AdamSmith

Seriouser observations by one of my profs at Jale ...
BOOKEND / By J. D. MCCLATCHY
Return to Gitche Gumee
hen Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was in England in 1868 to receive an honorary degree from Cambridge University, Queen Victoria invited him to tea. She was a great admirer of his work and found his company delightful. When she accompanied the poet to the door and watched him walk down the long palace corridor, she saw something slightly disconcerting. ''I noticed,'' she confided to her diary that night, ''an unusual interest among the attendants and servants. I could scarcely credit that they so generally understood who he was. When he took leave, they concealed themselves in places from which they could get a good look at him as he passed. I have since inquired among them, and am surprised and pleased to find that many of his poems are familiar to them. No other distinguished person has come here that has excited so peculiar an interest.''
Monarch and manservant, curate and carpetbagger, the whole world read Longfellow. He outsold Browning and Tennyson. In the White House, Lincoln asked to have Longfellow's poems recited to him, and wept.
When the emperor of Brazil made a state visit to the United States, his only request was to have dinner with Longfellow. The poet's 70th birthday, in 1877, was a day of national celebration, commemorated by parading schoolchildren around the country. It was proclaimed on that day that ''there is no man living for whom there is so universal a feeling of love and gratitude, and no man who ever wore so great a fame so gently and simply.''
His popularity marked a literary milestone. It could be said that Longfellow was our first professional poet. Not only was he able to make a living from his writing but he worked carefully to establish for American poetry a cultural eminence. He was both professor and balladeer; that is to say, he had literary qualities that rarely coincide and from either sideline are usually sneered at. He had an authority based on learning and allusion, gaining for his work an intellectual respect. And he had a narrative gift both sweeping and canny, along with a near perfect ear, that made his work memorable and gave it an enormous popular appeal.
Longfellow had earned his considerable prestige. From the start, he held himself to the highest literary standards, and was deeply admired by Hawthorne and Emerson, by Dickens and Ruskin. For many years, he taught comparative literature at Harvard, where he introduced Dante, Goethe and Moliere into the curriculum. He had as well the fabled energies of the Victorian man of letters. Early in his career he traveled widely, mastered 11 languages and had the entire European literary tradition in his head. He was an indefatigable anthologist (one alone ran to 31 volumes), compiler, textbook author, diarist and correspondent (so besieged was he by admirers that he eventually wrote about 1,500 letters a year), and he composed in every genre: novel, romance, short story, travel sketch, essay, table talk, verse play, translation, epic, sonnet, ballad, elegy and lyric.
Even as a young man, Longfellow aspired to literary eminence. Had he been merely brilliant, all his learning would not have helped him fulfill that ambition. But he cared too for his readers, for the language of their hearts and memories, and they responded. When ''The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems'' was published in 1858, it sold 25,000 copies in the first two months and 10,000 copies in London the first day. There was hardly a home in the United States without its hearthside copy of ''Evangeline.'' And in the wake of ''The Song of Hiawatha,'' in 1855 -- well, the nation is still cluttered with motels and steamboats, summer camps and high schools that bear the name. It was a poem imitated in French by Baudelaire and translated into Latin by Cardinal Newman's brother. As ''Hiawatha's Photographing,'' it was even quickly parodied by Edward Lear. Parody is the last form praise takes; Lear thought Longfellow ''the greatest living master of language,'' but his contemporary sendup (''From his shoulder Hiawatha / Took the camera of rosewood, / Made of sliding, folding rosewood; / Neatly put it all together'') takes primitivism into the drawing room with hilarious consequences.
Longfellow himself was no mandarin. He carefully monitored his sales figures and made certain that in addition to the morocco-bound volumes printed for the carriage trade, there were broadsides and cheap pamphlets available for the common reader. As a result, he was more widely read, more widely appreciated than any American writer of his time. One ironic token of such appreciation is that more of us, even today, can still quote at least the opening of several Longfellow poems, from ''I shot an arrow into the air'' to ''Though the mills of God grind slowly.'' In fact, so well known have many of his phrases become they have achieved the dubious status of cliche -- the patter of little feet,'' for instance, or ''ships that pass in the night'' or ''into each life some rain must fall.'' Here is poem after poem that has sunk into the national consciousness, become an indelible part of the American imagination. How is that possible?
