A Birthday Thought

"Youth is not a period of life, it is a condition of the spirit, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, an intensity of emotion, a victory of courage over timidity, a taste for adventure over comfort. One becomes old when one abandons one's ideals."
- Douglas MacArthur 1945

Those First 2 Years Are Killer

"The average baby demands adult attention of one kind or another every twenty seconds. New mothers lose an average of seven hundred hours of sleep during that first year. Marital satisfaction plummets 70 percent, while risk of maternal depression more than doubles..." - David Brooks, The Social Animal, page 35

Little Things Matter

"In one study, we were watching newlyweds, and what often happened with the couples who ended up in divorce is that when one partner would ask for credit, the other spouse wouldn't give it. And with the happier couples, the spouse would hear it and say, 'You're right'. That stood out. When you nod and say 'uh-huh' or 'yeah', you are doing that as a sign of support.."
From the book Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, page 25

Maurice Sendak Still Kicking

 

"I take kids seriously, they have a lot of things wrong. They protect their parents. Children are brave little creatures."

(about his new book Bumble-Ardy) "... both his parents die on the first page, don't ask me what I was thinking."

"I have to lie down, have lunch, go get a haircut, make believe we have a purpose to living, I'm still living. I can still listen to an opera."
-Maurice Sendak

Insincerity Quote

"There is, especially in the American media, a deep belief that insincerity is better than no sincerity at all."
-Christopher Hitchens

Ways of Giving

"There are those who give with pain little of the much that they have, and that pain is their cleansing. There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. And then, there are those who give without being mindful of giving, they give just as they walk and they breathe. Through the eyes of those the heavens smile on Earth".
-The Prophet

Pigs Get Fed Hogs Get Slaughtered

"Pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered.." - Roxanne Qualls, as heard on WVXU this morning quoting Mayor Mallory in regards to the budget battle.

I heard her say this and had no idea what the saying meant. So I googled the saying, and found that Joe Sutter claims to have invented the phrase in 2001 in response to a salesman that tried to gouge customers instead of offering his product at a fair price. He ended up being slaughtered. If he had been satisfied with a reasonable profit he would have been fed.

If I am understanding this correctly, Qualls and Mallory are saying that those who ask for too much in the budget debate may loose, and those who are reasonable may win.

How to Speed Decomposition

....It now appeared that he had taken practical steps to ensure that there would be no veneration. Though the grave was excavated to a depth of eight feet, no human remains whatever were discovered. The cardinal had been buried in a simple wooden coffin, and on his instructions the grave had been filled with a soft mulch designed to speed decomposition; the wet clay of the Lickey hills had done the rest. The crestfallen relic-hunters had to content themselves with a few pieces of corroded metalwork and the tassels from Newman’s ceremonial cardinal’s hat...

-From the NY Times Review of Books on Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint

Have a Tormented Day

"No little part of the torment of existence is that Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us catch our breath but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip."
- Schopenhauer (as quoted in The Corrections)

Zephyr

This band never really made it big, but for some reason, I was turned on to them a long time a long time ago. I just read up on the band on the internet and foud out that the singer, Candy Givens died in 1984.

Sunset Ride album, 1972
 

picture on the back of the cover
 

...Boulder, Colorado, in the fall of 1968, was the gateway to the Rockies for thousands of people leaving the East and West to look for a cleaner, more rewarding life. Nowadays, Boulder is a cute little Disneylandesque example of why homosexuals shouldn’t plan cities, but twenty years ago it still had a couple of rough edges left. The popular bands in town were the Leopold Fuchs Hate Band and Black Pearl. Drugs, parachutes, skis, mountain climbing gear, motorcycles, and waterbeds were the popular recreational toys of the day...

...We played about half-way down the bill on the first night. It was just before sunset. The city powers-that-were had prepared for bloody, Communist inspired riots: plenty of cops on hand. There were a dozen or so street freaks who wanted to get in for free; you know, “music belongs to The People” types, gathered on a little hill just outside the stadium. They were typical noisy jerks, drunk, who are probably now the sportscasters on your local talk radio station...

... Carly Simon...was a very smart girl, and she deduced, correctly, that if she struck up a romance with Eddie, she would receive priority treatment. She was ever so right: ...she began getting the better time slots and more of it. Eddie is not the most macho of men and I suppose that f**ing a big horse of a woman like Carly did something wonderful for his ego.... - David Givens, interview about Zephyr

RFK on Gross National Happiness

....we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

-Robert F. Kennedy Address, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, March 18, 1968

At Least You're Not an Oyster

“Let us rejoice and bless God that we are neither Oysters, Hogs, or Dray-Horses; and not stand repining that He has not made us Angels; lest we be found unworthy of that share of Happiness He has thought fit to allow us.”
- Benjamin Franklin

Finance Quote of the Day

"Construction lending is really the cocaine of the banking industry..."

At least it was... until 17% of them went into default ...

"If a bank forecloses on a house, it's a house. Everybody knows what to do with it,..But if you're dealing with a half-constructed hotel or a half-constructed strip mall, not only does no one want it, you now have to maintain it" ... many bankers have chosen to wait it out, extending the terms of loans to troubled developers to keep from having to foreclose and take possession of a half-built headache. Which leaves bad loans and troubled property in limbo...

