for a friend

Friendship

"And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship."
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed."

The Prophet, Khalil Gibran, 1923.

i less-than-three these things

sleep is notoriously evasive for millions of people. i am one of the millions who depend on sleep aids (knock 'em back with a noggin of whiskey) to find that sweet respite of sleep, and i'm a man who loves his sleep.

this afternoon at my local wal-mart, i found the shelves utterly devoid of tylenol products, probably as a result of the recent massive drug recall. abandoning the hope of my once-beloved tylenol pms and forced to choose among competing sleep-aid products, i went straight for the best: excedrin pm.

ahh, excedrin, the vicodin of otc medication. who's ever had an unpleasant experience with the high-octane, 'roid-raging pain-reliever-on-crack that is excedrin? from past experience treating everything from slight headaches to the praying-for-death throat-agonies of pharyngitis, excedrin has been the hefty sack to tylenol's wimpy bag.

knowing that excedrin packs more active ingredients into each easy-to-swallow tablet, i'm ashamed that i groveled piteously at the feet of tylenol pm for so many years like a hungry zombie, begging the sweet brains of sleep from a peasly 25mg of diphenhydramine.

pharmaceutical deity novartis consumer health, inc. has ridden in like a cannibal brain market with its beefed-up 38mg of oh-so-satisfying diphenhydramine. zombie swallow pill. zombie sleep. zzz....

nighty-night!

motivational propaganda

 

from wikipedia:

"Keep Calm and Carry On was a propaganda poster produced by the British government in 1939 during the beginning of World War II, but never used. It was rediscovered in 2000 and has been re-issued by a number of private sector companies, and used as the decorative theme for a range of other products."

in the face of adversity, always keep a stiff upper lip.

from the ragbag

from our good friend raynor:

"let us revel and rejoice
for on this day in 1869, parliament (and george clinton) repealed the duty on hair powder act of 1795. because of this, you and i and lady gaga no longer have to pay the man™ when we want to powder our outlandish wigs with lavender-scented finely ground starch."

if you're bored or hankering to know every last thing there is to know about everything, head on over to the ragbag for hours upon hours of uproarious amusement!

R. I. P. Charlye Farris 1929-2010

 

My friend, Charlye Farris

A woman who made history in Wichita Falls, in Texas and across the South died Thursday.
Charlye Farris, 80, died following a battle with cancer.
District Attorney Barry Macha, a close friend, confirmed Farris died about 5:15 p.m. with her son, Troy, at her side.
“She was an inspiration to all of us,” Macha said.
The Booker T. Washington High School graduate became the first black woman in Texas to earn a license to practice law in 1953.
Macha said Farris had to go to the University of Denver Law School because a black woman could not gain entrance to Texas schools at that time.
A short time later she moved back to Wichita Falls and became the first woman to practice law in Wichita County. By 1954, she was County Judge Pro Tem, making her the first black woman in the South to serve in a judicial position since Reconstruction.
Farris opened a private law practice on the city’s predominantly black East Side. After passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, she moved her office downtown. Later, she served as acting district judge of the 78th Court.
Despite her breakthrough achievements, Farris told the Times Record News in a 2003 interview she considered herself a private person, who enjoyed travel and bridge.
The Wichita County Bar Association and the Wichita Falls Area Community Foundation established a scholarship in her name.
More recently, the former Fannin Elementary School was converted into the Farris Early Childhood Center, named both for Charlye Farris and her mother, Roberta, who was an educator for 47 years. Roberta Farris, 104, survives her daughter.
Charlye Farris was active until her illness limited her activities. She was appointed to the Midwestern State University Board of Regents in 2006.
In addition to her mother, Farris is survived by a brother and a son. Funeral arrangements had not been announced as of press time Thursday.

By Lynn Walker for the
Times Record News

 

frozen horses

this scene was captured on 11 february 2010 by a local resident on the campus of midwestern state university whose mascot mustangs are traditionally allowed to roam the campus freely. in what newscasters are dubbing the "winter storm of 2010," temperatures dipped so low in northwest texas that these mustangs actually froze in mid-gallop.

first post!

welcome to jay's miscellany! i'm jay, and i'll be your trusty guide on this white-knuckled runaway blog ride i call jay's miscellany. dictionary.com defines "miscellany" as:

1.	a miscellaneous collection or group of various or somewhat unrelated items.

2.	a miscellaneous collection of literary compositions or pieces by several authors, dealing with various topics, assembled in a volume or book.

3.	miscellanies, a miscellaneous collection of articles or entries, as in a book.

while i'll try to keep this blog to the realm of sweet finds i've made online, i may at times dive off the deep end and give you a post from the deepest, darkest recesses of my labyrinthine mind.

so welcome to my blog! feel free to subscribe and link to jay's miscellany!

in unrelated news, i'd give my inaugural edition of john f. kennedy's profiles in courage for a deep-muscle full-body massage right about now.