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Love your neighbour, but don't pull down your fence. Benjamin Franklin, American polymath, born on January 17, 1706
I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it. Benjamin Franklin; from 'Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion', November 20, 1728
If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Roman Catholic Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England. Benjamin Franklin
I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity. Benjamin Franklin; Works, Vol. VII, p. 75
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of. Benjamin Franklin
Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade. Benjamin Franklin
Joy is not in things! It is in us! Benjamin Franklin
If to be venerated for
benevolence, if to be admired for talent, if to be esteemed for
patriotism, if to be beloved for philanthropy, can gratify the human mind,
you must have the pleasing consolation to know that you have not lived in
vain.
George Washington in a letter to Benjamin Franklin, about a year before
the latter's death
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you
particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion ... has
received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present
dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho' it is a
question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it
needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of
knowing the Truth with less trouble. Benjamin Franklin, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by
Thomas Fleming, p. 404, (1972, Newsweek, New York, NY) quoting
letter by Franklin to Exra Stiles March 9, 1790
Lighthouses are more
helpful than churches. Benjamin Franklin
I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear
country. Benjamin Franklin; letter to Jacques Barbeu Dubourg, April, 1773
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Benjamin Franklin
And sometimes, with his marvellous range, in spite of his personal tang,
he seems to have been more than any single man: a harmonious human
multitude.
Carl Van Doren on Benjamin Franklin
[Our constitution,
said Franklin] will fail, as all such constitutions have in the past, because of the essential corruption of the people. He pointed his finger at all the American people. And when the people become so corrupt, he said, we will find it is not a republic that they want but rather despotism
– the only form of government suitable for such a people. Gore Vidal
Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard
to utter the abominable word "Frisco," which has no linguistic
or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor, and shall
pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars. Norton I, Emperor of the United States And Protector of Mexico, born on
January 17, 1811
I could argue all day about the significance of
facing east in religious rituals, but a clean table is a clean table. Emperor
Norton I
I yam what I yam. Popeye, who first appeared on January 17, 1929
I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong. Muhammad Ali, American boxer and conscientious
objector, born Cassius Clay on January 17, 1942
The uglier the woman, the
more you gotta kiss her. Makes her feel good. Muhammad Ali
It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves
pound the sand. I beat people up. Muhammad Ali
This conjunction of an immense
military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American
experience ... we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential
for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. USA President Dwight
D Eisenhower, January 17, 1961
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious.
Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again. Allen Ginsberg; from 'America', Berkeley, January 17, 1956
Felicitas is a minor Roman goddess of
good luck. Known particularly from the
2nd Century BCE, in Roman mythology, this goddess of success was
very closely associated with the Imperial
Family.
She had multiple temples in Rome,
including one on the Forum Romanum. Felicitas personified
happy events and was linked with agricultural prosperity. Ovid's Roman calendar,
theFasti, tells us she was associated
with the numen Augusti.
This is one of the dies
comitiales (C), when committees of citizens could vote on political or
criminal matters.
Saint Anthony the Great
(251 - 356),
Christiansaint, was a leader among the
Desert
Fathers, who were Christian monks in the
Egyptian desert in the
3rd and
4th centuries
CE. His feast day is celebrated on January 17 in some churches, but celebrated on
Tobi 22 (January
31) in the Coptic Orthodox Church which has the closest cultural and geographical ties to him. Anthony is known as the father of Christian monasticism; he had many temptations by the Devil.
He is the patron saint of herdsmen and also the patron of pigs. The smallest pig of a litter was named a Tantony pig in his honour.
Anthony
was born in about 251 in Heraclea, Egypt. He lived in a cave and practised abstinence and
self-inflicted punishments, suffering many temptations by the Devil.
