Campaign songs from Andrew Jackson (he ran on the "Democratic Republican Party ticket), William Henry Harrison (a Republican against Democrat Martin Van Buren), Abraham Lincoln's second campaign, Al Smith (Democrat defeated by Herbert Hoover), Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Andrew Jackson, 1828: The Hunters of Kentucky
William Henry Harrison, 1840: Tippecanoe and Tyler Too Read more about All Together Now
From around 1947 or so. Seems particularly apropos, if not entirely accurate, on several fronts today.
No Holy Wars for Them
Robert Frost
Read more about Nuisance?>States strong enough to do good are but few,
Their number would seem limited to three,
Good is a thing that they, the great, can do,
But puny little states can only be.
And being good for these means standing by
To watch a war in nominal alliance,
And when it's over watch the worlds supply
Get parceled out among the winning giants.
God, have You taken cognizance of this?
The Hotel Poem in Istanbul is a stone's throw from the Hagia Sofia, The Blue Mosque, and Topkapi Palace.
This was the poem on our door.
LISTENING TO ISTANBUL
Orhan Veli Kanik Read more about Hotel Poem
Purple prosody, perhaps. But that's what happens when you mix red and blue.
Read more about Hope and Change>Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,
On Monday, I said something about my friend Sue and a poem I wrote for her way back when. Sue and I met when we both worked for a tree nursery in Door County, Wisconsin, in the late 70's. I drove a tractor pulling a tree planter that sat six. Six other women with a never-ending supply of evergreen seedlings. I hauled them up one set of rows and down another while they put tiny trees in the ground. It must be entirely automated now. I can't find a single picture of a tree planter with actual human beings aboard. Read more about To Sue
At first I thought this lovely poem by Emily Dickinson was one of the few I've read so far that didn't reference death in some way. But a second look at the one I call Second Summer convinces me that Emily does not mistake signs of life for life itself.
Read more about Second Summer>These are the days when Birds come back --
A very few -- a Bird or two --
To take a backward look.These are the days when skies resume
The old -- old sophistries of June --
Channel surfing the other night, I came across the American Masters showing of The Day Carl Sandburg Died.
In the light of our current political climate, Sandburg is worth revisiting. Take this excerpt from:
Read more about Sandburg>The people yes
The people will live on.
The core of any people, any religion, lies in its poets. When we remember that, this contention will cease.
Read more about Rumi>When it's cold and raining,
you are more beautiful.And the snow brings me
even closer to your lips.The inner secret, that which was never born,
you are that freshness, and I am with you now.I can't explain the goings,
or the comings. You enter suddenly,
Is there a song about September that isn't about loss?
Harry Warren and Al Dubin
September in the Rain
Here's Dinah Washington
Read more about September Songs>The leaves of brown came tumbling down
Remember, in September, in the rain
By John Donne
Read more about I Have Not Yet A Winter Face>No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape,
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape.
If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame;
Affection here takes reverence's name.
Were her first years the golden age? That's true,
But now she's gold oft tried and ever new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time,