Daily Poem and Quotations

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Labor Day is a celebration observed in most countries, although there is a large variation in the date. We honor the concept of labor and those who perform it by, naturally, taking a day off from our labors. Alas, in these parlous times that makes rather less sense than normal, given the staggering numbers in almost every country that not only won't be working on that day but won't be working the rest of the week. Let's hope that those that are charged with working on this problem make some progress by next year.
QUOTES ON WORK:
"Without work all life goes rotten."
- Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960

"There is no fatigue so wearisome as that which comes from lack of work."
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 1834 - 1892

"Where Labor stands idle ... there is a demonstrated deficiency, not of Capital, but of brains."
- Horace Greeley, 1811 - 1872

"Employment gives health, sobriety, and morals. Constant employment and well-paid labor produce, in a country like ours, general prosperity, content, and cheerfulness. Thus happy have we seen the country."
- Daniel Webster, 1782 - 1852

"Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume."
- Victor Hugo, 1802 - 1885

"Even in the meanest sorts of Labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work."
- Thomas Carlyle, 1795 - 1881

"The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment."
- Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784


Thought of the Day:
"Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention."
--Simone Weil, French philosopher & mystec (1909-1943)

Quote of the Day:
"The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future."
--Jessamyn West, author (1902-1984)

Quote of the Moment:
"A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else."
--John Burroughs, naturalist (1937-1921)

Poem of the Day
"By ways remote and distant waters sped (101) by Gaius Valerius Catullus/trans. by Aubrey Beardsley

By ways remote and distant waters sped,
Brother, to thy sad grave-side am I come,
That I may give the last gifts to the dead,
And vainly parley with thine ashes dumb:
Since she who now bestows and now denies
Hath ta'en thee, hapless brother, from mine eyes.
But lo! these gifts, the heirlooms of past years,
Are made sad things to grace thy coffin shell;
Take them, all drenched with a brother's tears,
And, brother, for all time, hail and farewell!

Bonus Poem:
"A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" by Dylan Thomas

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Iowa's Elmer Maytag was born on Sept. 18th in 1883, and went on to develop the first home washing machine. Tomorrow we observe the birth of William Hesketh Lever in 1851. With his brother he developed the first soap made from vegetable oils and created the Lever Brothers empire (now Unilever). Today's theme: Cleanliness.
QUOTES:
"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749 - 1832

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward."
- Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

"There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough."
- Mother Teresa, 1910 - 1997

"I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there were only one in the world."
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

"Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them."
- Benjamin Disraeli, 1804 - 1881

"The Rose Bowl is the only bowl I've ever seen that I didn't have to clean."
- Erma Bombeck, 1927 - 1996


Thought of the Day:
""If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow." — Chinese proverb.

Quote of the Day:
"The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work."
--Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)

Quote of the Moment:
"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
--Albert Camus, French writer (1913-1960)

Poem of the Day
"The Horrid Voice of Science" by Vachel Lindsey

"There's machinery in the
butterfly;
There's a mainspring to the
bee;
There's hydraulics to a daisy,
And contraptions to a tree.

"If we could see the birdie
That makes the chirping sound
With x-ray, scientific eyes,
We could see the wheels go
round."

And I hope all men
Who think like this
Will soon lie
Underground.

Bonus Poems:
"Friends, I Will Not Cease" by Vachel Lindsay

Friends, I will not cease hoping though you weep.
Such things I see, and some of them shall come,
Though now or streets are harsh and ashen-gray,
Though our strong youths are strident now, or dumb.
Friends, that sweet town, that wonder-town, shall rise.
Naught can delay it. Though it may not be
Just as I dream, it comes at last I know,
With streets like channels of an incense-sea.

"The Dandelion" by Vachel Linday

O dandelion, rich and haughty,
King of village flowers!
Each day is coronation time,
You have no humble hours.
I like to see you bring a troop
To beat the blue-grass spears,
To scorn the lawn-mower that would be
Like fate's triumphant shears.
Your yellow heads are cut away,
It seems your reign is o'er.
By noon you raise a sea of stars
More golden than before.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Sofia Villani Scicolone was born at Rome on this day in 1934, her mother a music teacher and aspiring actress. Despite having two daughters, her father refused to marry which left the family in dependent on family for shelter. At fourteen, Sofia entered a beauty contest and was among the finalists, two years later she came to the attention of film producer Carlo Ponti, 22 years her senior. They married in 1957, the union was annulled in 1962 so Conti could finalize his divorce, then rewed in 1966; they had two sons and remained married until Conti's death in 2007. After that first beauty contest she won small parts in Italian films as Sofia Lazzaro, adopting Sophia Loren starting with La Favorita in 1952. From 1950 to date she has appeared in over ninety films, winning over fifty awards including two Oscars and seven Golden Globes. Hard working, talented, and gorgeous, she's also insightful and witty.
QUOTES:
"Being beautiful can never hurt, but you have to have more. You have to sparkle, you have to be fun, you have to make your brain work if you have one."

