Many paths up the mountain...

Peel and remove the pit from a couple of ripe avocados.
Mash well
Hit with a few splashes of fresh lime juice.
Add in a few shakes of Tabasco sauce, a little Kosher salt and a nice shake or two of chili powder.
For good measure, I add a few TBS or so of chopped cilantro.

One time I added chopped tomatoes and was nearly beat over the head with a bag of chips. Apparently I broke some guacamole rule.

Bobby:

"Dad, why do you always hate what your don't understand?"

Hank:

"Bobby, I don't hate you!"

Drilling in Afghanistan

Excerpts from Thomas L. Friedman's essay, Drilling in Afghanistan...

You can read the entire essay here

"Sometimes in politics, particularly in campaigns, parties get wedded to slogans — so wedded that no one stops to think about what they’re saying, whether the reality has changed and what the implications would be if their bumper stickers really guided policy when they took office. Today, we have two examples of that: “Democrats for Afghanistan” and “Republicans for offshore drilling.”

Republicans have become so obsessed with the notion that we can drill our way out of our current energy crisis that re-opening our coastal waters to offshore drilling has become their answer for every energy question.

Anyone who looks at the growth of middle classes around the world and their rising demands for natural resources, plus the dangers of climate change driven by our addiction to fossil fuels, can see that clean renewable energy — wind, solar, nuclear and stuff we haven’t yet invented — is going to be the next great global industry. It has to be if we are going to grow in a stable way.

Therefore, the country that most owns the clean power industry is going to most own the next great technology breakthrough — the E.T. revolution, the energy technology revolution — and create millions of jobs and thousands of new businesses, just like the I.T. revolution did.

Republicans, by mindlessly repeating their offshore-drilling mantra, focusing on a 19th-century fuel, remind me of someone back in 1980 arguing that we should be putting all our money into making more and cheaper IBM Selectric typewriters — and forget about these things called the “PC” and “the Internet.” It is a strategy for making America a second-rate power and economy.

But Democrats have their analog. For many Democrats, Afghanistan was always the “good war,” as opposed to Iraq. I think Barack Obama needs to ask himself honestly: “Am I for sending more troops to Afghanistan because I really think we can win there, because I really think that that will bring an end to terrorism, or am I just doing it because to get elected in America, post-9/11, I have to be for winning some war?”

The truth is that Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Pakistan are just different fronts in the same war. The core problem is that the Arab-Muslim world in too many places has been failing at modernity, and were it not for $120-a-barrel oil, that failure would be even more obvious. For far too long, this region has been dominated by authoritarian politics, massive youth unemployment, outdated education systems, a religious establishment resisting reform and now a death cult that glorifies young people committing suicide, often against other Muslims.

The humiliation this cocktail produces is the real source of terrorism. Saddam exploited it. Al Qaeda exploits it. Pakistan’s intelligence services exploit it. Hezbollah exploits it. The Taliban exploit it..."

Welcome to Holland

Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans...

Welcome to Holland

Nothing to Wear...

From Reese Palley's great sailing manifesto, Unlikely Passages:

‘Shed cares, shed guilt, shed family and friends who bore you. Shed banks and accountants and doctors and taxi drivers and most of all shed the damned lawyers.

Shed the devious accents of land. Shed the salesmen who seek to lengthen your indenture. Shed aches and pains, shed embarrassment of flab and shed the flab itself. Then shed your clothes.

It is, after all, the only condition in which they will allow you back into Eden.’

An old song says it best...

Good-bye to things that bore me,
life is waiting for me.
I see a new horizon;
my life has only begun,
Beyond the blue horizon
lies a rising Sun.

- Beyond the Blue Horizon, 1930, Whiting, Harling, and Robin.

A man who knows what he wants

"Get me out of this hospital.

I want to go sailing!"

- Ted Kennedy, when told he had a brain tumor.

Wisdom regarding growing old...

Everything you think you are
when you are young,
you spend the rest of your life
learning that you never were
and never will be...

and

Everything we learn,
we learn too late...

It was only a matter of time...

Obesity contributes to global warming, study says...

A dream is an island anybody can sail to...

The meditation word for today is...dream

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm...

To My Best Friend...

I heard this on the Prairie Home Companion, Sonnet Episode in April 2008:

"To My Best Friend"
by Margaret Cook of Middlebury, IN

I wish you weren't so far away,
I love you more than words can say.

We met when we were in first grade.
Hopscotch, jump rope and tag we played.
At recess time we traded lunch,
Walked home in winter's snowy crunch.

Each other's secrets we did keep,
The trust we had was true and deep.
The boys we loved became young men,
Down wedding aisles we followed them.

Beside your grave I stand today
And hope that you can hear me say
If I could do it all again,
I'd still choose you for my best friend.

