Ramblings of a Retired Mind

  Terrifying Truth   I live in a yurt. Not many people do. If you've never been inside one, there is something important to know: there are no corners. My bathroom is round. No corners. My bedroom is round. No corners. I have no closets because I could never build one without creating a corner. The walls of my yurt curve like waves on an ocean, flowing continuously around me. Nothing interrupts their movement. No sharp edges. No angles. No corners. I live alone. I work alone. I work in my yurt. I have a garden where I grow fruits and vegetables. It, too, is round. No corners. I do not drive. There are too many corners where streets meet, too many sharp angles in the world. When I go into town, I walk with an almost unconscious avoidance of corners. I stay away from the edges of buildings and where walls meet. I weave left and right, always moving in a curved stride. There is a method to my movement. There is a reason. He grabbed me and twisted my arm. “Yo...

  Terrifying Truth The mirror shows an image. But there is no depth—no depth of understanding, no glimpse into what lies beneath the surface. Is the image looking back at me the person I truly want others to see, or simply the person I hope they will see? I know that when I look at someone, I am evaluating them, too. Do they like what I like? Do they believe as I do? Are their morals the same as mine? And I wonder: when they look back at me, are they asking themselves the same questions? We all wear masks. We reveal our true selves to only a limited few. The rest of the world sees the image we choose to present, the reflection in the mirror, carefully shaped by what we want others to believe about us. But a mirror can only show us the surface. It cannot reveal the fears that weigh upon us, the worries that keep us awake, or the joy and hope that quietly live within us. It shows us the face we present to the world, but never the story behind it. What is the truth? Perhaps ...

  “Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there’s the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That’s so for all stages of development and classes of society.”   Fyodor Dostoevsky

  “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” Albert Einstein

  “The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.” Arthur Schopenhauer

  The truth! Now there’s a joke. What is the truth? Today, truth seems more blurred than ever. “The honest-to-God truth!” we proclaim, perhaps with our fingers crossed behind our backs. The truth is what one says is the truth—or is it? For some people, repeating a lie often enough eventually turns it into truth in their own minds. They convince themselves that because they believe it, it must be true. Not me. The terrible truth is that it is becoming harder to know what is actually true. Wars have been fought over competing versions of the truth. Marriages have been made, and marriages have been destroyed, based on what one person says is true and another believes to be a lie. “To love, to honor, till death do us part.” Those are powerful words. Yet how easily can someone convince themselves that looking outside the marriage is not really a betrayal? Perhaps they redefine love and fidelity until, in their own mind, they have somehow remained true to their vows. A terrib...

  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...

​ “Mixing one’s wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.” Bertolt Brecht 

  “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

  “Little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” Arthur Miller

  “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.” W. E. B. Du Bois

  “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.” George Orwell

​ “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

  “There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery.” F yodor Dostoevsky

​ “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Eleanor Roosevelt

  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...

  “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

  Really... “People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.” Dan Quayle

 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

  “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.”   Charles Dickens

  “No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.” Edward R. Murrow

​ “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.” Charles Dickens

​ “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.” —  Henry David Thoreau

  “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

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...

  “I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.” Johannes Kepler

​ “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.

  “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

  “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

  “Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.” Voltaire

  “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

  “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

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...

  “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