Blue Sky

  

Ben Webster meets Oscar Peterson (Hannover, 1972)

  

Ben Webster meets Oscar Peterson (Hannover, 1972)

No copyright infringement intended, I do not take credit for
this video.

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Music

Music in this video

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Song

I got it bad and that ain't good

Artist

Ben Webster & The Oscar Peterson Trio

Album

Live In Hannover

Writers

Paul Francis Webster, Duke Ellington

Licensed to YouTube by

The Orchard Music (on behalf of Gambit Records); SOLAR Music Rights Management, Warner Chappell, UNIAO BRASILEIRA DE EDITORAS DE MUSICA - UBEM, Sony ATV Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, and 5 Music Rights Societies

 

Link: https://youtu.be/q5IaMdhVBFo

Classical music from Iran - Kayhan Kalhor and Ali Bahrami Fard

  

Classical music from Iran

Kayhan Kalhor (shah kaman)
Ali Bahrami Fard (bass santûr)

https://youtu.be/qB-5o0iMnPI

Be Happy

Uploaded on Jul 1, 2011

Is happiness a skill? Modern neuroscientific research and the wisdom of ancient contemplative traditions converge in suggesting that happiness is the product of skills that can be enhanced through training and such training exemplifies how transforming the mind can change the brain. 

Kent Berridge, Richie Davidson, and Daniel Gilbert speak at the Aspen Ideas Festival

.

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  • "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" by Dick Hyman (iTunes • eMusic)

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Link: https://youtu.be/MDTi2_PHiiM

Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen Credit Dominique Issermann

  Leonard Cohen: Darkness and Praise

By LEON WIESELTIER 
 NOV. 14, 2016 

The email from the boy began: “Did anything inspire you to create Hallelujah?"

Later that same winter day the reply arrived: 
“I wanted to stand with those who clearly see God’s holy broken world for what it is, and still find the courage or the heart to praise it. You don’t always get what you want. You’re not always up for the challenge. But in this case — it was given to me. For which I am deeply grateful.”

The question came from the author's son, who was preparing to present the hymn to his fifth-grade class. The boy required a clarification about its meaning. The answer came from the author of the song, Leonard Cohen.

Cohen lived in a weather of wisdom, which he created by seeking it rather than by finding it. He swam in beauty, because in its transience he aspired to discern a glimpse of eternity.
There was always a trace of philosophy in his sensuality.
He managed to combine a sense of absurdity with a sense of significance, a genuine feat.
He was a friend of melancholy but an enemy of gloom, and a renegade enamored of tradition.

Leonard was, above all, in his music and in his poems and in his tone of life, the lyrical advocate of the finite and the flawed.

Leonard sang always as a sinner. He refused to describe sin as a failure or a disqualification. Sin was a condition of life. 

“Even though it all went wrong/ I’ll stand before the Lord of song/ With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!”

The singer’s faults do not expel him from the divine presence. Instead they confer a mortal integrity upon his exclamation of praise. 

He is the inadequate man, the lowly man, the hurt man who has given hurt, insisting modestly but stubbornly upon his right to a sacred exaltation.

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”  

He once told an interviewer that those words were the closest he came to a credo.  

The teaching could not be more plain: fix the crack, lose the light.

  

Here is a passage on frivolity by a great rabbi in Prague at the end of the 16th century:

“Man was born for toil, since his perfection is always being actualized but is never actual,” 
he observed in an essay on frivolity.
“And insofar as he attains perfection, something is missing in him.  In such a being, 
perfection is a shortcoming and a lack.”

Leonard Cohen was the poet laureate of the lack, the psalmist of the privation, who made imperfection gorgeous.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/opinion/my-friend-leonard-cohen-darkness-and-praise.html?ribbon-ad-idx=3&src=trending

Living with a sense of purpose in life

Conclusion:

A sense of purpose in life also gives you this considerable advantage:

"People with a sense of purpose in life have a lower risk of death and cardiovascular disease."

The conclusions come from over 136,000 people who took part in 10 different studies.

Participants in the studies were mostly from the US and Japan.


The US studies asked people:

• how useful they felt to others,
• about their sense of purpose, and
• the meaning they got out of life.

The Japanese studies asked people about ‘ikigai’ or whether their life was worth living.
The participants, whose average age was 67, were tracked for around 7 years.

During that time almost 20,000 died. 
But, amongst those with a strong sense of purpose or high ‘ikigai’, the risk of death was one-fifth lower.

Despite the link between sense of purpose and health being so intuitive, scientists are not sure of the mechanism.

Sense of purpose is likely to improve health by strengthening the body against stress.

It is also likely to be linked to healthier behaviours.

Dr. Alan Rozanski, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Of note, having a strong sense of life purpose has long been postulated to be an important dimension of life, providing people with a sense of vitality motivation and resilience.

Nevertheless, the medical implications of living with a high or low sense of life purpose have only recently caught the attention of investigators.

The current findings are important because they may open up new potential interventions for helping people to promote their health and sense of well-being.”

