Chicago Cub Chris Coghlan

"Staying in the present is hard to do. Nobody does it perfectly--I don't at all. It's a natural tendency for humans to worry and to doubt and to fear and have anxiety about the future. But I think as I've gotten older I've learned to take those thoughts captive and to try to really challenge myself to stay more in te moment of, 'OK, today is what I've been given. I'm going to try to do the best I can do today and not worry about tomorrow.' And then when tomorrow comes do the same thing again."

"That's life, man. It's just the journey--that's what it's about. For me, it's been so much of not getting caught up in what I want to conquer. You just try to enjoy the journey you've been given."

--Chicago Tribune, September 7, 2015

Hummingbird

"Yet by some object ev'ry brain is stirr'd,
The dull may waken to a hummingbird."

Alexander Pope, 1742

Is this an insult to people delighted by hummingbirds, or a testament to the awe in which hummingbirds are held?

Pope Francis on happiness, keys to

"Last year, he was asked about his secret to happiness. He said slow down. Take time off. Live and let live. Don’t proselytize. Work for peace. Work at a job that offers basic human dignity. Don’t hold on to negative feelings. Move calmly through life. Enjoy art, books and playfulness."

NYTimes, Timothy Egan, May 2015

Terry Pratchett

"Of course, Lord Vetinari, Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, would occasionally meet Lady Margolotta, Governess of Uberwald," he wrote in the most recent Discworld book, "Raising Steam" (2013). "Why shouldn't he? After all he also occasionally had meetings with Diamond King of Trolls up near Koom Valley, and indeed with the Low King of the Dwarfs, Rhys Rhysson, in his caverns under Uberwald. This, as everybody knew, was politics. Yes, politics, the secret glue that stopped the world falling into warfare.
"In the past," he continued, "there had been so much war, far too much, but as every schoolboy knew, or at least knew in those days when schoolboys actually read anything more demanding than a crisp packet, not so long ago a truly terrible war, the last war of Koom Valley, had almost happened, out of which the dwarfs and trolls had managed to achieve not exactly peace, but an understanding from which, hopefully, peace might evolve. There had been the shaking of hands, important hands, shaken fervently, and so there was hope, hope as fragile as a thought."--New York Times, 3/13/2015

Terry Pratchett, April 18, 1948-March 12, 2015