Poem Video: "Multitudes"

According to the Poetry Foundation, "It's difficult to overstate the impact that Walt Whitman has had on American poetry." The animated video "Multitudes," created by Manual Cinema and the Poetry Foundation, "explores eight segments of Whitman's central poem, 'Song of Myself,' featuring readings by three contemporary poets -- Kaveh Akbar, Duriel E. Harris, and Yusef Komunyakaa -- and innovative puppetry by Manual Cinema."

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Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

A Quotation from Sigurd F. Olson

We sat on a little shelf of rock under the pines where we could watch the firelight change the branches and their tracery to coppery gold. For hours we watched them and the reflection on the water, but when a loon called from the open lake and then swam like a ghost into the circle of light, the scene was touched with magic.

To read an article about Sigurd F. Olson (1899-1982), the author of the quotation above, click here.

To read an article about the loon, click here.

The Final Say: Going About

THE FINAL SAY: GOING ABOUT

by Monty Gilmer

The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of all:) that word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.

     PETER

     The Bible: Acts 10:36-38 (King James Version)

I read

In a book

That a man called

Christ

Went about doing good.

It is very disconcerting to me

That I am so easily

Satisfied

With just

Going about.

     GEORGE SMALL

     Quoted by my mother Evelyn M. Gilmer

     Original source unknown

Pray for Sri Lanka After Easter Bombings | Blog | News | American Bible Society

Read Pray for Sri Lanka After Easter Bombings | Blog | News | American Bible Society: On Easter Sunday, more than 320 people were killed and 500 were injured in 8 coordinated attacks throughout Sri Lanka. At St. Sebastian’s Easter mass, families lined the pews as they sang hymns celebrating Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. But in an instant, a bomb tore everything [Click on the link above and continue reading.]

A Time for Everything

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens." So reads Ecclesiastes 3:1 in the New International Version of the Bible. Here are two quotations, each of which is an observation on there being a season to everything "and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (The Bible, King James Version). 


Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.
     RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Ralph Waldo Emerson

. . . There is a season for everything, and we do not notice a given phenomenon except at that season, if, indeed, it can be called the same phenomenon at any other season.

     HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Henry David Thoreau

An Observation by Henry David Thoreau on 4 May 1857

On this day in 1857, Henry David Thoreau wrote the following observation in his journal:

Perhaps the most generally interesting event at present is a perfectly warm and pleasant day. It affects the greatest number, the well out of doors and the sick in chambers. No wonder the weather is the universal theme of conversation.

Source: Daily Observations: Thoreau on the Days of the Year (2005), edited by Steve Grant

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)