Be the change you want to see in the world.  — Gandhi These words from Gandhi have great meaning to me. They are a big part of who I am. As evidenced by  the vitriolic atmosphere in the world today we have so many tools that allow us to complain, I would even call it ranting, about anything we disagree with. Just look at the bottom of any on-line news article and you will see very concrete evidence of this fact.  It is just so easy today to let the world know what we are against. But in my mind … Continue reading Be the change you want to see in the world. [Gandhi]

  I enjoy waking up and not having to go to work.  So I do it three or four times a day.  ~Gene Perret I don’t know anything about the author of this quote but the message strikes home with me :)  One of the first things I did when I retired was to take off my wrist watch and shut off the alarm clock. I had spent so much of my life to a slave of the clock I couldn’t get away from it fast enough. As it turns out I have never put the wrist watch back on … Continue reading Taking Naps….

I came across this long time ago picture of “Mama-son”. She was with us over fifteen years. She had a regal way about her. Continue reading Our Beloved Pets…

I recently finished watching the re-make of the old film The Day The Earth Stood Still. That is a story about how an advanced race of aliens came to save the earth. The way they were going to save it was by eliminating the inhabitants who were destroying it. That being us!  One of the statements made by the other world visitors was that we who inhabit the earth are a destructive race! He said we readily kill each other and are destroying the earth in the process.  The logic for starting over was that there are only a very limited number … Continue reading All I Know – A Destructive Race…

One thing Labor Day used to be about was a parade. This digitized picture was taken in 1990 somewhere in the northwestern U.S.  I never recorded, nor remember, the exact location….. Continue reading Labor Day Parade…

Here it is Labor Day. I have always wondered just what Labor day is really about and why it is at the end of summer. Here is what I found out about it from my old friend Wikipedia: The first big Labor Day in the United States was observed on September 5, 1882, by the Central Labor Union of New York.  It became a federal holiday in 1894, when, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland reconciled with the labor movement. Fearing further conflict, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed … Continue reading Labor Day Thoughts….

I am a spiritual person. I believe our spirit is what sets us apart from everything else on the earth. It is what makes us human. So to make this blog a true reflection of my life’s experiences it is necessary to add this category. I do this with some hesitancy.  I am inspired by many people and things that cross my life’s path. I will use this category to relay some of those stories  and thoughts to you in as positive a manner as I can. Let me start out by saying what this new category is NOT: I … Continue reading Things Spiritual…

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today. — Will Rogers This is one of the quotes from Will that gets me thinking rather deeply. Besides loving the song Yesterday by the Beatles I don’t really believe in fixating on yesterday. Too many of us seniors just spend too much time there. We look back on our life instead of looking forward to tomorrow. Yes most of it is now behind us but there is still much more to experience in life if we just face it head on.  Our eyes should be looking forward at least most of the … Continue reading Yesterday….

I know one of the top shows currently on TV is Dancing with the Stars and there are a couple of others like it which I don’t know the names. I have only watched the aforementioned one for a couple of minutes but it seems pretty silly. You want to know the reason why?  Try putting the mute on during the program and you will see what I mean.  Without music dancing just seems like someone got into the Jack Daniels a little too much. I have mentioned before that I am deaf and after almost 25 years my brain … Continue reading Dancing Seems Pretty Silly To Me……

‎. . . there is people so excited over this election that they think the President has something to do with running this country. -October 30, 1932    — Will Rogers I would maybe add “or producing jobs” to the quote.  Everybody expects the president (whoever he is) to fix everything but history has shown that it can’t be done that way. He can tweak around the edges but that is about it.  let’s look at another of Will’s quotes about that. Being serious, or being a good fellow has got nothing to do with running this country, if the breaks … Continue reading Will Rogers Quote for Our Times

I got a little bored today so decided to play around some with the blog formats here. One of the categories on my corner was “Waiting 4 God” but that seemed to be a little too nondescript for what it has morphed into. This category is about life in our senior years but the old name could be taken to mean any of a number of things. One of my themes in life is “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify” so that is what I did. This category is now called “Seniors Only”. I know that name is pretty exclusive and it is … Continue reading A New/Renamed Category…

It seems that stock market trading is quite different from when I was dabbling in it in the past. In those days I studied several different parameter including the P/E ratios and such before deciding which company to invest in. And when I did buy a stock I held it for at least a couple of years. Now days trading in the stock market seems more like gambling at the roulette table than anything else. The only way you seem to be able to make any money is to try to time when you sell back your stock. Now a long-term hold … Continue reading Gambling or Not??

Continue reading Reflections — Ottawa Canada July 2011

Source: Column: Washington leadership’s grade is a solid F – USATODAY.com. Cal: McConnell and Boehner, challenge the wealthy. The “rich” should be the model for reaching out and helping people so that we can have less government and lower taxes. Churches should be called upon, too. Those megachurches with ornate architecture and huge budgets? How about living up to your commission to help the poor? Bob: You’re right. Boehner and McConnell, when it comes to taxes, you are tone-deaf and cowering before the Tea Party and the bombastic my-way-or-the-highway Grover Norquist. You both know that the tax code needs to be changed to eliminate … Continue reading Give them an "F"

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. Henry David Thoreau These are words written by Thoreau in his famous book Walden Pond.  Anybody who has read any of Thoreau knows that he was a guy who marched to his own drummer. That alone makes him one of my heroes. Although he died at the age of forty-four he left us with many things to think about. All of us seniors need to quietly contemplate this most famous quote. Will you go to your grave with the song still in … Continue reading A Song Still In Us??….

A Quaker friend recently introduced me to the concept of attentive idling. The concept is so thought provoking I want to pass it on to all you seniors out there.  The idea behind these words is that all of us need to occasionally shut down our iPods, smart phones, PDA, and the like and just listen and observe things around us.  The last ten years or so has given us devices that make it possible to go through an entire day constantly being bombarded by artificial stimulus. When that happens it drowns out the things of nature and of God. … Continue reading Be An Attentive Idler…..

The title to this post certainly sounds like an ultra pompous statement doesn’t it?  But this is indeed what some Christians are saying when they cling to the “Sola Scriptura” doctrine. To say that God has nothing else to teach us besides what is contained the documents that were collected more than sixteen hundred years ago is depriving them of much needed help in living in the world today.  In that regard I feel deeply sorry for those that stubbornly cling to the concept of “Sola Scriptura”. They are depriving themselves of lessons God has been teaching the rest of … Continue reading I Don’t Care To Know Anything More About God….

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. Abraham Lincoln I haven’t put up a Lincoln quote in quite a while so here is one that interlaces with what Will Rogers also said. And it seems very appropriate to the current crop of presidential wanna-bes out there. The one who keeps his/her mouth shut long enough will become the nominee :) Continue reading Quotes – The Wisdom of Lincoln

  As promised here is another mural found on the side of a building during our recent visit to  Old Town Quebec. Continue reading In The Slow Lane – Another Quebec Mural

Source:  Golden decade is ending for defense industry, and stocks – USATODAY.com. The article above is about how our defense budgets and prosperity of the our military contractors might be taking a hit in the coming years of apparent austerity (that is except for the richest of us). It mentions that military budgets might be trimmed as much as 10% in the coming years, especially if the super committee in congress can’t re-direct the cuts to other areas. Here is a quote from the article; just click on the link above to see the whole article: The U.S. spent $1.3 … Continue reading All I Know – Where Did Our Debt Come From??

I shrink a little more each day. I am among a rather small percentage of men who suffer from severe osteoporosis. That along with three compression fractures that were caused by falling on ice about eight years ago has caused me to lose more than three inches in height. But now it seems I am also losing muscle mass as well. Here is an interesting article about that subject. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/health/research/31muscle.html?ref=business Below is a quote from the article: Why muscles wither with age is captivating a growing number of scientists, drug and food companies, let alone aging baby boomers who, despite having spent years sweating in … Continue reading Seniors Only — The Ever Diminishing Senior

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-war-tax-its-still-not-a-bad-idea/2011/08/11/gIQAfJLwHJ_story.html Anyone who has seen much of this blog, particularly the “All I Know” category knows that I am pretty much anti-war in all regards. So, when I ran across the above article it immediately caught my attention.  Here are some words from the article. Click on the source above to see the whole thing. These days, one of them, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), believes such a levy should be on the agenda of the debt-reduction “supercommittee.” “These wars ought to be paid for and not put on a credit card so that our kids will have to pay for this in … Continue reading All I Know — How About a War Tax??

The condition called midlife crisis is pretty well documented. That is where a person is beginning the second half of his life and realizes that things aren’t going as planned. The response to that sometimes is constructive but often is isn’t. When people throw off their spouses, get a sports car, and look for babes (hunks, I guess for you ladies) to party with that is not a good thing in the vast majority of cases. I am convinced that there is a similar but often more constructive change that occurs to people as they move into their retirement years. I … Continue reading Remaking Yourself in Your Senior Years…

This is a continuation of my discussions of the book entitled “When God Is Love” by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland. Here is the quote for today: Working to make the world a more gracious place wasn’t a priority in the churches of my childhood. Some of this negligence was a result of apolcalyptic interpretations in which the world was doomed and damned anyway. One man insisted we shouldn’t work for peace in the Middle East because we were simply postponing Armageddon and the return of Christ. However, the primary reason the church didn’t have time to change the world … Continue reading If God Is Love (Part 5)

