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Quote of Note

Inaugural Poem

May 28, 2014 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

 
A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no more hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,

Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.

The River sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers–desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot …
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.

I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours–your Passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.

Give birth again
To the dream.

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

–Maya Angelou, January 20, 1993

Filed Under: Current Events, Quote of Note

Libraries: The Dream of Civilization

April 10, 2014 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

 

Add this to the Quote of Note file:

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz:

To destroy a library is to destroy the dream of civilization. To destroy the NY Public Library is to destroy our sixth and best borough; that beautiful corner of New York City where all are welcome and all are equals, and where many of us were first brought to the light.  The Library is the borough I love best and the one we need to fight hardest to preserve —for in its many branches and countless shelves lie our best hope for a better world.  It really is that simple: Save the Library, save New York. Save the Library, save the future.  Write Mayor de Blasio and remind him of his promises and of our covenant with our libraries and with our future.

My Books

[author_books amount=”3″ size=”150″ type=”random” name=”jonfrater”]

Filed Under: Angry Librarian, Quote of Note

The Correctness Party

May 2, 2008 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

An excellent description of life in my house growing up, by Garrison Keillor of Salon magazine:

A college graduate just sent me an e-mail asking about a band that
"one" a contest, wishing she had been "their" to see it. Misspelling
drives me nuts. You young people learned spelling by the Close Enough
method. As long as we know what you mean, you think it’s OK. And nobody
corrects you. And you go along on your merry way, and the dark clouds
of Error build up in the rain forest and the ground shakes.

People accuse us liberals
of permissiveness — no no no no no. We liberals are oppressive, not
permissive, working day and night to take your guns away and make you
apply for a permit every time you spit. In my heart, I belong to the
Correctness Party, the party of good spellers, of people who pay
attention to details. The Current Occupant
is not one of us. He is not a man who puts pen to paper with any
confidence. Intellectually he has been a charity case all his life. He
is one of those men who are lucky that their fathers were born before
they were.

Read the whole article here.

Filed Under: Quote of Note

Wisdom from Old Sam Clemens

October 25, 2007 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

"Americans too often teach their children to despise those
who hold unpopular opinions. We teach them to regard as traitors, and hold in
aversion and contempt, such as do not shout with the crowd, and so here in our
democracy we are cheering a thing which of all things is most foreign to it and
out of place – the delivery of our political conscience into somebody else’s
keeping. This is patriotism on the Russian plan."

— Mark Twain

Filed Under: Quote of Note

Dawkins on Life and Death

January 19, 2007 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

I admire Richard Dawkins’ mind very much.  His delivery, well, not as much. That said, this observation is sheer brilliance:

"We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are
never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The
potential people who could have been here in my place, but who will, in
fact, never see the light of day, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.
…In the face of these stupefying odds, it is you and I, in our
ordinariness, that are here. Here’s another respect in which we are
lucky. The universe is older than a hundred million centuries. Within a
comparable time, the sun will swell to a red giant and engulf the
earth. Every century of hundreds of millions has been in its time, or
will be when its time comes, the present century. The present moves
from the past to the future like a tiny spotlight inching its way along
a gigantic ruler of time. Everything behind the spotlight is in
darkness, the darkness of the dead past. Everything ahead of the
spotlight is in the darkness of the unknown future. The odds of your
century being the one in the spotlight are the same as the odds that a
penny, tossed down at random, will land on a particular ant crawling
somewhere on the road from New York to San Francisco. You are lucky to
be alive and so am I."

Read the interview here.

Filed Under: Quote of Note

Quotes of Note 2.0

November 6, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Something else I found while looking at the past posts on Andy’s website:

What Democrats will Do In Their First 100 Hours in Congress.

To paraphrase, they say they would:

· Put
new rules in place to "break the link between lobbyists
 and legislation."

· 
Enact
all the recommendat
ions made by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

· Raise
the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, maybe in one step.


· 
 Cut
the interest rate on student loans in half.

· Allow
the government to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical
 companies for lower drug prices for Medicare patients.

· All
the days after that: "Pay as you go," meaning no incr
easing the
deficit

These plan points, if enacted, would be good for all of us who are not personal friends of the Bush family.

We’re not even going to discuss the fact that the United States Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines Times have called for Donald Rumsfeld’s removal as Secretary of Defense (nobody else in the mainstream media is, either).

Vote for something completely different tomorrow.

Filed Under: Quote of Note

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