John Kenneth Galbraith

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

“In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.”

“The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.”

- John Kenneth Galbraith
(October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006)

May light perpetual shine upon him.

books

Lincoln Speaks

Abraham Lincoln, Texas, Mexico, The Mexican-American War. What the hell does this have to do with today’s world?

You tell me.

In a letter to his partner in law, William Herndon, written on February 15, 1848 Lincoln protested the Mexican-American war and said:

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him,–I see no probability of the British invading us”; but he will say to you, “Be silent: I see it, if you don’t.”

The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.

In a speech on January 12, 1848 when we were embroiled in the war, Lincoln complains that the President never justified the war because he couldn’t justify it without resorting to lies:

The result of this examination was to make the impression, that taking for true, all the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof, if it had not been for the small matter, that the truth would not permit him.

That his justifications for war fluctuated constantly, and the President refused to respond to critics and answer questions: . But if he can not, or will not do this–if on any pretence, or no pretence, he shall refuse or omit it, then I shall be fully convinced, of what I more than suspect already, that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrongthat he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him. That originally having some strong motive–what, I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning–to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory–that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood–that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy he plunged into it, and has swept, on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself, he knows not where. How like the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream, is the whole war part of his late message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever, that we can get, but teritory; at another, showing us how we can support the war, by levying contributions on Mexico. At one time, urging the national honor, the security of the future, the prevention of foreign interference, and even, the good of Mexico herself, as among the objects of the war; at another, telling us, that “to reject indemnity, by refusing to accept a cession of teritory, would be to abandon all our just demands, and to wage the war, bearing all it’s expenses, without a purpose or definite object[.]”

Finally Lincoln concludes:

Again, it is a singular omission in this message, that it, no where intimates when the President expects the war to terminate. At it’s beginning, Genl. Scott was, by this same President, driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months. But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes–every department, and every part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever before been thought men could not do,–after all this, this same President gives us a long message, without showing us, that, as to the end, he himself, has, even an imaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show, there is not something about his conscious, more painful than all his mental perplexity!

The excerpt from the letter is wise and tragically prophetic.

The excerpt from the speech is coincidental yet a reminder of how history haunts and repeats when we don’t learn from it.

In this case, when too many didn’t learn from past mistakes (Election 2000) and committed the same atrocity at the polls again.

the complete letter

the complete speech

“Frankl(in)y, my dear…”

“… I’m mixing systems.”

EDITED TO ADD: MY APOLOGIES — I THINK THIS IS A CONFUSING MESS. I’M GOING TO EDIT AND REPUBLISH WHEN I HAVE TIME, SO IF YOU FOUND THIS ENTRY AT ALL INTERESTING BUT COULDN’T WADE THROUGH IT, CHECK BACK TO SEE A CLEARER, SHORTER ENTRY LATER. YOU’LL KNOW IT’S UP BECAUSE THIS NOTICE WILL NO LONGER BE HERE. THANKS.

Meaning, I’m taking the parts of GTD that work for me and adding them to the parts of the Franklin Planner (described here) that work for me and ending up with (I hope) a hybrid that works exceptionally well for me.

I’ve described three things in GTD that have made a big difference for me.

Now I’ll describe two things from the Franklin Planner that work really well for me.

First let me tell you — I started using the FP a decade ago. I can’t say that I ever implemented the entire system all that well, but when I used it my life went a lot more smoothly, and the two things I’m going to share with you now literally changed my life.

If you’re like me, you’ll get a phone call and somebody will have info you need and you’ll grab the nearest pad of paper, post-it, scrap of envelope or very lightly-used napkin from Jack in the Box and scribble that info down.

Then it disappears into the swamp.

Here is what changed my life.

When I bought my first Franklin Planner (now known as Franklin Covey but since I bought the original and never added any Covey-tude to my system I remain old-school in my reference) I hesitated for a long time. I read bulletin boards where people swore by it. I finally went to the Franklin Quest Store and studied all the different sizes of pages and expensive binders and such, and finally went the cheapest way I could think of — I bought some sort of starter set that was standard notebook-paper size. I figured I could put it in a regular binder, try it, and if I didn’t like it, move on. (Just like I’d done with all those little purse-sized Day Runners and File O Faxes and things I’d bought.)

The first thing that set this apart from the others when it came to my ability to implement it is the fact that each day had an entire blank ruled page for writing notes.

