Guest Book

The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
Disraeli

I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
John Adams to Abigail Adams May 12, 1780

I used to be Snow White…but I drifted.
Mae West

Whatsoever is brought unto thee, take cheerfully.
Ecclesiasticus ii, 4.

The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.
Adolf Hitler

It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by
dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short
again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end
the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, at least fails while
daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who
know neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt

Marriage is a bit of a chess game, except the board is made of flowing water, and the peices are made of smoke.
Jerry Seinfeld

Colleges of the Ivy League:
Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Yale
The Seven Sisters
(An informal term for the female equivalent of the Ivy League Colleges):
Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar, Wellesely

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gave it to.
Dorothy Parker

Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead.
Financial expert Mac McCleary, quoted in the Montreal Gazette

The Twelve Labors of Hercules:
Killing the Nemean Lion
Killing the Hydra of Lerna
Capture the Ceryneian Hind
Capture the Erymanthian Boar
Cleaning the Stables of Augeas
Killing the Stymphalian Birds
Capture the Cretan Bull
Capture the Mares of Diomedes
Acquisition of the Girdle of Hippolyte
Capture the Cattle of Geryon
Acquisition of the Golden Apples of the Hesperides
Capture Cerberus in the Underworld

Old age is like climbing a mountain. The higher you get, the more tired and breathless you become, but your view becomes much more extensive.
Ingmar Bergman

Reindeer:
Dasher
Dancer
Prancer
Vixen
Comet
Cupid
Donner (or Donder)
Blitzen
(Rudolph)

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Management expert Peter Drucker

I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde

Timeline: 12:40h March 04, 2014.

I live in Westchester, and work in New Jersey. Cross over on the Tappan Zee Bridge; it’s a 45-minute commute on a good day. On a bad day it could be anything at all…
To help pass the time, and because along with my wife and my daughter my best Friend in this whole wide world is still my Mom, and because she always, always has my back and always, always will, and because I love her more than any mere words will ever be able to describe, I call my Mom on my way home from work every day. OK, almost every day; four out of five, at the very least.
Over the years it’s become a nice, comfortable routine for both of us. I know I enjoy it. I’m pretty sure she enjoys it too…at least, I think she does…well, she picks up the phone every time…
Most conversations, I just tell her about my day, and she tells me about hers. It’s pretty standard stuff, as I have the most boring job in the world, and she doesn’t get out much these days; she suffers from macular degeneration, and is virtually housebound. Some days we bore each other to tears. But sometimes I learn something about her that takes my breath away.
She told me this story recently…
She was 19 years old; it was 1946. Going to college was not an American birthright back then, as it is now. She was living with her Mom and Dad in Brooklyn, a young professional, commuting back and forth to her secretarial job in a small Manhattan law office. Things were looking up: the war was over (just); she had a steady job in the big city, she was young and pretty and able to buy herself some nice clothes for the first time in her life.
One day her father took sick. He rarely took sick, and she could not remember him ever missing a day of work before. But on this day he had to stay home in bed. He worked in downtown Manhattan, and he asked my Mom if she could stop by his office on her way home and pick up his paycheck for him. My Mom was only too happy to oblige; she wrote down his work address.
As she rode the subway that afternoon, my Mom realized she didn’t know much about what her father did for a living. She knew he was in the garment industry, and that he made men’s suits, and that his office was downtown…and that was about it.
She found the address he had given her, and made her way up the stairs, up and up, and up. There was the number on the heavy metal door, and she knocked, and knocked again. No response. She pushed open the door and “wham!” The heat and noise and stench were like a slap in her face. All at once, much too late, my mom realized where her father went every day, all day, for the nineteen years of her young life: the proverbial sweatshop, of the very worst variety. She peered around, shouted over the din, and finally found someone in charge, who pointed out her father’s sewing table. There was the envelope with ‘Harry’ scrawled on it. She picked it up and hurried out, holding her breath the whole time. She hopped on the next train back to Brooklyn.
When she arrived home she walked in to her father’s room and burst into tears.
“What is it sweetheart? Did you get lost?”
“No.”
“Did they not give you my pay?”
“Yes, Father, they gave it to me.”
“Then what is wrong, my Love? Why do you cry so?”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me where you worked?!?”
My Grandfather smiled and said: “Do not weep, Little-one. Didn’t you notice where my table is? It is the very best table in the whole shop, the very best: I can see out of the window.”

Among the Gauls men would lend money to be repaid in the next world, and, we need not add, that no Christian people have yet reached that sublime height of faith.
Ignatius Donnelley, Atlantis