“I may not understand what you say, but I’ll defend to your death my right to deny it.” — Albert Alligator, in Pogo, 26 September 1951

Pogo, the comic strip by Walt Kelly, was still being drawn by Mr. Kelly when I was a kid. However, being just a kid, I was often confused by the things that Pogo, Albert, and all their  swamp-mates would say, and often wondered why people thought the strip was so funny. Later, when I went away to college, I was re-introduced to the strip, and came to understand why Walt Kelly was considered a genius. His droll sense of irony and his keen wit had, in the swamp society he created, a perfect outlet for all his sharp observations of American culture and politics, delivered in a down-home, laid-back way that belied the depth of his cutting wit. This Pearl, from Albert Alligator, is a perfect example of that wit, and how he used one single line to portray a number of concepts. This particular phrase sounds as if it could have been uttered by almost any of our modern talking heads. It is certainly no less potent a point than those being brought out by the group of Republican presidential wannabees; it actually sounds like something Rick Perry might blurt out, then spend the next three days “refining” his meaning. Though today we have our own modern version of Pogo in the characters of Doonesbury, I would love to have seen some of the strips Mr. Kelly would have drawn on the subject of today’s culture, were he still alive, especially those that would poke gentle fun at what I like to call the Motley Crew (Perry, Cain, Romney, Bachman, etc.)……

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny:
You cannot rob me of free Nature’s grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve:
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave:
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave.
— James Thomson (1700-1748) — The Castle of Indolence, Canto ii, Stanza 3

IMHO, (in my humble opinion, for the uninitiated) poetry is possibly the one divine attribute that mankind can truly claim as his own. There is some unique part of the human psyche that is able to take the most complex, powerful emotions we experience and, in just a few well-chosen, gracefully arranged words, give powerful expression to what otherwise would take hundreds of words to explain. Love, death, betrayal, honor, independence, sorrow, joy, all of the most powerful of human feelings, all are perceived by the fertile minds of poets, who then, by some unknown inner process, give back to the world what they perceive and feel, in a form that inspires and illuminates. This particular excerpt, from James Thomson, is one I had never come across before, and before I even understood what it was saying, I knew I’d be using it, because it is just plain beautiful to read. When reading it, try reading it aloud; it’s got a wonderful rhythm to it that is just fun to speak out loud……and the message I get from it is pretty inspiring as well. What did you see or feel when you read it?…….More on this subject in future missives…..

Nuke a gay whale for Jesus. — an attempt to be as politically incorrect as possible, of unknown origin

Like most of us probably have, I’ve seen this floating around the net (there’s a phrase you wouldn’t have seen even as little as 20 years ago); whether it made you smile, frown, or just groan is immaterial for the purposes of this discussion, plus I don’t really care. 🙂 What I’m interested in just now is the phrase ‘politically incorrect’. I have serious misgivings when I consider the societal gestalt that created the whole idea of ‘political correctness’; the phrase alone is suggestive of an idea that keeps cropping up, an idea that Mrs. Grundy has been promoting for centuries, to wit: morality can be legislated. (Mrs. Grundy, for those of you who don’t know her, is that old lady across the street whose curtains twitch all day long as she takes note of all her neighbor’s activities, so she has ammunition for her busybody opinions and critical judgments of the rest of us. Also known as Nosy Parker) Trying to tell people how they should act is not the function of government, and what goes on in my house is MY business, not anyone else’s. This is another subject that we will explore again, when I’ve gotten the hang of this new format. So far, I’m being a bit too long winded (surprise!)…..

“For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points:
first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.”  — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 AD) — Meditations, ii, 14

The author of this little statement of philosophy re: reality and life was born one thousand, eight hundred and ninety years ago. I think we can agree that that is a long time ago. He lived without TV, without radio, without air-conditioning, cars; hell, they didn’t even have toilets yet. (Put THAT picture in your head; 10,000 or so people in ancient Athens, no toilets!) We modern folk tend to look upon those times, when we think of them at all, with scorn or amusement for what they had to put up with (or without). We have theoretically made a lot of progress since those days, but I can think of very few modern thinkers who have come even close to such insight into human nature, and the proper alignment of that nature in the universe. I actually find this to be the case in a large number of instances, and can only regard it as more data that points toward Armageddon in the not-so-distant future. Mankind as a species is in a period of grave danger, and that danger lies within our own nature, for we are quick to deny that which doesn’t fit our conception of how things should be, and turn our attention elsewhere. This denial will end up, I believe, as our Achilles’Heel…..

Well, that’s enough doom & gloom for one morning. Wow…..in looking back over today’s piece, I am underwhelmed, but hopeful. There was no lack of subject matter, but this format seems to feed into my tendency to fall into pedantry (see?), so we may have to make some adjustments. Here, then is your final Pearl for today, more wisdom from the ages, and sans comment……

‘We give to necessity the praise of virtue.” — Quintilian (42-118 AD) — Institutiones Oratoriae, i, 8, 14