Daily Poem and Quotations

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Denis Diderot was born at Langres, France on Oct 5th in 1713. He earned a master of arts in philosophy with the intention of entering the clergy, switched to law, and then became a writer. For this his father disowned him and Diderot was widely admired but always poor as a result. In order to provide a dowry for his daughter he had to offer his library for sale, to the horror of intellectual society. His work was filled with brilliant insights and original thought although never well organized. He discussed natural selection and rejected "intelligent design" a hundred years before Darwin. Much of his work was suppressed by the aristocracy and the church, many works were only available in France well after his death.
QUOTES:
"From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step."

"Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things."

"I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to follow any idea, wise or mad, that may present itself.... My ideas are my harlots."

"There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it."

"Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others."

"To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him."
All from Denis Diderot, 1713 - 1784


Thought of the Day:
"America has believed that in differentiation, not in uniformity, lies the path of progress. It acted on this belief; it has advanced human happiness, and it has prospered."
— Louis D. Brandeis, assoc. justice, US Supreme Court (1856-1941).

Quote of the Day:
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
--Sir Winston Churchill, British statesman (1874-1965)

Quote of the Moment:
"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think."
--Niels Bohr, Danish physicist (1885-1962)


Poem of the Day
"Magnolia" by Gerald Stern

The mayor, in order to marry us, borrowed
a necktie from a lawyer which, on him,
looked stupid and kept his eye on a red pigeon
which somehow got in to coo her disappointment,
if only for the record, though one of the two
witnesses who kicked the red got only what
she deserved and that was that, except that the
rain cooed too, but we didn't give a shit
for we had a bed, for God's sake, with two tin buckets
of blossoms waiting for us; and someone there
of Greek persuasion enacted the dancing though somewhat
lickerish and turned to reading the names of the dead
from World War I the other side of the bandstand
but we didn't care nor did we know her name
nor where she came from or what the necktie or what
our love had to do with it anyhow, mostly nothing.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Quotemaster: "I've long admired Steve's contribution, despite occasionally deriding his "reality distortion field", but I wasn't a disciple. Still, I bought my daughter an Apple ][ when she was in grade school, I produced a lot of artwork on my series of Macs, going back to the SE/30. In addition to Larkin's MacBook Air and my iMac there is an Apple Airport wireless access point, an iPod, and an iPad here. Steve's products change computing, networking, music, and telephony, always with the finest design. We are living in the reality that is the result of Steve's distortion. Think Different."
QUOTES:
"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes ... the ones who see things differently ... they're not fond of rules.... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things ... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do."

"I'm as proud of what we don't do as I am of what we do."

"In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service."

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."

"We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life."

"The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans, if they worked hard with other creative, smart people, could solve most of humankind's problems. I believe that very much."

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle."
All from Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011



Thought of the Day:
"Sin is too stupid to see beyond itself."
-— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, English poet laureate (1809-1892).

Quote of the Day:
"You can't always get what you want... but if you try sometime you just might find you get what you need."
--Mick Jagger, English rock star (b. 1943)

Quote of the Moment:
"I don not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the toruble of liking them."
--Jane Austen, English novelist (1775-1817)


Poem of the Day
"At the Public Market Museum: Charleston, S.C." by Jane Kenyon

A volunteer, a Daughter of the Confederacy,
receives my admission and points the way.
Here are gray jackets with holes in them,
red sashes with individual flourishes,
things soft as flesh. Someone sewed
the gold silk cord onto that gray sleeve
as if embellishments
could keep a man alive.

I have been reading War and Peace,
and so the particulars of combat
are on my mind—the shouts and groans
of men and boys, and the horses' cries
as they fall, astonished at what
has happened to them.
Blood on leaves,
blood on grass, on snow; extravagant
beauty of red. Smoke, dust of disturbed
earth; parch and burn.

Who would choose this for himself?
And yet the terrible machinery
waited in place. With psalters
in their breast pockets, and gloves
knitted by their sisters and sweethearts,
the men in gray hurled themselves
out of the trenches, and rushed against
blue. It was what both sides
agreed to do.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Niels Bohr was born at Copenhagen on this day in 1885. His genius was challenged by his physiologist father, and he entered a competition from the Academy of Sciences to solve a scientific problem - his paper was published in 1908 and won the gold medal. He received his Masters in Physics from Copenhagen University in 1911, his Doctorate in 1913, and the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. He taught both in England and in Denmark until WW II. He found work and homes for many Jewish physicists who escaped to Denmark, then went to the US where he worked on the Manhattan Project. He was one of the physicists who campaigned for peace after seeing what the atomic bomb was capable of. His comments on life are filled with non sequiturs and charmingly border on the oxymoronic.
QUOTES:
"No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical."

"Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them."

"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."

"A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself."

"Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."

"It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite."

"The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning."
All from Niels Bohr, 1885 - 1962


Thought of the Day:
"Being right half the time beats being half-right all the time."
? Malcolm Forbes, publisher (1919-1990).

Quote of the Day:
"I am ashamed of confessing that I have nothing to confess."
-- Fanny Burney, English novelist(1752-1840)

Quote of the Moment:
"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be."
--Voltaire, French philosopher (1694-1778)

Poem of the Day
"White Stork" by Michael Waters in Gospel Night [BOA Editions]

Ciconia ciconia

Such jazzy arrhythmia,
the white storks'
Plosive and gorgeous leave-takings suggest
Oracular utterance where the blurred
Danube disperses its silts.
Then the red-
Billed, red-legged creatures begin to spiral,
To float among thermals like the souls, wrote
Pythagoras, praising the expansive
Grandeur of black-tipped wings, of dead poets.
Most Eastern cultures would not allow them
To be struck, not with slung stone or arrow
Or, later, lead bullet—
birds who have learned,
While living, to keep their songs to themselves,
Who return to nests used for centuries,
Nests built on rooftops, haystacks, telegraph
Poles, on wooden wagon wheels placed on cold
Chimneys by peasants who hoped to draw down
Upon plague-struck villages such winged luck.

If the body in its failure remains
A nest, if the soul chooses to return…

Yet not one stork has been born in Britain
Since 1416, the last nest renounced
When Julian of Norwich, anchoress,
Having exhausted all revelations,
Took earthly dispensation, that final
Stork assuring, even while vanishing,
"Sin is behovely, but all shall be well."

Bonus Poem:
"Wedding Dress" by Michael Waters

That Halloween I wore your wedding dress,
our children spooked & wouldn’t speak for days.
I’d razored taut calves smooth, teased each blown tress,
then—lipsticked, mascaraed, & self-amazed—
shimmied like a starlet on the dance floor.
I’d never felt so sensual before—
Catholic schoolgirl & neighborhood whore.
In bed, dolled up, undone, we fantasized:
we clutched & fused, torn twins who’d been denied.
You were my shy groom. Love, I was your bride.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
John William Gardner was born at Los Angeles, Calif. on Oct 8th in 1912. He graduated from Stanford, where he was also a champion swimmer, and earned his Ph.D. at U. C. Berkeley, taught psychology, then was a Marine Corps captain in WW II. In 1955 he was named president of the Carnegie Corporation and it's Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, he led JFK's Task Force on Education, and was secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under LBJ, during which time he oversaw the creation of Medicare. In 1967 he was in charge of the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. After leaving government he founded the "citizen's lobby" Common Cause. This wide range of experiences gave him the material for eleven books and many speeches and articles.
QUOTES:
"Leaders come in many forms, with many styles and diverse qualities. There are quiet leaders and leaders one can hear in the next county. Some find strength in eloquence, some in judgment, some in courage."

"Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well."

"Where human institutions are concerned, love without criticism brings stagnation and criticism without love brings destruction."

"Life is the art of drawing without an eraser."

"The world loves talent but pays off on character."

"We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems."
All by John W. Gardner (1912-2002)


Thought of the Day:
"Don't let yesterday use up too much of today."
— Will Rogers, American humorist (1879-1935).

Quote of the Day:
"Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking."
-- Dave Barry, Pulitzer-winning humor columnist (b. 1947)

Quote of the Moment:
"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
-- George Santayana, Spanish-born philosopher (1863-1952)

Poem of the Day
"For Aaron Sheon" by Judith Vollmer


"Tiny hatches, if you make enough of them, make

an entire etching move," you told us while we smoked

in the lit cave of your Tuesday 1-2:15. We scratched

our pens: dance & film posters, flyers to end the war.

In our famous jeans we slouched before your podium & slides weaving

the movements & the solo trips.

"He was lonely." "She had no patron."


