Coffee Break?

I’m not going to write about the barbecues, fireworks, beach, parades or “sales of the century”.  Independence…that’s a very valuable word, a very valuable state of being.  Not all of us can expect to be totally independent…maybe none of us can, regardless of wealth or perceived financial status.  What does it mean to me…to you?  It’s having a mind with which I can dream, aspire;  a soul which tells me what’s right for me, living according to my principles and beliefs and the spirit with which to do and be all of those things.  Independence allows me to live for myself whilst yet considering, helping others.  And sure…if it comes with a good measure of stubbornness…can be difficcult for others to tolerate and accept!  But, above all, it requires I afford others the right to their independence.  To strive in making the most and best of their God-given life.  I was fortunate to have been born and raised in a country (and of parents) who encouraged me to feel free to question, to strive, to think for myself.  I have been fortunate to live in countries which didn’t thwart that spirit.  Many are not.  For quite some years…and especially more recently…there has been much talk of the immigration “problem” in this country.  I say this country because this is where I make my home, these politics affect my life.  (I don’t think, these days, the situation is much different in the UK).  There is a militia of sorts in force;  there is talk of building a wall, armed guards of which most are in favour.  I’m not…never have been and for a multitude of reasons which, I admit, seem impractical and unreasonable to most.  The link (below) came through my email today…I subscribe to this particular website newsletter.  I watched it, I cheered, was yet again moved and thought how fortuitous to arrive this particular weekend.  I’d like to share it.  How fortunate are we that this man believed in the opportunities and independence would afford him.  

http://www.karmatube.org/

Now, not everyone in his shoes will have or choose the career he did.  Some may be workers of the fields, others in a chicken plant, some clean homes, hotels and other institutions, some build habitations, malls, factories.  Most of them will take whatever job they can find that many of our own would scoff at, work for wages that others would refuse because they “make more on welfare without breaking a sweat”.  No matter what they do, they contribute to our lives and way of life…most more than those who would sit on their backside and take rather than give.    

Tags: Dr. Quinones, Illegal Aliens, Johns Hopkins, Karma, KarnaTube

What was your most popular blog post?

Hmmm…this one doesn’t head the list of THE most popular post but it is among the top ten listed so I’ve taken the liberty to choose it for this week’s challenge.  Why?  It’s one of my own favourites…a message (if you like), I’d like to see out there.   More visible, taken to heart.   Today, so many live an uneasy life in a less than easy world.  Instead of extending a hand with a rifle or a grenade clutched in the palm, yes…I hope for a flower or palm outstretched to grasp another’s.  Many years ago one such newspaper photograph caught the heart and attention of many, including myself.  The young woman at the Kent State protest of the Vietnam War, seen placing a daisy in the rifle barrel of Natl. Guardsman.  Apparently there is no still copy of that photograph to be found but it was emblazoned on many hearts and minds.  The link available in “my most  popular post” was the next best thing I could use.  Please look at the pics, listen to the words…make your choice.  Again I say we all have the right…and reason..to choose according to our conscience or beliefs.  Mine will forever remain the same. 

http://maat45.blogdumps.net/2008/09/11/it-is-a-choice/

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Tags: Blogdumps, Kent State, Peace, Peace Today, Popular Blog, Tuesday Challenge

What is yours?  As usual, I’m back to being the potato chip…can’t have just one.  And I’m not a real big fan of poetry to begin with…at least not so much the poems of today.  Mine hark back to childhood-schooldays-two much more recent

1) “The Land of Nod”  R.L. Stevenson.  As a child…even now if I admit it!..it did encourage me to welcome sleep rather than fight it!

2) “I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud” Wordsworth.  There isn’t a spring awakens in my garden or those around me that I don’t think of this poem.  So much so that I plant daffodils every year, everywhere there’s room enough for “just one more bulb”.

3) “The Pedlar’s Caravan” William B. Rands.  That always sounded so romantic…lol…not only to me but to my mother who, I believe, had the travel bug also.  But love of the poem came first…maybe that was what gave me the wanderlust.

4) “Sea Fever” John Masefield.  Hmmm…I see a theme here!  Travel, gypsy, dream.  Some might suggest I’ve looked at running away all of my life…hahahaha!  Nope…just a big beautiful world out there with never enough time to see all of it.

5) ”Silver” Walter De La Mare.  This COULD be the number one favourite and, like Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” I never see a silver moon but I run this poem through.  And it was another of my mother’s favourites…more than once, I’d find myself standing next to her, gazing skyward.  Without a word to each other, we’d both begin reciting this well-loved poem as we scanned the chimneys and roof tiles, rose gardens gleaming in the moonlight.

6) “Stop All The Clocks” W.H. Auden.  A mournful poem this one but I like it and especially love the descriptive last verse:

“The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

7) “A Creed” John Masefield.  Far and away my most favourite.  I first had to learn his “Sea-Fever” in school, loving the words, the images it conjured up, the flow immediately and I never did forget it.  Years later, many years later and long after I had settled into my own “creed” I happened upon the Masefield poem…with much surprise to find we shared a very similar philosophy.  I find it comfortable.

A Creed

I HOLD that when a person dies

His soul returns again to earth;

Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise

Another mother gives him birth.

With sturdier limbs and brighter brain

The old soul takes the road again.

Such is my own belief and trust;

This hand, this hand that holds the pen,

Has many a hundred times been dust

And turned, as dust, to dust again;

These eyes of mine have blinked and shown

In Thebes, in Troy, in Babylon.

All that I rightly think or do,

Or make, or spoil, or bless, or blast,

Is curse or blessing justly due

For sloth or effort in the past.

My life’s a statement of the sum

Of vice indulged, or overcome.

I know that in my lives to be

My sorry heart will ache and burn,

And worship, unavailingly,

The woman whom I used to spurn,

And shake to see another have

The love I spurned, the love she gave.

And I shall know, in angry words,

In gibes, and mocks, and many a tear,

A carrion flock of homing-birds,

The gibes and scorns I uttered here.

The brave word that I failed to speak

Will brand me dastard on the cheek.

And as I wander on the roads

I shall be helped and healed and blessed;

Dear words shall cheer and be as goads

To urge to heights before unguessed.

My road shall be the road I made;

All that I gave shall be repaid.

So shall I fight, so shall I tread,

In this long war beneath the stars;

So shall a glory wreathe my head,

So shall I faint and show the scars,

Until this case, this clogging mould,

Be smithied all to kingly gold.

John Masefield

So where did this come from?  Good question…no answer other than it’s the wee sma’ hours of the morning.  A time when ‘oft my thoughts do flee’, wander, take me to places that, in the busy daylight hours I don’t have much time to spend dallying.  Which is about how I learned the first four or five of those favourites…sitting at my desk in class, chin propped on one elbow with eyes…and mind…casting around the blue and white skies beckoning me through the long windows…day-dreaming. 

Tags: Child's Garden of Verse, Creed, Daffodils, John Masefield, Poems, Poetry, Sea Fever, Silver, The Land Of Nod, The Pedlar's Caravan, W.B. Rands, W.H.Auden, Walter De La Mare