Life stories have the power to inspire us (Case 2)

Tiger Woods teaches us to never give up

By Dr. Ely Lazar & Dr. Adele Thomas

[Republished here by permission of the authors from their “Lifestyle Tips for Over 50s,” affiliated with their website “Passionate Retirees,” September 27, 2018.]

On Sunday, September 23, Tiger Woods produced a remarkable achievement. He won his first golf tournament in over five years, beating out the top golfers in the world. What makes the victory remarkable was that in 2017, it looked like his golfing career was over.

Life stories have the power to inspire us (Case 1)

Tim Samaras overcame tremendous odds

By Dr. Ely Lazar & Dr. Adele Thomas

[Republished here by permission of the authors from their “Lifestyle Tips for Over 50s,” affiliated with their website “Passionate Retirees,” August 25, 2018.]

We all have life stories, some that inspire us, others that are steeped in tragedy. We are drawn to those individuals who overcome tremendous odds and achieve greatness through sheer perseverance and drive. One such individual encompassed all of the above.

A Life Position Revisited

Truth does not alter

By Victor L. Midyett

I believe that throughout our entire life, no matter how many birthdays we have, life offers us opportunities to change and grow.
    Have you ever said something to someone and been totally taken aback and surprised at their reaction, or “come back,” to the point that you were left wondering, Where did that come from?

Sketches from the Twin Cities: A tricolor improvisation

By Geoffrey Dean

The early morning hours hold seemingly limitless potential – for reflection, for creation, for getting the day under control before it’s really started. This morning, for about an hour, I continued a three-crayon improvisation that I had started the day before.
    The three crayons (yellow, orange, and blue green) were the ones that happened to be out at my daughter’s coloring station. She had been using ink stamps on the same stretch of paper, but I did not try to incorporate the blue and red blobs from her stamps. I gave myself over, as completely as I could without conscious effort, to the very act of putting lines – straight, wavy, intersecting, of unclear origin, destination, purpose, relationship – on paper, of layering colors and textures and noticing in passing how they mix, change, and morph as they move through the space.

Missionary Kid: Champion Kite

“Kite” (detail)

By Vic Midyett

[Originally published on September 7, 2016. The original stock image of a kite has been replaced with the painting by Shirley Deane/Midyett, and Vic has made a few minor changes.]

I was about 10 years old, maybe 12. Every summer the kids where we were living in India bought or made kites and flew them in the summer breezes. Any given day or time you could see hundreds of kites in the air.
    The Indians did something that I haven’t heard of anywhere else. Most kite makers there also sold a string with very fine crushed glass glued onto the string. The reason for this was a game kids played where, with skill, they would wrap their kite’s string around another kid’s kite’s string, and jerk down suddenly in hopes of cutting the other kid’s string and setting his kite loose. This brought bragging rights.

Distant Hope

By Bellator Senex

The world has become too disheartening to write about. Every day there is a new fuck-you from the White House. We don’t have time to vent our anger before something worse comes along to be pissed off about. Like whatever happened to all those kids, what’s to be done about Puerto Rico and the American Virgin Islands?

Ten Years Ago Today: Realism...or magical optimism?

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 24, 2008, without the image.]

This morning [ten years ago] I read in the New York Times a very short op-ed piece, “The Power of Negative Thinking,” by Barbara Ehrenreich. Ms. Ehrenreich assails the pie-in-the-sky optimism that I myself subscribed to for many years:

As promoted by Oprah Winfrey, scores of megachurch pastors and an endless flow of self-help best sellers, the idea is to firmly believe that you will get what you want, not only because it will make you feel better to do so, but because “visualizing” something — ardently and with concentration — actually makes it happen.

The Loneliest Liberal:WOW at the autumnal equinox

By James Knudsen

Today, September 22, 2018, is the autumnal equinox. Fall has traditionally been associated with things like Thanksgiving, the proliferation of all things “pumpkin spice,” and going back to school. However, in these modern times, school often starts not in a traditional autumn month like September, but in August. And sometimes you’re not going back to school, but arriving at a new place for the first time. I spent September 20 (two days ago) watching and participating in the delivery of a newly minted college freshman to her dorm.

A Yorkshire Dales obituary

By Anonymous

The couple had been happily married for just over 50 years when the wife died. They had spent their entire married life in the Yorkshire Dales. The husband contacted the local newspaper to enquire about having an obituary published. But when informed of the cost by the lady in the newspaper office, the man uttered, in true Yorkshire fashion, “How much?! You’ve got to be joking!!”