The second thing was that I’d chosen the largest (and least popular) size. Because really, who wants to lug a big book like that around with them all the time?

But for me it was oddly like returning to high school, and I just started carrying it and it was no big deal. I found that if I had that notebook open by me when I was working, if one of those calls came I mentioned earlier, I’d write down the info on the blank page. And after a few weeks, I realized that this simple process was making me armed and dangerous.

Because suddenly I could refer back to earlier conversations with an event coordinator, an insurance company, etc. and tell them specifically what they’d promised on a certain day and who I spoke to, and they could no longer duck out of things or claim they never told me that (probably because they’d lost the dirty gum wrapper where they’d written down notes about my call, those bastids).

I mean, I no longer protested in a desperate whine*, “But you said…” while they acted professional and huffy and said, “I can assure you nobody in this office promised you that.”

They whined; I professionally snapped details at them; they snapped into action; I won.

Very easy.

And after I realized the beautiful simplicity yet enormous power of simply writing things down on the blank page of any given day and searching back and finding it later — I realized, okay, this planner thing is actually working for me, maybe now I should actually devote a little more time to figuring it out.

Because up to then I’d just used it like a scheduler, the obvious stuff that you can look at, and that is pretty much like a lot of other planners.

But this was when I went ahead and bought a binder made specificly for the FP, and yes, that was a good move. And I bought Hyrum Smith’s book (see link above) and found out all the cleverness of the system. Stuff that goes beyond the obvious.

So, here you go. I wanted to demonstrate to you the power of the system, so I thought to myself, “Hmmm, what was a really busy time for me?” and thought of Fall 2000. So I went to my bookshelf, pulled down the notebook that holds the year 2000, flipped to October and found a day that had a lot of notes on it, mostly from phone calls I was making and receiving:

October 31. There you see it. On the left, the page that looks like other planner pages. A “to-do” list (Prioritized Daily Task List in FQ Terms), small monthly calendars, and an Appointment Schedule.

But on the left — that’s my power page. That’s where I took notes as I spoke to different people on the phone. As I mentioned, I figured out the power of this on my own.

But watch THIS little trick. Remember how I said that I wanted to show you a particular kind of day, and once I had a general idea (Fall 2000) I went to the shelf and pulled it off? The way I found this particular day was by checking the “Table of Contents.”

Now I probably wouldn’t be taking so much time showing you all of this if it weren’t for the fact that I think you can make this “Table of Contents” idea work for you in other systems and in other ways. And also, if it weren’t for the fact that most people I know who took Franklin seminars and read the books don’t recall this, which blows my mind.

Here’s your real weapon. In just a couple of minutes you can find most anything you need, even if you have years of planners to look through. Because (assuming you made your Table of Contents) you just flip through them month by month until you find what you’re looking for. And in my case the general memory of “Fall 2000″ clarified quickly when I opened to October and saw this:

There is the one month calendar for October 2000.

And that is also the table of contents.

Every day that has any kind of note or reference on it that I may need to refer to later, has one or two words (usually a name) in its little square. In the second half of this month I was receiving so many phone calls that I have lots of names in most of the squares. But if I want to find when I spoke to a particular person I look here, and even if I spoke to them more than once it simply doesn’t take long to flip to the appropriate date/s to see the notes and find the specific info I’m looking for.

That’s it. Table of Contents for my life.

That’s why I’m not letting go of my Franklin Planner (yet) even though I’ve finally reverted back to a purse-sized planner, which I will explain in a later entry.

Now, I need to go get things done.

* I do not whine. That was literary license. Shut up.

That Time of Year

Either the Resident Storm Chaser or I took this pic today. He thinks he did. I think I did. What can I say? This is what happens when you don’t bother to get your own camera out of the case because the wildflowers are so darned sucky.

Because of the drought we’ve had, of course.

But we did manage to find some Texas bluebonnets near Ennis, which is a good thing since they’re having their bluebonnet festival this weekend. Usually there are acres and acres of beautiful bluebonnets around Ennis. This year, not many at all, and the ones that are there are stunted.

Oh well.

They’re still bluebonnets. Even though in this picture you can’t tell much about them. I’ll post a better picture (one from last year) later.

Things That Work

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for awhile. Lately I’ve stumbled across a couple of products that simply work. Now I know how this goes. What works for me may not work for you. But I still figured I’d pass the info along, just in case.

