Taking a hint from my daughter...

The One Book Meme

The One Book meme, courtesy of James Tata.

Here's my list:

--One book that changed your life. USA by Leon Uris. --One book that you’ve read more than once. None! I re-read parts of Twain and Dickens to my children when they were growing up. -

-One book you’d want on a desert island. A large book with edible pages.

--One book that made you laugh. Ogden Nash Books

--One book that made you cry. From Here to Eternity by James Jones because of the disclaimer that the book was a work of fiction except for the parts about the stockade.

--One book that you wish had been written. Can’t think of one

--One book that you wish had never been written. The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich. The swastika on the cover was enough to turn me cold and I wouldn’t have the book on my book-case.

--One book you’re currently reading. Assassins Gate by George Packer.

--One book you’ve been meaning to read. The next Harry Potter book.

...just a thought for Friday

"By the Hoof of the Wild Goat"
By, Rudyard Kipling

By the Hoof of the Wild Goat uptossed
From the cliff where she lay in the Sun
Fell the Stone
To the Tarn where the daylight is lost,
So she fell from the light of the Sun
And alone!

Now the fall was ordained from the first
With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn,
But the Stone
Knows only her life is accursed
As she sinks from the light of the Sun
And alone!

Oh Thou Who hast builded the World,
Oh Thou Who hast lighted the Sun,
Oh Thou Who hast darkened the Tarn,
Judge Thou
The sin of the Stone that was hurled
By the goat from the light of the Sun,
As she sinks in the mire of the Tarn,
Even now--even now--even now!

...just a thought for Wednesday

the cockroach who had been to hell
By Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927


listen to me i have
been mobbed almost
theres an old simp cockroach
here who thinks he has
been to hell and all
the young cockroaches make a
hero out of him and admire
him he sits and runs his front
feet through his long white
beard and tells the story one
day he says he crawled into a yawning
cavern and suddenly came on a
vast abyss full of whirling
smoke there was a light
at the bottom billows
and billows of yellow smoke
swirled up at him and
through the horrid gloom he
saw things with wings flying
and dropping and dying they veered
and fluttered like damned
spirits through that sulphurous mist

listen i says to him
old man youve never been to hell
at all there isn t any hell
transmigration is the game i
used to be a human vers libre
poet and i died and went
into a cockroach s body if
there was a hell id know
it wouldn t i you re
irreligious says the old simp
combing his whiskers excitedly
ancient one i says to him
while all those other
cockroaches gathered into a
ring around us what you
beheld was not hell all that
was natural some one was fumigating
a room and you blundered
into it through a crack
in the wall atheist he cries
and all those young
cockroaches cried atheist
and made for me if it
had not been for freddy
the rat i would now be
on my way once more i mean
killed as a cockroach and transmigrating
into something else well
that old whitebearded devil is
laying for me with hisgang he is jealous
because i took his glory away
from him dont ever tell me
insects are any more liberal
than humans

archy

just a thought for a Tuesday

The Ostrich
by Ogden Nash

The ostrich roams the great Sahara.
Its mouth is wide, its neck is narra.
It has such long and lofty legs,
I'm glad it sits to lay its eggs.

I'm BAAACK!!!

I hope to start keeping up with this Blog now that I got good news from all my tests and my Medical team. The map above was supplied by my cousin from Israel.