing Constant

There's nothing constant in the world,
All ebb and flow, and every shape that's born
Bears in its womb the seeds of change.
—Ovid

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, March 19, 2007.
⇒ Ovid was born on this dayin 43 B.C. in the village of Sulmo, just east of Rome. He died in Tomis, now Constanţa AD 17.
See also:
⇒ Ovid's Metamorphosis.
⇒ On WikiPedia: Ovid's biography.

Knowledge vs. Wisdom

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit,
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
—Ruba

Source: Ruba's Profile [requires free registration] on Sitepoint forums.

Let Go of Bitterness

The nature of bitterness is rooted in the fact that the pain we feel provides us with a rationale. We may feel that we deserve to embrace our bitterness to its full extent. And to be bitter is, in essence, to cut ourselves off from all that is positive, hardening our hearts and vowing never to let go of our hurt. But just as bitter feelings can be self-defeating, so too can the release of bitterness be life-affirming in a way that few other emotional experiences are. When we decide that we no longer want to be bitter, we are reborn into a world filled with delight and fulfillment unlike any we knew while in the clutches of bitterness. The veil it cast over our lives is lifted, letting light and warmth touch our souls.
—extract from the DailyOM for Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM Lifting Pain's Veil: Bitterness published Wednesday, March 14, 2007.
⇒ This entry is in honor of my daughter, Jennifer, who seems to me to continue to hold a deep bitterness in her heart towards me. I prayer that I may release the bitterness I feel towards her, and move on in my life. I prayer that she will be able to find the strength and courage to release her bitterness, and let light and warmth touch her life. I love you so much, Jen Marie!

World is Comprehensible

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
—Albert Einstein

Dr. Albert Einstein was born on this day in 1879 at Ulm, Wuerttemberg, Germany. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.
⇒ See the New York Times obituary Albert Einstein Dies in Sleep at 76; World Mourns Loss of Great Scientist
⇒ See the NobelPrize.org's Albert Einstein – Biography Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921.

Beginnings

Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
—Rick played by Humphrey Bogart in the 1942 movie, Casablanca.

Source: Internet Movie Database's [IMDb] Casablanca (1942) – Memorable Quotes.

Protecting Free Thought We Hate

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Source: BrainyQuote's Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes
⇒ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was born on this day in 1841, in Boston, Massachusetts. He died of pneumonia in Washington, D.C. on March 6, 1935.
⇒ See his New York Times Obituary, Washington Holds Bright Memories of Justice Holmes's Long and Useful Life.
⇒ Also, Arlington National Cemetery's biography, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Captain and Brevet Colonel, U.S. Army, Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court.

150 Years Since the Horrid Dred Scott Decision

The words 'people of the United States' and 'citizens' are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the 'sovereign people,' and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate [60 U.S. 393, 405] and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.
—Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, March 6, 1857

Source: U.S. Supreme Court DRED SCOTT v. SANDFORD, 60 U.S. 393 (1856) on FindLaw.com
⇒ Dred Scott Decision on the US National Archives and Records Administration Web site.
⇒ "The decision of Scott v. Sandford, considered by legal scholars to be the worst ever rendered by the Supreme Court, was overturned by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and declared all persons born in the United States to be citizens of the United States."—US National Archives and Records Administration
⇒ Dred Scott Case Collection of the Washington University in Saint Louis.

Let Us, Then, Be Up and Doing

A Psalm of Life

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
    Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
    And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
    And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
    Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
    Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
    Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
    And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
    Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
    In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
    Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
    Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living Present!
    Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
    We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
    Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
    Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
    Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
    With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
    Learn to labor and to wait.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This is my tribute to the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Lonfellow. Today is the 200^th anniversary of his birth, having been born on February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine. Longfellow died in Cambridge on March 24, 1882. In London his marble image is seen in Westminster Abbey, in the Poet's Corner.
⇒ See: Books & Writers short biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807–1882
⇒ Also: PoetryFoundation.org's Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that includes links to many of his works, including the above, A Psalm of Life.
⇒ It is also the birthday of my sweet Mother-in-Law, Ruth, who was born in Sweetwater, Oregon in 1918. Happy Birthday, Mom. I am honored to be your son-in-law.

What Do You Browse?

You affect the world by what you browse.
—Tim Berners-Lee

Source: Time Berners-Lee Quotes on Brainy Quote dot com
⇒ WorldWideWeb was introduced on February 26, 1991, by Tim Berners-Lee, and ran on the NeXTSTEP platform. It was the world's first web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor. It was later renamed Nexus to avoid confusion with the World Wide Web.
⇒ WorldWideWeb (WWW) was the first program which used not only the common File Transfer Protocol but also the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, invented by Berners-Lee in 1989. At the time it was written, WorldWideWeb was the only way to view the Web in 1991. See WorldWideWeb on Wikipedia.
⇒ Note: The Internet predates the World Wide Web, having as its earliest manifestation, the establishment of the four–node ARPANET in December 1969.

Living Peacefully With the Past

In order to live more peacefully with the past, it helps to remember that once we know better, we tend to do better. Prior to knowing, we generally do our best, and while it's true that from the perspective of the present, our best doesn't always seem good enough, we can at least give our past selves the benefit of the doubt. We did our best with what knowledge we had. Beyond this, we serve the greater good most effectively by not dwelling on the past, instead reigning our energy and knowledge into our present actions. It is here, in this moment, that we create our reality and ourselves anew, with our current knowledge and information.
—extract from the DailyOM for Thursday, February 22, 2007

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM The Past In Light Of The Present: Knowing Better Now published Thursday, February 22, 2007.

Eight Worldly Preoccupations

Our intention should not be spoiled by the eight worldly preoccupations: gain or loss, pleasure or pain, praise or criticism, and fame and infamy.
—attributed to His Holiness, The Dalai Lama

Source: Insight from the Dalai Lama Daily Calendar Wednesday, October 11, 2006.
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama.

The Ultimate Happiness

To find a person who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.
—Robert Brault

Source: On Valentine's Day, 2007 on the counter at:
Java House
210 W Evergreen Blvd # 400
Vancouver, WA 98660
(360) 737-2925
See also:
⇒ Bob Brault, American Poet
⇒ Dedicated to my soulmate, love of my life, and Bride; Carol: my Consider This entry When My Hair is Gray? of August 12, 2005

Happy Valentine's Day to my Sweetheart, Carol, and to all my family and friends (living and dead), and to all my enemies, too! I pray you find in your life the meaning of real, true LOVE.
—Rich Wersinger, Niganit/Golden Retriever

Fundamental Connectedness

I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe.
—Brian Greene

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Friday, February 9, 2007.
⇒ It is the birthday of physicist and science writer Brian Greene, born in New York City in 1963.
⇒ The Official String Theory Web site.

Success: A Definition

To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8
See also: The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

My History

Each of us is a piece of a larger puzzle. We are all born into the unique and complex network of individuals, settings, and circumstances that constitute our heritage. Whether or not you are aware of your ancestors, you family's country of origin, the cultural history of your people, or the trials faced by the people responsible for bringing you into the world, these forces have had a hand in shaping your values. Knowing your family history and reflecting often upon your own personal history as it relates to your heritage empowers you to look at your life in a larger historical context and to understand that you are a vital part of an ongoing drama greater than yourself.
—extract from the DailyOM for Monday, February 5, 2007

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM Unearthing Your Roots: Knowing Your History published Monday, February 5, 2007.

Advice

Folks, I'm telling you,
Birthing is hard
And Dying is mean
So get yourself
Some loving in between.
—Langston Hughes &ndash Advice

Source: February 1^st is the birthday of poet and novelist Langston Hughes, born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902. He died of cancer on May 22, 1967.
⇒ See: FamousPoetsandPoems.com's Langston Hughes Biography

Ole Farmer's Advice

If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
—Anonymous

Source: Wednesday's Humor – 31 January 2007, from a daily email I receive from a Navy friend.

Happy Birthday, FDR

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants-everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

Source: Annual Message to Congress, January 6, 1941 [commonly referred to as the Four Freedoms Speech] by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Thirty-Second President 1933-1945.
President Roosevelt was born on this day in 1882 in Hyde Park, New York. He died: April 12, 1945 in Warm Springs, Georgia.
See WhiteHouse.gov's very short biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Crisis vs Day-to-Day Living

Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out.
—Anton Chekhov

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Monday, January 29, 2007
It's the birthday of writer Anton Chekhov, born in Taganrog, Russia in 1860. He died of tuberculosis at the health spa of Badenweiler, Germany, on 15 July 1904.
See:
⇒ books and writers' short biography of Anton Chekhov
⇒ Works by Anton Chekhov.

Forgiveness, the Cement of Community Life

Community is not possible without the willingness to forgive one another 'seventy-seven times' [which means infinity times infinity] (see Matthew 18:22). Forgiveness is the cement of community life. Forgiveness holds us together through good and bad times, and it allows us to grow in mutual love.

But what is there to forgive or to ask forgiveness for? As people who have hearts that long for perfect love, we have to forgive one another for not being able to give or receive that perfect love in our everyday lives. Our many needs constantly interfere with our desire to be there for the other unconditionally. Our love is always limited to spoken or unspoken conditions. What needs to be forgiven? We need to forgive one another for not being God!
—Henri J. M. Nouwen

Source: The January 24 entry of Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith by Henri J. M. Nouwen. HarperSanFrancisco 1996 ISBN13: 978-0060663766.
Thank you, David,for sharing this with me via a recent email. Blessings, dear friend.

Being Lost and Trusting

Learning to be okay with being lost and trusting that we will be guided, we begin our journey.

We can support ourselves by confirming that we don�t need to know exactly where we are going in order to take our first steps. We are learning to feel our own way, rather than following an established path, and in doing so we learn to trust ourselves. It is this trust that connects us to the universe and reminds us that no matter how lost we feel, and even as we journey, on the inner level we are already home.
—extract from the DailyOM for Thursday, January 11, 2007

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM Uncharted Territory:Feeling Lost published January 11, 2007.

One of the Greatest Blunders in Military History

During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour; at Omaha it held up the U.S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history.
—Stephen Ambrose

Source: Stephen Ambrose Quotes – The Quotations Page
Attributed to D Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II by Stephen Ambrose Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (June 1, 1995) ISBN-13: 978-0684801377
Stephen Ambrose was born on this day in Decatur, Illinois (1936). He died on October 13, 2002 in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

Not a Crook?

You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.
—Richard M. Nixon, 1962

On May 22 [1973], I stated in very specific terms�and I state again to every one of you listening tonight these facts�I had no prior knowledge of the Watergate break-in; I neither took part in nor knew about any of the subsequent coverup activities; I neither authorized nor encouraged subordinates to engage in illegal or improper campaign tactics.

That was and that is the simple truth.
—Richard M. Nixon

I'm not a crook.
—Richard M. Nixon, November 17, 1973, during a press conference.

Source: New York Times Richard M. Nixon obituary, The 37th President; In Three Decades by John Herbers April 24, 1994.
Former President Richard M. Nixon was born on this day in 1913, in Yorba Linda, California. He died April 22, 1994 in New York City, New York. Following the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned from the Presidency on August 9, 1974.
See also:
1. watergate.info's Nixon's Second Watergate Speech: August 15, 1973.
2. White House.gov's Richard M. Nixon

We Are Family

Acknowledging how close we all are, instead of clinging to what separates us, enables us to feel less alone in the world. Every person we meet, see, hear, or read about, is a member of our family. We are truly not alone. We also begin to see that we are perfectly capable of understanding and relating to people who, on the surface, may seem very different from us. This awareness prevents us from disconnecting from people on the other side of the tracks, and the other side of the world. We begin to understand that we must treat all people for what they are�family.
—extract from the DailyOM for Friday, December 22, 2006

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM We Are Family: Humanity published December 22, 2006
This thought is particularly profound to me, since we are spending Christmas with our Daughter, Son-in-Law, and our two Grandsons in Bandung, Indonesia. People seem so different, yet still the same, half way around the world from our home in Washington State USA!

We Are All on This Planet Together

We are all on this planet together. We are all brothers and sisters with the same physical and mental faculties, the same problems, the same needs. We must contribute to the fulfillment of the human potential and the improvement of the quality of life as much as we are able. Mankind is crying out for help. Ours is a desperate time. Those who have something to offer should come forward. Now is the time.
—attributed to His Holiness, The Dalai Lama

Source: Insight from the Dalai Lama Daily Calendar Wednesday, November 29, 2006.
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama.

After Great Pain

After great pain, a formal feeling comes �
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs �
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round �
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought �
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone �

This is the hour of Lead �
Remembered, if outlived
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow �
First � Chill � then Stupor � then the letting go �
—Emily Dickinson in her poem After great pain, a formal feeling comes

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006
Note: Emily Dickinson was born on this date in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830 and died there on May 15, 1886. See Modern American Poetry's Emily Dickinson's Life

Our daughter, Mary, sings Cecak, an Indonesian lullaby

powered by ODEO and STUDIO ODEO

Pearl Harbor Day: 2006

Congressional Medal of Honor
SAMUEL GLENN FUQUA

Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Navy, U.S.S. Arizona.
Place and date: Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, 7 December 1941. Entered service at: Laddonia, Missouri.
Born: 15 October 1899, Laddonia Mo.

