For some reason, this was running through my head all last night. No idea why.
Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on March 29, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/03/29/todays-earworm-718/
A Year of Poetry – Day 340
Rain has fallen all the day.
O come among the laden trees:
The leaves lie thick upon the way
Of memories.
Staying a little by the way
Of memories shall we depart.
Come, my beloved, where I may
Speak to your heart.
— James Joyce, Rain Has Fallen All The Day
Posted by daddybear71 on March 29, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/03/29/a-year-of-poetry-day-340/
New Book From Peter Grant
Peter Grant, proprietor of the Bayou Renaissance Man blog, has brought out the second book in his Ames Archives western series, titled Rocky Mountain Retribution. The new book is the sequel to last year’s Brings the Lightning, and it is an excellent continuation of the story.
In the post-Civil War West, the railroads are expanding, the big money men are moving in, and the politicians they are buying make it difficult for a man to stand alone on his own. So, Walt Ames moves his wife, his home and his business from Denver to Pueblo. The railroads are bringing new opportunities to Colorado Territory, and he’s going to take full advantage of them.
Rocky Mountain Retribution is an excellent yarn that takes Walter Ames all over the American west, through all kinds of conditions, and follows his fight against a new enemy. It’s a page turner, so don’t be surprised if you don’t finish it in one sitting. If you haven’t read Brings the Lightning yet, it will definitely bring the second book into focus, but this one could also be enjoyable as a stand-alone novel.
If you like Louis L’Amour or Zane Grey, you’ll enjoy these. Grant is one of the best story tellers I know, and I’ve enjoyed his westerns more than anything else he’s written. I definitely recommend Rocky Mountain Retribution to anyone who enjoys adventure, honor, and grit.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 28, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/03/28/new-book-from-peter-grant/
A Year of Poetry – Day 339
Some days my thoughts are just cocoons- all cold, and dull and blind,
They hang from dripping branches in the grey woods of my mind;
And other days they drift and shine – such free and flying things!
I find the gold-dust in my hair, left by their brushing wings.
— Karle Baker Wilson, Days
Posted by daddybear71 on March 28, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/03/28/a-year-of-poetry-day-336/
100 Years On – Abdication
Russia began 1917 taking staggering steps toward oblivion. Millions of men had been taken out of her economy to fight against the Germans and Austrians. Russia’s military had traded hundreds of thousands of dead men for little gain. Her industrial complex, which had been barely out of its infancy when the war began, creaked along to provide the bare minimums to the military, and provided little to the Russian people.
Leadership in Saint Petersburg had spent the previous few years contributing to the misery of the people it was charged to lead and protect. The cost of food and other necessities of life quickly rose four-fold or more. Hunger, never a stranger in the life of the Russian peasant, became a common problem throughout the country.
The situation exploded with food riots in Saint Petersburg in February, 1917. Units which were sent in to quell the disturbances, , most of them almost bereft of experienced soldiers, tended to either overreact to the mobs and commit atrocities against them, or they joined in alongside the rioters. Against this backdrop, Tsar Nicholas tried to return to the capitol to provide leadership and try to head off anarchy.
He never made it. His train was stopped south of Saint Petersburg, and the demands of the new Provisional Government, including his abdication, were given to him. Seeing no alternative, the Tsar bowed to the inevitable.
On March 15, 1917, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne his family had occupied for 300 years. He also abdicated for his son, the Tsarevich Alexei, due to the boy’s failing health. He named his brother, Michael, as the new leader of Russia, but Michael refused to take the throne unless his ascension was approved by the Russian people.
Nicholas Romanov and his family went into internal exile and were murdered by Communist forces during the ensuing Russian Civil War.
The Provisional Government was quickly recognized by most major nations, and began the work to form a truly representative government in a country that had no history of such things to support it. It continued to fight the war against Austria and Germany, leaving a lot of the problems that led to its formation in place. This created an opening for the Communists to stage their own revolution later that year.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 27, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/03/27/100-years-on-abdication/
A Year of Poetry – Day 338
Bring her again, O western wind, Over the western sea! Gentle and good and fair and kind, Bring her again to me! Not that her fancy holds me dear, Not that a hope may be: Only that I may know her near, Wind of the western sea! -- William Ernest Henley, Bring Her Again...
Posted by daddybear71 on March 27, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/03/27/a-year-of-poetry-day-338/
A Year of Poetry – Day 337
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
— Robert Frost, Acquainted With The Night
Posted by daddybear71 on March 26, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/03/26/a-year-of-poetry-day-337/
A Year of Poetry – Day 336
When you and I are buried
With grasses over head,
The memory of our fights will stand
Above this bare and tortured land,
We knew ere we were dead.
Though grasses grow at Vimy,
And poppies at Messines,
And in High Wood the children play,
The craters and the graves will stay
To show what things have been.
Though all be quiet in day-time,
The night shall bring a change,
And peasants walking home will see
Shell-torn meadow and riven tree,
And their own fields grown strange.
They shall hear live men crying,
They shall see dead men lie,
Shall hear the rattling Maxims fire,
And by the broken twists of wire
Gold flares light up the sky.
And in their new-built houses
The frightened folk will see
Pale bombers coming down the street,
And hear the flurry of charging feet,
And the crash of Victory.
This is our Earth baptizèd
With the red wine of War.
Horror and courage hand in hand
Shall brood upon the stricken land
In silence evermore.
— E. Alan Mackintosh, Ghosts of War
Posted by daddybear71 on March 25, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/03/25/a-year-of-poetry-day-336-2/
A Year of Poetry – Day 335
His Grace! impossible! what dead!
Of old age too, and in his bed!
And could that mighty warrior fall?
And so inglorious, after all!
Well, since he’s gone, no matter how,
The last loud trump must wake him now:
And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,
He’d wish to sleep a little longer.
And could he be indeed so old
As by the newspapers we’re told?
Threescore, I think, is pretty high;
’Twas time in conscience he should die
This world he cumbered long enough;
He burnt his candle to the snuff;
And that’s the reason, some folks think,
He left behind so great a stink.
Behold his funeral appears,
Nor widow’s sighs, nor orphan’s tears,
Wont at such times each heart to pierce,
Attend the progress of his hearse.
But what of that, his friends may say,
He had those honours in his day.
True to his profit and his pride,
He made them weep before he died.
Come hither, all ye empty things,
Ye bubbles raised by breath of kings;
Who float upon the tide of state,
Come hither, and behold your fate.
Let pride be taught by this rebuke,
How very mean a thing’s a Duke;
From all his ill-got honours flung,
Turned to that dirt from whence he sprung.
— Jonathan Swift, A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General
Posted by daddybear71 on March 24, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/03/24/a-year-of-poetry-day-335/
Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on March 23, 2017
https://daddybearsden.com/2017/03/23/todays-earworm-717/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 