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;void(0)) . . . FARMING see: "COUNTRY LIFE" see: "EARTH" see: "PRAIRIE" see "FOOD & DRINK" for other related links see "WORK" for other related links [The Waco Kid (Gene Wilder):] You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new west. You know morons. --Mel Brooks (1926 ) American actor, writer, and director. "Blazing Saddles" [1974 movie] We plough the fields and scatter The good seeds on the land, But it is fed and watered By God's almighty hand. --Jane Montgomery Campbell (18171878) English hymn-writer. "We plough the fields, and scatter" [1861 hymn] The corn is as high as an elephant's eye, An' it looks likes it's climbin' clear up to the sky. --Oscar Hammerstein II (18951960) American songwriter. "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" (song), from the musical "Oklahoma" [1943] Earth is here [Australia] so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. --Douglas Jerrold (18031857) English playwright and journalist. _A Land of Plenty_ A farm is an irregular patch of nettles, bound by short term notes, containing a fool and his wife who didnt know enough to stay in the city. --S.J. Perelman (19041979) American humorist and author. "Acres and Pains" [1947] Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand, And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. _Windsor Forest_, l. 39 (Ceres was the Roman goddess of the growth of food plants.) "How do you do, my farmer friend? "Howdy." "Nice looking country you have here." "Fer them that likes it." "Live her all your life?" "Not yit." --Carl Sandburg (18781967) American poet. _The People, Yes_, 60 [1936] And he gave it for his opinion, 'that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.' --Jonathan Swift (16671745) Anglo-Irish poet and satirist. _Gulliver's Travels_ [1726] "Voyage to Brobdingnag" Ch. 7 Mr. Beecher's farm is not a triumph. It would be easier if he worked it on shares with some one; but he cannot find any body who is willing to stand half the expense, and not many that are able. Still, persistence in any cause is bound to succeed. He was a very inferior farmer when he first began, but a prolonged and unflinching assault upon his agricultural difficulties has had its effect at last, and he is now rising fast from affluence to poverty. --Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910) American humorist, novelist, journalist, and river pilot. "Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's Farm" [1885] Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it. --Charles Dudley Warner (18291900) American newspaperman, author, editor, and publisher. _My Summer in a Garden_ [1870] I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture, its breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman's cares. --George Washington (17321799) American general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution [17751783] and first president of the United States [17891797]. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization. --Daniel Webster (17821852) American orator and politician. _Remarks on Agriculture_, p. 457 Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; Let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; Who sows a field, or trains a flower, Or plants a tree, is more than all. --John Greenleaf Whittier (18071892) American poet. "A Song of Harvest" [1858] A green-thumbed young farmer from Leeds Once swallowed a package of seeds. In a month, his ass Was covered with grass And his balls were grown over with weeds. --anon. TOPICAL - Going With the Grain By Ronald Bailey _The Wall Street Journal_ September 5, 2006 Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970? You may be forgiven for not remembering, given some of the prize's dubious recipients over the years (e.g., Yasser Arafat). Well, then: Who has saved perhaps more lives than anyone else in history? The answer to both questions is, of course, Norman Borlaug. Who? Norman Borlaug, 92, is the father of the "Green Revolution," the dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity that swept the globe in the 1960s. He is now the subject of an admiring biography by Leon Hesser, a former State Department official who first met Mr. Borlaug 40 years ago in Pakistan, where they worked together to boost that country's grain production. "The Man Who Fed the World" describes, in a workmanlike way, how a poor Iowa farm boy trained in forestry and plant pathology came to be one of humanity's greatest benefactors. [ . . . ] It was an achievement that made Mexico self-sufficient in wheat by the late 1950s and, when later deployed throughout much of the developing world, forestalled the mass starvation predicted by neo-Malthusians. In the late 1960s, lest we forget, most experts were speaking of imminent global famines in which billions of people would