The Good, The Heroic, The Enjoyable, The Inspiring and the Beautiful in Man and Life Thread

[John Locke]

Given the general malevolent view of man many view the world through these days I'm not expecting much play in this thread. But who knows.

I have little interest in being miserable so I look for and thoroughly enjoy things like these 2 books from 2 longtime friends.

I enjoy movies of the same nature and more.

BTW the way, they are both atheists and share my philosophic and benevolent view of man and his potential for greatness and a benevolent existence in which we live that has not stacked the deck against us.

Andrew Bersnstein

Andrew Bernstein - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

View: https://www.amazon.com/Heroes-Legends-Champions-Heroism-Matters/dp/1946928240


"Here are several of many excellent blurbs I have received for "Heroes, Legends, Champions: Why Heroism Matters."

I can't fit them all on the back cover--but I will try to fit these five. But I will use all of the blurbs in the many forms of advertising planned for this important book. Getting close to pub date. Hopefully February.

"Professor Bernstein has crowned his majestic body of work with another dazzling gem! If heroism is indeed the dauntless pursuit of life-enhancing values, then this is a work of heroic dimensions." James Valliant, J.D., Co-Author, "Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity"

"Andrew Bernstein's philosophic justification of heroism will hopefully go a long way to neutralize the damage caused by decades of moral relativism and to re-affirm the human quest for dauntless pursuit of significant life-advancing goals." Nora Dimitrova Clinton, Ph.D., President, American Research Center in Bulgaria.

"If heroism is in need of a hero, it has found one in Andrew Bernstein." Robert Miller, Ph.D., Chair, Division of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Mount Saint Mary College

"As Andrew Bernstein eloquently explains, it's the heroic, not the ordinary, to whom civilization owes the greater credit. Heroes deserve so much more appreciation and emulation than they typically get." Lawrence W. Reed, President Emeritus, Foundation for Economic Education, Author, "Real Heroes: Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction"

"If you are not already a hero worshiper, you will be by the end of this vitally needed book." Robert White, Ph.D., Dean of Faculty, American University of Bulgaria, Author, "The Moral Case For Profit Maximization""

 

[John Locke]

Alexandra York

I'm sharing her lengthy bio as well, quite a woman and incredibly wonderful who has a summer compound near me in Vermont.




View: https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Celebrations-Spiritual-Snacks-Alexandra/dp/1951510976


Alexandra York Follow AUTHOR STATEMENT: "I am a Rational Romantic intent on championing and merging beauty and reason. I write both fiction and nonfiction to enrich, enlighten,and inspire. I am determined to confront the cynical concepts of the sensationalist, nihilistic, popular anti-culture in which we now live and encourage a path of self-created distinctiveness, integrity, and pursuit of excellence.

My novels fall under the broad category of Romantic-Suspense, but they are based in serious ideas with no escapism, fantasy, or wishful dreaming to waste the brain. My fiction goals are an integral part of my larger mission to contribute directly and indirectly to individual and cultural enrichment through the power of art by dramatizing high ideals that can be actualized in real life. Whether celebrating love and joy or empathizing with loss and pain, my themes intend to be both romantically suspenseful and contemplatively motivational. I want to inspire readers to find personal pleasure and meaning in my work by introducing them to fascinating but believable characters, by visiting exotic locales, and by offering moral and value selections that may enhance their own lives.

My nonfiction focuses on the arts and the culture at large, mining history to bring golden nuggets of universal truths to fresh, modern light in order to help meet and greet today's contemporary challenges." Here's a book signing interview:

