"Sometimes when you come up the rough side of the mountain, it allows you to learn really valuable lessons and when you do fall in love with the process, the process will love you back."
— Matt Campbell, football coach at Iowa State
"There's always that doubt in the back of your mind about what you're doing, and I think you need that edge, I think you need that to be successful."
— Jim Boeheim, men's basketball coach at Syracuse
"Do the good that's in front of you, even if it feels very small."
— Sharon Salzberg
"Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire."
— Arnold H. Glasow
"An addiction to distraction is the end of your creative production."
— Robin Sharma
"The human attention span is now shorter than the attention span of the goldfish. It's down to eight seconds."
— Arianna Huffington
"I'm a big believer in micro-steps (to self-improvement).... I don't do anything perfectly, I'm a work in progress."
— Arianna Huffington
"I would recommend they read the latest science around the importance of sleep and pauses in the course of our day. Because we claim to be data driven, but we are ignoring the data. The prevailing culture still believes that being 'always on' is the way to succeed, that cutting down on sleep means we are more productive because we have more time available. So I would show them (students) the latest science and then I would bring together new role models, people in the arena, people they admire like Jeff Bezos (who strives to get eight hours of sleep for better clarity, decision-making, and so on)."
— Arianna Huffington, advocate for proper self-care, sleep, digital detoxing, walking, etc.
"You can't really run your life from your inbox."
— Arianna Huffington
"I was born and raised in Los Angeles, a California girl who lives by the ethos that most things can be cured with either yoga, the beach, or a few avocados."
— Meghan Markle, actress and girlfriend of Prince Harry
"The distinction between base avarice and honest ambition may be exceedingly fine."
— Reverend Noel Blackwell, 1853
"If you have everything under control, you're not moving fast enough."
— Mario Andretti
"Smile when it's raining, and when you're going through hell - keep going."
— Bear Grylls, survival advice
"I am ordinary, but I am determined."
— Bear Grylls
"... if you can help people feel stronger and more capable because of what you tell them, then it becomes worthwhile... in ways that are impossible to quantify."
— Bear Grylls
"I haven't always succeeded, and I haven't always had the most talent, but I have always given of myself with great enthusiasm – and that counts for a lot. In fact, my dad had always told me that if I could be the most enthusiastic person I knew then I would do well. I never forgot that. And he was right. I mean, who doesn't like to work with enthusiastic folk?"
— Bear Grylls
"Families are always great levelers."
— Bear Grylls
"If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family."
— Ram Dass
"I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me – that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns."
— Anne Lamott
"Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."
— Thomas a Kempis
"Don't judge someone just because they sin differently than you."
— internet meme
"Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions."
— Elizabeth Gilbert
"Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct."
— Thomas Carlyle
"No rain, no flowers."
— internet meme
"After playing poorly in her first match of the year (at the Australian Open held in January), in which she felt she had missed too many backhands, she went to the practice court and for two and a half to three hours hit 2,500 of them, by her estimation. If she missed one, she started over. She did roughly the same the next practice day."
— Vanity Fair article about Serena Williams
"Don't explain your philosophy – embody it."
— Epictetus
"Riches and rank have no necessary connection with genuine gentlemanly qualities. The poor man with rich spirit is in all ways superior to the rich man with a poor spirit.... He who has lost all, but retains his courage, cheerfulness, hope, virtue, and self respect, is still rich."
— Samuel Smiles, from his book Self-Help published in 1859
"Do you know what the word 'hero' meant in ancient Greek? Get
this, it didn't mean 'tough guy' or 'killer of bad guys.' It meant
'protector.' A hero has strength for two. A hero's secret weapon? Love,
compassion, empathy. Quite simply, a hero cares. And, very importantly, a
hero is willing to do the work required to optimize, and build the
strength to make a difference in their families, communities, and world.
And you know what? Our world needs heroes today more than ever before.
We need you to be a hero."
— Brian Johnson, creator of Philosophers Notes, check 'em out!
Saturday, November 18, 2017
Invictus by William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
This book excerpt...
... is about surfing, which I've never done, but the book came highly recommended and I checked it out and here we are; I just found this very rich, philosophical, metaphorical, challenging. I haven't surfed but I've lived. Someday I hope to try surfing.
"But surfing has always had this horizon, this fear line, that made it different from other things, certainly from other sports I knew. You could do it with friends, but when the waves got big, or you got into trouble, there never seemed to be anyone around. Everything out there was disturbingly interlaced with everything else. Waves were the playing field. They were the goal. They were the object of your deepest desire and adoration. At the same time, they were your adversary, your nemesis, even your mortal enemy. The surf was your refuge, your happy hiding place, but it was also a hostile wilderness – a dynamic, indifferent world.... The ocean was... endlessly dangerous, power beyond measure. And yet you were expected, even as a kid, to take its measure every day. You were required – this was essential, a matter of survival – to know your limits, both physical and emotional. But how could you know your limits unless you tested them? And if you failed the test? You were also required to stay calm if things went wrong. Panic was the first step, everybody said, to drowning. As a kid, too, your abilities were assumed to be growing. What was unthinkable one year became thinkable, possibly, the next. My letters from Honolulu in 1966, kindly returned to me recently, are less distinguished by swaggering bullshit than by frank discussions of fear. 'Don't think I've suddenly gotten brave. I haven't.' But the frontiers of the thinkable were quietly, fitfully edging back to me."
— William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
"But surfing has always had this horizon, this fear line, that made it different from other things, certainly from other sports I knew. You could do it with friends, but when the waves got big, or you got into trouble, there never seemed to be anyone around. Everything out there was disturbingly interlaced with everything else. Waves were the playing field. They were the goal. They were the object of your deepest desire and adoration. At the same time, they were your adversary, your nemesis, even your mortal enemy. The surf was your refuge, your happy hiding place, but it was also a hostile wilderness – a dynamic, indifferent world.... The ocean was... endlessly dangerous, power beyond measure. And yet you were expected, even as a kid, to take its measure every day. You were required – this was essential, a matter of survival – to know your limits, both physical and emotional. But how could you know your limits unless you tested them? And if you failed the test? You were also required to stay calm if things went wrong. Panic was the first step, everybody said, to drowning. As a kid, too, your abilities were assumed to be growing. What was unthinkable one year became thinkable, possibly, the next. My letters from Honolulu in 1966, kindly returned to me recently, are less distinguished by swaggering bullshit than by frank discussions of fear. 'Don't think I've suddenly gotten brave. I haven't.' But the frontiers of the thinkable were quietly, fitfully edging back to me."
— William Finnegan, Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
Monday, November 13, 2017
#381
I can't park in the garage right now because my space is full of other shit (a wheelbarrow for mulch, construction materials, sports gear, more sports gear) so this morning Meg and I headed down the driveway to a frozen minivan. It was 17 degrees. This is no biggie for January in Chicago but it's early November. We shivered and climbed into the van which wasn't any warmer. I exhaled a plume of breath and looked at it. The car turned over slowly. Meg shifted in her seat, trying not to touch anything frozen, but everything was frozen. She said, "Do you have butt-warmers?" I'm pretty sure she knew the answer. No. I don't have heated seats. Then I noticed she didn't have a coat. No coat! Actually, she had a coat but she was carrying it instead of wearing it... which, you know, makes total sense when it's freezing out, dude. Question: Why is this fashionable? Michael wore hoodies and stubbornly shunned jackets also. At their age, I remember rolling jeans, fixing turtlenecks, spraying hairspray, spraying cologne, but the winter jacket meant nothing; its presence or absence, its style or brand, announced nothing about you. (Except for the cool kids who skied and had lift tickets dangling like jewelry.) Anyway, as a parent, I draw on my own young experience for a kind of comparative understanding. This, of course, is often futile, irrelevant, illogical. Things change. If you wore a hoodie to my junior high back in '88, you'd hear snickers. Sweatpants were a no-no. As for butt-warmers and cars: I buy base models because I can't afford to pay extra. Or maybe I choose not to (that sounds better). As grueling as life is without heated seats, I survive so I can do other things: travel, eat sushi, get tickets to Hamilton or a Cubs game. I didn't go to Hamilton or a Cubs game this year. My arguments with M 'n' m often blow up in my face like this, also. But my money is finite, which is a fun problem to have most of the time; I get to make decisions and enjoy them. My goal is to help M 'n' m with college, and at the rate things are going, I'll be able to pay for one textbook and a pizza.
A question just popped into my head: How many words are there in the English language? I asked Google. Literally. Verbally. You know how it goes: I tapped the Google microphone icon on my smartphone, said the question, and a pleasant female voice replied: "The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries." I will ask Siri and Alexa and confirm consensus. Remember the days when you had to thumb through books to find answers? And sometimes you couldn't find an answer and were left to wonder. Yeah, that was the effin' stone age, man! How unenlightened we were. But we were thoughtful. And happy.
Meg had her first basketball tourney of the season over the weekend and did awesome. I love her.
A question just popped into my head: How many words are there in the English language? I asked Google. Literally. Verbally. You know how it goes: I tapped the Google microphone icon on my smartphone, said the question, and a pleasant female voice replied: "The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries." I will ask Siri and Alexa and confirm consensus. Remember the days when you had to thumb through books to find answers? And sometimes you couldn't find an answer and were left to wonder. Yeah, that was the effin' stone age, man! How unenlightened we were. But we were thoughtful. And happy.
Meg had her first basketball tourney of the season over the weekend and did awesome. I love her.
Friday, November 10, 2017
The Wisdom of Travis McGee via John D. MacDonald
My
favorite fictional character in a series of books is a guy called Spenser,
created by Robert B. Parker. My second favorite is Travis McGee, who
appeared in 21 novels by a genius named John D. MacDonald. MacDonald
passed away in 1986 but I'm grateful I can read and reread what he left
us, including these quotes from the inimitable Travis McGee:
"The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit."
"Education is something that should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor. It needs contemplation, fallow periods, the measured and guided study of the history of man’s reiteration of the most agonizing question of all: Why?"
"All the little gods of irony must whoop and weep and roll on the floors of Olympus when they tune in on the night thoughts of a truly fatuous male."
"I can bend my own rules way, way over, but there is a place where I finally stop bending them."
"I know just enough about myself to know I cannot settle for one of those simplifications which indignant people seize upon to make understandable a world too complex for their comprehension."
"Every day, no matter how you fight it, you learn a little more about yourself, and all most of it does is teach humility."
"If there was one sunset every twenty years, how would people react to them? If there were ten seashells in all the world, what would they be worth? If people could make love just once a year, how carefully would they pick their mates?"
"Appreciate the therapeutic value of silence. It is the McGee version of being a loner: merely having some people about to whom you don’t have to constantly react."
"Somebody has to be tireless, or the fast-buck operators would asphalt the entire coast, fill every bay, and slay every living thing incapable of carrying a wallet."
"I wanted to be stable as all hell, but the world was on a slight tilt. It was like being yanked around an unexpected curve. You lean for a long time. My friend Meyer, the economist, says that cretins are the only humans who can be absolutely certain of their own sanity. All the rest of us go rocketing along rickety rails over spavined bridges and along the edge of bottomless gorges. The man who believes himself free of any taint of madness is a damned liar. The trouble is, you never know exactly what might tip you off those rails."
"I had thought that I was in fine balance.... I had even believed I had grown another little layer of hide over those places where I could be hurt."
"Acquaintance rather than friend. The dividing line is communication, I think. A friend is someone to whom you can say any jackass thing that enters your mind. With acquaintances, you are forever aware of their slightly unreal image of you, and to keep them content, you edit yourself to fit. Many marriages are between acquaintances. You can be with a person for three hours of your life and have a friend. Another one will remain an acquaintance for thirty years."
"I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique. As far as we can see, there are other galaxies, all slowly spinning, numerous as the leaves in the forest. In an infinite number of planets, there has to be an infinite number with life forms on them. Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories."
"Newsmen have a very short attention span. It is a prerequisite in the business. That is why the news accounts of almost anything make sense to all ages up to the age of twelve. If one wishes to enjoy newspapers, it is wise to halt all intellectual development right at that age."
"We're all children. We invent the adult facade and don it and try to keep the buttons and the medals polished. We're all trying to give such a good imitation of being an adult that the real adults in the world won't catch on. Each of us takes up the shticks that compose the adult image we seek."
"Old friend, there are people — young and old — that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it's revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by an old one. We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can't see it at all that way bore the hell out of me."
"Up with life. Stamp out all small and large indignities. Leave everyone alone to make it without pressure. Down with hurting. Lower the standard of living. Do without plastics. Smash the servomechanisms. Stop grabbing. Snuff the breeze and hug the kids. Love all love. Hate all hate."
"Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible."
"People take you at the value you put upon yourself."
"Nobody can ever get too much approval."
"At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom. But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one's self. Some come to realize this after they are in the nursing home."
And a quote about MacDonald from Lee Child, the creator of Jack Reacher, another unforgettable, resourceful, resilient, principled, tough character in fiction that is just rich and wise:
"The fight was never easy and, one feels, never actually winnable. But it had to be waged. This strange, weary blend of nobility and cynicism is MacDonald's signature emotion."
— Lee Child
"The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit."
"Education is something that should be apart from the necessities of earning a living, not a tool therefor. It needs contemplation, fallow periods, the measured and guided study of the history of man’s reiteration of the most agonizing question of all: Why?"
"All the little gods of irony must whoop and weep and roll on the floors of Olympus when they tune in on the night thoughts of a truly fatuous male."
"I can bend my own rules way, way over, but there is a place where I finally stop bending them."
"I know just enough about myself to know I cannot settle for one of those simplifications which indignant people seize upon to make understandable a world too complex for their comprehension."
"Every day, no matter how you fight it, you learn a little more about yourself, and all most of it does is teach humility."
"If there was one sunset every twenty years, how would people react to them? If there were ten seashells in all the world, what would they be worth? If people could make love just once a year, how carefully would they pick their mates?"
"Appreciate the therapeutic value of silence. It is the McGee version of being a loner: merely having some people about to whom you don’t have to constantly react."
"Somebody has to be tireless, or the fast-buck operators would asphalt the entire coast, fill every bay, and slay every living thing incapable of carrying a wallet."
"I wanted to be stable as all hell, but the world was on a slight tilt. It was like being yanked around an unexpected curve. You lean for a long time. My friend Meyer, the economist, says that cretins are the only humans who can be absolutely certain of their own sanity. All the rest of us go rocketing along rickety rails over spavined bridges and along the edge of bottomless gorges. The man who believes himself free of any taint of madness is a damned liar. The trouble is, you never know exactly what might tip you off those rails."
"I had thought that I was in fine balance.... I had even believed I had grown another little layer of hide over those places where I could be hurt."
"Acquaintance rather than friend. The dividing line is communication, I think. A friend is someone to whom you can say any jackass thing that enters your mind. With acquaintances, you are forever aware of their slightly unreal image of you, and to keep them content, you edit yourself to fit. Many marriages are between acquaintances. You can be with a person for three hours of your life and have a friend. Another one will remain an acquaintance for thirty years."
"I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique. As far as we can see, there are other galaxies, all slowly spinning, numerous as the leaves in the forest. In an infinite number of planets, there has to be an infinite number with life forms on them. Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories."
"Newsmen have a very short attention span. It is a prerequisite in the business. That is why the news accounts of almost anything make sense to all ages up to the age of twelve. If one wishes to enjoy newspapers, it is wise to halt all intellectual development right at that age."
"We're all children. We invent the adult facade and don it and try to keep the buttons and the medals polished. We're all trying to give such a good imitation of being an adult that the real adults in the world won't catch on. Each of us takes up the shticks that compose the adult image we seek."
"Old friend, there are people — young and old — that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it's revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by an old one. We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can't see it at all that way bore the hell out of me."
"Up with life. Stamp out all small and large indignities. Leave everyone alone to make it without pressure. Down with hurting. Lower the standard of living. Do without plastics. Smash the servomechanisms. Stop grabbing. Snuff the breeze and hug the kids. Love all love. Hate all hate."
"Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible."
"People take you at the value you put upon yourself."
"Nobody can ever get too much approval."
"At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom. But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one's self. Some come to realize this after they are in the nursing home."
And a quote about MacDonald from Lee Child, the creator of Jack Reacher, another unforgettable, resourceful, resilient, principled, tough character in fiction that is just rich and wise:
"The fight was never easy and, one feels, never actually winnable. But it had to be waged. This strange, weary blend of nobility and cynicism is MacDonald's signature emotion."
— Lee Child
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
It's that time again: Mantras and motivation... which, of course, is another M 'n' m
Just do it.
Start.
Push yourself.
Do work, Son.
One more.
Be a force for good.
My cup runs over. ― Psalm 23
If it disappoints you, think of it less.
Self-respect comes from hard work.
What you do defines you.
We gonna do this, or we just gonna talk about it?
The only easy day was yesterday. ― SEALs
If it doesn't suck, we don't do it. ― SEALs
There is no tomorrow. ― Apollo Creed
Hey, I didn't hear no bell! ― Mickey
Keep moving. ― Rambo
Keep making shots.
Discomfort is growth.
Train your will.
Pioneers take arrows.
Brother, stand the pain, escape the poison of your impulses. ― Rumi
The intelligent want self-control, children want candy. ― Rumi
Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment. ― Rumi
Be childlike, playful, and wise.
Free yourself from the tyranny of constant thought.
It's okay to live a life others don't understand.
Life is an attitude. Have a good one.
The painting isn't done in the middle.
Love more, worry less.
My song is love. ― Coldplay
Love is all around you. ― Tesla
There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. ― Ryan Adams
How may I serve?
Sprinkle kindness, scatter joy.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. ― Dylan Thomas
This mustn't register on an emotional level. ― Sherlock Holmes
We won't get weak, that's not in us anymore. ― Rick, TWD
Confrontation's never been something we've had trouble with. ― Rick, TWD
Your bad habits are in the hallway doing push-ups.
Relax Luther, it’s much worse than you think. ― Ethan Hunt, Mission Impossible
Every warrior hopes a good death will find him. ― One Stab
But Tristan refused to speak of her. ― One Stab
The wind cannot defeat a tree with strong roots. ― The Revenant
You're okay. Keep fighting. ― Ronda Rousey
Comparisons are odious ― Jack Kerouac
I can do this all day. ― Captain America
We carry our own. ― Grandma Bev at Grandpa Swede's funeral
There is power in optimism.
There is power in gratitude.
There is power in ritual.
Make practice a practice.
Rust never rests.
Terror is a fine instructor.
Bet on him, if you like. ― Herger the Joyous
Grow stronger. ― Herger the Joyous
(I am not a warrior!) Very soon, you will be. ― Herger the Joyous
I’ve been through worse. ― Wolverine
A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
Which is the greater pleasure?
Enjoy every minute of it, Hon.
...but the dreamers of day are dangerous men... ― T. E. Lawrence
You can measure a man by the opposition it takes to discourage him.
Be comfortable being uncomfortable.
Don't avoid, or chase, confrontation.
I only harbor healthy thoughts.
Within us is the power of self-repair.
I honor the power within me.
Thank you for M 'n' m.
Thank you for ....
Great multitudes came to him, and he healed them all.
"Deep within man dwell slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action."
― Orison Swett Marden
"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-control."
― 2 Timothy 1:7
"Iron is full of impurities that weaken it, but, through forging, it becomes steel. It is the same with human beings."
― Morihei Ueshiba
"In the midst of winter I found within me an invincible summer."
― Albert Camus
"Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness, and they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy, but they become legend."
― One Stab, Legends of the Fall
Start.
Push yourself.
Do work, Son.
One more.
Be a force for good.
My cup runs over. ― Psalm 23
If it disappoints you, think of it less.
Self-respect comes from hard work.
What you do defines you.
We gonna do this, or we just gonna talk about it?
The only easy day was yesterday. ― SEALs
If it doesn't suck, we don't do it. ― SEALs
There is no tomorrow. ― Apollo Creed
Hey, I didn't hear no bell! ― Mickey
Keep moving. ― Rambo
Keep making shots.
Discomfort is growth.
Train your will.
Pioneers take arrows.
Brother, stand the pain, escape the poison of your impulses. ― Rumi
The intelligent want self-control, children want candy. ― Rumi
Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment. ― Rumi
Be childlike, playful, and wise.
Free yourself from the tyranny of constant thought.
It's okay to live a life others don't understand.
Life is an attitude. Have a good one.
The painting isn't done in the middle.
Love more, worry less.
My song is love. ― Coldplay
Love is all around you. ― Tesla
There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. ― Ryan Adams
How may I serve?
Sprinkle kindness, scatter joy.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. ― Dylan Thomas
This mustn't register on an emotional level. ― Sherlock Holmes
We won't get weak, that's not in us anymore. ― Rick, TWD
Confrontation's never been something we've had trouble with. ― Rick, TWD
Your bad habits are in the hallway doing push-ups.
Relax Luther, it’s much worse than you think. ― Ethan Hunt, Mission Impossible
Every warrior hopes a good death will find him. ― One Stab
But Tristan refused to speak of her. ― One Stab
The wind cannot defeat a tree with strong roots. ― The Revenant
You're okay. Keep fighting. ― Ronda Rousey
Comparisons are odious ― Jack Kerouac
I can do this all day. ― Captain America
We carry our own. ― Grandma Bev at Grandpa Swede's funeral
There is power in optimism.
There is power in gratitude.
There is power in ritual.
Make practice a practice.
Rust never rests.
Terror is a fine instructor.
Bet on him, if you like. ― Herger the Joyous
Grow stronger. ― Herger the Joyous
(I am not a warrior!) Very soon, you will be. ― Herger the Joyous
I’ve been through worse. ― Wolverine
A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
Which is the greater pleasure?
Enjoy every minute of it, Hon.
...but the dreamers of day are dangerous men... ― T. E. Lawrence
You can measure a man by the opposition it takes to discourage him.
Be comfortable being uncomfortable.
Don't avoid, or chase, confrontation.
I only harbor healthy thoughts.
Within us is the power of self-repair.
I honor the power within me.
Thank you for M 'n' m.
Thank you for ....
Great multitudes came to him, and he healed them all.
"Deep within man dwell slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action."
― Orison Swett Marden
"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-control."
― 2 Timothy 1:7
"Iron is full of impurities that weaken it, but, through forging, it becomes steel. It is the same with human beings."
― Morihei Ueshiba
"In the midst of winter I found within me an invincible summer."
― Albert Camus
"Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness, and they live by what they hear. Such people become crazy, but they become legend."
― One Stab, Legends of the Fall
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Jeremy Renner on parenting
"Renner was 42 when Ava was born. 'It was like seeing The Matrix,' he says. 'In a second, everything just opened up and made perfect sense.' He named her Ava because it's 'a classic Hollywood name' but also because it's a palindrome, like Renner. He has custody every other week, he says, and the rest of the time she's with his ex-wife.... I ask him the most fun parts of having a daughter. 'Everything's fun, man. Especially at this age.' She loves dance, gymnastics, musical instruments, swimming. Renner tries to keep her from being too girly: 'Like this Christmas,' he says, 'she got a princess castle, but she also got a tool set.' ... Friends say Ava is everything to Renner. 'She has her daddy wrapped around her finger,' (Renner's friend, Kristoffer) Winters says, 'The few times in life I've seen him cry were because he missed something of hers.' ... Renner says he would have loved to have more kids. 'I'd like to have eight running around,' he says. 'A gaggle, a little clan.' He thought about having another girl and naming her Hannah, also a palindrome. 'But at this point,' he says, 'that's not in my future.' I tell him you never know, but he shakes his head. 'It takes two,' he says. 'Doing it alone is not fun. You want to share the experience. You kind of want a partner. I've done so many amazing, cool-ass things in my life - but I think as we get older, there's more value in doing something with somebody.' ... 'I won't even let (Ava) watch Avengers. The only reason she knows I'm Hawkeye is because I'm on her pajamas.' ... 'Parenting is not a sexy thing. But when someone has fortitude, they're always going to be there. I'm the rock,' he says."
— Josh Eells, Men's Journal article about actor Jeremy Renner
— Josh Eells, Men's Journal article about actor Jeremy Renner
Sunday, November 5, 2017
#380
I'm envious of Michael. He plays an instrument and plays it well. The cello. Every time I hear it, his playing sounds more fluid, versatile, crisp. I don't know how to describe music. But I know his confidence as a musician grows every year. Because confidence comes from hard work, practice, getting shit done (in your chosen craft). Amen. Michael's orchestra had a concert a couple Saturdays ago and it was fantastic.
I watch Modern Family with the kids. If you're unfamiliar – because you live on Mars? – Modern Family is a TV show on Earth. It's loaded with goodness, but it isn't light on adult-y stuff either. The characters are vivid, various, and hilarious. And they're uniquely expressive and vulnerable in cutaway scenes where the characters talk directly to the camera; they talk to you, the audience; they open up, explain. They confess. They overshare. Naturally, I love it. Ferris Bueller talked to the camera too, and everyone loves Ferris... the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads. Ferris was my favorite movie as a teenager. Ferris Bueller's Day Off released in 1986. It isn't super-clean either. But it's pretty great.
Ed Rooney, School Principal: What is so dangerous about a character like Ferris Bueller is he gives good kids bad ideas. Last thing I need at this point in my career is 1,500 Ferris Bueller disciples running around these halls. He jeopardizes my ability to effectively govern this student body.
Grace, School Secretary: He makes you look like an ass, is what he does, Ed.
E: Thank you, Grace, but I think you're wrong.
G: Oh, he's very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads, they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.
E: That is why I need to show these kids that the example he sets is a first-class ticket to nowhere!
G: Oh, Ed, you sounded like Dirty Harry just then.
E: Really? Thanks, Grace.
Jeannie Bueller: In a nutshell, I hate my brother....
Druggie at the Police Station: You ought to spend a little more time dealing with yourself, a little less time worrying about what your brother does. That's just an opinion.
J: What are you, a psychiatrist?
D: No.
J: Then why don't you keep your opinions to yourself.
D: There's somebody you should talk to.
J: If you say Ferris Bueller, you lose a testicle.
D: Oh, you know him?
Ferris Bueller: Never had one lesson!
Ferris Bueller: This is the part where Cameron goes Berserk.
By the way, there's a reason I mentioned Modern Family. Last night during the show, Megan said, "Dad, you are Phil Dunfy." Phil was having an especially bad episode. I was like, really? I felt insulted. Then I felt complimented. Then insulted, then complimented, then offended again. It's probably, exactly, how Phil would respond in a similar situation. Megan watched me process her comment. I was silent but I was reacting – happy, hurt, happy, hurt – and Meg read me and smiled. Busted. Phil is goofy but he's caring, creative, energetic, generally optimistic, and he tries hard to bond with people, especially his kids. Sometimes he's an idiot. Most of the time he's juvenile. Okay. Ouch. Oh well. Someone at work told me I was Phil Dunfy, also. Been called worse. Thank you for the compliment.
I'm closing in on #400. I intend to get there. Maybe then I'll stop. But why can't I always write? Even if I'm a scuffling minor-leaguer. Or little-leaguer. It's fun. Thanks for reading.
I watch Modern Family with the kids. If you're unfamiliar – because you live on Mars? – Modern Family is a TV show on Earth. It's loaded with goodness, but it isn't light on adult-y stuff either. The characters are vivid, various, and hilarious. And they're uniquely expressive and vulnerable in cutaway scenes where the characters talk directly to the camera; they talk to you, the audience; they open up, explain. They confess. They overshare. Naturally, I love it. Ferris Bueller talked to the camera too, and everyone loves Ferris... the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads. Ferris was my favorite movie as a teenager. Ferris Bueller's Day Off released in 1986. It isn't super-clean either. But it's pretty great.
Ed Rooney, School Principal: What is so dangerous about a character like Ferris Bueller is he gives good kids bad ideas. Last thing I need at this point in my career is 1,500 Ferris Bueller disciples running around these halls. He jeopardizes my ability to effectively govern this student body.
Grace, School Secretary: He makes you look like an ass, is what he does, Ed.
E: Thank you, Grace, but I think you're wrong.
G: Oh, he's very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads, they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.
E: That is why I need to show these kids that the example he sets is a first-class ticket to nowhere!
G: Oh, Ed, you sounded like Dirty Harry just then.
E: Really? Thanks, Grace.
Jeannie Bueller: In a nutshell, I hate my brother....
Druggie at the Police Station: You ought to spend a little more time dealing with yourself, a little less time worrying about what your brother does. That's just an opinion.
J: What are you, a psychiatrist?
D: No.
J: Then why don't you keep your opinions to yourself.
D: There's somebody you should talk to.
J: If you say Ferris Bueller, you lose a testicle.
D: Oh, you know him?
Ferris Bueller: Never had one lesson!
Ferris Bueller: This is the part where Cameron goes Berserk.
By the way, there's a reason I mentioned Modern Family. Last night during the show, Megan said, "Dad, you are Phil Dunfy." Phil was having an especially bad episode. I was like, really? I felt insulted. Then I felt complimented. Then insulted, then complimented, then offended again. It's probably, exactly, how Phil would respond in a similar situation. Megan watched me process her comment. I was silent but I was reacting – happy, hurt, happy, hurt – and Meg read me and smiled. Busted. Phil is goofy but he's caring, creative, energetic, generally optimistic, and he tries hard to bond with people, especially his kids. Sometimes he's an idiot. Most of the time he's juvenile. Okay. Ouch. Oh well. Someone at work told me I was Phil Dunfy, also. Been called worse. Thank you for the compliment.
I'm closing in on #400. I intend to get there. Maybe then I'll stop. But why can't I always write? Even if I'm a scuffling minor-leaguer. Or little-leaguer. It's fun. Thanks for reading.
Stuff About Things #8
"You know that assignment you always get in high school when you’re reading Walden, to keep a journal? Well, I just kept doing that."
— John Hughes
"Relax. No one else knows what they're doing either."
— Ricky Gervais
"If somebody would ask what is it that you breathe that's not air, but that's what you need, it's art. I have to see it constantly. It's not even like 'O.K., I'm going to look at art in the evening'; it's all day long."
— Raf Simons, Chief Creative Officer at Calvin Klein
"Just think of all the things that have come and gone in our lifetimes, all the would-be futures we watched age into obsolescence – CD, DVD, answering machine, Walkman, mixtape, MTV, video store, mall. There were still some rotary phones around in our childhood – now it’s nothing but virtual buttons. We are the last generation to grow up with crappy video games, with actual arcades instead of quality home consoles. If you wanted to play, you had to leave the house and mix it up with the ruffians. That is, we are the last Americans to have the old-time childhood, wherein you were assigned a bully along with a homeroom teacher. Our childhood was closer to those of the 1950s than to whatever they’re doing today. It was coherent, hands-on, dirty, and fun."
— Vanity Fair magazine, Why Generation X Might Be Our Last, Best Hope by Rich Cohen
"I lived to see the jokes about the possibility of these motors displacing the horse fade away and automobiles fill the streets and cover the nations."
