07 January 2010
quest...
***
Every writing career starts
as a personal quest for sainthood,
for self-betterment.
Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon,
a writer discovers the pen accomplishes
a lot more than the soul.
~Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky...
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Joseph Brodsky | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky 24 May 1940 Leningrad, Russia, USSR |
| Died | 28 January 1996 (aged 55) New York City, New York, USA |
| Occupation | Poet, essayist |
| Nationality | Russian - American |
| Ethnicity | Russian Jew |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Notable award(s) | Nobel Prize in Literature (1987) Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Award (1991) |
| Spouse(s) | Maria Sozzani (1990-1996) |
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (Russian: Ио́сиф Алекса́ндрович Бро́дский) (24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Soviet-Russian-American poet, essayist, and Nobel Laureate in Literature.
He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1991.[1]
Contents |
Biography
Early years
Brodsky was born into a Jewish family in Leningrad, the son of a professional photographer in the Soviet Navy.
In early childhood he survived the Siege of Leningrad.
When he was fifteen, Brodsky left school and tried to enter the School of Submariners without success.
He went on to work as a milling machine operator.
Later, having decided to become a physician, he worked at a morgue at the Kresty prison.
He subsequently held a variety of jobs at a hospital, in a ship's boiler room, and on geological expeditions.
At the same time, Brodsky engaged in a program of self-education.
He learned English and Polish (mainly to translate poems by Czesław Miłosz, who was Brodsky's favorite poet and a friend), and acquired a deep interest in classical philosophy, religion, mythology, and English and American poetry.
Later in life, he admitted he picked up books from anywhere he could find them, including garbage dumps.
Career
Brodsky began writing his own poetry and producing literary translations around 1957.
His writings were apolitical.
The young Brodsky was encouraged and influenced by the poet Anna Akhmatova who called some of his verses "enchanting."[2]
In 1963, he was arrested and in 1964 charged with parasitism by the Soviet authorities.
A famous excerpt from the transcript of his trial made by journalist Frida Vigdorova was smuggled to the West:
- Judge: And what is your profession, in general?
- Brodsky: I am a poet and a literary translator.
- Judge: Who recognizes you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?
- Brodsky: No one. Who enrolled me in the ranks of humankind?
- Judge: Did you study this?
- Brodsky: This?
- Judge: How to become a poet. You did not even try to finish high school where they prepare, where they teach?
- Brodsky: I didn’t think you could get this from school.
- Judge: How then?
- Brodsky: I think that it ... comes from God.[3][4]
For his "parasitism" Brodsky was sentenced to five years of internal exile with obligatory engagement in physical work and served 18 months in the Archangelsk region.
His sentence was commuted in 1965 after protests by prominent Soviet and foreign literary figures, including Evgeny Evtushenko, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Jean-Paul Sartre.[2]
In 1964, Leonid Brezhnev came to power. As the Khrushchev Thaw period ended, only four of Brodsky's poems were published in the Soviet Union.
He refused to publish his writings under censorship and most of his work has appeared only in the West or in samizdat form.
Exile
Brodsky was expelled from the USSR on 4 June 1972 and moved to the United States where he was naturalized in 1977.
His first teaching position in the US was at the University of Michigan.
He was Poet-in-Residence and Visiting Professor at Queens College, Smith College, Columbia University, and the Cambridge University in England.
He was a Five-College Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College, brought there by poet and historian Peter Viereck.
In 1978, Brodsky was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Yale University, and on 23 May 1979, he was inducted as a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
In 1981, Brodsky received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's "genius" award.
He is also a recipient of The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence.
In 1986, his collection of essays Less Than One won the National Book Critics Award for Criticism.
In 1987, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the fifth Russian-born writer to do so.
At an interview in Stockholm airport, to the question: "You are an American citizen who is receiving the Prize for Russian-language poetry.
Who are you, an American or a Russian?", he responded: "I am Jewish - a Russian poet and an English essayist".[5]
Brodsky held an honorary degree from the University of Silesia and was an honorary member of the International Academy of Science.
In 1991, Brodsky became Poet Laureate of the United States. His inauguration address was printed in Poetry Review.
Ideas
A recurring theme in Brodsky's writing is the relationship between the poet and society.
In particular, Brodsky emphasized the power of literature to positively impact its audience and to develop the language and culture in which it is situated.
He suggested the Western literary tradition was in part responsible for the world having overcome the catastrophes of the twentieth century, such as Nazism, Communism and the World Wars.
