Daily Poem and Quotations

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Quintus Horatius Flaccus was born on Dec 8th in 65 BC at Venusia (now Venosa in modern Italy) to a freed slave. He was well educated - first at Rome and then at Athens, but a cowardly soldier: He survived the Battle of Philippi by throwing down his shield and fled. When an amnesty was declared he returned to Italy and took up a position in the treasury which allowed him time to become the best-known lyric poet during the reign of Augustus. We know him as Horace. I'll start with what is probably his most widely recognized advice.
QUOTES:
"Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero!" (Seize the day, put little trust in tomorrow!)

"He has half the deed done who has made a beginning."

"Who then is free? The wise man who can govern himself."

"Anger is momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you."

"As a rule, adversity reveals genius and prosperity hides it."

"Excellence when concealed, differs but little from buried worthlessness."

"Patience makes lighter what sorrow may not heal."
All from Horace, 65 - 8 BC

Thought of the Day:
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
--Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright (1854--1900)

Quote of the Day:
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over."
--Aneurin Bevan, English statesman (1897-1960)

Quote of the Moment:
"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it."
--Thomas Jefferson, 3rd Pres. of the US (1743-1826)


Poem of the Day
"In drear nighted December" by John Keats in The Complete Poems[Modern Library]

In drear nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity—
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy—
But were there ever any
Writh'd not of passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

Bonus Poem:
"Bright Star" by John Keats

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

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Emmett Leo Kelly was born at Sedan, Kansas on Dec. 9th in 1898. His father worked for the railroad and the Kellys lived in company housing right next to the switching yard until moving to a Missouri farm in 1905. At 19 he moved to Kansas City with hopes of becoming a cartoonist, but first created his clown act while working for an advertising agency. He debuted as "Wearie Willie" in 1933, the hobo character became a great hit in the depression era. He joined Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1941, and became a major star, probably the best known clown in the world.
QUOTES ON CLOWNS:
"I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician."
- Charlie Chaplin, 1889 - 1977

"To people who take music seriously, I'm a musician. To people who don't take music seriously, I'm a comedian. To people who don't take anything seriously, I'm a clown."
- Victor Borge, 1909 - 2000

"A lot of music today is so serious. Lighten up! As entertainers, we're not descendants of theologians. We're descendants of court jesters."
- Jimmy Buffett.

"A clown is like aspirin, only he works twice as fast."
- Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx, 1890 - 1977

"A clown's makeup and character, that's all he has to sell. He loves and believes in that character."
- Emmett Kelly, 1898 - 1979

"If by chance some day you're not feeling well and you should remember some silly thing I've said or done and it brings back a smile to your face or a chuckle to your heart, then my purpose as your clown has been fulfilled."
- Red Skelton, 1913 - 1997

Thought of the Day:
"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?"
--John Keats, English Romantic poet (1795-1821)

Quote of the Day:
"We are an impossibility in an impossible universe"
--Ray Bradbury, sci-fi author (b. 1920)

Quote of the Moment:
"In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility."
--Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady, diplomat & columnist (1884-1962)


Poem of the Day
"Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been" by William Shakespeare in Complete Sonnets and Poems[Osford University Press].

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December’s bareness every where!
And yet this time remov’d was summer’s time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem’d to me
But hope of orphans and unfather’d fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.


Bonus Poem:
"Blow, blow, thou winter wind", As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII

Lord Amiens, a musician, sings before Duke Senior's company

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.
Heigh-ho! sing . . .

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born at Kislovodsk in Russia's Caucasus Mountains on Dec. 11th in 1918. Expert in mathematics, he quickly rose to captain in the Red Army artillery in World War II, but a letter criticizing Stalin in 1945 landed him in prison for the first time, serving eight years until Stalin's death. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, but though he was allowed to leave he declined as he feared he would not be allowed to return. In 1974, having exposed the Gulag system of work camps, he was exiled to Switzerland, belatedly gave his Nobel lecture, and later took up residence in Vermont. His Soviet citizenship was restored in 1990 and he returned in 1994.
QUOTES:
"It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him."

"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power - he's free again."

"I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either."

"A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones."

"How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?"