Upon the commencement of the attack, Lt. Comdr. Fuqua rushed to the quarterdeck of the U.S.S. Arizona to which he was attached where he was stunned and knocked down by the explosion of a large bomb which hit the guarterdeck, penetrated several decks, and started a severe fire. Upon regaining consciousness, he began to direct the fighting of the fire and the rescue of wounded and injured personnel. Almost immediately there was a tremendous explosion forward, which made the ship appear to rise out of the water, shudder, and settle down by the bow rapidly. The whole forward part of the ship was enveloped in flames which were spreading rapidly, and wounded and burned men were pouring out of the ship to the quarterdeck. Despite these conditions, his harrowing experience, and severe enemy bombing and strafing, at the time, Lt. Comdr. Fuqua continued to direct the fighting of fires in order to check them while the wounded and burned could be taken from the ship and supervised the rescue of these men in such an amazingly calm and cool manner and with such excellent judgment that it inspired everyone who saw him and undoubtedly resulted in the saving of many lives. After realizing the ship could not be saved and that he was the senior surviving officer aboard, he directed it to be abandoned, but continued to remain on the quarterdeck and directed abandoning ship and rescue of personnel until satisfied that all personnel that could be had been saved, after which he left his ship with the boatload. The conduct of Lt. Comdr. Fuqua was not only in keeping with the highest traditions of the naval service but characterizes him as an outstanding leader of men.
—extract from Captain Fuqua's Congresional Medal of Honor citation

Source: WorldWarIIHistory.net's Congressional Medal of Honor Heroes of Pearl Harbor
See also:
1. Consider This in 2005: Remember Pearl Harbor, 07 DEC 1941 About Dorie Miller.
2. Consider This in 2004: Pearl Harbor Attacked, Dec. 7, 1941 About FDR's Speech.
3. USS Arizona National Memorial (US National Park Service
4. Pear Harbor Survivors Project
5. Arlington National Cemetery's Samuel Glenn Fuqua Rear Admiral, United States Navy

Focus on the World's Hope

Many sad things happen in our world, but rather than focusing on them, have hope for the future. Think of the world's potential. Perhaps the future holds the curing of diseases, the end of violence, the amelioration of poverty and hunger.
—David Niven, Ph.D. in Focus not on the world's tragedies, but on the world's hope: Number 84 of The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

Over nine in ten Americans are uncomfortable or worried about aspects of the world and society. The difference between more and less happy people is what they do with that discomfort. Less happy people wallow in the problems they see, while happier people focus on potential improvements in the future.
—Garrett, R. 1996. "Wisdom as the Key to a Better Life" Contemporary Issues in Behavior Therapy. New York: Plenum.

Source: The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It. by David Niven, Ph.D. 2000 HarperCollins ISBN: 0-06-251650-7
See also: Country Inns & Suites by Carlson Read & Return It program.

Cannot Escape History

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it.

We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free,--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just,--a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
—Abraham Lincoln

Source: State of the Union Address to United States Congress by President Abraham Lincoln on December 1, 1862. These are President Lincoln's concluding paragraphs to this address.
See: State of the Union Addresses by Abraham Lincoln at the Gutenberg Project
See also: Biography of Abraham Lincoln at WhiteHouse.gov.

About Love: Mark Twain

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. At first I thought she talked too much; but now I should be sorry to have that voice fall silent and pass out of my life. Blessed be the chestnut that brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart and the sweetness of her spirit!
—Mark Twain

Source: Adam's Diary by Mark Twain cited on TwainQuotes.com – Category LOVE
It is the birthday of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, pen name: Mark Twain, born in Florida, Missouri in 1835. He died on April 21, 1910 in Redding, Connecticut.
See also:
» Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, November 30, 2007.
» Mark Twain in His Times by the University of Virginia Library's The Electronic Text Center.
» Mark Twain on Wikipedia.org.

Believe in Freedom of Speech?

If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
—Noam Chomsky

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8
See also: The Noam Chomsky Web site

Life: Your Teacher

The people and situations we encounter every day have much to teach us when we are open to receiving their wisdom. Often we don't recognize our teachers because they may not look or act like our idea of a guru, yet they may embody great wisdom. In addition, some people teach us by showing us what we don't want to do. All the situations in our lives, from the insignificant to the major, conspire to teach us exactly what we need to be learning at any given time. Patience, compassion, perseverance, honesty, letting go-all these are covered in the classroom of the teacher that is your life.
—extract from the DailyOM for Friday, November 24, 2006

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM Life: Your Perfect Teacher published November 24, 2006

Kristallnacht: Lest We Forget the Horror

Today is the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when German Nazis coordinated a nationwide attack on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. It's generally considered the official beginning of the Holocaust. Before that night, the Nazis had killed people secretly and individually. After Kristallnacht, the Nazis felt free to persecute the Jews openly, because they knew no one would stop them.
—Garrison Keillor

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, November 9, 2006
See also: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Kristallnacht: The November 1938 Pogroms

Tolerable and Awful

The Iraq war has turned into a sucking chest wound for our country � infecting its unity at home and its standing abroad. No one can predict what Iraq will look like 10 years from now. I wish it well. But in the near term, it is clear, nothing that we�ll feel particularly proud of, nothing that we�ll feel justifies the vast expenditure of lives and treasure, is going to come out of Iraq.

These are our real choices in Iraq now: tolerable and awful. It�s time we choose. No more expending lives and treasure for nothing good. The only way we can pursue good in the world again is by either shrinking our presence in Iraq, if Iraqis will step up, or leaving entirely, if they won�t.
—Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist

Source: Extract from Thomas L. Friedman: Tolerable or Awful: The Roads Left in Iraq New York Times, November 8, 2006 [requires registration & premium subscription]

Never Been Lost?

I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks.
—Daniel Boone

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, November 2, 2006 Daniel Boone was born on this date near Reading, Pennsylvania in 1734.
See also: American West's short biographical sketch Daniel Boone

Had a Good Life?

There is no objective way to tell if you have had good life, a good day, or a good hour. Your life is a success based only upon your judgment.
—David Niven, Ph.D. in Number 34 of The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People

Knowing whether someone has recently suffered a personal set-back or personal triumph is not as good a predictor of how satisfied they are with their lives as is knowing how they perceive the causes and consequences of those events.
—Staats, S., M. Armstrong-Stassen, and C. Partillo. 1957. "Student Well-Being: Are They Better Off Now?" Social Indicators Research 34:93

Source: The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It. by David Niven, Ph.D. 2000 HarperCollins ISBN: 0-06-251650-7
See also: Country Inns & Suites by Carlson Read & Return It program.

Contracting Before Expanding

Sometimes our lives contract before they expand. We may be working hard on ourselves spiritually, doing good in the world, following our dreams, and wondering why we are still facing constrictions of all kinds-financial, emotional, physical. Perhaps we even feel as if we've lost our spirituality and are stuck in a dark room with no windows. We may be confused and discouraged by what appears to be a lack of progress. But sometimes this is the way things work. Like a caterpillar that confines itself to a tiny cocoon before it grows wings and flies, we are experiencing the darkness before the dawn.
—extract from the DailyOM for Monday, October 30, 2006

Source: For the entire contemplation visit: DailyOM Going Through The Opening: Contracting Before Expanding published October 30, 2006

Beauty into Ugliness into?

A blossoming tree becomes bare and stripped in autumn. Beauty changes into ugliness, youth into old age, and fault into virtue. Things do not remain the same and nothing really exists. Thus, appearances and emptiness exist simultaneously.
—attributed to His Holiness, The Dalai Lama

Source: Insight from the Dalai Lama Daily Calendar Saturday/Sunday, October 28/29, 2006
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Create Your Own Merit

Never depend on the admiration of others.There is no strength in it. Personal merit cannot be derived from an external source. It is not to be found in your personal associations, nor can it be found in the regard of other people. It is a fact of life that other people, even people who love you, will not necessarily agree with your ideas, understand you, or share your enthusiasms. Grow up! Who cares what other people think about you!

Create your own merit.

Personal merit cannot be achieved through your associations with people of excellence. You have been given your own work to do. Get to it right now, do your best at it, and don't be concerned who is watching you.

Do your own useful work without regard to the honor or admiration your efforts might win from others. There is no such thing as vicarious merit.

Other people's triumphs and excellences belong to them. Likewise, your possessions may have excellence, but you don't derive excellence from them.
—Epictetus

Source: page 12 of The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness: A New Interpretation by Sharon Lebell 1995 by Sharon Lebell HarperSanFrancisco ISBN: 006-251322-2(cloth)
See also: The Internet Encylcopedia of Philosphy's Epictetus

See Things For What They are

Circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get.

Open your eyes: See things for what they really are, thereby sparing yourself the pain of false attachments and avoidable devastation.

When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it; you can either accept it or resent it.

Things and people are not what we wish them to be nor what they seem to be. They are what they are.
—Epictetus

Source: page 7 of The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness: A New Interpretation by Sharon Lebell 1995 by Sharon Lebell HarperSanFrancisco ISBN: 006-251322-2(cloth)
See also: The Internet Encylcopedia of Philosphy's Epictetus

Act Well the Part That is Given to You

We are like actors in a play. The divine will has assigned us our roles in life without consulting us. Some of us will act in a short drama, others in a long one. We might be assigned the part of a poor person, a cripple, a distinguished celebrity or public leader, or an ordinary private citizen.

Although we can't control which roles are assigned to us, it must be our business to act our given role as best we possibly can and to refrain from complaining about it. Wherever you find yourself and in whatever circumstances, give an impeccable performance.

If you are supposed to be a reader, read; if you are supposed to be a writer, write.
—Epictetus

Source: The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness: A New Interpretation by Sharon Lebell 1995 by Sharon Lebell HarperSanFrancisco ISBN: 006-251322-2(cloth)
See also: The Internet Encylcopedia of Philosphy's Epictetus

Feeling Inferior?

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
—Eleanor Roosevelt, born this day in 1884 in New York City

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8
See also: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, October 11, 2006
and Biography of Eleanor Roosevelt at WhiteHouse.gov

Honesty and Truth

When we promise more than we can deliver, hide from the consequences of our actions through falsehoods, or deny our true selves to others, we hurt those who were counting on us by proving that their faith was wrongly given. We are also hurt by the lies we tell and the promises we break. Integrity is the foundation of civilization, allowing people to live, work, and play side by side without fear or apprehension.
—DailyOM for Thursday, October 5, 2006

Source: DailyOM Power In Honesty: Staying True to Your Word published October 5, 2006

Political Party's Power

History suggests that once a political party achieves sweeping power, it will only be a matter of time before the power becomes the entire point. Policy, ideology, ethics all gradually fall away, replaced by a political machine that exists to win elections and dispense the goodies that come as a result.
—New York Times editorial page

Source: New York Times editorial The Foley Matter published October 3, 2006 [Requires registration and log-in]

Life Does Not Hinge on One Element

Don't let your life hinge on one element.

Your life is made up of many different facets. Don't focus on one aspect of your life so much that you can't experience pleasure if one area is unsettled. It can become all you think about, and it can deaden your enjoyment of everything else—things you would otherwise love.
—David Niven, Ph.D.

Source: Number 37, The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It by David Niven, Ph.D. HarperCollins 2000 ISBN 0-06-251650-7 (pbk.)

Facing Facts on Iraq

While Iraq is a central issue in this year�s election campaigns, there is very little clear talk about what to do, beyond vague recommendations for staying the course or long-term timetables for withdrawal. That is because politicians running for election want to deliver good news, and there is nothing about Iraq � including withdrawal scenarios � that is anything but ominous.

In the real Iraq, armed Shiite and Kurdish parties have divided up the eastern two-thirds of the country, leaving Sunni insurgents and American marines to fight over the rest. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his �national unity cabinet� stretch out their arms to like-thinking allies like Iran and Hezbollah, but barely lift a finger to rein in the sectarian militias and death squads spreading terror across Baghdad and the Shiite south.

The civilian death toll is now running at roughly 100 a day, with many of the victims gruesomely tortured with power tools or acid. Over the summer, more Iraqi civilians died violent deaths each month than the number of Americans lost to terrorism on Sept. 11. Meanwhile, the electricity remains off, oil production depressed, unemployment pervasive and basic services hard to find.

Iraq is today a broken, war-torn country. Outside the relatively stable Kurdish northeast, virtually every family � Sunni or Shiite, rich or poor, powerful or powerless � must cope with fear and physical insecurity on an almost daily basis. The courts, when they function at all, are subject to political interference; street-corner justice is filling the vacuum. Religious courts are asserting their power over family life. Women�s rights are in retreat.

Growing violence, not growing democracy, is the dominant feature of Iraqi life. Every Iraqi knows this. Americans need to know it too.

Beyond the futility of simply staying the course lies the impossibility of keeping the bulk of American ground forces stationed in Iraq indefinitely. They have already been there for 42 months, longer than it took the United States to defeat Hitler. The strain is undermining the long-term strength of the Army and Marines, threatening to divert the National Guard from homeland security and emboldening Iran and North Korea. Yet with the military situation deteriorating, the Pentagon has had to give up any idea of significant withdrawals this year, or for that matter anytime in the foreseeable future.
—excerpt of a New York Times Editorial, published Sunday, September 24, 2006.

Source: New York Times Editorial, Facing Facts on Iraq of Sunday, September 24, 2006

On September 23, 2006, a Washington Post editorial observed, in part:
The president's steadfastness would be much more impressive if it seemed to be attached to a winning strategy. Sadly, the events of the past several weeks suggest otherwise, at least in Iraq. Gen. Abizaid candidly described the progress of a U.S. military campaign in Baghdad, where additional American forces have been concentrated in the hope of stopping rampant sectarian bloodshed, as slight. Asked by reporters if the war could be won, he replied, "Given unlimited time and unlimited support, we're winning the war."