perish. "The battle to feed all of humanity is over," biologist Paul Ehrlich famously wrote in "The Population Bomb," his 1968 best seller. "In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now." As Mr. Ehrlich was making his dark predictions, Mr. Borlaug was embarking on just such a crash program. Working with scientists and administrators in India and Pakistan, he succeeded in getting his highly productive dwarf wheat varieties to hundreds of thousands of South Asian peasant farmers. These varieties resisted a wide spectrum of plant pests and diseases and produced two to three times more grain than traditional varieties. [ . . . ] Hence the Nobel Prize. The chairman of the Nobel committee explained why it had chosen Mr. Borlaug in this way: "More than any other single person of this age, [he] has helped to provide bread for a hungry world. We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace." Whether bread induces peace is a question for another day. It certainly kills hunger and saves lives. Contrary to Mr. Ehrlich's bold pronouncement, hundreds of millions of people did not die for lack of food. Far from it. Despite occasional local famines caused by armed conflicts or political mischief, food is more abundant and cheaper today than ever before in history. It is an absurd travesty that Mr. Ehrlich is still much better known than Mr. Borlaug, but perhaps Mr. Hesser's biography can begin to right the balance. Mr. Borlaug is still tirelessly working to keep hunger at bay. He remains a consultant to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico and president of a private Japanese foundation working to spread the Green Revolution to sub-Saharan Africa. He believes that biotechnology will be crucial to boosting world food supplies in the coming decades and decries the underfunding of the world's network of nonprofit agricultural research centers. He also laments the unnecessary suspicion with which biotech is treated these days. "Activists have resisted research," he notes, "and governments have overregulated it." They both miss the point. "Responsible biotechnology is not the enemy: starvation is." Mr. Bailey is the science correspondent for Reason magazine and the author of "Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution." & note: Worrying about starving future generations won't feed them. Food biotechnology will. --Advertisement by the Monsanto corporation; in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 951. Cohan & Major add: The company has developed genetically modified strains of food crops, which, it claims, will produce much higher yields than traditional varieties and avoid the use of insecticides and chemical fertilizers. Public concern about the long-term effects on existing plant life and human health has caused serious resistance to Monsanto, including a five-year ban on its commercial imports into the European Union. In Feb. 2003 Representative Bill Thomas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, declared that if the EU did not lift the ban there would be strong support in Congress for the US to leave the WTO in 2005. -- A farmer purchased an old, run-down, abandoned farm with plans to turn it into a thriving enterprise. The fields were grown over with weeds, the farmhouse was falling apart, and the fences were broken down. During his first day of work, the town preacher stops by to bless the man's work, saying, "May you and God work together to make this the farm of your dreams!" A few months later, the preacher stops by again to call on the farmer. Lo and behold, it's a completely different place. The farm house is completely rebuilt and in excellent condition, there is plenty of cattle and other livestock happily munching on feed in well-fenced pens, and the fields are filled with crops planted in neat rows. "Amazing!" the preacher says. "Look what God and you have accomplished together!" "Yes, reverend," says the farmer, "but remember what the farm was like when God was working it alone!" -- A farmer in the country has a watermelon patch and upon inspection he discovers that some of the local kids have been helping themselves to a feast. The farmer thinks of ways to discourage this profit eating situation. So he puts up a sign that reads, "WARNING: ONE OF THESE WATERMELONS CONTAINS CYANIDE!" The farmer returns a week later to discover that none of the watermelons have been eaten, but finds another sign that reads: "NOW THERE ARE TWO!" -- ----- fecund [FEE-kuhnd; FEK-uhnd], adjective: 1. Capable of producing offspring or vegetation; fruitful; prolific. 2. Intellectually productive or inventive. Ex.: For 21 years after the birth of the Prince of Wales, the fecund royal couple produced children at the rate of two every three years -- eight boys and six girls in all. --Saul David, _Prince of Pleasure_   FASHION . . see: "APPEARANCE" see: "CLOTHES" see: "DRESS" see: "THE BODY" for other related links Fashion is made to become unfashionable. --Coco Chanel (18831971) French fashion designer. In _Life_ (mag.) [19 August 1957]. Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are. --Quentin Crisp [Denis Pratt] (19081999) English writer. In Larry Chang _Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing_, p. 154 [2006]. ^ Elsie De Wolfe (18651950) American fashion designer. In 1933 Elsie traveled to Greece with some friends. Like most visitors, Elsie found her first sight of the Acropolis a stirring experience. 'It's beige. My color,' she cried. --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andr้ Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ ^ Chauncey Depew (18341928) American lawyer, politician, and wit. When Chauncey Depew was quite old, he was sitting at dinner next to a young woman wearing a very low- cut, off-the-shoulder dress. The old lawyer peered at her d้colletage, leaned toward her, and asked, "My dear, what is keeping that dress on you?" "Only your age, Mr. Depew." --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andr้ Bernard [2000 ed.] ^ The custom and fashion of to-day will be the awkwardness and outrage of to-morrow. So arbitrary are these transient laws. --Alexandre Dumas (18021870) French novelist and dramatist. So soon as fashion is universal it is out of date. --attributed to Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (18301916) Austrian writer. We laugh heartily to see a whole flock of sheep jump because one did so. Might not one imagine that superior beings do the same by us, and for exactly the same reason? --Fulke Greville (15541628) English philosophical poet. In _The World's Best Essays_ p. 3969 [1900]. I don't design clothes. I design dreams. --Ralph Lauren [Ralph Lifshitz] (1939 ) American fashion designer. Quoted in "N.Y. Times" [19 April 1986]. That's quite a dress you almost have on. --Alan Jay Lerner (19181986) American playwright and lyricist. (Spoken by Gene Kelly to Nina Foch in a bare-shoulder gown.) All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress. --Lin Yutang (18951976) Chinese writer and philogist. Fashion is, for the most part, nothing but the ostentation of riches. --John Locke (16321704) English political and educational philosopher. In James Wood _Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources_, p. 102 [1899]. [During a 1956 visit to the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional robes:] You look like you're ready for bed! --Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921 ) Consort of Queen Elizabeth II. Quoted in "Did I say that?" compiled by John Hind, _The Observer_ [21 June 2009]. In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tired, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. --Alexander Pope (16881744) English poet. _An Essay on Criticism_ [1711] I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch. --Gilda Radner (19461989) American actress and comedienne. In Kendall Farr _The Pocket Stylist_, p. 73 [2004]. I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they do today. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (18791935) American humorist and actor. The fashion wears out more apparel than the man. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Much Ado About Nothing_, iii, 3 [15981599] Have the courage to prefer propriety to fashion one is but the abuse of the other. --Stanislaw I [Stanislaw Leszczynski] (16771766) King of Poland. _Ceuvres du philosophe bienfaisant_ [1763] Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. --Henry David Thoreau (18171862) American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher. _Walden_ [1854] ----- bedizen (Verb) [be-'dI-z๊n] To dress up in a flashy fashion, to deck (oneself) out brazenly in gaudy clothes. bling-bling (noun) ['bling 'bling] (Slang) A self-consciously over-the-top and expensive style, originally in jewelry, but also in clothes, cars and general life- style. diaphanous (adj.) [dI-'ๆ-f๊-n๊s] Thin and fragile, translucent, filmy or flimsy. dishabille [dis-uh-BEEL], noun: 1. The state of being carelessly or partially dressed. 2. Casual or lounging attire. 