Still a chance to do better

This is really about "Words"

A "word", specifically, is a unit of language. It, by itself, carres a meaning. It implies meaning and has a sound. It can be the root of other words. Words combine to create phrases and sentences.

Words can have power or can be without power. An example of how they can lack power but yet still tell the whole story is shown when Shakespear's Hamlet said:

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Today I heard a confernence talk about the "power of words". The message was presented using a quote from James 3:2.

James 3:2 For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridel the whole body.

*

Looks like a solution to avoid getting "swallowed up"

A way to be be better. A way yet to change. A way to change in a good way.

Remember: The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

I flew over the mountains in El Paso two weeks ago and then again yesterday. Two weeks ago I learned that the mountains there are the "highest" mountain tops in Texas.

I am not sure if this is the main thing to mention today. I do find the Moon Picture from a day or so ago that I posted really interesting. I have seen it over the mountains of El Paso at night and it is indeed small compared to looking across the water at it. Then to this isn't so much the main thing today. I will have to give it some thought. Monday the main thing may have been thinking about this picture above. I don't know if it makes a lot of difference if I post a picture two days in a row. Maybe the main thing is to post. Maybe the main thing is to finish up here and go to work.

Monday and thoughts about the Moon

One of the more memorable times that I saw the moon was on the East Coast of Mexico. Looking across the Atlantic Ocean at night when the Moon seemed to almost touch the water made the Moon look bigger than I had ever seen it before. Apparently the Moon has a lot of influence on the Earth. How we start the week can have some influence on the rest of the week.

Expanding oneness or influencing others

I suppose that knowledge is something that expands. Builds on itself. We seem to add to what we know or at least to the core of what we knew that was right. Knowledge builds on itself. Our universe expands.

Personalities interact. Sometimes one person can successfully uplift another. Influence is a term that usually refers to the ability to indirectly affect or even control the actions of other people or things. What it is that influence itself might be might depend on who or what it is that is being affected.

How often do we find a term of which the definition of what it is depends on the object of is impact?

A basketball is a basketball whether or not it is on the way to the hoop or just in someones minds eye, more or less.

Influence on the other hand does not seem to reside only in the person giving it without some dependence on the person to be “influenced”.

This morning I read a blog written by a young lady working on her PHD. She seemed to have been influenced in her thinking by a variety of folks. Since I came to her blog quite by accident I certainly wasn’t able to influence her. Yet perhaps she influenced me.

A couple of weeks ago I visited with a man who over the years has had a lot of influence on me. Meeting and talking and listening to this individual is a lot like finding a cool drink of water in the desert. Of course in that sense it is as much about the hot tired water deprived person as it is about the water. Here to influence itself might depend on who or what it is that is being affected.
As for me and my meeting with my friend I am often affected by observing his interests and really his own passion for his interests. This time I found new books to read and new ways to look at what I had already read. I also found some reassurance in knowing what was important to him. This friend is older than me by about 12 or 13 years. I miss having older friends. Since moving I have missed that.

Albuquerque Cubism, southwest ritual

Picasso didn't paint this parking meter, or the walls that seperate old and new, and real and unreal, in Albuquerque. Even so these paintings all may be
"cubism".
Maybe they are about choice and freedom.



Pablo Picasso seems was interesting in expressing his agency. Of this mural above he said:

The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste, which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death

Picasso was know for an approach to painting called Cubism. Cubism is a painting of a normal scene but painted so that it is viewed from multiple views while the positions of some of the parts are rotated or moved so that it is odd looking and scrambled. In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form — instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles presenting no coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the ambiguous shallow space characteristic of cubism.

Albuquerque seems to have a style of art often expressed in murals. I would suggest that these murals are “cubism”

Does art exist if choice does not exist? Does having individual agency open the door to understand art? Art is a term that is used to describe a particular type of creative production generated by human beings, and the term usually implies some degree of aesthic value. (at least this is what usally claimed) . An artist makes a work of art for various purposes, such as creating an experience for others, or as part of a ritual. The boundaries of "art" is subjective, but the impetus or reason for art is often called human creativity.

Here lies the idea that choice and agency may have a connection. Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy sometimes called value theory. It results from judgments of snetiment and taste.
Art is about choice

Mother of Exiles, choice welcome here

Free agency can be found in the internet based free encylopedia, Wikipedia. It says that it is “in Latter Day Saint Theology as the name of the human capacity to make choices for themselves and to choice between right and wrong”

The same source suggests that choice consists of the mental process of thinking involved with the process of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one of them.