"Cooking is an act of love, a gift, a way of sharing with others the little secrets — "piccoli segreti" — that are simmering on the burners."

"I was not interested in what I could bring to myself by being an actress, but in what I could bring out of myself."

"If you haven't cried, your eyes can't be beautiful."

"The facts of life are that a child who has seen war cannot be compared with a child who doesn't know what war is except from television."

"I'm a giraffe. I even walk like a giraffe with a long neck and legs. It's a pretty dumb animal, mind you."
All from Sophia Loren

Thought of the Day:
"There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste."
--Johann von Goethe, German writer (1749-1832)

Quote of the Day:
"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault."
--Henry Kissinger, 56th Secretary of State (b. 1923)

Quote of the Moment:
"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time."
--Edith Wharton, novelist (1862-1937)


Poem of the Day
"Autumn" by Amy Lowell in Selected Poems [Rutgers University Press]

They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia,
Opulent, flaunting.
Round gold
Flung out of a pale green stalk.
Round, ripe gold
Of maturity,
Meticulously frilled and flaming,
A fire-ball of proclamation:
Fecundity decked in staring yellow
For all the world to see.
They brought a quilled, yellow dahlia,
To me who am barren
Shall I send it to you,
You who have taken with you
All I once possessed?

Bonus Poems:
"A London Toroughfare, 2 A.M." by Amy Lowell

They have watered the street,
It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,
And lies
Like a slow-moving river,
Barred with silver and black.
Cabs go down it,
One,
And then another,
Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
Tramps doze on the window-ledges,
Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
The city is squalid and sinister,
With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,
A river leading nowhere.

Opposite my window,
The moon cuts,
Clear and round,
Through the plum-coloured night.
She cannot light the city:
It is too bright.
It has white lamps,
And glitters coldly.

I stand in the window and watch the
moon.
She is thin and lustreless,
But I love her.
I know the moon,
And this is an alien city.


"Opal" by Amy Lowell

You are ice and fire,
The touch of you burns my hands like snow.
You are cold and flame.
You are the crimson of amaryllis,
The silver of moon-touched magnolias.
When I am with you,
My heart is a frozen pond
Gleaming with agitated torches.

[pegasus]

Quotes of the Day
On Sept. 21st in 1970 The New York Times introduced a new element in newspapers, the "Op Ed" page. It would be the page opposite the official editorial page, a place for commentary from voices not officially affiliated with the newspaper. It turns out that this page is, in most papers, marked by better-crafted writing than the rest of the paper; whether I agree with the sentiments expressed or not I consistently turn to this page for that reason alone. It is the home of well-reasoned Opinion.
QUOTES:
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
- Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955

"The understanding that underlies the right decision grows out of the clash and conflict of opinions and out of the serious consideration of competing alternatives."
- Peter Drucker, 1909 - 2005

"In frank expression of conflicting opinion lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action; and in suppression lies ordinarily the greatest peril."
- Louis Dembitz Brandeis, 1856 - 1941

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind."
- John Stuart Mill, 1806 - 1873

"The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately."
- Bertrand Russell, 1872 - 1970

"I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up."
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742 - 1799

Thought of the Day:
"It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
--J. K. Rowling, author (b. 1965)

Quote of the Day:
"Every man serves a useful purpose: a miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor."
--Laurence J. Peter, author (1919-1988)

Quote of the Moment:
"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimatd his ability."
--Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright (1854-1900)

Poem of the Day
"A Windmill Makes a Statement" by Cate Marvin

You think I like to stand all day, all night,
all any kind of light, to be subject only
to wind? You are right. If seasons undo
me, you are my season. And you are the light
making off with its reflection as my stainless
steel fins spin.

On lawns, on lawns we stand,
we windmills make a statement. We turn air,
churn air, turning always on waiting for your
season. There is no lover more lover than the air.
You care, you care as you twist my arms
round, till my songs become popsicle

and I wing out radiants of light all across
suburban lawns. You are right, the churning
is for you, for you are right, no one but you
I spin for all night, all day, restless for your

sight to pass across the lawn, tease grasses,
because I so like how you lay above me,
how I hovered beneath you, and we learned
some other way to say: There you are.