3. An intentionally careless or casual manner. Ex.: "She was dressed, that is to say, in dishabille, wrapped in a long, warm dressing-gown." --Alexandre Dumas, _Twenty Years After_ frippery (noun) Article of adornment worn for show: a showy article of clothing or an adornment worn for display or effect. gewgaw [G(Y)OO-gaw], noun: A showy trifle; a trinket; a bauble. Ex.: Walk into almost any department store, and there it is -- along with mounds of other gimmicky gadgets and garish gewgaws that (no offense, Vanna) the world can live without. --James A. Russell, "What the World Needs Now... Is Not Another Gimmicky Gadget or Worthless Doohickey," _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_ [9 September 1995] panoply (noun) ['pๆ-n๊-plee or -pli] A full suit of armor; an impressive array of something rich and lustrous. pizzazz (noun) Energy and style: an attractive and exciting vitality, especially when combined with style and glamor (informal) prink [PRINGK], transitive verb: To dress up; to deck for show. intransitive verb: To dress or arrange oneself for show; to primp. Ex.: "Tara has supermodel legs and is already getting used to being prinked and coiffed as she prepares for her first beauty contest in the autumn." --Raffaella Barker, "Diary hatched, matched and almost despatched," _Daily Telegraph_ [6 September 1997] tatterdemalion [at-uhr-dih-MAYL-yuhn; -MAY-lee-uhn], noun: A person dressed in tattered or ragged clothing; a ragamuffin. adjective: Tattered; ragged. Ex: "To my ear, though, the prose has the tatterdemalion feel of something hooked together by commas, tacked together by periods." --Brad Leithauser,"Capturer of Hearts," _New York Times_ [7 April 1996] ;void(0)) FAT . . see: "THE BODY" Portly G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton once remarked to the exiguous George Bernard Shaw : "To look at you, anyone would think there was a famine in England." To which Shaw replied: "To look at you, anyone would think you caused it." --Quoted in "A Nasty Way With Words" by Alexander Theroux, reviewing _Poisoned Pens_ ed. by Gary Dexter. In _The Wall Street Journal_ [20 November 2009]. - THE PERILS OF OBESITY Yesterday my gun exploded When I thought it wasn't loaded; Near my wife I pressed the trigger, Chipped a fragment off her figure. 'Course I'm sorry and all that, But she shouldn't be so fat. --Harry Graham (18741936) British writer and journalist. _Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes_ [1899] - Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? No, no, 'tis your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears. --Washington Irving (17831859) American writer. Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character. --Oscar Levant (19061972) American pianist and actor. "Memoirs of an Amnesiac" [1965] For a quick pick-me-up, take a plain yoghurt, a banana and a few ice cubes in a blender and puree until smooth. Throw it at a skinny person. --Susan Maushart Has it ever struck you that there's a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there's a statue in every block of stone. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. _Coming Up for Air_, pt. I, ch. 3 [1939] It would be insensitive to say Dennis Brown and Ted Washington were fat when they reported to [football training] camp. Let's just say they were over-served. --Scott Osler, "San Francisco Chronicle," [11 August 1993] Well, you'll never fly in it, you're too fat to be an astronaut. --Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921 ) Consort of Queen Elizabeth II. Said at the University of Salford to a 13-year-old aspiring astronaut, who was wishing to fly the NOVA rocket; "Gift of the gaffe: Prince Philips top ten embarrassing moments" _Daily Mirror_ [14 December 2009]. - For we are told that when a certain man was accusing both of them to him, he [Julius Caesar] said he had no fear of those fat and long-haired fellows, but rather of those pale and thin ones [Brutus and Cassius]. --Plutarch (A.D. 46?119?) Greek philosopher and biographer. _Parallel Lives_ "Anthony" sec. II & note: Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, He thinks too much; such men are dangerous. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Julius Caesar_, I, ii [1599] - The reason fat men are good-natured is they can neither fight nor run. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [19011909]. - The grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _King Henry IV_ Part Two,' V,v, 54. (King Henry V to Falstaff.) He hath eaten me out of house and home; he hath put all of my substance into that fat belly of his. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _King Henry IV_ [1597], pt. 2, act 2, sc. 1, l.74 - All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening. --Alexander Woollcott (18871943) American dramatic and literary critic. Quoted in "Reader's Digest" [December 1933]. - Here's to us, my good, fat friend, To bless the things we eat; For it has been full many a year, Since we have seen our feet. There once was a lady of Crete, So enormously broad in the seat, That one day in the ocean, She caused such commotion, That Admiral Byrd claimed her for America. --anon. TOPICAL Newcomers to the United States are struck by the amenities enjoyed by "poor" people. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s when CBS television broadcast a documentary, "People Like Us," intended to show the miseries of the poor during an ongoing recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with a view to embarrassing the Reagan administration. But by the testimony of former Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans have TV sets, microwave ovens and cars. They arrived at the same perception that I witnessed in an acquaintance of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States. I asked him, 'Why are you so eager to come to America?' He replied, 'I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat.' --Dinesh D'Souza (1961 ) American author. "10 things to celebrate: Why I'm an anti-anti-American" ----- collop (noun) ['kah-l๊p] (1) A lump or slice of meat or fat; (2) a fold of body fat. corpulent [KOR-pyuh-luhnt], adjective: Very fat; obese. dewlap (noun) ['dju-lๆp] A fold of loose skin hanging from the neck of some bovines, reptiles and birds (turkeys and roosters). embonpoint [ahn-bohn-PWAN], noun: Plumpness of person; stoutness. Ex.: "With his embonpoint, Mr Soames appears to be wearing a quadruple-breasted suit." --Simon Hoggart, "Roll up, roll up, to explore the Soames Zone," The "Guardian" [1 February 2000] paunch (noun) A protruding abdomen. Synonyms: belly . . see: "ACCIDENT" see: "CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES" see: "CHANCE" see: "CIRCUMSTANCES" see: "DESTINY" see: "LUCK" see: "OPPORTUNITY" see "ACTIONS" for other related links I returned, and I saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. --Bible "Ecclesiastes" 9:11 Destiny, n. A tyrant's excuse for crime and a fool's excuse for failure. --Ambrose Bierce (18421914) American newspaperman, wit, and satirist. _The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906] (Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_.) When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a lemonade. --Dale Carnegie (18881955) American writer and lecturer. _How to Stop Worrying and Start Living_ [1944] Every one is the son of his own works. --Miguel de Cervantes (15471616) Spanish novelist. _Don Quixote de la Mancha_ [16051615], pt. 1, bk. iv, ch. xx They are raised on high that they may be dashed to pieces with a greater fall. --Claudian (c. 370c. 404) Roman poet. _In Rufinum_ Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends. --Sir William Davenant [also spelled D'Avenant] (16061668) English poet, playwright, and theater manager. Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends. --Jacques Delille (17381813) French poet. "Malheur et Piti้", canto I [1803] Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses. --Democritus of Abdera (c. 460 B.C.c. 370 B.C.) Greek philosopher. In Lotte H. Eisner _Fritz Lang_, p. 380 [1986]. - A man's fate is his own temper; and according to that will be his opinion as to the particular manner in which the course of events is regulated. A consistent man believes in destiny a capricious man in chance. --Benjamin Disraeli (18041881) British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 18741880]. "A Visit to a Celebrated Diplomatist" in _Vivian Grey_ [1827] We make our own fortunes and we call them fate. --Benjamin Disraeli (18041881) British Tory statesman, novelist, and Prime Minister [1868, 18741880]. _Miriam Alroy_ [1870] - Men are what their mothers made them. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _The Conduct of Life_ "Fate" [1860] We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. --Kahlil Gibran (18831931) Lebanese poet. In _The Book of Positive Quotations_, {comp. by John Cook}, p.. 354 [2007]. Sometimes a glance, a few casual words, fragments of a melody floating through the quiet air of a summer evening, a book that accidentally comes into hands, a poem or memory-laden fragrance may bring about the impulse which changes and determines our whole life. --Anagarika Govinda [Ernst Lothar Hoffman] (18981985) German-born author & founder of the Buddhist Order Arya Maitreya Mandala. We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours. --Dag Hammarskj๖ld (19051961) Swedish diplomat; served as the Secretary General of the U.N. [1953-1961]. _Markings_ [1955], tr. Leif Sj๖berg and W.H. Auden [1964] Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a moral the truth, namely, that the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones. --Nathaniel Hawthorne (18041864) American novelist and short-story writer. _The House of the Seven Gables_ [1851], preface A man's character is his fate. --Heraclitus (c.535475 B.C.) Greek philosopher. _On the Universe_ (fragment 121) Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi Finem di dederint. (Do not try to find out we're forbidden to know what end the gods have in store for me, or for you.) --Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (658 BC) Roman poet. _Odes_, bk. 1, # 11 We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. . . Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. --William James (18421910) American philosopher. _The Principles of Psychology_ [1890] The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. --Omar Khayyแm (10481131) Islamic scholar, poet, and mathematician. _The Rubแiyแt of Omar Khayyแm_ (FitzGerald's 1859 translation) That's the way life goes, of course. A breeze comes up in Rhode Island on a morning in March during the Civil War, and a Union soldier home on leave goes into a park in Providence to fly a kite, and a young woman sees the kite in the sky from her front stoop a block away and wanders into the park, where she meets the soldier and likes him, and they write letters to each other after he goes back to his outfit, and they are married after the war, and they have a son, who grows up and has a son, who grows up and has a son, who is named Charles after the soldier. And here I am. But I wouldn't be, if a Rhode Island day in 1864 had turned out calm, rather than breezy. I owe everthing to the wind and to Providence. --Charles Kuralt (19341997) American journalist and broadcaster. _Charles Kuralt's America_ [1995] "April: A Change of Plans" By going a few minutes sooner or later, by stopping to speak with a friend on the corner, by meeting this man or that, or by turning down this street instead of the other, we may let slip some impending evil, by which the whole current of our lives would have been changed. There is no possible solution in the dark enigma but the one word, "Providence." --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882) American poet. There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat. --James Russell Lowell (18191891) American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat. In a speech in Birmingham, England [6 October 1884] published in _On Democracy_ [1884]. Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being. --Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121180) Roman emperor [161180] and Stoic philosopher. In Bertrand Russell _History of Western Philosophy_ [1945]. - "The Appointment in Samarra" (As retold by W. Somerset Maugham (18741965), [1933].) The speaker is Death: There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra. - We talk about fate as if it were something visited upon us; we forget that we create our fate every day we live. And by fate I mean the woes that beset us, which are merely the effects of causes which are not nearly as mysterious as we pretend. Most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior. --Henry Miller (18911980) American novelist and essayist. _A Devil in Paradise_ [1956] There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed. --Napoleon I (17691821) Emperor of France [18041815]. When the man from Seriphus told him [Themistocles] that he had not obtained this honor by himself, but by the greatness of his city, he replied, "You speak truth; I should never have been famous if I had been of Seriphus; nor you, had you been of Athens." --Plutarch (A.D. 46?119?) Greek philosopher and biographer. _Life of Themistocles_ - I cannot forget. In May, 2001, the company I worked for the previous three years collapsed, leaving me and about sixty other engineers jobless in a badly shrunken market. I spent the next five months struggling to get interviews while husbanding my savings and my sanity. I got only one interview, from a Manhattan company. Their VP of IT liked me, and would have hired me on the spot, but there was a hiring freeze until their second-quarter results were in, analyzed, and understood. So I went home and waited. One fine morning, there came a letter from that company, offering me a position at a salary I could not believe, nearly twice what I'd been earning at my former place of business. I was sitting at my desk with tears of relief running down my face, when my elder daughter burst in and screamed, "A plane just hit the World Trade Center!" The company that had offered me the job was Cantor Fitzgerald. They occupied floors 101 through 105 of One World Trade Center. They lost almost 70% of their employees that bright September morning. Had their offer letter arrived two weeks earlier, I would have been among them. I cannot forget. --Francis W. Porretto - You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give. --Eleanor Roosevelt (18841962) American human rights activist, diplomat, and wife of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. - There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of others much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny. --Franklin D. Roosevelt (18821945) American Democratic statesman and President [19331945]. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Party National Convention [June 1936]. Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. --Franklin D. Roosevelt (18821945) American Democratic statesman and President [19331945]. Address to the Pan American Union [14 April 1939]. - It is often a comfort in misfortune to know our own fate. --Quintus Curtius Rufus (fl. 1st C. B.C.) Roman historian. _De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni_, IV. 10. 