Pictures for Today...

Aurora

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I really really like all of the pictures that the NASA website [see link to the left] puts out on a daily basis. I think that they're neat and they make you think, too. Call me a nerd, but I look at them most every day.

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[Caption]

Aurora from Space Credit:Don Pettit, ISS Expedition 6, NASA
Explanation: From the ground, spectacular aurora seem to dance high above. But the International Space Station (ISS) orbits at nearly the same height as many auroras sometimes passing over them, and sometimes right through them. Still, the auroral electron and proton streams pose no direct danger to the ISS. In 2003, ISS Science Officer Don Pettit captured the green aurora, pictured above in a digitally sharpened image. From orbit, Pettit reported that changing auroras appeared to crawl around like giant green amoebas. Over 300 kilometers below, the Manicouagan Impact Crater can be seen in northern Canada, planet Earth.

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For the full article or more pictures of auroras, click here.

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There were a lot more NASA pictures that I really liked. To see a few of them, click the links below:

Sunspot

Bubble Nebula

Mediterranean Trip - Part 3

The last part...

I've had two posts (actually 3, but whatever) before this about my trip last year to the Mediterranean. This is the last of them and will chronicle my journeys to Rome and Vatican City.
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When we got off the boat in Civittavecchia, we stayed in another hotel in Rome. It was on the far other side of the city from where we stayed the first time. It was closer to the Vatican, because that was where we were to go the next day. I forgot my camera when we went, so I used Mom's. I'm not sure if the pictures in the post are mine or hers, but that's beside the point.
It was a really really cool thing to see. There was so much history crammed into a space of barely .2 square miles. That's teeny. And there were just so many things that you've always seen in books or wherever.
We went to the Vatican museum (Musei Vaticani) where we got tickets into all of the tours and went through security. [Vatican City is actually a country. It is the only country in the world that does not require a passport to enter.] So we got in and started touring through what seemed like miles of corridors filled with statues and historical things. Eventually it opened into a courtyard that had the "Vatican Pinecone" and lots more famous statues. [The Vatican Pinecone is (I think) Bernini's creation. It's a huge pinecone made of copper, but it's turned green by now, of course. Dante gave reference to it in The Inferno, in reference to something really ugly. It was one of the less beautiful things there, I will say.] After all the museums, we went through the Sistine Chapel museum, which was filled with a lot more art, lots of which were by Rafael and Michelangelo. Then it opened into the Sistine Chapel [bottom left - the big square-ish part towards the top], one of the most prolific works of art of all time. They don't let you take pictures or talk in there, but it was truly beatiful. And HUGE. All of the paintings seemed life-size, but they were way up there, so they were really much bigger. Lots of wellknown glimpses of art are in there, like the one where God's and Adam's fingers are almost touching, and the wall on the far end that shows, in a sense, heaven and hell. I can't think if they have names or not, but they're definitely recognizable. It's got to be one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Speaking of what I saw, we also saw...the Pope. We were there at about five o'clock, and they were having Mass at St. Peter's Bascilica, so we went in. There was standing room only, so stand we did. We stood on the right side where the choir sits. They were singing in Latin, so I didn't know what on earth they were singing, but we were right there next to the baritones, and one of them moved his book over so we could read off it...very nice of him, but we couldn't read it. I hummed, though.

Then we looked up towards the front and there was the Pope (Benedict XVI, or Papa Bendetto XVI, in Italian. That name made me giggle.) in his white robe and little hat thing...just kind of standing there. He didn't say anything. As far as I ever saw, he was just standing there.

After we were there for a while, we decided it was time to find some dinner, so we left. On the way out, I accidentally dropped my water bottle. Of course, everything else was silent, and the water was icy. It rolled about five feet and a Swiss Guard in the vicinity looked at me kind of mean. I picked it up, muttered a "scuzie", and went on my way. So across Italy, on televisions or hundreds of Catholics, they hear a big THUNK. Yeah, that was me.

