Tuesday, November 29, 2016

To Autumn

This poem has been a favorite of mine since childhood.

John Keats

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

31 comments:

  1. From the last thread:

    listener11/29/2016 12:32:00 AM

    Today (Tuesday the 29th) is the birthday of authors:

    Louisa May Alcott (1832)
    http://www.louisamayalcott.org

    C.S. Lewis (1898)
    http://www.biography.com/people/cs-lewis-9380969

    Madeleine L'Engle (1918).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_L'Engle

    The world is so much deeper and richer because of their gifts!

    Thanks, Listener.

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  2. Cat, you likely still have your screen capture in your machine. You just have to PUT it somewhere. Open paint, home, upper left hand (just above the screen us a tiny icon= PASTE)click that and paste. Then save where you want. Icon looks kinda like a TV screen.

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    Replies
    1. I'll give it a try. Thanks, Puddle!

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    2. Doesn't seem to work that way in Win10. That has something called Snipping Tool. I started reading about how to use it and gave up after about thirty seconds. Like everything else to do with Win10, it is needlessly complicated and insanely difficult to use. I think Win10 must have been designed by a psychotic and sadistic twelve-year-old.

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  3. Why is the print in this thread so much smaller and lighter than in the main post at the top?

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    Replies
    1. I wondered the same thing. As far as I know, I didn't touch or mess up anything. *shrug*

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    2. Can't find any setting that could have gotten messed up, which means I can't try to fix it. I'm sorry.

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  4. Dono if I remembered to report it earlier, but the Day of Action in solidarity with Standing Rock on December Fifth will not after all involve blocking roads, thankfully. Still don't know exactly what it will involve, details are yet to forthcome, ahem, but thankfully wiser heads prevailed and it was decided that blocking roads would be dangerous for everyone.

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  5. Alan, the Guardian oped by Neil Young and Daryl Hannah is an excellent read. Thanks for pointing it out.

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  6. One of the articles from yesterday mentioned that Hillary devoted almost all her TV ads to attacking Trump, very little to policy issues. Reminds me of how Mark Kirk became US Senator from Illinois six years ago. Gianapolis let the election degenerate into a question of who you distrusted less and the voters decided that was Kirk.

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  7. I see that someone in Italy turned 117 today. That gives me another 37 years. I'll take that.

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    1. LOL Bill. Eighty doesn't seem that old anymore, does it?

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    2. I figure that the natural human lifespan must be 120 years, so 60 is just the beginning of middle age.

      Alan

      P.S. I figured the type was smaller and lighter because way out here the signal must be weaker. If that isn't the case, it must be either gremlins or a marvel of modern technology. (Maybe if the type is smaller, it can get through a smaller wire?)

      P.P.S.: Glad you liked the op-ed, Cat, but I don't recall what it was about. On your recommendation I will go check it out again.

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  8. Cat, it's *supposed* to work that way, even in windows 10. This has a screenshot:
    http://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-ways-take-screenshots-windows-8-81-using-built-tools

    The icon turns out to be a clipboard (which is where pintscreen saves screen shots).

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    1. Can't find either the icon on the desktop or how to open/view the clipboard. I'll follow your link, though. It might help. Something I read said to hold down teh Windows key while pressing Print Screen...only my keyboard hasn't got a Windows key! The lack is a major pain! Curiously, Dad didn't even notice. It took him a moment to grasp what I was telling him. Apparently, he never uses the Windows key. I used to use it all the time:(

      Oh well, off to follow the link. Thanks,Puddle♥

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    2. Ah, nuts! The clipboard clears when you reboot, doesn't it? :(

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    3. The icon appears on the PAINT screen.

      Don't know if it clears on reboot. Amazing the stuff that doesn't. . . .

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    4. Tried pasting in Paint and nothing happened. I'll look at it again. *Keeping fingers crossed*

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    5. Blogger ate a long comment *as* I was writing it! :(

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  9. The snipping tool is really quite easy. I keep it on my start menu. Just click it, wait for it to come up, put your cursor at one corner of what you want to save, drag it diagonally, let go, it saves. Go to left corner, top: FILE. Right click FILE, save as. . . .

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  10. Oh yes--*that* op-ed. It makes one think of Gandhi, and also of Birmingham and Selma.

    Alan

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  11. How the Democrats could win again, if they wanted. [Click] By Thomas Frank
    I think this sets out what ails the Dems pretty darn well. One of the things I continually wonder about is why the New Dems, whose politicking is supposedly aimed precisely at people like me (highly educated upper middle class suburban professionals) seem totally incompetent at (or unconcerned with) connecting with me. I wonder if it is because I was not born to the class, and remember where I came from? Or am I too old—having been politically formed by a combination of the New Deal consensus and the Civil Rights movement? Well, in any event I am heartened by the activism of young folks these days; it gives some hope. But the Democratic establishment and their media enablers (propagandists, to be honest) are going to go down fighting like hell. They should be treated just as they treated the remaining New Dealers—discarded without hesitation.

    —Alan

    (I suppose my increasingly good feeling about voting for Gloria La Riva and Dennis Banks is part of the current generalized pitchforks-and-torches attitude.)

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    1. I'm nearly fifteen years younger than you, Alan, and feel much the same.I voted for Stein/Baraka because the Green platform represents what I believe in, whereas the Dems haven't represented that pretty much since Jimmy Carter. It is a point of pride, albeit bittersweet, that in the first election I was eligible to vote in, I voted for Fritz Mondale and Geri Fararro.

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    2. As to Clinton and Trump, my feeling all along has been and continues to be very much a pox on both your houses. Whether she intended it or not, Clinton facilitated Trump. I mean, if people like Paul Crudman are saying it's acceptable to ignore the working class, that pretty much drives the final nail. And yet, as you say, they don't appeal to folks like us, upper middle class with advanced degrees, either. So who exactly do they think they appeal to? Who do they think their base is that will sustain their party?

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    3. As always, the left is fragmented - there are too many groups and mini-movements. I'll stick with Bernie on FB (though I'm somewhat dubious about Our Revolution), Code Pink and the gathering movement centered on Standing Rock. And I'll keep an eye on Brand New Congress. Barring a major miracle, I can't see myself voting for another Dem. presidential nominee for a very long time.

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    4. Cat --> What do you have against Elizabeth Warren? It is much too early to know whether she will be the nominee or it will be somebody like Howard or Bernie that no one is thinking about at the moment. But assume it's Warren. Why wouldn't you vote for her?

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    5. Hey, I voted for Mondale and Ferarro too! That was the most recent Dem ticket I really wanted to vote for. Birds of a feather flock together!

      Alan

      P.S.: I still think George Wallace and Shirley Chisolm would have made quite a ticket--something for everyone! And Wallace's better angels had their way with him after he was shot. Let's see...Chislom stood for the nomination in 1972, Wallace 1964, '68, '72 and '76. He was shot in 1972 (and Chisolm visited him in the hospital). Mondale was nominated in 1984. [Per Wikipedia.]

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    6. Boy, that would be grist for an alternative history; instead of Nixon & Agnew vs. McGovern & Shriver in 1972, what if it had been vs. Wallace & Chisolm?

      Alan

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    7. Bill--As for myself, I think Warren looks interesting, but who knows what will happen by 2019?

      Alan

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