"We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable."
All from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)

Thought of the Day:
"Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians."
--Chester Bowles, statesman (1901-1986)

Quote of the Day:
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."
--Kurt Vonnegut. sci-fi author (1922-2007)

Quote of the Moment:
"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation."
--George Washington, 1st Pres. of the US (1732-1799)


Poem of the Day
"An Old Man's Winter NIght" by Robert Frost in The Poetry of Robert Frost. [Henry Holt & Co.]

All out-of-doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him—at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off;—and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon—such as she was,
So late-arising—to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man—one man—can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.

Bonus Poem:
"Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost.

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

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

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

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

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

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan, Scotland on Dec. 4th in 1795 and raised in a stern Calvinist family which expected him to enter the ministry. While at the University of Edinburgh he lost his Christian faith, but not his Calvinist values. His powerful writing was appealing in Victorian-era England and his work was influential in New England transcendentalism. Most of his work is too deep and some is appallingly racist, but these selections still seem valid for today.
QUOTES:
"It is the first of all problems for a man to find out what kind of work he is to do in this universe."

"Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight."

"Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand."

"The aristocracy of feudal parchment has passed away with a mighty rushing, and now, by a natural course, we arrive at aristocracy of the money-bag."

"I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."

"Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world."

"I don't pretend to understand the Universe — it's a great deal bigger than I am."
All from Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Thought of the Day:
"The price of greatness is responsibility.:
--Sir Winston Churchill, English statesman (1874-1965)

Quote of the Day:
"Never do anything yourself that others can do for you."
--Dame Agatha Christie, English author (1890-1976)

Quote of the Moment:
"We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others."
--Blaise Pascal, French philosopher (1623-1662)


Poem of the Day
"Horoscope" by Maureen N. McLane

Again the white blanket
icicles pierce.
The fierce teeth
of steel-framed snowshoes
bite the trail open.
Where the hardwoods stand
and rarely bend
the wind blows hard
an explosion of snow
like flour dusting
the baker in a shop
long since shuttered.
In this our post-shame century
we will reclaim
the old nouns
unembarrassed.
If it rains
we'll say oh
there's rain.
If she falls
out of love
with you you'll carry
your love on a gold plate
to the forest and bury it
in the Indian graveyard.
Pioneers do not
only despoil.
The sweet knees
of oxen have pressed
a path for me.
A lone chickadee
undaunted thing
sings in the snow.
Flakes appear
as if out of air
but surely they come
from somewhere
bearing what news
from the troposphere.
The sky's shifted
and Capricorns abandon
themselves to a Sagittarian
line. I like
this weird axis.
In 23,000 years
it will become again
the same sky
the Babylonians scanned.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Harry Heine was born at Duesseldorf, Germany on Dec. 13th in 1797, in a time in which the area was occupied by the French which helped the prospects of Jews. He trained for business and law, and though he converted to Protestantism (required for civil service or practicing law) and earned his law degree in 1825, his interest had turned to literature. He moved to Paris in 1831 for the intellectual community, remained there after some of his writing made him unwelcome in Germany. In addition to poetry (some of which was set to music by German composers such as Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann), he also wrote travel pieces and political essays. When he converted he took the name he published under, Heinrich Heine.
QUOTES:
"Of course God will forgive me; that's His job."

"The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough."

"We keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we at last come to look upon them as virtues."

"Great genius takes shape by contact with another great genius, but, less by assimilation than by friction."

"I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day."

"Like a great poet, Nature knows how to produce the greatest effects with the most limited means."

"I bequeath all my property to my wife on the express condition that she remarry immediately. Then there will be at least one man to regret my death."
All from Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

Thought of the Day:
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
--H. G. Wells, English author (1866-1946)

Quote of the Day:
"Foolish writers and readers are created for each other."
--Horace Walpole, English author (1717-1797)

Quote of the Moment:
"One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world. Sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions."
--Ann Radcliffe, English Gothic author (1764-1823)


Poem of the Day
"Blustery" by Neil Shepard.

Blustery 25-below, O Walt, I wouldn't go
And live with animals tonight—
Or anytime soon. How do
They survive in their snowy lairs?
How could I, for that matter, who
Haven't taken the wild Swedish plunge
Every chilly night to thicken my fur layer
By layer, I who doze by the fire
With the phone to my ear,
Doze the whole new year
Listening to my wife in such weird
Zone-warping tropical heat, naked,
Whispering her desire for 50-below,
If it brings her home. That's fur
Of a different nature, Walt, layer
Upon layer of love that glows, grows
Over us like a sun-lit coat.
O we are hothouse flowers, Walt,
Naked and limply alive in a narrow
Equatorial band. Otherwise, we die.
Walt, we must make do
With our lovely human hair.

