David B. Katague is an online memoirist and cultural essayist whose writing has appeared on HubPages

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Free Inspirational Messages for You, Today

I received the following from my e-mail today. The messages included on the list below are sent to us by our friends and loveones. They are posted here for sharing and educational purposes only. They are sent to us for free and you can copy and send them to your friends too for free.

SILENT doesn’t always means YES. It may mean NO but it’s better left unsaid.

LAUGHTER doesn’t always mean HAPPINESS. Sometimes it is just a MASK.

ANGER doesn’t always mean HATRED. It could just be a means of COPING.

TEARS doesn’t always mean SORROW. It may also be an outlet of JOY.

STAYING AWAY doesn’t always mean IT’S THE END. It may also mean THE BEST BEGINNING.

And though life is so complicated, it is always beautiful.

-oOo-

What’s the point of being committed with someone if in the end you will get hurt. Why not just enjoy the time that you are together even without commitment, as long as you are both happy and you feel each other’s importance and see if you can commit that even in your life after death you will never be apart.

-oOo-

Whether you have been through your worst time or it is yet to come always remember that life can only be summed up to three words … “It Goes On.”

-oOo-

There are times we treat life like a mysterious door. it doesn’t open no matter how hard we push it. We never notice that a huge sign is posted that reads “PULL”.

-oOo-

God has placed you where you are now for a reason… You are there to bless, to inspire, and to create a positive influence. You are there because God has used you to be his hand, feet and mouth to carry out his work… continue to be a “BLESSING” always in everything you do.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Time for Some Classical Music-Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto

Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concierto is one of my favorite violin concierto. The following video has comments that will help the first listener appreciate more of the music. The soloist is Janine Jansen. Enjoy! Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 is his last large orchestral work. It forms an important part of the violin repertoire and is one of the most popular and most frequently performed violin concertos of all time. A typical performance lasts just under half an hour. Mendelssohn originally proposed the idea of the violin concerto to Ferdinand David, a close friend and then concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Although conceived in 1838, the work took another six years to complete and was not premiered until 1845. During this time, Mendelssohn maintained a regular correspondence with David, seeking his advice with the concerto. The work itself was one of the violin concertos of the Romantic era and was influential to the compositions of many other composers. Although the concerto consists of three movements in a standard fast–slow–fast structure and each movement follows a traditional form, the concerto was innovative and included many novel features for its time. Distinctive aspects of the concerto include the immediate entrance of the violin at the beginning of the work and the linking of the three movements with each movement immediately following the previous one. The concerto was initially well received and soon became regarded as one of the greatest violin concertos of all time. The concerto remains popular and has developed a reputation as an essential concerto for all aspiring concert violinists to master, and usually one of the first Romantic era concertos they learn. Many professional violinists have recorded the concerto and the work is regularly performed in concerts and classical music competitions.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Time to visit a National Park near You- Acadia National Park

June 1: It is only a few more days when school closes for the summer break. The temperature here in Northern California had finally reached to the low 90's for a couple of days. This reminded me that it is time to plan visiting a National Park near you to save on gasoline. Today, I am reposting my first posting on a series about our National Park. The first one is on Acadia National Park in Main.

Acadia National Park (ANP) is a National Park located in the U.S. state of Maine. It reserves much of Mount Desert Island, and associated smaller islands, off the Atlantic coast. The area first was inhabited by the Wabanaki people. In the fall of 1604, Samuel de Champlain observed a high-notched island composed of seven or eight mountains rising to bare-rock summits from slopes of birch, fir, and pine. In spite of many changes over nearly 400 years, the area remains essentially the same.

The landscape architect Charles Elliot is credited with the idea for the park. It first attained federal status when President Woodrow Wilson, established it as Sieur de Monts National Monument on July 8, 1916, administered by the National Park Service. On February 26, 1919, it became a national park, with the name Lafayette National Park in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, an influential French supporter of the American Revolution. The park's name was changed to Acadia National Park on January 19, 1929.

