Daily Poem and Quotations

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Sergeant Shoichi Yokoi of the Japanese Imperial Army was discovered hiding in a cave near Guam's Talofofo River forty years ago o Jan 24th in 1972, 28 years after the end of the war. A tailor's apprentice before being drafted, Yokoi clothed himself in cloth woven from fibers of the wild hibiscus. He subsisted on a diet of coconuts, breadfruit, papayas, snails, eels, and rats. (Snails without butter and garlic? There's a tragedy!)
QUOTES ON THINGS HIDDEN:
"A person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: Those who prefer to have nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden."
- Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960

"At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1896 - 1940

"Just as the sand-dunes, heaped one upon another, hide each the first, so in life the former deeds are quickly hidden by those that follow after."
- Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180

"Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer, it is my task to reveal it if I can."
- Yousuf Karsh, 1908 - 2002

"Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty."
- Galileo Galilei, 1564 - 1642

"The world will never discover a person who is hiding in the crowd."
- Mardy Grothe.

Thought of the Day:
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
--Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, author, editor (1818-1895),

Quote of the Day:
"I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts."
--Will Rogers/i], humorist (1879-1935)

Quote of the Moment:
"Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one."
--Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) in Civil Disobedience,


Poem of the Day
"America" by Claude McKay.

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

Bonus Poem:
"Spring in New Hampshire" by Claude McKay.

Too green the springing April grass,
Too blue the silver-speckled sky,
For me to linger here, alas,
While happy winds go laughing by,
Wasting the golden hours indoors,
Washing windows and scrubbing floors.

Too wonderful the April night,
Too faintly sweet the first May flowers,
The stars too gloriously bright,
For me to spend the evening hours,
When fields are fresh and streams are leaping,
Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
At the end of his shift on Jan. 26th in 1905, mine supervisor Frederick Wells was heading out of the Cullinan diamond mine in Gauteng, South Africa. He looked up and saw what he thought was a chunk of glass stuck in the wall as a prank. Wrong! At 3,106 carats it was the largest gem diamond ever found. The Cullinan Diamond was sent to Asscher Brothers of Amsterdam for cutting, where it was studied for months before the first cut was attempted because of a major flaw near the center. The two largest pieces are part of the British Crown Jewels and can be seen in the Tower of London. Here are some thoughts on lesser Diamonds.
QUOTES ON DIAMONDS:
"Naturally intelligent people are like lumps of coal. Eventually, we turn into diamonds. And the people we once envied turn into coal."
- Kevin R. Hutson.

"Already the writers are complaining that there is too much freedom. They need some pressure. The worse your daily life, the better your art. If you have to be careful because of oppression and censorship, this pressure produces diamonds."
- Tatyana Tolstaya.

"You don't want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel."
- Richard Bach[/img].

"If there were as great a scarcity of soil as of jewels or precious metals, there would not be a prince who would not spend a bushel of diamonds and rubies and a cartload of gold just to have enough earth to plant a jasmine in a little pot, or to sow an orange seed and watch it sprout, grow, and produce its handsome leaves, its fragrant flowers, and fine fruit."
- Galileo Galilei, 1564 - 1642

"The past has brought us both ashes and diamonds. In the present we find the flowers of what we've planted and the seeds of what we are becoming."
- Julia Cameron.

"This isn't the most outrageous of my wardrobe but it is the most expensive. Wanna know why? It's the buttons. They're real diamonds, but I couldn't come out here in just the diamonds!"
- Liberace, 1919 - 1987

Thought of the Day:
"It has been said that the greatest threat to our liberty is from well-meaning, and almost imperceptible encroachments upon our personal freedom."
--John Louis Coffey, Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

Quote of the Day:
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."
--Ronald Reagan, Pres. of the US (1911-2004)

Quote of the Moment:
"Power gradually extirpates for the mind every humane and gentle virtue."
--Edmund Burke, Irish-born British statesman & orator (1729-1797)

Poem of the Day
"We Dogs of a Thursday Off" by Alberto Rios.

The wine of uncharted days,
Their unsteady stance against the working world,

The intense intoxication of nothing to be done,
A day off,

The dance of the big-hearted dog
In us, freed into a sudden green, an immense field:

Off we go, more run than care, more dance—
If a polka could be done not in a room but straight

Ahead, into the beautiful distance, the booming
Sound of the phonograph weakening, but our legs

Getting stronger with their bounding practice:
This day, that feeling, drunkenness

Born of indecision, lack of focus, but everything
Forgiven: Today is a day exposed for what it is,

A workday suddenly turned over on its back,
Hoping to be rubbed.


Bonus Poem:
"The Cities Inside Us" by Alberto Rios.

