Daily Poem and Quotations

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Quotes for Today
Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun was born at Wirsitz, Germany (now Wyrzysk, Poland) on March 23rd in 1912. Fascinated by space flight as described by Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, he learned the math needed to comprehend rocketry. He had a research grant from the German army before he graduated from university, and he was the leader of the Peenemünde rocket development center. Seeing that Germany was going to fall, he arranged for the bulk of his team to surrender to US forces, along with a lot of the hardware.
For fifteen years he was key to the US missile and space programs and designed most US rockets through the Saturn V, along with Spacelab. When Sputnik stunned the US, von Braun modified a Redstone rocket to launch the first US satellite within five months.
QUOTES:
"Our two greatest problems are gravity and paper work. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."

"Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month."

"I believe in an immortal soul. Science has proved that nothing disintegrates into nothingness. Life and soul, therefore, cannot disintegrate into nothingness, and so are immortal."

"A good engineer gets stale very fast if he doesn't keep his hands dirty."

"One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions."

"Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently."
All from Wernher von Braun (1912-1977)

Thought of the Day:
"Let us fashion together a new world order."
-- Henry Kissinger in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, October, 1975.

Quote of the Day:
"A good listener is usually thinking about something else./"
--Kin Hubbard (1868 - 1930), American humorist.

Quote of the Moment:
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th US President,

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Quotes for Today
Frederick Henry Royce was born at Alwalton, Huntingdonshire, England on March 27th in 1863. He apprenticed as a telegraph boy with a railroad and started his own shop making dynamos, motors, and electrically-driven cranes in 1884. He bought his first car in 1903 and found it seriously lacking, so put his own first car on the road on 1 April 1904. After joining up with motorist Charles Rolls in 1907 the brilliant engineer created a line of cars known around the world for Excellence.
QUOTES ON EXCELLANCE:
"Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing, because plumbing is an humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy, because philosophy is an exalted activy, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
- John W. Gardner (1912-2002)

"He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper but he is more excellent who can suit his temper to any circumstances."
- David Hume (1711-1776)

"I saw one excellency was within my reach; it was brevity and I determined to obtain it."
- John Jay (1745-1829)

"In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

"The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous."
- Shana Alexander (1925-2005)

Thought of the Day:
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), 34th US President

Quote of the Day:
"Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."
--Michael Crichton (1942 - 2008), AUTOR

Quote of the Moment:
"My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own."
--William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U S Supreme Court Justice

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Quotes for Today


Thought of the Day:
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Quote of the Day:
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Quote of the Moment:
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Poem of the Day
"Break of Day" by John Donne.

Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well, I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honor so,
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
O, that's the worst disease of love.
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.

Bonus Poem:
"Batter my heart, three person'd God" (Holy Sonnet 14)
by John Donne[.

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The poet John Donne is known as the founder of the Metaphysical Poets, that included George Herbert and Andrew Marvell. They are known for their ability to startle the reader and coax new perspective through paradoxical images, subtle argument, inventive syntax, and imagery from art, philosophy, and religion using an extended metaphor known as a conceit. Donne reached beyond the rational and hierarchical structures of the 17th century with his exacting and ingenious conceits, advancing the exploratory spirit of his time. In 1621, he became dean of St Paul's Cathedral. and his writing reflected his fear of his inevitable death. He wrote his private prayers, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, during a period of severe illness and published them in 1624. His learned, charismatic, and inventive preaching made him a highly influential presence in London. Best known for his vivacious, compelling style and thorough examination of mortal paradox, John Donne died in London in 1631.

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Construction started for the Home Insurance Building at the corner of LaSalle and Adams Streets in Chicago on May 1st in 1884. The first building to be called a skyscraper, it would soon stand an imposing ten stories tall! On May 1st in 1931, the somewhat taller (102 stories) Empire State Building was dedicated at Manhattan, the tallest building in the world again. Here I have a half dozen quotes related to Skyscrapers.

QUOTES:
"In short, the building becomes a theatrical demonstration of its functional ideal. In this romanticism, High-Tech architecture is, of course, no different in spirit - if totally different in form - from all the romantic architecture of the past."
--Dan Cruickshank.

Architecture is the alphabet of giants; it is the largest set of symbols ever made to meet the eyes of men. A tower stands up like a sort of simplified statue, of much more than heroic size."
--Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874 - 1936

"The skyscraper establishes the block, the block creates the street, the street offers itself to man."
--Roland Barthes, 1915 - 1980

"By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul."
--Carl Sandburg, 1878 - 1967

A skyscraper is at the same time a triumph of the machine and a tremendous emotional experience, almost breath-taking. Not merely its height but its mass and proportions are the result of an emotion, as well as of calculation.
--George Gershwin, 1898 - 1937

"Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space."
--Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1886 - 1969

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] Quotes for Today
Scott Adams was born at Windham, New York on June 8th in 1957. A fan of Peanuts, he started drawing cartoons at age six, but was rejected at art school and decided to become a lawyer. Instead, he landed at San Francisco's Crocker Bank where he sprinkled cartoons into his presentations to management. He went to work for Pacific Bell in 1986, characters he met there inspired Dilbert, which was carried by 100 papers in 1991, 400 in 1994. In 1996 he published The Dilbert Principle, the daily strip ran in 800 papers, and he left the phone company. Dilbert now appears in 2,000 papers in 65 countries and 25 languages. Whenever you have any thoughts of seeking employment again, five minutes with Dilbert will set you straight.

