tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26587465216506023772024-03-13T06:47:54.370-04:00Enso PeacePeace does not conform itself to what I think it should be. It doesn't give a crap what I think, actually. Enso Circles remind me that perfection is a myth of my own creation. The combined EnsoPeace symbol reminds me that the communal journey toward incremental gains is a perpetual state.
Posts will intentionally be held to under 300 words. Mostly. Check out the resources tab to learn more about Enso Circles and the Peace Sign.Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.comBlogger256125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-78150332710146425822018-08-27T12:00:00.000-04:002018-08-27T12:00:06.391-04:00One Sunday morning, not too long ago, on my way to church I stopped through the Dunkin Donuts drive through for a cup of coffee (don't judge me!)
Waiting my turn in a line of about three cars, I happened to notice the person in the car behind mine. This person was on the phone. Their arms were moving about and there was clearly an exhaustive search for something going on. Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-13191186072121487462018-08-20T12:00:00.000-04:002018-08-20T12:00:01.489-04:00The Three Buttons
There is a button on my internet browser labeled “Favorites”.
It’s where I keep links to websites I use a lot. Of course, this is a good idea because it saves me from having to re-type the whole website address thing. I know it’s a good
idea because I use it often.
I do, however object to the label “Favorites”. I actively dislike some of the websites I
visit often. I Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-63684504908881372272018-07-16T12:00:00.000-04:002018-07-16T12:00:05.965-04:00Spanish Civil War
Tomorrow is the 82nd anniversary of what is commonly considered the
start of the Spanish Civil War. I read a
fantastic book about the Spanish Civil War this spring. It is called "Spain in Our Hearts"
by Adam Hochschild. Mr. Hochschild is a wonderful story teller, but this is a
horrible story.
I even studied in Spain at college and I left there not knowing what I
now know.
I Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-62725642466472679022018-06-11T12:00:00.000-04:002018-06-11T12:00:04.898-04:00The Lonley Top Half of the PoleIts Flag Day this week. June 14. Thursday to be specific. It's also my grandmother's birthday. She would have been 120 years old today.Not too long ago, I walked into my office building in the morning and noted that the flags were at half-mast. Again.
Is it me, or are our flags at half-mast a lot more than they were when I was a kid? Maybe I just don't remember - after all I was a kidEd Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-89338807754454687632018-06-05T12:00:00.000-04:002018-06-05T12:00:08.655-04:00I am Sears (PS....So Are You)
Well, it looks like Sears department store is well into its process of fading into obscurity. The most recent 6+ years have been declining sales and disappearing profits.
From a high of building the worlds tallest building as its headquarters and store in (what seemed like) every zip code, to "when was the last time I was in a Sears other than because the parking is easiest at the Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-44685662303314829922018-05-14T12:00:00.000-04:002018-05-14T12:00:09.870-04:00Aquila Non Capit Muscas
I just heard this very interesting latin phrase for the first time.I was looking up de minimis which is a phrase I just cannot for the life of me seem to remember how to spell. De minimis means "dealing with little things". Its used in accounting and business when what we want to say is that "We are going to mail you a check for $0.03 because that would be stupid." Aquila Non Capit Muscas Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-16677535954307364912018-04-23T12:00:00.000-04:002018-04-23T12:00:44.279-04:00Unexpected ConsequencesI have an acquaintance who is slow to ask for help.I’m understating that purposefully for the purpose of effect. This person will never, ever ask for help and I have come to understand that not as a reflection of our relationship, but a rather consistent pattern for her.The thing I’m realizing is that her discomfort with asking for help changes the way I deal with her. I am reluctant to ask herEd Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-63893556754045283772018-04-20T12:00:00.000-04:002018-04-20T12:00:08.257-04:00Earth Day, 2018Its Earth Day again. Earth Day is the celebration of what crappy stewards of our planet we are.
I remember the television commercials when I was a kid in the 1970's of the actor portraying the American Indian crying over all the trash all over the place.
We've certainly made strides. The river in my home town was so awful that we dreaded getting stuck in a Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-54029511605569750562018-04-16T12:00:00.000-04:002018-04-19T10:35:25.250-04:00Passwords, Airports and Risk
The super-passwords thing is getting a little crazy. 12 characters, one capital, one lower case,
one number, but not more than 4 numbers in a row, one character, but not a @ or
a ! - all to secure my access to a website about basketball?
It’s the same as the TSA having you take your shoes off at the
airport. George Carlin called it the
largest industry in the United States: the Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-22487334503339055492017-09-18T12:00:00.000-04:002017-09-18T12:00:09.530-04:00The Ownership of WorkKarl Marx brought to collective attention the differences - some would say "disparity" - between the risks taken by the two classes in a capitalist system: the labor class and the capital class. As part of that discussion, he quite often used the term "owning the means of production". This was one of the key ways that he separated the capital from labor - the capital Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-43870601036095652112017-08-28T12:00:00.000-04:002017-08-28T12:00:19.988-04:00Dear High School History TeachersI am watching a television series on the history channel that talks about the Roman Empire from the perspective of those who resisted it. The series is called "Barbarians Rising".
As I'm watching it, I'm having flashbacks to High School History classes. What I guess I didn't realize at the time was that I was definitely being taught history - or at least this slice of history Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-15741249348289482892017-08-14T13:16:00.002-04:002017-08-14T13:16:55.562-04:00Meet Dr. Frank JobeDr. Frank Jobe is probably the most famous doctor you have probably never heard of.
Dr. Jobe developed a surgery sometimes referred to as ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction surgery.