On the Statue of Liberty the words of the poet Emma Lazarus says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.

Breathe free seems to be the goal.

What a contrast to some many ways of life. It seems at first glance that extemes of the far right and left are very different. It seems or would be expected to find that these extremes would be in opposition. Then on the other hand they share something in common. The all lack the same thing. Agency is not found on the left or the right. Imagine that Fascism, Communism, Nazism, would seem to share something in common.

All expect it’s followers to following blindly. To be a follower of any of these extremes means that you must give up your "agency". The ultimate of totalitarianism is to have the followers follow without thought.

Agency allows other thoughts to exist. Seperation of Church and State divides those that expect blind obediance from those that choose.

Enter our land and find these words at the base of the Statue of Liberty.


Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

by Emma Lazarus, New York City, 1883

It is a Blue Thursday, or maybe I meant Red

Thursday...............

"Blue Thursday", Black Friday", both seem to have some frequency, as a term of description, as I recall but then I am not sure about "Blue Thursday"? Maybe I just have not given this enough thought? Color does seem to have a mode impact and contribute to labeling events and ideas. Today may yet prove Red, or it could be just Blue? Just Blue sort of proves that it is not as good as Red.

Choice is the real issue. Everyday is one that at some level we have the choice to label or define. I probably will make the choice to finish this blog with something else by the days end.

Maybe.

The clover was green not red this March19th

A Dentist day for me. I guess if ever a blog proves beyond any doubt that it is not going anywhere in the world of literature this one will prove that today. Seems like you never know what is worth reading. Some blogs have in fact been real launch pads for books, articles and so on. A guy in Utah went to Iraq and posted some thoughts on a blog every month or so. Then he came home and still did the same thing. His blog was "black" and he talked a lot about gunfire, weapons, and life in the zone. Hundreds of thousands of people have logged on to read about him. The blog achieved the distinction of having the most visits in some way at one point. I am not sure how so many people found his blog and it also seems surprising that his audience seemed to have grown and grown even though he only writes something about once a month.

http://wordsmithatwar.blog-city.com/

This guy now has a book agent. He was written up in Newsweek or maybe it was "Time". He has been on TV and made several newspaper articles. Guess his thoughts have a broad appeal. You will see, if you click the address I have included, that he does have a great blog layout. I am not fond of black blogs but then he is the successful blogger.

Anyway today for me in my particular chain of events my story is about Green. A brighter Green like you see with the red grid above. Sort of round. Could have been a clover? Probably not.

Often I see Red as a color when I close my eyes. Sometimes Yellow. I just don't recall ever seeing Green after closing my eyes. Sometimes I try to think back about dreams I have had and it is hard to remember a dream's colors? Remembering is different than seeing.

Today with the help of some "gas" from the dentist along with a bunch of shots I relaxed and closed my eyes. As I sat there I saw Green.

There you go. This is it. This is a blog of a Monday experience. I wish I had more for anyone who has read this far today.

I did find it interesting thinking about the dental assistant who when I just mentioned that I was seeing green images she decided to tell me that just yesterday she said she sort of dosed off in her church during a sermon and recalled seeing Green?

What does this mean? Perhaps it is just a omen of St Patrick influence this time of year?

Take two Cherry Phosphates & call me in the morning

It is possible that Paris, New York, El Paso have little in common with a cherry phosphate.

Since the only cherry phosphate I ever experienced was in Pocatello in the late 1950's it may not be fair to wonder which of these other cities would also have had them or if any did then or still might.

Then this is just some random thoughts not necessarily connected, but then who is connected really. Al Gore, is connected now that I recall his video. Today I saw a video on what some real scientists had to say about Global Warming. This was interesting. I figure it may not have a thing to do with cherry phosphates either but it might as well have been about that because what I saw in this video was a 180 degrees from the Al Gore Video. Seems like the inventor of the Internet and former future President thinks that CO2 drives temperature change and the many real scientists non movie stars in the video thinks that it follows. Temperature change heats up the ocean and it gives off CO2 a few hundred years later cause it's a big pot to boil.

