Flag Day

As has become my custom, on Flag Day I post this:

Several years ago I was part of an exchange with secondary teachers from Japan. The Japanese teachers spent some time with us in Madison and in our schools and we did the same in Japan. As preparation for the experience, all of us spent some time together in Washington, D.C., learning about each other, getting acquainted, and trying to bridge some of the cultural differences. In one of the sessions a Japanese teacher asked why Americans seemed to place so much emphasis on our flag. Many Japanese are, for understandable historical reasons, very skeptical of anything smacking of nationalism. I explained that in our case we have no national figure—no queen or emperor—who symbolizes the nation. Nor does the flag stand for blood or soil. It stands for our ideals—"the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." It stands for what we believe in and aspire to be as a country. We honor the flag because it represents the Constitutional system that protects our freedoms and our rights.

In my files I came across a pamphlet, undated, published by the Marine Corps, titled How to Respect and Display Our Flag. A stamp on it indicates that it was distributed by the "Marine Corps Recruiting Sub-Station" in Janesville, Wisconsin. Since the flags in the illustrations have forty-eight stars, it must be from the late 1950s. The rules it specifies seem almost quaint after the events of the last half century. The flag has been burned and trampled by Americans. It is flown night and day in good weather or foul—even by those who intend to honor it. A colleague used to put one on the floor of his classroom, inviting students to decide whether to walk on it. How one treats the symbol became partisan, expressing a political rather than a patriotic allegiance.

Here is the section from that pamphlet titled "How to Display the Flag":

"...Count our spoons"

A miscellany of Samuel Johnson quotations from my new acquisition:

• DEPEND upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
• THERE is nothing more likely to betray a man into absurdity than condescension; when he seems to suppose his understanding too powerful for his company.
• WHY Sir, if the fellow does not think as he speaks, he is lying; and I see not what honour he can propose to himself from having the character of a liar. But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
• SIR, are you so grossly ignorant of human nature as not to know that a man may be very sincere in good principles without having good practice?
• SIR, we know our will is free, and there's an end on't.
  
• IT matters not how a man dies but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time. A man knows it must be so and submits. It will do him no good to whine.

"Keep me, O keep me..."

All praise to Thee, my God, this night, for all the blessings of the light! Keep me, O keep me, King of kings, beneath Thine own almighty wings.

Forgive me, Lord, for Thy dear Son, the ill that I this day have done, That with the world, myself, and Thee, I, ere I sleep, at peace may be.

O may my soul on Thee repose, and with sweet sleep mine eyelids close, Sleep that may me more vigorous make to serve my God when I awake.

When in the night I sleepless lie, my soul with heavenly thoughts supply; Let no ill dreams disturb my rest, no powers of darkness me molest.

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise God above, ye heavenly host; praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

"There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law"

Lincoln, age 28, in 1844: from the Lyceum Address delivered in Springfield:

.... If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana....

...[B]y instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained.— Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed—I mean the attachment of the People. Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last. By such things, the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it; and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak, to make their friendship effectual. At such a time and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric, which for the last half century, has been the fondest hope, of the lovers of freedom, throughout the world. .... (more)

Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address

"The wicked flee when no one pursues..."

In The New York Times, a wonderful appreciation by Donna Tartt, who did the audio book of True Grit, of Charles Portis, its author, who died this spring. On True Grit:

Comedy is the most ephemeral of the arts. There are very few comic novels that do not wither with time, and even fewer novels — comic or otherwise — that can be given to pretty much anyone, from an old person to a small child. Even more rare is a novel one can reliably turn to for cheer when one is sick or sad. But “True Grit” is this rare novel, and Mattie Ross, its narrator, is one of the greatest of Portis’s innocents: a Presbyterian spinster who in old age relates the story of how, as a child, she struck out in the 1870s to avenge her father’s murder. “People do not give it credence that a 14-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.” It’s a serious book by any measure; Mattie’s rage and grief are thunderous (“What a waste! Tom Chaney would pay for this! I would not rest easy until that Louisiana cur was roasting and screaming in hell!”) and yet perhaps the greatest pleasure of the book is Mattie’s speaking voice: rambling, deadpan, didactic, sprinkled with oddball opinions and facts, obstinate in its views and acute in its observations. Of Chaney, the hired man who murdered her father (“He was a short man with cruel features. I will tell more about his face later”), she has this to say: “He had no gun but he carried his rifle slung across his back on a piece of cotton plow line. There is trash for you. He could have taken an old piece of harness and made a nice leather strap for it. That would have been too much trouble.” ....

I love that book and enjoy both of the films.

Donna Tartt on the Singular Voice, and Pungent Humor, of Charles Portis - The New York Times

Reading with inclination

More Samuel Johnson on reading:

I AM always for getting a boy forward in his learning; for that is a sure good. I would let him at first read any English book which happens to engage his attention; because you have done a great deal, when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book. He'll get better books afterwards.

