More.

I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.

- Nelson Mandela

Ronnie Dunn, "Cost of Livin'"

... whatever it takes.

Happy Birthday, Browne.

Jackson Browne was born on this date in 1948.

Something Fine

The papers lie there helplessly
In a pile outside the door
I've tried and tried, but I just can't remember what they're for
The world outside is tugging like a beggar at my sleeve
Oh, that's much too old a story to believe

And you know that it's taken its share of me
Even though you take such good care of me
Now you say "Morocco" and that makes me smile
I haven't seen Morocco in a long, long while
The dreams are rolling down across the places in my mind
And I've just had a taste of something fine

The future hides and the past just slides
England lies between
Floating in a silver mist so cold and so clean
California's shaking like an angry child will
Who has asked for love and is unanswered still

And you know that I'm looking back carefully
ÔCause I know that there's still something there for me
But you said "Morocco" and you made me smile
And it hasn't been that easy for a long, long while
And looking back into your eyes I saw them really shine
Giving me a taste of something fine
Something fine

Now if you see Morocco I know you'll go in style
I may not see Morocco for a little while
But while you're there I was hoping you might keep it in your mind
To save me just a taste of something fine

Great song.

David Lindley plays a masterful fiddle ...

Rally.

The situation was dire at halftime but the Wolverines’ halftime change, whether it be mood or scheme, was enough to pound the Wildcats into submission.

Though Denard Robinson struggled in the first half, he made the biggest change and was outstanding in the second, finishing the game with 442 yards of offense, leading four second-half touchdown drives, completing 7-of-8 passes and rushing for 69 yards in the final 30 minutes — without a turnover.

The U-M defense was just as potent, holding Northwestern without a touchdown in the second half and forcing two turnovers.

It was a scene that mirrored much of the season, with yet another impressive second half, showing an ability to rally.

Read the rest at The Freep.

Reality.

Honesty simply asks if we are open, willing, and able to acknowledge this truth. Honesty brings an end to pretense through a candid acknowledgment of our fragile humanity. It is always unpleasant, and usually painful, and that is why I am not very good at it. But to stand in the truth before God and one another has a unique reward. It is the reward which a sense of reality always brings. I know something extremely precious. I am in touch with myself as I am. My tendency to play the pseudo-messiah is torpedoed.

To the extent that I reject my ragamuffin identity, I turn away from God, the community, and myself. I become a man obsessed by illusion, a man of false power and fearful weakness, unable to think, act, or love.

Read the rest at Ragamuffin Ramblings.

Free.

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him. To accuse others for one's own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete. Only the educated are free.

- Epictetus

Rejoices.

He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not, but rejoices in what he has.

- Epictetus

Teachers.

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.

- Charles William Eliot


Lifelong exposure ... Harrison speaks here.

la Valdene, here.

Vanishing.

Goldsworthy, Fall Leaves, undated


The flow of the river is ceaseless and its water is never the same. The bubbles that float in the pools, now vanishing, now forming, are not of long duration; so in the world are men and their dwellings.

- Kamo no Chomei

Being.

Ruskin, View of Brugg, 1862


No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, or happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than man could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.

- John Ruskin

Draconid.

Night is coming soon to North America. If you’re a North American observer, go outside as soon as it gets dark and watch for the Draconid shower!

Read the rest at EarthSky.

Harmonious.

I often recall reading about a person in Palladio’s time who wanted to build a majestic home. He acquired the services of a musician, a theologian and an architect to make the design. We are not capable today, generally, of imagining such a thing. I am writing in a room that has the proportions of 4:2:1 A fourth, an octave and the unison, pleasing musical sounds. You could play my room on the piano, and it would sound harmonious. It feels harmonious. Its acoustics are harmonious.

Read the rest at Care of the Soul.

David Francey, "Skating Rink"

HOCKEYTOWN.

The puck drops ... now.

GO WINGS!

Bob Seger, "Roll Me Away"

... to Texas.



GO TIGERS!

Wings.

Twelve hours from now, the Detroit Red Wings will begin their 85th season.

Grace.

Give ... and receive with grace.

Thank you, Jess and Steve.

Head in the clouds.

Whole Larder Love (great name) sources a meal ... here.

Beauty.

You want to know what Jim Leyland wanted to talk about Thursday before Game 5 of the ALDS? His new suit.

