Then:
Now:
Putting Christmas Back in America
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Comments on this entry are closed.
Girard,
You know what’s the coolest thing about Christmas? It’s the way Christmas just is. Nowhere — nowhere — in the Bible are we commanded to observe Christ’s birthday. We’re just given the bare facts concerning his birth, the manner of it, its place in man’s history and its implications for man’s destiny. But the facts are so astounding and the implications so profound — nothing less than our deliverance from sin and death — that this birthday has literally brought joy to the world, and inspired some of the greatest and most beautiful music, art and literature in all of human history. Christmas is something that, once you know about it, you just want to celebrate. That’s what’s so cool. Merry Christmas!
TGTW
sigz are kinda pointy
Beautiful. But Barron should learn script for his sig. Kinda’ like his parents.
Barron’s mother will have to teach him cursive; schools don’t do it anymore. I discovered my daughter couldn’t sign her own name in cursive when she was about 13, so I just made up some exercises and taught her how to do it myself. She’d still be printing her name if I hadn’t done so.
I remember taking penmanship classes in 4th and 5th grade and didn’t particularly care for them. My cursive writing quality was OK but I seen no need for it. We already learned how to make all the letters in upper and lower case so what what the cursive stuff for? There was a proper way of doing penmanship but might it be different across the country? Were 4th graders in Phoenix taught the same way as those in Gettysburg?
As the years rolled by the cursive writing we were taught had morfed into other things through convenience, speed, and other reasons. While some adhered to the old methods most modified their writing to suit conditions. As an architecture student I was introduced to “Upper Case Gothic Lettering” and quickly converted to it full time. From about the age of 16 on my handwriting became what most people would call “printing” and in architecture was called “lettering”. It was more comfortable, faster, and much more legible than cursive.
Over the years I have seen many types of cursive writing and much of it was either unreadable or difficult to read, and a few were very artsy. How many “mistakes” had been made over the centuries by people interpreting other people’s cursive writing? By this time I no longer did cursive except in my signature but even that dropped of drastically over the past 20 years. Now, the only time I use a cursive signature is when I can’t get out of it, like when signing that slick surfaced tiny screen on the card swiper in places of commerce. That fake pen goes skating all over the place on that plastic surface and in no way matches the sig on say, my drivers license, which in no way matches the sig on my CCW. None of my sigs match, so what’s the point? Resistant conventions.
I imagine, probably due to laziness, expediency, and technology, signatures and even cursive writing in general, will be mostly eliminated and will only be seen in things like greeting cards and other artsy endeavors. Me, I won’t miss it. As far as I’m concerned it is already gone. Though I don’t like it, when I occasionally due a text on the phone I find myself sometimes sliding toward 1337.
It appears as though people who don’t like cursive don’t much like grammar and spelling either.