Hope

You're Very Welcome.

The Elements of Style from Jake Heller on Vimeo.

Peace On Earth, Good Will To All . . .

Perhaps My Favorite of All Christmas Stories,

 especially because it's True.

Christmas Eve 1914

 
Photo Source.

Same place, 98 years later.

 Photo Source.

Read the whole story:

 here, here, here, or here.

My previous post:
here.

A President on Immigration . . .

No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us. Some of us are very disappointing. No doubt you have found that justice in the United States goes only with a pure heart and a right purpose, as it does everywhere else in the world. No doubt what you have found here did not seem touched for you, after all, with the complete beauty of the ideal which you had conceived beforehand.

But remember this: If we had grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. … And if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you, at any rate, imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. That is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome. … You dreamed dreams of what America was to be, and I hope you brought the dreams with you.

No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise. Just because you brought dreams with you, America is more likely to realize dreams such as you brought. You are enriching us if you came expecting us to be better than we are.

—Woodrow Wilson, Philadelphia, May 10, 1915

to 4,000 newly naturalized citizens

3 Quarks Daily via The American Scholar.

Quote of the Day

I’m not asking you to believe in God or to accept any kind of supreme being. 

I’m asking you to think about the faith that is associated with the hope that is not necessarily rooted in the empirical realities you see around you right at this moment, that says that we can still be part of something that is bigger than ourselves, and something that we cannot necessarily see at the moment, but simply requires us not to be afraid of each other. 

Because it’s our fear of each other that makes us exceptionally easy to divide.

- Melissa Harris-Perry:

 “Fear Is Driving America’s Politics, But Hope Is the Only Antidote“

HI-E-EYE HOPES, HE HAD HI-E-EYE HOPES, HIGH APPLE PIE IN THE SKY HOPES.

IT IS SPRING, AND THERE IS SO MUCH POSSIBILITY TODAY

To be alive        
by Gregory Orr

To be alive: not just the carcass
But the spark.
That's crudely put, but…

If we're not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?


From Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved by Gregory Orr. Copyright © 2005 by Gregory Orr.
NPR.
Blue Flower Arts.

BOOKS

TOMORROW, Or Maybe The Day After

These days, I find myself slipping now and again nearer the swirling eddies of depression, occasionally wetting a toe or two; and I thought, "I must not be the only one."

So I grabbed one of my anthologies - along with my English degree, I amassed quite an impressive collection of anthologies - and in the index, looked under "hope." Nothing. If it were there it would have been between "homo" and "horse," but it was not.

The volume was my NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY, and apparently hope is not a contemporary theme. A bit of browsing left me feeling lower than I started. Serious stuff here.

Look what I found. I had to go all the way back to Victorian Poetry. I guess they had more to look forward to. Think?

Song of Hope

- Thomas Hardy

O sweet To-morrow! -
After to-day
There will away
This sense of sorrow.
Then let us borrow
Hope, for a gleaming
Soon will be streaming,
Dimmed by no gray -
No gray!

While the winds wing us
Sighs from The Gone,
Nearer to dawn
Minute-beats bring us;
When there will sing us
Larks of a glory
Waiting our story
Further anon -
Anon!

Doff the black token,
Don the red shoon,
Right and retune
Viol-strings broken;
Null the words spoken
In speeches of rueing,
The night cloud is hueing,
To-morrow shines soon -
Shines soon!