He influenced the church from Scotland to Italy. Satan came to him
early in his career as a beautiful woman and a black boy, and with
many demons came to him in his cell one night and it appeared to
others that the saint was dead. Another time the walls shook as
Satan and his demons assailed him. They came as all sorts of beasts
– lions, bears, leopards, bulls, asps, serpents, scorpions and
wolves, and he was mangled by them. "This continued till the
roof of his cell opened, a beam of light shot down, the devils
became speechless, Anthony's pain ceased, and the roof closed
again." – Robert
Chambers, (Ed.), The
Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection
with the calendar, etc,W
& R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879
Edition is online and 1869
edition here
with CD-ROM available; See also The
English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of
Days)
In 285 for
solitude he withdrew into the mountain wilderness, returning in 305
to found a monastery. An angel came and plaited mats of palm leaves,
saying "Do this and thou shalt be saved". He hated the
Arians. Died 356, aged 105, and no rain fell for three years. He
once shut himself up in a tomb and was assailed by devils. A friend
carried his nearly lifeless body out, but he revived and asked to be
carried back. Once the devil put a large piece of gold plate in his
way, but Anthony rebuked him and the plate disappeared. Another time
the devil put some real gold in his way, but he jumped over it. He
locked himself up in an empty castle for twenty years, and friends
came to see him in vain. When they broke in they found his body
exactly the same as 20 years before. He performed an exorcism on a
boat after recognizing the stench of Satan in a possessed man.
It was brought to Europe by a
miracle. One Joceline had not gone on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem so
was wounded in battle and carried for dead into a chapel dedicated
to St Anthony, where a host of devils came to take him to Hell. But
Anthony intervened, and made him promise to carry his body to
France. Bits of him were all over Europe as relics, enough limbs to
make about six people.
Patron of pigs; like a tantony pig
London: At the markets, city officers took any pigs that were
starved or unfit for human consumption. They slit their ear. One of
the proctors of St Anthony's Hospital tied a bell around its neck,
and let it feed on the dunghills. No one would hurt it or steal it.
Anyone who fed it would thereafter be followed by it, hence the
saying to be followed as though by an Anthony pig. 'Like a tantony
pig' decribes a whining person.
Anthony
could cure pigs. He is sometimes represented
in art with a large hog, but there are many images showing the many temptations
of St Anthony (often with naked women) including those by Delaroche, Bosch and
Dali.
His biography was written by St Athanasius of Alexandria and
entitled Life of St Anthony. He instructed his followers to
bury his body in an unmarked, secret grave,
lest his body become an object of veneration.
He is sometimes said to have preached to fish, but this was
Anthony of Padua,f.d. June 13.
Benediction of the Beasts, Church of St
Anthony, Rome This ancient Christian
ceremony lasted for some days. Everyone who had a horse, mule or
ass, sent them to be blessed at the shrine of St Anthony near Santa Maria Maggiore. A
similar custom has traditionally been observed on the same day at Madridand many any other places.
The beasts at Romewereblessed at St Anthony's shrine. A little holy water, for a fee,
was splashed on all sorts of animals. Today, on his feast day,
domestic animals are cleaned and decorated and brought to churches
for blessings; in Italy even cars are treated in this way.
"His
relationship with pigs and patronage of swineherds is a little
complicated. Skin diseases were sometimes treated with
applications of pork fat, which reduced inflammation and
itching. As Anthony's intervention aided in the same conditions,
he was shown in art accompanied by a pig. People who saw the art
work, but did not have it explained, thought there was a direct
connection between Anthony and pigs - and people who worked with
swine took him as their patron."Source
St Anthony's Fire An inflammatory disease, St Anthony's Fire raged in Europe in
the 11th Century. The saint was prayed to for relief; a relic (a
religious item, such as a piece of a saint's body or part of a
saint's possessions) was also dipped in wine which was then drunk.
"Ergot
poisoning (pronounced "er-get") has been blamed for
hallucinations and convulsions accompanying the dance mania.
