Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.
Dame Edna Everage
*****************************
I have a problem. My problem is a sense of humor. I have a fondness for the absurdities, ironies, bewilderments, perplexities and paradoxes of life. I find them amusing. It is funny when those things affect other people. I laugh with them if they laugh. But I am particularly amused when it's my feet that are stuck to the fly paper or I'm the one who bumps his head.
So what's the problem? The problem is that when I describe the things about my life that I think are amusing many people don't see it that way. I guess they think I'm complaining and feeling sorry for myself. Or even worse some people will ascribe to me a dire condition that must be dealt with somehow. Everything has an amusing side of you just look for it
Last night I was talking to a friend who reminded me of that Thanksgiving when my stove and oven weren't working and how I bought some canned food to eat and my can opener decided to break down before I got the first can opened. It was a peanut butter and jelly Thanksgiving. If one can't see the humor in that one is lost.
If I can't remember names so what. I have a lot of things in my brain to remember. It does not mean I am losing my mind. It amuses me.
It is difficult and painful for me to walk. I stagger. I am not falling down, coming apart and ready for a wheel chair. I stagger, that's all. I went to meet two friends in Philadelphia one afternoon. One of them was a few years older than I. We had to walk a long block to a bus stop and we both staggered. The other person looked at us a said how awful it was that we were both staggering. I said that we weren't staggering, we were just warming up for our tap dance number. My staggering friend laughed out loud. The other person didn't think it was that funny.
There isn't any experience in life that doesn't deserve to have it's funny side. I was in a production of "Arsenic And Old Lace" at a theatre in Florida. The comedy, if you don't know it, is about two charming old ladies who benevolently poison all the lonely old man who come to live with them in order to put them out of their misery. It's very funny.
We did 40 performances of it and many of them were in the afternoon. We would frequently have church groups who were bussed in to enjoy the show. But one afternoon, in the middle of the first act, a large group got up and walked out. As they were leaving to get back on their bus the house manager asked them what was wrong. They said they couldn't stay because the play was about "serial killers." Heaven help those pious people and grant them each a sense of humor.
I can get to laughing when I think back to some of the silly things I have done in my life and some of the amusing predicaments I have been in. Now I find there are many comical things about being a senior and I'm enjoying every one of them.
If you catch me trying to find my slippers in the morning go ahead and laugh. I don't mind.
Dana
The Vagabond
******************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 6 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Letter To Quitters
"What man wants to do, he can do." This is just a high-sounding tautology. What he wants to do upon the command of his morally commanding reason is exactly what he ought to do.
Immanuel Kant
***********************
Just as vermin crawl through the corpse so the worms of inanity and negativity ooze their way through a human being or a society that has lost its standard of reason and conscience. With a wave and bland smile the destroyers will throw a rope of lies to the struggling spirit. Innocent criminals, self bewildered, brazen fools, parasites in those still living.
As frightening as it may appear to uncertain travelers we must tread on the high places of our reason and not allow the enemy to dwell there. All the claims of failure, hidden error, uselessness, unworthiness must be chased out and trampled on by iron boots.
Logic is a tool in the hands of both the seer and the deceiver. It invites combat, and it is a skilled fighter. We have a choice. We can either join battle in the mud pit of immoral muck or stand on the high ground in the light of reason knowing that the truth sails on the winds of integrity and inspiration. Ignorance, greed and irresponsibility are given license by a dying society. They are the worms that gnaw the vitality out of our lives and they are busy right now, today, this very hour, camouflaging their desperate work with spider webs.
When we stop listening to the blandishments and fancy prose and posing of the deniers and truly think in the highest and clearest manner we know we are not permitted to do just what we please. We are permitted to do what we know is right and we know what is right because we decide.
If you are still alive you know there is no quitting. If you quit the worms are waiting.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 5 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Immanuel Kant
***********************
Just as vermin crawl through the corpse so the worms of inanity and negativity ooze their way through a human being or a society that has lost its standard of reason and conscience. With a wave and bland smile the destroyers will throw a rope of lies to the struggling spirit. Innocent criminals, self bewildered, brazen fools, parasites in those still living.
As frightening as it may appear to uncertain travelers we must tread on the high places of our reason and not allow the enemy to dwell there. All the claims of failure, hidden error, uselessness, unworthiness must be chased out and trampled on by iron boots.
Logic is a tool in the hands of both the seer and the deceiver. It invites combat, and it is a skilled fighter. We have a choice. We can either join battle in the mud pit of immoral muck or stand on the high ground in the light of reason knowing that the truth sails on the winds of integrity and inspiration. Ignorance, greed and irresponsibility are given license by a dying society. They are the worms that gnaw the vitality out of our lives and they are busy right now, today, this very hour, camouflaging their desperate work with spider webs.
When we stop listening to the blandishments and fancy prose and posing of the deniers and truly think in the highest and clearest manner we know we are not permitted to do just what we please. We are permitted to do what we know is right and we know what is right because we decide.
If you are still alive you know there is no quitting. If you quit the worms are waiting.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 5 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Friday, January 28, 2011
Good Company
If you can mentally separate solitude from loneliness today, your time alone will seem alive with possibility.
Unknown
***********
It's a strange back and forth see saw ride. Sometimes I am very lonely. Those are times when I have no one to talk to. I lived a very collaborative life, surrounded by fellow artists, sharing experiences, ideas and humor. There was always someone there. Some of my most enjoyable memories are of both the inspired work and the comical antics of the creative people I have had the pleasure to associate with. I could tell great stories if there was anyone around to listen to them.
Now I live alone and truthfully I cherish my solitude. I am at home with my own experiences and my own ideas, and I have grown accustomed to it. It is refreshing not to have to be concerned with what I'm wearing, when I get up, how many dishes are in the sink or how much smoke I've put into the apartment. But there are other, higher levels to my solitude. I can perfectly well catch myself at my own foolishness without it being pointed out by someone else. I can trace the evolution of an idea without being interrupted. I can let my imagination roam across distant and unfamiliar landscapes in search of crowns of gold and magic wands. And no one will stop me and tell me I'm being unrealistic.
I write every day. That gives me a way to investigate the possibilities of knowledge and discovery, subordinated to nothing but the shackles of my own humble intellect. If I could converse with people maybe I wouldn't write so much. But alone or with a companion the vagabond journey is the one I'm on. If you come and visit you'll find me a very sociable guy. But if you don't it's okay. I keep excellent company with myself.
DB - The Vagabond
**********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 5 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Unknown
***********
It's a strange back and forth see saw ride. Sometimes I am very lonely. Those are times when I have no one to talk to. I lived a very collaborative life, surrounded by fellow artists, sharing experiences, ideas and humor. There was always someone there. Some of my most enjoyable memories are of both the inspired work and the comical antics of the creative people I have had the pleasure to associate with. I could tell great stories if there was anyone around to listen to them.
Now I live alone and truthfully I cherish my solitude. I am at home with my own experiences and my own ideas, and I have grown accustomed to it. It is refreshing not to have to be concerned with what I'm wearing, when I get up, how many dishes are in the sink or how much smoke I've put into the apartment. But there are other, higher levels to my solitude. I can perfectly well catch myself at my own foolishness without it being pointed out by someone else. I can trace the evolution of an idea without being interrupted. I can let my imagination roam across distant and unfamiliar landscapes in search of crowns of gold and magic wands. And no one will stop me and tell me I'm being unrealistic.
I write every day. That gives me a way to investigate the possibilities of knowledge and discovery, subordinated to nothing but the shackles of my own humble intellect. If I could converse with people maybe I wouldn't write so much. But alone or with a companion the vagabond journey is the one I'm on. If you come and visit you'll find me a very sociable guy. But if you don't it's okay. I keep excellent company with myself.
DB - The Vagabond
**********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 5 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Thursday, January 27, 2011
A Reprint from January '09
Everything has its own song.
Josef von Eichendorff
########################
I hear the music of creation.
I hear the sounds of nature.
I hear the songs of life.
I hear the vigorously loud and the beautifully silent.
I hear the rolling tympani of thunder, the cymbal crash of lightening, the snare drum of rain on the window and the sweet celesta of falling snow upon my cheek.
I hear the adagio of the drifting clouds, the harp notes of sunshine and the oboe song of the moon.
I hear the trumpet calls from the mountain tops, the trombones in the forest and the gentle horn upon the surface of the lake.
I hear the flute tones of the humble pebbles on the beach, the whisper of the sand and the parade of marching bands as the tides come in.
I hear the choir of autumn colors, the sopranos in their nests in spring,
I hear the largo of the growing flowers and the presto of the squirrels.
I hear the siren song of stars and the humming along the garden path.
I hear the bubbling madrigal of children on their way to school.
I hear the opera of the busy city streets.
I hear the strings that sing of love and friendship, of hope and faith.
I hear the sounds of nature.
I hear the music of creation.
I hear the symphony of life,
"And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."
Isaiah 55:12
DB
Josef von Eichendorff
########################
I hear the music of creation.
I hear the sounds of nature.
I hear the songs of life.
I hear the vigorously loud and the beautifully silent.
I hear the rolling tympani of thunder, the cymbal crash of lightening, the snare drum of rain on the window and the sweet celesta of falling snow upon my cheek.
I hear the adagio of the drifting clouds, the harp notes of sunshine and the oboe song of the moon.
I hear the trumpet calls from the mountain tops, the trombones in the forest and the gentle horn upon the surface of the lake.
I hear the flute tones of the humble pebbles on the beach, the whisper of the sand and the parade of marching bands as the tides come in.
I hear the choir of autumn colors, the sopranos in their nests in spring,
I hear the largo of the growing flowers and the presto of the squirrels.
I hear the siren song of stars and the humming along the garden path.
I hear the bubbling madrigal of children on their way to school.
I hear the opera of the busy city streets.
I hear the strings that sing of love and friendship, of hope and faith.
I hear the sounds of nature.
I hear the music of creation.
I hear the symphony of life,
"And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."
Isaiah 55:12
DB
In The Cave
The great arrogance of the present is to forget the intelligence of the past.
Ken Burns
**********************
I was going through a recent copy of Art News admiring some of the work that's current and noticing the great range of materials artists can work with these days: computer graphics, lasers, and a great array of colors and media. Some of the pieces are simply low in quality and craftsmanship, displaying a juvenile lack of imagination. But there are others which push at the limits of their materials and hoist up one's own imagination as one views them. But on one page is a portrait, a simple drawing, charcoal on paper, by the 15th Century artist Francesco Bonsigniori. It got me to thinking about how art has developed over the years and how much the past can influence the present. But some things never change: imagination, creativity, artistry, observation, articulation and the love and necessity of doing it.
A few years ago I became interested in the ancient cave paintings while I was working on a story about prehistoric people. Those paintings are mostly of animals. They were painted deep in the caves lit only by torchlight, using the simplest of materials. The cave artists had some primitive colors obtained by grinding up rock. The also used the bulges and folding of the cave walls to define the muscles and limbs of the animals they were drawing.
Some of the depictions are of standing animals, some running, some in herds, with hunting scenes and some that could be attacks. Stories are being told in pictures. Many of the drawings are crude and not well done, but there are quite a few that are excellent. Much has been written about those cave paintings but there is one thing about them that, in my opinion, is the most remarkable of all and I haven't read any accounts of it anywhere, so maybe this is the first.
Back in the early 80"s when I first began to study art I took a life drawing class with Gregory D'Lessio, who was an excellent teacher. He would arrange exercises for us designed to improve our observation and expression. Some of the poses the model took were long, 25 minutes or more. But others were short, one minute or less. During those one couldn't do any detailed drawing but tried to get the general position and attitude of the model. Those are called gesture drawings. Then once or twice a week he would have the model pose for one minute while we did no drawing but only observed the pose. Then the model would break the pose and we would have to draw what we had seen. Those were called memory gesture drawings. After resting for a minute the model would take the pose again, so we could see see how we had done, and then go on to the next one. Those were very difficult exercises to do. Very difficult.
When I wasn't in class I would sometimes sit on the steps of a building, watch the people passing by and try to draw them as I had seen them, trying to get the position, the form and movement of the person, trying to remember what I had seen.
Many of those prehistoric caves are very deep, small, difficult to get to and there is no sunlight. There are no animals running back and forth inside those caves. And that means all the figures and scenes drawn by those prehistoric artists deep in the cave had to be done from memory.
And that is amazing. They were learning how to draw in those ancient times just the way I was but without all the benefits of the 20th Century. How well did they do it? See for yourself.
Paleolithic Cave Paintings
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 5 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Ken Burns
**********************
I was going through a recent copy of Art News admiring some of the work that's current and noticing the great range of materials artists can work with these days: computer graphics, lasers, and a great array of colors and media. Some of the pieces are simply low in quality and craftsmanship, displaying a juvenile lack of imagination. But there are others which push at the limits of their materials and hoist up one's own imagination as one views them. But on one page is a portrait, a simple drawing, charcoal on paper, by the 15th Century artist Francesco Bonsigniori. It got me to thinking about how art has developed over the years and how much the past can influence the present. But some things never change: imagination, creativity, artistry, observation, articulation and the love and necessity of doing it.
A few years ago I became interested in the ancient cave paintings while I was working on a story about prehistoric people. Those paintings are mostly of animals. They were painted deep in the caves lit only by torchlight, using the simplest of materials. The cave artists had some primitive colors obtained by grinding up rock. The also used the bulges and folding of the cave walls to define the muscles and limbs of the animals they were drawing.
Some of the depictions are of standing animals, some running, some in herds, with hunting scenes and some that could be attacks. Stories are being told in pictures. Many of the drawings are crude and not well done, but there are quite a few that are excellent. Much has been written about those cave paintings but there is one thing about them that, in my opinion, is the most remarkable of all and I haven't read any accounts of it anywhere, so maybe this is the first.
Back in the early 80"s when I first began to study art I took a life drawing class with Gregory D'Lessio, who was an excellent teacher. He would arrange exercises for us designed to improve our observation and expression. Some of the poses the model took were long, 25 minutes or more. But others were short, one minute or less. During those one couldn't do any detailed drawing but tried to get the general position and attitude of the model. Those are called gesture drawings. Then once or twice a week he would have the model pose for one minute while we did no drawing but only observed the pose. Then the model would break the pose and we would have to draw what we had seen. Those were called memory gesture drawings. After resting for a minute the model would take the pose again, so we could see see how we had done, and then go on to the next one. Those were very difficult exercises to do. Very difficult.
When I wasn't in class I would sometimes sit on the steps of a building, watch the people passing by and try to draw them as I had seen them, trying to get the position, the form and movement of the person, trying to remember what I had seen.
Many of those prehistoric caves are very deep, small, difficult to get to and there is no sunlight. There are no animals running back and forth inside those caves. And that means all the figures and scenes drawn by those prehistoric artists deep in the cave had to be done from memory.
And that is amazing. They were learning how to draw in those ancient times just the way I was but without all the benefits of the 20th Century. How well did they do it? See for yourself.
Paleolithic Cave Paintings
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 5 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Wake Up
We are not human beings on a spiritual journey, we are spiritual beings on a human journey.
Stephen Covey
************************
Years ago I went to visit a very wise man. I was seeking his advice. My acting career was going fairly well. But I was also doing a lot of broadcasting work and could drop everything and stay with that full time. I had also been doing some teaching and wanted to do more. My drawings and paintings were becoming better known. I was confused about which direction I ought to go with my life and just wanted to talk it out with him. I spelled it all out and said I was uncertain about which of those activities I should focus on. His reply, which I've never forgotten, was "The answer is none of the above. What you should be doing is waking up."
That remark has stayed with me all these years as one of the touchstones of my life, something to test all fundamental questions against. I once wrote isn't it odd that we spend most of our adult lives somewhere between asleep and awake?
These are some of those fundamental questions. Why aren't we fully awake yet? Why do we see "through a glass darkly"? and are unable to view reality face to face? Is the glass dark, or is it our own darkness that obscures the view? Is the glass a window, or a mirror, a telescope, a microscope, or all of those? Is the truth in the image on the glass or in the one behind it?
I used to take a train from Westchester into New York City. That route is a particularly busy one for trains going in many directions. Out the window I would see other tracks as they slid in under the train or fanned out from beneath it, and feel the rumble and bump as those tracks moved under the train. Eventually the ride would smooth out as we made it on to the main track and shortly after that into the tunnel which took us to Grand Central Station.
It is necessary and important for humans to make a lot of changes on their journeys. There are changes in schools, jobs and careers, in dwellings and neighborhoods, family and friends and changes in experiences, beliefs, opinions and understanding. At a certain point some people click on to the final track and know that the destination is enlightenment and spirituality. But is spiritual evolution simply a matter of waking up? Are all the choices, changes, bumps and rumbles along the journey happening in our sleep? "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" said Shakespeare.