Longfellow lived at a propitious time. He was born in the wake of the Revolutionary War; his grandfather was a colleague of Washington and his father a friend of Lafayette. The great events of the century -- the westward expansion, the debate over slavery, the Civil War -- he had as subjects. And he lived on into the modern extravagances of the Gilded Age; one of his last visitors was Oscar Wilde. His lifetime, in other words, spanned the era when the country sought to define itself, and what Longfellow gave his countrymen -- who spurned history -- was the mythology they needed. Evangeline in the forest primeval, Hiawatha by the shores of Gitche Gumee, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, the wreck of the Hesperus, the village blacksmith under the spreading chestnut tree, the strange courtship of Miles Standish, the maiden Priscilla and the hesitant John Alden, even the lonely striver's footprints on the sands of time -- together they form a nostalgic image of innocence, a people starting over, a muted but forceful heroism in touch with the rhythms and harmonies of the natural world. Both in his poems and in his undervalued novel ''Kavanagh,'' Longfellow creates his Great Good Place. Neither the city nor the wilderness attracts him. Neither the thronged metropolis of Whitman nor the solitary pond of Thoreau draws out his sympathies. Instead, Longfellow feels himself most at home in the village, its dimensions contained, its inhabitants known, its cozy routines established, its eccentric novelties cherished, a civilized community on the edge of the unfamiliar.
At the same time, he boldly helped American poetry welcome European influences, from Germanic legends to Nordic meters, seeking in the term ''American'' not a thumping, homemade vigor but a cosmopolitan openness to foreign resources. In his appetite for the unusual, combined with his extraordinary prosodic virtuosity, he seems an unexpected precursor of W. H. Auden, another poet who sought not to defy tradition but to renovate and extend it.
And then, less than half a century after Longfellow's death, the modernist braves circled and shot him down like a dazed buffalo. Ezra Pound (who, by the way, was Longfellow's grandnephew) and T. S. Eliot were determined to rid the poetic landscape of mawkishness. Narrative was out and the skewered, ego-bound lyric was in. Moralizing was out and psychologizing was in. The elegant and delicate were derided, the fragmented and confessional applauded. Meter and rhyme were considered fustian, and the broken line or free verse effusion was all the rage. Longfellow was officially declared kitsch.
But among the many readers who privately maintained their devotion to the old poet was Robert Frost, in many ways Longfellow's true successor. The title of Frost's first book, ''A Boy's Will,'' is taken from a Longfellow poem, and in 1907, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Longfellow's birth, Frost wrote an affectionate poem, ''The Later Minstrel,'' in which he gratefully acknowledges that, while under Longfellow's spell, ''You wronged the wisdom that you had, / And sighed for vanished days.'' More astutely than most, Frost understood that ''Song's times and seasons are its own, / Its ways past finding out.'' Put aside for a moment your sleek preferences, your ironic prowess, and the minstrel days of old emerge with a remarkable majesty.
Longfellow is not a poet of startling originality, not a Whitman or Dickinson. But he is a much better poet than is now supposed. Yes, he will seem sentimental at times, but from how many Victorian poems would we not nowadays want to snip off the last few, homilizing lines? Still, rereading his best lyrics, one is struck by the twilit, ghostly melancholy of his lost paradises. The moon glides along the damp mysterious chambers of the air, and somber houses are hearsed with plumes of smoke. And the grand narrative poems of his ''Tale of a Wayside Inn'' sequence have a dramatic thrust and vivid portraiture that can evoke one's first, enthralled experiences with stories, the high adventurous romance of those books that helped shape our desires and still abide in our memories. If Longfellow has long since been consigned to your dusty top shelf, it may be time to take him down. You won't just be opening a book, you'll encounter a world sometimes thought lost, but actually as near as a dream.
J. D. McClatchy, a poet and critic, is the editor of Longfellow's ''Poems and Other Writings.''
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/10/22/bookend/bookend.html

