In a recent conversation with an older member of society I was informed of the sad death of map navigation in the wake of widespread GPS usage. At the time I agreed that losing the ability to read maps and navigate with them was a bad precedent, but I have now convinced myself otherwise. Learning to use a more sophisticated (yet easier to operate) technology to accomplish the same tasks we've always performed with an adequate technology is great. Even forgetting the old methods of navigation isn't necessarily bad. After all, who but the odd enthusiast enjoys navigating using sextants and compasses? These are obsolete not because they don't work, but because it takes more effort and thought to use them. They were never used by anywhere near the percentage of the US population that now uses GPS. And, instead of clogging our time with the discrete minutia of celestial or street-map utilization we can use it to actually go where we are going. GPS frees up our time by taking little of it, frees up our mind by demanding near none of it, and empowers more of us to travel wherever we wish by enabling our safe navigation of unfamiliar territory.
The old ways are not the best ways, if they were they'd be the current ways. The most effective and efficient are, without doubt, the most popular. Nostalgia, whether for the topographic maps of yesteryear or for the flint tools of the stone age is misguided and not thought out. Let knowledge die! The knowledge that it truly useful is always used and will only be forgotten when obsolete.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
The Highly Annoyed Gardener Presents
Plants Deer Don't Eat
- Astilbe
- Pulmonaria
- Huechera
- Dicentra
- Aruncus
- Asarum
- Podophyllum
- Ligularia
- Thymus
- Yucca
Things Deer DO Eat:
- Lead, if thrust in their faces fast enough
- Salt-licks laced with Cyanide, Poison Hemlock, 1080, or any other good mammalian poison
- Your wildlife-loving soul
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Bean Sprouts
A tour of Quansett Nurseries in Massachusetts this past weekend left me wondering about the possibilities of an agar or reusable nutrient gel medium for use in "sprout" production. Here goes.
The current method of edible sprout production at Quansett Nurseries uses a peat/perlite mix for germination. This is inefficient and - to use a much-hated buzzword - unsustainable. They either don't reuse the medium and therefore have a high initial cost and produce a large amount of waste medium constantly, or they do reuse it, adding the cost of steaming the medium to remove possible pathogens to their bill. Also, the medium does wear out through repeated uses. Depending on how much they spend on growing medium by initially buying it and repeatedly steaming it, research into an alternative medium especially for sprout production may be worthwhile.
I don't pretend to know the industry of sprouting as well as they do, but perhaps my fresh perspective has seen something they have not.
That said, here's the revolutionary plan: Grow in a soluble gel! An agar medium, a starch solution, whatever works and is reusable. My plan as of the moment is to sprout in something akin to the mixture used in tissue culture, without the Plant Growth Regulators. A pan would be filled with the stuff, seeds would be germinated on it, and the whole sprout (not just the shoot, but also the root) would be harvested by dissolving the medium. There is the question of the seed husks, but this would only matter on certain seeds which have large, inedible husks.
An issue that could arise would be the lack of oxygen to the roots of the seedling. To get a seed to germinate and grow fast, a good amount of oxygen needs to be available to the roots. The gel could be "fluffed" with oxygen as it is setting, resulting in a bubbly, solid mixture.
The beauty of this plan is in the harvest - getting the roots increases sprout bulk and value, recycling growing medium saves money and reduces waste.
Any thoughts?
The current method of edible sprout production at Quansett Nurseries uses a peat/perlite mix for germination. This is inefficient and - to use a much-hated buzzword - unsustainable. They either don't reuse the medium and therefore have a high initial cost and produce a large amount of waste medium constantly, or they do reuse it, adding the cost of steaming the medium to remove possible pathogens to their bill. Also, the medium does wear out through repeated uses. Depending on how much they spend on growing medium by initially buying it and repeatedly steaming it, research into an alternative medium especially for sprout production may be worthwhile.
I don't pretend to know the industry of sprouting as well as they do, but perhaps my fresh perspective has seen something they have not.
