When it comes, I’ll be fine, calm.

black and white, photography

“My doctor told me that I’m old, fat, and ugly, but none of those things is going to kill me immediately,” he told me shortly before his 72nd birthday. “The actuaries say I have six to eight years. The best tables give me 10. Three thousand days, more or less.” I asked if he is afraid to die. “Because of my hemophilia, I’ve been prepared to face death all of my life. As a boy I spent a lot of time in hospitals. My parents had to leave at the end of visiting hours, and I spent a lot of time just lying there in the dark, thinking about the fact that any accident could be dangerous or even fatal. So I’m ready. Everybody fears the unknown. But I have a strong feeling there’s something bigger than us. I don’t think all this exists because some rocks happened to collide. I’m at peace. When it comes, I’ll be fine, calm. I’ll miss life, though. Especially my family.”

~ Roger Ailles, 72, Founder and Head of Fox News, in Vanity Fair


Whether one is far right, passionate left or in the center, we are not so different at our core. We face our daily struggles. We love our family. We’d give anything for another ten years…Life is good.  Have a good day…


Image Credit: EveryThing All Around Me

The long roll of heavens artillery

black and white, ocean, waves, photography

“Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his infinity, – the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heavens artillery, – but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggots life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear of death, of God, of the universe, comes over him, – the hope of the Resurrection and the life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, – it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God.”

~ Jack London


This share was inspired by the 10 ton meteorite falling out of the heavens in Siberia on Friday. (The long rolls of heavens artillery…The sky clears, the heavens are as brass…)

Jack London (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.


Sources: Quote – thank you makebelieveboutique.com.  Photo: midnightmartinis - “Portugal” – by Hélène Desplechin

I’m not one. But this stopped me in my tracks today…

Vibrant Produce

“The risk of hospitalization or death from heart disease is 32% lower in vegetarians than people who eat meat and fish, according to a new study from the University of Oxford.

Heart disease is the single largest cause of death in developed countries…The new findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggest that a vegetarian diet could significantly reduce people’s risk of heart disease…This is the largest study ever conducted in the UK comparing rates of heart disease between vegetarians and non-vegetarians. The analysis looked at almost 45,000 volunteers from England and Scotland…of whom 34% were vegetarian. Such a significant representation of vegetarians is rare in studies of this type, and allowed researchers to make more precise estimates of the relative risks between the two groups.”

Source: University of Oxford


Image Credit

Running. With Newtown.

black-and-white-love-sad-sweet-true-love-Favim.com-244215

Off to a late start today.  Could not fire the engines.  Or the head.  Temperature: Brisk 35F. Not a trace of wind.  And gloriously sunny.  Sunny but dark.

I skip the hat.  Skip the gloves. Skip the extra sweatshirt.  I needed cold.  Needed to feel alive. Needed a new path.  A fresh 5-mile route.  Away from the familiar.

9:45 am: I’m heading North. (It’s quiet out. Eerily quiet. I don’t hear birds. Traffic seems to be moving slower.  Everyone mourning? Newtown is North.  Sandy Hook Elementary School is 39 miles due North. TV images flicker by: Mother holding phone, screaming.  Children being marched out of the building. “Close your eyes.  Hold your hands.“)

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Grounded.

illustration, sketch, black and white, simple figure, woman figure

It’s Monday, October 29th.  The day that Hurricane Sandy hit the Tri-State Region.

I’m scrolling down the new WordPress posts for bloggers I follow.  My fingers sliding clumsily on the touch pad. Scrolling. Scrolling. (Cursing because I haven’t figured out this d*mn touch pad. I miss the eraser thing in the middle of keyboard.  Getting old.  Hating change.  Big clumsy fingers. I slide fingers in wrong direction and I’m taken to another website.  I lose my place.  Need to start back at the top.  Grrrrrrr. Can this be so difficult pal? )

My eyes flitting from post to post.  Scanning images and topics of interest.

My eyes land on the image on the left.  I freeze.  (What is it about this image?  I can feel its soothing effects.  The ‘Work’ clutch now slipping from OVERDRIVE to neutral.)

A few lines.  Black lines.  White background.  A simple image. A simple, beautiful human image.  (Let’s not get too carried away.  It’s certainly not that simple.  And nothing I could ever draw.)

I found it to be startling.

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Quinquennium

You get up today.  You may be tired.  You may be lonely.  You may be ill.  You may be angry.  You may be scared.  You may be feeling despair.  You may be sad.  You may not be looking forward to going to work.  And, you may need to have your face pressed right up against the glass to see

Hit this link

Sunday Morning: Of Souls & Water…

Beautiful.  Mesmerizing on the way to hypnotic.  Calming with a soothing cadence.  And, Spiritual for believers and non-believers.

Yes.  I loved this.

Good Sunday Morning…



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I want to live…

How one goes from this morning’s post on Charlie Brown and Snoopy and being-grateful-for-everything-dancing-and-whooping-it-up in the morning – to this topic in the evening – should give you a sense of my day.  And it should also give you a sense of what I was reading on my train ride home from work.  Yes, I question my own judgment on my forms of stress relief.  Nonetheless, I made a commitment to me that I would post what was on my mind. So, this post is related to the “LIVE” part of “LEAD, LEARN, LIVE.”  LIVE in capital letters.  LIVE Forever.

WTMI* Factoid 1:
I am maniacal on subject of self-help and finding it in self-help books.  (He who needs lots of help, hungrily seeks it out.)

WTMI* Factoid 2:
I’m a MWMC.  (That’s Man-With-Mortality-Complex).  I’m sayin’ like anxiety attacks – cold sweat – darkness. Fear of not waking up.  THE END.

Conversely, there are few (very few) bouts of light on the subject.  The most recent light being tied to a Steve Jobs story.  (See Post Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow.)

So, when I saw a pre-release version of Stephen Cave’s new book: Immortality-The Quest To Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization – I thought maybe…just maybe, I tripped into the Holy Grail.

You know the pitch.  Face your fears head on – and only then do you grow.  Or Dorothy Thompson: “Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.” [Read more...]