"Scale extends us & reins us in," you said of the strange Piranesis.

"Find the heart of a city by stepping in."

My alleys & arcades pressed onto the copperplate of my 20-year-old brain

fusing its hemispheres. I hitched to Colmar and found

the Isenheim Altarpiece, figures on the old panels aflame, then turned

my back on all religions because you'd shown us Goya's firing squad


& Daumier's gutters where people looked for water.

"Movement in a painting is important as Dante."

I've looked for Dante's houses, cafés, notebooks, & horse-stalls, & someone

always says Oh, you mean The Poet.

"The body doesn't make sense by itself," you said, pointing the red-tip

wand at the chalky nudes of Ingres. If I am lonely


in any town whose museum

treasures its one Whistler or Bonnard, I stand before the image

hear your voice; my eyes

un-scroll, I lift

again like a hinge.

Bonus Poem:
"House Spiders" by Judith Vollmer

Streetlights out again I'm walking in the dark
lugging groceries up the steps to the porch
whose yellow bulb is about to go too, when a single
familiar strand intersects my face,
the filament slides across my glasses which seem suddenly
perfectly clean, fresh, and my whole tired day slows down
walking into such a giant thread
is a surprise every time,
though I never kill them, I carry them outside
on plastic lids or open books, they live
so plainly and eat the mosquitoes.
Distant cousins
to the scorpion, mine are pale & small,
dark & discreet. More like the one
who lived in the corner of the old farm kitchen
under the ivy vase and behind the single
candle-pot--black with curved
crotchety legs.
Maya, weaver of illusions,
how is it we trust the web, the nest,
the roof over our heads, we trust the stars
our guardians who gave us our alphabet?
We trust the turtle's shell because
it, too, says house and how can we read
the footprints of birds on shoreline sand,
& October twigs that fall to the ground
in patterns that match the shell & stars?


I feel less and less like
a single self, more like
a weaver, myself, spelling out
formulae from what's given
and from words.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Napoleon Bonaparte was born on Aug 15th in 1769 at Ajaccio, Corsica. A short man with grand vision, he is often quoted on military strategy despite disastrous battles at Moscow and Waterloo, and quoted on politics despite having been deposed and exiled twice. His appetites, however, are reflected in a great number of excellent additions to dining (Chicken Marengo is one of my favorites, first served to him after winning a battle at Marengo), his civil code was a great factor in breaking feudalism, and he laid the groundwork for the unification of both Germany and Italy.
QUOTES:
"Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment."

"Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide."

"What then is, generally speaking, the truth of history? A fable agreed upon."

"In politics, absurdity is not a handicap."

"In war, character and opinion make more than half of the reality."

"Simpletons talk of the past, wise men of the present, and fools of the future."

"To do all that one is able to do is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do would be to be a god.'
All from Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)


Thought of the Day:
"I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver. Then they would really be educated."
— Al McGuire, Basketball Hall of Fame coach (1928-2001).

Quote of the Day:
"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
--Tom Clancy, novelist (b. 1947)

Quote of the Moment:
"Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?
--Sir J. M. [James Matthew] Barrie, Scottish author (1860-1937)


Poem of the Day
:Change in the Grove of Chickadees" by Lesle Lewis in Landscapes I & II [Alice James Books]

Happy for nothing, we could be with no dinner to cook.

Absence is gigantic in our heads and houses.

We’re old and it’s bold to say so standing at the kitchen counter with the flashing red things.

The clock says midnight and we say yes.

When we go out, time always pays.

We spike our heads with copper ions and picnic with the breast explorers.

We’re riding the earth.

Non-motion is impossible.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell was born on Oct 10th at Sydney, Australia, the son of British Royal Navy officer seconded to the Royal Australian Navy. He was raised in England and joined the Royal Artillery in 1940, at some point he adopted James as his first name publicly. Fighting on Malaya he was wounded by machine-gun fire and sent to a Japanese POW camp on Java, then transferred to Changi Prison at Singapore. That experience was the basis for King Rat, his first novel. He went on to write Tai-Pan, Shogun, and several other books, and worked as screenwriter, director, and producer in Hollywood, most notably To Sir, With Love for which he filled all three of those roles.
QUOTES:
"All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they're any good, the ending is a beginning."

"Changi became my university instead of my prison.... Among the inmates there were experts in all walks of life — the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving."

"Isn't it only through laughter we can stay human?"

"Only by living at the edge of death can you understand the indescribable joy of life."

"The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox."

"The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world, and the most dangerous."
All from James Clavell (1924-1994)


Thought of the Day:
"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."
—Orson Welles, actor-director (1915-1985)

Quote of the Day:
"After all is said and done, a lot more will be said than done."
--Anonymous.

Quote of the Moment:
"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets."
--Edward Abbey, environmental author (1927-1989)

Poem of the Day
"Afterlife" by Joan Larkin in Selected Poems [Hanging Loose Press]

I’m older than my father when he turned
bright gold and left his body with its used-up liver
in the Faulkner Hospital, Jamaica Plain. I don’t
believe in the afterlife, don’t know where he is
now his flesh has finished rotting from his long
bones in the Jewish Cemetery—he could be the only
convert under those rows and rows of headstones.
Once, washing dishes in a narrow kitchen
I heard him whistling behind me. My nape froze.
Nothing like this has happened since. But this morning
we were on a plane to Virginia together. I was 17,
pregnant and scared. Abortion was waiting,
my aunt’s guest bed soaked with blood, my mother
screaming—and he was saying Kids get into trouble—
I’m getting it now: this was forgiveness.
I think if he’d lived he’d have changed and grown
but what would he have made of my flood of words
after he’d said in a low voice as the plane
descended to Richmond in clean daylight
and the stewardess walked between the rows
in her neat skirt and tucked-in blouse
Don’t ever tell this to anyone.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born at New York City on Aug 11th in 1884. When she was eight her mother died and her father was committed to an insane asylum due to drug and alcohol addictions. In 1903 she was engaged to a distant cousin, Franklin, and married him in 1905. Five years later she launched her own ambitious political and public service efforts and became a major public figure in 1932 when FDR was elected president. Though she was a politician's wife, and a significant politician in her own right, I've attempted to make a completely apolitical selection this year and chosen some of her thoughts on living.
QUOTES ON LIVING:
"Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product."

"I think somehow we learn who we really are and then live with that decision."

"A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think."

"One should always sleep in all of one's guest beds, to make sure that they are comfortable."

"There never has been security. No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor."

"Experience should teach us that it is always the unexpected that does occur."

"To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart."
All from Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

Thought of the Day:
"Modesty is the highest form of arrogance."
— German saying.

Quote of the Day:
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."
--Groucho Marx, comedian (1890-1977)

Quote of the Moment:
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't."
--Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1884-1962)


Poem of the Day
"Egg" by Ales Steger in The Book of Things [BOA Editions]

When you kill it at the edge of the pan, you don't notice
That the egg grows an eye in death.

It is so small, it doesn't satisfy
Even the most modest morning appetite.

But it already watches, already stares at your world.
What are its horizons, whose glassy-eyed perspectives?

Does it see time, which moves carelessly through space?
Eyeballs, eyeballs, cracked shells, chaos or order?

Big questions for such a little eye at such an early hour.
And you – do you really want an answer?

When you sit down, eye to eye, behind a table,
You blind it soon enough with a crust of bread.

Bonus Poem:
"Breakfast" by Minnie Bruce Pratt in The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems [University of Pittsburgh Press]

Rush hour, and the short order cook lobs breakfast
sandwiches, silverfoil softballs, up and down the line.
We stand until someone says, Yes? The next person behind
breathes hungrily. The cashier's hands never stop. He shouts:
Where's my double double? We help. We eliminate all verbs.
The superfluous want, need, give they already know. Nothing's left
but stay or go, and a few things like bread. No one can stay long,
not even the stolid man in blue-hooded sweats, head down, eating,
his work boots powdered with cement dust like snow that never melts.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
On March 13 in 1884 the International Prime Meridian Conference established a system of standard time zones. Before that, every town observed local time, based on noon being when the sun was highest in the sky. Railroad schedules were a nightmare to prepare, so the 25 nations assembled at Washington City brought order to our clocks. And none of this nonsense about calling it 1 pm for half the year!
QUOTES ON TIME:
"There's time enough, but none to spare."
- Charles W. Chesnutt, 1858 - 1932

"Some things arrive on their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever."
- Gail Godwin, author

"Methinks I see the wanton hours flee,
And as they pass, turn back and laugh at me."
- George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, 1592 - 1628

"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours! Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack my day so wretchedly into small pieces!"
- Plautus, 254 - 184 BC

"We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery."
- H. G. Wells, 1866 - 1946

"The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age."
- Lewis Mumford, 1895 - 1990


Thought of the Day:
"The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced."
— Andre Gide, French author & critic (1869-1951).

Quote of the Day:
"I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
--Mark Twain, author (1835-1910)

Quote of the Moment:
"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."
--Douglas Adams, author (1952-2001)

Poem of the Day
"Of Politics, & Art" by Norman Dubie in New and Selected Poems 1967-2000 [Copper Canyon Press]

--for Allen
Here, on the farthest point of the peninsula
The winter storm
Off the Atlantic shook the schoolhouse.
Mrs. Whitimore, dying
Of tuberculosis, said it would be after dark
Before the snowplow and bus would reach us.

She read to us from Melville.

How in an almost calamitous moment
Of sea hunting
Some men in an open boat suddenly found themselves
At the still and protected center
Of a great herd of whales
Where all the females floated on their sides
While their young nursed there. The cold frightened whalers
Just stared into what they allowed
Was the ecstatic lapidary pond of a nursing cow's
One visible eyeball.
And they were at peace with themselves.

Today I listened to a woman say
That Melville might
Be taught in the next decade. Another woman asked, "And why not?"
The first responded, "Because there are
No women in his one novel."

And Mrs. Whitimore was now reading from the Psalms.
Coughing into her handkerchief. Snow above the windows.
There was a blue light on her face, breasts and arms.
Sometimes a whole civilization can be dying
Peacefully in one young woman, in a small heated room
With thirty children
Rapt, confident and listening to the pure
God rendering voice of a storm.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Margaret Hilda Roberts was born at Grantham, Lincolnshire, England on Oct 13th in 1925. She was educated at Somerville College, Oxford where she studied chemistry. After her marriage in 1951 she studied law and won a seat in Parliament in 1959. Before she became Prime Minister the Russians had dubbed her "The Iron Lady" after one of her speeches. Ronald Reagan called her "the best man in England", her detractors dubbed her "Attilla the Hen". Margaret Thatcher was the first woman elected as PM in England and held the office longer than anyone else in the last century, which gave her the chance to leave a lot of great quotes.
QUOTES:
"Consensus is the negation of leadership."

"In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman."

"No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions. He had money as well."

"Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true."

"Constitutions have to be written on hearts, not just paper."

"On my way here I passed a local cinema and it turns out you were expecting me after all, for the billboards read: The Mummy Returns."
All from Margaret Thatcher


Thought of the Day:
"A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world."
— Nathaniel Hawthorne, author (1804-1864).

Quote of the Day:
"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you thee."
--Lewis Carroll, English mathematician & author (1832-1898)

Quote of the Moment:
"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm."
--Vince Lombardi, NFL Hall of Fame coach (1913-1970)

Poem of the Day
"Muse, a Lady Cautioning" by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers in

for Billie Holiday

There's fairness in changing blood for septet's
guardian rhythm, the horn blossoming
into cadenza. No good pimp's scowl, his
baby's voice ruined sweet for the duration.

Yes, these predictable fifths. O, the blues
is all about slinging those low tales out
the back door (sing: child pried open on that
stained floor). O, Billie hollers way down dirt

roads (sing: woman on the verge of needled
logic). She's aware--yeah, I'm going to
kiss some man's sugared fist tonight. O, this
tableau's muse, a Lady cautioning me:

Just tough this thing out, girl. Sweat through the jones.
Don't ask for nothing. Spit your last damned note.

Outlandish Blues [Wesleyan University Press]

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Dwight David Eisenhower was born at Denison, Texas on Oct 14th in 1890. After growing up at Abilene, Kansas, he was turned down by the Naval Academy but accepted at West Point. His first posting was to San Antonio where he met and married Mamie. He served in staff and training positions until the start of World War II, when he was posted to London. He took command of the invasion of North Africa in 1942, the outset of the Italian campaign, and then commanded all Allied forces for the Normandy invasion. After the war he was president of Columbia University, Supreme Commander of NATO, and served two terms as the 34th president of the US. His presidency seems to represent "the good old days" for much of my parents' generation.
QUOTES:
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

"By leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it."

