"Searching For Green Roots" ~ History of the Beacoms

Quoting from a 1967 booklet, "Through the Years in West Nissouri 1818 to 1967" by Ida Logan of Thorndale, ON. about the crossing from Ireland to the new world.

"For the early immigrants, the six-week Atlantic crossing was quite a hardship.  They sailed in cargo vessels which carried squared timber back to Britain.  The ship's captain put in a few temporary partitions and bunks, and jammed in hundreds of passengers, who had to look after their own needs on the long voyage.
They supplied their own bedding, dishes, food, except bread and water which the captain provided.  The cooking was done over fireplaces where much pushing and shoving occurred over turns to cook porridge, salt pork, or potatoes.  The same confusion reigned over wash basins and corners for fresh air as the quarrels raged between peopled housed in such cramped quarters.  Colds and other diseases spread rapidly among the passengers.  It was not unusual to have 40 - 50 funerals in one crossing."

~ Lulu M. Carson & M. Phyllis Thompson,
Abco Copy Cat Limited, London, ON, 1989.

"Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size."

~ Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941) A Room of One's Own [1929]

March 8 is International Women's Day.  Theme for 2016 is Pledge for Parity.

 

 

[Photo:  Vintage hand-fan advertising for G. W. Robinson Co. Ltd. Department Store lbw]

 

 

 

 

"Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to un-know."

~ Sir Richard Francis Burton [March 19,1821 - October 20,1890] British explorer, writer, poet.
Familiar Quotations, John Bartlett./ Little,  Brown and Company, Centennial Edition. 1955

[Portrait:  Wikipedia]




 

"...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.