Power of Choice

A Challenging and Informative Book of the Week

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Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, March 2018.

As I often say, I try to keep politics off my Intentional Living blog, but I also like to post about the books I’m currently reading, and sometimes those two areas overlap. Whatever your political leanings, though, I consider this a book required reading as we move ahead into the unknown territory our country is now traversing. (That sounds a little pompous, I guess. After all, the future is always “unknown territory,” isn’t it?) You may remember that I wrote a post about the Gary Kasparov book Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped awhile ago, a truly frightening book by someone who has lived through the worst that the Putin regime has yet to offer.

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Be Grateful that You Can’t Afford to Buy One of These!

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Not the actual houseboat in this post.

I’ve been watching a program called “Impossible Builds” on our local PBS station on Wednesday nights (until they started up yet another of their endless fundraising marathons—sigh) and have found myself equally tickled and saddened by it all. (That’s a pretty hard pair of emotions to hold onto at the same time!) The series will include an office tower in New York City, but so far the three projects showcased have all been luxury homes, either downtown condos (in Miami) or vacation homes (in the U.A.E. and, I think, Saudi Arabia).

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I Can See Clearly Now!

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I wrote in a previous post about my identification with Teddy Roosevelt’s poor vision and his utter amazement when he got his first pair of glasses. I’d be interested to know how his vision problems progressed as he got older. Since Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of bifocals, I’d assume that TR at least had that feature available to him. And there were some primitive contact lenses as early as the late 1800’s, although it doesn’t appear that he ever wore those.

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Are You Guilty of Being an “Evil Donut Bringer”?

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Well, it’s getting to be somewhat of a tradition that on Wednesday I write about something that piqued my interest on the Gretchen Rubin/Liz Craft podcast, “Happier.” Today the two sisters were doing an anniversary special and revisiting some popular ideas from the past year. One of those was that of the “evil donut bringer,” that person in the office who brings in treats that tempt people who shouldn’t eat them. Liz is a Type 1 diabetic, so it’s especially important that she strictly limit sweets. But all of us have had the experience of repeatedly walking past a plate of something we know we shouldn’t eat, resisting and resisting, until finally, on the tenth pass, we reach out and grab that cupcake. We do our best to ignore that bowl of candy on a co-worker’s desk but (especially if it’s mini Reese’s peanut-butter cups), again, it’s all too easy to finally give in.

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Sympathizing with Others’ Stress

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Did you know that fear of public speaking is, at least according to some sources, the number one fear in America? I was reminded of this strange fact by today’s podcast of  “Happier in Hollywood” that is hosted by Liz Craft (Gretchen Rubin’s sister) and her writing partner Sarah Fain. They interviewed a consultant who works with speakers, especially those who are going to appear at TED Talks. The consultant is very funny and helpful, with some really great insights. I’d encourage you to 

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It May Be Your Problem Even If It’s Not Your Fault.

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You’ll be amazed to find out that I’m referencing a podcast today that’s not from Gretchen Rubin. My husband and I are huge fans of the Freakonomics franchise, the series of books and podcasts by the team of economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner who have made a career of challenging conventional wisdom about how markets and incentives actually work.

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Yet Another Great Historically-Based Film You Should See

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Theatrical release poster accessed via Wikipedia.

No book review this week, I’m afraid. I never made it through the Yuvan Levin book, estimable as it is. I just ground to a halt with it, but I’m glad I got as far as I did. You, oh estimable readers, may have more of a mind able to absorb dense political analysis than I do. Levin’s a great guy, and very clear and thoughtful. If you’re like me and don’t want to wade through the thickets, here’s a podcast in which he appears: “Why Can’t We Have Nice Things?” hosted by the estimable (although somewhat giggly) Jonah Goldberg.

But Jim and I did finally make it to The Post, the new movie about the publication of the Pentagon Papers by The Washington Post. What a total treat! Any movie that has Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep is going to be great even if they’re just reading the phone book. I said to Jim as the credits came on, “I’d like to just sit here and watch it all over again.” So I’d urge you to go watch it, or at least make sure to see it when it comes out on Netflix or Amazon. I’ll tell you why I liked it

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Wear “Real Clothes” in February

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How well I remember the morning that the tree crew arrived to do some work on our 75-foot oak tree at our house back in Virginia. Gideon was little, and I was home with him. I hadn’t planned on going anywhere that day, so I had on my grungy “at-home” outfit, an old t-shirt dress that was frayed around the edges. It was easy to pop on. I think I had taken a shower but hadn’t done anything to my hair, a sure recipe for the Wild Woman of Borneo look. (No disrespect intended to the real women of Borneo!)

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Lessons from the Government Shutdown

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As I often say, this isn’t a political blog. If you want to see my opinions in that arena you can visit my personal Facebook page or read articles I’ve written myself over at one of my other websites, Intentional Conservative. I’m not concerned within the context of this article with the winners and losers in this rather farcical non-event endlessly trumpeted about from the Right and the Left. Instead, I’m sort of tickled at the way the RFNE illuminates human nature.

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Making Intelligent, Intentional Donations

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The article at the end of this post got me thinking about the whole issue of fund-raising and how we spend our time and effort on activities (such as collecting box tops) to raise money for a favored institution. If we really thought things through, would we intentionally choose to support our causes by doing this type of thing?

Let’s look at the specific program discussed in the article: the use of various cutouts (box tops, bar codes, etc.) from certain products to be turned in to the company making the product in return for a certain amount of money per cutout. The article says that the refunds/reimbursements range from about “5 cents to 38 cents.” So it seems fair to take the midpoint of that range for my discussion, around 20 cents.

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