That said, here's the revolutionary plan: Grow in a soluble gel! An agar medium, a starch solution, whatever works and is reusable. My plan as of the moment is to sprout in something akin to the mixture used in tissue culture, without the Plant Growth Regulators. A pan would be filled with the stuff, seeds would be germinated on it, and the whole sprout (not just the shoot, but also the root) would be harvested by dissolving the medium. There is the question of the seed husks, but this would only matter on certain seeds which have large, inedible husks.
An issue that could arise would be the lack of oxygen to the roots of the seedling. To get a seed to germinate and grow fast, a good amount of oxygen needs to be available to the roots. The gel could be "fluffed" with oxygen as it is setting, resulting in a bubbly, solid mixture.
The beauty of this plan is in the harvest - getting the roots increases sprout bulk and value, recycling growing medium saves money and reduces waste.
Any thoughts?
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
To Propagandize or not to Propagandize
That is the question.
Say, for a minute, that the cares of the world have taken seed in my affections. How can I, without violating my conscience, further my political, economic, and philosophical goals? Is it not evil to persuade through half-truths, is it not worse to give my cause the best defense possible?
Two truths I can know for certain, three I can rely on:
I know my course; I must not be ashamed of my actions first and foremost. I cannot tell a half-truth in support of my cause, I must be truthful to myself, my reason, and my human matrix. It would be far worse to convince a bunch of halfwits and convert the majority to a cause than to remain honest and earnest, gaining the alliance of the few who would fully understand it.
Say, for a minute, that the cares of the world have taken seed in my affections. How can I, without violating my conscience, further my political, economic, and philosophical goals? Is it not evil to persuade through half-truths, is it not worse to give my cause the best defense possible?
Two truths I can know for certain, three I can rely on:
- Propaganda can work in the short term.
- Propaganda eventually becomes history.
- Propagandists, when found out, are despised.
I know my course; I must not be ashamed of my actions first and foremost. I cannot tell a half-truth in support of my cause, I must be truthful to myself, my reason, and my human matrix. It would be far worse to convince a bunch of halfwits and convert the majority to a cause than to remain honest and earnest, gaining the alliance of the few who would fully understand it.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Homesteading
I've always been drawn to the homesteading way of life, or at least a modernly feasible form of it. I like making my own, whether this be my own beer or my own house. I'm not sure where this yearning comes from, but here's a thought.
To go into the wild and live is to re-found society and make it our own. We play by our own rules and laws and form a way of life that usurps our current modern way. Out of the struggle of the rat race, at last we win!
So, is the desire to go into the wild (to be self-reliant, to be undisturbed by the vicissitudes of modernity and neighbors, to be on our own) a result of a lackluster experience with modern society?
What is wrong with the society and civilization I want to exit? An examination of the aspects of homesteading I value most might reveal what is wrong with society. A great thing about homesteading is the ability of a homesteader to be unaffected by the outside - to be able to not read the news, not obey laws we think distasteful, and to not care about greener grass. Strife - in whatever form - is stressful even to be seen. Hearing of the new horrible laws and new "acts of God" and the affect they have on people's happiness is stressful. Is the stress of solitariness greater than viewing these?
All work and striving begins with envy. Whether we want the food, property, or anything else that belongs to someone else, the reason we work is so that we can have what they do. A homesteader doesn't have to look at others every day, and doesn't envy their property. The homesteader is less motivated to work, and though he may spend more hours than average toiling, demands less return from his labor.
Is not playing the only way to win the rat race?
It is said that "You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game". If this is true of the rat race, it is hopeless to exit via self-reliance or homesteading.
To go into the wild and live is to re-found society and make it our own. We play by our own rules and laws and form a way of life that usurps our current modern way. Out of the struggle of the rat race, at last we win!
So, is the desire to go into the wild (to be self-reliant, to be undisturbed by the vicissitudes of modernity and neighbors, to be on our own) a result of a lackluster experience with modern society?
What is wrong with the society and civilization I want to exit? An examination of the aspects of homesteading I value most might reveal what is wrong with society. A great thing about homesteading is the ability of a homesteader to be unaffected by the outside - to be able to not read the news, not obey laws we think distasteful, and to not care about greener grass. Strife - in whatever form - is stressful even to be seen. Hearing of the new horrible laws and new "acts of God" and the affect they have on people's happiness is stressful. Is the stress of solitariness greater than viewing these?