— W.E.B. Du Bois, 1868–1963, from The Autobiography of W.E.B. Dubois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century
"I grew up in a simpler time, in an America where you didn't instantly download the newest hit single on your phone... no, sir, you bought 12 CDs for a penny, with the stipulation that you purchase the 8th CD at the regular club price. That CD was a rip-off, and their selection sucked, but it was a good way to stock up on greatest-hits albums.... I was the first in my family to go to online college... I'll never forget the day I received my diploma, because it went into the spam folder.... I proudly showed it off to my parents, after updating my Flash Player, since it was an animation. It turned out the attachment had a virus, and some guys in Nigeria demanded a thousand bucks or they'd delete all my files.... I have a wonderful woman I share my life with now, Lucy. I met her two nights ago on Tinder..."
— Vanity Fair magazine, a humor piece by Teddy Wayne
"You gotta really stay sharp.... You gotta be sharp."
— Tom Brady
"It's year-round, and I try to make a big commitment... I put a lot of effort in... I spend a lot of time working at it... it takes effort and discipline, but as long as I can do that I know I can be successful on the field."
— Tom Brady ... or ...
"Well, I'm always working on my techniques, my fundamentals, I mean, I think that's a daily thing for me because you don't wanna just... you know, I always think you can get a percentage or two off a week and over the course of five weeks, you're 10% off where you want to be, whether certain quarterbacking techniques or, you know, things like that, so you gotta really stay sharp. So I film a lot of those things so I can watch it daily, know really what I'm looking for, and, you know, you gotta be sharp.... I think everything keeps me up at night, the expectations are so high, the standards that have been set here are... they're just high, for everybody, and everybody wants to do a great job, and there's a lot of effort, and guys are putting in a lot of work.... I love being a part of it. I wake up everyday thinking about how I can help this team win and the work I need to put in so I can be really held accountable for what I do, so I can be really dependable for the team, and we've had a great thing goin' so hopefully we can keep doin' it.... I think (my lifestyle) is hugely important. I've just learned a certain way that works for me, and I try to incorporate those things into my daily life, and it's year-round, and I try to make a big commitment... I put a lot of effort in... I spend a lot of time working at it... it takes effort and discipline, but as long as I can do that I know I can be successful on the field."
— Tom Brady ... the guy is practically my age and still winning Super Bowls, and Super Bowl MVPs, he's won four – four! – Super Bowl MVPs, and don't forget he was drafted in the 6th round, he's not a perfect physical specimen, he has worked to get to the top... I was disappointed by 'deflategate' but his work ethic, discipline, and dedication to health and longevity is impressive
"Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can."
— Danny Kaye
"A scorpion must sting. A wolf must hunt."
— Wonder Woman
"I didn't have any fear about being too personal. I said what I wanted to say; I was talking to myself."
— Charlotte Gainsbourg, on the songs she wrote for her 'revealing' fifth album, Rest
"Leaders set the culture. Federer gives lie to the notion that top athletes must have a nasty streak. For all the metaphors bestowed on the guy, you will not hear him likened to an 'assassin' or a 'cold killer' or, for that matter, a 'tiger.' Federer generally performs with a smile on his face and an unruffled demeanor. He treats his colleagues as opponents, not enemies. He's played his entire career absent controversy, much less scandal. This affects the entire tennis culture."
— Sports Illustrated magazine
"I'm not introverted the way some (politicians) have been, but I'm not an F.D.R. or a Bill Clinton either, who are just constantly in a crowd and relishing it. I like my quiet time. There's a writer's sensibility in me sometimes, where I step back. But I do think that I am generally optimistic. I see tragedy and comedy and pain and irony and all that stuff. But in the end I think life is fascinating, and I think people are more good than bad, and I think that the possibilities of progress are real."
— Barack Obama, Vanity Fair magazine
"Early in my presidency, I went to Cairo to make a speech to the Muslim world. And in the afternoon, after the speech, we took helicopters out to the pyramids. And they had emptied the pyramids for us, and we could just wander around for a couple hours at the pyramids and the Sphinx. And the pyramids are one of those things that live up to the hype. They're elemental in ways that are hard to describe. And you're going to these tombs and looking at the hieroglyphics and imagining the civilization that built these iconic images. And I still remember... thinking to myself, there were a lot of people during the period when these pyramids were built (who considered themselves) really important... people anguishing over their relative popularity or position... (but all that's left) today are the pyramids. Sometimes I carry with me that perspective, which tells me that my particular worries on any given day – how I'm doing in the polls or what somebody is saying about me, for good or for ill – isn't particularly relevant. What's relevant is: What am I building that lasts."
— Barack Obama, Vanity Fair magazine
"When I ran for Congress in 2007... I finished a fight in San Antonio, then flew to the Philippines to campaign. I wasn't prepared. I lost.... There's a lot of poverty in my province. I wanted to represent them. I came from the dirt like everyone else.... Some people thought I would not try again, but I came up with a better plan... and I won.... I schedule my training and fights around congressional recesses... I don't think about retiring right now. I want to fight more. I pray that, with God's will, I can. I didn't worry about my boxing career because I'm good at managing my time.... I've learned good lessons from my mistakes.... What I don't like about politics is the corruption.... Public service is my calling."
— Manny Pacquiao
"What looks like arid scrubland contains countless Indian burial grounds and other sites sacred to the tribes who lived there: the Nez Perce, the Umatilla, and the Yakama. For 13,000 years or so prior to the white man's arrival the place had been theirs. To them the American experiment is no more than the blink of an eye."
— Vanity Fair magazine
"(In Cambodia) I found a people who were so kind and warm and open, and, yes, very complex. You drive around here (Los Angeles), you can see a lot of people with many things, but not often expressing happiness. You go there, and you see the families come out with their blanket and their picnic to watch a sunset."
— Angelina Jolie
"Here we don't shout. We talk."
— Rith Pahn, in Cambodia, yelling is not just disrespectful, it's also considered a sign of weakness
"I was very worried about my mother, growing up, a lot. I don't want my children to be worried about me. I think it's very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything's going to be all right even when you're not sure it is."
— Angelina Jolie
"Let's embrace being not normal."
— Angelina Jolie
— John Hughes
"Relax. No one else knows what they're doing either."
— Ricky Gervais
"If somebody would ask what is it that you breathe that's not air, but that's what you need, it's art. I have to see it constantly. It's not even like 'O.K., I'm going to look at art in the evening'; it's all day long."
— Raf Simons, Chief Creative Officer at Calvin Klein
"Just think of all the things that have come and gone in our lifetimes, all the would-be futures we watched age into obsolescence – CD, DVD, answering machine, Walkman, mixtape, MTV, video store, mall. There were still some rotary phones around in our childhood – now it’s nothing but virtual buttons. We are the last generation to grow up with crappy video games, with actual arcades instead of quality home consoles. If you wanted to play, you had to leave the house and mix it up with the ruffians. That is, we are the last Americans to have the old-time childhood, wherein you were assigned a bully along with a homeroom teacher. Our childhood was closer to those of the 1950s than to whatever they’re doing today. It was coherent, hands-on, dirty, and fun."
— Vanity Fair magazine, Why Generation X Might Be Our Last, Best Hope by Rich Cohen
"I lived to see the jokes about the possibility of these motors displacing the horse fade away and automobiles fill the streets and cover the nations."
— W.E.B. Du Bois, 1868–1963, from The Autobiography of W.E.B. Dubois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century
"I grew up in a simpler time, in an America where you didn't instantly download the newest hit single on your phone... no, sir, you bought 12 CDs for a penny, with the stipulation that you purchase the 8th CD at the regular club price. That CD was a rip-off, and their selection sucked, but it was a good way to stock up on greatest-hits albums.... I was the first in my family to go to online college... I'll never forget the day I received my diploma, because it went into the spam folder.... I proudly showed it off to my parents, after updating my Flash Player, since it was an animation. It turned out the attachment had a virus, and some guys in Nigeria demanded a thousand bucks or they'd delete all my files.... I have a wonderful woman I share my life with now, Lucy. I met her two nights ago on Tinder..."
— Vanity Fair magazine, a humor piece by Teddy Wayne
"You gotta really stay sharp.... You gotta be sharp."
— Tom Brady
"It's year-round, and I try to make a big commitment... I put a lot of effort in... I spend a lot of time working at it... it takes effort and discipline, but as long as I can do that I know I can be successful on the field."
— Tom Brady ... or ...
"Well, I'm always working on my techniques, my fundamentals, I mean, I think that's a daily thing for me because you don't wanna just... you know, I always think you can get a percentage or two off a week and over the course of five weeks, you're 10% off where you want to be, whether certain quarterbacking techniques or, you know, things like that, so you gotta really stay sharp. So I film a lot of those things so I can watch it daily, know really what I'm looking for, and, you know, you gotta be sharp.... I think everything keeps me up at night, the expectations are so high, the standards that have been set here are... they're just high, for everybody, and everybody wants to do a great job, and there's a lot of effort, and guys are putting in a lot of work.... I love being a part of it. I wake up everyday thinking about how I can help this team win and the work I need to put in so I can be really held accountable for what I do, so I can be really dependable for the team, and we've had a great thing goin' so hopefully we can keep doin' it.... I think (my lifestyle) is hugely important. I've just learned a certain way that works for me, and I try to incorporate those things into my daily life, and it's year-round, and I try to make a big commitment... I put a lot of effort in... I spend a lot of time working at it... it takes effort and discipline, but as long as I can do that I know I can be successful on the field."
— Tom Brady ... the guy is practically my age and still winning Super Bowls, and Super Bowl MVPs, he's won four – four! – Super Bowl MVPs, and don't forget he was drafted in the 6th round, he's not a perfect physical specimen, he has worked to get to the top... I was disappointed by 'deflategate' but his work ethic, discipline, and dedication to health and longevity is impressive
"Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can."
— Danny Kaye
"A scorpion must sting. A wolf must hunt."
— Wonder Woman
"I didn't have any fear about being too personal. I said what I wanted to say; I was talking to myself."
— Charlotte Gainsbourg, on the songs she wrote for her 'revealing' fifth album, Rest
"Leaders set the culture. Federer gives lie to the notion that top athletes must have a nasty streak. For all the metaphors bestowed on the guy, you will not hear him likened to an 'assassin' or a 'cold killer' or, for that matter, a 'tiger.' Federer generally performs with a smile on his face and an unruffled demeanor. He treats his colleagues as opponents, not enemies. He's played his entire career absent controversy, much less scandal. This affects the entire tennis culture."
— Sports Illustrated magazine
"I'm not introverted the way some (politicians) have been, but I'm not an F.D.R. or a Bill Clinton either, who are just constantly in a crowd and relishing it. I like my quiet time. There's a writer's sensibility in me sometimes, where I step back. But I do think that I am generally optimistic. I see tragedy and comedy and pain and irony and all that stuff. But in the end I think life is fascinating, and I think people are more good than bad, and I think that the possibilities of progress are real."
— Barack Obama, Vanity Fair magazine
"Early in my presidency, I went to Cairo to make a speech to the Muslim world. And in the afternoon, after the speech, we took helicopters out to the pyramids. And they had emptied the pyramids for us, and we could just wander around for a couple hours at the pyramids and the Sphinx. And the pyramids are one of those things that live up to the hype. They're elemental in ways that are hard to describe. And you're going to these tombs and looking at the hieroglyphics and imagining the civilization that built these iconic images. And I still remember... thinking to myself, there were a lot of people during the period when these pyramids were built (who considered themselves) really important... people anguishing over their relative popularity or position... (but all that's left) today are the pyramids. Sometimes I carry with me that perspective, which tells me that my particular worries on any given day – how I'm doing in the polls or what somebody is saying about me, for good or for ill – isn't particularly relevant. What's relevant is: What am I building that lasts."
— Barack Obama, Vanity Fair magazine
"When I ran for Congress in 2007... I finished a fight in San Antonio, then flew to the Philippines to campaign. I wasn't prepared. I lost.... There's a lot of poverty in my province. I wanted to represent them. I came from the dirt like everyone else.... Some people thought I would not try again, but I came up with a better plan... and I won.... I schedule my training and fights around congressional recesses... I don't think about retiring right now. I want to fight more. I pray that, with God's will, I can. I didn't worry about my boxing career because I'm good at managing my time.... I've learned good lessons from my mistakes.... What I don't like about politics is the corruption.... Public service is my calling."
— Manny Pacquiao
"What looks like arid scrubland contains countless Indian burial grounds and other sites sacred to the tribes who lived there: the Nez Perce, the Umatilla, and the Yakama. For 13,000 years or so prior to the white man's arrival the place had been theirs. To them the American experiment is no more than the blink of an eye."
— Vanity Fair magazine
"(In Cambodia) I found a people who were so kind and warm and open, and, yes, very complex. You drive around here (Los Angeles), you can see a lot of people with many things, but not often expressing happiness. You go there, and you see the families come out with their blanket and their picnic to watch a sunset."
— Angelina Jolie
"Here we don't shout. We talk."
— Rith Pahn, in Cambodia, yelling is not just disrespectful, it's also considered a sign of weakness
"I was very worried about my mother, growing up, a lot. I don't want my children to be worried about me. I think it's very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything's going to be all right even when you're not sure it is."
— Angelina Jolie
"Let's embrace being not normal."
— Angelina Jolie
John Hughes and Writing
"I grew up outside Chicago. I went to one of the high schools where John Hughes set all of those iconic teen movies. I studied them as a religious scholar might study the Bible, searching for answers, clues. The Breakfast Club was not one of my favorites, but it was said to define my generation. In that movie, Hughes... says more than he probably intended, which is the way with art. Now and then, you are telling the future without meaning to."
— Rich Cohen, Vanity Fair magazine
I'm from the same generation referred to above, and I grew up outside Chicago, and I loved and studied Hughes films, also. We watch Christmas Vacation every year, and so does everyone else; that's another screenplay written by John Hughes, based on his short story in National Lampoon magazine, Christmas '59. I didn't know what the word 'virgin' meant until I overheard its use in The Breakfast Club, which my parents were watching with my uncle at the time. I was listening from another room and 'virginity' was a hot topic in the film; you know this if you've seen it. Hughes's teen films are classics, but so are Planes, Trains, & Automobiles and Home Alone, and before those, Mr. Mom and National Lampoon's Vacation, the first in the series starring Chevy Chase.
At the young age of 59, Hughes had a severe heart attack and passed away. A long life isn't guaranteed.
