I want to die while you love me never see this grow dim cease to be
Adapted from the poem I Want to Die While You Love Me by Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson (September 10, 1880 – May 15, 1966), was a poet. She was one of the earliest female African-American playwrights, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance according to Wikipedia.
I want to die while you love me, While yet you hold me fair, While laughter lies upon my lips And lights are in my hair. I want to die while you love me, And bear to that still bed, Your kisses turbulent, unspent To warm me when I’m dead. I want to die while you love me Oh, who would care to live Till love has nothing more to ask And nothing more to give! I want to die while you love me And never, never see The glory of this perfect day Grow dim or cease to be.
crimson light of a rising sun fresh from creative burning hand of God
According to Wikipedia, This Week Magazine was a nationally syndicated Sunday magazine supplement that was included in American newspapers between 1935 and 1969. In the early 1950s, it accompanied 37 Sunday newspapers. A decade later, at its peak in 1963, This Week was distributed with the Sunday editions of 42 newspapers for a total circulation of 14.6 million.
When it went out of business in 1969 it was the oldest syndicated newspaper supplement in the United States. It was distributed with the Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), the Boston Herald, and others. Magazine historian Phil Stephensen-Payne noted, “It grew from a circulation of four million in 1935 to nearly 12 million in 1957, far outstripping other fiction-carrying weeklies such as Collier’s, Liberty and even The Saturday Evening Post (all of which eventually folded).”
“I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God.
I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision”
The text of the complete quote is even better at least for those who like to hope for better days,
“I have spent,” he said gravely, “as strenuous a life as any man surviving three wars and two major depressions, but never, not for a moment, did I lose faith in America’s future.
Time and time again, I saw the faces of her men and women torn and shaken in turmoil, chaos, and storm.
In each Major crisis, I have seen despair on the faces of some of the foremost strugglers, but their ideas always won.
Their visions always came through.
“I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us,
I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God.
I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision. . . “
I end with the last line of the story.
He took off his hat, as if saluting the future, and ran his hand through his white hair and said with a smile, “May I offer my favorite toast? “To the storms to come and the stars coming after.”
To the storms to come and the stars coming after!
I like that.
I like that a lot, especially on a morning when I drove to work as the sun rose out of the Atlantic Ocean with a storm coming from the west.
To close, may I offer Mr. Sanburg’s favorite toast?
“To the storms to come and the stars coming after.“
*I reproduce the story best I can but if you click on this link, you can read a PDF of the complete issue. The advertisements are great and you might enjoy taking the Are You in the Know quiz.
Carl Sandburg Speaking: I See Great Days Ahead
Here is an article that will bring you a thrill. In it, you will walk along a city street with a beloved story-teller, and hear America talking
BY FREDERICK VAN RYN
Mr. Van Ryn, is a former editor and motion-picture executive who has been associated with Sandburg for 20 years.
SEVENTY-FIVE years ago this coming Tuesday, a child was born in a three-room frame house on Third Street, just east of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy tracks, in Galesburg, Ill. A Swedish midwife said to the dark, stickily built man who was waiting outside, “Det är en pojke” — “It’s a boy.” The man nodded, ate his breakfast in silence, and went out to his job in the CB&Q blacksmith shop. He was good at swinging a hammer, but he was not very demonstrative.
The boy was christened Carl August Sandburg but he dropped his middle name. The various jobs he tried — he delivered milk and newspapers, he was a hobo and a dishwasher, a shoeshine boy and a soldier — did not seem to rate a middle name.
A few weeks ago, while on a short visit to New York, Sandburg went for a long walk with an old friend. He was in a reminiscent mood. He talked of his early days in Galesburg, of his youth in and around Chicago, of his present home in the mountains of North Carolina, and of America’s future.
The Prophecy
So stirring was his description of the days that lie ahead of us, that his companion wished that all Americans, particularly those who suffer because of little faith, could hear this prophecy of things to come. Sandburg was not making a speech, he was merely chatting. But it so happens that his conversational style is an amazing mixture of grave, sonorous phrases that seem to be lifted right out of “Pilgrim’s Progress” and the latest slang expressions that would be understood by the most boisterous of teen-agers. Once in a while, as he and his companion were waiting for a traffic light to change, a passer-by would look at Sandburg and say: “Excuse me, but your face seems familiar. Weren’t you on television a few nights ago?” This far-from-flattering way of identifying one of America’s most famous poets and the greatest biographer of Abraham Lincoln did not disturb Sandburg. He grinned. “I like New York,” he said, “but Lordy, oh Lordy, how I miss Chicago . .. New York is handsome and intelligent, but,” he raised a warning finger, “Chicago is steaks, pork chops, grain. When New York is sick, the rest of the country still struggles along, but let Chicago sneeze … why, the whole country runs a fever . . . New York may be this nation’s head, but Chicago is still its heart.
