Keep Your Powder Dry

Cultural Offering is stocking his basement with the necessities of life.

He has enough survival products to last the family through one serious snowstorm and four zombie attacks.

Longshoreman Philosopher

From the Hoover Digest, here's a 2003 profile of Eric Hoffer. An excerpt:

Around 1920 Hoffer left for Los Angeles with $300 provided by his late father’s guild of craftsmen. For the next 20 years, Hoffer was either in Los Angeles or on the move in the San Joaquin Valley as a migratory worker. Accumulating library cards along the way (none has survived), he acquired a lifelong reading habit. The only documentary evidence that has survived from that period is his Social Security application, dated June 1937. It attests that Hoffer was then living on Eye Street, Sacramento, and was employed by the U.S. Forest Service in Placerville. His age was given as 38, and his birth date, July 25, 1898. Later in life, even after Hoffer became well known through his appearances on television, no one seems to have come forward claiming to have known him in the earlier part of his life.

Quote of the Day

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

- Eric Hoffer

Starting Picasso

Art Contrarian looks at some early work of Picasso.

Standing: I Like the Instructions

From The Onion:

The Department of Health and Human Services recommends standing at least once a day.

Making Added Work Work

At Fortune, Vickie Elmer on dealing with an invisible promotion. An excerpt:

Maura finally worked up her courage and asked to be recognized for the work she'd been doing. She gave her manager two options: promote her to art director or split up the extra work she'd been handling among several people. She got the promotion, though it took months for her raise, about 2%, to come through. "It wasn't the pay increase to match the title," Maura says. She wants to tackle that this year, but for now she is negotiating on deadlines for projects from other departments, and she has finally convinced her boss to hire a freelance designer to help.

Music Break

Anderson Layman's Blog has some versions of In the Hall of the Mountain King.

Good stuff.

Career Training

Important tips from Ted Baxter's Famous Broadcasters School.

The Important Things

The important things are often found among the things we take for granted.

We turn the faucet and expect clean water. We trust that the police will not pull us over unless there is cause and that the firefighters will not loot the house. We assume that our doctors have received a certain level of training and that the plumber can fix a leak.

And yet we also know that trouble can hide in those assumptions. We wave goodbye to some people and they never come back. The procedure that worked 500 times before breaks down on the 501st. The explicit instructions are ignored. The person who epitomized reliability decides to sit on a hill and embrace the moon.

Those moments remind us that few things should be taken for granted.

Check. Assess. Maintain. Review. Revive. Create.

Quote of the Day

The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. 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'll discover is yourself.

- Alan Alda