We live in secret cities
And we travel unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize
But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.
They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city
Inside us, and inside us

There go all the cars we have driven
And seen, there are all the people

We know and have known, there
Are all the places that are

But which used to be as well. This is where
They went. They did not disappear.

We each take a piece
Through the eye and through the ear.

It's loud inside us, in there, and when we speak
In the outside world

We have to hope that some of that sound
Does not come out, that an arm

Not reach out
In place of the tongue.

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[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Billings Learned Hand was born at Albany, New York on Jan. 27th in 1872, in a family where his father, uncle, and grandfather had been attorneys. After Albany Academy he earned a degree in philosophy at Harvard and went on to Harvard Law School. After briefly practicing law he was appointed Federal District Judge for the Southern District of New York where he became known both for this judgment and the quality of his writing, he served there from 1909 to 1924. Calvin Coolidge named him to the Second District Court of Appeals where he served until 1961. His independence probably kept him from advancing beyond that bench, but he is widely regarded as the nation's most influential judge to not sit on the US Supreme Court.
QUOTES:
"We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all activity, the intolerable labor of thought."

"If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice."

"For myself it would be most irksome to be ruled by a bevy of Platonic Guardians, even if I knew how to choose them, which I assuredly do not."

"Right knows no boundaries and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution."

"The mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion."

"I shall ask no more than that you agree with Dean Inge that even though counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them."
All from Learned Hand, 1872 - 1961

Thought of the Day:
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
--Albert Einstein, 1922 Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist (1879-1955).

Quote of the Day:
"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."
--Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. diplomat & Democratic nominee for president (1900-1965)

Quote of the Moment:
"The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government power, not the increase of it."
--Woodrow Wilson, 28th US President (1856-1924)


Poem of the Day
"Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll in The Annotated Alice [W.W. Norton & Co.]

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Bonus Poem:
"The Crocodile" by Lewis Carroll.

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
I'm an explainer. Larkin (Mrs Quotemaster) warns people not to ask me what time it is lest they have to endure a lecture on the celestial mechanics behind time, the history of timekeeping, the development of time zones, the idiotic advent of Daylight Stupid Time, etc. I can't help myself, so here's what happened yesterday: I did my normal daily research on the day's authors, added about 125 quotes to the database, and set out to send Alan Alda quotes. I edited the files to put that in the subject line and changed the URL on the author link (but somehow left it saying Learned Hand). Then I realized it just wasn't coming together and decided to do quotes on Prejudice. I wrote the introduction, narrowed down the selection of quotes to about two dozen, and decided that my eyes needed a rest. I sat down with a book, five hours later I woke up with all the lights on. Quick like a bunny, I narrowed the selection down to the final six, checked the subscription changes, and off it went. Quick like a bunny that wan't awake yet. Now I've made my Explanation, and here's the quotes that tell me that I shouldn't have.
QUOTES ON EXPLANATIONS:
"Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible."
- Eugene Ionesco, 1909 - 1994

"It takes less time to do things right than to explain why you did it wrong."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882

"The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology."
- Red Auerbach, 1917 - 2006

"To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible."
- Thomas Aquinas, 1225 - 1274

"Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem: neat, plausible, and wrong."
- h.l. [Henry Louis] Mencken, 1880 - 1956

"There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations."
- Benjamin Disraeli, 1804 - 1881

"I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards."
- Rudyard Kipling, 1865 - 1936

Thought of the Day:
""The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government power, not the increase of it."
--Woodrow Wilson, 28th US President (1856-1924)

Quote of the Day:
"The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others."
--Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844 - 1900)

Quote of the Moment:
"There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice."
--Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)


Poem of the Day
"Complaint" by William Carlos Williams in The Collected Poems, Vol 1: 1909-1939 [New Directions]

They call me and I go.
It is a frozen road
past midnight, a dust
of snow caught
in the rigid wheeltracks.
The door opens.
I smile, enter and
shake off the cold.
Here is a great woman
on her side in the bed.
She is sick,
perhaps vomiting,
perhaps laboring
to give birth to
a tenth child. Joy! Joy!
Night is a room
darkened for lovers,
through the jalousies the sun
has sent one golden needle!
I pick the hair from her eyes
and watch her misery
with compassion.

Bonus Poem:
"Approach of Winter" by William Carlos Williams.

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd president of the United States and the only four-term president in US history, was born at Hyde Park, New York on this date in 1882. Whether revered or reviled, the creator of the "New Deal" is certainly one of the most influential presidents this country has had.
QUOTES:
"It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach."

"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own mind."

"People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."

"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics."

"The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are lost in the sea."

"Confidence ... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live."
All from Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882 - 1945

Thought of the Day:
"A juror compelled to decide against his own judgment will rebel at the system that made him a traitor to himself."
--Alan W. Scheflin, Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law in California.