Nicknamed St. Anthony's Fire, ergotism coincided with floods and
wet growing seasons which fostered the growth of the fungus claviceps
purpura which thrives in damp conditions and forms on
cultivated grains, especially rye. While this could account for
some symptoms, many outbreaks did not coincide with floods or
wet growing or harvest periods. Convulsive ergotism could cause
bizarre behavior and hallucinations, but chronic ergotism was
more common and typically resulted in the loss of fingers and
toes from gangrene, a feature that is distinctly not associated
with dance manias (Donaldson et al. 1997, 203)."Source:
Rethinking the Dancing Mania
St
Anthony and the centaur
and satyr
"On his road he met with a demon in the form of a centaur.
Later on he spied a tiny old man with horns on his head. 'Who are
you?' asked Antony. 'I am a corpse, one of those whom the heathen
call satyrs, and by them were snared into idolatry.'"
Source
Atami Ume Matsuri (Apricot Festival),
Atami,
Shizuoka Prefecture,
Japan (Jan 15 - 17)
From the end of
December till mid-January, the early-blooming apricot
is in flower. The festival to commemorate this includes
caged-nightingale singing contests and photography contests.
Wassailing the apple trees, Carhampton in Somerset, UK Source
Franklin was
born on January
6, 1706, which was then Epiphany, but in 1752, when
he was 46, England and her colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar
and also changed to New Style, which dropped 11 days. Thus we
remember this American 'Renaissance man' on January 17.
Long before there
was Wilson's Almanac,
there was Poor Richard's Almanac, by Ben Franklin, the
first American bestselling book, which gave the young Franklin
financial security to begin his life's work doing … absolutely
everything.
The prodigious accomplishments of
the boy who left school aged ten include: the foundation of the Society to Abolish Slavery and
the American Philosophical Society, the first US hospital and its
first lending library, its first police and fire departments and the
first American fire insurance company. He invented the lightning
rod, a platform rocking chair, the step ladder that folds down into
a chair, the Franklin stove (still popular today) and bifocals. He
created the first efficient postal service in the USA, and an
academy that became the University
of Pennsylvania.
He was America's first newspaper cartoonist;
the US Ambassador to England and France (helping to
cement the alliance so valuable to the American Revolution); a
musician, philanthropist, cartographer, linguist and printer. He sat
on the committee that drafted the US
Declaration of Independence. He founded a popular publication,
the Pennsylvania Gazette, later to become The Saturday
Evening Post. He invented
swim fins, and a tool to get books off of high shelves; he headed the Pennsylvania
delegation to the Albany Congress; he established two
major fields of physical science, electricity
and meteorology. Old Ben wrote a scientific essay
that for the first time described the existence of the Gulf Stream.
He also wrote essays on how to select a
mistress (pick an older woman) – he was something of a ladies' man
and a member of England's infamous and licentious Hellfire Club* – and how to avoid flatulence (drink perfume); in 1737 he drew up the first formal list of American slang terms for drunkenness (coming up with an impressive 228).
On top of all that, he was also said to
have been
a likeable man.
There is the story of the
young Franklin arriving in Philadelphia so poor that all he could
buy was a penny-roll to eat. A local girl, Deborah Powell, laughed
at him. Years later she became his common-law wife.
"Franklin appears to have been the first to use,
at least in print in English, these electrical terms: armature,
battery, brush, charged, charging, condense, conductor,
discharge, electrical fire, electrical shock, electrician,
electrified, electrify, electrized, Leyden bottle, minus
(negative or negatively), negatively, non-conducting,
non-conductor, non-electric, plus (positive or positively),
stroke (electric shock), uncharged." Benjamin
Franklin, by Carl Van Doren, 1939
How did he do it all in one lifetime? His extraordinary autobiography
tells, among many things, of his daily regimen.
Many sayings commonly used today were written by Ben Franklin:
Keep conscience clear, then never fear.
Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
Don't throw stones at your neighbors', if your own windows are made
of glass.
God helps them that help themselves.
