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Many Happy Returns: January 22nd

Francis Bacon, b.1561. English philosopher, statesman, and essayist.

Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.

The joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter the other.

As for the passions and studies of the mind: avoid envy; anxious fears; anger fretting inwards; subtle and knotty inquisitions; joys and exhilarations in excess; sadness not communicated. Entertain hopes; mirth rather than joy; variety of delights, rather than surfeit of them; wonder and admiration, and therefore novelties; studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects, as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature. Laugh, wonder, and hope. Study in accordance with Philippians 4:8.

Judges ought to remember, that their office is jus dicere, and not jus dare; to interpret law, and not to make law, or give law. Isn’t this just what conservatives have been saying in regard to judicial appointments for the past fifty years or so?

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

George Gordon, Lord Byron, b.1788.
Byronic: “of, like or characteristic of Byron or his writings, romantic, passionate, cynical, ironic, etc.” I thought Lord Byron, whose birthday is today, was supposed to be wildly good-looking. Here’s the best picture I could find; you see what you think.

Maybe you’re more impressed than I am–or maybe I’m just being Byronic (cynical). Anyway, I did always like this scrap of poetry by Byron–even though I’ve heard people quote it Byronically (cynically and ironically):

SHE walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that ‘s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o’er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o’er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,—
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.

It would be fun to have that written about me. It’s probably the most innocent-sounding poem Byron ever wrote.

Today’s Poetry Friday Roundup is being hosted by Caldecott Honor Medal winner Liz Garton Scanlon at Liz in Ink.

Many Happy Returns: January 20th

Blair Lent, b.1930. Illustrator of one of our favorites, Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel. Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sa Rembo Chari Bari Ruchi Pip Peri Pembo! I can say it fast. Can you?

I really believe Tikki TIkki Tembo is one of the best picture books ever. It came in at number 35 in Fuse #8’s Top 100 Picture Book Poll, quite a respectable showing. I found the video of this Weston Woods production at Fuse #8.

Wow, that takes me back to when we used to watch filmstrips in the filmstrip viewer in my school library. Does anybody else remember filmstrips?

Blair Lent died last year (2009) on January 27th, just a few days after his 79th birthday. He won the Caldecott Medal for his illustrations for another Arlene Mosel book, The Funny Little Woman.

Many Happy Returns: January 19th

poe
Edgar Allan Poe, b. 1809.
Semicolon’s Favorite Poets: Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe: Annabel Lee.
Edgar Allan Poe: Tintinnabulation.
Quoth the Raven.
Tricia reviews Nevermore: A Photobiography of Edgar Allan Poe by Karen Lange.
In which I am stripped of my romantic illusions about the poem Annabel Lee by Someone Who Knows (at Wittingshire).
The Edgar Allan Poe Calendar, a blog celebrating the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe.

I think I like John Astin’s rendition better, but Mr. Jones is not bad.

Many Happy Returns: January 18th

Alan Alexander Milne, b. 1882
The Most Important Book I Read in College and other Milne links.
Favorite Pooh quotes.

Did you know that Milne wrote a parody of Conan Doyle and of Pope called “The Rape of the Sherlock”?

His first book was called Lovers in London, a collection of sketches about a young Englishman and his American sweetheart. Doesn’t that sound sweet? Milne was ashamed of the book and said that he hoped it never came back into print.

He wrote plays and was a good friend of J.M. Barrie, also a playwright.

Dorothy Parker wrote a very critical review of The House at Pooh Corner to which Milne responded that he didn’t write it for Dorothy Parker but rather for the children who loved Pooh. ” . . . no writer of children’s books says gaily to his publisher, ‘Don’t bother about the children, Mrs Parker will love it.'”

Quotes:

Ideas may drift into other minds, but they do not drift my way. I have to go and fetch them. I know no work manual or mental to equal the appalling heart-breaking anguish of fetching an idea from nowhere. (Autobiography, 225)

When I am gone
Let Shepard decorate my tomb
And put (if there is room)
Two pictures on the stone:
Piglet, from page a hundred and eleven
And Pooh and Piglet walking (157)…
And Peter, thinking that they are my own,
Will welcome me to heaven.

Many Happy Returns: January 11th

Alan Paton, b.1903.

Alan Paton is a South African author, famous for his book Cry, the Beloved Country about the system of racial apartheid that kept South Africa in turmoil for so many years. Alan Paton is a writer you should read. There are passages in Cry, the Beloved Country that bring tears to my eyes whenever I read them. And here’s a brief discussion of a couple of Mr. Paton’s other books.

A writer who can evoke emotion that well and who writes hope in the midst of tragedy is not to be missed.

Many Happy Returns: January 10th

Today, according to my handy, dandy Booklover’s Day Book, is Lord Acton’s birthday, b. 1834. I had heard of him, but couldn’t place him. It turns out that he’s the one who said this:

“Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end…liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition…The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to to govern. Every class is unfit to govern…Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

I had never heard the part about “every class is unfit to govern.” I like that. We are unfit to rule over others for an indefinite period of time. After a while, we do get power-mad. We enjoy playing God. According to Wikipedia, “Most people who quote Lord Acton’s Dictum are unaware that it refers to Papal power and was made by a Catholic, albeit not an unquestioning one.”

