“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.”
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
“No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
“Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
“Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles.”
“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.”
“The God whom we worship is not a weak and incompetent God. He is able to beat back gigantic waves of opposition and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. The ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.”
“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
“Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”
“All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.”
“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”
“Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”
“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? … Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience ask the question, is it right? “
“Whatever your life’s work is, do it well.”
“There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
“We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”
“The surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.”
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
“We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”
“The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat.
“You will change your mind; You will change your looks; You will change your smile, laugh, and ways but no matter what you change, you will always be you.”
“He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.”
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
“We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to mankind.”
“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ ”
“If any earthly institution or custom conflicts with God’s will, it is your Christian duty to oppose it. “
‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the cat. ‘We’re all mad here.’ ~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.” ~ Lord Byron
“Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.” ~ George Jean Nathan
“You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.” ~ Adlai Stevenson
“Age gives you a great sense of proportion. You can be very hard on yourself when you’re younger but now I just think ‘well everybody’s absolutely mad and I’m doing quite well’.” ~ Steven Morrissey
“You can’t stay mad at someone who makes you laugh.” ~Jay Leno
“Don’t be afraid to make people mad. Your honesty will inspire your true followers.” ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” ~ Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Past medical studies found a 20% increase in heart attacks on Mondays.
The 80’s-era Bangles’ hit song “Manic Monday” was written by Prince.
There are 53 Mondays on the calendar this year.
There were only 52 Mondays last year.
The name “Monday” comes from Greek and/or Latin phrases, both meaning “Day of the Moon” or “Moon’s Day”.
Jimmy Buffet’s song “Come Monday” was written for his wife, because he missed her while playing weekend shows.
One study claims that 50% of employees are late to work on Monday mornings.
Worker productivity studies showed that an average of only 3.5 hours of actual work are conducted on Mondays.
The first Monday after Thanksgiving, deemed “Cyber Monday”, is not the busiest online shopping day of the year, despite claims otherwise.
“I Don’t Like Mondays”, the title of a 1979 hit song, comes from a phrase quoted by Brenda Spencer, the perpetrator of a school shooting which killed 2 adults and wounded 8 children.
The Carpenters recorded their hit song “Rainy Days and Mondays” in 1971 and then saw it climb to #2 on the charts.
Monday Night Football is one of the longest running prime-time commercial network television series, starting in 1970 and currently contracted to go through 2021.
Alarm is set for 8 a.m. for a late-start day.
7:15 – phone call: one of your lifeguards has passed out.
7:20 – make 3 phone calls as scrambling to get dressed, in attempt to arrange guard coverage
7:50 – lifeguard until someone else can take over
9:25 – check on lifeguard we sent home: she’s doing well
9:30 – begin working on extremely urgent project that absolutely must be completed that day
9:40 – realize that I just deleted two very important parts of the project
9:40.32 – begin to panic
9:45 – figure out how to fix the problem and find accidentally deleted files
10:00 – radio call from warm pool: temperature seems off in the room
10:05 – enter warm pool, attempt to breathe in heavy air
10:20 – track down maintenance director who is working upstairs
10:30 – check readings with maintenance director; air filtration system has one part down.
10:33 – report to lifeguard: current air temp is 90 degrees with 63% humidity. repairman called.
10:45 – return to work on urgent project.
11:03 – text lifeguard due in at 3 pm, ask her to come in at 1:30 if possible
11:45 – make peanut butter sandwich at desk and eat it while still working on project
12:50 – approximately half of project is complete. use bathroom. report to warm pool.
1:00 – lifeguard warm pool ’til guard can come in
1:30 – return to office, work on urgent project
1:40 – fire alarms begin sounding. evacuate pools and building.
1:50 – all clear is given. no fire, just a broken sprinkler head. reopen pools.
1:55 – quick parking lot search for evacuee/therapy patient who apparently decided to drive away
2:00 – return to urgent project
2:20 – hot tony walks by and asks if we have an extra squeegee in the pool area, which we do
2:30 – radio call: cool pool lifeguard needs a break
2:35 – me to the lifeguard stand. guard goes on break but is put to work moving towels to the back desk. she reports there is “water in the front desk area”
2:40 – she returns to guard. i check out the “water”.
2:41 – stand in awe at the volume of water still dripping from ceiling in front lobby. apparently when sprinkler head broke, it flooded an upstairs room which then flooded through the ceiling and onto the front desk area.
2:55 – meeting called for available staff. temporary command center established in front of lifeguard office. all people coming in will need to enter through side door and then walk through lifeguard office and cool pool to get to locker rooms.
3:00 – give breaks to guards so they can move personal belongings from lifeguard office to my office
3:15 – in attempt to stop people tracking dirt all over pool deck, create a sign to funnel them through a particular hallway. wording of sign: Walk This Way
3:30 – new shift lifeguards and swim instructors begin arriving. explain to each one to put their belongings in my office. repeat morning story about a hundred times.
3:45 – interview subject arrives. employment interview conducted in my office amidst piles of peoples’ belongings with unusually heavy foot traffic past my office.
4:00 – lifeguard requests Sharpie to enhance “Walk This Way” signage (See picture below.)
4:15 – navigate dark front desk area to find paperwork for new hires to sign
4:16 – return to potential hire. realize i have the wrong paperwork.
4:17 – get correct paperwork. front desk area still dark. desk completely clear because all computers, telephones, papers, files, etc. are somewhere being dried off.
4:20 – return to extremely urgent project
5:15 – son calls to request food at work. as an aside he mentions that perhaps for his birthday party, we should do a giant scavenger hunt. around the entire quad cities. three days from now. i tell him this may be quite a stretch to figure out in 3 days. he says he understands.
5:17 – scribble down 3 ideas for scavenger hunt. return to extremely urgent project.
5:30 – finish extremely urgent project. clock out. i worked 9.33 hours without a break.
5:45 – take son food
5:55 – eat my dinner in the car on the way home
6:00 – home, begin working on scavenger hunt ideas. watch Big Bang Theory
6:12 – on commercials, do housework
6:50 – research scavenger hunt ideas online
7:15 – prepare to leave for 2nd job, important phone call regarding birthday party
7:30 – gas tank at E for two days: go to gas station
7:40 – detour on the way to work to check out something for scavenger hunt
7:45 – work second job
9:30 – leave second job wearing wet bathing suit with a towel wrapped around me
9:40 – birthday party discussions via telephone on the way home
10:00 – stand outside in the cold air and wet swimsuit to finish birthday party conversation
10:15 – give kids the rundown of my entire day
10:20 – take a shower so long that the hot water runs out
10:40 – snacks (cheese stick and tortilla) and Diet Coke; decompress
