a few quotes...

“We Americans bring in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat” (64) -Steinbeck

“‘If by force you make a creature live and work like a beast, you must think of him as a beast, else empathy would drive you mad. Once you have classified him in your mind, your feelings are safe’” (265) Steinbeck


"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
- Albert Camus

"There is perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder and
discovering that you're on the wrong wall." - Joseph Campbell

Speech.

don't know who I stole this from...but I haven't read this book yet.

"Communications must destroy localness, by a slow, inevitable
process [...] Radio and television speech becomes standardized, perhaps
better English than we have ever used. Just as our bread, mixed and
baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident of human frailty,
is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one
speech [...] What I am mourning is perhaps not worth saving, but I
regret its loss nevertheless" (106-107)

Travels with Charley- Steinbeck

Cute Robot!

Isn't this just the cutest robot you have ever seen? I found him while doing work at the library this week...He reminds me of all those drawings kids do, with the man looking over a wall?

I don't know that this should be interesting to me, but Cuba is still keen on counting each and every anniversary. For example, check out this link... (or not.) It links to a scientific journal that in the upper right hand corner of the banner says "53rd Year of the Revolution." I wonder exactly who they are trying to remind.

http://revistascientificas.cujae.edu.cu/

Let me google that for you...

www.lmgtfy.com

Super helpful when someone asks you something they could find out on their own, but probably a tad snarky :)

Here's a friendly example...

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=warrior+dash

another one from Kent... (traveling)

"But travel is not as romantic and exotic as it sounds. The familiar will always call, and your sense of rootlessness will not give you rest. Your emotions will fly crazily in all directions until sometimes you will feel that you have lost your moorings. If you travel alone, the warmth of families and couples will break your heart, and your loneliness will plunge you to depths you did not think possible.

And then, there are greater dangers. You may wake up and discover that you have become a runner who uses travel as an escape from the problems and complications of trying to build something with your life. You may find that you were gone one hour or one day or one month too long, and that you no longer belong anywhere or to anyone. You may find that you have been caught by the lure of the road and that you are a slave to dissatisfaction with any life that forces you to stay in one place.

There things happen. But how much worse is it to be someone whose dreams have been buried beneath the routines of life and who no longer has an interest in looking beyond the horizon?

I believe it is worth taking the risk. How else will you know the feeling of standing on something ancient, or hearing the silent roar of empty spaces? How else will you be able to look into the eyes of a man who has no education, never left his village, and does not speak your language, and know that the two of you have something in common? How else will you know, in your heart, that the whole world is precious and that every person and place has something unique to offer?

And when you have tragedies or great changes in your life, how else will you truly understand that there are a thousand, a million ways to live, and that your life will go on to something new and different and every bit as worthy as the life you are leaving behind?"-Kent Nerburn, Letters to my Son

Travel...

"That is why we need travel. If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon; our ears don't hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. "- Kent Nerburn, Letters to my Son