3 Ring Binder

Like industrialists extracting materials Used to power the world, I happily exploit your potential. Like settlers working the land, Laying claims on their efforts, I eagerly seek to possess you. Like single-minded pursuit of purpose Indelibly marks its pursuer, Your life is inscribed on mine. As deliciously entwined as we choose to live, We are distinct: Each defined by his values. For in as long as we remain true to our selves, It is our virtue which sustains this perfect love.

That this week's Objective Round Up is posted at Musing Aloud . And while I was there, I was poking around and saw that a commenter here recommended this romantic song.  Now I can be that  quelqu'un qui t'a dit the same.   The guitar tune is simple enough, so I just have to learn the words , en français, bien sûr! Enjoy!

"Some adults will spend their money foolishly, but it is not the purpose of the federal government to prevent them legally from doing it." Yes.   Massachusetts Representative Frank actually said this . He’s right, of course, but since when did he not think that the purpose of government was to regulate every financial aspect of our lives?   That’s certainly what he’s trying to do . Here, however, he was not talking about those who gambled with their credit and took out loans they had no way to repay because they were enticed by the low standards of loan approval created by government mandated lending practices. No, this is regarding internet gambling, an apparently uncaptured resource, some might classify as wasted resource, oozing into the hands of internet gambling proprietors! Mr. Frank is animated by the thought that if the government lifts its regulatory ban on internet gambling (which should never have been put in place to begin with) they could not only regula...

At the recommendation of my husband, who will listen to virtually anything he can get his hands on in the library for his commute to work, I am listening to the audio book written and read by Mireille Guiliano.   [If you listened to WCRB, the classical music Boston radio station, before it became “listener supported,” you would probably recognize her voice from the popular Veuve Clicquot commercials.] Ms. Guilliano was the spokeswoman and CEO of the French Champagne House, Veuve Clicquot. Her book, French Women Don’t Get Fat , is simply a series of ways she enjoys her food, drink, and life and she imparts the lee-tul tricks she has learned so she can eat anything she wants and not get fat.   While her common sense approach to mindful eating is rather run-of-the-mill, her enthusiasm for celebrating life everyday is infectious; I’m actually really enjoying her guilt-free gastronomique ravings as well as listening to her silly accent (Monty Python reference – not that Fre...

Being a fan of the fun that ensues from the testing and discovery of one’s psychological preferences  boiled down to four dichotomous traits , I was interested in this article, Our Blog Vocabulary, Our Selves ,   in yesterday’s edition of The Boston Globe.   What struck me most was not that we reveal our personalities through our word choices, but that modern psychology has developed a model of human personality reduced to the Big Five personality traits.   Bloggers who scored high on the trait of “agreeableness” seldom swore and referred often to the notion of community. I HAD to find out more about this so-called “ agreeableness ” trait.   (Not being a psychologist, I went to Wikipedia for a quick overview.) People scoring low on agreeableness place self-interest above getting along with others. Um. Dur. Then who doesn’t score low? If you don’t place self-interest first, who will be there to get along with the others?   A bunch of doormats? Since, ...

It’s that time of year when my youngest goes on a performance juggernaut in which my time is generally part of the sacrifice.   This weekend she‘s in three performances of Annie: The Musical . If you ask her what part she’s playing, you get the same, deadpan answer: “a named orphan.”   Being the seemingly impossible parent of that named orphan, I volunteered to wrangle the other orphans when they were not on stage.   I hate kid wrangling. And yet, I continue to volunteer. Two years ago I wrangled singing nuns—let me tell you, they were no saints. Last year, I wrangled the boys, Winkies and Ozians—with no yellow brick road to follow or broomstick with which to help me keep them in line! This year, I'm wrangling the little girl orphans—some named and, sadly, some unnamed which makes it harder to get their attention. There’s also some interesting politics in Annie, including the character of Daddy Warbucks, the self-made billionare, a staunch Republican, and friends with...

Yesterday during the flurry of the Objectivist Round Up visits, my blog had its 25000 th visitor! Why this is more important than its 24000 th or 21932 nd visitor, I can’t say – but it seemed a momentous occasion worthy of taking note. So to mark the occasion, I took a screen shot of my site meter summary page:     Ta-da! Then, knowing what would be the obvious draw, I went to check the referral source of my momentous occasion visitor. Imagine my surprise to find not the Objectivist Round Up , any recent post, or even any of the dog week   eye candy series as the reason for the 25000 th visitor! My momentous occasion visitor was looking for a “giraffe print binder” (for the record, visitor 25001 was looking for a "zebra print binder") and it all started with this one little 3 Good Things  post. I’m telling you, people,  animal print stationery is big! (On that zebra print binder PSA I wanted to tell commenter Kim that perha...

There are two things that make living in Massachusetts bearable: 1) Wicked awesome history, and 2) A relative dearth of extreme religiosity.   Because of #1, we’d actually consider moving to Virginia, but then #2 is destroyed by things like this and this (taken in Virginia on our recent return trip from Georgia). You can therefore imagine my shock when only moments ago (in what could best be described as a WTF? moment) I saw my first “Choose Life” license plate – IN MASSACHUSETTS! What? The? He ck? Fair is fair, so this article goes on to explain , “ Specialty plates in Massachusetts do not need legislative approval, so abortion advocates could start an effort to have their own plates. ” According to the same article, in order to get a state of Massachusetts specialty license plate with any damn non-profit cause desired, all one needs is 3000 Massachusetts residents to complete the registration form and to pay the $40 fee.   Here is the list of specialty plates cur...

Welcome to this 158 th edition of the Objectivist Round Up, a  blog carnival  of posts written by individuals who are advocates of Objectivism : the philosophy developed and defined by Ayn Rand . If you are new to Ayn Rand and would like to discover more about her "philosophy for living on earth", I recommend you read her two great novels, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead . If you enjoy her novels, I recommend her essays Man’s Rights , and The Nature of Government . The Ayn Rand Institute and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights provide relevant information and commentary. Following, in the order in which they were received*, are the posts for this Objectivist Round Up. Khartoum presents The Ambani’s Fiasco posted at Reddie Reasons. , saying, "My commentary on the feud between the Indian government and the multi-billion dollar Ambani's over natural gas extracted from off-shore property." Rachel Miner presents Tooth Fairy Musings posted ...

H.R.5741 -- Universal National Service Act ”To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes. ” Introduced in the United States House of Representatives, July 15, 2010 "Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man's fundamental right--the right to life--and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man's life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. If the state may force a man to risk death or hideous maiming and crippling, in a war declared at the state's...

This morning my daughter and I went kayaking on the Concord River.   There we saw 30 geese a-swimming (blech); 18 mallards quacking (meh); 17 turtles sunning (my daughter kept saying, "I like tourdous"  like a zombie ); 6 robins wading (didn’t know they were water birds); 5. . . Golden . . . Dragonflies; 2 baby beavers! 1 great blue heron! 1 Peregrine falcon! And a duck that looked like a cow. Not bad for a brief, 60 minute outing! I have seriously never seen such an odd looking duck in my life!   Or baby beavers!   At least I’m guessing they were babies because I’ve seen adult beavers before and they were huge compared to these little guys. Actually, I don’t know if what we saw was a Peregrine falcon or some other bird of prey, either. If a falcon, it was a first year (brown and white, less defined mask), but it was loud.   Here’s a cool beans video of a Peregrine falcon diving in air and a goshawk doing the speeder bike thing through the forests of Endor....

For all my talk of never accepting unearned guilt or punishing myself for living, I can’t really explain my attraction to this blog other than it seems to be some type of self-flagellation for not being more active—no, more effective—in the fight against the tyranny of our ever-expanding government.    It is filled with ostensibly sunny ideas from our paternalistically benevolent government written with hopeful enthusiasm by some of the top bureaucrats in our nation.   Introduction to the Middle Class Task Force (Or The Voice of Collectivism ) “A strong middle class equals a strong America. We can’t have one without the other.   This Task Force will be an important vehicle to assess new and existing policies across the board and determine if they are helping or hurting the middle class.   It is our charge to get the middle class – the backbone of this country – up and running again.”   Vice President Joe Biden “This investigation answers the President’...

After fifteen years of cohabitational bliss, my husband recently acknowledged the near-complete integration of our lives. I choked. I laughed.   I shook him by the shoulders to make certain that he meant it.   He had indeed, purposely, referred to one of the CDs I brought to the relationship as “ours.”   In order to have my reaction make sense, you should know that only within the last two years have I been able to convince him that packing and using the same suitcase, as well as allowing his individually encased toothbrush to co-mingle with mine in the drug bag (we call it the HBA bag when flying) was a more efficient than each of us carrying our own stuff separately. Even with these recent concessions toward couple-hood, he left me ill-prepared for the unsolicited acceptance of any part of my lesser—in both quantity and quality, according to him—music collection. (OK. Given that I think I may still have a Milli Vanilli CD kicking around somewhere, I’m willing to co...

