I think I now have enough frequent surgery points to get my next one free. Wiserafter90.

I'm feeling good this morning so I hope you enjoy a little levity. "Show me a man who is a good loser & I'll show you a man who is golfing with his boss." "When a wife laughs at her husband's jokes it is not because they are clever but because she is." Evan Esar.

The aortic valve surgery had to be terminated when the artery began hemmorhaging. But my heart was losing its rhythm so the next day I got a pacemaker. Home now & the valve surgery is scheduled for when (month?) the pacemaker site has healed. Feeling good. I'll be posting quotes again tomorrow.

Update: surgery scheduled for 8:30 tomorrow morning. I'll be incommunicado for a few days. Sincere thanks for all the encouragement and support from so many of you.

"Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience." Viktor Frankel. "Strangely, of one of two choices to make, there is an 80% chance you'll make the wrong one." Wiserafter90.

This morning I go to the hospital 30 miles away for pre-op preparation for surgery Wednesday. I'm very ready. I've been getting weaker by the day for months but look forward to getting out and doing things again.

"Leadership is the courage to admit mistakes, the vision to welcome change, the enthusiasm to motivate others, and the confidence to stay out of step when everyone else is marching to the wrong tune." M. E. Estes. "Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning." William A. Ward.

"He who begins to be our friend because it pays will also cease because it pays." Seneca. "You can't say that civilization don't advance, for in every war they kill you in a different way." Will Rogers. "What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do." Aristotle.

"A friend is someone, so they say, who knows all about you and likes you anyway. But a friend is also, I have found, on a level more profound, someone who knows enough--just, to take all else you are on trust." Michael Drury. "My life is in its anecdotage." Clair Booth Luce.

"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over." Samuel Johnson.

"Older women are preferable in affaires d'amour because they're more experienced, more discreet, there's no chance of children, women age from the neck down, all cats are gray in the dark, and lastly--they're so grateful." Benjamin Franklin.

"Being a restaurant critic is sort of like being put out to stud. There's no denying that the basic activity is highly pleasurable, but when you have to do it when & with whom somebody else tells you, it loses a lot of its appeal." Colman Andrews. "A friend in power is a friend lost." Henry Adams.

"Guard within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness. Know how to replace in your heart, by the happiness of your love, the happiness that may be wanting in yourself." George Sand.

"The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions: the soon forgotten charities, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling." Samuel Taylor Coleridge. "To have joy one must share it--happiness was born a twin." Lord Byron.

"She had never understood that sadness can unite as well as separate, heal as well as hurt, that fears, once recognized and shared, lose their trailing shadows." Troy K. Martin. "Small things are not small if great results come from them." Blaise Pascal. First, habits are like cobwebs, then cables.

"Envy is such an impediment to personal growth. Don't envy anybody. Everybody has something no other has. Develop that one thing and make it outstanding." George Peppard. "We live in a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it." Don Marquis.

One of my early morning companions.

"No one knows how greatness comes to a man. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time--he can never return to simplicity." John Steinbeck.

On this special morning, named for and traditionally dedicated to the baby Jesus Christ, it is my hope that we can put aside our fears of anyone who looks, acts or worships differently from us, and find peace together. And for those incapable of this, perhaps they will drown in their own hate. 🌹

#ChristmasEve Always a perfect time to remind all who celebrate who Jesus really was Born a Jew Died a Jew With thanks @johnfugelsang.bsky.social

"(Maturity) is to be able to stick to a job until it is finished, to do one's job without being supervised, to be able to carry money without spending it, and be able to bear an injustice without wanting to get even." Abigail Van Buren (Pauline Phillip).

Good news - my surgery is moved up to the 7th of January.

Personal: My upcoming heart surgery, tentatively scheduled for today, has been confirmed for January 20.

"We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once." Calvin Coolidge. "Be still indebted to somebody or other that there may be somebody to pray for you." Francois Rabelais. "(One) must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"When some devout Wordsworthians were depressed by the master's confession that he had got drunk at Cambridge, a writer who knew him well said soothingly: " His standard of intoxication, let me assure you, is miserably low." Louis Kronenberger.

