O-Dark-Thirty

A few decades ago I worked with Jack, a genius at file structures and coding. When he was conjuring solutions for our fledgling database he would stare into the air and see the structures as he devised them. At some point he became so good, even I could see them! Jack the Genius was mesmerized by Jabberwocky, which he had committed entirely to memory and would mumble at odd times during his thinking sessions. In case you don't know what Jabberwocky is, here is the definition: jabberwocky   | ˈ jab ə r ˌ wäk ē | noun ( pl.  - wockies ) invented or meaningless language; nonsense. ORIGIN early 20th cent.: from the title of a nonsense poem in Lewis Carroll's  Through the Looking Glass  (1871). So though the word moved into the English language, the power of the poem remains just as potent. JABBERWOCKY Lewis Carroll ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: A...

Blog posts aren’t supposed to take forever. They lose relevance. Yet I’ve been writing and editing this particular post for more than a week, and I finally understand why. I’m baffled. Let me explain. I think that James Altucher and I would argue. A lot. Yet I’d treasure the arguments. I don’t know James Altucher. From his posts, I probably know more details about his life than I know about the lives of my own brothers. We’d argue because we have different world views, but that’s understandable. We come from different backgrounds, and he’s more clever than I, having made and lost a number of fortunes. We have a few common losses, but those are other stories. He stretches his own mind and challenges others to do the same. I like that. The post that got me was on Memorial Day . A casual reader might mistake his post as anti-Memorial Day. When I first glanced at it, my thought was “Wait a minute here!” and I’ll admit to immediate teeth-grinding. Then I read it. I come from a mil...

Blog posts should be less than three hundred words, with pictures. My daughter informed me of this guideline not too long ago, shortly after I started this blog. Three hundred! In the first few hours of the morning I can barely manage to utter three hundred words. When I’m writing, I ramble and three hundred words get left in the dust. An urban legend states that men use 10,000 words per day and women use 25,000. Darling informed me that I needed to save some words for when I get home. I try to do that. But what about the quality of the words? Some days I use the right words – good words, helpful words, uplifting words, words of encouragement, words of enlightenment, words of love and kindness that bring a glow to the hearers. Those are good days, for me and everyone around me. Other days my words are growled out or snapped off, worthless words, critical words, destructive words, words of complaint, words of disillusion, words of ignorance and spite that tear ap...