The Foundation

Acropolis by Leo von Klenze

"Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous."

~ Pericles, funeral oration, 431BC

Palmyra

ISIS now controls this famous oasis city of the Silk Road. How long before they bulldoze the spectacular ancient ruins?

SuperHuman

“Fear is a kind of pain, an anticipative pain, like the ‘ache’ of desire. It brings energy, intensity, strength. In a way, you might say it’s the source of courage.” ~Anand Pandava, the Indian intelligence agent in THE ASSASSIN LOTUS

"When we find ourselves under intense pressure, fear unleashes reserves of energy that normally remain inaccessible. With the sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis fully activated, our bodies and brains can utilize their resources so fully that we become, in effect, superhuman."
~Jeff Wise, EXTREME FEAR, The Science of Your Mind in Danger

Act Brave, Be Brave

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

"There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first. But by acting as if I was not afraid, I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience."  ~T.R.

The Best Laughter

John Huston, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich

"There is a laughter that goes so far as to lose touch with its motive and to exist only, grossly, in itself. This is laughter at its best."  

~Max Beerbohm 

Shangri La?

Having recently written a novel about the longing for utopia (The Assassin Lotus), it was wonderful to take a trip with my wife to a real-world paradise--the "Garden Isle" of Kauai. Oldest of the Hawaiian Islands, it remains as lush and wild as when I traveled there as a teenager some 40 years ago. A veritable Garden of Eden--without a single snake!  Click the pics to enlarge:

The Storm Before the Calm

"Christ Before Pilate" - Andrea Mantegna, 1500

"Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging, clamorous torrent of man's consciousness, with all its crises, pangs, and torments." 

~Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik