An excerpt from Maya Angelou’s autobiography, A Song Flung Up to Heaven.

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“The limited success I had stemmed from the fact that I didn’t love doing it.  I would never be great because I would not sacrifice for it.  To be successful and to sustain that success, one must be willing to relinquish many pleasures and postpone many gratifications… I didn’t care enough for my own performance to make other people appreciate it.”

Words from Maya Angelou

“I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.” 

“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”
 

“I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life.”
 

“I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as “making a life.” 

“I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance.” 

“I’ve learned that you should not go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back.”

“I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.”
 

“I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one.”

“I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone.   People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.” 

“I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn.”
 

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 

From WIRED Magazine

One-Woman Pixar's Animated Film Premieres at Tribeca
Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues, which makes its North American premiere Friday at the festival, tells two parallel stories: the ancient Hindu epic the Ramayana and the breakup of Paley's 21st-century marriage.

Link to Article on WIRED

THE POLITICAL BRAIN
The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation
By DREW WESTEN

Review from Public Affairs Books:

The Political Brain is a groundbreaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, shows that the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose.

That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt-and only one Republican has failed in that quest.

In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role.

Newsweek: The Roots of Fear
The evolutionary primacy of the brain's fear circuitry makes it more powerful than reasoning circuits.

Through surveys of voters, lab experiments that simulate voting and, now, brain-imaging studies that pinpoint which regions switch on when people weigh political decisions, a new generation of political psychologists and campaign strategists is refining the understanding of the power of fear. The result is new insights into how voters respond to having their anxieties stoked; how playing to fears and anxieties can affect voters' views on issues seemingly unrelated to those that incite fear; how fear is wielded most effectively as a scalpel rather than a cudgel, and how the power of fear can be squared with the political truism that the candidate who best projects hope tends to win.

Music from Seeqpod

A Book About Living by Ira Byock, M.D.

Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you. 

These four simple statements are powerful tools for improving your relationships and your life.  Even as people confront death (their own or others’), they can reach out to express love, gratitude, and forgiveness. When they do, they consistently find that they, and everyone involved, are transformed.

I have come to understand viscerally that we live every moment on the brink. We are, each one of us, at every moment, a heartbeat away from death. Seen against the backdrop of our certain mortality, our differences are dwarfed by our commonality – and the importance we hold for one another.

I’ve never read Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic but within it’s key lessons, I see the characteristics of the successful people I have worked with… 

Six ways to make people like you

• Smile.
• Be a good listener.
• Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
• Make the other person feel important.
• Remember names.
• Become genuinely interested in other people.

http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/win-friends.html

I chanced upon this PBS journalist and really enjoyed his interviews.  His site describes him this way:

Acclaimed interviewer and broadcast journalist Charlie Rose engages America's best thinkers, writers, politicians, athletes, entertainers, business leaders, scientists and other newsmakers in one-on-one interviews and roundtable discussions.

Click: Charlie Rose interviews on Google Video

I received a small book of pictures and quotes by Jane Seabrook that is introduced this way on its website:

Guaranteed to coax a smile from the grumpiest of grumps, Furry Logic is a little book with a big heart and sly humour. Exquisitely detailed watercolour paintings depict animals caught up in the joy and drudgery of life and are paired with old adages given a new spin for our times.

My favorite quote is “I would be unstoppable; if only I could get started.”  The quotes are written and copyrighted (aggressively) by Ashleigh Brilliant of the UK.  Read more about his Brilliant Thoughts.

Photos by Vitoria Falabella : Flower | Water | Light Bulbs | Doorway

Inverted Circle | Grecian Street |

A review by Nandan Dutta (2006).

A review by Sashi Tharoor in the Washington Post (2005).

From an interview with this noted author…

The central character is a brain surgeon, so I've been going and watching very closely major brain surgery.  I've got a lot more of this fascination with work and its pleasures, the slight abandonment of self that complete immersion in work can bring, the focus. It needn't be work, actually — it could be in a tennis game or cooking a meal — but there's a certain kind of hard-to-describe, selfless elation that comes occasionally with writing, for example, certainly not all the time, but in moments, half hours, two-hour stretches, when you don't even know you exist. You're only doing the thing you're doing and you're not even aware of the clock or what you're going to do next or where you are in the story of your existence.

I was looking for a kind of work that might have to draw on this kind of resource daily, and I decided that surgery would fit the bill. And it's turned out to be absolutely correct. The man I'm shadowing is never happier than when he's operating on someone's brain. He's transported. That's what he lives for, to get back in there.

Full Interview

Neil Diamond Lyrics

http://www.fonerbooks.com/surfing.htm

Leigh - Speaker's Bureau

Virginia Postrel, “Designers of all products and services now must think beyond function and include meaning and pleasure in their designs as a necessary element of their economic value.”

Storyteller: Carmen Deedy

Entertaining thousands of adults and children alike with her ultra energetic and charming style, Carmen Deedy has recounted her tales of growing up Cuban in Decatur, Georgia for over a decade.

Whether sitting on a couch during the day or lying on the bed at bedtime, establish a regular place and time to read with your children.