G: Good Advice, Guns N Roses, Green Mamba

#atozchallenge G: Good advice. Best advice my mother gave me was "everything in moderation" and that's how we were raised. Dessert at every meal, but portions were small. Avoid gluttony.

So here's some useful quotes from my Good Advice book

Generosity - When you have nothing, ask for nothing - Albanian proverb.

Gift Giving - Give all thou canst;high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely calculated less or more - William Wordsworth

Goals - It's not enough to be busy ... the question is: What are we busy about? Henry David Thoreau (way too true in today's world)

Good Humor - We are all here for a spell;get all the good laughs you can - Will Rogers

Speaking of sheer raucous joy - Gun N Roses Greatest Hits is a perfect Saturday CD to blast on our patio. Whatever the chore, you'll be doing it quicker with Welcome to the Jungle. Sweet Child 'O Mine soars. Paradise City is hardcore rock. Slash on guitar - absolute gumption to galvanize your soul.

Our deadly dose today is courtesy of the cobra family - the Green Mamba can grow to nine feet and is "less" aggressive than the black mamba or some other cobras. No matter what, the venom can paralyze the nervous system and cause death within two hours. Try to avoid crossing its path.

Seamless Safire

Over Labor Day Weekend, I stood on the Wilmington, DE waterfront and watched young crew teams train. I admired their coordination and teamwork. No oars dragging in the water. Instead, crisp and steady, the boats glided seamlessly.

William Safire, New York times columnist, passed away on 9/27/09 and as Mark Davis wrote in the Dallas Morning News, "There are many left to man the oars of punditry, though few will do it with such grace." You didn't have to agree with his conservative politics, but you couldn't disagree with his love of the English language. He wrote seamlessly and debated endlessly over word usage, structure, and style.

I pulled out my copy of Safire's Language Maven Strikes Again, and chuckled as I perused a few chapters. In the forward he wrote, "It's your language, too, buddy; if you want to abuse it and muddle it up, you will do that for yourself, not for me. If, on the other hand, you are willing to think about how we communicate, and consider the words and the forms of grammar, then you are automatically a member of the Authority, entitled to the thrill of membership."

It's a fun journey. Grab an oar and start paddling.