All work and striving begins with envy. Whether we want the food, property, or anything else that belongs to someone else, the reason we work is so that we can have what they do. A homesteader doesn't have to look at others every day, and doesn't envy their property. The homesteader is less motivated to work, and though he may spend more hours than average toiling, demands less return from his labor.
Is not playing the only way to win the rat race?
It is said that "You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game". If this is true of the rat race, it is hopeless to exit via self-reliance or homesteading.
Urban Dictionary on Education
Everyday, millions of children march to school with drudgery and resistance. As young children, they go in open-hearted and free -- at night, they imagine that their tiny hands can reach up and touch the birds. The entire world is a new place and the fascination of beauty never subsides. But as older adolescents leaving their high school, they go close-minded and bondaged -- at night, they drink themselves into passing out and talk about the most popular thing to come, under obligation. The boys worry about their sexual conquests. The girls worry about their sexual appearance. Both worry about being social in a society that has made a weakness of kindness and an insult of emotion. Such a great change occurs between those who enter school and those who leave it.
Just think of the sheer idiocy of compulsary education. We threaten these children with imprisonment if they do not appear in class. Once in class, they spend their time either sleeping or completing tasks that are completely irrelevant to them. By giving them no option in their schooling, what have we taught them? The first lesson they learn is to detest learning. Take any man, put him in chains, and force him to recite poetry, or force him to play an instrument, or force him to farm the land -- and once he becomes a free man, do you think he will want to engage in that activity that was forced upon him? The scars on a slaves hands from working the fields, the memories of abuse of a house servant; given the right to do as they wish in the world, is it likely to think that they will return to that work which they were forced to do? And then consider schools. We force children to sit and overfeed them erroneous facts, faulty logic, damaged reasoning, concealed under the guise of "schooling." Once the mental faculties of these children are damaged, their heart grows an animosity towards learning, towards books, towards facts and knowledge. It is the greatest folly to make children hate learning, and the greatest danger to a real, living Democracy in any nation.
Because when the Red Sox win a baseball game, five universities in the state of Massachussetts riot. But when the United States regime supports a South American dictator known for slaughtering his own people, it's a whisper lost in the wind.
Our ignorance is their power.
Real knowledge is acquired by learning what interests you, through reading, investigation, practice, or any other desirable method. To become intelligent, you must engage in activity with the idea that are you learning because you want to, because knowledge is a goal. The path to conformity varies greatly from this. First, you engage in nothing, but allow cultural standards and social obligations to control you. Second, the idea of learning is to memorize random, perhaps unrelated and blatant facts -- true or untrue -- so that they may be recited upon command. Third, the goal is not knowledge, but a passing grade; they learn to for the sake of knowledge, but rather for the sake of social acceptance.
Take two children. Give the first freedom and liberty, give him a wealth of books and movies, give him teachers to aid him upon his request and a place that encourages art, creativity, and independence. Then take away the freedom and liberty of the second, require his presence in a classroom in front of a teacher, threaten him with a jail sentence if he does not go to his school. Give each of them ten or fifteen years, and check the development of each of them after this amount of time. The only forced to endure slavery may be able to stand in a lecture hall and he might be able to say to you, "George Washington was born in 1732 and died in 1799. In 1776, the Revolutionary War began where he acted as general. In 1783, it ended. In 1789, he was elected president a first time, and in 1792, he was elected president a second time." You are given dates and events, surely, it is true history. But take the child who was given freedom to do as he pleased, and he might be able to stand in a lecture hall and tell you, "In the sixteenth century, in Europe, a Spanish physician by the name of Michael Servetus was convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. Fleeing from his oppressors, he made it to Geneva, where the vindictive John Calvin had absolute authority. In earlier years, Servetus expressed his doubt on Calvin's protestant religion. Once captured by the authorities, Servetus was burned to death at the orders of John Calvin in 1533. They had him wear a hat of sulphur and used slow-burning wood, that the crowd could listen to screams for mercy for the duration of a half hour. One year after the death of this man, Calvin published a list of insults of his former enemy."
Be a rebel. Because being a conformist means admitting that the parts of you that matter are already dead.