FORMAL BIO: Internationally published author Alexandra York presently draws from her multi-faceted background to focus on fiction and writing and lecturing on the arts and the culture. Her debut novel CROSSPOINTS A Novel of Choice received praise from The Wall Street Journal, V Magazine for Women, and Laissez Faire Book Club among many others; it has been translated into world-wide Russian and Spanish. Her second novel, THE INNOCENT, was released in paperback and on Kindle in 2015, and her third, ADAMAS, in 2016. She has a regular Art and Culture column on NewsMax.com, and her monograph LYING AS A WAY OF LIFE: Corruption and Collectivism Come of Age in America was launched as of May 1, 2016. She is founding president of American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART), a NYC-based 501 (C) (3) nonprofit educational foundation devoted to a rebirth of beauty and life-affirming values in all of the fine arts; www.ART-21.org In addition to authoring six nonfiction books, Alexandra has also been published in magazine and newspaper articles, book and movie reviews, and poetry. In other media, she both wrote and performed a bi-weekly feature on WPIX-TV Channel 11 Evening News in New York and wrote and hosted two different talk shows that tracked the contemporary performing arts for CBS Radio Network. As an author, she has been a guest on many major talk shows, including "Today," "Larry King Live," "To Tell the Truth," "AM New York," "AM Los Angeles," "AM Philadelphia," "Wake-Up Houston," ABC's "Eyewitness News," and hundreds of local and syndicated radio shows. As a performer, she appeared (along with stage and film work) as principal actress in dozens of TV and radio commercials in America and Europe, culminating that aspect of her career in a year-long tour of the U.S. as an exclusive TV spokeswoman for Clairol,Inc. In person, she has lectured extensively at Town Hall Celebrity Series, private organizations, corporations, universities, and exclusive cruise ships. Alexandra is published in England, Australia, Mexico, South America, Russia, and Spain, as well as the United States and Canada. Aside from her nonfiction books (Book-of-the-Month Club, Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, Van Nostrand, Ballantine and Berkley-Jove), her work has also appeared in publications as varied as Reader's Digest (Domestic and International), Vital Speeches, The New York Times, USA Today, Vogue, New Woman, Chronicles, The Humanist, The Intellectual Activist, Reason, American Arts Quarterly, American Artist, and Confrontation Literary Journal.

She was for six years the Editor for ART Ideas, a quarterly arts and culture magazine published by her nonprofit foundation American Renaissance for the Twenty-first Century (ART). She was also a national award-winning Editor for Best Roll-Royce magazine, The Atlantic Lady.

Alexandra received the 1997 Whiting Memorial Award for "outstanding and continued contribution to the advancement of society" from the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry. She serves on the Advisory Council for The Florence Academy of Arts in Italy, the Advisory Board for Art Renewal Center(ARC) and the Policy Advisory Board for Heartland Institute in America. She is listed in Who's Who of American Women and Who's Who in America and with her husband Barrett Randell divides her time between bustling New York City, historic Bucks County, PA, and the contemplative mountains of Vermont.

 

[ParanoidPatriot]

Need this to be translated to Maine subtitles.

 

[BostonTim]

Need this to be translated to Maine subtitles.

Can't get there from heah

 

[John Locke]

Can't get there from heah

Thank you. I drew a blank on how to speak New England Redneck. Which is actually very strange cuz I'm surrounded by em here in the Lakes Region.

Somehow I never picked up the accent, tone nor ability to speak it fluently. I can understand it, but they must have structurally different tongues cuz mine just can't form the words properly.

I just remembered, I don't have a Boston accent either and just like above I can understand the language but just can't speak it.

Go figure.

I'm a failed New Englander.

 

[John Locke]

THE BEAUTY OF LIFE AND LIVING....

We live in an earthy world, as human beings. We live with a capacity to observe and know, discover and expand our vision... How strange, is it not?

To see a tree, and to feel and also sense that tree, to see more than that tree, the treeness... What language then that tree could speak for our human ears to listen.... We listen, see , touch...with a sensation that is strange, utterly human... They call it Divine!! But ah!! That is fully human!!

That feeling you get, that overwhelming feeling of your own existence, when looking up at the blue sky or the night sky filled with stars... that expanse you feel that is so magical...why? Because you see with human eyes and the whole meaning contained in that sight...otherwise it wold be an animal sensation..

Humans are not animals literally ...they are beings that can hold a view, a vision, a sensation of deep meaning and hold it, feel it, sense it...and also do something with it, create the new...that is inseparably contained in that same seeing eyes..they called it the "third eye" ...But they are your natural, inner eyes!!

When you see other human beings you see, that deep nature whatever..good/bad/ugly..but you SEE ...it is metaphysical, rooted in the nature of that being and seeing a thing in itself! And that seeing is the meaning...and the acting and doing..because you cannot keep quiet..you need to act to fulfill..

Sex then is LOVE of that soul mate and giving/receiving, with touching and feeling the whole beings one to one!

