Our lives, discoloured with our present woes,
May still grow white and shine with happier hours.
So the pure limped stream, when foul with stains
Of rushing torrents and descending rains,
Works itself clear, and as it runs refines,
till by degrees the floating mirror shines;
Reflects each flower that on the border grows,
And a new heaven in it’s fair bosom shows.
— Joseph Addison, Hope
Posted by daddybear71 on January 30, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/01/30/a-year-of-poetry-day-282/
Posted by daddybear71 on January 29, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/01/29/musings-226/
No, I'm not Byron; I am, yet, Another choice for the sacred dole, Like him - a persecuted soul, But only of the Russian set. I early start and end the whole, And will not win the future days; Like in an ocean, in my soul, A cargo of lost hopes stays. Who, oh, my ocean severe, Could read all secrets in your scroll? Who'll tell the people my idea? I'm God or no one at all! -- Mikhael Lermentov, No, I'm Not Byron...
Posted by daddybear71 on January 29, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/01/29/a-year-of-poetry-day-281/
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”
— John Gillespie MaGee, Jr., High Flight
Posted by daddybear71 on January 28, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/01/28/a-year-of-poetry-day-280/
On January 27, 1967, the crew of Apollo 1 strapped themselves into their spacecraft for a routine test. Astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee were preparing for a launch of the first Apollo spacecraft a few weeks later. The United States was racing to put men on the moon, and this was to be a vital test of the craft that would take them there.
After the doors were sealed, something started a fire in the oxygen-filled capsule, and the three astronauts died before they could get out or be rescued. This was the first time that an American space crew had perished. Unfortunately, it was not the last.
The deaths of these brave men sobered a nation which was giddy over the space program. Few at the time realized the true risks astronauts took every time they flew, much less in the preparations for flight. NASA, to its credit, learned from the tragedy and used its lessons to improve the equipment and procedures used in later missions.
I grew up in the immediate aftermath of the Apollo missions. I remember, vaguely, being placed in front of my parents’ television to watch men walk on the moon. My first science fiction books were full of hope that mankind would stretch out from our planet to explore and conquer the stars. Men like Grissom, White, and Chaffee, along with their compatriots aboard Challenger and Columbia, remind us that achieving those dreams will be dangerous and it will exact a toll in lives.
We will find our way in space, of that I have no doubt. Our astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts are the descendants of all of the men and women who stretched out across vast oceans to find the next island or the lands over the horizon. But those journeys, as deadly as they were, were done at the bottom of an ocean of air, and a leak in the boat was not almost uniformly fatal. Our new explorers will make their journeys in an environment more deadly than any of our ancestors could imagine, but they do it with all of the knowledge and skill our species can muster.
We will lose good men and women as we stretch out from our cradle. It could be due to bad decisions, or faulty equipment, or just bad luck, but that price must be paid if we are to not only set foot on other planets, but to seed them with our civilizations. When that happens, it is right and necessary for us to honor the lost, but it is absolutely incumbent upon us to learn from tragedy and use it to spur ourselves further toward the horizon.
Today, we remember Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee, but we honor them by never forgetting why they climbed into that capsule. It is my fervent hope that my children and grandchildren will follow them to the stars, and it is my job as a parent to teach them about the heroes who gave of themselves to get them there.
Posted by daddybear71 on January 27, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/01/27/50-years-on-apollo-1/
The hedge on the left, and the trench on the right,
And the whispering, rustling wood between,
And who knows where in the wood to-night,
Death or capture may lurk unseen,
The open field and the figures lying
Under the shade of the apple trees —
Is it the wind in the branches sighing
Or a German trying to stop a sneeze.
Louder the voices of night come thronging,
But over them all the sound is clear,
Taking me back to the place of my longing
And the cultured sneezes I used to hear,
Lecture-time and my tutor’s ‘hanker’
Stopping his period’s rounded close,
Like the frozen hand of a German ranker
Down in a ditch with a cold in his nose.
I’m cold, too, and a stealthy shuffle
From the man with a pistol covering me,
And the Bosche moving off with a snap and a shuffle
Break the windows of memory —
I can’t make sure till the moon gets lighter —
Anyway shooting is over bold,
Oh, damn you, get back to your trench, you blighter,
I really can’t shoot a man with a cold.
— E. Alan Mackintosh, In No Man’s Land
Posted by daddybear71 on January 27, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/01/27/a-year-of-poetry-day-279/
Just got the email that Lost Children has gone live on Amazon! Thanks to everyone who bought it on pre-sale. It should show up on your e-reader this morning.
Hope everyone enjoys the latest yarn. Please remember, honest reviews are always welcome!
Posted by daddybear71 on January 26, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/01/26/lost-children-live-now/
Before a lonely shrine
Of foam-born Aphrodite,
Ungarlanded of vine,
Undyed by dripping wine,
I brought green bay to twine,
And prayed to her, almighty, —
And lo, the prayer of mine
Was heard of Aphrodite.
I sang of answered prayer,
And now before the goddess,
The maids lay flowers rare,
And she has ceased to care
For bay that I might bear.
To heal my heart’s distress,
My feet must wander where
There waits some lonelier goddess.
— Sara Teasdale, Triolets
Posted by daddybear71 on January 26, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/01/26/a-year-of-poetry-day-278/
In January, 1917, British intelligence intercepted a telegram from the German foreign ministry to its ambassador in Mexico. The message, which has come to be known as the “Zimmermann Telegram,” detailed a proposal by the German government to support a Mexican attack on the United States if the U.S. were to declare war on Germany.
Mexico was still smarting from U.S. incursions into its northern borderlands by the United States Army, as well as the seizure of Veracruz in 1914. German leadership hoped that war with Mexico would delay or reduce the amount of assistance the United States could offer the European allies. This would improve Germany’s chances of success in 1917 and 1918.
British codebreakers had a conundrum, though. How to get the telegram into the hands of the Americans without giving away the fact that they were tapping American diplomatic channels? The Americans, officially neutral in the war and hoping that a negotiated peace could be brokered, allowed German diplomatic traffic to pass over their trans-Atlantic cables. Normally, this traffic had to be unencrypted, but somehow Germany was able to convince American diplomats to allow this telegram to be sent encoded. Since the cable ran through British hands, and our cousins across the sea are nobody’s fools, they were making copies of everything that went down that wire.
After a bit of subterfuge on the part of the British, and a bit of bad decision-making on the part of the Germans, the telegram was not only delivered to the Americans, but was publicly confirmed as authentic . This helped to swell anti-German sentiment in the United States and, along with German resumption of unlimited submarine warfare in February 1917, helped to bring the Americans into the war against Germany.
Posted by daddybear71 on January 25, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/01/25/100-years-on-zimmermann-telegram/
A fond kiss, and then we sever;
A farewell, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I’ll wage thee.
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu’ twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.
I’ll ne’er blame my partial fancy,
Nothing could resist my Nancy;
But to see her was to love her;
Love but her, and love forever.
Had we never lov’d say kindly,
Had we never lov’d say blindly,
Never met–or never parted–
We had ne’er been broken-hearted.
Fare thee well, thou first and fairest!
Fare thee well, thou best and dearest!
Thine be like a joy and treasure,
Peace. enjoyment, love, and pleasure!
A fond kiss, and then we sever;
A farewell, alas, forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I’ll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I’ll wage thee!
— Robert Burns, A Fond Kiss
Posted by daddybear71 on January 25, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/01/25/a-year-of-poetry-day-277/
DaddyBear’s Den 