But if that's the case, what does matter? The emotions that run rampant through our head, the thoughts that we tumble and toss over in our minds constantly -- sexual fantasies to memories of our friends and family, thoughts and ideas about our future, wishes and desires for our current life with those who are close to us. The idea of a living freedom, knowing that what you wish to do believe with your mind is unrestricted and what you wish to do with your body, so long as you harm none, is unlimited. Life matters to us because we make it matter; if we never told a lover we would miss them upon our departure for a long voyage, if we never told a family member that we dream of a time when oppression ended, if we never wrote a poem and hoped to give it to a friend whose face we haven't seen in years -- if we never cared about life, then life wouldn't matter. What matters is what we make matter. So in a few years, all the kids who graduate from high school will know that their grades never mattered, because even though so young, they already know that it won't be the grades they got that they think about upon their death bed.
Twenty years ago the textbooks used in history class just began to cover some of the issues of the four hundred years of oppression of the African race in this country.
Children who are forced into a school and forced to complete erroneous assignments learn only one thing: to hate education. I clearly demonstrated this truth earlier, but there is more to be learned from it. Take a slave. It could be a slave from any society, whether an African in colonial America or a Plebeian in the Roman Empire. For the entirety of their life, they labor. Their sweat, their tears, their blood, the biproducts of their toil seep into the ground and their garments. All they produce goes to the one who did not labor. Inside every slave, there will be a growing hatred of their activity as a servant, a farmer, a manufacturer -- they will learn to hate what has been forced upon them without their consent. But inside some of them, there will be the kindling of hope for a dream. One day, they will hope to produce for themselves, knowing that what their hands reap will be what fills their stomach, and not the stomach belonging to idle hands. So, too, it is with our compulsary education. The more we are forced into schools and our minds filled with useless facts, the stronger our thirst grows for real education, for real knowledge. Few are like this, but we exist. Others simply remain politically and emotionally sedated, as the focus of their mind is the next test or the next prom, and not children enslaved in southeast asia or the meaning of life.
To every student who must endure the excuse of an education system that we have, I can only offer these words of hope... Educate yourself, not with school teachers, but with the books they wanted to ban. Teach yourself, learn, grow, and develop. Learn that the greatest asset education can offer is that of independence.
"If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better than nonsense.
A Quote:
"The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him, as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and folly in the other."
-- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book 5, Chapter I, Part 3, Article II.
Just think of the sheer idiocy of compulsary education. We threaten these children with imprisonment if they do not appear in class. Once in class, they spend their time either sleeping or completing tasks that are completely irrelevant to them. By giving them no option in their schooling, what have we taught them? The first lesson they learn is to detest learning. Take any man, put him in chains, and force him to recite poetry, or force him to play an instrument, or force him to farm the land -- and once he becomes a free man, do you think he will want to engage in that activity that was forced upon him? The scars on a slaves hands from working the fields, the memories of abuse of a house servant; given the right to do as they wish in the world, is it likely to think that they will return to that work which they were forced to do? And then consider schools. We force children to sit and overfeed them erroneous facts, faulty logic, damaged reasoning, concealed under the guise of "schooling." Once the mental faculties of these children are damaged, their heart grows an animosity towards learning, towards books, towards facts and knowledge. It is the greatest folly to make children hate learning, and the greatest danger to a real, living Democracy in any nation.
Because when the Red Sox win a baseball game, five universities in the state of Massachussetts riot. But when the United States regime supports a South American dictator known for slaughtering his own people, it's a whisper lost in the wind.
Our ignorance is their power.
Real knowledge is acquired by learning what interests you, through reading, investigation, practice, or any other desirable method. To become intelligent, you must engage in activity with the idea that are you learning because you want to, because knowledge is a goal. The path to conformity varies greatly from this. First, you engage in nothing, but allow cultural standards and social obligations to control you. Second, the idea of learning is to memorize random, perhaps unrelated and blatant facts -- true or untrue -- so that they may be recited upon command. Third, the goal is not knowledge, but a passing grade; they learn to for the sake of knowledge, but rather for the sake of social acceptance.