You strip the cut, splice it to strips, you mill
the wind, you scissor the air into ecstasy until
all lawns shimmer with your bluest energy.

Bonus Poem:
"Scenes fFrom the Battle of Us" by Cate Marvin

You are like a war novel, entirely lacking
female characters, except for an occasional
letter that makes one of the men cry.

I am like a table
that eats its own legs off
because it’s fallen
in love with the floor.

My frantic hand can’t find where my leg
went. You can play the tourniquet. A tree
with white limbs will grow here someday.

Or maybe a pup tent
that’s collapsed in on itself,
it so loves the sleep
of men sleeping beneath it.

The reason why women dislike war movies
may have something to do with why men hate
romantic comedies: they are both about war.

Perhaps I should
live in a pig’s trough.
There, I’d be wanted.
There, I’d be tasted.

When the mail bag drops from the sky
and lands heavy on the jungle floor, its letters
are prepared to swim away with your tears.

One letter reads:
I can barely feel
furtive. The other:

[pegasus]

QUOTES OF THE DAY
Philip Dormer Stanhope was born at London on Sept 21st in 1694. After graduation from Trinity Hall, Cambridge he left for the Grand Tour of Europe but returned to a position in the court of George I when Queen Anne died and soon took a seat in Parliament. At the end of his maiden speech he was reminded by a senior member that he was liable for a large fine for speaking before he had reached his majority, he returned to France and collected information for the crown until he came of age. Despite his oratory in both houses of Parliament and his skill in diplomacy, he is best remembered for Letters to his Son, a collection of advice he sent as letters to his illegitimate son.
QUOTES:
"Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least."

"I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves."

"Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so."

"In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge."

"Learning is acquired by reading books; but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading man, and studying all the various editions of them."

"Ridicule is the best test of truth."
All from Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, 1694 - 1773

Thought of the Day:
"If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind."
--John Stuart Mill, English philospher (1908-1873)

Quote of the Day:
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death."
--Joan D. Vinge in Catspaw.


Quote of the Moment:
"A well-spent day brings a happy sleep."
--Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance polymath (1452-1519)


Poem of the Day
"Air Envelope" by Catherine Wagner

A skylight stippled
Wet, scatted
With translucent brown maple seedwings

I'm under that

I wrote it as if it were a poem
And my handy margin
Would profit me.

The notebook margin
Lends to me
Its frugal axis, asking
Nothing, determinist
Of route, but blandly so.

"I didn't know."

Push forward
The bag of skin
Scaffolded animated
And house at the same time

The hinge we turn on
Wrap around night
Becomes day, same page
We're on it.

Bonus Poem:

answers questions vaguely, as if from distance,
cares less for the dribs and drabs of his libido;
gets more droll, lachrymose, implicit with age;

has backed from the room, the turntable moving
and a refill pad lying open at the page
with 'swansong' and 'glockenspiel' written on it;

makes collect calls from payphones, lost for words;
has been known to sleep in the rear seat
on the hard shoulder, the hazards ticking;

is given to sudden floods of hope; still dreams
of swimming pools, in sepia; can take or leave
a life in shadow; will whoop out of the blue

and surface on the landing, fork and spoon in hand,
adrift of what the done thing was; doodles butterflies
on the envelopes of unread letters; travels happiest

towards daylight and fancies pigeons; gets a kick
inhabiting the third person, as if talking across himself
or forever clapping his own exits from the wings.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
William Holmes McGuffey was born at Finely Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania on this day in 1800. Self educated, he was teaching at age thirteen, later getting a college degree and spending the rest of his life as either a college president (which he didn't enjoy and wasn't good at, one of the schools went bankrupt under his leadership) or professor. But his McGuffey Peerless Pioneer Readers sold 122 million copies and tought countless Americans to read.
QUOTES:
"A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the unsolved ones.
- Abraham Lincoln, 1809 - 1865

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement.
- Doris Lessing b. 1919

And I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.
- Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007

It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.
- Vincent van Gogh, 1853 - 1890

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it? ... A book must be like an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.
- Franz Kafka, 1883 - 1924

Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
- Richard Wright, 1908 - 1960


Thought of the Day:
"Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can."
--John Wesley, English founder of Methodism (1703-1791)

Quote of the Day:
"Some men are born mediocre, some men achiever mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them."
--Joseph Heller, author (1923-1999)

Quote of the Moment:
"One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar."
--Helen Keller, deaf/blind autohr (1880-1968)


Poem of the Day
"Year of the Amateur" by Cathy Park Hong

Recall the frontier when the business
of memory booms, when broadbands uncoil
and clouds swell with sticky portals, amassing
to a monsoon of live-streams.
Burn your chattel to keep the cloud afloat
so its tears can freeze to snow.
The voice flatlines in this season of pulp:
The artist makes miniature churches out of drain pulp,
The Indonesian rainforest is pulped,
the last illuminated gold leaves are pulped so we
gather and watch an otter nom nom
sweet urchin to a pulp.
We laugh softly.