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After we saw Vatican City, we stayed a last night at the hotel and then flew back. Seeing the sign after customs that said "WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" was a sight to behold. Of course, we then had to drive home. It was good to be back, but great to have gone.

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[NOTE: I found a good picture of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Click here to see it.]

I never cease to be amazed...

Another genius in the world...


[We are in Walmart, in the crafts section. Sunday afternoon.]
Mom: Excuse me?
Worker 1: [bewildered] Yes?
Mom: Do you all have self-adheisive felt?
Worker 1: No.
Worker 2: But we do have the kind that you can stick to things.
Me: [smirking] That might just work.


Have a cheery day!

Mediterranean Trip - Part 2

[This is my second attempt at posting this.]
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There are some posts below this about my trip a year ago to the Mediterranean. I've been having a hard time getting anything posted - especially the pictures.

Anyhow, this is about the second part of the trip: the part in Greece and Turkey.

After Sicily, our next stop was in Turkey. When we woke up one morning, the above picture was what we saw out the window. It was a city called Marmaris. There were a lot of stores, so we shopped even though Americans got gouged for their money. The vendors came up to you as you walked down the street and asked you [in English] to visit their shop. If you said no, it wasn't rare to get yelled after...one man yelled after us, "You insult my family!!" They really took it personally. The best thing to do if you didn't want to go in was play foreign. We often just replied "No hablo ingles" or "No parlo iglisi" [Spanish and Italian for "I don't speak English."] They only spoke Turkish and Engish since Americans were their top customers and they were from Turkey. They charges us higher prices, too.

After Turkey, we went to Greece. The first stop there was in Patmos. We walked up to the site where John wrote Revelations...it was way up on a mountain. The picture at the right is out of the window there. There's also a well-known monastery there, but we didn't hike that far up the mountain. It was a really neat place in the cave - there were lots of paintings and really old things and it had the place where John is said to have sat writing, and shows where it said he laid his head, etc. You weren't allowed to take pictures in there, so I just bought a postcard for my scrapbook, because it really was nice.

After Patmos, we went to Santorini, a little town situated on top of a mountain out in the middle of the ocean. It looked like it would topple if you so much as stomped. To get to the top, you either rode a cable car or a donkey...we chose the cable car - the donkeys were expensive and we can ride a donkey at home anyway! There was a lot of shopping there and we went to a Catholic Church [someone who lived there told us that it was one of hundreds on the island]. It was really a cool place. The clock tower shows what most of the buildings looked like. Most of them were shades of white and blue, and all square and plain. They had porches and gardens, and their occupants seemed to be very carefree. There were lots of cats there too - I got a really cool picture of me with a little black kitten that lived outside a bakery. I was offering it food and it looked pleased [though not too much in need].

Note: The previous and next pictures would not load. For the clock tower, click here. For the boat, click here.

Like I said, almost all of Santorini is situated up on the cliff. There was just a little bit down at the bottom, like information and the cable car station, etc. There was also a place that rented out boats and gave rides. The boats were really cool - kind of like a pirate ship. I took lots of pictures of them. We didn't ride on one because it, too, was very pricey. And we only had so much time there - there was so much to do! After Santorini, we started back towards Italy. We had a few days at sea, where we did things like go to concerts, watch fruit carvings, and go to paper-flower-making classes. That was just as fun!

Coming up next: my favorite part! The Vatican's coming at you.

Mediterranean Pictures

Ah...finally I have given in. Posting these pictures with Blogger is just not going to work. I have tried every way I know - URLs, new posts, Print Shop, and countless attempts...with no avail.

But I have done the next best thing.

To get URLs for pictures to post, I use Photobucket, and they give you links you can use to get to pictures. So...here they are.

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The Colosseum:

This is one of my favorite pictures I have ever taken. I took it just as we were going to tour the Colosseum.

Roman Forum:

Another very cool place...This was just a big building (I want to say a church?) but I'm not really sure about it. But right next to it was a place where a famous martyr was burned at the stake. His last words were "Flip me over - I'm done on that side." Ah...the wit.