During his term as the Poet Laureate, Brodsky promoted the idea of bringing the Anglo-American poetic heritage to a wider American audience by distributing free poetry anthologies to the public through a government-sponsored program.
This proposal was met with limited enthusiasm in Washington.
Much of Brodsky's writing–particularly his essays such as Less Than One–dabbled in existentialist philosophy.
Personal life
Between 1962 and 1964 Brodsky had a relationship with the artist Marina Basmanova which produced a son Andrey.
Basmanova refused to marry Brodsky and registered the child under her own surname[6].
Brodsky married Maria Sozzani in 1990.
They had one daughter, Anna.
Brodsky died of a heart attack in his New York City apartment on 28 January 1996, and was buried in the Episcopalian section at Isola di San Michele cemetery in Venice, Italy (the setting of his book, Watermark).
A close friend to fellow Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, Brodsky was memorialized in Walcott's poetry collection The Prodigal (pp. 26-27).
Bibliography
Works in English
- Poetry
- 1967: Elegy for John Donne and Other Poems, selected, translated, and introduced by Nicholas William Bethell, London: Longman[7]
- 1968: Velka elegie, Paris: Edice Svedectvi
- 1972: Poems, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis
- 1973: Selected Poems, translated from the Russian by George L. Kline. New York: Harper & Row
- 1977: A Part of Speech[8]
- 1977: Poems and Translations, Keele: University of Keele
- 1980: A Part of Speech, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- 1981: Verses on the Winter Campaign 1980, translation by Alan Myers.–London: Anvil Press
- 1988: To Urania : Selected Poems, 1965-1985, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- 1995: On Grief and Reason: Essays, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- 1996: So Forth : Poems, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- 1999: Discovery, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- 2000: Collected Poems in English, 1972-1999, edited by Ann Kjellberg, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- 2001: Nativity Poems, translated by Melissa Green–New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- Essays
- 1986: Less Than One: Selected Essays, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
- 1992: Watermark, Noonday Press; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- 1996: On Grief and Reason
- Plays
- 1989: Marbles : a Play in Three Acts, translated by Alan Myers with Joseph Brodsky.–New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- 1991 Democracy! in Granta 30 New Europe, translated by Alan Myers and Joseph Brodsky.
- Interviews
- 2003: Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, edited by Cynthia L. Haven. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi Literary Conversations Series.
Works in Russian
- 1965: Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, Washington, D.C. : Inter-Language Literary Associates
- 1970: Ostanovka v pustyne, New York: Izdatel'stvo imeni Chekhova (Rev. ed. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1989)
- 1977: Chast' rechi: Stikhotvoreniia 1972-76, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
- 1977: Konets prekrasnoi epokhi : stikhotvoreniia 1964-71, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
- 1977: V Anglii, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
- 1982: Rimskie elegii, New York: Russica
- 1983: Novye stansy k Avguste : stikhi k M.B., 1962-1982, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
- 1984: Mramor, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
- 1984: Uraniia : novaia kniga stikhov, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
- 1989: Ostanovka v pustyne, revised edition, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1989 (original edition: New York: Izdatel'stvo imeni Chekhova, 1970)
- 1990: Nazidanie : stikhi 1962-1989, Leningrad : Smart
- 1990: Chast' rechi : Izbrannye stikhi 1962-1989, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura
- 1990: Osennii krik iastreba : Stikhotvoreniia 1962-1989, Leningrad: KTP LO IMA Press
- 1990: Primechaniia paporotnika, Bromma, Sweden : Hylaea
- 1991: Ballada o malen'kom buksire, Leningrad: Detskaia literatura
- 1991: Kholmy : Bol'shie stikhotvoreniia i poemy, Saint Petersburg: LP VTPO "Kinotsentr"
- 1991: Stikhotvoreniia, Tallinn: Eesti Raamat
- 1992: Naberezhnaia neistselimykh: Trinadtsat' essei, Moscow: Slovo
- 1992: Rozhdestvenskie stikhi, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta (revised edition in 1996)
- 1992-1995: Sochineniia, Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, 1992-1995, four volumes
- 1992: Vspominaia Akhmatovu / Joseph Brodsky, Solomon Volkov, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta
- 1992: Forma vremeni : stikhotvoreniia, esse, p'esy, Minsk: Eridan, two volumes
