After all in any hierarchy
-particularly in families-
the bottom must be selfless
to give the top it's 'character'
-it's fitness to decide and rule.
But I have never quite adjusted
to how my actions might make
the live of others quite as pointless
as my own sometimes seems to me.
Friday, 6 November 2015
Thursday, 5 November 2015
Liquid Politics
Kenneth J Galbraith prepared a speech
for U.S. President, Lyndon Johnson.
After reading the speech Johnson asked Galbraith:
“Did y’ever think, Ken, that making a speech
on ee-conomics is a lot like pissing down your leg?
It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else".
There is more than one quote by President Johnson
which used passing urine as metaphor for politics....
for U.S. President, Lyndon Johnson.
After reading the speech Johnson asked Galbraith:
“Did y’ever think, Ken, that making a speech
on ee-conomics is a lot like pissing down your leg?
It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else".
There is more than one quote by President Johnson
which used passing urine as metaphor for politics....
Wednesday, 4 November 2015
Sixty Five years Ago, Today....
GBS
Shaw is dead. The great dark gates of death that have been locked against him for so long swung open for a moment at dawn yesterday and the lean derisive Sage looked over his shoulder for a final twinkling trice - and was gone.
GBS, who has said most things worth saying in the past century and who has had the world by the ears and tail for longer than any writer in history, finally learned the most difficult and most simple of tricks - how to die.The frozen field-mouse stiff and cold under the hedgerow knew it before him ; the fledgling in the cats paw understood it and the poor weighted mongrel in the canal beat him to it in having an earlier glimpse of the last sombre secret of how to leave this life.
Only this glittering Jack Frost of a man, whose contemporaries began to die at the turn of the century and who has pierced and exposed most of the follies and foibles of mankind had not, until the birth of yesterday, achieved that final shattering achievement, the ending of life, and in this case the ultimate awesome passing of George Bernard Shaw.
The mould is broken. There was none like him before him, none like him when he was alive - and there will be none to match him now he has gone. Shaw in love seems almost grotesque - though there is much evidence that in his time many women did not think it so. How for instance could any girl in his arms deal with this sort of stuff? :
'When you loved me I gave you the whole suns and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul. We possessed all the universe together - and you ask me to give you my scanty wages as well!'
Mr Churchill, who know a golden intellect and a diamond-bright pen when he sees one, has paid his profound respects GBS. But he has also recorded his censure at some of the gaucheries of the sage in his antics.
'If truth must be told, our our British island has not had much help in its trouble from Mr Bernard Shaw. When nations are fighting for life, when the palace in which the Jester dwells not uncomfortably is itself assailed, and everyone from prince to groom is fighting on the battlements, the Jesters jokes echo through deserted halls, and his witticisms, distributed evenly between friend and foe, jar the ears of hurrying messengers, and mourning women and wounded men. The titter ill accords with the tocsin*, or the motley with the bandages.'
GBS died after a fall when reaching out to prune an old and dying bough with secateurs. The symbolism would not have been lost on him. he was almost certainly a happy man for a very long long time. But even on that he had the last paradoxical word. Said Mr Shaw 'A life time of happiness? No man could bear it : it would be hell on earth.'
Daily Mirror Columnist Sir William Connor, who wrote under the name Cassandra on the death of George Bernard Shaw, November 3rd 1950.
*funeral bell
Shaw is dead. The great dark gates of death that have been locked against him for so long swung open for a moment at dawn yesterday and the lean derisive Sage looked over his shoulder for a final twinkling trice - and was gone.
GBS, who has said most things worth saying in the past century and who has had the world by the ears and tail for longer than any writer in history, finally learned the most difficult and most simple of tricks - how to die.The frozen field-mouse stiff and cold under the hedgerow knew it before him ; the fledgling in the cats paw understood it and the poor weighted mongrel in the canal beat him to it in having an earlier glimpse of the last sombre secret of how to leave this life.
Only this glittering Jack Frost of a man, whose contemporaries began to die at the turn of the century and who has pierced and exposed most of the follies and foibles of mankind had not, until the birth of yesterday, achieved that final shattering achievement, the ending of life, and in this case the ultimate awesome passing of George Bernard Shaw.
The mould is broken. There was none like him before him, none like him when he was alive - and there will be none to match him now he has gone. Shaw in love seems almost grotesque - though there is much evidence that in his time many women did not think it so. How for instance could any girl in his arms deal with this sort of stuff? :
'When you loved me I gave you the whole suns and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul. We possessed all the universe together - and you ask me to give you my scanty wages as well!'
Mr Churchill, who know a golden intellect and a diamond-bright pen when he sees one, has paid his profound respects GBS. But he has also recorded his censure at some of the gaucheries of the sage in his antics.
'If truth must be told, our our British island has not had much help in its trouble from Mr Bernard Shaw. When nations are fighting for life, when the palace in which the Jester dwells not uncomfortably is itself assailed, and everyone from prince to groom is fighting on the battlements, the Jesters jokes echo through deserted halls, and his witticisms, distributed evenly between friend and foe, jar the ears of hurrying messengers, and mourning women and wounded men. The titter ill accords with the tocsin*, or the motley with the bandages.'
GBS died after a fall when reaching out to prune an old and dying bough with secateurs. The symbolism would not have been lost on him. he was almost certainly a happy man for a very long long time. But even on that he had the last paradoxical word. Said Mr Shaw 'A life time of happiness? No man could bear it : it would be hell on earth.'
Daily Mirror Columnist Sir William Connor, who wrote under the name Cassandra on the death of George Bernard Shaw, November 3rd 1950.
*funeral bell
Tuesday, 3 November 2015
In Rememberance Week
 |
| Remember the alternative to the official recognition of the fallen and falling.... |
Monday, 2 November 2015
On Home Ownership
As the richest people in the world
increasingly detach themselves
from the poor, through their wealth,
the more the rich few reinforce
the private ownership of everything
whilst redefining the value of care
to only what is valuable to them.
What each of us needs is very simple
- a door we can close against the world
when it presses us to be who we are not
-behind which we can be at ease in ourselves.
increasingly detach themselves
from the poor, through their wealth,
the more the rich few reinforce
the private ownership of everything
whilst redefining the value of care
to only what is valuable to them.
What each of us needs is very simple
- a door we can close against the world
when it presses us to be who we are not
-behind which we can be at ease in ourselves.
Sunday, 1 November 2015
Watching Television Alone
Watching television used to be sold
as 'an activity for all the family'
-something to bind family members
each to the other via the values
presented on the screen.
Where does this leave the person
who lives and watches alone?
If, well more likely when, they disagree
with the presenter will they let it wash over them?
Or swear at the screen repeatedly, get angry,
and have to turn it off if they want some calm?
Whether they agree or swear at the screen
on their own there nobody with whom
to share affirmation through agreement.
No shared joy at being positively surprised.
No feedback through spontaneity.
Just freshly minted inertia
which blocks out the silence
that would speak a lot clearer
to all about how to make true rest.
as 'an activity for all the family'
-something to bind family members
each to the other via the values
presented on the screen.
Where does this leave the person
who lives and watches alone?
If, well more likely when, they disagree
with the presenter will they let it wash over them?
Or swear at the screen repeatedly, get angry,
and have to turn it off if they want some calm?
Whether they agree or swear at the screen
on their own there nobody with whom
to share affirmation through agreement.
No shared joy at being positively surprised.
No feedback through spontaneity.
Just freshly minted inertia
which blocks out the silence
that would speak a lot clearer
to all about how to make true rest.
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