Personal/Family Archives - Page 17 of 39

Archive for Personal/Family – Page 17

Posted by jdbernard743

· May 15, 2019

Yellowcake and Other Ruses

What is it that makes men who never served in the military so eager to go to war? This week it’s Donald “Bone Spurs” Trump and John “Shoot First, Aim Later” Bolton rushing the aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln, to the Persian Gulf, while sending the imperious, condescending, Mike “Fat Man” Pompeo, off to Brussels and points east where he was rebuffed by the EU, and warmly received by Vladimir Putin. All these moves designed to prepare the world for our military intervention “just in case” Iran “does something to undermine our interests.” It looks eerily like Wag the Dog. Start a war to deflect attention from the political chaos at home. read more

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Categories : Aviation, Personal/Family, Politics, Travel, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· April 17, 2019

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Important Perspective…

Monday’s catastrophic fire inside the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, terrible as it was, might just allow us to step back from the 24-hour news cycle and reflect on the longer horizon of human history. The fire damage to this iconic structure provides us an opportunity to look at a longer horizon and set other events in perspective. There is little doubt that the church will be rebuilt and restored. Even as the embers were still glowing, President Emmanuel Macron was promising to rebuild. This is not the first time its existence has been in peril. With luck, however, it may be the last. read more

Categories : Art, Books, Fashion/Lifestyle, Friendship, Personal/Family, Politics, Travel, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· April 12, 2019

· 2 Comments

Cultural Placeholders…

I’ve been thinking about generational differences lately and how each generation anchors itself with a set of creative icons, go-to figures, that serve as reference points on a timeline of cultural awareness.

What do you say or who do you think of when people ask you for your favorite movie, book, painting, or rock group? Who’s on that playlist? What music pops to mind? What paintings do you think of? What writers do you refer to and re-read? How you answer those questions most likely depends on the artistic/creative imprinting of your generation. read more

Categories : Art, Aviation, Books, Fashion/Lifestyle, Film/Television, Personal/Family, Travel

Posted by jdbernard743

· April 4, 2019

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Kindergarten Rules Updated…

In 1988, a local Unitarian Universalist minister published a book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It was a back to basics primer for Baby Boomers. It snuck onto the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for 2 years. Twenty-five years and 7,000,000 copies later the author, Robert Fulghum, revised his little primer and added a few new essays for the anniversary re-release. Today, his advice is just as cogent as it was when first published – maybe more so in the Age of Trump.

Here’s Fulghum’s Kindergarten code, in red, updated for the Age of Trump, in black:

“All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain (We don’t know about Donald, since he ordered his schools to hide his grades),but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned: (Pay attention Donald. Turn off Fox and Friends. This is not Executive Time).

Share everything.Your tax returns and all the tainted money your father gave you. Be grateful.

Play fair. Stop lying, cheating at golf, and stealing from the American people.

Don’t hit people.Or put them in cages.

Put things back where you found them. Russian money. Golf divots. Your dick.

Clean up your own mess. OMG, this is the big one. If you’ll get out of the way, the Democrats will do it for us.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours. The Affordable Care Act.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Mexicans, disabled reporters, Christine Blasey Ford, and the other 372,200,000 of us.

Wash your hands before you eat. Especially after you put everything back where you found it.

Flush. Fox News.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. KFC, Big Mac’s, and porn stars are not.

Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Hard to balance when you’re dancing with Lucifer.

Take a nap every afternoon. Alone. No tweeting.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. If Melania lets you.

Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. The great wonder is how Trump ever got to the White House and how he manages to stay there.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup—they all die. So do we. And, so will Trump, in spite of Dr. Ronnie Jackson’s bogus misrepresentations.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned—the biggest word of all—LOOK. Not TAKE.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living. Fulghum’s Golden Rule is not a reference to the tacky decoration in Trump’s New York apartment, but I couldn’t resist this picture.

Categories : Art, Fashion/Lifestyle, Friendship, Personal/Family, Politics, Travel, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 28, 2019

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Forgiveness and Tolerance…the limits.

Forgiveness (noun): “Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.” (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu) read more

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