Bonus Poem:
"Turn of a Year" by Joan Houlihan

This is regret: or a ferret. Snuffling,
stunted, a snout full of snow.

As the end of day shuffles down
the repentant scurry and swarm—

an unstable contrition is born.
Bend down. Look into the lair.

Where newborn pieties spark and strike
I will make my peace as a low bulb

burnt into a dent of snow. A cloth to keep me
from seeping. Light crumpled over a hole.

Why does the maker keep me awake?
He must want my oddments, their glow.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Labor Day is a celebration observed in most countries, although there is a large variation in the date. We honor the concept of labor and those who perform it by, naturally, taking a day off from our labors. Alas, in these parlous times that makes rather less sense than normal, given the staggering numbers in almost every country that not only won't be working on that day but won't be working the rest of the week. Let's hope that those that are charged with working on this problem make some progress by next year.
QUOTES ON WORK:
"Without work all life goes rotten."
- Albert Camus, 1913 - 1960

"There is no fatigue so wearisome as that which comes from lack of work."
- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 1834 - 1892

"Where Labor stands idle ... there is a demonstrated deficiency, not of Capital, but of brains."
- Horace Greeley, 1811 - 1872

"Employment gives health, sobriety, and morals. Constant employment and well-paid labor produce, in a country like ours, general prosperity, content, and cheerfulness. Thus happy have we seen the country."
- Daniel Webster, 1782 - 1852

"Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume."
- Victor Hugo, 1802 - 1885

"Even in the meanest sorts of Labor, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony the instant he sets himself to work."
- Thomas Carlyle, 1795 - 1881

"The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment."
- Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784


Thought of the Day:
"Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention."
--Simone Weil, French philosopher & mystec (1909-1943)

Quote of the Day:
"The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future."
--Jessamyn West, author (1902-1984)

Quote of the Moment:
"A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else."
--John Burroughs, naturalist (1937-1921)

Poem of the Day
"By ways remote and distant waters sped (101) by Gaius Valerius Catullus/trans. by Aubrey Beardsley

By ways remote and distant waters sped,
Brother, to thy sad grave-side am I come,
That I may give the last gifts to the dead,
And vainly parley with thine ashes dumb:
Since she who now bestows and now denies
Hath ta'en thee, hapless brother, from mine eyes.
But lo! these gifts, the heirlooms of past years,
Are made sad things to grace thy coffin shell;
Take them, all drenched with a brother's tears,
And, brother, for all time, hail and farewell!

Bonus Poem:
"A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London" by Dylan Thomas

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
A great deal of history is the record of battles fought. A few of those battles were significant turning points. One such was the English victory over the French at the Battle of Crécy on Aug 26th in 1346. The longbow had been around for centuries but had never been a decisive weapon until the English learned to use it well and trained a large part of the population. A typical English archer of the day could loose a dozen arrows in a minute, at a range of over 200 yards, with most shots hitting a target. Our quotes today on Arrows are, happily, less warlike in nature.
QUOTES ON ARROWS:
Convey love to thy friend as an arrow to the mark; not as a ball against the wall, to rebound back again.
- Francis Quarles, 1592 - 1644

If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it; every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882

The supreme irony of business management is that it is far easier for an inadequate CEO to keep his job than it is for an inadequate subordinate.... At too many companies, the boss shoots the arrow of managerial performance and then hastily paints the bullseye around the spot where it lands.
- Warren Buffett, financier (b. 1930)

I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.
- J. R. R. Tolkien, 1892 - 1973

Base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark.
- Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626

Labour not after riches first, and think thou afterwards wilt enjoy them. He who neglecteth the present moment, throweth away all that he hath. As the arrow passeth through the heart, while the warrior knew not that it was coming; so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it.
- Michel de Montaigne, 1533 - 1592

Thought of the Day:
"A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th Pres. of the US (1890-1969)

Quote of the Day:
"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."
--Herm Albright, German-born artist (1876-1944)

Quote of the Moment:
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France (1769-1821)

Poem of the Day
"Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right
I have been one acquainted with the night.

