--SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, BUT AT LEAST I KNOW YOU’RE OUT THERE SOMEWHERE

…It’s Monday and it definitely feels like it.

…Did you watch the Grammy’s?  I did, for the first time in years.  It’s certainly more interesting having lots of performances and cutting down the time for acceptance speeches.  Still, it seems like there’s a lot of mediocre music out there.

…I’m reading “Tell The Wolves I’m Home.”  It’s quite good.  I’m learning some things.

…Some inspirations I like to start the week are these:

-“Some days I feel like my shadow’s casting me.”  Warren Zevon

-“Laughter is the language of the Gods.” - Buddhist saying

-The legendary cellist Pablo Casals was asked why at age 90 he continued to practice, to which he said, “Because I think I’m making progress.”

-“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.” E.B. White

-“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”- Beverly Sills

-"I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."- Leo C. Rosten

-"Courage isn't the absence of fear; it's the dealing with it."- Randall 'Tex' Cobb

-“The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery.” - Janet Erskine Stuart

-The world needs dreamers and the world needs doers. But above all, the world needs dreamers who do.”  - Sarah Ban Breathnack

-"Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.” –Adrienne Rich

-“It is a good thing to be rich, it is a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.” -Euripides

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late." Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Henry David Thoreau

"I don't see why we ever think of what others think of what we do – no matter who they are. Isn't it enough just to express yourself?" Georgia O'Keefe