Stuff 2 Know
July 16, 2019
Notes from around our human experience, including Philosophy 101, On This Date and an excerpt from one of my books.
PHILOSOPHY 101
Talent is nothing but long patience.
Gustave Flaubert
Flaubert was known as a writer who avoided cliches, preferring to take whatever time was necessary to find the exact word he was looking for. This didn’t always work and Flaubert is rumored to have never been completely satisfied with anything he wrote. Flaubert wrote from an early age and, knowing this was what he was about, he couldn’t be bothered with the cacophony that attends married and family life, with a biographer claiming he only had one serious romantic relationship, in his 20s and 30s with the poet Louise Colet, who was married at the time. That out of his system, he was free to pursue his life’s work.
There are three elements to success: wisdom, courage and patience. We must have the wisdom to know the life we were meant to live and the courage to go and live that life, but all the wisdom and courage, not to mention talent, will not do us any good if we do not have the patience to see our journey through to the very end.
The work of being on our path simply does not stop: we must be on our path every day. Not some days and not others, not some weeks and not others, every day of every week of every year. It will not always be a bed of roses and there will be attainments – life’s great prize – and failures – life’s great lesson, and there will always be a dream to chase – life’s great challenge.
Talent is nothing but long patience…
We must find what we are meant to do and do it. It doesn’t matter what this is, either. All that matters is that it comes from deep inside you, that you are answering to your heart instead of merely chasing the proverbial windmills offered by outside influences. When we do this, we are living the life we are meant to live. When we have the patience to do it every day – life’s great challenge – we will look back on a life well-lived.
Flaubert wrote. The guy who fixes my car grew up wanting to be a mechanic, so that’s what he does. What do you do?
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was a French novelist
Running The Numbers
Our national debt as I write this is $22.499 trillion. and America has been at war for 10,802 consecutive days. Election Day 2020 is 477 days away.
Great Moments In Nuclear War
The United States detonates History’s first nuclear device 73 years ago today, in 1945, at a test facility in central New Mexico. Code named Trinity, the explosion left a crater 5 feet deep and 30 feet wide and the sand turned into a light green, radioactive glass now known as trinitite. A government press release issued after the explosion (one of four that had been prepared weeks earlier) blamed the to an ammunition magazine and pyrotechnics explosion.
“All Engines Running…Lift Off, We Have A Lift Off…”
Our first attempt to fly to and land on another heavenly, Apollo 11, lifts off from Cape Kenndy in Florida on this date in 1969, 50 years ago today. The mission was manned by a civilian, Neil Armstrong, commander, and two US Air Force officers, Michael Collins, command module pilot, and Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot. After a twelve-minute trip to Earth’s orbit, Apollo 11 went around earth one-and-a-half times before heading to the moon
CHARTWATCH
#1 songs on this date in 1966:
Hot 100 – Hanky Panky…Tommy James and the Shondells (1st of two consecutive weeks)
Soul Chart – Ain’t Too Proud to Beg…The Temptations (4th of eight non-consecutive weeks)
Country Chart – Think of Me…Buck Owens (3rd of six weeks)
UK Singles Chart – Sunny Afternoon…The Kinks (2nd and final week)
Album Chart – What Now My love…Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (8th of nine non-consecutive weeks)
– Chart data courtesy of Billboard (US) and Official Charts Company (UK).
TODAY’S KAITLYN BOOK EXCERPT
From the novella Nat’s Story.
In today’s episode, Beth, 53, prepares to seduce Nat, 18.
Beth, 53, black hair, still trim and firm and beautiful, spotted Nat as soon as he and his shipmates had walked in the door. He was the tall one, with a body that Beth figured had been chiseled from granite instead of maturing through the normal growth process. Beth had sufficient experience to peg Nat’s height at six feet, two inches and his weight at 190. When Nat took his hat – called a cover in the Navy – off, she saw a nice shock of brown hair. She could not stop staring at him from her seat a booth with some co-workers and she figured his cock had to be at least three feet long.
Beth wanted the tall young man immediately. This wasn’t a bulletin because Beth often wanted tall, young men immediately.
Beth was bored stiff on her business trip, tolerating dinner with some co-workers. It was the last night of the trip and Beth had not been laid in what seemed like forever and was refreshingly open to a romp in the hay with a younger man.
Beth was not particularly worried that she was 53-years-old, a full 35 years older than the boy she had every intention of taking to bed. Experience had taught her that she radiated sexuality like a waterfall disperses water. Plus she still had her looks, too and she knew she didn’t look 53.
Beth decided it was unlikely her tall young man would come over and introduce himself, and since she wanted him pretty bad she took action. After excusing herself she went to the ladies room. She took out a notebook and a pen and wrote on it in a feminine hand that itself oozed sensuality.
I will be in the bar next door after dinner. If you can get away from your buddies I would like to buy you a drink – Beth
After exiting the bathroom, Beth found their waiter.
“Those sailors over there,” she said. She nodded in their direction. Discreetly, the waiter glanced over his shoulder in their general direction, even though they were the only sailors in the restaurant and Beth could not possibly have been referring to anybody else.
“I am feeling very patriotic tonight. I would like to buy the sailors their dinner.”
“An excellent idea, madam. However someone has already beaten you to it. Their bill is taken care of.”
Beth sighed peevishly. However, she was a senior vice president of something or another for medium-sized company and she hadn’t reached that position because she couldn’t think on her feet.
“Then I want to buy them a round of drinks…”
Beth wasn’t entirely sure any of the sailors was 21, but the restaurant had been pouring booze down them all night and hadn’t seemed to care.
The waiter nodded with approval.
“A splendid idea, madam.”
“Thank you,” Beth said. She gave the waiter the note and a $20 bill. “And give the tall one this.”
The waiter took the note casually, as if he accepted scraps of paper from older women summoning young, freshly minted sailors as a matter of course.
“Of course.”
Click here to read more from Nat’s Story.