From the Quote of the Week files, Memorial Day 2006

Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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It is Memorial Day in America.

Every year, on the last Monday in May, Americans observe Memorial Day. Originally called "Decoration Day," Memorial Day is a holiday that commemorates those who have died in battle while serving in the U.S. armed forces. Today We are reminded that they died so that we could live and continue to cherish the things they loved.

The Quote of the Week honors those who gave their lives for our future freedoms and the acknowledge those men and women who serve in our armed forces today.

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"When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today"

Kohima Epitaph

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Links to Memorial Day History and the the Kohima Epitaph...

http://www.rootsweb.com/~nyseneca/memorial.htm
http://www.burmastar.org.uk/epitaph.htm

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Wishing you a most beautiful day, wherever this may find you!

From the Quote of the Week files, May 22, 2006

Welcome to the Quote of the Week!! The place to go to where you can get timeless wisdom at bargain basement prices!!
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The Secret of Life...

The search for this week's quote bought me to the March 27th issue of The New Yorker magazine and Calvin Trillen's essay, Alice, Off Page, which is a tribute to his late wife. Here is an excerpt from that essay that may explain the secret of life.

Once, for the program at the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp gala, some volunteer counselors contributed short passages about their experiences at camp, and Alice wrote about one of the campers, a sunny little girl she called L. At camp, Alice had a tendency to gravitate toward the child who needed the most help, and L. was one of those. "Last summer, the camper I got closest to, L., was a magical child who was severely disabled, " Alice wrote. "She had two genetic diseases, one which kept her from growing and one which kept her from digesting any food. She had to be fed through a tube at night and she had so much difficulty walking that I drove her around in a golf cart a lot....One day, when we were playing duck-duck-goose, I was sitting behind her and she asked me to hold her mail for her while she took her turn to be chased around the circle. It took her a while to make the curcuit, and I had time to see that on top of the pile was a note from her mom. Then I did something truly awful, which I'm reluctant now to reveal. I decided to read that note. I simply had to know what this child's parents could have done to make her so spectacular, to make her the most optimistic, most enthusiastic, most hopeful human being I had ever encountered. I snuck a quick look at the note, and my eyes fell on this sentence: 'If God had given us all the children in the world to choose from, L., we would only have chose you.' Before L. got back to her place in the circle, I showed the note to Bud, who was sitting next to me. 'Quick. Read this,' I whispered. 'It's the secret of life.'

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Here is a link to the full text...

http://www.math.missouri.edu/~krishna/alice
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A Recycled Quote of the week classic...

"A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives roses."

Chinese Proverb
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Wishing you a most beautiful day, wherever this may find you!

From the Quote of the Week files, May 15, 2006

Welcome to the Quote of the Week! Your First Aid for Pessimism!
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Wisdom from across the bar...

Life, work and careers were the subject of the conversation I had with Dave and Leslie, an interesting couple I met at the bar of a local restaurant. Passionate about her career, Leslie summed up her philosophy of work and getting ahead in the quote below. I thought it was pretty interesting and made it this week quote. Enjoy!
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"What's the point of getting where you want to go if your are not going to help others get where they want to go?"

Leslie Dyer
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A Recycled Quote of the Week Classic…

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or horror, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they could be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."

J.W. Goethe
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Wishing you a most beautiful day, wherever this may find you!

From the Quote of the Week files, May 7, 2006

Today's quote comes from the book The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian which contains 300 short paragraphs of insights, reflections, and advice. Below is #140. I think this will be my challenge for this coming week... Go straight to the Good of Everything!
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Go Straight to the Good in Everything

"It is the happy lot of those with good taste. The bee goes straight for the sweetness, and the viper for the bitterness it needs for its poison. So with tastes: some go for the best, others for the worst. There is nothing that doesn't have some good, especially books, where good is imagined. Some people's temperaments are so unfortunate that among a thousand perfections they will find a single defect and censure it and blow it all out of proportion. They are the garbage collectors of the will and the intellect, burdened down with blemishes and defects: punishment for their poor discernment rather than proof of their subtlety. They are unhappy, for they batten on bitterness and graze on imperfections. Others have a happier sort of taste: among a thousand defects they discover some perfection that good luck happened to drop."

Baltasar Gracian
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A Recycled Quote of the Week Classic...

"The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside."

Dag Hammarskjold
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Wishing you a most beautiful day, wherever this may find you!

From the Quote of the Week files, May 1, 2006

Happy talk, keep talkin' happy talk,
Talk about things you'd like to do.
You got to have a dream,
If you don't have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true?

If you don't talk happy,
And you never have a dream,
Then you'll never have a dream come true!

Rogers and Hamerstein
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It is funny how things can come together...

Last week I was reading an article by business guru Tom Peters on 100 Ways to Succeed (see link below) with Rogers and Hammestein play South Pacific blaring in the background (nothing else was on). Just as I am finishing the Peters’ 15th way to succeed titled, You must be able to answer this question! And the question is: What’s the Dream?, the song above song, Happy Talk starts playing.

Now this is a song that I have heard many times over the years without really paying much attention to the lyrics. But the reading of Tom Peter’s article bought new meaning to these words...

You got to have a dream,
If you don't have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?

So now not only do I find myself singing this song in the shower and the car during these past few days but more importantly, I am asking myself, What is my dream? Hmm, I going to have to give this some thought!!!

By the way, What is your dream?
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Link to Tom Peters Article...

http://www.tompeters.com/blogs/freestuff/uploads/

Link to the lyrics of Happy Talk...

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/happytalk.htm

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Wishing you a most beautiful day, wherever this may find you!