"Unless each day can be looked back upon by an individual as one in which he has had some fun, some joy, some real satisfaction, that day is a loss."

"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

"The best morale exists when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it's usually lousy."

"Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides."
All from Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1890 - 1969


Thought of the Day:
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
— Anais Nin, French-born author (1903-1977).

Quote of the Day:
"He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit."
--Anonymous.

Quote of the Moment:
"That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding."
--Edward Abbey, author (1927-1989)

Poem of the Day
"At the Equinox" by Arthur Sze.

The tide ebbs and reveals orange and purple sea stars.
I have no theory of radiance,

but after rain evaporates
off pine needles, the needles glisten.

In the courtyard, we spot the rising shell of a moon,
and, at the equinox, bathe in its gleam.

Using all the tides of starlight,
we find
vicissitude is our charm.

On the mud flats off Homer,
I catch the tremor when waves start to slide back in;

and, from Roanoke, you carry
the leafing jade smoke of willows.

Looping out into the world, we thread
and return. The lapping waves

cover an expanse of mussels clustered on rocks;
and, giving shape to what is unspoken,

forsythia buds and blooms in our arms.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
The poet and storyteller Publius Vergilius Maro was born on Oct 15th in 70 BC at Andes, a village near Mantua, Italy. His father could afford an extensive education for the man we know simply as Virgil. Most of his writing career was spent on rustic poetry, but after Octavian came to power he pressured Virgil to write the Aeneid, the complete epic of Roman history. As Homer was the greatest of the Greek poets, Virgil was the greatest Roman poet and covered much of the same material. On his Notable Quotable page (link below) you'll find many of his quotes in the original Latin, I'm limiting myself to translations here.Virgil is among our Notable Quotables: www.qotd.org/search/search.html?aid=6881
QUOTES:
"As the twig is bent the tree inclines."

"Love begets love, love knows no rules, this is the same for all."

"A fault is fostered by concealment."

"All our sweetest hours fly fastest."

"Even virtue is fairer when it appears in a beautiful person."

"Mind moves matter."

"Trust not too much to appearances."

"Perhaps the day may come when we shall remember these sufferings with joy."
All from Virgil, 70 - 19 BC

Thought of the Day:
"A friend to all is a friend to none."
— Aristotle, Greek philosopher (384 B.C.-322 B.C.).

Quote of the Day:
"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult."
--E. B. White, autor (1899-1985)

Quote of the Moment:
"Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first. "
--Peter Ustinov, English acotr (1821-2004)


Poem of the Day
"The impact of a dollar upon the heart" by Stephen Crane in Crane: Prose & Poetry [Library of America]

The impact of a dollar upon the heart
Smiles warm red light
Sweeping from the hearth rosily upon the white table,
With the hanging cool velvet shadows
Moving softly upon the door.

The impact of a million dollars
Is a crash of flunkeys
And yawning emblems of Persia
Cheeked against oak, France and a sabre,
The outcry of old beauty
Whored by pimping merchants
To submission before wine and chatter.
Silly rich peasants stamp the carpets of men,
Dead men who dreamed fragrance and light
Into their woof, their lives;
The rug of an honest bear
Under the feet of a cryptic slave
Who speaks always of baubles,
Forgetting state, multitude, work, and state,
Champing and mouthing of hats,
Making ratful squeak of hats,
Hats.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
A very sad event occurred on Oct 17th in 1814. At the Meux and Company Brewery on Tottenham Court Road in the parish of St. Giles, London, a vat containing 135,000 imperial gallons of beer ruptured with a sound that was heard miles away. As the waves of beer cascaded against other vats they also split open, a total of 323,000 gallons (almost 1.5 million liters) of beer was released. It isn't just a pretense of grief on the part of a long-time beer lover, as the beer broke through the brick walls of the brewery it destroyed a pub and two houses, eight persons were drowned or crushed in the London Beer Flood.
QUOTES ON BEER:
"If God had wanted us to spend all our time fretting about the problems of home ownership, He would never have created beer. This is not to say that I am recommending that you totally ignore your responsibilities as a homeowner and just sit around all day with a can of beer in your hand. No indeed, I have long been a believer in purchasing bottled beer, and pouring it into a chilled glass."
- Dave Barry (b. 1947)

"A good prince will tax as lightly as possible those commodities which are used by the poorest members of society: grain, bread, beer, wine, clothing, and all other staples without which human life could not exist."
- Desiderius Erasmus, 1466 - 1536

