Daily Poem and Quotations

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Quotes for Today
This day in 1844 is known as the Great Disappointment. William Miller, a Baptist preacher and leader of a sect known as the Millerites, had carefully calculated the return of the Christ as sometime in 1843 or early 1844. When that didn't happen, another Millerite preacher, Samuel Sheffield Snow, reviewed the figures and calculated the correct date as 22 October 1844. Thousands of "Second Advent Followers" waited eagerly, many had sold or given away their possessions, fully expecting to be "taken up" as foretold in Revelations. The disappointed Millerites that didn't simply return to their previous churches divided into three groups, one of which became the Seventh-Day Adventists.
QUOTES ON DISAPPOINTMENT:
"Our real blessings often appear to us in the shapes of pains, losses and disappointments; but let us have patience, and we soon shall see them in their proper figures."
- Joseph Addison, 1672 - 1719

"We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting."
- Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784

"If you want one thing too much it's likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk - and feisty gentlemen."
- Larry McMurtry

"None of us can be free of conflict and woe. Even the greatest men have had to accept disappointments as their daily bread."
- -Bernard Baruch, 1870 - 1965

"Disappointments are to the soul what a thunderstorm is to the air."
- -Friedrich Schiller, 1759 - 1805

"A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment."
- -Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955


Thought of the Day:
"Truth is a great flirt."
—Franz Liszt, Hungarian-born composer (1811-1886).

Quote of the Day:
"Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves."
--Rudyard Kipling, English author (1865-1936)

Quote of the Moment:
"Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers."
--Alfred Lord Tennyson, English poet (1809-1892)

Poem of the Day
"Three Moves" by John Logan

Three moves in sixth months and I remain
the same.
Two homes made two friends.
The third leaves me with myself again.
(We hardly speak.)
Here I am with tame ducks
and my neighbors' boats,
only this electric heat
against the April damp.
I have a friend named Frank—
the only one who ever dares to call
and ask me, "How's your soul?"
I hadn't thought about it for a while,
and was ashamed to say I didn't know.
I have no priest for now.
Who
will forgive me then. Will you
Tame birds and my neighbors' boats.
The ducks honk about the floats . . .
They walk dead drunk onto the land and grounds,
iridescent blue and black and green and brown.
They live on swill
our aged houseboats spill.
But still they are beautiful.
Look! The duck with its unlikely beak
has stopped to pick
and pull
at the potted daffodil.
Then again they sway home
to dream
bright gardens of fish in the early night.
Oh these ducks are all right.
They will survive.
But I am sorry I do not often see them climb.
Poor sons-a-bitching ducks.
You're all fucked up.
What do you do that for?
Why don't you hover near the sun anymore?
Afraid you'll melt?
These foolish ducks lack a sense of guilt,
and so all their multi-thousand-mile range
is too short for the hope of change.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
John William Carson was born at Corning, Iowa on this day in 1925. A mail-order course in magic started his entertainment career, after a Navy stint and graduating from the University of Nebraska he moved to radio, became a writer for Red Skelton, and hosted a game show before becoming the host of the Tonight Show in 1962. Four other entertainers turned down that gig, Carson became the highest paid television personality as a result of it. His first guest was Groucho Marx, his last was Bette Middler. I'm not even going to try to sound like Ed McMahon but, "Heeeere's Johnny!"
QUOTES:
"To me, democracy means placing trust in the little guy, giving the fruits of nationhood to those who built the nation. Democracy means anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president."

"For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off."

"Money gives me just one big thing that's really important, and that's the freedom of not having to worry about money."

"Adults ask questions as a child does. When you stop wondering, you might as well put your rocker on the front porch and call it a day."

"People will pay more to be entertained than educated."

"And so it has come to this. I am one of the lucky people in the world. I found something that I always wanted to do and I have enjoyed every single minute of it."

"I now believe in reincarnation. Tonight's monologue is going to come back as a dog."
All from Johnny Carson, 1925 - 2005


Thought of the Day:
"A learned fool is more a fool than an ignorant fool."
—-Moliere, French playwright (1622-1673).

Quote of the Day:
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
---Albert Einstein[/img], German-born physicist (1879-1955)

Quote of the Moment:
"Death teaches us to live; it gives us a boundary to map our living within. Death's hammer breaks through the mirror separating us from light."
---David Meltzer, Beat poet (b. 1937)

Poem of the Day
"The Bus through Jonesboro, Arkansas" by Matthew Henriksen

Inanimate intimacy in the plural
Couples under their dark covers

The distance between one body and another
An echo chamber against every stone

The distance between lovers in a rock-lashing wave
The solitude of two together under the waters of night

Or the flattened space between two people on a bus
Talking above the low beams of a few lost trucks

Seeking their destruction or their portion elsewhere
A road imagined as a slick for words in a discrete stream

Flawless enamel the tongue slides along
Or skates off into a future illumined within a highway sign

At the lip of revelation comes denouement or slow torturous sleep
Because traveling does not follow music

Only music brings the body down from the sky
The solid body in its partial form

Bonus poem
"Dark Matter" by Jack Myers in The Memory of Water [New Issues Press]

I've lived my life as if I were my wife
packing for a trip—I'll need this and that
and I can't possibly do without that!
But now I'm about
what can be done without.
I just need a thin valise.
There's no place on earth
where I can't unpack in a flash
down to a final spark of consciousness.
No place where I can't enter
the joyless rapture
of almost remembering
I'll need this and I'll need that,
hoping to weigh less than silence,
lighter than light.

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[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
The Peace of Westphalia was established when two treaties were signed on this day in 1648, following another one signed earlier in the year. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War, but decisions based on those treaties actually established the concept of the nation state which guides international law to this day. Almost three centuries later, the United Nations was founded on this day in 1945. Despite the best intentions of all involved in these events, nations continue to misbehave.
QUOTES ON NATIONS:
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."
- Abba Eban, 1915 - 2002

"Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900

"When you see the Earth from space, you don't see any divisions of nation-states there. This may be the symbol of the new mythology to come; this is the country we will celebrate, and these are the people we are one with."
- Joseph Campbell, 1904 - 1987

"Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right."
- Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788 - 1860

"The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong."
- Sir Winston Churchill, 1874 - 1965

"My fellow citizens, we live in a great nation. It's occasional resemblance to a lunatic asylum is purely coincidental and doubtlessly not the intention of the author of us all."
- Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

Thought of the Day:
"Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; and number not voices, but weigh them."
— Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (1724-1804).

Quote of the Day:
"There is something even more valuable to civilization than wisdom, and that is character”
--H.L. Mencken, journalist (1880-1956)

Quote of the Moment:
"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."
--Percy Bysshe Shelley


Poem of the Day
"Heat" by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

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.

Bonus Poem:
"Helen" by H. D.

All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.

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Quotes for Today
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born at Málaga, Spain on Oct 25th in 1881. Legend says that young Picasso once painted a picture so compelling that his artist father gathered up his own brushes and gave them to the son, never to paint again. He pursued, many would say mastered, a dizzying sequence of artistic styles and media. His painting, sculpture, pottery, and printmaking had a profound effect on the world of art, his comments along the way are fairly profound as well.
QUOTES:
"Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction."

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

"I paint forms as I think them, not as I see them."

"Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness."

"Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?"

"What the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order."

"I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money."
All from Pablo Picasso, 1881 - 1973

Thought of the Day:
"Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret."
— Mary McCarthy, author & critic (1912-1989).

Quote of the Day:
"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them."
--Paul Valery, French critic & poet (1871-1945)

Quote of the Moment:
"It is not good enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well."
--Rene Descartes, French philosopher (1596--1650)


Poem of the Day
"Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight" by Vachel Lindsay

(In Springfield, Illinois)

It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us:—as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long,
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.

His head is bowed. He thinks of men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why;
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come;—the shining hope of Europe free:
A league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.

It breaks his heart that things must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?