This research on links between sense of purpose in life and longevity is getting stronger all the time:

• “A 2009 study of 1,238 elderly people found that those with a sense of purpose lived longer.
• A 2010 study of 900 older adults found that those with a greater sense of purpose were much less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
• Survey data often links a sense of purpose in life with increased happiness.

No matter what your age, then, it’s worth thinking about what gives your life meaning.”



Read More:

Find out what kinds of things people say give their lives meaning.

Here’s an exercise for increasing meaningfulness

And a study finding that feeling you belong increases the sense of meaning.

The study was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine (Cohen et al., 2015).




A sense of purpose in life
Link: http://www.spring.org.uk/2015/12/here-is-why-a-sense-of-purpose-in-life-is-important-for-health

Right Attitude

When something of an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.
- Rousseau


Or you learn to work around the obstacle, if it is an incurable disease like M.S. that is ongoing and causes systematically more disability.


It is important to take an attitude of adapting and thriving in spite of the disease.

Leave the cure to the scientists and manage your life with the attitude that you can deal with the problems created by the disease.

You will probably need to give up some activities,like the balance beam (LOL) and other athletic pursuits that require balance, strength or require being on your feet for too long.


Focus on what you can still do and not on what you have lost.

Shelburne Cop-Stop Controversy Goes Globalrod maciver

Shelburne Cop-Stop Controversy Goes Global With Coverage by CNN, HuffPo and Japan's Fuji TV


POSTED BY KEN PICARD ON AUGUST 02, 2013 AT 01:27 PM IN CHITTENDEN COUNTY, LAW ENFORCEMENT, VERMONT | PERMALINK


Artist and writer Rod MacIver is probably wishing his artwork was half as popular as the saga of his traffic stop in Shelburne.

The cruiser-cam video that led MacIver, 56, to challenge the bogus ticket he received last December for running a red light just topped 200,000 hits on YouTube.

MacIver's story — first reported by Seven Days' Charles Eichacker on July 25 — has spread, too. Earlier this week, CNN's Jeanne Moos — famous for her quirky, first-person pieces on news oddities — did one on MacIver's legal showdown with the Shelburne PD.

The story also got some ink, er, pixels, from theHuffington Post.

On Wednesday, MacIver was interviewed via Skype for Japan's Fuji TV's "Tokudane," a morning news program similar to "The Today Show" or "Good Morning America." The show, which airs daily across Japan from 8 to 10 a.m., is consistently the highest rated show at that time, with an estimated 8-10 million viewers.

Shelburne Officer Jason Lawton won't likely be visiting Tokyo anytime soon.

Link: http://7d.blogs.com/offmessage/2013/08/shelburne-cop-stop-controversy-goes-global-with-coverage-by-cnn-japans-fuji-tv.html

 

Published on Jul 2, 2013

In the early hours of December 9, 2012 Officer Jason Lawton of the Shelburne Vermont Police Department pulled me over for no reason, and when I objected he wrote me a ticket for something he knew I did not do because he didn't like my attitude. I had three contacts with the Shelburne Police Department and in all the officers, including Officer Lawton's supervisor Sgt. Allen Fortin, made deliberately deceptive and misleading statements. Officer Lawton also deliberately misstated the fact under oath at trial, later claiming the "overactive imagination" defense. For more, visithttp://shelburnevermontpolicedepttraf....

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Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I9l9pSwUck

How to be Happy in 12 Simple Steps

By SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY






STEP 1 - Show gratitude 

(* There's a lot more to gratitude than saying "thank you." Emerging research shows that people who are consistently grateful are happier, more energetic and hopeful, more forgiving and less materialistic. Gratitude needs to be practised daily because it doesn't necessarily come naturally.)


STEP 2 - Cultivate Optimism


STEP 3 - Avoid overthinking and social comparison

(* Many of us believe that when we feel down we should try to focus inwardly to attain self-insight and find solutions to our problems. But numerous studies have shown that overthinking sustains or worsens sadness.)


STEP 4 - Practice kindnessChewbaaka and Koya



STEP 5 - Nurture social relationships


STEP 6 - Develop coping skills


STEP 7 - Learn to forgive 

(* Forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation, pardoning or condoning. Nor is it a denial of your own hurt. Forgiveness is a shift in thinking and something that you do for yourself and not for the person who has harmed you. Research confirms that clinging to bitterness or hate harms you more than the object of your hatred. Forgiving people are less likely to be hostile, depressed, anxious or neurotic.


* Forgive yourself for past wrongs. Recognising that you too can be a transgressor will make you more empathetic to others. )


STEP 8 - Find more flow

(* "Flow" was a phrase coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1960s. It means you are totally immersed in what you are doing and unaware of yourself. Happy people have the capacity to enjoy their lives even when their material conditions are lacking and even when many of their goals have not been reached.)


STEP 9 - Savour the day



STEP 10 - Commit to your goals 

(* People who strive for something personally significant, whether it's learning a new craft or changing careers, are far happier than those who don't have strong dreams or aspirations. Working towards a goal is more important to wellbeing than its attainment.)


STEP 11 - Take care of your soul

 (* A growing body of psychological research suggests that religious people are happier, healthier and recover better after traumas than nonreligious people. ...

