When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
― Albert Camus
Sometimes you just have to bite your upper lip and put sunglasses on.
― Bob Dylan
Money doesn’t talk, it swears. – Bob Dylan
Dylan, Yavar, and I went to Capital One to see the Capitals play the Nashville Predators. Lost 5-4. The Caps goaltender accidentally passed the puck to the other team, which resulted in a goal. Whoops.
[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”7″ display=”basic_imagebrowser”]Big crowd.
Nancy and I went to Falls Church Merrifield and bought some Winterberries for the Commons (I also got a couple of our yard).
Joyce and I planted them in the Commons.
[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”6″ display=”basic_slideshow” autoplay=”0″ arrows=”1″ show_thumbnail_link=”0″]Went with Dylan to the Steve Forbert show at the City Winery in DC last night. He played the Jackrabbit Slim in its entirety, in celebration of the 40th anniversary of its release. His band was truly outstanding! City Winery is a fine place to see a show, more than decent food.
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By Emily Dickinson
Saw the Shin Yun troupe at the George Mason Concert Hall. A somewhat strange mixture of Chinese traditional dance and religious cult propaganda. The group is banned in China. Part of the show focused on the repression of free expression in China, religious expression in particular. The dancing was entertaining and the show was educational.
by Emily Dickinson
by Emily Dickinson
The book consists of a series of excerpts from various works by Fred Rogers. I suppose it’s fair to say that Mr. Rogers was a bit cornball and simplistic. It’s certainly understandable why have many people, including me, didn’t pay a lot of attention to him.
But after seeing the recent movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, doing some reading about his life, and reading this book, I can see the value of Mr. Rogers. Actually, his thoughts on love and kindness are profound.
I have always called talking about feelings “important talk”. Knowing that feelings are natural and normal for all of us can make it easier for us to share them with one another. – Fred Rogers
The real issue in life is not how many blessings we have, but what we do with our blessings. Some people have many blessings and hoard them away. Some have few and give everything away. – Fred Rogers
If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person. – Fred Rogers
When you combine your own intuition with a sensitivity to other people’s feelings and moods, you may be close to the origins of valuable human attributes such as generosity, altruism, compassion, sympathy, and empathy. – Fred Rogers
I hope you’re proud of yourself for the times you said “yes,” when all it meant was extra work for you and was seemingly helpful only to somebody else. – Fred Rogers
What makes the difference between wishing and realizing our wishes question what lots of things, of course, but the main one, I think karma is whether we link our wishes to our act of work. It may take months or years, but it’s far more likely to happen when we care so much that we will work as hard as we can to make it happen. And when we are working towards the realization of our wishes, some of our greatest strengths come from the encouragement of people who care about us. – Fred Rogers
Listening is a very active awareness of the coming together of at least two lives. Listening, as far as I’m concerned, is certainly a prerequisite of love. One of the most essential ways of saying “I love you” is being a receptive listener. – Fred Rogers
I didn’t see any this year that I would call a great – or even very good. Below is a list of the ones I did see (that I remember), roughly in the order of “goodness”.
Written by the daughter of Kenny Shopsin, the founder of the famously quirky restaurant which carries his surname.
Written in a quirky style, with funky typography. Primarily short antidotes about her family and the restaurant. It starts off kind of slow but becomes a lot of fun about halfway through.
The title refers to her father’s philosophy. Nothing really matters, but dedicating oneself to something actually makes it matter. (I may be wildly mispresenting his thoughts.)
An analysis of the rise of Hilter. Many parallels to the rise of Trumpism, albeit on a much larger scale.
Really something of a boring book. Probably important for future historians, but too much detail for the average reader.
by Emily Dickinson
