Hamilton Wright Mabie and A. Lincoln

Found a really old book while cleaning out a bookcase in the house we will be selling. It is Volume XIII LES-MAB of the Library of the World's Best Literature. It was published in1896. One chapter is devoted to Abraham Lincoln with an overview of President Lincoln's life written by someone called Hamilton Wright Mabie. Anyone familiar with the guy?

Mr. Mabie detailed President Lincoln's love of reading and his study habits as a youth. Although his formal education was meager, Lincoln was always the student. This paragraph absolutely hit me in all the right places:

"But Mr. Lincoln's possession of certain rare qualities is in no way more surprising than their possession by Shakespeare, Burns, and Whitman. We are constantly tempted to look for the sources of a man's power in his educational opportunities instead of in his temperament and inheritance. The springs of genius are purified and directed in their flow by the processes of training, but they are fed from deeper sources."

How wonderful that truth is. I wish there were more Mr. Mabies in our world.

A Save the Children Idea........

Just a thought. With all that is changing and hoping, if you know what I mean, this Volunteer Youth Organization/AKA Indoctrination Camp run in School at taxpayers' expense and turning out who knows what that will eventually be loyal to what?

I just read that Homeschooled children will be exempt from drinking the kool-aid. I have happened upon job creation opportunities. What about a pool of people who will home school other people's children in their home....sort of like a nanny who doesn't live in and clean and do laundry. I used to be a teacher. I am retired.....I would love to teach again. There are lots of parents who both have to work, especially now, and yet hate having the kids in Government Clutches - I mean schools. Why not be creative....start a new enterprise and save the children. Sing with me now .... Save the Children .... light your Bics and wave them...... Save the Children.

I think this is an idea whose time has come. I will visit many blogs and spread this idea and ... yes I am like Johnny Appleseed...../Gemma start an idea and hope that it will catch and spread. I think this is a keeper.

Tuesday's Child

She's really bored and sick of winter. She also thinks she's the size of a kitten. Good thing it's a big table so it stays put when she leaps up to answer the door. Our last pooch, a bit larger than this girl, would get under the coffee table and when he leaped the table went with him.

I said I was going to regress to childhood days and since I said that I have been remembering an album we had when we were kids. It consisted of 2 or 3 78RPM records and was made by someone called Uncle Don or was it Ed? Anywho, he sang nursery rhymes and giggled through the silly ones. I loved it. Here are the words to one and I'll bet you will love it too:

I saw an old lady tossed up in a basket ,Twenty three times as high as the moon. Where she was going I could not but ask it, for in her hand, she carried a broom.

"Old woman, old woman, old woman," said I, "Whither, oh whither, oh whither, so high?"

"To sweep the cobwebs off the sky. I'll be back again, by and by."

Now you can see why we love childhood. All things have to do is rhyme, not so much make sense. I'll have another for tomorrow if I can remember the middle. I know the start and the finish but . . sigh. . .childhood was a long long time ago.

Happy Monday Visual

Since the weather forecast says snow - thanks to Global Warming no doubt - I thought the daffodils should make an appearance. They are always a help to me and my winter doldrums. We are off to see my father in law today as well as truck to my former office and pick up whatever the mailman has left there. That get out of the business thing is like trying to unwrap a ball of scotch tape, it's easier when someone else is doing it. Anyway the other chore is to go to our house which will be readied for sale in a month or so, if it ever stops snowing, and check on the furnace and see if the mail has not been forwarded but left all over the front steps.

That's my day. I pine for Spring. Soon soon soon. Spring has sprung, the grass has ris', I wonder where the birdies is.

Later gater.

A new Approach

Here's my new approach. I'm old enough to have lived through any number of international messes and to be honest with you, during the 50's when the Korean War was ongoing I went to school and came home and played jump rope and dodge ball and hop scotch and I don't recall my parents or aunts and uncles ever expressing dire thoughts about our future. I lived through the under your desks drills in school when the bomb, you know which bomb, "the BOMB" was an issue and to their credit, the teachers never left any of us with a traumatic over the top panic about dying feeling at all. Vietnam came and went and except for my fury over the Jane Fonda's and John Kerry's of the world, and of course the loss of many of my peers, I can't say that I was deeply marked. Now, with the doom and gloom crashing all around us, deliberately so I believe, I am retreating into the world of my youth and will watch from a distance. Best I can do.

Just Ranting

Does anyone actually know what the vision of Obama is? What does he see us all doing in a year or two? Will we have jobs? Will they be government jobs? Will we be able to stay warm in the winter without reasonably priced heat sources? Will we be able to own cars or homes or land? What about guns? Will we be able to own them? What about our news sources, will they be free to speak out if corruption is occurring? Will our Justice Department investigate anyone who commits a crime or only Republicans? Will citizens be impugned, as Joe the plumber was and is, and investigated if they speak against or merely question the policies of the people in power? Will the resources of our glorious "free press" be used to investigate all of the potential leaders or only the Sarah Palins? Will we have access to the internet? Will we be able to congregate in public places? What is it the Dems have in mind for us. We will obviously not have private retirement funds since they have destroyed our portfolios or 401Ks. We will have very little private enterprise that is affordable since the unions will run every shop. We will . . . I give up.....does anyone know what their plans are? That's what I thought.

Have a Spot of Tea?

So now my husband wants to get involved in the Tea Party movement.....after all, here we are in or near Boston, the location of the original. Why not? He is a passionate and fed up guy who only wants to have a tad of what we earned and saved for retirement available to us for things we worked and saved for. I know, all those things our dear leader has said we have no need of, all that "stuff" we have been piling up. Well we were thinking of things like heat, lights, and food and I guess he's right. If we had those things then we would just hang on into old age and drain the resources of this planet which should be used for others, younger and healthier. What was I thinking? Anyhow, my husband is determined that we should be able to hang on for a couple of years yet..at least until he can collect social security. In order to do that we will need to keep a couple of the dollars we earn and it seems that with the vision and brilliance of the new administration we won't have those foolish 401K's to fall back on. I guess the only thing we can do now to feel less than totally helpless is to go to the harbor and dump in the tea!! I think that here, in Boston, April 19th would be the perfect time to do it.....that shot heard round the world day and the tea somehow seem to go together. Later.