I don't feel like this blog today is one of my best but it may only be read by one or two folks who hopefully will take the Gore Challenge and view the new video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831

If you do give it some time. It really does offer hard facts about 10 minutes into it and it is every bit as good as big Al's latest. I just have to admit that I liked Frank Church. I liked the Kennedy's. I seem to get caught up with a bunch of the Democrats and then the Republicans just seem so consistently unable to keep from messing things up. I just don't know what the answer is. Somewhere out there is a Cherry Phosphate waiting. It may just be my job to find it.

on the other hand I did re do a couple of former blogs..............................................

Rust is Beautiful, bald is less prideful than before

No son you will never be bald, he said. but the real question is:

What is Rust? What is Pride. Why do I think of Pride when I look at a lion? What about the Lion. Long distinguished maine. Reminds me of hair. I have to be reminded, as mine is mostly gone and I have to keep it short so I am not really sure if it is gone.

Then Proverbs has some wisdom about Pride or Rust or missing my hair.

Proverbs 16:18 tells us: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before the fall.”

Rust, sort of, has some deeper meaning for, at least the picture of the Truck, if not for ................................. pondering lost hair.

Rust comes when oxygen starts to combine with metal at a atomic level forming a new compound called an oxide. It weakens the bonds of the metal itself.

Water sort of speeds this all up. Water gets into the cracks and exposed metal. Then the hydrogen atoms present in water can combine with other elements to form acids, which will eventually cause more metal to be exposed. If sodium is present, for example from saltwater, then corrosion comes even faster. This all of course weakens the metal, and it becomes brittle and crumbly.

So pride comes before the fall. Pride is like rust to good metal. It makes it into the exposures.
Then too looking back at the lions "mane" I admit that I feel some pride for having once had hair and now realize that may hair has “fallen” mostly.

The good news here is that rust can be very interesting. This truck above is not the truck it once was but "it the truck now that it never was". It has a unique beauty now. Rust is actually a very interesting color. It adds a new life, a new look, and a different perspective to something you thought you new.

All a matter of perspective.

Then too I did get an email from and old friend. I liked his email endings. I have notice that some folks like to end their emails with positive quotes.

Red and white or plain all over.

Red seems to change everything

Red is the national color of Wales, which is where my Great Grandparents on my Fathers side came from. Just this week I saw a lot of pictures of the very house and village where one of them lived.

Something about black and white pictures seem peaceful. Mostly they seem to be about yesterday. On the other hand Red and Black are associated with anarchism, war, and danger, as well as attitude. Sometimes Red seems to be an indication of being liberal. The Liberal party of Canada uses this color.

Color seems to add value if the right colors are picked. Food sold for take-out in white containers do not seem to have the same ‘perceived value” as does food sold in black containers. Plastic utensils in white seem to be of less quality and value as black ones. Put Red on a menu and it presents a higher perceived value. Sometimes it is just a choice but something about Red seems to be powerful.

In the movie, Pleasantville, the characters were at fist look, wholesome and safe, and just what we all would want to escape and be with. After you got to know them a little better then seemed sort of empty. Lacking in much meaningful thought, started to be what the black and white represented. It was interesting to see how different a little time in ”Black and White Land” changed in what one felt as you watch this move. Feeling is what changed. Seemed as though feeling was Red. Red cheeks with a kiss. Red faces with some thought.

We remember the good old days and often it is sort of brought to life with a black and white picture. Perhaps like the movie showed the more you would look into the memory the more it would be lacking. Memory seems to just be a print out of an event. The event is full of choices. The choices were where the value resided.

What about thought, choice, struggle. All Red. What about agency? Nothing safe about making choices. The easy choice is no choice. Seems like for a tempting as a black and white existence might me that we need to have some Red in our lives.

A young dancer, inside, to be specific

I spent some time with some old friends and some time with my grandkids and daughter and Son in Law over the last few days. Guess they all qualify as old friends. I also saw a couple of folks whom I hadn’t seen in 5 years. Great visit. Just a comment about it, they said I hadn’t changed a bit. Then I saw another friend who said the same thing? Guess that is what we tell each other. I wonder how I can have basically no hair and people would say that. Same thing happened at the convention and I mentioned it a couple of blogs back.

Whether we look the same to others or not is probably not really as important as how we look to ourselves. I just see someone a little different in the mirror than I do when I just think about myself. Seems like I have always seen myself different in my own mind so maybe it just isn't age.

These shadows on the wall above are not really that odd. A reflected dancer who is a lot younger. Yep, that is a good way to see oneself.

