“All the men on my staff can type.” – Bella Abzug

“Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

30 May

“I begin to think that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.” - Abigail Adams

“Those who are easily shocked need to be shocked more often.” – Mae West

“Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

28 May

“The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.” - Lady Bird Johnson

“My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept love in return.” - Maya Angelou

From “Me Too,365” by Arnold Kunst

29 May

Whenever I am ratty with you - maybe I had a hard day at work, or maybe I didn't get enough sleep last night, or maybe I'm feeling guilty about something and I'm reverting to some reptilian version of "the best defense is an offense" - whatever the reason, I end up needling you in some way. The point is, it needn't have anything to do with you at all because whenever I pass judgment on you it is ALWAYS about me and NEVER about you. Or, to put it a little differently, whenever I give in to the seductive allure of self pity - and nothing is more seductive than self-pity, is there? - I surrender the right to touch you where you really are, to say anything about/to you with any genuine integrity/authority.

But the damage doesn't stop there. I automatically activate in you very powerful memories of the time you wet your pants in kindergarten. It goes something like this: "See, I knew I couldn't make you happy; I screw up everything I touch. I'm always a nickel short and an hour late." And on and on you go, into the wee hours of the night, sucked into an irresistible vortex, spinning further and further away from me - and spinning further and further from the real you.

The good news is, I have the power to move you every bit as profoundly when I reach through all the everlasting ordinariness of life and touch you where you really live, when I affirm you, when I praise you, when I thank you. I think I'm getting the idea Jesus had when he talked about millstones being wrapped around a person's neck and having him thrown into the sea. Sometimes Scripture can be dense and difficult to understand, but not when it talks about, well, being ratty to someone we're put here to love!

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

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

30 May

The deepest values you believe in are, surely, too precious to disrespect with your own small-mindedness.

“You’d think after practicing 20 times every night I would have gotten better at putting a toddler to bed.” - Anonymous

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

29 May

It’s a good thing we’re not on a one-mistake-per-day authorization. Otherwise I’d be into next week’s credit before breakfast! – Arnold Kunst

“You always had the power, my dear; you just had to discover it for yourself.” – The Wizard of Oz

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

28 May

You and I are meant to get the balance right, to be eager to pay in the proper coinage the price victory requires. For life holds immense riches in store for you and me. Those riches are coming as inevitably as the tiniest stream on the highest mountain is destined, sooner or later, to reach the ocean for that ocean draws it inexorably.

“When all is said and done, more gets said than done.” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 30

“When I do good I feel good. When I do bad I feel bad. That is my religion.” - Abraham Lincoln

“Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.” - Simone Weil

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 29

“The presidential campaign of 1860 that elected Lincoln for the first time completely failed to do what a political campaign is supposed to do – bring the nation to a full awareness and earnest discussion of its most crucial issues and lead to a verdict that would put those issues on the way toward settlement. There had been nothing even resembling an attempt by reasonable men to analyze a baffling problem and see what could be done about it… The election would be a shock which could benefit no one but the extremists on both sides.” - Bruce Catton

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” - William James

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 28

“In 1854 Lincoln represented James Dunlap who had assaulted a newspaper editor by the name of Peter Selby. Selby wanted $10,000 in damages. There wasn’t much Lincoln could do about getting his client entirely off the hook; Dunlap had in fact assaulted Selby. When the time came for his turn to address the jury, Lincoln slowly stood, picked up a copy of Selby’s motion, and then suddenly burst into a long, loud laugh accompanied by his most wonderfully grotesque facial expression. The very sight of this caused several members of the jury to snicker, at which point Lincoln apologized. He said he had looked at the motion and noticed that the original amount of the suit had been only $1,000, but that this had been crossed out and replaced with the $10,000 figure. Lincoln snickered that, somehow, Selby had had second thoughts and ‘concluded that the wounds to his honor were worth an additional nine thousand dollars.’ His little joke was calculated to rob the assault case [and the plaintiff] of dignity. Apparently it worked; the jury returned a decision for damages of only $300.” - Brian Dirck

“Big results require big ambitions.” – Heraclitus

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

27 May

“Whatever the theories may be of woman's dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens.” - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“A baby fills a place in your heart you never knew was empty.” - Anonymous

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

27 May

An infallible, universal characteristic of babies and losers is that they want what they want NOW, not a week from Tuesday, not in five minutes.

The good news is, babies will grow up!

“I could drown in a frown and swim in a smile.” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 27

     “I rode with Robert E Lee / For three years thereabout.

Got wounded in three places / And I starved at Point Lookout.

I caught the rheumatism / A'campin in the snow.

But I killed a hundred Yankees / And I'd like to kill some more.

     Three hundred thousand Yankees / Is stiff in Southern dust,

We got three hundred thousand / Before they conquered us.

They died of Southern fever, / Of Southern steel and shot.

