Lime Crackles

This morning I tried a magazine recipe called Lime Crackles - so I photographed them.  Used some Green Food Coloring.

Old Beautiful Trees Gone, Many Thoughts

Tree Removal Dec 18, 2015

No, I do not know why it happens that it is not that easy.   I wrote to the Urban Forest at the City of Tacoma,  “…they kept the goodwill of everyone as they built, but their intentions were really something entirely different from what did appear to be a project that was including the large old trees.” Those are my feelings, but there are many feelings. 

A New Sidewalk, Again Broken

About fifteen years ago I fell on my face over a broken sidewalk at that corner and walked in the dark to the Emergency Room at Tacoma General Hospital.  Just then I had a very few hours work at the Tacoma University of Washington Branch Library while I also had a newspaper route.  The following morning I got up and delivered the newspapers.   At one time, one of the newspaper customers lived in that building.  It had not been the fault of the trees that I fell.  I rode my bicycle past the trees many times and their resin stuck slightly to my tires.  But those trees were welcome shade and I felt powerfully good about them. 

Beautiful Trees During Project

This summer fires east of the mountains caused a day of air filled with drifted smoke.  And the building project was a part of the summer.   I did think their plan was to include the old trees.  The trees found their way into a selfie – the project looked good from a heavily traveled corner, and the trees were such a part of the project looking good.

Lovely Appearance

 I do not know why, but it happens.  I had a small tree of my own, this year I transplanted it too late, into a pot it should have had sooner.  It went into shock ,  part of it is dead now.  I am not that successful in the garden.  The fact is, this morning they took the great large trees away, and I have to accept it was the end of their lifespan. 

My tree after and before, with
Photos of Orange Smokey Sun

Childhood Peanut Butter Cookies For Saint Lucia Day

Provenance:  I do not have my mother’s cookbook with the peanut butter cookies.  I found a copy at a hallway table of things building residents were giving away.  Others told me whose it was, and I checked with her to make sure she intended to give it away.  So the previous owner of the copy I have was a lady who had lived at the building.  During a Black History Month project an African-American  librarian told me African-Americans want their presence mentioned.  At four of the six buildings in Tacoma where I have lived, residents have appeared to me to be African-Americans, and among them was the lady who  gave away the cookbook.  After I acquired my copy I saw another copy at the Goodwill or at a yard sale.  A cousin has her mother’s copy of the cookbook. 

The Cookbook, from Martha Meade, is from the Sperry Flour Mill Company.  Marie Malm, who was my grandmother’s sister, worked as a baker at the Sperry Flour Mill Company for years.  They tested the flour and I suppose they tested it with different recipes.   The book had an index based on Types of Recipes and an Index based on Types of Foods. 
  

So Peanut Butter Cookies, here appearing with Cookies in the Types of Recipes Index, also appears with Peanut Butter in the Types of Foods Index.   The publication date is 1939, which was the year my grandmother’s sister died.  She worked as a baker at the Sperry Flour Mill Company for many years, and her first job was at a candy factory.   

Pandering has been a question currently on Facebook.  Novelist Claire Vaye Watkins  wrote in her essay, “On Pandering”.  “Myself, I have been writing to impress old white men. Countless decisions I’ve made about what to write and how to write it have been in acquiescence to the opinions of the white male literati.”  Each Month the Martha Meade cookbook had another beautiful piece of appropriate poetry.  The quote from Shakespeare, according to the internet, is from Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 1, Marcellus, to Horatio and Bernardo, after seeing the Ghost.  Horatio prays as light is appearing and day begins. 

The Martha Meade Cookbook had a Menu for a Day on each page, and for the third week of December I find a day when all the recipes appear to be vegetarian.  I have been a vegetarian since 1987.   

Friday at King's Books

Christopher J. Jarmick, Featured

Friday evening December 11th was either the eighth or ninth Open Mike participation I made with the DWS this year, and it was the final Distinguished Writer Series Event for 2015.   With a camera only with me about two and a half weeks, Connie Walle gave me permission to take a few photos.  I include some here.  Christopher J. Jarmick was the featured reader, he also attended the Holiday Party at the home of one of the Open Mike readers afterwards.