- 1993: Kappadokiia.–Saint Petersburg
- 1994: Persian Arrow/Persidskaia strela, with etchings by Edik Steinberg.–Verona: * Edizione d'Arte Gibralfaro & ECM
- 1995: Peresechennaia mestnost ': Puteshestviia s kommentariiami, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta
- 1995: V okrestnostiakh Atlantidy : Novye stikhotvoreniia, Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
- 1996: Peizazh s navodneniem, compiled by Aleksandr Sumerkin.–Dana Point, Cal.: Ardis
- 1996: Rozhdestvenskie stikhi, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta, revised edition of a work originally published in 1992
- 1997: Brodskii o Tsvetaevoi, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta
- 1998: Pis'mo Goratsiiu, Moscow: Nash dom
- 1996 and after: Sochineniia, Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, eight volumes
- 1999: Gorbunov i Gorchakov, Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
- 1999: Predstavlenie : novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow
- 2000: Ostanovka v pustyne, Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
- 2000: Chast' rechi, Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
- 2000: Konets prekrasnoi epokhi, Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
- 2000: Novye stansy k Avguste, Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
- 2000: Uraniia, Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
- 2000: Peizazh s navodneniem, Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
- 2000: Bol'shaia kniga interv'iu, Moscow: Zakharov
- 2001: Novaia Odisseia : Pamiati Iosifa Brodskogo, Moscow: Staroe literaturnoe obozrenie
- 2001: Peremena imperii : Stikhotvoreniia 1960-1996, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta
- 2001: Vtoroi vek posle nashei ery : dramaturgija Iosifa Brodskogo, Saint Petersburg: Zvezda
Essays in Romanian
- 2005: "Cochilia de sidef", translated into romanian and edited by George-Razvan Stoica and Alexandra Mitrea, Sibiu, University Press.
Footnotes
- ^ "Poet Laureate Timeline: 1981-1990". Library of Congress. 2009. http://www.loc.gov/poetry/laureate-1991-2000.html. Retrieved 2009-01-01.
- ^ a b Timelessness: Water Frees Time from Time Itself. Natalia Zhdanova. 1st August 07. Neva News (St. PETERSBURG FIRST MONTHLY ENGLISH NEWSPAPER). Last visited Jan. 11, 2009. NevaNews.com
- ^ Судья: А вообще какая ваша специальность? Бродский
- ^ Cissie Dore Hill (trans.)Remembering Joseph Brodsky. Hoover Institution
- ^ Works and Days. A Jew or a Hellene? chapter by Simon Markish
- ^ http://www.nevanews.com/index.php?id_article=666§ion=13
- ^ "Joseph Brodsky Bibliography". Nobel Foundation. 1987. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1987/brodsky-bibl.html. Retrieved 2009-01-01.
- ^ Robert D. McFadden (29 January 1996). "Joseph Brodsky, Exiled Poet Who Won Nobel, Dies at 55". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F07E6DE1039F93AA15752C0A960958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print. Retrieved 2009-01-01.
References
- Труды и Дни (Works and Days, 1998) Edited by Pyotr Veil and Lev Losev
- Строфы века. Антология русской поэзии (Verses of the Century, 1995) Edited by Evgeny Evtushenko
- Biografía y poemas en español de Joseph Brodsky
External links
 | Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Joseph Brodsky |
- Literary Encyclopedia
- biographical information about Brodsky
- Short Biography
- (Russian) Brodsky: biography, photos, poems, critical essays
- (Russian) Some prose and essays by Brodsky
- 21 English poems by Brodsky
- Joseph Brodsky–Biography at Nobelprize.org
- (Russian) Comprehensive site on Brodsky
- (Russian) Interview with Yevgeny Rein giving background on Brodsky's life
- Written in Stone - Burial locations of literary figures.
- Finding aid for the Joseph Brodsky Papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
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Categories: 1940 births | 1996 deaths | Russian essayists | Russian poets | Russian Nobel laureates | Russian-American Jews | Russian-American writers | Soviet dissidents | American Poets Laureate | American poets | Burials at Isola di San Michele | Deaths from myocardial infarction | Fellows of Clare Hall, Cambridge | Jewish American writers | Jewish poets | MacArthur Fellows | Mount Holyoke College faculty | Naturalized citizens of the United States | Nobel laureates in Literature | People from Saint Petersburg | Translators from Polish | Russian immigrants to the United States
lightroom...
Adobe Lightroom...
Adobe Lightroom is an imaging software excellent for keeping track of large numbers of photos, and also provides an extensive range of processing and manipulation functions.
I'm working on version 2.3 as I write this; 3.0 beta was just released.
The program's broken into five intuitively designed modules: Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, Web.
