To thine own self be true

Terry Fox runners which have a map of Canada and Terry’s route on the insoles.

Favorite Quotes Compiled and Edited by Richard Davies, 2017.

Everything hinges upon our realizing the essential transitory possibilities.
-Viktor Frankl

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
-Henri Matisse

Nature never did betray/The heart that loved her.
-William Wordsworth

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Change is the law of life.
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy

We make up ourselves as we go.
-Kate Green

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
-Henry David Thoreau

The dollar is always betting against the soul.
-Sven Birkerts

Technology will never love you. Screens will never love you.
-Richard Davies

Turning our backs on the full sensory business of living, we have installed another proxy-world.
-Sven Birkerts

The time is out of joint.
-William Shakespeare

Shallowness spreads.
-Daniel Liebert

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.
-Thomas Carlyle

Most people perform essentially meaningless work. When they retire, that truth is borne upon them.
-Brendan Francis

The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be.
-Joseph Campbell

Be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life.
-Buddha

Do I dare eat a peach?
-T.S. Eliot

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
-Bertrand Russell

A man can do all things if he will.
-Leon Battista Alberti

I sometimes think I inhabit my own country.
-Tennessee Williams

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself.
-Galileo

The proper study of mankind is books.
-Aldous Huxley

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
-Rudyard Kipling

Music is the best means of digesting time.
-W.H. Auden

Art serves to rinse out our eyes.
-Karl Kraus

Genuine poetry is conceived and composed in the soul.
-Matthew Arnold

We live in the hope that authentic meeting between human beings can still occur.
-R.D. Laing

The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key.
-Pearl Buck

Enthusiasm is life.
-Paul Scofield

All vigor is contagious.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

The stars are in one’s brain.
-Bertrand Russell

I love a broad margin to my life.
-Henry David Thoreau

That is happiness, to be dissolved into something complete and great.
-Willa Cather

Cheer up–it can only get worse.
-Pearl Bailey

According to Dr. Gupta, my age group is 90x more likely to die from catching it than 20 year-olds.

I would submit that he has accumulated a song and album catalogue minimally equal to Bob Dylan, who won the award previously.

Consider the hit singles (many more than Dylan):

The Sounds of Silence (1964)
I Am a Rock (1965)
Homeward Bound (1966)
The Dangling Conversation (1966)
A Hazy Shade of Winter (1968)
At the Zoo (1968)
Mrs. Robinson (1968)
Fakin’ It (1968)
Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)
Cecilia (1970)
El Condor Pasa (1970)
The Boxer (1970)
Mother and Child Reunion (1972)
Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (1972)
Kodachrome (1973)
Loves Me Like a Rock (1973)
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (1975)
My Little Town (1975)
Slip Slidin’ Away (1977)
Late in the Evening (1980)
Graceland (1986)
You Can Call Me Al (1986)
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (1986)
Boy in the Bubble (1986)
The Obvious Child (1988)
Born at the Right Time (1990)
Father and Daughter (2003)

Consider, too, the myriad other memorable songs:

Red Rubber Ball (recorded by The Cyrkle)
Richard Cory
Kathy’s Song
April Come She Will
59th Street Bridge Song
Scarborough Fair/Canticle
America
Old Friends/Bookends
A Most Peculiar Man
American Tune
Under African Skies
and many more from the albums:

Baby Driver, Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine, Cloudy, The Cool, Cool River, Darling Lorraine, Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall, Getting Ready for Christmas Day, Gone at Last, Gumboots, Homeless, How Can You Live in the Northeast?, Hurricane Eye, One Trick Pony, Patterns, A Poem on the Underground Wall, Punky’s Dilemma, So Beautiful or So What, So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright, Spirit Voices, Still Crazy After All These Years, Take Me to the Mardi Gras, That Was Your Mother, Wartime Prayers, You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lies, et al.

And the memorable, popular, strong-songed albums:

Wednesday Morning, 3 am (1964), Sounds of Silence (1964),Paul Simon Songbook (1965), Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966), Bookends (1968), Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970), Graceland (1986), Rhythm of the Saints (1990), You’re the One (2000), Surprise (2006), So Beautiful or So What (2011), Stranger to Stranger (2016).