Three Open Mike Readers



Reader with Assistance Animal





Atticus (Herbert not shown)

Connie Walle Maskter of Ceremonies

First Job For Marie Malm Was At A Candy Factory

Third From Right, Marie Malm

Yesterday at the candy history display at Tacoma Historical Society downtown (reviewed in Tacoma Weekly, Chocolate City)I admired  hand-managed heavy candy-making machinery.   The climate was right here, and it was close to railroad shipping,  so there were many companies that made candy in Tacoma.   There was a huge copper kettle with a huge spoon from Brown and Haley.  A guide pointed out machines,  among them one that made Ribbon Candy, and I thought about the story of my mother’s Aunt Marie.

Second From Left, Marie Malm

My mother, Linnea Gord Jensen, wrote in a 1930s bio about Marie Malm, her aunt, that Marie’s first job was at a candy factory.  She worked later at Sperry Flour Mill as a baker in the test kitchen,  she was a baker there for many years.  Marie Malm appears in two photos of the Test Kitchen Workers at the Sperry Flour Mill.  The  workers’ names are not listed.  Perhaps others in these photos also worked at Tacoma candy factories at other times.

Reading During November and December --

 At this time there is a sentencing about the terrible Aurora Theater Shootings.  I read The Spiral Notebook, which  is about “the Holmes case, but with an emphasis on the cultural influences that had shaped him and his generation.”  In their book about the Aurora Theater Shootings in July 2012, the authors quote people in their teens and twenties about these influences, as well as specialists.  These two quotes included in the book are about the influence of violent video games:

“There are two major types of memory and learning,” he (Dr. Larry Wahlberg, clinical psychologist) says.  “One type is Deductive Learning that comes from memory:  You  learn that Denver is the capital of Colorado by repeating this again and again.  The second type is called Procedural Learning and it comes from repetitive actions and practice, like shooting a basketball over and over until you become good at it.  One of the problems with video games is that you’re learning to kill repetitively in simulated situations.  You get better at it and you get more desensitized to the process.”

The authors, Stephen and Joyce Singular, refer many times to on-line responses to the violent attacks and to interviews with young people to respond to a stated point of view that older people have not experienced the culture as young people have.

From a twenty-five-year-old male graduate student:

If you don’t have close friends or a good relationship with your parents, what do you have?  Action characters in video games and movies.  The point of these games is violence…

The video games cover all the recent wars: Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  It’s not hard to figure how someone raised on this stuff could act it out in a real way that causes real violence…

Arts Month and Daylight Savings Time End, I Read Some Books

Daylight Savings Time extended the weekend by one hour.  October was busy,  I dared to settle in and   read.  I was able to finish  Finding Me, by Michelle Knight with Michelle Burford, about the Cleveland Kidnappings.   A lot of people recall the difficult impact of the story of three girls held captive for ten to twelve years. 

I looked for Read-Alikes for The Case of the Missing Books, by Ian Sansom, and found a series by Elly Griffiths about a Forensic Archaeologist.  I could find The Janus Stone.   While browsing, I saw T.C. Boyle’s Talk Talk, at the start police arrest a woman who runs a stop sign because there are warrants out for her arrest.  She spends the weekend in a county jail.  It is about Identity theft.  I waited in line to again read Sara Paretsky’s  Brush Back, the protagonist again in her childhood neighborhood in South Chicago.

During Arts Month I supplied copies of Poetry Northwest for display at the Tacoma Poetry Festival.  I attended the presentation that included David Wagoner.   Happily, art of mine appeared at Hinches de Poesia. 

I Attend A Community Conversation With State Elected Officials

AT THE COMMUNITY CONVERSATION – My Earlier Thoughts, The List of Many Topics, and A New State Government Office

Oak Tree Beyond Window

My Earlier Thoughts - Yesterday I got a Tacoma Public Schools newsletter that describes a Pacific Lutheran University partnership between PLU and Tacoma Public Schools to foster the languages and the cultures of the residences within the whole context of learning.  One project involves student teachers from PLU at Tacoma Schools.  “We need to reflect the languages, the culture and histories of our community in our classrooms as we move forward…” (Spotlight, Tacoma Public Schools Fall 2015)

My thought on that topic is, that perhaps descendents of Scandinavian-Americans need to discuss this with emotional reference.  Another quite recent PLU project was about Caring Burnout.  A mistaken perception could exist in communities involved with this partnership.  In truth, in the history of the Scandinavians with Tacoma Public Schools, the Schools have not fostered the language and cultures of Scandinavians.  Scandinavian groups formed committees to request their languages in high schools, and Tacoma Public Schools rejected this. 