Making web galleries is ridiculously easy, and printing is much more intuitive in Lightroom than Photoshop (at least CS2, my current version).
Now that there are graduated filters and advanced cloning/spot removal in Lightroom, I only do really serious retouching in Photoshop.
I'm not sure if it's as useful for processing jpegs as it is RAW files (I don't shoot jpegs), but the RAW converter is comprehensive and a pleasure to use.
The keywording and metadata functions are great for retrieval, and you also have the option of duplicating everything you import from your CF/SD cards onto a second drive for instant backup. It also converts RAW files directly to DNG (best for long-term storage) upon import, if you choose.
Lightroom's one of my all-time favorite pieces of software. I don't enjoy the pixel pushing aspect of photography a fraction as much as I enjoy taking pictures, but it's less painful with Lightroom.
I haven't used its main competitor, Aperture, but have been told by friends who've used both Aperture doesn't offer image manipulation capabilities on par with Lightroom.
Available from Amazon
Made by Adobe
clash...
Egyptian Christians clash with police after Christmas murders...
1 hour, 28 minutes ago
CAIRO (AFP) - Clashes erupted on Thursday as thousands of Coptic Christians in a southern Egyptian village buried six of their number, gunned down on Coptic Christmas Eve, by men believed to be Muslims, security officials said.
Officials and the local bishop said three men in a car had raked pedestrians with gunfire along a street containing two churches and a shopping precinct, late Wednesday.
Bishop Kirilos said the victims were people who had just emerged from church after attending a Christmas Eve service, and the proximity of the shopping area might have drawn some of them to it.
Six Copts and a Muslim policeman were killed, while at least nine more Copts were wounded, two of them seriously, a security official said.
The wounded were evacuated to hospital in the nearby governorate of Sohag. Related article: Italy condemns Egyptian attacks.
An estimated 5,000 Copts attended Thursday's funeral in Nagaa Hammadi, 40 miles (65 kilometres) from the popular tourist city of Luxor.
Police said a group of protesters stoned cars as the dead were buried, and police responded with tear gas.
The demonstrators chanted: "With our spirit and blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for the Cross."
They said Copts earlier stoned police cars, and the hospital where the bodies of the six dead were held before the service, chanting: "No to repression."
Security sources said sporadic trouble continued after the funerals.
An initial investigation into Wednesday's shooting reported that the gunmen opened fire as they sped along the street, killing and wounding people over a distance of 400 metres (yards).
As the car headed out of town, the gunmen fired at a convent, which also housed the bishop's offices, before fleeing to a rural area near the town in Qena province, 700 kilometres (435 miles) south of Cairo.
Copts celebrate Christmas on 07 January, along with many other Orthodox communities around the world.
Bishop Kirilos told AFP on Thursday he saw gunmen spraying worshippers with automatic gunfire outside the archbishopric after the mass ended the previous night.
"We concluded the mass at 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) and I was heading to the bishopric when I saw a man, in a car, open fire with an automatic rifle at Copts who were walking past the building," Kirilos said in a phone interview.
"The gunman then continued to fire on Copts in the streets of the town," he said.
"People are angry and very worried."
The bishop said the "author of this crime has a police record and should have been arrested" for past crimes, but is under the protection of prominent figures close to the ruling National Democratic Party.
Witnesses, cited by local officials, earlier said the main gunman is a Muslim wanted by police, and linked the shooting to the abduction of a 12-year-old Muslim girl in November, who was allegedly raped by a Coptic youth.
"The first elements of the investigation, based on testimony of people on the ground, indicate the main shooter is a town resident, identified as Mohammed Ahmed Hussein, wanted by the police," one official said.
Kirilos also told AFP for the past week some of his parishioners had received cell phone hate calls and threats alleging Muslims "will avenge the rape of the girl during the Christmas celebrations."
Copts, who represent under 10 percent of Egypt's 80-million population, are the largest Christian community in the Middle East, but they frequently complain of discrimination, harassment, and sectarian attacks.
In November, hundreds of Muslim protesters torched Christian-owned shops in the town of Farshut, near Nagaa Hammadi, and attacked a police station where they believed the suspected rapist was being held.
It was latest in a wave of sectarian tension between Muslims and Egypt's Copts.
On Wednesday, the head of the Coptic minority, Pope Shenuda III, led a Christmas midnight mass at the Abbassiya church in Cairo, which was attended by thousands of worshipers, including President Hosni Mubarak's son, and heir apparent, Gamal.