"John Hughes never stopped writing. He was notorious for this trait, especially in the 1980s, when he churned out screenplays faster than Hollywood could make them into movies. The script for Sixteen Candles came forth in a two-day burst during the 1983 preparations for The Breakfast Club, so impressing his studio overseers that it jumped the line to become Hughes’s directorial debut, in 1984.... Writing was, for Hughes, not so much a profession as a condition of life. The thoughts that germinated in his brain took a direct path to his hands, which filled notebooks, floppy disks, and hard drives with screenplays, stories, sketches, and jokes. When he wasn’t writing creatively, he was writing about how much writing he was doing. A spiral-bound logbook from 1985 finds Hughes keeping track of his progress on Ferris Bueller. The basic story line, he notes, was developed on February 25. It was successfully pitched the following day. And then he was off: “2-26 Night only 10 pages … 2-27 26 pages … 2-28 19 pages … 3-1 9 pages … 3-2 20 pages … 3-3 24 pages.” Wham-bam, script done. All in one week.... At some point, Hughes 'stopped and looked around,' and he realized that he didn’t want to make movies anymore. He wanted to be at liberty to spend as much time with his family as he pleased, to work the farm he owned 75 miles northwest of Chicago, and to exult in the resolutely uncoastal ethos of his beloved Midwest. And by 1990, with the release of his highest-grossing movie, the Macaulay Culkin sado-slapstick comedy Home Alone, which Hughes wrote and produced but did not direct, he had the means to put Hollywood and the movies behind him. For all his success in pictures, Hughes’s directing years turned out to be an aberration in his life - a shortish stretch that required him to do uncharacteristic things like be in L.A. and keep the company of actors. The one normal aspect of this period for him, consistent with the rest of his life, was the compulsive writing. It was a habit that dated back, appropriately enough, to his teen days. 'You know that assignment you always get in high school when you’re reading Walden, to keep a journal?' he said in a 1988 interview. 'Well, I just kept doing that.' ... Hughes, his sons say, reveled in grandfatherhood.... he now viewed it as his primary duty to be, in his younger son’s words, 'the curious, engaged grandpa in the seersucker.' The creative writing he continued to do was, therefore, not necessarily for public consumption. In recent years, he worked in a variety of formats: memoir, short fiction, and, yes, screenplays. But he was content, (his son) John III said, to 'pump the stuff out for his own satisfaction, comfortable with it never going anywhere.' He’d had his say, and it was time for others to have theirs. This mind-set was, as contradictory as it may sound, consistent with the one that led Hughes to become the sympathetic voice of teendom in the 1980s. One of his major hobbyhorses – 'a constant topic,' in (his son) James’s words – was the attention-hogging egotism of his own generation, the baby-boomers. In his view, the boomers did not know when to step aside and cede the stage. 'He was kind of upset not to see more people of his generation passing the baton,' John III said. 'He wanted to give youth a voice.'"
— David Kamp, Vanity Fair magazine
— Rich Cohen, Vanity Fair magazine
I'm from the same generation referred to above, and I grew up outside Chicago, and I loved and studied Hughes films, also. We watch Christmas Vacation every year, and so does everyone else; that's another screenplay written by John Hughes, based on his short story in National Lampoon magazine, Christmas '59. I didn't know what the word 'virgin' meant until I overheard its use in The Breakfast Club, which my parents were watching with my uncle at the time. I was listening from another room and 'virginity' was a hot topic in the film; you know this if you've seen it. Hughes's teen films are classics, but so are Planes, Trains, & Automobiles and Home Alone, and before those, Mr. Mom and National Lampoon's Vacation, the first in the series starring Chevy Chase.
At the young age of 59, Hughes had a severe heart attack and passed away. A long life isn't guaranteed.
"John Hughes never stopped writing. He was notorious for this trait, especially in the 1980s, when he churned out screenplays faster than Hollywood could make them into movies. The script for Sixteen Candles came forth in a two-day burst during the 1983 preparations for The Breakfast Club, so impressing his studio overseers that it jumped the line to become Hughes’s directorial debut, in 1984.... Writing was, for Hughes, not so much a profession as a condition of life. The thoughts that germinated in his brain took a direct path to his hands, which filled notebooks, floppy disks, and hard drives with screenplays, stories, sketches, and jokes. When he wasn’t writing creatively, he was writing about how much writing he was doing. A spiral-bound logbook from 1985 finds Hughes keeping track of his progress on Ferris Bueller. The basic story line, he notes, was developed on February 25. It was successfully pitched the following day. And then he was off: “2-26 Night only 10 pages … 2-27 26 pages … 2-28 19 pages … 3-1 9 pages … 3-2 20 pages … 3-3 24 pages.” Wham-bam, script done. All in one week.... At some point, Hughes 'stopped and looked around,' and he realized that he didn’t want to make movies anymore. He wanted to be at liberty to spend as much time with his family as he pleased, to work the farm he owned 75 miles northwest of Chicago, and to exult in the resolutely uncoastal ethos of his beloved Midwest. And by 1990, with the release of his highest-grossing movie, the Macaulay Culkin sado-slapstick comedy Home Alone, which Hughes wrote and produced but did not direct, he had the means to put Hollywood and the movies behind him. For all his success in pictures, Hughes’s directing years turned out to be an aberration in his life - a shortish stretch that required him to do uncharacteristic things like be in L.A. and keep the company of actors. The one normal aspect of this period for him, consistent with the rest of his life, was the compulsive writing. It was a habit that dated back, appropriately enough, to his teen days. 'You know that assignment you always get in high school when you’re reading Walden, to keep a journal?' he said in a 1988 interview. 'Well, I just kept doing that.' ... Hughes, his sons say, reveled in grandfatherhood.... he now viewed it as his primary duty to be, in his younger son’s words, 'the curious, engaged grandpa in the seersucker.' The creative writing he continued to do was, therefore, not necessarily for public consumption. In recent years, he worked in a variety of formats: memoir, short fiction, and, yes, screenplays. But he was content, (his son) John III said, to 'pump the stuff out for his own satisfaction, comfortable with it never going anywhere.' He’d had his say, and it was time for others to have theirs. This mind-set was, as contradictory as it may sound, consistent with the one that led Hughes to become the sympathetic voice of teendom in the 1980s. One of his major hobbyhorses – 'a constant topic,' in (his son) James’s words – was the attention-hogging egotism of his own generation, the baby-boomers. In his view, the boomers did not know when to step aside and cede the stage. 'He was kind of upset not to see more people of his generation passing the baton,' John III said. 'He wanted to give youth a voice.'"
— David Kamp, Vanity Fair magazine
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
#379
I professed my fanhood for Bear Grylls here and now I must do so for another Englishman, a knight in fact, who I've recently learned more about. His words and philosophies are inspiring; his actions, adventures, daredevilry, business successes, and humanitarian efforts are impressive (lest we forget: actions speak louder than words). I'm referring to Richard Branson, or Sir Richard Branson, although I bet he's quick to dispel or oppose any pretentiousness that comes with the title. He said this in an interview and it's great advice: "I actually think everybody should write a book about their lives. I've persuaded a number of people to do so.... You don't have to have led a very public life, I think everyone has led interesting lives. Your children and your grandchildren will be fascinated by the lives you lead." I am grateful for every word my grandparents wrote that was saved by the family. My dad's dad kept a journal during the Korean War and my mom's dad wrote several letters home from WWII. I continue to ask questions and pry stories out of my grandmas. They're awesome women; I'm so lucky, and M 'n' m are lucky to have them as great-grandmas. I spent considerable time with one of my great-grandmas when I was young – I was cared for by a person born in 1900! – and I'll never forget her motherly generosity and dependability. She had a wonderful sturdiness of character. I won't forget her house and garden, her cactuses and Siamese cats, her coin collection and the organ she played beautifully. How much I'd love a book about her life and times! She rode in a covered wagon. She lost a young son tragically (to drowning in the ocean) and was heartbroken I'm sure. She would not allow anyone to leave her house without a hug. She was a Dodger fan because of Jackie Robinson, and she smoked, drank beer, and watched baseball when she wasn't mothering and feeding everyone. And her daughter (my grandma) became the first Ph.D. in the family and one of the most all-around impressive women I've ever known, a sheer force of productivity and love. I remember my great-grandma sitting with me at a table and doing a Lego set while listening to the radio broadcast of the college football game everyone else was at. Awesome. What a woman! So just do it, someday, please, for your descendants, write down a few thoughts and stories. In a journal, on Facebook, in emails, whatever. In any form or format your loved ones can keep... or photocopy or scan or otherwise digitally archive; let them figure it out; you just record your slice of history, what you went through, what advice you'd give, your life's joys and curiosities, and so on; it's fascinating and your grandchildren will thank you.
"First of all, I'm lucky, I have a very extraordinary mother, and a lovely father, and we're a very, very close-knit family, and that's fortunately continued with myself, my wife and children, and so on ever since. So that's given us a fantastic foundation as a family.... Well, my mother, her whole approach to bringing up her children was one where she'd be arrested today but in those days she could get away with it. At age three or four she would shove me out of the car two or three miles from grandmother's house and tell me to make my own way there. She would put me on a bicycle at age seven or eight and tell me to ride 300 miles in the pouring rain, again to grandmother's house, and her attitude was, you know, if we survived we'd be the stronger for it. She wouldn't allow us to watch television, for instance, we had to get out there and do things. She would push us out of the house and tell us to come back in the evening.... We lived in the countryside and it was a fun upbringing, and a very loving upbringing; it may not sound like it, but she wasn't actually trying to kill us, she did love us as well [laughter].... It's fun, my mom's 94 now and I just saw her a few minutes ago and she will never stop. I mean she's got an idea a minute, and, you know, we've always had to run to keep up with her, and put the two of us together and it's a dangerous combination!"
— Richard Branson in a phone interview with Tim Ferriss
"When things went wrong (during his various dangerous adventures)... if you're gonna survive, the only way you're gonna survive is by keeping focused, by staying positive, even if you are facing almost certain death, you're definitely going to die unless you stay focused and stay positive and fight to the bitter end, and, you know, there have been circumstances where, on paper, we were well over the 90% chance I'm not coming home, and I think by staying focused and staying positive, and with a big dose of good fortune, we made it all the way back."
— Richard Branson, interviewed by Tim Ferriss
"I think humor is important, putting on a brave face, cracking jokes, plenty of hugs; I think hugs are important [laughter]."
— Richard Branson, speaking of how he reassured others as Category 5 Hurricane Irma roared over them devastating Necker Island
"Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.... A company is people.... The way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers.... There's no magic formula for great company culture. The key is just to treat your staff the way you would like to be treated."
— Richard Branson
"Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple."
— Richard Branson
"If your dreams don't scare you they are too small."
— Richard Branson
"I don't think of work as work and play as play. It's all living."
— Richard Branson
"First of all, I'm lucky, I have a very extraordinary mother, and a lovely father, and we're a very, very close-knit family, and that's fortunately continued with myself, my wife and children, and so on ever since. So that's given us a fantastic foundation as a family.... Well, my mother, her whole approach to bringing up her children was one where she'd be arrested today but in those days she could get away with it. At age three or four she would shove me out of the car two or three miles from grandmother's house and tell me to make my own way there. She would put me on a bicycle at age seven or eight and tell me to ride 300 miles in the pouring rain, again to grandmother's house, and her attitude was, you know, if we survived we'd be the stronger for it. She wouldn't allow us to watch television, for instance, we had to get out there and do things. She would push us out of the house and tell us to come back in the evening.... We lived in the countryside and it was a fun upbringing, and a very loving upbringing; it may not sound like it, but she wasn't actually trying to kill us, she did love us as well [laughter].... It's fun, my mom's 94 now and I just saw her a few minutes ago and she will never stop. I mean she's got an idea a minute, and, you know, we've always had to run to keep up with her, and put the two of us together and it's a dangerous combination!"
— Richard Branson in a phone interview with Tim Ferriss
"When things went wrong (during his various dangerous adventures)... if you're gonna survive, the only way you're gonna survive is by keeping focused, by staying positive, even if you are facing almost certain death, you're definitely going to die unless you stay focused and stay positive and fight to the bitter end, and, you know, there have been circumstances where, on paper, we were well over the 90% chance I'm not coming home, and I think by staying focused and staying positive, and with a big dose of good fortune, we made it all the way back."
— Richard Branson, interviewed by Tim Ferriss
"I think humor is important, putting on a brave face, cracking jokes, plenty of hugs; I think hugs are important [laughter]."
— Richard Branson, speaking of how he reassured others as Category 5 Hurricane Irma roared over them devastating Necker Island
"Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.... A company is people.... The way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers.... There's no magic formula for great company culture. The key is just to treat your staff the way you would like to be treated."
— Richard Branson
"Complexity is your enemy. Any fool can make something complicated. It is hard to make something simple."
— Richard Branson
"If your dreams don't scare you they are too small."
— Richard Branson
"I don't think of work as work and play as play. It's all living."
— Richard Branson
Monday, October 23, 2017
#378
I wonder how much Meg is troubled by the Las Vegas rampage. So many people murdered. Megan has a keen sense of the potentially unsafe and scary. She has a kind of hair trigger on her personal fear, and it's a trait or biochemistry she gets from me, I'm afraid. Naturally, our 'hair trigger' misfires. It distorts us and intensifies our perception of things. It helps us too – not much goes over Megan's head, unless she's buried in her smartphone which is too often – but the over-anxiousness can be burdensome. Generally, our well-being and safety isn't being threatened. We're fortunate to live in a good community and country, and I believe the world, overall, is far from lawless. I suppose that's debatable. If you watch the news, you'll surely think the world's headed to hell in a handbasket.... But getting back to Megan and Las Vegas, public shootings are scary. When I was a little younger than m, I was shocked by a similar TV news report; a guy walked into a McDonald's and opened fire. The TV cameras showed police tape, flashing lights, and a terrorized McDonald's restaurant identical to the ones I'd been in many times. I was freaked. I didn't eat comfortably in fastfood joints for months, maybe years; I profiled other diners like I would, honestly, frankly, other airline passengers in the aftermath of 9/11. I sat panicky on airplanes for a few years and still don't love flying. My irrational brain can be like Mike Tyson, and logic like one of his first 37 opponents. (Tyson won his first 19 fights by knockout, 12 in the first round, and 33 of his first 37 by KO; the most dominant young fighter ever.) Anyway, I think I've evolved a little with age, and hopefully m will too.
My days of writing about Michael, directly, will end now. I can still comment on parenthood, I guess, moving forward, as I closely observe upperclassmanship in high school in a few years, and teen driving and dating and growing and maturing and teen technology use and applying for college and getting ready for launch and life. And sports, I can talk about sports, and Iowa State who just cracked the football top 25 rankings!!!!! God I love Iowa State. Almost as much as I love M 'n' m.
Writing is cathartic. Blogging and scribbling and journaling and list-making and emailing and Facebook-posting and attempting to organize thoughts during hectic, emotion-filled days and months and years. Most of my days have significant emotion in them, things above or below neutral, likely both, though some days are more turbulent than others. Maybe writing makes me feel productive, expressive, and not lazy, in addition to the catharsis part, which I seem to use as a primary excuse for writing. But why do I need an excuse to write? Why do I need permission? It's one of those paradoxes in parenting I've discovered; I don't want M 'n' m to be reckless, but I don't want them seeking permission for everything in life either, whether it be from authority figures or pop culture or me. The more I know, the more I realize I don't know. So I want M 'n' m to be confident, empowered individuals, setting their own course and habits that will lead to a long, fulfilling life. Amen.
Definition of CATHARSIS
noun, plural catharses
1: the purging of emotions (such as pity or fear) or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through art
2: a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal
3: elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it release
"Journaling is really about priming our soul for action... activating our energy."
— Brian Johnson
My days of writing about Michael, directly, will end now. I can still comment on parenthood, I guess, moving forward, as I closely observe upperclassmanship in high school in a few years, and teen driving and dating and growing and maturing and teen technology use and applying for college and getting ready for launch and life. And sports, I can talk about sports, and Iowa State who just cracked the football top 25 rankings!!!!! God I love Iowa State. Almost as much as I love M 'n' m.
Writing is cathartic. Blogging and scribbling and journaling and list-making and emailing and Facebook-posting and attempting to organize thoughts during hectic, emotion-filled days and months and years. Most of my days have significant emotion in them, things above or below neutral, likely both, though some days are more turbulent than others. Maybe writing makes me feel productive, expressive, and not lazy, in addition to the catharsis part, which I seem to use as a primary excuse for writing. But why do I need an excuse to write? Why do I need permission? It's one of those paradoxes in parenting I've discovered; I don't want M 'n' m to be reckless, but I don't want them seeking permission for everything in life either, whether it be from authority figures or pop culture or me. The more I know, the more I realize I don't know. So I want M 'n' m to be confident, empowered individuals, setting their own course and habits that will lead to a long, fulfilling life. Amen.