BONUS POEM:
"After Apple-Picking" by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
John Chapman was born at Leominster, Mass. on Sept. 26th in 1774. Johnny headed west in 1797, just ahead of a wave of westward expansion, planting apple orchards in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, some of which are still bearing fruit. He didn't just throw the seed on the ground as sometimes depicted, he bought land and started nurseries. He did give away a lot of trees, but mostly sold them to homesteaders who were required to plant fifty apple trees in the first year. He spent almost fifty years growing Apples.
QUOTES (Apples):
"Adam was but human - this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent."
- Mark Twain, author (1835-1910)

"The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less."
- Arthur Miller, playwright (1915-2005)

"As an apple is not in any proper sense an apple until it is ripe, so a human being is not in any proper sense a human being until he is educated."
- Horace Mann, educator (1796-1859)

"Some things you have to do every day. Eating seven apples on Saturday night instead of one a day just isn't going to get the job done."
- Jim Rohn, motivational speaker (1930-2009)

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."
- Martin Luther King, Jr, civil rights activist (1929-1968)

"A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard—by stealing what he has a taste for and can carry off."
- Archibald Macleish, author (1892-1982)

Thought of the Day:
"A man may learn wisdom even from a foe."
--Aristophanes, Greek comic playwright (c.448-390 B.C.)

Quote of the Day:
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
--Sir Winston Churchill, English statesman (1874-1965)

Quote of the Moment:
"Never let the demands of tomorrow interfere with the pleasures and excitement of today."
--Meredith Willson, playwright/composer (1902-1984)

Poem of the Day
"Orchard" by H. D. in Collected Poems [New Directions]

I saw the first pear
as it fell—
the honey-seeking, golden-banded,
the yellow swarm
was not more fleet than I,
(spare us from loveliness)
and I fell prostrate
crying:
you have flayed us
with your blossoms,
spare us the beauty
of fruit-trees.

The honey-seeking
paused not,
the air thundered their song,
and I alone was prostrate.

O rough-hewn
god of the orchard,
I bring you an offering—
do you, alone unbeautiful,
son of the god,
spare us from loveliness:

these fallen hazel-nuts,
stripped late of their green sheaths,
grapes, red-purple,
their berries
dripping with wine,
pomegranates already broken,
and shrunken figs
and quinces untouched,
I bring you as offering.

Bonus Poem:
"Heat" by H. D.

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air--
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat--
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Henri-Frédéric Amiel was born at Geneva, Switzerland on sEPT. 27th in 1821. Although his parents died when he was quite young, he was able to travel widely and befriended many of the intellectual leaders of Europe. He was appointed professor of aesthetics (1849) and professor of moral philosophy (1854) at the Academy of Geneva, but these positions given by the democratic party isolated him from the cultural life of the city. Although he published several volumes of poetry we know him today for his "Intimate Journal", which he kept for the last two decades of his life, largely philosophical musings that totaled over 16,000 pages.
QUOTES:
"A belief is not true because it is useful."

"A man must be able to cut a knot, for not everything can be untied."

"An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains."

"Charm is the quality in others that makes us more satisfied with ourselves."

"Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence."

"We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves."

"The fire which enlightens is the same fire which consumes."

Perfect happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
All from Henri-Frédéric Amiel, 1821 - 1881


Thought of the Day:
"Just as you began to feel that you could make good use of time, there was no time left to you,"
--Lisa Alther, novelist (b. 1944)

Quote of the Day:
"Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything."
--Charles Kuralt, TV journalist (1934-1997)

Quote of the Moment:
"A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. "
--Tennesse Wiliams (1911-1983) in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Poem of the Day
"Only a Dad" by Edgar Guest

Only a dad with a tired face,
Coming home from the daily race,
Bringing little of gold or fame,
To show how well he has played the game,
But glad in his heart that his own rejoice
To see him come and to hear his voice.

Only a dad with a brood of four,
One of ten million men or more.
Plodding along in the daily strife,
Bearing the whips and the scorns of life,
With never a whimper of pain or hate,
For the sake of those who at home await.

Only a dad, neither rich nor proud,
Merely one of the surging crowd
Toiling, striving from day to day,
Facing whatever may come his way,
Silent, whenever the harsh condemn,
And bearing it all for the love of them.

Only a dad but he gives his all
To smooth the way for his children small,
Doing, with courage stern and grim,
The deeds that his father did for him.
This is the line that for him I pen:
Only a dad, but the best of men.