Theater Review: Plus One

Artwork by Maria Oglesby
(for review cited below)

A mom’s review of her son’s work

By Cynthia Barnett

What does a mom feel when she watches the premier performance of her son’s play? Curiosity, nervousness, excitement, pride? Maybe all of the above. But when it was over on Monday, September 10, at Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre in Los Angeles, I sat in my seat in amazement. Or rather, I joined the many in the intimate little theatre who rose in standing ovation for the two actors of Plus One, which was written and directed and acted in by my son.

Roger’s Reality: Dancing with the Devil, Part 5 (final)

The battle is over

By Roger Owens

For the greater part of a year, my wife, Cindy, and I have been dancing with the Devil as we battled the specter of her breast cancer. I include myself, because all caregivers to cancer patients should be included, for the perfect reason that it is our battle as well. No less than a war correspondent or an unarmed medical corpsman is subject to the same enemy fire as any soldier, are those of us who care for cancer victims we love vulnerable to the destruction of the afflicted. Arguably the greatest war correspondent of modern times was Ernest Taylor “Ernie” Pyle, and that great soul was killed at the very end of the war in the Pacific, at the battle of Ie Shima (eeyayshima), at a time when the area was believed to be safe. Pyle was speaking to a regimental commander when enemy machine-gun fire ended his storied life. We all take risks, and losing a friend in combat is as common as dirt.

Boldt Words & Images:A bit of personal history

The trippy, inauguratory poster for the erstwhile
Electric Theater, Aaron Russo’s psychedelic club
on N. Clark St. (Chicago 1968). Artist unknown

Or how I got this way

By Bob Boldt

“The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.” –Robert Burns

Aaron Russo, the impresario of the Electric Theater, the 60’s psychedelic night club, bottomed out financially when the planned opening week in April 1968 was severely hampered by a curfew due to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that same week. The club limped on under its new name, Kinetic Playground, but finally closed in 1969 due to fire. The Playground had a six-month resurgence minus the famous light show until the sheet was finally pulled over its face in 1973.

Boldt Words & Images: Washing Up

A grave marker in San Paulo, Brazil

By Bob Boldt

[The poem below is the first I submitted for this fall semester’s “Poetry Workshop” at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. A poem submitted for the fall 2017 semester’s workshop, “History’s Rhymes 9/11/73,” was published here on November 30 last year.]





I remember stone cities standing in the rain
half a world away arising now in memory,
their only friend.

Twelve Years Ago Today: Retrieving a Childhood

Young GWB

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 12, 2006.]

In response to my 9/10[/2006] post, a friend wrote to me: “You got a post out of [that speech], but you got so much more. You were fortunate enough to be able to retrieve a tangible piece of your childhood. That’s priceless. Hang on to it, always.”

Book Review: Jonathan Price’s just-published collection of film reviews

In the Nick of Time

By Ann Weldy

In this interesting and somewhat quirky selection of reviews from the past six years, most of them first published on a friend’s blog, Jonathan Price reveals a fluent and graceful writing style, imbued with his joy in films and illuminated by his wide acquaintance with literature and cultural history. The book is organized around eight themes, each given a chapter comprising several essays, rather than the more usual chronological order, and this arrangement provides useful coherence among the texts and the films they present.

Twelve Years Ago Today: “The American’s Creed”

William Tyler Page (1868 – 1942)

By Moristotle

[Originally published on September 10, 2006.]

This morning I came across the text of my eighth-grade graduation speech. Typed single-space on seventeen 3x5 cards, its opening paragraphs say that the graduating class has just recited “The American's Creed,” written by William Tyler Page. [I later found out that Page wrote it in 1917 for a contest, which he won, in competition with over 3,000 other entrants.] The eighth-grader I was says he’s privileged to speak on the second of the creed’s two paragraphs: “I therefore believe it is my duty to my Country to love it; to support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its Flag; and to defend it against all enemies.”

Michael Hanson will be at Flyleaf Books this week

Remembering James Dickey

By Moristotle
 

Flyleaf Books announces on its website:

Event:
    Michael Hanson reads from his book
    Tripping to Dickeyland
Event date:
    Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2018 - 7:00 p.m.
Event address:
    752 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
    Chapel Hill, NC 27514

Poetry & Portraits: Grades

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Grades
By Eric Meub

[Originally published on December 10, 2016]

Above the chair’s arm and her perfect card,
his glasses mirror back a blank regard.
She seeks for eyes behind those disks of light,
gold-edged, and lensed in brilliant newsprint white.

Options are great, but…

By Dr. Ely Lazar & Dr. Adele Thomas

[Republished here by permission of the authors from their “Lifestyle Tips for Over 50s,” affiliated with their website “Passionate Retirees,” August 18, 2018.]

“Mr Jones, you have no option but to have this surgery”