Tower:

I'm not sure what this is called, but it's in the general are of the Forum. When I got my pictures developed, I couldn't remember where it was, and I only found out when I saw it in the background of another Rome picture.

Sicily:

This was in the public square in Catania, Sicily.

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For more on the trip, see the post two down from this one. Sometime soon, I'm going to post parts 2 and 3. Better luck then, I hope.

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[Note: When I tried these links, they took awhile to load. But my internet is very slow, so that could just be it. Stick with it, though - they're really neat to see.]

light in motion

When I was at Sarah's house last weekend, the moon was really pretty. We thought that we would take pictures of the moon...but that was difficult as usual. (See a post a few down from this...) Then we decided to move the camera deliberately...hail the results:

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My brother says that this looks like the new iPod commercial...but whatever.

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[Note: If you view it in the actual size, you'll see a little blue dotted line right under the big white one that is the moon...the blue one is just a light on a house in the distance. There was much confusion over what it was...but then we looked out at the horizon again and figured it out.]

Mediterranean Trip: Part 1

Ah...it's been a year exactly since I was in...Greece.
That was part of a trip I took in 2005 that brought me to Italy, Turkey, Greece and Vatican City.
I saw a lot of really, really neat things. That was my second time going to Europe, and it is quite the experience. It's not just the things that you see, but the oddities of foreigners: languages, food, mannerisms, and feelings toward Americans. And the feel of it all. It's completely different from going somewhere in the U.S. where you understand what you overhear, you know what every dish of your dinner contains, you know how to ask directions, know how much what you're buying REALLY costs, and you don't act like you're from a different country so that you aren't charged more for everything. You're wandering back to wherever because you've lost your way and your ears are filled with the sounds of the street: babbling Italians (or whomever), street vendors, and - usually - a cat. (I'm telling you, I've never seen so many stray cats. And they're FAT. Thanks to the tourists like me who give them a pinch of whatever they happen to be eating...)
So...now I've finally gotten my scanner up and working (this trip was before the reign of my digital camera) and this was the first thing I did.
I have quite a few pictures that I thought summed a lot up. Because my computer is so horribly slow, I'm only going to do a few at a time.
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The first little section, I guess, is going to be the first few days in Italy.
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We flew to Rome, where we stayed in the Hotel Imperiale, just down from the Hard Rock Cafe Roma (I wear my shirt all the time). The first day, we took a bus to the Roman Forum - home of the Colosseum. We took a tour nearly four hours long of the Forum. (May it be noted that we had just disembarked a cramped plane after a sleepless eight hour trans-Atlantic flight, taken our suitcases to the hotel, and then gone straight to the Forum on the Roman equivalent of a Greyhound bus. I was feeling a bit off-color, I admit.) There was a lot to see there - the Colosseum was the main attraction, but there was also the Arch of St. Constantine, the tomb of Julius Caesar, and various basilicas and statues.
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Our next stop in Italy was Civitavecchia, a port-town about an hour from Rome. Here we boarded our ship, the Costa Tropicale: home for the next week or so. Our first stop after boarding was in Catania, Sicily. (Sicily is a region of Italy - and island to the Southwest.) It was really quite rough and there was a lot of evidence that it was a port city - it was messy, fishy, and there were a ton of boats around. I have lots of pictures taken just of some of the trash and fish piled high on the sides of the roads. The streets were filled with markets and everything for a while once you got there. We were starting to think that there had to be something more to Sicily when the busy street we were on opened up into a courtyard - downtown Sicily. Here we found an abbey (Very, very pretty - I couldn't find a picture of this, though), lots of statues, a place that sold Coca-Colas (one phrase that can be recognized in any language), and even a "Euro-Store" - the European equivalent of a Dollar General. (Here I bought lots of gifts for people. They were cheap, but still authentic. We also gave the store's workers quarters and candy from the U.S. - they spoke only Italian and were very interested in us.)
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We left Catania at the end of the day: laden with packages from the Euro-Store, full on pastries and Cokes, and about ready to be back on the ship for dinner and a nap.
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Thus ends the first leg of the trip...I'll pick up on the rest of it sometime soon! The next post should be on Turkey and Greece and the last one will be about the Vatican, etc.
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[Note: My computer is currently being disagreeable and refuses to load my beautiful pictures. I've even tried a few different computers and it still doesn't work. It does this often, so I will just post this now and try tomorrow to get the pictures up...they're the best part, I think.]