FOR general improvement a man should read whatever his immediate inclination prompts him to. What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attentions so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.

"Read at his choice..."

In the mail today "'Sir,' Said Dr. Johnson —" Some Sayings, 282 pages of quotations organized by topic. This collection was originally published in London in 1911. The book I just received is a photo reproduction. I'm only a few pages into the first section, "Children and Education," from which:

ACCUSTOM your children constantly to this; if a thing happened at one window and they when relating it say it happened at another, do not let it pass but instantly check them. You do not know where deviation from Truth will end.

BABIES do not want to hear about babies, they like to be told of giants and castles and of somewhat which can stretch and stimulate their little minds.

WOULD put a child into a library (where no unfit books are) and let him read at his choice. A child should not be discouraged from reading anything he takes a liking to, from a notion that it is above his reach. If that be the case, the child will soon find it out and desist; if not he of course gains the instruction; which is so much the more likely to come, from the inclination with which he takes up the study."

Wodehouse again

Another appreciation of Wodehouse:

Some authors may want to expose the world’s injustices, or elevate us with their psychological insights. Wodehouse, in his words, preferred to spread “sweetness and light”. Just look at those titles: Nothing Serious, Laughing Gas, Joy in the Morning. With every sparkling joke, every well-meaning and innocent character, every farcical tussle with angry swans and pet Pekingese, every utopian description of a stroll around the grounds of a pal’s stately home or a flutter on the choir boys’ hundred yards handicap at a summer village fete, he wanted to whisk us far away from our worries. Writing about being a humourist in his autobiography Over Seventy, Wodehouse quoted two people in the Talmud who had earnt their place in Heaven: “We are merrymakers. When we see a person who is downhearted, we cheer him up.” ....

“What Wodehouse writes is pure word music,” said Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy. “It matters not one whit that he writes endless variations on a theme of pig kidnappings, lofty butlers, and ludicrous impostures. He is the greatest musician of the English language, and exploring variations of familiar material is what musicians do all day.” ....

Whatever was going on in his life, Wodehouse stayed buoyant; and whatever is going on in the reader’s life, he keeps us buoyant, too. “I was clinically depressed for most of 1999,” said Jay McInerney, the author of Bright Lights, Big City in a 2016 interview “and I would turn to Wodehouse, possibly the funniest writer in the English language. It seemed to be more effective at warding off despair than the antidepressants that I was taking.” .... (more)

The man who wrote the most perfect sentences ever written - BBC Culture

"Listen my children and you shall hear..."

If you can complete the phrase in the title of this post you may be in my generation. Today Michael Dirda reviews Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, by Nicholas Basbanes. From that review:

When I was growing up, there were four junior high schools in my hometown: Hawthorne, Whittier, Irving and Longfellow. They were all built in the 1920s and named in honor of what were then America’s most respected, and respectable, 19th-century writers. Forty years later, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow still featured prominently in the school system’s English classes. To speak just of poetry, my classmates and I read “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” “The Village Blacksmith” and even the book-length “Evangeline.”

As it happens, all these are by Longfellow....

I had the same experience in grade school.

.... They are narrative poems, patriotic in character and chockablock with memorable lines: “One, if by land, and two, if by sea,” “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?,” “Under a spreading chestnut-tree/ The village smithy stands,” “This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks.” To Longfellow we owe dozens of striking phrases we still use: “footprints in the sands of time,” “forever and a day,” “ships that pass in the night,” “A banner with a strange device/ Excelsior!” Because they told stories in verse, his poems — others include “The Song of Hiawatha” and “The Wreck of the Hesperus” — were popular recital pieces back in the day when dramatic declamation was a minor art. ....

Sadly, America’s first world-famous poet fell from favor during the 20th century. ....

Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, by Nicholas Basbanes book review - The Washington Post

Friendship

Patrick Kurp:

...[F]riends are interesting, good company, even entertaining, seldom dull. They crave conversation (a dying art). They aren’t bossy. Their sense of humor is compatible with yours. They know when they’re skirting tedium and when to shut up. They know things and aren’t pedantic when sharing them. Their values in the essential things are not radically different from your own. They can tell a good story. There’s no virtue signaling or other unearned claiming of credit. ....

Anecdotal Evidence: 'We Knew Each Other and Were Friends'

In the day of trouble

Via Alan Jacobs: 

Almighty God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favour and glad to do Thy will. Bless our land with honourable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in Thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  

Book of Common Prayer (1928)

In the spirit of neighborliness

O God, the Creator of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you in Jesus Christ; in whose Name we pray. Amen.

Increase, O God, the spirit of neighborliness among us, that in peril we may uphold one another, in suffering tend to one another, and in homelessness, loneliness, or exile befriend one another. Grant us brave and enduring hearts that we may strengthen one another, until the disciplines and testing of these days are ended, and you again give peace in our time; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer (Anglican), 2019.

"Make us wise..."

