In a peaceful rural location near Lexington, Kentucky, there is a Shaker village restoration “Pleasant Hill”. Years ago, we went there many times when visiting family. After enjoying the excellent Shaker-style food at the restaurant, we wandered the settlement, trying to imagine the industrious life of its inhabitants.

The banner image for this blog was taken in one of the buildings of Pleasant Hill. It is looking upward at a magnificent spiral staircase, with a continuous shape that seems to suggest a possible metaphor for life and the logic of learning and growing along the way. – mjd

“Ideals are but mile-stones which we put successively behind us, while we press on to another, they are successive rounds of an infinite ladder, which we put beneath us while we rise higher.” [ – quoted from Joseph Le Conte ]

With our purpose to attain an ideal or a series of ideals, for many appear along the path of life, we by careful selection and by frequent contemplations of them so blend our work with our ideals that that work itself is idealized.

… If one reaches this point, he has overcome drudgery in work.

 – Floyd Wilson, Man Limitless, 1905.