You can well imagine why we scream, and are wonder struck each night with our love in our arms, That is human, divine sex, they call it Tantra, or whatever...Butgit is simply our human right, natural...and our very breath..

That is why we become screwy when denied, and most are denied...because of self blindness....a blindness of the spiritual connection and bond between souls and body.

Aristotle spoke of 2 souls in 1 body and he wasn't referring to sex, he was referring to the most wonderful bond between soulmates, can be deep friends, lover..the most ecstatic and most divine moments in a human life live here.

That is why all the adultery, all the seeking, all that mystery that haunts us. We split our unified being in 2, the soul and the body. But it is simply and most brilliantly human sense and sensation!!

The work we do...we see, and then we see so many things that we can do to create something concrete that was never before in existence. That is why man made technology seriously stops my breath. It is pure ecstasy to simply look at the concrete and see how that divinity...brought it to concrete reality....Man seems to want to only see..and sight is far more then sense perception, it is fully cognitive and conceptual!!

That is his deep biocentric need, human need, otherwise don't you see --just sleeping, eating, and fornicating is reducing ourselves when we should have taken flight to ecstasy!!

A HUMAN BEING is exactly his reason, his feelings, his sense of the world, his creativity stemming from that..and his resultant ECSTASY!!

How wonderful the human divinity here on earth!!!!

 

[John Locke]

THE BEAUTY OF LIFE AND LIVING....

We live in an earthy world, as human beings. We live with a capacity to observe and know, discover and expand our vision... How strange, is it not?

To see a tree, and to feel and also sense that tree, to see more than that tree, the treeness... What language then that tree could speak for our human ears to listen.... We listen, see , touch...with a sensation that is strange, utterly human... They call it Divine!! But ah!! That is fully human!!

That feeling you get, that overwhelming feeling of your own existence, when looking up at the blue sky or the night sky filled with stars... that expanse you feel that is so magical...why? Because you see with human eyes and the whole meaning contained in that sight...otherwise it wold be an animal sensation..

Humans are not animals literally ...they are beings that can hold a view, a vision, a sensation of deep meaning and hold it, feel it, sense it...and also do something with it, create the new...that is inseparably contained in that same seeing eyes..they called it the "third eye" ...But they are your natural, inner eyes!!

When you see other human beings you see, that deep nature whatever..good/bad/ugly..but you SEE ...it is metaphysical, rooted in the nature of that being and seeing a thing in itself! And that seeing is the meaning...and the acting and doing..because you cannot keep quiet..you need to act to fulfill..

Sex then is LOVE of that soul mate and giving/receiving, with touching and feeling the whole beings one to one!

You can well imagine why we scream, and are wonder struck each night with our love in our arms, That is human, divine sex, they call it Tantra, or whatever...Butgit is simply our human right, natural...and our very breath..

That is why we become screwy when denied, and most are denied...because of self blindness....a blindness of the spiritual connection and bond between souls and body.

Aristotle spoke of 2 souls in 1 body and he wasn't referring to sex, he was referring to the most wonderful bond between soulmates, can be deep friends, lover..the most ecstatic and most divine moments in a human life live here.

That is why all the adultery, all the seeking, all that mystery that haunts us. We split our unified in 2, the soul and the body. But it is simply and most brilliantly human sense and sensation!!

The work we do...we see, and then we see so many things that we can do to create something concrete that was never before in existence. That is why man made technology seriously stops my breath. It is pure ecstasy to simply look at the concrete and see how that divinity...brought it to concrete reality....Man seems to want to only see..and sight is far more then sense perception, it is fully cognitive and conceptual!!

That is his deep biocentric need, human need, otherwise don't you see --just sleeping, eating, and fornicating is reducing ourselves when we should have taken flight to ecstasy!!

A HUMAN BEING is exactly his reason, his feelings, his sense of the world, his creativity stemming from that..and his resultant ECSTASY!!

How wonderful the human divinity here on earth!!!!

Feel like translating this one @BostonTim? You seem to speak the native language more fluently.

My guess is some will find non sequitars, even maybe contradictions, there are none.

 

[John Locke]

It's beginning to snow here in NH.

I always love it when it snows.

In a heavy snow the noise of the word grows muffled, almost silent and in the country if you step outside especially at night the world has gone still.

The first snow is aways magical to me.

