A conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged; a liberal is
a conservative who’s been indicted; and a passionate prison reformer is a
conservative who’s in one.
April
is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Search America's historic
newspapers pages from 1836-1922 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find
information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
On this day in 1895, Oscar
Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest opened in London. He
wrote the first draft in just 21 days, the fastest he'd ever written anything.
The play tells the story of a man named Jack Worthing who pretends to have a
younger brother named Earnest. Jack uses the imaginary Earnest as an excuse for
getting out of all kinds of situations, and even pretends to be Earnest when
that suits his purposes. At the same time, Jack's friend Algernon Moncrieff
also begins impersonating the imaginary Earnest. When two women fall in love
with Jack and Algernon, they both think they are in love with a man named
Earnest. It comes out in the end that Jack and Algernon are themselves actually
long lost brothers.
Wilde said that The Importance of Being
Earnest expressed his philosophy that "we should treat all the trivial
things of life very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere
and studied triviality."
Going to heaven!
I don't know when,
Pray do not ask me how,--
Indeed, I'm too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to heaven!--
How dim it sounds!
And yet it will be done
As sure as flocks go home at night
Unto the shepherd's arm!
Perhaps you're going too!
Who knows?
If you should get there first,
Save just a little place for me
Close to the two I lost!
The smallest "robe" will fit me,
And just a bit of "crown";
For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home.
I'm glad I don't believe it,
For it would stop my breath,
And I'd like to look a little more
At such a curious earth!
I am glad they did believe it
Whom I have never found
Since the mighty autumn afternoon
I left them in the ground.
Now that the vegetarian
nightmare is over and we are back to
our diet of meat and deep in the sway of our dark and beauty-
ful habits and able to speak with calm of having survived, let
the breeze of the future touch and retouch our large and hun-
gering bodies. Let us march to market to embrace the butcher
and put the year of the carrot, the month of the onion behind
us, let us worship the roast or the stew that takes its place once
again at the scared center of the dining room table.
After years of marriage, he stands at the foot
of the bed and
tells his wife that she will never know him, that for everything
he says there is more that he does not say, that behind each
word he utters there is another word, and hundreds more be-
hind that one. All those unsaid words, he says, contain his true
self, which has been betrayed by the superficial self before her.
"So you see," he says, kicking off his slippers, "I am more than
what I have led you to believe I am." "Oh, you silly man," says
his wife, "of course you are. I find that just thinking of you
having so many selves receding into nothingness is very excit-
ing. That you barely exist as you are couldn't please me more."
With only one story to
tell, the clock strikes
a monotonous note, irrespective of how
musical the bell, how gilded the chimes
its timely conclusions report through.
Time literally on hands, it informs you
to your face exactly where you stand
in relation to your aspirations, stacks up
the odds against your long-term prospects,
leaves your hopes and expectations checked.
Keeping track of time to the last second, it gives
the lie to all small talk about your reputedly
youthful looks, sees through the subterfuge
of dyed hair, exposes the stark truth beneath
the massaged evidence of smooth skin.
Every year, for twenty years or more, I drove my family to Delaware
to visit my parents at Christmas time. We would dread the day long drive each
year, first with a baby, then later with two babies, then small children and finally,
all day in a car with teenagers. Waking up in the dark to beat the morning rush
hour traffic in Charlotte, Richmond by lunch time, and Washington DC before the
afternoon rush, we would pull off of I-95 in Delaware, frazzled and tired, by
dinner time. 525.4 miles in ten hours, we made that trip year after year after
year.
I always felt such relief to walk into Mary Lee and Minor’s
home. It was clean as a whistle and warm and inviting and when Dad said his customary
“greetings!” I knew I had finally arrived home. Mom had a meal ready that would
keep well and we all stood around looking at each other, glad for the ride to
be over and anticipating all that Christmas was at the Seward’s home. And
though my own home was far away, I always felt that I had come back to my
original home where I was able to be carefree and relaxed, accepted for who I
was, no matter what I did or did not do.
We did the same things and ate the same food and said the
same words to one another over the years. Nothing happened in their house that
wasn’t also happening in homes all across America. It was just what we did and
I really didn’t appreciate it much until the last three Christmases. My kids
are now in their mid-twenties and we stopped making the trip regularly when
they left home. My wife deserved to be with her family for a change and it just
didn’t make sense anymore. We still drove
up to visit but not so regularly and not always at Christmas.
When it would come time to leave for drive back home, Dad
would park his Lincoln out in the driveway so I could back my Honda into the
garage and load it up in the warm. At o’dark-thirty, Mom and Dad would be up,
in their bathrobes and pajamas, coffee cups in hand, to see us off. For many
years, I hugged my dad and told him I loved him, there in the kitchen. After several
years, he came to respond, first with “uh-huh” then “me too”, until finally one
year, I hugged him and he hugged me back and Minor Seward said, right out loud,
“I love you too, son.”
Dad died in September of 2009 and this is the third
Christmas that I won’t be able to hug him. I don’t think about him much now
unless I am using a tool he showed me how to use, or using the table he built
that is beside my chair in the den, or when I make coffee in the morning or
check the house before bed or when I check the oil in my car, or when … ok I
think about him every day.
The fire is burning
The room's all aglow
Outside the December wind blows
Away in the distance
The carolers sing in the snow
Everybody's laughing
The world is celebrating
And everyone's so happy
Except for me tonight
Because...
[Chorus:]
I miss you
Most at Christmas time
And I can't get you
Get you off my mind
Every other season comes along
And I'm all right
But then I miss you
Most at Christmas time
I gaze out the window
This cold winters' night
At all of the twinkling lights
Alone in the darkness
Remembering when you were mine
Everybody's smiling
The whole world is rejoicing
And everyone's embracing
Except for you and I
Baby...
I miss you
Most at Christmas time
And I can't get you
Get you off my mind
Every other season comes along
And I'm all right
But then I miss you
Most at Christmas time
In the springtime
Those memories start to fade
With the April rain
Through the summer days
Till Autumn's leaves are gone
I get by without you
Till the snow begins to fall
And then...
I miss you
Most at Christmas time
And I can't get you
Get you off my mind
Every other season comes along
And I'm all right
But then I miss you
Most at Christmas time
“Time is like
money: you can spend, waste, or invest!” Unknown
I'll be ready for
it to happen and that way it won't happen. It's a burden, being able to control
situations with my hyper-vigilance, but it's my lot in life.
Tina Fey, Bossypants,
2011
So live that you
wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.
--Will Rogers
The
culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor
MapQuest
app gives audible turn by turn directions on my Iphone so I won’t drive my car
off of a cliff, again.
Meditation of the week
Nothing happens unless first a dream. --Carl Sandburg
What do
we see when we daydream about the future? Is everything much better than it is
now, or are we still struggling with the same issues? Are we dreaming about
what we really want or about what we think we want? Do we see the whole picture
or just a piece of it? Do our daydreams match our goals?
Actions
we take today affect how we live tomorrow. If we know what we want -- if we
listen to our heart's desire, write down our goals, and keep them in mind with
every action we take --we create our dreams. We turn our wishes into goals and
our goals into reality.