Gamal Mubarak (front row-3rd L) , son of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, attends the Coptic Christmas midnight mass, celebrated along with Orthodox communities across the world, at the Abbassiya catherdral in Cairo.
Clashes erupted as thousands of Coptic Christians gathered in a southern Egyptian town to bury six of their number gunned down on Coptic Christmas Eve by men believed to be Muslims. Photo:/AFP
dementia help?
Mobile phone use may stave off, reverse Alzheimer's: study...
07 Jan '10
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Long suspected of causing brain tumors, mobile phones are now being eyed as key allies in the fight against Alzheimer's disease, US researchers said in study.
Researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) found, to their surprise, 96 mice they zapped, twice daily, for an hour each time with electromagnetic waves similar to those generated by US mobile (cellular) phones benefited from the exposure.
Older mice saw deposits of beta-amyloid -- a protein fragment that accumulates in the brain of Alzheimer's sufferers to form the disease's signature plaques -- wiped out, and their memories improved, after long-term exposure to mobile phones, the study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease showed.
Young adult mice with no apparent signs of memory impairment were protected against Alzheimer's disease after several months' exposure to the phone waves, and the memories of normal mice with no genetic predisposition for Alzheimer's disease were boosted after exposure to the electromagnetic waves.
No one was more surprised by the results than the researchers themselves, who had embarked on the tests several years ago, convinced they would show "electromagnetic fields from a cell phone would be deleterious to Alzheimer's mice", lead author Gary Arendash, a USF professor, told AFP.
"When we got our initial results showing a beneficial effect, I thought, 'Give it a few more months and it will get bad for them.'
"It never got bad.
"We just kept getting these beneficial effects, in both the Alzheimer's and normal mice," Arendash said.
It took several months of exposure before the benefits were seen in mice, and that would be the equivalent of many years in humans, Arendash said.
The mice in the study didn't wear tiny headsets, or have scientists holding mobile phones up to their ears.
Instead, their cages were arranged around an antenna that generated a mobile phone signal.
Each animal was housed the same distance from the antenna and exposed to electromagnetic waves equivalent to what is typically emitted by a mobile phone pressed up against a human head.
"Since we selected electromagnetic parameters identical to human cell phone use and tested mice in a task closely analogous to a human memory test, we believe our findings could have considerable relevance to humans," Arendash said.
But William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer's Association, said the study was "very preliminary" and warned against self-medicating by over-using a cell phone.
"No one should feel they are being protected from Alzheimer's, dementia, cognitive decline by using their cell phones based on this study," Thies said in a statement.
The study "needs to be replicated in animals before we begin to even consider trying it in people, as animal models of Alzheimer's and people with the disease are very different," he said.
Arenbach called the Alzheimer?s Association reaction disappointing, and "so negative about a new research area of neuroscience that could offer real benefits against the disease in the future -- especially since a new therapeutic approach is desperately needed and long overdue."
The researchers concurred more research is needed to find out, among other things, what the optimal "dosage" of electromagnetic waves would be -- the 918 megaHerz in US mobile phones, 800 megaHerz in European phones, or another frequency -- and how long effective "treatment" would have to be.
"If we can determine the best set of electromagnetic parameters to effectively prevent beta-amyloid aggregation and remove pre-existing beta amyloid deposits from the brain, this technology could be quickly translated to human benefit against Alzheimer's disease," said USF professor Chuanhai Cao.
The new therapy could also be used to treat one of the invisible injuries suffered by soldiers in war, Cao said.
"Since production and aggregation of beta-amyloid occurs in traumatic brain injury, particularly in soldiers during war, the therapeutic impact of our findings may extend beyond Alzheimer's disease," he said.
Around 36 million people will be living with dementia this year, according to international umbrella group, Alzheimer's Disease International.
Pentagon officials have said that up to 360,000 US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan may have suffered brain injuries.
Fact file on Alzheimer's disease.
Long suspected of causing brain tumors, mobile phones are now being eyed as key allies in the fight against Alzheimer's disease, US researchers said in study. Photo:/AFP
Mini 273...
***
Deluded...
With the breakup of her marriage two hours past, Dina collapsed into a fetal position at the water's edge, having exhausted herself running the whole time along the beach where they had first met, seemingly but a few moments ago, rather than the actual nine years.
With the tide coming in, she no longer cared.
~2010 laughingwolf
*****
level...
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love/folly...
