Warren Bluhm's Blog, page 40

Glad … to be an optimist

I’m so glad … I can see the bright side.

I confess. I’m Pollyanna.

I have done my best to cultivate an inner attitude that it’s going to be all right. I’ve been grateful for that attitude a lot, lately.

It’s a big, scary world with people who seem hell-bent on keeping it scary for as long as possible.

The scariest are the people who believe they’re scaring us for our own good. People with altruistic motives are more likely to do something horrible because they believe they’re act...

Glad … for independent thought

I’m so glad we … have reason and free will.

Moms used to say, “If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?” and that was how we knew we didn’t have to do what everyone else does.

Moms would say things like you have two ears and one mouth and you should use them in that proportion. Or look before you leap. Or if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything (wow, we could sure use THAT mom these days).

Nowadays sometimes it feels like moms are saying, “Jump o...

Glad … for life

It’s all turned around and inside out today.

I usually sit down in my blue chair to journal before dawn, but this has been one of those “everything got away from me” weeks, and so I’m writing these words a couple of hours after sunset, or about 12 hours behind. (Actually, I haven’t been in the chair all week, so maybe I’m a day and a half behind, or more.)

Having a cup of coffee after supper is odd. Red is off to town doing something Christmassy, so the house is as quiet as 6 a.m.

I...

Glad … for music

I’m so glad I … hear the music.

When I was a kid I was obsessed with Top 40 radio, but I also hoarded my dad’s 78 rpm records and fell in love with Artie Shaw’s “Frenesi” and Benny Goodman’s “Sing Sing Sing” and Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse.”

My background music as I type this is Anoushka Shankar, and I seem to write most efficiently to Ahmad Jamal, but Bruce Springsteen and the Beatles and Rachael Price and Jason Mraz have been known to accompany my fingers as they tap along … and of c...

Glad … for words

I’m so glad I … learned to read and write. The world opened.

I learned about shy stegosauruses and buried treasure, superpowered heroes and heroines from other worlds and down the street, and with pencil and paper I created my own world.

Words give us a portal into other minds and souls, times and places. We walk with Thoreau through Walden Woods in 1854, go whale hunting with Melville in 1851, settle into the audience at the Globe Theatre in 1603 to see what story this fellow Shakespe...

Gladness is infectious

What if we spent a day starting every sentence with Im so glad ?

Im so glad I

Im so glad you

Im so glad we

How soon would we run out of things to be glad about? or would we discover, at length, that the supply is endless?

I cant help thinking people would be a lot happier if they were always looking for what makes them glad.

Im so glad I thought of this.

An instrument of Your peace

Apparently St. Francis of Assisi did not write what we know as The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi.

Does it really matter? Its beautiful whoever wrote it.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your...

Top 10 lists of remembered joy

While mindlessly surfing social media the other day, I stumbled across a 10 best TV shows of all time thread. I love lists and so enjoyed wandering through other peoples lists.

Then I decided to give it a whirl. These are the 10 shows I thought of before my brain started thinking shows that I SHOULD put on the list as opposed to the first ones that sprang to mind.

Firefly
Foyles War
Bosch
Breaking Bad
Jericho
Eli Stone
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
X-Files
Hill Street Blues

...

A snooty snob who enjoys the tawdry

I opened my old college textbook The Literature of England at random yesterday morning and found This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Samuel Taylor Coleridges poem composed in his garden under a lime tree while his visiting friends took a walk in the nearby countryside. He had to stay behind, having been sidelined when his wife accidentally spilled boiling milk on his foot. (Ow-ow-ow!)

Before that, I took a brief stab at Troilus and Criseyde, and what a surprise, 45-plus years of not reading...

Shelves of buried treasure

(Written at the end of an enjoyable early-morning hour spent reading old poems, reflecting on the thousands of pages of buried treasure on the shelves in my room, and writing in my journal.)

Ah, the familiar pang of knowing I have but a few minutes left before I must dive into the quotidian. And heres a hungry dog to help me start the transition.

Exploring the piles of treasure is entertaining and instructive. You need to get out more, they say, but, see here, we need to get in more, too....