MOST heartily do we thank Thee, O Lord, for all Thy mercies of every kind, and for Thy loving care over all Thy creatures. We bless Thee for the gift of life, for Thy protection round about us, for Thy guiding hand upon us, and for the many tokens of Thy love within us; especially for the saving knowledge of Thy dear Son, our Redeemer; and for the living presence of Thy Spirit, our Comforter. We thank Thee for friendship and duty, for good hopes and precious memories, for the joys that cheer us and for the trials that teach us to trust in Thee. In all these things, our heavenly Father, make us wise unto a right use of Thy great benefits; and so direct us that in word and deed we may render an acceptable thanksgiving unto Thee, in Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

The Book of Common Worship (Presbyterian), 1906.

Misfortune

Re-posted because it's perfect:

"Once a thing is done..."

Similar to an argument I would make to persuade 9^th graders of the value of studying history:

...[T]he future is imaginary, the present is happening and that only leaves the past to be true; and it leaves the past as, in a sense, all of a piece. Once a thing is done, it belongs to the past. .... C.H. Sisson (1914-2003)

Anecdotal Evidence: 'Brands Us As a Sailor'

"For I am a stranger...and a sojourner"

Lord, let me know my end and the number of my days, that I may learn how short my life is.

Behold, you have made my days as a span in length, and my age is even as nothing before you; and truly, everyone living is but a breath. For everyone walks about as a shadow, and disquiets himself in vain; he heaps up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them.

And now, Lord, what is my hope? Truly, my hope is in you.
Deliver me from all my offenses, and make me not a taunt of the foolish.

I became mute and opened not my mouth, for it was you that brought it to pass. Take your affliction from me; I am consumed by the blows of your heavy hand.

When you, with rebukes, chasten someone for sin, you consume what is dear to him, like a moth eating a garment; everyone therefore is but vanity.

Hear my prayer, O LORD, and with your ears consider my cry; hold not your peace at my tears. For I am a stranger with you, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.

O turn your gaze from me, that I may again be glad, before I go away to be seen no more.

Psalm 39:5-15 (Coverdale, 1535)

Memorial Day

Mom's youngest brother, Robert Levi Bond, killed in action in September of 1944, buried in Belgium at Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery.

Mom, Uncle Robert, Aunt Bea

Secretary of War Stimson

Surrounded by a cloud of witnesses

From the Book of Common Prayer, 2019:

Most loving Father, you will us to give thanks for all things, to dread nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on the One who cares for us. Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, and grant that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested unto us in your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Heavenly Father, help us to entrust our loved ones to your care. Though sorrow darkens our lives, help us to look up to you, remembering the cloud of witnesses by which we are surrounded. And grant that we on earth, rejoicing ever in your presence, may share with them the rest and peace which your presence gives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Honored dead

My Bond Great-grandfather's brother

Levi W. Bond, Company B, 15th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry, US,
killed September 3, 1864, near Berryville, Virginia

Cigars

Sat outside under shelter this afternoon. Rain, straight down, warm, April showers, (in May), global warming, I guess, except a month later. Smoked a very good cigar. I first smoked cigars in graduate school in Virginia (1969-1970), cigarillos with plastic tips, I think.  A friend, now a pastor, later introduced me to Jamaican cigars — a considerable upgrade. Later, in the UK I purchased a packet of Cubans legally. They were unavailable here because of the boycott JFK imposed on Cuba (but only after he arranged to buy lot for himself). I enjoy them. A friend, who did, too, and whose wife didn't object, can't smoke anymore because of precarious health, and has stopped. Another friend, also stopped because they no longer gave him pleasure. Life can be unfair. I was reminded of this Kipling poem from 1922:

OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout, For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out. We quarreled about Havanas—we fought o’er a good cheroot, And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute. Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a space; In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie’s face. Maggie is pretty to look at—Maggie’s a loving lass, But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass. There’s peace in a Laranaga, there’s calm in a Henry Clay; But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away— Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown— But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o’ the talk o’ the town! Maggie, my wife at fifty—grey and dour and old— With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold! And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,   And Love’s torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar— The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket— With never a new one to light tho’ it’s charred and black to the socket! Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a while. Here is a mild Manilla—there is a wifely smile Which is the better portion—bondage bought with a ring, Or a harem of dusky beauties fifty tied in a string? Counselors cunning and silent—comforters true and tried,  And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride? Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes, Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead, Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead. The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main, When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again. I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal, So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall. I will scent ’em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides, And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides. For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o’ Teen. And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear, But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year; And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight. And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove, But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o’-the-Wisp of Love. Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire? Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire? Open the old cigar-box—let me consider anew— Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you? A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke; And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke. Light me another Cuba—I hold to my first-sworn vows. If Maggie will have no rival, I’ll have no Maggie for Spouse!

That's not me. If I had married I would have given up the habit if it would have pleased her (whoever would have had me), but in my bachelor existence cigars have given a lot of pleasure.