Quotes of the week
This is what you shall do
"This is what you shall do; Love the earth
and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate
tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the
people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number
of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with
the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of
every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church
or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh
shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in
the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and
in every motion and joint of your body."
Websites of the week
The culmination of millennia of scientific endeavor
Video of the week
Poem of the Week
The Polishings
In
the warm painted porch
of our old stucco house
at the legged laundry sink
covered with a plywood board
my father taught me as a boy
as he'd been taught, how a salesman
ought to polish his good shoes.
"Make them shine enough to speak,"
he insisted. "They're your first step
through the door." He'd spread out
newspaper, rags and brushes
and metal tins that twisted open
with a pop, revealing creams—
deep brown, black, cordovan.
He taught me by doing: the rag
doubled to keep the gob of polish
from bleeding though;
the non-master hand like a foot
inside the worked-on shoe
to hold it steady; the thorough
coating and spreading over leather
of waxy color, starting from scuffed toe
then down the instep side to heel
and back to toe. Once both shoes
were creamed over, he lit a cigarette
to let the glazed pair dry. Hurried
brushing, he'd say, made a short-lived
shine that wouldn't last half a day
of cold calls on the road. My father
knew so much in his handsome hands—
gilded with a rectangled wristwatch
a wedding band, and between knuckles,
wiry sprays of golden hair.
I can still see one good hand hidden
inside a brougue, the other gripping
the wooden brush as it bristled out
a leathered glow. How long did they last
those lessons on the porch? One year?
Two? How long the morning polishings
with the jobless day before him
and a son watching, a wife waiting
and no door but ours to walk through.
of our old stucco house
at the legged laundry sink
covered with a plywood board
my father taught me as a boy
as he'd been taught, how a salesman
ought to polish his good shoes.
"Make them shine enough to speak,"
he insisted. "They're your first step
through the door." He'd spread out
newspaper, rags and brushes
and metal tins that twisted open
with a pop, revealing creams—
deep brown, black, cordovan.
He taught me by doing: the rag
doubled to keep the gob of polish
from bleeding though;
the non-master hand like a foot
inside the worked-on shoe
to hold it steady; the thorough
coating and spreading over leather
of waxy color, starting from scuffed toe
then down the instep side to heel
and back to toe. Once both shoes
were creamed over, he lit a cigarette
to let the glazed pair dry. Hurried
brushing, he'd say, made a short-lived
shine that wouldn't last half a day
of cold calls on the road. My father
knew so much in his handsome hands—
gilded with a rectangled wristwatch
a wedding band, and between knuckles,
wiry sprays of golden hair.
I can still see one good hand hidden
inside a brougue, the other gripping
the wooden brush as it bristled out
a leathered glow. How long did they last
those lessons on the porch? One year?
Two? How long the morning polishings
with the jobless day before him
and a son watching, a wife waiting
and no door but ours to walk through.