Fey, Darnielle, Jenkins

It was always true that Tacoma Public Schools offered their students an education in a supportive and varied way, with diversity present. I adored school, but my Scandinavian Experience was light years away from our curriculum.  We did do family trees with some holiday traditions in eighth grade.   As adults we have not been misguided - we live in a diverse Tacoma.  However, for non-English people the languages and cultures have not been taught.  Nor has their historical perspective.

At the Community Conversation - The List of Many Topics:  Jake Fey, Jeannie Darnielle, and a slightly late arrived Laurie Jinkens at Wheelock Library meeting room began their community conversation by gathering a long list of topics people wanted to cover:  mental health and civil rights and helath care...

The discussions began with Immigrant Rights and the Detention Center on the tide flats,  continued with Social Security disability cuts and other budget issues. 

Taxes,  laws on religion...Ms. Darnielle explained that some issues were federal (not state) issues, that there were several tiers of government.

They discussed budget issues – with a 25 million dollar fire budget, we have just had a 75 million dollar fire.  And they discussed the slow but progressive action taken, the McCleary response – in affirmative rights the government must support public education. 

I mentioned it might be important to listen openly to the thoughts about non-parents on education.  They experience paying for education without using the service. 

They discussed medical marijuana.  As our representatives, they described how they were strategic in how they tried to engage the many issues of the time.

A new state government office:  And they discussed youth.  Many are homeless.  They are acting to change the fact that many are suspended or expelled without re-entry plans.  They plan a new state government office to address what is bringing children into homelessness and to study how for committing so-called “status offenses”, like running away or skipping school,  children could be incarcerated.  Gray's Harbor County, they said, has a high rate of student incarceration for these offenses.  Adults cannot be incarcerated for these behaviors. 

“There is a huge gap, and what is happening now is not a solution,” said a representative from Hilltop Artists.

They discussed the removal of the Washington State Telephone Assistance Program, now to be managed by a federal program.  Many people under the poverty level will no longer have assistance with telephone bills.   
 

News Article Wednesday Contrasts To Bus Incident Monday

An internet article today from the news contrasts to an incident on the bus I was on Monday.  A Sound Transit Bus exploded on the freeway, minutes after the passengers evacuated.  The incident on the bus I was on was less astonishing.  Monday afternoon twenty minutes after I got on a 4:45 bus at TCC our trip was interrupted by an unusual dinging noise.  We were stopped for forty-five minutes while they found a part that was broken, a hose.  That time of day buses that could come for us four passengers were far off, or were busy.  The replacement bus arrived at last. 

My time right now, as it frequently is, has been occupied with books.  And a book I was carrying was The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, which begins with a bus that soon lofts off the surface of the planet.  And also books that occupy my thoughts are two books that refer to the holocaust, by descendents of the holocaust, and a memoir of the news story about three young women rescued from a residence where they had been held captive for ten years.   A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz, by Göran Rosenberg, My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past, by Jennifer Teege, and Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed: A Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings, by Michelle Knight. 

In the book by Michelle Knight I learn her childhood had been one of abuse and homelessness.  These several grim stories are absorbing, but they reveal a lot about these people who are the books authors.  In the library systems of today I recognize that the permanence of the presence of books in the systems have changed, and wonder what that means for a book like a memoir, when a story has been told, one of intense meaning to the author.  

Greyhound High School Travel, 1966, and Roseburg, Oregon

I use public transit, walk, or ride a bicycle.  My small experience with Roseburg, Oregon, is from Greyhound.  When a friend and I went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, in 1966, our friend and her mother and father continued to California, while we two got the Greyhound bus back to Tacoma.   

It was a long, hot trip.  There was a little restroom in the back, I wore a shift dress with browns, reds and oranges that went with a basket purse.  The driver announced there was a dinner break at Roseburg.  And I remember everyone descended to a cafeteria, a little cafe, at the Greyhound depot.   