My grandson asked me what Random Specific meant. I left my blog open one night for a while. He read it. The "one" question he had was about the title of the blog?

Shows how interesting this stuff is. Anyway I told him it was all specific stuff. Just like the deep message here today. Very specific! It is about ones inner self. Self Image. Feeling young. Course it sort of came up as a random idea. Random Specific Thoughts.

Along that line I was thinking about when I was in Athens a few years back and then also about being in Korea and both times I remember seeing a dead duck hanging in a restaurant and also in a small market.

The other night an old friend in Salt Lake took me to a little hole in the wall restaurant. I think the place used to be a hamburger stand. I guess I really have been gone a while since this was a surprise find. Anyway it was a good choice. It was great Chinese food. He wanted to order a “half a duck”. He had seen it hanging as we came it. Didn’t work. It was sold when we ordered. Seems odd that I have not ordered duck like this. Maybe a random thought but it was “Thursday night in Salt Lake”, and it was in part about duck. Then in part it was about a lot of talk and a really great friend. I did stop off on the way home and got a “real” milk shake.

So much for the journal approach...... Hope to find something random to put on here next.

No Nice Clowns, for some reason????

Thoughts about Clowns are a long way from the subject of "Salt of the Earth".


A picture above to show that there are......"No Nice Clowns".

Seems like humor is often at someones expense and so it can be with Clowns.





The blog, before this one, talked about folks who are just "salt of the earth"

Guess we have "salt and pepper". I don't know where the clowns fit into all of this but at times it is hard not to just feel like a clown and that is not always a nice thing.

I just finished attending a trade show and saw a lot of people that I see every 6 months and some that I haven't seen in years. I sometimes wonder how anyone who hasn't seen me in a lot of years would recognize me. Tonight my grand kids created an image of me with a tool on the TV that had some game attached to the TV. When they re created me on the screen this is what they had. Bald head, patch of hair on each side. Sort of sad, it seems to me.



I, not this weird guy in the picture, but me, myself, cut, actually almost shave, my entire head, to avoid that look.

Even so they, the grandkids, I guess can easily draw me and bald the easy part. No old memories for them. Then too at the trade show a guy who hadn't seen be for at least 7 years walked up and said hi and seemed to immediately recognize me? Older, less hair, still me however. I needed to check his name tag before I even started to remember him. So the guy in the picture on the side of this blog sitting by his 55 chev seems like he has no connection to the one looking at this screen who has a round head, little hair, almost shaved really, and yet maybe he is still recognizable to some.

Literature is a good place to spend some time during your life, when things change, or for that matter all along. Things have changed of course. Reading works into this because what reading is, in some ways, is the desire to be different and the desire to be elsewhere, or maybe even looked different. It seems to be that when we read, and for that matter the more we read, the benefits are very solitary, specifically for ourself. Someone else doesn't see what you take from the experience of reading.


Even so my blog today reflects perhaps how we look as we get older as much as how we feel. I hate to even use the word older because it is a self fulling word. Apply it to yourself and "presto" your indeed older.


A man named Moliere was known for a play and this poem is one from that play. It sort of sums up the blog today..........................


Sir, these are delicate matters,; we all desire


To be told that we've the true poetic fire.


But once, to one whose name I shall not mention,


I said, regarding some verse of his invention,


That gentleman should rigorously control


That itch to write which often afflicts the soul;


That one should curb the heady inclination


To publicize one's little avocation'


And that in showing off one's works of art


One often plays a very clownish part.

The real salt with savour can be found in surprising places

Listening can be like reading a book. Words have a lot of character. It is not easy to find authentic differences. The world seems so generic at first glance. Most places look the same. Get on a plane or sit in an airport and the people coming by are all different yet all the same.

I listened close yesterday to a group of people I sat with. One from New York, one from Baltimore, another a “New York original” now from Phoenix. Others too. All familiar with what is “still” different about this part of the Eastern Seaboard area.

Words, in some ways define the difference. You can hear it in the tone but even the pronunciation. Riva is river. Jumpa is jumper. Benda is bender (fenda benda). Or, your sister Brenda is really Brender. Others: How awe Ya, Good sense of Yuma, New Yawk. Standing on the cawna (corner)………………..

People being themselves compared to folks just fitting in. Odd subject perhaps for a day on the plane and some time with people from all over the country?

