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Favorite items:
Books
Movies
Music
MOST EXCELLENT READING
Fiction:
The River Why -- David James Duncan, fishing family saga
Time and Again -- Jack Finney, 1880 Dakota time travel
Floatplane Notebooks -- Clyde Edgerton, family chronicle
A River Sutra -- Gita Mehta, retired and running a retreat
Happy All the Time -- Laurie Colwin, trust fund lives
Prisoner's Dilemma -- Richard Powers, growing up
GoldBug Variations -- Richard Powers, computer-music-biology
Galatea 2.2 -- Richard Powers, artificial intelligence English M.A. test
The Time of Our Singing -- Richard Powers, music and civil rights (passing)
Snow Falling on Cedars -- David Guterson, NW fishing murder trial
The Soloist -- David Salzman, young cellist outcast angst
Iron and Silk -- David Salzman, teaching in Japan
The Laughing Sutra -- David Salzman, scroll search with Monkey
Lost In Place -- David Salzman, autobiography/kung fu
A Lesson Before Dying -- Ernest J. Gaines, young black death row inmate
36 Views of Mt. Fuji -- Cathy Davidson, ESL teacher in Japan
Candide -- Voltaire, sarcastic quest with fate
Crossing to Safety -- Wallace Stegner, two couples suffer through
The Toughest Indian in the World -- Sherman Alexie, Native American trials and tribulations
The Emperor of Ocean Park -- Stephen L. Carter, mystery involving Darker Nation law professor
Lecturer's Tale -- James Hynes, sarcastic look at university (English department)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog -- Muriel Barbery, concierge and child in Parisian apartment
Starboard Sea -- Amber Dermont, confused young (spoiled) sailor at private school
Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown -- Michael Cunningham, beautiful contemplation of Provincetown
John Irving -- all books
A Gentleman in Moscow -- Amor Towles, restricted to the Metropol hotel; a life uncommon
Essays:
E.B. White, Essays of ...
Michael Dorris, Paper Trail
Working Men
David Updike, Out of the Marsh
Poetry:
Pushkin
Kipling
Derek Walcott -- white egrets
Dean Young -- bender
Nature:
The Snow Leopard -- Peter Mathiessen
Table of Contents -- John McPhee
River Teeth -- David James Duncan
Philosophy:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -- Robert Pirsig
Ishmael -- Daniel Quinn
Stalking the Wild Pendulum -- Itzhak Bentor
Walden Two -- B.F. Skinner
Sophie's World -- Jostein Gaarder
First You Have to Row A Little Boat -- Richard Bode
Chronicles of Tao -- Deng Ming-Dao
Many Lives, Many Masters -- Brian Weiss
Sees Behind Trees -- Michael Dorris
Surfing the Himalayas -- Frederick Lenz
Celestine Prophecy -- James Redfield
Upanishads
Saltwater Buddha -- Jaimal Yogis
Christopher Hitchens -- anything
Richard Dawkins -- anything
Non-Fiction:
The Good Rain -- Timothy Egan, history of NW, USA
Out Here -- Andrew Ward, family in NW, USA
Surviving the Savage Sea -- Dougal Robertson, shipwreck survival
Piano Lessons -- Noah Adams
Under the Tuscan Sun -- Frances Mayes, restoring an Italian villa
Lunar Men -- Jenny Uglow, Erasmus Darwin and friends: notes and life
The Making of a Chef -- Michael Ruhlman, Culinary Institute experience
Piano Shop on the Left Bank: the hidden world of a Paris atelier -- T.E. Carhart
Educating Alice -- Alice Steinbach, various travel experiences
French Revolutions -- Tim Moore, biking the Tour de France route
How We Decide -- Jonah Lehrer, reason and emotion (overwhelming beyond 7 ideas)
The Tipping Point -- Malcolm Gladwell, types of behaviors, and ways to persuade
Down to a Soundless Sea -- Thomas Steinbeck, coastal life
The Season of Open Water -- Dawn Clfton Tripp, split family loyalties in tough coastal times
Wooden Boats -- Michael Ruhlman, the building of Joel White's last boat
The Secret Life of the Seine -- Mort Rosenblum, barging along the Seine
A Forgiving Wind : on becoming a sailor -- Fred Powledge, learning to sail
Wanderer -- Sterling Hayden, actor runs off to the Pacific islands
Criusing At Last -- Elliott Merrick, cruising around LI Sound
The Coast of Summer -- Anthony Bailey, cruising along LI Sound
A Splendid Madness -- Thomas Froncek, learning to sail on the upper Hudson River
With Reckless Abandon -- Captain Jim Sharp, owning a fleet of Maine windjammers
The Journals of Constant Waterman -- Matthew Goldman, musings on CT canoe and LI Sound sailing
Sloop -- Daniel Robb, restoring a family Herreshoff 12 1/2
Stars to Windward -- Doug Hood, cruise from Canada to Caribbean and back
Humor:
Little League Confidential -- Bill Geist
Tom Robbins: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Another Roadside Attraction, Half Asleep in Frogs Pajamas, Skinny Legs and All That
Stephen Leacock (suggested by Groucho Marx)
FINE FILMS:
Razor's Edge (both versions)
Wings of Desire
Bringing Up Baby
Philadelphia Story
Sleeper
Fantasia
Earth Girls Are Easy
The Rutles
Stop Making Sense
Zorro: the Gay Blade
Shakespeare in Love
The Quiet Man
Harvey
The Swan
Just a Kiss
Das Boot
When Harry Met Sally
Dead Poet's Society
Roxanne
Cousins
Cinema Paradiso
Swimming to Cambodia
Lost Horizon
My Mother's Castle
Manon of the Spring
Defending Your Life
Vincent and Theo
He Said/She Said
Avalon
Queens Logic
Warren Miller ski flix
Thelma and Louise
The Dresser
Fanny and Alexander
Field of Dreams
Hunt for Red October
Dog Day Afternoon
Shawshank Redemption
Joy Luck Club
Major League
A Fish Called Wanda
Man Without A Face
IQ
While You Were Sleeping
Big Night
Waking Ned Devine
Mystic, Alaska
October Sky
A.I.
Station Agent
Today's Special
Fair Game
Moonrise Kingdom
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
A Good Year
The Other One
Our Souls At Night
MUSIC:
Popular-
Laurie Anderson
Beatles
Bill Nelson (BeBop Deluxe)
David Bromberg
James Brown
Norton Buffalo
Jimmy Buffett
Leonard Cohen
Marc Cohn
Elvis Costello
Counting Crows
Crowded House/Neil Finn
The Doors
Peter Gabriel
David Gilmour/Pink Floyd
Grateful Dead
Dan Hubbard
Joe Jackson
James
Rickie Lee Jones
k.d. lang
Gordon Lightfoot
Little Feat
Little Village
Lyle Lovett
Mana
John Mayer
Sarah McLachlan
Ralph McTell
George Michael
Van Morrison
Phil Ochs
Pink Floyd
Prince (The Artist ...)
John Prine
Bonnie Raitt
Rolling Stones
Sade
Santana
Paul Simon
Sting
the subdudes
10cc
Tears for Fears
Tuck and Patti
Uncle Bonsai
Loudon Wainwright
Tom Waits
Sammy Walker
Steve Winwood
Stevie Wonder
Jesse Colin Young
Neil Young
Frank Zappa
***
Strong albums:
Dylan - blood on the tracks
Stones- sticky fingers
Laurie Anderson - strange angels
Beatles - abbey road
Jackson Browne - late for the sky
Leonard Cohen - the future
Phil Collins - face value
Elvis Costello - my aim is true
Counting Crows - august and everything after
Crowded House - woodface
Melissa Ethridge
Peter Gabriel - us
Art Garfunkel - garfunkel
Joe Jackson - night and day
James - laid
Billy Joel - songs in the attic
Rickie Lee Jones
Huey Lewis - time flies
Lyle Lovett - (and Pontiac)
Madonna - true blue
Bob Marley - legend
Paul McCartney - all the best
Sarah McLachlan - fumbling toward
George Michael - faith
Joni Mitchell - court and spark
Van Morrison - moondance
Bonnie Raitt - sweet forgiveness
Robbie Robertson - (and Contact)
Sade - lovers rock and love deluxe
Seal
Simon & Garfunkel - concert in central park
Paul Simon - hearts and bones
Bruce Springsteen - greetings from asbury park
Sting - dream of the blue turtles
Talking Heads - stop making sense
10cc - sheet music
U2 - achtung baby
Loudon Wainwright - album III
Tom Waits - heart of Saturday night
Jennifer Warnes - famous blue raincoat
Stevie Wonder - conversation peace
Frank Zappa - apostrophe
***
Bach
Beethoven
Brahms
Copland
Dvorak
Mahler
Mozart
Prokofiev
Shostakovich
Telemann
Vaughan Williams
Wagner
Maurice Andre
Emanuel Ax
Nicola Benedetti
Leonard Bernstein
Renee Fleming
Hilary Hahn
Lynn Harrell
YoYo Ma
Peter Serkin
Barry Tuckwell
Frederica von Stade
Jazz-
Sidney Bechet
Art Blakey
John Coltrane
Miles Davis
Johnny Hodges
Stanley Jordan
Charlie Parker
Sarah Vaughan
Lester Young
**********************************
Quotations:
"With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own." -- JFK
"Some men see things as they are, and ask, Why? I dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?" -- RFK
"For all of those whose care has been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die." -- TK
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx
"Language is amber in which a thousand previous and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved." -- Richard Chenevix Trench
"Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade before the public. Never clothes them in vulgar or shoddy attire." -- George W. Crane
"The field of knowledge which even the best of us can master is like an island surrounded by a limitless ocean of mystery. And the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder." -- Ralph W. Sockman
"To read good books is like holding a conversation with the most eminent minds of past centuries and, moreover, a studied conversation in which these authors reveal to us only the best of their thoughts." -- Rene Descartes
"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." -- Christopher Hitchens