Definition of CATHARSIS
noun, plural catharses
1: the purging of emotions (such as pity or fear) or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through art
2: a purification or purgation that brings about spiritual renewal
3: elimination of a complex by bringing it to consciousness and affording it release
"Journaling is really about priming our soul for action... activating our energy."
— Brian Johnson
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Stuff About Things #7
"Fathering may be good for men as well as for children."
— Ross D. Parke
"But despite these sorrows my father remained an optimist. And that optimism was the greatest gift he gave to me – a sense of excitement about life that has carried me through everything."
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, Vanity Fair magazine
"His heritage to his children wasn't words or possessions, but an unspoken treasure, the treasure of his example as a man and a father. More than anything I have, I'm trying to pass that on to my children."
— Roy Rogers
"I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all."
— E. B. White
From Men's Journal magazine: "In the sport of bull riding, grit is a prerequisite, and these guys have a lot of it.... In the locker room, the Brazilians' abundance of grit isn't immediately clear, but their camaraderie is.... The real difference between the Brazilians and the Americans goes back to fundamental toughness. The Brazilians train harder during the week. They don't whine, they don't bitch, and they come in expecting to win. If I was a young rider, I'd watch them closely and learn everything I could."
From Vanity Fair magazine: "True belief, if you think about it, is much scarier than simple greed. The greedy man can always be bought at some price, and his behavior is predictable. But the true zealot? He can't be had at any price, and there's no telling what his mad visions will have him and his followers do."
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
— Christopher Hitchens
"Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it."
— Christopher Hitchens
From Men's Journal magazine: "Stig Severinsen contends that optimal breathing, with its focus on physical, mental, and emotional self-awareness, can be an effective weapon in the world of corporate warfare." ... and from Men's Health magazine: "Turns out, deep breathing can stimulate the production of insulin, which lowers blood-sugar levels; with more time, it can also nix extra cortisol (a stress hormone) and harmful free radicals."
From Vanity Fair magazine: "One evening in December, young John (F. Kennedy Jr.) emerged from Jackie's room. Spotting a portrait of his father, he removed a lollipop from his mouth and kissed the image, saying, 'Good night, Daddy.' Jackie related the episode to Marg McNamara by way of explanation as to why it would be impossible to have such a picture near. She said it brought to the surface too many things."
"When I was young I spent months humping a pack and an M-16 up and down the Annamite Cordillera in Vietnam. It took me years to want to go out in the mountains again, but now nature was my friend, a consoling, calming presence I wanted to share with my son.... When I picked my pack back up, I realized I'd forgotten the bear spray. There were grizzlies up in the high country. A big male could be twice the size of a lion, weigh up to a third of a ton, and reach nine feet tall when it stood up. It could kill you and then eat you. You weren't at the top of the food chain and you could feel it.... I always took bear spray, and usually I took my pistol, too, an old Colt M1911A1 .45 like the one I carried in the war. The .45 was basically useless against a grizzly, but I like carrying it. Bear spray was better. It could make the fiercest grizzly turn and run, but only if you could get the canister out of the holster, pull back the safety, depress the trigger, and spray it in the bear's face, all in a split second. I knew how fear could paralyze a man when he wasn't hardened by daily contact with it. I hadn't been that man in a long time – the man who could respond with skill to a sudden onset of fear – so I wasn't sure that if a grizzly suddenly appeared I would be able to do any of those things."
— William Broyles
"Everything that could possibly go wrong with that game did.... I had to just breathe through it and go into that area you learn about through meditation: 'Oh yes, I recognize this, this is life, this is how life goes, there's no reason to rail against it, this is OK.'"
— Phil Jackson
"We don't have a healthcare system in the U.S. but a disease-care system. We treat diseases – we don't prevent them. Traditional doctors aren't trained in diet, supplements, exercise, meditation, and other therapies you need to stay healthy."
— Dr. Frank Lipman, preventative and holistic care advocate
"Winners know what they don't know." — Men's Health magazine
"Joe Maddon says the most important thing he has to do as a manager is listen to his players." — Men's Journal magazine
"The human brain is one of nature's most advanced systems, but it nevertheless has a hard time distinguishing the difference between real and imagined threats." — Men's Health magazine
"Advanced results required advanced measures. Does nobody understand this anymore? You have to do the work and you have to sacrifice.... The key to confidence has less to do with inborn talent than it does with ingrained practice." — Men's Fitness magazine
"The other side of it (of getting up very early, other than having private time to be productive) is just straight-up self-discipline. It's not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn't sing you a song, it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So, how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide, or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day."
— Jocko Willink
"Once, instead of paying attention to the class, I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. At the end of the hour, (the professor) asked me what was so much more interesting that his lecture. I held up the book and told him it was the greatest novel written in any language since William Faulkner died. I still think so."
— Bill Clinton
"Like a magnet, two poles lie at the ends of American success: You can succeed by empowering others or you can succeed by exploiting them." — Bloomberg Businessweek magazine
"'You can go run business development for a mobile company!' was one suggestion (from friends who assured her she could easily jump into a money job in the for-profit sector). Well, I would rather die. Seriously. I can't imagine getting up every morning and putting on a little suit and getting into my little car and driving on the highway with my Starbucks and having meetings where I do not care, nothing is at stake; it's about dollars and the bottom line, which is fine, but it's just not motivating to me at all. It's not that I think there's anything wrong with that world, obviously, but it's just not for me and it would be soul destroying."
— Sue Gardner
"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it."
— Michel de Montaigne
"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
— Thomas Merton
"Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony."
— Thomas Merton
"Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real."
— Thomas Merton
"We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen."
— Thomas Merton
— Ross D. Parke
"But despite these sorrows my father remained an optimist. And that optimism was the greatest gift he gave to me – a sense of excitement about life that has carried me through everything."
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, Vanity Fair magazine
"His heritage to his children wasn't words or possessions, but an unspoken treasure, the treasure of his example as a man and a father. More than anything I have, I'm trying to pass that on to my children."
— Roy Rogers
"I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all."
— E. B. White
From Men's Journal magazine: "In the sport of bull riding, grit is a prerequisite, and these guys have a lot of it.... In the locker room, the Brazilians' abundance of grit isn't immediately clear, but their camaraderie is.... The real difference between the Brazilians and the Americans goes back to fundamental toughness. The Brazilians train harder during the week. They don't whine, they don't bitch, and they come in expecting to win. If I was a young rider, I'd watch them closely and learn everything I could."
From Vanity Fair magazine: "True belief, if you think about it, is much scarier than simple greed. The greedy man can always be bought at some price, and his behavior is predictable. But the true zealot? He can't be had at any price, and there's no telling what his mad visions will have him and his followers do."
"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
— Christopher Hitchens
"Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it."
— Christopher Hitchens
From Men's Journal magazine: "Stig Severinsen contends that optimal breathing, with its focus on physical, mental, and emotional self-awareness, can be an effective weapon in the world of corporate warfare." ... and from Men's Health magazine: "Turns out, deep breathing can stimulate the production of insulin, which lowers blood-sugar levels; with more time, it can also nix extra cortisol (a stress hormone) and harmful free radicals."
From Vanity Fair magazine: "One evening in December, young John (F. Kennedy Jr.) emerged from Jackie's room. Spotting a portrait of his father, he removed a lollipop from his mouth and kissed the image, saying, 'Good night, Daddy.' Jackie related the episode to Marg McNamara by way of explanation as to why it would be impossible to have such a picture near. She said it brought to the surface too many things."
"When I was young I spent months humping a pack and an M-16 up and down the Annamite Cordillera in Vietnam. It took me years to want to go out in the mountains again, but now nature was my friend, a consoling, calming presence I wanted to share with my son.... When I picked my pack back up, I realized I'd forgotten the bear spray. There were grizzlies up in the high country. A big male could be twice the size of a lion, weigh up to a third of a ton, and reach nine feet tall when it stood up. It could kill you and then eat you. You weren't at the top of the food chain and you could feel it.... I always took bear spray, and usually I took my pistol, too, an old Colt M1911A1 .45 like the one I carried in the war. The .45 was basically useless against a grizzly, but I like carrying it. Bear spray was better. It could make the fiercest grizzly turn and run, but only if you could get the canister out of the holster, pull back the safety, depress the trigger, and spray it in the bear's face, all in a split second. I knew how fear could paralyze a man when he wasn't hardened by daily contact with it. I hadn't been that man in a long time – the man who could respond with skill to a sudden onset of fear – so I wasn't sure that if a grizzly suddenly appeared I would be able to do any of those things."
— William Broyles
"Everything that could possibly go wrong with that game did.... I had to just breathe through it and go into that area you learn about through meditation: 'Oh yes, I recognize this, this is life, this is how life goes, there's no reason to rail against it, this is OK.'"
— Phil Jackson
"We don't have a healthcare system in the U.S. but a disease-care system. We treat diseases – we don't prevent them. Traditional doctors aren't trained in diet, supplements, exercise, meditation, and other therapies you need to stay healthy."
— Dr. Frank Lipman, preventative and holistic care advocate
"Winners know what they don't know." — Men's Health magazine
"Joe Maddon says the most important thing he has to do as a manager is listen to his players." — Men's Journal magazine
"The human brain is one of nature's most advanced systems, but it nevertheless has a hard time distinguishing the difference between real and imagined threats." — Men's Health magazine
"Advanced results required advanced measures. Does nobody understand this anymore? You have to do the work and you have to sacrifice.... The key to confidence has less to do with inborn talent than it does with ingrained practice." — Men's Fitness magazine
"The other side of it (of getting up very early, other than having private time to be productive) is just straight-up self-discipline. It's not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn't sing you a song, it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So, how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide, or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day."
— Jocko Willink
"Once, instead of paying attention to the class, I read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. At the end of the hour, (the professor) asked me what was so much more interesting that his lecture. I held up the book and told him it was the greatest novel written in any language since William Faulkner died. I still think so."
— Bill Clinton
"Like a magnet, two poles lie at the ends of American success: You can succeed by empowering others or you can succeed by exploiting them." — Bloomberg Businessweek magazine
"'You can go run business development for a mobile company!' was one suggestion (from friends who assured her she could easily jump into a money job in the for-profit sector). Well, I would rather die. Seriously. I can't imagine getting up every morning and putting on a little suit and getting into my little car and driving on the highway with my Starbucks and having meetings where I do not care, nothing is at stake; it's about dollars and the bottom line, which is fine, but it's just not motivating to me at all. It's not that I think there's anything wrong with that world, obviously, but it's just not for me and it would be soul destroying."
— Sue Gardner
"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it."
— Michel de Montaigne
"Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
— Thomas Merton
"Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony."
— Thomas Merton
"Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real."
— Thomas Merton
"We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen."
— Thomas Merton
Friday, October 6, 2017
#377
I still pray with Meg before bed and sometimes we chat a bit. Last night she asked, "Are you on Facebook?" I said yes. She said, "Mom's on Facebook too and I don't like it when she puts anything about me on Facebook." Oh. So maybe Dad shouldn't write about you on a blog for 15 years?
Meg just had a birthday. She's 12. People say teenage daughters are one of life's tests. I have a year to brace myself.
I'm a little worried. Her words were unmistakable: I don't like it when (Mom) puts anything about me on Facebook. And my words, tens of thousands now, are here and seemingly dismissive of this sentiment. But it's okay. I just forgot to mention: none of this is true. It's exaggeration. It's fiction. It's about as unbiased and trustworthy and prescient as modern 'news' (look no further than their presidential election coverage and prediction). Very little about the real Megan is shared. Or over-shared. Definitely not under-shared! Anyway, Megan isn't a ratings-getter. And this is happy; happy is boring; how can it be relevant and worthy if it doesn't inflame and divide?
I apologize. That was cynical. I like it when bright, productive people suggest that cynicism is lazy, unimaginative, too easy. It's definitely low-hanging fruit.
"We learned long ago in this business that dumber and more alarmist always beats complex and nuanced. Big headlines, cartoonish morality, scary criminals at home and foreign menaces abroad, they all sell. We decimated attention spans, rewarded hot-takers over thinkers, and created in audiences powerful addictions to conflict, vitriol, fear, self-righteousness, and race and gender resentment."
— Matt Taibbi, writer and journalist for Rolling Stone
"War is a monstrous failure of imagination."
— Franz Kafka
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
— Einstein
Meg just had a birthday. She's 12. People say teenage daughters are one of life's tests. I have a year to brace myself.
I'm a little worried. Her words were unmistakable: I don't like it when (Mom) puts anything about me on Facebook. And my words, tens of thousands now, are here and seemingly dismissive of this sentiment. But it's okay. I just forgot to mention: none of this is true. It's exaggeration. It's fiction. It's about as unbiased and trustworthy and prescient as modern 'news' (look no further than their presidential election coverage and prediction). Very little about the real Megan is shared. Or over-shared. Definitely not under-shared! Anyway, Megan isn't a ratings-getter. And this is happy; happy is boring; how can it be relevant and worthy if it doesn't inflame and divide?
I apologize. That was cynical. I like it when bright, productive people suggest that cynicism is lazy, unimaginative, too easy. It's definitely low-hanging fruit.
"We learned long ago in this business that dumber and more alarmist always beats complex and nuanced. Big headlines, cartoonish morality, scary criminals at home and foreign menaces abroad, they all sell. We decimated attention spans, rewarded hot-takers over thinkers, and created in audiences powerful addictions to conflict, vitriol, fear, self-righteousness, and race and gender resentment."
— Matt Taibbi, writer and journalist for Rolling Stone
"War is a monstrous failure of imagination."
— Franz Kafka
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
— Einstein
Stuff About Things #6
"Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow."
— Steve Jobs, in his final words before his death, according to his sister Mona Simpson's eulogy
"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man."
— Tagore
"Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it."
— Ursula K. Le Guin
"I don't have stage fright, I have life fright."
— comedian Ben Hoffman
From Men's Health magazine: "Practice, practice, practice. That's the message of ongoing research.... 'Students think talent is all that matters,' one study notes, 'Because they rarely see other people practice, but nearly all famous people say that practice is what led to their success.' And 'deliberate practice' is not play or performance time but rather activities designed to improve specific aspects of performance. It means working on your weaknesses, working that sweet spot at the edge of your abilities. It involves frustration, concentration, repetition, and feedback."
"Consistency on the fundamentals is the pathway to mastery."
— Robin Sharma
From Men's Health magazine: "Learn to be optimistic. Gritty people are optimistic people. When optimistic people suffer setbacks, they think of them as temporary and limited in scope. They think with just a bit more effort, they can get over the hump. Pessimists, on the other hand, attribute bad events to big, overpowering causes that have not ruined everything forever and ever. They 'catastrophize.' And whether it's entirely their fault or not, they blame themselves."
"Warning! You think about 60,000 thoughts a day. It's up to you to make sure that you don't use up 59,999 of them with negative, cynical thinking."
— internet meme
"The question is not what we can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what we can love, and value, and appreciate."
— John Ruskin
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
— William James
"I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God."
— Abraham Lincoln
From Wikipedia: "Before he became an actor, Steve Buscemi was busy rescuing people as a New York firefighter from 1980 to 1984. The day after 9/11, he showed up at his old firehouse to volunteer, working twelve-hour shifts for a week, digging through rubble, looking for survivors, bodies, missing firefighters."
