VIEW IN THE MIRROR

“I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”

Maya Angelou (American Poet, b.1928)

PROSPERITY CAKE

“When prosperity comes, do not use all of it.”

Confucius (China's most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, 551-479 BC)

LION DANCE TROUPE AT THE GATE

The lion dance is thought to bring good luck and happiness.

David Tam

AUSPICIOUS RED DECOR

“Glory is not a conceit. It is not a decoration for valor. Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely and who rely on you in rerun.”

John McCain (American Politician and Senator from Arizona since 1987. b.1936)

SCENIC BEACH VIEW

“Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.”

Loren Eiseley (American essayist, philosopher, and literary naturalist, 1907-1977)

OPEN SPACE

“Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought”

Karl Jaspers

EMPTY STAGE

“If life is just a stage, then we are all running around ad-libbing, with absolutely no clue what the plot is. Maybe that's why we don't know whether it's a comedy or tragedy.”

Bill Watterson (American Author of the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, b.1958)

WATER TAP

“Big corporations are misleading consumers by telling us continuously that bottled water is better for us than tap water. But studies have shown that in fact bottled water is sometimes less safe, containing harmful bacteria and other contaminates like arsenic.”

Dan Favre

STAIRS

“For in all the world there are no people so piteous and forlorn as those who are forced to eat the bitter bread of dependency in their old age, and find how steep are the stairs of another man's house. Wherever they go they know themselves unwelcome. Wherever they are, they feel themselves a burden. There is no humiliation of the spirit they are not forced to endure. Their hearts are scarred all over with the stabs from cruel and callous speeches.”

Dorothy Dix (American Journalist and Columnist, 1870-1951)

TREE CANOPY

“This is seen as a win-win that allows property owners to proceed with development while demonstrating compliance with standards that will more effectively achieve the city's goals for more tree canopy and more recreation/open space area dedication.”

Ty Peterson

EMERGENCY SIGNAL FLARE RELEASE

“Life moves out of a red flare of dreams into a common light of common hours, until old age bring the red flare again.”

William Butler Yeats (Irish prose Writer, Dramatist and Poet. Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. 1865-1939)

Picture courtesy of TSAI

2007: YEAR OF THE BOAR

“Beijing people only do two things for Lunar New Year - cook good food and light fireworks. When fireworks were banned, it took the atmosphere out of it. All these things about safety and the environment - don't worry about it. Give people some fun.”

Dai Qiansheng

WINDOWS ARRAY

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.”

Dale Carnegie (American lecturer, author, 1888-1955)

BREAKFAST ALLEY

“Life is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have a half a one for breakfast.”

Douglas Adams (British comic Writer, 1952-2001)

CAT NAP ON CAR ROOF

“The cat lives alone, has no need of society, obeys only when she pleases, pretends to sleep that she may see more clearly, and scratches everything on which she can lay her paw.”

François R. Chateaubriand (French author and diplomat, 1768-1848)

THE ROAD AHEAD

“When we are sure that we are on the right road there is no need to plan our journey too far ahead. No need to burden ourselves with doubts and fears as to the obstacles that may bar our progress. We cannot take more than one step at a time.”

Orison Swett Marden

BIRDS NESTS

“You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.”

Chinese Proverbs

CLOUDY SKY ABOVE

“I earnestly wish them all imaginable success; in the first place that they may not, by the unseasonable obscurity of a cloudy sky, be deprived of this most desirable sight; and then, that having ascertained with more exactness the magnitudes of the planetary orbits, it may redound to their eternal fame and glory.”

Edmond Halley

OLD PICKET FENCES

“The old fence was in such bad shape that it was starting to become a safety issue. There were holes in the old chain link. It was just the next project in a long list of improvements we've been wanting to make to the field.”

John Glover

WINDOW DISPLAY FOR LUNAR NEW YEAR 2007

“When the full story is reached at the end of the quarter, retail profits will be less impressive, especially in apparel. There was nothing in the display windows (of clothiers) to incite cautious customers to buy.”

Kurt Barnard

MANDARIN ORANGES ON DISPLAY

“I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.”

D.H. Lawrence (British Poet, Novelist and Essayist, 1885-1930)

CRANE TRACTOR AT CONSTRUCTION SITE

“When I look out of my window at all those construction sites, I see a sea of nonperforming loans looming large on the horizon. The numbers defy logic.”

Jack Rodman

EMPTY SEATS AT DENTISTRY DEPARTMENT AT 830AM

“When you have that many empty seats, there's no urgency to buy. You're dependent on team performance, which as much as we think we can control that, it's not always the case.”

Michael Crowley

DRYING HERBS UNDER SUNLIGHT

“We have finally started to notice that there is real curative value in local herbs and remedies. In fact, we are also becoming aware that there are little or no side effects to most natural remedies, and that they are often more effective than Western medicine.”

Anne Wilson Schaef

MOONLIGHT FLARE

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900)

SHOPPING CART

“Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It's like stealing a two-year-old.”

Erma Bombeck (U.S. humorist, 1927-1996)

TRAFFIC JAM

“If they all go real fast at the same time you get a traffic jam and performance goes down.”

Chris Maher

RAIN PUDDLE

“You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step into it”