Monday Morning Coffee - The King's Singers

My husband and I have recently formed an a cappella vocal group. We are just starting to learn some Christmas carols (traditional and jazz arrangements) and are also looking at a Renaissance piece by William Byrd - The Mass for 5 Voices. We are far from our first appearance at Carnegie Hall but it's fun to sing with friends even if you never appear outside of the living room.

So, for Morning Coffee today, I thought I would share with you one of my favorite a cappella vocal groups, The King's Singers, performing one of my favorite Christmas songs... Enjoy :)

Morning Coffee Quotes

"The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance."
- Laurence J. Peter

"Most people have the will to win; few have the will to prepare to win."
- Bobby Knight

"The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears."
- John Vance Cheney

"Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics: It is addictive, gives momentary pleasure, and separates the victim from reality."
- John Gardner

"So often in time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key."
- The Eagles, 'Already Gone'

"How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it."
- Marcus Aurelius

"People don't plan to mess up their lives. They just don't plan not to."
- Andy Stanley

"Between the great things we cannot do and the small things we will not do, the danger is that we shall do nothing."
- Adolph Monod

"Wait until it is night before saying that it has been a fine day."
- French Proverb

"Be not proud of race, face, place or grace."
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon

"Less is more."
- Mies van der Rohe

"An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight. The truly wise person is colorblind."
- Albert Schweitzer

"Woe be to him that reads but one book."
- George Herbert

"Folks who never do more than they're paid for, never get paid for any more than they do."
- Elbert Hubbard

"What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope."
- George Eliot

"Many who deservedly attribute great dysfunction and societal harm to lawyers apparently never labored alongside Ivy Leaguers. One never fathomed silver spoons could sap common sense out of so many seemingly intelligent folks."
- R. E. Bell

"During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them have done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think."
- Bernard M. Baruch

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
- Bob Dylan, 'Subterranean Homesick Blues'

Morning Coffee Quotes for November 17th

Me, the morning of my 50th birthday (Nov 14th) on the shores of Lake Michigan - photo by Dan Caraway

“There is in this world no such force as the force of a person determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained.”
- W.E.B. DuBois

“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.”
- Charles Dickens

“Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than the exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.”
- John W. Tukey

“Blessed are those with cracks in their broken heart because that is how the light gets in.”
- Shannon L. Alder

“You're only lonely if you're not there for you.”
- Phil McGraw

“The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.”
- Milton Friedman

“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one.”
- Benjamin Franklin

“I will not take ‘but’ for an answer.”
- Langston Hughes

“He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.”
- Jacques Anatole

“I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.”
- William Penn

“There is no prejudice so strong as that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice.”
- William Hazlitt

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”
- Harriet Tubman

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“You never find yourself until you face the truth.”
- Pearl Bailey

“Forget what other people think. Screw the hype. A job title is only a title. Money pays bills; it does not create happiness or move us to tears. Earn enough, give some away and stop believing it is the friggin’ authority on value.”
- Amy Selwyn

“The greatest gift you can give is just being present.”
- Rasheed Ogunlaru

“Prejudice is a form of untruthfulness, and untruthfulness is an insidious form of injustice.”
- Miroslav Volf

Morning Coffee - Desire to Fly: Samantha Bryan’s Hand-Crafted Sculptures of Whimsical Aviator Fairies

Desire To Fly from R&A Collaborations on Vimeo.

Morning Coffee - Just a little bit of Spring before the big freeze...

While cleaning out image files on my ol' hard drive, I found these lovely shots of cherry blossoms that I took in April. I love Fall - time to bundle up in wool sweaters and turtlenecks, drink hot chocolate and cuddle on the couch watching chick flicks - but as I look at these pictures, I can almost feel the warm air and sweet fragrance of Spring...

 

 

Morning Coffee - Yo Yo Madness!

