 |
| Now is the Time! |
 |
| "LA FÊTE A PAPA"
A Sweet French Father's Day Greeting & Le Bon Marché ~ advertising card Thanks to my friend Jes for this little treasure! |
Sons Of
Sung by Judy Collins
Sons of the sea, sons of the saint
Who is the child with no complaint;
Sons of the great or sons unknown
All were children like your own
The same sweet smiles, the same sad tears
The cries at night, the nightmare fears
Sons of the great, sons unknown
All were children like your own
Sons of tycoons, or sons from the farms
All of the children ran from your arms
Through fields of gold, through fields of ruin
All of the children vanished too soon
In towering waves, in walls of flesh
Amid dying birds trembling with death
Sons of tycoons, sons from the farms
All of the children ran from your arms
Sons of your sons, sons passing by
Children were lost in lullaby
Sons of true love, sons of regret
All of your sons you can never forget
Some build the roads, some wrote the poems
Some went to war, some never came home
Sons of your sons, sons passing by
Children were lost in lullaby
Written by Jacques Brel (1929 - 1978),
Eric Blau, Gérard Jouannest, & Mort Shuman
 |
| A. C. Grayling (b 1949)
on amazon / pdf |
"Almost everywhere one looks among present societies, race and racism make angry welts and deep wounds on the body politic. It is an irony that although racism is a reality, and a harsh one, race itself is a fiction. The concept of race has no genetic or biological basis. All human beings are closely related to one another, and at the same time each human being is unique. Not only is the concept of race entirely artificial, it is new; yet in its short existence it has, like most lies and absurdities current among us, done a mountain of harm. . . . But advances in genetics have demolished such taxonomies, by taking DNA [and species] as the criterion of classification. . . . ‘Race has no basic biological reality,’ says Professor Jonathan Marks of Yale University; ‘the human species simply doesn’t come packaged that way.’ Rather, race is a social, cultural and political concept based on superficial appearances and historical conditions, largely those arising from encounters with other peoples as Europe developed a global reach, with the slavery and colonialism that followed.
. . . The physical diversity of human populations today is purely a function of geographical accidents of climate and the isolation of wandering bands. The distinctions which have since been drawn between peoples are therefore arbitrary and superficial, even those relating to skin colour – for as a moment’s attention shows, there is simply no such thing as ‘white’, ‘black’ or ‘yellow’ people; there are people with many shades and types of skin, making no difference to any other aspect of their humanity save what the malice of others can construct."
~From Sections 68 & 69
 |
| Check out this mystery
~ and review in The Guardian ~ for numerous fun allusions to James Joyce's Ulysses. Quirke even sees a "lanky-looking galoot in a gabardine raincoat" (148). |
 |
 |
And so close, he nearly had it: " . . . the cedar-shingled roof of Martello Tower #3 was destroyed by fire on June 6, 1857 by fire and replaced with a metal roof. The tower was demolished in 1904 to make way for a hospital pavilion."
Appropriately, a Martello - themed answer -- about Canada rather than Ireland -- constitutes a classic "Bloomism", which is "a term coined by scholar Richard Ellmann to describe a characteristic mental habit of Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses: 'an uneasy but scrupulous recollection of a factual near-miss.' It refers to moments when Bloom accurately recalls the gist or context of a fact, name, or phrase, but gets the specific detail slightly wrong, resulting in a funny or almost-correct error."
 |
| Update 2025:
The Forty Foot & The Martello Tower |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Spring Willows
by Andrea Wisnewski |
 |
| Willow Baby
by Elsa Beskow (1874 – 1953) |
 |
| by Grace Tiffany |
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
David Wagoner (1926 – 2021)
American poet, novelist, and educator
More by Wagoner: QK & FN
Actuarially Impossible: “Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope to read in one fleeting lifetime. A good book, resting unopened in its slot on a shelf, full of majestic potentiality, is the most comforting sort of intellectual wallpaper.” ~ David Quammen
 |
| Church Bell ~ Ward, Colorado, 1917
By Georgia O'Keeffe |
 |
| Photos above and below ~ Edinburgh, 2018 |
My Ain Countrie
The sun rises bright in France,
and fair sets he,
But he has lost the look he had,
in my ain countrie
Though gladness comes to many,
a sorrow comes to me
As I look o’er the ocean wide
tae my ain countrie
It’s no my ain ruin
that saddens aye my ee
But the love I left in Gallowa
wi bonnie bairnies three
My hamely hearth burns bonnie
an smiles my sweet Marie
I left my heart behind me,
in my ain countrie
The bird wins back tae summertime,
and the blossom tae the tree
But I’ll win back, no never,
tae my ain countrie
I’m leal tae high heaven,
that will prove leal tae me
An I will meet ye aa aricht soon,
frae my ain countrie
Allan Cunningham (1784 – 1842)
"My Ain Countrie
"A sad late Jacobite song of exile.
"The song was written by Allan Cunningham, an author and poet in the manner of Robert Burns, who was born at Keir, near Dalswinton, Dumfriesshire. Cunningham’s father had been a neighbour of Robert Burns at Ellisland, and Allan became a friend of James Hogg.
"Cunningham was asked by Robert Cromek to help gather old songs for Cromek’s book called 'Robert Hartley Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song.' Cunningham successfully presented several of his own imitations of ballads and Jacobite songs as old originals. One of these was ‘My Ain Countrie.’
"The tune is said to be ‘A Gaelic air.’"
 |
| Spring in Gościeradz (1933)
Leon Jan Wyczółkowski (1852 – 1936) Leading Polish painter and educator |
Today
If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze
that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house
and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,
a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies
seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking
a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,
releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage
so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting
into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.
by Billy Collins (b. 1941)
from his collection
Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems
