It's Christmas time again
Time for families to be together
A time to give thanks
That we are not apart
Our loved ones are with us
We are not on our own
But out there in Afghan
Our boys are just that
Out on their own working
And under attack
Where they wish that for Christmas
They could spend it at home.
But Santa is kind he does not forget
He saved up some pressies to give to our boys
Dodging the bullets he flew on his way
To make sure they got presents on their Christmas day
With a ho ho ho he was then on his way
To boys and girls with toys to play
But his best time of all came at journey's end
When checking his list he remembers his friends
The cooks in the mess tents who fed him fine food
The men who gave Rudolf and Prancer their share
Then as he took off they gave him a cheer
As he took their love to the children so dear
A look of contentment appears on his face
As he drinks up his coffee at a leisurely pace
Then goes to his window and opens it wide
Looking out on the world he raises his voice
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL
AND TO ALL GIRLS AND BOYS
(c) Michael Douglas Bosc
Daily Quote: The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes
but in having new eyes.
- Marcel Proust
Linguist Corner-ITALIAN: bambina: child / noun.
Example sentence: Da bambina mi divertivo a disegnare.
Translation: As a child I enjoyed drawing.
I remember laying outside the house
remembering the days when we were young
those days seem so long ago
but back then we had so much fun
I remember children laughing and playing in the field
seemed everyday our hearts would heal
just to be there to laugh and play
seemed like it'd be, forever that way
But so long ago, were those days
They dont last forever, some memories fade away
We live, we learn, we grow from young to old
then to our children and theirs our story will be told
Of how we met and were kismit
the times we shared, and showed how we cared
the warmth of your smile, the smell of your hair
and then our memories, will to, be theirs
Daily Quote: The winds of grace are always blowing;
all we need to do is raise our sails.
- Anonymous
Linguist Corner-FRENCH: bûche de Noël / English translation: Yule log / noun
Example sentence:
French: Pour le dessert du repas de Noël, ma mère cuisine toujours sa fameuse bûche de Noël faite maison.
English: For Christmas dinner dessert my mother always bakes her famous homemade Yule log.
This poem is about/a place I use to call my home;
a place where this new silence I see was once the laughter
of hope and pride. A place where my young feet
use to run in the freedom winds of innocence
but now as I look down this narrow street
I do not recognize the sorrow/ there is emptiness
as the price of destruction has diminished once proud
eyes and now there is no sun that rises about this sky
just clouds that have dampened a tough cement
into a muddy paradox of nothingness.
I use to run up and down this paved road singing
the sweet tunes of whistled happiness
manipulating older ears into their own sweet remembrance
of how their time here use to be. The older folk
always renewed history in telling the stories of their younger years
and now my own proud tears
bring this street back alive.
These lampposts have lifted their rust and fresh lights
shine down upon the feet of bicycles ready to smile again
and faded graffiti walls have washed themselves
of decay and now reach out to embrace
trees that have lost their names; these same trees
have found their identities again and now sparkle
in the sunlight of those golden days before crime
kidnapped the aspirations of many dreams;
before poverty took over the stage of hope
and before time took away the history
of a neighborhood that once held hands
upon this street of unity.
This poem is a memory
This poem is about /a place that will never be again
that place I used to call my home but my feet
still cry for this street because my heart
has never abandoned the beauty that nurtured
my growth; the beauty once absorbed by the foundation
of these sidewalks now dismantled
by the migration of everything that made life here
possible…
Daily Quote: weltschmerz \VELT-shmerts\, noun:
Sentimental pessimism; sorrow that one feels and accepts as one's necessary portion in life.
Example:
Cohen confused his mood with his chronic weltschmerz. He spoke at great length on the vicissitudes of a sensitive spirit, his dissatisfaction, the inadequacy of this sphere as far as he was concerned.
-- Daniel Fuchs, Summer in Williamsburg
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first-grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.