And pizza...and wine...and soduku...

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”

- Cicero

The meditation word for today is...contentment.

If People with Down Syndrome Ran the World...

Here is a great article!

You owe it to yourself to read it and learn about people with Down Syndrome.

- Bret

The meditation word for today is...awareness.

Thanks, GW!

When George Bush entered office, gas was $1.42 a gallon.

Now it's pushing $4.00...

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!

Four things...

Four films I could watch over and over:

A Walk in the Clouds
In Harm' Way
White Christmas
The Philadephia Story (1940)

Four places I've lived:

Ames, Iowa - where I went to school and had the most intense emotions of my life
Denver, Colorado - where my soul is most at peace
Dodge City, Kansas - where I was born...I don't remember much about it, but when you mention you were born in Dodge City, people go, "Dodge City! Cool!"
Johnson County, Kansas - home of self-adsorbed soccer moms.

Four favorite foods:

Pizza - any kind, any time
Chicken Massaman - Thai dish with potatoes and creamy peanut sauce
Dutch Letters from Pella, Iowa
Crock Pot Roast with veggies

Four websites I visit every day:

Four favorite colors:

Primary color red
Primary color yellow
Flat black
Burnt Sienna - from the 64 crayon box

Four places I would love to be right now:

Hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park
On the beach at Playa del Carmen
Times Square, New York City
The YMCA trails in Ames

Four names I love but would/could not use for my children:

Larry "Bud" Melman
Dirk Diggler
Leon
Frodo Baggins

Heard on NPR...

Monogamy may be boring, but

the alternatives take too much time and energy.

The meditation word for today is...monogamy.

An oldie but a goodie...

Two atoms are walking down the road.

The first atom says to the second, "Dang! I think I've lost and electron!"

"Are you sure?" asks the second.

"Yes," says the first, "I'm positive!"

Wisdom...

“The greatest battles of life are fought out every day in the silent chambers of one’s own soul.”

- David O. McKay

Quotes on clutter

These quotes are from Peter Walsh, the clutter clearing expert and frequent Oprah guest (so we know he's legit, right?):

What is your vision for the life you want to live, and do your life choices reflect that vision? Specifically: Is your home a space for the life you want?

The things you own are a distraction to getting started on the right path. The key to getting — and staying — organized is to look beyond the stuff and imagine the life you could be living. Put most simply: It’s about how you see your life before all else.

From "The Long Voyage Home"

What's bothering you, Smitty?

Oh...memories, Donkeyman.

The best thing to do with memories is - forget 'em.

Suppose you couldn't forget 'em?

Well, I'd get drunk, same as you're doing!

Don't believe everything you think...

Timeless truths...

Your dreams minus your doubts equals your true worth.

- Anon

Timeless truths...

Be good and you'll be lonesome.

- Mark Twain

After the family moved into a larger house, their six-year-old was asked how he liked his new home.

“It’s just great,” he said, “I have my own room, and so do my sisters.

"But poor Mom is still in with Dad.”

Classic mis-communication...

“There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.”

- Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Sometimes we go through life looking through a rear view mirror...

- McLuan

My new favorite phrase

Electile Dysfunction : the inability to become aroused over any of the choices for president put forth by either party in the 2008 election year.

Empties...

Have you ever sat
by the railroad track
and watched the empties comin' back?
Swinging alone with a groan and a whine,
smoke strung out in a long gray line,
puffed from a panting engine's stack,
just the empties comin' back.

I have and to me they seem
like dreams I sometimes dream.
About a girl or money or fame,
my dreams have all returned the same,
swingin along the home bound track,
just the empties comin' back.

- Anon

What time is it?

"On an ancient wall in China
Where a brooding Buddha blinks,
Deeply graven is the message
It is later than you think.

The clock of life is wound but once
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop,
At late or early hour.

Now is all the time you own,
The past a golden link,
Go cruising now my brother...
It is later than you think."

- framed and hanging on the back bar at "The Spot" in La Jolla.

"Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength."

The Dalai Lama

Couldn't have said it better myself...

Angie Rossini: "Do you want to get married?"

Rocky Papasano: "Well, I said I would, didn't I?"

Angie Rossini: "That's not what I asked you!"

Rocky Papasano: "Who wants to get married!"

Dialog between Angie (Natalie Wood) and Rocky (Steve McQueen) in Lover With the Proper Stranger, 1963

Our most brilliant President?

"The last time I checked, the Constitution said, 'of the people, by the people and for the people.' That's what the Declaration of Independence says."

Bill Clinton, 1996...

...or maybe it was the Gettysburg Address, Slick

Timeless wisdom...

"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices."

-Voltaire.

Simple truths...

What is a home without children?

Quiet.

- Henny Youngman

Simples truths...

