Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

It isn’t what we say or do that defines us, but what we do– Jane Austen

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Remember that creating a successful marriage is like farming: you have to start over again every morning.  – H. Jackson Brown Jr

A good marriage isn’t something you find, it’s something you make, and you have to keep on making it.

I chose these quotes because my farmer and I have just reached another decade of marriage.

I’m not sure there’s a rational reason that a decade anniversary should have any more significance than any other but this one has been an occasion for reflection and counting blessings.

One of those reflections is that the relatively high number of people celebrating longer marriages in recent years might not continue.

People are living longer but marrying later, if at all.

If you marry in your 20s, as many of my contemporaries did, the chances of celebrating ruby, golden, and diamond (40th, 50th and 60th) anniversaries are a lot higher than if you marry when you’re older.

Of course a long marriage doesn’t necessarily mean it’s always a happy one and I don’t know anyone who is happily married who hasn’t had some rough patches. A dear friend who has been married more than 50 years once told me, in jest but with an element of resignation, she’d never contemplated divorce but murder had crossed her mind on a few occasions.

When writing services as a celebrant, I often think about what marriage means and what makes it works.

The answers to that are as diverse as the individuals who become couples and the partnership that ensues.

But marriage is a decision. Once you’ve made the decision you both have to do all you can to make it work, enjoying the highs and enduring the lows, and staying committed to each other and your marriage as the traditional vows say – for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish as long as we both shall live.

 

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

The arithmetic makes it plain that inflation is a far more devastating tax than anything that has been enacted by our legislatures. THe inflation tax has a fantastic ability to simply consume capital. – Warren Buffett

Sunday saopbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence. – Sheryl Sandberg

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

 

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.– Peter Drucker

Sunday’s soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

The highest result of education is tolerance. – Helen Keller

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s  soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

 

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting  – E.E. Cummings

 

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Land really is the best art. – Andy Warhol

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

 

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day. – Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week begin paving hell with them as usual.  – Mark Twain

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

We need Joy as we need air. We need Love as we need water. We need each other as we need the earth we share. – Maya Angelou

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle. – Robert Alden

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

By each crime and every kindness, we birth our future. – David Mitchell

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly. – Margaret Atwood

Saturday’s soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Punishment is not for revenge but to lessen crime and reform the criminal. Elizabeth Fry

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money. ― Frederick Douglass

Saturday soapbox

Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.

Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship. — Aryeh Neier

Sunday soapbox

Sunday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse

I remember thinking how often we look, but never see . . .we listen bu never hear . . . we exist but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive. – Erma Bombeck