“. . . 𝑎𝑙𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑠𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑏𝑖𝑟𝑑𝑠
𝑠𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑖𝑠 𝑓𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ,
𝑒𝑎𝑐ℎ 𝑓𝑙𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑦 𝑚𝑜𝑢𝑡ℎ
𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑑,
𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒,
𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠
𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑡 𝑏𝑎𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑎𝑖𝑟,
𝑎𝑠 𝑖𝑡 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑟𝑙𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛."

‐‐ Mary Oliver (American, 1935-2019), from “Winter Trees” in 𝙏𝙬𝙚𝙡𝙫𝙚 𝙈𝙤𝙤𝙣𝙨 (Little Brown & Co, August 30, 1979)

 

[TipRoast]

Yo-Yo Ma Is Finding His Way Back to Nature Through Music

This superstar cellist’s latest project, which has taken him to America’s national parks, aims to newly understand our place in the world.

www.nytimes.com

Yo-Yo Ma: “There are wonderful people everywhere, and I want to meet them.”

 

[John Locke]

Yo-Yo Ma Is Finding His Way Back to Nature Through Music

This superstar cellist’s latest project, which has taken him to America’s national parks, aims to newly understand our place in the world.

www.nytimes.com

Yo-Yo Ma: “There are wonderful people everywhere, and I want to meet them.”

Thank you for a wonderful addition to this thread Tip.

It's perfect and much needed.

I read it listening to this. Welcome tears and a warm heart.


View: https://youtu.be/a1QzMNM94-s

 

[John Locke]

From my wonderful, very longtime, older writer friend Ken West, just now.

"Ten Things I Learned about Life so Far

1. Having a loving partner in life is a huge source of happiness.

2. Memories, both good and bad, are a precious resource. This is especially true if you’re a writer. They are material to work with.

3. Pets are a major source of happiness.

4. Always seek work that fits your personality and interests. If you’re not in a perfect job, find a niche for yourself where you can shine.

5. Don’t beat yourself up for mistakes. Instead, learn what not to do.

6. Realize that your life span—the time you have available for living—is limited. It will end someday. Treat your time as a most valuable commodity, not to be squandered.

7. Do the work you love. If you haven’t found it yet, do everything in your power daily to discover it and achieve it.

8. Read and/or listen to the great thinkers, past and present. See what they have to say, but don’t take anything on faith. Test it in your own life.

9. Always seek the best in people, places, and things of this world.

10. Choose to be happy."

-

 

[John Locke]

A friend Quent Cordair.

No Sea Was Ever Sailed

No sea was ever sailed
By fear of drowning in the deep.
No bridge was ever built
By huddled souls in castle’s keep.
No cloud slipped ’neath the wing
Of one who dared not leave the ground.
No daunting height was scaled
Without a test of holds unsound.

No barn was ever raised
By hands that wouldn’t plant in spring.
No city skyline drawn
By those whose vision wouldn’t sing.
No rocket ship was launched
Without a dream to touch the stars.
No man stood on the Moon
Who didn’t long to land on Mars.

No writer wrote a wonder
Without braving the first line.
No sculptor carved a marvel
But for craving sight divine.
No dancers spun a ballroom
Before graceless learning turns.
No masterwork was painted
By a critic’s clucks and burns.

No cure was finally bottled
Without trials that failed to save.
No bulb illumed the night
Of those who never left the cave.
No gear turned fine and smoothly
Till the first rough models broke.
No wheel turned light and quickly
Till a rebel carved a spoke.

No friendship grew and strengthened
Without hearts opened to hurt.
No neighbor’s warmth was nurtured
With responses cold and curt.
No lovers’ cove was treasured
More than after storms astern.
No passion’s flame rekindled
But for bringing fuel to burn.

No man was free a master
Till his mind was unenslaved.
No people shed a tyrant
Till they faced him unafraid.
No peace was long in lasting
When unanswered went the call.
No justice served for any
When no one would stand for all.

No life is fully lived
In pallid dread of pending death.
No fear is faced and conquered
Till accepted with deep breath.
No step into this world
Is ever taken until willed.
When last your eyes have closed
May they’ve seen a life fulfilled.

~ Quent Cordair, Copyright 2020

Signed prints of "No Sea Was Ever Sailed" are now available.