Sometimes I like to post cool things I find online, just because... they are my "Morning Coffee" posts and can include interesting quotes, videos, etc. that I find while surfin' the net. Someone sent me a link to this YouTube video and I was mesmerized (although the music drove me bit crazy)! Enjoy... :)

Morning Coffee Quotes to get you thinking!

Sweet-smellin' Lilacs (Photo by Cindy Caraway)

"Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it is good only for wallowing."
- Katherine Mansfield

"Who is in your life asking you the tough questions?"
- Jeff Henderson

"The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it."
- John Ruskin

"Example is the lesson that all men can read."
- Gilbert West

"There are two ways to improve yourself — through the people you interact with and the books you read."
- S. Truett Cathy

"Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose."
- Lyndon B. Johnson

"Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as 'suits'."
- Paul Graham

"Progress is always preceded by change; change is always preceded by challenge; challenging the status quo is often where leadership begins."
- Andy Stanley

"The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail."
- Napoleon Hill

"A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?"
- Don Marquis

"Do not trust all men, but trust men of worth; the former course is silly, the latter a mark of prudence."
- Democritus

"The most profound statements are often said in silence."
- Lynn Johnston

"It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money."
- Albert Camus

"The man who can articulate the movements of his inner life need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering."
- Henri Nouwen

"Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it."
- Brian Tracy

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

"You don't get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour."
- Jim Rohn

"Psychiatry is the care of the id by the odd."
- Unknown

Monday Morning Coffee - Dithyrambalina: The Music Box and Beyond

Musical Architecture in New Orleans... how cool is that?


Dithyrambalina: The Music Box and Beyond from TungstenMonkey on Vimeo.

Morning Coffee Quotes

Sailing - photo by Cindy Caraway

"You can do anything, but not everything."
- David Allen

"Expectations are premeditated resentments."
- Unknown

"A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it is committing another mistake."
- Confucius

"It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew."
- Henry Rollins

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
- Oscar Wilde

"In the long run people hit only what they aim at."
- Henry David Thoreau

"Faith is not a shelter against all difficulties,
but a belief in the face of all contradictions.
- Unknown

"There is no need to fasten a bell to a fool."
- Danish Proverb

"He, who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fears."
- Michel Eyquen

"The trouble with you gringos is that you think manana means 'tomorrow'.  What it really means is 'not today'."
- Unknown

"You manage things; you lead people."
- Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

"Blessed are those who give without remembering. And blessed are those who take without forgetting."
- Bernard Meltzer

"One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity."
- Albert Schweitzer

"Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning."
- Robert Kiyosaki

"We tell our triumphs to the crowds, but our own hearts are the sole confidants of our sorrows."
- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

"A great many people mistake opinions for thoughts."
- Herbert V. Prochnow

Morning Coffee - A Bird Ballet

I thought this was cool and wanted to share it! Happy Autumn!


More of my work on http://neelscastillon.com
An incredibly poetic murmuration of starlings.
We were shooting for a commercial, waiting for an helicopter flying into the sunset, when thousands and thousands of birds came and made this incredible dance in the sky. It was amazing, we just forgot our job and started this little piece of poetry... Enjoy !
Directed by Neels CASTILLON
Shot by Mathias Touzeris
Producted by Masterfilms.
Music: Hand-made - Alt J

Morning Coffee TED talk - Guerilla Gardening

I love this guy! As Ron Finley would say, "Let's plant some shit!"

Morning Coffee Quotes

St. Ulrich's Priory - Black Mountains, Germany - photo by Cindy Caraway

"Of all the people on the planet, you talk to yourself more than anyone. Make sure you are saying the right things."
- Martin Rooney

"The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Forgiveness is not a matter of exonerating people who have hurt you. They may not deserve exoneration. Forgiveness means cleansing your soul of the bitterness."
- Harold S. Kushner

"We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way."
- John Steinbeck

"Failing to prepare is like preparing to fail."
- John R. Wooden

"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong."
- Ecclesiastes 9:11

"People are attracted to you by what they see in you; they remain attracted to you by what you see in yourself."
- Mark Amend

"Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof."
- Kahlil Gibran

"Neither situations nor people can be altered by the interference of an outsider. If they are to be altered, that alteration must come from within."
- Phyllis Bottome

"The more you know the less you need to say."
- Jim Rohn

"Poor God, how often He is blamed for all the suffering in the world. It’s like praising Satan for allowing all the good that happens."
- E.A. Bucchianeri

"Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it."
- Albert Camus

"Our lives change in two ways: through the people we meet and the books we read."
- Harvey MacKay

"He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration."
- Michael Pollan

"The weak makes excuses, the strong makes changes."
- Habeeb Akande

Morning Coffee Quotes

Christmas Lights Chicago - photo by Cindy Caraway

"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life."
- Baruch Spinoza

"Pay your people the least possible and you'll get from them the same."
- Malcolm S. Forbes

"Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also."
- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
- Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues

"With most people, unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another."
- Georg C. Lichtenberg

"It’s a wonderful feeling when you discover some evidence to support your beliefs."
- Unknown

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
- Albert Camus

"We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won't need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don't fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine."
- Dwight L. Moody

"No one’s happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy."
- Ayn Rand

"When ability exceeds ambition, or ambition exceeds ability, the likelihood of success is limited."
- Ralph Half

"Self-worth comes from one thing -- thinking that you are worthy."
- Wayne Dyer

"Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses."
- James Baldwin

"We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school."
- Bruce Springsteen, No Surrender

"While we pursue happiness, we flee from contentment."
- Hasidic Proverb

Morning Coffee Quotes

Hummingbird Having Lunch - photo by Cindy Caraway

"When chasing dreams, be certain you don't have the blankets pulled over your head."
- A.F. Raud

"To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it."
- Churton Collins

"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."
- Eric Fromm

"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy."
- Thích Nhất Hạnh

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition."
- Marilyn Monroe

"Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math."
- Ambrose Bierce

"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts."
- Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

"Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different."
- J.K. Rowling

"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."
- Mother Teresa

"Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are."
- Marianne Williamson

"Good friendships are fragile things and require as much care as any other fragile and precious things."
- Randolph Bourne

"There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor."
- Oscar Wilde

"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful."
- C.S. Lewis

"It is not what he has, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is."
- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

"No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong."
- François de La Rochefoucauld

Morning Coffee Quotes

Mississippi Slough - photo by Cindy Caraway

"The route you take depends a good deal upon where you want to go."
- Lewis Carroll

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."
- James Madison

"Good enough isn't."
- Unknown

"The highest wisdom is kindness."
- The Talmud (Berakot)

"The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays."
- Søren Kierkegaard

"Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable."
- John Patrick

"Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue."
- Francois De La Rochefoucauld

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
- George Bernard Shaw

"Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it."
- David Star Jordan

"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
- Sam Levenson

"Happiness is wanting what you get, not getting what you want."
- Robert A. Heinlein

"Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings."
- George F. Will

"Cherish the questions, for the answers keep changing."
- Albert Einstein

"They will never forget you until somebody new comes along."
- The Eagles, New Kid In Town

"Wisdom consists in knowing what to do with what you know."
- Unknown

"A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice."
- E. W. Howe

"If you want happiness for an hour -- take a nap. If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing. If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help others."
- Unknown

Morning Coffee Quotes

Garden Visitor (Photo by Cindy Caraway)

"Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When you want to win a game, you have to teach. When you lose a game, you have to learn."
- Tom Landry

"What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?"
- Matthew 16:26

"People should always have something which they prefer to life."
- Johann G. Seume

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it."
- Rene Descartes

"A civilization is built on what is required of men, not on that which is provided for them."
- Antoine De Saint-Exupery

"Misfortunes one can endure--they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults--ah!--there is the sting of life."
- Oscar Wilde

"Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly."
- Albert Camus

"You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance."
- Kahlil Gibran

"Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us."
- Eric Hoffer

"Lying and stealing are next door neighbors."
- Arabian Proverb

"Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves, without any insistence that they satisfy you."
- Dr. Wayne Dyer

"A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience."
- John Updike

"In nine times out of ten, the slanderous tongue belongs to a disappointed person."
- George Bancroft

"A stiff apology is a second insult. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton

"The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity."
- Thomas Peters

Morning Coffee Quotes

Smoky Mountains (May 2013) - photo by Cindy Caraway

"It is a very dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice."
- Phyllis Bottome

"Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though 'twere his own."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."
- C. S. Lewis

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart."
- Nelson Mandela

"You can pretend to care, but you can't pretend to show up."
- George L. Bell

"There is nothing anti-intellectual in the leap of faith, for faith is not believing without proof but trusting without reservation."
- William Sloane Coffin Jr.

"A man who lacks reliability is utterly useless."
- Confucius

"Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights."
- John R. Wooden

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
- Henry David Thoreau

"Pray not for easy lives, pray to be stronger men."
- John F. Kennedy

"As long as you don't forgive, who and whatever it is will occupy rent-free space in your mind."
- Isabelle Hollande

"One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license."
- P.J. O'Rourke

"I once thought losing my confidence was the worst thing that could happen; then I lost my faith."
- Bobby Vee

"Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere."
- Glen Turner

"We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the best deal man has ever made."
- M. Facklam

"Example moves the world more than doctrine."
- Henry Miller

"Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry--all forms of fear--are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence."
- Eckhart Tolle

"A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time."
- Mark Twain

Morning Coffee Quotes

Feet in Freiburg - photo by Cindy Caraway

"Some folk want their luck buttered."
- Thomas Hardy

"One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton

"You can have everything in life that you want if you just give enough other people what they want."
- Zig Ziglar

"Jealousy is the jaundice of the soul."
- John Dryden

"The worst feeling in the world is the homesickness that comes over a man occasionally when he is at home."
- Edgar Watson Howe

"Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step."
- Antoine De Saint-Exupery

"Flatter not thyself in thy faith in God if thou hast not charity for thy neighbor."
- Francis Quarles

"I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
- William Butler Yeats

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."
- Robert Frost

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
- Oscar Wilde

"Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid it will never begin."
- Grace Hansen

"America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life's sacred spontaneity. They can't trust life until they can control it."
- D. H. Lawrence

"Fatigue makes cowards of us all."
- Vince Lombardi

"No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government."
- Socrates

"The reason why so little is done is generally because so little is attempted."
- Samuel Smiles

Morning Coffee - St. Luke's Bottle Band (What a hoot!)

You have GOT to see this great video! I laughed out loud! I wanna start a bottle band in Dubuque...

Morning Coffee Quotes - Marriage Rocks!

Photo by Cindy Caraway

"Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without."
- James C. Dobson

"A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences."
- Dave Meurer

"No man is truly married until he understands every word his wife is NOT saying."
- Unknown

"There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps."
- Ronald Reagan

"To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up."
- Ogden Nash

"A good marriage is the union of two good forgivers."
- Ruth Bell Graham

"Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance."
- I Corinthians 13:7

"Success in marriage does not come merely through FINDING the right mate, but through BEING the right mate."
- Barnett Brickner

"Let there be spaces in your togetherness."
- Kahlil Gibran

"You can't be right and married at the same time. If you're trying to be right and prove your partner wrong, you've stepped outside the marriage."
- Frank Pittman

"The first duty of love is to listen."
- Paul Tillich

"Marriage has some thorns, but celibacy has no roses."
- Vernon McLellan

"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse predict an ailing marriage: criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt. The worst of these is contempt."
- John Gottman

"He who finds a wife finds what is good."
- Proverbs 18:22

"When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Commitment is making a choice to give up other choices."
- Scott Stanley

"My heart is ever at your service."
- William Shakespeare