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Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on July 4, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/04/todays-earworm-701/
A Year of Poetry – Day 72
Hats off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,
A flash of color beneath the sky:
Hats off!
The flag is passing by!
Blue and crimson and white it shines,
Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.
Hats off!
The colors before us fly;
But more than the flag is passing by.
Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great,
Fought to make and to save the State:
Weary marches and sinking ships;
Cheers of victory on dying lips;
Days of plenty and years of peace;
March of a strong land’s swift increase;
Equal justice, right and law,
Stately honor and reverend awe;
Sign of a nation, great and strong
To ward her people from foreign wrong:
Pride and glory and honor,—all
Live in the colors to stand or fall.
Hats off!
Along the street there comes
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;
And loyal hearts are beating high:
Hats off!
The flag is passing by!
— Henry Holcombe Bennett, The Flag Goes By
Posted by daddybear71 on July 4, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/04/a-year-of-poetry-day-72/
A Year of Poetry – Day 71
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
— Katharine Lee Bates, America the Beautiful
Posted by daddybear71 on July 3, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/03/a-year-of-poetry-day-71/
Musings
- There are worse ways to spend a day than making and canning applesauce.
- I have informed Irish Woman that saying “We’re making baby food!” while we are making said homemade applesauce is not cool.
- Also, I had to inform her that the applesauce did not need bourbon to flavor it.
- I am no longer allowed to tell Boo that if he wants to walk around the house singing loudly in a soprano, I can make him into a castrati and make it official.
- I will be heading to LibertyCon next weekend. Look for me to be the big, fat, hairy bald guy trying to maintain personal space.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 2, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/02/musings-201/
Quote of the Day
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. — Nobel acceptance speech, Elie Wiesel, 1928 to 2016
Posted by daddybear71 on July 2, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/02/quote-of-the-day-164/
A Year of Poetry – Day 70
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on the fate!
We know what Master laid the keel,
What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,
What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock,
‘Tis of the wave and not the rock;
‘Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest’s roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o’er our fears,
Are all with thee, – are all with thee!
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Republic
Posted by daddybear71 on July 2, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/02/a-year-of-poetry-day-70/
100 Years On – Somme
On the morning of July 1, 1916, French and British forces stepped off on their part of what was supposed to be a coordinated effort by the Allied armies to attack the Central Powers on all fronts. French forces, however, had been drained by efforts to stave off the Germans at Verdun. The British changed the plan so that they would take on a heavier load on the Western Front, principally along the Somme River.
After a lengthy artillery bombardment, 13 British divisions, including what was left of the Regular Army, the Territorials, and the new divisions of the Kitchener Army, left their trenches and advanced in good order. They, along with 11 French divisions, ground into the German lines. British losses on the first day alone came to 57,470 men, with 19,240 killed.
In 141 days, the British and French pushed German lines back six miles along a front of sixteen miles. This was the largest Allied advance since the beginning of the war.
141 days later, over one million men, French, German, and British, were either dead, wounded, or captured.
16 miles by 6 miles is 96 square miles.
146,431 dead Allied soldiers (95,675 British and 50,756 French) divided by 96 square miles comes to about 1525 dead men for each mile gained. In contrast, the Union side of the American Civil War lost 140,414 men to combat over four years. This was war on a destructive level never before seen.
While British leadership was criticized for the cost of the battle both during and after the war, later historians point to the horrific scale of casualties absorbed by Britain’s French and Russian allies throughout the war and assert that the Somme was Britain’s introduction to truly modern warfare. Whether the Somme, with its gains, were worth the number of dead and injured, is open to interpretation.
The Battle of the Somme did, however, cause great harm to the German army. Losses of 465,000 dead, wounded, or missing could not be absorbed without having an impact on the ability of the Germans to continue to defend their gains in France and Belgium. In 1917, they would withdraw to better designed fortifications along the Hindenburg Line.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 1, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/01/100-years-on-somme/
A Year of Poetry – Day 69
I
Where the wings of a sunny Dome expand
I saw a Banner in gladsome air-
Starry, like Berenice’s Hair-
Afloat in broadened bravery there;
With undulating long-drawn flow,
As rolled Brazilian billows go
Voluminously o’er the Line.
The Land reposed in peace below;
The children in their glee
Were folded to the exulting heart
Of young Maternity.
II
Later, and it streamed in fight
When tempest mingled with the fray,
And over the spear-point of the shaft
I saw the ambiguous lightning play.
Valor with Valor strove, and died:
Fierce was Despair, and cruel was Pride;
And the lorn Mother speechless stood,
Pale at the fury of her brood.
III
Yet later, and the silk did wind
Her fair cold for;
Little availed the shining shroud,
Though ruddy in hue, to cheer or warm
A watcher looked upon her low, and said-
She sleeps, but sleeps, she is not dead.
But in that sleep contortion showed
The terror of the vision there-
A silent vision unavowed,
Revealing earth’s foundation bare,
And Gorgon in her hidden place.
It was a thing of fear to see
So foul a dream upon so fair a face,
And the dreamer lying in that starry shroud.
IV
But from the trance she sudden broke-
The trance, or death into promoted life;
At her feet a shivered yoke,
And in her aspect turned to heaven
No trace of passion or of strife-
A clear calm look. It spake of pain,
But such as purifies from stain-
Sharp pangs that never come again-
And triumph repressed by knowledge meet,
Power delicate, and hope grown wise,
And youth matured for age’s seat-
Law on her brow and empire in her eyes.
So she, with graver air and lifted flag;
While the shadow, chased by light,
Fled along the far-brawn height,
And left her on the crag.
— Herman Melville, America
Posted by daddybear71 on July 1, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/01/a-year-of-poetry-day-69/
A Year of Poetry – Day 68
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
— Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
Posted by daddybear71 on June 30, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/06/30/a-year-of-poetry-day-68/
A Year of Poetry – Day 67
Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your children en-masse really are?)
— Walt Whitman, Long, Too Long America
Posted by daddybear71 on June 29, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/06/29/a-year-of-poetry-day-67/
DaddyBear
