“Take it easy. But take it.” – Woodie Guthrie

“Too fat, too thin, too loud, too quiet – I was never going to fit the standards others created for me. Instead of complying, I protested.” – Ashley Graham

 From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst 26 May “Well behaved women seldom make history.” – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

“I want to live my life, not record it.” – Jackie Kennedy

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst
26 August
[On Bette Davis] “Even when I was carrying a gun, she scared the be-jesus out of me.” – Humphrey Bogart

“The man who has no imagination has no wings.” - Muhammad Ali

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

August 20

In the 1850's Lincoln was involved in a high-profile case arguing for a steam ship company against a railroad company. The issue had to do with low-lying trestles across a river. In his summation to the jury the lawyer for the railroad argued brilliantly as to why the burgeoning economic prosperity of the entire region demanded free and unfettered access to bridges across rivers. His summary took over an hour. Lincoln's summary was one sentence: “What this jury has to decide is whether one group has more right to cross a river than another has to go up and down that same river.”

He won the case.

“5:00 AM: the hour when legends are either waking up or going to bed.” - Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

31 July
"If timeless, spaceless realities [beauty, truth, goodness, simplicity, play, etc] don’t stretch you beyond your comfort zones, it’s because you’re focused on the tawdry. You’ve sold your very soul for a pittance." - Arnold Kunst

“Has any man attained to inner harmony by pondering the experience of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire.” - Norman Douglas

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

30 July

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” - Anonymous

“The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” – Vince Lombardi

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

30 July

“You’re blessed indeed if your God stretches you beyond your comfort zones. [Or would you prefer the safety of scaling ten-foot mountains?]” – Arnold Kunst

“Where do I sign?” - Anonymous

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

July 30

“When the people rise in masses in behalf of the Union and the liberties of their country, truly may it be said, ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against them.’”- Abraham Lincoln

“Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.” - Demosthenes

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

29 July

“Children see magic because they look for it.” Christopher Moore

“Rise to the level of the child.” - Dr. Shinichi Suzuki

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

29 July

Arnold Kunst and the Piano, Part One

When I was 6 or 7 I saw a little-known Disney movie called “Johnny Appleseed.” One of the movie’s songs was “The Lord is Good to Me.” When I came home I picked the tune out on the [unused] piano, then told my Mommy and my Daddy that I wanted to take piano lessons. 

I did, for three years. At the end of my 4^th grade I even made it to Prince Charming during the end-of-year Cinderella-themed recital. But family financial troubles meant we couldn’t afford the cost [$100 for a school year] so I quit that year. 

I took it up again when I was in high school, and minored in music in college.

I taught my very first piano lesson at 23 in the summer of 1964 to a 5-year-old girl living next door to us. She had heard me play, and told her mother she wanted me to teach her piano. When her mother asked me I said, “Sounds fun, but I’ve never taught piano before.” The mother, with great wisdom, said in reply, “All you have to do is get a book that’s at her level, and then just stay a few pages ahead of her. After all, she’s only five, right?”

Well, I did take her on. Of course, the kid’s mother was dead right. Eventually I became qualified, would you believe, with the Royal School of Music in London; I taught piano for the next 20 years. It was a fun 20 years, believe me. And I never looked back!

“I’d be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.” - Terry Pratchett

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

July 29

“As a general rule I abstain from reading reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.” - Abraham Lincoln

“If I had my life to live over, I would do it all again, but this time I would be nastier.” – Jeanette Rankin [first women elected to U. S. Congress]

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

28 July

“The minute you start caring about what other people think is the minute you stop being yourself.” – Meryl Streep

“Behold, this dreamer cometh.” – The Bible

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

28 July

“The only vision that counts comes from the light we radiate toward one another. So don't put yours under a bushel – the rest of us can’t afford it!” – Arnold Kunst

“The riddles of God are far more interesting than the solutions of man.” - G. K. Chesterton

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

July 28

“It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged.” - Abraham Lincoln

 

“And though she be but little she is fierce.” – William Shakespeare

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

27 July

“Parliaments have stopped laughing at woman suffrage, and politicians have begun to dodge! It is the inevitable premonition of coming victory.” – Carrie Chapman Catt

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.” – Muhammad Ali

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

27 July

At age 91 Winston Churchill could well have looked back on a life replete with unmitigated failure. Defeated at the polls at the very end of a world war he was so instrumental in winning, he returned to the back benches as head of the Opposition, and once again he was a lone voice crying out in the wilderness, this time decrying the threat of Stalin's voracious, unprincipled Soviet Union in the 1950’s as he had against the threat of Hitler’s voracious, unprincipled Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. 

An unabashed imperialist, he sat impotently by as the British Empire withered into that toothless PR construct known as The British Commonwealth - Britain as a world power was finished. He lived the vast majority of his life in the wilderness as a member of the opposition and, if he weren’t careful would have gone to his grave thinking his life a failure. 

The rest of us knew, though, that there were a few months during those 91 years, from the spring of 1940 on, when he stood alone on the bulwarks of civilization itself against the bottomlessly evil and immensely powerful threat of Nazism. 

Hey, he wasn’t a failure after all!

The moral of the story: in 1940 he was THE right man for the job, and all of us, and all of our posterity, owe this man a debt of gratitude of incalculable proportions.

“We teach people how to remember, not how to grow.” - Oscar Wilde

 From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

July 27

“Kings have always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally if not always that the good of the people was the object.” - Abraham Lincoln

“Stop trying to calm the storm. Calm yourself; the storm will pass.” – Buddha

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

26 July

“Whenever I was upset by something in the papers, Jack always told me to be more tolerant, like a horse flicking away flies in the summer.” – Jackie Kennedy

“Patience is the ability to count down before you blast off.” – Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

26 July

“Be patient. Life comes at you at its own pace, and doesn’t take kindly to your pushing the water uphill any more than it does to your pushing it downhill.” – Arnold Kunst