"Know thyself" is another one of those vital touchstones of life. I have a lot of questions and some of them are fundamental and have cosmic importance to my life and to the world. But I won't have many answers until after I wake up. "Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." When I truly understand myself I can wake up, become enlightened, cease looking for myself through a glass, know myself as a spiritual being and find my place on the journey.
(I Cor. 13)
DB - The Vagabond
********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 5 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Stephen Covey
************************
Years ago I went to visit a very wise man. I was seeking his advice. My acting career was going fairly well. But I was also doing a lot of broadcasting work and could drop everything and stay with that full time. I had also been doing some teaching and wanted to do more. My drawings and paintings were becoming better known. I was confused about which direction I ought to go with my life and just wanted to talk it out with him. I spelled it all out and said I was uncertain about which of those activities I should focus on. His reply, which I've never forgotten, was "The answer is none of the above. What you should be doing is waking up."
That remark has stayed with me all these years as one of the touchstones of my life, something to test all fundamental questions against. I once wrote isn't it odd that we spend most of our adult lives somewhere between asleep and awake?
These are some of those fundamental questions. Why aren't we fully awake yet? Why do we see "through a glass darkly"? and are unable to view reality face to face? Is the glass dark, or is it our own darkness that obscures the view? Is the glass a window, or a mirror, a telescope, a microscope, or all of those? Is the truth in the image on the glass or in the one behind it?
I used to take a train from Westchester into New York City. That route is a particularly busy one for trains going in many directions. Out the window I would see other tracks as they slid in under the train or fanned out from beneath it, and feel the rumble and bump as those tracks moved under the train. Eventually the ride would smooth out as we made it on to the main track and shortly after that into the tunnel which took us to Grand Central Station.
It is necessary and important for humans to make a lot of changes on their journeys. There are changes in schools, jobs and careers, in dwellings and neighborhoods, family and friends and changes in experiences, beliefs, opinions and understanding. At a certain point some people click on to the final track and know that the destination is enlightenment and spirituality. But is spiritual evolution simply a matter of waking up? Are all the choices, changes, bumps and rumbles along the journey happening in our sleep? "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" said Shakespeare.
"Know thyself" is another one of those vital touchstones of life. I have a lot of questions and some of them are fundamental and have cosmic importance to my life and to the world. But I won't have many answers until after I wake up. "Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." When I truly understand myself I can wake up, become enlightened, cease looking for myself through a glass, know myself as a spiritual being and find my place on the journey.
(I Cor. 13)
DB - The Vagabond
********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 5 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Dancing Man
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
Charles Dickens
**************************
Thank you, all of you, to those I can reply to and those I can't, for you kind and comforting words to me about my friend Bill.
**************************************************
Now this is the story of a man named Sam. Sam is a dancer who performs mainly in musical comedies. He's a good dancer and a good man.
I was the principle player in a musical years ago, and in it I had a solo dance. I'm not much of a dancer and I need a lot of help and preparation. The show had a choreographer who was very interested in staging the big ensemble numbers but had no interest in me.
On the first day of rehearsal I explained my limitations to her and requested that she set my choreography as soon as possible so that I could learn it and practice it.
Nothing happened, A full week went by while she worked with the dancers and never noticed me. I repeat, I was the leading performer in this musical and the only one with a solo dance and my needs and wishes were being totally ignored.
Finally we got together and she gave me some opening steps which were very good and just right, but then she left it there. I made a tape of the orchestra playing the music for my dance and worked on it back in my room. But beyond the opening steps I didn't know what to do and in rehearsal I just did a lot of jumping around in order to fill out the music, expecting that she would get back to it and finish designing the dance.
When I asked her when we would work it out she said she liked all the jumping around. Well I didn't. It wasn't authentic to the character, to the story or to the music. But when we got to the first public performance that's what I did. After that night she left for another job.
Then I went to Sam and said "Sammy, please, you've got to help me." He obviously had seen the dance and how second rate it was and how much I was suffering because he didn't even take a breath. "Sure" he said.
The next morning we got together on the stage when no one was there. I played the tape and showed him the first few steps I had. He listened to the rest of the music and when I played it through again he came up with a dance that was perfect. Right off the top of his head. Right off the bottoms of his feet. The only trouble was it was too complicated for me. He said 'Okay" and simplified it a bit. It was still beyond my ability as a dancer, so he simplified it a bit more and it was fine. I could do it. We ran through it a few times as he taught it to me. Then I did it on my own while he watched and made a few corrections. Then I ran it five or six more times until I was secure with it.
At the performance that night that was the dance I did and I was applauded even from the stage.
Thank you Sam.
DB - The Vagabond
***********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 5 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Charles Dickens
**************************
Thank you, all of you, to those I can reply to and those I can't, for you kind and comforting words to me about my friend Bill.
**************************************************
Now this is the story of a man named Sam. Sam is a dancer who performs mainly in musical comedies. He's a good dancer and a good man.
I was the principle player in a musical years ago, and in it I had a solo dance. I'm not much of a dancer and I need a lot of help and preparation. The show had a choreographer who was very interested in staging the big ensemble numbers but had no interest in me.
On the first day of rehearsal I explained my limitations to her and requested that she set my choreography as soon as possible so that I could learn it and practice it.
Nothing happened, A full week went by while she worked with the dancers and never noticed me. I repeat, I was the leading performer in this musical and the only one with a solo dance and my needs and wishes were being totally ignored.
Finally we got together and she gave me some opening steps which were very good and just right, but then she left it there. I made a tape of the orchestra playing the music for my dance and worked on it back in my room. But beyond the opening steps I didn't know what to do and in rehearsal I just did a lot of jumping around in order to fill out the music, expecting that she would get back to it and finish designing the dance.
When I asked her when we would work it out she said she liked all the jumping around. Well I didn't. It wasn't authentic to the character, to the story or to the music. But when we got to the first public performance that's what I did. After that night she left for another job.
Then I went to Sam and said "Sammy, please, you've got to help me." He obviously had seen the dance and how second rate it was and how much I was suffering because he didn't even take a breath. "Sure" he said.
The next morning we got together on the stage when no one was there. I played the tape and showed him the first few steps I had. He listened to the rest of the music and when I played it through again he came up with a dance that was perfect. Right off the top of his head. Right off the bottoms of his feet. The only trouble was it was too complicated for me. He said 'Okay" and simplified it a bit. It was still beyond my ability as a dancer, so he simplified it a bit more and it was fine. I could do it. We ran through it a few times as he taught it to me. Then I did it on my own while he watched and made a few corrections. Then I ran it five or six more times until I was secure with it.
At the performance that night that was the dance I did and I was applauded even from the stage.
Thank you Sam.
DB - The Vagabond
***********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 5 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Monday, January 24, 2011
The Loss Of A Friend
Only the gentle are truly strong.
James Dean
*******************
Yesterday morning I sent yet another email to Just Plain Bill and was soon informed by his son that Bill left us last November. I was very sad to read that news. I wept.
Bill was a particular friend of mine and I will miss him very much. He was always instant with advice, encouragement and instructions to help me with my computer. When every now and then I was sloppy with my journal entries he was my proofreader.
After all these years he was the only Jlander/Blogspotter I have ever met personally, face to face. He often visited me here, bringing something to give me. He gave me some books. One day he brought me a bottle of Wild Turkey, my favorite hard stuff. I still have a golf club mitten he left behind, a calling card, I guess. He gave me my digital camera and taught me how to use it. He spent two hours one day trying to get my deviant, devilish Dell to work and finally took it away. And when some of you got together, pooled your resources and bought me the Hewlett Packard computer I have now, it was Just Plain Bill who delivered it to my front door, hauled it up three flights to my attic aerie and helped me to install it.
Bill once told me he had no sense of humor and yet on a few occasions we shared good times and laughs together over crab cakes and manhattans at the King George here in Bristol. The King George is closed now. Bill once told me about some of the bars he used to visit in this area but whose doors are shut now. I got him to laugh about it when I said "Bill, you've closed more bars than the temperance movement. What's your secret?"
Bill was a good guy for certain. We discussed many things. We disagreed about politics but we never argued about it. In fact I never heard him say a harsh or unkind word about anyone or anything. He was a true gentleman and a fine, first rate friend. I will never forget him.
Good bye Bill. May a giant bubble of blessings surround you wherever you go.
Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
*******************************
James Dean
*******************
Yesterday morning I sent yet another email to Just Plain Bill and was soon informed by his son that Bill left us last November. I was very sad to read that news. I wept.
Bill was a particular friend of mine and I will miss him very much. He was always instant with advice, encouragement and instructions to help me with my computer. When every now and then I was sloppy with my journal entries he was my proofreader.
After all these years he was the only Jlander/Blogspotter I have ever met personally, face to face. He often visited me here, bringing something to give me. He gave me some books. One day he brought me a bottle of Wild Turkey, my favorite hard stuff. I still have a golf club mitten he left behind, a calling card, I guess. He gave me my digital camera and taught me how to use it. He spent two hours one day trying to get my deviant, devilish Dell to work and finally took it away. And when some of you got together, pooled your resources and bought me the Hewlett Packard computer I have now, it was Just Plain Bill who delivered it to my front door, hauled it up three flights to my attic aerie and helped me to install it.
Bill once told me he had no sense of humor and yet on a few occasions we shared good times and laughs together over crab cakes and manhattans at the King George here in Bristol. The King George is closed now. Bill once told me about some of the bars he used to visit in this area but whose doors are shut now. I got him to laugh about it when I said "Bill, you've closed more bars than the temperance movement. What's your secret?"
Bill was a good guy for certain. We discussed many things. We disagreed about politics but we never argued about it. In fact I never heard him say a harsh or unkind word about anyone or anything. He was a true gentleman and a fine, first rate friend. I will never forget him.
Good bye Bill. May a giant bubble of blessings surround you wherever you go.
Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
*******************************
Sunday, January 23, 2011
WEEKEND PUZZLE ANSWERS
Weekend Puzzle Answers
Here are some famous trios. Who are they?
There was one winner, the unbeatable Val of the Blogspot Tigers.
The puzzle was:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
T KTY, T NJQB TQE T ATQM JZ ATDK
NSJJE, UVBTR TQE RBTKU
IKJUNO, URDSSU TQE QTUA
ZTDRA, AJXB TQE IATKDRO
ZTRABK, UJQ TQE AJSO YAJUR
AJX, UMDX TQE HCFX
ACBO, EBVBO TQE SJCDB
SDZB, SDNBKRO TQE RAB XCKUCDR JZ ATXXDQBUU
XBRBK, XTCS TQE FTKO
KBTEDQY, VKDRDQY TQE TKDRAFTRDI
KBE, VADRB TQE NSCB
UQTX, IKTIMSB TQE XJX
RAB RAKBB URJJYBU
RDQMBK RJ BGBKU RJ IATQIB
RJF, EDIM TQE ATKKO
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
And Val's correct answers were:
------------------------
a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair
blood, sweat and tears
Crosby, Stills and Nash
faith, hope and charity
Father, Son and Holy Ghost
hop, skip and jump
Huey, Dewey and Louie
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
Peter, Paul and Mary
reading, writing and arithmetic
red, white and blue
snap, crackle and pop
The Three Stooges
Tinker to Evers to Chance
Tom, Dick and Harry
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
And the winner of the quick one was Pacifica of the Email Lions
Something happened on August 28, 888 that didn't happen again until February 2, 2000. What was it?
-------------------------------------
All the dates in between 8, 28, 888 and 2, 02, 2000 had odd numbers.
------------------------------------
Congratulations to both.
DB
******************************
Here are some famous trios. Who are they?
There was one winner, the unbeatable Val of the Blogspot Tigers.
The puzzle was:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
T KTY, T NJQB TQE T ATQM JZ ATDK
NSJJE, UVBTR TQE RBTKU
IKJUNO, URDSSU TQE QTUA
ZTDRA, AJXB TQE IATKDRO
ZTRABK, UJQ TQE AJSO YAJUR
AJX, UMDX TQE HCFX
ACBO, EBVBO TQE SJCDB
SDZB, SDNBKRO TQE RAB XCKUCDR JZ ATXXDQBUU
XBRBK, XTCS TQE FTKO
KBTEDQY, VKDRDQY TQE TKDRAFTRDI
KBE, VADRB TQE NSCB
UQTX, IKTIMSB TQE XJX
RAB RAKBB URJJYBU
RDQMBK RJ BGBKU RJ IATQIB
RJF, EDIM TQE ATKKO
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
And Val's correct answers were:
------------------------
a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair
blood, sweat and tears
Crosby, Stills and Nash
faith, hope and charity
Father, Son and Holy Ghost
hop, skip and jump
Huey, Dewey and Louie
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
Peter, Paul and Mary
reading, writing and arithmetic
red, white and blue
snap, crackle and pop
The Three Stooges
Tinker to Evers to Chance
Tom, Dick and Harry
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
And the winner of the quick one was Pacifica of the Email Lions
Something happened on August 28, 888 that didn't happen again until February 2, 2000. What was it?
-------------------------------------
All the dates in between 8, 28, 888 and 2, 02, 2000 had odd numbers.
------------------------------------
Congratulations to both.
DB
******************************
How We Define Life
It is better to create than to learn. Creating is the essence of life.
Julius Caesar
***********************
I have a two disk recording of the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by Bach, played by Nathan Milstein. Other great violinists have played and recorded those pieces but Milstein's performances are my favorites simply because they were the first and thus he defined the music for me.
I look back over my career sometimes. The less I do that the better. But I wonder sometimes what to make of it. An actor's life is a very gossamer thing, particularly a stage actor's life. But I comfort myself by realizing that I have probably defined some great roles and helped define some great plays for people. Maybe I have defined the roles of Big Daddy, Sir Toby, Eddie Carbone, Zorba and John Procter to people, even if they see another production.
But beyond my own sphere of interest, impact is being made on the world at all times by the fact that creation is still going on. I know that my life has been affected by music, theatre, literature and works of art.. I think it is impossible to measure the depths to which some creations can affect the life of people. A lot of it is probably unconscious.
But consider this. None of us are disconnected from the world. Every picture you paint, every drawing, every photograph, every thing you make, everything you say and do becomes a permanent part of creation. It is an efficacious part of the world, of life. and by being in the world it has altered and defined life, and not just yours.
Civilization today is the summation of all the people who have lived. And that includes you and me. You may think your contributions are small, well, considering the vast number of people who have lived, all contributions are small, but they are all important. They are the essence of life.
DB - The Vagabond
*************************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are some famous trios. Who are they.
On your mark. Get set. Go!
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
T KTY, T NJQB TQE T ATQM JZ ATDK
NSJJE, UVBTR TQE RBTKU
IKJUNO, URDSSU TQE QTUA
ZTDRA, AJXB TQE IATKDRO
ZTRABK, UJQ TQE AJSO YAJUR
AJX, UMDX TQE HCFX
ACBO, EBVBO TQE SJCDB
SDZB, SDNBKRO TQE RAB XCKUCDR JZ ATXXDQBUU
XBRBK, XTCS TQE FTKO
KBTEDQY, VKDRDQY TQE TKDRAFTRDI
KBE, VADRB TQE NSCB
UQTX, IKTIMSB TQE XJX
RAB RAKBB URJJYBU
RDQMBK RJ BGBKU RJ IATQIB
RJF, EDIM TQE ATKKO
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Good luck.
------------------------
Here's a quick one, if you read this far.
Something happened on August 28, 888 that didn't happen again until February 2, 2000. What was it?
2 correct answers so far
******************************
Julius Caesar
***********************
I have a two disk recording of the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin by Bach, played by Nathan Milstein. Other great violinists have played and recorded those pieces but Milstein's performances are my favorites simply because they were the first and thus he defined the music for me.
I look back over my career sometimes. The less I do that the better. But I wonder sometimes what to make of it. An actor's life is a very gossamer thing, particularly a stage actor's life. But I comfort myself by realizing that I have probably defined some great roles and helped define some great plays for people. Maybe I have defined the roles of Big Daddy, Sir Toby, Eddie Carbone, Zorba and John Procter to people, even if they see another production.
But beyond my own sphere of interest, impact is being made on the world at all times by the fact that creation is still going on. I know that my life has been affected by music, theatre, literature and works of art.. I think it is impossible to measure the depths to which some creations can affect the life of people. A lot of it is probably unconscious.
But consider this. None of us are disconnected from the world. Every picture you paint, every drawing, every photograph, every thing you make, everything you say and do becomes a permanent part of creation. It is an efficacious part of the world, of life. and by being in the world it has altered and defined life, and not just yours.
Civilization today is the summation of all the people who have lived. And that includes you and me. You may think your contributions are small, well, considering the vast number of people who have lived, all contributions are small, but they are all important. They are the essence of life.
DB - The Vagabond
*************************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are some famous trios. Who are they.
On your mark. Get set. Go!
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
T KTY, T NJQB TQE T ATQM JZ ATDK
NSJJE, UVBTR TQE RBTKU
IKJUNO, URDSSU TQE QTUA
ZTDRA, AJXB TQE IATKDRO
ZTRABK, UJQ TQE AJSO YAJUR
AJX, UMDX TQE HCFX
ACBO, EBVBO TQE SJCDB
SDZB, SDNBKRO TQE RAB XCKUCDR JZ ATXXDQBUU
XBRBK, XTCS TQE FTKO
KBTEDQY, VKDRDQY TQE TKDRAFTRDI
KBE, VADRB TQE NSCB
UQTX, IKTIMSB TQE XJX
RAB RAKBB URJJYBU
RDQMBK RJ BGBKU RJ IATQIB
RJF, EDIM TQE ATKKO
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Good luck.
------------------------
Here's a quick one, if you read this far.
Something happened on August 28, 888 that didn't happen again until February 2, 2000. What was it?
2 correct answers so far
******************************
Saturday, January 22, 2011
The Mixture In The Jar
Life is bitter. Life is sweet. Life is marmalade.
Anonymous
**********************
I know a man who is in love every minute of his day with a woman he never sees and almost never talks to, and then only through emails. They worked together many years ago and that's how they met. There were a few times when they almost became close but there was always something that interrupted. As the years past they saw each other less and less, but he kept in his heart and his mind a constant yearning for her and a continuing hope for her happiness and well being.
Eventually she got married to a great guy. He's glad of that but his heart burns with a solitary desire that things had worked out differently. She knows how he feels because he told her. But she has been happily married for 15 years. He tries not to think about her, but he thinks about her every day. It is a bitter pill that won't dissolve.
---------------------------------------------
I've never been much of a wine drinker. I do enjoy beer, and can drink buckets of it, which makes me very jolly. If I have a cocktail it's generally a manhattan. Just Plain Bill http://justplainbill7.blogspot.com/ and I have enjoyed some of those together at a local oasis.
But at the Artists' Christmas party last December I had a glass of wine (Merlot) for the first time in many years. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, I had two glasses of it. So I then bought a bottle of wine for myself to have with my dinner, a tasty and gentle Cabernet Sauvignon. Wednesday evening I had a glass with my dinner and it was a delight.
I planned to have two glasses of it. But I drank half the glass with my dinner and as the evening wore on I sipped the rest of it and then went gracefully and sweetly to sleep.
----------------------------------------
I performed in a very large musical production at a theatre up north one winter. During rehearsals I climbed up to an upper level, waited for the orchestra and choir to finish, then stepped forward and delivered a speech. I was by myself on that upper lever though there were benches set up around me.
But on opening night when I ascended the steps all those benches were filled with young girls, members of the high school chorus. Each one was as pretty as the next one. I must have appeared a bit shocked to see them for they all smiled at my reaction. They made a place for me to sit and I sat feeling like a father with 20 beautiful daughters all the same age.
After the performance i discovered that one of those girls was mildly, but permanently crippled. She needed to walk with a cane. I thought how bitter it was that such a young, pretty girl should be cursed with that burden for the rest of her life. I got to talking with her and found that she was a delightful person, sweet, charming, intelligent and full of life. I sought her out after every performance and we became temporary buddies. I am grateful to her. She taught me a lot about the bittersweetness of life, about the marmalade of life.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are some famous trios. Who are they.
On your mark. Get set. Go!
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
T KTY, T NJQB TQE T ATQM JZ ATDK
NSJJE, UVBTR TQE RBTKU
IKJUNO, URDSSU TQE QTUA
ZTDRA, AJXB TQE IATKDRO
ZTRABK, UJQ TQE AJSO YAJUR
AJX, UMDX TQE HCFX
ACBO, EBVBO TQE SJCDB
SDZB, SDNBKRO TQE RAB XCKUCDR JZ ATXXDQBUU
XBRBK, XTCS TQE FTKO
KBTEDQY, VKDRDQY TQE TKDRAFTRDI
KBE, VADRB TQE NSCB
UQTX, IKTIMSB TQE XJX
RAB RAKBB URJJYBU
RDQMBK RJ BGBKU RJ IATQIB
RJF, EDIM TQE ATKKO
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Good luck.
------------------------
Here's a quick one, if you read this far.
Something happened on August 28, 888 that didn't happen again until February 2, 2000. What was it?
2 correct answers so far.
******************************
Anonymous
**********************
I know a man who is in love every minute of his day with a woman he never sees and almost never talks to, and then only through emails. They worked together many years ago and that's how they met. There were a few times when they almost became close but there was always something that interrupted. As the years past they saw each other less and less, but he kept in his heart and his mind a constant yearning for her and a continuing hope for her happiness and well being.
Eventually she got married to a great guy. He's glad of that but his heart burns with a solitary desire that things had worked out differently. She knows how he feels because he told her. But she has been happily married for 15 years. He tries not to think about her, but he thinks about her every day. It is a bitter pill that won't dissolve.
---------------------------------------------
I've never been much of a wine drinker. I do enjoy beer, and can drink buckets of it, which makes me very jolly. If I have a cocktail it's generally a manhattan. Just Plain Bill http://justplainbill7.blogspot.com/ and I have enjoyed some of those together at a local oasis.
But at the Artists' Christmas party last December I had a glass of wine (Merlot) for the first time in many years. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, I had two glasses of it. So I then bought a bottle of wine for myself to have with my dinner, a tasty and gentle Cabernet Sauvignon. Wednesday evening I had a glass with my dinner and it was a delight.
I planned to have two glasses of it. But I drank half the glass with my dinner and as the evening wore on I sipped the rest of it and then went gracefully and sweetly to sleep.
----------------------------------------
I performed in a very large musical production at a theatre up north one winter. During rehearsals I climbed up to an upper level, waited for the orchestra and choir to finish, then stepped forward and delivered a speech. I was by myself on that upper lever though there were benches set up around me.
But on opening night when I ascended the steps all those benches were filled with young girls, members of the high school chorus. Each one was as pretty as the next one. I must have appeared a bit shocked to see them for they all smiled at my reaction. They made a place for me to sit and I sat feeling like a father with 20 beautiful daughters all the same age.
After the performance i discovered that one of those girls was mildly, but permanently crippled. She needed to walk with a cane. I thought how bitter it was that such a young, pretty girl should be cursed with that burden for the rest of her life. I got to talking with her and found that she was a delightful person, sweet, charming, intelligent and full of life. I sought her out after every performance and we became temporary buddies. I am grateful to her. She taught me a lot about the bittersweetness of life, about the marmalade of life.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are some famous trios. Who are they.
On your mark. Get set. Go!
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
T KTY, T NJQB TQE T ATQM JZ ATDK
NSJJE, UVBTR TQE RBTKU
IKJUNO, URDSSU TQE QTUA
ZTDRA, AJXB TQE IATKDRO
ZTRABK, UJQ TQE AJSO YAJUR
AJX, UMDX TQE HCFX
ACBO, EBVBO TQE SJCDB
SDZB, SDNBKRO TQE RAB XCKUCDR JZ ATXXDQBUU
XBRBK, XTCS TQE FTKO
KBTEDQY, VKDRDQY TQE TKDRAFTRDI
KBE, VADRB TQE NSCB
UQTX, IKTIMSB TQE XJX
RAB RAKBB URJJYBU
RDQMBK RJ BGBKU RJ IATQIB
RJF, EDIM TQE ATKKO
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Good luck.
------------------------
Here's a quick one, if you read this far.
Something happened on August 28, 888 that didn't happen again until February 2, 2000. What was it?
2 correct answers so far.
******************************
Friday, January 21, 2011
I'm Stylish
History would be an excellent thing if only it were true.
Leo Tolstoy
************************
It has been twice now that I have received the Stylish Blogger Award. The first one came from the Yellow Dog Farm and another one from the Lone Star Concerto, The rules say I must thank the one who honored me with the award, so thank you both from the bottom.
Next the rules say I am supposed to tell you 7 things about myself. I don't have 7 things to tell. My life story and it's details are written out in my journal, Vagabond Journeys, in which there are over a thousand entries, some still to be rediscovered from the dusty vaults of Google. Besides a recital of facts, a biography, doesn't tell the story of a man, The only words that count are those that tell what a person is, above, around and beside all the "facts" of life.
Another rule connected with this award is that I am supposed to pass it on to 15 people, 15 other deserving blogs. I can't possibly do that. I follow 88 blogs, and I do click onto every one of them, which is why I don't get to yours as often as I want to. I figure anyone who has shown an interest in me and my writing even occasionally deserves my attention.
Lastly I'm supposed to paste the award on my journal. The images that are at the bottom of my profile have been there for years. They moved from emachines through Dell and onto Hewlett Packard. But owing to the vagaries of my contract with HP I am unable to paste anything else, no pictures, no graphics, no videos, nothing except words. So please accept my words because words are what I've got.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
******************************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are some famous trios. Who are they.
On your mark. Get set. Go!
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
T KTY, T NJQB TQE T ATQM JZ ATDK
NSJJE, UVBTR TQE RBTKU
IKJUNO, URDSSU TQE QTUA
ZTDRA, AJXB TQE IATKDRO
ZTRABK, UJQ TQE AJSO YAJUR
AJX, UMDX TQE HCFX
ACBO, EBVBO TQE SJCDB
SDZB, SDNBKRO TQE RAB XCKUCDR JZ ATXXDQBUU
XBRBK, XTCS TQE FTKO
KBTEDQY, VKDRDQY TQE TKDRAFTRDI
KBE, VADRB TQE NSCB
UQTX, IKTIMSB TQE XJX
RAB RAKBB URJJYBU
RDQMBK RJ BGBKU RJ IATQIB
RJF, EDIM TQE ATKKO
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Good luck.
------------------------
Here's a quick one, if you read this far.
Something happened on August 28, 888 that didn't happen again until February 2, 2000. What was it?
1 correct answer so far
******************************
Leo Tolstoy
************************
It has been twice now that I have received the Stylish Blogger Award. The first one came from the Yellow Dog Farm and another one from the Lone Star Concerto, The rules say I must thank the one who honored me with the award, so thank you both from the bottom.
Next the rules say I am supposed to tell you 7 things about myself. I don't have 7 things to tell. My life story and it's details are written out in my journal, Vagabond Journeys, in which there are over a thousand entries, some still to be rediscovered from the dusty vaults of Google. Besides a recital of facts, a biography, doesn't tell the story of a man, The only words that count are those that tell what a person is, above, around and beside all the "facts" of life.
Another rule connected with this award is that I am supposed to pass it on to 15 people, 15 other deserving blogs. I can't possibly do that. I follow 88 blogs, and I do click onto every one of them, which is why I don't get to yours as often as I want to. I figure anyone who has shown an interest in me and my writing even occasionally deserves my attention.
Lastly I'm supposed to paste the award on my journal. The images that are at the bottom of my profile have been there for years. They moved from emachines through Dell and onto Hewlett Packard. But owing to the vagaries of my contract with HP I am unable to paste anything else, no pictures, no graphics, no videos, nothing except words. So please accept my words because words are what I've got.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
******************************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are some famous trios. Who are they.
On your mark. Get set. Go!
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
T KTY, T NJQB TQE T ATQM JZ ATDK
NSJJE, UVBTR TQE RBTKU
IKJUNO, URDSSU TQE QTUA
ZTDRA, AJXB TQE IATKDRO
ZTRABK, UJQ TQE AJSO YAJUR
AJX, UMDX TQE HCFX
ACBO, EBVBO TQE SJCDB
SDZB, SDNBKRO TQE RAB XCKUCDR JZ ATXXDQBUU
XBRBK, XTCS TQE FTKO
KBTEDQY, VKDRDQY TQE TKDRAFTRDI
KBE, VADRB TQE NSCB
UQTX, IKTIMSB TQE XJX
RAB RAKBB URJJYBU
RDQMBK RJ BGBKU RJ IATQIB
RJF, EDIM TQE ATKKO
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Good luck.
------------------------
Here's a quick one, if you read this far.
Something happened on August 28, 888 that didn't happen again until February 2, 2000. What was it?
1 correct answer so far
******************************
Thursday, January 20, 2011
A Winter Song
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
***********************
It allows the trees to sleep and dream of leaves, squirrels and birds.
It gives the squirrels an unblocked sight to help them remember where they buried their provisions.
It gives the tiny birds of the north a season away from the bitter Arctic winds.
It wraps the twigs and wires in bright and glistening rain drops.
It holds up the branches of evergreens to boldly catch the strong whiteness.
It brings out the heavy gear to push and stomp.
It allows the child to slide and sled.
It pastes the fallen leaves into the Spring's mosaic.
It makes the kitchen an even more welcome place.
It stores up its history in icicles.
It records the commerce of the beasts in foot prints.
It touches the cheek with cool kisses.
It brightens the moon and beclouds the sun.
It redefines the landscape.
It brings people together.
DB
*********
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 3 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Here's a quick one, if you read this far.
Something happened on August 28, 888 that didn't happen again until February 2, 2000. What was it?
Albert Camus
***********************
It allows the trees to sleep and dream of leaves, squirrels and birds.
It gives the squirrels an unblocked sight to help them remember where they buried their provisions.
It gives the tiny birds of the north a season away from the bitter Arctic winds.
It wraps the twigs and wires in bright and glistening rain drops.
It holds up the branches of evergreens to boldly catch the strong whiteness.
It brings out the heavy gear to push and stomp.
It allows the child to slide and sled.
It pastes the fallen leaves into the Spring's mosaic.
It makes the kitchen an even more welcome place.
It stores up its history in icicles.
It records the commerce of the beasts in foot prints.
It touches the cheek with cool kisses.
It brightens the moon and beclouds the sun.
It redefines the landscape.
It brings people together.
DB
*********
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 3 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Here's a quick one, if you read this far.
Something happened on August 28, 888 that didn't happen again until February 2, 2000. What was it?
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
The Simple Truth
Truth is not introduced into the individual from without, but was within him all the time.
Soren Kierkegaard
************************
"It can't be true, I only thought of it myself."
Are we all born wise and gradually become ignorant? Are we all born sane and slowly go mad? So it would seem since as adults we tend to give up rational thinking and do crazy things.
There is the classic legend of the man who goes out looking for the most beautiful flower in the world. He scours the earth, goes into every garden, every field and forest. He finds many exotic and colorful blossoms, but none he considers the most beautiful. After many years he finally gives up his quest and returns home, and there he finds the most beautiful flower of all growing in his own back yard.
After working several years in my career and having learned the ropes by doing I finally read a well known book on acting. The author wrote eloquently and affirmatively about the subject and I was expecting to find some secrets to improve my work.. I was surprised to realize that there was noshing in the book I wasn't acquainted with. As I read I kept saying "Yes. Yes. That's right."
I think to approach any venture from the practical instead of the theoretical side is the only way to go about it. At best the book did simplify a few things for me, and that was good. But you can't learn to be an actor by reading a book. A theoretical approach can lead one into gardens, fields and forests looking for the most beautiful. But we can learn to rely on our own reason, desire, sense of proportion and form, of right and wrong, our own sense of truth to tell us what is the most beautiful.. And once wedded to an objective with heart and mind and body the search is over. The doing is all.
I am grateful for my patient and unpatronizing friends with whom I can share and enjoy the simpleness of life.
DB - The Vagabond
***********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 3 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Soren Kierkegaard
************************
"It can't be true, I only thought of it myself."
Are we all born wise and gradually become ignorant? Are we all born sane and slowly go mad? So it would seem since as adults we tend to give up rational thinking and do crazy things.
There is the classic legend of the man who goes out looking for the most beautiful flower in the world. He scours the earth, goes into every garden, every field and forest. He finds many exotic and colorful blossoms, but none he considers the most beautiful. After many years he finally gives up his quest and returns home, and there he finds the most beautiful flower of all growing in his own back yard.
After working several years in my career and having learned the ropes by doing I finally read a well known book on acting. The author wrote eloquently and affirmatively about the subject and I was expecting to find some secrets to improve my work.. I was surprised to realize that there was noshing in the book I wasn't acquainted with. As I read I kept saying "Yes. Yes. That's right."
I think to approach any venture from the practical instead of the theoretical side is the only way to go about it. At best the book did simplify a few things for me, and that was good. But you can't learn to be an actor by reading a book. A theoretical approach can lead one into gardens, fields and forests looking for the most beautiful. But we can learn to rely on our own reason, desire, sense of proportion and form, of right and wrong, our own sense of truth to tell us what is the most beautiful.. And once wedded to an objective with heart and mind and body the search is over. The doing is all.
I am grateful for my patient and unpatronizing friends with whom I can share and enjoy the simpleness of life.
DB - The Vagabond
***********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 3 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Hands Across And Down The Middle
A man doesn't know what he knows, until he knows what he doesn't know.
Thomas Carlyle
************************
There hae been several times in my life when I was with a group of people who were having a conversation that was so far from what I thought was my broad intellectual realm that i felt like an alien, a stranger and an ignorant boob. It wasn't that the topics were highly technical or philosophically deep. It was that the people talking were thinking in a manner that was foreign to me.