This is a quote: “It’s a humdinger.”

This manager always believes that how he is feeling or projects himself to be feeling reflects upon his players. Loose doesn’t begin to describe how he seemed at his media session on the afternoon before the all-or-nothing final game of the first-round series against the Yankees.

Nightclub comic would be a better description.

“Be sure to tip your wait staff. And now, ladies and gentlemen, Shecky Leyland!“

He opened by saying he had an announcement. He got a telegram from a professor from a reknowned university professor who made a strong push to start closer Jose Valverde, have him pitch five innings and then follow him up with ace starting pitcher Justin Verlander for the last three . . . on short rest.

Two thoughts:

1. What the heck? Who sends telegrams? Isn’t Western Union just where you cash payroll checks to pay the bookie these days?

2. Ummm, Professor, five and three equals eight. And we wonder why the Japanese are so much better educated than we are now . . .

Theories are like belly-buttons. Everybody’s got one.

That’s the beauty of baseball.

Read the rest at Fox Sports Detroit.

Ah, yes ... the beauty of baseball.

TIGERS!

Victor Martinez and the Tigers beat New York 3-2 to win the ALDS.

Sweeping.

To remember that you're alive
visit the cemetery of your father
at noon after you've made love
and are still wrapped in a mammalian
odor that you are forced to cherish.
Under each stone is someone's inevitable
surprise, the unexpected death
of their biology that struggled hard as it must.
Now go home without looking back
at the fading cemetery, enough is enough,
but stop on the way to buy the best wine
you can afford and a dozen stiff brooms.
Have a few swallows then throw the furniture
out the window and then begin sweeping . . .

- Jim Harrison, from "Broom"

November 1, 2011.

< = >

Give.

A man who has a spirit that has accepted its own poverty may well find in himself a heart that is given to servanthood. He will not presume to have the means to acquire services of another man or affront the dignity of another by thinking that labor (which is priceless and holy) can be paid for, that time (which is rare) can be bought, or that energy (which is life and so sacred) can be traded for. A man’s creativity will be seen as his birthright, and love — even such love as is merely human — is his gift from God. The poor in spirit would not demand these things of anyone but rather give all of it freely to everyone that would need them.

Read the rest at Ragamuffin Ramblings.

Possibility.

The most valued bowls for tea ceremony are irregularly shaped, and have some gold patches here and there accentuating (rather than concealing) damage suffered at the hands of long ago owners. Asymmetry and irregularity allow the possibility of growth, but perfection chokes the imagination.

- Donald Keene

Wonder.

What I wanted to hear from my teachers on my first day of school.

What would I have wanted to hear from my teachers on my first day of school, or what would I want them to tell me if I became a student again?

Tales about my vacations? No. Those of my classmates? No. I would already know everything. You have to study? This is going to be difficult? We’re going to have to make more of an effort? No, no thank you. I know. This is why I’m here, and besides I’m deaf from the ear of duties. Tell me something different, something new, so that I don’t start getting bored already, but rather that I might feel even just a slight desire to start this school year. From the ear of passion, I can hear perfectly.

Show me that it’s worth my while to stay here for a whole year listening to you. Tell me please that all this will be relevant to my everyday life, that it will help me better understand the world and myself, that it’s worthwhile for me to be here. Show me, most of all through your own lives, that the effort you demand of me will fill my own life the way it fills yours. You have dedicated studies, efforts and dreams to teach me your subject, now show be that it’s all true, that you are conveyors of something desirable and indispensable, something that you own and that you wish to impart upon me as a gift. Show me that you lose sleep to teach me these things that — you say — are worth my efforts. I want to look into your eyes and if they’re not shining I’m going to get bored, I’m telling you now, and I’m going to do something else. You can’t lie to me. If you don’t believe it, then why should I? And don’t tell me about your salaries, about the union, about [Italian education minister] Gelmini, about your family and relationship troubles, about your failures and your obsessions. No. Tell me about how much you love the force of the sun that has burned for 5 billion years and transforms hydrogen into light, life and energy. Tell me how this happens, this miracle that will continue for at least another 5 billion years. Tell me why the moon always shows me her same face and teach me how to interrogate her like Leopardi’s shepherd did. Tell me how it’s possible that a rose has petals arranged according to a divine and infallible proportion and why the heart is a muscle that beats involuntarily and how the eye transforms light into images.

There are so many things in this world that I don’t know and that you could teach me, with eyes shining, because only wonder knows.

And tell me about the mystery of humans, tell me how the Greeks built their temples that you feel like you’re in contact with the gods, and how the Romans managed to combine beauty and utility like nobody else. Tell me how Leonardo da Vinci did it, how Magellan did it. Tell me the secret of Einstein, Gaudi’, or Mozart. If you know it, tell me.

Tell me, how am I supposed to decide what to do with my life, if I don’t know about the lives of others? Tell me, how am I supposed to find my own story, if I have not a bit of passion for those that left their mark? Tell me what I should gamble my life for. Or no, don’t tell me. I will decide for myself. You show me the possibilities. Help me discover my passions, my talents, and my dreams. And remember that you will only succeed if you yourself have dreams, projects and passions of your own. Otherwise how am I supposed to believe you? And remind me that my life is not repeatable, that it’s made for greatness, and help me not to settle for small pleasures, real and virtual, that may satisfy me in the moment, but that deep down just bore me…

Challenge me, put my best qualities to the test, and write them on your register along with all those grades that are always the same. Help me not to believe illusions, not to live on dreams filled with air, but at the same time teach me to dream and to have the patience to realize these dreams, turning them into projects.

Teach me to reason, such that I may not derive my beliefs from common cliches, from the dominant thought, from unreasoned thought. Help me to be free. Remind me of the unity of knowlegde and don’t tell me about the unity of Italy, but be united among each other: don’t talk ill of one another, I beg you. And remind me of how beautiful this country is, talk about it, make me want to discover everything it is hiding before I begin to long for a tropical vacation.

And please, one last favor, keep your cynicism to yourselves. Don’t hide your battles from me, but give me the strength to bear them and don’t poison my hopes even before I have conceived them.

For this, one day, I will remember you.

Thank you, Prof. 2.0.

Different.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Think different

Steve Jobs (1955-2011), R.I.P.

Heavenly.

Volume up ...



Get lifted at Wanderations.

Don't miss this one.

Thanks, Jess.

Wings.

Three more days.

Need.

Michael B. Crawford left D.C. think-tanks and the Committee on Social Thought to open a motorcycle shop.

In this memoir/manifesto, he suggests that knowledge work is ultimately unfulfilling, and recommends manual trades as a more engaging way to both think and do.

We are recalled to the basic antagonism of economic life: work is toilsome and necessarily serves someone else’s interests. That’s why you get paid. Thus chastened, we may ask the proper question: what is it that we really want for a young person when we give them vocational advice? The only creditable answer, it seems to me, is one that avoids utopianism while keeping an eye on the human good: work that engages the human capacities as fully as possible. What I have tried to show is that this humane and commonsensical answer goes against the central imperative of capitalism, which assiduously partitions thinking from doing. What is to be done? I offer no program, only an observation that might be of interest to anyone called upon to give guidance to the young.

Since manual work has been subject to routinization for over a century, the nonroutinized manual work that remains, outside the confines of the factory, would seem to be resistant to much further routinization. There still appear developments around the margins; for example, in the last twenty years pre-fabricated roof trusses have eliminated some of the more challenging elements from the jobs of framers who work for large tract developers, and pre-hung doors have done the same for finish carpenters generally. But still, the physical circumstances of the jobs performed by carpenters, plumbers, and auto mechanics vary too much for them to be executed by idiots; they require circumspection and adaptability. One feels like a man, not a cog in a machine. The trades are then a natural home for anyone who would live by his own powers, free not only of deadening abstraction, but also of the insidious hopes and rising insecurities that seem to be endemic in our current economic life. This is the stoic ideal.

Read the rest at The New Atlantis.

He adds ...

Taking a tool in hand and seeing a direct effect of your actions in the world, answers to a very basic human need.



Watch the rest at FORA.

Don't miss Crawford's book, Shop Class as Soulcraft. There are many answers found there.

Cliffy has some as well ... Thank you, Karen.

Transition.

Goldsworthy, Entrance, undated


A permanent state of transition is man's most noble condition.

- Juan Ramón Jiménez

Beauty.

... from The Fresh Aspect.

