Wake Up! You've Got Mail!

Mr. Goundhog, you know there's another day in the bleak month of February that's even more widely observed than Groundhog Day.  While you were snoozing away in your warm little den the world celebrated Valentine's Day.  Wake up! Mr. Goundhog, you've got mail!

By the way, you were right about six more weeks of winter.

Six More Weeks of Winter

Once again Punxsutawney Phil, "prognosticator of all prognosticators," saw his shadow on Groundhog Day.  So we're in for six more weeks of winter.

Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg, poet, biographer, editor, and American folk-song collector, was born on January 6, 1878 in Galesburg, Illinois.

Sandburg was the winner of three Pulitzer Prizes.  In 1919 and 1951 he won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry: in 1940 he won the Pulitzer Prize in History for "Abraham Lincoln;The War Years."  This was the second volume of his biography of our 16th president.

Caboose Thoughts
1918

It's going to be all right----do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass----they know.
They get along----and we'll get along.

Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won't come,
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won't come.

There will be ac-ci-dents.
I know ac-ci-dents are coming.
Smash-ups, signals wrong, washouts, trestles rotten,
Red and yellow ac-ci-dents.
But somehow and somewhere the end of the run
The train gets put together again
And the caboose and the green tail lights
Fade down the right of way like a new white hope.

I never heard a mockingbird in Kentucky
Spilling its heart in the morning.

I never saw the snow in Chimborazo.
It's a high white Mexican hat, I hear.

But I've been around.
I know some of the boys here who can go a little.
I know girls good for a burst of speed any time.

I heard Williams and Walker
Before Walker died in the bughouse.

I knew a mandolin player
Working in a barbershop in an Indiana town,
And he thought he had a million dollars.

I knew a hotel girl in DesMoines.
She had eyes; I saw her and said to myself
The sun rises and the sun sets in her eyes.
I was her steady and her heart went pit-a-pat.
We took away the money for a prize waltz at a
          Brotherhood dance.
She had eyes; she was safe at the bridge over the
           Mississippi at Burlington; I married her.

Last summer we took the cushions going west.
Pike's Peak is a big old stone, believe me.
It's fastened down, something you can count on.

It's going to come out all right----do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass----they know.
They get along----and we'll get along.

Carl  Sandburg  1878 - 1967

National Cupcake Day

Did you know that December 15th is celebrated as National Cupcake Day?  I wonder who makes decisions about food holidays.

      Since we're coming close to the Winter Solstice why not make snowmen cupcakes?

November 22

Saint Cecilia with an Angel

 Orazio Gentileschi,  around 1618 - 1621

Autumn Arrives

"Divinest autumn! who may paint thee best, forever changeful o'er the changeful globe?"

R. H.  Stoddard

(1825 - 1903)

Richard Henry Stoddard, a nineteenth century American critic and poet, originally trained as a blacksmith and later worked as an iron moulder.  In his leisure time he read poetry and he acquainted himself with other men interested in literature.  In 1853 Nathaniel Hawthorne helped him to secure a job as customs inspector for the Port of New York.  He held this job until 1870, making a living and also advancing his literary pursuits.  His poetry is elegant and erudite and his lyric poems, set to music, earned him a reputation as a writer of songs.

A Story in Pictures