From her lips to God's ears......................

      Your brain's health may be the most powerful indicator of how long you will live.  It is crucial to whether that life will be rich and satisfying from youth into old age, or something substantially less rewarding, and for less time.
      A car driven wisely, fueled with high-quality gasoline, given regular oil changes, and repaired with new parts as old ones wear out is likely to last longer than one that's abused or neglected.  Likewise, the easiest way to have a healthy brain in middle age and beyond is to start with one as a youth and to follow good physical and mental habits.  Exercise it.  Feed it.  Challenge it.  Then enjoy the rewards.
      But what of the person who comes late to the repairs, like the owner of a car that rusts for years on blocks or runs too long on dirty oil?   The car owner can always swap out the engine.  You, on the other hand, have only one brain, basically composed of the same neurons you were born with, plus a few added to some narrowly specific areas.  Once they've begun to deteriorate, can they be saved—or even made stronger?
      Brain researcher Marian Diamond is certain they can.

-Michael S. Sweeney,  Your Best Brain Ever:  A Complete Guide & Workout

Sometimes we should...................

...............just stop and ponder sentences like this:

"The refusal of the British and Russian peoples to accept what appeared to be inevitable defeat was the great factor in the salvage of our civilization."
-General George C. Marshall, from his Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff, US Army (1 September 1945)

Majestic...............................

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

-The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., as excerpted from his Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

Full text of the letter is here.

School is in session.........................

Our friends at Maggie's Farm point to the Art of Manliness, who is presenting the Winston Churchill School of Adulthood.  Please do attend!

Next year.............................................

Just beginning................

thanks Rob

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

thanks nicole

Hard....................................

"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up."
-Babe Ruth