G as in Good H as in Happy

According to the Old Lady with a Corncob Pipe

May 31, 2008

Who said she was there:

[In 1814 English] marines pulled toward the [Scituate, MA] harbor with obvious intention of burning the town. Becky, then about 16, was alone in the lighthouse with her younger sister Abigail. Becky quickly seized her brother’s fife and her younger sister Abigail the drum. Sneaking out of their lighthouse home they followed behind the cedar covered sand hills of the point, beating a lively tattoo to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” The marines, who had believed the town undefended, hearing the rhythmic strains wafted toward the ship’s boat, thought the town garrison was marching out, and returned to the ship...

Sometimes we know the awful facts, but even so, for the moment, we can postpone capitulation.

An Army of One-or-More.

Semiotics. Use it for your benefit.

Courtesy Maggie's Farm

Windmills of the Mind

May 6, 2008


...not futile, vaguely depressive, or stalled in the imaginary. A young Malawian figures out how to build a windmill for electric power (video).

Day for night. Sr. Dilys is right -- effective creativity is a divine spark, the Doing of It rolling down the Four Worlds from Idea to tangible reality.

Not to seem ungrateful, but why does this not happen all the time, everywhere there is a need? The key cultural question.

Reminded of this by The Corner.

Forgiveness

April 7, 2008

Rod Dreher again, this time on forgiveness, the Mennonites, death, friendship, a wonderful story in its way.

Too late to cancel a too-long comment (sorry, Crunchy Con), it's posted here anyway because it's what I think needs to be said. So:

The Willingness to Walk Away

July 14, 2006

Eric Sink (via Craig Newmark) isolates what he believes is the key to negotiating prowess -- the willingness to walk away. As a few commentors point out, there are many other things to build on that foundation, but never ever perceiving oneself as helpless or even needy is the bottom line. As a genial former husband of warm memory was accustomed to chant like a mantra in the face of every dilemma:

I am not without resources.

When the Good&Happy blog began, a backlog of ideas here at Chez Dilys demanded an airing. In addition, the rowdy days of RatherGate, and risibly diminishing Episcopalian plausibility, made some of us want to smoke out and dance with our natural allies.

All that has changed.

An encouraging number of natural allies, compatible friends, and sharp-tongued interlocutors have by now made their appearance here, or off-blog. The choreography remains to be notated.

One person's personal Episcopal dilemma is solved, and its playing-out on the larger stage is generating predictable comments in loops larded with "be nice, now." Whether the starved and embattled stalwarts will ever get off the dime / sixpence, remains to be seen. One convert to an Ancient Church wrote recently:

If the (American Episcopal) General convention is now of academic interest only, I think you'll find as the years pass that you'll feel about it as you feel about a Little League game in Boise, Idaho, or the meeting of the town council of Pensacola, Florida.

In a similar vein, the direction of the little portion of the blogosphere I frequent is wavering. The usually-clear are stating their cases with less precision than usual, and the supercilious ad hominem savagery with which commentors are dismissed has become, I cite a personal threshhold, distasteful and counterproductive. Light is best, heat is manageable. Cold self-regarding modern prejudice sported by the blinkered ill-educated, begging to have their brilliance acknowledged, not worth electrifying a screen for.

So it's time personally to move back and onward into one's small impact on the molecules-and-atoms space, from negligible impact on The Discussion of What EVER.

As Robert Frost intuited, the game of musical chairs can be called at any moment; at the end of the day, literally, it pays to have one's personal supply of oil for the lamp purchased and stored, to be positioned for self-reliance. The oil is not only 401(K)'s and a network of the intelligent and productive -- it had better also be generic optimism about one's flexibility and vision, and fearless faith in the goodness of life. Whatever it takes, the freedom to walk away is golden.

Good&Happy will remain open to notate the occasional interesting source or meditate on an idea, a conversation with ourselves to be had only intermittently, with or without eavesdroppers.

Dilys herself is just now lumbering over the sunset hill.

There's a note:

Thanks to everyone for the river experience.

Independence Day

This day of the people.

The Revolution's few friends arose among the families that had been read out of the Quaker meetings for being too obstreperous and witty, for playing fiddles or arguing about theology like the Scots-Irish men they tended to marry.

They had known from birth what it means to live true to yourself in a monolithic culture that held other principles.

Read at Done With Mirrors this one of so many stories. And, if so inclined, tap your toe to a Celt lament.

Losing Perspective

Photon Courier is another of those blogs, emphasis on business, energy, and the passing scene, that slips under the radar, but appeared again when via a good-sense comment from the blogger on Assistant Village Idiot. So we followed him home.

David writes about the Wall Street Journal's report on "the panicky classes," that is, parents over-obsessed with children's performance in school and counter-productive pressure on their children.

One Manhattan tutor reflects on the consequences of the high-pressure efforts to get into a "top college." He sees a distressing number of children who are "completely burnt out and won't accomplish anything in college because they were driven through high school the way an associate is driven through a law firm."

When Sr. Dilys ran his first marathon, he returned frustrated and disappointed because he had gone flat-out too early. He soon adjusted that impulse. Unfortunately, the trajectory of childhood cannot be re-run.

On the other hand, David's friend Ginny does the circle tour of junior or community college experience, and second and third chances.

Great Scott!

June 23, 2006

Media religion coverage "a few tacos short of an enchilada platter.

Four Minus Two is Plenty

June 18, 2006

What can you say about this dog? The choice between weird and no life, we'll take weird. Limits may always be re-assessed.

Weird with love and work is beautiful. Especially with hints far beyond coincidence.

[Too much talk on the video to be work-safe.]

Neo-neocon found this.

What's New?

June 16, 2006

Reported here and here, a study by UCL (University College London) scientists published in Nature on 15th June on brain activity in contrasting but related undertakings:

• pursuing something that is reliably believed to produce profit and reward;
• pursing the as-yet-unknown-something that may disclose even greater profit and reward.

A Creative Class of Machines

June 9, 2006

Richard Florida and his books' "creative class" -- graphics designers, dot.com engineers, the young, the fashionable, the cutting-edge -- have convinced cities to adopt policies that will engage that class; the rest of the citizenry can like it or not. Austin, in its whipsawing between "urban density" and "anti-gentrification" moves, its "make 'em vote in light rail," is a fair example.