Love... And Folly [*]
Love bears a world of mystery—His arrows, quiver, torch, and infancy:
It's not a trifling work to sound
A sea of science so profound:
And, hence, explain it all today
Is not my aim; but, in my simple way,
To show how that blind archer lad
(And he a god!) came by the loss of sight,
And eke what consequence the evil had,
Or good, perhaps, if named aright—
A point I leave the lover to decide,
As fittest judge, who has the matter tried.
Together on a certain day,
Said Love and Folly were at play:
The former yet enjoyed his eyes.
Dispute arose. Love thought it wise
Before the council of the gods to go,
Where both of them by birth held stations;
But Folly, in her lack of patience,
Dealt on his forehead such a blow
As sealed his orbs to all the light of heaven.
Now Venus claimed that vengeance should be given.
And by what force of tears yourselves may guess
The woman and the mother sought redress.
The gods were deafened with her cries—
Jove, Nemesis, the stern assize
Of Orcus,—all the gods, in short,
From whom she might the boon extort.
The enormous wrong she well portrayed—
Her son a wretched groper made,
An ugly staff his steps to aid!
For such a crime, it would appear,
No punishment could be severe:
The damage, too, must be repaired.
The case maturely weighed and cast,
The public weal with private squared:
Poor Folly was condemned at last,
By judgment of the court above,
To serve for aye as guide to Love.[^]
[*] It is thought de La Fontaine owed somewhat of his idea of this fable to one of the poems of Louise Labbe, "the beautiful ropemaker", as she was called, who lived between 1526 and 1566.
[^] This fable was first published in the collection of the "Works in Prose, and Verse of the Sieurs Maucroix and de La Fontaine", issued by the joint authors in 1685.
See, for M. de Maucroix, note to Fable 1, Book 3.
~Jean de la Fontaine
06 January 2010
murdered?
Florida lottery winner vanishes; sheriff suspects he was killed...
06 Jan '10
By Tamara Lush, The Associated Press
LAKELAND, Fla. - In 2006, Abraham Shakespeare - a truck driver's assistant who lived with his mother - won $30 million in the Florida lottery.
His good fortune may have cost him his life.
Shakespeare vanished, months ago.
His mother hopes he is somewhere in the Caribbean, lying on a beach and enjoying the good life, away from all the hangers-on who were constantly hitting him up for money.
The sheriff has a more ominous theory: Shakespeare was killed.
"There are a lot of odd and bizarre circumstances in this case," Sheriff Grady Judd said.
"We fear and are preparing for the worst.
"We're working this case as if it were a homicide."
Shakespeare, 43, won the big jackpot after buying a lottery ticket at a convenience store in a town called Frostproof, claiming later he gave the last $3 in his pocket to a homeless man, just before the winning numbers were announced.
Shakespeare - who had a criminal record that included arrests and prison time for burglary, battery, and not paying child support - took a lump-sum payment of $16.9 million instead of annual instalments.
He bought a Nissan Altima, a Rolex from a pawn shop, a $1 million home in a gated community.
He talked about starting a foundation for the poor, and insisted the money wouldn't change him.
"I'm not a material person," he said in 2007.
"I don't let material things run me.
"I'm on a tight budget."
The money quickly caused him problems.
A former co-worker sued him in 2007, accusing Shakespeare of stealing the winning ticket from him.
Six months later, a jury ruled the ticket was Shakespeare's.
Then there were the people constantly asking him for a piece of his fortune.
"They didn't wait.
"They just came, right after they found out he won this money," his mother, Elizabeth Walker, said recently.
She said her son was generous, paying for funerals, lending money to friends starting businesses, even giving a million dollars to a guy known only as "Big Man".
Not long after he bought the million-dollar home in early 2007, he was approached by a woman named Dee Dee Moore, said family and officials.
Moore - who could not be reached by The Associated Press - said she was interested in writing a book about Shakespeare's life.
She became something of a financial adviser to Shakespeare, who never graduated high school.
Property records show that Moore's company, American Medical Professionals, bought Shakespeare's home for $655,000 last January.
His mother said the last time she saw him was shortly afterward, around her birthday in February.
The sheriff said the last time anyone saw Shakespeare was in April - but it wasn't until 09 Nov. that he was reported missing, by a police informant.
And the story gets more bizarre.
According to the Ledger of Lakeland, the 37-year-old Moore contacted reporters at the newspaper in April, saying Shakespeare was "laying low" because people tried to suck money out of him.
That made sense to Shakespeare's mother - sort of.
"I remember once, talking with me over the phone, he said he might go to Jamaica," she said.