“ Country Boy”
“Why don’t I live in Chicago? That’s simple … I’m a country boy. When I wake up in the morning, I’ve got to be able to see either the prairie or the mountains. When I’m in a city, I feel like a visitor . . . I’m not certain of myself, I can’t think.” He stopped abruptly, raised his head, and looked at the group of massive buildings ahead. _“The Medical Center,” he said slowly. “Each time I look at those beautiful buildings, I think of the miracles that have occurred in America within my lifetime. You don’t hear nowadays about many children dying of diphtheria, do you? Well, when I was twelve, in Galesburg, my two kid brothers, Freddy, who was two years old, and Emil, who was seven, woke up one morning and complained of sore throats. Old Doc Wilson came, examined them and said, ‘It’s diphtheria. All we can do now is hope . . . They might get better, they might get worse. I can’t tell.’ “He came again the following morning and just shook his head . . . “It was Freddy who first stopped breathing. I can still see Mother touching Freddy’s forehead and saying, her voice shaking and the tears coming down her face, ‘He’s cold … our Freddy is gone…’
The Lincoln Book
“Em was a strong, fine boy, and we hoped he might pull through. We stood by his bed and watched … His breathing came slower and slower, and in less than half an hour, he seemed to have stopped breathing. Mother put her hands on him and said, ‘Oh God, Emil is gone, too…” “That was medicine in the late 1880’s. Look at it now. Why, nowadays, Freddy and Emil would be up and about in less than a week.”. After a long silence, Sandburg spoke up again. “Speaking about children,” he began, “once upon a time, I had a brainstorm. I decided I would write a book that kids could understand and enjoy. It dawned on me that someone ought to tell them about that strange man from the plains of Illinois named Abe Lincoln. So, I sat down and wrote the title page — THE STORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN — FOR THE VERY YOUNG. . .
“It was my intention to write a short book, not more than three hundred pages. I thought I could write it, maybe, in six months. I didn’t want to write anything about the Civil War. I thought it would be too gory for the kids. I was going to say on the first page, “You all know about the great Civil War. I am not going to say anything about it in this book, but I want to tell you the story of Lincoln when he was still a young man and lived in a prairie town. ..’””
Gathering Information
He laughed and nudged his companion. “Well sir, then I began gathering my ammunition … Weeks, months,. years went by. Every day, I would find either a letter that was never published before, or a clipping, or a photograph that nobody before paid any attention to. It took me eight years before I was ready to- write my story. By that time, I could hardly move in my attic. Every inch of space was taken by boxes, barrels, and trunks containing my data. “As far as the actual writing was concerned, it took me exactly sixteen years to write “The Prairie Years’ and “The War Years.’ All in in all . . .” he laughed again, “well, the first World War was still on when I conceived the bright notion of writing ‘Abraham Lincoln’s Story for the Very Young,’ but by the time I finally managed to deliver the last batch of stuff to my publishers, it was July, 1939, and the second World War was just around the corner … Lordy, Lordy, how I worked. Often sixteen, sometimes as many as twenty hours at a stretch … My bones ached.
“I guess what actually kept me alive during those years was the challenge . . . When I started gathering my ammunition, I said to myself, ‘Let’s find out whether that man, Lincoln, was really as good and as great as they say.’ That was the challenge. “Well, Lincoln won. It took me twenty-four years to find out that he was every inch as good and as great as he was described.” By now, Sandburg was within a block of his hotel. He stopped, lit a cigar, and spoke briefly of his new book. It is called, “Always the Young Strangers,” and Harcourt, Brace will bring it out on Tuesday, the poet’s birthday. It’s about the first 20 years of his life. He said he had to write it. There was no other way to “get rid” of the teeming memories of his past.
The Life of Riley
“There I was,” he said by way of explanation, “hibernating on my farm in Flat Rock, which is probably the smallest and the nicest town in my adopted State of North Carolina. I was living the life of Riley, staring at the Great Smoky Mountains, and watching my sixty goats that I brought with me from my farm in Michigan. “But my mind was far, far away, right back where I started from, in Galesburg, the town I was born in. … I would close my eyes and visualize the old burg as I knew it.
