The martini according to Wikipedia.

Reading "Uncle Fred in the Springtime" -- very funny.

Try these online intros to Wodehouse:

Some online texts.

Some online quotes.

Amazon.com PG Wodehouse search.

The path of human destiny cannot but appall him who surveys a section of it. But he will do well to keep his small commentaries to himself, as one does at the sight of the sea or of majestic mountains.

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

A man must live, and if he precludes himself from the support furnished by the establishment, will probably be reduced to very wicked shifts to maintain himself.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with stories of courage and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war. The vanquished know the essence of war — death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away from the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the license to kill with impunity.

Chris Hedges, "On War" The New York Review (December 16, 2004).

Like sex, bathing, sleeping, and drinking, the effects of food don't last. The patterns are repeated but finite. Life is a near-death experience, and our devious minds will do anything to make it interesting.

Jim Harrison, "A Really Big Lunch," The New Yorker, September 6, 2004.

If he would just take a plunge (always the Realtor’s fondest wish for mankind), banish fear, let loose the reins, think that instead of having suffered error and loss he’d survived them and that today is the first day of his new life, then he’d be fine and dandy. In other words, embrace in full the permanent period of life, live not as though he were going to die tomorrow but as though he might live.

Richard Ford, The Shore, The New Yorker, August 2, 2004

Wartime Washington

Today the maples are in flames,
The breeze so cool,
I need body armor.
The world is at war,
No truce, no quarter.

The words of an old song
Go through my brain.
How did I get here?
Whose life is this anyway?

Fuck it.
It doesn’t matter.
Today the maples are in flames.
And I have body armor.

GMG

Sky Blue

At 7 am
The sun was barely up.
Three hours later,
The shadows were still long on Rock Creek.
The sky shined a perfect blue,
With a brilliance so true
It juxtaposed
The trees –
Greens, reds, browns and golds
Already a bit of a cacophony –
Showing off the earth’s odd colors.

The artist who painted this picture,
However uncaring of life within the frame,
Set the stage with great beauty.
What more can we reasonably ask
Of any deity.

GMG

A man’s usefulness
depends upon living up to
his ideals
in so far as he can.

A great democracy
has got to be progressive or
it will soon cease
to be great or a democracy.


Teddy Roosevelt

All the exotic ingredients of alchemy – all the metals and minerals and compounds – are in truth one, and that singularity is neither more nor less than the person of the alchemist himself. If the base metal is in need of purification then so, even more so, is he. Out of the corruption and confusion he must find a oneness in which nature and divinity are reconciled. Out of the unstillness of his own impurity must come the transforming power to achieve redemption.

Alan Wall, The School Of Night

October Season

Most trees still have their leaves,
Except for those on the boulevard,
Sickly from the fumes,
The sort the local electric company
Likes to “trim.”

Green leaves too,
With just fringes here and there,
Turning.

On quiet side streets,
Birds were singing
As if still in spring.

Confused about the season?

The squirrels running into the road,
Mouths stuffed with acorns.
They know.

GMG

Water

Sunlight gleaming off the water,
Water where water should be.
A squirrel lies dead on the bridge,
That it gave its life crossing.
A bit of a strange place to die,
Suspended over the water.

Caterpillar

I see the caterpillar on the parkway
Too late.
I swerve.
Think I missed it.
I don’t look back.

Two poems from a bike ride, GMG.

...conducting alchemical experiments...searching for the brightest thing, for something so luminous, even though it was hidden away at the heart of matter, that, should it ever get to be uncovered, it would have made...the sun blink.

Alan Wall, The School of Night

I believe it will always be found, that he who calls much for information will advance his work but slowly.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

Out here in the fields, I fight for my meals, I get my back into my living.
I don't need to fight, To prove I'm right, I don't need to be forgiven.

The Who, Baba O'Riley

Where is the subject and where is the object if you are operating on your own brain? The point is made by the expression “what we are looking for is what is looking.” Consciousness involves a paradoxical self-reference, a ability taken for granted, to refer to ourselves separate from the environment.

Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver for five minutes longer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson