FOR YOU, O DEMOCRACY

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,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (read it free at Dailylit.com).  I’m not sure how accurate this poem is anymore…

“Trilling” by the way is “flowing in a small stream or in drops/to trickle”

`That’s the reason they’re called lessons,’ the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.’

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Chapter 9) by Lewis Carroll.  Read it for free at DailyLit.com.

The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman that
loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath swearing,
(O I willingly stake all for you,
O let me be lost if it must be so!
O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think?
What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust
each other if it must be so;)

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. From “From Pent-Up Aching Rivers”.  Read it free at Dailylit.com.

I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of
the farther systems.

Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
Outward and outward and forever outward.

My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels,
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.

There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage,
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces,
were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would
not avail the long run,
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. From “Songs of myself” verse 45.  Read it free at Dailylit.com.

Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.

Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
When I give I give myself.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. From “Songs of myself” verse 40.  Read it free at Dailylit.com.

When you win, say little. When you lose, say less

Bill Belichick, New England Patriots head coach

It’s better to have the right person ask the wrong question than the wrong person ask the right question.

Wally, from Dilbert 11/4/07.

That such a diet makes people sick and fat we have known for a long time.  Early in the twentieth century, an intrepid group of doctors and medical workers stationed overseas observed that wherever in the world people gave up their traditional way of eating and adopted the Western diet, there soon followed a predictable series of Western diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer.  They called these the Western diseases and, though the precise causal mechanisms were (and remain) uncertain, these observers had no doubt these chronic diseases shared a common etiology: the Western diet.

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

Ever notice that ‘What the hell’ is always the right decision?

The Little Big Things by Tom Peters (free on DailyLit)

I am not praising China because I want to emulate their system. I am praising it because I am worried about my system. In deliberately spotlighting China’s impressive growth engine, I am hoping to light a spark under America.

Thomas Friedman, Too Many Hamburgers? in the NYTimes