* Find the sacred in ordinary life ...)

STEP 12 - Take care of your body

"The How of Happiness" Sonja Lyubomirsky - TalkRational



Sonja Lyubomirsky

link: http://lyubomirsky.socialpsychology.org/




 

Practice Patience

  

The key to everything is patience.  You get the chicken by hatching
the egg, not by smashing it.
- Arnold H. Glasgow


Talent is long patience.
- Gustavew Flaubert


The patience for waiting is possibly the greatest wisdom of all: the wisdom to plant the seed and let the tree bear fruit.
-John MacEnulty


A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.
Dutch Proverb



Patience is the art of hoping.
- Lucky Luciano


Patience helps us live longer and with less Stress.
- David March


With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.
-- Chinese proverb


Patience is the ability to idle your motor when you feel like stripping your gears.
- Michael Le Fan


Patience [is one of those] "feminine qualities which have their origin in our oppression but should be preserved after our liberation.
- Simone de Beauvoir


Patience furthers.
- Lama Surya Das


We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
- Helen Keller


Awareness releases reality to change you.
- Anthony de Mello


If we love and cherish each other as much as we can, I am sure love and compassion will triumph in the end.
- Aung San Su Kyi


Long is not forever.
- German poverb


We can do no great things; only small things with great love.
- Mother Teresa


Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.
- Henry W. Longfellow


I think and think for months and years, ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false.
The hundredth time I am right.
- Albert Einstein



The thing with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
- Lily Tomlin



When people are bored it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored.
- Eric Hoffer


Keep cool: it will all be one a hundred years hence.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson


Waiting sharpens desire.  In fact it helps us recognize where our real desires lie.  It separates our passing enthusiasms from our true longings.
- David Runcorn



Faith is the belief in the unseen, the quietly held conviction that even though you can't imagine how, at some time, in some place, in the right way, the thing you desire will indeed come to pass.
- Daphne Rose Kingma




Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you, but not in the one ahead.
- David March



To practice patience, you need a real rascal to help you. It's no use practicing on gentle and kind creatures, for they require no patience.
- from "The Magic of Patience" a Jataka
tale written around 300 B.C.



If there is a defining characteristic of a man as opposed to a boy, maybe it is patience.
- Lance Armstrong




Folks differs, dearie.  They differs a lot.  Some can stand things that others can't.  There's never no way of knowin' how much they can stand.
- Ann Petry



Every moment a beginning.
Every moment an end.
- Mark Salzman



The shortest and the surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.
-- Socrates





Something happens when we don't resist, when we don't hate ourselves for what we are experiencing.  Our hearts open...
Sharon Salzberg



It's taken time and practice ... to appreciate that how [we] start the day sets the pace for
everything that comes next.
- David March



You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.
- Bruce Lee


Patience... is cultivated through the rational process of analysis...
It is essential that we begin our training in patience calmly, not while experiencing anger.
-the Dali Lama



Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
- Henry J. Kaiser


Nothing is more effective than a deep, slow inhale and release for surrendering what you can't control and focusing again on what is right in front of you.
- Oprah



When the crowded refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost.  But if even one person remained calm and centered, it was enough.  They showed the way for everyone to survive.
- Thich Nhat Hanh




He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty.
And he who rules his spirit, than he who takes a city.
Proverbs 1 6:32



You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What
you'll discover will be wonderful.  What you discover will be yourself.
- Alan Alda


Our nervous system isn't just a fiction, it's part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and inside us, like teeth in our mouth.
- Boris Pasternak


You will be pleased to know that the heat in Lucknow has been really hot!... It is good to burn with the heat of God outside since we don't burn with the heat of God in our hearts.
- Mother Teresa



A great preservative against angry and mutinous thoughts, and all impatience and quarreling, is to have some great business and interest in your mind, which, like a sponge shall suck up your attention and keep you from brooding over what displeases you.
- Joseph Rickard



How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong - because one day you will have been all of these.
-George Washington Carver




When some misfortune threatens, consider seriously and deliberately what is the very worst that could possibly happen.  Having looked this possible misfortune in the face, give yourself sound reasons for thinking that after all it would be no such terrible disaster.
- Bertrand Russell



I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.
Margret Thatcher



We are all dangling in mid-process between what already happened (which is just a memory) and what might happen (which is only an idea).  Now is the only time anything happens.  When we are awake in our lives we know what's happening.
- Sylvia Boorstein






Life is so short, we should all move more slowly.
-Thich Nhat Hanh

Multiple Sclerosis has no cure but don't let the facts defeat you.

When something of an affliction happens to you, you either let it defeat you, or you defeat it.
- Rousseau


Or you learn to work around the obstacle, if it is an incurable disease like M.S. that is ongoing and causes systematically more disability.


It is important to take an attitude of adapting and thriving in spite of the disease.  

Leave the cure to the scientists and manage your life with the attitude that you can deal with the problems created by the disease. 

You will probably need to give up some activities,like the balance beam (LOL) and other athletic pursuits that require balance, strength or require being on your feet for too long. 


Focus on what you can still do and not on what you have lost.