Bonus Poem:
"Cold Morning" by Eamon Grennan.

Through an accidental crack in the curtain
I can see the eight o'clock light change from
charcoal to a faint gassy blue, inventing things

in the morning that has a thick skin of ice on it
as the water tank has, so nothing flows, all is bone,
telling its tale of how hard the night had to be

for any heart caught out in it, just flesh and blood
no match for the mindless chill that's settled in,
a great stone bird, its wings stretched stiff

from the tip of Letter Hill to the cobbled bay, its gaze
glacial, its hook-and-scrabble claws fast clamped
on every window, its petrifying breath a cage

in which all the warmth we were is shivering.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Michel de Nostradame was born at Saint Remi, France on Dec. 14th in 1503. He studied medicine and opened a practice in 1525, achieving wide renown for curing particularly advanced cases. In 1550 he moved to Salon and began writing cryptic predictions of verses of four lines, called quatrains. He published them in "centuries", each a set of 100 quatrains (except Century VII which inexplicably has only 42). The predictions supposedly extend through the year 3797. He wrote in French with a liberal mix of Prevencal, Latin, and Greek, claiming that the vague wording, intentional anagrams, and numerological hints were to prevent his arrest for witchcraft by the Inquisition. It's rather more likely that he wrote this way, like modern astrologers, so his predictions predict nothing in advance, but seem to have predicted things that have already come to pass. Utter nonsense, but ever since the oracle hung out her shingle at Delphi, we've been fascinated by Predictions.
QUOTES ON PREDICTIng:
"You can only predict things after they have happened."
- Eugene Ionesco, 1909 - 1994

"This is my prediction for the future - whatever hasn't happened will happen and no one will be safe from it."
- J. B. S. Haldane, 1892 - 1964

"You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable."
- Peter Drucker, 1909 - 2005

"In conditions of great uncertainty people tend to predict the events that they want to happen actually will happen."
- Roberta Wohlstetter, 1912 - 2007

"I have made a good many predictions about the future of our business and I have been wrong every time because I have always underestimated its possibilities."
- Thomas John Watson, Sr, 1874 - 1956

"To prove that Wall Street is an early omen of movements still to come in GNP, commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions! And its mistakes were beauties."
- Paul Samuelson, 1915 - 2009

Thought of the Day:
"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him."
--Galileo Galilei, Italian scientist (1564 - 1642)

Quote of the Day:
"Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."
--Sir James M. Barrie, Scottish author (1860 - 1937)

Quote of the Moment:
"The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come."
--Sir Peter Ustinov, British actor (1921 - 2004)


Poem of the Day
"To a Locomotive in Winter" by Walt Whitman in The Complete Poems[Penguin Classics]

Thee for my recitative!
Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,
Thee in thy panoply, thy measur'd dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel,
Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides,
Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,
Thy great protruding head-light fix’d in front,
Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,
The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack,
Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels,
Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,
Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering;
Type of the modern—emblem of motion and power—pulse of the continent,
For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,
With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,
By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes, By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.

Fierce-throated beauty!
Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night,
Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all,
Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,
(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)
Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d,
Launch’d o’er the prairies wide,across the lakes, To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.

Bonus Poem:
"A Clear Midnight" by Wlat Whitman.

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
Freeman John Dyson was born at Crowthorne, Berkshire, England on this day in 1923. He attended Winchester College from 1936 to 1941, then served in the operation research section of the RAF through the war. He earned his BA in math at Cambridge (1945), was a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, had a fellowship at Cornell where he became a physics professor in 1951, without a PhD. Two years later he joined the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He was able to understand the work of Richard Feynman (who did have a PhD) well enough to explain it for other physicists (ditto). He spent four years designing Orion, a propulsion system based on rapidly exploding nuclear bombs behind a space ship but was happy when the atmospheric test ban canceled the development. He essentially believes that anthropogenic global warming is a reality but thinks it distracts from more pressing issues, and is distressed by the attitudes, behavior, and sloppy thinking of advocates in that arena. He has written over a dozeN books, analyzed science and military technology, and speaks cogently on religion. His many fans, including some with Nobel prizes, believe he long since should have gotten one.
QUOTES:
"Heretics who question the dogmas are needed.... I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies."