The problem, as both Gen. Abizaid and Mr. Bush well know, is that neither time nor resources are unlimited. Reports in several newspapers yesterday said the continuing heavy deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan had prompted commanders to discuss whether to call up more National Guard units at the expense of breaking rules about how often they are deployed.

The same day Gen. Abizaid spoke, the chairmen of a bipartisan Iraq study group set up by Congress delivered a blunt message to the four-month-old Iraqi coalition government, which has been slow to take desperately needed steps toward national reconciliation. "The government of Iraq needs to show its own citizens soon, and the citizens of the United States, that it is deserving of continuing support," said former representative Lee H. Hamilton, who chairs the group along with former secretary of state James A. Baker III.

Unless that message is heeded, the sacrifice involved in holding U.S. troop levels steady for another six months -- in lives, above all -- is likely to be wasted.
—excerpt of Washington Post editorial published September 23, 2006.

Source: Washington Post editorial The Troops Stay On of September 23, 2006

In the Neighborhood of Wonder

May you live in the neighborhood of wonder
May you have the courage to befriend your eternal longing
May you take the time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention
May you arise each day with a voice of blessing whispering in your heart that something good is going to happen
May there be kindness in your gaze when you look within
May the places of darkness within you be turned to the light
May you know that absence is full of tender presence
And that nothing is ever lost or forgotton.
—John O�Donohue

Source: My wonderful and beautiful bride, Carol Ruth, shared this with me on Tuesday, September 19, 2006. I am awed by our love.

On Being Flexible

Flexibility is the capacity to bend without breaking, as well as a continual willingness to change or be changed in order to accommodate new circumstances. People with flexible minds are open to shifting their course when necessary or useful; they are not overly attached to things going the way they had planned. This enables them to take advantage of opportunities that a more rigid person would miss out on. It can also make life a lot more fun. When we are flexible, we allow for situations we could not have planned, and so the world continues to surprise and delight us.
—Daily Om, excerpt

Source: Daily OM for Wednesday, September 20, 2006, for the complete meditation.

Washington's Farwell to the Nation

To the efficacy and permanency of your union a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute. They must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay by the adoption of a Constitution of Government better calculated than your former for an intimate union and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This Government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government...

Toward the preservation of your Government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite not only that you steadily discountenance irregular oppositions to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles, however specious the pretexts. One method of assault may be to effect in the forms of the Constitution alterations which will impair the energy of the system, and thus to undermine what can not be directly overthrown. In all the changes to which you may be invited remember that time and habit are at least as necessary to fix the true character of governments as of other human institutions; that experience is the surest standard by which to test the real tendency of the existing constitution of a country; that facility in changes upon the credit of mere hypothesis and opinion exposes to perpetual change, from the endless variety of hypothesis and opinion; and remember especially that for the efficient management of your common interests in a country so extensive as ours a government of as much vigor as is consistent with the perfect security of liberty is indispensable. Liberty itself will find in such a government, with powers properly distributed and adjusted, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little else than a name where the government is too feeble to withstand the enterprises of faction, to con-fine each member of the society within the limits prescribed by the laws, and to maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment of the rights of person and property.
—President George Washington, excerpt from his letter of September 17, 1796

Source: U.S. State Department's Basic Readings in Democracy, FAREWELL ADDRESS (1796), George Washington
Although his farewell was never given orally by the President, it was first published in Philadelphia's American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796. It was subsequently published in many newspapers throughout the United States
The U.S. Senate has had a tradition since 1896 of reading the President's Farewell on his birthday, February 22^nd in legislative session, according to the Senate's Art & History History Minutes.
I think this excerpt is particularly pertinent to the September 2006 debates before the House and Senate regarding President George W. Bush's proposed Military Commissions legislation.

Warmhearted Feelings for Others

Cultivating a close, warmhearted feeling for others automatically puts the mind at ease. From the least to the most important event, affection and respect for others are vital for our happiness.
—attributed to His Holiness, The Dalai Lama

Source: Insight from the Dalai Lama Daily Calendar Friday, September 1, 2006
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Walking Through: When Doors Open

When a door opens, walk through it. Trust that the door has opened for a reason and you have been guided to it. Sometimes we have a tendency to overanalyze or agonize over the decision, but it is quicker to simply go through the door and discover what's there as that's the only way to know. Even if it doesn't seem right at first, opening this door may lead to another door that will take us where we need to go.
—Daily Om, excerpt

Source: Daily OM for September 15, 2006, for the complete meditation.

Only a Boche or a Someone Who's an Enemy

We brought him in from between the lines: we'd better have let him lie;

For what's the use of risking one's skin for a TYKE that's going to die?
What's the use of tearing him loose under a gruelling fire,
When he's shot in the head, and worse than dead,
and all messed up on the wire?

However, I say, we brought him in. DIABLE! The mud was bad;
The trench was crooked and greasy and high, and oh, what a time we had!
And often we slipped, and often we tripped, but never he made a moan;
And how we were wet with blood and with sweat!
but we carried him in like our own.

Now there he lies in the dug-out dim, awaiting the ambulance,
And the doctor shrugs his shoulders at him,
and remarks, "He hasn't a chance."
And we squat and smoke at our game of bridge
on the glistening, straw-packed floor,
And above our oaths we can hear his breath deep-drawn in a kind of snore.

For the dressing station is long and low, and the candles gutter dim,
And the mean light falls on the cold clay walls
and our faces bristly and grim;
And we flap our cards on the lousy straw, and we laugh and jibe as we play,
And you'd never know that the cursed foe was less than a mile away.
As we con our cards in the rancid gloom, oppressed by that snoring breath,
You'd never dream that our broad roof-beam was swept by the broom of death.

Heigh-ho! My turn for the dummy hand; I rise and I stretch a bit;
The fetid air is making me yawn, and my cigarette's unlit,
So I go to the nearest candle flame, and the man we brought is there,
And his face is white in the shabby light, and I stand at his feet and stare.
Stand for a while, and quietly stare: for strange though it seems to be,
The dying Boche on the stretcher there has a queer resemblance to me.

It gives one a kind of a turn, you know, to come on a thing like that.
It's just as if I were lying there, with a turban of blood for a hat,
Lying there in a coat grey-green instead of a coat grey-blue,
With one of my eyes all shot away, and my brain half tumbling through;
Lying there with a chest that heaves like a bellows up and down,
And a cheek as white as snow on a grave, and lips that are coffee brown.

And confound him, too! He wears, like me, on his finger a wedding ring,
And around his neck, as around my own, by a greasy bit of string,
A locket hangs with a woman's face, and I turn it about to see:
Just as I thought . . . on the other side the faces of children three;
Clustered together cherub-like, three little laughing girls,
With the usual tiny rosebud mouths and the usual silken curls.
"Zut!" I say. "He has beaten me; for me, I have only two,"
And I push the locket beneath his shirt, feeling a little blue.

Oh, it isn't cheerful to see a man, the marvellous work of God,
Crushed in the mutilation mill, crushed to a smeary clod;
Oh, it isn't cheerful to hear him moan; but it isn't that I mind,
It isn't the anguish that goes with him, it's the anguish he leaves behind.
For his going opens a tragic door that gives on a world of pain,
And the death he dies, those who live and love, will die again and again.

So here I am at my cards once more, but it's kind of spoiling my play,
Thinking of those three brats of his so many a mile away.
War is war, and he's only a Boche, and we all of us take our chance;
But all the same I'll be mighty glad when I'm hearing the ambulance.
One foe the less, but all the same I'm heartily glad I'm not
The man who gave him his broken head, the sniper who fired the shot.

No trumps you make it, I think you said? You'll pardon me if I err;
For a moment I thought of other things . . .
   MON DIEU! QUELLE VACHE DE GUERRE.
—Robert W. Service Only a Boche

Source: Rhymes of a Red Cross Man by Robert W. Service, published in 1916
excerpted from the Project Gutenberg's online text version of Rhymes of a Red Cross Man, by Robert W. Service
I am the grateful recipient of a 1916 original copy of Service's book, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man given to me by my dear friend Ernie, at our Men's Gathering in Buffalo Gap Camp in West Virginia in October 1, 2, & 3, 2004. Thank you so very much, Brother Ernie.

A Prayer

May I become at all times, both now and forever
A protector for those without protection
A guide for those who have lost their way
A ship for those with oceans to cross
A bridge for those with rivers to cross
A sanctuary for those in danger
A lamp for those without light
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter
And a servant to all in need.
—atributed to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

Source: Insight from the Dalai Lama Daily Calendar Monday, September 4, 2006
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Praise the Past and Condemn the Present?

Is it not the common practice of the old men to praise the past and condemn the present? And this may probably operate much further than one would at first imagine. When those that have more experience than we, and therefore, we are apt to think, more wisdom, are almost continually harping upon this, the degeneracy of the world, is it any wonder if, being accustomed from our infancy to hear how much better the world was formerly than it is now, (and so it really seemed to them, when they were young, and when the cheerfulness of youth gave a pleasing air to all that was around them,) the idea of the world's being worse and worse should naturally grow up with us? And so it will till we, in our turn, grow peevish, fretful, discontented, and full of melancholy complaints: 'How wicked the world is grown! How much better it was when we were young, in the golden days that we can remember!
—unknown

Source: Former Times, written in the 1700's, provided by my dear friend, David Roberts, on Friday September 1, 2006

Human Relations Most Important

Don't sacrifice your life to work and ideals.
The most important things in life are human relations.
I found that out too late.
—Katharinde Susannah Prichard, Australian Author

Source: My beautiful bride, Carol, suggested this one. Thanks, Sweetheart

Sad Words

For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'
—John Greenleaf Whittier

Source: My wonderful bride, Carol, shared this one with me today!
See also: Selected Poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) on the University of Toronto's Representative Poetry Online (RPO).
Wikipedia's article, John Greenleaf Whittier.

I Have a Friend

Around the corner I have a friend
In this great city that has no end
Yet the days go by and the weeks rush on,
And before I know it a year has gone.

And I never see my old friend's face
For life is a swift and terrible race.
He knows I like him just as well
As in the days when I rang his bell and he rang mine.
We were younger then.

And now we are busy, tired men.
Tired of playing a foolish game;
Tired of trying to make a name.

"Tomorrow, "I say, I will call on Jim,
Just to show that I'm thinking of him."
But tomorrow comes, and tomorrow goes;
And the distance between us grows and grows.

Around the corner—yet miles away—
"Here's a telegram, Sir, Jim died today."
And that's what we get and deserve in the end;
Around the corner, a vanished friend.
—Henson Towne

This poem usually appears on the Web with the following sage advice:

Remember to always say what you mean. If you love someone, tell them. Don't be afraid to express yourself. Reach out and tell someone what they mean to you. Because when you decide that it is the right time, it might be too late. Seize the day. Never have regrets. And most importantly, stay close to your friends and family, for they have helped make you the person that you are today.
—Unknown

Source: The Men's Council of Greater Washington, sponsors of the Annual Men's Gathering in 2006, at Buffalo Gap Camp in Capon Bridge, West Virginia Friday, Sep. 29—Sunday, Oct. 1.
Through the mid-1990's The Men's Council met every month (except October) in the Washington Ethical Society hall. We distributed cards with the above poem at those wonderful programs. Each meeting included a profound greeting tradition, drumming, as well as a moving and challenging program. I do so miss those endearing experiences that helped me discover the courage to find myself and reach out to men.
See also: Lori MacBlogger: Around the Corner

Do You Prefer Fire or Ice?

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those that favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
—Robert Frost in his poem Fire and Ice

Source: The Road Not Taken: A selection of Robert Frost's Poems with an Introduction and Commentary by Louis Untermeyer Owl Books 1985 ISBN 0-8050-0528-5 (An Owl Book: pbk.)
See also: Rice University's [minstrels] Fire and Ice -----Robert Frost with comments.

A Young Man's Turning Point

Scout Oath
On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

Scout Law
A Scout is:
Trustworthy
Loyal
Helpful
Friendly
Courteous
Kind
Obedient
Cheerful
Thrifty
Brave
Clean
Reverent
—Boy Scouts of America

Source: Boy Scouts of America, National Council
Perhaps my nephew, Joe, will make the right moral and ethical choices to not follow a path of self destruction, but rather, a path of opportunity out of poverty.

Finding Paths

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere.
—Frank A. Clark

Source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Saturday/Sunday, June 17/18, 2006 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN: 0-7407-5200-6

Learn More

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.
—Lloyd Alexander

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8
See also: Kidsread.com's Lloyd Alexander

Difficult Moments

Each difficult moment has the potential to open my eyes and open my heart.
—Myla Kabat-Zinn

Source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Tuesday, July 11, 2006 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN: 0-7407-5200-6

Get Meaning into Your Life, Redux

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things.
The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to the community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
—Morrie Schwartz

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie: an Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom 1^st ed. 1997 by Doubleday ISBN: 0-385-48451-8
Secondary source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Saturday/Sunday, July 8/9, 2006 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN: 0-7407-5200-6
See also:
Consider This' shorter version of Get Meaning into Year Life, published exactly a year ago!
FastCompany.com's November 1999 article Work and Life - Morrie Schwartz

Freedom & Security: Related?

There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.
—Molly Ivins

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8
See also: Molly Ivins Columns at the Star-Telegram, Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas

Flaming Quicksand Unwinnable War

Americans need to understand that Mr. Bush's invasion of Iraq was a strategic blunder of the highest magnitude. It has resulted in mind-boggling levels of bloodshed, chaos and misery in Iraq, and it certainly hasn't made the U.S. any safer.