This surgery is known worldwide as "Tommy John Surgery". The surgery fixes a (normally) repetitive injury in the elbow. It corrects a very common injury that occurs in baseball pitchers. Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-71641673037793101792017-08-07T12:00:00.000-04:002017-08-25T11:41:23.283-04:00If the Bible Taught Us Anything, #2.
And while we’re on the topic of the
Garden of Eden, let’s take a look at the two-trees thing.
One of the most fundamental rules of
making things work well is making it difficult – or better, impossible - for
the operator to make a mistake.
Take brakes on your car, for example.
They’re very important. That’s why they’re
right there where most people can easily reach them. Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-48105261162827099232017-07-31T12:00:00.000-04:002017-07-31T12:00:00.273-04:00If the Bible Taught Us Anything, #1If the Bible taught us anything, it’s that Adam got the best
of Eve.
Come back with me to the Garden of Eden. There, humans
had everything they ever wanted, mostly because they hadn't learned to want stuff yet.
All they had to do was not mess it up by eating fruit from one of these two
trees. [This whole two-trees thing is clearly a setup if I’ve ever seen
one, but that’s a Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-71039410404739051372017-07-24T12:00:00.000-04:002017-07-24T12:00:36.378-04:00Such a small differenceHave you ever considered just how dissimilar "care for" and "care about" really can be?
We tend to use them interchangeably, but they're really, really different when you think about it.
And then, there is a rather old fashioned use of "care for" - normally in the negative. Relatives of my past generation would say "I don't care for [...]" when they were trying to soften "I don't like [..Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-85039251712364939242017-07-10T12:00:00.001-04:002017-07-10T12:00:24.792-04:00We need so many words...English needs a lot more words.
Take the word "love", for example. Its quite the overused word, asked to fill in for a rainbow of feelings. I love my dogs in a way that's very different from the way I love, say scotch.
And when it comes to people, well, now love becomes more of a timebomb. A nuclear ka-boom! Take a long term relationship. It is highly improbable Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-63298535180054850332017-07-03T12:00:00.000-04:002017-07-03T12:00:12.519-04:00Saint Independence DayIts Saint Independence day again.
Over the years, I have grown to honestly dislike Saint Independence day.
It has been - and still is - a day on which we commemorate our violent separation from our mother land, simultaneously both matter-of-factly and oddly defensively recalling all our justifications for doing so. In today's climate, infected with rabid tribalism, it also Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-83379904205187669842017-06-26T12:00:00.000-04:002017-06-26T12:00:06.108-04:00Life is a series of "normals"Life is a series of "normals" all packaged up in bundle of "normals".
What's normal for you today? Waking up a certain time. Seeing certain people. Doing certain things.
Sure, but even those move around a bit. Here's one example: Where I live, even if I wake up at the same time each day, its perfectly normal for it to be dark when I wake up in the winter, and bright sunshine inEd Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-25661367267684775992017-06-19T12:00:00.000-04:002017-06-19T12:00:10.279-04:00Don't Look BackHuey Lewis and the News had a song on their 1991 album "Hard at Play" called "Don't Look Back".
The song was about taking matters into your own hands and not doubting yourself. It wasn't popular, but I liked it. I was young at that point in my life, having not learned about things like patience and relationships, I would hum it as a bit of an anthem toward moving onto the next thing, which inEd Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-32014181051375879322017-06-12T12:00:00.000-04:002017-06-12T12:00:14.780-04:00I Feel ImportantI had an experience recently in which someone gave me something that made me change my mind about myself.
This person, in a longer than usual conversation, did three specific things that, when taken together made me reconsider my opinion of myself.
At the end of it all, my big revelation was that I felt important. Yes. That's it. I felt important. This feeling of Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-15453040316552766182017-06-05T12:00:00.000-04:002017-06-05T12:00:03.513-04:00Doors
Someone once told me that they saw life as a series of doors. Some doors we see and walk through. Some we see and avoid. Some we see and are sort of pushed or pulled through. Then, there are lots and lots we just miss entirely.
Thursdays are normally boring. That's why television content providers focus so much on that day, because people don't have much toEd Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-52893198479031795862017-05-29T12:00:00.000-04:002017-05-29T12:00:16.974-04:00Memorial DayI have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line — the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothersEd Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-14642067984860400912017-05-22T12:00:00.000-04:002017-05-22T12:00:25.567-04:00Its Graduation SeasonSo many people are being graduated from high schools and colleges all over the place this year. I kind of hang out in what might be called "affluent" circles where graduating again and again is kind of the norm. This year, the graduation bug hit my house. I am finishing up my (first and probably only) Masters degree. My wife is finishing a professional degree and our Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-54570310865718431242017-05-15T12:00:00.000-04:002018-04-19T18:30:43.649-04:00Free Breakfast Eggs
Have you run into the yellow, egg-like substance served on
hotel “free” breakfast bars yet?
Eggs a la 2017
I travel a lot for work, so I stay in a lot of mid-line
hotels. I see this stuff a lot.
What is it, exactly? From
a few feet away, it looks like eggs, but the closer you get to it, the less and
less it looks like eggs. I mean it still
looks like eggs, but my Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2658746521650602377.post-26813998968165737042017-05-08T12:00:00.000-04:002017-05-11T09:21:46.389-04:00Superman to the rescue!
The United States recently went through a rather abrupt
change in leadership when the pre-ordained winner of the presidential election,
in fact didn’t defeat the other candidate who was the pre-ordained sacrificial
lamb.
The result has been (amongst other things) an equally abrupt
redefinition of goals and the way we measure results. The two candidates were as different from a
Ed Proulxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01548967148110882262noreply@blogger.com0