Charles Dana,
Editor,
The New York Sun, Dec.,1897.

Dear Virginia,
     Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little.
     In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole truth and knowledge.
     Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
     He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance, to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Early 1900s Post Card

     Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in Fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in chimneys on Christmas evening to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove?

     Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.

     Did you ever see Fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there.

     You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart.

     Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.

     Is it real?

     Ah, Virginia, in all the world there is nothing else real and abiding.

          No Santa Claus? Thank God, he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia…nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

The Editor

(Charles Dana, The New York Sun, 1897 ~ in answer to a letter from a little girl, asking “Is there a Santa Claus?”)

"The best teacher, until one comes to adult pupils, is not the one who knows most, but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and the wonderful which slips into the infantile comprehension.  A man of high intelligence, perhaps, may accomplish the thing by a conscious intellectual feat.  But it is vastly easier to the man (or woman) whose habits of mind are naturally on the plane of a child's.  The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike."

~ H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956) American journalist, editor, critic.

As we send our children and grandchildren back to school this morning, let us vow to support the voices of reason.  Let us take a minute to write, to e-mail, to out-shout the self-serving rhetoric of pro-gun advocates screaming outdated legislation. lbw

"Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love."
~ Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846 - 1916) American editor, essayist, critic.

"It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child Himself."
~ Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) British author.

"The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist."

~  Alfred Tennyson (1809 - 1892) British Poet Laureate.

Cayuga Bridge Progress:   Bridge Work Completion Spring of 2013



The Grand River Cayuga



Some of you may have listened to self-serving gun lobbyists screaming ~ talking over each other ~ last night on "Piers Morgan Tonight" about the American "right-to-bear-arms."  Their rhetoric is sickening.  Essentially what they are saying is, "Arm everybody and we will all be safer."

The lack of conversation in the past on the tragic shootings occurring on a regular basis in the U.S. has motivated the British-born journalist and talk-show host to speak out on the flood of weapons among the general population in the U.S.

How many more of these mass shooting will we have to endure before the powerful gun lobbyists ~ not least of all the National Rife Association www.nra.org ~ begin to care about the rights of people to feel safe?

Gun-ownership rights are currently more important than the rights of children to feel safe.



~lbw

ABE LINCOLN ~   "Mostly, he educated himself by borrowing books and newspapers There are many stories about Lincoln's efforts to find enough books to satisfy him in that backwoods country.  Those he liked he read again and again, losing himself in the adventures of Robinson Crusoe or the magical tales of The Arabian Nights.  He was thrilled by a biography of George Washington, with its stirring account of the Revolutionary War.  And he came to love the rhyme and rhythm of poetry, reciting passages from Shakespeare or the Scottish poet Robert Burns at the drop of a hat.  He would carry a book out to the field with him, so he could read at the end of each plow furrow, while the horse was getting its breath.  When noon came, he would sit under a tree and read while he ate. 'I never saw Abe after he was twelve that he didn't have a book in his hand or in his pocket,'  Dennis Hanks remembered.  'It didn't seem natural to see a feller read like that.'"

~ Abraham Lincoln, American President (b.Feb. 12, 1809 - d.April 15, 1865)

Inscription in young Abe Lincoln's homemade arithmetic book:

"Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
god knows When."

~ LINCOLN A PHOTOBIOGRAPHY, Russell Freedman, Clarion Books, 1987.
www.alplm.org

For the book lover on your list, The Neat L'l Bookshop carries used, like-new and local new.

Many hardcover popular authors are only five dollars.Check us out!  "Coffee pot's always on..."

Have a safe and happy holiday season.  Wishing you the peace and beauty the Christmas season brings.