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Quotes for Today
John Marwood Cleese was born at Weston-super-Mare, England on Oct 27th in 1939. After prep school he went to Clifton College at Bristol and passed three A-Levels, taught at his old prep school briefly, and entered Downing College, Cambridge. There he joined the Cambridge Footlights Revue and got a taste for acting and comedy. He preferred writing to practicing law so he worked at the BBC and for David Frost. With three fellow writers from The Frost Report, and one friend from Cambridge days, he created Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1969. He was rector of the University of St Andrews, the oldest university in Scotland, for three years, lectured on business management, and returned to show business With the Fawlty Towers series, A Fish Called Wanda, two James Bond films, two Harry Potter films and a host of other roles.
QUOTES:
"Filming is like a long air journey: there's so much hanging around and boredom that they keep giving you food."

"He who laughs most, learns best."

"I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires."

"If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play."

"When people say 'I'm not a prude, but ...' what they mean is 'I am a prude, and ...'."

"You don't have to be the Dalai Lama to tell people that life's about change."

"I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel, and incompetent comes naturally to me."
All from John Cleese.


Thought of the Day:
"Happiness is a way station between too much and too little."
— Channing Pollock, author & dramatist (1880-1946).

Quote of the Day:
"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."
--Henry J. Kaiser, US industrialist (1882-1967)

Quote of the Moment:
"The important work of moving the world forward does not wait toe be done by perfect men."
--George Eliot, French writer (1819-1880)


Poem of the Day
"The World Below the Window" by William Jay Smith in The World Below the Window: Poems 1937-1997

The geraniums I left last night on the windowsill,
To the best of my knowledge now, are out there still,
And will be there as long as I think they will.

And will be there as long as I think that I
Can throw the window open on the sky,
A touch of geranium pink in the tail of my eye;

As long as I think I see, past leaves green-growing,
Barges moving down a river, water flowing,
Fulfillment in the thought of thought outgoing,

Fulfillment in the sight of sight replying,
Of sound in the sound of small birds southward flying,
In life life-giving, and in death undying.

[1957]

Bonus Poem:
"Winter Morning" by William Jay Smith

All night the wind swept over the house
And through our dream
Swirling the snow up through the pines,
Ruffling the white, ice-capped clapboards,
Rattling the windows,
Rustling around and below our bed
So that we rode
Over wild water
In a white ship breasting the waves.
We rode through the night
On green, marbled
Water, and, half-waking, watched
The white, eroded peaks of icebergs
Sail past our windows;
Rode out the night in that north country,
And awoke, the house buried in snow,
Perched on a
Chill promontory, a
Giant's tooth
In the mouth of the cold valley,
Its white tongue looped frozen around us,
The trunks of tall birches
Revealing the rib cage of a whale
Stranded by a still stream;
And saw, through the motionless baleen of their branches,
As if through time,
Light that shone
On a landscape of ivory,
A harbor of bone.

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Quotes for Today
James Boswell was born at Edinburgh, Scotland on Oct 29th in 1795, the son of a wealthy family related to the crown. Boswell's father was a judge and insisted that his son be trained in law and join the bar. On a visit to London James met Dr Samuel Johnson, one of England's great literary figures, and formed a lasting friendship. After his law career deteriorated, he was somewhat taken to drink and gambling when unhappy and the law made him unhappy, he spent a great deal of time with Johnson and recorded it in his journals. In 1791, seven years after Johnson's death, he published The Life of Samuel Johnson which was probably the first readable biography and is still seen as one of the finest biographies ever. His name became synonymous with confidential biography, Sherlock Holmes at one point called Watson "my Boswell".
QUOTES:
"A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself."

"For my own part I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed: and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation."

"I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am."

"I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything."

"It is not every man who can be exquisitely miserable, any more than exquisitely happy."

"It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time."
All from James Boswell (1740-1795)

Thought of the Day:
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
--Yogi Berra, Hall of Fame NY Yankee catcher (b. 1925)

Quote of the Day:
"Food is an important part of a balanced diet."
--Fran Lebowitz, writer (b. 1950)

Quote of the Moment:
"I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago."
--Edgar Allan Poe, writer (1809-1882)

Poem of the Day
"Water" by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Collected Poems & Translations [Library of America]

The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.

Bonus Poem:
"Fable" by Ralph Waldo Emeerson

The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel;
And the former called the latter ‘Little Prig.’
Bun replied,
‘You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I'm not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I'll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.’

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Grace Barnett Wing was born at Evanston, Illinois on Oct 30th in 1939 and was mostly raised in California. After graduating from high school at Palo Alto she attended Finch College (New York) and the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Florida. In the early sixties she was a model for I. Magnin, then decided that rock and roll paid better and was more fun. She married Jerry Slick in 1961, the two of them and some friends started a band called The Great Society in 1965. When the lead singer of Jefferson Airplane left the band, Grace took her place, bringing a couple of songs with her that would be great hits. She was sexy, foul-mouthed, drank far too much, and her voice thrilled millions. Slick retired from music in 1988, eats a mostly vegan diet, and paints portraits of the other rock stars of her earlier days.
QUOTES:
"No matter how big or soft or warm your bed is, you still have to get out of it."

"Loss either teaches you to persist in the face of suffering, or hardens you into a bitter cynic. Sometimes, it does a little of both."

"I don't like old people on a rock and roll stage. Me included."

"Janis [Joplin] knew more than I did about "how it was", but she lacked enough armor for the inevitable hassles. She was open and spontaneous enough to get her heart trampled with a regularity that took me thirty years to experience or understand."

"I don't miss anything about the 1960s, not really. I did it. It's like asking, 'Do you miss the fourth grade?' I loved the fourth grade when I was in it, but I don't want to do it again."

"Without alcohol I'd be richer by two million dollars that went to pay lawyer's fees."
All from Grace Slick


Thought of the Day:
"There are things that are known and things that are unknown; in between are doors." — Anonymous.

Quote of the Day:
"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
--Will Rogers, cowboy humorist (1879-1935)

Quote of the Moment:
"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
--John F. Kennedy, 35th Pres. of the US (1917-1963)


Poem of the Day
"Searchers" by D. Nurkse in Burnt Island [Alfred A. Knopf]

We gave our dogs a button to sniff,
or a tissue, and they bounded off
confident in their training,
in the power of their senses
to re-create the body,

but after eighteen hours in rubble
where even steel was pulverized
they curled on themselves
and stared up at us
and in their soft huge eyes
we saw mirrored the longing for death:

then we had to beg a stranger
to be a victim and crouch
behind a girder, and let the dogs
discover him and tug him
proudly, with suppressed yaps,
back to Command and the rows
of empty triage tables.

But who will hide from us?
Who will keep digging for us
here in the cloud of ashes?

Bonus Poem:
"A Clear Midnight" by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass [1881 ed/]

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson
done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the
themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
What we now know as the National Weather Service went into business on Nov 1st in 1870, although it was operated by the Army Signal Service Corps for the first twenty years. If you think weather forecasting is bad now, imagine it without Doppler radar, hurricane hunter aircraft, a century of previous data to refer to, or even telephones to call the next town to check on the approach of storms.
QUOTES ON WEATHER:
"On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice."
- Willa Cather, 1873 - 1947

"It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm."
- Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784

"All we need is a meteorologist who has once been soaked to the skin without ill effect. No one can write knowingly of the weather who walks bent over on wet days."
- E. B. White, 1899 - 1985

"Those born to wealth, and who have the means of gratifying every wish, know not what is the real happiness of life, just as those who have been tossed on the stormy waters of the ocean on a few frail planks can alone realize the blessings of fair weather."
- Alexandre Dumas, père, 1802 - 1870

"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."
- J. R. R. Tolkien, 1892 - 1973

I actually like this weather. I like the rain. What I like about Seattle is that people are so used to the rain that they still do stuff. They don't stay indoors, take antidepressants, and read novels. They just go out and get wet.
- Augusten Burroughs, writer (b. 1965)


Thought of the Day:
"Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuse himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels."
--Henry Adams, writer & historian (1838-1918).

