Tuesday, September 30, 2008

"How the hell can I work when the sky's so blue? I damn sure don't work for nothin'. Piss on it I just as soon sit underneath the shade tree."
~Felix, Riding the Rails by Michael Mathers

Monday, September 29, 2008

"Love is in us. It's deeply embedded in the brain. Our challenge is to understand each other." ~Helen Fisher, The brain in love

Sunday, September 28, 2008

"Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic."
~Leif Enger, So Brave, Young, and Handsome

Saturday, September 27, 2008

"The biggest joy was on the way home. In my cockpit window, every two minutes: The Earth, the Moon, the Sun, and the whole 360-degree panorama of the heavens. And that was a powerful, overwhelming experience. And suddenly I realized that the molecules of my body, and the molecules of the spacecraft, the molecules in the body of my partners, were prototyped, manufactured in some ancient generation of stars. And that was an overwhelming sense of oneness, of connectedness; it wasn't 'Them and Us', it was 'That's me!', that's all of it, it's... it's one thing. And it was accompanied by an ecstacy, a sense of 'Oh my God. Wow. Yes.' An insight. An epiphany. "
~Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14, In the Shadow of the Moon

Friday, September 26, 2008

"Americans... still believe in an America where anything's possible - they just don't think their leaders do."
~Barack Obama

Thursday, September 25, 2008

"It's a popular fact that 90 percent of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong...It is used. One of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, to turn the unusual into the usual. Otherwise, human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing a stupid grin, saying, "Wow," a lot. Part of the brain exists to stop this from happening. It is very efficient, and can make people experience boredom in the middle of marvels."
~Terry Pratchett

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

"Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds." ~Albert Einstein

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

"Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can - there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did." ~Sarah Caldwell

Monday, September 22, 2008

"I don't care what the doctors say, my bones are hard."
~An old woman to her old friend over coffee

Sunday, September 21, 2008

"You make me love things I used to hate."
~Neighbor Hansen to me, on vegetables and kettle corn

Saturday, September 20, 2008

"Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness...

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death."
~David Foster Wallace, Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address - May 21, 2005

Friday, September 19, 2008

"By the way guys... tequila drunk - all I'm gonna wanna do is dance." ~Heidi Fikstad, happy at Malo's happy hour

Thursday, September 18, 2008

"With the stones we cast at them, geniuses build new roads for us."~Paul Eldridge

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

"History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads. People get the history they deserve." ~Charles de Gaulle

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

"What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its promise." ~Barbara Jordan

Monday, September 15, 2008

"When you play the cowbell, people listen." ~jG Francis

Sunday, September 14, 2008

"If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day." ~Leonard Cohen

Saturday, September 13, 2008

"I'm gonna give her a cookie and a hug and she'll be fine." ~Nanny Jamie Masters, regarding a one-year-old
...
"That's how you keep me quiet for 10 minutes."
~Heidi Fikstad, a 28-year-old

Friday, September 12, 2008

"When seeing a new place, I often think: I am going to come back here later -- when I am rich, or when I have more time, or when I have a purpose, or when I am with someone I love -- and do this right. But it is a self-deception. More often than not, my feet lead me somewhere new rather than somewhere I have already been. And as I sat at that window watching the train bore through the heart of China, I had a different, more probable thought: I'd better remember what this place looks like. I will never be back." ~Brad Newsham

Thursday, September 11, 2008

"You can make anything pretty."
~Neighbor Hansen to jG, in the backyard cleaning the BBQ

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

"It is easy, but not right 2 judge that which we do not understand. Our only job is 2b tru2 ourselves follow our hearts& 2 love& 4give!"
~Rosalee Toews (aka Mom), via text message

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

"If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly."
~Andrew Harvey

Monday, September 8, 2008

"I said, make me dinner!"
~jG Francis to me, after watching too much Mad Men

Sunday, September 7, 2008

"Enter each day with the expectation that the happenings of the day may contain a clandestine message addressed to you personally. Expect omens, epiphanies, casual blessings, and teachers who unknowingly speak to your condition." ~Sam Keen

Saturday, September 6, 2008

"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." ~Abraham Lincoln

Friday, September 5, 2008

"The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thursday, September 4, 2008

"The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future." ~Jessamyn West

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

"It is good for man
To try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace and anguish,
not to go down the dinosaur's way
Until all his capacities have been explored: and it is good for him
To know that his needs and nature are no more changed, in fact, in ten
thousand years than the beaks of eagles."
~Robinson Jeffers

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

"It is weird that I would eat one of those dudes on a bun."
~jG Francis, passing a pasture of cows in Butte Valley, CA

Monday, September 1, 2008

"I'm coming SOON!" ~Jesus, according to a big billboard off Highway 730 in Irrigon, WA