"...the fear of hurting someone's feelings may be having a chilling effect on solid conversation in general ~ not only political conversation.  At dinner parties I've attended, the topics of conversation mainly were restaurants, vacations, and health ~ all safe subjects.
To engage in small talk is often enjoyable and it certainly is "polite," but a steady diet of conversation about food, vacations, and health is tedious.  "Politeness," La Rochefoucauld says, "is essential in social life, but it should have limits;  it becomes a kind of slavery when it is excessive."
...
"Yet it is hard to avoid saccharine politeness when the alternative is often the angry venting of opinions.  Judith Martin says that "she would be only too happy to welcome the return of substantive conversation at dinner parties; goodness knows she is weary of hearing people talk about the food.  But conversation requires listening respectfully to others and engaging in polite give-and-take, rather than making speeches and impugning others' motives and judgment."

Conversation requires listening respectfully to others and engaging in polite give-and-take, rather than making speeches and impugning others' motives and judgment.

"Anne Applebaum, a Washington Post columnist, warns against discussing politics at dinner parties.  'Anyone who has ever even invited guests of opposing political persuasions over to dinner will know how quickly it can all go wrong....A chilly, polite dinner is more bearable than one that ends with guests stomping out the door'."

 

 

~ Stephen Miller, Conversation, A History of a Declining Art, Yale University, 2006.

"45 B.C. Julius Caesar adjusts 46 B.C. ~ known as the Year of Confusion with its 445 days ~ by fixing 365 days and six hours as the length of a year, with one day intercalated every four years, a leap."

~ A Book of Days for the Literary Year, Edited by Neal. T. Jones, Thames and Hudson 1984.

Happy Birthday to all you Leap Year babies!  (How old are you today?)

 

Find us on Facebook: Cayuga-on-the-Grand OR The Neat Little Bookshop

 

 

 

 



When the sun shines upon the crust of March
In the bare wood, how blue the shadows lie
Along the snow between the gray tree-boles!
And where the muffled stream runs, bluer still
Between its snowy banks edged with frail ice,
The silvery oaks and sugar maples stand
Like a faint tracing on a lacquer tray,
Or a worn pattern on old Sheffield plate.
The strong sun melts the snow in open places;
A calling crow flies over, trailing north
His silent shadow down the wooded slope;
And then to bring the winter scene to life,
Etched on the memory like a haunting smile
A bluebird flashes to an apple bough.

~  Bliss Carmen, "A Bluebird in March" ~ Sanctuary, Sunshine House Sonnets,
McClelland & Stewart, 1929.

Along the Grand

[Photos:  Cayuga-on-the-Grand, Feb., 2016 lbw]

SANCTUARY by Bliss Carman

Out of the turmoil whither shall I go?
How cure the fever of a mind distraught,
The crazed futility of haste assuage,
And dear serenity's lost poise restore?
Is there no respite for the racing pulse,
No haven from the day's demoniac din
And the relentless frenzy of the night?
Were may the haunting peace of God be found?
No cabined luxury contents the soul,
Homesick for solace of its native air.
For healing of the wind among the pines,
The stilling beauty of the clear new moon,
The strength of hills, the joy of singing streams,
Take any road at hand, to Out-of-doors.

~ ESCAPE by Bliss Carman (1861 - 1929) Canadian Poet Laureate

 

 

SANCTUARY SUNSHINE HOUSE SONNETS by Bliss Carman, Illustrations by Whitman Bailey.

McClelland & Stewart, 1929.

 

 

 

 

{...for our friends in Florida.}

[Photos: Railway Bridge Over Grand at Cayuga Feb.2016 lbw]

 

 

"Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles.  We had many devices to use as few as possible.  In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for two or three hours;  she could do this in the dark, or by fire-light;  and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my wristbands, she told me to 'keep blind-man's holiday'."

"String is my foible.  My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come.  I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel, instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold.  How people can bring themselves to use Indian-rubber rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine.  To me an Indian-rubber ring is a precious treasure.  I have one which is not new;  one that I picked up off the floor, nearly six years ago.  I have really tried to use it; but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the extravagance.

"I have often noticed that almost every one has his own individual small economies ~ careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction--any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. An old gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of the failure of a Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was invested, with stoical mildness, worried his family all through a long summer's day, because one of them had torn (instead of cutting) out the written leaves of his now useless bank-book;  of course, the corresponding pages at the other end came out as well; and this little unnecessary waster of paper (his private economy) chafed him more than all the loss of his money.  Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in;  the only way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished article was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so making them serve again.  Even now, though tamed by age, I see him casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole instead of a half sheet of note-paper, with the three lines of acceptance to an invitation, written on only one of the sides..."

~ Elizabeth Gaskell, known as Mrs. Gaskell (1810 - 1865) English novelist. CRANFORD, Chatto & Windus Publishers, 1907.
[Photo miniature: Wikipedia.]

[Tomorrow: "String is my foible...Small pieces of butter grieve others."]