Expansion From 1915 to 1933, the wealthy philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. financed, designed, and directed the construction of a network of carriage trails throughout the park. He sponsored the landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, with the nearby family summer home Reef Point Estate, to design the planting plans for the subtle carriage roads at the Park (c.1930). The network encompassed over 50 miles (80 km) of gravel carriage trails, 17 granite bridges, and two gate lodges, almost all of which are still maintained and in use today. Cut granite stones placed along the edges of the carriage roads act as guard rails of sort and are locally known as "coping stones" to help visitors cope with the steep edges. They are also fondly called "Rockefeller's teeth".

Recent events On August 23, 2009, several park visitors were swept out to sea at Thunder Hole by high surf attributed to the remnants of Hurricane Bill. All were rescued but one of the tourists, a 7-year-old girl, who later died.

Centennial Initiative Project The National Park Service, as part of their Centennial Initiative celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2016, created a project to promote voluntary, multimodal park access for present and future generations. Going “car free” offers visitors the opportunity to explore Acadia by foot, bicycle, shuttle bus, commercial tour bus, private automobile, or private and commercial vessels. The project includes an inter-modal transportation center on state-owned land four miles (6 km) north of the park, multiple-use trails to connect gateway communities with the park, and rehabilitation of historic carriage roads surrounding Eagle Lake.

Terrain and features The park includes mountains, an ocean shoreline, woodlands, and lakes. In addition to Mount Desert Island, the park comprises much of the Isle au Haut, parts of Baker Island, and a portion of the Schoodic Peninsula on the mainland.

Cadillac Mountain, named after the French Explorer of the same name, is on the eastern side of the island. Its green, lichen-covered, pink granite summit is one of the first places in the United States to see the sunrise. Miles of carriage roads were originally built by Rockefeller, Jr. The mountains of Acadia National Park offer hikers and bicycle riders views of the ocean, island lakes, and pine forests.
The inlet Somes Sound, often described as the "only fjord on the East Coast", is now called a fjard by officials.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Movie of the Week-Lost in Paradise

Here's a second movie this week that I like very much. It is a story of male and female prostitution in Saigon, South Vietnam. It has English subtitles. It is an excellent movie if you are not homophobic. There is the side story of a mentally handicapped man and his pet duck. This side story touched my heart, indeed. It reminded me of my childhood years when I was raising a chick that think, I was his mother in the jungle of Panay Island during the American-Japanese War in the Philippines. Let me know if you like it. Lost in Paradise is a 2011 Vietnamese drama film directed by Vũ Ngọc Đãng. Its original title is Rebellious Hot Boy and the Story of Cười, the Prostitute and the Duck (Hot boy nổi loạn và câu chuyện về thằng Cười, cô gái điếm và con vịt), shortened to Rebellious Hot Boy (Hot boy nổi loạn) or simply Hot Boy. The film is set in Saigon and has two separate story lines. The first depicts a love triangle between three men, Khôi, Lam, and Đông, of whom the latter two work as prostitutes. The second concerns a mentally-handicapped man, Cười, his friendship with Hạnh, a female prostitute, and his attempts to raise a duckling. The film was a strong critical and commercial success in Vietnam. It has been shown at several international festivals, from which it garnered more mixed reviews. In particular its portrayal of homosexuality has been noted as ground breaking within the context of Vietnamese cinema.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

A Journey to the Center of Your Mind-A Video

The other day, I received this video from a member of the Philippine American Academy of Science and Engineering(PAASE) regarding the brain and its function. This is one of the most interesting video talk I have viewed for quite sometime. Listened to it and tell me if you agree. This lecture is by Vilayanur Ramachandran an excellent speaker and sponsored by TEDTalks. Vilayanur Ramachandran tells us what brain damage can reveal about the connection between celebral tissue and the mind, using three startling delusions as examples. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes -- including speakers such as Jill Bolte Taylor, Sir Ken Robinson, Hans Rosling, Al Gore and Arthur Benjamin. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, politics and the arts.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...