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REVENGE OF THE SPANISH LADY |
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For our friends in Greece this is
National Day and, it’s the feast days of St. Simon, St. Jude and St. Cyral.
On this day in 312 Constantine the Great is victorious over Marcus Aureoles Valerius
Maxentius at the Mulvian Bridge. Quick, say that three times without making a mistake.
1216: Henry III ascends the English throne. Columbus discovers Cuba in 1492 during his
first expedition.1636 Harvard is founded in Cambridge Mass. and in 1646 the missionary
John Eliot conducts the first Protestant service for Indians in Nonantum, Mass. There goes
the neighborhood.
In 1868 Burlesque is introduced in the United States. 1886: The Statue of Liberty, a gift
to America from France, by sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi is dedicated at
Bledsoe’s Island in New York. In 1918 "The Plague of the Spanish Lady" (not
a movie starring Antonio Banderas but an influenza epidemic) reaches it's height in
Britain. In 1952 e. e. Cummings, Charles Norton Professor of Poetry gives the first of six
"non lectures" at Harvard. Nancy Reagan says she’s "amused" by
the new First Family Paper Doll Book, which shows The Reagan’s in their underwear.
Winter’s on the way and the Bob-O-Links have flown, but I hope it’s still warm
enough wherever you are to run around in your underwear.
- RM 10/16/98 |
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Jane Alexander o
Capt. James Cook o Dody Goodman o Howard Hanson o Edith Head o Bruce Jenner o Elsa Lanchester o John Leech o Suzy Parker o Joan Plowright o Dr. Jonas Salk o Evelyn Waugh |
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Solitude is a gift
that most of us are too dumb to appreciate.
What matters most is the quality of solitude we keep while
waiting to be found out.
Silence and solitude offer more chance for enlightenment than
years of crowds and company.
There may be cosmic loneliness, but solitude is selective. |
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ONE SEA IS NOT LIKE ANY OTHER |
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I am always being pulled by love
not only bed and bodies
but a city here,
a red sail there.
A beach town
or some seaport city
always opens up her arms
in welcome to me.
I am now
the product of those
many oceans
the sea is all I know
for sure
but I know it well.
If the sea
did not make me
by hand
it rubbed me, rolled me
out of darkness
into light.
For I have seen
my past and future
on the white caps
dancing out beyond
a thousand shorelines.
I have recognized
my face
swimming in the shallows,
my body blundering
through the gray-white foam.
My life has sailed
so far out past the tide
it’s now beyond
my own far-reaching reach.
The sea makes something
out of nothing every day,
by the running in
and running back
of the tide alone.
And with the aid
of but a little sand
it polishes and hones
the bottom of the world
twice daily.
One ocean for me
is not like any other
except to say
that each has given comfort
when I need it,
love when there was none
forthcoming
from another quarter,
peace if I stayed long enough
to wait for it or seek it out.
- From "The Sea Around Me." 1975,76 |
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