Quotes from books I have recently read

“Grammar is like the air: someone higher up might try to set rules for using it, but people won’t necessarily follow them.”

“Once it has taken root in your heart, hatred is the most difficult thing in the world to shake off.”

“If the fear won’t go, you’ll have to do it afraid.”

“Love who you were sent to love.”

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

“None of us can count on a life lived in perfect health and vitality. In the end, it seems what we have in common, what might actually define our lives, are times of weakness and vulnerability, dependence, disability and frailty. Perhaps the most vulnerable version of myself is the real me: Perhaps the world seen by those dimmed lights is the real world.”

“…it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explains not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs which think themselves new; and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young-like.”

“It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature.”

The only blind date I ever went on

Daily writing prompt

How did you meet your significant other?

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I’ve been on one blind date in my life. It took place on August 2, 1991. I was 21 and had just gotten out of the Navy, and was about to start college. So I was definitely not looking for a relationship at the time. But my first cousin and his then-girlfriend (long since married) set me up with her best friend. We were both sort of quite that evening. My cousin and I went out for pizza and we all met at my cousin’s girlfriend’s home — she still lived with her parents at the time — and we all watched a movie after dinner, then went out for frozen yogurt. But I was intrigued by this quiet girl. (She was only 18 at the time.) So I waited for a moment alone and then asked her for a second date. The second date led to a third, and, well, we’ve been married for 32 years now.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but…

Daily writing prompt

What’s a conspiracy theory you actually find believable?

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I have never accepted the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I do believe he was part of conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy. I have no idea the breadth or the identities of the conspiracists; does anyone? But I do believe Oswald was part of something much larger.

I wish schools taught personal finance

Daily writing prompt

What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?

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I graduated high school 38 years ago. Some of it I remember quite well, other parts (most parts, actually) were rather forgettable. American history during my senior year was perhaps the best, most useful component of all my schooling. Learning how to write a research paper in English class that same year was another useful skill. But I recall with particular fondness learning how to fill out a Form 1040EZ in economics, which I took for one semester (spring, I believe) during the 11th grade. Later that year, I landed my first job, and early the next year, I put that knowledge to use. It was one of the most useful things I learned during all my schooling from K-12. I wish schools taught more of that.

I promised myself that I would never move my family

Daily writing prompt

What’s a promise you made to yourself that you’ve actually kept?

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I group up the child of a Methodist minister, and because of that, my family moved several times before I graduated high school. More or less every three years we would dig up whatever roots we had planted and head for another town, another church, another school. The older I got, the more difficult this became for me. I knew that was my father’s calling, and that moving at regular intervals came with the territory, but part of me resented the nomad-like existence that we endured. I can’t say I had a bad childhood. Overall, the memories of my younger years are good ones. But as an adult, I vowed I would never move my family around like that. My geographic stability definitely hurt in terms of promotion potential where I am employed, but I wouldn’t do anything differently. My wife and I have lived in the Nashville area since 1995. We bought our present home in 1999 when our son was not yet two years of age. It’s the only family home he has ever known.

Things I noticed on the way to work today

I drove to work earlier today, which is nothing remarkable. I do it all the time. It normally takes me 13-15 minutes to make the 7-mile drive, although today I took a detour so I could stop by the library (dropped off two, picked up one). Indeed, the daily commute is normally a mundane endeavor. It may be so for you, too. But have you ever really paid attention to the things going on around you? Here’s are today’s highlights:

(Soundtrack: most of the album “Once upon a Time” by Simple Minds)

A thunderstorm had just passed over the area, and there was still some lingering rain, so my windshield wipers were on intermittent. At any rate, I didn’t need my sunglasses.

A jaywalker carrying a backpack briefly held up traffic.

Today was the first day of early voting for the August primaries. The library is a polling place, so there was the usual smorgasbord of political signs stuck in the ground.

An ambulance managed to weave its way across a busy intersection.

I got stopped at a railroad crossing to let the WeGo commuter train go through. They are painted purple and silver. I don’t much like those trains, but I supposed the ones who use them feel differently. This one was westbound, headed toward Nashville.