A basket purse 1960s, from Etsy

So Roseburg has remained in my travel memories from High School, and I am sure in many travel memories of those who used Greyhound.  When I looked up the Greyhound station at Roseburg, Oregon, on Google Earth Street Views, a mini-drama shows a bus stopped at the permanently closed Greyhound depot and there is a person with luggage just up the street.  A McMenamin's Restaurant has restored an historic building nearby.  

There are some resources on the internet for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival from the 1960s.  Outside in the dark at the theater costumed dancers performed close into the audience before the play began, we did not see the featured play that season, A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I believe we saw Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

Thoughts at Lincoln High School's Project Peace Event

In the background of my blurred photos at the Project Peace event at Lincoln High School yesterday afternoon is a mariachi band.  They played two numbers, which primarily brought to mind for me, in the context of the introduction of the Washington State Teacher of the year 2016, the 1966 Washington State Teacher of the year, Doris Hubner.  

Mrs. Doris Hubner was my kindergarten teacher and later hosted an educational tv show that served as a mnemonic for the Spanish pronunciation of the double-l - Cholla's Corner.  Cholla was a Chihuahua. 

Nathan Gibbs-Bowling is the 2016 Washington State Teacher of the year.


At Lincoln High School Lunchroom
October 5, 2015

.




  Mrs. Doris Hubner included as her piano accompanist on the television show, Linnea Gord Jensen..  My mother participated a lot in the PTA.

Upper Photo Includes
Linnea Gord Jensen at Piano

 

Nordic Festival October 10, 2015

During the past year the International Order of Runeberg downsized to a group of lodges called the Order of Runeberg Lodges.  Over their many years they were no longer the large number of larger-sized lodges and this name change reflects the size.  When I have visited at the Nordic Festival in Edgewood, although the Order of Runeberg has not officially participated, some lodge members have been present.  This year's festival is on October 10, 2015.

The International Order of Runeberg was part of my mother's life.  Part of the work I have been able to do as a volunteer at the Pacific Lutheran University has been about the work she did with the lodge as a talented piano accompanist for the lodge choir, when they visited Finland in 1930 to give performances, and later as choir director.  When I was in elementary school, she was their choir director.

Marie Cain and Syrene Forsman '08
Swedish-Finn Historical Society

Over seven and a half years ago the International Order of Runeberg sponsored dancers and singers who visited Seattle and Olympia and gave wonderful performances.  At the Nordic Festival participants sometimes wear Scandinavian Costumes - at the Seattle and Olympia performances in 2008 included was a costume from Malax, Finland. 



Dancers in Olympia 2008

Both my mother and her cousin Signa had costumes from Malax, Finland.  These came from 1938, when my mother visited Finland on a Runeberg Excursion on which her family dance band performed as the Soumi Band on the Atlantic crossing from New York to Helsingfors. 


Marie Cain and Dancer
Malax Costume 2008

Laura Jensen and Dancer
Malax Costume 2008

These are one or two photos of the great visit from 2008.  Marie Cain, Signa's daughter, and I both have Malax Costumes like these.

An Earlier Facebook Post for A Political Situation

My time in Tacoma has not included more information about the Prosecutor and the recent effort for recall than what appears in the News Tribune or on the Internet. But the recent editorial by Peterson at the Tribune only impresses me to believe that the Prosecutor takes meticulous care about reaching people's important news source when print media has ongoing experiences with change. Tribune Carriers are not employees of the paper, this new ruling can have yet another effect on how the News Tribune experiences everything.

Came Across a High School Yearbook

Earlier this week I came across a high school yearbook - outside.  It was getting dark.  A couple days later, doing research to try to find the owner, the Pacific Northwest Room helped me.  They are the Tacoma Public Schools depository.  So I was able to leave this book with them.  Problem Solved.

Thoughts About 2001 Fourteen Years Later

draft horses 2015

Fourteen years ago I went to a job I had at the fair, the crowd was thin, at the concessions booth they told me I would not be needed that day, to go back the following day. I had a drawing book with and drew in the corn roaster, the counter, the little radio, which was explaining about how blood transfusions would be necessary, I gradually separated from the drawing and went over to the counter. They explained to me. At that time I was delivering papers, I delivered the paper the following day. And then went back to the fair to see the Governor Gary Loch speak at the grandstand. Then I went to the concessions stand to work.