I was never a good student. The rigors of the classroom were uncomfortable to me. I was an "accidental scholar." The knowledge I had was picked up along the way as facts and ideas were drawn like a magnet to my particular mentality. And then I would find myself in a discussion in which my mentality didn't function. So I sat there quietly listening and trying to understand why I couldn't understand.
It's similar to an intricate folk dance. "Hands across and down the middle." If you don't know the steps you'll get tangled up and bump into people. Best to get out of it, stand to one side and watch.
There are books by linguists such as Noam Chomsky and philosophers such as Martin Heidegger who speak of patterns of thought as it relates to other issues of the mind. But for me it was getting off the bus in the wrong city when I was actually surrounded by thought patterns that were unknown to me. It wasn't that I couldn't follow the subject of the discussions, it was that I couldn't follow the steps. Hands Across And Down The Middle. Connections were made between one idea and another that I found unexpected and unexplainable.
Part of a psychiatrist's job is to determine how people think. And so is an actor's evidentially. Soon I began to use my observations to understand how the characters thought in the roles I was playing. What is his thought process, his mental pattern, is it different from mine and how can I discipline my own mind to think they way he does?
I found a way "down the middle" by understanding how much we judge people without realizing it. It is not usual or tactical to take into consideration the fact that another person sees the world differently than we do. Assumptions are made about people and we don't listen or observe them properly. We should begin with the understanding that one may not be thinking about things with the same set of habitual thought patterns that we have. It doesn't mean that person is unreasonable or illogical. It means that person has a way of processing thoughts, facts and ideas which is different from ours and therefore they have a knowledge of things we don't. And there is something we don't know.
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 3 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Thomas Carlyle
************************
There hae been several times in my life when I was with a group of people who were having a conversation that was so far from what I thought was my broad intellectual realm that i felt like an alien, a stranger and an ignorant boob. It wasn't that the topics were highly technical or philosophically deep. It was that the people talking were thinking in a manner that was foreign to me.
I was never a good student. The rigors of the classroom were uncomfortable to me. I was an "accidental scholar." The knowledge I had was picked up along the way as facts and ideas were drawn like a magnet to my particular mentality. And then I would find myself in a discussion in which my mentality didn't function. So I sat there quietly listening and trying to understand why I couldn't understand.
It's similar to an intricate folk dance. "Hands across and down the middle." If you don't know the steps you'll get tangled up and bump into people. Best to get out of it, stand to one side and watch.
There are books by linguists such as Noam Chomsky and philosophers such as Martin Heidegger who speak of patterns of thought as it relates to other issues of the mind. But for me it was getting off the bus in the wrong city when I was actually surrounded by thought patterns that were unknown to me. It wasn't that I couldn't follow the subject of the discussions, it was that I couldn't follow the steps. Hands Across And Down The Middle. Connections were made between one idea and another that I found unexpected and unexplainable.
Part of a psychiatrist's job is to determine how people think. And so is an actor's evidentially. Soon I began to use my observations to understand how the characters thought in the roles I was playing. What is his thought process, his mental pattern, is it different from mine and how can I discipline my own mind to think they way he does?
I found a way "down the middle" by understanding how much we judge people without realizing it. It is not usual or tactical to take into consideration the fact that another person sees the world differently than we do. Assumptions are made about people and we don't listen or observe them properly. We should begin with the understanding that one may not be thinking about things with the same set of habitual thought patterns that we have. It doesn't mean that person is unreasonable or illogical. It means that person has a way of processing thoughts, facts and ideas which is different from ours and therefore they have a knowledge of things we don't. And there is something we don't know.
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 3 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Monday, January 17, 2011
The Day I Scared The Tourists
Every path has a few puddles.
American proverb
***********************
Up in New Hampshire where I lived for a while there are two conjoined ledges on top of a very high and sheer cliff. One is called Cathedral Ledge and the other White Horse Ledge. When you are standing on one you can easly see over to the other one. There is a road which goes up to Cathedral Ledge where one can park, get out, walk to the edge and enjoy the magnificent view.
During the Summer and Autumn months I used to do a lat of hiking on the trails and peaks of the area mountains, and one cloudy day I decided to take the trail up to White Horse Ledge. As it looked like it might rain I folded up a large rain parka and put it in my back pack along with a few other items. took my trusty walking staff which always went with me, parked my car by a lake near the foot of the trail and started up.
The begiinig of the trail was a hefty climb through forest. Then the trail became very treacherous, straight up for about 30 feet. Old roots sticking out of the cliff and an occasional chuck of rock were the only places to get a foot hold. Half way up that part of the trail it started to rain which made it een more treacherous. When I finally came out of that stretch I donned my rain parka and vowed to descend on the road and not try to return by way of the trail. The rain parka was hooded and large enough to fit over my back pack and still cover most of my body.
The last part of the trail went though a young forest, was a fairly easy climb and by then the rain had stopped. But almost to the end of it I heard a car door slam. That is a sound one doesn't expect hear when out hiking in the middle of a forest. But I knew it meant that I was near the end of my hike and White Horse Ledge was just ahead.
When I stepped out on the ledge I looked across and saw a young couple enjoying the view from Cathedral Ledge. I didn't want to startle them so I stood perfectly still and waited.
But the woman looked over and saw me. She gasped and grabbed the man's arm. Now picture me. A large black robe covering a back pack which made me look deformed, a gray beard jutting out from beneath a black hood which covered my face, standing perfectly still holding a five foot staff.
I was a ghost, an apparition, Jeremiah raised from the dead, the Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come, the Mythical Rider of the White Horse, the Old Man Of The Mountain, a mystical being from the deep, dark forest, the Grim Reaper, Satan himself.
Whatever they thought I was they quickly got in their car and left. They were probably a nice couple form Massachusetts, tourists no doubt. I could have walked over and introduced myself but they were standing at the edge of a cliff and I didn't want to scare them. I scared them anyway, just being there. They probably still talk now and then about the strange spectre they saw one cloudy day in the mountains of New Hampshire.
DB - The Vagabond
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
American proverb
***********************
Up in New Hampshire where I lived for a while there are two conjoined ledges on top of a very high and sheer cliff. One is called Cathedral Ledge and the other White Horse Ledge. When you are standing on one you can easly see over to the other one. There is a road which goes up to Cathedral Ledge where one can park, get out, walk to the edge and enjoy the magnificent view.
During the Summer and Autumn months I used to do a lat of hiking on the trails and peaks of the area mountains, and one cloudy day I decided to take the trail up to White Horse Ledge. As it looked like it might rain I folded up a large rain parka and put it in my back pack along with a few other items. took my trusty walking staff which always went with me, parked my car by a lake near the foot of the trail and started up.
The begiinig of the trail was a hefty climb through forest. Then the trail became very treacherous, straight up for about 30 feet. Old roots sticking out of the cliff and an occasional chuck of rock were the only places to get a foot hold. Half way up that part of the trail it started to rain which made it een more treacherous. When I finally came out of that stretch I donned my rain parka and vowed to descend on the road and not try to return by way of the trail. The rain parka was hooded and large enough to fit over my back pack and still cover most of my body.
The last part of the trail went though a young forest, was a fairly easy climb and by then the rain had stopped. But almost to the end of it I heard a car door slam. That is a sound one doesn't expect hear when out hiking in the middle of a forest. But I knew it meant that I was near the end of my hike and White Horse Ledge was just ahead.
When I stepped out on the ledge I looked across and saw a young couple enjoying the view from Cathedral Ledge. I didn't want to startle them so I stood perfectly still and waited.
But the woman looked over and saw me. She gasped and grabbed the man's arm. Now picture me. A large black robe covering a back pack which made me look deformed, a gray beard jutting out from beneath a black hood which covered my face, standing perfectly still holding a five foot staff.
I was a ghost, an apparition, Jeremiah raised from the dead, the Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come, the Mythical Rider of the White Horse, the Old Man Of The Mountain, a mystical being from the deep, dark forest, the Grim Reaper, Satan himself.
Whatever they thought I was they quickly got in their car and left. They were probably a nice couple form Massachusetts, tourists no doubt. I could have walked over and introduced myself but they were standing at the edge of a cliff and I didn't want to scare them. I scared them anyway, just being there. They probably still talk now and then about the strange spectre they saw one cloudy day in the mountains of New Hampshire.
DB - The Vagabond
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Look At That
Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.
Lauren Bacall
**********************
Do you trust your instincts? Probably. Do you trust your intuition? Maybe. How about your ingenuity? Most likely. But do you trusty your imagination? Why not?
Imagination works in two ways. One is what happens when the mind "wanders" and you are what's known as lost in thought. At such a time you visit various places, ideas, memories, doubts, fears, worries, visions, spectacles, hopes, waking dreams. Then sometimes the wandering imagination finds a trail and follows it for a while. That wayfaring imagination can be a very pleasant experience or a negative one.
Creative imagination comes with a ballet slipper or a test tube. It is the potter;s clay, the carpenter's wood, the smith's metal, the poet's word. When the dial clicks on the right number an idea shows up into sight out of the fog of maybes and might bes. The creative thinker takes that idea and gives it a bath in his imagination. It is molded and fashioned by him, held up to the light and maybe hammered a little bit. That is the process of discovery and creativity and when it goes on one is truly lifted into a special place in the universe all his own. Out of the mundane into the spiritual, it's one of life's greatest joys.
DB - The Vagabond
***************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Lauren Bacall
**********************
Do you trust your instincts? Probably. Do you trust your intuition? Maybe. How about your ingenuity? Most likely. But do you trusty your imagination? Why not?
Imagination works in two ways. One is what happens when the mind "wanders" and you are what's known as lost in thought. At such a time you visit various places, ideas, memories, doubts, fears, worries, visions, spectacles, hopes, waking dreams. Then sometimes the wandering imagination finds a trail and follows it for a while. That wayfaring imagination can be a very pleasant experience or a negative one.
Creative imagination comes with a ballet slipper or a test tube. It is the potter;s clay, the carpenter's wood, the smith's metal, the poet's word. When the dial clicks on the right number an idea shows up into sight out of the fog of maybes and might bes. The creative thinker takes that idea and gives it a bath in his imagination. It is molded and fashioned by him, held up to the light and maybe hammered a little bit. That is the process of discovery and creativity and when it goes on one is truly lifted into a special place in the universe all his own. Out of the mundane into the spiritual, it's one of life's greatest joys.
DB - The Vagabond
***************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Saturday, January 15, 2011
I Know My Rights
If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama.
Irving Babbit
*************************
In the dispute between Andrei Sitov, correspondent for Russia's official news agency ITAR-TASS, and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the score was Sitov 1, Gibbs 0. In a discussion about the massacre that took place in the Tucson parking lot, Sitov offered his condolences to "all Americans" and the victims. Then Sitov said the slaughter that took place "does not seem all that incomprehensible, at least from the outside. It's the reverse side of freedom. Unless you want restrictions, unless you want a bigger role for the government."
Gibbs strongly protested that assertion.
"No, no, I would disagree vehemently with that. There are -- there is nothing in the values of our country, there's nothing on the many laws on our books that would provide for somebody to impugn and impede on the very freedoms that you began with by exercising the actions that that individual took on that day. That is not American. There are -- I think there's agreement on all sides of the political spectrum: Violence is never, ever acceptable. We had people that died. We had people whose lives will be changed forever because of the deranged actions of a madman. Those are not American. Those are not in keeping with the important bedrock values by which this country was founded and by which its citizens live each and every day of their lives in hopes of something better for those that are here."
Gibbs's rhetoric is very fine and few Americans, if any, would argue with it, but it does not address the issue posed by Sitov. One may say it's splitting hairs or "just a matter of interpretation" but the fact remains there is a big difference between freedoms and rights.
President Bush said that we were fighting in Iraq to protect our freedoms. And now the same is said about our troops in Afghanistan. But what freedoms are they fighting to protect? The freedom to shoot a bunch of innocent people in a parking lot in Arizona?
I am free to take your car and you are free to take my computer. Yes. You can come into my apartment, unhook my computer and take it away and if I see your car parked somewhere and I can get into it, start it, drive it away and no one stops me I am free to take your car. Anything one can do one is free to do. But if everyone did what they wanted to we would be living in a state of barbaric anarchy.
So we enter into n agreement with each other, a contract. I agree not to take your car and you agree not to take my computer. Then we firm up that contract with a law, thus making it illegal to take your car, and if I'm caught with it I've broken the contract, I've broken the law, it's a crime, grand theft auto, and I will go to prison, thus depriving me of my freedoms.
The most important contract we have in this country is the Constitution. Attached to the Constution is a series of 10 amendments, known as the Bill Of Rights. It's actually a bill of restrictions. "Congress shall make no law..." etc.
The second amendment states "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. " That amendment can never be removed from the Constitution, it can only be amended against. But if it loses its position and influence that might put into jeopardy the entire Bill of Rights. We might find ourselves losing the right to speak, publish, worship, assemble, protest and have a fair trial So did Jared Loughner have the freedom to own a gun? Yes. Did he have the right to own a gun? Yes. Did he have the freedom to shoot people with it in the parking lot in Arizona? Yes. Did he have the right to shoot them? No. Why not? Because of a contract with Americans which allows them the right to live, a freedom they already have. To steal a man's car is a crime. To take away a man's life is a crime. For the same reasons. The freedom to do those things are denied by the contracts, and hence the laws against them.
The US Congress is in the business of passing legislation to define and protect our rights. Which they will do if they ever stop insulting each other. They can't protect our freedoms, any more than the troops in Afghanistan can. We own those freedoms. But they can protect our "unalienable rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
***************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Irving Babbit
*************************
In the dispute between Andrei Sitov, correspondent for Russia's official news agency ITAR-TASS, and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the score was Sitov 1, Gibbs 0. In a discussion about the massacre that took place in the Tucson parking lot, Sitov offered his condolences to "all Americans" and the victims. Then Sitov said the slaughter that took place "does not seem all that incomprehensible, at least from the outside. It's the reverse side of freedom. Unless you want restrictions, unless you want a bigger role for the government."
Gibbs strongly protested that assertion.
"No, no, I would disagree vehemently with that. There are -- there is nothing in the values of our country, there's nothing on the many laws on our books that would provide for somebody to impugn and impede on the very freedoms that you began with by exercising the actions that that individual took on that day. That is not American. There are -- I think there's agreement on all sides of the political spectrum: Violence is never, ever acceptable. We had people that died. We had people whose lives will be changed forever because of the deranged actions of a madman. Those are not American. Those are not in keeping with the important bedrock values by which this country was founded and by which its citizens live each and every day of their lives in hopes of something better for those that are here."
Gibbs's rhetoric is very fine and few Americans, if any, would argue with it, but it does not address the issue posed by Sitov. One may say it's splitting hairs or "just a matter of interpretation" but the fact remains there is a big difference between freedoms and rights.
President Bush said that we were fighting in Iraq to protect our freedoms. And now the same is said about our troops in Afghanistan. But what freedoms are they fighting to protect? The freedom to shoot a bunch of innocent people in a parking lot in Arizona?
I am free to take your car and you are free to take my computer. Yes. You can come into my apartment, unhook my computer and take it away and if I see your car parked somewhere and I can get into it, start it, drive it away and no one stops me I am free to take your car. Anything one can do one is free to do. But if everyone did what they wanted to we would be living in a state of barbaric anarchy.
So we enter into n agreement with each other, a contract. I agree not to take your car and you agree not to take my computer. Then we firm up that contract with a law, thus making it illegal to take your car, and if I'm caught with it I've broken the contract, I've broken the law, it's a crime, grand theft auto, and I will go to prison, thus depriving me of my freedoms.
The most important contract we have in this country is the Constitution. Attached to the Constution is a series of 10 amendments, known as the Bill Of Rights. It's actually a bill of restrictions. "Congress shall make no law..." etc.
The second amendment states "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. " That amendment can never be removed from the Constitution, it can only be amended against. But if it loses its position and influence that might put into jeopardy the entire Bill of Rights. We might find ourselves losing the right to speak, publish, worship, assemble, protest and have a fair trial So did Jared Loughner have the freedom to own a gun? Yes. Did he have the right to own a gun? Yes. Did he have the freedom to shoot people with it in the parking lot in Arizona? Yes. Did he have the right to shoot them? No. Why not? Because of a contract with Americans which allows them the right to live, a freedom they already have. To steal a man's car is a crime. To take away a man's life is a crime. For the same reasons. The freedom to do those things are denied by the contracts, and hence the laws against them.
The US Congress is in the business of passing legislation to define and protect our rights. Which they will do if they ever stop insulting each other. They can't protect our freedoms, any more than the troops in Afghanistan can. We own those freedoms. But they can protect our "unalienable rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Dana Bate
Vagabond Journeys
***************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Thursday, January 13, 2011
A Grateful Exit
Always know where the back door is.
