Do Unto Others . . .

It is one of the great secrets of life that those things which are most worth doing, we do for others.

Writer Lewis Carroll

Mark Twain - An Angry Young (?) Man

Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Mark Twain, writing about the author Jane Austen

Quoted in "The Writer's Almanac" of 16 Dec 2011

The Presidential Address to Congress of December 8, 1941

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives: Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.

And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces—with the unbounding determination of our people—we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

Failure Is Not An Option

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Novelist George Eliot, a.k.a. Mary Anne Evans, a.k.a. Marian Lewes

19 Nov 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

President Abraham Lincoln

Up Sh*t Creek?

I believe the appropriate metaphor here involves a river of excrement and a Native American water vessel without any means of propulsion. 

Sheldon to Penny in The Big Bang Theory, "The Lizard-Spock Expansion"

Hope

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

St. Augustine

Political Satire Alert!

No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

Political Satirist PJ O'Rourke

I Second This Endorsement, Albeit 500 Years Later

Who loves not woman, wine, and song remains a fool his whole life long. 

Martin Luther

Perhaps This Is Where We Are, Historically

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

Second President of the United States, John Adams

Language

A description of language as something beautiful . . . it is:

a bouquet of discrete understandings

Ojibwe novelist David Treuer

 

Are We Lost And Alone?

"We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men; we are crude and sorrowful and superficial — I believe we are lost."

Erich Maria Remarque, author of All Quiet on the Western Front

We are hard pressed, but we are not crushed
We are struck down but not destroyed
Cause no matter what may happen
We are not abandoned
We are not alone

Carolyn Arends, Not Alone, Polyanna's Attic

No, we're not.

Winnie-the-Pooh

My daily e-Mail message from The Writer's Almanac (here) tells me that Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne, was published on 14 Oct 1926.

I cannot tell you how much influence the Pooh characters have had in the development of the life of my youngest son, Timothy. Well, Tim, nowadays. He's 24, and no longer a little boy. In fact, he's a Critical Care Medic, and someone who you'd probably want "in your corner" when you are the critically ill patient.

Our lives were filled with Pooh books, Pooh videos and Pooh stuffed animals for a long, long time. Tim even got to hug a real live Pooh Bear when we went to Disneyworld way back when. Now, so many years later, I sometimes can't help but get teary-eyed when I think back on it.

My thanks to the author, who, I just found out (through his Wikipedia entry), died the same year I was born. And thanks to Disney who picked up the stories . . .

Quotation :: How Boys Think

I, personally, think this is right on:

I suppose if there is anything more exciting to a young boy than an ocean liner, it is an ocean liner sinking.

Historian and Nonfiction Author Walter Lord

Rest in Peace, Steve Jobs

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Laughter

"Laughter is the hand of God on the shoulder of a troubled world."

Humorist and Southern Baptist minister Grady Nutt 

The Greatest Thing Since . . .

7 Jul 2011 - Sliced bread was sold for the first time on this date in 1928. Up until that time, consumers baked their own bread, or bought it in solid loaves.

Otto Frederick Rohwedder, a jeweler from Davenport, Iowa, had been working for years perfecting an eponymous invention, the Rohwedder Bread Slicer. He tried to sell it to bakeries. They scoffed, and told him that pre-sliced bread would get stale and dry long before it could be eaten. He tried sticking the slices together with hatpins, but it didn't work.

Finally he hit on the idea of wrapping the bread in waxed paper after it was sliced. Still no sale, until he took a trip to Chillicothe, Missouri, and met a baker who was willing to take a chance. Frank Bench agreed to try the five-foot-long, three-foot-high slicing and wrapping machine in his bakery. The proclamation went out to kitchens all over Chillicothe, via ads in the daily newspaper: "Announcing: The Greatest Forward Step in the Baking Industry Since Bread was Wrapped — Sliced Kleen Maid Bread." Sales went through the roof.

Rohwedder not only gave Americans the gift of convenience and perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but he also provided the English language with the saying that expresses the ultimate in innovation: "the greatest thing since sliced bread."

Courtesy of The Writer's Almanac

The View From Kari's

At Kristiansand, Sat, 18 Jun 2011

Sidsel, Nancy, Vivian, Sonja, Mette, Kari and Kerry in Kristiansand, Norway.

Paris 2011, at the Eiffel Tower

Tomorrow :: A Quotation

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself into our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."

Actor John Wayne

Your Story :: A Quotation

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

Dr. Maya Angelou

And So It Did: A Quotation

"Is there not some reason to expect that the discovery will greatly change the commercial and personal intercourse of the country?"

Samuel Morey, who received a patent for the internal combustion engine, 1 Apr 1826

And So Much Better: A Quotation

"You know, when you're a kid, they tell you it's all 'grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid and that's it.'

No.

Truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It's so much darker. And so much madder.

And so much better . . ."

Writer Russell T. Davies, from the 2006 Doctor Who episode "Love & Monsters"

On Life; A Quotation

"My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn."

Author Louis Adamic

On Old Age; a Quotation.

"Old age isn't a battle, old age is a massacre."

Philip Roth, in Everyman

Good-bye Facebook

So this is the night on which I'm pulling the plug on Facebook. (This post will be cross-referenced to my site.) Why? A couple of reasons. First, I pretty much talk to many of the people I'm friends with fairly often . . . they're friends, and they're local. Second, I don't have that much to say.

So, good-bye Facebook.

If anyone needs to write me, I'm at Mark_Dopita@Yahoo.com.

A 31-Cent Gift

I'm kinda embarrassed. And kinda not.

I was in line at the grocery store today, when one of the employees came up to buy a simple bag of chips ("crisps" to you in the UK; I like that). It turns out that she didn't have any money with her, so she told the checker that she'd have to put it on her debit card. I was packing my groceries into the large, gray, plastic tub I use in place of plastic grocery bags (hate 'em) and overheard the conversation.

After insisting on paying the 31-cent cost of the chips, the employee insisted that she pay me back. "Not to mind," I told her. No problem. No worries. Consider it a Christmas gift. A New Years present. Pay it forward. "When's your birthday?" I asked. "Consider it an early present."

I don't know if I was more embarrassed to have her insist on paying me back - I hope she doesn't, actually - or if I was more sad that she didn't have even 31 cents in her pocket. A simple kindness, which was surpassed by tens of thousands or "larger" kindnesses around the world today, no doubt.

My wife and I have been there - one year after Christmas we had all of $47.00 to our name. To be sure, we also had a house - with its mortgage, property taxes and utility bills; two cars - with their insurance, gas and repair costs; and four kids - with their clothing, schooling, doctor and dental bills. And we were working, which solves a lot of monetary ills. So I understand.

Or am I getting too far away from life-as-it-is for many: living week-to-week, paycheck-to-paycheck?

Quotation: Preparation

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

I love this quote! I find it attributed to many different people, but one of the oldest is Seneca (the Younger), a Roman philosopher, politician and dramatist.

I've spent my life getting education on various things, especially things surrounding my job as a computer programmer and analyst. I learned COBOL, IMS DB/DC, CICS, DB2 & SQL, LotusScript, Java, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, C++, XML, XSL, SAP's Java Web Dynpro, project management techniques, structured analysis and structured design. And I was ready for the "next assignment".

The way I think about it, if you want to make yourself valuable to your employer, educate yourself. And stay on top of your education needs.

Oh, and Another Thing

It may be that there are one or more new hips in my future. Doctor visit this month will tell the tale . . .

2010 : A Poor Year for Blog Posts

Lookit that - four posts last year. Don't I have more to say than that? Let's see what this year will bring. Potential posts include (cue the preview music):

• A 30th wedding anniversary
• Dad's 90th birthday
• Two 55th birthdays
• A new niece (due in February)
• A neat vacation (more detail on that later)
• The trips to open and close our friends' cabin in northern Wisconsin
• Implementation of SAP NetWeaver Portal at work, replacing our current Intranet (something about which I don't normally post)
• New quotations
• Chicago sports failures (and successes, I hope)
• Notes on plays we're going to see
• A new car (perhaps)
• Some writing (poems, lyrics)
• Some songs (if I can get them recorded)

So . . . let's see where we go with this!

Hello 2011!

"Just think of what it's gonna be like when we're 25!"

I said that back in 1974, when sitting with a bunch of friends in front of a house in Mount Prospect, Illinois, the year many of us graduated from high school.

We turned 25 in 1981, just about 30 years ago.

Seems that everyone tells you, around the time your kids are born, should you have any, "Pay attention, because before you know it, they're going to be all grown up." Now that my kids are grown, I can echo that sentiment to everyone else.

Let me write a corollary: Pay attention, because, before you know it, you're going to be (what used to be called) middle-aged.

What does 55 feel like? In my mind, I don't feel "old". I do recognize that both my hips need to be replaced, and that I'm way-overweight, that I couldn't play a quarter of a touch-football game even if I wanted to, but that doesn't mean I don't feel the same as I did back in '74.

Time sure does fly.

Now it seems that I've got that "yearning deep within me, telling me there's more to come", to paraphrase one of my favorite singer/songwriters. so, perhaps, it's time to take inventory of the good and the bad, work on making the good even better and making the bad good.

Hello 2011! Thanks for making me sit up and take notice.