February 2012
7 posts
4 tags
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it....”
– Howard Thurman (1899 – April 10, 1981), American author and civil rights leader; from Wikipedia. Quote from Thinkexist.com.
5 tags
Poignant moment
When Al McKeon, a newspaper reporter for The Nashua Telegraph, reflected upon his tenure at the paper, I didn’t expect we would be one of two recollections he noted.
Well, I guess I’m not surprised after all, since his recollection is of Andrea and the remarkable roller-coaster experience we all shared with her that June almost five years ago.
Here’s his piece from...
3 tags
“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”
– Henry David Thoreau, thanks to Wendy Thomas
3 tags
My take-aways from Mitch Albom's "The Five People...
There are no random acts. We are all connected.
Fairness does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young.
Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.
Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices.
Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else.
It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.
Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.
Life has to end. Love doesn’t.
And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven -- that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.
1 tag
3 tags
January 2012
7 posts
3 tags
3 tags
5 tags
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will finally know...”
– Jimi Hendrix
4 tags
“What you haven’t done is the price you paid for what you have done.”
– Mark Forster, one of my favorite authors on time management, from a blog post on consistency.
2 tags
“Andrea, this is superb. Please provide me with a copy so I may use it as a model...”
– Andrea started her winter-spring semester today and received her graded research paper that she turned in right before the holidays. I’d say she aced it.
2 tags
December 2011
10 posts
3 tags
2 tags
Christmas Day
Hard to imagine a better Christmas than this year’s: everyone home and healthy, a leisurely awakening and opening of presents, laughter and conversation, a delicious and plentiful ham dinner, games, a neighborhood walk with Strudel, lazing about the house.
Very grateful.
4 tags
3 tags
3 tags
“Try not to become a man of success but rather a man of value.”
– Albert Einstein
Seeing this quote, Andrea commented that success and value are not either-or choices — one can be both. Good point. Stimulated by her thought, I’d add that being of value is successful, by definition.
3 tags
November 2011
11 posts
3 tags
4 tags
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be...”
– Albert Einstein. I find this quote significant because business and other organizations often establish metrics based upon what is easy to measure and report, rather than more telling, yet subjective, measures.
Find more Einstein quotes at Brainy Quote.
3 tags
4 tags
Photos from Snowtober
The snow began falling mid-afternoon on Saturday, October 29. By early evening the lights were flickering; at 10:00 they went out and weren’t restored for almost five days.
We slept at home the first three nights, then stayed with friends three nights. The temperature in the house dropped to around 40, too cold to be comfortable, yet too warm to save the food in the refrigerator.
Oh,...
3 tags
Power!
From PDX, waiting for my flight to Boston — Just spoke with Lori, and she relayed that the power came back on about 8:30 last night. That’s just shy of five days and about the same time we were without power after the ice storm of 2008.
Growing up in Reno, I had the impression that the west was where Mother Nature showed her worst behavior. We were not far from the Donner...
3 tags
Snowtober
I write from a hotel in Portland, Oregon, having enjoyed a warm bath after a fine meal over esoteric conversation. My day began in Boston, a morning drive through the congested rush-hour traffic to Logan and two comfortable flights carrying me cross country.
I write feeling guilty, leaving Lori and Grant and Strudel sleeping with friends, still no power at our house after Saturday’s...
October 2011
13 posts
4 tags
WatchI didn’t think the snow was supposed to fall before the leaves were off the trees.
6 tags
3 tags
3 tags
Cross-country recap
This has been a big weekend for cross-country, both an end and a beginning:
Grant wrapped up his high-school season Friday afternoon at the JV Division I State meet. He set a personal record for his cross-country career, completing the 5K course in 19:15, which averages to a 6:12 mile. He came in 69th in the field of 224 runners.
On Saturday, Coach Lori’s Fairgrounds Middle School team...
4 tags
3 tags
3 tags
2 tags
“There are some decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades...”
– At the University of Chicago teach-in regarding Occupy Chicago. From Barbara Hoag Gadon.
3 tags
Cross Country Race
Grant had his best race of the season at the Battle of the Border competition at Alvirne High School on Saturday (October 8). He ran the 5K course in 19:40.
4 tags
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree,...”
– Albert Einstein
September 2011
9 posts
2 tags
“If I could give you one key, and one key only to more abundant life, I would...”
– Reverend Greta Crosby, UU minister