And then I thought, why stop here? I’d like to know what works for other people.

So, this is a meme. It’s as broad as anybody wants it to be. And I’m going to tag somebody at the end, of course.

1. Cheap Fountain Pen that Writes Like a Dream

By hanging out on some Moleskine and GTD sites, I discovered the Lamy Safari Fountain Pen with Extra Fine nib. Now maybe you’re a fountain pen expert who has expensive fountain pens and will say, “Oh, that doesn’t write like a dream, the Uber-Costly German Gold-and-Sterling Whipperjammer writes like a dream, not that cheap piece of junk.”

But here’s what happened to me. I love fountain pens but won’t buy one that costs much because I’m afraid I’ll lose it. Plus, I just don’t want to get started down that road, because boy are there some gorgeous pens out there. So I bought the Lamy and loved it so much I was tempted to get three or four in different colors, and use each one for a different color ink. (Um, what road was it you weren’t going down, Pooks? Shut up.)

But I started surfing sites and saw some really beautiful pens that didn’t cost too much more than the Lamy Safari, and I finally decided to buy a couple of them instead. And they write scratchy. Or at least, not as smoothly as the Lamy. And after excursions into other cheap fountain pens I finally realized, “Duh, maybe there’s a reason why people kept recommending the Lamy Safari.” (I said Shut Up.)

So I’m back to wanting several colors of Lamy Safari pens. To go with the pretty inks I have. (Another weakness.)

My recommendation is you spring for the converter so that you can choose your own ink and refill, but if you prefer the ease of cartridges, that’s fine, too.

And as for that ease of writing thing — I’ve mentioned it before but my handwriting is abysmal. And after years of buying bold pens I discovered that this extra fine nib makes my handwriting much more legible. Wow, who knew?

Then of course there’s the added benefit that the fountain pen (this one, anyway) glides across the page so easily that I’m less prone to gripping too hard, pressing down too hard, and thus my handwriting improves even more, and my hand doesn’t cramp.

This pen works for me. Especially when writing in my Moleskine. Is there anything more romantic and lovely than writing in a Moleskine with a fountain pen? I think not.

2. 100% Cotton Shirts that Don’t Wrinkle

Really. This is not a joke or an advertising trick. First I bought a couple for myself. So the Resident Storm Chaser asked me, “When did you start ironing your shirts?” I’d been wearing it all day and it still looked crisp and smooth, and hell no, I hadn’t ironed it. I did hang it up straight from the dryer, but that’s it.

So I bought him some. We’re believers.

Go to LLBean and search on “wrinkle resistant” and you’ll find a great selection. It works.

3. Lip Balm with Color

I have chapped lips. I constantly reapply lipstick or chapstick or lip balm or whatever, and sometimes I’ll be okay and other times they’re a mess. But just out of curiosity I picked up some Burts Bees Lip Shimmers, and I’m in love. The colors are nice. (Shimmery but not sheer — very nice colors.) And my lips haven’t been chapped in yonks. Love this stuff! (And if you’re not into color I assume the regular stuff is just as great.)

According to them, “They’re made from natural ingredients like vitamin E, coconut and sunflower oils to moisturize and highlight your lips.” Whatever it is, it’s great stuff. And cheap!

4. GTD

Haven’t I said enough about that yet? Well, no, but I’ll save it for another day.

But for me?

It works.

5. The Best Screenwriting Competition Ever

And I believed this long before I ever won. It is the best run, the best planned, the most respected, the best in all ways. When Mrs. Gee Nicholl decided to endow a fellowship for writers she became the guardian angel to more thousands of writers than she will ever know.

It’s not just the writers who are discovered because they entered, and have careers launched. It’s not just the writers who win.

It’s the thousands of you who are even now typing into the late hours of the night and wee hours of the morning to complete scripts to meet that May 1 deadline. Whether you’re in Los Angeles or Dallas or London or Hamburg or Hong Kong the dream is within your reach because this terrific woman decided to honor her husband’s memory with this fellowship, and because the Academy has done such a stunning job of implementing it.

So … why are you reading this?

Go write.

Now.

And good luck!

Now … I want to know what works for other people. I’m going to tag Toni and Candace and brett even if he is an Aggie. You can write about one thing that works or a dozen. You can list them or explain them. I don’t care. I just want to know –

What works for you?