"I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society, except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the old men and women warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer."
- Brendan Behan, 1923 - 1964

"The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition claims that a moderate beer drinker — whatever that means — swallows 11% of his dietary protein needs, 12% of the carbohydrates, 9% of essential phosphorus, 7% of his riboflavin, and 5% of niacin. Should he go on to immoderate beer drinking, he becomes a walking vitamin pill."
- Barbara Holland, 1933 - 2010

"Beer, of course, is actually a depressant. But poor people will never stop hoping otherwise."
- Kurt Vonnegut, 1922 - 2007


Thought of the Day:
"Those who nobly set out to be their brother's keeper sometimes end up by becoming his jailer. Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie."
— I. F. Stone, American journalist (1907-1989).

Quote of the Day:
"Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."
--Woody Allen, comedian & movie director (b. 1935)

Quote of the Moment:
"We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities."
--Walt Kelly, [cartoonist of Pogo (1913-1973)

Poem of the Day
"A London Thoroughfare, 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.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Abbott Joseph Liebling was born to a wealthy family on Manhattan's East Side on Oct 18th in 1904. He entered Dartmouth College in 1920 where he contributed to Jack-O-Lantern, the school's humor magazine. He left without graduating, later claiming he was expelled for skipping compulsory chapel services. He got his degree at Columbia University's School of Journalism and began his career at the Evening Bulletin, Providence, R.I., then joined the sports desk at The New York Times where he was also sacked, allegedly for spoofing the names of referees. After spending a year in Paris, where he paid little attention to his classes at the Sorbonne, he got a job at Pulitzer's New York World and World Telegram until he joined The New Yorker in 1935. Other than his serving as a war correspondent (he was at the front several places, including during the Normandy invasion and the Allies' arrival at Paris), Liebling was at The New Yorker until his death. He covered boxing, horse racing, and food, but is best known for his criticism of the news media.
QUOTES:
"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."

"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."

"People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news."

"An Englishman teaching an American about food is like the blind leading the one-eyed."

"The way to write is well, and how is your own business."

"Newspapers write about other newspapers with circumspection, .. about themselves with awe, and only after mature reflection."

"The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite."
All from A. J. Liebling, 1904 - 1963


Thought of the Day:
"Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words."
— Henri Bergson, French philosopher (1859-1941).

Quote of the Day:
"There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people."
--Muhammad Ali, Heavyweight champion (b. 1942)

Quote of the Moment:
"My interest is in the future...because I'm going to spend the rest of my life there."
--Charles F. Kettering, engineer & inventor (1876-1958)


Poem of the Day
"Bright Felon DVD Extra/Alternate Ending" by Kazim Ali

In the convicted evening I am a victor struck loose and restless,
creeping for the unlocked window.

The family inside at the dinner table is mine.

Listening to the escape story on the radio, my mother's hand freezes
in the air halfway to her mouth.

She realizes it's me they're talking about.

Lightning by lightning the minute before thunder.

Streets as empty as a beach before rain.

My hand on the cold glass.

Car alarm, tornado warning, catastrophe.

Who remembers the criminal son, free of the labyrinth and still
unsought, unthought of.

Oh when will the streetlamps blink out so my father can appear furtive
at the door and beckon me furiously in.


Bonus Poem:
"Sleep Door" by Kazim Ali

a light knocking on the sleep door
like the sound of a rope striking the side of a boat

heard underwater
boats pulling up alongside each other

beneath the surface we rub up against each other
will we capsize in

the surge and silence
of waking from sleep

you are a lost canoe, navigating by me
I am the star map tonight

all the failed echoes
don't matter

the painted-over murals
don't matter

you can find your way to me
by the faint star-lamp

we are a fleet now
our prows zeroing in

praying in the wind
to spin like haywire compasses

toward whichever direction
will have us

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Lewis McDonald Grizzard was born at Fort Benning, Ga. on Oct 20th on 1946. His father left the family and Grizzard and his mother moved in with her parents at Moreland, Ga. He attended the University of Georgia at Athens, studying journalism and working at the Athens Daily News. At 23 he was executive sports editor at the Atlanta Journal. After a challenging stint at the Chicago Sun-Times he returned to Atlanta and the Atlanta Constitution where he soon was writing a widely-syndicated humor column. His columns, stand-up routines, and albums were largely based on the traditional values of the "Old South" of his youth, although they included enough observations on life in general to attract a national audience. He had just married for the fourth time when he had his fourth heart-valve surgery, complications from which led to his death.
QUOTES:
"Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes."

