“Poetry should be rather like a coranto, short and nimbly-lofty, than a dull lesson of a day long.” Patrick Kurp talks about poetry a bit.
"What melodious sounds I hear"
From the cross uplifted high
Where the Savior deigns to die
What melodious sounds I hear
Bursting on my ravished ear
Love¹s redeeming work is done
Come and welcome, sinner, come.
Sprinkled now with blood the throne
Why beneath thy burdens groan
On my pierced body laid
Justice owns the ransom paid
Bow the knee and kiss the Son
Come and welcome, sinner, come.
Read more from this hymn by Thomas Haweis (1732-1820)
Work Break: Poetry Reading
Bill Murray read poems to the construction workers building Poetry House in Manhattan.
Gina Holmes' Debut Novel
The popular blogger Gina Holmes has her first book out this month, Crossing Oceans.
Excerpt of Bertrand's "Back on Murder"
You can pre-order this novel using our carousel of recommended books on the right of the screen.
Free Book on BadLanguage.net
Matthew Stibbe is giving away his ebook on his website, BadLanguage.net. No, it isn’t about that. It’s called 30 Days to Better Business Writing.
Friday Fight: Longspear
With Lars going to the Festival of Nations, leaving the blog to me, and with May coming tomorrow and it being National Honesty Day today, I think I need to post a live steel combat video. Here’s one from the Skjaldborg group.
Short hiatus
I won’t be posting as usual tonight, because I’ll be at the Viking table for the Festival of Nations at the River Centre in St. Paul today, Saturday and Sunday. Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood. I’ll be back Monday.
Beyond parody dept., item # 3,892
In another milestone in the United Nations’ march toward a finer, freer world, the world body has “elected” Iran to a seat on its Commission on the Status of Women. Here’s the story from FOX News.
NEW YORK — Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged “immodest.”
Let’s pause for a moment to savor the bittersweet irony of this.
It’s a classic U.N. Compromise – “We have something for everyone! For liberals, we have enthusiastic support for abortion on demand. For conservatives, we have the stoning of women. Everybody should be happy!”
It’s hard to make anything like meaningful statements about “world opinion” and “international sentiment” (which is one of the basic problems at the core of the whole U.N. enterprise), but it seems to me a lot of the world (especially Europe) is counting on perpetual Islamic hatred for the United States to keep them out of the terrorists’ sights.
But this won’t last forever. Eventually, either because America has stood firm and scared the jihadists off, or because it has succumbed to dhimmitude, Islam will turn its eyes on the rest of the non-Muslim world (or, as it’s called in the Koran, “The House of War”).
And then, “the world community” will either have to man up and defend what they think of as their values, or say goodbye to their sexual experimentation, “gay” rights, feminism, and secularism.
It occurs to me that I probably ought not to worry as much as I do about the advances of social liberalism in America. They will almost certainly be stopped in time, either by a resurgence of Christianity in this country, or by the substitution of Shariah.
Tip: Townhall.com blog.
Theory Into Game
Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do is a guessing game from Albert-László Barabási who claims that “despite the seeming randomness of human behavior, humans actually act in very predictable patterns.” Looks like fun.