For want of a nail a shoe is lost; for want of a shoe a horse is
lost; for want of a horse the rider is lost. (Sayings
from Poor Richard's Almanac)
" …
invented swim fins, bifocals, a glass armonica, watertight
bulkheads for ships, the lightning rod, a wood stove, and an
odometer. While serving as Postmaster General in 1775, Franklin
decided to analyze the best routes for delivering the mail. He
invented a simple odometer
to help measure the mileage of the routes that he attached to his
carriage."Source
*The Hellfire Club "The Hell Fire Club
initially was based at Medmenham Abbey which Sir Francis bought and
converted into an erotic garden. The members of the Hell-Fire club
took part in mock religious ceremonies and used masks and costumes
to allow them to indulge in varying degrees of debauchery. Medmenham
gained some notoriety so the Hell Fire club moved to a more secluded
site at West Wycombe caves. Members of the club included Sir Francis
Dashwood, the Earl of Sandwich, Thomas Potter (the son of the
Archbishop of Canterbury), John Wilkes, William Hogarth, the Earl of
Bute, the Marquis of Granby, the Prince of Wales and possibly
Benjamin Franklin and Horace Walpole. It was alleged that the
'monks' took prostitutes down the Thames from London in barges to
act as masked 'nuns'. The members of the Club also were accused of
celebrating the Black Mass over the naked bodies of aristocratic
ladies, one of whom was Lady
Mary Montagu Wortley, the mother-in-law of the Earl of
Bute." Source
Joshua Norton, born in London, grew up in a pioneer British
family in South Africa, and inherited the fortune of his merchant
father. At the age of 30, Joshua went to San Francisco from Brazil,
where he had accumulated a considerable treasure of his own.
California had become the scene of perhaps the world's greatest-ever
gold rush, and Joshua Norton wanted to be a part of the excitement
and prosperity.
By 1853 he had amassed a vast fortune of more than $250,000 by
trading in real estate and high-demand goods such as coffee, tea and
flour. His success brought him some fame in California, and he
earned the nickname 'Emperor'.
Soon, however, he lost his fortune and was even in $50,000 debt when
he lost a gamble of cornering the market in rice. He worked at
menial jobs and disappeared from view, only to re-emerge on
September 16, 1854 when he walked into the office of the San
Francisco Call, dressed like a Gilbert and Sullivan-style monarch.
He asked the editor to publish what he called a "decree"
… Read
on
1877May Gibbs,
MBE,
English-born Australian children's author, creator of the enduring
children's classic characters, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, the gumnut
babies. She worked as a political cartoonist in Perth
before going to Sydney and working for The Bulletin.
The Gumnut Babies, her first book about Australian bush fairies, was published in 1916 in Sydney.
(American actress Ava
Gardner is often credited with having made a comment that if you had
to make a movie about the end of the world, Melbourne, Australia, is
the place to do it. Below is an alternative explanation for the quote.)
"This may be the final word on matters
Melbourne, the end of the world and Ava Gardner – at least until
the next journalist runs the mythical story. Neil Jillett has
emerged once again (he outed himself in 1982 in the Age) to ease the
burden on the one-time Mrs Sinatra.
"'When I was working in the Melbourne
office of the SMH in 1959 I was told to do an interview with Ava,
then in town for the filming of On The Beach. She was
very much unavailable, so I wrote a few pars of inanities about that
and about the number of cigarettes and bottles of whisky going into
her South Yarra flat. The final par went something like:
"'"It has not been confirmed that Miss
Gardner, as has been rumoured at third hand from usually unreliable
sources, if given the chance, would seriously consider whether, if
she managed to think of it, she would like to have put on record
that she said: On The Beach is a story about the end of the world,
and Melbourne sure is the right place to film it."'
"Jillett expected a sub-editor to see the
joke and cut it out, but it was printed that way in The
Sun-Herald. He now wryly comments: 'It's not easy to live with
the fact that, after 48 years as a journalist, I have only once
written anything worth repeating – and someone else got the
credit'."Source
1899Al Capone
(d. 1947),
American gangster, nicknamed 'Scarface'
Your family and friends will get a
kick when they hear their own name being sung in 'Happy Birthday'!!
