At a gathering after an actors’ reading of the Waste Land and other poems of T.S. Eliot, I chatted with Dame Eileen Atkins, a star of both stage and screen.
She spoke of staying in touch with Eliot’s widow, now quite old. When I told her of enjoying her 2002 Broadway performance in The Retreat from Moscow with John Lithgow and Ben Chaplin, she said that she had stayed in contact with John.
“This country is all under shock, they population is all gone to America.” These words, taken from a letter dated January 23, 1853, were written by my great-great-grandfather from the town of Portumna in Ireland.
They speak for themselves.
“I don't feel like an old man; I feel like a young man who has something the matter with him.” – Bruce Bliven
One of the privileges of being a candidate when I ran was being invited to the home of a local academic deity. As he smiled down at me from a great height, I was given a vicarious sense of what it means to be truly eminent.
That experience helped motivate me during the occasional dark days when my electoral prospects lost some of their glow.
On Phileas J. Fogg, a cat long since departed from earth's shores:
He demonstrates a kind of self-possession difficult to ignore. Though he cannot say so in words, he signals an entitlement to be honored. It's as if he has established certain rights which cannot be violated with impunity. Sometimes he vindicates these rights by complaining to the management.
Amadeo Peter Giannini (1870-1949) declared, “If our institution has become great, it is by the consent of the people we serve.”
Giannini was speaking as founder of the Bank of America, now grown the nation's largest. Recently, it received 45 billion dollars from the federal government and us all.
My friend, Jack Trumpbour, at a demonstration on March 5, opposite the Copley Square branch of the Bank of America, changed Giannini's sentiment:
“Bank of America today has adopted a new motto: ‘If our institution has become great (at seizing your estate), it is by no consent of the people we screw.'”
“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”