My father and mother, my sisters and brothers, the man who gave me my first job as a delivery boy … and the man who gave me hell because, instead of using a soft brush on his high silk hat, I dusted it with my whiskbroom … my school teachers and friends, and the storm. ..’” the Knox College campus where Lincoln and Douglas debated . . . Finally, it got too much for me. So, two years ago, I decided to re-visit Galesburg and maybe write a book about those far-gone days. “All the streets in Galesburg were paved by now, and the town looked happy and prosperous. Most of the people I knew were gone, but my cousin, Charlie Krans, with whom I played when we were kids, was still alive. So, I spent a day on his farm. When I was leaving, I said, ‘I think we’ll meet again, Charlie, we’re too ornery to die soon.’ ”
Never Lost Faith
Sandburg laughed uproariously. He was standing on the sidewalk in front of his hotel by this time and was about to go in when he suddenly changed his mind, turned around and looked at the lateafternoon sun that seemed to be setting afire the skyscrapers on lower Manhattan. His manner changed abruptly. He was no longer a jovial man who had gone to visit his old home town. His pale blue eyes were blazing, his finely chiseled face was set. He was a prophet. “I have spent,” he said gravely, “as strenuous a life as any man surviving three wars and two major depressions, but never, not for a moment, did I lose faith in America’s future. Time and time again, I saw the faces of her men and women torn and shaken in turmoil, chaos, and storm. In each Major crisis, I have seen despair on the faces of some of the foremost strugglers, but their ideas always won. Their visions always came through. “I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision. . . “” He took off his hat, as if saluting the future, and ran his hand through his white hair and said with a smile, “May I offer my favorite toast? “To the storms to come and the stars coming after.”
that usual gang of idiots – Mad would not be Mad without you
Al Jaffee has died.
The New York Times reports that:
Al Jaffee, a cartoonist who folded in when the trend in magazine publishing was to fold out, thereby creating one of Mad magazine’s most recognizable and enduring features, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 102.
“I have this idea,” he recalled telling them. “I think it’s a funny idea, but I know you’re not going to buy it. But I’m going to show it to you anyway. And you’re not going to buy it because it mutilates the magazine.”
The men did buy it, and then asked for more, and the inside back cover quickly became Mr. Jaffee’s turf. Although other regular Mad features changed artists over the years, no one but Mr. Jaffee drew a fold-in for 55 years.
Anyone my age knows Mad Magazine.
Odd little jokes and word play that I first read in Mad still come to my mind on a regular basis.
I am not sure of who bought them in my family.
There was a built in cupboard with three drawers in our family room and that was where all our comic books were stored.
The Mad Magazines also got tossed in there.
The thing was, I never knew where they came from or who bought them.
But there they where.
And always, ALWAYS, someone had already folded the fold in.
Then when I was in Junior High, I happened to be in Kay’s Drugstore on the North End (NOTE: Not the North East side as some folks thought was implied by the NE on the street signs – the NE stood for North End) of Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up.
I happened to be in Kay’s Drugstore with money in my pocket.
I must have been sent up to the Avenue (as Plainfield Ave was called) to get my hair cut at Dick’s Barbershop.
If you were a boy my age and you lived on the North End of Grand Rapids, you got your hair cut at Dick’s Barbershop.
That meant we all looked the same in our school pictures.
That also meant that when you got to Dick’s you stood outside until it looked like Dick or Arnold had a free chair,
If you didn’t wait and just walked right in you might end up in Nick’s chair.
Nick, AKA ‘Nick the Butcher’, had this bad habit of catching his razor on that bony part behind your ear.
“Whup,” he would say, “might have nicked you there.”
If was bad enough you would get Band-Aid stuck on your head under your ear lobe.
You would see these Band-Aids under other kids ears at school and point and laugh and say “Nick the Butcher got you.”
But I digress.
I must have been sent to get my hair cut and had some change left over so I could go to Kay’s and get a candy bar or something.
Instead I looked at the comics and Mad Magazine.
I still remember how it felt when I figured out I had enough money to buy my own copy of Mad.
It felt great and at the same time, almost wrong.
It wasn’t that Mad Magazine was banned in our house or anything like.
But it was … off color … shall we say.
