To any English sea-farers out there......

Interesting note about this song (according to our infallible friends at Wikipedia):

Whittaker is quoted as saying that "one of the ideas I had was to invite listeners to send their poems or lyrics to me and I would make songs out of them. We got a million replies, and I did one each week for 26 weeks." Ron A. Webster, a silversmith from Birmingham, England, sent Whittaker his poem entitled "The Last Farewell", and this became one of the selections to appear on the radio programme. It was subsequently recorded and featured on Whittaker's 1971 album New World in the Morning (A Special Kind of Man in the US and Canada).

SONG
    - John McGrath

And when our streets are green again
When metalled roads are green
And girls walk barefoot through the woods
Of Regent Street, Saint Martin's Lane

And children hide in factories
Where burdock blossoms vetch and rust
And elms and oaks and chestnut trees
Are tall again and hope is lost

When up the strand the foxes glide
And hedgehogs sniff and wildcats yell
And golden orioles come back
To flash through Barnes and Clerkenwell

When governments and industries
Lie choked by weeds in fertile rain
For sure the few who stay alive
Will laugh and grow to love again.

BREAD
    - Ann Kilcrin Ward

"I am Alpha," He cried, "Omega, too;
I'll dance the lexicon for you!"
        The people watched, the people saw
        The Cosmos dancing with the Law.
        The people watched, then turned aside
        To supper and the fireside.

"I am the Truth," He sang, "The Way!
Follow me to a better day!
I'll give you joy, I'll take your sorrows,
For all your infinite tomorrows."
        The people followed, some of them
        Kissed His ragged garment's hem.
        (But soon the followers turned aside
        Tp supper and the fireside.)

He hailed the father, blessed the daughter,
Made a heady wine from water;
Then He told the awestruck groom,
"Even to the edge of doom
Will I be with you." The people sighed.
Eternity sounded very fine,
But this feast had abundant wine.
        The people ate and drank their fill,
        Then hurried home to the fireside.

Grieving, Jesus bowed his head
And prayed in the words of a common man,
        "Father,they need food to eat:
        Let me give them heaven's wheat.
        I ask you to turn this cup aside;
        Let me finish what I began!
        Let me go once more to their fireside."

A festive room, a table spread
For thirteen men gathered there.
Death waited in the streets outside,
But Jesus' smile was like a prayer.
        Then Alpha-Omega, the God-child said,
        "Take, eat; I am your bread."

Today I'm leaning left.

A DAY IN HEAVEN (today)

Stretches

4 Readings: Bible
                    A Year With Lewis
                    Poem of The Day
                    Ideas Have Consequences (current book)

Recite your poetry!

Thomas Aquinas: Theology (Ecclesiastes)
                              Philosophy (Meno)
                              Natural Science (Parts of Animals)
                              Math (Euclid)
                              Language (Latin)
                              Seminar (Iliad)

Make bread
Make yogurt
Laundry
Remove doors, empty buffet
Darcy

And music throughout.........

The bottom part of the list varies from day to day. Mind you, I have never completed everything on this list, and there's a couple of things I haven't STARTED yet. But I'm working toward the whole enchilada. 

"Writing occurs which is the detail, not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with the things as they exist, and of directing them along a line of melody" - Zukofsky

Listening to this playlist as I do my stretches, partly because I love seeing these colors filling my living room.

We were without a DVD player for a few months, and now that we have one again I can finish watching this series. But...... I've lost my train of thought. Need to start over.  😉

I REMEMBER CLIFFORD
                - Philip Levine

Wakening in a small room,
the walls high and blue, one high window
through which the morning enters,
I turn to the table beside me
painted a thick white. There instead
of a clock is a tumbler of water,
clear and cold, that wasn't there
last night. Someone quietly entered,
and now I see the white door
slightly ajar and around three sides
the night on fire. I remember once
twenty-seven years ago walking
the darkened streets
of my home town when up ahead
on Joy Road at the Bluebird of Happiness
I heard over the rumble of my own head
for the first time the high clear trumpet
of Clifford Brown calling us all
to the dance he shared with us
such a short time. My heart quickened
and in my long coat, breathless
and stumbling, I ran
through the swirling snow
to the familiar sequined door
knowing it would open on something new.

