Poems of the Week: Two Ballads
How blithe each morn was I tae see
My lass come o’er the hill.
She tripped the burn and ran tae me.
I met her wi good will.
Category: Free Content
GOP Goes Full Metal Trump Jacket
What’s noteworthy is how both GOP candidates are going over the top identifying with Trump and his issues, while demonizing the other guy as a tool of Pelosi. One Rohrabacher campaign flyer features pictures of him as a young speechwriter standing next to President Reagan; next to that is a picture of Trump. The words highlight three issues: “Leading the fight against illegal immigration….Working to end the unfair ‘Gas & Car Tax’…. Supporting President Trump.”
Ransom Notes May 21: The Pope’s Theology of Evil
Pope Francis has once again managed to use a private conversation as an opportunity to make a heretical statement, reserving the right to take it back or fall back on issue clarification, should the storm of outrage prove to be too furious. According to Juan Carlos Cruz, an alleged victim of clerical sexual abuse, the Pope told him : “Juan Carlos, that you are gay does not matter.“God made you like this and loves you like this and I don’t care.“The pope loves you like this. You have to be happy with who you are.” As a matter of course...
Poems of the Week, May 20: Omar Khayam
This is a brief section of Edward Fitzgerald’s famous rendering of the Rubaiyat by the Persian mathematician Omar Khayam VII Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter–and the Bird is on the Wing. VIII Whether at Naishapur or Babylon, Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one. IX Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say; Yes, but where leaves the Rose...
Wednesday’s Child: This Portside of Paradise
When a Negroni cocktail is properly made, it is just the thing to drink sitting in the shade on a sunny day. But when the humble Negroni is made with Punt e Mes instead of ordinary red vermouth, it is more than the cocktail you drink in the shade on a sunny day, it is how you set sail for paradise.
Poems of the Week, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl’s trisyllable.
[Between a Rock and a Hard Place] 04-10-18
The only rational argument that this Iranian regime will ever recognize is force majeure
Poems of the Week, May 6: Canning on Candid Friends
“Much may be said on both sides.”–Hark! I hear
A well known voice that murmurs in my ear,–
The voice of Candour.–Hail! most solemn sage,
Thou drivelling virtue of this moral age,
Candour, which softens party’s headlong rage.
“Which Clash, What Civilization?” Part One of Two
One of the minor annoyances of growing old is the uncomfortable feeling that that less time we have left, the faster it seems to be going by. In a dying civilization the annoyance is aggravated by the constant awareness of how rapidly downhill everything is headed.
Poems of the Week: April 30– Andrew Marvell
Full well I know – my friends – ye look on me
A living specter of my Father dead –
Had I not bourne his name, had I not fed
On him, as one leaf trembling on a tree,
A woeful waste had been my minstrelsy –