Quote of the Moment:
"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience."
--George Bernard Shaw, Anglo-Irish playwright (1856-1950)

Quote of the Day:
"When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out."
--Rev. Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran pastor (1892-1984), arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau in 1938 and freed by the allied forces in 1945. Source: Poem in 1976 translated from German


Poem of the Day
"January" by Helen Hunt Jackson

O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,
What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn
Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn
Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire
The streams than under ice. June could not hire
Her roses to forego the strength they learn
In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn
The bridges thou dost lay where men desire
In vain to build.
O Heart, when Love's sun goes
To northward, and the sounds of singing cease,
Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace.
Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.
Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,
The winter is the winter's own release.

Bonus Poem:
"A Winter Without Snow" by J. D. McClatchy

Even the sky here in Connecticut has it,
That wry look of accomplished conspiracy,
The look of those who've gotten away

With a petty but regular white collar crime.
When I pick up my shirts at the laundry,
A black woman, putting down her Daily News,

Wonders why and how much longer our luck
Will hold. "Months now and no kiss of the witch."
The whole state overcast with such particulars.

For Emerson, a century ago and farther north,
Where the country has an ode's jagged edges,
It was "frolic architecture." Frozen blue-

Print of extravagance, shapes of a shared life
Left knee-deep in transcendental drifts:
The isolate forms of snow are its hardest fact.

Down here, the plain tercets of provision do,
Their picket snow-fence peeling, gritty,
Holding nothing back, nothing in, nothing at all.

Down here, we've come to prefer the raw material
Of everyday and this year have kept an eye
On it, shriveling but still recognizable--

A sight that disappoints even as it adds
A clearing second guess to winter. It's
As if, in the third year of a "relocation"

To a promising notch way out on the Sunbelt,
You've grown used to the prefab housing,
The quick turnover in neighbors, the constant

Smell of factory smoke--like Plato's cave,
You sometimes think--and the stumpy trees
That summer slighted and winter just ignores,

And all the snow that never falls is now
Back home and mixed up with other piercing
Memories of childhood days you were kept in

With a Negro schoolmate, of later storms
Through which you drove and drove for hours
Without ever seeing where you were going.

Or as if you've cheated on a cold sickly wife.
Not in some overheated turnpike motel room
With an old flame, herself the mother of two,

Who looks steamy in summer-weight slacks
And a parrot-green pullover. Not her.
Not anyone. But every day after lunch

You go off by yourself, deep in a brown study,
Not doing much of anything for an hour or two,
Just staring out the window, or at a patch

On the wall where a picture had hung for ages,
A woman with planets in her hair, the gravity
Of perfection in her features--oh! her hair

The lengthening shadow of the galaxy's sweep.
As a young man you used to stand outside
On warm nights and watch her through the trees.

You remember how she disappeared in winter,
Obscured by snow that fell blindly on the heart,
On the house, on a world of possibilities.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Norman Kingsley Mailer was born at Long Branch, New Jersey on Jan. 31st in 1923, but was raised in Brooklyn where he wrote a 250-page story at age nine. He went to Harvard where he didn't fit in well and got a degree in aeronautical engineering that he doesn't seem to have ever used. He hoped to go to Europe to see the war so he could write a book about it, but the Army sent him to the Philippines, the book was called The Naked and the Dead and established him as a major writer at age 25. Subsequently, he won two Pulitzers, six wives, fathered nine children, and was jailed for anti-war demonstrations.
QUOTES:
"With the pride of an artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists, the small trumpet of your defiance."

"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."

"I had the idea that there were two worlds. There was a real world as I called it, a world of wars and boxing clubs and children's homes on back streets, and this real world was a world where orphans burned orphans.... I liked the other world in which almost everyone lived. The imaginary world."

"A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped."

"Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer."

"In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell."
All from Norman Mailer (1923-2007)

Thought of the Day:
" One of the things that bothers me most is the growing belief in the country that security is more important than freedom. It ain't."
-- [Franklyn C.] Lyn Nofziger, journalist, political consultant & Press Secretary for President Reagan (1924-2006)

Quote of the Moment:
"There's an old saying about those who forget history. I don't remember it, but it's good".
--Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report[/img], March 10, 2008

Quote of the Day:
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty
when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment
by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
--Louis D. Brandeis, US Supreme Court Justice (1856-1941)


Poem of the Day
"Lamp or Mirror" by Tony Barnstone.