You can schedule your singing cards in advance, and even add your
own face to funny animations. (Pay cards)
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ezine
Webmaster,
webmasters free content, or else articles at very reasonable rates
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application. Further details
1668A three-way duel was fought among George Villiers, Duke of
Buckingham, Francis Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and Bernard Howard. Lord
Shrewsbury later died of his wounds.
1871 Children at the
French village of Pontmain saw a vision of the Virgin Mary that lasted several
hours.
1873First Battle
of the Stronghold in the USModoc War,
the last of the Indian Wars to occur in California or Oregon.Four hundred federal troops were routed by Modoc
Amerindians in the Tule Lake area of Northern California. The Native Americans
proceeded to a wage guerrilla war on state and federal soldiers.
1874Chang and Eng,
the original Siamese
Twins, died within three hours of each other, aged 62. The conjoined
twin brothers had each married, and fathered 10 and 11 children
respectively.
1915 US: Anarchist Lucy Parsons led a hunger march in
Chicago; IWW songwriter Ralph Chaplin wrote his
famous labor song, 'Solidarity
Forever' for the march.
In our hands is placed a power greater than their
hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold;
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old,
For the union makes us strong.
Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever,
For the union makes us strong.
Elzie Segar was an American cartoonist drawing a strip called Thimble Theater in 1929, when on this day
Popeye the spinach-eating Sailor Man made his first appearance.
Segar's whimsical characters
Castor Oyle (father of Olive, who soon meets Popeye on January 24) and Ham Gravy
had gained possession of Bernice the Whiffle Hen, a lucky bird. The two
determined to use this good fortune to their financial advantage, and planned to
use the hen for guidance at Mr Fadewell's casino on Dice Island. For $6,000 they
bought a boat (Castor tells Ham Gravy that it's good the holes in the hull are
all below the waterline where they won't show), and go looking for someone who
knows how to "drive a boat".
Down on the waterfront they
come across a tough-looking character with a strong chin and only one eye. Oyle
says "Hey there! Are you a sailor?" Popeye, dressed in a sailor suit
of course, retorts, "Ja think I'm a cowboy?" Thus with typical sarcasm
was Popeye born. When Segar had Castor Oyle hire that sailor on the spot, he
could scarcely have known that he was creating a legend of the twentieth
century.
Two common English words
first appeared in the Popeye strip: goon (meaning a German guard in WWI), and jeep (meaning GP, general purpose military vehicle).
"Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" (Sanskrit:
"great soul") Gandhi (October 2,
1869 - January 30,
1948) was one of
the founding fathers of the modern Indian state and
an influential advocate of pacifism as a means of revolution. (See also: Mahatmas.)"Source
1966 A B-52 bomber collided
with a KC-135
jet tanker over Spain,
dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the
town of Palomares and another one into the sea.
"On 17 January 1966 two
US B52s collided in a refueling accident spilling four H-bombs onto Palomares,
Spain, in the only known case of nuclear weapons being lost in a populated area.
Over 37 years later, an exhibition entitled, "Operation Broken Arrow:
Nuclear Accident in Palomares," displaying photographs and film of the
accident and its aftermath, is touring Spain. At the time of the accident the
United States constantly kept nuclear-armed warplanes in the air near the Soviet
border. The Spanish government still tests people at random in the Palomares
region for radiation effects and just late last year warned against construction
in the area where two of the bombs fell." Source: Los Angeles Times, August 24, 2003
1967London's Daily Mail (some sources say Daily
Mirror) reported the Blackburn City Council's road hole survey. Forgettable,
were it not that John Lennon mentioned the 4,000 holes in the song A Day in the
Life. The Beatles started recording the song two days later.
The Beatles worked on the
song Penny Lane on the evening of the 17th.
1968George W Bush took the
Air Force officer and pilot qualification tests, scoring 25%, the lowest
possible passing grade on the pilot aptitude portion. Yet on May 27, after just six
weeks of basic airman training, the son of George HW Bush received
a commission as a second lieutenant by means of a 'special appointment' by the
commanding officer of his squadron, with the approval of a panel of three senior
officers. This achievement normally required eight full semesters of college
ROTC courses or eighteen months of military service or completion of Air Force
officer training school.