Bonus Poem:
"The Portrait" by Stanley Kunitz

My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
For most of us, penicillin is old news, an antibiotic long replaced by more powerful or more specific treatments, but it was on this day in 1928 that Alexander Fleming found a mold growing in one of his culture dishes and killing a staph culture he was studying. It was only during World War II that Fleming's discovery became a useful treatment, which demonstrates how recent most of what we know as "traditional medicine" actually is. Comments about medicine, however, haven't changed greatly over the years.
QUOTES:
"He's the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the most medicines."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1706 - 1790

"Love is a medicine for the sickness of the world; a prescription often given, too rarely taken."
- Karl Augustus Menninger, 1893 - 1990

"For all the advances in medicine, there is still no cure for the common birthday."
- John Glenn (b. 1921)

"The sicker you get, the harder it is to remember if you took your medicine."
- George Carlin, 1937 - 2008

"The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."
- François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), 1694 - 1778

"Praise, like penicillin must not be administered haphazardly."
- Haim Ginott, 1922 - 1973


Thought of the Day:
"A man who lives everywhere lives nowhere."
-- Martial, Latin poet (c.38/41-102/04)

Quote of the Day:
"Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes."
--Jim Carrey, actor (b. 1962)

Quote of the Moment:
"Strong reasons make strong actions."
--William Shakespeare, English playwright (1564-1616)


Poem of the Day
"A Word From the Fat Lady" by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
It isn't how we look up close
so much as in dreams.

Our giant is not so tall,
our lizard boy merely flaunts

crusty skin- not his fault
they keep him in a crate

and bathe him maybe once a week.
When folks scream or clutch their hair

and poke at us and glare and speak
of how we slithered up from Hell,

it is themselves they see:
the preacher with the farmer's girls

(his bulging eyes, their chicken legs)
or the mother lurching towards the sink,

a baby quivering in her gnarled
hands. Horror is the company

you keep when shades are drawn.
Evil does not reside in cages.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
QUOTES ABOUT CENSORSHIP.
"Censorship…is always and everywhere an evil. Censorship means the screening of material by an authority invested with power to ban that which it disapproves….And who is that paragon to whom we would be willing to entrust such authority?"
-- Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld (1913-1996)

"Censorhio is advertising paid by the government."
--Federico Fellini (1920-1993)

"The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important."
-- Hosea Ballou (1771-1852)

"It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships,
that they give credibility to the opinions they attack."
-- Voltaire [aka François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778)

"A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to."
-- Laurence J. Peter(1919-1990)

"If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all."
-- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)


Thought of the Day:
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
---Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist (179-1955)

Quote of the Day:
"The penalty for success is to be bored by the people who used to snub you>"
--Lady Nancy Aster, American-born British politician (1879-1964)

Quote of the Moment:
"Whoso would be a man must be a noncomformist."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Trancendentalist writer (1803-1882)


Poem of the Day
"What God Knew" by Marianne Baruch

when he knew nothing. A leaf
looks like this, doesn’t it? No one
to ask. So came the invention
of the question too, the way all
at heart are rhetorical, each leaf
suddenly wedded to its shade. When God

knew nothing, it was better, wasn't it?
Not the color blue yet, its deep
unto black. No color at all really,
not yet one thing leading to another, sperm
to egg endlessly, thus cities, thus
the green countryside lying down
piecemeal, the meticulous and the trash,
between lake and woods
the dotted swiss of towns along
any state road. Was God

sleeping when he knew nothing? As opposed
to up all night (before there was night)
or alert all day (before day)? As opposed to that,
little engine starting up by itself, history,
a thing that keeps beginning
and goes past its end. Will it end, this
looking back? From here, it's one shiny
ravaged century after another,
but back there, in a house or two: a stillness,
a blue cup, a spoon, one silly flower raised up
from seed. I think so fondly of the day
someone got lucky
and dodged the tragedy meant for him. It spilled
like sound from a faulty speaker
over an open field. He listened from
a distance. God-like, any one of us
could say.



Bonus Poem:
"Little Fugue" by Marianne Baruch

Everyone should have a little fugue, she says,
the young conductor
taking her younger charges through
the saddest of pieces, almost a dirge
written for unholy times, and no,
not for money.
Ready? she tells them, measuring out
each line for cello, viola, violin.
It will sound to you
not quite right. She means the aching half-step
of the minor key, no release
from it, that always-on-the-verge-of, that
repeat, repeat.
Everyone should have a little fugue--
I write that down like I cannot write
the larger griefs. For my part, I
believe her. Little fugue I wouldn't
have to count.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner was born at Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne, England on Oct 2nd in 1951, the eldest of four children of a hairdresser and a milkman. An uncle emigrated to Canada, leaving behind his guitar, which provided Gordon an escape from his unhappy lower-class origins. Playing in jazz bands during college, he earned the name Sting after performing in a black and yellow sweater that the band leader thought made him look like a bee. In 1977 he joined a New Wave band called The Police, over the next five years they released five hit albums and won six Grammy Awards. In addition to his solo work he acted in a number of films in the '80s. He has been active in promoting human rights causes, as well as working with other high-profile performers. He has been with his second wife for thirty years, married for eighteen of them.
QUOTES:
"Great music as much about the space in between the notes as it is about the notes themselves."