We've had enough clownish debates on the Senate floor and elsewhere. We've had enough muscle-flexing in the White House and on Capitol Hill by guys who ran and hid when they were young and their country was at war. And it's time to stop using generals and their forces under fire in the field for cheap partisan political purposes.

The question that needs to be answered, honestly and urgently (and without regard to partisan politics), is how best to extricate overstretched American troops � some of them serving their third or fourth tours � from the flaming quicksand of an unwinnable war.
—Bob Herbert

Source: Bob Herbert's New York Times op-ed piece Playing Politics With Oraq, Monday, June 26, 2006 [requires registration & paid subscription]

Collaborate With Whom?

Seth Kahan 2006

Highway Collaboration

My dear brother and friend sent me this photo for our consideration! Seth is a Collaboration Specialist, Conference Keynote Speaker, and Executive Strategy Consultant. Visit www.sethkahan.com to learn more. Visit his blog: collaboratioNation.com

What all these stories tell me is that we are seeing the emergence of collaborative business models that were simply unimaginable a decade ago. Today, there are so many more tools, so many more ideas, so many more people able to put these ideas and tools together to discover new things, and so much better communications to disseminate these new ideas across the globe.

If more countries can get just a few basic things right � enough telecom and bandwidth so their people can get connected; steadily improving education; decent, corruption-free economic governance; and the rule of law � and we can find more sources of clean energy, there is every reason for optimism that we could see even faster global growth in this century, with many more people lifted out of poverty.
—Thomas L. Friedman: Outsourcing, Schmoutsourcing! Out Is Over New York Times, May 19, 2006

Source: Seth Kahan's blog, collaboratioNation.com 22 May 2006 entry.
See also Thomas L. Friedman: Outsourcing, Schmoutsourcing! Out Is Over New York Times, May 19, 2006 [requires registration & premium subscription]

Can Anything Be Stupider?

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
—Blaise Pascal

Source: BrainyQuote.com's Blasie Pascal Quotes
It's the birthday of mathematician and mystic Blaise Pascal, born in Clermont, France (1623).

Common Karma

The universe we inhabit and our shared perceptions of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human and nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. we all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
—atributed to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

Source: Insight from the Dalai Lama Daily Calendar Thursday, June 15, 2006
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Nothing You Must Be

There is really nothing you must be.
And there is nothing you must do.
There is really nothing you must have.
And there is really nothing you must know.
There is really nothing you must become.
However. It helps to understand that fire burns, and when it rains, the earth gets wet...

'Whatever, there are consequences. Nobody is exempt,' said the master.
—Robert Fulghum

Source: It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It by Robert Fulghum 1989 Villard Books ISBN 0-394-58056-7
See also: Robert Fulghum's Official Web site
See also: Marine Corps Heritage Foundation
This is my daughter Jennifer's 32^nd birthday. I wish her love, peace, and courage. Happy birthday Jenn Marie!

Unconditional Gift: Kindness

In the quest to create a gentler, more loving world, kindness is the easiest tool we can use. Though it is easy to overlook opportunities to be kind, our lives are replete with situations in which we can be helpful, considerate, thoughtful, and friendly to loved ones and associates, as well as strangers. The touching, selfless acts of kindness that have the most profoundly uplifting effects are often the simplest: a word of praise, a gentle touch, a helping hand, a gesture of courtesy, or a smile. Such small kindnesses represent an unconditional, unrestricted form of love that we are free to give or withhold at will. When you give the gift of kindness, whether in the form of assistance, concern, or friendliness, your actions create a beacon of happiness and hope that warms people's hearts.

The components of kindness are compassion, respect, and generosity. Put simply, kindness is the conscious act of engaging others in a positive way without asking whether those individuals deserve to be treated kindly.
—DailyOm for Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Source: Online DailyOm for Wednesday, June 14, 2006
It is Flag Day in the USA, and the 55^th anniversary of my mom's, Minna, naturalization as an American citizen.
See also USFlag.org's History of Flag Day that celebrates the resolution adopted by the Second Continental Congress at Philadelphia on June 14, 1777 that adopted the stars and stripes as America's national flag.

Among Substantial Things

Could we but give us wholly to the dreams,
And get into their world that to the sense
Is shadow, and not linger wretchedly
Among substantial things.
—William Butler Yeats, from his poem The Shadowy Waters, written in 1900

Source: W. B. Yeats Dead; Famous Irish Poet NY Times obituary January 30, 1939. Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland on this date, June 13, in 1865.
See also: Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Battle of Midway: June 4, 1942

U.S. Navy photo by PHAN James R. Evans

Flightdeck CVN-72: Pacific Ocean (March 30, 2006)

Flight deck personnel work to ready an F/A-18F Super Hornet assigned to the �Fighting Vigilantes� of Strike Fighter Squadron One Five One (VFA-151) for take-off from the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) during a snow storm. Lincoln and Carrier Air Wing Two (CVW-2) are currently underway in the Western Pacific conducting a scheduled deployment.

It was on this day in 1942 that the Battle of Midway took place over the Pacific Ocean. It was one of the first battles fought almost entirely in the air, and it's considered one of the major turning points of the Pacific half of World War II. At the time, the Japanese had a far superior naval and air fleet, and they had scored a series of victories over the Allies since bombing Pearl Harbor. They hoped to seize Midway Island because it was the last American outpost in the central Pacific. They could have use it to stage an invasion of Hawaii, which would have given them complete strategic control over the Pacific Ocean.

The Japanese had one of the largest and most heavily armed navel fleets ever assembled up to that time. They launched their first attack early in the morning on this day in 1942. The Japanese pilots dropped their bombs on the Midway airfield, and then flew back to their carriers to refuel and reload with bombs.

The U.S. knew that the Japanese would be attacking that day, because they had cracked the Japanese codes, but they didn't know where the Japanese fleet was located. While the Japanese were refueling, a squadron of American bombers noticed the wake of a small Japanese ship and decided to follow it. When they descended from the clouds, they realized that they had accidentally stumbled upon the Japanese fleet, caught almost defenseless, with all their planes docked and refueling. The American bombers dove down from 12,000 feet, dropped their bombs on the Japanese aircraft carriers, and took off again.

In just five minutes, the U.S. bombers had delivered a devastating blow to the Japanese fleet. The battle raged for three more days, but the Japanese never recovered from that first attack. Their navy was shattered, and from that battle onward, they were on the defensive. The Japanese never won another decisive naval battle for the rest of the war.
—Garrison Keillor

Source: Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Sunday, June 4, 2006
See also US. Navy's Navy Historical Center Midway FAQs

Book of Life

'And what is as important as knowledge?' asked the mind.
'Caring and seeing with the heart,' answered the soul.
—Flavia

Source: A greeting card entitled Book of Life given to me by my Bride of eight years, my Sweet Carol Ruth, on the occasion of our eighth Wedding Anniversary. I love her so very much. We have found a joyful chorus of love in our lives now.
See also: About Flavia

Memorial Day, May 2006

Source: Wersinger Family Archives

DIck Wersinger: 1944 World War II in the Pacific

My Dad, Dick Wersinger, sent this photo from somewhere in the Pacific Theater to his then fiancee, Minna, in Sydney, Australia. Dad survived the war and Minna emigrated to the US in 1946. They were happily married from November 1946 until February 1992 when he passed on.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
—Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) Canadian Army

Source: From his poem In Flanders Field on a Web site (unofficial) devoted to Arlington Cemetery
See also the official Arlington National Cemetery Web site.

America the Fearful

The Bushies will tell you that it is dangerous and even against the law to inquire into these nefarious activities. We just have to trust the king.

Well, I give you fair warning. This is a road map to totalitarianism. Hallmarks of totalitarian regimes have always included an excessive reliance on secrecy, the deliberate stoking of fear in the general population, a preference for military rather than diplomatic solutions in foreign policy, the promotion of blind patriotism, the denial of human rights, the curtailment of the rule of law, hostility to a free press and the systematic invasion of the privacy of ordinary people.

There are not enough pretty words in all the world to cover up the damage that George W. Bush has done to his country. If the United States could look at itself in a mirror, it would be both alarmed and ashamed at what it saw.
—Bob Herbert

Source: Bob Herbert column America the Fearful [requires registration & subsription] published in the New York Times on Monday, May 15, 2006

Teachers Open Doors

Teachers open the door, but you must enter yourself.
—Chinese proverb

Source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Tuesday, May 2, 2006 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN: 0-7407-5200-6

Shared Humanness: Prime Importance

Regardless of race, creed, ideology, political bloc (East and West), or economic region (North and South), the most important and basic aspect of all people is their shared humanity—the fact that each person, old, young, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, male, or female, is a human. This shared humanness and thus the shared aspiration of gaining happiness and avoid suffering as well as the basic right to bring these about are of prime importance.
—atributed to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

Source: Insight from the Dalai Lama Daily Calendar Saturday/Sunday, April 22/23, 2006
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Longings Are Universal

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone.
You belong.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896—1940 American novelist

Source: The Ultimate Pocket Positives: A Second Anthology of Inspirational Thoughts Compiled by Maggie Pinkey. The Five Mile Press 2001 Reprinted 2002 ISBN = 1 86503 579 3

Bush's 1,000 Days

The Hundred Days is indelibly associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Thousand Days with John F. Kennedy. But as of this week, a thousand days remain of President Bush's last term -- days filled with ominous preparations for and dark rumors of a preventive war against Iran.

The issue of preventive war as a presidential prerogative is hardly new. In February 1848 Rep. Abraham Lincoln explained his opposition to the Mexican War: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure [emphasis added]. . . . If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us'; but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.'"
—Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Source: Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s OP-ED Bush's 1,000 Days published April 24, 2006 in The Washington Post

Presidents and Politicians Worry

Presidents and politicians may worry about losing face, or votes, or legacy; it is time to think about young Americans and innocent civilians who are losing their lives.
—John Kerry, US Senator, Massachusetts (D)

Source: Senator John Kerry's speech "Dissent" given in Faneuil Hall April 22, 2006, Boston, Massachusetts.

1943: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Begun 63 Years Ago

What we grieve for is not the loss of a grand vision, but rather the loss of common things, events and gestures. ... Ordinariness is the most precious thing we struggle for, what the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto fought for. Not noble causes or abstract theories. But the right to go on living with a sense of purpose and a sense of self-worth—an ordinary life.
—Irena Klepfisz, survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, on the forty-fifth anniversary of the uprising.

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, April 19, 2006
See also:
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum's WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING. The uprising resisted the Nazis until May 16, 1943.

Not Enough to be Compassionate

It is not enough to be compassionate. You must act. There two aspects to action. One is to overcome the distortions and afflictions of your mind, that is, in terms of calming and eventualy dispelling anger. This is action out of compassion. The other is more social, more public. When something needs to be done in the world to rectify wrongs, if one is really concerned with benefiting others, one needs to be engaged, involved.
—atributed to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama

Source: Insight from the Dalai Lama Daily Calendar Saturday/Sunday, April 1/2, 2006
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Cherry Trees: Washington, DC

National Park Service

March 30, 2006. Cherry Blossoms at Peak Bloom: National Mall, Washington, DC

The Peak Bloom Date is defined as the day in which 70 percent of the blossoms of the Yoshino Cherry (Prunus x yedoensis) trees are open. The date when the Yoshino cherry blossoms reach peak bloom varies from year to year, depending on weather conditions. Cherry Blossom Festival dates are set based on the average date of blooming (April 4), but nature is not always cooperative. Unseasonably warm and/or cool temperatures have resulted in the Yoshino cherries reaching peak bloom as early as March 15 (1990) and as late as April 18 (1958).

On this day in 1912, President Taft's wife and the wife of the ambassador from Japan planted the first of Washington D.C.'s cherry trees. The cuttings were scions from the most famous trees in Tokyo, the ones that grow along the banks of the Arakawa River. Workers took over, and thousands of cherry trees�all gifts from the Japanese government�were planted around the Tidal Basin. During the Second World War, Tokyo lost scores of cherry trees in the allied bombing raids; after the surrender, horticulturists took cuttings from the trees in Washington and sent them back to Tokyo. Years later, some of the Washington trees died, and Tokyo sent cuttings back across the Pacific.
—Garrison Keillor

Source: The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor for Monday, March 27^th, 2006

Keep a Good Heart

Keep a good heart. That's the most important thing in life. It's not how much money you make or what you can acquire. The art of it is to keep a good heart.
—Joni Mitchell

Source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Tuesday, March 21, 2006 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN: 0-7407-5200-6

Tears Over Answered Prayers

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.
—Truman Capote; an epigraph he chose for his last, unfinished work

Source: from the motion picture Capote

Do Not Believe (Revisited)

Do not believe what you have heard.
Do not believe in tradition because it is handed down many generations.
Do not believe in anything that has been spoken of many times.
Do not believe because the written statements come from some old sage.
Do not believe in conjecture.
Do not believe in authority or teachers or elders.
But after careful observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and it will benefit one and all, then accept it and live by it.
---Buddha (563 B.C. -- 483 B.C.)

Source: Wisdom of the Ages: A Modern Master Brings Eternal Truth into Everyday Life by Wayne W. Dyer ISBN: 0-06-019231-3
Today is MY birthday. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for giving me life, and for being such wonderful, honest parents
This entry was originally posted on April 28, 2004 and has such deep and profound meaning to me that I thought it was altogether proper to repost here.

Busy About?

