Thursday, July 10, 2008

Like all weak men, he laid an exaggerated emphasis on not changing his mind.

W. Somerset Maugham 

We got some 'wicked' wind today, it uprooted some trees, made a mess in the cemetery and damaged some roofs but we got off easy compared to Colville and the other towns west of us, Colville had a beautiful park with huge pine trees in it wna a neatly manicured lawn, I would say there are over a quarter of them down and at least one crushed bandstand like structure. There were trees down everywhere. There were fires in a preserve/wilderness area in Spokane that persisted into Friday and hundreds of electrical fires and outages... a real mess.

Friday, July 11, 2008

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

George Santayana, philosopher (1863-1952)

Monica went to Colville with me to get her shop, I also did some grocery shopping and picked up parts for Ken Starky. Ken fixed the brakes on Mikes car, I paid for it...I had to order a new gas tank for the Craftsman Lawn Tractor. I poked a hole in it years ago and I have patched it twice noe but this time I decided to just get a new one. I let Monica use it to mow Vallerie Bower's yard, it was about 3' high. I called Sirius Radio to order a new radio but they are sending me one for free... cool. Amanda went to her boyfriends house for the night and so did Calie, I am not warm and fuzzy about the idea but I am not to concerned either, I know the parents and I trust the kids.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own"

Aldous Huxley - English novelist and critic, 1894-1963

I was shuttling people all day, got next to nothing accomplished. I had Autumn with me while Christy was at her church, Monica worked for George today and Amanda worked at the MMM, they went to the lake and then to the movie, I went too, We saw Get Smart, it was better than I had expected, I wonder why reviewers were so harsh, I think they just like to be pissy. It is easy to criticize and some folks get a power rush when they can belittle other people work... sad.

I have been reading a Blog by a reporter for NPR (National Public Radio) Our version of the BBC… His name is Leroy Siever, he has been fighting Cancer for a long time, he is coming to the end of his battle I think and I will miss his observations and insight into the world of Cancer a great deal. His pragmatic objectivity and grace is inspirational.

I am fascinated by ‘transitions’ I am wholly impressed with how well people are able to come to terms with the inevitable reality. I guess it’s all about character and dignity… I was with my parents when they died, Dad in 84 and Mom in 98 and both of them were at peace with dying, they both hated the helpless indignities they had to endure though. Both were religious and seemed to be anxious to move on. I am not religious so the prospect of dying isn’t something I am particularly anxious to participate in but I am not at all afraid, once you have been born you set out on a path that ends in death, ho-hum. I don’t think we serve any special purpose beyond propagating the species and our genetic coding seems to demand that we attempt to improve the world we inhabit so that future generations have a better life… that last bit seems to be getting watered down a bit lately. We appear to be enabling a generation of apathetic hedonists but that may just be my own narrow perspective.

I wish I believed that somehow I would be able to see how this grand chaotic experiment turns out but, unless Global Warming wipes us out in the next 20 years I guess I am going to miss it.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

"The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded."

Charles-Louis De Secondat (1689-1755) Baron de Montesquieu - Source: The Spirit of the Laws, 1748

Calie Trevor & I went to Spokane to pick up furniture, a reclining couch and loveseat, it was a good day. I enjoyed the trip.

I had my 65^th birthday a few weeks ago. I am not exactly sure yet why, but for some reason this one felt like a significant milestone. It is hard for me to keep my life in perspective, too may conflicting dynamics.

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity"

George Bernard Shaw

To criticize is to complain and to waste time which could better be spent on improving your own weaknesses.

Will Bowen

"Where might is master, justice is servant"

Proverb
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"It is sheer folly to expect justice from the unprincipled"

Proverb
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"Much law, but little justice"

Proverb
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"Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all"

Edmund Burke
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"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people"

Martin Luther King Jr.
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love. Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme that any man be crushed by one above.
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!

"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are."

Niccolo Machiavelli - (1469-1527) Italian Statesman and Political Philosopher - Source: Discourses, 1513-1517

"As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom."

Lyn Nofziger - [Franklyn C. Nofziger] Press Secretary for President Reagan

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

"Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, "War is an evil in as much as it produces more wicked men than it takes away."

Immanuel Kant