On 05 Dec., a sobbing Moore told the Ledger she helped Shakespeare disappear, but now wants him to return, because detectives were searching her home and car, looking for blood on her belongings.
One reason he wanted to leave, she said, was a child-support case for a child he allegedly fathered after winning the lottery.
"Abraham sold me his mess to get a better life," she told the paper.
She even gave the paper a video she said she took of Abraham.
In the video, he says he is tired of people asking him for money.
"They don't take 'no' for an answer," he says.
"So, where you wanna go to?" Moore asks in the video.
"It don't matter to me.
"I'm not a picky person," Shakespeare replies.
Moore told the paper she took the video to "protect herself".
Moore said she filed paperwork to take over five mortgages totaling about $370,000 owed to Shakespeare.
She said she sold the loans at a loss to another person.
She added, many of the people who borrowed from Shakespeare have refused to pay, and she felt threatened by some of them.
Moore's past includes a year of probation, after she was charged with falsely reporting she was carjacked and raped, in 2001.
Officials said she concocted the scheme so her insurance company would reimburse her for the SUV, which she claimed had been stolen.
The woman did not answer several calls placed to a number listed for her in public records.
During a recent visit to the home she bought from Shakespeare, a security box rang to a phone number that had been disconnected.
Sheriff's officials won't comment on Moore's involvement in Shakespeare's life.
The sheriff said Shakespeare spent the bulk of his lottery winnings.
The fact he didn't call his mother on Christmas reinforces the theory Shakespeare is not just hiding, Judd said.
"I hope so much he is alive, somewhere," said his mother.
"I want people to know, if they ever win the lottery, I hope they know how to handle the people that come after them.
"They can be dangerous."
Copyright © 2010 Canadian Press
jason evans' contest...
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
"Silhouette" Short Fiction Contest
Welcome to the 12th Clarity of Night Contest!! Before the post-holiday doldrums gain a foothold, let's get a little juiced up, shall we?
Here's how the contest works. Using the photograph above for inspiration, compose a short fiction (or poetry) piece of no more than 250 words in any genre or style. Send your entry to me by email at jevanswriter at yahoo dot com before 11:00 p.m., Wednesday, January 13th (Eastern Time, United States). I'd prefer attachments formatted in Microsoft Word (please see the format request below), but if you have something more exotic, you can paste the text into the body of an email (no docx formats, please). Each entry will be posted and indexed.
Now for the goodies. The following prizes are up for grabs:
- 1st Place: $50 Amazon gift certificate
- 2nd Place: $30 Amazon gift certificate
- 3rd Place: $25 Amazon gift certificate
- 4th Place: $20 Amazon gift certificate
- 5th Place: $15 Amazon gift certificate
- Readers' Choice Award 1st Place: $25 Amazon Gift certificate
But this is about more than prizes. I hope you take advantage of the opportunity to meet and interact with your fellow writers. Our different perspectives, styles, and skills shine when we all start at the same place. It's a great opportunity to learn from each other.
Rules:
- 250 words maximum.
- Titles are optional, but encouraged. Titles do not count toward your word count.
- One entry per person.
- Any genre or style is welcome. If you choose to submit poetry, you must have narrative movement within the poem if you wish to compete with the prose pieces for the prizes.
- The copyright remains with you, the author; however, you grant me worldwide first electronic publishing rights to post your entry on this blog indefinitely.
- Judging will be conducted by me, Jason Evans. For an explanation of the judging criteria and scoring system, see A Note on Judging. You can also read the winning entries from past contests.
- Please provide a name for your byline. If you have a website or a blog, I'd be happy to link your site to your byline. If you don't have a website or blog, feel free to include a short bio. A bio does not count towards your word count.
- At the close of the contest, I will give the date and time for the announcement of winners.
- After the winners are announced, I will post what I liked most about each entry in the comments.
- The Readers' Choice Award is awarded by vote of the contest participants. The entry with the highest number of votes wins. The rules for this portion of the contest will be posted after the entry period closes.
- Public critiques in comments are encouraged, but must remain respectful. I reserve the right to delete comments and ban participants who do not abide by the collegial spirit of Clarity of Night contests.
- For prior contests and their results, see the links on the sidebar.
Format Request:
These are not rules, and I will not reject an entry which does not conform, but if you follow them, my work in running the contest is much less. For that, I will be eternally grateful!
- Single space lines, and double space paragraph breaks.
- No tabs or indents for new paragraphs.
- If you have italics in your text, please code it for html by putting a begin italics code <> where it starts and an end italics code < /i > where it ends.