Quote of the Day:
"Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip."
--Mar Twain. humorist (1879-1935)

Quote of the Moment:
"In the end, everything is a gag."
--Charlie Chaplin, comedian & actor (1889-1977)

[
Poem of the Day
"A Young Poet" by Jane Miller

For begging beauty
one can hardly blame the artist

sleeping like butter in the sun
taking no action for action

some prefer being a yellow rose petal
I learned when I traveled

the young poet saying a prayer
is a form of panic

Bonus Poem:
"#4" by Jane Miller

Do you know how long it has been since a moral choice presented itself

and the wrong choice was made

not two minutes

why is it not quiet between lightning and thunder as if someone were asking

do you have other articulable feelings if so express them now

tragedy ensues

with a laser blast from the cockpit

the dangled finger of God makes contact

PLEASE CALL FOR SEVERAL THOUSAND PHYSICIANS QUICKLY

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Quotes for Today
John Montagu was born on this day in 1718 and succeeded his grandfather to become the Fourth Earl of Sandwich when he was ten. He held a number of significant political positions, three times serving as First Lord of the Admiralty, notably including the American Revolution. He was a patron of Captain James Cook, who named quite a few things in the south Pacific, including the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) after the Earl. Depending on whether you believe the official biography (which holds that Montagu was too busy at the admiralty to leave for lunch, so he had meal of salt beef between two slices of bread at his desk) or the rumors of his detractors (that he often ate this meal at the casino to avoid interrupting the games), what we know as the Sandwich was probably invented by him and definitely named after him.
QUOTES ABOUT SANDWICHES:
"The small businessman is smart; he realizes there's no free lunch. On the other hand, he knows where to go to get a good inexpensive sandwich."
- Adam Osborne, 1939 - 2003

"Hors D'oeuvre: A ham sandwich cut into forty pieces."
- Jack Benny, 1894 - 1974

"I believe that if you don't want to do anything, then sit there and don't do it, but don't expect people to hand you a corn beef sandwich and wash your socks for you and unzip your fly for you."
- Shel Silverstein, 1930 - 1999

"In the family sandwich, the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are, for a time, the meat."
- Anna Quindlen

"You should realize that the community with which you deal is not the one of 42nd Street and Broadway, or Hollywood and Vine. These are the crusts on the great American sandwich. The meat is in between."
- Bishop Fulton John Sheen, 1895 - 1979


Thought of the Day:
"The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born --that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born."
--Warren G. Bennis, professor & organization consultant (b. 1925)

Quote of the Day:
"You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in."
--Arlo Guthrie, folksinger (b. 1947_

Quote of the Moment:
"We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe. "
--Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Supreme Court justice (1851-1935)


Poem of the Day
"Witch-Wife" by Edna St. Vincent Millay in Collected Poems [Harper & Brothers]

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Guy Fawkes was arrested at London on Nov. 5th in 1605, guarding 36 kegs of gunpowder below the House of Lords. The intent on the part of a group of unhappy Catholic subjects was to blow up the building when James I entered later in the day to open Parliament. James was the very Protestant monarch known as "the wisest fool in Christendom" and the sponsor of the most lyrical, if least accurate, English translation of the Bible. I have to admit to occasionally thinking that blowing up one or the other of our two legislative bodies was an excellent idea, although the question of whether the upper or lower house attracts my enmity varies with the times, but never with the religion of the head of state. I'm always in favor of good fireworks and cheerful bonfires. So here's to Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot.
QUOTES:
"A ship is always referred to as she because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder".
- Adm. Chester William Nimitz, 1885 - 1966

"Genius as an explosive power beats gunpowder hollow; and if knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply run amuck among friends and foes".
- Thomas Henry Huxley, 1825 - 1895

"Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry"!
- Oliver Cromwell, 1599 - 1658

"Exercise is the worst thing in the world and as bad an invention as gunpowder".
- Horace Walpole, 1717 - 1797

"The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, as the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing".
- Jonathan Swift, 1667 - 1745

"Man is a military animal, glories in gunpowder, and loves parade."
- Philip James Bailey, 1816 - 1902


Thought of the Day:
"Frugality without creativity is deprivation."
--Amy Dacyczyn, writer/editor (The Tightwad Gazette)

Quote of the Day:
"He wrapped himself in quotations- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors".
--Rudyard Kipling, English author (1865-1936)

Quote of the Moment:
"The best way out is always through".
--Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)


Poem of the Day
"Detail of the Woods" by Richard Siken

I looked at all the trees and didn't know what to do.

A box made out of leaves.
What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.
I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon.

From the landscape: a sense of scale.
From the dead: a sense of scale.

I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority.
Everything casts a shadow.

Your body told me in a dream it's never been afraid of anything.

Bomus Poem:
"Epigram on Rough Woods" by Robert Burns

I'm now arrived—thanks to the gods!—
Thro' pathways rough and muddy,
A certain sign that makin roads
Is no this people's study:
Altho' Im not wi' Scripture cram'd,
I'm sure the Bible says
That heedless sinners shall be damn'd,
Unless they mend their ways.

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Quotes for Today
It was on Nov. 7th in 1940 that "Galloping Gertie" went down. Officially known as the Tacoma Narrows Bridge near Tacoma, Washington, she was a 5,000-foot suspension bridge that had gone into service on 1 July of the same year. Because even very light winds often setup oscillations of several feet in the bridge deck, traffic volume was often three times what was expected as folks drove from near and far to experience driving across a deck that danced. On her last day, winds of 25 to 46 miles per hour swept down the Narrows and the bridge deck twisted wildly, the deck surface angling 45 degrees to one side, then the other. After a half hour the first piece of decking plunged into the water 195 feet below, within an hour the entire center span was gone, and both 1100-foot approaches had dropped 30 feet. Films of the collapse have been entertaining engineering students ever since.
QUOTES ON BRIDGES:
"In true love the smallest distance is too great, and the greatest distance can be bridged."
- Hans Nouwens

"Men build bridges and throw railroads across deserts, and yet they contend successfully that the job of sewing on a button is beyond them. Accordingly, they don't have to sew buttons."
- Heywood Campbell Broun, 1888 - 1939

"The future is a bridge you don't have to cross this moment. And which, when it arrives, will be simply a fact of life and not a spooky idea at the horizon."
- Renate Rubinstein, 1929 - 1990

"In giving, you throw a bridge across the chasm of your solitude."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1900 - 1944

"Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away.... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer –- that is composition."
- Robert Henri, 1865 - 1929

"Men build too many walls and not enough bridges."
- Isaac Newton, 1643 - 1727

Thought of the Day:
"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles."
--George Jean Nathan, drama critic & editor (1882-1958)

Quote of the Day:
"I once said cynically of a politician, 'He'll doublecross that bridge when he comes to it.'"
--Oscar Levant, pianist & wit (1906-1972)

Quote of the Moment:
"It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one."
--George Washington, 1st Pres. of the US (1732-1799)


Poem of the Day
"Amaze" by Adelaide Crapsey in Complete Poems and Collected Letters [State University of New York Press]

I know
Not these my hands
And yet I think there was
A woman like me once had hands
Like these.

Bonus Poems:
"November Night" by Adelaide Crapsey

Listen. . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.

"Triad" by Adelaide Crapsey

These be
three silent things:
The falling snow . . . the hour
Before the dawn . . . the mouth of one
Just dead.

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Quotes for Today
There is an amusing claim that Bourbon Whiskey was first distilled on Nov. 8th in 1789 by a Baptist preacher named Elijah Craig. More serious historians note that the product wasn't called Bourbon until 1821, that corn whiskey was made in Kentucky at least four years before Craig, and Craig left no record of the actual date for the start of his distilling career. But later bourbon drinkers liked the idea that their potent potable was developed by a preacher, and Elijah was quite the colorful character. He built a fulling mill (cloth), a paper mill, a river-shipping company, and definitely a distillery. Even before his legendary first batch, he had founded what became Kentucky's Georgetown College. Despite the feeble basis for the historical trivia, here are some quotes on whiskey.
QUOTES ON WHISKEY:
"Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets."
- Logan Pearsall Smith, 1865 - 1946