"It is better to be wrong than to be vague."

"It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment."

"The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible."

"The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand."

"To answer the world's material needs, technology has to be not only beautiful but also cheap."

"If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter."
All from Freeman Dyson.

Thought of the Day:
"Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated."
--G. K. Chesterton, English author (1874-1936)

Quote of the Day:
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
--Henry David Thoreau, writer & philosopher (1817-1862)

Quote of the Moment:
"Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so."
--Gore Vidal, novelist (b. 1925)


Poem of the Day
"My Daughter Among the Names" by Farid Matuk.

Difficult once I've said things

to know them this morning

the lights above the tollway all off

at exactly 7:36

all "we took our yellow from the pewter sky."


But we have so many

things! Stories

about our diction, the leather couch

some trees and our ages.

What about all the rooms the sky makes—


she tried several

spaces today, under a desk, a nook

bent to her.

I thought of picking a fight

with dead Bachelard.

Her small body a new host for

waters, spaces brought round

for viruses, their articulations, their ranges.


Think of all the products

left behind by a shift in design—

iPod cases, dancers called spirit rappers

sites where "women, negroes, natives were acted out"

for Rev. Hiram Mattison "vehicles of impurity."


"My children too have learned

a barbarous tongue, though it's not so sure

they will rise to high command"— Tu Fu or

Bernadette Mayer on Hawthorne's American Notebooks

a boy tried to hang a dog in a playground, she said.


O structural inequalities! O explanations!

The owner of the desert house we rented

plants butterfly bushes, cenizo, and columns

of dark leaves where birds go.

Sharp sweet dung smell off the horse trailer


after it pulls away.

What about all the rooms the sky makes?

Faint blue expanse

a long far line of electric poles

a mountain I can see. Dog yelps almost digital


maybe from inside a car at the Dollar General.

She made her first marks today

on this page

rain .... hand ..... here

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Arthur Charles Clarke was born at Mine head, Somerset, England, on Dec. 16th in 1917. In his youth he enjoyed stargazing and reading old American science fiction magazines that made their way to England as ballast in returning freighters. He served as a radar specialist with the FAR during NW II and contributed to the system that allowed the A'S success in the Battle of Britain. He is best known for his science fiction, including the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, but he was a serious scientist as well. His concept that satellites in geosynchronous orbit could aide in communications has changed the world, your satellite TV signal comes from a transponder parked in what is now knows as the Clarke Orbit. He lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death, was wheelchair bound since 1988, but remained active in education and space exploration up until months before his death.
QUOTES:
"I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about."

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."

"All explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest."

"Communication technologies are necessary, but not sufficient, for us humans to get along with each other."

"I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers."

"A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets."

"I don't believe in astrology; I'm a Sagittarian and we're sceptical."
All from Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

Thought of the Day:
"So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with."
--John Locke, English political philosopher (1632-1704)

Quote of the Day:
"Mothers are a biological necessity; fathers are a social invention."
--Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901-1978)

Quote of the Moment:
"The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way."
--Samuel Butler, English playwright (1835-1902)


Poem of the Day
"Out, Out--" by Robert Frost

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
William Safire was born at New York City on Dec. 17th in 1929. He attended public school at The Bronx, graduating from Bronx High School of Science in 1947. He dropped out after two years at Syracuse University, but was later asked to give a commencement address and served as a trustee. After service in the Army he worked in public relations, then joined Nixon's White House staff as a speech writer. (Agnew's line, "nattering nabobs of negativism" was a Safire speech.) Some were appalled when the noted conservative joined the New York Times as a political commentator in 1973, but many were delighted when his "On Language" column began in 1979.
QUOTES:
"Never assume the obvious is true."

"Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to 'get in touch with your feelings,' fine — talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts."

"The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right."

"Ears are sloppy and eyes are precise; accordingly, speech can be loose but writing should be tight."

"Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected."

"Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace."
All from William Safire (1929-2009)

Thought of the Day:
"I've never sought success in order to get fame and money; it's the talent and the passion that count in success."
--Ingrid Bergman, Swedish actress (1915-1982)

Quote of the Day:
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
--John F. Kennedy, Pres. of the US (1917-1963)

Quote of the Moment:
"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."
--Eric Hoffer, philosopher (1902-1983)


Poem of the Day
"A Prayer for my Daughter" by William Butler Yeats.