When strange light stirs the mirror, forces swirl
the shadows by the bathtub and I glimpse
a figure standing glowing. As I rinse
the toothpaste down the drain, his blind eye whirls
numinous white, his hair is moonlight streaming.
I know neurologists have shown the course
of dreaming as synaptic lines of force,
and even in this dream I know I'm dreaming,
yet when the light refracts at such an angle
it shows his broken face, frost in his beard,
his black lips mouthing words I only hear
as moaning of an operatic angel.
His ice hand reaches out. I flinch in fear.
The mirror breaks. I gasp awake. He's here.

Bonus Poem:
"In the Bathroom Mirror" by Ralph Burns.

He continues to ponder
And his wife moves next to him.
She looks. They look at themselves
Looking through the fog.
She has a meeting she says in about
Thirty minutes, he has
Something too. But still she has
Just stepped out of the bath
And a single drop of water
Has curved along her breast
Down her abdomen and vialed in
Her navel then disappeared
In crimson. Unless they love
Then wake in love
Who can they ever be? Their faces bloom,
A rain mists down, the bare
Bulb softens above the glass,
So little light that
The hands mumble deliciously,
That the mouth opens
Mothlike, like petals finding
Themselves awake again
At four o'clock mid shade and sun.
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[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was born in Sverdlovsk Oblast in the USSR on Feb. 1st in 1931. After high school he focused on construction and rose steadily in both functional and political positions in public works and housing. Frustrated by the speed of reforms he supported, he became the first person ever to resign from the Politburo on 1987. Two years later he was, effectively, the mayor of Moscow supported by 92% of the vote, and as he was in opposition to the Soviet powers those numbers are likely to be valid. He pushed Gorbachev aside and orchestrated the end of the Soviet Union. But reforms didn't work at the rate he called for; privatizing too many state industries left them in the hands of the new oligarchs, ending subsidies of consumer goods devastated the working classes, and corruption became widespread. By the time he left office, Russia's GDP had been cut in half, he had been impeached twice, and his approval rating was estimated at 2%, less than ten years after his triumphant rise to power.
QUOTES:
"You can build a throne out of bayonets, but you can't sit on it for very long."

"A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame."

"Dissidents should be paid 13 months' salary for a year, otherwise our mindless unanimity will bring us to an even more hopeless state of stagnation. It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts."

"Liberty sets the mind free, fosters independence and unorthodox thinking and ideas. But it does not offer instant prosperity or happiness and wealth to everyone. This is something that politicians in particular must keep in mind."

"There are numerous bugbears in the profession of a politician. First, ordinary life suffers. Second, there are many temptations to ruin you and those around you. And I suppose third, and this is rarely discussed, people at the top generally have no friends."

"Today is the last day of the past."
All from Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007)

Thought of the Day:
"Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time."
--Abraham Lincoln, 16th Pres. of the US (1809-1865)

Quote of the Day:
"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
--G. K. Chesterton, English author (1874-1936)

Quote of the Moment:
"We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them."
--Abegail Adams, wife of Pres. John Adams (1744-1818)


Poem of the Day
"Cityscape 1" by Pablo Medina.

Let the aroma of need
waft across the river to New Jersey:

all the snow and hills,
a sky that moves and moves.

I saw a rose in the clouds,
I saw happiness on fire.

Bonus Poem:
"God Went to Beauty School" by Cynthia Rylant.

He went there to learn how
to give a good perm
and ended up just crazy
about nails
so He opened up His own shop.
"Nails by Jim" He called it.
He was afraid to call it
Nails by God.
He was sure people would
think He was being
disrespectful and using
His own name in vain
and nobody would tip.
He got into nails, of course,
because He'd always loved
hands--
hands were some of the best things
He'd ever done
and this way He could just
hold one in His
and admire those delicate
bones just above the knuckles,
delicate as birds' wings,
and after He'd done that
awhile,
He could paint all the nails
any color He wanted,
then say,
"Beautiful,"
and mean it.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Today is Candlemas, forty days past Christmas. Traditionally, the candles that would be used in a church during the year were blessed on this day. In medieval England it was thought the day's weather could forecast the end of Winter. "If Candlemas Day be fair and bright; Come Winter, have another flight. If Candlemas brings clouds and rain; go wit and come not again." Watching groundhogs, prairie dogs, badgers, or bears for their shadows is a more recent trend. (See Punxsutawney Phil (www.groundhog.org) or rent the movie Groundhog Day.) Whether Winter will soon be over or wait until the Equinox in March, here are some thoughts on Shadows.
QUOTES ON SHADOWS:
"To light a candle is to cast a shadow."
- Ursula K. Le Guin, sci-fi author

"The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope."
- Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867 - 1959

"Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us."
- Samuel Smiles, 1812 - 1904

"I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface."
- John Ruskin, 1819 - 1900

"I saw the clear afternoon, casting the shadows of chairs one way in the room, so that the season was as clear within a house as out of doors. The shadows had the time of day written into them, as well as the look of autumn."
- Louise Bogan, 1897 - 1970

"You can only come to the morning through the shadows."
- J. R. R. Tolkien, 1892 - 1973

Thought of the Day:
"[T]he Jury have not only the power, but the right, to pass upon the law as well as the facts..."
--Georgia Supreme Court, in Keener v. The State, 18 Ga. 194, 231 (1855).