It is not enough to be busy—
So are the ants.
The question is:
What are we busy about?
—Henry David Thoreau

Help Another and Help Oneself

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Saturday/Sunday, March 4/5, 2006 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN: 0-7407-5200-6
See also: The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Online)

Last of Human Freedoms

The last of the human freedoms—,
to choose one's attitudes in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
—Viktor Frankl

Source: The Portable Life 101: 179 essential lessons from the New York Times bestseller Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned in Life In School—But Didn't by Peter McWilliams 1995 ISBN: 0-931580-41-2
See also:
Viktor Frankl Institut's Viktor Frankl: Life and Work
Memorial for Peter McWilliams, 1950—2000

Act of Kindness

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.
—Kahlil Gibran

Source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Saturday/Sunday, February 25/26, 2006 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN: 0-7407-5200-6
See also: Gibran Kahlil Gibran - Biography and Works

The Illiterate of the 21st Century

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.
—Alvin Toffler

Source: quoted in Learn More Now: 10 Simple Steps to Learning Better, Smarter, and Faster by Marcia Conner
See also:
marciaconner.com
Ageless Learner: Curious for Life
Alvin Toffler on Wikipedia
Toffler Associates

Other Life Gives Life Meaning

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.
—Mitsugi Saotome

I AM because I am love; I AM because I love.
Happy Valentine's, my Love, Carol Ruth, and all in my life who truly love me. I am full of joy and gratitude for your love. I am a more complete man because I love and I am loved.

Source: Wisdom.com's Love Quotes | Love Quotations category
See also: Wikipedia's Mitsugi Saotome biography

Love Compared to Indifference

Love will find a way. Indifference will find an excuse.
—Anonymous

Source: Teachers: Jokes, Quotes, and Anecdotes Daily calendar Tuesday, January 24, 2006 Andrews McMeel Publishing ISBN: 0-7407-5200-6

Weakness of Violence

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from Strength to Love (1963)

Source: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Wikiquote
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. born January 15, 1929, died April 4, 1968

Answer in Your Hands

A young man caught a small bird, and held it behind his back. He then asked, "Master, is the bird I hold in my hands alive or dead?" The boy thought this was a grand opportunity to play a trick on the old man. If the master answered "dead," it would be let loose into the air. If the master answered "alive," he would simply wring its neck. The master spoke, "The answer is in your hands."
—attrributed to his Holiness the Dalai Lama

Source: Insight from the Dalai Lama Daily Calendar Wednesday, January 11, 2006
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Theft From Those Who Hunger

Every gun that is made, every warship ever launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
—Dwight D Eisenhower

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8
See also: Dwight D. Eisenhower, The Chance for Peace speech, April 16, 1953 Washington, D.C. Social Justice Speeches Project of the Edchange.com Multicultural Education Pavilion

Making It Meaningful

Old friends pass away,. new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend—or a meaningful day.
—attributed to HH the Dalai Lama

Source: Insight from the Dalai Lama Daily Calendar, Thursday, January 6^th 2006 entry
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Insanity: A Definition

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.
—Albert Einstein

Source: The Best Liberal Quotes Ever: Why the Left is Right by Wlliam Martin. Sourcebooks, Inc. 2004 ISBN: 1-4022-0309-8
See also: Nobel Foundation's The Nobel Prize in Physics 1921 Albert Einstein — Biography

Finish Each Day

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: Teachers Daily Calendar, Saturday/Sunday, December 31, 2005 / January 1, 2006
A Blessed and Happy New Year to All

Teachers' Vulnerabilty

Teaching is a daily exercise in vulnerabilty.
—Parker Palmer

Source: Teachers Daily Calendar, Thursday, December 29, 2005 entry
See also: explorefaith.org's Parker J. Palmer biographical sketch

What Miracle is Wrought

When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
—Helen Keller

Source: Daily Inspirational Calendar Saturday/Sunday, December 24/25, 2005 entry

Peace and Good Will

It's easy enough to be cynical about the things we would like to feel here at the dark end of the year, to dismiss them out of hand as if they were only the battery-powered, sugar-coated, marzipan dreams of a child's holiday. Life is too tough, too embattled for such sentimentality. That is Scrooge's point exactly: no use pretending the world isn't exactly the way it is. One of the reasons we love to hear the story of an old crank like Scrooge is that he seems to embody this cracked old world, made whole in one night by regret and repentance.

One night will not do it, nor will one day. Peace does not simply appear in the sky overhead or lie embodied one morning in a manger. We come into this season knowing how we want it to make us feel, and we are usually disappointed because humans never cease to be human. But we are right to remember how we would like to feel. We are right to long for peace and good will.
—New York Times editorial for Sunday, December 25, 2005

Merry Christmas to all

Gravely Dangerous Actions

Warrantless intelligence surveillance by an executive branch unaccountable to any judicial officer -- and apparently on a large scale -- is gravely dangerous.
—Washington Post Editorial, Dec. 18, 2005

Source: Dec. 18^th, 2005 Washington Post Editorial, Spying on Americans
See also: NY Times Nov 18, 2005 article Eavesdropping Effort Began Soon After Sept. 11 Attacks

Country Really Free?

The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is truly free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.
—Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (1834-1902)

Source: Counter-top at the Java House: 210 W. Evergreen, Vancouver, WA 98660, 360.737.2925. A very friendly and pleasant coffee house in downtown Vancouver, Washington. And they have free Wi-Fi! Thanks so much!

Owed by So Many to So Few

US Navy: JO3 Ryan C. McGinley

USS CHAFEE (DDG 90) Returns to Pearl

On (Nov. 9, 2005) crew man the rails aboard the guided missile destroyer USS Chafee (DDG 90) as she returns to Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Chafee returned to Pearl Harbor after a regularly scheduled deployment as part of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group in support of the Global War on Terrorism.

I helped build these Arleigh Burke Class DDGs

Today is Veterans Day, honoring Americans who have served in the armed forces.

November 11 was originally called Armistice Day because it was on this day in 1918 that the First World War came to an end. The armistice was signed at 11:00 AM, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year. After four years of brutal trench fighting, nine million soldiers had died and 21 million were wounded. It was called "The War to End All Wars," because it was the bloodiest war in history up to that point, and it made many people so sick of war that they hoped no war would ever break out again.

Many intellectuals and artists were disillusioned by the war. The philosopher Bertrand Russell said, "All this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country's pride."
—Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Friday, Nov. 11, 2005

Bob's B-17 Page

My Father-in-Low, Earl, served with the 8th Air Force in WW2

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
—Winston Churchill of Britain's fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain, 1940

Source: BBC History: Battle of Britain

The History Place.com | Pacific War

Lingayen Gulf, January 9, 1945

Landing barges sweep through the waters of Lingayen Gulf carrying the first wave of invaders to the beaches of Luzon following a naval bombardment of Japanese shore positions.

My Dad, Richard C., serving with the US Army's 612 Port Company, was here on this day in the first or second wave ashore.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have hallowed it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
---Abraham Lincoln November 19, 1863

Source: University of Oklahoma Law Center's U.S. Historical Documents Collection

Joseph Rachel Destroyer Photo Archive

USS STRIBLING (DD-867) Enters Monaco, June 1972

I served in USS STRIBLING (DD-867) from August 1970 through July 1972 as Main Propulsion Assistant. I was aboard STRIB when this picture was taken. View another photo of STRIB, with "bone in her teeth."

Honor the Men and Women of our Armed Forces
I honor my Dad's service in the US Army in World War 2 in the Pacific. He was on New Guinea, the Phillipines, and Japan as part of the Occupation Forces. Dad was in the first or second waves to go ashore during the landings at Lingayen Gulf, January 9, 1945, during the invasion of Luzon.
I honored my Father-in-Law's service in the US Army in World War 2 in the European Theater. He served with the Eighth Air Force based in England.
I honor my Brother-in-Law, Bill, who served in the US Navy in USS CONSTELLATION during the Viet Nam War and the Cold War.
I honor all my other family members and friends I've known through the years, for their honorable service.
I honor all my shipmates of the many commands I served at sea and ashore in the US Navy from 1970 to my retirement in 1994 during the Viet Nam War and the Cold War.

What Lies Within Us

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: Daily Inspirational Calendar Saturday/Sunday November 5/6, 2005 entry

The Work of a Teacher

The work of a teacher—exhausting, complex, idisyncratic, never twice the—is at its heart, an intellectual and ethical enterprise. Teaching is the vocation of vocations, a calling that shepherds a multitude of other callings. It is an activity that is intensely prcatical and yet transcendent, brutally matter-of-act, and yet fundamentally a creative act. Teaching begins in challenge and is never far from mystery.
—William Ayres

Source: Teachers Daily Inspirational Calendar Thursday, October 27^th, 2005

Rosa Parks: Free, Free at Last

People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some pople have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
—Rosa Parks, reflecting upon her experience on that bus on December 1^st, 1951 evening in Montgomery, Alabama.

Source: Washington Post, Oct. 24, 2005 article, Civil Rights Icon Dies at Age 92

Opportunties Are For Taking

Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for a might-have-been.
—Arthur Ransome, 1884—1967 British novelist

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood. leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries
On such a full sea are now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
—William Shakespeare, 1564—1616 English poet and playwright

If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.
—Anonymous

Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations.
—Jean Paul Richter, 1763—1825 German novelist

Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us daily.
—Sally Koch American writer

To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
—William James, 1842—1910 American psychologist and philospher

Source: The Ultimate Pocket Positives: A Second Anthology of Inspirational Thoughts Compiled by Maggie Pinkey. The Five Mile Press 2001 Reprinted 2002 ISBN = 1 86503 579 3

How Far You Go

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong.
Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
—George Washington Carver

Source: Inspirational Daily Calendar Tuesday, October 18, 2005 entry

An Argument's Aim

The aim of an argument or discussion should be progress, not victory.
—Joseph Joubert

Source: Inspirational calendar Sat/Sun June 16/17 June 2002 entry. Sunday, June 16, 2002 was Father's Day.
See also Joseph Joubert: Wikipedia Entry

Deep Inside Us is Valuable

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that what is deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
—e.e. cummings

Source: Teachers Daily calendar Thursday, September 29, 2005 entry

Real Courage

You risked your life, but what else have you risked? Have you ever risked disapproval? Have you ever risked economic security? Have you ever risked a belief? I see nothing particularly courageous in risking one's life. So you lose it, you go to your hero's heaven and everything is milk and honey 'til the end of time. Right? You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences. That's not courage.
Real courage is risking something you have to keep on living with, real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one's clich�s.
—Tom Robbins in Another Roadside Attraction

Source: Words I Wish I Wrote: A Collection of Writing That Inspired My Ideas by Robert Fulghum published by HarperCollins 1997 ISBN: 0060175605

Consider the Source, or the Idea?

If an idea comes from someone very gentle or great, without much thinking about the idea itself, one tends to be more accepting of the idea. We must rely more on the substance of the idea, rather than the authority of the person who it comes from
—attributed to HH the Dalai Lama

Source: Words of Wisdom Daily Calendar, Thursday, November 18^th 2004 entry
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Belief Easy in June

Belief is easy in June, with summer all around you. In fact, doubt is difficult in a green and hospitable world. The test comes in December, when you have to believe that onsetting winter will pass. You have to muster the deep-down belief that hope is not foolish and faith is not futile. You have to believe in your own believing.
—Hal Borland

Source: Hugs for Teachers calendar Monday, December 9, 2000

Deeds Get Down INto Your Soul

What you want to be eventually, that you must be every day; and by and by the quality of your deeds will get down into your soul.
—Frank Crane

Source: Daily Inspirational Calendar Wednesday, August 17, 2005 entry

Live Your Truth

The authentic you is your true self and, in living authentically, you live your truth, making time for the things you love and projecting who you really are. The simplest way to live your truth is to leave the expectations of other behind and live the way you feel most worthwhile.
—DailyOM for Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Fear Death?

Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
—Bertolt Brecht

Source: Daily Inspirational Calendar Wednesday, June 29, 2005 entry

Might Have Been

The saddest words of tongue or pen are these four words—
it might have been.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Source: Whatever It Takes series window card by Compendium, Inc.

Why Do Human Beings Kill and Injure?

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.
—John Lennon

Source: Merseyworld.com's Imagine : LyricsWritten by: John Lennon � Bag productions inc

To Be Grandpa

My grandfather was a wonderful role model. Through him I got to know the gentle side of men.
—Sarah Long

Source: Daily Celebrations: Favorite Grandparent Quotations

Wrightisms Revisited?

• A DAY WITHOUT SUNSHINE IS LIKE, NIGHT.
• ON THE OTHER HAND, YOU HAVE DIFFERENT FINGERS.
• 42.7 PERCENT OF ALL STATISTICS ARE MADE UP ON THE SPOT.
• I FEEL LIKE I'M DIAGONALLY PARKED IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE.

—From Anne E. in L.A. Not attributed, but they sound suspiciously like Steven Wright comments

Source: An email of 6 May 2005 from my sweet Bride, Carol
See also Steven Wright - Wikiquote

Get Meaning Into Your Life

The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to the community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.
—Morrie Schwartz

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie: an Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom 1^st ed. 1997 by Doubleday ISBN: 0-385-48451-8

Trust: The Dots in Your Life Connect

You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future....

You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down and it has made all the difference in my life....

You have to find what you love. The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work....

Your time is limited. Don't waste it living someone else's life. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition....

Stay hungry, stay foolish.
—Steve Jobs
CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, Commencement address at Stanford University, delivered on June 12, 2005.

Source: The other side of the dream by Garry Barker, Sydney Morning Herald June 23, 2005
To read his entire speech, see also: Steve Jobs at Stanford, June 12, 2005

Life's Learning: Aldous Huxley

Let us be kinder to one another.
—Aldous Huxley: reportedly on his deathbed, reflecting on his entire life's learning.