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[I beleive that I have surpassed the deadline I set for myself at the beginning of this "series" - I wanted to get it all done during the 8-18 of October, because that's when I was there last year. However, it is currently the 20th of October (nearly the 21st, for that matter). I'll get it done eventually. I think my picture troubles are nearly over. I'm trying again. It hasn't worked. I'm off to bed...I'll try once more tomorrow.]

a promising friendship...

I was in Kohl's tonight shopping when I heard two workers talking. They were two girls folding turtlenecks and I was just a few racks away, and their conversation lured me in. They were talking (with harsh language) about a girl they didn't like who went to their school/college.

The best part went as follows:

Girl 1: So then we went to the store and got a couple dozen eggs.

Girl 2: Then what?

Girl 1: We went to her house and we SO egged it. Her mailbox, her house, and even her car.

Girl 2: Yeah?

Girl 1: And her parents knew it had something to do with her, because she's just so [insert adjective of choice here]

Girl 1: But we're good friends now. She'll just never know I'm the one who egged her mailbox and everything will be just fine!

Girl 2: Cool!

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beware of [shy] dog

[Garfield]

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I read this Garfield comic in the paper this morning and then it was on my homepage, too. I thought it was really funny.

Next to Peanuts, I'd have to say that Garfield is my favorite comic. It's one of those that you pretty much always get...but it's hardly even comparable to Peanuts. It doesn't have the same kind of qualities...Peanuts is just so very true. C'mon - you've got to admit that anyone can sympathize with Charlie Brown. Or at least I can.

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[I couldn't get the comic to load. I don't think they like it when you try to use their comics in other places...but if you click on the word 'this' at the beginning of this post, it should go to it. Or try clicking here. Or, for that matter, read the latest edition of your hometown's paper. Unless, that is, you live here, which means you only get the town paper once a week, and even then it doesn't have comics. The site only keep comics up for like 2 weeks, so if it doesn't work, that would be why.]

lace bookmarks

I spent most of the day today at my grandparents' house. My Nannie and I made bookmarks, because she does a lot of sewing stuff. They're made completely of thread, and the machine weaves them into a kind of lace. It's hard to tell in the picture, but the green one on the left is just a kind of Celtic-looking knot and the purple one on the right is a flower.

The green one I'm keeping for myself...and - yes Sarah - you can have the purple one.

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I can see how this sewing stuff would get quite addictive...it's a lot of fun.

feeling miniscule

I was doing a little Google-ing earlier and found...this:

"But what IS it?" you ask. [Besides fascinating] It's called a "horsehead nebula". Here's what the source had to say about it:

Horsehead Nebula. This photo was taken on the morning of October 5, 2000, at Kitt Peak Observatory as part of the Advanced Observing Program. The telescope was a Meade 16 inch LX200 (f/6.3) with an SBIG ST-8E CCD camera. Adam Block, lead observer, Betty Peterson and Mel Peterson were the photographers. This picture was processed using LRGB color production with exposures of 48 minutes for the luminance (greyscale), 10 minutes for the red component, 10 minutes for the green component, and 20 minutes for the blue component. The full size image is 1522 x 1006 pixels. Kitt Peak is the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc. See Astronomy, October, 2000, page 80, for an article on this program by Adam Block.

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I got this from a really neat site about the astronomy program at Augustana College, in Illinois. There were lots of other really cool pictures besides this one. [Click above where the word 'source' is highlighted for the whole page.]