Darrell Scott, "The Miracle of Living"

He left Boston in December for New Mexico
Determined to forget all of the faces he’d known
A little lonesome in a world of troubled mind

With a bed roll on his shoulder and a banjo on his knee
He would hitch a ride with truckers
He believed them to be free
Eighteen-wheelers roll a little further down the line

He did not meet a girl in Richmond nor in old San Antone
His vision of the Southwest would be realized alone
Alone to wonder
how his life had gone thus far

As he walked along the highway
He felt a power from inside
He found a miracle of living
In having nothing left to hide

He walked Carlsbad to White Sands
For forty days and nights
But it only took ten minutes for that man to realize:
Lord, it’s lonesome everywhere

Now he’s living back in Boston teaching English in high school
Glad to have bi-weekly wages
Glad the kids all think he’s cool
He’s a man who has learned from where he’s been

He keeps a bottle full of white sand on his table down the hall
And a worn map of New Mexico thumb-tacked on the wall
Oh, you never know
He may need to go again

As he walks along the hallway
He feels that power swell up from inside
And finds a miracle of living
In having nothing left to hide

Oh, it’s a miracle

Telemann, "Overture" from the Polish Partita

Julian Bream and John Williams perform ...

Wonders.

As Once the Winged Energy of Delight

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with Things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the pattern grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions ... For the God
wants to know himself in you.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Todo.

Brandt, The Adephi, 1939


Quiero que sepas
una cosa.

Tú sabes cómo es esto:
si miro
la luna de cristal, la rama roja
del lento otoño en mi ventana,
si toco
junto al fuego
la impalpable ceniza
o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña,
todo me lleva a ti,
como si todo lo que existe:
aromas, luz, metales,
fueran pequeños barcos que navegan
hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.

Pablo Neruda, de "Si Tu Me Olvidas"

Passion.

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.

- Vincent van Gogh

Live.

In order to write about life, first you must live it.

- Ernest Hemingway

Grand.

For the first time in over 30 years, The Saint Louis Art Museum, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and The Cleveland Museum of Art have collaborated to reunite the three panels of Agapanthus as the artist himself intended.

The Agapanthus triptych was inspired by Monet's pond in his famed garden at Giverny, just west of Paris. Monet himself gave the title Agapanthus to the 42 foot triptych after the plant (also known as "African lily" or "Lily of the Nile"). His large-scale water-lily compositions represent the culminating achievement of his career, and were described by the artist as his Grand Decorations.

Read the rest at St. Louis Art Museum.

Happy Birthday, Buckingham.

Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham was born on this date in 1947.

Not taught.

Doesn't read music.



Enjoy the "extension of his limitations ..."

Sweetly.

Wyeth, Blowing Leaves, 1980


Our lives ... are but a little while, so let them run as sweetly as you can, and give no thought to grief from day to day. For time is not concerned to keep our hopes, but hurries on its business, and is gone.

- Euripides

Marvel.

Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.

I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.

If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,

never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.

- Federico García Lorca

Peace.

Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.


The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, ...


... while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.

- John Muir

More at Cultural Offering ...

Moment.

There is a brief period of twilight of which I am especially fond, ...


... little more than a moment, when I see what seems to be color without light, followed by another brief period of light without color.


The earlier period, like a dawn of night, calls up such sights as at all other times are hidden, wistful half-formless presences neither of day nor night, that draw up with them similar presences in the mind.

- Robert Grudin

Thank you, Corrine (top) and Abbie & Randolfo (bottom). What a day!

Care.

Ecclesiastes 5

God's in Charge

1
Watch your step when you enter God's house.
Enter to learn. That's far better than mindlessly offering a sacrifice,
Doing more harm than good.

2
Don't shoot off your mouth, or speak before you think.
Don't be too quick to tell God what you think he wants to hear.
God's in charge, not you—the less you speak, the better.

3
Overwork makes for restless sleep.
Overtalk shows you up as a fool.

4-5
When you tell God you'll do something, do it—now.
God takes no pleasure in foolish gabble. Vow it, then do it.
Far better not to vow in the first place than to vow and not pay up.

6
Don't let your mouth make a total sinner of you.
When called to account, you won't get by with
"Sorry, I didn't mean it."
Why risk provoking God to angry retaliation?