The best Simon and Garfunkle live concert: The Concert in Central Park.

The best Paul Simon live concert: The Graceland Concert.

And song-lines that often read like poetry:

-The Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar

-Homeless, homeless, moonlight sleeping on a midnight bay

-And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made

-I have my books and my poetry to protect me

-On a tour of one-night stands, my suitcase and guitar in hand

-It’s a still-life watercolor on a now-late afternoon

-Time, time, time, see what’s become of me

-Zebras are reactionaries, antelopes are missionaries

-Like a bridge over troubled waters, I will lay me down

-Goin’ home, where the New York city winters aren’t a-bleedin’ me

-Mama Pajama rolled out of bed and she ran to the police station

-And furthermore I hope my meaning won’t be lost or misconstrued

-If you’ll be my bodyguard, I can be your long-lost pal

-And the bomb and the baby carriage were wired to the radio

-In restless walks she’ll prowl the night

-Just kickin’ down the cobblestones, lookin’ for fun and feelin’ groovy

-How terribly strange to be seventy

-Wish I was a Kellogg’s cornflake floatin’ in a bowl takin’ movies

-Pattern still remains on the wall where darkness fell

-Toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat

All we have is words and language to express our feelings and communicate our ideas, sharing them/communicating them with others. Hence, the importance and high roads of poetry and prose writers (especially journalists these days). They, who ‘do it all’, with just words/spoken and written language.

Looking back on all the great men and women of history, you’d have to say that words and language were key, vital elements in their many effective, popular communications.

But this idea also applies to expands via The Arts (including non-verbal communications). Those expressions, communications, and works of musical composers and performers, those of painters, photographers, and sculptors, those of moviemakers, movie writers and actors, those of dancers and choreographers, the architects and builders, and many other artists of various artforms not mentioned above.

Overall, the creators, who make new things, experiences, and possibilities for us all to explore, ponder, and enjoy in every age.

…………………………
BTW/Sciences and scientists deserve their own separate, but related entry/support piece. They are, likewise, creators, inventors, and disseminators expressing their own ideas, views, and values to the world.

can attest to, there is nothing more unfortunate than not being able to give voice clearly and coherently to one’s feelings and thoughts to others.

Unfortunately, many listeners lack the patience, understanding, and tolerance to respond fully and fairly to those with speech problems or folks with weak or poor speaking voices.

Important in all this is to remember that these people have something they want to say and share–a content or subject matter, as important, if not moreso, than their limited/limiting means to express themselves.

One of the interesting consequences of the pandemic has been having groceries delivered by a veritable international cast of decent, hard-working, friendly folks from many different (non-caucasian thusfar) countries. A global intersection and crossroads which would not have happened and we would not have experienced previously in non-pandemic times.

We continue to survive and thrive here, largely thanks to the generous efforts of these stalwart workers from far-away places. A true eye-opener and positive opportunity for both deliverers and recipients. Quirky irony in an age of isolation and nationalism redux.

The capacity for evil in women has been duly noted in literature by such works as Aeschylus in Agamemnon (Clytemnestra) and Shakespeare in Macbeth (Lady Macbeth–an example echoing all the killer-mothers of children BTW) and King Lear (Goneril and Regan). An early modern writer, who was well-aware of the same possibility, but who is not often recognized, was Agatha Christie who featured some very nasty, evil women villains–something I’ve become more aware of in Suchet’s Poirot mystery series.

will become very dangerous, chaotic, and destructive with autonomous vehicles. To wit, the 20 year-old arrested in AB for auto-driving 150 kms/hr. on the QE2 while he reclined or slept, with a passenger doing likewise.

The wonders of technology are unquestionable and unquestioned these daze. But what about Human Error, the supposed ‘brain’/controlling factor/human bean behind the auto-tech? What if the designers are untrustworthy dumb-asses or crazies who abuse the power?

I, for one, have instantly become very nervous now about highway driving everywhere, knowing there are morons like this imbecile on the roads with their truly lethal 150 km/hr. technology.