The Perfect Age to Retire

New Plants for the Garden

The perfect age to retire is 60, in my opinion. If you still feel the desire to work that should be your right to do so, but I would like to still have my energy, my mind and my health left for me to enjoy retirement. I wouldn't want to wear myself down to a husk of what I used to be from work and then retire. This of course is all hypothetical because here in the U.S many arguments are being made over this very question.

Write a short letter to yourself, to be read exactly one year from nw.

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tag2011

Dear Self,
Today is the day you have to read this letter. Monday, July 17th, 2012.

I hope that you had a Happy New Year and a Merry Christmas, I hope that you had started making plans and saving up for your long trip to France to celebrate Tonton Leon’s 85th birthday. You should be there in France right now and I hope that you have made a point to visit as many of the cousins as possible. At this date I’m not sure if we would be in Rouen, Lyons or Bordeaux. But, most importantly, we would be in France. Have you had a nice sandwich de jambon et du beurre? Ham with butter sandwich, it sounds really plain and simple, which it is, but it is the gloriousness of the 3 ingredients that make it so spectacular. The golden richness of Normandy butter coupled with a fresh slice of ham from the butcher on a fresh, out of the oven, 6 inch baguette, is just so good that no matter how hungry you are, you chew it slowly, to savor the crunchiness of the baguette mingled with the slight tang of salt from the ham and the rich smooth creamery butter, all these tastes and textures rolling around your taste buds of your tongue. You know what I am talking about. I hope that we have indulged in the perfection that is the chocolate eclair. I can go on and on, but don’t forget to try to make each day go as slowly as possible. No looking forward to something while there with everyone, because looking forward to something makes the days go too quickly. Not like when we were younger, time is on high-speed these days and we want to stop and smell the thousands of roses around us. I know that there were a few posts about pictures and whether or not they capture moments in time or memories but whatever was decided, who cares, take pictures, at least one of everybody. Don’t forget the countryside everywhere.

I hope to remember to read this letter next year and I hope that I will be reading it on my Ipad in France. I can show all my relatives all the posts that I have written and will still be writing from overseas. Exciting! Something to look forward to! Time may go quickly, but time goes quickly anyway, at least there will be something wonderful and worthwhile at the end of the wait.

Hope that you are having fun!
Love,
Self

Is Congress About to Cause Another Great Depression?

Our founding fathers revered education and realized that an educated electorate was vital to our democracy. Apparently our electorate hasn’t kept up with their history studies because they are supporting those politician­s who are seeking to repeat history not to our betterment but to our detriment. I have been yelling at Bernanke for over a year now because he called himself a student of the Great Depression on 60 minutes but here he was just standing by idly letting Congress follow the same playbook that they followed in the late 1930’s which stalled the recovery back then. If our electorate had paid attention, we would have been more vocal in letting our politician­s know that they were taking us down the avenue. We need investment here in the U.S. and we need JOBS.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tea Party: Polls Show Importance To GOP Base

I would love to know how many tea party members have received Pell grants to go to college, are receiving social security checks, take the highways, use the internet, use medicare or live on disability­, are recipients of agricultur­al subsidies? The government has had both a quiet presence and like with the Wall Street bailout (thank you President Bush) a huge presence in our lives. Our huge highway system (thanks to President Eisenhower­) due to government works, the internet part of the DOD work in computeriz­ation. This small but hugely vocal part of the republican party need a time machine so that they can go back to the world of 18th century America or England whichever they prefer. Their vision does not coincide with the realities of America today. The GOP politician­s need to grow a spine and stand up to them because you can’t tell me that Boehner and a few of his buddies are really comfortabl­e with this version of extremism.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Can a movie ever be better than the book it was based on?

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postaday2011

Yes, in the hands of a great director paired with a brilliant cinematographer such as seen in Gone with the Wind, the visual can overpower the book. I do know, however, that there were many books that I have read in the past that were never done the justice they deserved by the film. Stephen Kings books for example, have never been done correctly in film form. His talent in the written word has yet to be captured by a camera. I don’t know if it is the director’s lack of vision or the screenplay but the glaring difference between the two genre’s is shocking.
But then, like I stated with the example of Gone with the Wind, the right director, cinematographer and actors can bring the book even more to life on the big screen than the book ever could. The burning of Atlanta seen on film stays with you much longer than the scene on the written page. Usually the main issue I have with the movie version of the book I read, is the casting/acting. I always enjoy the journey I take with the characters in the book in question, and when the movie doesn’t share the vision I had in my head, the viewing experience is diminished in my eyes. I can get possessive of my artistic interpretation of the book and if the director doesn’t agree with my interpretation, I am not a satisfied audience member.
It is all an individual experience and we are lucky that books are still so important to us that film directors launch bidding wars for works of literature, science fictions, drama and comedy and so on. I must admit that after seeing all the Harry Potter movies, I’m glad that I didn’t read a single book, because my experience as a movie goer was pure and simple entertainment and wonder. I know quite a few avid Potter readers, who yelled and complained that the films didn’t honor the books enough but since I didn’t want to read them I was a very happy customer. Why did I not want to read them? My two children were old enough to read them on their own, and I was reading my own stuff. But I was glad to go to the movies. The same thing happened with the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, I had read all the books but it had been so long that I was rusty in the details. The sheer brilliance of Peter Jackson, the director and his cinematographer really brought those books to life even more vividly than my own imagination. His vision of middle earth and its inhabitants was extraordinary. I count myself lucky to have the opportunity to read and see movies and complain if I want to about how the movie didn’t do the book justice or leave a movie saying wow, what a brilliant director, he really got the book.