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I GET LETTERS |
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E-mail arrived the other day from
the intrepid and indispensable tara who made an interesting suggestion. To whit;
‘Since you’re having trouble getting to new editions of Ask Rod, why not answer
a few letters each day at the beginning of the Daily Flight Plan.’ Seems like a
pretty good idea to me, what do you think? Meanwhile on with Sarah & Joe’s
favorite feature, the somewhat selective version of this day in history.
Today in 1674 John Milton, poet and polemicist (Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and
Areopagitica) died in Chalfont England. Dateline: Spokane, Washington, 1810 – W.M.
Frost receives patent for an insect electrocution device. 1864: Abraham Lincoln reelected
president.1871: Everyone knows about what happened today in Chicago with Mrs.
O’Leary’s cow. But almost unnoted is that on the same day as that famous
gigantic blaze, in Wisconsin the Great Postage Fire is raging over six counties, killing
1,182 people (compared with 250 fatalities in the Chicago fire.)
Today in 1880 civil war broke out in Samoa and in 1889, Montana becomes the forty-first
state to be admitted to the union.
In 1900 Doubleday, Page & Co. issues Theodore Dresser’s first novel Sister
Carrie. The book is considered immoral by many and bowing to public pressure it is
withdrawn. 459 copies were sold and the author’s royalties amount to $64.40. 1965:
Composer Edgar Varese dies in New York City. In 1974 London’s Covent Garden closed
for the last time.
No Blue Mondays allowed tomorrow. Work hard and afterward play harder.
- RM 11/2/98 |
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Christian Barnard o
Sir Arnold Bax o Alain Delon o Alberto Erede o Leif Garrett o Edmond Halley o Mary Hart o June Havoc o Katharine Hepburn o Jerome Hines o
Rickie Lee Jones o Margaret Mitchell o Patti Page o
Parker Posey o Bonnie Raitt o Morley Safer o Georg Schneevoight |
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Hope is the pilot
light of life.
Kindness is the link between earth and heaven.
Let no one presume to write your history, live it.
Those who suffer together have the tightest bond. |
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TWO POEMS FROM CELEBRATIONS OF THE HEART |
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I Roll
Better with the Night
Wrestling with the morning
I come out the loser
lying on the mat
looking up through the thighs of today.
I imagine myself
being picked up
held, not let go.
Friendly hands
slipped into my back pockets
holding me close against new shoulders
then across my back
hands becoming arms
keep on holding me.
I roll better with the night.
I come up easy in the night
falling back
only when I’m tired and happy.
I don’t mean to be indelicate
but I’m always amazed
on meeting someone,
later mouthing them all over
all night long,
then in the morning they leave
afraid to use my toothbrush.
My mouth’s now been in and out of yours
and in and out of you so much
that scrubbing down with your toothbrush
is like eating cool mint jellybeans.
It’s seven a.m.
another twenty minutes
and we’ll both be late.
I don’t want to move
and, anyway, my arm’s asleep.
I know, I know.
Go, if you like,
but brush your teeth first
on the way to work
you might meet someone
you’d like to smell especially sweet for.
Report on a Life in Progress / February 1973
I’d rather be
a poet read
than one who postures
for posterity.
As I would rather love
and know that I am unloved
than be desired at a distance,
unmoved and unaware.
Having achieved as far as I know
these two distinctions
the first has given me
happiness of some measure.
The second one has made me
not as sad
as some among you might believe.
- From "Celebrations of the Heart", 1973, 1975 |
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