Merry Christmas all.........................

All people are created equal..........

 

..............They just don’t stay that way very long.

Opening paragraphs.................

      As someone who never really had one, maybe I am the least qualified person to defend the importance of family.  But as someone with more education than I ever expected to receive, maybe I'm more qualified to say we give education more importance than we should.  I am grateful for the miraculous trajectory of my life, but I had to experience upward mobility firsthand and reach the summit of education to understand its limitations.  I've come to understand that a warm and loving family is worth infinitely more than the money or accomplishments I hoped might compensate for them.

Rob Henderson, from the Preface to his book, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class

A time for family.....................

..............expecting 27.  A degree in space planning would have been useful, but it looks like all will fit in the dining room.  More food has been prepared that you can shake a stick at.  Good thing we all appreciate the leftovers.

value added..................

      Like Warren Buffett, Munger inherited no wealth.  He built his fortune on the sheer power of his will and his business acumen.

     "While no real money came down, my family gave me a good education and a marvelous example of how people should behave, and in the end that was more valuable than money."

-Janet Lowe, Damn Right! Behind the Scenes With Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger

Privilege................................

 .....................I grew up in a home like this.

Apparently people are starting to notice that it makes a difference.  For instance, this book review, or this column review.   For a different take, check this blog post. All I know is I do feel privileged.

Life Its Ownself.......................

 ...........the joys of parenting — and grandparenting:

Choices.................

..........Building net worth vs building for a family:

Our accumulated memories have more value than any amount of additional assets I could imagine.

-Richard Quinn, from here

Haven't read too many...................

 ...................obituaries like this one.  Zesty.

via

A dog named................................

 .......................................................................Beau.

Recommended.......................

 

I wanted to tell Uncle Will I had noticed, not just his actions today but his actions through all these years, to let him know I loved him, and that I so appreciated the burden he recognized and shouldered.  That's a complicated thing to talk about.  I worried I didn't have the words.  Thankfully I wouldn't need words.

     I reached into the bag and gripped the neck of the bottle and walked out to the waiting room.  He saw me and leapt up and we embraced.  Then I handed him the bottle.  Tears filled his eyes and there wasn't a word that needed to be said.  He took that bottle home and shares it with special people and on special occasions.  I'm not sure what it means, but the last two gifts I've given Uncle Will were that bottle and a Thomas Merton book, because I like to talk about my evolving faith with him.  There's a synchronicity at work all around us.  A few weeks later, a package arrived at my house from the Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery.  I tore open the box and gasped.  Julian had sent a hand-labeled bottle of whiskey to Wallace, bearing her name and date of birth, safe in a plush red bag.  It sits in my liquor cabinet, hopefully making the trip, waiting on a time when its presence is required to properly convey what a moment means, or what the people we are sharing that moment with mean, so we can revel in the great communal joy of being alive.

-Wright Thompson,  Pappyland:  A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things that Last

Quite the weekend...................

 Executing father-of-the-bride duties flawlessly:

A happy day...............................

 

The shift.............................

If you want to summarize the changes in family structure over the past century, the truest thing to say is this:  We've made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families.  We've made life better for adults but worse for children.  We've moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple with their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options.  The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and poor.

-David Brooks, from his recent essay, The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake

but it just might give them a better chance at having a life filled with grace and joy...

But the world looks different from the perspective of middle age. In her last 19 months of life, Ruthie showed me that I now had important work to do back home. Hers was a work of stewardship—of taking care of the land, the family, and the people in the community. By loving them all faithfully and tending them with steadfast care, Ruthie accomplished something countercultural, even revolutionary in our restless age.

-Rod Dreher, from this incredible essay on life its ownself

On powerful legacies...................

............................................................and "no regrets."

Gratitude.............................

........................................................and the "grand old journey."

Success.................................

..................................................................the old-fashioned way:

"Practice frugality. Work hard. Save and invest your money."

Four Questions..............................

Every human being wants to be happy.  From the philosophical classics of Plato and Aristotle to the great texts of the world religions, to poetry and song-writing down to the present day, we find this permanent truth inscribed in the great works of men and women, because it's inscribed in our hearts.  America's Founding Father understood this.  A right to "the pursuit of happiness" was given by God, they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, and it can not be stripped away by any king or potentate who happens to wield the sword of state for a time.
     Happiness has never been easy to come by, let alone hold onto.  Even to say precisely what happiness is presents a challenge.  Nonetheless, when life brings us joy and contentment, we know it.  The question is whether we can play an active part in making it happen.
     Social scientists have identified four primary drivers of human happiness, which we can put in the form of four questions:

         1.  Do you have family you love, and who love you?
         2.  Do you have friends you trust and confide in?
         3.  Do you have work that matters—callings that 
              benefit your neighbors?
         4.  Do you have a worldview that can make sense
              of suffering and death?

Think of these four components as the legs of a chair.  When all four are in place, things are sturdy.  When one goes missing, your happiness begins to wobble.

-Ben Sasse,  Them:  Why We Hate Each Other—And How To Heal

A standing ovation..................

     A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who, when he was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of World War II, was called "the Little Flower" by adoring New Yorkers because he was only five foot four and always wore a carnation in his lapel.  He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and wherever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids.
     One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city.  LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself.  Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread.  She told LaGuardia that her daughter's husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving.  But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges.  "It's a bad neighborhood, Your Honor," the man told the mayor.  "She's got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson."
     LaGuardia sighed.  He turned to the woman and said, "I've got to punish you.  The law makes no exceptions -- ten dollars or ten days in jail."  But even as he pronounced the sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket.  He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero, saying, "Here is the ten dollar fine, which I now remit;  and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat.  Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant."
     So the following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations, and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.

-Brennan Manning,  The Ragamuffin Gospel