7
But against all illusion and fantasy and empty talk
There's always this rock foundation: Fear God!

A Salary of Smoke

8-9
Don't be too upset when you see the poor kicked around, and justice and right violated all over the place. Exploitation filters down from one petty official to another. There's no end to it, and nothing can be done about it. But the good earth doesn't cheat anyone—even a bad king is honestly served by a field.

10
The one who loves money is never satisfied with money,
Nor the one who loves wealth with big profits. More smoke.

11
The more loot you get, the more looters show up.
And what fun is that—to be robbed in broad daylight?

12
Hard and honest work earns a good night's sleep,
Whether supper is beans or steak.
But a rich man's belly gives him insomnia.

13-17
Here's a piece of bad luck I've seen happen:
A man hoards far more wealth than is good for him
And then loses it all in a bad business deal.
He fathered a child but hasn't a cent left to give him.
He arrived naked from the womb of his mother;
He'll leave in the same condition—with nothing.
This is bad luck, for sure—naked he came, naked he went.
So what was the point of working for a salary of smoke?
All for a miserable life spent in the dark?
Make the Most of What God Gives

18-20
After looking at the way things are on this earth, here's what I've decided is the best way to live: Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever job you have for as long as God gives you life. And that's about it. That's the human lot. Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what's given and delighting in the work. It's God's gift! God deals out joy in the present, the now. It's useless to brood over how long we might live.

If.

Most people who work in corporations or academia have witnessed something like the following: A number of engineers are sitting together in a room, bouncing ideas off each other. Out of the discussion emerges a new concept that seems promising. Then some laptop-wielding person in the corner, having performed a quick Google search, announces that this “new” idea is, in fact, an old one—or at least vaguely similar—and has already been tried. Either it failed, or it succeeded. If it failed, then no manager who wants to keep his or her job will approve spending money trying to revive it. If it succeeded, then it’s patented and entry to the market is presumed to be unattainable, since the first people who thought of it will have “first-mover advantage” and will have created “barriers to entry.” The number of seemingly promising ideas that have been crushed in this way must number in the millions.

What if that person in the corner hadn’t been able to do a Google search? It might have required weeks of library research to uncover evidence that the idea wasn’t entirely new—and after a long and toilsome slog through many books, tracking down many references, some relevant, some not. When the precedent was finally unearthed, it might not have seemed like such a direct precedent after all. There might be reasons why it would be worth taking a second crack at the idea, perhaps hybridizing it with innovations from other fields. Hence the virtues of Galapagan isolation.

Read the rest at World Policy Institute.

Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community.

- Nathaniel Branden



Innovation will never arrive like the calvary ... throngs of white-clad, locked-stepped, good-deed-doers thundering in to save the day.

No.

It's the crooked trees that stand out in the landscape of column after column of well-pruned masses. That's why it's a mistake to look for imagination and innovation in boardrooms and classrooms.

The shadowy corners.

The back row.

The audience of one.

Look there for the solution.

Happy Birthday, Horowitz.

My all-time favorite pianist, Vladimir Horowitz, was born on this date in 1903.

Here he performs Schumann's "Traumerei," from the famous Moscow concert ...

Freed.

I have great faith in all things not yet spoken.
I want my deepest pious feelings freed.
What no one yet has dared to risk and warrant
will be for me a challenge I must meet.

If this presumptious seems, God, may I be forgiven.
For what I want to say to you is this:
my efforts shall be like a driving force,
quite without anger, without timidness
as little children show their love for you.

With these outflowing, river-like, with deltas
that spread like arms to reach the open sea,
with the recurrent tides that never cease
will I acknowledge you, will I proclaim you
as no one ever has before.

And if this should be arrogance, so let me
arrogant be to justify my prayer
that stands so serious and so alone
before your forehead, circled by the clouds.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Delicious.

October

Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath!
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf,
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief
And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay
In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I
Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks
And dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks,
And music of kind voices ever nigh;
And when my last sand twinkled in the glass,
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

- William Cullent Bryant

Still.

Let us labor for an inward stillness--
An inward stillness and an inward healing.
That perfect silence where the lips and heart
Are still, and we no longer entertain
Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions,
But God alone speaks to us and we wait
In singleness of heart that we may know
His will, and in the silence of our spirits,
That we may do His will and do that only.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Truth.

Goldsworthy, Elder Leaf Patch, 1983


The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

- Flannery O'Connor