QUOTES:
"Mission Statement: A long awkward sentence that demonstrates management's inability to think clearly."

"Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive."

"The Dilbert Principle: The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage - Management."

"We're a planet of nearly six billion ninnies living in a civilization that was designed by a few thousand amazingly smart deviants."

"Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion."

"There are two essential rules to management. One, the customer is always right; and two, they must be punished for their arrogance."

"If you want to kill an idea without being identified as the assassin, suggest that the legal department take a look at it."
All from Scott Adams

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]Quotes for Today
Sunday was the 40th anniversary of the break-in on the sixth floor of the Watergate Hotel and Office Building, 2600 Virginia Avenue, Washington City. Forty years ago today, President Nixon and his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, had a conversation in the Oval Office about the event. In July, Alexander Butterfield told Senate investigators of the voice activated recording system in use, beginning a legal battle for release of the tapes. Apparently that meeting on 20 June was important, because that was the tape with the infamous eighteen and a half minute "gap".
QUOTES:

"Post-Watergate morality, by which anything left private is taken as presumptive evidence of wrongdoing."
- Charles Krauthammer

"You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job."
- Richard Nixon, 1913 - 1994

"If the many allegations made to this date are true, then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate were, in effect, breaking into the home of every citizen."
- Sam Ervin, 1896 - 1985

"Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news."
- John le Carré

"Watergate is an immensely complicated scandal with a cast of characters as varied as a Tolstoy novel."
- Bob Woodward

"Watergate showed more strengths in our system than weaknesses.... The whole country did take part, in quite a genuine sense, in passing judgment on Richard Nixon."
- Archibald Cox, 1912 - 2004

"Even Napoleon had his Watergate."
- Yogi Berra

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Poem of the Day
"Father" by Edgar Guest in Selected Poems, published by Reilly & Lee Co.


My father knows the proper way
The nation should be run;
He tells us children every day
Just what should now be done.
He knows the way to fix the trusts,
He has a simple plan;
But if the furnace needs repairs,
We have to hire a man.

My father, in a day or two
Could land big thieves in jail;
There's nothing that he cannot do,
He knows no word like "fail."
"Our confidence" he would restore,
Of that there is no doubt;
But if there is a chair to mend,
We have to send it out.

All public questions that arise,
He settles on the spot;
He waits not till the tumult dies,
But grabs it while it's hot.
In matters of finance he can
Tell Congress what to do;
But, O, he finds it hard to meet
His bills as they fall due.

It almost makes him sick to read
The things law-makers say;
Why, father's just the man they need,
He never goes astray.
All wars he'd very quickly end,
As fast as I can write it;
But when a neighbor starts a fuss,
'Tis mother has to fight it.

In conversation father can
Do many wondrous things;
He's built upon a wiser plan
Than presidents or kings.
He knows the ins and outs of each
And every deep transaction;
We look to him for theories,
But look to ma for action.

A belated Father's Day contribution.

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I just have to have my Emily Dickinson fix. I could easily post her entire output but I restrain myself.

"My life closed twice before its close"(96) by Emily Dickinson.

My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.


Emily Dickinson, the so-called "Belle of Amherst", was born in 1830 and lived in almost total physical isolation from the outside world. She is now linked with Walt Whitman as founders of a unique American poetic voice.

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"Autumn" by T. E. Hulme


A touch of cold in the Autumn night
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded;
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.


Born on September 16, 1883, T. E. Hulme was an English critic and poet who contributed to Ezra Pound's Imagist movement. The first of only six poems published in Hulme's lifetime, "Autumn" (published in 1909) is considered one of the first Imagist poems.

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"I Sit and Sew" by Alice Dunbar-Nelson

I sit and sew—a useless task it seems,
My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams—
The panoply of war, the martial tred of men,
Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death
Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath—
But—I must sit and sew.

I sit and sew—my heart aches with desire—
That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
Once men. My soul in pity flings
Appealing cries, yearning only to go
There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe—
But—I must sit and sew.

The little useless seam, the idle patch;
Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
You need, me, Christ! It is no roseate seam
That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,
It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?



Alice Dunbar-Nelson was an American poet, journalist and political activist. Among the first generation born free in the South after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Her first husband was the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar; she then married physician Henry A. Callis; and last married Robert J. Nelson, a poet and civil rights activist.

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"I cry your mercy—pity—love!—ay, love" by [/i]John Keats

To Fanny.

I cry your mercy—pity—love!—ay, love!
Merciful love that tantalises not
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmask'd, and being seen—without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole,—all—all—be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss,—those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,—
Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom or I die,
Or living on, perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes,—the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

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Today is St Crispin's Day which always brings Shakespeare to my thoughts and his speech in Henry V. So in his honor, I give you one of his sonnets.

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds" (Sonnet 116) by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

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"So we'll go no more a roving" by George Gordon, Lord Byron

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

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"Faults" by Sara Teasdale

They came to tell your faults to me,
They named them over one by one;
I laughed aloud when they were done,
I knew them all so well before,—
Oh, they were blind, too blind to see
Your faults had made me love you more.


Born in 1884, Sara Trevor Teasdale's work was characterized by its simplicity and clarity and her use of classical forms.