First the fly invasion, then the chickens cavorting with wild animals. What’s next? Boiling seas? Since I’m not into human sacrifice, and given that the temperature will exceed 90°F for the next four days in a row, I tell you where I’ll be ending my days: sequestered in the East Wing with the quieter, more efficient AC, my books, and all the wine I can drink! Who knows? Maybe I’ll even let the rest of my family join me.   If I can get a good wireless signal up there, I may never leave. Note to self: Must bring pepperoni and cheese.   And toothbrush. Stay cool, friends.

Based on some paragraphs of personal fiction writing, I write like Vladimir Nabokov I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software . Analyze your writing! Based on some paragraphs from a blog post . I write like Raymond Chandler I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software . Analyze your writing! Apparently I also write like David Foster Wallace, Johathan (not to be confused with Jo n athan) Swift, Margaret Mitchell, and Charles Dickens, so this is clearly a very scientific and conclusive test. For some actual substance, head on over to The Playful Spirit where Rachel is hosting the third anniversary edition of the Objectivist Round Up .

Yesterday, July 14, I received this timely piece of art via email from the Metropolitan Museum.   It looked remarkably like a Christmas card we sent out years ago – from the painting style right down to the Mansard roof buildings—but the flags were American, the city was New York, and it was winter!   I had to find out if the artist had created that particular image as well. I’m sorry to say, although I found Childe Hassam's interesting flag series , the Christmas card image was not among them. The sorry part comes from the time I spent searching for it for naught; however I did come across some of his other paintings that I found noteworthy (as well as information about his contributions to  American art in general). Here are three of them: The first is a favorite from my youth, the second cements my fascination with his use of light in transforming urban life, and the third is reminiscent of another long-time favorite . While I’m not a big fan of his human...

Our doorbell rang early this morning.   Although I was expecting a FedEx delivery from our wine club sometime this week, I wasn’t prepared for the 8:00 AM delivery time!   I threw on some clothes and ran downstairs to answer the door. After exchanging pleasantries with the delivery peopleguy and turning toward the package he had put down in the mudroom to briefly inspect it, I gave my electronic signature and a smile of thanks to the exiting young man who made apologies about the early hour.   Cavalierly adding, “No problem,” and thinking how clever I am to don my wrinkled but bold CAPITALIST t-shirt , and, because I was so quick to dress, I was able to get the wine and not another thing on my to-do list , I returned to the kitchen quite self-satisfied with my being able to pull it all together in an instant.   That lasted all of .2 seconds before my youngest dashed my illusion saying, “Nice jammies.” What ? Oh well.   In addition to the jammie tail an...

While I am unfamiliar with the work of this cartoonist, Lynda Barry , I do like what she says about the potential function of memorizing poetry and its subsequent availability in the subconscious. (via Twitter PRSatran) For a few years, I tended to learn the poems that my daughter was learning to recite by heart, but even that’s been a while.   I need to memorize some more. I’ve decided on this as my first: The Coming American By Sam Walter Foss     Bring me men to match my mountains;     Bring me men to match my plains, --     Men with empires in their purpose,     And new eras in their brains.     Bring me men to match my prairies,     Men to match my inland seas,     Men whose thought shall pave a highway     Up to ampler destinies;     Pioneers to clear Thought's marshlands,    ...

I suspected early on in our relationship that it might come to this. After twenty-five years of hijinks, what else could a policeman, a librarian, a health agent, an artist, a journalist, and a homeschool mother expect from our midsummer Girls Night Out?   Sadly, our night in jail was not for any form of civil disobedience, but rather spent at the Liberty Hotel , formerly the old Charles St. jail in Boston. Happily. Beginning at the spectacular 90 foot rotunda and ending at the dungeon-like bar, Alibi, we thoroughly enjoyed our romp through the erstwhile jail which, in its day, played host to notables such as James Michael Curley, Malcolm X, and Sacco and Vanzetti. The dinner was excellent, and my drink, the Charles St. , was divine (gin, lavender bitters, and cucumber water).   The patrons milling about seemed to cover an impressive range of ages, and everyone seemed right at home there.   If you’re ever in the area, I recommend stopping by at least for a drink. T...