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Frank Vincent Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland on Dec. 21st in 1940. His father was a chemist for the military and the family moved frequently until they landed at San Diego in time for high school and Frank's first band. After his first marriage he moved into a friend's recording studio and spent his waking hours learning multi-track recording. In 1965 his band landed a record contract on the condition that they change the name to the Mothers of Invention, "the Mothers" was deemed too suggestive, and they created some of the most advanced and complex music of the time combined with Zappa's biting social and political commentary. For most of us it went right over our heads, but we loved "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and our parents hated it, that was enough. With his birthday coming this close to Christmas, I somehow have gone all these years without ever delivering a set of his quotes. People with late-December birthdays suffer that a lot - we'll hear from one of them on her special day tomorrow.
QUOTES:
"Art is making something out of nothing and selling "

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice, there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

"People make a lot of fuss about my kids having such supposedly 'strange names', but the fact is that no matter what first names I might have given them, it is the last name that is going to get them in trouble."

"Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over."

"The more boring a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the child, receive adulation for being good parents because they have a tame child-creature in their house."

"Never stop until your good becomes better, and your better becomes the best."

"Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?"
All from Frank Zappa, 1940 - 1993

Thought of the Day:
""Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money."
— Anonymous.

Quote of the Day:
"Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind."
--Evan Esar, humorist writer (1899-1995)

Quote of the Moment:
"If you're successful in what you do over a period of time, you'll start approaching records, but that's not what you're playing for. You're playing to challenge and be challenged."
--Lou Brock, MLB Hall of Fame player (b. 1939)

Poem of the Day
"You Are Not a Statue" by Mark Yakich.

And I am not a pedestal.

We are not a handful of harmless
scratches on pale pink canvas.
Today is not the day to stop

looking for the woman
to save you. What was once
ivory is wood. What was once

whalebone is cotton.
My coif and corset are duly
fastened, and your shirttail is

tied in a diamond knot.
You may be the giver
of unappreciated nicknames

and the devoted artist
who has given my still life
life. But we can never reach

each other's standards.
You want to condemn me
to eternity. I want to make you

no more perfect than you
used to be. We are not
together, we are not alone.


Bonus Poem:
"Air Envelope" by Catherine Wagner

A skylight stippled
Wet, scatted
With translucent brown maple seedwings

I'm under that

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

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

"I didn't know."

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

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

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Today is Boxing Day, celebrated in England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and a legal holiday in some of those, but the origins of the day are lost. Possibly it's the day the priests distributed the proceeds of the Christmas offering boxes to the needy, possibly the remnants of masters giving gifts to the servants who had to work on Christmas putting on the feast. The custom is old, "Good King Wenceslaus", actually the Duke of Bohemia, took food and fuel to the poor man on this day in the first half of the 10th century.
QUOTES ON BOXES:
"There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams. Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there."
- Erma Bombeck, 1927 - 1996

"The past should be culled like a box of fresh strawberries, rinsed of debris, sweetened judiciously and served in small portions, not very often."
- Laura Palmer.

"If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn't the whole airplane made out of that stuff?'
- George Carlin, 1937 - 2008

"Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead."
- Tom Stoppard, playwright

"There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food."
- Zora Neale Hurston, 1891 - 1960

"The finest philosophy for life I ever read was printed on the back of a box of matches, it was 'Keep dry and away from children'. Naturally I jest. Or do I?"
- Robert Rankin.

Thought of the Day:
""Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good."
—-Calvin Coolidge, 30th Pres. of the US (1872-1933).

Quote of the Day:
"Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it."
--W. Somerset Maugham, English author (1874-1965)

sl.glitter-graphics.net/pub/1056/1056048gfr2ahr4mi.gif[/i]
Quote of the Moment:
"Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory."
--John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-born economist (1908-2006)

Poem of the Day
"Monna Innominata (I dream of you, to wake)" by Christina Rossetti.