I am not sure why I felt it was wrong but I do remember feeling that my Mom would not be happy if I came home with it.
So I made the decision that Mom just wouldn’t know.
I grabbed a copy and went to the counter to pay feeling both good and bad and very grown up.
It came to me that who ever it was at Kay’s who was working at the cash register and would check me out would most likely know who I was and if not WHO I was, would know I was a Hoffman and the fact that I bought a copy of Mad Magazine might be mentioned to my Mom the next time she came in.
I quickly rationalized that being from a family of 11 kids, the chances were good that while my family would be known, I would escape in the anonymity of being the 8th kid and I could live with those chances.
I got my copy of Mad and read it all the way home.
When I got home, I put the Mad flat under my sweater, walked in the house and yelled, I’M HOME.
My Mom was in the kitchen (she was usually in the kitchen – in the days when all of us were living at home, 6 o’clock dinner time preparations started with 2 dozen pork chops around 4pm) and she told me to stop and turn around.
Busted! I thought but then she just complimented me on my hair cut.
Until the hippy era, I had to same hair cut which was universally known as a ‘Princeton’ or a buzz cut with bangs.
I pretty much looked the same from 1964 to 1972 except that I got glasses.
I said thanks and walked as innocently as I could through the kitchen to my room.
I walked so innocently that had my Mom been watching she would known I was up to something but she turned her back and I made it downstairs.
In my room, I closed the door and slipped the Mad Magazine out from under my sweater.
I sat on my bed with extreme satisfaction and did a ‘first time’ back page fold-in for the first time.
BOY HOWDY but did I feel like something!
There then was the rub,
How did I brag about this to my brothers without revealing that I had brought a Mad Magazine home?
As much as I wanted to tell everyone what I did, I made the decision that not getting caught was better than showing off.
I stayed in my room and read Mad Magazine.
Dinner time came and I hid the magazine under my bed.
After dinner I went a back to my room and read through the Mad version of the movie the Guns of Navarone.
By bedtime I had finished every page, panel and joke including all the Sergio Aragones Marginals.
The next morning presented the problem of what to do with the magazine.
I had thought that if I could smuggle it upstairs into the comic book drawer I would be safe.
But that meant sharing it with my brothers and I felt, it was MY copy.
I kinda made my bed, which I never did, and slid the magazine under the pillow and pulled the covers up over the pillow and tucked it in.
That was safe and sound for me.
That afternoon I got home from school.
I’M HOME, I yelled as I came in as any of my brothers and sisters would have yelled.
My Mom poked her had out of the laundry room (which is where she was if she wasn’t in the kitchen) to say hello and ask about my day and as I stood talking with her I looked at the laundry piled up and saw that it was all bedding from the boys rooms.
Mom just kept talking about this and that as my stomach dropped into my shoes.
She want back to her laundry and I walked into the kitchen and made noise getting some cookies and when enough time had passed I ran down to my room.
My bed had been remade with clean sheets and blankets.
I stood for a minute just looking.
Without moving into the room, I stood and looked at my desk and the bureau and the floor of the room.
Nothing.
Hoping beyond hope, I laid on the floor and looked under the bed.
Maybe when my Mom made the bed, the Mad Magazine had fallen out and landed, undetected, under the bed.
Nope.
I stood up.
I reached out and raised up my pillow.
There under the pillow, tucked under the blanket was my Mad Magazine.
Al Jaffee has died.
I remember him with very fond memories.
Some of which are about his stuff inside Mad magazine.
call it a weapon it’s something used to injure defeat or destroy
Oh, how I want to ignore the world and how I want to comment on words and word play and the like but the world keeps knocking down my door and takes over my mind so that I have to comment on the world with words or go crazy.
My brother Bobby was one of the last group of young American men to be welcomed into serving their country through something known as selective service or, more simply, the Draft.
As I understand it, every American male got a draft number assigned by their birthday.
I am not sure how often it happened that numbers were reissued but I clearly remember a night when I was about 6 or 7 that we all watched TV as draft numbers were selected.
In a big bowl were 365 small identical plastic containers.
In each container was a piece of paper with a month and day.
The date in that first container that was opened got the draft number of 1.
Say that that container just opened had the date July 17th on it, that meant that every year, when the 1st draft class was called up, all those young men who were 18 years old on July 17 should consider themselves drafted.
As the US Army needed men that year, more and more draft numbers and draft classes would be called up.
Any number lower than 50, you could plan on being in the US Army for at least 2 years.
