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Mar 12 2011

In Memoriam

We note with sadness the passing of Diane Gee’s husband Mike last night.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,

Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy housewife ply her evening care:

No children run to lisp their sire’s return,

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How jocund did they drive their team afield!

How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour:-

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault

If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise,

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault

The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,

Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,

Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll;

Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage,

And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood,

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,

And read their history in a nation’s eyes,

Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;

Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,

Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;

Along the cool sequester’d vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet e’en these bones from insult to protect

Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d Muse,

The place of fame and elegy supply:

And many a holy text around she strews,

That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires;

E’en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

E’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead,

Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;

If chance, by lonely contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, —

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,

Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;

‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.

His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;

Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

‘One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,

Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;

Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

‘The next with dirges due in sad array

Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,-

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay

Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.

Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,

And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heaven did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,

He gained from Heaven (’twas all he wish’d) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode

(There they alike in trembling hope repose),

The bosom of his Father and his God.

By Thomas Gray (1716-71).  

Mar 12 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for March 11, 2011-

DocuDharma

Mar 12 2011

Prime Time

Broadcast is dead.  So is cable, all lazy ass play the same B movie twice programming.

And as if to prove all I have said, here is one of the first to go! A lad who sat before me on these very benches, who gave up all to serve in the first year of the war. One of the iron youth who have made Germany invincible in the field! Look at him. Sturdy and bronze and clear-eyed! The kind of soldier every one of you should envy! Paul, lad, you must speak to them. You must tell them what it means to serve your fatherland.

(I)t’s been a long while since we enlisted out of this classroom. So long, I thought maybe the whole world had learned by this time. Only now they’re sending babies, and they won’t last a week! Up at the front you’re alive or you’re dead and that’s all. You can’t fool anybody about that very long. And up there we know we’re lost and done for whether we’re dead or alive. Three years we’ve had of it, four years! And every day a year, and every night a century! And our bodies are earth, and our thoughts are clay, and we sleep and eat with death! And we’re done for because you *can’t* live that way and keep anything inside you!

Later-

A man’s hands never seem to get clean, even if he don’t touch nothing. They just stay dirty. Sort of a special kind of dirt. G.I. dirt. I bet one of those criminologists could take a sample out of a guy’s fingernail, put it under a microscope, and say, “That’s G.I. dirt.” The dirt’s always the same color, no matter what country you’re fighting in.

Dave in repeats from 2/3.

Pork Chop Hill is in North Korea now, but those who fought there know for what they died, and the meaning of it.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Mar 12 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

With 58 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Rebels appeal for aid as Kadhafi troops advance

by Danny Kemp, AFP

14 mins ago

NEAR RAS LANUF, Libya (AFP) – Rebels battling Moamer Kadhafi appealed for arms and medical aid on Friday, as the European Union insisted he step down and US President Barack Obama said the world was “tightening the noose” on the Libyan leader.

Kadhafi is “a leader shooting at his own people”, EU president Herman Van Rompuy said at the close of an emergency summit of the 27-nation bloc in Brussels to examine the crisis and seek consensus on how to deal with it.

“The Libyan leadership must give up power without delay,” Van Rompuy said.

Mar 11 2011

Still a “Fierce Advocate”

I could say, “When you’ve lost Scarecrow…” but I haven’t particularly noted him as a proud Obamabot unlike some I could name.  Still, I thought this piece worthy of your notice.  That clunking sound you hear is Cenk Uygur’s jaw hitting the floor.

Sherrod Brown on Cenk: President Obama Has a Loud Microphone

By: Scarecrow, Thursday March 10, 2011 5:27 pm

Expecting the same Obama who sold out on tax cuts for the rich, the Public Option, Gitmo, torture investigations/prosecutions, and coddling TBTF banksters, etc, to rein in the Tea-GOP is, uh, not reassuring.

In just the last three months, Obama undercut Schumer on limiting the tax breaks to those over a million in income. He undercut Schumer again today by making sure that when the White House’s corporate staff sits at the table with the crazies who would destroy the economy and 70 years of progressive governance, the Tea-GOP will not even be asked to consider raising revenues, let alone taking back the recent gift tax breaks for scofflaw corporations or wealthy Americans.

…

There are simply too many White House betrayals, broken promises, secret deals, dashed hopes, disingenuous dodges, stupid blunders (or were they deliberate?), insults to supporters and every element of the Democratic coalition, including America’s working class, to list here. FDL writes about them every day.

So is Senator Brown honestly expecting this President to lead us? Not a chance. Only Pod People still think America’s working class has a President on their side.

Mar 11 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for March 10, 2011-

DocuDharma

Mar 11 2011

Prime Time

Why does TV suck so much?

Discuss.

To the last, I will grapple with thee… from Hell’s heart, I stab at thee! For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee!

We are one big, happy fleet! Ah, Kirk, my old friend, do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold in space!

Later-

You still remember, Admiral. I cannot help but be touched. I, of course, remember you.

Dave in repeats from 2/8.  Jon has Trey Parker and Matt Stone (talking about Mormons), Stephen Jeff Greenfield.  Conan hosts Seth Rogen, Wendy Williams, and Lykke Li.

It has been said that social occasions are only warfare concealed. Some would prefer it to be more honest, more… open.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Mar 11 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 57 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Kadhafi son says ‘victory in sight’ as West frets

by Imed Lamloum, AFP

1 hr 14 mins ago

TRIPOLI (AFP) – Moamer Kadhafi’s son said on Thursday victory was in sight against rebels fighting his father’s iron-fisted regime after loyalist forces retook two key towns and Western powers fretted over how to deal with the civil war while tightening the screws further.

He spoke after NATO and the European Union began 48 hours of crisis talks, amid growing calls for the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya, reports France would even support selective air strikes and more ships being deployed to the area.

“We’re coming,” Seif al-Islam told young regime supporters in Tripoli, referring to the advance of government forces towards the eastern rebel bastion of Benghazi.

Mar 10 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for March 9, 2011-

DocuDharma

Mar 10 2011

Prime Time

The horror.

I’m here to kick your ass, and you know it, and everybody here knows it, and above all, you deserve it. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that this party is about to become a historical fact.

I hate feeling ashamed. I hate where I’m from. I hate watching my friends get everything their hearts desire. I gave into that hatred and I turned on what I believed in. I didn’t have to. You didn’t.

Later-

We’re gonna bring this party up to a nice respectable level. Don’t worry, we’re not gonna hurt anyone. We’re not even gonna touch ’em. We’re just gonna make ’em cry a little, just by lookin’ at ’em.

Dave in repeats from 2/10.  Jon has Aaron Eckhart, Stephen David Brooks (David Broder being unresponsively dead and all).  Conan hosts Paul Rubens, Shane Mauss, and Edmund Morris.

Don’t go mistaking paradise for a pair of long legs.

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