"In those days the best painkiller was ice; it wasn't addictive and it was particularly effective if you poured some whiskey over it."
- George Burns, 1896 - 1996

"A good gulp of hot whiskey at bedtime — it's not very scientific, but it helps."
- Alexander Fleming, 1881 - 1955

"There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer."
- Elizabeth Gilbert[/img]

"The only way that I could figure they could improve upon Coca-Cola, one of life's most delightful elixirs, which studies prove will heal the sick and occasionally raise the dead, is to put rum or bourbon in it."
- Lewis Grizzard, 1946 - 1994

Thought of the Day:
"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
--Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (1813-1855)

Quote of the Day:
"The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives."
--Lois McMaster Bujold, sci-fi & fantasy author (b. 1949)

Quote of the Moment:
"I want freedom for the full expression of my personality."
--Mahatma Gandhi, Indian revolutionary (1869-1948


Poem of the Day
"Your Brain Is Yours" by Natalie Lyalin.

I am baptized by coins with a faint smell of elderflower.

I transfigure, blink in one part of the house and then another.

A holy night unfolds and stands weakly.

A child chemist mixes a star in a test tube.

Glass shatters lightly.

I am a saint.

I soothe with marmalade and tonic.

I embroider a pillow and give it a squeeze.

I attach a heavy gold necklace to a horse rump.

We clang along across the empire.

Every church window flies open in greeting.

Every bell rings weary.

I stretch my arms out and receive light.

My face appears on a tree.

Red flowers spring forward.

I attend a funeral, and then another.

My face appears in water, lightly distorted.

I am tired like the ancients were tired.
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Quotes for Today
At 5:16 pm (and 11 seconds, precision is important to the grid) on this day in 1965, a shoebox-sized relay at the Sir Adam Beck generating station in Queenston, Ontario tripped, shutting down a key electrical transmission line. Hundreds of thousands were stuck in darkened subway tunnels or left in immobile elevators. Surgeons completed surgery by candle light. From an incorrect setting on one relay, one resource after another went off line like falling dominoes, and within 12 minutes New York City was without power, along with much of the rest of the state, most of New England, and Ontario. It was the largest power failure in history, and left millions in Darkness.
QUOTES ON DARKNESS:
"To attempt seeing Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without knowing the Darkness. It cannot be."
- Frank Herbert, 1920 - 1986

"We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."
- Henry James, 1843 - 1916

"Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere."
- H. Rider Haggard, 1856 - 1925

"There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes."
- Leo Tolstoy, 1828 - 1910

"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
- Vladimir Nabokov, 1899 - 1977

"Creativity — like human life itself — begins in darkness."
- Julia Cameron

Thought of the Day:
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist & poet (1803-1882)

Quote of the Day:
"When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt."
--Henry J. Kaiser, industrialist (1882-1967)

Quote of the Moment:
"There is no greater importance in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you."
--Norman Mailer, novelist (1923-2007)


Poem of the Day
"First Light Edging Cirrus" by Jane Hirshfield in Come, Thief [Knopf]

10²⁵ molecules
are enough
to call woodthrush or apple.

A hummingbird, fewer.
A wristwatch: 10²⁴.

An alphabet's molecules,
tasting of honey, iron, and salt,
cannot be counted—

as some strings, untouched,
sound when a near one is speaking.

As it was when love slipped inside us.
It looked out face to face in every direction.

Then it was inside the tree, the rock, the cloud.

Bonus Poem:
"A Hand" by Jane Hirshfield

A hand is not four fingers and a thumb.

Nor is it palm and knuckles,
not ligaments or the fat's yellow pillow,
not tendons, star of the wristbone, meander of veins.

A hand is not the thick thatch of its lines
with their infinite dramas,
nor what it has written,
not on the page,
not on the ecstatic body.

Nor is the hand its meadows of holding, of shaping—
not sponge of rising yeast-bread,
not rotor pin's smoothness,
not ink.