50 to 100, well, things didn’t look too good for you either.
Above 100, you could take a breath.
Above 200 you could relax.
Bobby sat there and watched, waiting for October 6th to show up.
Bobby got a number in the ’80s.
He sat in a chair and stared at the TV.
“Look at that! Look at that!“, he said again and again.
Bobby turned 18 in 1968 but was enrolled in College and got deferments.
In the fall of 1972, after graduation from Western Michigan University, he got a letter of greetings from Richard Nixon, the President of the United States that informed him that his presence at Fort Knox, Kentucky was required.
He would spend that Thanksgiving season at Fort Knox.
And on December 28, 1972, the draft was suspended by that same President Nixon.
Myself, I thought it was kind of cool.
I was 12 and the idea that my brother got to go play army with all his buddies was okay with me.
We got regular letters and the occasional phone call.
I ate it all up.
He sent his score sheet from the rifle range.
He described testing gas masks and what it was like when you had to take off your mask.
He described eating Thanksgiving Dinner in an Army mess hall with Drill Sergeants yelling MOVE IT, MOVE IT, EAT, EAT, EAT!
He described leaning to throw a hand grenade.
Bobby was a pretty good ball player and had a decent arm.
He told how he was handed a grenade by his Sergeant and shown how to pull the pin then told to put the grenade on his ear to hear the timer.
Then he was told to throw it.
Not sure how much more incentive anyone needs to throw something than to hold a ticking grenade to your ear and Bobby got rid of it as quick and as hard as he could.
There was a pause, then an explosion far down the grenade range.
“Wow!”, said his Sergeant.
“Great throw!”
Bobby taught us some of the songs they sang on marching.
Some of the cadences.
He would rattle of a line or two.
“They say that in the army, the clothes are mighty fine. Both me and my buddy can fit into mine.“
Then he stop and say, “The next words get a little dirty.”
One thing that really stuck with me was that he got to use an M-16.
He was always careful to refer to it as a weapon.
That was part of the training.
It was a weapon.
It was a weapon, not a gun.
Bobby said that if the Sergeant heard you refer to your weapon as a gun, it was 25 pushups.
Twenty five pushups with your weapon on the floor under your hands.
After each pushup, you had to recite, “I am sorry I called you a gun, Weapon!”
That got me to thinking about words and word use.
It is not a gun.
It is a weapon.
A weapon as described by the online Merriam-Webster is something (such as a club, knife, or gun) used to injure, defeat, or destroy.
Injure.
Defeat.
Destroy.
I can’t do much about the nations obsession with weapons.
there’s a race of men that don’t fit in, can’t stay still roam the world at will
I had opportunity to enjoy a cigar with my books in the South Carolina sunshine from out on our balcony over looking the parking lot.
I saw a family walking across the to their car.
A young Mom and Dad.
The Dad, skinny with a red baseball cap.
The Mom, carrying a baby in a car seat.
The Dad pushing, with one hand, a small child in a stroller and carrying another car seat with another child in the in the other hand.
They approached their car, set the car seats down and opened all the doors to let the heat out.
Then they packed up the family.
Working the three car seats and the three kids into the back seat of their car took about 5 minutes.
There was a baby crying in that infant-baby squalling tone of cry
The Mom got in.
The Dad made one final check of seat belts, straps and clips then shut the doors and got in.
And they drove off.
A young family.
Just getting starting.
Years of commitment on tap.
I had to wonder.
In a way, more than anything else in the news, here was some small, short, casual message of hope.
A portrayal of folks, perhaps in their proper groove.
In way, I felt sorry for that young Dad.
In way, I did not feel sorry for that young Dad.
As I said, I was reminded of a poem by Robert Service.
The Men That Don’t Fit In.
The first stanza goes like this.
There’s a race of men that don’t fit in, A race that can’t stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain’s crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don’t know how to rest.
As I said, this poem came to mind as I watched this young Dad and Mom.
The poem was not about them.
######
The complete poem:
The Men That Don’t Fit In There’s a race of men that don’t fit in, A race that can’t stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain’s crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don’t know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they’re always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. They say: “Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!” So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake.
And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead, In the glare of the truth at last.
He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance; He has just done things by half. Life’s been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost; He was never meant to win; He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone; He’s a man who won’t fit in.
Source: The Spell of the Yukon, and Other Verses (1911)
No Haiku For You 