walt whitman

i love this quote more each time i read it. enjoy:

"This is what you shall do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches,
give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants,
argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,
re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body..."

~walt whitman

Today's Recommendation: Music

Today I recommend ...


... Pandora set to the Aretha Franklin channel.


I've been listing to it all afternoon.

red and yellow, black and white ...

Today I rode my bike to Balboa Park to finish off "Made to Stick" and enjoy an unusually warm January afternoon outdoors. Sitting on a bench in front of the coy pond it dawned on me one of the reasons I love America: the diversity of people you see on a day-to-day basis.

In Uganda everyone was African, with the exception of a few missionaries, British businesspeople and foreign journalists. In Honduras everyone was pretty much Latin. People looked different from each other, but not drastically like here.

I wasn't at the Park more than 30 minutes and I saw people from more than a dozen nations. How beautiful. People marvel at the diversity of fish in an aquarium, but people are no less diverse, I think. I love encountering so many different countries and cultures without even having to get into my car.