"Speaker of the House in Texas at the time, Ben Barnes,
admitted he had received a request from a longtime Bush family friend, Sidney
Adger of Houston, to help Bush get into the Air National Guard. Barnes further
testified that he contacted the head of the Texas Air National Guard, Brig.
Gen. James Rose." Source
1968 Eartha Kitt
created a stir when she protested against poverty and the Vietnam War at a White House
dinner.
1970
USA: Yippie leader Jerry Rubin addressed an overflow Seattle crowd of 4,000 at the University
of Washington Student Union Building.
1985The Washington Post ran a piece recapping the
sleazy glories of the 'Rat Pack'. When reporters tried to interview Frank
Sinatra later, he was not happy. "You read ThePost this
afternoon?" he snarled, eyes blazing and index finger waving. "You're
all dead, every one of you. You're all dead."
1997 New Zealand: Twenty activists were arrested for
trespass at the Waihopai spy station.
1998Mexico: More than 2,000 indigenous Tzeltals and Tojolbals from the state
of Chiapas occupied the military barracks of the 39th Military Zone in protest
over Mexican Army incursions into their communities.
2001
The death of Gregory Corso (b. 1920),
American poet and leading member of the
Beats. Convicted of theft at 17, he
discovered literature in prison and later met Allen Ginsberg
and published his first book, The Vestal Lady on Brattle in
1955.
"His mother,
sixteen years old when Gregory was delivered, abandoned the family a year
later and returned to Italy. Afterwards, Corso spent most of his childhood
in orphanages and foster homes. His father remarried when Gregory was eleven
years old, and he had his son stay with him, but the boy repeatedly ran
away. He was removed to a boy's home, from which he also ran away. His
troubled adolescence included a stint of several months in the Tombs, the
New York City jail, for a case involving a stolen radio, and three months of
observation in Bellevue. At seventeen, he was convicted of theft and
sentenced to Clinton State Prison for three years. During his incarceration,
he read avidly from the prison library and began writing poetry."Source
"
Now 20 years old, he quickly fell in with the
rambunctious crowd of writers and other artists that would become famous as
the "Beats". Unlike many others who merely hung around this scene,
though, Corso had a natural talent, and easily began churning out wonderful
poems for his friends to enjoy. His poetic voice was simple, colloquial, funny
and unpretentious.
"His first book of poetry was published by City
Lights in 1955. He quickly became popular, and was much more well-known in
the 50's and 60's than he later became. He was one of the major
"characters" in the Beat circle, and appeared as the charismatic
Yuri Gregorovic, the guy who steals Jack
Kerouac's girlfriend in Kerouac's somewhat self-pitying novel 'The
Subterraneans.'"Source
Budger of history Brake of time You
Bomb
Toy of universe Grandest of all
snatched sky I cannot hate you
Do I hate the mischievous
thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the
mace the flail the axe
Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise
flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
Ah and the sad desparate gun of Verlaine Pushkin
Dillinger Bogart
And hath not St. Michael a burning sword St. George a
lance David a sling
Bomb you are as cruel as man makes you and you're
no crueller than cancer
All Man hates you they'd rather die by car-crash
lightning drowning
Falling off a roof electric-chair heart-attack old
age old age O Bomb
They'd rather die by anything but you
Death's finger is free-lance
...
(The whole of this picture poem looks
like an A-bomb)
The Congo in general,
and Goma in particular, even before this tragedy, were in great need of help
from the rich nations due to numerous environmental and political/military
disasters.
2007 Double good
speak:
George W Bush's
Attorney
General,
Alberto Gonzales, asserted in Senate testimony that while
habeas
corpus is "one of our most cherished rights", the United States
Constitution does not expressly guarantee habeas rights to United
States residents or citizens.
reetings from Australia.
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