Thanks for stopping by--if you have any comments, criticisms, witticisms, non sequiturs, trivia, late-breaking news or good old snide remarks, feel free to add something to the comments box.
“In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.”-- Thich Nhat Hanh
"I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde" ~ Dolly Parton
“If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it.”--W.C. Fields
"The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." --C. S. Lewis
"Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future".--Albert Camus
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.”--Anne Lamott
I am not a person who asks film or sports celebrities for autographs. Part of the reason for this is the fear of rejection. Another part is that I'm naturally shy, so the few times I have been at... more
"The Barbary Coast" is a gritty but fascinating background book on the social and political history of San Francisco. No major city in America ever had such a pedigree of chaos--going from a... more
Originally titled "Rhumba", this is the last movement of the overture, which was composed in 1932. It was an immediate success for the composer. It's debut in a New York stadium that same year on an "All-Gershwin" program was a major cultural... more
Thanks, Iri Ani. It's Ashland's main street at dusk, with the Ashland Springs Hotel (the tall buliding) in the background . I love the colors and the angle the photographer chose.
And the same to you, aaran. There is a lot of Camus' brief reflections that one could post--but that one I think fits my feelings about America the best.
Hey Doug after your baseball reference in the comment on my blog I posted a poem for you, but in case you didn't see it I will stick it here as well. This is a poem by one of my favourite bards and book shop owners, hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
"You cover and field your position very well, to use a little baseball lingo" Thanks Doug
Baseball Canto Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Watching baseball, sitting in the sun, eating popcorn, reading Ezra Pound, and wishing that Juan Marichal would hit a hole right through the
Anglo-Saxon tradition in the first Canto and demolish the barbarian invaders. When the San Francisco Giants take the field and everybody stands up for the National Anthem, with some Irish tenor's voice piped over the loudspeakers, with all the players struck dead in their places and the white umpires like Irish cops in their black suits and little black caps pressed over their hearts, Standing straight and still like at some funeral of a blarney bartender, and all facing east, as if expecting some Great White Hope or the Founding Fathers to appear on the horizon like 1066 or 1776.
But Willie Mays appears instead, in the bottom of the first, and a roar goes up as he clouts the first one into the sun and takes off, like a footrunner from Thebes. The ball is lost in the sun and maidens wail after him as he keeps running through the Anglo-Saxon epic. And Tito Fuentes comes up looking like a bullfighter in his tight pants and small pointy shoes. And the right field bleechers go mad with Chicanos and blacks and Brooklyn beer-drinkers, "Tito! Sock it to him, sweet Tito!" And sweet Tito puts his foot in the bucket and smacks one that don't come back at all, and flees around the bases like he's escaping from the United Fruit Company. As the gringo dollar beats out the pound. And sweet Tito beats it out like he's beating out usury, not to mention fascism and anti-semitism. And Juan Marichal comes up, and the Chicano bleechers go loco again, as Juan belts the first ball out of sight, and rounds first and keeps going and rounds second and rounds third, and keeps going and hits paydirt to the roars of the grungy populace. As some nut presses the backstage panic button for the tape-recorded National Anthem again, to save the situation.
But it don't stop nobody this time, in their revolution round the loaded white bases, in this last of the great Anglo-Saxon epics, in the territorio libre of Baseball.
This is Vonnegut most famous book, and one that I finally got around to reading again after many years. I was not disappointed. I often gravitate towards stories and novels about time travel, and this is one of the best. The main character,... more