(Mariah speaking) I love art about art.

Still talking to someone behind a door
I slammed
And locked
And threw away the key.
(really just talking to myself)
(been doing that the whole time)
Safe on this side of the lock I'm free -
Soon I'll only talk to me.

"Waitin' for the train that goes home, sweet Mary,
 Hopin' that the train is on time....."

Love the harmony 

From IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES
                                - Richard M. Weaver

   This story of man's passage from religious or philosophical transcendentalism has been told many times, and, since it has usually been told as a story of progress, it is extremely difficult today to get people in any number to see contrary implications. Yet to establish the fact of decadence is the most pressing duty of our time, because until we have demonstrated that cultural decline is a historical fact - which can be established - and that modern man has about squandered his estate, we cannot combat those who have fallen prey to hysterical optimism.
   Such is the task, and our most serious obstacle is that people traveling this downward path develop an insensibility which increases with their degradation. Loss is perceived most clearly at the beginning; after habit becomes implanted, one beholds the anomalous situation of apathy mounting as the moral crisis deepens........ Thus in the face of the enormous brutality of our age we seem unable to make appropriate response to perversions of truth and acts of bestiality. ......We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without means to measure our descent.

(Mariah speaking) This reminds me of a great tune by Supertramp - The Fool's Overture. "They called the man a fool, stripped him of his pride - Everyone was laughing until the day he died - And thought the wound went deep - Still he's calling us out of our sleep." .......... It also reminds me of an old rhyme that we discussed at Spoken Word the other night:
Evil is of such awful mein
That to be hated needs but to be seen.
But seen too oft, familiar of face,
We first abhor, then endure...then embrace.

Is it possible that society will never work until we all believe in the same things - and they have to be the right things?  Wow, that would be tough to achieve..........

Love this girl - she sings my heart, right down to the wonder and the giggles. 

I think this pic needs to be in my forest...... 

Doesn't this just look delicious??  

Syllabus

• 
• 

The following is a list of works read in whole or in part in the curriculum of Thomas Aquinas College. They are not all of equal weight. Some are regarded as masterworks, while others serve as source of opinions that either lead students to the truth or make the truth more evident by opposition to it. (In 2010, College Dean Brian T. Kelly began a series of presentations to the Board of Governors about why the curriculum includes particular authors and subjects. You can read those talks by clicking here.)

Freshman Year | Sophomore Year | Junior Year | Senior Year
Compositions | Senior Thesis

Freshman Year
Theology
	The Holy Bible
Philosophy
	Plato	Meno, Protagoras, Gorgias, Apology, Crito, Phaedo
	Porphyry	On the Predicaments(Isagoge)
	Aristotle	Categories, On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics
	St. Thomas Aquinas	Proemium to the Commentary on the Posterior Analytics
Natural Science
	Aristotle	Parts of Animals
	DeKoninck	The Lifeless World of Biology
	Fabre	Souvenirs Entomologiques
	Galen	On the Natural Faculties
	Harvey	On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
	Linnaeus	Systema Naturae
	Pascal	On the Equilibrium of Liquids
	Archimedes	On Floating Bodies
	Mendel	Plant Hybridization
	Various Authors	Scientific papers of Driesch, Gould and Marler, Tinbergen, Goethe, Virchow, von Frisch, et alia
		Measurements Manual
Mathematics
	Euclid	Elements
Language
		A Primer in Latin Morphology According to the “Stem Method” Latin Readings According to the “Stem Method”
	Nesfield	Aids to the Study and Composition of English
Seminar
	Homer	Iliad, Odyssey
	Plato	Ion, Symposium, Republic
	Aeschylus	Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides
	Sophocles	Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
	Herodotus	Histories
	Plutarch	Lives (Lycurgus, Pericles, Aristides, Alcibiades, Alexander)
	Aristotle	Poetics, Rhetoric
	Euripides	Hippolytus
	Thucydides	History of the Peloponnesian War
	Aristophanes	The Birds, The Clouds

HOME FROM ABROAD
                      - Laurie Lee

Far-fetched with tales of other worlds and ways,
My skin well-oiled with wines of the Levant,
I set my face into a filial smile
To greet the pale, domestic kiss of Kent.

