We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
I will not ask very private questions such as "What's in your pockets," "What's in your briefcase?," or "What's in your pocketbook?"
However, I will tell that all there really ever is in my pockets are my wallet, a pocketknife, some crumbled-up paper money, and a few coins. Nothing interesting.
It's a cliche because there is so much truth in that expression that it is at least half-true. You could make the same case for bad luck.
I advise the youth to regard life as a conveyor belt of opportunities rolling past you. Experiences, jobs, relationships, books, learning, etc. They roll by, but almost never come back. If you grab enough of them, some will work out. On the other hand, the same bad selections that life offers keep returning, don't they?
I have been lucky in ways that I had nothing at all to do with (raised in an educated, middle-upper middle class church-going American family with no divorce), decent genes, a functional and honest personality (despite my share of flaws which nobody really knows about but one of which happens to be a lack of talent for anything requiring talent), etc. However, I give myself credit for making the most of those gifts in my pursuit of happiness and satisfaction. I suppose that I "could have made more of myself," but I didn't want to.
I've been given an education this week on classic, old-timey flower styles via Mrs. BD. I always like to learn new things and I like purty flowers. Who doesn't? Flower design is just ephemeral sculpture and I like seeing and smelling them around the olde HQ. Any old cabin like ours is enlivened by floral productions.
Thinking about the Great War 100 years ago. A terrible, pointless war that never should have happened. Historians say that WW2 was just a continuation of it.
The best movie I've seen about the Great War is The Shooting Party. There is no war in it except allusions to it in the last 30 seconds.
Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends. In the Great War eight million people were destroyed because two persons, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his Consort, had been shot.… [T]he Great War was more ironic than any before or since. It was a hideous embarrassment to the prevailing Meliorist myth which had dominated the public consciousness for a century. It reversed the Idea of Progress.
I know a few guys who were dragged to see the Charles James Beyond Fashion show at the Metropolitan Museum. I was, last weekend. Lots of husbands there being good sports, and lots of fashionistas of all varieties (taking notes and detailed close-up photos of stitching, etc).
I can assert that I know more about couture dress-making now than I did before. It is complicated, detailed, and difficult to do.
Was the "War On Drugs" mostly political? I will not defend drug use morally, spiritually, or otherwise, but the fact remains that you can buy anything you want on almost any selected street corner in the US. All that war seems to have done is to create gangs, enrich drug cartels, add lots of government employees, and put a lot of people in jail.
Handling money is almost, or more, complicated than handling love and sex. People want both so much that it often scrambles their brains and incites irrational or self-destructive behavior (see our morning links today).
Money is difficult to obtain, all too easy to get rid of. Romance and sex are easy to obtain, difficult to get rid of. Having some money put aside means security and power over a crazy world, and love and sex mean, well, whatever they mean to you.
I once lived beyond my means, and made all sorts of rationalizations for it (eg turning wants into needs, like shoes, luxurious impulses, and "therapeutic shopping"). I learned from that, and some discipline from a financial spouse helped. I was smart about love, but dumb about money even though, before I married, I worked for every penny.
Some might term this simple guide cynical. Others might not. For the guys' use, there is a crazy/hot matrix, for the gals' use a cute/money matrix. Simplified indeed, but a good starting point anyway.
Yes, it's a comedy sketch, but young males need to know that women are always seeking guys, and young women need to know that guys are always seeking gals. Human nature. There is no need for anyone to be shy or non-judgemental.
Evil exists because human beings exist. No other living thing, and no inanimate object, is capable of being, thinking, feeling evil or of committing evil acts. Only us.
"The world" is not a wicked place. And Humanity is not a wicked thing. Evil is just one of many capabilities we possess. We have to recognize it and (if we're sane) choose not to indulge in it. That's not easy. Most of all, we shouldn't deny evil or act all surprised when it turns up. Like it or not, it's business as usual for us humans.
Fortunately, it's not the WHOLE business. We can do better...
If you have some savings (which most responsible people sacrifice comforts and luxuries to have), what do you do with it? Investing how? Or not investing?
- Short-term savings (might possibly need within a year or three)
- Long-term (might need someday, or might wish to leave to kids if you croak soon enough)
Inquiring people want to know what you do with your money. If I get some comments, I'll show you mine.
I've been a Roger Angell reader for most of my life. Whether interested in baseball or not, I recommend his prose to you. He just turned 93, has retired to Maine, is planning a second marriage, and is being honored in Cooperstown for his contributions to baseball.
Check me out. The top two knuckles of my left hand look as if I’d been worked over by the K.G.B. No, it’s more as if I’d been a catcher for the Hall of Fame pitcher Candy Cummings, the inventor of the curveball, who retired from the game in 1877. To put this another way, if I pointed that hand at you like a pistol and fired at your nose, the bullet would nail you in the left knee. Arthritis.
Also,
Recent and not so recent surveys (including the six-decades-long Grant Study of the lives of some nineteen-forties Harvard graduates) confirm that a majority of us people over seventy-five keep surprising ourselves with happiness. Put me on that list. Our children are adults now and mostly gone off, and let’s hope full of their own lives. We’ve outgrown our ambitions. If our wives or husbands are still with us, we sense a trickle of contentment flowing from the reliable springs of routine, affection in long silences, calm within the light boredom of well-worn friends, retold stories, and mossy opinions. Also the distant whoosh of a surfaced porpoise outside our night windows.
We elders—what kind of a handle is this, anyway, halfway between a tree and an eel?—we elders have learned a thing or two...
If you want to reinvent the wheel and design a whole new way to live an adult life, go bananas. Nobody gives a shit. If, however, you don’t have a smarter plan, here’s what’s been working for many generations...
The American founders knew that government needed a short leash. So much for that plan.
This essay by Williamson is almost too good to post on a summer Friday afternoon: Property and Peace - The irreplaceable basis for a prosperous and decent society is property. One quote:
The founding ideal of this republic is that we are the who and government is the whom, a necessary evil that is to some degree necessarily evil. On the right scale and in its proper place, that necessary evil is bearable. But when it oversteps, we are under no obligation to bear it — in fact, we are morally obliged by our particular American patrimony to resist. That is why the usual progressive taunt, “If you don’t like it, why don’t you move to Somalia?” is foolish and shallow: The American government exists at our sufferance — we do not exist at its sufferance. George W. Bush was mocked for talking about an “ownership society,” but if you want peace, that’s precisely what you should be trying to build. The alternative is to have 50 percent + 1 arbitrating the uncomfortable question of who in effect owns whom.
You want a less polarized politics? Consider that the God of the Old Testament asked only for 10 percent, and had Ten Commandments, not ten thousand.
Handling money is almost, or more, complicated than handling love and sex. People want both so much that it often scrambles their brains and incites irrational or self-destructive behavior (see our morning links today).
If you have some savings (which most responsible people sacrifice comforts and luxuries to have), what do you do with it? Investing how? Or not investing?
Pic on loan from the NYT article - 
10 Great Things About the Burqa,