April 13, 2014

Good Morning! 

Today is the birthday of Guy Fawkes (1570 – 1606) who said:

“A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy.”

It is also the birthday of Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1886) who said:

“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.” 

and

“I cannot live without books.” 

and

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

and

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

and

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”

Happy Birthday to Nella Larsen (1891 – 1964) who said:

“Authors do not supply imaginations, they expect their readers to have their own, and to use it”

And to Samuel Beckett (1906 – 1989) who said:

“We are all born mad. Some remain so.”

and

“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

and

“You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.”

and

“My mistakes are my life.”

Today is the birthday of Jacques Lacan (1901 – 1981) who said:

“The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom”

It is also the birthday of Eudora Welty (1909 – 2001) who said:

“Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.”

and

“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”

and

“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”

A very special birthday wish to Seamus Heaney (1939 – 2013) who said and wrote these marvelous things:

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.”

The Otter

When you plunged

The light of Tuscany wavered

And swung through the pool

From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,

Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders

Surfacing and surfacing again

This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.

You were beyond me.

The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air

Thinned and disappointed.

Thank God for the slow loadening,

When I hold you now

We are close and deep

As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.

You are my palpable, lithe

Otter of memory

In the pool of the moment,

Turning to swim on your back,

Each silent, thigh-shaking kick

Re-tilting the light,

Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you're out,

Back again, intent as ever,

Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,

Printing the stones.

Birthday greetings to Christopher Hitchens (1949 – 2011) who said:

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”

and

“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”

Finally, Amy Goodman (1957 - ) has a birthday today, and she said:

“Go to where the silence is and say something.”