Smile for Today ~

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit."
~ Nelson Henderson

"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong."
~ Winston Churchill

~ Treasury of Wit & Wisdom, Reader's Digest, 2006

Winter

The wintry west extends his blast,
   And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
   The blinding sleet and snaw;
Wild-tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
   And roars frae bank to brae;
While bird and beast in covert rest,
   And pass the heartless day.

The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,'
   The joyless winter day
Let others fear, to me more dear
   Than all the pride of May;
The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul,
   My griefs it seems to join'
The leafless trees my fancy please,
   Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Pow'r Supreme, whose mighty scheme
   These woes of mine fulfil,
Here, firm I rest, they must be best,
   Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want (O, do Thou grant
   This one request of mine!);
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
   Assist me to resign.

~ Robert Burns (January 25, 1759 - July 21, 1796)  Scottish Bard
Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, Collins, 1955.
*Front Cover Pitkin Pictorials Ltd., 1973,  Portrait of Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, painted in 1828, 32 years after the poet's death.

The 2013 Man Booker International Prize longlist of finalists was announced on Wednesday, January 23.  Among the names:  a Canadian short-story and essay writer, Josip Novankovich.

Novankovich was born in 1956 in what is now Croatia; he was educated in medicine in Serbia.  When he moved to America where his Mother was from, he studied psychology and creative writing at Vassar Collage and Yale.
Today he lives in Montreal, Quebec and teaches creative writing at Concordia University, recently acquiring his Canadian citizenship.

The winner will be announced on May 22 in London, England.  Canadian short-story writer, Alice Munroe, won the prize in 2009.

www.themanbookerprize.com

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.