A President once said,

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

Now it seems like we’re supposed to be afraid

It’s patriotic in fact and color coded

- Randy Newman, A Few Words in Defense of this Country

Iphidamas

no one who has ever read the Iliad
has remembered you
until me

raised by a loving family
your father a king
you married
but left for the glorious war
before you had lain with your bride
and in your first combat
Agamemnon killed you

that is all

Homer gave you perhaps twenty lines
blew life into you
marched you into battle
had you slain
meat butchered by heros

the first time I read the Iliad

even I did not notice you
but the second
during my “honeymoon”
absurd word
in Chicago in 1962
with a woman from whom I am long divorced
your brief life made me wonder
what happened to your virgin bride
how soon did she forget
and you
did you have time for regret before you died
or was the thrusting sword too quick

you could not know
that Homer would sing of you
however briefly
and that in 3000 years
I at last would be touched by your death

but if you had known
I wonder
if that would have been enough

Webb Chiles - 1975

Wisdom from the Bold and the Beautiful

Young, beautiful girl, who has just been proposed to:

"I can't marry you! I'm a sex addict! I can't control my physical desires!"

Older man who has just proposed:

"You say that like it's a bad thing!"

The meditation phrase for today is..."dream come true"

A favorite joke of mine...

Two atoms were walking down the street.

The first atom says, "I think I've lost an electron!"

"Are you sure?" asks the second atom.

"Yes, " says the first, "I'm positive!"

A bit of Missouri Philosophy...

"A man not honorable in his marital relations is not usually honorable in any other."

- Harry Truman

ps: no photo with this post...insert your own picture...or a mirror.

sigh...

[A tragedy of the world’s poor has been that] the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths.

The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families.

The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get three dollars to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths.

...It is heart-breaking that global society has evolved a highly efficient way to get entertainment to rich adults and children, while it can’t get twelve-cent medicing to dying poor children.

— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good, (Penguin Press, 2006), p. 4

Timeless Wisdom

A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.

- Tao te Ching

Life is short,
The art is long,
The opportunity fleeting

- Hippocrates - and carved into
the southeast wall of Harvard Medical School

Rock and Hard Place

It takes two people to share some dreams.

- Bret

A man was riding his Harley...

A man was riding his Harley along a California beach when suddenly the sky clouded above his head and, in a booming voice, the Lord said,"Because you have tried to be faithful to me in all ways, I will grant you one wish."

The biker pulled over and said,"Build a bridge to Hawaii so I can ride over anytime I want."

The Lord said,"Your request is materialistic, think of the enormous challenges for that kind of undertaking; the supports required to reach the bottom of the Pacific and the concrete and steel it would take! It will nearly exaust several natural resources. I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for worldly things. Take a little more time and think of something that could possibly help mankind."

The biker thought about it for a long time. Finally, he said,"Lord, I wish that I and all men could understand women; I want to know how she feels inside, what she's thinking when she gives me the silent treatment, why she cries, what she means when she says nothing is wrong, and how I can make a woman truly happy."

The Lord replied, "You want two lanes or four on that bridge?"

Using the Four Agreements to Resolve Conflict

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz gives a few significant tools for moving past conflict in any arena. The book is about four habits you can adopt that improve your life in general. Use the agreements to put myself in the right frame of mind before heading into the lion's den:

1. Be impeccable with your word.

Words have immeasurable power, so use them with care. Say only what you mean, and remember your opinion isn’t fact. Silence is better than saying something you’ll regret.

2. Don’t take anything personally.

Here I’ll quote the book, “Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.” That guy honking at you just spilled scalding coffee all over his lap, the boss screaming at you is going through a divorce. Their stuff has nothing to do with your stuff, and assuming you’re the root cause of someone’s behavior is not only self-centered, it’s also a big waste of energy.

3. Don’t make assumptions.

You can spend hours generating theories about why someone did something, or you can just ask. When someone lashes or does something unexpected, save time by seeking clarification.

4. Do your best.

Do the best you can with the conflict in front of you, and you won’t need to waste brain power on self-judgements or regrets.

When I can keep these guidelines in mind, I’m almost always able to diffuse a situation. Other benefits:

Resolution comes more quickly because you ask for clarification instead of jumping to conclusions.
You reduce time lost to stress because you don’t feel personally responsible for the other person’s anxiety or anger.
Initial conflict often turns into a productive conversation and leads to a deeper relationship, because you come from a more compassionate place.
You ideally come away without regrets, having resolved the situation instead of escalating it.

A National Epidemic...

"If anything characterizes the 21st century, it’s our inability to restrain ourselves for the benefit of other people," said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University.

"The cellphone talker thinks his rights go above that of people around him, and the jammer thinks his are the more important rights."

...from a discussion on the rise of mobile and fixed cell phone jammers.

The meditation word for today is...courtesy