To thine own self be true

will be complete in days when pot daze begin. Young adults and teens have been selfishly sold downstream by Justin Dope.

The levels of consciousness, thinking, language, education, and discourse in our society is about to take a major hit. Get ready for more stay-at-home dopers with a total aversion to work.

Essentially, Tennyson’s “Lotus-Eaters” here we come! The continuing decline of young people who want to work in our society. As to increased consciousness, there are limits to already built-in limitedness. As if to breathe were life itself, eh?

Edmonton is about to become The Pot Capital of Canada. What an uplifting moniker. Now these are the type of quality tourists and residents Iveson wants to attract to our crumbling roads, infrastructure, and fast-food joints.

The world is too much with us: late and soon,/getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. –William Wordsworth

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

Money is congealed energy and releasing it releases life possibilities. If you follow your bliss, you will always have your bliss, money or not. If you follow money, you may lose it, and you will have nothing. –Joseph Campbell

It is better to live rich than to die rich. –Samuel Johnson

The love of money is the root of all evil. –I Timothy, VI, 10

Every man has his price. –Sir Robert Walpole

Versatility is a curse. One-dimensional people make a lot of money. –Jonathan Winters

When money speaks, the truth is silent. –Russian proverb

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

I cannot afford to waste my time making money. –Louis Agassiz

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
–Lin Yutang

The simplest things are often the truest.
–Richard Bach

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.
–Albert Einstein

If one’s life is simple, contentment will come.
–Dalai Lama (saw him once in Calgary)

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.
–Frank Lloyd Wright

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
–Albert Camus

Forever is composed of nows.
–Emily Dickinson

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
–Albert Camus

Come forth into the light of things, let Nature be your teacher.
–William Wordsworth

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

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
–George Eliot

Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.
–Camille Pissarro

Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.
–Democritus

There is enchantment right in front of you, waiting for you to notice.
–Janet Luhrs

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.
–John Ruskin

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
–Franz Kafka

You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.
–Henry David Thoreau

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
–Charles Mingus

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself.
–Arthur Conan Doyle

The mediocre always feel as if they’re fighting for their lives when confronted by the excellent.
–Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach

‘Elitism’ is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.
-Sydney J. Harris

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
–Robert G. Ingersoll

Mediocrity is excellence to the mediocre.
–Joseph Joubert

Readiness to answer all questions is the infallible sign of stupidity.
–Saul Bellow

Stupidity is the deliberate cultivation of ignorance.
–William Gaddis

You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass.
–John Buchan

When hope is taken away from a people, moral degeneration follows swiftly after.
–Pearl Buck

There is no darkness but ignorance.
–William Shakespeare

To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.
–John Buchan (no longer followed or practised)

To be able to be caught up into the world of thought–that is to be educated. (Agendas rather than ideas are the order of the day in schools and post-secondary)
–Edith Hamilton

The love of money is the root of all evil.
–The Bible

The price we have to pay for money is paid in liberty.
–Robert Louis Stevenson

Money often costs too much.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Technology…is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand and it stabs you in the back with the other.
–C.P. Snow

Happiness is in the imagination. What we perform, is always inferior to what we imagine.–Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave

You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.–W. Somerset Maugham, The Circle

Art attempts to find in the universe, in matter as well as in the facts of life, what is fundamental, enduring, essential.–Saul Bellow, “Nobel Prize Speech”

Recognizableness is an artistic quality which most people find profoundly thrilling.–Aldous Huxley, “Music at Night”

Art enlarges by admitting us to the inner life of others.–Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Politics

Half of art is knowing when to stop.–Arthur William Radford

A work of art is good if it is has sprung from necessity.–Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letter to a Young Poet”

The proper study of mankind is books.–Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

Civilization is an exercise in self-restraint.–W.B. Yeats

Verbal communication about music is impossible, except among musicians.–Virgil Thompson, The State of Music

The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts, but of values.–W.R. Inge, The Church in the World

Genius is talent provided with ideals.–W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook

Impropriety is the soul of wit.–W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook

Men die but an idea does not.–Alan Jay Lerner, The Street Where I Live

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.–Simone Weil, Gravity and Grouse

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.–Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

The limits of language stand for the limits of my world.–Ludwig Wittgenstein, quoted Harry Zohn, Karl Kraus

Literature is not about something: it is the thing itself, the quiddity.–Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature

In memory everything seems to happen to music.–Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Music is the best means of digesting time.–W.H. Auden, quoted Robert Craft, Stravinsky: The Chronicle of a Friendship

Poetry is a perfectly reasonable means of overcoming chaos.–I. A. Richards, Science and Poetry

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.–George Santayana, Little Essays

Human kind/Cannot bear much reality.–T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Most of one’s life is a prolonged effort to avoid thinking.–Aldous Huxley, “Green Tunnels”

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”–Proverbs XXIX, 18

“The time is out of joint.”–Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5

“Common sense is very uncommon.”–Horace Greeley

“Man’s inhumanity to man/Makes countless thousands mourn!”–Robert Burns, “Man Was Made to Mourn”

“Excellent things are rare.”–Plato, The Republic

“Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”–Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 2, scene 2

“When money speaks the truth is silent.”–Russian proverb

“Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.”–Thoreau

“The love of money is the root of all evil.”–I Timothy, VI, 10

was an Alectoris Chukar Partridge, a rare bird in these parts, on our front lawn just after Thanksgiving, coincidentally. You’ve never seen everything (part 2,720).

These birds were native to Europe, but were later introduced to North America. There are some in the Okanagan area apparently.

“Gobble gobble”

(backyard bird bath)

by Richard Davies

Another major turning point was buying a Scrabble game in grade 12 (1966-67), which I played with my closest friends Hugh and Dave. (I still play it once a year minimum.)

An awakening interest that year in words and language along with the gr. 12 English books–Hamlet, Hardy’s Return of the Native, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The overlapping worlds of language and literature opening up suddenly, memorably, and powerfully. The freedom of thought and expression simultaneously blossoming hugely.

At the same time I took to the boards more prominently in a play The Red Velvet Goat and Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury, opening the doors to public performance and all the years of performing that followed. (I even played the butler in The Importance of Being Earnest and sang Simon and Garfunkle songs with my friend Chris at MTC.) There seemed to be no limits with language, literature, and performing all opening up to me in 1967, the year of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the year I met the love of my life Karen Reade (still my better half 51 years later)