by Richard Subber | Sep 5, 2024 | Reflections, Tidbits
…and good deeds, too…
“Ideas are like rabbits.
You get a couple and learn how to handle them,
and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (1902-1968)
American author: Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath
Pour another half glass of wine, and enjoy that Steinbeck quip again.
Pour another half glass of wine, and you start to think that he could have said
“Good deeds are like rabbits.”
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Dirty Dancing (1987) (movie review)
Oh baby, baby, baby…
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 3, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature
the sane and the duly goggled
Book review:
Character and Opinion in the United States
by Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás
[George Santayana (1863-1952)]
Spanish philosopher, poet, novelist
Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956 (first published 1920)
Santayana wrote this book in 1920 after he had left the United States for good. He had taught in the philosophy department at Harvard from 1889 to 1912. He returned to Europe, taught at the Sorbonne in Paris, and finally settled in Italy for the remainder of his life.
Much of the book is based on a series of lectures he delivered to British audiences after leaving America. In the Preface to Character and Opinion he says “Only an American—and I am not one except by long association—can speak for the heart of America. I try to understand it, as a family friend may who has a different temperament.”
Santayana took his own sweet time to take a look at the people around him in the United States, and to make his own unhurried assessment of their characters and of their manifestations of human nature.
For example, he gave respectful recognition to “…the intellectual cripples and the moral hunchbacks…”—not otherwise explicitly defined—who, notwithstanding their possibly dubious claim to respect, may nevertheless be the beneficiaries of “heavenly influences.” You can make your own determination about the prospective positive impact of such influences. I think Santayana’s point was that we do not fully know the prior byways or the future trajectories of another person’s life.
Moreover, Santayana distinguishes the cripples/hunchbacks and their (presumptively enlightened) presumptive betters—“…the thick-skinned, the sane and the duly goggled…”
These goggled elites are admonished to be wary of their limitations in discerning the realities and the frequency and the potency of “heavenly influences.”
I guess I have, perhaps smugly, collaborated with Santayana in a more than marginally self-satisfied effort to say something like:
“Give the other fellow a break.”
Think about it for another minute.
Here endeth the lesson for today.
Source:
Character and Opinion in the United States, p. 46.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Boz indeed! Sketches by Boz
Charles Dickens delivers,
in a fastidiously literary kind of way…
My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 1, 2024 | Language, My poetry, Poetry
The Book of Days
The dawn’s early light can be pleasure enough for the whole day.
There are words enough to tell the story of “the temptation of day to come.”
It is my delight to write some of them for your delectation.
ciel rouge
A bacon sky,
some heightened reds,
a cloudy froth,
the day is nigh.
May 15, 2024
sometimes color is the main clue…
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Lafayette by Harlow Unger
He was a great man. Also rich and lucky.
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Aug 29, 2024 | Reflections, Tidbits
there’s no mystery…
Prepare yourself to get lucky.
That’s how you make luck happen.
You probably know that lots of people have already said this, in slightly different ways.
You probably know this is what you need to do.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Does the public want public interest news?
Is it news to you?
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Aug 27, 2024 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
talk trash to the wind
des arbres et vents
The trees do not seek the wind,
but they grow where it goes.
A tree knows its work:
a tree stands in rain
and growth happens
time after time,
and a tree stands in snow
and holds it aloft
for us to see,
and a tree welcomes critters
who need a high place to live.
Every tree tempts the breezes
and taunts the wind,
boughs do not break
as they beckon all winds,
the limbs slide and sway
and push the wind aside,
the trees eat the wind
under sun and stars,
each tiny twig, each lazy leaf
talks trash to the wily wind
that knows about the detours
in great worlds of open air,
but won’t give up the endless gift
of giving the trees
a reason to bend
as they turn the wind
into wrinkles that slump and hide,
among the unseen nests
of the birds and squirrels.
May 23, 2024
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
84, Charing Cross Road (book review)
Helene Hanff, on reading good books…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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