I like to look at big pictures of the universe - it makes you realize that our day-to-day trifles are miniscule in the grand scheme of things...hmmm...now that I've gotten all philosophical, I beleive it's time to go off and watch the Twilight Zone before Sarah demands her DVD returned.

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After delving a little further into the site, I found out they have an astronomy picture of the day. Here's a link: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

the sky is falling!

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

- [That's right] Chicken Little

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The moon was full last night or the one before that, and it was really golden-orange. The problem I was having was that in order to get a long enough exposure to be able to make it out, I had to sit still for that long. I was sitting in the middle of a feild of dew-covered winter wheat, in the dark, and freezing cold. On this first one, it actually had a pretty interesting effect. Instead of a shooting star I supposed it was a shooting moon. I kind of like it, even though it's not what I was going for.

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I finally did get a decent picture, but the moon was the only discernible thing in the whole picture. You couldn't see the trees or anything. I suppose I'll try again another time...

bookends

This is June and Riley in our den, napping. I think they look like bookends.

We have three dogs. Raven is the other and she was outside when I took this. Lots of times, they all sleep there together.

I took lots of pictures of them sitting there like that. I think it's really cute.

...and I quote...

I love quotes. These are some that manage to stick with you...

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"Yes, ma'am - I am drunk. But in the morning, I'll be sober and you'll still be ugly." -W.C. Fields

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"Some are born greaat, others achieve greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them." -William Shakespeare in Twelfth Night

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"Ignornace more commonly begots confidence than intelligence." -Charles Darwin

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"It must of really been worth hearing about if it was too awful to mention." -Olive Anne Burns in Cold Sassy Tree

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"Without music, life would be a mistake." -Freidrich Nietzche

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"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today; it's already tomorrow in Australia." -Charles Schultz

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"When they give you ruled paper, write the other way." -Juan Ramon Jimenez

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"No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is not try." -Yoda in Star Wars by George Lucas

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"Don't be so humble, you're not that great." -Golda Mier

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"My one regret in life is that I'm not somebody else." -Woody Allen

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"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." -Mark Twain

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"The world is but a canvas to our imaginations." -Henry David Thoreau

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"Happiness isn't getting what you want, it's wanting what you got." -Garth Brooks

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"Give me a museum and I'll fill it." -Pablo Picasso

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"Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted." -John Lennon

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"Feminism is a way for ugly women to get into the mainstream of America." -Rush Limbaugh

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If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it." -W.C. Fields

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"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than to be crowded on a velvet cushion." -Henry David Thoreau

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"The cup of life is for him that drinks, not for him that sips." -Robert Louis Stevenson

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In three words I can sum up everything about life: it goes on." -Robert Frost

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"Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." -George Bernard Shaw

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"To be positive: to be mistaken at the top of one's voice." -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

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"We know what we are, but we know not what we may be." -William Shakespeare, Hamlet

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"Someday we'll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car." -Evan Davis

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"Get your facts first. Ten you can distort them as much as you please." -Mark Twain

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"It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it." -Mark Twain

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"I gloat! Hear me gloat!" -Rudyard Kipling

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A sufficient start...but not even the beginning of all of them that I have.

the same sun

It always gets me that every time you see the sun, it's different, but the very same...ah, the complexities...I love to take pictures of the sun in all different places, and probably take one of every sunset and most sunrises. This is one of my favorites since the last time I posted pictures of the sun. I took a lot more at the same time as this one, but they're all a lot the same. I often find myself taking about twenty pictures of the same sunset. Once I printed them all from one day and it was like one of those cartoons where you can flip the pages and see it like it's actually happening. I still have them in a book so you can flip and see them in rapid succession.

[Above: A picture of a recent sunrise off our back porch; the sillhouette of our dinner bell. Yes, we have a dinner bell.]

are you there? no.

When I was doing the post on last words, I was reading about Ambrose Bierce and his disappearance. I've always thought that disappearances are very odd (and quite depressing) but here are some notable ones from througout history.