A car with a Washington license plate was in the lane next to mine right before I pulled into Starbucks. You don’t see many Washington license plates in Tennessee.

My shoes being wet from the rain, I slid on the floor after entering Starbucks, but didn’t fall. (That would have been quite the scene.) They had my favorite — Caffè Verona. I ordered a venti, then topped it off with plenty of cream.

Back on the road, a purple WeGo bus was in the left-turn lane, also headed toward Nashville.

The rain stopped before I arrived at work. There was even a patch of blue sky up ahead.

Feline for a week

Daily writing prompt

If you had to be an animal for a week, which one would you be and why?

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If I could be an animal for a week, I’d be a house cat. A house cat can cop an attitude, be aloof or a downright snob and still be considered adorable. I could easily fill that role.

You always have a choice

Something that I am learning as I get older is the fallacy in the assertion we sometimes make that “I had no choice.” That’s a cop-out. We always have a choice. In fact, making the very claim “I had no choice” implies that you did, in fact, have a choice. Sometimes the choice is clear and easy to make. That’s how we prefer life to be. But sometimes the options aren’t so clear-cut. Maybe all you have in front of you is a bad option and an even worse option. Or perhaps you get to choose between expediency and doing what’s right. And then there are choices that result in disappointing one person versus disappointing another person. Either way, you do have a choice. So don’t try to convince others (or yourself) that you had no choice.

Nominate Yoda, I do

Daily writing prompt

Emperor Palpatine has announced open elections for a new Emperor — and he’s nominated Darth Vader. You get to nominate one challenger.

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It’s easy. Yoda for Emperor.

Quotes from books I have read

“Shared joy is double joy. Shared sorrow is half sorrow.”

“…the ability to conform governs success in the educational scene.”

“The easiest thing in the world to be is what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be.”

“We are all functioning at a small fraction of our capacity to live fully in its total meaning of loving, caring, creating and adventuring. Consequently, the actualizing of our potential can become the most exciting adventure of our lifetimes.”

“A total immersion in life offers the best classroom for learning to love.”

“We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist. And forever will recreate each other.”

“It is the weak who are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.”

“…grief is really love without anywhere to go…”

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

“Like all other living creatures, I am the descendant of survivors, so the fear in my head is the voice of my ancestors whispering their accumulated wisdom.”

“…the past is long, and the future is short.”

“…once, on a dark afternoon in summer at the waning end of the year of the slowing, two kids knelt down together on the cold ground. We dipped our fingers in the wet cement, and we wrote the truest, simplest things we knew—our names, the date, and these words: We were here.”

“Beauty is beyond good and evil. Good people are also attracted to beauty…”

“Were writers who embodied and illuminated their times eventually condemned by the more enlightened future they themselves helped bring into being?”

“There is but one step from triumph to downfall. I have seen, in the most significant of circumstances, that some little thing always decides great events.”

How I have grown this year

Daily writing prompt

What is one way you have grown this year?

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The past several months I have come to appreciate all the more the importance of human connections. Whether it’s with a spouse or a child or a sibling or parent, a co-worker or friend or acquaintance or someone you just met, there is no replacement for human connectedness. And this comes from an introvert who requires an abundance of personal time and solitude. Admittedly, I come a small family, I’ve been married for nearly 32 years to my wife, we have just one child, and my circle of friends is tiny. But even I value the people in my life to the utmost, and as I grow older, I value human connections all the more.

I’m not sure what has triggered this realization. Perhaps it is the increasing ubiquity of A.I., which makes it more difficult to ascertain what is real and what is just a mirage. Indeed, I value more and more the things that are real. In a world that can be cold and unforgiving, a world that can easily make a person feel anonymous and ordinary, it’s a wonderful feeling to hear someone say, “It’s good to hear your voice.”

So, at the risk of sounding sanctimonious, I’m in the process of casting aside judgements and stereotypes. I’m trying to see others not by their differences from me, but by our commonalities. I mean, if we look hard enough, we can find something we have in common with just about anyone. There are many ways I could classify the year 2026 — it’s already nearly half over, believe it or not — but the way I’ll classify it here is “2026: the year of personal connections.”