Stop Coddling the Super-Rich – NYTimes.com. Click on the above to see an op-ed piece by Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world. It clearly says something very different than the current Republican party mantra. If we could just send the same bunch of men to Washington for the good of the nation, and not for political reasons, we could have the most perfect government in the world. -June 8, 1924 Will Rogers But what do I know…. Continue reading All I Know — Stop Coddling the Super-Rich

This is going to be kind of serious post. It is hard to be humorous about this topic. I just went through a comments round with an old high school classmate and her friends on Facebook recently. She was passing on what I deem a rather inappropriate joke about throwing the president and first lady out of an airplane.  When I pointed out that “I don’t wish the death of our president and first lady under any circumstances” I’m sure I hurt her feelings. That was not my intent but maybe a necessary consequence of taking this action. Of course … Continue reading All I Know – About those Jokes…

This mural was on the side of a building in old city Quebec. We took this picture while there in July 2011. Continue reading In The Slow Lane — Quebec Mural

Trying to determine the nature of God is something many who are much smarter than I am have been doing since our very existence. I don’t pretend to have any answers that they have not considered.  But, I have been looking at a different understanding of God at least from a personal perspective. This new approach came from a comment on a previous post here on RLL.  In that post I was lamenting how I have  trouble reconciling the God of the Old Testament to Jesus Christ in the New.  To me these two faces of God have always seemed to be in … Continue reading The Nature of God….

Once a person reaches their senior years should all the aspirations have been completed? First of all I guess I should make clear just which definition of the noun I am talking about. The aspiration I am talking about is: strong desire, longing, or aim; ambition: intellectual aspirations; a goal or objective desired [Aspirating or taking a breath is something all of us need to do. To stop doing that is to literally stop living :) ] Now with all this silliness taken care of let’s move on the to topic at hand. When we talk about aspirations it is typically about our youth. Things like “he aspired to be president one day”. … Continue reading Senior Aspirations…

I know of people who think having a passion about something is a detriment. They say “why are you going overboard about this (or that)”? This topic can be applied across life’s spectrum but I will try to limit this post to those of us in our senior years. Let’s look at how the dictionary defines passion: pas·sion [ noun] 1. any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate. 2. strong amorous feeling or desire; love; ardor. 3. strong sexual desire; lust. 4. an instance or experience of strong love or sexual desire. 5. a person toward whom one feels strong love or sexual desire Although the second through the fifth definition is not a bad thing, especially if it is directed to your mate of many years :) , the kind of passion I am talking about in this post … Continue reading About Passions..

OK, this mountainous Canadian cold is finally beginning to loosen its grip on me so I will start my regular blogging again soon. There is so much that has happened since my hiatus it is hard to even try to figure out where to begin.  I will be thinking about that in the coming few days and will begin building an advanced inventory of posts (I usually write a post about a week or so before it is actually used. That gives me plenty of chances to edit and re-edit). :) With all this budget and deficit stuff going on now I probably have enough to … Continue reading All I Know…Getting Back in the Saddle….

We made it home from Nova Scotia on Sunday afternoon. After doctors appointments on Monday we learned that my wife has a pretty severe eye infection and a rough Canadian cold. I can personally attest to the cold as I also got it!  Other than that we will recover. I will likely hold off blogging for a few more days and then try to get back to my usual schedule. It is nice to be home and our house sitter did a pretty good job taking care of things while we were away. Our tomatoes are in full ripe mode … Continue reading Back Home Again In Indiana….

Made another 500 miles today so should be home sometime tomorrow. Usually I don’t spend a lot of time on the Interstates. I prefer State roads and a more casual drive. In the last three days I have driven more than 1200 miles of interstates and have refined my opinion of them.  When I used to drive them about fifteen years ago they were mostly numbing. To be driving at a constant speed for hours at a time was deadening to the senses. But I have a different opinion of them now. It seems there are two modes to today’s … Continue reading On The Road — Interstate Driving is Tiring…..

My wife has decided that she wants to go home so we will head out this morning. It will take two to three days to get there from here. Since she is not feeling well I will be doing  all of the driving so it will be a long couple of days.  Give us a little prayer that we get there safely. And the journey (home) goes on… Continue reading Going Home….

Here I am banging on the keyboard in Bangor Maine. We made about 500 miles today which is the most for one day on this vacation. Unfortunately I had to do almost all the driving. My wife started feeling poorly yesterday so we cut our time in Nova Scotia short and started heading back this morning. She wants to rest and try to get a good nights sleep and then see how she is in the morning. We may just make a dash for home from here. It is about 1250 miles and will take about 23 driving hours.  I … Continue reading On The Road — Bangor Maine