A serious and sometimes not so serious personal blog
I just really appreciate the work that went into this photo. It looks almost like something that should be on a museum wall. It’s a little odd, though, how each of the three main subjects seems to be looking in different directions. I wonder what was going on around them.
Happiness is not a goal, it is a by-product. Paradoxically, the one sure way not to be happy is deliberately to map out a way of life in which one would please oneself completely and exclusively. After a short time, a very short time, there would be little that one really enjoyed. For what keeps our interest in life and makes us look forward to tomorrow is giving pleasure to other people.
[…]
It is easy to slip into self-absorption and it is equally fatal. When one becomes absorbed in himself, in his health, in his personal problems, or in the small details of daily living, he is, at the same time losing interest in other people; worse, he is losing his ties to life. From that it is an easy step to losing interest in the world and in life itself. That is the beginning of death.
I have always liked Don Quixote’s comment, ‘Until death it is all life.’
Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: ‘A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others.’
But there is another basic requirement, and I can’t understand now how I forgot it at the time: that is the feeling that you are, in some way, useful. Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive. And it is its own reward, as well, for it is the beginning of happiness, just as self-pity and withdrawal from the battle are the beginning of misery.
Eleanor Roosevelt, “You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life“
Three years isn’t as long as it sounds. I’m glad we had a little time with her. I’m glad she trusted us and that we could give her a comfortable life. I wish I’d picked her up more.
We had to say goodbye to one of our cats yesterday. She was a sweetheart with a big heart and she will be missed. Thank you for being a part of our lives, Mama Cat.
A cooking manga with Superman. There really is a manga about everything.
I spotted this on the shelf at Kinokuniya in Edgewater, NJ yesterday.
Last Tuesday I got stuck in traffic while trying to get to work because of an accident. I was late to work the previous week for the exact same thing, so I had to take photos this time to make sure my boss knew I wasn’t bullshitting her.
I figured they’re worth sharing. The weirdest thing about the accident to me is that the person in the smaller vehicle looks like some old lady that just rolled out of her living room to yell at some kids for being noisy in the street.
This section of 287 is rough. People get into car accidents there all the time because of cars veering from the left lane into the middle lane to cut the hard left exit onto 27 East, Prospect Expressway, followed immediately by people merging into the highway from 3rd Ave and then everyone opening it up on the straightaway if possible to make up time before the Belt Parkway split.
287 is called the Gowanus (‘Go anus’) Expressway, which adds some comic relief to getting screwed by bad traffic backups there regularly, but during the school year traffic is so bad that I’m thinking about taking the train to work instead, even though the trip would be 1.5 hours each way.
The original flag of the State of Alabama was very different to the current flag. It was designed by a group of Alabama women in 1861. It featured the words, “Independent Now and Forever” over the Goddess of Liberty on one side. The other side had a cotton plant and a rattlesnake with the Latin words “Noli Me Tangere,” meaning “Touch Me Not.”
Quote: States101: Alabama Images: Wikipedia
I stumbled onto this in a weird way, looking for info about car decals and Alabama, since I just did a road trip there and back from New York. I wasn’t aware that the phrase “noli me tangere” was ever used in Alabama for anything significant. My only exposure to it was the book by Jose Rizal:
Noli Me Tángere (Latin for “Touch Me Not”) is a novel by Filipino writer and activist José Rizal published during the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. It explores perceived inequities in law and practice in terms of the treatment by the ruling government and the Spanish Catholic friars of the resident peoples in the late-19th century.
Wikipedia
The reasons for using the phrase are pretty similar for both the women in Alabama creating a State flag and for Jose Rizal, who both saw themselves as part of an oppressed group being trampled on by outside forces: the Union Army for Alabama and the Spanish colonizers for Jose Rizal.
The choice of the rattlesnake on the original Alabama flag makes me wonder if it was partially inspired by the Gadsden flag, which was created and used during the American Revolutionary War by US Continental forces fighting the British. It included the phrase “DONT TREAD ON ME”, which is pretty similar to “noli me tangere” / “touch me not”, though I wonder what they were thinking of exactly when they chose that phrase. For Jose Rizal, it seems more clear. Noli me tangere is a reference to John 20:17, and considering the use of Catholicism as a form of oppression in the Philippines, he was almost certainly making a religious appeal, though I haven’t read the book yet so I couldn’t say for sure.
Kadie the Cow is now on Bay Avenue in Woodruff Riverfront Park in Downtown Columbus, Georgia, but she used to “live” on Manchester Expressway in front of the old Kinnett Dairy. Along with her calf, BeBe, she was the company’s mascot, and they both stayed on in the same location even after Kinnett shut down and was replaced by a Best Buy, which in turn has also shut down.
Over the years, Kadie has been defaced with obscene graffiti and BeBe was kidnapped and spent some time in Butler, Georgia, before being recovered. It’s weird the kinds of things people get attached to, but with so much change happening in Columbus and Kadie standing witness to it all, she gained significance to the community and achieved landmark status.
It’s nice to see her down at the new river walk with a fresh coat of paint. It feels like a monument to my childhood and a simpler, friendlier, perhaps rose colored past. When I was a kid, my Nana kept a box of Kinnett ice cream sandwiches in the freezer in the Florida Room of her house because she knew that me and her other grandkids loved them. We’d walk through the den, open the sliding glass door and step into that hot room that smelled like chlorine and hot plastic, and open up the freezer to grab dessert, or a snack when we got older.
I’ve spent most of my life living outside of Columbus, because of military service and work, and when we talked on the phone Nana would always ask me when I was “coming in”. What an interesting way of looking at the world. Beyond the borders of Columbus was outside, and coming home was coming in to where family waited for you. Coming in meant Kinnett ice cream sandwiches and visiting with loved ones. My entire childhood is tied up with memories of Kadie and Kinnett products. I was really disappointed when the company went under, but at least Kadie is still around to remind me of the past.
This is getting ridiculous. Can we find a cause to virtue signal about that benefits the United States and its citizens in a more direct way? Can we let Europe take care of Europe for a while and instead take care of the United States before our country falls apart we need Europeans to buy virtual pets in online games to help support us?
Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog 