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ANOTHER TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE |
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Yesterday was Abe & Mary
Lincoln’s 156th wedding anniversary. Did you remember to send a card? Today is Guy
Fawkes Day in Great Britain.
Everyone’s A Critic Dept: The year is 1664. Samuel Pepys writes in his diary
that’s he has been to see Shakespeare’s "Macbeth". He terms it,
"A pretty good play". On this day in 1872, four days after leading a march to
Rochester city hall demanding she be allowed to register to vote, Susan B. Anthony defies
the law by casting a ballot in a New Yolk election. She is fined $100. PS, she voted for
Ulysses S. Grant.
Two patents granted this week. One good, one not so good. 1862: Richard J. Gatling, for
his machine gun. He later wrote of his invention "It bears the same relation to other
fire arms that McCormick’s reaper does to the sickle, or the sewing machine to the
common needle." 1879: James Ritty receives a patent for the cash register. He
designed it as a way to discourage employees from pilferage.
Today in 1914 France and Britain declare war on Turkey. Three years later in 1917 General
Pershing leads American troops in to action against German forces in the so called
"War To End All Wars."
In 1930 when Sinclair Lewis receives a telephone call from a Swedish newspaper reporter
informing him he has just won the Nobel Prize for literature, Lewis thinks it a prank and
begins to imitate the mans accent. In 1942 American songwriter and performer George M.
Cohan dies. 1955: The French painter Maurice Utrillo passes on and in 1960 we lose the
great film producer and comedian, Mack Sennett..
- RM 11/2/98 |
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Bryan Adams o
Mark Breland o Will Durant o Walter Gieseking o Vivien Leigh o Mantovani o Nicholas Maw o Joel McCrea o Tatum O’Neal o Gram Parsons o
Roy Rogers o Natalie Schaefer o Sam Shepard o Paul Simon o Elke Sommer o Ike Turner o Krystian Zimmerman |
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I want to be owned by
nothing I own.
Help is always on the way, but most of us keep our eyes
closed.
Stress by any handle, tension or tomorrow, is the enemy of
reason.
Gentleness is the proof of human dignity. |
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TWO NIGHTS PAST THE FULL MOON |
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Finally no one lives here.
Echoes, wind, climate climbing
or falling down -
rain rains while no one listens.
In the night, as in the day,
nothing moves, turns, climbs, runs,
jumps, or even is caught
standing still.
Passion seeps
below the bedsprings
to the slats and imperfection
in the
sagging floor.
Truth hides back
behind some bolted door
that no key fits.
At least not one I own
or loaned to me
and now in my possession.
Not even the legitimate lie,
if there is such a thing
is bothered with,
trotted out and dusted off
to slide past silence
into something.
Strangely I’m complacent,
not predisposed or looking.
Anxieties that I have lived with
day into night for years,
seem less important now.
This must be some new kind of peace -
demanding nothing.
What I have done
was done deliberately.
I placed my sensibilities
in some blind trust
like a presidential candidate
who takes his new influence sincerely.
I do not expect
that one day
things will change
go back to what we’re told
is normal.
( And what is normal
certainly one man’s definition
is too simple
as a hundred guardians
of what they call normalcy
confuse, conspire and even
trap the word
until it has no meaning).
There must be reasons
for this unnoticed disappearance
of nearly everything I prized.
Disappointment with myself
is surely one,
another might be
some new culture
that crept in
while all our backs were turned.
Indifference,
some new strain
that no vaccine has been
invented for
must bear responsibility
for so many changes
or so much I cannot figure out.
I only know that even ghosts
would now call this land uninhabited.
Do not expect people or a poltergeist
to enter through an archway
or from behind a hidden panel.
Let go.
Do not be disappointed.
No keys are jangling
and no door is left ajar.
Figures. People maybe -
move about behind barred windows,
stalk as shadows
past drawn blinds
and newly shuttered screens.
Two nights past the last full moon
and all the streets
are lunar landscapes.
- From Folio, 1974, 1985 |
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