it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”
“With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams,
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2001-2022
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
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
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That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
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
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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Deplorable, adorable. What a great guy!
Adorable. :’)
Charity at its purist.
Rescuing wildlife is a worthy activity, as is hunting. Both help with the overall health of the herd. The best I can say for myself is that I have broken up coyote packs as they were actively hunting deer, and my family and I did rescue an owl whose wing had been twisted back on itself.
The honest truth is that if you follow the life of a deer herd, the majority cause of deer mortality is by accidental death. Disease, hunting, predation, winter kill and accidental death, take their toll and accidents are a large factor; I want to say the largest one in the mortality of the deer. Old age? rarely does a deer survive to old age, which is about 5 years of age. Anyway, saving deer from accidental death is a worthy endeavor.
“It is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.” Yes it is. I don’t get pessimists. They let purely earthly matters—all of which are temporary—steal their happiness. This is no less than putting yourself—your attitude, your world view, your joy—into the hands of your enemies. There is a phrase for this: voluntary slavery. I would say to those who cannot see anything but misery all around that they are looking in the wrong places. It’s like searching for a wife among Las Vegas prostitutes. A man who chooses to keep his eyes shut should never make any statements about sunlight.
Some Carpenter said, “Be of good cheer!” Then He boasted that He had overcome the world. Sounds legit.
+1
A humane act, and admirable.
Maybe three years back I was walking north on 6th Avenue and had crossed Canal. There was a man in the crosswalk, slight, older, blank look. Shot, basically. Walking as slow as I’ve seen someone move, in a swarm of stalled traffic that was moving in fits and starts. A lot of horns. I got behind him slightly, a bit to his right, and thus walked along side as a precaution. We were almost at the opposite side of the avenue when a passenger in a van threw a soda bottle at me. The man and I made it the rest of the way, I asked him if he was alright, I got no answer. He was empty, staring behind his eyes. I picked up a piece of concrete and saw the van up 6th Avenue, but couldn’t get to it. If I had I was going to put the concrete through the open passenger window and pull the son-of-bitch out of the vehicle.
Compassion has a mirror image.
I know it must be hell to live in NYC, but you were in line for several Darwin awards for what you described there, friend.
Agreed. Crazy people are…well, crazy: random actions, irrational, incoherent. I give such a wide berth. Most of them are crazy because of choices made somewhere back in their lives. To believe you can help such folks is a kindness not quite rooted in reason, although such actions do count with the Carpenter. He sees intent; we cannot. When “gwbnyc” helped that confused soul across the street, I can well imagine Christ saying, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
I save turtles. On the road. 300+ over the past 30 years. I see no reason to not do so.
Bring em back here to the compound and release them. I’ve had 3 turtles in my truck at one time, 2 Boxes in the cab and 1 snapper in the bed. You can tell a male turtle by his belly, it arches slightly upward. Male Paints have red on the cheeks. If you don’t have successful experience with snappers don’t fuck with em, they’ll get you. Bad. Super long neck, very fast, can opener yap, and severely pissed off all the time. Very aggressive.
Some 50 years ago I was driving on a turnpike from Tulsa to Broken Arrow. There were numerous turtles on the road, some squashed and some trying to get the Hell to the other side and to safety. I stopped my car, got out and dodged traffic to pull as many turtles as I could to safety. A cop stopped pulled off onto the shoulder, and asked me what I was doing. I told him, and he said that I was “disrupting traffic”. Well yes, I was indeed doing that. That cop might not have appreciated it, but a few turtles did.
I still do the same today, though on a bicycle. Still disrupting traffic I would guess. Folks in their cars have yet to complain. Neither have any of those turtles.
“Bad. Super long neck, very fast, can opener yap, and severely pissed off all the time.”
My new spirit animal!
Well then Gerard, I promise never to get on your bad side. If chose a spirit animal, it would probably be a thylacine.
I can vouch for Ghostsniper’s cautions in regards to snappers, having rescued one or two over the years myself. They don’t look so dangerous, though, when they’re young.
Living cuticle trimmer.
Wow, that IS a little one John. I actually found a young Box one fall, a little smaller than that, right here in my driveway. It was too late in the season to let it go as the snow would soon fly and it would die if left out. So I made a little habitat for it right here in my office. Fed it minced fruits and veg’s and in the late spring I turned it loose in the yard.
See quite a few different turtles along our little crick, Ghostsniper. Snappers, of course, Box, and Painted. The biggest Snapper I’ve seen on the crick, so far, was probably 16 inches side to side. Had one of the gnarliest, algae and crick weed covered shells I’ve seen. He must’ve been an old guy. I remember the first time I attempted to save a Snapper. I cautiously attempted to pick it up by the sides of its shell, but back towards its back legs. Not only did that sucker whip out its neck to try and nip me, its back legs came out put some decent scratches on my hands. Had to regroup after that, but I got it to a safer place. I’ve also had a Painted attempt to dig a hole in our fire pit to lay. I kept bringing it back down to the crick, to encourage it to go elsewhere, but we’d leave for a few hours of fishing, come back to camp, and there it would be, again. I finally had to take it for a ride in my truck to a more remote section of the crick.
even little the sawteeth are already on the edge of the shell.
we have that in NC at times of the year, and yes, squashed turtles.
(+/-) 15 years ago-
drove down there at night from NYC after a long period of rain, the last part of the trip is along Rt 158, the southern border of the Great Dismal Swamp. the water level was just kissing the edges of the road. thousands of frog were leaping in front of us as the headlights reached then, and they thumped against the underside of the car as we drove on, for miles. in the morning there were squashed frogs all over the roads, thousandsXthousands. by the next day or so all had been eaten by birds.
the rains breached the dam at Dillard’s Millpond in Chowan County. I went to look at it and the cast iron norse wheel that powered the millstones was laying on the ground, apparently it had been buried in the dam for many years. after that it was gone. two months ago I called the county historical society and asked where it was. no one there knew, and no one got back to me.
Not to be a Debbie Downer, but did the deer then stop on the railroad track to wait for the train? The look on the guy’s face at the end of the video says it all. The pessimists will say the guy shrugged and continued with his day. The optimists will say he went after the deer and chased it off the tracks….where the pessimists say it ran off into the oncoming path of some snowmobilers… who A) swerved in the nick of time, or B) enjoyed a hearty venison dinner.
the deer made the woods, and gone.
Apropos of whether the deer avoided the train . . . some of them do seem to have a death wish. Reminds me of a summer a few years back when I was house-sitting for some friends who lived on the edge of a golf course– which had a lot of tasty greenery that attracted the local deer population. One day the UPS man rang my friends’ doorbell to deliver a package. As I was signing for it, I looked down the driveway and saw that the side of his truck was bent inward with a dark brown streak below the point of impact. I asked him what had happened, and he said that one of the golf course deer “tried to break into my truck” and didn’t live to tell about it. He was on his way back to the UPS facility in North Haven to report the accident and get the truck fixed; he said he felt bad for the deer but he was also glad that the deer didn’t come through his windshield. There are cases every year around the country in which drivers are killed by deer crashing through the front windshield and forcing the car off the road.
Thank you for some light amidst the darkness. One good turn deserves another.
https://tinyurl.com/2p8ntfwf
That was a good turn, Richard. Thanks.
The Dodo is one of my regular stops. It restores my faith in my fellow man. It reminds me of the beauty of this earth, of the compassion that lies in the hearts of most men.
that’s a good one 🙂
there is one of a robin raising her chicks, the camera is right on the nest. she brings worms for them, they grow larger, begin to fly, leave the nest until one is left. the mother comes back with worms for the last time to an empty nest, all the young birds gone and away.
I’m telling you I tried, and couldn’t watch it twice.
I’m telling you I tried, and couldn’t watch it twice. ++++++++++++
I know what you mean. I’ve viewed the hummingbird video numerous times, but when the child (little girl) gently strokes the bird with her finger and says “bye”, well, let’s just say my vision gets awfully blurry.
+1
Wonderful. Just wonderful.
Bravery plus kindness. Admirable.