Comey’s rebuke of Trump cuts deep
The former FBI director does more than dish on Trump’s behavior — his book offers a full-throated indictment of Trump’s character.
Former FBI Director James Comey pillories President Donald Trump in his soon-to-be-released book, “A Higher Loyalty,” deriding him as a cruel and selfish liar who is “unethical,” “untethered to truth” and has likely never “recoiled from causing another person pain.”
From jabs at Trump’s height to ruminating on the status of his marriage, Comey leaves little question about how he feels about the 45th president.
But throughout the book, a manuscript of which was obtained by POLITICO, Comey also seeks to draw deeper lessons about leadership — rebukes of Trump and those around him that may be lost in the headlines surrounding the book’s more startling details, like Trump’s apparent obsession with allegations concerning prostitutes in Moscow.
In those passages, though, Comey indicts not only Trump’s character but also that of many around him, and those in power who support and defend him.
Here are some of Comey’s more pointed passages that strike at the center of Trump’s worldview.
A rumination on what it means to live a good life: “Sit there, and imagine you are at the end of your life. From that vantage point, the smoke of striving for recognition and wealth is cleared. Houses, cars, awards on the wall? Who cares? You are about to die. Who do you want to have been? … I hope some of them decide to have been people who used their abilities to help those who needed it — the weak, the struggling, the frightened, the bullied. Standing for something. Making a difference. That is true wealth.”
On liars and lying: “I’ve seen many times over the years how liars get so good at lying, they lose the ability to distinguish between what’s true and what’s not. They surround themselves with other liars. The circle becomes closer and smaller, with those unwilling to surrender their moral compasses pushed out and those willing to tolerate deceit brought closer to the center of power. Perks and access are given to those willing to lie and tolerate lies. This creates a culture, which becomes an entire way of life. The easy, casual lies — those are a very dangerous thing. They open up the path to the bigger lies, in more important places, where the consequences aren’t so harmless.”
On the fragility of institutions: “The actions of one person can destroy what it took hundreds of people years to build.”
On effective leadership: “Effective leaders almost never need to yell. The leader will have created an environment where disappointing him causes his people to be disappointed in themselves. Guilt and affection are far more powerful motivators than fear. … A leader who screams at his employees or belittles them will not attract and retain great talent over the long term.”
On self-reflection: “But transparency is almost always the best course. Getting problems, pain, hopes, and doubts out on the table so we can talk honestly about them and work to improve is the best way to lead. By acknowledging our issues, we have the best chance of resolving them in a healthy way. Buried pain never gets better with age. And by remembering and being open and truthful about our mistakes, we reduce the chance we will repeat them.”
The impostor complex: “All of us labor, to one degree or another, under the belief that if other people really knew us, if they knew us the way we know ourselves, they would think less of us. That’s the impostor complex — the fear that by showing ourselves we will be exposed as the flawed person we are. If you don’t have this, in some measure, you are an incredible jerk and should stop reading immediately.”
On humility: “As I’d seen from other leaders, being confident enough to be humble — comfortable in your own skin — is at the heart of effective leadership. That humility makes a whole lot of things possible, none more important than a single, humble question: ‘What am I missing?’ Good leaders constantly worry about their limited ability to see.”
On Trump’s team: “I once again was having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service of some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth.”
On Trump’s impact: “What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay. Whatever your politics, it is wrong to dismiss the damage to the norms and traditions that have guided the presidency and our public life for decades or, in many cases, since the republic was founded. It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check.” 
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/13/james-comey-book-excerpts-522042