What I like about New York is the differences that are there. I remember people I have known who came through the port to get into this country originally. An old man I knew had sent a small contribution to help fund the Statue of Liberty in remembrance for years. His son continued the tradition

The Statue of Liberty has a plaque at the base that comes from a poem. “The New Colossus” by and American poet, Emma Lazarus makes the Statue seem to talk.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore
Send these, the homeless, tempest –tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.


I remember last year a congresswoman came to speak at our business. Another woman who was with the associated press flew in to be there. I stood by the reporter from New York. She seemed more interested in asking me about how I felt about immigration than she did in listening to the speech. I guess for some the "lamp is no longer by the door".
Then too I wonder who the real salt of the earth is. I have known so many people over the years from Southeastern Idaho. Some stayed, most left. I find that those folks I know and remember as I write this are indeed “Salt of the Earth”.

Interpreting Influence at the Fiery Show

Mother ships. Many things lead back to the Mother Ship. Interesting marketing principle. Being tempted to talk about marketing, I may just pause here to say something less "business", but at it's core still what I like about business. It also is what I like about the Fiery Food show.

Aesthetic value is by definition engendered by an interaction between artists, and influencing that is always an interpretation".

Each year for 3 years we have gone to the “Fiery Foods Show”. This seems to be a very successful show and has been held in Albuquerque for many years. Kathy takes her camera. I on the other hand would make Jeff proud as I took in the show yesterday. You see he does this very well and added a unique approach to this approach in a recent trip to Disneyland this year.

I stopped and visited at most of the booths and asked a lot of questions. Where the business was based. What caused them to get started and how the show performed for them? (People whom comet to this show really like it by the way. It works for them) I really like to hear the stories and especially enjoy talking to the owners. Especially to the ones who are so excited about their businesses. In spite of the fact that this is a “public blog” I am going to reveal a “secret” shared with me at this show. I realize that I might be revealing away a secret to millions, but then I, at best, average 5 or 10 hits a day here and sometimes 5 or so are from another country and the odds of many people having read what may be a dozen lines or so to find this secret at slim. The one person who might use the secret will indeed read to this point.

So the big buy from “Peppers. COM” comes up to us at the show as we stop by the booth. He saw my badge and could see that I was with a distributing company so I looked like a good customer. (We go to this show during the trade show portion and it really makes it fun since the crowds are a lot less) Changing the subject here a bit: if you read Kathy’s blog then for sure look at yesterday because her picture grouping of this show is suburb, as usual.

The big guy and I talked for a while. I complimented him on the name “Peppers.com” I suggested that the statement on the sign, “largest seller of pepper products or something like that in the world”, just may have something to do with the name “Peppers.com”. He said of course. They got the name for themselves years ago. Then he told me a secret of which I am about to disclose here. This may seem like I am just kidding about this but the truth is it is a pretty basic idea that I found pretty interesting to think about. Then again we both thought a lot about hot things for a long time yesterday because the “heat” left the show with us. Love the heat. Love the colors.

So. He told me that they had 179 different sites all tied into their base site. Segment marketing. Focus sites. Pushing specific approaches to reach specific customers would be my take on this approach. He told me of some of the sites. I don’t recall the names. Perhaps something like “Chile’s for Women who watch Desperate Women. COM”. “Hot Habaneras Sauce for Bald guys over 60.com”. Another one and the list is long, “Especially hot BBQ for Disneyland Workers and impersonators who like to eat BBQ watching the Super Bowl. COM”.

Maybe the key would not be so much the segment as in these insightful segment .com ideas. Maybe it would be in part just capturing something that leads to peppers or hot foods. A site that said, “Hot Food. COM” (this one might be their I will have to check) would expand the base.

I like the idea of the sub sites leading to the mother site. It is mom who has the kids. Us dads know this.

So the secret is there. You could expand the base of your “special product” by expanding the ways to get to the “mother site”.

Perhaps today is a flagship day for my blog. I have not mentioned books. I have not ignored the subject of business in which I have spent my entire career. It seems as though our outing to the Fiery Food show and my chat with the big guy just made it impossible to ignore a lot of what I love about business. Hate to get caught saying this but what are the real odds that this will be read.

Then again I saw artists to day and they influenced me

did I mention that the first picture is one I actually took myself. Looking east over the Sandia moutains. I knew I would need to take a special picuture since we have talented photographers here in the house so one night late I took this picture. Or, maybe I was dreaming it.