Bate
*****************************
I have often found that the best way out of a bad situation is not necessarily the same way you got into it. Back peddling is the tactic used most of the time, but it doesn't always work, and at worst it leaves one open to accusations of hypocrisy and infidelity. And breaking through a wall to make an exit is harmful and causes a lot of resentment. Knowing where the rear exit is is the best plan.
Being a bit claustrophobic myself, I always want to know what my means of escape are in case I want to leave a place. I was very uncomfortable when I had to work in the hermetically sealed office buildings in New York. I worked in the World Trade Center a few times and though it was very comfortable when you were in there, trying to get in or out was an indication of how ill equipped it was to allow for easy egress.
In concert with the sealed up office buildings was the sealed mentality that ran many of the businesses that tried to function in them. That was another thing I needed to escape from. Many of the people I met in those environments reminded me of Bob Newhart's "Buttoned Down Mind." Suits were wearing men rather than the other way around. I could sit there in a cubicle doing ridiculous things and tell myself how important they were. In my files I have some minutes of a Board Of Directors meeting. One paragraph clearly states: "Dress down Friday was discussed and all agreed it was a great success. The Board voted unanimously to have it discontinued." Quick! Where's the back door?!
Sometimes you can find the back door in a contract. Many a game has been lost because the winner knew the rules and the loser did not. A good agent will always negotiate an "out clause" into a contract simply to allow for getting out of a bad situation.
I gave my notice at a radio station I was working for. The boss was resentful and wanted to know where my loyalty was. When I signed up there was guaranteed job security. But the contract was renegotiated and firing without cause was inserted. I had to explain to him that if you take away job security you also take away employee loyalty. They go together. He wasn't bright enough to understand that.
Once in my life I was fired. It was from an actng job. But the vacuum heads who ran the theatre didn't know what they were doing and I had to go into the office and show them how to fire me. They didn't know about a termination clause in the contract, that I could work for two more weeks if they wanted me to, or they had to give me two weeks severance pay, and they had to provide transportation back to my home. It was all in the contract, which they never read. I was the one being fired and I had to teach them how to do it. You see why I have a sense of humor?
There were a few other sticky things they didn't know about and when all the legal mumble jumble was finished they probably wish they hadn't decided to do it. But I didn't care. I didn't like that job anyway. Firing people was not the only thing they were ignorant about.
I showed them the back door and had them hold it open for me while I gratefully made my exit.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************the out clause, mental cubicals, fired from my job
Bate
*****************************
I have often found that the best way out of a bad situation is not necessarily the same way you got into it. Back peddling is the tactic used most of the time, but it doesn't always work, and at worst it leaves one open to accusations of hypocrisy and infidelity. And breaking through a wall to make an exit is harmful and causes a lot of resentment. Knowing where the rear exit is is the best plan.
Being a bit claustrophobic myself, I always want to know what my means of escape are in case I want to leave a place. I was very uncomfortable when I had to work in the hermetically sealed office buildings in New York. I worked in the World Trade Center a few times and though it was very comfortable when you were in there, trying to get in or out was an indication of how ill equipped it was to allow for easy egress.
In concert with the sealed up office buildings was the sealed mentality that ran many of the businesses that tried to function in them. That was another thing I needed to escape from. Many of the people I met in those environments reminded me of Bob Newhart's "Buttoned Down Mind." Suits were wearing men rather than the other way around. I could sit there in a cubicle doing ridiculous things and tell myself how important they were. In my files I have some minutes of a Board Of Directors meeting. One paragraph clearly states: "Dress down Friday was discussed and all agreed it was a great success. The Board voted unanimously to have it discontinued." Quick! Where's the back door?!
Sometimes you can find the back door in a contract. Many a game has been lost because the winner knew the rules and the loser did not. A good agent will always negotiate an "out clause" into a contract simply to allow for getting out of a bad situation.
I gave my notice at a radio station I was working for. The boss was resentful and wanted to know where my loyalty was. When I signed up there was guaranteed job security. But the contract was renegotiated and firing without cause was inserted. I had to explain to him that if you take away job security you also take away employee loyalty. They go together. He wasn't bright enough to understand that.
Once in my life I was fired. It was from an actng job. But the vacuum heads who ran the theatre didn't know what they were doing and I had to go into the office and show them how to fire me. They didn't know about a termination clause in the contract, that I could work for two more weeks if they wanted me to, or they had to give me two weeks severance pay, and they had to provide transportation back to my home. It was all in the contract, which they never read. I was the one being fired and I had to teach them how to do it. You see why I have a sense of humor?
There were a few other sticky things they didn't know about and when all the legal mumble jumble was finished they probably wish they hadn't decided to do it. But I didn't care. I didn't like that job anyway. Firing people was not the only thing they were ignorant about.
I showed them the back door and had them hold it open for me while I gratefully made my exit.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************the out clause, mental cubicals, fired from my job
The Boy I Left Behind
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
Nelson Mandela
*************************
I used to know a woman in her 30's who was unmarried with three older brothers and a father who was a great influence in her life. One of the things her father required of her was to keep a journal recording her life. She began it as a child and thus she had stacks of notebooks with jottings of her experiences, an autobiography of personal and very subjective bits and pieces. I don't think she ever went back to read anything she had written and I know her father didn't. I don't know what the point was except to record a life: what was, what used to be, what could have been, what is no more. I wonder what she would think of herself if she did revisit some of those writings.
I was born into a middle class family living in a New York suburb. Four years later my father died. There was then no income and hence no money. Two years later mother sold the house and we moved. After that we slowly drifted into a state of poverty. We had to keep moving, 25 times until I finally left home, 6 times one year.
I've had an occasion to go back to that town and look at some of the places we lived. I tried to remember and visualize what I was like growing up, as a youngster and a teenager, and seeing how much I have changed. When I had a chance to see the first big house, the one I was born into, with all its property, the back yard I used to play in, my early life seems completely remote from me. The child I was still lives in that house. I don't.
I went to visit some folks I knew at the college theatre where I had worked and learned. At one point they all wanted to go out to lunch but I was expecting someone to meet me there so I stayed by myself and was remembering some of the shows I had done.
I answered the phone. It was a new professor who didn't know me. I explained who I was to his satisfaction, I thought. But shortly after that the campus police showed up and threw me out. I had put up scenery, hung and focused lights, helped to build and repair that theatre, acted and directed many productions. But from that day on I was a stranger, not welcome any more. I never went back to that place.
I have relinquished many things in my life, some because I was forced to and some because I wanted to. We change, we grow. The great lesson is that we have to let go of who we used to be if we want to keep changing, to keep growing. That's alright with me.
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
DB - The Vagabond
Nelson Mandela
*************************
I used to know a woman in her 30's who was unmarried with three older brothers and a father who was a great influence in her life. One of the things her father required of her was to keep a journal recording her life. She began it as a child and thus she had stacks of notebooks with jottings of her experiences, an autobiography of personal and very subjective bits and pieces. I don't think she ever went back to read anything she had written and I know her father didn't. I don't know what the point was except to record a life: what was, what used to be, what could have been, what is no more. I wonder what she would think of herself if she did revisit some of those writings.
I was born into a middle class family living in a New York suburb. Four years later my father died. There was then no income and hence no money. Two years later mother sold the house and we moved. After that we slowly drifted into a state of poverty. We had to keep moving, 25 times until I finally left home, 6 times one year.
I've had an occasion to go back to that town and look at some of the places we lived. I tried to remember and visualize what I was like growing up, as a youngster and a teenager, and seeing how much I have changed. When I had a chance to see the first big house, the one I was born into, with all its property, the back yard I used to play in, my early life seems completely remote from me. The child I was still lives in that house. I don't.
I went to visit some folks I knew at the college theatre where I had worked and learned. At one point they all wanted to go out to lunch but I was expecting someone to meet me there so I stayed by myself and was remembering some of the shows I had done.
I answered the phone. It was a new professor who didn't know me. I explained who I was to his satisfaction, I thought. But shortly after that the campus police showed up and threw me out. I had put up scenery, hung and focused lights, helped to build and repair that theatre, acted and directed many productions. But from that day on I was a stranger, not welcome any more. I never went back to that place.
I have relinquished many things in my life, some because I was forced to and some because I wanted to. We change, we grow. The great lesson is that we have to let go of who we used to be if we want to keep changing, to keep growing. That's alright with me.
DB - The Vagabond
**************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
DB - The Vagabond
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The Perils Of Wisdom
In seeking wisdom thou art wise, in imagining that thou hast attained it thou art a fool.
Simon ben Azzai
************************
The more I know, the less I know. The less I know, the more I want to know. It's a syndrome. But I'd rather be addicted to learning things than to drink, drugs or some other self destructive entity.
I have known a lot of people who are called "accidental scholars." I used to be one of them. Those are people who flit carelessly through life and every now and then stumble over a fact or a concept.
Some folks want to know why I don't do the traditional retired man's things. I don't really have an answer to that except to say that I enjoy poking my nose into books and pouring over magazines. And I have no other motive for doing it than that I enjoy it.
I suppose I am getting wiser. But there are some dangers in this humanoid version of gaining wisdom. We can gang up on ourselves if we're not careful. When an interesting fact or a refreshed way of looking at an old fact occurs there is the threat of thinking that now we really know something. That is taking the wrong exit off the highway. One bit of knowledge should lead to another. Why do we stop pursuing it? Because the second stretch of highway seems so much longer than the first. It's a discouragement until we realize that it may have taken us much longer than we thought to obtain the first bit. Seeking and finding wisdom is not an easy task. Information leads to knowledge, which should in turn lead to understanding, and that might draw us, if we're lucky, into some degree of wisdom. But then there's a recipe involved. It is up to the thinking person, or one who thinks he is a thinking person, to mix one bit of wisdom with another, stir and put in the oven of time and see what comes out. Is it a pie, a Pi or a piece of garbage? Reckoning with what you have is good and proper until you need more.
Another danger is to rely for your self esteem on what you know and be satisfied with it. You may think your are impressing other people with your wisdom but all you're doing is playing hand ball into a mirror. Some actors get tangled in that game. They think they have figured out how to play a certain type of role and so instead of starting from the beginning to understand a specific character they just repeat themselves.
Then there's the danger of anti intellectualism which rears its ugly, hissing head or hops like a smelly toad out of the strangest places. I knew an actor who, when he came to visit one day, saw a book on calculus sitting on my desk. He thought it wasn't mine. When I said it was he wanted to know why I was reading it. He disbelieved that I had any interest in the subject. Why wasn't I reading books on acting? Why, I thought? I'm a working actor, I do theatre day after day, I don't have to read about it. I'm interested in knowing about other things. He decided I was just trying to impress people. I didn't carry the book around with me and I didn't discuss mathematics with anyone. I fail to see why he thought my attempts to understand rectilinear motion was impressing anyone.
Now about impressing people. I knew a sweet man named Mr Bixbee who was deprived of a formal education from which he suffered a sense of inferiority. He compensated for it by claiming a familiarity with the great literature of the world which he didn't have. He wouldn't talk about the books except to say that he read them. I felt a bit sorry for him that he had to live that pretense. He wasn't a stupid man. There was a whole world of wisdom available to him if he would just open one of those books and begin to read it.
The gaining of wisdom is not a tortoise and hare race. The finish line is so far ahead of all of us that our positions along the way are only relative. In fact, I don't think there is a finish line, and that's what makes it so interesting to me. No matter how much we know there is always more. Nature and the universe pour more information on us then we are prepared to accept. And it will always be that way. Forever.
DB - The Vagabond
***********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Simon ben Azzai
************************
The more I know, the less I know. The less I know, the more I want to know. It's a syndrome. But I'd rather be addicted to learning things than to drink, drugs or some other self destructive entity.
I have known a lot of people who are called "accidental scholars." I used to be one of them. Those are people who flit carelessly through life and every now and then stumble over a fact or a concept.
Some folks want to know why I don't do the traditional retired man's things. I don't really have an answer to that except to say that I enjoy poking my nose into books and pouring over magazines. And I have no other motive for doing it than that I enjoy it.
I suppose I am getting wiser. But there are some dangers in this humanoid version of gaining wisdom. We can gang up on ourselves if we're not careful. When an interesting fact or a refreshed way of looking at an old fact occurs there is the threat of thinking that now we really know something. That is taking the wrong exit off the highway. One bit of knowledge should lead to another. Why do we stop pursuing it? Because the second stretch of highway seems so much longer than the first. It's a discouragement until we realize that it may have taken us much longer than we thought to obtain the first bit. Seeking and finding wisdom is not an easy task. Information leads to knowledge, which should in turn lead to understanding, and that might draw us, if we're lucky, into some degree of wisdom. But then there's a recipe involved. It is up to the thinking person, or one who thinks he is a thinking person, to mix one bit of wisdom with another, stir and put in the oven of time and see what comes out. Is it a pie, a Pi or a piece of garbage? Reckoning with what you have is good and proper until you need more.
Another danger is to rely for your self esteem on what you know and be satisfied with it. You may think your are impressing other people with your wisdom but all you're doing is playing hand ball into a mirror. Some actors get tangled in that game. They think they have figured out how to play a certain type of role and so instead of starting from the beginning to understand a specific character they just repeat themselves.
Then there's the danger of anti intellectualism which rears its ugly, hissing head or hops like a smelly toad out of the strangest places. I knew an actor who, when he came to visit one day, saw a book on calculus sitting on my desk. He thought it wasn't mine. When I said it was he wanted to know why I was reading it. He disbelieved that I had any interest in the subject. Why wasn't I reading books on acting? Why, I thought? I'm a working actor, I do theatre day after day, I don't have to read about it. I'm interested in knowing about other things. He decided I was just trying to impress people. I didn't carry the book around with me and I didn't discuss mathematics with anyone. I fail to see why he thought my attempts to understand rectilinear motion was impressing anyone.
Now about impressing people. I knew a sweet man named Mr Bixbee who was deprived of a formal education from which he suffered a sense of inferiority. He compensated for it by claiming a familiarity with the great literature of the world which he didn't have. He wouldn't talk about the books except to say that he read them. I felt a bit sorry for him that he had to live that pretense. He wasn't a stupid man. There was a whole world of wisdom available to him if he would just open one of those books and begin to read it.
The gaining of wisdom is not a tortoise and hare race. The finish line is so far ahead of all of us that our positions along the way are only relative. In fact, I don't think there is a finish line, and that's what makes it so interesting to me. No matter how much we know there is always more. Nature and the universe pour more information on us then we are prepared to accept. And it will always be that way. Forever.
DB - The Vagabond
***********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 2 responses so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Keep The Lights On
If you wish to shine like the daylight, burn up the night of self-importance.
Rumi
*****************
I used to know a fellow in New York who was an actor and a friend. We did one show together and it went well. Then he would come to see my plays and I would see his plays and we would hang out and have fun. He was intelligent, friendly and had a sense of humor.
Then one day he asked me to be in a play he wanted to direct. It was a two character play. He cast the other part and scheduled a rehearsal. Immediately into the first day his personality changed. He became dark, a bully, an insulting martinet, criticizing every line reading and being generally obnoxious.
We were only doing it on speculation, there was no contract, so by the second rehearsal the other actor and I decided to drop out. The next time I saw my friend he was his usual jovial self.
I've seen that sort of Jekyll and Hyde behavior before and I don't understand it. What happens to people when they get a little bit of power or influence that they suddenly become a self-important antagonist instead of a friend. I've seen and had to work with that kind of oppressive behavior before but I never knew any of those people in any other context. This was different. This was a friend of mine who abruptly began treating us as if we didn't know what we were doing. Psychologists must have a word for that kind of temporary transformation. I don't know what it is. All I can say is that it was unexpected and unpleasant.
We eventually parted ways over a totally unrelated issue. But there was an element of the unexpected and unrealistic about that also. I finally concluded that there was a strain in his character I had missed for years. Under the right circumstances something made him change, take himself too seriously and to view himself as too important to bother with other people's rights or feelings. It's too bad because he was a nice guy and I liked him.
DB - The Vagabond
****************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 1 response so fa
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Rumi
*****************
I used to know a fellow in New York who was an actor and a friend. We did one show together and it went well. Then he would come to see my plays and I would see his plays and we would hang out and have fun. He was intelligent, friendly and had a sense of humor.
Then one day he asked me to be in a play he wanted to direct. It was a two character play. He cast the other part and scheduled a rehearsal. Immediately into the first day his personality changed. He became dark, a bully, an insulting martinet, criticizing every line reading and being generally obnoxious.
We were only doing it on speculation, there was no contract, so by the second rehearsal the other actor and I decided to drop out. The next time I saw my friend he was his usual jovial self.
