MY ALL TIME FAVORITE--I FOUND IT!

Wikipedia has more on: Tintern Abbey (poem).

Five years have past; five summers with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affectations gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.

If this

Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft—
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,
How oft has my spirit turned to thee!

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,

With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Nor perchance,

If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

Henry David Thoreau

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henry David Thoreau

Western Philosophy 19th century philosophy
Maxham daguerreotype of Henry David Thoreau made in 1856.
Full name	Henry David Thoreau
Birth	July 12, 1817(1817-07-12) Concord, Massachusetts
Death	May 6, 1862 (aged 44) Concord, Massachusetts
School/tradition	Transcendentalism
Main interests	Natural history
Notable ideas	Abolitionism, tax resistance, development criticism, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, direct action, environmentalism, nonviolent resistance, simple living

Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau; July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862)^[1] was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail.^[2] He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time imploring one to abandon waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs.^[3]

He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience influenced the political thoughts and actions of such later figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thoreau is sometimes cited as an individualist anarchist.^[4] Though Civil Disobedience calls for improving rather than abolishing government – "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government"^[5] – the direction of this improvement aims at anarchism: “‘That government is best which governs not at all;’ and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

June 18, 2009, 8:18 pm

The Way of the Bayou

Lori Waselchuk for The New York Times Members of the Jazz Vipers play in the Spotted Cat nightclub on Frenchman Street in New Orleans.

Five weeks after Hurricane Katrina, I was wandering around the ruins of New Orleans as a writer for The New Yorker when I heard some really dreadful news.

The city was just starting to show signs of life. A few restaurants had opened, albeit with very limited menus — burgers, red beans and rice — served on plastic plates. For those of us who’d stayed through the crisis, these small miracles were our first taste of cooked food in a month. More important, though, was the symbolism. Live music was returning; Coco Robicheaux sang at Molly’s, and three members of the Jazz Vipers played at Angeli. For the first time since the disaster, it was possible to see a future for New Orleans.

And then a bombshell: All of the city’s real estate records had been in the basement of the courthouse and were damaged by flooding, apparently beyond redemption. It seemed that nobody would be able to prove ownership of their homes, which meant federal housing aid and insurance payments were frozen, as well as any chance of redevelopment. It was like being punched in the stomach.

If New Orleans disappeared, a piece of the American soul would go with it.

I’d had very little experience with New Orleans before Katrina; I didn’t really start getting to know it until it was full of water. But even without much in the way of the cuisine and entertainment that makes it famous, New Orleans had me intoxicated. Its people were responding to the disaster with such candor and wit that the city seemed the national repository of that snoot-cocking Huck Finn spirit we Americans claim to cherish, and if it disappeared, a piece of the American soul would go with it.

I was staggering through the nearly deserted French Quarter when who should I see walking toward me but Joe Braun, the Jazz Vipers’ saxophone player. Joe is a lugubrious-looking fellow in the best of times, and these were hardly the best of times. Shoulders hunched, in his trademark newsboy’s cap, he looked like he was walking to his own funeral.

“I hate to make your burden heavier,” I said, “but I just got some bad news: The city’s real-estate records were all destroyed in the flood.”

I expected him to fold at the knees. Instead, a big smile split open his rubbery face. He arched his back and threw his arms over his head. “Oh, thank God!” he cried.

You never know what’s going to make people happy.

“No properties can change hands!” Braun laughed, clapping me on the shoulders. “It’s not going to happen!”

By “it” he meant change.

Circulating at the time were a lot of plans to use the Katrina destruction as a “blank slate” to make New Orleans “bigger and better than before.” One high-level commission after another spoke of mixed-income neighborhoods, casino districts, light rail, a denser urban “footprint,” the works. Their proponents pointed out that New Orleans before Katrina was a cauldron of urban pathologies: crime, corruption, decaying infrastructure, lousy schools, and more. To a certain way of thinking, Katrina represented a chance to “fix” things.