- USA Today article

Sprawl Becoming Less Affordable

...The meager short-term benefits of sprawl are increasingly outweighed by its profligate long-term costs. It's no longer uncrowded, no longer attractive, no longer livable. Now the last remaining argument for sprawl -- that it was affordable -- is discredited... -Andres Duany, in Portland

I found it interesting that the Oregon newspaper has tons of negative comments similar to what you would see in the Enquirer. Frankly, I think Cincinnati and Portland are both fantastic cities. I don't know why so many people hate their city so much. Does the anonymous nature of commenting encourage the vitriol, or is is the negativity encouraged by the papers as a way to drive pageviews?

Meanwhile: homebuilders in Las Vegas are busy rebuilding the bubble:

..There are 9,517 spanking new houses sitting empty. An additional 5,600 homes were repossessed by lenders in the first three months of this year and could soon be for sale.
Yet builders here are putting up 1,100 homes, and they are frantically buying lots for even more...

Civic Beauty

"Today nobody is concerned with city planning as an art - only as a
technical problem. When, as a result, the artistic effect in no way
lives up to our expectations, we are left bewildered and helpless;
nevertheless, in dealing with the next project it is again treated
wholly from the technical point of view, as if it were a railroad in
which artistic questions are not involved." Camillo Sitte,
City Planning According to Artistic Principles, ca 1889

Gift of Understanding

It's an oversimplification to say that "children make you a better person," but they do, or should, improve your ability to psychologically and emotionally integrate that a) you want lots of stuff, b) what you end up getting remains, no matter what, ridiculously small and inconsequential, and c) you can't control your life nearly as much as you think.

I would sooner say that these realizations are gifts which children give to us rather than calling them "selfish reasons" to have children.

- Tyler Cowen

Danny the Champion of the World

"I really loved living in that gypsy caravan. I loved it especially in the evenings when I was tucked up in my bunk and my father was telling me stories. The kerosene lamp was turned low, and I could see lumps of wood glowing red-hot in the old stove, and wonderful it was was to be lying there snug and warm in my bunk in that little room. Most wonderful of all was the feeling that when I went to sleep, my father would still be there, very close to me, siting in his chair by the fire, or lying in the bunk above my own."

Last paragraph of Chapter 1 of Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl

What a fantastic storyteller. Every kid loves his books.

Wendell Berry, Gene Lodgson and Wes Jackson

I have been getting into listening to more and more podcasts, and I think Citybeat has the best local podcast. This week they have excerpts from the Xavier Food and Agriculture Lecture Series last Sunday, which featured a discussion between Wendell Berry, Gene Lodgson and Wes Jackson. Below is a quote I transcribed:

Well I wanted to go back to this issue of limiting growth. We talk about limiting growth as if somebody is going to figure out how to limit it, as if somebody external to the problem would come in and measure it and say "alright, this far and no farther". There are lots of reasons to worry about that as you know.

So I think if we are going to talk about living as creatures rather than machines, you know all the voices all around are telling you that you are a machine, ... if we're going to try to live as creatures we ought to try to think our way back into our creaturely life and talk about what pleases us.

And one of the first things you realize if you begin to think of the human creature as a person who seeks to be pleased, is that most people are deeply displeased... by their work, by their places and so on...

"Thank God it's Friday" is virtually a national motto. But, people that are doing the thing they are called to do the work that they are best fitted to do in this world, and attracted to aren't saying "thank God it's Friday". They're having trouble distinguishing between their work and their recreation. Work itself is pleasure giving.

One thing the three of us have in common is that we live in really attractive places. And that's not at all to say that these places in which we live are extravagant in any way. We don't live in palaces. We live in places that in one way or another have relation to the surrounding landscape. And in the relationship between the dwelling place and the landscape and the other creatures with whom the dwelling place is shared there is a kind of comeliness that is deeply pleasing and deeply satisfying.

Now I'll just talk a little now from experience. I'm speaking as an experienced odd person.

If you live in a pleasing place, a place that you really like to be in, you're not going to need television, or violent distractions. Your not going to spend your time speeding somewhere. You're have to want to spend your leisurely time at home, (which would be a great saving in fossil fuels and lead and these other things that we're against). If you like looking at the country you are in, your not going to need to look at television. My own phobia or motto is to stay away from screens. I avoid screens of all kinds.... screens of distraction ...that disguise the place that you are. Books don't do that. -Wendell Berry

Neutral Public Ground

If we valued fraternity as much as independence, and democracy as much as free enterprise, our zoning codes would not enforce the social isolation that plagues our modern neighborhoods, but would require some form of public gathering place every block or two. We may one day rediscover the wisdom of James Oglethorpe who laid out Savannah such that her citizens lived close to public gathering areas. Indeed, he did so with such compelling effect that Sherman, in his destructive march to the sea, spared Savannah alone. - The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg, page 23

National Bike Summit Quote

Today, I want to announce a sea change. People across America who value bicycling should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized. -Ray LaHood

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