Each fall the children must endure together
What every child also endures alone:
Learning the alphabet, the integers,
Three dozen bits and pieces of a stuff
So arbitrary, so peremptory,
That worlds invisible and visible
Bow down before it, as in Joseph's dream
The sheaves bowed down and then the stars bowed down
Before the dreaming of a little boy.
That dream got him such hatred of his brothers
As cost the greater part of life to mend,
And yet great kindness came of it in the end.
II
A school is where they grind the grain of thought,
And grind the children who must mind the thought.
It may be those two grindings are but one,
As from the alphabet come Shakespeare's Plays,
As from the integers comes Euler's Law,
As from the whole, inseperably, the lives,
The shrunken lives that have not been set free
By law or by poetic phantasy.
But may they be. My child has disappeared
Behind the schoolroom door. And should I live
To see his coming forth, a life away,
I know my hope, but do not know its form
Nor hope to know it. May the fathers
he finds
Among his teachers have a care of him
More than his father could. How that will look
I do not know, I do not need to know.
Even our tears belong to ritual.
But may great kindness come of it in the end.
Sideways picture frames,
She looks at me, doesn’t know my name.
I say, “It’s me.”
She says, “Who would that be?”
& mutters a soliloquy.
She points at the glass to clear her throat,
As I take off my woolen coat,
& pull up a wooden chair,
& look at her ancient hair.
I tell her that I’m doing good,
& Mona’d come out if she could.
& she points and looks at the sky,
& says a scarecrow just passed by,
& I didn’t know what to do,
I’m just a boy she knew.
The room became so tense
She said things that made no sense.
About a man with a broom and a flute,
Who looked real good in a suit.
& I asked her which man,
& she said it was the one
Who fades into the evening sun.
I saw Death at the bedroom door
& fell to the wooden floor,
“Do you remember anything?
The morning’s when you would sing,
In the garden with the sun,
& laugh with everyone?”
(This dream that we’re in,
Is stuck in a coffin,
It’s not one that we choose,
But it’s just the one we’re use to).
& she said, “Who are you?”
“Mama, I’m the boy you knew.”
Amidst the kitchen’s floored pots and pans
And the empty boxes of discarded toys.
Through the winding tunnels of
The sitting-room’s turned up cushions
Or in the garden’s Bedouin tents of
Blankets stretched over the dryer’s dowels.
Between the beach’s ditches and dykes,
Palaces and castles and crumbling sand towers
Or around the lumpy works of
Serious budding snow sculptors
And in the Green’s mown grass ring forts…
Maybe playgrounds for the child psychologist
But in all the imperfection,
If that thing is to be named?
Why not the name Divinity?
Fergus Carty
Daily Quote: Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
- Rabindranath Tagore
Linguist Corner-ITALIAN: tramonto: sunset / noun
Example:
Example sentence: Il tramonto sul mare è molto romantico e pittoresco.
Translation: The sunset on the sea is very romantic and picturesque.
Life today
Yesterday, when I was young,
reminds me of music I once heard
and I can imagine my life being that song.
When I was young, I had the world spread out for me.
I dreamed of being a spaceman,
a cowboy, an army man, a fighter pilot
maybe even a policeman or a firefighter
and at times I knew I could be President.
Growing a little older, those dreams changed
doctor, teacher, or businessman
started to occupy my plans as I considered my
options and decided to write.
With thoughts of scripts, novels, shorts, and poetry
it was easy to see myself doing that.
Suddenly, I was older
and what I decided turned to how I would survive.
In the end there is no lake house, or hut by the sea
where typewriters and keyboards
keep me up through nights of writing.
Kids, responsibilities, and bills have become life today.
Daily Quote: Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
- John D. Rockefeller
Linguist Corner-SPANISH: ocultar, verb /to hide, to conceal
Example:
- Se arrojó sobre la cama, y ocultó el rostro entre las almohadas.
She flung herself on the bed and hid her face in the pillows.