"As best as I can tell, God was undefeated in all sports last year. Anybody who won thanked Him, and I never heard a single loser blame Him."

"I don't think I'll get married again. Every five years or so, I'll just find a woman I don't like and give her a house."

"Never order barbeque in a place that also serves quiche."

"Being a newspaper columnist is like being married to a nymphomaniac. It's great for the first two weeks."

"I grew up in a very large family in a very small house. I never slept alone until after I was married."

"In the south there's a difference between 'Naked' and 'Nekkid.' 'Naked' means you don't have any clothes on. 'Nekkid' means you don't have any clothes on ... and you're up to somethin'."
All from Lewis Grizzard, 1946 - 1994


Thought of the Day:
"The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things."
— Ernest Dimnet, French priest & author (1866-1954).

Quote of the Day:
"I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Sir Winston Churchill, British statesman (1874-1965)

Quote of the Moment:
"In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it."
--Dr. Samuel Johnson, English lexicographer (1709-1784)


Poem of the Day
" by Katie Ford

I failed him and he failed me—
Together our skinned glance makes a sorry bridge
For some frail specter who can't get through.

I failed him
but maybe it was the lamp that failed,
Maybe it was the meal,
Maybe it was the potter
Who would not intervene, maybe the clay,
Maybe the plateau's topaz, too steady to help,
Or was it the meat cut two days late, was it
The deciduous branch and its dull wait for bloom—

But I remember the small thing rotating in us
Towards hunger, how it did not fail to guide,
And that we made no request of our souls or all souls
Or the one perfectly distant soul
and so did not fail in what we did not do,
Never begging at the sky but moving
On the islands beneath it, hungry together by its rivers and bones.

Who told us we had failed
If not the human world gone wrong?

It was the world?

Ah, then we will fail again and again in the waters apart,
Bridging nothing, bridging nowhere
Towards what we, failures, are.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Carrie Frances Fisher was born at Beverly Hills, California on Oct 21st in 1956, the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. A year later her father was consoling Elizabeth Taylor, the divorce wasn't far behind. Her mother married a businessman who promptly started looting her savings. Surrounded by stars with a talent for dramatically dysfunctional relationships, and thrust onto the stage herself at age 12, Carrie kept herself afloat on a sea of drink and drugs. She says she slept with someone to get the role of Princess Leia in the first Star Wars film, but also claims to not remember who it was. With the 1987 publication of Postcards from the Edge she came to grips with her dependencies and bipolar disorder, subsequent books have offered witty and unsparing analysis of her life. She has eighty movies and TV roles to her credit, she was also one of Hollywood's top "script doctors".
QUOTES:
"I feel so agitated all the time, like a hamster in search of a wheel."

"Ambition is exhausting. It makes you friends with people for the wrong reasons, just like drugs."

"I shot through my twenties like a luminous thread through a dark needle, blazing toward my destination: Nowhere."

"Mom brought me some peanut butter cookies and a biography of Judy Garland. She told me she thought my problem was that I was too impatient, my fuse was too short, that I was only interested in instant gratification. I said, "Instant gratification takes too long." The glib martyr."

"No motive is pure. No one is good or bad-but a hearty mix of both. And sometimes life actually gives to you by taking away."

"As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don't."
All from Carrie Fisher


Thought of the Day:
"Silence is sometimes the severest criticism."
— Charles Buxton, English writer (1823-1871).

Quote of the Day:
"If you want to make enemies, try to change something."
--Woodrow Wilson, 28th Pres. of the US (1856-1924)

Quote of the Moment:
"Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them. "
--Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist (1828-1910)

Poem of the Day
"My Pentagon" by Heather Christie

It was the military
coming together

on paper under glass

to shine on me! they
called me

damp thing it was
my name coming

together under orders

nothing would go
unlaminated

they said
they said

under orders after death
all things must shine

Bonus Poem:
"Back Yard" by Carl Sandburg

Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.

An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month;
to-night they are throwing you kisses.

An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a
cherry tree in his back yard.

The clocks say I must go—I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking
white thoughts you rain down.

Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.