Etched Poem

At Point Defiance Park yesterday I found one or two of the etched poems from twenty years ago were no longer legible.  I knew how one by Joanne McCarthy read.  (Joanne McCarthy taught poetry at Tacoma Community College for years.  When I was an adjunct in the mid-eighties I replaced her for six months when she was on sabbatical.  That was exciting.)  I include my interpretation of her poem here. 

in winter darkness

the foghorns blow, sad cattle

lost on strange prairie

Joanne McCarthy

Semantic Memory, Episodic Memory, and Proprioception

Semantic Memory, Episodic Memory, and Proprioception

Memory of facts or events are two kinds of explicit memory, memory of facts is called semantic memory and memory of events is called episodic memory. (According to the internet) School made the effort to teach semantic memory – the example is “What is the capital of France?”  Episodic memory, an embarrassing thing you said in French Club, fills out in vivid detail from visual and other sensual memories. 

Remaining overhang

From the southwestern-most corner of Wilson High School’s buildings progress gains altitude along the promontory that is Tacoma, along the terrain created by Glacial Geological formation, towards the southwest to Tacoma Community College, where  it has a view of Mount Tahoma.  Wilson’s breezeway was actually not created by glaciers, but probably was designed when many futuristic buildings were designed.  These featured natural colors and materials and natural shapes.

Two different memories of facts stay in my thoughts.  Without any episodic memory of what method Wilson High School used to present electives to the students and without any episodic memory of exactly how it happened, I still know others said Junior Philosophy was a really great class to take.  Three years after, back home for the summer after a year of college, I still know I learned our teacher of Philosophy had gone on to Tacoma Community College.  So, with TCC at its fiftieth anniversary in 2015, in 1968 it was already hindsight that my first encounter with TCC happened in 1965 with Junior Philosophy.  The philosophy teacher, Mr. Edrington,  taught a great class at TCC for many years.

Then there is another memory of fact.  When we were students, they told us this would happen.

Torn-down Breezeway

Was it the last time or the time before that, not many days ago, as the bus passed Wilson High School, a necessarily adult person was walking along the breezeway from the Philosophy/History Hall.  I thought it might be the principal or a faculty member.  Today the breezeway had been torn down.  I got off to take a couple of snapshots. 

Then I walked about five blocks to catch a bus.  Surely proprioception, the consciousness of where one is in space, is related to short-term memory.  At the stop I kept feeling a difficulty with proprioception.  That I was still at the corner where the school in the photographs I was viewing on the cell phone should have been behind me.   

Wilson Philosophy/History Hall

April 13, 1935, A Great Episode from Out Our Way

At the library scanner I have prepared the April 13, 1935 Out Our Way to include in Spice Drawer Mouse.  It is surely in the public domain, at eighty years past.  What a great piece this one is.  I referred to it in July, where I included the dialogue. 

After the Saturday Storm, Cool With Rain

Park chipper at Wright's Park

According to the radio the storm on Saturday was the worst since the hurricane-level Columbus Day Storm in 1962.   On Friday at Pierce County Library I noticed an email from Friends of The Tacoma Public Library Initiative – go to the Main Library back door for the August Saturday Morning Meeting.  In front of the County City Building I thought the usual wind effect would knock me over and wondered if the Friends had their information right, for the library was still closed for the two week installation of the new system.  At the library I did not know where a back door would be.   

Someone else got there, and I followed in.  We were inside the closed library, however the library manager greeted us, she knew we would have the Saturday Morning Meeting.  Some discussion led the library director, who was present, along with another library specialist, to suggest we have not only a recording secretary, but a social media secretary.  Change always immediate.  The Friends of the Tacoma Public Library Initiative hope more devoted library users will join. 

On the way back I got caught in the rain, only a little.  I went to Church on Sunday, then helped my cousin pick plums, then took the bus to a Pierce County Library.  On Monday Metro Parks brought the park chipper to Wright's Park to do some larger branches.  And the weather continues cool and rainy as September begins, after a summer that was very warm.