"I went to China as one of the members of the Tibetan delegation at the Congress of the People's Republic of China. The parliament in Peking was very disciplined. I noticed that all the members barely dared make a suggestion. They would make a point, but only little corrections in wording [laughs]. Nobody really discussed meaning. Then, in 1956, I had the opportunity to come to India. And here, too, I had the opportunity to visit Indian Parliament. I found big contrast. In Indian Parliament, lots of noise. No discipline. This was a clear sign of complete freedom of expression. Indian parliamentarians, they love to criticize their government. So I realized, this is the meaning of democracy - freedom of speech."
— Dalai Lama
"Whenever we face a problem, we must dialogue. That's the only way. For that, we need inner disarmament."
— Dalai Lama
From Yoga Chicago magazine: "We are called upon to cope with hiccups and hurricanes in our lives... to navigate disruptive, unwanted changes.... Occasionally we have to respond with grace under pressure to troubles and tragedies.... The way we can bounce back from everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is through resilience - capacities innate in the brain to respond to the inevitable twists and turns in life flexibly and adaptively. Modern neuroscience is revealing how we can harness these capacities - called neuroplasticity - to rewire our habitual patterns of response to strengthen what are called the 5 C's of coping:
1. Calm: Staying calm in a crisis
2. Clarity: Seeing clearly what's happening, your internal response to what's happening, what needs to happen next, and possibilities from different perspectives
3. Connection: Reaching out for help as needed, learning from others how to be resilient, connecting to resources that expand your options
4. Competence: Calling on skills and competencies learned from previous experiences
5. Courage: Strengthening your faith to persevere in until you come to resolution or acceptance of the difficulty
"Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world."
— Jean Paul Richter
"As I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things."
— Martin Scorsese
"If you don't get physically ill seeing your first rough cut, something's wrong."
— Martin Scorsese
From Men's Journal magazine: "Doug Peacock has barely hunted, or even fired a gun, since his days in Vietnam. He experienced enough killing there, he says, to last several lifetimes. He was 27 when he came home, racked with PTSD, back before there was a name for it. Peacock thought he was alone back then; he didn't know that every soldier experienced some version of this. Once home, he wandered the West... in solitude for weeks at a time. Now no one knows wild grizzlies better.... For nearly his entire adult life, Peacock has been out with the bears - in their country, watching and learning. "It's the one animal out there that can kill and eat you anytime it chooses to - even though it seldom does," he says. "It stands as an instant lesson in humility." Peacock's diplomatic skills are less than zero, but his feist quotient exceeds any known scale of measurement. An iconic eco-warrior and spiritual godfather of monkeywrenching, he's the author of five books.... 'Doug is a real hero to me,' says author Carl Hiaasen, a longtime fly-fishing buddy of Peacock's. "He is the complete American renegade hero — outraged, badass, and deeply, unshakably moral. I've never met anyone quite like him. We should all wage life with a purpose so pure."
"I like to be learning something... I like things that take me out of my head."
— Edward Norton, answering the question, "When are you most happy in your life?"
"Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier."
— Albert Schweitzer
"It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable."
— Moliere
"The smallest good deed is greater than the grandest intention."
— Unknown
"All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action."
— James Russell Lowell
"There's always got to be a struggle. Sure. What else is there? That's what life is made of. I don't know anything else, do you? I mean if there is, tell me about it."
— Van Morrison
— Steve Jobs, in his final words before his death, according to his sister Mona Simpson's eulogy
"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man."
— Tagore
"Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it."
— Ursula K. Le Guin
"I don't have stage fright, I have life fright."
— comedian Ben Hoffman
From Men's Health magazine: "Practice, practice, practice. That's the message of ongoing research.... 'Students think talent is all that matters,' one study notes, 'Because they rarely see other people practice, but nearly all famous people say that practice is what led to their success.' And 'deliberate practice' is not play or performance time but rather activities designed to improve specific aspects of performance. It means working on your weaknesses, working that sweet spot at the edge of your abilities. It involves frustration, concentration, repetition, and feedback."
"Consistency on the fundamentals is the pathway to mastery."
— Robin Sharma
From Men's Health magazine: "Learn to be optimistic. Gritty people are optimistic people. When optimistic people suffer setbacks, they think of them as temporary and limited in scope. They think with just a bit more effort, they can get over the hump. Pessimists, on the other hand, attribute bad events to big, overpowering causes that have not ruined everything forever and ever. They 'catastrophize.' And whether it's entirely their fault or not, they blame themselves."
"Warning! You think about 60,000 thoughts a day. It's up to you to make sure that you don't use up 59,999 of them with negative, cynical thinking."
— internet meme
"The question is not what we can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what we can love, and value, and appreciate."
— John Ruskin
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
— William James
"I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God."
— Abraham Lincoln
From Wikipedia: "Before he became an actor, Steve Buscemi was busy rescuing people as a New York firefighter from 1980 to 1984. The day after 9/11, he showed up at his old firehouse to volunteer, working twelve-hour shifts for a week, digging through rubble, looking for survivors, bodies, missing firefighters."
"I went to China as one of the members of the Tibetan delegation at the Congress of the People's Republic of China. The parliament in Peking was very disciplined. I noticed that all the members barely dared make a suggestion. They would make a point, but only little corrections in wording [laughs]. Nobody really discussed meaning. Then, in 1956, I had the opportunity to come to India. And here, too, I had the opportunity to visit Indian Parliament. I found big contrast. In Indian Parliament, lots of noise. No discipline. This was a clear sign of complete freedom of expression. Indian parliamentarians, they love to criticize their government. So I realized, this is the meaning of democracy - freedom of speech."
— Dalai Lama
"Whenever we face a problem, we must dialogue. That's the only way. For that, we need inner disarmament."
— Dalai Lama
From Yoga Chicago magazine: "We are called upon to cope with hiccups and hurricanes in our lives... to navigate disruptive, unwanted changes.... Occasionally we have to respond with grace under pressure to troubles and tragedies.... The way we can bounce back from everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is through resilience - capacities innate in the brain to respond to the inevitable twists and turns in life flexibly and adaptively. Modern neuroscience is revealing how we can harness these capacities - called neuroplasticity - to rewire our habitual patterns of response to strengthen what are called the 5 C's of coping:
1. Calm: Staying calm in a crisis
2. Clarity: Seeing clearly what's happening, your internal response to what's happening, what needs to happen next, and possibilities from different perspectives
3. Connection: Reaching out for help as needed, learning from others how to be resilient, connecting to resources that expand your options
4. Competence: Calling on skills and competencies learned from previous experiences
5. Courage: Strengthening your faith to persevere in until you come to resolution or acceptance of the difficulty
"Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world."
— Jean Paul Richter
"As I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things."
— Martin Scorsese
"If you don't get physically ill seeing your first rough cut, something's wrong."
— Martin Scorsese
From Men's Journal magazine: "Doug Peacock has barely hunted, or even fired a gun, since his days in Vietnam. He experienced enough killing there, he says, to last several lifetimes. He was 27 when he came home, racked with PTSD, back before there was a name for it. Peacock thought he was alone back then; he didn't know that every soldier experienced some version of this. Once home, he wandered the West... in solitude for weeks at a time. Now no one knows wild grizzlies better.... For nearly his entire adult life, Peacock has been out with the bears - in their country, watching and learning. "It's the one animal out there that can kill and eat you anytime it chooses to - even though it seldom does," he says. "It stands as an instant lesson in humility." Peacock's diplomatic skills are less than zero, but his feist quotient exceeds any known scale of measurement. An iconic eco-warrior and spiritual godfather of monkeywrenching, he's the author of five books.... 'Doug is a real hero to me,' says author Carl Hiaasen, a longtime fly-fishing buddy of Peacock's. "He is the complete American renegade hero — outraged, badass, and deeply, unshakably moral. I've never met anyone quite like him. We should all wage life with a purpose so pure."
"I like to be learning something... I like things that take me out of my head."
— Edward Norton, answering the question, "When are you most happy in your life?"
"Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier."
— Albert Schweitzer
"It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable."
— Moliere
"The smallest good deed is greater than the grandest intention."
— Unknown
"All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action."
— James Russell Lowell
"There's always got to be a struggle. Sure. What else is there? That's what life is made of. I don't know anything else, do you? I mean if there is, tell me about it."
— Van Morrison
Thursday, October 5, 2017
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Stuff About Things #5
"One of the guards who looked after my grandfather told me how he smuggled me in when I was eight months old, so my grandfather could hug and kiss me."
— Nelson Mandela's granddaughter
"That's a big part of humor: the courage to constantly test out new material to see what works."
— Kevin Hart
There are two rules on the spiritual path:
1. Begin
2. Continue
"I don't have a life, really. I take my kids to school, and I go home, and I write. Then I go pick my kids up, make them dinner, put them to bed, and write some more.... I was reading Jack London and becoming obsessed with the idea of ancestry, thinking a lot about what I was passing on to my kids. I grew up Catholic, and I was thinking about this baby coming into the world that was going to be clean, you know, and I just wanted him to be able to make his own choices. I didn't want him to have my sins. The sins of the father, basically.... Right now, I think I have time to be three things, in no particular order: a father, a husband, and a filmmaker. That's why I don't go out – I have no space for it. I feel like one of those main things would suffer. For what? For drinking? I'm not interested."
— Derek Cianfrance, director, screenwriter, filmmaker
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
— Thomas Jefferson
"Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential."
— Winston Churchill
"A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to the older day."
— James Joyce, The Dead, from Dubliners, his 1914 collection of short stories
"What gives light must endure burning."
— Viktor Frankl
"There is no security in life, only opportunity."
— Douglas MacArthur
"Our idea of what is indispensable to human existence and enjoyment had been wonderfully curtailed. A horse, a rifle, and a knife – together with the skill to use them – seemed to make up the whole of life's necessities.... One other lesson our short prairie experience taught us was profound contentment in the present.... Men whose home is in the wilderness, and who love the campfire better than the hearth, they are content and happy in the midst of hardship, privation, and danger. Their cheerfulness is irrepressible, and no people on earth understand better how to make sport of the world.... No one can deny the intrepid bravery of these men, their intelligence and the bold frankness of their character, free from all that is mean and sordid. Yet for the moment the extreme roughness of their manners half inclines one to forget their heroic qualities. Most of them seem without the least perception of delicacy or propriety, though among them individuals may be found in whose manners there is plain courtesy, while their features bespeak a noble spirit equal to any enterprise."
— Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail, 1849
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
— Pablo Picasso
"I don't do drugs. I am drugs."
— Salvador Dali
"Great minds ask great questions."
— Michael Gelb
"Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them."
— Winston Churchill
"To govern is to serve, not to rule."
— Seneca
"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."
— Albert Einstein
"It is always your next move."
— Napoleon Hill
From Men's Journal magazine in 2012 (I am partial to Motorola): "The patent wars have ramped up with Motorola, Google, Apple, and Microsoft battling for giant patent portfolios that will allow them to compete with as little financial and technological friction as possible, virtually blotting out smaller innovators."
From Men's Journal magazine: "There's something to be said about keeping certain childhood enthusiasms alive.... Stay in touch with your younger self."
"Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."
— John Lennon
"All we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about."
— Charles Kingsley
"Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. (Don't let either be broken.)
— Kahlil Gibran
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
— Jesus
"The positive effect of kindness on the immune system and on the increased production of serotonin has been proven in research studies. Serotonin is a naturally occurring substance in the body that makes us feel comfortable and peaceful. In fact, the role of most anti-depressants is to stimulate the production of serotonin chemically. Research has shown that a simple act of kindness directed toward another improves the functioning of the immune system and stimulates the production of serotonin in both the recipient and the person extending the kindness. Even more amazing is that people observing the act of kindness have similar beneficial results. Imagine this! Kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved!"
— Wayne Dyer
"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."
— Dalai Lama
— Nelson Mandela's granddaughter
"That's a big part of humor: the courage to constantly test out new material to see what works."
— Kevin Hart
There are two rules on the spiritual path:
1. Begin
2. Continue
"I don't have a life, really. I take my kids to school, and I go home, and I write. Then I go pick my kids up, make them dinner, put them to bed, and write some more.... I was reading Jack London and becoming obsessed with the idea of ancestry, thinking a lot about what I was passing on to my kids. I grew up Catholic, and I was thinking about this baby coming into the world that was going to be clean, you know, and I just wanted him to be able to make his own choices. I didn't want him to have my sins. The sins of the father, basically.... Right now, I think I have time to be three things, in no particular order: a father, a husband, and a filmmaker. That's why I don't go out – I have no space for it. I feel like one of those main things would suffer. For what? For drinking? I'm not interested."
— Derek Cianfrance, director, screenwriter, filmmaker
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
— Thomas Jefferson
"Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential."
— Winston Churchill
"A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hyper-educated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to the older day."
— James Joyce, The Dead, from Dubliners, his 1914 collection of short stories
"What gives light must endure burning."
— Viktor Frankl
"There is no security in life, only opportunity."
— Douglas MacArthur
"Our idea of what is indispensable to human existence and enjoyment had been wonderfully curtailed. A horse, a rifle, and a knife – together with the skill to use them – seemed to make up the whole of life's necessities.... One other lesson our short prairie experience taught us was profound contentment in the present.... Men whose home is in the wilderness, and who love the campfire better than the hearth, they are content and happy in the midst of hardship, privation, and danger. Their cheerfulness is irrepressible, and no people on earth understand better how to make sport of the world.... No one can deny the intrepid bravery of these men, their intelligence and the bold frankness of their character, free from all that is mean and sordid. Yet for the moment the extreme roughness of their manners half inclines one to forget their heroic qualities. Most of them seem without the least perception of delicacy or propriety, though among them individuals may be found in whose manners there is plain courtesy, while their features bespeak a noble spirit equal to any enterprise."
— Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail, 1849
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
— Pablo Picasso
"I don't do drugs. I am drugs."
— Salvador Dali
"Great minds ask great questions."
— Michael Gelb
"Mountaintops inspire leaders but valleys mature them."
— Winston Churchill
"To govern is to serve, not to rule."
— Seneca
"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."
— Albert Einstein
"It is always your next move."
— Napoleon Hill
From Men's Journal magazine in 2012 (I am partial to Motorola): "The patent wars have ramped up with Motorola, Google, Apple, and Microsoft battling for giant patent portfolios that will allow them to compete with as little financial and technological friction as possible, virtually blotting out smaller innovators."
From Men's Journal magazine: "There's something to be said about keeping certain childhood enthusiasms alive.... Stay in touch with your younger self."
"Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."
— John Lennon
"All we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about."
— Charles Kingsley
"Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. (Don't let either be broken.)
— Kahlil Gibran
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
— Jesus
"The positive effect of kindness on the immune system and on the increased production of serotonin has been proven in research studies. Serotonin is a naturally occurring substance in the body that makes us feel comfortable and peaceful. In fact, the role of most anti-depressants is to stimulate the production of serotonin chemically. Research has shown that a simple act of kindness directed toward another improves the functioning of the immune system and stimulates the production of serotonin in both the recipient and the person extending the kindness. Even more amazing is that people observing the act of kindness have similar beneficial results. Imagine this! Kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved!"
— Wayne Dyer
"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."
