Two articles in the January 8 issue
of The New Yorker magazine:
1) Adam Gopnik on football.
2) Milan Kundera on being a Czech within a changing map of Europe.
They bring to mind this website:
http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm
Since it's all a matter of perspective.
Nevertheless, some lines of
W.H. Auden in a Phi Beta Kappa
address decades ago,
constantly echo in my mind--
his advice to,
" Read The New Yorker,
trust in God;
And take short views."
The entire poem, with a
little historical context and
commentary is available
on-line, among other places,
at:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1082.html
It's delightful and well worth
re-reading.
I aim to stick with the third part of the
admonition and enjoy my own life
in very short views.
Except when the night sky clears,
occasionally, and gives me a look
at the Big Dipper, or even, if
conditions are right in this well-
lighted city, at the North Star.
Then the view is long indeed.
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I always liked W.H.Auden.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this poem.
Yes, I enjoyed the poem very much too. Thank you Mary.
ReplyDeleteHello, Mary. I've always liked The New Yorker but the only time I got to read it was in my doctor's waiting room. (Apparently all doctors get The New Yorker.) Last week I got an offer in the mail for a "professional discount" subscription. I have no idea why that happened, but I took advantage of it and will now be getting it at home. In some ways that's too bad since it made the doctor visit more palatable and the wait more endurable. Sometimes after the appointment I'd sit back down in the reception room to finish an article, but that made the staff nervous.
ReplyDeleteNow I can read it at home, which is nice. But I have one less reason to keep medical appointments. Oh, well.
Tell us more about your cat.
(By the way, I'm the Gene Brown from TBOT.)
Cristina, Richie, and Gene:
ReplyDeleteThank you so very much for reading my blog and for your comments.
Gene has asked for more about my little black cat, so I shall now compose a blog with the title, "Domestic Felines."
I'll put the link to TBOT in that blog, also, in case any of my viewers would enjoy signing on to that mailing list.
Mary