Source: Who Will Cry When You Die? Life Lessons From the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin S. Sharma 1999 HarpersCollins ISBN 0-00-638578-8
See also, Robin Sharma Online

Somebody Cares

Somebody cares! What a world of woe
Lifts from our hearts when we really know
That somebody really and truly cares,
That we're in somebody's thoughts and prayers.
I want you to know, and I feel you do,
That somebody always is caring for you.
—Unknown

Source: My wonderful, caring Bride, Carol, shared this with me on Thursday, June 23, 2005, ILYWAMHAS, IAYLADHASRich

On Being Stuck

You are not stuck where you are unless you decide to be.
—Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Source: Everyday Wisdom by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer published by Hay House 1993 ISBN 1-56170-076-2
See also Dr. Dyer's Official Web site

President Roosevelt's D-Day Prayer (June 6, 1944)

On the morning of June 6, 1944, Americans awoke to the news that Allied forces were in the process of landing on the coast of France in Normandy. Later that morning, newspapers published a message from the President, which included a prayer for the success of the operation, and a request that the nation join him in prayer during his radio broadcast that evening.

My fellow Americans:

Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer.

---

Almighty God:

Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest - until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home - fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas - whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them - help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too - strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment - let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace - a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen
—President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Source: Strategypage.com's On War & Warfare: D-Day

Evening, June 5, 1944

National D-Day Museum New Orleans

Map of the English Channel, England and the Normandy Coast.

On the eve of June 5, 1944, more than 150,000 men, a fleet of 5,000 ships and landing craft, 50,000 vehicles, and 11,000 planes sat in southern England, poised to attack secretly across the English Channel along a 50-mile stretch of the Normandy coast of France. This force was the largest armada in history and represented years of rigorous training, planning, and supplying. It also represented a previously unknown level of cooperation between allied nations, all struggling for a common goal-the defeat of Germany. Because of highly intricate Allied deception plans, Hitler and his staff believed that the Allies would be attacking at the Pas-de-Calais, the narrowest point between Great Britain and France.

In the early morning darkness of June 6, thousands of Allied paratroopers and glider troops landed silently behind enemy lines, securing key roads and bridges on the flanks of the invasion area. As dawn lit the Normandy coastline the Allies began their amphibious landings, traveling to the beaches in small landing craft lowered from the decks of larger ships anchored in the Channel. They assaulted five beaches, code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. By nightfall nearly all 175,000 men were ashore at a cost of 4,900 Allied casualties. Hitler's vaunted Atlantic Wall had been breached in less than one day. The beaches were secure, but it took many weeks before the Allies could fight their way out of the heavily defended Normandy countryside and almost a full year to reach and defeat Germany in the spring of 1945.

Source: National D-Day Museum New Orleans Brief History of D-Day

Live with Intention

walk to the edge.
dare. listen hard.
practice wellness. laugh.
continue to learn.
play with abandon.
appreciate your friends.
do what you love.
live as if this is all there is.
—mary anne radmacher

Source: Word Garden, ltd greeting card
Sent on a card to my daughter, Jenn, on her 31^st birthday, June 15, 2005

Sharing Wisdom: Becoming a Mentor

There are many kinds of mentors and though we may feel intimidated by the responsibility, it is a role we should embrace. We are here on earth to learn and to pass on life's lessons to others. Whether we mentor someone throughout their life with guidance and counsel or for just a moment by letting someone confide in us, we are doing a valuable service. When someone reaches out, take their hand. They are saying that they trust your wisdom.
—DailyOm for Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Source: DailyOM email subscription

Today, May 24, 2005, would have been the 58^th birthday of my late wife, Maureen. She passed away from complications from cholangiocarcinoma August 15, 2005, shortly after her 50^th birthday. I learned much about life, love, cancer, friends, family and my character sharing life with her for just over 27 years of marriage. Altogether, we knew each other for 31 years. I honor her life, in spite of my still harboring some very unpleasant memories of my experiences with her. I do pray she has found peace and forgiveness on the other side of the veil. I forgive her for the injuries she inflicted upon me, both emotionally and physically. I pray that our daughter, Jennifer, may one day be moved to reconciliation with me.

Moving to a New Phase

You have a right to choose to surround yourself with those people who understand you, are helpful and compassionate, and put you at ease.
—DailyOM of 18 May 2005

Source: DailyOM email subscription

You Want Me to What? ...

After being interviewed by the school administration, the eager teaching prospect said: Let me see if I've got this right...

...You want me to go into that room with all those kids, and fill their. every waking moment with a love for learning. And I'm supposed to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, modify their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse and even censor their T-shirt messages and dress habits.

You want me to wage a war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, check their backpacks for weapons of mass destruction, and raise their self esteem. You want me to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship, fair play, how to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook, and how to apply for a job.

I am to check their heads for lice, maintain a safe environment, recognize signs of anti-social behavior, make sure all students pass the mandatory state exams, even those who don't come to school regularly or complete any of their assignments.

Plus, I am to make sure that all of the students with handicaps get an
equal education regardless of the extent of their mental or physical handicap. And I am to communicate regularly with the parents by letter, telephone, newsletter and report card. All of this I am to do with just a piece of chalk, a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a big smile AND on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps!

You want me to do all of this and yet you expect me . . NOT TO
PRAY??
—Unknown, (but every teacher I know had to have contributed to this)

Source: An email I received on Thursday, May 12, 2005

Tribute to Mother's Day

Today, Sunday, May 8, 2005, is Mother's Day in the USA.
I honor my Mom, Minna. She has been an inspiration to me all my life. She always has a sense of optimism and adventure mixed in with a tad of wanderlust. She loved my Dad, myself and my sister with her whole heart. Mom is always finding new learning experiences and is outgoing with everyone. I love you, Mom. Thank you for being such a wonderful Mom

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
—Author Unknown

Making the decision to have a child-it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
—Elizabeth Stone

Source: Mother's Day Quotes on 123holiday.net
See also: Blackdog's Mother's Day History

Reliving V-E Day in the City of Lights

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day.
—Shakespeare: Henry V

Regarding V-E (Victory in Europe) Day 60 years ago today. The Germans have surrendered. We are still in Paris. The six of us who have been together since England are standing on the parapet of Sacred Heart Cathedral atop Montmartre, overlooking the city. It is getting darker by the minute. Night is falling.

At almost the moment of total darkness � Paris has been blacked out for four years � we are overwhelmed. There is an explosion of light and music everywhere in the city.

In a single moment every streetlight, every electric sign, every square decorated with festive lanterns springs to life as bands in each of these places begin to play. The sound of the singing of "La Marseillaise" comes from everywhere. The war is over in Europe! The nightmare is ended.

For Europe, Parisians, the darkness is now behind them. I can now look forward to going home, to once again hug and kiss my mother, my sister, and to be with my beloved Anita and be married, a union that is now in its 60th year.
—Seymour Robinson

Source: Mr.Seymour Robinson's Letter to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times May 8, 2005
See also: US State Department's Eyewitness to History: Recollections of VE Day 1945

Days of Remembrance 2005

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Prisoners at the time of liberation of the Ebensee camp, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp. This photograph was taken by Signal Corps photographer Arnold E. Samuelson. Austria, May 7, 1945.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has designated "From Liberation to the Pursuit of Justice" as the theme for the 2005 Days of Remembrance (May 1 - 8, 2005) in honor of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the subsequent prosecution under international law of major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, Germany. Reflection on the liberation of thousands of Jews and other prisoners from Nazi camps and the prosecution of Nazi perpetrators reminds us that we must take action to prevent atrocities and vigorously pursue justice for the victims of such acts of hatred and inhumanity.
—The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)

See also: USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia MAUTHAUSEN Concentration Camp

The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.
—Justice Robert Jackson, Chief U.S. Counsel to the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Germany, November 21, 1945

Source: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

First Books Project

Books stir the senses, inspire the imagination, and spark a love of reading that can last a lifetime. Access to books is essential to reading development, yet many children from low-income families have no books at home or in the childcare centers they attend.

There are millions of children waiting for your help.
Visit First Book to help put new books into the hands of children in need.

Teachers Never Teaching?

Good teachers never teach anything. What they do is create the conditions under which learning takes place.
—S.I. Hayakawa

Source: Inspirational Calendar Tuesday, May 3, 2005 entry

Teacher Appreciation Day was celebrated on Tuesday, May 3, 2005.
Visit Teachers Count

Travel

I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.
—Mary Anne Radmacher

Source: Word Garden card by mary anne radmacher

War is Always About Sorrow

War is always about sorrow and the deepest suffering. Nitwits try to dress it up in the finery of half-baked rationalizations, but the reality is always wanton bloodshed, rotting flesh and the lifelong trauma of those who are physically or psychically maimed.
—Bob Herbert

Source: The Agony of War Op-Ed by Bob Herbert, NY Times, April 25, 2005

Solar System: Sun-Centric or Earth-Centric?

Apollo 8: NASA photo

Apollo 8: December 24, 1968

The crew of Apollo 8 were the first humans to witness the Earth rising over the Moon's horizon.

By my remarkable observations, the sky...was opened a hundred or a thousand times wider than anything seen by the learned of all the past centuries. Now, that sky is diminished for me to a space no greater than that which is occupied by my own body.
—Galileo

Source Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac for Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Also consider that Galileo wrote this in a letter to a friend after having been blinded by an eye infection. He was unable to get medical care because he was under house arrest following a conviction of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. It was on this day in 1633 that Galileo was put on trial for publishing evidence that the sun and not the earth is the center of the solar system. He was a devout Catholic but didn't believe his ideas should threaten the church. He wrote, the "Holy Sprit intended to teach us in the Bible how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go."
See also Rice University's The Galileo Project

Small Adventures

And I think over again
My small adventures
When from a shore wind I drift out
In my kayak
And thought I was in danger.
My fears,
Those small ones
That I thought so big,
For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach.

And yet, there is only
One great thing,
The only thing:

To live to see in huts and on journeys
The great day that dawns
And the light that fills the world.
—Song from the Kitlinguiharmiut. Copper Eskimo

Source: Recorded and translated by Knud Rasmussen, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-1924, the Danish Expedition to Arctic North America

Watch Your Thoughts

Watch your thoughts; they become your words.
Watch your words; they become your actions.
Watch your actions; they become your habits.
Watch your habits; they become your character.
Watch your character; they become your destiny.
—Unknown

Source: Teachers Calendar Thursday, February 5, 2004 entry

Purpose in Life

. . . . I wish you a great life filled with wisdom, happiness and fullfilment. May your days be spent in work that is engaging, on pursuits that are inspiring and with people who are loving. I'd like to leave you with the following words of George Bernard Shaw, which capture the essence of the final lesson far better than I ever could:

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a true force of Nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and, as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its sake. Life is no brief candle for me. It's a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Source: Who Will Cry When You Die? Life Lessons From the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin S. Sharma 1999 HarpersCollins ISBN 0-00-638578-8

Pope John II Passes Over the Veil

photo: NY Times

Bronze Door Closes on a Life

A Swiss Guard closes the bronze door under the portico in Saint Peter's Square, where several thousand people gathered to be close to Pope John Paul II, at the Vatican April 2, 2005. This door is closed every night and over the centuries it is also closed when a pope dies and is kept closed until a new pontiff is elected.

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.
—Pope John Paul II

Source: Pope John Paul II Quotes on BrainyQuote.com

Pope John Paul II died on Saturday, the Vatican announced. The 84-year-old Pontiff, who had headed the Roman Catholic Church for 26 years, died at 9.37 p.m (1937 GMT), a statement said.
—REUTERS/Max Rossi

One who exercises as much power as the pope will never be free of controversy, no matter how exemplary his life; the secular world is not in the habit of conferring sainthood on people. But John Paul II, after his death yesterday at 84, will be seen by most, we think, as a remarkable witness, to use a favorite term of his -- witness to a vision characterized by humaneness, honesty and integrity throughout his reign and his life.
—Washington Post, Sunday, April 3, 2005

Source: Washington Post, Sunday April 3, 2005 Editorial

Closest Friends

The closest friends I have made through my life have been people who also grew up close to a loved and loving grandmother and grandfather.
—Margaret Mead

Source: Grandparents: A Book of Favorite Quotations, Words of Wisdom edited by Kristin Shea 2003 Barnes & Noble Books ISBN 0-7607-4066-6
See also: Margaret Mead's Life and Work

Forgiveness and Love

Forgiveness is the ability to give love away in the most difficult of circumstances.
—Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Family and Links

In every conceivable way, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.
—Alex Haley

Source: CA 100 students contribution on Saint Patrick's Day, March 17, 2005
See also: Alex Haley on WisdomQuotes.com

Birth of Second Grandson

Call it "womb awe" or even "womb worship" but it's not simple envy. I don't remember even wanting to be a woman. But each of the three times I have been present at the birth of one of my children, I have been overwhelmed by a sense of reverence... It was quite suddenly, the first day of creation; the Goddess giving birth to a world... Like men since the beginning of time I wondered: What can I ever create that will equal the magnificence of this new life?
—Sam Keen

Source: Sam Keen Quotes on ThinkExist.com

This entry is dedicated to our second Grandson, born this day, Sunday, March 13, 2005 in Vancouver, WA. He was 7lbs 9ozs and 21 inches of pure love. His Grandma was in the Birthing Room and was privileged to be present at his birth. We both had the distinct and profound honor of cradling him in our arms on his first day of life.