I've seen that sort of Jekyll and Hyde behavior before and I don't understand it. What happens to people when they get a little bit of power or influence that they suddenly become a self-important antagonist instead of a friend. I've seen and had to work with that kind of oppressive behavior before but I never knew any of those people in any other context. This was different. This was a friend of mine who abruptly began treating us as if we didn't know what we were doing. Psychologists must have a word for that kind of temporary transformation. I don't know what it is. All I can say is that it was unexpected and unpleasant.
We eventually parted ways over a totally unrelated issue. But there was an element of the unexpected and unrealistic about that also. I finally concluded that there was a strain in his character I had missed for years. Under the right circumstances something made him change, take himself too seriously and to view himself as too important to bother with other people's rights or feelings. It's too bad because he was a nice guy and I liked him.
DB - The Vagabond
****************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 1 response so fa
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Monday, January 10, 2011
Go Wolfgang
Everything has its own food, and music is the food of the spirit.
Nasrabadi
********************
In the former, primitive, pre transistor, pre CD days the only way to get music, if you didn't make your own, was either on a cumbersome record player with vulnerable analogue disks or through a radio with tubes. But anyone who was hungry for the songs of the day had a portable AM radio which they carried next to their ear. There were plenty of yelling top 40 DJs supplying the air with all the latest hits.
If, like myself, you were a classical music lover, the opportunities were very slim. It was a hunting game. There was the station in New York where I was growing up, but it went off the air at midnight. Switch over to another Music Till Dawn station and then another one for the Saturday afternoon opera broadcast from the Met which happened only for part of the year. It was a stuggle.
But it was a struggle that was worth it. As more and more people were discovering the classical arena of music, musical education was improving in the schools and the United States was beginning to produce great musicians of its own, not having to rely completely on the gifted artists of Europe.
I like to compare classical musicians to Grand Prix drivers. Those people can drive anything, from a tractor on up, in any kind of traffic. In a recent interview a member of the New York Philharmonic said the orchestra was so good it could play any kind of music set before it. Unfortunately there is still some prejudice against "serious" music, even from some "popular" musicians. But the prejudice doesn't usually go the other way. Real musicians can not only play any kind of music, they can also appreciate it, even simple music. Shostakovich, the great Russian composer of symphonies and string quartets, also wrote some children's songs.
Some people have their favorites, the bombast of the 1812 Overture, the grand Hallelujah Chorus, Beethoven's Fifth and so on, but they don't venture into music they don't know. And when most people think of music they think of songs, lyrics, words. In pure music there are no words, or rather, there are words and ideas expressed in a language people aren't familiar with and don't learn.
That was my big discovery as a child with my radio hugged to my ear. I heard the language of music and have been a music lover ever since. If you want to know where the truth is it's in all the music of Bach, the late Beethoven string quartets and the Mozart piano concertos.
Now here is something you must do before the year is out and the sooner the better. Even if you don't like classical music, even if you hate it, you must listen to Alfred Brendel perform the Mozart Piano Concerto number 23 in A major K. 488. Buy, borrow or steal it (no don't steal it). Don't do anything else but listen. Concentrate, hear every note and let it talk to you. Listen to it twice through, at least. Don't intellectualize about it, Climb its ladders and swim in its streams. Hear the gentle rain, hear the warm sun. It is a grand, loving, work of genius and pure spirituality. It sings, dances, weeps, laughs, swirls and jumps with joy. It is life affirming, world changing, a gift from heaven to an as yet undeserving human race. Hear it, enjoy it. That's an order.
DB - The Vagabond
****************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Nasrabadi
********************
In the former, primitive, pre transistor, pre CD days the only way to get music, if you didn't make your own, was either on a cumbersome record player with vulnerable analogue disks or through a radio with tubes. But anyone who was hungry for the songs of the day had a portable AM radio which they carried next to their ear. There were plenty of yelling top 40 DJs supplying the air with all the latest hits.
If, like myself, you were a classical music lover, the opportunities were very slim. It was a hunting game. There was the station in New York where I was growing up, but it went off the air at midnight. Switch over to another Music Till Dawn station and then another one for the Saturday afternoon opera broadcast from the Met which happened only for part of the year. It was a stuggle.
But it was a struggle that was worth it. As more and more people were discovering the classical arena of music, musical education was improving in the schools and the United States was beginning to produce great musicians of its own, not having to rely completely on the gifted artists of Europe.
I like to compare classical musicians to Grand Prix drivers. Those people can drive anything, from a tractor on up, in any kind of traffic. In a recent interview a member of the New York Philharmonic said the orchestra was so good it could play any kind of music set before it. Unfortunately there is still some prejudice against "serious" music, even from some "popular" musicians. But the prejudice doesn't usually go the other way. Real musicians can not only play any kind of music, they can also appreciate it, even simple music. Shostakovich, the great Russian composer of symphonies and string quartets, also wrote some children's songs.
Some people have their favorites, the bombast of the 1812 Overture, the grand Hallelujah Chorus, Beethoven's Fifth and so on, but they don't venture into music they don't know. And when most people think of music they think of songs, lyrics, words. In pure music there are no words, or rather, there are words and ideas expressed in a language people aren't familiar with and don't learn.
That was my big discovery as a child with my radio hugged to my ear. I heard the language of music and have been a music lover ever since. If you want to know where the truth is it's in all the music of Bach, the late Beethoven string quartets and the Mozart piano concertos.
Now here is something you must do before the year is out and the sooner the better. Even if you don't like classical music, even if you hate it, you must listen to Alfred Brendel perform the Mozart Piano Concerto number 23 in A major K. 488. Buy, borrow or steal it (no don't steal it). Don't do anything else but listen. Concentrate, hear every note and let it talk to you. Listen to it twice through, at least. Don't intellectualize about it, Climb its ladders and swim in its streams. Hear the gentle rain, hear the warm sun. It is a grand, loving, work of genius and pure spirituality. It sings, dances, weeps, laughs, swirls and jumps with joy. It is life affirming, world changing, a gift from heaven to an as yet undeserving human race. Hear it, enjoy it. That's an order.
DB - The Vagabond
****************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
Only 1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Weekend Puzzle Answer
Weekend Puzzle Answer
Here are 12 names. Which one does not belong on the list. It's easy.
Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill
Charles de Gaulle
Dwight Eisenhower
Adolph Hitler
Bernard Montgomery
Benito Mussolini
Erwin Rommel
Theodore Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Harry Truman
Georgi Zhukhov
----------------------------
The answer is Theodore Roosevelt.
All the rest were involved one way or another in the World War II. It was the other Roosevelt, FDR, who was involved in the war.
There is one winner, Big Mark of the Blogspot Tigers. who takes home the grand prize of a truck load of sand from Normandy Beach.
Thank you all.
DB
*****************************
Here are 12 names. Which one does not belong on the list. It's easy.
Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill
Charles de Gaulle
Dwight Eisenhower
Adolph Hitler
Bernard Montgomery
Benito Mussolini
Erwin Rommel
Theodore Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Harry Truman
Georgi Zhukhov
----------------------------
The answer is Theodore Roosevelt.
All the rest were involved one way or another in the World War II. It was the other Roosevelt, FDR, who was involved in the war.
There is one winner, Big Mark of the Blogspot Tigers. who takes home the grand prize of a truck load of sand from Normandy Beach.
Thank you all.
DB
*****************************
Useless Information
A love affair with knowledge will never end in heart break.
Michael Marino
***********************
If you are standing directly on the South Pole, (I wouldn't advise it unless you are extremely well dressed and have some company) no matter which way you look there is only one direction you can go and that's north. Once you take a step you've added east and west to your limited possibilities. A few more steps and a few more directions are added. If you keep moving soon there are a great many directions you can move.
It's the same with your front door. There's only one step out, but once out you have some possibilities. Choose one of those to move in and you are gradually increasing the number of ways you can go.
I was quite sure of what I was going to do with myself when I retired. I had spent my adult life as an actor, I fully intended to keep doing that. But I didn't realize how hungry I was going to be, not for food but for knowledge.
In my career I knew actors, and I was one of them, who were prepared with the lines and behaviors of the character they played and with the intricacies of the drama. But there were other actors who came into rehearsals with much more. They had traced down the political, social and geographical contexts of the plays and the playwrights. If it was an historical drama they were acquainted with the events of the time and they had read biographical items of the main characters. Some of the other actors would yawn and consider it useless information. But I learned to be very interested in that approach. To me in added so many more dimensions and directions to move in while developing the play.
In "Educating Rita" specific reference are made to books by E. M. Forster and Rita Mae Brown. When I performed the play in Cincinnati the actress I worked with and I read both of those books. When I played a supporting roloe in "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" I read the whole novel about the Caine mutiny by Herman Wouk. If I found that a play touched on an ancient myth, as many modern plays do, I would track down the myth.
So what have I done since I retired? Bought books. I have books on philosophy, art, music, history, biography, science, psychology, religion and many other topics. Will I ever get to read all of those books? It doesn't matter. Whichever direction I go in I'm learning something. It's a love affair.
DB
********************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are 12 names. Which one does not belong on the list. It's easy.
Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill
Charles de Gaulle
Dwight Eisenhower
Adolph Hitler
Bernard Montgomery
Benito Mussolini
Erwin Rommel
Theodore Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Harry Truman
Georgi Zhukhov
Good luck
DB
*****************************
Michael Marino
***********************
If you are standing directly on the South Pole, (I wouldn't advise it unless you are extremely well dressed and have some company) no matter which way you look there is only one direction you can go and that's north. Once you take a step you've added east and west to your limited possibilities. A few more steps and a few more directions are added. If you keep moving soon there are a great many directions you can move.
It's the same with your front door. There's only one step out, but once out you have some possibilities. Choose one of those to move in and you are gradually increasing the number of ways you can go.
I was quite sure of what I was going to do with myself when I retired. I had spent my adult life as an actor, I fully intended to keep doing that. But I didn't realize how hungry I was going to be, not for food but for knowledge.
In my career I knew actors, and I was one of them, who were prepared with the lines and behaviors of the character they played and with the intricacies of the drama. But there were other actors who came into rehearsals with much more. They had traced down the political, social and geographical contexts of the plays and the playwrights. If it was an historical drama they were acquainted with the events of the time and they had read biographical items of the main characters. Some of the other actors would yawn and consider it useless information. But I learned to be very interested in that approach. To me in added so many more dimensions and directions to move in while developing the play.
In "Educating Rita" specific reference are made to books by E. M. Forster and Rita Mae Brown. When I performed the play in Cincinnati the actress I worked with and I read both of those books. When I played a supporting roloe in "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" I read the whole novel about the Caine mutiny by Herman Wouk. If I found that a play touched on an ancient myth, as many modern plays do, I would track down the myth.
So what have I done since I retired? Bought books. I have books on philosophy, art, music, history, biography, science, psychology, religion and many other topics. Will I ever get to read all of those books? It doesn't matter. Whichever direction I go in I'm learning something. It's a love affair.
DB
********************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are 12 names. Which one does not belong on the list. It's easy.
Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill
Charles de Gaulle
Dwight Eisenhower
Adolph Hitler
Bernard Montgomery
Benito Mussolini
Erwin Rommel
Theodore Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Harry Truman
Georgi Zhukhov
Good luck
DB
*****************************
Saturday, January 8, 2011
The Day I Owned Times Square
These vagabond shoes
They are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it,
New York, New York.
Fred Ebb, John Kander
****************************
Anyone who spends any time in New York City has New York stories. Adventures automatically occur in that remarkable, aggravating and rewarding place where anything can happen. This is one of my many stories and it's true, with no embellishments, I promise.
If you have ever been in Times Square then you know how big it is. It is actually two squares: Duffy Square on the north end and Times Square on the south, which are connected Two large boulevards, Broadway and Seventh Avenue proceed southward through it and cross each other. There are five cross streets, one of them going in two directions. It's huge.
If you've ever been in Times Square then you know how busy it is. Theatres, office buildings, hotels, bars and restaurants, shops, side walk vendors, busses, trucks, taxis, cars, bicycles, horses and everywhere there are people going here, going thee or standing around gawking, twenty four hours a day. It is truly a place that never sleeps.
I had a job as a relief announcer for WQXR, which was the New York Times radio station. That meant that I was on call, sometimes on short notice, to fill in when one of the other announcers couldn't be there.
One Sunday morning I got a phone call at 4 a.m. from the morning announcer telling me he couldn't make it in to work, he lived in New Jersey, could I take the shift for him. In those days the station did not go all night, so someone had to be there to do the sign on and the morning programs beginning at 6. So I got up, had some coffee and something to eat and left my apartment building at 5. I lived on 56th Street and 6th Avenue. As soon as I walked out the front door I could see why he couldn't get to work. There had been a major, MAJOR snow storm, one of the worst, the city was covered with snow.
I walked down 6th Avenue, crossed over to 7th and entered Times Square at the northeast corner. My destination was at the southwest corner, 43rd Street. I was amazed to see there was no traffic, and there hadn't been any for quite a while. There were no tire tracks or footprints in the snow. It was deep, over my ankles, but I trudged diagonally right across Times Square, something one could never do at any other time, brazenly walking down the avenues and the streets. In all that vast area I was the only creature moving. Even the ubiquitous pigeons were tucked in somewhere.
In the 5 to 10 minutes it took me to walk to work I was the only business man, the only proprietor, the only tourist, the only resident, the only citizen, completely alone and by myself in the center of what is the busiest place in America. And these "vagabond shoes" were straying through "the very heart of it."
It was a strange, surreal, Fellini-esque, Doctor Zhivago type adventure. I felt like an explorer. I felt like I should stick a flag in the snow and claim it for myself. I owned it. I owned Times Square.
DB - The Vagabond
***************************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are 12 names. Which one does not belong on the list. It's easy.
Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill
Charles de Gaulle
Dwight Eisenhower
Adolph Hitler
Bernard Montgomery
Benito Mussolini
Erwin Rommel
Theodore Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Harry Truman
Georgi Zhukhov
Good luck
DB
*****************************
They are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it,
New York, New York.
Fred Ebb, John Kander
****************************
Anyone who spends any time in New York City has New York stories. Adventures automatically occur in that remarkable, aggravating and rewarding place where anything can happen. This is one of my many stories and it's true, with no embellishments, I promise.
If you have ever been in Times Square then you know how big it is. It is actually two squares: Duffy Square on the north end and Times Square on the south, which are connected Two large boulevards, Broadway and Seventh Avenue proceed southward through it and cross each other. There are five cross streets, one of them going in two directions. It's huge.
If you've ever been in Times Square then you know how busy it is. Theatres, office buildings, hotels, bars and restaurants, shops, side walk vendors, busses, trucks, taxis, cars, bicycles, horses and everywhere there are people going here, going thee or standing around gawking, twenty four hours a day. It is truly a place that never sleeps.
I had a job as a relief announcer for WQXR, which was the New York Times radio station. That meant that I was on call, sometimes on short notice, to fill in when one of the other announcers couldn't be there.
One Sunday morning I got a phone call at 4 a.m. from the morning announcer telling me he couldn't make it in to work, he lived in New Jersey, could I take the shift for him. In those days the station did not go all night, so someone had to be there to do the sign on and the morning programs beginning at 6. So I got up, had some coffee and something to eat and left my apartment building at 5. I lived on 56th Street and 6th Avenue. As soon as I walked out the front door I could see why he couldn't get to work. There had been a major, MAJOR snow storm, one of the worst, the city was covered with snow.
I walked down 6th Avenue, crossed over to 7th and entered Times Square at the northeast corner. My destination was at the southwest corner, 43rd Street. I was amazed to see there was no traffic, and there hadn't been any for quite a while. There were no tire tracks or footprints in the snow. It was deep, over my ankles, but I trudged diagonally right across Times Square, something one could never do at any other time, brazenly walking down the avenues and the streets. In all that vast area I was the only creature moving. Even the ubiquitous pigeons were tucked in somewhere.
In the 5 to 10 minutes it took me to walk to work I was the only business man, the only proprietor, the only tourist, the only resident, the only citizen, completely alone and by myself in the center of what is the busiest place in America. And these "vagabond shoes" were straying through "the very heart of it."
It was a strange, surreal, Fellini-esque, Doctor Zhivago type adventure. I felt like an explorer. I felt like I should stick a flag in the snow and claim it for myself. I owned it. I owned Times Square.
DB - The Vagabond
***************************
Weekend Puzzle
Here are 12 names. Which one does not belong on the list. It's easy.
Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill
Charles de Gaulle
Dwight Eisenhower
Adolph Hitler
Bernard Montgomery
Benito Mussolini
Erwin Rommel
Theodore Roosevelt
Joseph Stalin
Harry Truman
Georgi Zhukhov
Good luck
DB
*****************************
Friday, January 7, 2011
Is It Folly To Be Wise?
He who tells the truth must have one foot in the stirrup.
Armenian proverb
**********************
Ignorance is doom. It is a danger to our future that so many people desire to grasp and possessively defend their own mental invariance about things. And it is even more frightening when whole groups of people become mesmerized by the nonsense they hear from their leaders. One gang calls people who disagree with them a gang. People would rather be on a race track which goes nowhere than on a highway which does.
In Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" the Spirit of Christmas Present displays two desperate children to Scrooge who wants to know who they are.
"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy,
for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased."
(Charles Dickens)
This is no idle warning. It is ignorance, which is the direct result of nonthinking and that which supports nonthinking. And why do so many people support this ignorance? Why is it even applauded in some quarters? Why is there so much suspicion of those who are trying to fray the enemies of progress? Because people don't want to know the truth. It upsets them.
I have said this before and I am saying it again. When the World Trade Center was destroyed the US Government went immediately to work forming a commission to determine how it happened. But there wasn't a single penny spent on a commission to determine WHY it happened. The government is still behind the screen on that one. Now people don't want American Muslims to build a mosque near where it happened because a group of Asian Muslims destroyed it.
One of our popular journalists, I won't name him, was interviewing an American Muslim who was just about to explain why he said that he understood the motives behind the terrorist attacks when the journalist called him a traitor and shut him off. He didn't want to know the truth.
We proudly proclaim that the United States is the best nation in the world and that our living standards are higher than other countries, and then we expect the people who live in those countries to stay there.
We can't decide who's an immigrant and who isn't. I recently read an article about a woman who was denied her Medicare benefits because she couldn't prove she was a citizen. She was born on a Choctaw reservation. She's a Native American. The tragedy of that far outweighs the irony. It just points the dial at the big I. Ignorance.
I know of a high school that closed down the theatre and arts programs in order to save power during the energy crises of years ago, and yet all the lights blazed for the basketball games.
Our government gives money, not programs but real money, to those who already have it, while it deprives the poor.
"Degrade first the Arts if you'd Mankind Degrade.
Hire Idiots to Paint with cold light & hot shade:
Give high Price for the worst, leave the best in disgrace,
And with Labours of Ignorance fill every place."
(William Blake)
That's the end of my rant for the day, but I've already got one foot in the stirrup. I'm outta here!
DB - The Vagabond
******************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Armenian proverb
**********************
Ignorance is doom. It is a danger to our future that so many people desire to grasp and possessively defend their own mental invariance about things. And it is even more frightening when whole groups of people become mesmerized by the nonsense they hear from their leaders. One gang calls people who disagree with them a gang. People would rather be on a race track which goes nowhere than on a highway which does.
In Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" the Spirit of Christmas Present displays two desperate children to Scrooge who wants to know who they are.
"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy,
for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased."
(Charles Dickens)
This is no idle warning. It is ignorance, which is the direct result of nonthinking and that which supports nonthinking. And why do so many people support this ignorance? Why is it even applauded in some quarters? Why is there so much suspicion of those who are trying to fray the enemies of progress? Because people don't want to know the truth. It upsets them.
I have said this before and I am saying it again. When the World Trade Center was destroyed the US Government went immediately to work forming a commission to determine how it happened. But there wasn't a single penny spent on a commission to determine WHY it happened. The government is still behind the screen on that one. Now people don't want American Muslims to build a mosque near where it happened because a group of Asian Muslims destroyed it.
One of our popular journalists, I won't name him, was interviewing an American Muslim who was just about to explain why he said that he understood the motives behind the terrorist attacks when the journalist called him a traitor and shut him off. He didn't want to know the truth.
We proudly proclaim that the United States is the best nation in the world and that our living standards are higher than other countries, and then we expect the people who live in those countries to stay there.
We can't decide who's an immigrant and who isn't. I recently read an article about a woman who was denied her Medicare benefits because she couldn't prove she was a citizen. She was born on a Choctaw reservation. She's a Native American. The tragedy of that far outweighs the irony. It just points the dial at the big I. Ignorance.
I know of a high school that closed down the theatre and arts programs in order to save power during the energy crises of years ago, and yet all the lights blazed for the basketball games.
Our government gives money, not programs but real money, to those who already have it, while it deprives the poor.
"Degrade first the Arts if you'd Mankind Degrade.
Hire Idiots to Paint with cold light & hot shade:
Give high Price for the worst, leave the best in disgrace,
And with Labours of Ignorance fill every place."
(William Blake)
That's the end of my rant for the day, but I've already got one foot in the stirrup. I'm outta here!
DB - The Vagabond
******************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Thursday, January 6, 2011
One Life
To be able to look back upon one's past life with satisfaction is to live twice.
Lord Acton
**********************
I have sometimes heard seniors say if they could live their lives over again they wouldn't change a thing. I don't know if they really mean that or not but to me that's total nonsense. If I could live my life over again I would change almost everything, beginning with a home and a family.
I would wish to be born into a family with a mother and a father and some brothers and sisters to grow up with. I would want to be in a home, a house that was a permanent place in the world to which I could return when I wanted to. I would want intelligent guidance and influence. I would like to know who my relatives are and get acceptance from those around me for who I am and what I can do.
I never knew my father. There were two grandfathers and one grandmother I never knew, two aunts and a whole flock of cousins. I have relatives now that I will probably never meet.
There was no stable home. I moved 25 times during the time I was growing up. I have no school chums because I kept changing schools. Even as an adult I found no stability. The longest time I lived in one place was 20 years in a transient hotel room, but even then I was touring all over the country as an actor.
I've noticed that many great writers are focused on particular circumstances that preside in their writings in one form or another. Many of Shakespeare's characters live through loss and sometimes regaining of place, power or influence. Dickens spends much time on the plight of the young in a poverty society. Dostoyevsky was in a constant search for spirituality.
I suppose I have been on that long search for home and family in my own writings. I guess I've always been a wanderer in search of my life, a life that got left somewhere. I tried, pointlessly, to make a family out of whatever theatre company I was with, an attempt that was misinterpreted by everyone.
I became a walker. I walked for miles through the cities of New York, Boston and it's suburbs. Hartford, Connecticut, Springfield, Massachusetts, Westchester County in New York State. In Boston one night I walked from Back Bay across the Charles River through Harvard Square to Somerville. In New York one day I walked from 104th Street and West Enid Avenue down to 4th Street and !st Avenue. In Westchester I walked from
Rye to White Plains. What was I looking for? My home? In 1960 I hitchhiked across the country, from Boston to Los Angeles.
I spent a few years, off and on, walking through the White Mountain National Forest where I was searching for myself.
People wonder why I live where I do now. I have no roots here and know almost no one. Well, I've grown accustomed to that.
I once started a list titled WHERE ARE YOU. On it were the names of all the people I once knew and liked, former friends and colleagues. It was astonishing to me how many people I used to know well. I stopped it before the list was finished and before I got too depressed. Today I am grateful for the few friends I have.
Music, literature and my career as an entertainer have been my life's companions and there have been very few people to share those things with.
Now I write. My two finished novels and a few of my short stories are about people who don't stay put, either because they can't or because they don't want to.
I'm a wanderer, a vagabond, I accept that. Now I wander through the pathways of what might have been and among the endlessly interesting imaginations of my mind. I do not look back on my past life with satisfaction. So instead I look forward.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Lord Acton
**********************
I have sometimes heard seniors say if they could live their lives over again they wouldn't change a thing. I don't know if they really mean that or not but to me that's total nonsense. If I could live my life over again I would change almost everything, beginning with a home and a family.
I would wish to be born into a family with a mother and a father and some brothers and sisters to grow up with. I would want to be in a home, a house that was a permanent place in the world to which I could return when I wanted to. I would want intelligent guidance and influence. I would like to know who my relatives are and get acceptance from those around me for who I am and what I can do.
I never knew my father. There were two grandfathers and one grandmother I never knew, two aunts and a whole flock of cousins. I have relatives now that I will probably never meet.
There was no stable home. I moved 25 times during the time I was growing up. I have no school chums because I kept changing schools. Even as an adult I found no stability. The longest time I lived in one place was 20 years in a transient hotel room, but even then I was touring all over the country as an actor.
I've noticed that many great writers are focused on particular circumstances that preside in their writings in one form or another. Many of Shakespeare's characters live through loss and sometimes regaining of place, power or influence. Dickens spends much time on the plight of the young in a poverty society. Dostoyevsky was in a constant search for spirituality.
I suppose I have been on that long search for home and family in my own writings. I guess I've always been a wanderer in search of my life, a life that got left somewhere. I tried, pointlessly, to make a family out of whatever theatre company I was with, an attempt that was misinterpreted by everyone.
I became a walker. I walked for miles through the cities of New York, Boston and it's suburbs. Hartford, Connecticut, Springfield, Massachusetts, Westchester County in New York State. In Boston one night I walked from Back Bay across the Charles River through Harvard Square to Somerville. In New York one day I walked from 104th Street and West Enid Avenue down to 4th Street and !st Avenue. In Westchester I walked from
Rye to White Plains. What was I looking for? My home? In 1960 I hitchhiked across the country, from Boston to Los Angeles.
I spent a few years, off and on, walking through the White Mountain National Forest where I was searching for myself.
People wonder why I live where I do now. I have no roots here and know almost no one. Well, I've grown accustomed to that.
I once started a list titled WHERE ARE YOU. On it were the names of all the people I once knew and liked, former friends and colleagues. It was astonishing to me how many people I used to know well. I stopped it before the list was finished and before I got too depressed. Today I am grateful for the few friends I have.
Music, literature and my career as an entertainer have been my life's companions and there have been very few people to share those things with.
Now I write. My two finished novels and a few of my short stories are about people who don't stay put, either because they can't or because they don't want to.
I'm a wanderer, a vagabond, I accept that. Now I wander through the pathways of what might have been and among the endlessly interesting imaginations of my mind. I do not look back on my past life with satisfaction. So instead I look forward.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Say The Thing
If anyone is glad that you are here, then you have not lived in vain.
Charles Hoffman
****************************
The young woman who lives on the first floor and I seldom talk. She's a nine to fiver with an active social life. So she's not here a lot and when she is she tends to stick to herself. We have had a few conversations over the years and she is always very pleasant. One day she said something to me that was golden.
I spent the day today cleaning my apartment and rearranging things, moving this over there, putting that away and finding a better place for the other thing. It was very tiring and I joked to myself that I really need a maid and maybe a handy man or two.
It brought to mind an episode I had last summer when I was being urged to move into an assisted living facility and I was seriously considering it for a time. Eventually I decided not to do it and to stay put even though I live three flights up and am alone. I sincerely felt I had made the right decision, but I still had a few doubts, when my neighbor came home from her job and found me sitting on the front porch. She stopped to chat and I told her what had gone on and what my decision was. She said "Well, I'm glad you're not leaving us."
That remark was worth more than I could possibly repay. It also taught me a lesson about how important a simple statement of appreciation can be, it can mean life to someone.
Tell someone today that you are glad they are there.
DB
****************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Charles Hoffman
****************************
The young woman who lives on the first floor and I seldom talk. She's a nine to fiver with an active social life. So she's not here a lot and when she is she tends to stick to herself. We have had a few conversations over the years and she is always very pleasant. One day she said something to me that was golden.
I spent the day today cleaning my apartment and rearranging things, moving this over there, putting that away and finding a better place for the other thing. It was very tiring and I joked to myself that I really need a maid and maybe a handy man or two.
It brought to mind an episode I had last summer when I was being urged to move into an assisted living facility and I was seriously considering it for a time. Eventually I decided not to do it and to stay put even though I live three flights up and am alone. I sincerely felt I had made the right decision, but I still had a few doubts, when my neighbor came home from her job and found me sitting on the front porch. She stopped to chat and I told her what had gone on and what my decision was. She said "Well, I'm glad you're not leaving us."
That remark was worth more than I could possibly repay. It also taught me a lesson about how important a simple statement of appreciation can be, it can mean life to someone.
Tell someone today that you are glad they are there.
DB
****************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
SeeSaw Of The Mind
The realm of reality is as vast as cosmic space, it is the knowing mind of sentient beings that is small.
Pao-chih
*************************
Sometimes I ponder with dismay the limits of my own small sentient mind and feel intimidated by the difference between what I know and the unknown but knowable. The task is made even more difficult by the nonsense, my own and others, that litters up the mental landscape.
One thing I did learn, finally, after years of foolishness, is to know and look for a reality that is not apparent to the sentient mind. Things are seldom, or never, what the seem to be. But there is a reality to what they are that can't be expressed in any other way. The great thinkers struggle over terms to make an inexpressible vision as clear as possible. The more extreme, the more spiritual the vision, the more esoteric the terms. When others struggle to understand those terms and make sense out of them a frustration often sets in that turns that struggle into nonsense and allows those strugglers to lapse back into a literal meaning of the terms, thus missing the true meaning, the reality that was in proximity but just out of reach.
Great works of art and literature are screens, not to hide the truth but to depict what is behind the screen in the best terms the artist or wirier can find to describe the vision and to invite exploration. Great stories are allegories to tell what is not known by the limited sentient mind. One can also say the same for creations of mechanics, technology, engineering and science. "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weigh their pains in sense" Shakespeare wrote.
Now we have a prophecy by some befuddled so-called Christians that have pin pointed this year as the year everything ends. Someone through careful Scriptural research he says, has picked May 21st as the "rapture" or Judgement Day, followed about 5 months later by the end of everything. If we are still here after the 21st of May then we weren't saved. Too bad.
Not only does the theory turn back the clock of history and honest exploration to the superstition of the Middle Ages where the earth was thought to be the center of the universe, but it also insists on interpreting Scriptural allegory in the most primitive literal terms. It has reduced the amazing and profound Biblical revelatory writings to nonsense.
Anyone who is really interested should carefully read all 22 chapters of the book of Revelation and explore what is behind the screen of the author's words, what is meant by the four horsemen, the angels with vials of plagues, the great red dragon and what the inspired writers vision is really trying to tell us. It isn't easy, but it also isn't simple minded.
While science continues to discoverer new planets and new laws, let them sit and wait for the great cloud in which Christ is going to descend with his book. But treat them kindly and with affection. They walk among us and they vote.
DB - The Vagabond
*************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Pao-chih
*************************
Sometimes I ponder with dismay the limits of my own small sentient mind and feel intimidated by the difference between what I know and the unknown but knowable. The task is made even more difficult by the nonsense, my own and others, that litters up the mental landscape.
One thing I did learn, finally, after years of foolishness, is to know and look for a reality that is not apparent to the sentient mind. Things are seldom, or never, what the seem to be. But there is a reality to what they are that can't be expressed in any other way. The great thinkers struggle over terms to make an inexpressible vision as clear as possible. The more extreme, the more spiritual the vision, the more esoteric the terms. When others struggle to understand those terms and make sense out of them a frustration often sets in that turns that struggle into nonsense and allows those strugglers to lapse back into a literal meaning of the terms, thus missing the true meaning, the reality that was in proximity but just out of reach.
Great works of art and literature are screens, not to hide the truth but to depict what is behind the screen in the best terms the artist or wirier can find to describe the vision and to invite exploration. Great stories are allegories to tell what is not known by the limited sentient mind. One can also say the same for creations of mechanics, technology, engineering and science. "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weigh their pains in sense" Shakespeare wrote.
Now we have a prophecy by some befuddled so-called Christians that have pin pointed this year as the year everything ends. Someone through careful Scriptural research he says, has picked May 21st as the "rapture" or Judgement Day, followed about 5 months later by the end of everything. If we are still here after the 21st of May then we weren't saved. Too bad.
Not only does the theory turn back the clock of history and honest exploration to the superstition of the Middle Ages where the earth was thought to be the center of the universe, but it also insists on interpreting Scriptural allegory in the most primitive literal terms. It has reduced the amazing and profound Biblical revelatory writings to nonsense.
Anyone who is really interested should carefully read all 22 chapters of the book of Revelation and explore what is behind the screen of the author's words, what is meant by the four horsemen, the angels with vials of plagues, the great red dragon and what the inspired writers vision is really trying to tell us. It isn't easy, but it also isn't simple minded.
While science continues to discoverer new planets and new laws, let them sit and wait for the great cloud in which Christ is going to descend with his book. But treat them kindly and with affection. They walk among us and they vote.
DB - The Vagabond
*************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Monday, January 3, 2011
Seals And Monkeys
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
Socrates
************************
During my career I have often been disgusted to learn what some young students have been taught by one dim acting teacher or another from their various drama departments. I heard one girl say her teacher told her the way to do comedy was to always keep her elbows up. I tried playing a scene with a boy who wouldn't look at me or listen to me because his teacher told him to always play to the audience.
One summer day I was with a few youngsters fresh out of college with degrees in Acting. It was a field trip of sorts to which I was invited as a resource. We went to the Central Park Zoo in New York City.
Just inside the entrance there is a large stone pit filled with water. There is a foot bridge over the water to a small island in the middle. Swimming around in the water are seals. Periodically a zoo keeper will walk out to the center and hold out fish. The seals will jump out of the water to grab the fish. They are trained to do that and it is quite amusing.