Quote of the Day:
"When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained."
--Edward R. Murrow, TV journalist & host (1908 - 1965)

Quote of the Moment:
"Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there."
--Clare Booth Luce, Congresswoman & wife of Henry Luce of Time magazine (1903 - 1987)


Poem of the Day
"Refresh. Refresh. Refresh" by Noah Eli Gordon.

I'd give you another day dizzy
in its bracket for the reluctant circumference
of a sad sad satellite's antiquated orbital stoppage.
You can't jump with a lead foot, can't
anthropomorphize insect anticipation, can't
pixelate postcard nostalgia, can't
trace a boy's tiny hand and call him
king of anything that crosses your path, your past,
your iconographic reluctance to let go the toehold
of ordinary New York lasting so long at night, so
lusty in traffic & another orphan absently
kicking the underside of an orange plastic chair.
Poems shouldn't make you wait for them to finish.
Like love, they should finish making you wait.

Bonus Poem:
"Half-Hearted Sonnet" by Kim Addonizio.

He'd left his belt. She
followed him and
threw it in the street.
Wine: kisses: snake: end

of their story. Be-
gin again, under-
stand what happened; de-
spite that battered

feeling, it will have been
worth it; better to
have etc…
(—not to have been born

at all— Schopenhauer.)
But, soft! Enter tears.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Judith Sussman was born at Elizabeth, New Jersey on Feb. 12th in 1938. After high school she got a degree in teaching from New York University (1961), married, and when her children were in preschool started writing as Judy Blume. Her best-known title is Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (1970). Her books are mostly for children and young adults but frankly deal with the real problems her readers have to face. As a result, she has often been the "most challenged author" in American libraries. That means that parents that are unwilling to address these issues with their children have frequently demanded that Blume's books not be available to them either. It hasn't hurt her, she has sold over 80 million copies and earned awards from the National Book Foundation, the American Library Association, and the Library of Congress. I was born too early to benefit from her work but I remember a couple of her books from raising my daughter.
QUOTES:
"I can't let safety and security become the focus of my life."

"Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear."

"Little kids are amazing. They seem able to adjust to anything."

"Not everything has to have a point. Some things just are."

The truth will make you odd."

"Our finger prints dont fade from the lives we touch."

"Snoring keeps the monsters away."
All from Judy Blume

Thought of the Day:
"Let Mr. Madison tell me when did liberty ever exist when the sword and the purse were given up from the people? Unless a miracle shall interpose, no nation ever did, nor ever can retain its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse."
-- Patrick Henry, Founding Father (1736-1799)

Quote of the Day:
"I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity."
--Tom Stoppard, English playwright (b. 1937)

Quote of the Moment:
"[It is not the purpose nor right of Congress] to attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require."
-- William Branch Giles, statesman, US Senator and 24th Governor of Virginia (1762-1830)


Poem of the Day
"What Things Want" by Robert Bly.

You have to let things
Occupy their own space.
This room is small,
But the green settee

Likes to be here.
The big marsh reeds,
Crowding out the slough,
Find the world good.

You have to let things
Be as they are.
Who knows which of us
Deserves the world more?

Bonus Poem:
"The Sympathies of the Long Married' by Robert Bly.

Oh well, let's go on eating the grains of eternity.
What do we care about improvements in travel?
Angels sometimes cross the river on old turtles.

Shall we worry about who gets left behind?
That one bird flying through the clouds is enough.
Your sweet face at the door of the house is enough.

The two farm horses stubbornly pull the wagon.
The mad crows carry away the tablecloth.
Most of the time, we live through the night.

Let's not drive the wild angels from our door.
Maybe the mad fields of grain will move.
Maybe the troubled rocks will learn to walk.

It's all right if we're troubled by the night.
It's all right if we can't recall our own name.
It's all right if this rough music keeps on playing.

I've given up worrying about men living alone.
I do worry about the couple who live next door.
Some words heard through the screen door are enough.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Robert Houghwout Jackson was born at Spring Creek Township in northwest Pennsylvania on Feb 13th in 1892 and raised just over the state line at Frewsburg, New York. After high school there he spent an extra year in high school at Jamestown, New York apprenticed in a two-man law firm, took the second year of Albany Law School's program (not the first), but was refused a law degree as he was under 21. So he passed the bar exam in 1913 without either a college or a law degree. In 1933 he held a prominent American Bar Association post, was general counsel to the predecessor of the IRS the next year, Assistant Attorney General for the antitrust division in 1937, and US Solicitor General in 1938. In 1940 he was named Attorney General, but in August of 1941 he was named to the Supreme Court where he served for thirteen years, other than a leave of absence to preside over the Nuremberg Trials. Legal writing is often reviled for it's dry obscurity; by stark contrast, I could read Justice Jackson's decisions for hours.
QUOTES:
"Civil government cannot let any group ride roughshod over others simply because their consciences tell them to do so."

"Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."

"It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."

"The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts."

"While the Declaration was directed against an excess of authority, the Constitution was directed against anarchy."

"When the Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions."
All from Robert H. Jackson, 1892 - 1954

Thought of the Day:
"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 3rd Pres. of the US (1743-1826)

Quote of the Day:
"We need a president who's fluent in at least one language."
--Buck Henry, comedian

Quote of the Moment:
"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars: the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."
--H. L. Mencken, journalist, lexicographer & critic(1880-1956)


Poem of the Day
"Fixed Interval" by Devin Johnston.

When he turns fifteen, you'll be fifty-four.
When he turns thirty, you'll be sixty-nine.
This plain arithmetic amazes more
than miracle, the constant difference more
than mere recursion of father in son.
If you reach eighty, he'll be forty-one!

The same sun wheels around again, the dawn
drawn out and hammered thin as a copper sheet.
When he turns sixty you'll be gone.
Compacted mud, annealed by summer heat,
two ruts incise this ghost-forsaken plain
and keep their track width, never to part or meet.

Bonus Poem:
"Aubade" by Devin Johnston

A vacant hour
before the sun—
and with it a valve's
pneumatic hush,
the deep and nautical
clunk of wood,
chanson du ricochet
of rivet gun,
trowel tap,
and bolt drawn—

the moon sets
and water breaks.

Curled within
a warm pleroma,
playing for time,
you finally turn
and push your face
toward November's
glint of frost,
grains of salt,
weak clarities
of dawn.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
In grade school, Valentine's Day was a giddy and silly occasion. In youth, the passion of love was a wrenching experience, whether up or down. On a Valentine's Day just over a quarter century ago, with rather more passion than I can muster these days, I asked a certain lady how she would feel about using my name thenceforth, and showing perhaps more affection than sense, she gave her assent. Giddiness passes, excitement ever wanes, but Affection can, and often does, last a lifetime.
QUOTES:
"Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to."
- Alfred A. Montapert

"Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives."
- C. S. Lewis, 1898 - 1963

"We should measure affection, not like youngsters by the ardor of its passion, but by its strength and constancy."
- Cicero, 106 - 43 BC

"When you make an omelet, as when you make love, affection counts for more than technique."
- Isabel Allende

"Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things. They're a refuge from life's disillusionments."
- Gustave Flaubert, 1821 - 1880

"Does it really matter what these affectionate people do, so long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses?"
- Mrs Patrick Campbell, English actress (1865-1940)

Thought of the Day:
"Unlike ordinary legislation, a constitution is enacted by the people themselves in their sovereign capacity and is therefore the paramount law."
--Justice Haymond, West Virginia Supreme Court

Quote of the Day:
"As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it."
--Dick Cavett, TV host (b. 1936)

Quote of the Moment:
"... judicial verbicide is calculated to convert the Constitution into a worthless scrap of paper and to replace our government of laws with a judicial oligarchy."
-- Sam Ervin, US Senator (D-N.C., 1954-74) (1896-1985)


Poem of the Day
"To a Friend who sent me some Roses" by John Keats

As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the sky-lark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert;—when anew
Adventurous knights take up their dinted shields:
I saw the sweetest flower wild nature yields,
A fresh-blown musk-rose; 'twas the first that threw
Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew
As is the wand that queen Titania wields.
And, as I feasted on its fragrancy,
I thought the garden-rose it far excell'd:
But when, O Wells! thy roses came to me
My sense with their deliciousness was spell'd:
Soft voices had they, that with tender plea
Whisper'd of peace, and truth, and friendliness unquell'd.

Bonus Poem:
"Bright Star" by John Keats

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

John Keats, born in 1795, an English Romantic poet and author of three poems considered to be among the finest in the English language - "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy," and "Ode to a Nightingale."

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Susan Brownell Anthony was born at West Grove, Adams, Massachusetts on Feb. 15th in 1820. She learned to read and write at age three, at six she briefly attended public school but was withdrawn when the teacher refused to teach her long division because of her sex. She was active in temperance and anti-slavery movements. In 1851 she met the leaders of the nascent women's rights movement, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Amelia Bloomer. Anthony and Stanton formed the first women's temperance society when they had been denied admission to a temperance convention because of their sex. In 1872 Anthony voted a straight Republican ticket in the November election, two weeks later she was arrested for this crime; her eloquent statements during her trial were widely publicized and though she was found guilty the government was, apparently, too embarrassed to ever enforce collection.
QUOTES:
"It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens, but we, the whole people, who formed this Union."

