11.17.2022 – Lord, give me this day

Lord, give me this day
my opinion and forgive
the one yesterday

Adapted from the line:

For my part,” an editorial writer ended his silence, “I begin each bright morning with praying: Lord, give me this day my daily opinion and forgive me the one I had yesterday.”

As it appeared in the poem, “The People, Yes!” by Carl Sandburg.

According to Wikipedia, The People, Yes is a book-length poem written by Carl Sandburg and published in 1936. The 300 page work is thoroughly interspersed with references to American culture, phrases, and stories (such as the legend of Paul Bunyan). Published at the height of the Great Depression, the work lauds the perseverance of the American people in notably plain-spoken language. It was written over an eight-year period. It is Sandburg’s last major book of poetry.

As it says, The People, Yes, lauds the perseverance of the American people in notably plain-spoken language.

It is also one of the great collections of one-liners in my personal experience until Garrison Keillor published his Pretty Good Joke book.

Mr. Sandburg includes:

“Man,” spoke up an anthropologist, “is a two-legged animal with¬ out feathers, the only one who cooks his food, uses an alpha¬ bet, carries firearms, drinks when he is not thirsty, and practices love with an eye on birth control.”

“Shakespeare is the greatest writer of them all, a dead Englishman and you have to read him in high school or you don’t pass.

“I want money,” said the editorial writer who knew where he got it, “in order to buy the time to get the things that money will not buy.”

I close with this blessing.

May you live to eat the hen that scratches over your grave.

10.14.2022 – always expected

always expected
the worst, and it’s always worse
than I expected

“I’ve always expected the worst, and it’s always worse than I expected.”, is attributed, by sources on the information highway, to the novelist Henry James.

While a great quote, I do like to find it’s context.

Stephen Fry talks about this need for attribution of quotes in his podcast, Fry’s English Delight, where Mr. Fry goes into the differing opinions on quotes.

Some think you should quote very little and always reference the original author.

Others felt the dubious practice of quoting however much you wanted, with no reference and even changing bits was okay.

It does bother me when I cannot find where a quote that the online world attributes to someone but cannot go any further than the quote itself.

So goes the thoughts on I’ve always expected the worst, and it’s always worse than I expected.

I ran across it yesterday in the New York Time.

Sadly, the writer attributed to Henry Adams.

Henry Adams.

Henry James.

Does it matter when no one reads either one anymore and all the name does is reawaken a slight echo that they might have been someone that at sometime was worth knowing something more about?

For Mr. James, I cannot say I know much about.

Wikipedia says that Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American-born British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.

The highest thing I can say about Mr. James, with my limited knowledge, is that James Thurber once wrote how he gathered up his courage and wherewithall and called on an ex-wife so that he could re-claim his copies of the collected works of Henry James.

The worst thing I can say is to quote Mark Twain on Henry James and say, “Once you’ve put one of his books down … you simply can’t pick it up again.

I have to admit that quote has kept me, despite my respect for Thurber, from ever picking up The Bostonians and taking a mental whack at it.

Legend has it that Beethoven once said something along the line of, “I like Wagner. I do! I think someday I will set it to music.”

The importance of getting it right verus Vass you dere, Sharlie?

Regardless.

Regardless of who said it first.

I’ve always expected the worst, and it’s always worse than I expected.

And don’t forget.

Blessed are those who expect nothing.

They will never be disappointed.

To quote Ms. Parker, “What fresh hell IS this!”

10.6.2022 – no matter how thick

no matter how thick
or how thin you slice it, it
is still baloney

On August 23, 1936, a book review in the New York Times was headlined, “Carl Sandburg Writes in the True Accent of the People; His New Poem Displays and Develops the Popular Sayings That Americans Live By THE PEOPLE, YES.”

According to Wikipedia, The People, Yes is a book-length poem written by Carl Sandburg and published in 1936. The 300 page work is thoroughly interspersed with references to American culture, phrases, and stories (such as the legend of Paul Bunyan). Published at the height of the Great Depression, the work lauds the perseverance of the American people in notably plain-spoken language. It was written over an eight-year period. It is Sandburg’s last major book of poetry.

Written in 1936.

Containing the sayings that Americans live by.

One of those lines is “No matter how thick or how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney.”

Published almost 100 years ago.

In the words of that old Virginia Slims cigarette commercial, “We’ve come a long way, baby!”

I watch the news.

I read the papers.

I look at the magazines.

All I can think is, No matter how thick or how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney.

Who knew you could say such a fine line of words and be quoting Carl Sandburg.

I can go down to the beach and stand with my feet in the Atlantic Ocean waves and face Algeria across the water.

Looking out, the entire country is behind me.

Turning around and I face the entire country all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

I want scream, “WAKE UP CANTCHA!!! GEE WHIZ”

The next line in the poem is, “I would if I could and I could if I would but if I couldn’t how could I, could you?”

I guess I will just turn away and look out.

At least I can see the sun rise.

If I said the poem, The People, Yes, was a bit nonsensical, it would only serve to make it more fit for reading today.

9.7.2022 – monarch of all he

monarch of all he
surveyed, but it didn’t seem
to mean anything

The Tiger Who Would Be King

One morning the tiger woke up in the jungle and told his mate that he was king of beasts.

“Leo, the lion, is king of beasts,” she said.

“We need a change,” said the tiger. “The creatures are crying for a change.”

The tigress listened but she could hear no crying, except that of her cubs.

“I’ll be king of beasts by the time the moon rises,” said the tiger. “It will be a yellow moon with black stripes, in my honor.”

“Oh, sure,” said the tigress as she went to look after her young, one of whom, a male, very like his father, had got an imaginary thorn in his paw.

The tiger prowled through the jungle till he came to the lion’s den. “Come out,” he roared, “and greet the king of beasts! The king is dead, long live the king!”

Inside the den, the lioness woke her mate. “The king is here to see you,” she said.

“What king?” he inquired, sleepily.

“The king of beasts,” she said.

“I am the king of beasts,” roared Leo, and he charged out of the den to defend his crown against the pretender.

It was a terrible fight, and it lasted until the setting of the sun. All the animals of the jungle joined in, some taking the side of the tiger and others the side of the lion. Every creature from the aardvark to the zebra took part in the struggle to overthrow the lion or to repulse the tiger, and some did not know which they were fighting for, and some fought for both, and some fought whoever was nearest, and some fought for the sake of fighting.

“What are we fighting for?” someone asked the aardvark.

“The old order,” said the aardvark.

“What are we dying for?” someone asked the zebra.

“The new order,” said the zebra.

When the moon rose, fevered and gibbous, it shone upon a jungle in which nothing stirred except a macaw and a cockatoo, screaming in horror. All the beasts were dead except the tiger, and his days were numbered and his time was ticking away. He was monarch of all he surveyed, but it didn’t seem to mean anything.

MORAL: You can’t very well be king of beasts if there aren’t any.

From Further Fables for Our Time by James Thurber (1956)

I might change the title of the book of essays to Further Fables OF Our Time.

8.14.2022 – it is something to

it is something to
face the sun know you are free
one day of life so

Based on the poem Clean Hands by Carl Sandburg in Smoke and Steel, 1922.

IT is something to face the sun and know you are free.
To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth
And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean:
It is something.
To go one day of your life among all men with clean hands,
Clean for the day book today and the record of the after days,
Held at your side proud, satisfied to the last, and ready,
So to have clean hands:
God, it is something,
One day of life so
And a memory fastened till the stars sputter out
And a love washed as white linen in the noon drying.
Yes, go find the men of clean hands one day and see the life, the memory, the love they have, to stay longer than the plunging sea wets the shores or the fires heave under the crust of the earth.
O yes, clean hands is the chant and only one man knows its sob and its undersong and he dies clenching the secret more to him than any woman or chum.
And O the great brave men, the silent little brave men, proud of their hands – clutching the knuckles of their fingers into fists ready for death and the dark, ready for life and the fight, the pay and the memories – O the men proud of their hands.