But as we entered the zoo I said to the group I was with "Remember. All the animals we see will be acting, except for the seals." They gave me very strange looks, probably doubting my sanity.
We saw the penguins, standing up flapping their wings, or swimming like bullets through the water. We saw the polar bears, one stretched out in an undignified posture sunning himself on the rocks, the other swimming back and forth. We saw the tree snakes oozing their way from one twig to another.
Then we came to large tree filled area with some very hairy black and white monkeys. The monkeys were chasing each other around from one tree to another, swinging on branches and chattering away. They were having a hell of a good time and it was very entertaining.
One of the girls turned to me and said "Now I see what you mean. These monkeys are doing what they naturally do. They're not playing for us, they're playing for each other."
"That's right" I said.
"I'll never look at animals the same way again."
"Or people."
"Or people?"
"Yes. Who are the natural monkeys and who are the trained seals."
I don't know if any of the other kids got it, but she sure did. And to know she could translate that knowledge into the performing art gave her a flame that would never go out. To know to rely on natural behavior and to play with the other actors and not to the audience was the beginning of her training as an actor. And it had nothing to do with elbows.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Socrates
************************
During my career I have often been disgusted to learn what some young students have been taught by one dim acting teacher or another from their various drama departments. I heard one girl say her teacher told her the way to do comedy was to always keep her elbows up. I tried playing a scene with a boy who wouldn't look at me or listen to me because his teacher told him to always play to the audience.
One summer day I was with a few youngsters fresh out of college with degrees in Acting. It was a field trip of sorts to which I was invited as a resource. We went to the Central Park Zoo in New York City.
Just inside the entrance there is a large stone pit filled with water. There is a foot bridge over the water to a small island in the middle. Swimming around in the water are seals. Periodically a zoo keeper will walk out to the center and hold out fish. The seals will jump out of the water to grab the fish. They are trained to do that and it is quite amusing.
But as we entered the zoo I said to the group I was with "Remember. All the animals we see will be acting, except for the seals." They gave me very strange looks, probably doubting my sanity.
We saw the penguins, standing up flapping their wings, or swimming like bullets through the water. We saw the polar bears, one stretched out in an undignified posture sunning himself on the rocks, the other swimming back and forth. We saw the tree snakes oozing their way from one twig to another.
Then we came to large tree filled area with some very hairy black and white monkeys. The monkeys were chasing each other around from one tree to another, swinging on branches and chattering away. They were having a hell of a good time and it was very entertaining.
One of the girls turned to me and said "Now I see what you mean. These monkeys are doing what they naturally do. They're not playing for us, they're playing for each other."
"That's right" I said.
"I'll never look at animals the same way again."
"Or people."
"Or people?"
"Yes. Who are the natural monkeys and who are the trained seals."
I don't know if any of the other kids got it, but she sure did. And to know she could translate that knowledge into the performing art gave her a flame that would never go out. To know to rely on natural behavior and to play with the other actors and not to the audience was the beginning of her training as an actor. And it had nothing to do with elbows.
DB - The Vagabond
************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Entertaining Angels
When faced with a challenge, look for a way, not a way out.
David Weatherford
*************************
There are 365 days in a year for making resolutions and at least 365 chances to carry them out. Why do we settle for so much less? Why do we forget, make a list and lose it, ignore, delay, justify and finally give up until next year?
The answer is very dimple. We are not entertaining angels.
Angel #1. Stairway to Self Esteem
The reason you made the resolution in the first place was to make an improvement in your life. You want to weigh less because it will make you look better and feel better about yourself. You want to save money and not spend it on foolish things. You want to eliminate wasteful, negative habits and replace them with positive, healthy ones. All of those things and others are very good and will no doubt improve you life. But don't forget that remark about good intentions paving the road to hell. So hold on to them.
Angel #2 Gentlemen Start Your Engines
Whatever it is that will make you a better, happier person is not going to be accomplished overnight. So take your list of resolutions, pick one and start making plans, set small practical goals and think about them. Look for simple ways to cut down on fattening food, and make a practical decision about how much money you can put aside for savings. Hold those thoughts as concrete visions in you head as you go about living. The more firmly they live in your thoughts the more often your mind will give you ways and means for carrying them out.
Angel #3 Bearding the Lion In Its Den
The Bible talks about there being lions in the street. I have come to understand that metaphor as meaning discouragement. Nothing can dump cold molasses on your plans better than momentary failure, set backs and feelings of hopelessness. The trick is to not believe in those claims. They can be removed: a speck in your eye, a pebble in your shoe, seaweed on your beach.
Angel #4 The Sun Dial
What difference does it make if you take two steps backward, as long as you make three steps forward. Some people like to keep a journal of their progress toward their goals. That's not a bad idea if you're one of those record keeping types, or even if you're not. Rose Kennedy once wrote "Life isn't a matter of milestones, but moments." We don't have much control over milestones but we do over the moments. Remember the sun dial, it records only the sunny hours.
Angel #5 Cutting The Cake
It's okay to step on the scale or look at your bank account. But do it with a positive point of view. If you wanted to lose 10 pounds but you only lost 8, so what. That's 8 pounds of baggage you no longer have to carry around on you. Keep at it. If it's another 8 pounds next time, or even 6 pounds, you're winning. If the deposit in you savings account is too much to handle make it less, it's still earning interest. I knew of a woman who worked all her life and retired at 70 with $150,000. When someone asked her how she did it she said two words: "compound interest." Every moment of life when we don't do the destructive thing we have habitually done, it's a deposit in the account of the happier person, the better life.
Angel #6 When the Swallows Return to Capistrano
Built solidly into anyone's list of resolutions should be the system which enables one to cavort, brag, twirl and collapse. In other words, it's reward time. But the danger there is taking the reward before you earn it, or making the reward illfit the triumph. Just because you've reached your temporary goal of getting thinner don't fall for the gimmick of rewarding yourself by gorging on a big chunk of cherry cheesecake. And if you've saved enough money to reach a desired temporary level it's not the time to splurge on am expensive vacation to the Caribbean, but maybe you can have the cheesecake. In other words plan to do something nice for yourself that doesn't turn you around and send you back into the vortex of shame and regret you struggled valiantly, with strength and courage, to get out of.
Angel #7 Warning: Slippery Road Ahead
There is a danger to beware of and that is that once you have achieved a simple goal you have proved to yourself that you can do it so maybe it's time to relax and not try so hard. Oooooo! Nasty, nasty. That's a trick which can even fool the angels. Then is the time to knuckle down, look yourself squarely in the eye and say "No Sir (or Miss, or Madam, or Ms., whichever you like) I am not going to fall for that scam. I am not giving up. I'll take a nap. And when I wake up I'll start right in on the next step of my progress. So there!"
Angel #8 Your Favorite Charity
Small, simple goals intending toward larger goals carried out with discipline and satisfaction, moments of triumph leading to milestones of success, resolutions met and mastered, now put you in position to be an authority on doing good things, and right things. Now comes the time to hang out your shingle and be ready to help the next person who wants to know how you did it. Now is the chance to introduce them to compound interest in their lives. And doing that has another benefit to you. If you can advertise yourself to yourself and the world at large as a successful master of your own resolutions it will keep you on the right highway with no detours into the jungle you got out of. Now you feel good about yourself. And that's the best way to live.
DB - The Vagabond
***********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
David Weatherford
*************************
There are 365 days in a year for making resolutions and at least 365 chances to carry them out. Why do we settle for so much less? Why do we forget, make a list and lose it, ignore, delay, justify and finally give up until next year?
The answer is very dimple. We are not entertaining angels.
Angel #1. Stairway to Self Esteem
The reason you made the resolution in the first place was to make an improvement in your life. You want to weigh less because it will make you look better and feel better about yourself. You want to save money and not spend it on foolish things. You want to eliminate wasteful, negative habits and replace them with positive, healthy ones. All of those things and others are very good and will no doubt improve you life. But don't forget that remark about good intentions paving the road to hell. So hold on to them.
Angel #2 Gentlemen Start Your Engines
Whatever it is that will make you a better, happier person is not going to be accomplished overnight. So take your list of resolutions, pick one and start making plans, set small practical goals and think about them. Look for simple ways to cut down on fattening food, and make a practical decision about how much money you can put aside for savings. Hold those thoughts as concrete visions in you head as you go about living. The more firmly they live in your thoughts the more often your mind will give you ways and means for carrying them out.
Angel #3 Bearding the Lion In Its Den
The Bible talks about there being lions in the street. I have come to understand that metaphor as meaning discouragement. Nothing can dump cold molasses on your plans better than momentary failure, set backs and feelings of hopelessness. The trick is to not believe in those claims. They can be removed: a speck in your eye, a pebble in your shoe, seaweed on your beach.
Angel #4 The Sun Dial
What difference does it make if you take two steps backward, as long as you make three steps forward. Some people like to keep a journal of their progress toward their goals. That's not a bad idea if you're one of those record keeping types, or even if you're not. Rose Kennedy once wrote "Life isn't a matter of milestones, but moments." We don't have much control over milestones but we do over the moments. Remember the sun dial, it records only the sunny hours.
Angel #5 Cutting The Cake
It's okay to step on the scale or look at your bank account. But do it with a positive point of view. If you wanted to lose 10 pounds but you only lost 8, so what. That's 8 pounds of baggage you no longer have to carry around on you. Keep at it. If it's another 8 pounds next time, or even 6 pounds, you're winning. If the deposit in you savings account is too much to handle make it less, it's still earning interest. I knew of a woman who worked all her life and retired at 70 with $150,000. When someone asked her how she did it she said two words: "compound interest." Every moment of life when we don't do the destructive thing we have habitually done, it's a deposit in the account of the happier person, the better life.
Angel #6 When the Swallows Return to Capistrano
Built solidly into anyone's list of resolutions should be the system which enables one to cavort, brag, twirl and collapse. In other words, it's reward time. But the danger there is taking the reward before you earn it, or making the reward illfit the triumph. Just because you've reached your temporary goal of getting thinner don't fall for the gimmick of rewarding yourself by gorging on a big chunk of cherry cheesecake. And if you've saved enough money to reach a desired temporary level it's not the time to splurge on am expensive vacation to the Caribbean, but maybe you can have the cheesecake. In other words plan to do something nice for yourself that doesn't turn you around and send you back into the vortex of shame and regret you struggled valiantly, with strength and courage, to get out of.
Angel #7 Warning: Slippery Road Ahead
There is a danger to beware of and that is that once you have achieved a simple goal you have proved to yourself that you can do it so maybe it's time to relax and not try so hard. Oooooo! Nasty, nasty. That's a trick which can even fool the angels. Then is the time to knuckle down, look yourself squarely in the eye and say "No Sir (or Miss, or Madam, or Ms., whichever you like) I am not going to fall for that scam. I am not giving up. I'll take a nap. And when I wake up I'll start right in on the next step of my progress. So there!"
Angel #8 Your Favorite Charity
Small, simple goals intending toward larger goals carried out with discipline and satisfaction, moments of triumph leading to milestones of success, resolutions met and mastered, now put you in position to be an authority on doing good things, and right things. Now comes the time to hang out your shingle and be ready to help the next person who wants to know how you did it. Now is the chance to introduce them to compound interest in their lives. And doing that has another benefit to you. If you can advertise yourself to yourself and the world at large as a successful master of your own resolutions it will keep you on the right highway with no detours into the jungle you got out of. Now you feel good about yourself. And that's the best way to live.
DB - The Vagabond
***********************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Saturday, January 1, 2011
A New Year
'"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
John Keats
****************************
Early last summer an acquaintance prophesied without a doubt that I would be bed ridden in six months. That was six months ago. Well, don't invite me to go disco dancing or to run a marathon, but I stand, I walk, I climb three flights of stairs every day and I carry my own grocery bags. I'm not bragging. I'm just notifying.
-----------------------------------------------
Any sure seeker of Truth must carry a two edged sword with which to decapitate all the evils that would prevent finding Truth. Why must we approach the darkness as warriors? Why must we prove ourselves worthy of the light? Why were we born just human in this box of ignorance from which we have to claw, punch and kick our way out? That is the Gordian Knot, the existential maze I still find myself in after 7 decades of planetary life.
I have a lot of books sitting around, I haven't counted them but there are a lot. They all have paper clips marking pages because they have all been opened and partially read. There are amazing beings tucked in the pages of a book. But something tells me that all the wisdom, all the literature one needs in order to know Truth can be found on a single page. But who can find that page? And having found it, who can read it? And having read it, who can understand it? And having understood it, who can explain it?
Is Keats right? Some think so, others don't. Perhaps it's not a great idea to settle for a simple statement, "Truth is beauty, beauty truth" with out analyzing what is meant by those titles. But that brings one back to seeking the meaning of Truth and hence Truth itself.
It has been said that darkness is the absence of light, Is, therefore, ignorance the absence of wisdom?
There is something very perplexing to me about this idea. I observed the recent
eclipse of the moon. While the light of the moon seemed to come and go, it was merely shadow. Darkness is therefore just shadow. The stronger the light the greater the shadow. Light comes and goes but not darkness. Take away the light and the darkeners remains. Does that mean darkness is the natural state, only temporarily erased by the coming of light. The sun's rays temporarily blocked by the earth cast a shadow on the face of the moon. But the moon has no light of its own, it is only reflected light. So the earth was only blocking off from the surface of the moon the sun's own reflected light. If there was no light of the sun, the moon would be dark all the time.
The theory is that light dispels darkness, but darkness does not dispel light.
Nature knows nothing of Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, New Year's Day or any of the other celebrations of us just humans. Nature knows nothing of our calendars. It has no relationship to the number 2011. All that nature was involved in were the equinox and the eclipse of the moon. But the eclipse signified that the suns reflected light from the moon was eclipsed by the shadow of the earth. Is that a case in which light was dispelled by darkness?
When you see a newborn baby screw up it's face into a terrible grimace and cry in desperate rage, is it because it has been taken out of the soft darkness of the womb into the blinding light of so called reality? And does it then need to claw, punch and kick it's way into acceptance?
Is it true that darkness is the natural state of the universe? And if so, is ignorance the natural state of us just humans?
DB - The Vagabond
*********************
HAPPY NEW YEAR
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
John Keats
****************************
Early last summer an acquaintance prophesied without a doubt that I would be bed ridden in six months. That was six months ago. Well, don't invite me to go disco dancing or to run a marathon, but I stand, I walk, I climb three flights of stairs every day and I carry my own grocery bags. I'm not bragging. I'm just notifying.
-----------------------------------------------
Any sure seeker of Truth must carry a two edged sword with which to decapitate all the evils that would prevent finding Truth. Why must we approach the darkness as warriors? Why must we prove ourselves worthy of the light? Why were we born just human in this box of ignorance from which we have to claw, punch and kick our way out? That is the Gordian Knot, the existential maze I still find myself in after 7 decades of planetary life.
I have a lot of books sitting around, I haven't counted them but there are a lot. They all have paper clips marking pages because they have all been opened and partially read. There are amazing beings tucked in the pages of a book. But something tells me that all the wisdom, all the literature one needs in order to know Truth can be found on a single page. But who can find that page? And having found it, who can read it? And having read it, who can understand it? And having understood it, who can explain it?
Is Keats right? Some think so, others don't. Perhaps it's not a great idea to settle for a simple statement, "Truth is beauty, beauty truth" with out analyzing what is meant by those titles. But that brings one back to seeking the meaning of Truth and hence Truth itself.
It has been said that darkness is the absence of light, Is, therefore, ignorance the absence of wisdom?
There is something very perplexing to me about this idea. I observed the recent
eclipse of the moon. While the light of the moon seemed to come and go, it was merely shadow. Darkness is therefore just shadow. The stronger the light the greater the shadow. Light comes and goes but not darkness. Take away the light and the darkeners remains. Does that mean darkness is the natural state, only temporarily erased by the coming of light. The sun's rays temporarily blocked by the earth cast a shadow on the face of the moon. But the moon has no light of its own, it is only reflected light. So the earth was only blocking off from the surface of the moon the sun's own reflected light. If there was no light of the sun, the moon would be dark all the time.
The theory is that light dispels darkness, but darkness does not dispel light.
Nature knows nothing of Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, New Year's Day or any of the other celebrations of us just humans. Nature knows nothing of our calendars. It has no relationship to the number 2011. All that nature was involved in were the equinox and the eclipse of the moon. But the eclipse signified that the suns reflected light from the moon was eclipsed by the shadow of the earth. Is that a case in which light was dispelled by darkness?
When you see a newborn baby screw up it's face into a terrible grimace and cry in desperate rage, is it because it has been taken out of the soft darkness of the womb into the blinding light of so called reality? And does it then need to claw, punch and kick it's way into acceptance?
Is it true that darkness is the natural state of the universe? And if so, is ignorance the natural state of us just humans?
DB - The Vagabond
*********************
HAPPY NEW YEAR
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