"I do not demand equal pay for any women save those who do equal work in value. Scorn to be coddled by your employers; make them understand that you are in their service as workers, not as women."

"I think the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth. The sense of independence and security is very sweet."

"Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother."

"Resolved, that the women of this nation in 1876, have greater cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution than the men of 1776."

"This is rather different from the receptions I used to get fifty years ago. They threw things at me then but they were not roses."
All from Susan B. Anthony, 1820 - 1906

Thought of the Day:
"[T]he accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
-- James Madison, 4th Pres. of the US (1751-1836)

Quote of the Day:
"A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B.
--Fats Domino, musician, singer, & songwriter (b. 1928)

Quote of the Moment:
"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
--Virginia Woolf, English author (1882 - 1941)


Poem of the Day
"A Book Of Music" by Jack Spicer

Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.

Bonus Poem:
"After Love" by Sara Teasdale

There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea—
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
hguhyjFor all its peace.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Florynce Rae Kennedy was born at Kansas City, Missouri on Feb. 11th in 1916. Her father was a Pullman porter and later owned a taxi company, he taught his five daughters independence. After "Flo" graduated from high school she opened a hat shop in Kansas City but when her mother died she moved to New York and applied to Columbia Law School. Denied admission because she was a woman, she threatened a discrimination suit and was among the first group of women to graduate in 1951. Representing the estates of Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker in collecting royalties owed by the music company she lost some of her faith in the legal system and turned to political protest. With her flamboyant clothes, cowboy hats, pink glasses, and sharp tongue she was one of the most dramatic characters in the civil rights and feminist movements, as a black woman she didn't see a difference.
QUOTES:
"Trying to help an oppressed person is like trying to put your arm around somebody with a sunburn."

"I approve of anyone wearing what the establishment says you must not wear."

"It's interesting to speculate how it developed that in two of the most anti-feminist institutions, the church and the law court, the men are wearing the dresses."

"Sweetie, if you're not living on the edge, then you're taking up space."

"You've got to rattle your cage door. You've got to let them know that you're in there, and that you want out. Make noise. Cause trouble. You may not win right away, but you'll sure have a lot more fun."

"I find that the higher you aim, the better you shoot."
All from Florynce Kennedy (1916-2000)

Thought of the Day:
"The principles of a free constitution are irrevocably lost when the legislative power is dominated by the executive."
--Edward Gibbon, English historian (1737-1794)

Quote of the Day:
"Anger is never without Reason, but seldom with a good One. "
--Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father (1706 - 1790)

Quote of the Moment:
"Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves."
--Thomas Jefferson, 3rd Pres. of the US (1743-1826)


Poem of the Day
"Amy Check On My Square Inch of Land" by Farrah Field

You didn't win the Cyndi Lauper look-alike contest
at the skating rink. Pretending to understand

you're in therapy. How long do you spend
thinking about women's arms.

We were supposed to do it 23 times before we broke up.
To honor the day we met.

Suddenly everyone values
at home child care
now that men do it.

You want someone you don't have to care about
because you're in love with a dead man.

At the end of every summer you can't
remember the last time you wore pants.

Bonus Poem:
"Automatic Teller Machine" by Ben Mirov

If you work at a steady rate
you may reach the river by nightfall
and if you have the will

a canoe will be waiting
by the ash factory
for you to take upstream

to the takoyaki shack
where you can eat delicious food
and drink as much beer as you like

until late into the night.
In other words you have
your whole life ahead of you

and no one can tell you
what to do or how to act
or what to say or anything

said the machine in the wall
before dispensing my receipt
in a tiny wadded ball.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Thomas John Watson was born at Campbell, New York on Feb 17th in 1874. He went to work for National Cash Register at Dayton, Ohio and was general sales manager at the time he left with a felony conviction for his part in NCR's conspiracy to control the used cash register market. He joined the Computing Tabulating Recording Company in 1914, made president the next year, and within a decade the company took on the name International Business Machines. Watson caused placards saying "THINK" to appear in offices, and was responsible for the boring, if reassuring, corporate look of IBM engineering, support, and sales staff.
QUOTES:
"Would you like me to give you a formula for ... success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You're thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all.... You can be discouraged by failure — or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success. On the far side."

"Good design is good business. Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all ... good design must primarily serve people."

"Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops."