Some Flowers

Nice Poppy - where I live



Nice flowers - where I live

This Summer there are some nice flowers where I live -


Poppies at the Duplex
of a Lodge Member A Year Back

Now the Library Will Close for Two Weeks to Install Radio Frequency Identification

Radio Frequency Identification

This is the Tacoma Public Library definition of the new system that will be installed while they remain closed for the next two weeks:  "RFID is a data collection technology that relies on radio waves to automatically identify items - which in the case of the library includes books, CDs, DVDs, videos, etc. The technology transfers data from an RFID tag to a reader and then to the library's circulation database. An RFID tag is placed on every library item with the barcode number of that item stored on the tag. RFID readers are placed at staff workstations, self check machines, and built into security gates. When the tagged item is placed near a reader, the barcode of that item is sent to the library's circulation system and the item is checked in or out."

Poem "Sorrow in the Bicycle Summer"

Yesterday evening I read this poem at the King's Books reading open mike, the poem was from 1990, twenty-five years ago, my first summer with an adult bike.

SORROW IN THE BICYCLE SUMMER

When I reach the red light just down at the park

The traffic light lands me, beaches me straddling

my middle bar, until the bicycle seat becomes

a place to sit, furniture I use while my mind drifts.

At the red light I forget I am on my bicycle

And across I notice the tree that rattles

Large feathers of leaves, the spine of a feather

And leaflets beside, and in the wind

The tree from top to low limbs over the curbs

and street can shimmer.  It is a black locust.

 

And it is my bicycle summer.

Now I am a person on a bicycle.

The swallows circled round my bicycle,

In the night are they asleep

or have they left us for the winter?  It was a lawn,

and a sun that was mercifully a part of the trees.

The sun a heart the leaves crowned,

The sun a heart the leaves screened.

Now the swallows will be gone

And sorrow is for anything, for our sad tables

turned over in the park, for a mislaid towel,

Or for a theorem long forgotten from school.

Edna St. Vincent Millary Pamphlet Removed From Tacoma Public Library

Among some of the Edna St. Vincent Millay work set up for sale by the Tacoma Public Library is a pamphlet of a poem that was read aloud by Ronald Colman on NBC on D-Day.  In the second section, the Prayer, hate can’t win is precursered.  The war rhetoric proclaimed an attack against hate, it is not an original language idea:

“Let us forget such words, and all they mean,

as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed,
Intolerance, Bigotry…”

There is a comparison of attacks to rain, earlier this week at a potluck I overheard rain called Nature’s Waterboarding.  I took exception to this language used for rain.

“the downpour of the heavy, evil, accurate, murderous rain;”

I think the loathsome female creatures described are Harpies.  I include the complete text of this poem, over seventy years old. 

POEM AND PRAYER FOR AN INVADING ARMY

            by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Written by Edna St. Vincent Millary for exclusive radio use by The National Broadcasting Company...and read by Ronald Colman on “D-Day” - June 6, 1944 – over the NBC Network

They must not go alone

into that burning building!-which today
is all of Europe!  
                              Say
that you go with them, spirit and heart and mind!
Although the body, grown
too old to fight a young man's war; or wounded
too deeply under the healed and whitened scars
of earlier battles, must remain behind.

You, too, may not be with them, save in spirit, you

so greatly needed here, here in the very van
and front of Duty,
to fashion tools and engines, and to engineer
their transport; build the ships and mine the coal
without which all their efforts would be worse than vain!

You men and women working in the workshops,

            working on the farms;
makers of tanks and of tractors, fitters of wings
to metal birds which have not left the nest
as yet, which yet must try their flight;
sowers of seed in season, planters of little plants
at intervals, on acres newly plowed
and disked and barrowed,

Out of the Tacoma Public Library

to feed a starving world;

You workers in the shipyards, building ships

which crowd each other down the ways;
you miners of coal in dark and dangerous corridors;
            who see the sun's
total eclipse
each morning, disappearing as you do under the earth's rim,
not to emerge into the daylight till the day's
over, and the light dim;

All you

without whose constant effort and whose skill -
without whose loyal and unfailing aid -
our men would stand
stranded upon a foreign and a hostile shore
without so much as a stout stick to beat away
Death or Pain:
bullets like angry hornets buzzing 'round the ears and the
            bewildered brain,
and from the sky again and yet again
the downpour of the heavy, evil, accurate, murderous rain;

You who have stood behind them to this hour,

move strong behind them now: let still
the weary bones encase the indefatigable Will.

But how can men draw near

so fierce a conflagration? - even here,
across a gray and cold and foggy sea
its heat is felt! - Why,
touch your cheek – is it not hot and tight and dry?