— Dalai Lama
Friday, September 29, 2017
#376
I riffled through a newspaper yesterday, an abandoned Chicago Sun-Times on my commuter train. I read about the Bears. They suck. I read about the Cubs. They don't suck. It's been ages since I read a flimsy, flappy, newsprint daily paper. I wonder if M 'n' m have ever read a newspaper. Will 'the paper' even exist when M 'n' m are my age, with a date like 2040 on the masthead? Nope. It's headed the way of cassettes, hitchhiking, dinosaurs, leather football helmets... you know, things we don't see anymore (except in movies and museums). Answering machines, film photography, pagers, payphones, phonebooks, paper maps, paper dictionaries, paper encyclopedias... things involving paper are really on the existential brink. Technology: it giveth and it taketh away. Maybe we'll get some forests back, some hunting habitat, thanks to tech. My grandma used to play with paper dolls. Now there's an app for that.
Population growth feels like a very un-PC thing to talk about, but as I consider the pros and cons of technology growth, I can't help but puzzle over a burgeoning world population. We add another billion people to the planet in ever-shrinking intervals. It used to take centuries, now it takes a decade. We've hit the knee in the curve. What does this mean for M 'n' m?
Speaking of forests and hunting habitat, I'm lucky to be a part of a group I'll call my hunting buddies. They are good husbands, fathers, men. I'm the least remarkable and experienced among them – as a human being I mean, not just a hunter – and for this I'm thrilled and grateful. Hopefully I've told M 'n' m, "If you find yourself in a group or place where you're the least incredible, this is a good thing." And apropos of what I do here is the fact I wouldn't know any of these guys without my dad ('what I do here,' by the way, I think, is scribble about fatherhood and other things I find elusive in terms of clarity, explicability, order, logic). So these dudes are impressive and so is the breadth and depth of the topics they interpret and debate. They are profound, precise, and fucking funny too, which is essential, let's face it. I toss in my two cents – generally lousy on perspective, accuracy, and real insight – because it's my nature not to be silent among friends around a pickup truck or a campfire. Politics, parenting, history, sports, relationships, guns, conservation... it's all covered (in person when we're together once a year, and over email otherwise). Recently, somebody kicked up a discussion about religious fundamentalists and the sacred texts they believe grant them authority and superiority. Of course, the Bible was mentioned, as was the Koran. I have read bits of the Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita, and other religious writings, also. But my position on the OT – the Old Testament – is the one, due to personal religious practice and familiarity, I find myself examining the most. To me, it's a broad set of books, espousing the whole spectrum of human and divine behavior, good and not so good. In my own heart and mind, I can't reconcile the combination of the OT and the NT (New Testament). The OT gives the NT some context, but I find few parallels in terms of direction and tone. I love the primary figure in the NT, and I feel his example and message run contrary to much of the rules, wrath, and retribution in the OT. (Have I lost ya? "Never talk religion or politics.") I only mention this as one example of the material we plow into as a group of friends and hunters; we go anywhere and everywhere in discussion and it's awesome. I learn. Our spouses, partners, families, and best friends are in our lives too, of course, to examine and dissect the world in conversation, but I think I'll tell M 'n' m: "Get some good hunting buddies while you're at it."
Population growth feels like a very un-PC thing to talk about, but as I consider the pros and cons of technology growth, I can't help but puzzle over a burgeoning world population. We add another billion people to the planet in ever-shrinking intervals. It used to take centuries, now it takes a decade. We've hit the knee in the curve. What does this mean for M 'n' m?
Speaking of forests and hunting habitat, I'm lucky to be a part of a group I'll call my hunting buddies. They are good husbands, fathers, men. I'm the least remarkable and experienced among them – as a human being I mean, not just a hunter – and for this I'm thrilled and grateful. Hopefully I've told M 'n' m, "If you find yourself in a group or place where you're the least incredible, this is a good thing." And apropos of what I do here is the fact I wouldn't know any of these guys without my dad ('what I do here,' by the way, I think, is scribble about fatherhood and other things I find elusive in terms of clarity, explicability, order, logic). So these dudes are impressive and so is the breadth and depth of the topics they interpret and debate. They are profound, precise, and fucking funny too, which is essential, let's face it. I toss in my two cents – generally lousy on perspective, accuracy, and real insight – because it's my nature not to be silent among friends around a pickup truck or a campfire. Politics, parenting, history, sports, relationships, guns, conservation... it's all covered (in person when we're together once a year, and over email otherwise). Recently, somebody kicked up a discussion about religious fundamentalists and the sacred texts they believe grant them authority and superiority. Of course, the Bible was mentioned, as was the Koran. I have read bits of the Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita, and other religious writings, also. But my position on the OT – the Old Testament – is the one, due to personal religious practice and familiarity, I find myself examining the most. To me, it's a broad set of books, espousing the whole spectrum of human and divine behavior, good and not so good. In my own heart and mind, I can't reconcile the combination of the OT and the NT (New Testament). The OT gives the NT some context, but I find few parallels in terms of direction and tone. I love the primary figure in the NT, and I feel his example and message run contrary to much of the rules, wrath, and retribution in the OT. (Have I lost ya? "Never talk religion or politics.") I only mention this as one example of the material we plow into as a group of friends and hunters; we go anywhere and everywhere in discussion and it's awesome. I learn. Our spouses, partners, families, and best friends are in our lives too, of course, to examine and dissect the world in conversation, but I think I'll tell M 'n' m: "Get some good hunting buddies while you're at it."
Monday, September 25, 2017
#375
I think storytelling is important. I guess I'm not the only one. We have Barnes & Noble, public libraries, movie theaters, a thousand TV channels, and much more. We have YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram. We have the Kindle app (but I still prefer books with paper pages).
Michael is over a month into high school. So far, so good. It's challenging, demanding, tiring but I haven't noticed any kind of crushing of the spirit. On the contrary; Michael seems upbeat. That was overly dramatic – the phrase 'crushing of the spirit' I mean – but peer pressure and serious mischief and bullying and bullshit like that can cause big problems. My firstborn is a full-on high-schooler now; it seems appropriate to be vigilant and observant. If I am only mildly naive and clueless, that would be swell. We'll see. Looking at my own experience isn't helpful; I was hazed more in junior high – by certain classmates – than in high school. And I was hazed again in college, but predictably so, by fraternity brothers. In all cases, thankfully, it was never anything serious; I would even call it invigorating and healthy (in my personal journey) and useful in toughening me up. In junior high there was periodic antagonism between factions we might've labeled 'preppies' and 'skaters.' I've joked here about wearing turtlenecks under sweaters and rugby shirts and spraying Polo cologne like I was putting out a forest fire. That should make it clear which army I was in. But the card-carrying, standard-bearing dudes on the other side tried just as hard as we did, to project an image, to be cool and expressive; they paid attention to detail also, rolling jeans and sculpting hair, and looking back I'd say they 'won' if victory can be measured by courageousness and originality. All of this reminds me of something I read in Esquire magazine from Lyle Lovett: "The idea that we humans are good-natured, politically correct, nonjudgmental beings is pure fantasy. We are, at the very least, judgmental. My lessons in how to dress came from classmates in parochial school. The time-honored, behavior-modifying method of ridiculing and instilling a sense of shame were not spared at Trinity Lutheran School in Klein, Texas. "A sweater?" a boy said in a loud voice in front of the whole class as I walked into my classroom on an early October day and heard everyone laughing. In my defense, my desk was by an always-open window, and it was getting cooler, and it was a new sweater I was eager to wear – an off-white cable-knit V-neck. I loved that sweater. I didn't wear it again until it was freezing, three months later. In my early 20s, Searcy Bond, who owned a hamburger joint I used to play at on Sunday nights, once asked me if I'd lost a bet. I asked him what he meant and he pointed at my shirt and suggested I'd been forced to wear it as payment for a wager gone wrong. Why would anyone wear a shirt like that if they didn't have to was his implication. But that's how you learn. Ridicule and shame don't get much of a chance in these sensitive times, which makes learning about how to dress that much more difficult. Fashion is communication, plain and simple. I don't mean to sound as though I'm telling you something you don't already know, because any self-respecting man with even a little common sense knows exactly what he's saying and to whom he's saying it as he gets dressed in the morning. We all wear uniforms of sorts that allow us to be accepted. There's no shame in that. That we have the gumption to clean up and, as we stare into our closet, care about how we'll look shows we're trying to put our best foot forward."
For the record, Michael dresses very casually (as in sweats and T-shirts mostly); I'm not sure what foot he's putting forward, or what look he's going for, or from which group he's seeking acceptance. I wouldn't consider him a sartorial standout. He's focused on other things. I know he has gumption. I know he cares about how he looks. Sometimes. But none of that matters to me as much as my sense that he's upbeat; it's hard work but my impression is he likes high school. So far.
Michael is over a month into high school. So far, so good. It's challenging, demanding, tiring but I haven't noticed any kind of crushing of the spirit. On the contrary; Michael seems upbeat. That was overly dramatic – the phrase 'crushing of the spirit' I mean – but peer pressure and serious mischief and bullying and bullshit like that can cause big problems. My firstborn is a full-on high-schooler now; it seems appropriate to be vigilant and observant. If I am only mildly naive and clueless, that would be swell. We'll see. Looking at my own experience isn't helpful; I was hazed more in junior high – by certain classmates – than in high school. And I was hazed again in college, but predictably so, by fraternity brothers. In all cases, thankfully, it was never anything serious; I would even call it invigorating and healthy (in my personal journey) and useful in toughening me up. In junior high there was periodic antagonism between factions we might've labeled 'preppies' and 'skaters.' I've joked here about wearing turtlenecks under sweaters and rugby shirts and spraying Polo cologne like I was putting out a forest fire. That should make it clear which army I was in. But the card-carrying, standard-bearing dudes on the other side tried just as hard as we did, to project an image, to be cool and expressive; they paid attention to detail also, rolling jeans and sculpting hair, and looking back I'd say they 'won' if victory can be measured by courageousness and originality. All of this reminds me of something I read in Esquire magazine from Lyle Lovett: "The idea that we humans are good-natured, politically correct, nonjudgmental beings is pure fantasy. We are, at the very least, judgmental. My lessons in how to dress came from classmates in parochial school. The time-honored, behavior-modifying method of ridiculing and instilling a sense of shame were not spared at Trinity Lutheran School in Klein, Texas. "A sweater?" a boy said in a loud voice in front of the whole class as I walked into my classroom on an early October day and heard everyone laughing. In my defense, my desk was by an always-open window, and it was getting cooler, and it was a new sweater I was eager to wear – an off-white cable-knit V-neck. I loved that sweater. I didn't wear it again until it was freezing, three months later. In my early 20s, Searcy Bond, who owned a hamburger joint I used to play at on Sunday nights, once asked me if I'd lost a bet. I asked him what he meant and he pointed at my shirt and suggested I'd been forced to wear it as payment for a wager gone wrong. Why would anyone wear a shirt like that if they didn't have to was his implication. But that's how you learn. Ridicule and shame don't get much of a chance in these sensitive times, which makes learning about how to dress that much more difficult. Fashion is communication, plain and simple. I don't mean to sound as though I'm telling you something you don't already know, because any self-respecting man with even a little common sense knows exactly what he's saying and to whom he's saying it as he gets dressed in the morning. We all wear uniforms of sorts that allow us to be accepted. There's no shame in that. That we have the gumption to clean up and, as we stare into our closet, care about how we'll look shows we're trying to put our best foot forward."
For the record, Michael dresses very casually (as in sweats and T-shirts mostly); I'm not sure what foot he's putting forward, or what look he's going for, or from which group he's seeking acceptance. I wouldn't consider him a sartorial standout. He's focused on other things. I know he has gumption. I know he cares about how he looks. Sometimes. But none of that matters to me as much as my sense that he's upbeat; it's hard work but my impression is he likes high school. So far.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
#374
Sounds like homecoming went well. Lots of dancing. Grandpa Mike cut right to the chase, "Was there any slow dancing?" Michael said no, it was all hip-hop and jumping around, getting sweaty and thirsty. The lines to get water were really long, he said. Lines to get water? WHO CARES? I'm kidding. Sort of. At least he didn't give a one-word answer. But it seems strange; don't they promote at least some pairing-off, close-contact, partner dancing? You know, something that forces a bit of intimacy. Although, it's 2017; maybe that IS how they pair off and close-dance at high schools now? I know that's the scene at clubs in the city. Or it was. 15 years ago. Damn, I'm 15 years removed from 'clubs in the city' and 25 from 'dancing at high schools.' When did I get so out-of-touch? This calls for further investigation. Only because I'm out-of-touch.
Michael is playing soccer and getting better every game. It's fun to watch. On Sunday, he drove in the winning run in his fall baseball game. His cello concert was terrific, although he said they didn't sound good. I disagree. Although I like Grunge too. Michael has a refined ear. He likes blues, jazz (and hip-hop, apparently). I'm just happy he's involved and busy, playing, trying, competing; there's no better time in life than high school to do so many things. He has friends that play soccer and then rush to marching band practice and then, presumably, tackle their homework for an hour or two before bed. That's a long day. But they love it. And they get good grades. It's possible. It's awesome. I hope M 'n' m encourage their kids to be busy like they are. Megan has basketball tryouts this weekend. And she's rockin' the cello too. Just like her favorite person on the planet. Michael is far from lovey-dovey super-nice to his little sister. But he sets a good example and I'm grateful. My older sister Jenny set a great example for me – the best – and I'm grateful for that too. And my friends were busy with sports and activities and we pushed each other. How many times can I say I'm grateful?
The Cubs magic number is 11. I love that number. It's lucky. But I hope it goes to zero quickly.
Something I've wanted to document here for awhile: I fear I've shortchanged M 'n' m by not exposing them to a certain time-honored tradition.... I know my parents experienced it with their parents, as did Aunt Jenny and I with ours. Movies are made about it; think Chevy Chase and Wally World. I'm referring, of course, to the 'tradition' of the family driving vacation. M 'n' m have flown to Florida and Texas a few times. Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan. They've been on a Caribbean cruise. But they have not – like I was as kid – been driven to Washington DC, Boston, Gettysburg, Niagara Falls, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, and – my favorite – Deadwood. So much impressionable history. The Freedom Trail, the Salem Witch Trials, Ford's Theater, Mount Vernon, the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, you name it. We even went to the baseball, basketball, and football Halls of Fame. But back to my favorite, from Robert M. Wright's book Dodge City, The Cowboy Capital:
"I also insist that Dodge City was not the worst place on earth and at last I have heard of a town which was equal to, if not worse than Dodge City, and, by way of comparison, I here quote a graphic picture taken from the Virginia City Chronicle, published in the '70's, of another bad town: 'There are saloons all over the place, and whisky four bits a drink. They put two barrels upon end, nail a board across for a bar and deal out. A miner who wants to treat pours some gold dust on the barrel head and says, "Set 'em up!" They never weigh the dust. Sometimes a man won't put down enough dust, but they never say a word, and if he's a little drunk and puts up ten or fifteen dollars' worth they never mention it. They have three faro banks running all the time. They don't use checks, for the boys, when they won a pile of checks they threw them all over the place and some of them were too drunk to handle them. So the checks got played out. Now a man puts a little gold dust on a dollar greenback. Two dollars worth of dust on a ten-dollar greenback goes for twenty dollars, and so on – don't weigh the dust at all but guess the amount. We have a daily newspaper – that is, sometimes it's daily, and then when the compositors get drunk it doesn't come out for several days. If a man wants gun wadding he goes and pays four bits for a newspaper. Whenever they start a new city government they print a lot of city ordinances, then there's a grand rush for the paper. Sometimes it comes out twice a week and sometimes twice a day. Every man in Deadwood carries about fourteen pounds of firearms hitched to his belt, and they never pass any words. The fellow that gets his gun out first is the best man and they lug off the other fellow's body. Our graveyard is a big institution and a growing one. Sometimes, however, the place is right quiet. I've known times when a man wasn't killed for twenty-four hours. Then again they'd lay out five or six a day. When a man gets too handy with his shooting irons and kills five or six, they think he isn't safe, and somebody pops him over to rid the place of him. They don't kill him for what he has done, but for what he's liable to do. I suppose that the average deaths amount to about one hundred a month.'"