- El ministro mintió y ocultó información esencial en su primera rueda de prensa.
The minister lied and concealed essential information in his first press conference.
Where commission boundaries
Cut through the outlived past
And sons of ancient lineages
Signed their names in green at last.
Where post and wire stitch through
Lost rolling hills and meadows
And harvests of rocks match
Everything else that grows.
Safe above the lake’s sodden shore
Along the rough grey graveled road,
The pampered small pasture spread,
Its heavy yield so carefully mowed.
The father steps proudly forward
Before his own familiar audience
And with practiced kicks and steps
He dances as layers of hay advance.
Soon a stack rises from the grass,
Like some nature goddess grown
And with rake in hands he grooms
Gold tresses with wild-flowers sown.
Loose wisps of hay fly in the air
As the wind begins to swirl and rise
But with no ropes he has a chance,
To show off his next surprise.
He loops a shock of hay over one tooth,
Behind his back he holds his partner
And deftly turns and swirls his rake,
In an expert step-less rural tango.
The son keeps feeding on the strands,
Trying not to heed the thistles palm counted,
As they spin their growing rope of gold,
To fasten the stack the field has sprouted.
So on it repeated, hour after hour,
A father and his family saving hay,
As the sun slipped onward to the sea,
Fed on sandwiches and cups of tae.
Less and less I recall that performance,
Though I was a member of the cast.
It seems now just like a re-enactment,
Even then it was a scene from the past.
Fergus Carty
Daily Quote: And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. ~William Shakespeare
Linguist Corner-FRENCH: bavarder / to chat / Part of speech: expression
Example:
French: Je suis heureuse que nous ayons pris le temps de bavarder un peu.
English: I'm glad that we took the time to chat a little.
Daily Quote: May a rainbow run beside you in a sky that's always blue.
And may happiness fill your heart each day your whole life through.
- Irish Blessing
Linguist Corner-SPANISH: antiguamente / adverb
once, formerly; in the old days
- como se decía antiguamente
as people used to say (in the good old days)
- un barrio donde antiguamente se alojaba una base militar
an area where there used to be a military base
In our youth when we were children and played as children did,
Life was naught but laughter and games.
And the day was our toy to exploit as we wished,
While the night was a rest between play.
And I remember we were beautiful miniatures then
Unaware of the presence of sorrow.
Living together, full of love for each other,
With an innocent joy that set us aglow.
Yet we grew as did our minds and experience in our hearts,
And suddenly we weren't children any more.
Still we laughed and we played, now with haunted eyes,
Dreading the day when we must close our open door.
Then it came time for our clan to separate
Though we joined hands and devoutly refused.
Feverishly swearing never to part,
Hopeless words tearing at sad, tender hearts.
And when tomorrow came, we were figures of ivory
Unbelieving and transfixed with pain.
Our tears were bitter with fresh knowledge of life,
And our voices were sweet echoes of yesterday.
- Dedicated to my loving family and friends with whom I am reunited 3 decades later. -
Daily Quote: Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.
~William Stafford
Linguist Corner-FRENCH: French word: côte à côte /side by side/ adverb
Example:
-French: Même mis côte à côte, on ne peut les différencier.
English: Even side by side we can't differentiate one from another.
One year, two year, three year
they pass so quickly,
it seemed I was a child,
teenager,
young adult,
man,
all before I knew what happened.
I wanted to be adult
and now I reach for childhood
Elementary, Junior High, High School and
College
a twenty-year reunion
a glance at the past that’s gone.
Nothing changes, everything changes
my hair changing now
my body changing too
vitamins the doctors recommends now with test
Invasive, odd, strange and reserved test for other, older people.
I am those older people now
it has all changed
but I still remember cartoon vitamins
they tasted grape.
Daily Quote: You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
-Rabindranath Tagore
Linguist Corner-FRENCH: tranche / slice / noun
Example:
French: Elle a découpé la brioche en tranches fines.
English: She cut the cake into thin slices.
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