Posts

It’s All About Me

Image
  Ramblings of A Retired Mind The new motto seems to be: “It’s all about me now.” Is that really the direction we want for our great nation—and for ourselves as citizens? Rules are for everyone else, but not for me. We see it in the person who fishes without a license, hunts an endangered animal, or speeds down the highway because the rules apparently don't apply to them. We see it in the driver who takes up two parking spaces, the neighbor who blasts music without a thought for anyone around them, or the person who sets off fireworks during a record drought with no concern for the danger to others. Little things, perhaps. But little things add up. Something seems different now. The sense that we are all part of the same community—that our actions affect other people—seems to be slipping away. And then there is politics. The divide has become so vast that sometimes it feels as though we are no longer simply citizens who disagree with one another, but opposing camp...
Post a Comment
Read more
​ “Mixing one’s wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.” Bertolt Brecht 
Post a Comment
Read more
  “When will we realize that the fact that we can become accustomed to anything, however disgusting at first, makes it necessary to examine carefully everything we have become accustomed to.”   George Bernard Shaw
Post a Comment
Read more
  “Little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” Arthur Miller
Post a Comment
Read more
  “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.” W. E. B. Du Bois
Post a Comment
Read more
  “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.” George Orwell
Post a Comment
Read more
​ “Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.” George Orwell
Post a Comment
Read more
  “There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery.” F yodor Dostoevsky
Post a Comment
Read more
​ “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Eleanor Roosevelt
Post a Comment
Read more

Mirrors

Image
  The writers group that I belong to Writers Out West , have challenged ourselves to write something about one word which will contain no more than 300 words. For one as "wordy" as myself, this is quite the challenge, but here is my 2nd effort for the word Mirrors.   Ramblings of a Retired Mind Mirrors   A pane of glass is a window to the world. Add a silvered, reflective surface, and it becomes a portal into countless other dimensions. Instead of looking outward, we look back, and when we do, we never truly know exactly what we will find. The present, the past, and perhaps even the future all wait within its silent, silver depths.   Will I recognize the face that looks back at me today? I was once young, then I matured, and now I have finally grown old. I see the person I deeply cherish, the one I once was. Every changing season of my life is reflected in the mirror before me. Yet, I cannot help but wonder: can I also catch a fleeting glimpse of the p...
2 comments
Read more
  “So far as I can see, all political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” George Orwell
Post a Comment
Read more
  Really... “People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.” Dan Quayle
Post a Comment
Read more
 Never has there been a time when there has been a truer statement than today... “The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” George Orwell
Post a Comment
Read more
  “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.”   Charles Dickens
Post a Comment
Read more
  “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” Edward R. Murrow
Post a Comment
Read more
​ “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.” Charles Dickens
Post a Comment
Read more
​ “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” —  Henry David Thoreau
Post a Comment
Read more
  “The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.” Umberto Eco
Post a Comment
Read more

Mirrors

Image
The writers group that I belong to Writers Out West , have challenged ourselves to write something about one word which will contain no more than 300 words. For one as "wordy" as myself, this is quite the challenge, but here is my effort for the word Mirrors.   Ramblings of a Retired Mind Mirrors   A pane of glass is a window to the world. Add a silvered, reflective surface, and it becomes a portal into countless other dimensions. Instead of looking outward, we look back, and when we do, we never truly know exactly what we will find. The present, the past, and perhaps even the future all wait within its silent, silver depths.   Will I recognize the face that looks back at me today? I was once young, then I matured, and now I have finally grown old. I see the person I deeply cherish, the one I once was. Every changing season of my life is reflected in the mirror before me. Yet, I cannot help but wonder: can I also catch a fleeting glimpse of the person I hav...
Post a Comment
Read more
  “I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.” Johannes Kepler
Post a Comment
Read more
​ “No matter where you stand, no matter how much popularity you have, no matter how much education you have, no matter how much money you have, you have it because somebody in this universe helped you to get it. And when you see that, you can’t be arrogant, you can’t be supercilious. You discover that you have your position because of the events of history and because of individuals in the background making it possible for you to stand there.” Martin Luther King Jr.
Post a Comment
Read more
  “Insects were scurrying about in the shade cast by the grass, and the lawn was a huge monotonous forest of thousands of little green blades, all equal, all alike, hiding the world from each other. Anguished, she thought, “I don’t want to be just another blade of grass.”” Simone de Beauvoir
Post a Comment
Read more
  “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.” Leo Tolstoy
Post a Comment
Read more
  “Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.” Voltaire
Post a Comment
Read more
  “When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hopes seem hardly worth having, just mount a bicycle and go for a good spin down the road, without thought of anything but the ride you are taking.” Arthur Conan Doyle
Post a Comment
Read more
  “We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.” Charlie Chaplin
Post a Comment
Read more

Robert Reich

Image
Sunday Thought: How to Begin the Mending? Ten steps ROBERT REICH JUL 5     Friends, Okay, we’ve now gone through the bitter-sweet 250th anniversary. Now let’s get to work.  Every day brings more news of Trump’s greed, incompetence, cruelty, and criminality. Raking in $2.2 billion in his first year in office, much of it siphoned off from taxpayers and gullible followers. His Iran debacle. His malignant narcissism, putting his face and name everywhere. His cruel mass deportations. His use of the Justice Department to prosecute anyone he feels has wronged him. And so on.  As journalist Tom Edsall writes, “The damage President Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world is so enormous and wide-ranging that it is hard to grasp.” I think it important to separate the loathsomeness of Trump as a person from the horrendous things he’s doing. Trump won’t change, but we can begin seeking changes in our system to prevent such awfulness in the future — especially if/wh...
Post a Comment
Read more
  “Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.” Fyodor Dostoevsky
Post a Comment
Read more
  “It is man’s intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts. ... Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the rain is being withheld by evil spirits, or as punishment for its transgressions. Therefore you never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.” Aldous Huxley
Post a Comment
Read more
​ “The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.” Albert Camus 
Post a Comment
Read more
  “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
Post a Comment
Read more
 “In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.” Edith Wharton
Post a Comment
Read more
  “We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.” Charlie Chaplin
Post a Comment
Read more
  “The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population—the intelligent ones or the fools?” Henrik Ibsen
Post a Comment
Read more
  “Narcissistic personality disorder is named for Narcissus, from Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection. Freud used the term to describe persons who were self-absorbed, and psychoanalysts have focused on the narcissist’s need to bolster his or her self-esteem through grandiose fantasy, exaggerated ambition, exhibitionism, and feelings of entitlement.” Dr. Donald W. Black
Post a Comment
Read more