But shall I never learn? That gawky girl,
Recalled so primly in my foreign thoughts,
Becomes again the green-haired queen of love
Whose wanton form dilates as it delights.

Her rolling tidal landscape floods the eye
And drowns Chianti in a dusky stream;
The flower-flecked grasses swim with simple horses,
The hedges choke with roses fat as cream.

So do I breathe the hay-blown airs of home,
And watch the sea-green elms drip birds and shadows,
And as the twilights nets the plunging sun
My heart's keel slides to rest among the meadows.

Last night we had our monthly meeting. Such a pleasant time! The building we were supposed to use was locked, so we went across the street to a lovely park. There was a musical group setting up when we arrived, and they played almost the whole time we were there. Turns out, one of the musicians is the husband of our Grand Pumbah, Diana.  haha... Gathered at a picnic table, and had cool breezes, pizza, wine, cheese and grapes, and wonderful time, chatting about music and arts and religion and poetry. I shared one sad poem, and a couple of the others shared some really good stuff. I'm so glad to be among such talented people. If the picture had gotten any perfecter, I would't have believed it.  

Estoy enamorada. Que voz dulce, sonrisa dulce, ojos dulcisimos. Sus ojos siempre están sonriendo.

JOHN ANDERSON MY JO
                    - Robert Burns

John Anderson my jo, John,
   When we were first acquent;
Your locks were like the raven,
   Your bony brow was breant;
But now your brow is bald, John,
   Your locks are like the snaw;
But blessings on your frosty pow,
   John Anderson my Jo.

John Anderson my jo, John,
   We clamb the hill the gither,
And mony a canty day, John,
   We've had wi' ane anither:
Now we maun totter down, John,
   And hand in hand we'll go;
And sleep the gither at the foot,
   John Anderson my Jo.
   

Wonderful day with the family yesterday!

 Lebanese breakfast - Manoosh B'Zataar, cukes, tomatoes, and olives. Mmmm..... the best!

 Lebanese lunch - Lamb Shawarma with tzatziki sauce.

 Afternoon at the lake......

 And then evening at the Queendom, our daughters' house, which looks like a fairy garden, to celebrate Christopher's birthday. What a great day!

Our oldest turned 32 yesterday!  Happy Birthday, Thelonius Ignatius Christaceous Sebastian!

DIFFERENT
      Clere Parsons

Not to say what everyone else was saying
not to believe what everyone else believed
not to do what everybody did,
then to refute what everyone else was saying
then to disprove what everyone else believed
then to deprecate what everybody did

was his way to come by understanding

how everyone else was saying the same as he was saying
believing what he believed
and did what doing.

You slapped my pink shades off with a snarl and a sneer - 

Fattened my lip, loosed a tear.

When my vision returned, returned the hue -

Now what's gray and dull is you.

Such a shame - I miss the Black and Blue.

Candy Cigarette

Sugar, water and yeast has been added - now the action begins!

From THE VOYAGE, for T.S. Eliot
                        - Robert Lowell

We imitate, oh, horror! tops and bowls
in their eternal waltzing marathon;
even in sleep, our fever whips and rolls -
like a black angel flogging the brute sun.
Strange port! where destination has no place
or name, and may be anywhere we choose -
where man, committed to his endless race,
runs like a madman diving for repose!
Our soul is a three-master seeking port:
a voice from starboard shouts, 'We're at the dock!'
Another, more elated, cries from port,
'Here's dancing, gin and girls!' Balls! it's a rock!
The islands sighted by the lookout seem
the El Dorado promised us last night;
imagination wakes from its drugged dream,
sees only ledges in the morning light.

I must be outta my mind....

Well, let's see what I can do!  :)

Most excellent lunch.

THE COMPANY OF THE BIRDS
                    - Sasha Moorsom

Ah the company of the birds
I loved and cherished on earth
Now, freed of flesh we fly
Together, a flock of beating wings,
I am light, as feathery,
As gone from gravity we soar
In endless circles.

I don't know karate
But I know karazy. 

Unity does not have to be uniformity.