Acton was a historian and also a book-lover. I read somewhere that he owned over 60,000 books when he died, and many of them had passages marked that he thought were significant. I thought I had a lot of books!

Do you mark your books? If so, have you ever thought about people reading your booknotes after your death? I think I’m going to start leaving clues to a treasure in mine. (I just have to figure out where to obtain the treasure.)

Happy Birthday, Mr. Tolkien

250px-Jrrt_1972_pipeToday, January 3rd, is the birthday of Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, b. 1892 in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, South Africa, to English parents Mabel and Arthur Tolkien. Tolkien grew up to be a professor of philology and Anglo-Saxon literature, and the author of beloved and best-selling fantasy books: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Silmarillion, and other minor works.

Tolkien’s influences: Beowulf, Norse Sagas, the Nibelungenlied, Homer, Sophocles, the Finnish and Karelian Kalevala, Catholicism and Christian theology in general, She by Rider Haggard, Edward Wyke-Smith’s Marvellous Land of the Snergs, poet and artist William Morris, W.H. Auden, and of course, The Inklings, especially Tolkien’s friend, C.S. Lewis.

Influenced by Tolkien: C.S. Lewis, Terry Brooks, Stephen Donaldson, Christopher Paolini, JK Rowling, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (creators of Dungeons and Dragons), Peter Jackson, Carol Kendall, Alan Garner, Lloyd Alexander, Peter Beagle, Jane Yolen, Andre Norton, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and probably almost any other modern fantasy author, including those who write that they are deliberately reacting against Tolkienesque high fantasy (i.e. China Mieville).

To celebrate Tolkien’s 119th birthday, I read The Children of Hurin, a book I’ve had on my shelf for about a year. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, and I guess this birthday is it. Children of Hurin is a story from The Silmarillion, adapted and edited to book form by Tolkien’s son Christopher Tolkien. The language in the book, like that of The Silmarillion, is formal, somewhat stilted, and quite beautiful. The story is a tragedy, the doomed lives and loves of the children of a hero named Hurin. Hurin’s children, Turin and Nienor, are cursed because of the hatred that Morgoth has for their father. Just as the children of Adam are cursed because of Adam’s sin and the hatred of Satan for our race, the children of Hurin make their own choices, and yet are doomed to fall under the curse of Morgoth.

JRR Tolkien died on September 2, 1973. Tolkien’s tombstone at Wolvercote Cemetery, Oxford, bears the following inscription:

Edith Mary Tolkien
Luthien
1889-1971
John Ronald
Reuel Tolkien
Beren
1892-1973

Luthien and Beren are two legendary lovers from Tolkien’s epic saga, The Silmarillion.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born January 30th

Walter Savage Landor, poet, b. 1775.

Ann Taylor, author of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, b. 1782.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, b. 1882.

Barbara Tuchman, author of one my favorite works of historical nonfiction, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, b. 1912.

Lloyd Alexander, b. 1924, author of fantasy based on Celtic and other mythologies. Karate Kid is reading Alexander’s The Arkadians, a novel set in a sort of fantastical ancient Greek world.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born January 27th

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
“Which road do I take?” she asked.
“Where do you want to go?” was his response.
“I don’t know,” Alice answered.
“Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

Other Lewis Carroll posts to cause you to lose your way:

Of Snarks and Quarks

Lewis Carroll’s Birthday: 2006

Radio Jabberwocky

“The horror of that moment,” the King went on, “I shall never forget!”
“You will, though,” The Queen said, “if you don’t make a memorandum of it.”

This is so appropo of my life and memory. The 3M’s, middle age, menopause, and memory loss, are my constant companions.

“The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.”

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.” Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Poetry Friday: Robbie Burns

Robert Burns, b. January 25, 1759.

“Robert Burns is Scotland’s best-loved bard and Burns Suppers have been held in his honour for over 200 years. This site gives you the complete guide to Robert Burns the man, his poems, his travels, haggis, whisky and much more.” From this website dedicated to all things Burns, The Bard.

A Grace Before Dinner, Extempore
1791

O thou who kindly dost provide
For every creature’s want!
We bless Thee, God of Nature wide,
For all Thy goodness lent:
And if it please Thee, Heavenly Guide,
May never worse be sent;
But, whether granted, or denied,
Lord, bless us with content. Amen!

A Grace After Dinner, Extempore
1791

O thou, in whom we live and move-
Who made the sea and shore;
Thy goodness constantly we prove,
And grateful would adore;
And, if it please Thee, Power above!
Still grant us, with such store,
The friend we trust, the fair we love-
And we desire no more. Amen!

Selkirk Grace

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it,
But we hae meat and we can eat,
Sae the Lord be thankit.