"Good Lord! What is man. For as simple he looks,/ Do but to try to develop his hooks and his crooks,/ With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil/ All in all, he's a problem must puzzle the devil." Robert Burns "I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." Wilson Mizner.

"You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong... Treat men as pawns and ninepins and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own." "There is nothing wrong with having nothing to say... unless you insist on saying it." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

(Cont.) "... it has delivered you from pride. Set the allowance against the loss and you shall find no loss great." Francis Quarles.

"As there is no worldly gain without some loss, so there is no worldly loss without some gain. If you have lost your wealth, you have lost some trouble with it. If you are omitted from honor, you are likewise freed from the stroke of envy. If sickness has blurred your beauty,... (Continued)

"In the long run of history, the censor and the Inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education." A. Whitney Griswold.

"Conversation is but carving!/ Give no more to every guest/ Than he's able to digest./ Give him always of the prime,/ And but little at a time./ Carve to all but just enough,/ Let them neither starve nor stuff,/ And that you may have your due,/ Let your neighbor carve for you." Jonathan Swift.

Good Morning and thank you so much King. 👑 You know I’m with you my brother! 💙🩵💙🩵💙🩵

Today, I turned 94. Hard to believe, but I hope to justify my long and largely healthy life with as much grace, respect, optimism and love as possible. Life is a gift to be shared every day. 🌹

"If people who don't understand each other at least understand that they do not understand each other, then they understand each other better than when, not understanding each other, they do not even understand that they do not understand each other." Gustav Ichhiser.

Absolute truth!! Stop saying you’re a Christian, and then ignore evil. God is all about love—Trump is all about hate!

Nobody knows more about anything than Trump. The problem is only he and his rabid cult believe that.

"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment." Dorothy Neville. "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away." Antoine de Exupery.

"A small town is a place where you're no longer a stranger after five minutes, but still an outsider after 50 years." Doug Larson. "Something that thoroughly annoys me is people who keep on talking when I'm trying to interrupt them." Wiserafter90.

"I think the unbroken monotony of (my brother Henry's) goodness and truthfulness and obedience would have been a burden to (my mother) but for the relief and variety I furnished in the other direction." Mark Twain.

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." Rachel Carson. "It is better to learn late than never." Publius Syrus.

"Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet. There's always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires." Madeleine Cox. "Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down." Wilson Mizner.

Continued. Dec. 9th, yesterday, was the exam by the surgeon who told me I needed surgery as soon as possible -, but he said he didn't think it was a good idea for a 93 year old patient. I told him that in just one week I would be 94. He laughed & said he would consider it in my case. It's Dec. 23.

Personal: Aug. 25 I had a routine check-up. My doctor said he wanted to get an ultrasound of my heart. Sep. 30, it was done. Oct. 15, my Dr. said he was concerned enough to send me to a cardiologist, & Oct. 30 I saw him. He told me I had a faulty heart valve & should see a surgeon. Continue --

"What's gay as a carnival, handy as chalk,/ Jolly as puppies just learning to walk,/ Useful as Band-Aids or money to spend,/ Warming as fire is, kind as a friend,/ Tempting as hamburgers ready to cook,/ Far more exciting than flying? A Book." Phyllis McGinley.

"When I take up a book I have read before, I know what to expect; the satisfaction is not lessened by being anticipated. I shake hands with, and look our old tried and valued friend in the face--compare notes and chat the hour away." William Hazlitt. "Never judge a book by its movie." J. W. Eagen.

"Yes, there are still bookworms and there will always be bookworms, because nothing will be invented like a book to give you just enough, never too little or too much, to give you a whole universe for yourself alone." Isaac Asimov. "Without a library the richest city is poor." Alex Dreier.

"I had been a bookseller's clerk for a while, but the customers bothered me so much, I could not read with any comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a furlough and forgot to put a limit to it." Mark Twain. "When I get a little money I buy books; if any is left, I buy food & clothes." Erasmus.