Did you know that, if convicted of some crime in the late Roman republic -- usually political, or otherwise something that would be publicly put about -- and one was a 'noble', or even an ordinary citizen with 'means', the honorable thing to do was to ask to go to the private latrine, then stuff this sponge down one's own windpipe, so as to induce irreversible suffocation.
Suicide being the 'honorable' exit path.
What a world.
That world was part of what Jeshua bar Joseph was trying to free us of.
And then Paul was too. At what ended up being fatal cost to himself.

+1000

You can get STDs from anything.
So? Stay home behind locked door?

Have done it for many years, and never problem.
Course I had longtime a dog who licked my face every day and built up my immune system. 

How old is this gentleman? 

How old is this gentleman? 

??? 
What drugs are you on?

There are a lot more of these if you Google  for them. 

Have done it for many years, and never problem.
Course I had longtime a dog who licked my face every day and built up my immune system. 

Don’t talk about underage boys. Otherwise this site is open to anything that comes into your head.
Or any other organ 

From the late ‘70s...
You picked up a guy you liked, or a girl you liked (or one of both that you both liked  ), went out eating & drinking, then went home & spent the next 24 hours in bed together.

Not exactly childhood, but in 11th grade my English teacher said, ‘I know who you would like,’ and handed me a collection of short stories by Flannery O’Connor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flannery_O'Connor
Life perception was never quite the same since. 

Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Thousand_Leagues_Under_the_Sea

Couldn't agree more, OZ.  
I've never felt that Black Lives Matter means that white lives don't matter.  What it's always meant to me is that black lives seem not to have mattered in the past and now it's time that they do.
As far as I can tell, those who hear Black Lives Matter and then parrot All Lives Matter or White Lives Matter are folks with a zero-sum viewpoint.  They think that, if a black life matters more, then a white life must matter less.  Personally, I don't believe that's true, nor have I ever been a fan of zero-sum thinking.
Like our President, I enjoy making deals but, unlike our President, I don't enjoy zero-sum deals where, in order for me to win, the other person has to lose.  Maybe that's what his life experiences have taught him but it's sure not what my life experiences have taught me.  I've found that, if I've got a deal where the other person is a loser, there's still more work to do.
A deal where there's a loser is unstable.  The "loser" is going to be unhappy and will be looking for a do-over at best and revenge at worst.  Much better for both parties to end up with a smile on their face.  For me, it's always been a matter of increasing the size of the pie so that both parties get a bigger slice. It may take a little more work, but it's well worth the effort.
Even if it takes a lot more work, it's well worth the effort.  Who wants to be surrounded by disgruntled colleagues?
And even if I come out of a deal with a little bit less than I otherwise might, it's worth it to have partners who are content and who will look forward to doing another deal in the future.  My white self has certainly got enough privilege throughout my life that I can afford to get by with a little less in the future so that my black partner can get a better deal than he has in the past.  The payoff of mutual support, stability and, inshallah, friendship is well worth any conceivable shift in the balance.
More than dislike of those who believe that a zero-sum deal is the only kind there is, I'm saddened that their life experiences have given them a win-lose mindset.  My hope is that life will be kinder to them in the future.  And that they will be kinder and more generous to others.
 


 
 

As my 6 month Ban was lifted yesterday, I logged back in to find a message "from the Big man" as to the reason of my Ban, which i never knew.....   So here it is: posting CHILD PORN....   I posted the pic in a political thread regarding the Trump administration..
PARANOID much ?    HE never ceases to amaze the shit outta me.  

CAT CONDO.....

 

He always had something interesting to post.

@Adam4muscle, Dude.......  cut the crap already !   EVERYONE (except Trump cultists) have decried the Election to be FAIR, without tampering or Fraud.   He LOST by a Landslide, live with it..... now go sulk for the next 4 years like WE had to do when Trump won....  there is absolutely NO way to defend Trump here, and his behavior is Despicable and Anti-American, or as HE would call it...TREASONOUS !
The time of Trump getting HIS way and getting away with it HAS ENDED !!!!!

 

I suppose it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one separated from my (distant) family this Thanksgiving. (I refuse to sit at a table with Trump apologists.) Maureen Dowd has long made public her rift with fellow family members over Trump.

Today, she gives her column to her brother Kevin (seated center), who wrote in praise of Trump. It's a fascinating, intelligent read.
Oh, Brother! Tears for Trump
(Love the headline.)
The Comments section on the opinion piece is just as fascinating, and those numbers are growing. This early comment from a Nevada psychiatrist, The Pessimistic Shrink, jumped out to me:
"I am telling Kevin that he and his millions do not feel what they think they feel. Love is not angry. It does not minimize entire ethnic groups. It does not admire a sociopath who likely never had a kind or giving thought in his head. You cannot simply say a word and make it so."
AMEN!

He was always kind and had a playful sense of humor.  I'll miss him.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chief-justice-roberts-striking-down-164800063.html?guccounter=1
Very, very good news/
Chief Justice Roberts: Striking down ObamaCare 'not our job'