In the Bleak Midwinter*

Canadian Winter

"Snow has fallen, and everything is white.  It is very cold...I love to close my eyes a moment and think of the land outside, white under the mingled snow and moonlight ~ white trees, white fields ~ the heaps of stone by the roadside white ~ snow in the furrows...If he were to come I could not even hear his footsteps."

~ Katherine Mansfield, 1914 (Buckinghamshire) Oct. 14, 1888- Jan. 9, 1923  Writer of short stories. Born in New Zealand.  Spent years in England where she became friends with Virgina Woolf and D.H. Lawrence.
(Photo:  for our friends wintering in Florida, U.S.A. "Close your eyes for a moment.")  Photo taken snowstorm Dec. 29, 2012.
* Poem by English poet, Christina Rossetti

*Giddy!!! "/'gidi / adj. (giddier, giddiest) 1. having a sensation of whirling and a tendency to fall, stagger, or spin around:  dizzy.  2. a. overexcited as a result of success, pleasurable emotion, etc.; mentally intoxicated. b.
~ Oxford Canadian Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1998.

This morning for the first time in weeks, unexpectedly, the photos feature on Blogspot works.

* Photos of riverbank Cayuga.  Building of the new bridge commenced this winter.  With any luck we will be able to bring photos of this historic event.  The Neat L'l Bookshop is located on Hwy. 3 in the block approaching the bridge.

"The Diminishing Few..."

"In 1980, the average CEO made forty-two times what an average hourly worker took home.  By 2005, the ratio was 262 to 1.*  Conservative outlets like the Wall Street Journal editorial page try to justify outlandish salaries and stock options as necessary to attract top talent, and suggest the economy actually performs better when America's corporate leaders are fat and happy.  But the explosion in CEO pay has had little to do with improved performance.  In fact, some of the country's most highly compensated CEOs over the past decade have presided over huge drops in earnings, losses in shareholder value, massive layoffs, and the underfunding of their workers' pension funds."
~ Published in 2006, Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope.  Crown Publishers/Random House.  In his 2013 Inaugural Speech, the U.S. President referred to "the diminishing few."

~ * CBC Peter Mansbridge answers the question how this happened. The National, Monday, January 21.

Word Watching ~  "Hope"

"[Few] on the partisan landscape can discuss the word 'hope' in a political context and be regarded as the least bit sincere.  Obama is such a man, and he proves it by employing a fresh and buoyant vocabulary to scrub away some of the toxins from contemporary political debate.  Those polling categories that presume to define the vast chasm between us do not, Obama reminds us, add up to the sum of our concerns or hint at where our hearts otherwise intersect."

~ John Balzar, Los Angeles Times, Review The Audacity of Hope, 2006.

In The AUDACITY of HOPE,  Obama writes:
"And in that place [Lincoln Memorial], I think about America and those who built it.  This nation's founders, who somehow rose above petty ambitions and narrow calculations to imagine a nation unfurling across a continent.  And those like Lincoln and King, who ultimately laid down their lives in the service of perfecting an imperfect union.  And all the faceless, nameless men and women, slaves and soldiers and tailors and butchers, constructing lives for themselves and their children and grandchildren, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, to fill in the landscape of our collective dreams.
"It is that process I wish to be a part of.
"My heart is filled with love for this country."

Today, January 21, Barack Obama will place his hand not only on President Lincoln's bible but also on freedom-rights advocate Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s bible to be sworn in at his official inauguration ceremony.

~Barack Obama (b. August 4, 1961) author of two New York Times Bestsellers: Dreams from My Father, 1995 and The AUDACITY of HOPE, 2006, Random House.

View From Our Window ~

Cupid Reading

"The audacity of hope ~
"That was the best of the American spirit, I thought ~ having the audacity to believe despite all the evidence to the contrary that we could restore a sense of community to a nation torn by conflict; the gall to believe that despite personal setbacks, the loss of a job or an illness in the family or a childhood mired in poverty, we had some control ~ and therefore responsibility ~ over our own fate.
"It was that audacity, I thought, that joined us as one people.  It was that pervasive spirit of hope that tied my own family's story to the larger American story, and my own story to those of the voters I sought to represent."

Obama thinks about what Benjamin Franklin wrote to his mother, explaining why he had devoted so much of his time to public service:  "I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than, He died rich."
Obama writes, "That's what satisfies me now, I think ~ being useful to my family and the people who elected me, leaving behind a legacy that will make our children's lives more hopeful than our own."

~  BARACK OBAMA, The AUDACITY of HOPE, 2006. THOUGHTS ON RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN DREAM, Random House, Inc..