Consider This

while I think on thee, dear friend

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear times' waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.
—William Shakespeare: Sonnet XXX

Source: The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor for Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2010.

Your Tribe; Do You Know It?

Our tribe members are those people who accept us as we are and gladly accompany us on our journeys of evolution.
—Daily OM for Friday, 5 Feb. 2010

Source: Daily OM for Friday, 5 Feb. 2010, Finding Your Tribe; Your Allies On Life’s Journey.
> See also: Men's Work: The Chesapeake Men's Gathering.

When to Stop Talking?

My great-grandfather used to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Source: ThinkExist.com's Mozart Quotes
> It is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart born in 1756 on this day in Salzburg, Austria. He died in Vienna, Austria on December 5, 1791. See The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor for Wednesday, January 27, 2010

You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean.
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died,
"I 'ope you liked your drink", sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone --
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
—Rudyard Kipling in his poem Gunga Din

Source: Everypoet.com's Poetry of Rudyard Kipling Gunga Din.
> it is the birthday of Rudyard Kipling who was born in Bombay, India in 1865. He died on January 18, 1936 in London England.

Waiting for Sunday?

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.
—Robert Bly from his unpublished poem Call and Answer

Source: New and Unpublished Poems by Robert Bly: Call and Answer
> It is the birthday of Robert Bly, born on this day in 1926 in Madison, Minnesota.
> See also The Chesapeake Men's Gathering.

No Lies, Please, I Love a good Soup!

Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup.
—Ludwig van Beethoven

Source: BrainyQuote.com's Ludwig van Beethoven Quotes.
>: Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany; he was baptized in a Roman Catholic service on 17 December 1770, and was probably born the previous day, 16 December. He died on 26 March 1827 in Vienna, Austria.

Ah, Life!

Never, my heart, is there enough of living.
—Leonie Adams

Source: The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor for Wednesday, December 9, 2009.
> It's the birthday of the American poet Leonie Adams. She was born on this day in 1899 in Brooklyn, New York. She died on June 27, 1988 in New Milford, Connecticut.

Happiness of Life

What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. ... I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.
—Virginia Woolf

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Wednesday, November 25, 2009.

The Snipes' Lament

The Snipes Lament
Now each of us from time to time, have gazed upon the sea.
We watched the warships pulling out, to keep this country free.
Most of us have read a book, or heard a lusty tale,
about the men who sail these ships, through lightning, wind and hail.
But there’s a place within each ship, that legend fails to teach.

It’s down below the waterline, it takes a living toll...
A hot metal living hell, that sailors call the “hole.”
It houses engines run by steam, that makes the shafts go round.
A place of fire, noise and heat that beats your spirit down.
The engines are molded by gods without remorse, that are nightmares in a dream.
Whose boilers threat that from the fires roar and superheated steam.
Makes the "hole" like living hell, that at any minute, with tormented scorn, escape the pipes and crush you out.

Where turbines scream like tortured souls, alone in the ships bowels,thinking of being lost in hell.
As ordered from Bridge above, to the Snipes a duty to answer every bell.
The men who keep the fires lit, and make the engines run,
are strangers to the world of day light, and rarely see the sun.
They have no time for man or God, no tolerance for fear.
Their aspect pays no living thing, the tribute of a tear.

For there’s not much that men can do, that these men have not done.
Beneath the decks deep in the hole, to make the engines run.
And every hour of every day, they keep the watch in hell.
For if the fires ever fail, their ship’s becomes a useless shell.

When ships converge to make war upon the sea.
The men below just grimly smile, at what their fate might be.
They’re locked in below like men for doomed, who hear no battle cry.
It’s well assumed that if they’re hit, the men below will die.
For every day’s a war down there, when the gauges all read red,
Twelve hundred pounds of heated steam, can kill you mighty dead.

So if you ever write their sons, or try to tell their tale.
The very words would make you hear, a fired furnace’s wail.
And people as a general rule, don’t hear of men of steel.
So little’s heard about the place, that sailors call the “hole.”

But I can sing about this place, and try to make you see.
The hardened life of men down there, cause one of them is me.
I’ve seen these sweat soaked heroes fight, in superheated air,
To keep their ship alive and right through no one knows they’re there.

And thus they’ll fight for ages on, till warships sail no more.
Amid the boiler’s mighty heat, and the turbines hellish roar.
So when you see a ship pull out, to meet a warlike foe,
Remember faintly if you can, THE MEN WHO SAIL BELOW,
that call the HOLE their home.
—Author unknown shared by a commenter "Black Shoe Snipe."

Source: From the deep bowels of the USS Donald B Beary FF-1085 "Mission Sailors Always" offered by a commenter, "Black Shoe Snipe" on my blog entry Snipes A Poem and Tribute for April 10, 2006. Thank you, Black Shoe Snipe! Remember, 30 and NO smoke! Only economy haze!

How Do You Respond to a Problem?

The problem is rarely/never the problem. The response to the problem invariably ends of being the real problem.*
—Tom Peters
*Perception is all there is!

Source: Email subscription tom peters! Quotes of 23 November 2009.
See also: tompeters!.

Use Me Thoroughly Up!

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
—George Bernard Shaw

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Monday, November 2, 2009.

Fears of Some People

The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.
—George Bancroft

Source: Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, October 3, 2009.
> Today is the birthday of George Bancroft born this day in 1800 in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was an historian and statesman, and was acting Secretary of the Navy when the US Naval School (later, the US Naval Academy) was established on October 10, 1845 on the Severn River in Annapolis, Maryland. He died on January 17, 1891 in Washington, D.C.
> Bancroft Hall at the US Naval Academy was built in 1901–06 and is named in honor of George Bancroft.

Be the Change

We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.
—Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Source: WikiQuote's Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
> WikiQuote says of this quote:
"As quoted in "Arun Gandhi Shares the Mahatma's Message" by Michel W. Potts, in India - West [San Leandro, California] Vol. XXVII, No. 13 (1 February 2002) p. A34; Arun Gandhi indirectly quoting his grandfather. See also. "Be the change you wish to see: An interview with Arun Gandhi" by Carmella B'Hahn, Reclaiming Children and Youth [Bloomington] Vol.10, No. 1 (Spring 2001) p. 6"
> Today is the birthday of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, born this day in Porbandar, a coastal town in present-day Gujarat, India, on 2 October 1869. On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot while having his nightly public walk on the grounds of the Birla Bhavan (Birla House) in New Delhi.
> See also Wikipedia's Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Clever, You Say?

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
—Oscar Wilde

Source: Oscar Wilde quotes on Thinkexist.com.

My Absent Child

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?
Fare you well: had you such a loss as I,
I could give better comfort than you do.—
I will not keep this form upon my head,
When there is such disorder in my wit.
O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!
—William Shakepeare as spoken by Constance in The Life and Death of King John

Source: The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor for Tuesday, August 11, 2009
>> On this day in 1596, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway buried their only son, Hamnet, who died at the age of 11 of unknown causes. At that time in England, about one third of children did not survive past the age of 10. Hamnet was named after Shakespeare's close friend, a baker, Hamlet Sadler. ("Hamnet" and "Hamlet" were virtually interchangeable names.) Hamnet had a twin sister Judith, named after the baker Hamlet's wife, Judith.