But I wish it was three million / Instead of what we got.” – “I'm a good Old Rebel,” a post Civil War ballad

“Well behaved women seldom make history.” – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

“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

“I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.” - Ebenezer Scrooge

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

26 May

Don't go goofy on Keeping Track Of The Bottom Line. There's the story of Pooh Bear counting his pots of honey. "Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, six-" and all of a sudden Rabbit bursts in and distracts him. Pooh, of course, says, "Oh bother, now I'll have to start counting all over again!" And Rabbit replies, with more wisdom than he probably realizes, "If it's that important, call it twenty; what difference does it make?"

What difference, indeed?! That's the real bottom line. After all, as is true for Pooh so it is true for you and me: life is meant to be lived, not calibrated.

“’I must do something’ always solves more problems than ‘Something must be done.’”- Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 26

“The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to have the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility.” - Abraham Lincoln 

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

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

25 May

“Every now and then go away and have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power of judgment…Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.” - Leonardo da Vinci

“A sense of responsibility is the clearest indication of mature leadership.” - John C. Maxwell

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

24 May

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“I am making a way for you right now.” – God

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

25 May

Remember, the Scripture quote doesn’t read, “Vengeance is mine, saith the aggrieved.” No matter what or who it is that has aggrieved me, the Lord will not be suckered in. Insofar as He does exact vengeance, my guess is He’ll take account of all the applicable components on the human spectrum from human frailty to cold-blooded premeditation. His eventual behavior may not follow my timetable, but it will be as proportionate as it is inescapable. The Lord won’t be merciful to me and exacting with them. I can’t have it both ways.

“Exuberance is better than taste.” Gustave Flaubert

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

24 May

Let’s get high on life!

“A closed mouth gathers no feet.” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 25

“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.” - Abraham Lincoln

“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” - Abraham Lincoln

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 24

“Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past.” - Lance Morrow

“I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore, and I know too much to go back and pretend.” – Helen Reddy

From “Me Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

23 May

“Extremism thrives amid ignorance and anger, intimidation and cowardice.” – Hilary Clinton

“Forgive them, even if they’re not sorry – you can’t LIVE without the resultant freedom.” - Anonymous

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

23 May

The ability to forgive divides the vibrant from all the look-alikes.

“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it, for error is always talkative.” - Oliver Goldsmith

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 23

The following editorial appeared in The Atlanta Confederacy just before the election of 1860, just before what looked like the formation of a thing called the Confederate States of America: “let the consequences be what they may - whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies, or whether the last vestige of liberty is swept from the face of the American continent, the South will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.”

“Truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.” - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

22 May

“Everybody today seems to be in such a terrible rush, anxious for greater developments and greater riches and so on, so that children have very little time for their parents. Parents have very little time for each other, and in the home begins the disruption of peace of the world.” - Mother Teresa

“You have to grow from the inside out. There is no other teacher but your own soul.” – Swami Vivekananda

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

21 May

“Loving your kids equally sounds great on paper, but it never pans out that way in fact. If it did, you’d have to wait for all of them to need a new pair of shoes before you provide shoes for the one who needs a new pair now.” – Arnold Kunst

“Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.” - Amelia Earhart

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

20 May

“The emotional, sexual and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor say, ‘It’s a girl.’” – Shirley Chisholm

“Be still - the quieter you become the more you can hear.” – Ram Dass

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

22 May

It takes no particular skill to recognize and react to beauty, truth, goodness where they are blatantly apparent. The real challenge, and fun, in life is to recognize them and prise them loose where they are hidden. Because they're everywhere. Literally everywhere. Isn't that what the poet meant by saying that earth is crammed with heaven?

"As long as you’re learning you’re not old.” - Anonymous

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

21 May

You and I are meant to adjust to new demands/choices/opportunities with the pliability of a goalie in a soccer match, tingling with all the excitement of life itself, darting at a nano-second’s notice to avert a goal/score a goal.

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” – e. e. cummings

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

20 May

Any heaven that comes easily, that isn't taken by storm, is a pretend heaven, the realm of some Wizard-of-Oz god who isn't worth crossing the street for. You want the real thing? Then you'd better gird your loins and prepare to do battle.

“A horse of good breeding is not dishonored by his saddle.” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 22

Lincoln advised a young man about becoming a lawyer that he “resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.”

“...and that government of the people by the people for the people shall not perish from the earth.” - Abraham Lincoln

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 21

“The fishermen know the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.” - Vincent van Gough    

“Beware the fury of the patient man.” - Publius Syrus

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 20

“I am a patient man - always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance; and also to give ample time for repentance. Still I must save this government if possible.” - Abraham Lincoln 

“Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.” – George Carlin

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

19 May

“All I want is an education, and I am afraid of no one.” – Malala Yousafzai

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” –John C. Maxwell

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

19 May

Don’t ever underestimate the power and breadth of your leading. Whether you like it or not, whether you realize it or not, you’re being watched – pretty much from all sides, pretty much at all times. Maybe with the unparalleled unobtrusiveness and uncanny accuracy of an oh, so quiet child who drinks in what his idol of a father/sister/uncle/mother is, filtering out the froth of what he/she says [just like you did when you were a kid]. If you believe in the primacy of Scripture trust me: they may well read the Bible in no other place but in the person you are.

“Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.” - Buddha

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 19

During the 40 years from 1880 to 1920 roughly 4,000 former slaves or children of former slaves were lynched in the United States, most of them in the South.

“Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.” - Buddha

“At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.” – Toni Morrison

From “Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

18 May

“Nothing brings me more happiness than trying to help the most vulnerable people in society. It is a goal and an essential part of my life – a kind of destiny. Whoever is in distress can call on me. I will come running wherever they are.” – Princess Diana

“I praise loudly. I blame softly.” – Catherine the Great

18 May

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

Praise is to humans what the sun is to flowers.

“There is no ‘I’ in ‘teamwork.’” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 18

When Grant was appointed head of all 860,000 Union troops in 1864, he devised a plan to attack all Confederate forces simultaneously: the Army of the Potomac would attack Lee in Virginia without let-up; Sherman would slash eastward through Georgia to the sea; Banks would attack northward through Mobile joining with Sherman in the Deep South. Lincoln had finally found his man, someone to execute a strategy he knew could not fail. Happily he observed, “those not skinning can hold a leg.”

“It’s time for us to turn to each other, not on each other.” – Jesse Jackson

From “Me, Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

17 May

“You can learn a lot from a porch light.

“Email to my children: ‘The other night we are getting ready for bed; I notice, at 10:30, that the porch light is on. So I tell your mother, “I know why you’re guaranteed to go to heaven.” She’s on her way to check the patio door to see if Zephyr our cat is in the back, but my statement stopped her in her tracks, and I explain it to her. “You had the porch light on for Zephyr; you were showing love and compassion for the only one of the creatures in your immediate orbit who, at this particular time, might need the love you have to offer. You do that like water goes downhill. And when you come to die God must recognize that you are doing what He does all the time, and so you’re guaranteed to make it - He’ll take you home because, clearly, it’s where you belong.” When I was finished she wanted a cuddle, the same cuddle I wanted to give her.

‘I’m telling you this to remind you, yet again, that your mother is an unparalleled treasure.’” – A husband smart enough to come in from the cold.

“If you were meant to be controlled you would have come with a remote.” - Anonymous

From “Me, Too 365,” by Arnold Kunst

16 May

“The parent who says he loves his child but then lays down a ton of conditions the child has to fulfill to earn that love doesn’t love his child. What he’s just done is to confuse and anger the child with what’s called emotional blackmail that will one day relentlessly corrode the child. Oh, in addition it’ll also blow up in the parent’s face. But trust me on this: it’s not love.” – Arnold Kunst

“When you get impatient you break the bond.” – Jonathan Hanaghan

“Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

15 May

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.” - Maya Angelou

“Sink into your silence, all the way to tranquility.” – Arnold Kunst

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

17 May

“Let us be silent that we might hear the whispers of the gods.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Can you withstand the frontal assault of a casually raised eyebrow?” - Anonymous

From "The Hunan Condition: A User's Manual," by Arnold Kunst

16 May

“Take care that you don’t go to enormous lengths to please people who do not have your best interests at heart.” – Arnold Kunst

“Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” – Mark Twain

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

15 May

“It is better to be alone than in bad company.” – George Washington

“Your progress is guaranteed insofar as you start out with, and continue to maintain, a clear view of the obstacles.” - Arnold Kunst

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 17

Blacks in colonial America were far more influential than is commonly supposed. According to Lincoln, in five of the original thirteen states – Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey and North Carolina - free Negroes had the right to vote. They undoubtedly played a part in the ratification of the Constitution and certainly were included in the preamble “we the people.”

“There's no substitute for the person with a properly formed sense of values.” - Anonymous

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 16

“I have borne a laborious and in some respects to myself, painful part in the contest. Through all I have neither assailed nor wrestled with any part of the Constitution.” - Abraham Lincoln

“Grow comfortable with the phrase, “I could be wrong, but...’ Your elbow won’t fall off.” - Arnold Kunst

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

May 15

“When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself.” - Abraham Lincoln 

“When I was born some of our relatives came to our house and told my mother, ‘Don’t worry, next time you will have a son.’” – Malala Yousafzai

“Me Too, 365,” by Arnold Kunst

14 May

“Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.” - Susan B. Anthony

“Abdication isn’t empowerment.” – Miles Anthony Smith

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

14 May

You and I are living far below our possibilities insofar as we continually hand over control to others.