 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home |
Credits |
Cast |
1 |
2 |
3 |
End |
Reviews |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home |
Credits |
Cast |
1 |
2 |
3 |
End |
Reviews |
|
|
;void(0)) . . . FARMING see: "COUNTRY LIFE" see: "PRAIRIE" see "FOOD & DRINK" for other related links see "WORK" for other related links 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!" ----- 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: "THE BODY" ^ 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 womanwearing 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. That's quite a dress you almost have on. --Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986) American playwright and lyricist. "An American in Paris" [1951 film] (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. 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. 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] TOPICAL Talk about wearing your faith on your sleeve. According to the Dallas Morning News, some people are making faith into a fashion statement, as they sport T-shirts with slogans ranging from the earnest ("Jesus Is My Homeboy") to the ethnic ("Meshuggenah") to the provocative ("Jesus paid for our sins, now let's get our money's worth"). Even American Muslims, the paper reports, are getting in on the T-shirt act, with one hot-seller reading: "My beard causes national security alerts, what does yours do?" --"The Wall Street Journal" [30 July 2004] - Perpetrator Problem: It's Hard to Run Away In Falling Trousers Cops Say Loose, Baggy Jeans Trip Up Many a Thief; 'Hey, Dude, Buy a Belt' By Serena Ng _The Wall Street Journal_ June 20, 2006 One sunny afternoon in January, Vicki Chandler, a 55-year-old underwriting associate at Cigna HealthCare in Chattanooga, Tenn., was walking to her car when a teenager in loose khaki pants approached her, pointed to her pocketbook and said, "I need that." As she recounts the incident, he snatched the purse and took off. But then he ran into trouble. As he ran, his loose trousers slipped down below his hips. As he reached down to hold them up, the teen was forced to throw the purse aside. "That boy, he could run fast but he got caught up by his pants, which were real big and baggy," says Ms. Chandler, whose purse was retrieved by a parking attendant who had heard her cries for help. It's a problem for perpetrators. Young men and teens wearing low-slung, baggy pants fairly regularly get tripped up in their getaways, a development that has given amused police officers and law-abiding citizens a welcome edge in the fight against crime. James Green might have made a clean getaway when he stole seven DVDs from a Blockbuster store in Ferndale, Mich., last October. But he, too, was undone by his baggy pants. Mr. Green, 30, rode away on a bicycle, with copies of "Donnie Brasco," "The Bourne Identity" and "Sin City." When a patrol car knocked over the bike, he fled on foot. As he ran, his trousers slipped down past his hips, and he tripped. He hitched up his pants and ran a few more yards before falling again. Things got worse and worse for Mr. Green. He finally kicked off his pants and shoes and "ran into the yard of 1720 Beaufield," police officer Kenneth Jaklic said in a report of the incident. "I ran after [Mr. Green], yelling at him to stop." Instead, Mr. Green jumped over a fence behind a garage, and Mr. Jaklic immobilized him with two Taser darts in the back. Mr. Green pleaded guilty to charges of resisting arrest and retail fraud and spent 30 days in jail. He could not be located for comment. Denny Fuhrman, a 58-year-old police officer in Lynnwood, Wash., was escorting a handcuffed suspect to his patrol car one afternoon in 2004 when the youngster twisted free and took off running. As he bolted, the baggy blue jeans he was wearing fell down around his ankles, sending him tumbling onto the pavement of a busy street. "He was rolling around in traffic, looking like a fish out of water," recalls Mr. Fuhrman. Mr. Fuhrman's suspect wiggled out of his trousers before getting up from the street and running toward a nearby mall, as the police officer radioed a description to his colleagues: "White male, running, no pants, in handcuffs," Mr. Fuhrman recalls saying. The young man was arrested at the entrance of a J.C. Penney store after Janice Lewis, a 61-year-old passerby, grabbed his shirt collar and held on to him until police arrived. "He was pretty wild," says Ms. Lewis, a grandmother of 10 who broke a knuckle during the scuffle. "I didn't even realize he was in his underwear till the police flipped him over." Police declined to release the full name of the youth, identified only as Jason in written reports, because he was not convicted of a crime in connection with the incident. He had been arrested after allegedly trying to access a bank account that wasn't his. Low-hanging baggy pants have been a fashion statement for young men for more than a decade, inspired by the advent of beltless prison jeans, says Andy Gilchrist, a California fashion consultant who has written a book on men's clothes. Over time, the tough-guy image associated with oversized trousers helped make the look standard for hip-hop performers, alternative music bands, skateboarders and snowboarders as it migrated from mostly black city streets to affluent white suburbs. Just about every other week, Jim Matheny, a 41-year-old police lieutenant in Stamford, Conn., says he gets into foot chases with youths. He says it's getting easier to capture them because they can't run fast or far in those loose jeans. "When I catch them, I tell them they'd do much better if they had pants that fit," says Lt. Matheny, who says he has had to help hold up the pants of his suspects while patting them down to search for drugs or weapons. "It's like: 'Hey dude, buy a belt and save yourself some trouble.' " Ill-fitting pants aren't suited for jumping, either, as Noah Donell Brown of Hendersonville, N.C., learned. The 24-year-old tried to leap over the counter of a Subway sandwich shop during a robbery attempt, but he stumbled and came crashing down in front of several startled store employees. Mr. Brown, armed with a gun, got up and fled into a nearby residential neighborhood as the police were notified. Police didn't have to work hard to arrest him. As Mr. Brown tried to scale a picket fence in someone's backyard, he caught his pants, according to the police department. He was found dangling upside down, his pants at his ankles and tangled in the fence. "He didn't make a good jump," said Hendersonville Police Chief Donnie Parks, who spotted Mr. Brown on the fence. "The only reason we caught the guy was because his pants fell down," he said, adding: "He was wearing underwear, thank goodness." [ . . . ] ----- 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" - 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 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] The reason fat men are good-natured is they can neither fight nor run. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [19011909]. - Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Julius Caesar_ [1599], Act I, Scene ii, Line 191 The grave doth gape For thee thrice wider than for other men. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _Henry IV_ Part Two,' V,v, 54. (King Henry V to Falstaff.) - 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: "CHANCE" see: "CIRCUMSTANCES" 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_.) 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 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. 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]. 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] 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]. - "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]. 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] 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] 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] --- 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. kismet [KIZ-met; -mit], noun: Destiny; fate. end page | FABLE - 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) | FOOLISH - FORESIGHT | FOREST - FRAUDS | FREE - FREE TRADE | FREEDOM | FREUD - (THE) - FRIENDS | FRUGAL - FUTURE | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
||