So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.
Ok so it’s an ad, but still it’s hilarious. Bert and Ernie, what’s not to love?
In working with a great master, no matter what goes wrong they can correct it; their mind is so fast that they know how to change directions and fix it right away. I always look for that in a young glass blower, to see what their potential is to be a great master, to see how fast they learn to be able to correct a bad situation. You know if you get a young glass blower coming into a strange shop, the first thing they start doing is complaining that something’s too hot, or something’s too cold or the bench is the wrong height. What does the master do? They walk in, there’s no complaints, there’s just instant work.
What Pi sounds like. Brilliant.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry—determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d’appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Where I lived and What I Lived For
This chapter is something that should be read often!
Satisfaction: Finally being able to mow the grass after it rained every day this week.
Peacefulness: Getting rid of all the weeds in the flower beds so all you see is the plants that should really be there. (Phlox and Tiger Lilies - one of my favorites!)
Contentment: Combing my daughter’s hair to get all the tangles out after she got a shower.
sweet light crude, by David T. Little, performed by his ensemble Newspeak. Video by Satan’s Pearl Horses.
Little says he writes mostly political compositions. Since I can’t understand much of what the singer is saying, I have no idea what his political stance is here, but something about this music really strikes me. I really like how it’s not rock, not classical, but both at the same time. Can this be one of the ways for classical music to thrive in the future? Think I’ll have to check out more of his music.