Reblog: “21 Truths About Your Body After 60 That Nobody Warns You About”

Bonsai Mary has a blog post containing “21 Truths About Your Body After 60 That Nobody Warns You About” that initially caught my attention and it was definitely a worthwhile read. I haven’t yet made it to 60; I’ll be 57 on my next birthday, but some of the aspects of aging she discusses I am already having to confront. Aging well is something I think about often — not just aging, but aging well. Not only am I deliberate about aging well for my own sake, but I also want to set a good example for others. If this is something you think about, too, then try giving her blog post a read.

I used to fear public speaking

Daily writing prompt

What’s a fear you’ve overcome — and how did you do it?

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I’m an introvert, so I am naturally anathema to public speaking (and being the center of attention in general). As an adolescent, I had an almost debilitating fear of, say, recitations in front of class. But this started to abate somewhat by the time I entered high school. Still, when I was in the Navy, I’d get “stage fright” whenever it was my turn to give a briefing to a group of individuals. I don’t know if my nervousness ever showed, but inside I’d be a quivering mess. Now, I’m 56 years old. Several times a year I give presentations to crowds of people, and it no longer bothers me. In fact, I actually enjoy public speaking to some extent. I’ve gotten good at it. So I guess you could say I’ve overcome my fear of public speaking by…speaking publicly.

Will I live to see us put a person on Mars?

Daily writing prompt

What’s something you’d love to see in the future, but know you probably won’t live to witness?

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It took 66 years to go from the Wright brothers’ first flight to putting a man on the moon. That was in 1969 — the year I was born. In the 57 years since that time, we’ve gone no farther. Sure, we have continued to explore space using unmanned craft. The space shuttle program has come and gone. The private sector has gotten on board with space travel. And we recently sent a space crew around the moon for the first time in decades. I genuinely believe we will someday send a space crew to Mars. It may or may not happen during my lifetime, but I’d love to see it. I’m still amazed we can send an airplane full of passengers across an ocean in just a few hours with a 99.999% chance of it arriving safely on the other side. It’s still mind-boggling to me that we sent a crew to the moon during the year of my birth. So the idea of a human being stepping foot on another planet seems literally other-worldly. Yet I do believe it’s going to happen. Whether or not I’ll be around to share the excitement is another matter.

Oh, the possibilities

Daily writing prompt

If you had an unlimited budget for 24 hours, what would you do?

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With an unlimited budget for 24 hours, I believe I’d fly first class from Nashville to somewhere in Italy (Rome, probably), book a room in a 5-star hotel, enjoy dinner in a Michelin-starred restaurant, order whatever I wanted, and drink a $500 bottle of wine. Then I’d hire a carriage ride and enjoy whatever remained of my evening. Realistic? No. But it sure is fun to think about.

A musical re-discovery

I was a huge Prince fan as a teenager in the 1980s. I bought all his albums, watched hours of music videos waiting for a Prince song to come on so I could tape it with our VCR (betamax!), and did the same with cassette tapes when his songs would come on the radio.

A coworker and I were discussing Prince recently while at the office. I don’t remember how the topic came about, but she was telling me about a song called “Starfish and Coffee.” “Oh, I remember that!” I exclaimed. “It’s on ‘Sign o’ the Times.’” (It felt a bit odd discussing 1980s Prince with a much younger co-worker. I’m actually older than her mother.) On the way home from work that evening, I queued up “Starfish and Coffee,” which I literally had not listened to since the 1980s, as well as a couple of other songs from that album. Since then, I’ve listened to “Sign o’ the Times” several times all the way through. (It’s a double-album and takes a while to play all the songs.)

