One hundred and two years ago today the British passenger liner, the TITANIC, sank tragically losing 1,490 lives.  In 1912, the largest ship in the world, Titanic, was supposedly unsinkable.

Over the century, the sinking of the Titanic has crept into everyday dialogue.  British Conservative politician, William Hague said, expressing his opposition to joining the single currency, "It was inevitable the Titanic was going to set sail, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea to be on it."

Roger Morton, on losing five of the last six primaries as President Ford's campaign manager, said, "I'm not going to rearrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic."

And Bob Dylan sings:
"Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And every body's shouting
'Which side are you on?'
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers."

        'Desolation Row'  1965, Bob Dylan, (b. 1941)
        American singer and songwriter, www.bobdylan.com

The Oxford Dictionary of QUOTATIONS, Oxford University Press, 2001.

 

 

 

 

 

"I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

 

~ SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642 - 1727)  Brewster's Memoirs of Newton.  Vol. ii. Chap.xxvii

 

[please click on photo for larger image, lbw]

 

 

 



"Everyone Welcome. . ."

Third Thursday

 April 17 at 1:00 p.m.

 

Neil Paul

Reading & Discussing Poetry

of

Gerard Manley Hopkins

 

 

"Coffee pot's always on..."

 

 

[Informal ~ If you can come for only a short time, that is okay!]

 

  



Spring
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring ~
  When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
  Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
  The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
  The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins  (1844 - 1889)  Victorian poet, A Philosopher's Stone and Other Poems.

"Whether The Weather Be Fine

Whether the weather be fine
      Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold
       Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
        Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not."

                                         ANONYMOUS

~ The Children's TREASURY of VERSE
Illustrated by Patricia Ludlow, Kibworth Books, 1999.

Day Later ~ All Under Water

 

[Photos: Friday, April 11]

 

 

Smile for Today ~

"In 1936, shortly before [US producer] Thalberg's* early death from pneumonia, his literary scout Al Lewin brought him the synopsis of a book about to be published.  He was greatly excited about its potential as a film and as a vehicle for Clark Gable.  The book's title was Gone With the Wind.  Thalberg agreed to read the synopsis, but kept putting it off.  Lewin went on reminding him and asking him about it until at last Thalberg said that he had read it and he agreed with everything Lewin had said about it.  'But,' he continued, 'I have just made Mutiny on the Bounty and The Good Earth.  And now you're asking me to burn Atlanta.  No, absolutely not!  No more epics for me now.  Just give me a little drawing-room drama.  I'm just too tired.' "

~ Irving J. Thalberg (1899 - 1936) had an important place in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's most famous films.

~ THE LITTLE BROWN BOOK OF Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman, General Editor.