I begin again…
May 23, 2008
I have a new purpose in posting to this blog: as an antidote to all the poisonous news and commentaries constantly spewing forth from all the mainstream media, I will feed myself, and share with all of you, at least one happy/joyful fact, thought, or occurrence at least a couple of times each week. I suppose I could do this in a private diary; but knowing (hoping?) that I’m being read will keep me on purpose, and discourage me from lapsing into “seriousness.”
Call me a late adopter. I recently bought my first iPod, Bose headphones, uploaded all my CDs into iTunes, and visited the iTunes store to buy a couple of new albums. (If you love great jazz, Stan Getz’s Serenity is a must-have.) Don’t know how I could have lived so long without. I’m now untethered from the home stereo and don’t have to worry about intruding on my wife when the spirit moves me to listen. I’m so happy with the ‘Pod that l that I’m almost ready to forgive Steve Jobs for not licensing the Mac OS in the late eighties, thereby sparing us all the torture of Windows.
A gift of music: if you find yourself feeling melancholy at the end of the day and need a “spirit-lifter” before bed, I heartily recommend J.S. Bach’s organ piece Allein Gott in der Hoeh sei Ehr’, BWV 662. (That’s why the good Lord, in his infinite wisdom, invented headphones.) This piece always makes me smile and believe that if the human race can produce minds and souls like Bach and Stan Getz, there is yet hope for the future of mankind.
Hello world!
June 27, 2007
Here’s my sense of life:
The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well, and having done it well, he loves to do it better.You see it in his science. You see it in the magnificence with which he carves and builds, the loving care, the gaiety, the effrontery. The monuments are supposed to commemorate kings and religions, heroes, dogmas, but in the end the man they commemorate is the builder. (Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man)
…a self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters. (Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead)
