Also thank you from me. A remarkable coincidence that it is a very useful sentiment at this particular moment in my life. My favorite poem is “The Odyssey A Modern Sequel” by Nikos Kazantzakis. It is twenty-four books long but the Prologue contains a few lines of exhortation I try to remember all the time:

Fold up your aprons, craftsmen, cast your tools away,

Fling off Necessity’s firm yoke, for Freedom calls.

Freedom, my lads, is neither wine nor a sweet maid,

Not goods stacked in vast cellars, no, nor sons in cradles,

It’s but a scornful, lonely song the wind has taken…

Come, drink of Lethe’s brackish spring to cleanse your minds,

Forget your cares, your poisons, your ignoble profits,

And make your hearts as babes, unburdened, pure and light.

O brain, be flowers that nightingales may come to sing!

Old men, howl all you can to bring your white teeth back,

To make your hair crow-black, your youthful wits go wild,

For by our Lady Moon and our Lord Sun, I swear

Old age is a false dream and Death but fantasy.

All playthings of the brain and the soul’s affectations,

All but a mistral’s blast that blows the temples wide;

The dream was lightly dreamt and thus the earth was made;

Let’s take possession of the world with song, my lads!

The Odyssey A Modern Sequel, Nikos Kazantzakis, translated by Kimon Friar, Simon and Schuster 1958

I'm not much of a poetry guy...but I did just cut up an onion for tonight's roast.

:-)

(I did. Really!)

Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code. -- SCOTUS that was...

And one of my all-time favorites from Robert Frost:

Acquainted with the Night

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 unearthy height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

Winter Trees

The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing—
Memories growing, ring on ring,
A series of weddings.

Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery,
Truer than women,
They seed so effortlessly!
Tasting the winds, that are footless,
Waist-deep in history—

Full of wings, otherworldliness.
In this, they are Ledas.
O mother of leaves and sweetness
Who are these pietàs?
The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but easing nothing.

- Sylvia Plath