daily headspa blogdaily headspa bloghttp://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2012-03-27T00:15:01ZSquarespacethe endhttp://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2011/12/23/the-end.htmldailyheadspa2011-12-22T21:56:14Z2011-12-22T21:56:14ZThe End
BY MARK STRAND

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.


“The End,” from The Continuous Life: Poems by Mark Strand, © 1990 by Mark Strand. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

]]>On the movehttp://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2011/12/12/on-the-move.htmldailyheadspa2011-12-12T10:23:09Z2011-12-12T10:23:09ZThis week, Dunes.

Dunes never stay the same. They are constantly being pulled down and put up. It’s like they March across the landscape.

Of course, the landscape itself is on the move. Nothing stays still. The tectonic plates shift, the planet spins, the galaxy expands.

Like so many things, the ‘fact’ that the earth is solid is just another convenient fiction by which we choose to live our lives.

Most of us choose to say that right now, as I write this, it is 8:46 pm, on Monday, December 12, 2011. At least, those of us who live around here choose to say that. In Sydney, Tokyo and LA they choose to say that it is some other time. We can easily forget all of this; that this is our convenient agreement. We can get ourselves into a lather stating that it really is 8:46, how silly we can be.

I like dunes because, if you pay close attention, over weeks, days sometimes you see the movement, the truth of the world.


Paul

Posted at dailyheadSpa.com

]]>Priced out of the markethttp://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2011/12/11/priced-out-of-the-market.htmldailyheadspa2011-12-11T04:24:57Z2011-12-11T04:24:57ZYou hear it a lot in Australia. First home buyers are being priced out of the market to buy a home.

Surely one of the problems in Australia is that there are so few housing options to choose from. The three-bedroom standard on a housing block, a McMansion with a clutch of bathrooms and a basement pool room and flat/unit/apartment, and that's your lot.

What we need is some lateral thinking.

Here are three sites that help me do that:

The Rural Studio

The Tiny Ass-Apartment

Tiny House Blog

]]>Alcohol and Pillshttp://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2011/12/10/alcohol-and-pills.htmldailyheadspa2011-12-10T05:23:51Z2011-12-10T05:23:51ZThe price of fame?

Fred Eaglesmith with his best song.

 

 

Paul

Posted at dailyheadspa.com

]]>Paying the pricehttp://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2011/12/9/paying-the-price.htmldailyheadspa2011-12-09T08:17:22Z2011-12-09T08:17:22ZLove him or hate him, you can't ignore John Pilger

 

]]>priceless?http://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2011/12/8/priceless.htmldailyheadspa2011-12-08T07:47:17Z2011-12-08T07:47:17ZYou know the mastercard ads that show people blissfully spending as the key to their father-son/mother-daughter relationships (and so on)? You ring up that ball glove; those third base line tickets for two; the hotdogs and cokes and voila! priceless family relations are the bonus pack.

Well, here's a little YouTube spoof on those from WikiLeaks. Raising the question, on the surface and in the deeper reaches of our collective psyche, "What price, freedom?"

-just asking,

Jana

]]>What price progress?http://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2011/12/7/what-price-progress.htmldailyheadspa2011-12-07T06:22:39Z2011-12-07T06:22:39ZHow about this from Cornell University, by Susan Lang

Diners in an "upscale casual" restaurant spent an average of $5.55 -- about 8 percent -- more when the menu did not use dollar signs, reports a Cornell study published in the International Journal of Hospitality Management (28:1).
"Changing the menu typography is like picking the low-hanging fruit," says doctoral student Sybil Yang, who co-authored the study with Sheryl E. Kimes, professor of operations management at the School of Hotel Administration, and Mauro Sessarego of the Culinaty Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. "The yield may not be large, but it is easy to do, and there is very little downside to form a typographical strategy for the menu," Yang said.
However, the researchers found no difference in spending when the prices were listed as numerals with dollar signs or were spelled out.
One possible reason why diners spend less when the word "dollars" or the dollar sign is used is that "references to dollars, in words or symbol, reminds people of the 'pain of paying,'" said Kimes, the Singapore Tourism Board Distinguished Professor of Asian Hospitality Management at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration.
The researchers based their conclusions on a study of 201 diners at a café at the Culinary Institute of America. Diners were randomly given one of the three menus, on which prices were written as numerals with the dollar sign; as numerals without the dollar sign; or spelled out. For example, the price was listed either as 20, $20 or twenty dollars.
The study is available free from the Center for Hospitality Research at http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/2009.html.

 

Paul

Posted at dailyheadSpa.com

]]>Price, worth, costhttp://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2011/12/6/price-worth-cost.htmldailyheadspa2011-12-06T11:30:24Z2011-12-06T11:30:24ZPrice, worth, cost. They might all mean the same thing, or they might not.

Price - what the owners or seller is trying to get for a thing.

Worth - what a thing is actually worth to me.

Cost - all that it actually costs to get; the cost to get it from where it is to where I want it, cost to insure it, maintain it, fix it, worry about it, think about it, dispose of it.

Paul

Posted at dailyheadSpa.com

]]>The true pricehttp://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2011/12/6/the-true-price.htmldailyheadspa2011-12-06T06:18:38Z2011-12-06T06:18:38ZHere is a story. I have no idea if it actually happened and I don’t care, I know it is true

Someone broke into a high-end jewelry store and all they did was switch around all the price tags.


Paul

Posted at dailyheadSpa.com

]]>The Summer You Learned to Swim http://www.dailyheadspa.com/dailyheadspa-blog/2011/12/4/the-summer-you-learned-to-swim.htmldailyheadspa2011-12-04T04:33:01Z2011-12-04T04:33:01ZThe Summer You Learned to Swim

                       for Lea

The summer you learned to swim
was the summer I learned to be at peace with myself.
In May you were afraid to put your face in the water
But by August, I was standing in the pool once more
when you dove in, then retreated to the wall saying
You forgot to say Sugar! So I said Come on Sugar, you can do it
and you pushed off and swam to me and held on
laughing, your hair stuck to your cheeks—
you hiccupped with joy and swam off again.

And I dove in too, trying new things.
I tried not giving advice. I tried waking early to pray. I tried
not rising in anger. Watching you I grew stronger—
your courage washed away my fear.

All day I worked hard thinking of you.
In the evening I walked the long hill home.
You were at the top, waving your small arms,
pittering down the slope to me and I lifted you high
so high to the moon. That summer all the world
was soul and water, light glancing off peaks.
You learned the turtle, the cannonball, the froggy, and the flutter
And I learned to stand and wait for you to swim to me.

Michael Simms

Paul

Posted at dailyheadSpa.com

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