"We don't have the time for psychological romance." - Cameo

From THE TEMPEST
      - William Shakespeare

Act V Scene 1

Ariel: Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry;
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily:
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Mmmm, went to a wine tasting this afternoon at the restaurant, with the owner of the building we're in, who's a judge. Then kept on drinking wine and eating chocolate cake with the judge, until Hubby came back from Austin. Very enjoyable afternoon. 

From IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES
                        - Richard M. Weaver

The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive for one's view of the nature and destiny of humankind. The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change in the affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modern empiricism.

(Mariah speaking) - That is from the introduction to his book. I told my student this morning that for every few sentences I read, I have to look up several words. So much to learn! But some of what I'm absorbing, I've put into words a 10-year-old can understand and told him about. He told me, "I kinda wanna learn that stuff too."   YAY!!  

ALL YOU WHO SLEEP TONIGHT
                        - Vickram Seth

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right,
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone.
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

Fun For Wordies......

From THE BROOK
     - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
  I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
  To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
  Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
  And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Phillip's farm I flow
  To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
  But I go on forever.

I chatter over stony ways,
  In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
  I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
  By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
  With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
  To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
  But I go on forever.

My life would be a song if you could be the sun,
So you could shine on me as you shine on everyone,
And make my waking up a thing to celebrate,
And go down in scarlet splendor when the day is done.

If— 

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

  Time to get back to my studies and exercise. I had been waiting for someone who had said he'd like to wade through Ideas Have Consequences with me, but I don't think it's going to happen. I get to start over, Alone Again Naturally.

  I've finished memorizing She Walks In Beauty, by Lord Byron, and now I'm beginning If, by Kipling, with my 10-year-old student. I want him to have these words of wisdom in his head forever, and it's about time I put them in mine.

  I keep thinking that it should look more apparent to the world that I'm accomplishing things. "What are you up to these days?"  - "Oh, so much! Thinking a lot. Memorizing poetry. Writing some, too. Reading some profound books."      ......... Awkward. People want to see physical results. Dollars and cents. Or at least the Great American Novel.   I see myself changing, growing up, adopting wiser ways of seeing things. But that stuff doesn't show up in everyday interaction with the folks about town. Boo.

Yvonne got home from Kentucky, and brought this for her Dad. I had thought these were hard to find there, but there seem to be more than I expected.

My first tart tatin. Easy as pie - think I'll do it again!

One of the logos being considered for our restaurant and brewery. I like it a lot. The 602 is not the address, but the zip code. Our brewery will put Bastrop on the map. 

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Adorable cousins......

                                                 Jad and Yvonne, Lebanon, 1992

Jad and Yvonne, Milan, 2016

By my nephew, Jad Ghoreyeb.

From IN A GONDOLA
           - Robert Browning

The moth's first kiss!
Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve,
How my face, your flower, had pursed
Its petals up; so, here and there
You brush it, till I grow aware
Who wants me, and wide ope I burst.

The bee's kiss now!
Kiss me as if you entered gay
My heart at some noonday,
A bud that dares not disallow
The claim, so all is rendered up,
And passively its shattered cup
Over your head to sleep I bow.

Lunch with my daughter-in-law the other day, at the Mexican restaurant a couple of miles from our house, which was our first restaurant building. We rented it to the fine family from Mexico for quite some time, and then sold it to them. But it still feels like ours. Our handprints are in the concrete at the doors. The spot where Hubby (Everybody Loves Raymond!) first made his mark on our town. It will always be ours, in some ways.......  💖

  These last two weeks I've had the granddaughter just about every day. The best life I could ask for. She's a joy all the time, even when she's wearing me out completely. Because she never holds still, is always busy, and always looking for things to get into. Playing with her is the most fun in the world.  But leaves precious little time for poetry and posting profound things on my blog. haha....
  I have her again today, and tomorrow all five kids will be coming out for Father's Day, including our daughter who's returning tomorrow from a few weeks in Kentucky. Can't wait to see her and hear all her adventures.....    Dinner for probably ten. Whew!

I had decided not to have a garden until fall this year, because summer is so bloomin' hot, it takes all the fun out of it. So I'm using my tanks that I usually plant in, for compost. And I now have a crop of roma tomatoes coming along quite nicely!  haha ...... And a baby avocado tree too, if I'm not mistaken.