David Anthony Sam's Blog, page 161
March 18, 2018
Another loss of a great writer: Kate Wilhelm, Prolific Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 89 – The New York Times
She wrote some 50 works of imaginative fiction, with plots one admirer called “haunting, hypnotic, incommensurable and strange.” She also wrote mysteries.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/obituaries/kate-wilhelm-prolific-science-fiction-writer-dies-at-89.html
March 17, 2018
My favorite Tennyson poem – Ulysses
“Ulysses” has been my favorite Tennyson poem since I first met it as a young man. Now that I am much older, the poem seems even more apropos.
And Helen Mirren’s reading of an excerpt on Colbert was wonderful.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known—cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all,—
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
March 15, 2018
Stephen Hawking was not limited by his disability
“People need not be limited by physical handicaps as long as they are not disabled in spirit.” -Stephen Hawking
March 14, 2018
Stephen Hawking Dies – A great man and mind
Stephen Hawking Dies at 76; His Mind Roamed the Cosmos – The New York Times
A physicist and best-selling author, Dr. Hawking did not allow his physical limitations to hinder his quest to answer “the big question: Where did the universe come from?”
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/obituaries/stephen-hawking-dead.html
March 12, 2018
My poem “Shades of Difficulty” is now live online at Parenthesis Journal.
My poem “Shades of Difficulty” is now live online at Parenthesis Journal. Another of my elegies for my mother.
March 11, 2018
My poem Sybil of Main Street is now published online by Dime Show Review
My poem Sybil of Main Street is now published online by Dime Show Review. The poem is based on a real woman who wandered the streets of Belleville in the late 1970s when I was partner/manager of Gondolier Music on Main Street.
The Simple Editing Trick That Will Change Your Writing
I got the pages back for my new novel. “The Simple Editing Trick That Will Change Your Writing” is published by Josh Spilker in Create Make Write
— Read on medium.com/create-make-write/the-simple-editing-trick-that-will-change-your-writing-9e24a66ca5cd
March 10, 2018
In war
“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.” José Narosky
March 7, 2018
Isaac Asimov on politics and saving the environment
“It is a mistake,” he said, “to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort.”