"I learned to change my accent; in England, your accent identifies you very strongly with a class, and I did not want to be held back."

"I tend to write the music first. If it's good music, it has a story."

"I think love has something to do with allowing a person you claim to love to enter a larger arena than the one you create for them."

"Men go crazy in congregation. They only get better one by one."

"I've got the same rank as James Bond. Commander of the British Empire. It used to span the whole world, from Britain to India and including America. But now it's the size of a postage stamp."


Thought of the Day:
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedey."
--Sir Ernest Benn, British publiishe & writerr (1875-1954)

Quote of the Day:
"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."
--H. H. Munro [pseud. Saki], British short story writer(1870-1916)

Quote of the Moment:
"A true friend is the greatest of all blessings, and that which we take the least care of all to acquire."
--François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French author of maxims (1613-1680)


Poem of the Day
"Feed Me, Also, River God" by Marianne Moore in Complete Poems [Penguin Classics]

Lest by diminished vitality and abated
vigilance, I become food for crocodiles—for that quicksand
of gluttony which is legion. It is there close at hand—
on either side
of me. You remember the Israelites who said in pride

and stoutness of heart: "The bricks are fallen down, we will
build with hewn stone, the sycamores are cut down, we will
change to cedars"? I am not ambitious to dress stones, to
renew forts, nor to match
my value in action, against their ability to catch

up with arrested prosperity. I am not like
them, indefatigable, but if you are a god, you will
not discriminate against me. Yet—if you may fulfill
none but prayers dressed
as gifts in return for your gifts—disregard the request.

Bonus Poem:
"Baseball and WRiting" by Marianne Moore

(Suggested by post-game broadcasts)

Fanaticism? No. Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement--
a fever in the victim--
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited? Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers lightly
back to plate. (His spring
de-winged a bat swing.)
They have that killer instinct;
yet Elston--whose catching
arm has hurt them all with the bat--
when questioned, says, unenviously,
"I'm very satisfied. We won."
Shorn of the batting crown, says, "We";
robbed by a technicality.

When three players on a side play three positions
and modify conditions,
the massive run need not be everything.
"Going, going . . . " Is
it? Roger Maris
has it, running fast. You will
never see a finer catch. Well . . .
"Mickey, leaping like the devil"--why
gild it, although deer sounds better--
snares what was speeding towards its treetop nest,
one-handing the souvenir-to-be
meant to be caught by you or me.

Assign Yogi Berra to Cape Canaveral;
he could handle any missile.
He is no feather. "Strike! . . . Strike two!"
Fouled back. A blur.
It's gone. You would infer
that the bat had eyes.
He put the wood to that one.
Praised, Skowron says, "Thanks, Mel.
I think I helped a little bit."
All business, each, and modesty.
Blanchard, Richardson, Kubek, Boyer.
In that galaxy of nine, say which
won the pennant? Each. It was he.

Those two magnificent saves from the knee-throws
by Boyer, finesses in twos--
like Whitey's three kinds of pitch and pre-
diagnosis
with pick-off psychosis.
Pitching is a large subject.
Your arm, too true at first, can learn to
catch your corners--even trouble
Mickey Mantle. ("Grazed a Yankee!
My baby pitcher, Montejo!"
With some pedagogy,
you'll be tough, premature prodigy.)

They crowd him and curve him and aim for the knees. Trying
indeed! The secret implying:
"I can stand here, bat held steady."
One may suit him;
none has hit him.
Imponderables smite him.
Muscle kinks, infections, spike wounds
require food, rest, respite from ruffians. (Drat it!
Celebrity costs privacy!)
Cow's milk, "tiger's milk," soy milk, carrot juice,
brewer's yeast (high-potency--
concentrates presage victory

sped by Luis Arroyo, Hector Lopez--
deadly in a pinch. And "Yes,
it's work; I want you to bear down,
but enjoy it
while you're doing it."
Mr. Houk and Mr. Sain,
if you have a rummage sale,
don't sell Roland Sheldon or Tom Tresh.
Studded with stars in belt and crown,
the Stadium is an adastrium.
O flashing Orion,
your stars are muscled like the lion.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Wilton Norman Chamberlain was born at Philadelphia, Pa. on Aug 21st in 1936, a full nine inches longer than the national average. I'm not much of a sports fan, but for a generation "Wilt the Stilt" or "The Big Dipper" defined tall. Looking over the stats quickly, it's hard to believe anyone else will do as much with their height as Chamberlain did, at least not on a basketball court. In the past I've chosen metaphorical quotes on this theme, this time I'm sticking pretty much with the literal trait.
QUOTES ON HEIGHT:
"For some people, 'ten feet tall' is just a metaphor. For me, it's more than twice my height!"
Dr. Ruth Westheimer

"Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy."
- Truman Capote, 1924 - 1984

"I should confess that I've always been more of an observer than a participant in Texas Womanhood: the spirit was willing but I was declared ineligible on grounds of size early. You can't be six feet tall and cute, both. I think I was first named captain of the basketball team when I was four and that's what I've been ever since."
- Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

"Being tall is an advantage, especially in business. People will always remember you. And if you're in a crowd, you'll always have some clean air to breathe."
- Julia Child, 1912 - 2004

"Einstein was a giant. His head was in the clouds, but his feet were on the ground. Those of us who are not so tall have to choose!"
- Richard Feynman, 1918 - 1988

"I do a great deal of research - particularly in the apartments of tall blondes."
- Raymond Chandler, 1888 - 1959


#reading# Thought of the Day:
"Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it."
— Woody Guthrie, folk singer-songwriter (1912-1967).

#chaplin# Quote of the Day:
"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."
--George Burns, comedian (1896-1996)

#1056048gfr2ahr4mi# Quote of the Moment:
"I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves."
--Alexander von Humboldt, German founder of modern geography (1769-1850)

Poem of the Day
"Wall Street at Night" by Lola Ridge in Light in Hand: Selected Early Poems [Quale Press]

Long vast shapes... cooled and flushed through with darkness...
Lidless windows
Glazed with a flashy luster
From some little pert café chirping up like a sparrow.
And down among iron guts
Piled silver
Throwing gray spatter of light... pale without heat...
Like the pallor of dead bodies.

Bonus Poem:
"Zero" by Dorothea Tanning

Now that legal tender has
lost its tenderness,
and its very legality
is so often in question,
it may be time to consider
the zero—
long rows of them,
empty, black circles in clumps
of three,
presided over by a numeral
or two.
Admired, even revered,
these zeros
of imaginary money
capture
the open gaze of innocents

like a vision of earthly paradise.

Now the zero has
a new name:
The Economy.

As for that earthly
paradise—well...

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
The world economy is a pretty sorry situation, most often expressed as a lack of growth, so the concept was already on my mind. But while economic indicators seem largely negative, all is not gloom.
QUOTES ON GROWTH:
If growth and progress are what we need to get out of our crisis, then it will be found not through managerial attitudes but through the release of talents...
- John Ralston

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.
- William Butler Yeats, 1865 - 1939

Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge, and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.
- William Ellery Channing, 1780 - 1842

We are not unlike a particularly hardy crustacean.... With each passage from one stage of human growth to the next we, too, must shed a protective structure. We are left exposed and vulnerable, but also yeasty and embryonic again, capable of stretching in ways we hadn't known before.
- Gail Sheehy

You will either step forward into growth, or you will step backward into safety.
- Abraham Maslow, 1908 - 1970

Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.
- Edgar R. Fiedler


#reading# Thought of the Day:
"Our individual lives cannot, generally, be works of art unless the social order is also."
--Charles Horton Cooley, sociologist (1864-1929)

#chaplin# Quote of the Day:
"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward."
--Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd Pres. of the US (1882-1945)

#1056048gfr2ahr4mi# Quote of the Moment:
"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness."
--Andre Malraux, French writer (1901-1976)


Poem of the Day
"The Changing Coat" by Anne Marie Macari in She Heads into the Wilderness [Autumn House Press]


When I wake up, heart
up my throat, a fear taste—
getting ready for
the changing skin.

Your hat on the knob
of the banister, tilted.
You ask, why are you
holding up your head

with your hand? I'm tired,
stripped down, maybe
I passed one of my deaths
getting ready for

the changing skin.
Sometimes, love, I can be
your sister, dead,
come to you in her

changing skin—tortoise
shell eyes, through gravel
and moss. And you can be
my brother, dead, saying:

I never meant to hurt anyone.
We are looking across
the table. It's a field,
long, spread out, pale,

the ground's icy. We're wearing
our new coats and we've passed
one or more of our deaths
along the way. There's no

afterlife, it's the same, the
same life, and when
we remember that we pull
close our changing coats,

we tilt toward each other,
the ground is softer
than I thought,
our foreheads touch.