And look what light climbs up the eastern sky, and sinks

and climbs again!
Like the bright Aurora of the North
it floods and flushes, pulses, pales – then glows,
lighting the entire East majestically;
as if it were the sun that rose.
                                                                        I wish it were!
Have patience, friend; it yet may be.

Surely our fibre and our sinews, the backbone

and brain of us, are made of some less common stuff
than clay? - Surely the blood which warms the veins
of heroes at the front, our brothers and our songs,
runs also in our own!
And are we not then capable perhaps of something more courageous
            than we yet have shown?

Surely some talisman, some token of

our lofty pride in them, our heavy gratitude,
and so much, so much love,
will find its way to them!
Some messenger, the vicar and the angel
of what we feel,
will fly before them where they fly, before them and above,
like patron goddesses in wars of old,
cleaving with level lovely brows the hard air
before the eager prows,
lighting their way with incandescent wings and winged heel.

This is the hour, this the appointed time.

The sound of the clock falls awful on our ears,
and the sound of the bells, their metal clang and chime,
tolling, tolling,
for those about to die.
For we know well they will not all come home, to lie
in summer on the beaches.

And yet weep not, you mothers of young men, their wives,

their sweethearts, all who love them well -
fear not the tolling of the solemn bell:
it does not prophesy,
and it cannot foretell;
it only can record;
and it records today the passing of a most uncivil age,
which had its elegance, but lived too well,
and far, oh, far too long;
and which, on History's page,
will be found guilty of injustice and grave wrong.

            …..........

Oh Thou, Thou Prince of Peace, this is a prayer for War!

Yet not a war of man against his fellowman.
Say, rather Lord, we do beseech
Thy guidance and Thy help:
In exorcising from the mind of Man, where she has made her nest,
a hideous and most fertile beast -
and this to bring about with all dispatch, for look, where even now
            she would lie down again to whelp!

Lord God of Hosts!  Thou Lord O Hosts not only, not alone

of battling armies Lord and King;
but of the child-like heart as well, which longs
to put away – oh, not the childish, but the adult
circuitous and adroit, antique and violent thing
called War;
and sing
the beauties of this late-to-come but oh-so-lovely Spring!
For see
where our young men go forth in mighty numbers, to set free
from torture and from every jeopardy
things that are dear to Thee.

Keep in Thy loving care, we pray, those of our fighting men

whose happy fortune it may be to come back home again
after the War is over; and all those who must perforce remain,
the mourned, the valiant slain.
This we beseech Thee, Lord.  And now before
we rise from kneeling, one thing more:
Soften our hard and angry hearts; make us ashamed
of doing what we do, beneath Thy very eyes, knowing it does
                        displease Thee.
Make us more humble, Lord, for we are proud
without sufficient reason; let our necks be bowed
more often to Thy will;
for well we know what deeds find favor in Thy sight and still
we do not do them.

Oh Lord, all through the night, all through the day,

keep watch over our brave and dear, so far away.
Make us more worthy of
their valor; and Thy love.

“Let them come home!  Oh, let the battle, Lord, be brief,

and let our boys come home!”
So cries the heart, sick for relief
from its anxiety, and seeking to forestall
a greater grief.

So cries the heart aloud.  But the thoughtful mind

has something of its own to say:
“On that day -
when they come home – from very far away -
and further than you think -
(for each of them has stood upon the very brink
or sat and waited in the anteroom
of Death, expecting every moment to be called by name)

Now look you to this matter well;

that they
upon returning shall not find

seated at their own tables, - at the head,

perhaps , of the long, festive board prinked out in prodigal array,
the very monster which they sallied forth to conquer and to quell;
and left behind for dead.”
Let us forget such words, and all they mean,
as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor, Greed,
Intolerance, Bigotry; let us renew
our faith and pledge to Man, his right to be
Himself, and free.

Say that the Victory is ours – then say -

and each man search his heart in true humility -
“Lord!  Father!  Who are we
that we should wield so great a weapon for the rights
and rehabilitation of Thy creature Man?
Lo, from all corners of the Earth we ask
all great and noble to come forth – converge
upon this errand and this task with generous and gigantic plan:

Hold high this Torch, who will.

Lift up this Sword, who can!”