All posts by philwade

Longfellow's April

sapling by nathansnostalgia/FlickrWhen the warm sun, that brings

Seed-time and harvest, has returned again,

‘T is sweet to visit the still wood, where springs

The first flower of the plain.

I love the season well,

When forest glades are teeming with bright forms,

Nor dark and many-folded clouds foretell

The coming-on of storms.

From the earth’s loosened mould

The sapling draws its sustenance, and thrives;

Though stricken to the heart with winter’s cold,

The drooping tree revives.

The softly-warbled song

Comes from the pleasant woods, and colored wings

Glance quick in the bright sun, that moves along

The forest openings.

When the bright sunset fills

The silver woods with light, the green slope throws

Its shadows in the hollows of the hills,

And wide the upland glows.

And when the eve is born,

In the blue lake the sky, o’er-reaching far,

Is hollowed out, and the moon dips her horn,

And twinkles many a star.

Inverted in the tide

Stand the gray rocks, and trembling shadows throw,

And the fair trees look over, side by side,

And see themselves below.

Sweet April! many a thought

Is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed;

Nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought,

Life’s golden fruit is shed.

“An April Day” by H.W. Longfellow

Photo of sapling by nathansnostalgia/Flickr

Brave, Noble Men

Here’s an Emerson poem for April in America and National Blame Someone Else Day.

What makes a nation’s pillars high

And it’s foundations strong?

What makes it mighty to defy

The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand

Go down in battle shock;

Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,

Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust

Of empires passed away;

The blood has turned their stones to rust,

Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown

Has seemed to nations sweet;

But God has struck its luster down

In ashes at his feet.

Not gold but only men can make

A people great and strong;

Men who for truth and honor’s sake

Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep,

Who dare while others fly…

They build a nation’s pillars deep

And lift them to the sky.

“A Nation’s Strength” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cheers, You Old Goat!

April is National Poetry Month, and I’m told that today, somewhere, it’s Look Up At the Sky Day. So today, I’d like to give you one of my favorite poems. I first read this in The Oxford Book of Light Verse back in college while looking for a bit of sunshine in the midst of deary study. Here’s an old sea shanty, meant for singin’.

Old Joe is dead and gone to hell,

Oh, we say so, and we hope so;

Old Joe is dead and gone to hell.

Oh, poor old Joe!

He’s as dead as a nail in the lamp-room door,

Oh, we say so, and we hope so;

He’s as dead as a nail in the lamp-room door.

Oh, poor old Joe!

He won’t come hazing us no more,

Oh, we say so, and we hope so;

He won’t come hazing us no more,

Oh, poor old Joe!

Eagle Eye Pigeon: Secret Agent

This story is part of Loren and B.’s Shared Storytelling: Six Birds.

Stokes awoke that morning, which meant he was alive—as far as he could tell. He still suspected the Cubans at Poco Burrito of being a front for Castro’s international revolutionary army, but now he knew they didn’t poison his bean dip last night. Perhaps they don’t suspect him, or perhaps they made a mistake and poisoned someone else. He could check the files for everyone he photographed using the micro-cameras in his ear studs.

“But there are bigger fish to batter,” he muttered.

“Water. Hot,” he said as he stepped into the shower. No water came until he turned the knobs by hand. One day, he thought, the bathroom will be fully automated.

Over his coffee and freezer waffles, the news feeds screamed of possible threats and leads. Spring break threatened by vigilante wildlife in Bull Moose, Maine. Japanese crime boss eludes Iraqi police by wearing a burka. Apple’s new iPork could inspire a wave of high tech breakfast food designed to spy on us.

Sigh.

Continue reading Eagle Eye Pigeon: Secret Agent

Write Your Reviews, Take Your Vacation

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) is running a little promotion for reviewers. Write at least 100 words in review of one of their products, and you will earn one chance for winning a vacation trip. If it’s a first review, you’ll earn two chances.

Do I need to recommend which things (ahem) to review?

A Dreadful Dragon Fierce and Fell!

St George (dc303)

(Speaking of dragons, I looked up a old poem telling the story of St. George and the Dragon. I’m a little nervous about the authenticity of my source, but it appears legit. The story is preserved in The Golden Legend, and I assume it was first recorded there in print. I don’t think this is what was written in that book, but a derivative from it or from oral history.)

Of Hector’s deeds did Homer sing,

And of the sack of stately Troy,

What griefs fair Helena did bring,

Which was Sir Paris’ only joy:

And by my pen I will recite

St. George’s deeds, and English knight.

Against the Sarazens so rude

Fought he full long and many a day,

Where many gyants he subdu’d,

In honour of the Christian way;

And after many adventures past,

To Egypt land he came at last.

Now, as the story plain doth tell,

Within that countrey there did rest

A dreadful dragon fierce and fell,

Whereby they were full sore opprest:

Who by his poisonous breath each day

Did many of the city slay.

The grief whereof did grow so great

Throughout the limits of the land,

That they their wise-men did intreat

To shew their cunning out of hand;

What way they might this fiend destroy,

That did the countrey thus annoy.

Continue reading A Dreadful Dragon Fierce and Fell!

Sustainably Grown Coffee

Caribou Coffee plans to be “the first U.S. coffee chain to commit to buying coffee grown only under sustainable farming practices developed by the Rainforest Alliance.” The Rainforest Alliance is a non-profit organization that works with farms to improve their crops and farming practices.

I hope they charge very little for certifying a farm. I can understand the cost for teaching farmers how to improve their work, but to merely put the Rainforest Alliance stamp of approval on a crop shouldn’t cost the farmer much, if anything. The farmers are barely making a living as it is, aren’t they? Why burden them to have their work approved by Americans?

Creating Toward a Goal

Andrew Peterson has a beautiful post from his writing retreat. “What I do when I build roads isn’t that much different from what you do,” an old logger told him. “I have to figure out how to get from here to there. I look at a place and imagine a road. Takes a fair bit of creativity.” He goes on.

The Great Books Alone Are Not Enough

Patrick J. Deneen, the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, argues that teaching the Great Books is essentially worthless if the teacher treats them all as equally true.

contemporary arguments on behalf of the Great Books are often as pernicious, and even indistinguishable from, the forms of value relativism that they purport to combat. Many conservative academics have become lazy in the defense of the Great Books, content to let the phrase stand in for a deeper and potentially more contentious examination of the various arguments within those books and the West itself, and of the need for university faculties to provide some kind of organized and well-formed guidance to students on how best to approach these texts.

In short, teachers must have a bias for the truth in order to guide students through these great works. Reality must be recognized in the classroom. Because if an interest in ideas, no matter how ridiculous, is the highest virtue for a teacher, it barely matters what he is teaching. The outcome will be similar. Students will believe their own opinions are the only ones that matter, regardless their merits.