The maple's green hands do not cup
the proliferant rain.
What empties itself falls into the place that is open.

A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question.

Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
The University of Minnesota's football team, at the end of a losing season, faced Northwestern on Nov. 2nd in 1898. In an attempt to boost morale and excitement, six young men led the crowd in cheering the Gophers on to victory. Their leader, Johnny Campbell, picked up a megaphone and had the crowd chanting "Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-U-Mah! Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Minn-e-so-tah!" That day is known as the beginning of cheer leading. (In 1923 Minnesota innovated in this field again, with the first female cheerleaders.) I'm a bit low on quotes related to actual cheerleaders, but I had plenty to choose from that suggest we should consciously work to maintain good Cheer.
QUOTES ON CHEERFULNESS:
"The cheerful live longest in years, and afterwards in our regards. Cheerfulness is the offshoot of goodness."
- Christian Nestell Bovee, 1820 - 1904

"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

"The thousand mysteries around us would not trouble but interest us, if only we had cheerful, healthy hearts."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900

"You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make an honest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy."
- Julia Child, 1912 - 2004

"In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society we insist they be cheerleaders."
- Steve Allen, 1921 - 2000

"I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness."
- Charles Dickens, 1812 - 1870


Thought of the Day:
"When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you."
--Kahlil Gibran, Lebanese-born author (1883-1930)

Quote of the Day:
"I'm just trying to make a smudge on the collective unconscious."
--David Letterman. TV host & comedian (b. 1947)

Quote of the Moment:
"Many would be cowards if they had courage enought."
--Thomas Fuller, English clergyman & historian (1608-1661)



Poem of the Day
"Haunted Houses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Poems and Other Writings[Library of America]

All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise
By opposite attractions and desires;
The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar
Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
Come from the influence of an unseen star
An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
Throws o'er the sea a floating bridge of light,
Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
Into the realm of mystery and night,—

So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O'er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

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Quotes for Today
Around the world, legislators overwhelmed by their onerous or frightening responsibilities take time off to commemorate this, that, and the other. Most of them simply don't move me any more than National Fried Celery Week (which doesn't exist) or National Iced Tea Month (which does - June), not to mention that there just aren't that many quotes appropriate for National Welding Month (April). But for some reason it's become traditional here to pause briefly and ponder percussion during International Drum Month. Let your fingers beat out a brisk rhythm on your desk as you check out these quotes on Drums.
QUOTES ABOUT DRUMS:
"You can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?"
- Kahlil Gibran, 1883 - 1931

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
- Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862

"The most persistent sound which reverberates through men's history is the beating of war drums."
- Arthur Koestler, 1905 - 1983

"Oh, the brave music of a distant drum!"
- Omar Khayyám, 1048 - 1131

"I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians. It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away. I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play."
- Ringo Starr

"We all have the drum major instinct. We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade."
- Martin Luther King, Jr, 1929 - 1968

Thought of the Day:
"Private opinion creates public opinion....That is why private opinion, and private behavior, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important."
--Jan Struther (nee Joyce Anstruther), English poet (1901-1953).

Quote of the Day:
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
--Sir Winston Churchill, English statesman (1874-1965)

Quote of the Moment:
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
--Thomas Edison, inventor (1847-1931)


Poem of the Day
"This Deepenng Takes Place Again" by Emily Kendal Frey.

What if everything
were revealed: where I was
last night. You, etc. The rain
is coming down like salad.
My sister's hair
reminds me of my sister
so much I can't
stop looking. Who am I
to have arms? On the plane
one short dream:
a baby so small
it wasn't even human,
just a bouquet
of light with wise
cellular eyes. If losing me
is the worst thing to happen,
your life is still a good life

Bonus Poem:
"Anna, Thy Charms" by Robert Burns.

Anna, thy charms my bosom fire,
And waste my soul with care;
But ah! how bootless to admire,
When fated to despair!

Yet in thy presence, lovely Fair,
To hope may be forgiven;
For sure 'twere impious to despair
So much in sight of heaven.