Evanescence "Missing"

From this child of God to Tomaso, who fails to recognize that I am a child of God whenever he chooses. I thought the Italian gentleman would be so very Christian when Francis I became Pope. Instead, he has become the academic, Italian, Joel Osteen, preaching how to make your pile bigger and bigger, with not a word about the least of these, not one action that comports with the Beatitudes. A heartbreaking development. A cruel, yes cruel, person, to me, not to everyone. But I know the side of him that the flock does not know. Sure do wish I didn't. Yes, I made huge mistakes. I was very wrong. It was not intentional. I apologized to Tomaso and to God. God forgave me. Tomaso never will.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln. I hope it was worth it.

Today is the 205th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, who began serving when he was 52 years old. He was president from March, 1861, until his death on April 15, 1865. One of the most beautiful arrangements of words in the English language is, to me, the Gettysburg Address,  a speech he delivered on November 19, 1863. The speech dedicated, even consecrated, the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA, just four months after the Union Army had defeated Confederate troops at that site. This particularly bloody battle carries the burden of its distinction of having resulted in the greatest number of casualties of any battle in the entire Civil War.

On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomatox Court House, Virginia. Two days later, on April 11, Lincoln spoke at the White House, mentioning his approval of granting the former slaves' their right to vote. Already a hated figure among many Southerners, and despite the fact that the war was over and the "Union" was preserved, these words tipped the balance in the mind of at least one man in the White House audience, the actor John Wilkes Booth. Booth was a member of one of may groups of pro-Confederate conspirators, who could not accept the war's ending in their defeat or the end of the Confederate States of America, not to mention freedom for the slaves. It turned out that most of these groups were all talk, but conspiratorial talk would no longer do for Mr. Booth. He vowed that what he had just heard would be the last speech that President Abraham Lincoln would ever make. He was now ready for his group of conspirators to move ahead with their plans to harm President Lincoln, and they did so very quickly.

President and Mrs. Lincoln attended the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, on the night of April 14, 1865, three days after Booth heard Lincoln speak and made his decision to commit murder. It was now just five days since Lee's surrender to Grant, ending the war. There at Ford's Theater, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, mortally wounding him, and then fled. President Lincoln died the next day, April 15, 1865, becoming the first U.S. president to die by assassination.

Abraham Lincoln really did give his life to save this Union, which is one of the major reasons that the throwing around of the threat to secede on the part of contemporary figures in the old Confederate states angers me so much, as does the lingering of Booth's and the Confederates' racism.

Here is that most beautiful of speeches, from Gettysburg, PA:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.








And it is up to us, Mr. President, to see to it that you too have not died in vain.

L'essentiel est invisible

From Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

It was then that the fox appeared.

“Good morning,” said the fox.

“Good morning,” the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.

Under the Apple Tree

“I am right here,” the voice said, “under the apple tree.”

“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very pretty to look at.”

“I am a fox,” the fox said.

“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”

“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”

“Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince.

But, after some thought, he added:

“What does that mean–’tame’?”

“You do not live here,” said the fox. “What is it that you are looking for?”

“I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that mean–’tame’?”

“Men,” said the fox. “They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?”

“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean–’tame’?”

“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties.”

“‘To establish ties’?”

“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . .”

“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . .”

“It is possible,” said the fox. “On the Earth one sees all sorts of things.”

“Oh, but this is not on the Earth!” said the little prince.

The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.

“On another planet?”

“Yes.”

“Are there hunters on that planet?”

“No.”

“Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?”

“No.”

“Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox.

But he came back to his idea.

“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”

Tame me

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

“Please–tame me!” he said.

“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”

“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . .”

“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.

“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me–like that–in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . .”

The next day the little prince came back.

“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . .”

“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.

“Those also are actions too often neglected,” said the fox. “They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all.”

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near–

“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”

“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . .”

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.

“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.

“Then it has done you no good at all!”

“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.” And then he added:

“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”

And the roses were very much embarassed.

“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox.

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential

It is only wth the heart that one can can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye

is  invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”

“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

Great Books Are Essential

I wrote this entry in December 2012 and kept it as an unfinished draft until today. My thoughts and feelings about the importance of including the great works of the great authors, even if we have to read Faust in translation, have not changed. If anything, I value literature more as time goes by, and I see the strength it has given me to draw on through times of sorrow and challenge and sickness as I near my own back pages.

The Telegraph's story  December 7, 2012

The UK's Telegraph is reporting that there is to be a major change in the curricula of American schools. Books like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird are to be replaced by nonfiction books that will help prepare students for jobs. The Telegraph reports that at least 70% of the reading material must be nonfiction greats such as a manual for installing insulation or an inventory of plants. Apparently Great Books are now reserved for the 1%, the 99% being worker bees who don't need to clutter their heads with Miss Havisham or the great Achilles or Oedipus Rex or Don Quixote or a hundred thousand others, not all of which I've gotten to myself because there are so many. And the biggest shock of all to me is that this plan is backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I learned to understand mortality from Homer's Iliad. I saw for a brief moment of flashing insight what immortality stole from the Greek gods. They squandered time on their feuds, their petty jealousies, but it didn't matter. No one was going to die. They could always make up tomorrow. But for us time is precious, people are precious, because we are mortal. I learned about the code of honor, the sacred respect for a body whose soul has passed and what a crime desecration is. I learned from Achilles the danger of unrestrained anger. I came away from Homer actually glad to be mortal. I am blessed to be mortal because I can love in a way that the Greek gods never could. And I need to appreciate the people in my life because all things must pass.

In the late 1970's I taught King Lear to a class of high school seniors who cried over how Lear was treated by his children. I was so touched that the young people felt such compassion for old Lear despite his foolishness and mistakes. There is much about madness and betrayal, but there is also the true and pure love that Cordelia feels for her father, the King. And more, always more.

These texts makes us fully human. The enhance our humanity, bring it to maturity. They teach us how others have faced the problems we face so that we know we can live through whatever we are going through. They imbue us with hope, wisdom, courage, morality, love.

And like To Kill a Mockingbird, they teach us about justice and injustice, about what other people feel, people whose shoes we will never be able to walk in, like the poor black man wrongly charged with raping a white woman and like Boo Radley, one of life's different ones. I loved Scout, her spirit, her courage, her intelligence, her gentleness. And Atticus, oh wouldn't we all want to have his courage?

And they want to replace all this with insulation manuals and plant taxonomies? And Bill and Melinda Gates are in on this. God help us all.

Making fun of my own flaws Part I

I have a lovely friend on Twitter who is a New York Times best-selling author and a very sweet person. On Thursday, the 6th, she posed this question to anybody and everybody:

"How do you confess a terrible mistake? Do you get straight to the point, or go round and round what you want to say?"


My answer:

"I do both repeatedly until they block me, literally and metaphorically, and it cannot be repaired."

I do not think I have been doing this very long. I think this is a brand new weed in the garden. There is nothing to do but pull it out by the roots right now.

Making fun of my own flaws Part II

Monty Python's I'm So Worried

I'm So Worried, Lyrics by Terry Jones

I'm so worried about what's happenin' today, in the middle east, you know.
And I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.
I'm so worried about the fashions today, I don't think they're good for your feet.
And I'm so worried about the shows on TV that sometimes they want to repeat.

I'm so worried about what's happenin' today, you know.
And I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.
I'm so worried about my hair falling out and the state of the world today.
And I'm so worried about bein' so full of doubt about everything, anyway.

I'm so worried about modern technology.
I'm so worried about all the things that they dump in the sea.
I'm so worried about it, worried about it, worried, worried, worried.

I'm so worried about everything that can go wrong.
I'm so worried about whether people like this song.
I'm so worried about this very next verse, it isn't the best that I've got.
And I'm so worried about whether I should go on, or whether I should just stop.

(pause)

I'm worried about whether I ought to have stopped.
And I'm worried, because it's the sort of thing I ought to know.
And I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.

(longer pause)

I'm so worried about whether I should have stopped then.
I'm so worried that I'm driving everyone 'round the bend.
I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for." Bob Marley

After Winter by Sterling Allen Brown

In honor of Black History, I offer a poem by my most beloved African-American poet, Sterling Allen Brown, called After Winter. I love Brown so much because of his reverence for folk life and authentic language despite his privileged upbringing and education at Williams College and Harvard. He taught the first course in Afro-American literature in the United States in the English Department at Howard University in Washington, DC, where Toni Morrison was among his students. The greatest privilege of my life was my time teaching in that department at that esteemed and wonderful university.

After Winter

He snug­gles his fin­gers
In the blacker loam
The lean months are done with,
The fat to come.

His eyes are set
On a brushwood-fire
But his heart is soar­ing
Higher and higher.

Though he stands ragged
An old scare­crow,
This is the way
His swift thoughts go,

“But­ter beans fo’ Clara
Sugar corn fo’Grace
An fo’ the lit­tle feller
Run­nin’ space.

“Radishes and let­tuce
Egg­plants and beets
Turnips fo’ de win­ter
An’ can­died sweets.

“Home­spun tobacco
Apples in de bin
Fo’ smok­ing’ an’ fo’ cider
When de folks draps in.”

He thinks with the win­ter
His trou­bles are gone;
Ten acres unplanted
To raise dreams on.

The lean months are done with,
The fat to come.
His hopes, win­ter wan­der­ers,
Has­ten home.

“But­ter­beans fo’ Clara
Sugar corn for Grace
An fo’ the lit­tle feller
Run­nin’ space.

Thank you God for poetry.

Bob Dylan broke my heart

My friend L. is an attorney who grew up in Greensboro. She's now retired, living on a lake outside of New York, where she had practiced. It was she who explained to me the why of Bob Dylan's appearances in TV commercials when I was distraught over his Super Bowl commercial Sunday. This participation, which is a horror to me, began 10 years ago when he let Victoria's Secret use a song and his image for a spot on American Idol. I never saw it because I never once watched American Idol. I don't apologize for that. I'm bragging about it. And he's dabbled in selling himself for other product commercials since then.

But there is something vastly different about Super Bowl commercials from all other commercials. That is not dabbling. That is the Big Time for commercials. I was broken-hearted by Dylan's Super Bowl ad, whether you interpret it as urging us to Buy American or Buy Chrysler or Keep Outsourcing. I saw countless articles about his fall from "counterculture hero" to what I would call a carnival barker. Why? He can't need the money that badly. Was he always a fraud or did he just finally sell out? I guess I feel as some did when he first went electric, but I won't tear anything up. I just dedicated "Positively 4th Street" to him."

L. says it's all best explained by the song for which he won the Academy Award in 2001 from the film "Wonder Boys:" 

"I used to care, but things have changed."

That 'bout says it.

Ya know, it's a damn fine song.

Good movie, too.







Lyrics:

A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind
There’s a woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin’s eyes
I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies
I’m well dressed, waiting on the last train

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

This place ain’t doing me any good
I’m in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood
Just for a second there I thought I saw something move
Gonna take dancing lessons, do the jitterbug rag
Ain’t no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag
Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove

Lot of water under the bridge, lot of other stuff too
Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road
If the Bible is right, the world will explode
I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

I hurt easy, I just don’t show it
You can hurt someone and not even know it
The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity
Gonna get low down, gonna fly high
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie
I’m in love with a woman who don’t even appeal to me

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
I’m not that eager to make a mistake

People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

Copyright © 1999 by Special Rider Music

Robert Plant in Tears at Kennedy Center Honors, 2012

Ann and Nancy Wilson, Heart, do what everyone thought could not be done. They did an excellent job performing "Stairway to Heaven" when the Kennedy Center Honors paid tribute to Led Zeppelin in late 2012. The Washington Post commented that at the after-party, the "grizzled Englishmen were the friendliest rock gods the event has seen in years." The website antimusic.com noted that Robert Plant was "humbled" by the honors.

Watch his face. Watch his eyes. Watch his hand at his face. At the same time, Jimmy Page seems totally happy and content, and John Paul Jones is smiling.

The choir in the black bowler hats is quite marvelous, and Ann Wilson succeeds.