Showing posts sorted by relevance for query John Adams. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query John Adams. Sort by date Show all posts

Monday, April 24, 2017

To Step Away + #MyPostMonday The Week's Best Original Content


 I'm a little late to the party, but I recently viewed the series 'John Adams'. This is a must-see series if you want to be entertained while getting to know a bit more under what conditions the U.S. was founded and what this lesser known 2nd president sacrificed in terms of family, hardship, and prestige. He was uncompromisingly true to his beliefs, even to the point that he probably sacrificed a 2nd term for the presidency because of it. 

His wife, Abigail, was one of the most intelligent women of that century, and was regarded as her husband's equal in terms of intelligence and judgement. He listened to her and treasured her opinions. Their relationship is regarded as one of the moving love stories of American History. Even Thomas Jefferson looked to her as an equal, one of the only women he deigned to regard as such.

The movie was produced by Tom Hanks, among others. Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney both did a superb job playing, respectively, John and Abigail Adams. 

Why I Loved It

I loved the portrayal of early American life. It was accurate and even showed how dental care was almost non-existent. Both George Washington and John Adams had horrible teeth when they were older men. Even Abigail had tooth problems, as I'm sure most society did in the absence of dental care! I'm sure glad that we have access to that today!

Smallpox ran rampant in those times and Abigail was one of the first to make sure her children got vaccinations so that the dreaded disease would pass by their front door. There were certainly risks to doing it, and the way it was portrayed in the movie was very graphic, although I'm sure accurate!

There were many other depictions of early American life and for me it was fascinating to think of how far civilization has come in some ways and yet seems to have devolved in other ways. 

John Adams was honest to the point of receiving ridicule from the social circles he was sent to move in, in order to bridge diplomatic relations between the infant Republic and the  French and English monarchies. He was such an independent thinker and was able to articulate his reasoning in front of a skeptical public. In some instances he was successful and in others not so much.
Image - Ryan Schantzenbach
 Because of his unpopular stance of neutrality when much of the country was clamoring for war, he avoided a very expensive and unnecessary war which, at the time, might have broken the country financially before it even got off the ground. 


He was able to step away from the crowd, think logically about his beliefs and get his footing before coming back and becoming a strong and persuasive force for the good of the infant country. He was indeed a strong individual and was willing to sacrifice much for his beliefs. 

I relearned that it's OK to take a moment, step back and get your head together. Before one rushes to do what everyone else is doing, it's wise to take a second and make sure it is consistent with who you are and what you really believe inside!
Today is "My Post Monday!" It's all about original content from bloggers who care to share what is on their minds--from Crafts to Camping, Wellness to Wealth, Fashion to Food, and whatever else is on the brain!  I  open up with a post of my own and then follow it up with a linky of the week's top original blog posts! It's all about what the writer thinks, believes, and knows--in other words, they are active, writing blogs. If I happen to find a great original, non-sponsored post, I'll link it up and share it with you here and on Twitter via the #MyPostMonday hashtag!  I can miss some amazing posts, but I don't want to!  So, in addition, if you'd like to link up yourself, you can do that too!  I'll visit your site, comment, promote and publicize! (Affiliate links welcome!)  

Friday, November 26, 2010

To Read More Books....As If!

This is intended as a Facebook tag thing, but I think I'd like to pass it along to you here as well!  This is a great list for books to read!  I'd love to read more of these when I get the chance.  Most of my reading was done pre-kids! This is how well I've done!  

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. …
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel (own it)
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding (own it)
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell 8
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom (own it)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas (own it)
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo 

Thanks to Ramblings of An Empty Mind for this list!

Friday, April 10, 2015

I Is For Insightful and Inciteful #AToZChallenge


Insightful - To show deep understanding and thoughtfulness of something
Inciteful - To instigate or rouse anger, provoke action.

When I think of the word insightful, I think of the great early heads of state and national government - men like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, and the great John Adams. I think of them laboring for days, trying to craft a document that would stand through the ages. The Constitution has done just that, with our nation coming up on 240 years of independence under that document! They were not thinking of their own immediate futures, but of the distant future of a nation. 
Photo credit - Wikipedia
When I think of the word inciteful I think of the Ferguson protestors. They were angry because of a verdict that was handed down by a Court of Law. They burned buildings, they robbed stores, talked hatred, and eventually shot an officer. In the end, it only exacerbated an already tense situation. A lot of people actually changed their opinions of the verdict because of the crazy and irresponsible behavior of the protesters.
 
Being insightful is a rare and great character trait. Too many people only think of the here and now, not looking into the future and the outcome of actions done today.

Being inciteful is usually done out of frustration and anger. Those who are inciteful are usually very impulsive.  Sometimes the consequences can be disastrous. It is rare when a good outcome is realized. 

What are some examples of insightful and inciteful that you can think of?

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Beauty That Still Remains + #MyPostMonday The Week's Best Original Content

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I really should be writing a patriotic post, seeing that tomorrow is July 4th and all, and it's one of my favorite holidays, but I think I wrote one last year. Oops, no I didn't I was really into the Summer Olympics about that time! But I did write a post about one of our founding fathers recently, John Adams! So I think we'll let that suffice! As for today's post.....