Take two children. Give the first freedom and liberty, give him a wealth of books and movies, give him teachers to aid him upon his request and a place that encourages art, creativity, and independence. Then take away the freedom and liberty of the second, require his presence in a classroom in front of a teacher, threaten him with a jail sentence if he does not go to his school. Give each of them ten or fifteen years, and check the development of each of them after this amount of time. The only forced to endure slavery may be able to stand in a lecture hall and he might be able to say to you, "George Washington was born in 1732 and died in 1799. In 1776, the Revolutionary War began where he acted as general. In 1783, it ended. In 1789, he was elected president a first time, and in 1792, he was elected president a second time." You are given dates and events, surely, it is true history. But take the child who was given freedom to do as he pleased, and he might be able to stand in a lecture hall and tell you, "In the sixteenth century, in Europe, a Spanish physician by the name of Michael Servetus was convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. Fleeing from his oppressors, he made it to Geneva, where the vindictive John Calvin had absolute authority. In earlier years, Servetus expressed his doubt on Calvin's protestant religion. Once captured by the authorities, Servetus was burned to death at the orders of John Calvin in 1533. They had him wear a hat of sulphur and used slow-burning wood, that the crowd could listen to screams for mercy for the duration of a half hour. One year after the death of this man, Calvin published a list of insults of his former enemy."
Be a rebel. Because being a conformist means admitting that the parts of you that matter are already dead.
But if that's the case, what does matter? The emotions that run rampant through our head, the thoughts that we tumble and toss over in our minds constantly -- sexual fantasies to memories of our friends and family, thoughts and ideas about our future, wishes and desires for our current life with those who are close to us. The idea of a living freedom, knowing that what you wish to do believe with your mind is unrestricted and what you wish to do with your body, so long as you harm none, is unlimited. Life matters to us because we make it matter; if we never told a lover we would miss them upon our departure for a long voyage, if we never told a family member that we dream of a time when oppression ended, if we never wrote a poem and hoped to give it to a friend whose face we haven't seen in years -- if we never cared about life, then life wouldn't matter. What matters is what we make matter. So in a few years, all the kids who graduate from high school will know that their grades never mattered, because even though so young, they already know that it won't be the grades they got that they think about upon their death bed.
Twenty years ago the textbooks used in history class just began to cover some of the issues of the four hundred years of oppression of the African race in this country.
Children who are forced into a school and forced to complete erroneous assignments learn only one thing: to hate education. I clearly demonstrated this truth earlier, but there is more to be learned from it. Take a slave. It could be a slave from any society, whether an African in colonial America or a Plebeian in the Roman Empire. For the entirety of their life, they labor. Their sweat, their tears, their blood, the biproducts of their toil seep into the ground and their garments. All they produce goes to the one who did not labor. Inside every slave, there will be a growing hatred of their activity as a servant, a farmer, a manufacturer -- they will learn to hate what has been forced upon them without their consent. But inside some of them, there will be the kindling of hope for a dream. One day, they will hope to produce for themselves, knowing that what their hands reap will be what fills their stomach, and not the stomach belonging to idle hands. So, too, it is with our compulsary education. The more we are forced into schools and our minds filled with useless facts, the stronger our thirst grows for real education, for real knowledge. Few are like this, but we exist. Others simply remain politically and emotionally sedated, as the focus of their mind is the next test or the next prom, and not children enslaved in southeast asia or the meaning of life.
To every student who must endure the excuse of an education system that we have, I can only offer these words of hope... Educate yourself, not with school teachers, but with the books they wanted to ban. Teach yourself, learn, grow, and develop. Learn that the greatest asset education can offer is that of independence.
"If the teacher happens to be a man of sense, it must be an unpleasant thing to him to be conscious, while he is lecturing his students, that he is either speaking or reading nonsense, or what is very little better than nonsense.
A Quote:
"The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave to him, as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability. It seems to presume perfect wisdom and virtue in the one order, and the greatest weakness and folly in the other."
-- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book 5, Chapter I, Part 3, Article II.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Lotsa Questions
(A growing list)
- Can caffeine be produced commercially by agrobacterium-changed microorganisms?
- Is Fire a black-body emitter, like the sun?
- Can salvaged American Chestnut "barnboard" lumber be spalted? Is it resistant? Can only freshly dead wood be spalted?