Michael is playing soccer and getting better every game. It's fun to watch. On Sunday, he drove in the winning run in his fall baseball game. His cello concert was terrific, although he said they didn't sound good. I disagree. Although I like Grunge too. Michael has a refined ear. He likes blues, jazz (and hip-hop, apparently). I'm just happy he's involved and busy, playing, trying, competing; there's no better time in life than high school to do so many things. He has friends that play soccer and then rush to marching band practice and then, presumably, tackle their homework for an hour or two before bed. That's a long day. But they love it. And they get good grades. It's possible. It's awesome. I hope M 'n' m encourage their kids to be busy like they are. Megan has basketball tryouts this weekend. And she's rockin' the cello too. Just like her favorite person on the planet. Michael is far from lovey-dovey super-nice to his little sister. But he sets a good example and I'm grateful. My older sister Jenny set a great example for me – the best – and I'm grateful for that too. And my friends were busy with sports and activities and we pushed each other. How many times can I say I'm grateful?
The Cubs magic number is 11. I love that number. It's lucky. But I hope it goes to zero quickly.
Something I've wanted to document here for awhile: I fear I've shortchanged M 'n' m by not exposing them to a certain time-honored tradition.... I know my parents experienced it with their parents, as did Aunt Jenny and I with ours. Movies are made about it; think Chevy Chase and Wally World. I'm referring, of course, to the 'tradition' of the family driving vacation. M 'n' m have flown to Florida and Texas a few times. Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan. They've been on a Caribbean cruise. But they have not – like I was as kid – been driven to Washington DC, Boston, Gettysburg, Niagara Falls, the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, and – my favorite – Deadwood. So much impressionable history. The Freedom Trail, the Salem Witch Trials, Ford's Theater, Mount Vernon, the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, you name it. We even went to the baseball, basketball, and football Halls of Fame. But back to my favorite, from Robert M. Wright's book Dodge City, The Cowboy Capital:
"I also insist that Dodge City was not the worst place on earth and at last I have heard of a town which was equal to, if not worse than Dodge City, and, by way of comparison, I here quote a graphic picture taken from the Virginia City Chronicle, published in the '70's, of another bad town: 'There are saloons all over the place, and whisky four bits a drink. They put two barrels upon end, nail a board across for a bar and deal out. A miner who wants to treat pours some gold dust on the barrel head and says, "Set 'em up!" They never weigh the dust. Sometimes a man won't put down enough dust, but they never say a word, and if he's a little drunk and puts up ten or fifteen dollars' worth they never mention it. They have three faro banks running all the time. They don't use checks, for the boys, when they won a pile of checks they threw them all over the place and some of them were too drunk to handle them. So the checks got played out. Now a man puts a little gold dust on a dollar greenback. Two dollars worth of dust on a ten-dollar greenback goes for twenty dollars, and so on – don't weigh the dust at all but guess the amount. We have a daily newspaper – that is, sometimes it's daily, and then when the compositors get drunk it doesn't come out for several days. If a man wants gun wadding he goes and pays four bits for a newspaper. Whenever they start a new city government they print a lot of city ordinances, then there's a grand rush for the paper. Sometimes it comes out twice a week and sometimes twice a day. Every man in Deadwood carries about fourteen pounds of firearms hitched to his belt, and they never pass any words. The fellow that gets his gun out first is the best man and they lug off the other fellow's body. Our graveyard is a big institution and a growing one. Sometimes, however, the place is right quiet. I've known times when a man wasn't killed for twenty-four hours. Then again they'd lay out five or six a day. When a man gets too handy with his shooting irons and kills five or six, they think he isn't safe, and somebody pops him over to rid the place of him. They don't kill him for what he has done, but for what he's liable to do. I suppose that the average deaths amount to about one hundred a month.'"
Monday, September 18, 2017
Stuff About Things #4
"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone."
— Tyrion Lannister
"Children always understand. They have open minds. They have built-in shit detectors."
— Madonna
"Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them."
— James Baldwin
"If you're offended easily... you're a bad resource allocator; it's a bad use of finite resources, which include your energy and the hours you're on this planet."
— Tim Ferriss
"I came along toward the tail end of a grand old tradition of manly self-destructiveness in American writing—Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, O'Neill, Cheever, Carver, Tennessee Williams. And then of course there was Dylan Thomas, the Welshman. So when I determined at the age of 18 to become a writer, I accepted my obligation to smoke many packs of cigarettes a day and learn how to drink gin and whiskey in goodly amounts, and to shun exercise done for the sake of exercise. No running. Writers were not runners. It was too awkward to run and smoke at the same time. We sat, brooding, and lit up and refilled the glass. I was a healthy young man who enjoyed tennis and softball and basketball, but I made the leap from beer to bourbon, skipped the low-tar smokes in favor of Luckies, Camels, Pall Malls, and, when feeling flush, Gauloises. I drank a gallon of coffee a day, all because that's what writers did.... I was an English major at the University of Minnesota and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression I became the editor of the campus literary magazine. I hiked around campus... with a pack of smokes in my pocket. If you hadn't anything to say but wanted to appear thoughtful, you reached for the pack and shook a cigarette out.... Back then, a pack cost 35 cents and a drink was a dollar.... (Mr. Tate) chain-smoked in class, so we did too. The whole English department reeked of smoke and was proudly alcoholic—anyone who didn't do both was considered an interloper, possibly a Mormon. In Mr. Wright's humanities class, he stood at a lectern with an empty tuna fish can for an ashtray and chain-smoked through his lectures on Dickens and Whitman and Dickinson, which he delivered through a haze of hangover."
— Garrison Keillor
"You learn more from getting your butt kicked than from getting it kissed."
— Tom Hanks
"Over time, talent and hard work become indistinguishable."
— Gerard Butler
"When there's a hill to climb, waiting won't make it any smaller."
— anonymous
From Pacific Standard magazine: "As people learn to see their thoughts and symptoms as separate from themselves, there is an uncoupling of the pain stimulus from their emotional responses.... Everyone wrestles with unruly minds and emotions.... Improving impulse control contributes to an overall sense of psychological well-being.... Social psychologists have found that most people are happier and less anxious from their mid-50s onward."
"Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness."
— Edward Stanley
"Happiness, like so many things, is a choice. So many people don't choose it."
— Ryan Reynolds
"Sometimes people confuse nonaction with weakness, but letting anger hook you is true weakness."
— Alex von Bidder
From Men's Health magazine's "What Winners Know" lists: "Your retirement account isn't just in dollars and cents. It's in skills, interests, and relationships." ... "The bigger the group, the less interesting the ideas it will generate." ... "You often have to fight hardest for the ideas that make the most sense."
"My son James smiled and said, 'So they died of old age, then.' I smiled back and stared off into the woods. That had been my own prayer back in Vietnam. Dear Lord, let me die of old age. And let me die before my children do. Amen."
— Anthony Doer
"If you can't pray sincerely, offer your dry, hypocritical prayer, for God in his mercy accepts bad coin."
— Rumi
"I usually start out in a totally rote sort of way. But if I stick with it, there is a moment when I become intensely present in the prayer. It feels like plugging an electric cord into a socket. I can feel the energy change. There is total connectivity."
— Sally Kempton, Yoga Journal
"Just as smiling actually makes you more happy, doing manly things makes you more manly. And manliness is self-perpetuating, because every time you push yourself to try something difficult, you become less afraid of everything else."
— Joel Stein
From Pacific Standard magazine: "The cathartic benefits of reaching out for help are hardly a secret. As scientists have come to better understand the brain, they have documented the potentially catastrophic consequences for individuals, particularly men, who go it alone when confronted by profound emotional challenges."
"Ask the great athlete or the concert pianist of the successful actor if they arrive at the place where they need no further practice. They will tell you that the higher you climb in proficiency and public acceptance, the greater the need for practice."
— Eric Butterworth
"Let food be your medicine."
— Hippocrates
"Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity..."
— Leonardo da Vinci
"It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants."
— Henry David Thoreau
"The constant question you should be asking yourself is, 'Will this make me stronger?'"
— Steven Lamm, MD
"I have always loved the quote from John F. Kennedy: 'When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.' Looking back on my life, I can see that I have never had a crisis that didn't make me stronger. And here was all that I loved before me (on Everest): great risk, but also great opportunity."
— Bear Grylls, Mud, Sweat, and Tears
"While it is hard enough to inoculate the integrity of the word 'friend' against today's epidemic of misuse and overuse, it can be even harder to calibrate our expectations of those who have earned the benediction of the title - the chosen few we have admitted into the innermost chambers of the heart and entrusted with going that hard way with us. 'Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship,' Seneca counseled in contemplating true and false friendship, 'but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul.' Two millennia later, the question of whom to welcome and to what extent remains one of the most delicate discernments with which life tasks us."
— Maria Popova, brainpickings.org, I really hope M 'n' m have great friends, now and always; it enriches life and we're learning it also lengthens life (see all the studies linking longevity not with exercise or diet or bad-habit-cessation, but with an active, healthy social life)
— Tyrion Lannister
"Children always understand. They have open minds. They have built-in shit detectors."
— Madonna
"Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them."
— James Baldwin
"If you're offended easily... you're a bad resource allocator; it's a bad use of finite resources, which include your energy and the hours you're on this planet."
— Tim Ferriss
"I came along toward the tail end of a grand old tradition of manly self-destructiveness in American writing—Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, O'Neill, Cheever, Carver, Tennessee Williams. And then of course there was Dylan Thomas, the Welshman. So when I determined at the age of 18 to become a writer, I accepted my obligation to smoke many packs of cigarettes a day and learn how to drink gin and whiskey in goodly amounts, and to shun exercise done for the sake of exercise. No running. Writers were not runners. It was too awkward to run and smoke at the same time. We sat, brooding, and lit up and refilled the glass. I was a healthy young man who enjoyed tennis and softball and basketball, but I made the leap from beer to bourbon, skipped the low-tar smokes in favor of Luckies, Camels, Pall Malls, and, when feeling flush, Gauloises. I drank a gallon of coffee a day, all because that's what writers did.... I was an English major at the University of Minnesota and I was very shy, which many people misinterpreted as intelligence. On the basis of that wrong impression I became the editor of the campus literary magazine. I hiked around campus... with a pack of smokes in my pocket. If you hadn't anything to say but wanted to appear thoughtful, you reached for the pack and shook a cigarette out.... Back then, a pack cost 35 cents and a drink was a dollar.... (Mr. Tate) chain-smoked in class, so we did too. The whole English department reeked of smoke and was proudly alcoholic—anyone who didn't do both was considered an interloper, possibly a Mormon. In Mr. Wright's humanities class, he stood at a lectern with an empty tuna fish can for an ashtray and chain-smoked through his lectures on Dickens and Whitman and Dickinson, which he delivered through a haze of hangover."
— Garrison Keillor
"You learn more from getting your butt kicked than from getting it kissed."
— Tom Hanks
"Over time, talent and hard work become indistinguishable."
— Gerard Butler
"When there's a hill to climb, waiting won't make it any smaller."
— anonymous
From Pacific Standard magazine: "As people learn to see their thoughts and symptoms as separate from themselves, there is an uncoupling of the pain stimulus from their emotional responses.... Everyone wrestles with unruly minds and emotions.... Improving impulse control contributes to an overall sense of psychological well-being.... Social psychologists have found that most people are happier and less anxious from their mid-50s onward."
"Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness."
— Edward Stanley
"Happiness, like so many things, is a choice. So many people don't choose it."
— Ryan Reynolds
"Sometimes people confuse nonaction with weakness, but letting anger hook you is true weakness."
— Alex von Bidder
From Men's Health magazine's "What Winners Know" lists: "Your retirement account isn't just in dollars and cents. It's in skills, interests, and relationships." ... "The bigger the group, the less interesting the ideas it will generate." ... "You often have to fight hardest for the ideas that make the most sense."
"My son James smiled and said, 'So they died of old age, then.' I smiled back and stared off into the woods. That had been my own prayer back in Vietnam. Dear Lord, let me die of old age. And let me die before my children do. Amen."
— Anthony Doer
"If you can't pray sincerely, offer your dry, hypocritical prayer, for God in his mercy accepts bad coin."
— Rumi
"I usually start out in a totally rote sort of way. But if I stick with it, there is a moment when I become intensely present in the prayer. It feels like plugging an electric cord into a socket. I can feel the energy change. There is total connectivity."
— Sally Kempton, Yoga Journal
"Just as smiling actually makes you more happy, doing manly things makes you more manly. And manliness is self-perpetuating, because every time you push yourself to try something difficult, you become less afraid of everything else."
— Joel Stein
From Pacific Standard magazine: "The cathartic benefits of reaching out for help are hardly a secret. As scientists have come to better understand the brain, they have documented the potentially catastrophic consequences for individuals, particularly men, who go it alone when confronted by profound emotional challenges."
"Ask the great athlete or the concert pianist of the successful actor if they arrive at the place where they need no further practice. They will tell you that the higher you climb in proficiency and public acceptance, the greater the need for practice."
— Eric Butterworth
"Let food be your medicine."
— Hippocrates
"Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity..."
— Leonardo da Vinci
"It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants."
— Henry David Thoreau
"The constant question you should be asking yourself is, 'Will this make me stronger?'"
— Steven Lamm, MD
"I have always loved the quote from John F. Kennedy: 'When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.' Looking back on my life, I can see that I have never had a crisis that didn't make me stronger. And here was all that I loved before me (on Everest): great risk, but also great opportunity."
— Bear Grylls, Mud, Sweat, and Tears
"While it is hard enough to inoculate the integrity of the word 'friend' against today's epidemic of misuse and overuse, it can be even harder to calibrate our expectations of those who have earned the benediction of the title - the chosen few we have admitted into the innermost chambers of the heart and entrusted with going that hard way with us. 'Ponder for a long time whether you shall admit a given person to your friendship,' Seneca counseled in contemplating true and false friendship, 'but when you have decided to admit him, welcome him with all your heart and soul.' Two millennia later, the question of whom to welcome and to what extent remains one of the most delicate discernments with which life tasks us."
— Maria Popova, brainpickings.org, I really hope M 'n' m have great friends, now and always; it enriches life and we're learning it also lengthens life (see all the studies linking longevity not with exercise or diet or bad-habit-cessation, but with an active, healthy social life)
Saturday, September 16, 2017
#373
Occasionally, when Jenny and I were kids, and Dad would say or buy or do something silly, something a little crazy, and we would laugh and stare and be interested and excited and give exactly the response fathers love, Mom would tell us, "Don't encourage him." She would say it semi-seriously, because she loved his ideas and humor and enthusiasm also. But, indeed, fathers do goofy, funny, unusual things sometimes to entertain and energize their families, and if you are one, a father, and it's been awhile since you earned yourself a "Don't encourage him," then maybe it's time to stir things up. I sometimes insist on word games, or question games, at the dinner table. Or I randomly bust out a dance move (that I butcher) and block the TV. Or I impersonate someone or sing very badly or make wild suggestions about things we should do, try, learn, whatever. In these moments, I hear groans and see eyes rolling and feel scorn, but the trick is to win a supporter or two also and then, if you're lucky, you hear it: "Don't encourage him." Bingo. You know you're not a boring dad.
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