I'm pondering Henry Ford's profound statement, "Whether you think you can or you can't, you are right." about 12 hours ago on Twitter via txt You might find the banter it generated on Facebook interesting . . . 11 hours ago via Facebook for BlackBerry ·
Douglas Hoyt, Terrence Rachel Burner and Jed Stout like this.
11 hours ago · John Forsyth very smart.
11 hours ago · John Forsyth You CAN do it.
11 hours ago · Doug Beecher Sr Right on, John!
11 hours ago · Keith Stout What conclusion have you come up with?
3 hours ago · Doug Beecher Sr That it's important to approach challenges in life with a "can do" attitude. If we encounter obstacles, think internally, and collaborate with others until we come up with "Plan B (or C, D, or whatever) and try again. If we start thinking we can't then we won't. Which is just how you approach things, Keith--one of many things I admire about you.
Moving on to other thoughts as the day progressed . . . I like this: If God asks us to do something, he will make it possible for us to do. about 7 hours ago on Twitter via web from La Verkin, UT (If you click on the link, it will take you to 1 Nephi 17:3)
Well, about dinnertime I finally finished with the desk. It's month-end, so Willyne has been working on Accutek invoices a good part of the day. I finished my project just in time to be able to help her start doublechecking them. So we got a lot done today.
I have one other thing for you today, a follow-up on yesterday's post about radiation clinic music and how it helps me stay calm and still while the treatments are done. It got me thinking about how music has affected me over the years . . .
I suppose I'm not that unusual when I say that music has been a big part of my life, but it has changed dramatically as my life has changed. As a child, I started relating songs with the places I was at when I heard them repeatedly. As an example, I've been to Death Valley (CA) once in my life, it was on Lincoln's Birthday weekend when I was 11. (This was before "President's Day". We used to commemorate both Lincoln's Birthday on Feb. 12 and Washington's Birthday on Feb. 22. This meant no school on either of these days) That year Lincoln's Birthday was on a Friday, so my dad took my brothers and I camping. The radio played the theme song from the James Bond movie Goldfinger repeatedly, and to this day when I hear that song I think of Death Valley and that camping trip.
Not too long after that trip, the Beatles started making a big impact in my life. At first it was negative. Some girls in my seventh grade class missed three straight days of school to try to get in to the Hollywood Bowl when they played there. Of course, the Beatles coming to L.A. got lots of attention on all the TV stations, so I watched and listened to see what all the fuss was about. I wasn't impressed. Everytime, I just barely started listening to the music when the screaming got so loud that was all I could hear. About then, Mr. Faulkner, my English teacher, wanted us to write a short essay on what we thought of this new phenomenon. We could say we liked it or didn't, he didn't care about that as much as he did how we defended our position. Here is the result . . .
The pictures at the bottom are some left over wallet-sized pictures that were taken for the school yearbook that year (at least I think that's what they are). The sweater was light green, and as another side note, this is what I wore passing the Sacrament every Sunday as a deacon.
Getting back to my story, it took a little more than a year to totally reverse my position on the Beatles. They came out with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and I was hooked. The summer of 1967, Brad Bobbs and I had a memorable summer creating a series of games (4 dimensional tic-tac-toe, a stock market game, and a really unique game we called "Turnpike" that was so large you couldn't fold the game board and included a 10 inch high papermache volcano that actually smoldered (when you put a piece of lit incense inside)) . . . while listening to Beatles albums hundreds of times.
So much for disliking the Beatles and not caring if that made me anti-social, ha!
Well I'll fast forward now so that I can end this post before anyone still reading it falls asleep. Just like hearing Goldfinger generates pictures in my mind of Scotty's Castle and our 1964 Chevrolet station wagon, and hearing Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head recreates mental images of a rainy week attempting to camp near McCall, Idaho in 1970, hearing the Beatles in particular, or classic rock in general, brings back vivid mental images of the whole process of growing up in the turbulent 60s in West L.A. and the early 70s at Santa Monica College.
Then I had my years of driving I-15 literally hundreds of times in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California, much of it late at night so I wouldn't miss any work time. Too much of the time I stayed awake by rolling down the window and turning up the volume of whatever my favorite classic rock station was at the time, and for a few hours each trip I would be back in another world.
Not so long ago, I discovered Pandora, a free internet "radio" service, where you can literally create your own radio station. It seemed made for me. I created a station full of these songs. But then a funny thing happened. I have also always liked quiet, contemplative music, and while I will always like energetic music, my tastes have definitely changed. So now I have two Pandora stations, the second one being a mixture of Enya, Jim Brickman, and other similar artists. Very little singing, I often prefer instrumentals.
Now for the most ironic part. I see lots and talk to lots of people every day. So when I actually get time alone in my car or office, guess what I listen to now. Either the scripture CDs I mentioned a few days ago, or the literal sounds of silence (not the Simon and Garfunkel version). And I do a lot of thinking when the silence begins.
Try it sometime. You might surprise yourself and really like it!
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