Mt. Saint Helens Erupts March 8, '05

Rich & Carol Wersinger 08 MAR 05

Click on image to enlarge.
We took this shot on Mar. 8, 2005 about 1735 PST Mar. 8, 2005, very shortly after the eruption was observed. We are about 30 miles sw of Mount Saint Helens. This eruption started in earnest about 1720 pst today. The ash plume altitude was estimated at 30,000 feet

I see the mind of the 5-year-old as a volcano with two vents: destructiveness and creativeness.
—Sylvia Ashton-Warner

We stood with less than a dozen of our neighbors in profound awe at the raw power of mother nature. We could see in the ash plume some of the newest soil of Mother Earth's surface. We were witnessing Mother Earth recycling at her finest. We were grateful that we stood upwind of the ash plume and were in no immediate danger. See the Mt Saint Helens National Monument VolcanoCam Live Images Archives.

Source: Sylvia Ashton-Warner quotes on BrainyQuote.com

What Man Descends From

We need not worry so much about what man descends from — it's what he descends to that shames the human race.
—Mark Twain

Source: The Little Book of Humrous Quotations edited by Alison Bullivant 2004 Barnes & Noble Books

Whole Idea of Living

The whole idea of living is to believe the best is yet to come.
—Peter Ustinov

Source: Expect a Miracle series window card by Compendium, Inc.

Teacher's Major Contribution

A teacher's major contribution may pop out anonymously in the life of some ex-student's grandchild.
—Wendell Berry

Source: Teachers Daily Calendar Thursday, February 17, 2005 entry

To Change Our World

Think of an idea to change our world
——and put it into ACTION!
—Mr. Eugene Simonet (Middle School Social Studies Teacher) played by Kevin Spacey in the movie Pay It Forward (2000)

Source: Pay It Forward DVD ISBN: 0-7907-5680-3
Mr. Simonet's Social Studies assignment to his seventh graders that inspired the character Trevor McKinney's Pay It Forward idea. Trevor was played by the young actor Haley Joel Osment.

All I Really Need to Learn

Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday school.
These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt someone.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup: The roots go dwon and the plant goes up and nobody really kows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the styrofoam cup—they all die. So do we.
• And then remember that Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned—the biggest word of all—LOOK.

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things by Robert Fulghum 1989 Villard Books
See also All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten : Fifteenth Anniversary Edition Reconsidered, Revised, & Expanded With Twenty-Five New Essays ISBN: 0345466179

Treasure This Day

Treasure this day, and treasure yourself.
Truly, neither will ever happen again.
—Ray Bradbury

Source: Expect a Miracle series window card by Compendium, Inc.

How Important You Are

If you could only sense how important you are to the lives you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.
—Fred Rogers

Source: The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers 2003 ISBN 1-4013-0106-1
See also: Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

I honor the memory of a colleague of mine of the last five years who passed on to the next adventure across the veil last Friday, February 4, 2005. Fair Winds and following seas to you shipmate, Michael.

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
—Dylan Thomas -- Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Wish for Children

My own wish for children is that they learn to find joy even amidst the world's and their own imperfections, that they grow to have a clear but forgiving interior voice to guide them, and that they come to have a reasonable sense of shame without unreasonable burdens of guilt.
—Fred Rogers

Source: Teachers Daily Calendar February 4, 2005 entry
from the book The World According to Mr. Rogers by Fred Rogers
See also: Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

Auschwitz Liberated 60 Years Ago: 27 Jan 1945

Thou shalt not be a victim.
Thou shalt not be a perpetrator.
Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.
---Holocaust Museum Washington, DC

Source: WisdomQuotes.com

It's very important. You are the last generation that can talk to the survivors, we are every day less. We can give living testimony...to let the world know, to try to get them to learn even though they don't, so that it doesn't happen again.
Auschwitz Survivor Trudy Spira

Source: Heads bowed in the snow, old and young pay silent tribute The Scotsman.com Friday, Jan. 28, 2005

Auschwitz Liberation Commemorated
During World War II, more than 1.5 million people died at three Auschwitz death camps before Soviet troops arrived to free the remaining prisoners. 60 years later, survivors and world leaders commemorated the liberation and reflected on one of humanity's darkest chapters, the Holocaust that claimed the lives of more than 6 million people.

Source: Washingtonpost.com We Will Never Forget: Photo Gallery

I Have a Dream

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood . . . that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today
---Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

Source: Teachers Daily Calendar, January 15/16, 2005 entry
See also: American Rhetoric's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: I Have a Dream

Becoming Great

Great people are those who make others feel they, too, can become great.
--Mark Twain

Source: Inspirations Daily Calendar January 10, 2005 entry

Truth and Error

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody will see it.
---Mahatma Gandhi

Source: The Official Mahatma Gandhi Archives: Quotes

Voice Within You

The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you hear what is sounding outside. And only he who listens can speak..
---Dag Hammarskjold,
Secretary-General of the United Nations from 10 April 1953 until 18 September 1961

Source: Educational Quotes for the 21st Century
See also Dag Hammarskjold's bio

Also, from Dag Hammarskjold

Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your orders without being humiliated.
---Dag Hammarskjold

Source: Brainy Quotes by Dag Hammarskjold

How in the World It All Came About!

U.S. Navy photo by
Photographer's Mate Airman Nicholas B. Morton

Haze Gray and Underway: Romeo Close-Up

The US Navy's guided missile destroyer USS Shoup (DDG 86) prepares to pull alongside (port-side to) the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) to conduct a replenishment at sea (RAS). SHOUP, LINCOLN, and embarked Carrier Air Wing Two (CVW-2) were deployed to the Western Pacific Ocean as of 01 Dec 2004.

Just occasionally you find yourself in an odd situation.
You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way, but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.
---Thor Heyerdahl, Kon-Tiki, 1951

Source: The Exploding Whale: and Other Remarkable Stories from the Evening News by Paul Linnman
One of the almost dozen books my sweet Bride, Carol, presented to me on this glorious Christmas Day.

Peace on Earth: Christmas 2004

There can be no peace as long as there is grinding poverty, social injustice, inequality, oppression, environmental degradation, and as long as the weak and small continue to be trodden by the mighty and powerful.

Source: Words of Wisdom Daily Calendar, Saturday, December 25^th 2004 (Christmas Day) entry
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Technology and Magic

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

and ...

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
---Arthur C. Clarke

Source: The Writer's Almanac for Thursday, December 16, 2004 by Garrison Keillor

Unresolvable Disputes?

It is my belief that there are no such things as unresolvable disputes in the world.
---HH The Dalai Lama

Source: Words of Wisdom Daily Calendar, Tuesday, December 14^th 2004 (Human Rights Day) entry
See Also: The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

Love Looks Not

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
---William Shakespeare

Source: Helena observes in Midsummer's Night Dream (I, i, 234)

An Instrument of Your Peace

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.
---St Francis of Assisi

Source: CatholicWomen.com's Kitchen Catechism St. Francis' Prayer

Out of the Ruts of Ordinary Perception

To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large -- this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.
--Aldous Huxley The Doors of Perception

Source: some-guy.com Words of Wisdom

Man is a Religious Animal

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter.
I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
---Mark Twain in The Lowest Animal essay, 1897

Source: some-guy.com's Mark Twain Quotes

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have hallowed it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
---Abraham Lincoln November 19, 1863

Source: University of Oklahoma Law Center's U.S. Historical Documents Collection

Explanatory notes on the National Archives' ourdocuments.gov

Perhaps the most famous battle of the Civil War took place at Gettysburg, PA, July 1 to July 3, 1863. At the end of the battle, the Union's Army of the Potomac had successfully repelled the second invasion of the North by the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia. Several months later, President Lincoln went to Gettysburg to speak at the dedication of the cemetery for the Union war dead. Speaking of a "new birth of freedom," he delivered one of the most memorable speeches in U.S. history.

At the end of the Battle of Gettysburg, more than 51,000 Confederate and Union soldiers were wounded, missing, or dead. Many of those who died were laid in makeshift graves along the battlefield. Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin commissioned David Wills, an attorney, to purchase land for a proper burial site for the deceased Union soldiers. Wills acquired 17 acres for the cemetery, which was planned and designed by landscape architect William Saunders.

The cemetery was dedicated on November 19, 1863. The main speaker for the event was Edward Everett, one of the nation�s foremost orators. President Lincoln was also invited to speak �as Chief Executive of the nation, formally [to] set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.� At the ceremony, Everett spoke for more than 2 hours; Lincoln spoke for 2 minutes.

President Lincoln had given his brief speech a lot of thought. He saw meaning in the fact that the Union victory at Gettysburg coincided with the nation�s birthday; but rather than focus on the specific battle in his remarks, he wanted to present a broad statement about the larger significance of the war. He invoked the Declaration of Independence, and its principles of liberty and equality, and he spoke of �a new birth of freedom� for the nation. In his brief address, he continued to reshape the aims of the war for the American people�transforming it from a war for Union to a war for Union and freedom. Although Lincoln expressed disappointment in the speech initially, it has come to be regarded as one of the most elegant and eloquent speeches in U.S. history.

To Help Others

We are all here on earth to help others. What on earth the others are here for I don't know.
---W. H. Auden

Source: Practice Kindnes series window card by Compendium, Inc., Lynnwood, WA
See also: PoetryConnection.net's W. H. Auden biography and Selcted Poems

War's Shocking Fact

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these human beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder and be murdered in quarrels not their own.
---Alduos Huxley (1894 - 1963)

Source: Military Encounters: Quotations on War & Peace edited by Robert Edwards, Barnes & Noble Books 2004 ISBN 0-7607-6324-0

To Be Criticized

Long experience has shown me that to be criticized is not always to be wrong.
---Anthony Eden

Source: The Little Book of Humorous Quotations, Chapter 4, Social Comment edited by Alison Bullivant 2004 Barnes & Noble Books ISBN 0-7607-3776-2
See also BRITANNIA.COM's page about Prime Minister Anthony Eden

I Hate War

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its studpidity
---Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)

Source: Military Encounters: Quotations on War & Peace edited by Robert Edwards, Barnes & Noble Books 2004 ISBN 0-7607-6324-0

In Flanders Fields

USS HOWARD (DDG-83) in heavy sea way
29 Aug 04, South China Sea, RAS approach
US Navy photo

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields
---by LTC John McCrae, M.D. May 1915

Source: Sheryl's Holiday Site: Veterans Day
For an explanation of the poem and the significance of the poppies

This entry, made on November 11^th, 2004 is to honor of all my brothers and sisters who are serving and have served honorably in defense of these United States.
In particular, I honor:
My Dad, Richard C., who served in the US Army in the Pacific Campaigns of World War 2;
My Father-in-Law, Earl, who served with the US Air Force's Eighth Air Force in the European Theater of World War 2;
My Brother-in-Law, Bill, who served in the US Navy aboard aircraft carriers during the Viet Nam era;
All my Brothers of our Men's movement and Buffalo Gap;
My late Father-in-Law, Thomas (Doc), who served in the US Navy in Alaskan waters during World War 2;
My late Mother-in-Law, Doris, who served in the US Navy Nurse Corps during World War 2. Her specialty included caring for Navy and Marine Corps amputees in the Naval Hospital, Philadelphia.
All my former shipmates with whom I served through my service in the US Navy from 1970 through 1994
And I honor my own service in the US Navy and the Naval Reserve

If I Knew That Today ...

If I knew that today would be the last time I�d see you,
I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul.
If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door,
I�d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more.
If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice,
I�d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again.
If I knew this is the last time I see you,
I�d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already.
---Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Source: Elise's Quotes: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
See also Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Macondo - This Modern World Gabo Author Page

Change the World with Love

The quickest way to change the world is to be of service to others.
Show that your love can make a difference in the lives of people and thereby someone else's love can make a difference in your life. By each of us doing that and working together we change the world one inner person at a time.
---Dannion Brinkley

Source: Dannion Brinkley's Web site about Compassion in Action

Living Your Life

There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
---Albert Einstein

Source: Expect a Miracle Window Card series by Compendium, Inc., Lynnwood, WA

Contact with Life

Making Contact
I believe
The greatest gift
I can conceive of having
from anyone
is to be seen by them,
heard by them,
to be understood
and
touched by them.
The greatest gift
I can give
is
to see, hear, understand
and to touch
another person.
When this is done
I feel
contact has been made.
---Virginia Satir

Source: Teaching With Fire: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Teach Sam M. Intrator & Megan Scribner, editors
ISBN: 0-7879-6970-2
David Gurteen's Knowledge Web Site Virginia Satir Page

Human Hand

I think the human hand is meant for embracing and not for hitting.
---HH the Dalai Lama

Source: Words of Wisdom Daily Calendar: Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Why We Call It the Present

many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart. to handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. anger is only one letter short of danger. if someone betrays you once, it is his fault; if he betrays you twice, it is your fault. great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. he who loses a friend, lose much more; he who loses faith, loses all. beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. learn from the mistakes of others. you can't live long enough tp make them all yourself. friends you and me....you brought another friend....and then there were three...we started our group....our circle of friends....and like that circle....there is no beginnning or end....yesterday is history. tomorrow is mystery. today is a gift, that's why they call it the present.
----Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

Source: quotablecards #115 at quotablecards.com

Our Own Wisdom

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
---Mahatma Gandhi

Source: Creative Quotations from Mahatma Gandhi

No Man Is An Island

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
---John Donne (1572-1631)
from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
MEDITATION XVII

Source: Wisdom of the Ages: A Modern Master Brings Eternal Truths into Everyday Life by Wayne W. Dyer
ISBN = 0-06-019231-3

Soft and Rigid

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. this is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
---Lao-tzu

Source: Teachers Daily Calendar: for Sat/Sun July/Aug 31/1

The Source of the Problem

This is the same planet, same human beings, same potential, same rights, but some are dying, some have surpluses. This is unequal, and not only morally wrong, but practically also the source of the problem.
---HH the Dalai Lama

Source: Words of Wisdom Daily Calendar: Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Even the Dark Moments

Trust Even the Dark Moments
While on our journey, life can sometimes get bleak. Dark passages may envelop us.
    Expect these moments. Often they come at the deepest period of working things out. It can be a time of despair, frustration, dead ends, anguish, and angst. Sometimes these moments are brief; sometimes they last a long time. But usually they are necessary.
    Plan on these moments. They are not the end of the journey. They are the passageway through the tunnel and into the light. In just a little while, you will feel, see, and know the purpose of what you're going through. Soon it will become clear. You will mve out of the darkness and into the light.