The city operates at such a low level of economic activity that it never really prospers in good times or suffers in bad.

In their zeal to imagine a new city, the big-picture planners lost sight of how happy New Orleanians had been with the old one. In a nationwide Gallup survey shortly before the storm, New Orleanians — in numbers far greater than other Americans — reported themselves “extremely satisfied” with their lives, despite some of the worst violence, poverty, and mismanagement in the country. New Orleanians measure happiness differently than the rest of us do.

While the rest of us Americans scurry about with a Blackberry in one hand and a to-go cup of coffee in the other in a feverish attempt to pack more achievement into every minute, it’s the New Orleans way to build one’s days around friends, family, music, cooking, processions, and art. For more than two centuries New Orleanians have been guardians of tradition and masters of living in the moment — a lost art. Their preference for having more time than money was at the heart of what made that city so much fun to visit and so hard to leave.

So when outsiders talked of making New Orleans “bigger and better,” the people of the city recoiled. “Bigger and better” struck many New Orleanian ears as code for whiter. But even more, I suspect, they heard it as a recipe for a city driven — like the rest of America — by the dollar and the clock. Who needs that?

Joe Braun celebrating the destruction of the real estate records was a harbinger. Although the records were freeze-dried and restored, the terrible “it” Braun had feared never happened. New Orleanians rejected all the plans for a “bigger and better” city, either by hounding the planners out of town or refusing entreaties to sell their ruined houses to developers. They’re putting New Orleans back together the way they like it, which is pretty much the way it was before Katrina. All the old neighborhoods are intact – even the Lower Ninth Ward, which was pronounced dead many times over. Life still revolves around second lines, the meticulous year-long building of Mardi Gras Indian suits, the boiling of crawfish and the lowing of saxophones.

Another good thing about living in New Orleans these days, according to some; it’s a great refuge from the recession. The gyrations of the Dow, the collapse of General Motors, the prospect of regulating credit default swaps – even the collapse of the housing markets – mean little to most New Orleanians. The city operates at such a low level of economic activity that it never really prospers in good times or suffers in bad.

Ronald Lewis is a retired streetcar-track repairman in the Lower Ninth Ward – pretty well off, by New Orleans standards, with a $1,100-a-month pension. His disappointment in me was audible when I called recently to ask if the recession was hurting him or his neighbors. “Now Dan,” he sighed. “You know we ain’t never had nothing down here, so how could we be losing?” Then he went on to describe the barbecue he was holding at house that evening and wondered if I couldn’t come by.

Americans will probably continue to use economists’ numbers to measure recovery from the current recession. But as we debate what to do for the millions of homeowners who are “under water” — owing more on their homes than the homes are worth — we could learn from a city that knows a thing or two about being under water. New Orleans can teach us that the life we build with our neighbors deserves at least as much attention as our endless thrust towards newer and bigger.

---

Dan Baum is a former staff writer for the New Yorker and the author of “Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans.”

The Joy of Less

Anne’s  Great Act

Frank’s birthday is a good time to contemplate what it means, really, to survive. The word is derived from the Latin supervivere, a combination of super (over) and vivere (to live). While the common translation of supervivere is “to outlive,” Frank’s diary suggests that supervivere means something infinitely richer. Her story describes survival as an act of grace under pressure—super-living, you could call it.

When Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1942, the Franks, along with the van Pels family, hid from the Nazis on the top two floors of the Amsterdam office building where Anne’s father, Otto Frank, once worked. They called the space the Annex. The two families had to get used to an entirely new way of living, where at any moment they could be discovered and killed. Anne worked hard at establishing a normal life under such remarkable circumstances, and in her effort we find a true survivor.

Frank saw her captivity as a chance to face “the difficult task of improving [her]self,” and as she worked steadily through the days and weeks, she “discovered an inner happiness underneath [her] superficial and cheerful exterior.” Directed action is always essential to this sort of super-living. There must be a purpose. For Frank, it was her diary. It kept her going and gave meaning, direction, and coherence to an otherwise insane existence.

She rejoiced in life, as long-term survivors always do. “We live in a paradise compared to the Jews who aren’t in hiding,” she wrote. She drank in the beauty of the natural world, looking out the windows at the sky and writing, “I firmly believe that nature can bring comfort to all who suffer.” And, like so many wilderness survivors, Frank had a sense of humor that sustained her. At one point she wrote up a “Prospectus and Guide to the Secret Annex,” as if it were a resort, advertising it as “open all year round.” She described the diet as “low fat.” Their food was running out, and Frank had begun to starve, yet she was still making jokes. In her very last entry, she talks of her “ability to appreciate the lighter side of things.”

Frank recognized the reality of her situation, she could see her own impending doom, and yet she was determined to go on with her life. She exhibited a classic ability to survive through surrender. Survival by surrender means accepting the fact that you might die, while simultaneously embracing, and trying to extend, the life you have. It means letting go of the outcome and engaging in the process of living. “I see the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we’re standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us.” Frank’s message is strikingly similar to those of Holocaust survivors. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, was imprisoned in Auschwitz and studied its internees. Those who made it through, he wrote, “were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom.” Primo Levi, an Italian chemist, also wrote about his Auschwitz experiences. In the midst of the unspeakable horror around him, Levi, like Frank, maintained his inner core: “We must not become beasts. . . . We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety.” Levi was able to tease out from the background ugliness what was good and beautiful. One morning the sun came up after a freezing night, and he rejoiced in the wonder of “eternal puddles, on which a rainbow veil of petroleum trembles.” Both he and Frank understood the concept that a life condemned but not yet finished can be exquisitely rich and rewarding. To live that way is to live fully to the end, no matter when that end might come.

There are many voices to hear among survivors, but most are of mature adults. I love Frank’s because she was just a child, yet even as the adults in the Annex were squabbling among themselves and becoming careless, Frank remained wise. Her mother advised her to think of all the suffering in the world and to be thankful. Frank’s advice to herself was to “think of all the beauty.” She had her moments of weakness too: “All I really want is to be an honest-to-goodness teenager!” she wrote.

And, despite all that was working against her, she succeeded. She lived like a teenager, right down to her own self-doubt, but also found opportunity in adversity. As she put it, “Beauty remains, even in misfortune.” Reflecting on her previous life as a pampered middle-class kid, she wrote, “It’s a good thing that, at the height of my glory, I was suddenly plunged into reality. . . . I look back at that Anne Frank as a pleasant, amusing, but superficial girl, who has nothing to do with me.”

She had undergone the transformation that is characteristic of the survival journey, and as the end approached, she lay in bed at night reflecting on “the world, nature and the tremendous beauty of everything, all that splendor. . . . A person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!”

On August 4, 1944, the Annex was raided and everyone was taken away to the death camps. Frank was 15 years old. Three months earlier she had written, “After the war I’d like to publish a book called The Secret Annex. . . . My diary can serve as the basis.” And: “My greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer.” One of her last entries reads, “It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe. . . .”

Frank realized her dream. By keeping a journal, by trusting the process that she had learned so well, she became a famous writer. And in that special type of survival, one that no one could take away, she truly lived a super-life

Just a brief note to say that I quit smoking last night. Along with that, I am implementing many others changes. Today I will attempt jogging again, hehe, even though some odds may be against me, it is something I have to try. I miss it and my ankles need strengthening real bad. I am diabetic and following my diet, I've been exercising here in my home as well as in the pool. I'm drinking more water. Please do this, it is the Kindest thing you can do for your body--keep it hydrated, tyvm. Thanks to all of you who are supporting me in my endeavors, I love you all to death and yep, I need ya too. Have a great day.....let's get physical peeps!