Vitamin D and Dog Ownership

https://shadowmap.org/learn/the-vitamin-d-advantage-of-dog-ownership-how-your-furry-friend-boosts-your-health

The most important thing in human life for one’s sanity is to be able to be playful or to be able to do things which are sublimely useless. Alan Watts

Much of the secret of life consists in knowing how to laugh, and also how to breathe. Alan Watts 

A man does not really begin to be alive until he has lost himself. Until he has released the anxious grasp which he normally holds upon his life, his property, his reputation and position. Alan Watts

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves. Alan Watts

 You can’t live at all unless you can live fully now. Alan Watts

If you make where you are going more important than where you are, there may be no point in going. Alan Watts

Lacking self-acceptance, we are always at odds with our point of departure, always doubting the ground on which we stand, always so divided against ourselves that we cannot act with sincerity. Alan Watts

This is the real secret of life: to be completely engaged with what you’re doing in the here and now, and instead of calling it work, realize that this is play. Alan Watts

 We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end. […] But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played. Alan Watts

Dream

I was at a big Italian dinner party outdoors. My husband and I were assigned to sit at the kids table. After the meal I gathered up all of the cheese graters and danced around holding them in my hands.

When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Find your quiet center of life and write from that to the world.

Sarah Orne Jewett

 Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction. Alan Watts

I drove to Blackridge this morning to walk my dogs early in the quiet. A woman pulled over in her huge black Suburban, "Haven't seen ya in a while," she said. I introduced her to my new dog. She said my son had a rescue like that and someone broke in an bashed his dog's head in. After she left I was sorry I came to Blackridge. These pretty small towns are deceiving.

“Did it ever occur to you, Charlie, that tolerance can reach a point where it is no longer tolerance? When that happens, the noble-sounding attitude on which most of us pride ourselves degenerates into weakness and acquiescence.” ― Grace Metalious, Peyton Place

It was on this day in 30 B.C. that Queen Cleopatra of Egypt killed herself with a snake she had smuggled into her chamber where she was held captive by Octavian, formerly the political rival of her lover Mark Antony.

The Putinization of America

 Open your eyes, kids.

Henry David Thoreau: What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

Richard appears to have aged 20 years in two months. He was a tall muscular man in June and now he's a shriveled apple doll on a stick. He's a terrifying sight especially when you realize that it's Richard, that guy who was  taking and selling drugs a few months ago. He was going strong until the Feds came and shut down the ring. He lucked out that day and was not caught in the sweep.