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[Note: all of the following have an article or more on Wikipedia. That's were I got my info...]

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The Princes in the Tower
These were two illegitamate sons of Edward IV of England and Elizabeth Woodville. Their names were Edward V of England (1470–1483?) and Richard of Shrewsbury, first duke of York (1473–1483?), and they were placed in the Tower of London in 1483. Nothing was heard of them after that.
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John Cabot
John Cabot was an Italian explorer. He is often noted as the first modern European to discover America. He, along with 4 other ships, dissapeared while trying to go west from Europe to Asia.
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The Corte-Reals

Gaspar Corte-Real was a Portuguese explored who was trying to find a NW passage from Europe to Asia int he early 1500s.
His brother, Miguel Corte-Real was also a Portuguese explorer who disappeared while searching for his brother Gaspar.
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Henry Hudson
Henry Hudson was an English explorer (1570-1611) who was set adrift by fellow crewmen and never heard from again. His widow, Katherine, tried to find him, but there was no trace.
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Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce, an American writer (notably of THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY) very much like Edgar Allan Poe, disappeared in Mexico while travelling. In a letter shortly before his disappearance, he is said to have written:
"Good-by — if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico — ah, that is euthanasia".
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Anastasia
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia and her family were the last of the Romanov autocratic dynasty in Russia (early 1900s). Her family was murdered in 1918 in a house sometimes referred to as "The House of Special Purpose." Some say that she was murdered with her family, while it is also claimed that she survived the executions. In th 1990s, the remains of most of the family were found, but those of Anastatia and her brother Alexei remain missing. Some researchers say they were buried in a "seperate, undisclosed location." This has not been proven and her death remains a mystery.
Her identity was claimed by Anna Anderson, but these claims were found to be false.
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Percy Fawcett
Percy Fawcett was a British archaeologist and explorer who was lost while trying to find a lost city in Brazil. He named this city only "Z". It was supposed to be in the Mato Grosso region of Brazil; the city, Fawcett, and Fawcett's son Jack are still yet to be recovered.
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Felix Moncla and Frederick Valentich
I'm just going to directly quote Wikipedia on this one:

Felix Moncla, Jr was a United States Air Force pilot who disappeared while pursuing an unidentified flying object over Lake Superior in 1953. The Air Force reported that Moncla had crashed and that the "unknown" object was a misidentified Canadian Air Force airplane, but the RCAF disputed this solution, reporting that none of their craft were near the area in question.
This is not the only aircraft disappearance associated with a UFO; over two decades later, Australian Frederick Valentich vanished after reporting an unusual object near his small plane.

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Roanoke Island - The Lost Colony
Roanoke Island was an early American settlement in what is now NC. [The Outer Banks region] The city appeared abandoned and its occupants gone without a trace.

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For more click below: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_disappeared

poe...the sequel

That's right...I'm blogging on Edgar Allan Poe again. I recently bought a book at Barnes and Noble that had the "Essential Poe" and his biography (about 100 pages) at the beginning. It's a huge book - about 800 pages. The first section is poetry...and these were some of my favorite poems. You can definitely tell a huge difference between the poems he wrote earlier and the poems he wrote after the death of his wife, Virginia Clemm. After she died of TB, life got darker for Poe.

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Anyhow, here are some of my favorites.

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The first one is "The Sleeper." It's kind of creepy, but in a mystical way.

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THE SLEEPER
by Edgar Allan Poe

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!- and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies! -
O, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully- so fearfully-
Above the closed and fringed lid
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness! -
The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by! -
My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold-
Some vault that oft has flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals-
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone-
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within. - -
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This next one is one that I quoted in my last post on dearest Edgar..."Is all that we see or seem/but a dream within a dream?" I like this, and it is one of his more familiar and - go figure - one of the brighter, happier ones.

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A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
by Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream. -
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream? - -


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This one is another example of the "comfortable desolation" that I beleive I've mentioned feeling before. "...Yet that terror was not fright/but a tremulous delight..." I like this a lot.