27. In Kate Louise Roberts _Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations_, p. 264 [1922] Suppose . . . that Lenin had died of typhus in Siberia in 1895 and Hitler had been killed on the western front in 1916. What would the twentieth century have looked like now? --Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (19172007) American historian. _The Cycles of American History_ [1986] As fate is inexorable, and not to be moved either with tears or reproaches, an excess of sorrow is as foolish as profuse laughter; while, on the other hand, not to mourn at all is insensibility. --Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC65 A.D.) Roman philosopher and poet. In Maturin M. Ballou _Treasury of Thought_ p. 446 [15th ed. 1894.] Cassius: Men at some time are masters of their fate: The fault, dear Brutus, in not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Julius Caesar_, 1.2.139 [1599] People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] _Mrs. Warren's Profession_ [1893, first performed in 1902] Wouldn't it be terrible to discover that life is indeed fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us happen because we really deserve them? --attributed to J. Michael Straczynski (b. 1954) American writer and television producer. It is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one sometimes does, when the time is past, of some little, little wheel which works the whole mighty machinery of Fate, and see how our destinies turn on a minute's delay or advance. --William Makepeace Thackeray (18111863) English novelist. "Catherine" published in Fraser's Magazine [1940]. Every human being is the artificer of his own fate. . . Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown. --Henry David Thoreau (18171862) American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher. _Journal_ [27 April 1854] In historical events great men so-called are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels, they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free-will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity. --Leo Tolstoy (18281910) Russian novelist. _War and Peace_, pt. 9, ch. I [1869] --- With the success of "Chantilly Lace," Richardson took some time off from KTRM radio and joined Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Ritchie Valens, and Dion and the Belmonts; for a "Winter Dance Party" tour. On February 2nd, 1959, Buddy Holly chartered a Beechcraft Bonanza to take him and his new Crickets band (Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings) to Fargo, North Dakota. Richardson came down with the flu and didn't feel comfortable on the bus, so Waylon gave his plane seat to him. Valens had never flown on a small plane and requested Allsup's seat. They flipped a coin, and Ritchie called heads and won the toss. In the early morning of February 3, following a February 2nd performance at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, the small four-passenger Beechcraft Bonanza took off into a blinding snow storm and crashed into Albert Juhl's corn field several miles after takeoff at 1:05 a.m. The crash killed Holly, Valens, Richardson and pilot Roger Peterson. This event would become known as "The Day the Music Died." --anon. & see: The barnstorming rock 'n' roll tour is called The Winter Dance Party, and the four finger-popping boys from the Bronx, wearing pimp boots and nylon shirts and slick suits like these heartland kids have never seen before, are fourth on the bill behind Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper. Dion and the Belmonts, they're called; they've had a couple of hit records, but they're not yet so big that the lead singer. 19-year-old Dion DiMucci, is really sure he wants to come up with the $35 when Holly asks if he wants to come along on a charter flight to the next show. Thirty-five dollars is the monthly rent Dion's folks pay for their second-story walkup back home at 749 E. 183rd Street. --C.J. Sulivan, "Pure Bronx Soul: Dion and The Belmonts", in _Big Town Biography: Lives and Times of the Century's Classic New Yorkers_. ----- auspice (noun) Omen: a sign or token for the future, especially a happy or promising one. ineluctable [in-ih-LUCK-tuh-buhl], adjective: Impossible to avoid or evade; inevitable. kismet [KIZ-met; -mit], noun: Destiny; fate. end page | FACE - FAME | FAILURE | FAMILIARITY - FANTASY | FARMING - FATE | FATHERS - FEELINGS | FEMINISTS - FIFTIES (THE) | FIFTY - FLAG | FLATTERY - FOLLOWERS | FOOD & DRINK - PAGE 1 (A-O) | FOOD & DRINK - PAGE 2 (P-Z) | FOOLS/FOOLISH | FOOTBALL - FORESIGHT | FOREST - FRAUDS | FREE - FREEDOM OF THOUGHT | FREEDOM | FREUD - FRIENDS | FRUGAL - FUTURE | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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