"Solve it. Solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. If you solve it wrong, it will come back and slap you in the face, and then you can solve it right. Lying dead in the water and doing nothing is a comfortable alternative because it is without risk, but it is an absolutely fatal way to manage a business."

"A man is known by the company he keeps. A company is known by the men it keeps."

"You don't hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news."

"Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?"
All from Thomas J. Watson, 1874 - 1956

Thought of the Day:
"A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie."
--Charles Edward Montague, English journalist, writer (1867-1928)

Quote of the Day:
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
--Flannery O'Connor. Spitjerm wroter (1925-1964)

Quote of the Moment:
"Honesty pays, but it don't seem to pay enough to suit some people."
--Frank "Kin" McKinney Hubbard, humorist & journalist (1868-1930)


Poem of the Day
"Celestial" by Tina Chang

When everything was accounted for
you rummaged through my bag to find
something offensive: a revolver,
a notebook of misinterpreted text.

I'm God's professor.
His eyes two open ovens.
He has a physical body
and it hiccups and blesses.

Tell me a story before the mudslide,
tell it fast before the house falls,
before it withers in the frost, before
it dozes off next to the television.

I couldn't tell if it was that screen
or the sky spitting dust and light.

Bonus Poem:
"Infinite and Plausible" by Tina Chang

It is the smallest idea born in the interior will,

that has no fury nor ignorance,

no intruder but stranger, no scaffold of a plea,

no mote of the hungry, no pitchfork of instinct,

no ladder of pity, no carriage of lust,

no wavering foot on concrete, no parish of bees,

no mountains of coal, no limestone and ash,

no lie poured down the stairs of a house among them,

and this is the will of maker and offspring,

no boot in the hallway indicating more exit

than arrival, more straying than strategy, no more struggle

than contained in my body now, as I wander the rooms,

tearing curtains apart from their windows

separating material from light.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
I was stunned by an article in today's New York Times about Chain 124, a series of kidney donations involving thirty donors and thirty recipients, with transplants taking place in seventeen hospitals in eleven states. If I needed a kidney, my wife, brother, sister, or daughter might be willing to donate one, but might not be compatible. This story tells how the problem was solved. Organs are important, I have at least 2,100 quotes that mention at least one organ, from 1,144 related to the heart down to a single reference to the pancreas.
QUOTES:
"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too."
- Elizabeth I, 1533 - 1603

"The brain can be hoodwinked but not the stomach."
- Rex Stout, 1886 - 1975

"What light is to the eyes, what air is to the lungs, what love is to the heart; liberty is to the soul of man."
- Robert Green Ingersoll, 1833 - 1899

"You don't know, perhaps, but I will tell you; the brain is the palest of all the internal organs, and the heart the reddest. Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and color of its birthplace."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, 1809 - 1894

"You don't only just use your voice, you use support form the lungs and diaphragm and everything gets old, whether you like it or not."
- Joan Sutherland, 1926 - 2010

"I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this."
- Emo Phillips

Thought of the Day:
"What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven."
--Friedrich Hoelderlin, German poet (1770-1843)

Quote of the Day:
"Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.
..Helen Gurlely Brown, Cosmopolitan editor (b. 1922)

Quote of the Moment:
"We are not liberated until we liberate others. So long as we need to control other people, however benign our motives, we are captive to that need. In giving them freedom, we free ourselves."
--Marilyn Ferguson, author (b. 1938)


Poem of the Day
"The House-top" by Herman Melville

A Night Piece[/u] (July, 1863.)

No sleep. The sultriness pervades the air
And binds the brain—a dense oppression, such
As tawny tigers feel in matted shades,
Vexing their blood and making apt for ravage.
Beneath the stars the roofy desert spreads
Vacant as Libya. All is hushed near by.
Yet fitfully from far breaks a mixed surf
Of muffled sound, the Atheist roar of riot.
Yonder, where parching Sirius set in drought,
Balefully glares red Arson—there—and there.
The Town is taken by its rats—ship-rats.
And rats of the wharves. All civil charms
And priestly spells which late held hearts in awe—
Fear-bound, subjected to a better sway
Than sway of self; these like a dream dissolve,
And man rebounds whole aeons back in nature.
Hail to the low dull rumble, dull and dead,
And ponderous drag that shakes the wall.
Wise Draco comes, deep in the midnight roll
Of black artillery; he comes, though late;
In code corroborating Calvin's creed
And cynic tyrannies of honest kings;
He comes, nor parlies; and the Town redeemed,
Give thanks devout; nor, being thankful, heeds
The grimy slur on the Republic's faith implied,
Which holds that Man is naturally good,
And—more—is Nature's Roman, never to be scourged.

Bonus Poem:
"Shiloh: A Requiem" by Herman Melville

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh--
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain
through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh--
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there--
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve--
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.
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