- Could Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) be crossed with Ebony (Diospyros ebenum or Diospyros crassiflora) to make a tree which
- (1) produces tasty, seedless persimmons,
- (2) grows well in the range of the american persimmon,
- (3) produces, at a faster-than-average rate, quality wood having the qualities of the lumber species, and
- (4) is not too susceptible to what pests may attack persimmon on the american continent?
- How much land does a man need?
- What are the aspects of a human-life-sustaining landscape? The goal is to make a permanent, self-sustaining, human-suited, beautiful landscape.
- What is absolutely necessary to ensure human happiness as far as landscape goes?
- What is the optimal set-up for such a site? Food and Shelter must be permanently available.
- What is the best climate for human life?
- Is it better to be famous for fifteen minutes or famous to fifteen people?
- How do underwater-flowering plants work?
- What causes curly, quilt, and birdseye figure in maple wood?
- Why should I post this? The throngs crowding this pixel of the interblagowebz might leave this post as just the top of an infinite stream of comments, each answering all these questions with theories and new knowledge.
- Nah, that'll never happen.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Unorthodox application of non-laws
Lest week, a friend of mine (also a Virginia Tech student) was kicked out of the university library for watching a youtube video about a firearm he was interested in. It is completely legal to watch this, even as a university code complying VT student on a library computer. It appears that some anonymous person peered over my friend's shoulder and thought the worst of the situation. It's like seeing someone watching Mythbusters blow up Buster and calling the police for assault.
Come to think of it, this is exactly what happened with my friend. A person was put in fear of imminent harm by the actions of another, the definition of assault.
My friend wasn't watching in order to scare those peering over his shoulder, he was peacefully pursuing a personal interest.
An excerpt from an email from my Governor-Appointed better, the President of the university, tells me that I should:
"Avoid visiting or commenting on sites that contain threatening and harassing material.
If you observe behaviors that cause you concern for your safety, or that of the community, contact the Virginia Tech Police."
I wonder if the recommendations are now policy? Can I visit sights that talk about negative things anymore? Am I bound by the VT standards of community to shun certain subjects? Or should I not do anything that might cause busybodies to fret?
I don't think I can do any of those. As an unschooler I must pursue my own curriculum.
The excerpt above merits little fear, but the situation my friend was put in was a result of these recommendations. How bad does an application of pseudo-policy have to be in order to be reprehensible? Say, the level caused by limitation of internet use to approved content?
Come to think of it, this is exactly what happened with my friend. A person was put in fear of imminent harm by the actions of another, the definition of assault.
My friend wasn't watching in order to scare those peering over his shoulder, he was peacefully pursuing a personal interest.
An excerpt from an email from my Governor-Appointed better, the President of the university, tells me that I should:
"Avoid visiting or commenting on sites that contain threatening and harassing material.
If you observe behaviors that cause you concern for your safety, or that of the community, contact the Virginia Tech Police."
I wonder if the recommendations are now policy? Can I visit sights that talk about negative things anymore? Am I bound by the VT standards of community to shun certain subjects? Or should I not do anything that might cause busybodies to fret?
I don't think I can do any of those. As an unschooler I must pursue my own curriculum.
The excerpt above merits little fear, but the situation my friend was put in was a result of these recommendations. How bad does an application of pseudo-policy have to be in order to be reprehensible? Say, the level caused by limitation of internet use to approved content?
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
First attempt at iambic pentameter villanelle construction - Closet poetry, really.
You see that girl? She used to smile at me.
It’s years since we have been together, though
Long ago I used to make her happy.
Each other’s presence taught us to flirt, she
With smiling glance, would chase away all woe.
You see that girl? She used to smile at me
With flutters in her heart which I could see,
Years and months past, back when I was her beau,
Long ago I used to make her happy.
We were madly in love, to some degree
The look in her eyes allowed me to know.
You see that girl? She used to smile at me
When she heard her favorite melody
When I, smiling wide, said “My love, hello!”
-Long ago I used to make her happy.
You know how people will drift away, free?
I can’t believe I could just let her go.
You see that girl? She used to smile at me,
Long ago I used to make her happy.
The Desiderata
By Max Erhmann.
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others,
even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble,
it's a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God.
And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
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