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The 52:52:52 project, launching both on this site and on social media in early 2024 will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

A Mundane Comedy is Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in mid 2024. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.

This site addresses what's changing, in our own lives, in our organisations, and in wider society. You'll learn about key changes across more than 150 areas, ranging from ageing and time, through nature and animals, to kindness and love...and very much else inbetween.

Halcyon's aim is to help you reflect on how you can better deal with related change in your own life.

Choices

On George Orwell

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According to Open Culture, Orwell's Animal Farm was almost never published.  The manuscript barely survived the Nazi bombing of London during World War II, and then initially T.S. Eliot (an important editor at Faber & Faber) and other publishers rejected the book.  It eventually came to see the light of day but, reportedly, Animal Farm still can’t be legally read in China, Burma and North Korea, or across large parts of the Islamic world. 

However, the Internet Archive offers free access to audio versions of Animal Farm and Orwell’s other major classic, 1984.

See also:

On "Favourite" Songs

Many evenings of my youth were spent listening to Radio Caroline's "Personal Top 30s", from 6-9pm and 9pm-midnight on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. My friends and I would write down, swap, be inspired by and gently criticise each others' choices, but none of us ever got round to posting ours in, and our chance vanished into the North Sea with the Mi Amigo in March 1980.

However, since 2008 I have listened almost constantly to Caroline, which plays "Personal Top 15s" every weekday at 10am CET, but again, I've not summoned the nerve to send mine in.

On Jane Goodall

"Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it" - Robert Heinlein

Jane Goodall's Chimp Greeting from The Jane Goodall Institute on Vimeo.

As one of reportedly fewer than 10 people ever to be invited to study for a PhD at Cambridge without a prior undergraduate degree, Jane Goodall was promptly told by "experts" there that all her field work on chimpanzee behaviour was wrong, and that she should not anthropomorphise them with names, still less assign them thoughts, personalities and emotions.

Today, we know that she was right and they were wrong.

On Alcohol

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"You had been the cause of my problems, not the solution you pretended to be, and now you were banned from the kitchen. Banished from my life. I delighted in our family glow, the result of my efforts bringing happiness to us all. I have not forgotten how you tricked me in the past. I have taken you back many times before, but not now. I can remember how much better everything was when I had the courage to leave you, and now I know the truth. You are not fun. You were never fun. You spoil everything.I am no longer listening. - Rachel Black (a pseudonym.

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The hand you are dealt is determinism- the way you play it is free will - Jawaharlal Nehru

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Whenever you are faced with a choice between liberty and security, choose liberty - Benjamin Franklin

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We cannot chose our external circumstances but we can always choose how we respond to them - Epictetus http://bit.ly/c6qoI1

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This is the point where we choose. Do we want a society based in love, where most of us work for the benefit of the whole. or do we want to continue in a society based in fear where we focus our energy on ourselves and those immediately around us? - Neil Crofts

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There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself - Henry David Thoreau