I dream of you, to wake: would that I might
Dream of you and not wake but slumber on;
Nor find with dreams the dear companion gone,
As, Summer ended, Summer birds take flight.
In happy dreams I hold you full in night.
I blush again who waking look so wan;
Brighter than sunniest day that ever shone,
In happy dreams your smile makes day of night.
Thus only in a dream we are at one,
Thus only in a dream we give and take
The faith that maketh rich who take or give;
If thus to sleep is sweeter than to wake,
To die were surely sweeter than to live,
Though there be nothing new beneath the sun.

Bonus Poem:
"Monna Innominata (I loved yu first) by Christina Rossetti.

I loved you first: but afterwards your love,
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? My love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you contrued me
And loved me for what might or might not be—
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not 'mine' or 'thine';
With separate 'I' and 'thou' free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of 'thine that is not mine';
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

"Monna Innominata (I wish I could remember) by Christina Rossetti

I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or Winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my tree
That would not blossom for many a May.
If only I could recollect it, such
A day of days! I let it come and go
As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow;
It seemed to mean so little, meant so much;
If only now I could recall that touch,
First touch of hand in hand—Did one but know!

[/size][/color][/font]

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
The Maico Transist-ear hearing aid was first offered for sale on Dec. 29th in 1952, the first fully-transistorized hearing aid. (Sonotone had introduced a model with one transistor and two tubes just the week before.) It was a breakthrough in comfort and weight, reducing the size of the belt-mounted battery pack dramatically and cutting the cost for a set of replacement batteries from $100 to $10. I hope to not need one soon, although my Hearing is not what it once was.
QUOTES ON HEARING:
"The world is dying for want, not of good preaching, but of good hearing."
- George Dana Boardman, 1801 - 1831

"We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less."
- Laertius Diogenes.

"You wish to see; listen. Hearing is a step toward vision."
- Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, 1090 - 1153

"A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it."
- Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1474 - 1564

"One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time."
- Gioachino Rossini, 1792 - 1868

"It is one thing to read about the world, but quite another to see and hear for oneself."
- Mary Travers, 1936 - 2009

"My father was totally against FDR. My mother thought FDR could do no wrong. They were both quite hard of hearing.... The decibel level at our dining room was high."
- David McCullough.

Thought of the Day:
"I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it."
--Rita Mae Brown, author (b. 1944)

Quote of the Day:
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
--H. G. Wells, English author (1866-1946)

Quote of the Moment:
"Never expose yourself unnecessarily to danger; a miracle may not save you...and if it does, it will be deducted from your share of luck or merit."
--The Talmud


Poem of the Day
"Winter-time" by Robert Louis Stevenson in Delected Poems [Penguin Classics]

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.

Before the stars have left the skies,
At morning in the dark I rise;
And shivering in my nakedness,
By the cold candle, bathe and dress.

Close by the jolly fire I sit
To warm my frozen bones a bit;
Or with a reindeer-sled, explore
The colder countries round the door.

When to go out, my nurse doth wrap
Me in my comforter and cap;
The cold wind burns my face, and blows
Its frosty pepper up my nose.

Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding-cake.

Bonus Poem:
"Envoy" by Robert Louis Stevenson

Go, little book, and wish to all
Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,
A bin of wine, a spice of wit,
A house with lawns enclosing it,
A living river by the door,
A nightingale in the sycamore!

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born at Bombay, British India on Dec. 30th in 1865, son of the headmaster of an art school there. At five the boy was sent to school in England, he returned to India at seventeen. He worked as a newspaper writer and editor, turning out short stories and poems on the side. By the time he returned to England in 1889 he was famous for both poetry and satire, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. His reputation has risen and fallen with cultural change of the last century, but much of it has been consistently loved.
QUOTES:
"Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels fastest who travels alone."

"They copied all they could follow
but they couldn't copy my mind
so I left them sweating and stealing
a year and a half behind."

"All we have of freedom
all we use or know
This our fathers bought for us,
long and long ago."

"Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat."

"Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din."

"When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took — the same as me."
All from Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

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

Quote of the Day:
"The meek shall inherit the earth — if that's all right with you."
—-Anonymous.

Quote of the Moment:
"Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."
--Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright (1854-1900)


Poem of the Day
"Thursday" by Edna St. Vincent Millay in Collected Poems [Haarper & Brothers]

And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday—
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday,—yes—but what
Is that to me?

