Food? Existential
necessity, carries love.
Daily life structure
Grandma’s food was a conduit that transmitted love. Peasant women worked too hard and too much to find time to cuddle and play with the kids; instead, they would make their favourite dishes. This is another source for the ethical value of food – it carried love . From ‘Bread is practically sacred’: how the taste of home sustained my refugee parents By Aleksandar Hemon
Another well-written article from the Guardian. (UK)
Sign of a Nation
Equal justice, right and law
Hats Off! Flag passing!
Hats off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
A dash of color beneath the sky:
Hats off!
The flag is passing by!
Blue and crimson and white it shines,
Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.
Hats off!
The colors before us fly;
But more than the flag is passing by.
Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great,
Fought to make and to save the State:
Weary marches and sinking ships;
Cheers of victory on dying lips;
Days of plenty and years of peace;
March of a strong land’s swift increase;
Equal justice, right and law,
Stately honor and reverend awe;
Sign of a nation, great and strong
To ward her people from foreign wrong:
Pride and glory and honor,–all
Live in the colors to stand or fall.
Hats off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;
And loyal hearts are beating high:
Hats off!
The flag is passing by!
Henry Holcomb Bennett
Henry Holcomb Bennett (December 5, 1863 – April 30, 1924) was an American author, journalist, and poet.
Bennett was born in Chillicothe, Ohio on December 5, 1863. He attended Kenyon College and graduated in 1886. He moved to Kansas for a time before returning to his home town as a journalist. He also began submitting creative writing to various newspapers and magazines.
Bennett was the author of poems such as “A Desert Love Song” (Munsey’s Aug. 1902) and “Gangway! Gangway”, (National Magazine Mar. 1901) and the short stories “The Face of Ompah” (National Magazine June 1900) and “A Glorious Privilege”, (National Magazine Nov. 1900) but remains best known as the author of the popular patriotic poem, “Hats Off – The Flag Goes By”.
It was first published in The Youth’s Companion on January 13, 1898. It was collected in An American Anthology in 1900, edited by Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908). The poem was also published in The Young and Field Reader, Book Five, Boston, Ginn and Company, c. 1915, submitted by Ross I. Morrison, Sr and Woman’s World in July 1919. It was soon published and sung widely—especially on the 4th of July. Years later, poet E. E. Cummings recited the poem at his class’s commencement.
Bennett is buried in Grandview Cemetery, Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio, USA. (wikipedia)
chill through the heart
apocryphal predictions
end of printed word?
I want a world with books.
Lots and lots of books.
And lots of bookstores and lots of libraries.
But it is practical?
They say the iPhone has the computer power to match the old CRAY5 Mega Computers of the 1980’s.
On my computers and devices, I have 1,000s of titles and with internet access, I have access to million’s more – on a level that was beyond even imagination until this century.
I have worked in bookstore, libraries and publishers.
I have been around books all my life.
There is a bookstore in Savannah where I hope to get a job when I retire.
I still find unexplainable personal pleasure in reading a well bound hard cover book.
I still find unexplainable personal pleasure in being in a library or bookstore.
I still find unexplainable personal pleasure in seeing large personal libraries.
But we have moved often and relocating a personal library of lots and lots of books changed my personal point of view.
Printed books have moved from a necessity to a luxury.
And so many things get printed for some reason.
Just look at cook books.
I have a rule that if a cookbook had 1, just 1 good recipe that I would use, that was a good cookbook.
And good cookbooks are hard to find.
Technology so great …
Can go to outer space, but
can’t get glasses clean
I think it really got bad for me with the plastic or polycarbonate lenses and for the life of me I cannot get them clean.
I cannot get that greasy film off.
I have tried everything from space age wipes to extra extra special cleaning clothes.
I have spent 10 minutes polishing my glasses only to put them on and and seemingly instantly, a fingerprint shows up.
So I live with it but geeeee whizzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
My grand daughter recently saw a photo of me when I was kid, before glasses.
She said, “It’s Poppa when he could see!”
Share the kindliness
Manifest no jealousy
A new existence
Most of my grade school teachers started the day with reading out loud to the class.
My sixth grade teacher, Mr. Vanderwheel, introduced us to Treasure Island and Call of the Wild.
Jack London at 9AM in sixth grade can be a lot for a kid but I can still hear Mr. Vanderwheel read: To Buck’s surprise these dogs manifested no jealousy toward him. They seemed to share the kindliness and largeness of John Thornton. As Buck grew stronger they enticed him into all sorts of ridiculous games, in which Thornton himself could not forbear to join; and in this fashion Buck romped through his convalescence and into a new existence. Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time. This he had never experienced at Judge Miller’s down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. With the Judge’s sons, hunting and tramping, it had been a working partnership; with the Judge’s grandsons, a sort of pompous guardianship; and with the Judge himself, a stately and dignified friendship. But love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken John Thornton to arouse.
Pretty good thoughts, for a dog.