A person’s musical tastes do change as he/she gets older. Some of us cling to the songs of our youth. Some, like me, move on to different styles and different artists. Although I have, on occasion, called up a Prince song here and there, his music does not have the allure it once did. “Sign o’ the Times” came out during the spring of 1987, during my junior year of high school. It was the first Prince album I purchased on cassette; I had heretofore stuck with vinyl records. Although I listened to that album avidly, I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as, say, “1999” or “Purple Rain.” After graduating from high school the next year and entering the Navy, I more or less stopped listening to Prince altogether. (The “Batman” soundtrack in 1989 was the last Prince album I would ever buy — on CD, for once.)

So here I am 39 years later, 56 years old instead of 17, and I find myself appreciating the artistry of “Sign o’ the Times” more than I ever did as a teenager. It is, in my opinion, Prince’s magnum opus, which says a great deal for someone who produced so much music. No, I not familiar with much of his later work, so I haven’t listened to every single Prince album, but I’m confident that nothing he did after the fact could have rivaled his double-album from 1987.

I am not alone in my assessment. From Wikipedia:

Sign o’ the Times is one of the most critically acclaimed albums in popular music, widely being regarded as Prince’s best album, ahead of Purple Rain (1984). It was voted the best album of 1987 in the Pazz & Jop critics poll and was nominated for Album of the Year at the 30th Grammy Awards. Often hailed as a masterpiece, some critics have praised Sign o’ the Times as the best album of the 1980s. It is a frequent inclusion in lists of the greatest albums of all time and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2017.

Not really concerned about leaving a legacy

What is the legacy you want to leave behind?

I’m not someone who thinks a great deal about leaving a legacy. In fact, the idea of a legacy means very little to me. I won’t be around to enjoy my legacy, so what’s the use? Rather, my objective is to squeeze the most out of each day that I possibly can. I do my best to treat people well and also do my best with my health and resources. Perhaps I will leave behind a book or two of my writings. But as far as leaving an actual legacy, well, the Christian band Casting Crowns recorded a song several years ago called “Only Jesus” in which they humbly confess “I don’t want to leave a legacy/I don’t care if they remember me/Only Jesus.” It’s a sobering reminder that for most of us, our legacies exist only in the memories of those we knew on earth. And once they, too, are gone, so will the memories of us.

The don’t call it “Music City” for nothing

Daily writing prompt

Which is the best thing to do in your city?

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I live in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee a.k.a. “Music City.” I have lived in this area since 1995 and cannot count the number of concerts my wife and I have attended over the years — some at Bridgestone Arena, but most at various smaller venues. We attend primarily Christian concerts, but also patronize the Nashville Symphony two or three times a year. Oddly, neither of us are country music fans, which is what Nashville happens to be known for. But no matter. There is still plenty of music to go around to fit just about any musical taste. It’s one of the best things about living here.

Voting consistently since 1988

Daily writing prompt

Do you vote in political elections?

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I have voted in every presidential election since 1988. when I was 18 years old. I have voted in every mid-term election since 1994. I haven’t always voted for the same party, but I have always voted. However, I must admit that I’m not quite so faithful when it comes to primary elections. I have sat out a few of those over the years. There needs to be someone or something that intrigues me to draw me in on the primaries (although the lines tend to be mercifully short or non-existent). But, yes, I do vote in political elections.

It’s a small world, after all

Daily writing prompt

Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.

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I was 19 years old and had been in Naples, Italy for just a few weeks. It was my first (and only) duty station during my 3-year stint in the Navy. The following encounter took place sometime just before Christmas, 1988. At any rate, I was on a bus that was about to transport us from the small airport base at Capodichino to the primary naval base at Agnano, on the other side of the sprawling metropolis. A sailor who was many years older than me (late 30s, it would turn out, but he seemed even older) strode down the center aisle and noticed me sitting there by myself.

“Say, you’re new here, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I didn’t think I’d seen you before. Where are you from?”

“Tennessee.”

“Could you be a little more specific?”

“West Tennessee.”

“Could you be even more specific?”

“Medina.”

“Well, I know where that is. I’m from Huntingdon.”

And so Charlie Singleton and I became, if not quite friends, then certainly acquaintances, and even did some traveling together before he returned to the states sometime the following spring.

(Medina is a small town located just north of Jackson. Huntingdon is about 20 miles northeast of Medina.)