So in reading my facebook feed this morning, I came across a teaching colleague’s post expressing that he’d more or less had his fill of reading about this sideshow that has been going on in politics. That we need to start finding something else to talk about, to just get back to the business of lifting ourselves out of this mess and muck and outright insanity. So I guess I am posting this short blog with a bit of art that speaks volumes about what gives us hope over despair.
Peace.
“Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. “ –Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself“
Henry Tanner, "The Annunciation"
“As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,The rising of the women means the rising of the race.No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;Hearts starve as well as bodies; bread and roses, bread and roses.” –James Oppenheim
Henry Tanner, "The Banjo Lesson"
Tomorrow, I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me, “Eat in the kitchen,”
Then. Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful
I am
And be ashamed–
I, too, am America.
Jane Gilday performs “Don’t that Beat Everything”
Image via Wikipedia
Oh the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin’
Like the stillness in the wind
’Fore the hurricane begins
The hour when the ship comes in
Oh the seas will split
And the ship will hit
And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking
Then the tide will sound
And the wind will pound
And the morning will be breaking
Oh the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they’ll be smiling
And the rocks on the sand Will proudly stand
The hour that the ship comes in
And the words that are used
For to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they’re spoken
For the chains of the sea
Will have busted in the night
And will be buried at the bottom of the ocean
A song will lift As the mainsail shifts
And the boat drifts on to the shoreline
And the sun will respect
Every face on the deck
The hour that the ship comes in
From “When the Ship Comes In”
Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music
(borrowed as fair use for educational purposes)
Marc Chagall, Paris Opera Ceiling
I choose to be a figure in that light, half-blotted by darkness,
something moving across that space, the color of stone greeting the moon,
yet more than stone: a woman.
I choose to walk here.
And to draw this circle. —Adrienne Rich, from “Twenty-One Love Poems” 1974-76
this arlo guthrie video is so beautiful. ..the embedding doesn’t work, but if you click through, you won’t be sorry. so inspiring. thanks, woody and arlo. 