Bonus Poem:
"Assault" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Welcome to the year 2012! I hope it's a great one for all of us. New Year's Day is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar used in ancient Rome. With most countries using the Gregorian calendar as their main calendar, New Year's Day is the closest thing to being the world's only truly global public holiday, often celebrated with fireworks at the stroke of midnight as the new year starts. January 1 on the Julian calendar currently corresponds to January 14 on the Gregorian calendar, and it is on that date that followers of some of the Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate the New Year.
QUOTES:
"The principle of fashion is ... the principle of the kaleidoscope. A new year can only bring us a new combination of the same elements; and about once in so often we go back and begin again."
- Katherine F. Gerould.

"Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires."
- Omar Khayyám, 1048 - 1131

"The gist of New Year's Day is: Try again."
- Frank Crane, 1861 - 1928

"Some years I'm the coolest thing that ever happened, and then the next year everyone's so over me, and I'm just so past my sell date."
- Cher, actress & entertainer.

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."
- Neil Gaiman, author.

Thought of the Day:
"The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear."
--Maya Angelou , poet & author (b. 1928)

Quote of the Day:
"When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them."
--Rodney Dangerfield, comedian (1921-2004)

Quote of the Moment:
"Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything."
--Blaise Pascal, French philosopher (1623-1662)


] Poem of the Day
"In Memoriam (Ring out, wild bells) by Alfred Lord Tennyson in Selected Poems [Penguin Classics]

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Bonus Poem:
"Break, Break, Break" by Alfrend Lord Tennyson

Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.

[pegasus]

Quotes for Today
Barry Morris Goldwater was born at Phoenix, in the Arizona Territory, on Jan. 2nd in 1909. His father ran the largest department store in Phoenix. After attending Staunton Military Academy he went to the University of Arizona for a year but left to take over the family business when his father died. He joined the Army Air Force at the start of WW II and flew freight to Asia and South America. After the war, he established the Arizona Air National Guard, piloting 165 different types of plane. He served in the Senate from Arizona, then ran for president in 1964, appearing to be so conservative that he lost in the biggest landslide ever (a record that would stand for only eight years). He had supported most civil rights legislation and had integrated the Arizona Air National Guard two years before the rest of the armed services, opposed the increase in religion in conservative politics, urged Nixon to resign, and argued in favor of allowing gay men and women to serve in the armed forces. Outside of politics, he was a longtime ham radio operator, an avid collector of Hopi kachina dolls, and a skilled landscape and portrait photographer.
QUOTES:
"Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternative."

"To disagree, one doesn't have to be disagreeable."

"My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century."

"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed."

"Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar. They'll still be serving long after we're all dead and buried. That should not surprise anyone."

"We would have lost even if Abraham Lincoln had come back and campaigned with us."
All from Barry Goldwater (1909-1998)

Thought of the Day:
"Liberty, like chastity, once lost, can never be regained in its original purity."
--Henry Wheeler Shaw, humorist & lecturer (1818-1885)

Quote of the Day:
"If you believe everything you read, better not read."
--Japanese proverb.

Quote of the Moment:
"Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud."
--Sophocles, Greek dramatist (c.496-406 B.C.)


Poem of the Day
"New Year's Morning" by Helen Hunt Jackson in Sonnets and Lyrics [Roberts Brothers]

Only a night from old to new!
Only a night, and so much wrought!
The Old Year's heart all weary grew,
But said: "The New Year rest has brought."
The Old Year's hopes its heart laid down,
As in a grave; but, trusting, said:
"The blossoms of the New Year's crown
Bloom from the ashes of the dead."
The Old Year's heart was full of greed;
With selfishness it longed and ached,
And cried: "I have not half I need.
My thirst is bitter and unslaked.
But to the New Year's generous hand
All gifts in plenty shall return;
True love it shall understand;
By all my failures it shall learn.
I have been reckless; it shall be
Quiet and calm and pure of life.
I was a slave; it shall go free,
And find sweet peace where I leave strife."
Only a night from old to new!
Never a night such changes brought.
The Old Year had its work to do;
No New Year miracles are wrought.

Always a night from old to new!
Night and the healing balm of sleep!
Each morn is New Year's morn come true,
Morn of a festival to keep.
All nights are sacred nights to make
Confession and resolve and prayer;
All days are sacred days to wake
New gladness in the sunny air.
Only a night from old to new;
Only a sleep from night to morn.
The new is but the old come true;
Each sunrise sees a new year born.