Trust even the bleak times
When you reach the end of
the tunnel, then you will
know why this all had to be.

Source: September 26^th entry: Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul by Melodie Beattie ISBN 0-06-251121-1

In Autumn, One Leaf Falls

In Autumn, one leaf falls, then another, then all the beautiful flowers die until we are surrounded by bare naked plants. We do not feel so joyful. Why is this?
Because deep down, we desire constructive, fruitful growth and dislike things collapsing, dying, or beingdestroyed.
---Dalai Lama

Source: Words of Wisdom Daily Calendar, Friday, September 24^th entry
The Tibetan Government in Exile: About His Holiness The Dalai Lama

The Truth

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
---Oscar Wilde

Source: W3School.com's Browser Statistics Page

Happy Birthday, Mom

Clancy of the Overflow

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just on spec, addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow"

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
"Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."

* * * * * * * * *

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

* * * * * * * * *

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal
--But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of The Overflow.
---A. B. (Andrew Barton) "Banjo" Paterson

Source: University of Queensland, Australia "Banjo" Paterson's Cancy of the Overflow First published in the The Bulletin in 1889.

Courage: What is It?

Love makes courage necessary. And it's love that makes courage possible for all of us to possess. You get courage by loving something more than your own well-being. When you love virtue, when you love freedom, when you love other people, you find the strength to demand courage of yourself and of those who aspire to lead you. Only then will you find the courage, as Eleanor Roosevelt put it, "to do the thing you think you cannot do."
--Sen. John McCain

Source: FastCompany magazine article In Search of Courage by Senator John McCain, FastCompany Issue 86 September 2004

How Many Deaths?

Yes'n how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind...
---Bob Dylan

Source: An email signature that I received today, September 10, 2004
See also: Blowin' in the Wind, Lyrics

Choosing Sides?

One cannot choose sides on a round planet.
---Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Source: Everyday Wisdom by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer 1993 Hay House ISBN 1-56170-076-2

Poetry and Our Soul

Poetry is the language your soul would speak
if you could teach your soul to speak.
---Jim Harrison

Source: Seen on the back of a T-Shirt in the La Terrazza restaurant, Sep. 7, 2004, Portland, Oregon, USA
See also, University of Mississippi's offering: Conversations with Jim Harrison, and
See also, Salon.com's Interview with Jim Harrison

Man, You Are in Error

It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of truth.
---John Locke (1732-1704)

Source: John Locke's CreativeQuotations page. He was born August 29, 1632.

Women: VOTE!

On Aug. 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing American women the right to vote, was declared in effect.
--New York Times: ON THIS DAY, Auguts 26, 2004

Source: NYTIMES.com - On This Day August 26, 2004

In the Living Years

Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door

I know that I'm a prisoner
To all my Father held so dear
I know that I'm a hostage
To all his hopes and fears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Crumpled bits of paper
Filled with imperfect thought
Stilted conversations
I'm afraid that's all we've got

You say you just don't see it
He says it's perfect sense
You just can't get agreement
In this present tense
We all talk a different language
Talking in defence

Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye

So we open up a quarrel
Between the present and the past
We only sacrifice the future
It's the bitterness that lasts

So don't yield to the fortunes
You sometimes see as fate
It may have a new perspective
On a different day
And if you don't give up, and don't give in
You may just be O.K.

Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye

I wasn't there that morning
When my Father passed away
I didn't get to tell him
All the things I had to say

I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I'm sure I heard his echo
In my baby's new born tears
I just wish I could have told him in the living years

Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye
---Song: Living Years by Mike & the Mechanics �

Source: Absolute Lyrics In the Living Years by Mike and the Mechanics

I honor my Dad's Birthday today.
My Dad, Richard C (Dick) was born on this day in 1914 in Junedale, Pennsylvania, USA. He led a loving and good life, was devoted to his wife, my Mom, Minna, was devoted to my sister, Sue, and me, and was the most honest man I ever knew.
When my Mom called in February, 1992, informing me that he had been stricken down by stroke, I drove alone three hours from Washington, DC to central New Jersey. Mom was sure that he would not recover from his massive stroke. Throughout that road trip the above song, The Living Years, seemed to be playing on every radio station I found.
It struck me then, as it does now as I recall my emotions, that I had allowed other life forces move me away from a closeness with him. Our separation was, I think, a loss for both of us, but most particularly for me. I lamented that I had never found the opportunity to know what he thought was the meaning of life.
And I wish I had told him in his living years how much I loved him and honored him for his life. He reached heaven on February 29, 2004.
Thus, I do honor him for his life and all that he truly meant to me. I do now, finally, understand what he thought was the meaning of life for him.
To Do Good

Nagasaki Atomic Bomb :: +59 Years

On August 9, only three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, (see my Aug 6, 2004 entry) another B-29, Bock's Car, left Tinian at 3:49 a.m. The first choice target for this bombing run had been Kokura. Since the haze over Kokura [on the Japanese island of Kyushu] prevented the sighting of the bombing target, Bock's Car continued on to its second target. At 11:02 a.m., the atomic bomb, "Fat Man," was dropped over Nagasaki. The atomic bomb exploded 1,650 feet above the city.

Source: About.com's History on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 1945

The pumpkin field in front of the house was blown clean. Nothing was left of the whole thick crop, except that in place of the pumpkins there was a woman's head. I looked at the face to see if I knew her. It was a woman of about forty. She must have been from another part of town - I had never seen her around here. A gold tooth gleamed in the wide-open mouth. A handful of singed hair hung down from the left temple over her cheek, dangling in her mouth. Her eyelids were drawn up, showing black holes where the eyes had been burned out. . . . She had probably looked square into the flash and gotten her eyeballs burned.
---Fujie Urata Matsumoto, a Nagasaki survivor

Source: About.com's History on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 1945

Tonkin Gulf Resolution + 40 Years

On this 40th anniversary of the Tonkin Gulf incident it is appropriate to recall an affair that has much history wound around it, a watershed in the U.S. move toward full-scale war in Vietnam. At the time, in August 1964, the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson used the incident as a pretext to seek from Congress a joint resolution approving the use of force in Southeast Asia, which it then relied upon as legal justification for all-out war. The episode opened the way for an American military commitment that ultimately peaked in March 1969 with 548,000 U.S. troops in South Vietnam plus additional supporting forces in Thailand. Some 59,000 Americans and several million Vietnamese died in the conflict.
---John Prados

Source: August 4, 2004 Essay on the 40th Anniversary of the Tonkin Gulf Incident at the George Washington University's National Security Archive Web site.

Conclusions of this Essay?

Among the most prophetic and disturbing statements in the declassified record are those by national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, at the White House staff meeting at 8 a.m. on August 4, 1964. Bundy told the staff, according to the memorandum for the record drafted by military aide William Y. Smith: "On the first attack, the evidence would be pretty good. On the second one the amount of evidence we have today is less than we had yesterday. This resulted primarily from correlating bits and pieces of information eliminating double counting and mistaken signals. This much seemed certain: There was an attack. How many PT boats were involved, how many torpedoes were fired, etc. - all this was still somewhat uncertain. This matter may be of some importance since Hanoi has denied making the second attack." We now know this denial was accurate and Washington's claims were not, and that senior officials knew of the "double counting and mistaken signals." But when new staffer Douglass Cater - attending his first morning meeting on August 5, 1964 - questioned the need for a Congressional resolution, "Bundy, in reply, jokingly told him perhaps the matter should not be thought through too far. For his own part, he welcomed the recent events as justification for a resolution the Administration had wanted for some time."

Change a few of the words in these quotes - perhaps substitute "weapons of mass destruction" for "PT boats" and "torpedoes," and "Baghdad" for "Hanoi" - and the parallels with today become all too apt.

This new evidence permits us to view more accurately the internal deliberations of the Johnson administration. Especially in combination with LBJ's telephone conversations with McNamara, recently made available to the public with transcriptions, the material clearly shows Washington rushing to a judgment on events in the Tonkin Gulf, which it seized upon as evidence in support of its predetermined intention to escalate the conflict in Vietnam. Those who questioned the veracity of the Johnson administration's description of the Gulf of Tonkin incident at the time were right to do so. The manipulation of this international situation for the administration's political purpose of obtaining a congressional authorization for the use of force bears considerable similarity to the manner in which the Bush administration manipulated intelligence regarding the possibility that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction to gain its own legislative approval for war against that country. In both cases, truth became the first casualty. In both cases, the consequences far outweighed anything anticipated by the presidents involved.
---John Prados

Source: August 4, 2004 Essay on the 40th Anniversary of the Tonkin Gulf Incident at the George Washington University's National Security Archive Web site.

Hiroshima Atomic Bombing + 59 years

Fifty-Nine years ago on August 6, 1945, the United States of America opened up the Atomic Age by dropping an Atomic Bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower said
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
---Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

Source: Doug Long's Hiroshima Web Site, quotes

Source: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956: The White House Years. by Dwight D. Eisenhower, Doubleday, Garden City, NY., 1963

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British Grand Slam, which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.
---Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, August 6, 1945, first public announcement of the event

Source: Yale Law School's Avalon Project on the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Introduction

Life is Sacred

Take time to remember that all life is sacred.
---Melody Beattie

Source: August 4, 2004 Main Point: Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul by Melody Beattie 1996 HarperCollins isbn: 0-06-251121-1 (pbk.)

War = Murder?

War is no different than a murder in the street.
---Dalai Lama

Source: Words of Wisdom Daily Calendar, Wednesday, August 4^th entry

Apollo 11 35th Anniversary

Source: NASA

July 20, 1969, U.S Astronaut Buzz Aldrin steps off the Lunar Module onto Earth's moon to be the second man on the moon.

Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
---U.S. Astronaut Neil Armstong, July 20, 1969 as the Lunar Module lands on Earth's moon.

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
---U.S. Astronaut Neil Armstong, July 20, 1969 as he steps off the Lunar Module to be the first man to step foot upon Earth's moon.

It's the summer of 2004 and NASA is plotting a new course into the cosmos. The Vision for Space Exploration calls for a return to the moon, followed by journeys of discovery to Mars and beyond. There are many uncertainties on the road ahead, but there should be no doubt that NASA can set lofty goals and meet them.
---NASA's Web site July 20, 2004

Source: NASA - Apollo 11 at 35

If Thou Kiss Not Me?

The sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?
---Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) English poet

Source: The Kiss 1992 Running Press Book Miniature Edition ISBN 1-56138-149-7
from Shelley's poem Love's Philosophy

Lincoln on Slavery

It is the eternal struggle between these two principles---right and wrong---throughout the world.
They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings.
It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says. "You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it."
No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.
---Abraham Lincoln

Source: The Wit & Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Observations by James C. Humes 1999 ISBN 0-517-20719-2

The Invitation

It doesn�t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart�s longing.

It doesn�t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn�t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life�s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn�t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
�Yes.�

It doesn�t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn�t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn�t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

---- � Oriah Mountain Dreamer, from the book The Invitation published by HarperSanFrancisco, 1999

Source: Author's Official Web site Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Our Job in Life

As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is,
that each of us has something that no one else has--
or ever will have--something inside that is unique to all time.
It's our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.
---Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers)

Source: The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers 2003 ISBN 1-4013-0106-1
See also: Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

We Declare Our Independence

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
---In Congress, July 4, 1776, A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled

Source: founding.com | A User's guide to the Declaration of Independence

Advice

Folks, I'm telling you ....
birthing is hard
and dying is mean
So get yourself
a little loving
in between.
---Langston Hughes

Source: The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes Ediors Rampersad & Roessel 1994 ISBN 0-679-76408-9

Approach Immortality

If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality.
---Norman Cousins

Source: Teachers Calendar Thursday, June 24, 2004 entry

When Will We Learn?

When will we learn?

There is no Them. Only Us.

We do not teach our children that might makes right.
We do not teach our children that the end justifies the means.
We do not teach our children there is honor in killing and being killed.
We do not teach our children that violence is the glory of civilization.
Why do we forget that when we grow up?

I do not know. Those who weep cannot say.
---Robert Fulghum

Source: Robert Fulghum's May 21, 2004 Journal Entry from Kolymbari, Crete, Greece

Act of Kindness

No act of kindness, no matter how small, (or large) is ever wasted.
---Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC), The Lion and the Mouse

Source: OHSU PAS Specialist, Shauna Adkins email message of 16 June 2004

Six Mistakes of Man

1.  The illusion that personal gain is made up of crushing others

2.  The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.

3.  Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it.

4.  Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.

5.  Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and study.

6.  Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
---Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 B.C. - 43 B.C.

Source: Wisdom of the Ages: A Modern Master Brings Eternal Truths into Everyday Life by Wayne W. Dyer ISBN 0-06-019231-3