Keith Emerson - Close to Home

So long, Keith Emerson, you were the best!

Sylvia Plath reads Plath

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson

Call each thing by its right name...

If you're black, white, asian, arabic or whatever I have some advice that will serve you well. Don't be an asshole! Looters and arsonists are assholes. Unfortunately these people overshadow the regular Americans who feel slighted, right or wrong, who want to bring attention to a potential problem. So now I have to endure the endless stories or articles backing up particular individual's contention that all members of a group are the same. Generalizations are the tool of lazy thinkers who are mired in their own obtuseness. At least have the courage to admit to others or even yourself that you don't care too much for an ethnic group as a whole. I know that anyway, but I don't give a shit, you're the one who has to reconcile that with your conscience or your god. So instead of playing passive aggressive head games, hinting at who you really are, try evolving and join the enlightened.

Jethro Tull - Life's A Long Song (video)

Hear 130 Minutes of Charles Bukowski’s Recorded Readings (1968)

Hear 130 Minutes of Charles Bukowski’s Recorded Readings (1968)  

from OPEN CULTURE

Thank You

The term homeless veteran should not exist. They go off and do our country’s dirty work come home get called a hero by people who don’t know the meaning of the word. Praised and thanked then ignored. Then we enact laws in a number of cities to make homelessness illegal where even feeding them is a crime. Talk about kicking people when they’re down. Even with the epidemic of veteran suicides we do nothing. Then we have holidays to honor them falsely so we can sleep at night. Yes, we should honor and thank them, but we as a people can do better than half-hearted salutes. Don’t mean to be a downer but I’ve developed a strong addiction to the truth these days.