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THE LAKE. TO __
by Edgar Allan Poe
In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around. -
But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody-
Then- ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake. -
Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight-
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define-
Nor Love- although the Love were thine. -
Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining-
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake. - -

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As it's now midnight, I'm off to read some more Poe. Or something like that.

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Note: I got all these poems here because I didn't want to type them. It's a really good site. It probably has about as many short stories and poems as the book I bought. Were I not such a feind for books, I might just read things off the internet.
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let's talk about henrik

In my post about last words, I mentioned those of Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I thought that his picture was entertaining. The only acquaintance I've ever had with him was when I had to read A Doll's House for English I. It was pretty good.
Have a nice day!

Famous Last Words

I have a book that shows the last words of a lot of famous people and I find them quite intriguing...but maybe that's just me. So here are some of my favorites.

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From "Famous Last Words: Fond Farewells, Deathbed Diatribes, and Exclaiations upon Expiration" Compiled by Ray Robinson

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"Am I dying or is this my birthday?" -Lady Astor
"I wish I had drunk more champagne." -John Maynard Keynes
"It’s very beautiful over there." -Thomas Edison
"I’ve never felt better." -Douglas Fairbanks
"On the contrary!" -Henrik Ibsen [when his wife said he’d get better]

NOTE: I love the picture of Henrik Ibsen on the link above.
"Death is nothing, nor life either, for that matter. To die, to sleep, to pass into nothingness, what does it matter? Everything is an illusion." -Mata Hari
"They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist-." -General John Sedgwick [of Confederate sharpshooters on faraway ridge]
"[Tell them] that I loved to draw. Then go home." -Edgar Degas [instructions for his funeral]
"Drink to me!" -Pablo Picasso
"What have I lived for?" -Lorenz Hart
"Let us cross over the river and sit under the shade of the trees." -Stonewall Jackson
"My dear, before you kiss me good-bye, fix your hair. It’s a mess." -George Kelly
"I wish the whole human race had one neck and I had my hands around it." -Carl Panzram
"As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination." -Ambrose Bierce [before disappearing]
"More light!" -Johann Wolfgang von Geothe
"Curtain! Fast music! Light! Ready for the last finale! Great! The show looks good! The show looks good!" -Florenz Ziegfeld.
"Lift me up, for I am dying. Don’t be frightened. Thank God it has come." -John Keats
"All my possessions for a moment of time." -Elizabeth I
"I’m tired of fighting. I guess this thing is going to get me." -Harry Houdini
"sister, you’re trying to keep me alive as an old curiosity. But I’m done, I’m finished, I’m going to die." -George Bernard Shaw
"God, don’t let me die. I have so much to do." -Huey Long
"What an artist the world is losing in me." -Nero
"There’s fun in the air." -Maurice Chevalier
"Goodnight my darlings, I’ll see you tomorrow." -Noel Coward
"Dear world, I’m leaving you because I’m bored. I’m leaving you with your worries. Good luck." -George Sanders
"I shall hear in heaven!" -Ludwig van Beethoven [other sources say his last words were "Friends, applaud. The comedy is over.]
"Goodbye, I’ll see you in heaven." -John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
"I have just had 18 whiskeys in a row. I do believe that is a record." -Dylan Thomas
"Cool it, brothers." -Malcolm X
"I want nothing but death." -Jane Austen
"I paint as a means to make life bearable. Don’t weep. What I have done is best for all of us. No use, I shall never be rid of this depression." -Vincent van Gogh
"Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!" -Karl Marx
"I had it all, I did it all, I loved it all." -Sid Luckman
"I do not have to forgive my enemies. I have had them all shot." -Ramon Maria Narvaez
"I’m losin’." -Frank Sinatra
"I die happy!" -Charles James Fox
"Wait a second." -Madame de Pompadour
"It has all been very interesting." -Lady Marot Worthy Mantagu
"Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something." -Pancho Villa

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