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions." -- Blaise Pascal
"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." -- Joseph Conrad
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture of their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me." -- Alexander Pope
"There is no such thing as a minor lapse of integrity" -- Tom Peters
"The only proper intoxication is conversation." -- Oscar Wilde
"As unnecessary as a well is to a village on the banks of a river, so unnecessary are all scriptures to someone who has seen the truth." -- Bhagavad Gita
"A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours." -- Milton Berle
"You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf." -- Jon Kabat-Zinn
"Cowards die many times before their deaths." Julius Caesar Act 2, Scene 2 -- Shakespeare
"You have lost the moment you pick up a gun. When you resort to violence to prove a point, you've just experienced a profound failure of imagination." -- Sherman Alexie (Saint Junior in The Toughest Indian in the World)
People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough.The Shadow of the Wind -- Carlos Ruiz Zafon
"There are many echoes in the world, but only a few voices." -- Goethe
"The goal of life is more than material advance; it is now and through all eternity, the triumph of spirit over matter, of Love and liberty over force and violence. -- Adlai II
"When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself." — Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast)
"I believe everything will be taken from us. Then given back when it’s no longer what we want." -- Dean Young
"Our future ain't what it used to be." -- Yogi Bera
"You must be the change you want to see in the world." -- Mahatma Gandhi
"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." -- George Carlin
"If there's another world, he lives in bliss; If there is none, he made the best of this." Epitaph on William Muir -- Robert Burns
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." -- Henry David Thoreau
"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading." -- Henny Youngman
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein.
What we want is not an exchange of ideas but a mutual tolerance of soliloquies. " -- Adam Gopnik"
A good book is like a woman's dress, "long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting." -- Max Schuster
"... the appalling uselessness of trying to explain anything whatever to anybody whatever." Baudelaire
Don’t be sad that it’s over, smile because it happened. — Vin Scully
"Time on the water is time well spent." -- ?
"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you." -- Mark Stern
Some cause happiness wherever they go, some whenever they go.
Then, the backyard was your world. Now the world is your backyard.
Some folks are wise, and some folks are otherwise.
Don't just wish for peace, work for justice.
Respect our existence or expect our resistance.
Don't pump fake the money shot.
Society values discretion over morality.
When I die, I want the people I did group projects with to lower me into my grave, so they can let me down one last time.
Adversity and pain create the art. ?
The aim of discussion is not victory, but progress.
You don't pray for strength from somewhere else, you find that strength within yourself.
When you have more than you need, build a bigger dinner table rather than a bigger fence.
NRA response: Your "thoughts" should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your "prayers" should be for forgiveness if you do nothing - again. Starting with certainty often leads to doubt, and starting with doubt often leads to certainty.
I can be fast, I can be slow. I can control things, or just let them go. (me)
Stop pretending your racism is patriotism.
Embrace the life you never expected.
Normal is just a setting on the dryer.
Democracy allows for susceptibility to momentary passions. One must form the character of citizens so that they will give their consent to wise leadership and withhold it from fools, bigots, and demagogues. Patriotism must be taught. Statesmanship- a leader's capacity to reconcile principle with circumstance in securing a just result. Leadership as skilled management did not suffice. from Patriotism is not enough. Steven F. Hayward
The physical world is discrete not continuous. Not being, but becoming. Not things, but events.
The cowards never start, and the weak died along the way - that leaves us. (Bill Bowerman, Nike founder)
last revised: February 23, 2021