Time, flowing like a river

A biography of one of the greatest men this country has ever produced:

Time wastes too fast: every letter / I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours / of it are flying over our heads like clouds of a windy day never to return...

He died, 185 years ago tomorrow.

Someday, may we see his like again.

(comments at Better than salt money)

Oi...

Sarah Palin has resigned.

One wonders why. It would be foolish for me, who has no contacts in the circles of Alaskan politics to speculate on specifics, but I can't help but think something is going to break which is would be worse if she were still in office.

That's the first part. The second... I never thought she was brilliant. Clever, cunning and perhaps gifted at the arts of politicking. That's one thing. But real smarts... not so much.

Not stupid but not brilliant.

I think, looking at her resignation speech, I may have to reconsider. This wasn't a silly gaffe, off the cuff (like Dan Quayle on "potatoe"), this was something she had time to craft.

Every one – all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We’ve won! But it hasn't been cheap - the State has wasted THOUSANDS of hours of YOUR time and shelled out some two million of YOUR dollars to respond to “opposition research” – that’s money NOT going to fund teachers or troopers – or safer roads. And this political absurdity, the “politics of personal destruction” … Todd and I are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills in order to set the record straight. And what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? It doesn’t cost them a dime so they’re not going to stop draining public resources – spending other peoples’ money in their game.

It’s pretty insane – my staff and I spend most of our day dealing with THIS instead of progressing our state now. I know I promised no more “politics as usual,” but THIS isn’t what anyone had in mind for ALASKA.

If I have learned one thing: LIFE is about choices!

And one chooses how to react to circumstances. You can choose to engage in things that tear down, or build up. I choose to work very hard on a path for fruitfulness and productivity. I choose NOT to tear down and waste precious time; but to build UP this state and our country, and her industrious, generous, patriotic, free people!

Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and “go with the flow”.

Nah, only dead fish "go with the flow".

No. Productive, fulfilled people determine where to put their efforts, choosing to wisely utilize precious time... to BUILD UP.

What?

This is important? This use of CAPS FOR EMPHASIS is what she chooses to present to the world? This air of, "how could they do this to me?" is what she wants to be in her last official statement?

If this was some attempt to move out of the pressure cooker of active politics, to line up for a run in 2012.... well she doesn't have even the political chops I thought she did.

(comments at Better than salt money)