- Although it's rarely used, handle bold <>< /b > and underline <>< /u > the same way.
- Write your title at the top of the document left justified in title case (first letters capitalized). On the next line write your byline left justified (example, by Jason Evans). Add two blank lines, then begin your story.
Welcome to this latest contest! Entries will be posted starting January 6th.
Help spread the word!
american gold!
U.S. captures gold at junior hockey championship with 6-5 OT win over Canada...
SASKATOON - The United States beat Canada at its own game to win the 2010 world junior hockey championship and foil the host team's bid to make history.
A smaller, younger, less experienced American team than in previous years, but one with teamwork and trust in each other, to complement its speed, edged Canada 6-5 in overtime Tuesday.
John Carlson ended Canada's hopes of winning a record sixth straight gold medal in this tournament with a wrist shot at 4:21 of overtime, after the Canadians had scored twice late in the third period to tie it.
Canada's Jordan Eberle rea…
The Canadian Press - 06 Jan '10
The Canadian Press - 06 Jan '10
"We played Canadian hockey," said U.S. coach, Dean Blais.
"We played gritty.
"We learned from the best.
"It's not an accident you guys have won five straight gold medals."
Carlson, on loan to the U.S. team by his American Hockey League team in Hershey, scored twice in the game.
"He's one special player.
"Keep your eyes on him," U.S. captain Derek Stepan said of Carlson.
"He's going to be in the NHL for a long time."
The U.S. got some revenge for a 5-4 shootout loss against Canada on New Year's Eve that gave the hosts a bye to the semifinals.
The Americans also led that game by two goals before allowing Canada to send it to overtime.
Tuesday's final was the first between the two countries since 2004, when the U.S. came from behind to beat Canada in Helsinki [pronounced HELsinggi... not hellSINKY], Finland, for the Americans' first gold medal in the tournament.
Canada had won it every year after that until Tuesday.
"It's unfortunate we didn't get to make history," Canadian forward Taylor Hall said.
"It's unfortunate, and not something we're proud of."
New York Rangers prospect, Chris Kreider, Vancouver Canucks draft pick, Jordan Schroeder, Toronto Maple Leafs property, Jerry D'Amigo, and Stepan, also a Rangers draft pick, had the other goals for the U.S.
The Americans had underachieved in this tournament in recent years with bigger names and more first-round NHL draft picks in the lineup.
Tuesday's win was the second international hockey victory in as many nights for the U.S. after its under-17 team beat Ontario 2-1 in the final of the World Under-17 Challenge.
The U.S. junior team held a selection camp prior to this tournament for the first time instead of following its usual habit of naming 22 players to its team.
Canada has held selection camps for decades and the practice seemed to help the U.S. as they played a cohesive team game in this tournament, and had the nerve to pull out the most important win.
"I didn't want a bunch of fancy Dans who wouldn't play both ends and were cocky and arrogant and I didn't have that team," Blais said.
"We picked guys with good character and yeah, we got a few breaks, but win or lose, I think we had the right guys here."
Canada's streak of five gold nearly ended during each of the last three tournaments, but they've managed to keep the run alive.
They nearly did it again with Jordan Eberle, of the Regina Pats, scoring twice in the final three minutes to tie the game and force a 20-minute overtime.
Luke Adam, of the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles, and Windsor Spitfires teammates Greg Nemisz and Hall, also scored for Canada in front of a disappointed sellout crowd of 15,171 at Credit Union Centre.
Eberle was largely responsible for keeping Canada's drive for five titles alive in Ottawa last year.
He scored with five seconds left in the semifinal against Russia, and again in the shootout.
The Edmonton Oilers prospect was named the tournament's most valuable player, but the honor felt hollow to him.
"It was almost tough going into the dressing room before overtime because we were on such a high and we wanted to stay out there and play," Eberle said.
"Overtime, anything can happen.
"A bounce here, they get a three-on-one, and obviously it was a great shot."
Both starting goaltenders had sub-par nights, and were pulled at different points of the game.
Martin Jones, of the Calgary Hitmen, went in for Jake Allen of the Montreal Juniors after the Americans' fifth goal early in the third period.
The U.S. scored when Allen bobbled the puck in front of him, trying to glove it, which gave Stepan enough time to race in and bang it in.
Mike Lee didn't last as long in the U.S. net.
After giving up three goals on seven shots, 17-year-old Jack Campbell replaced him early in the second and was strong the rest of the way with 32 saves.
Canadian forward, Brandon McMillan, played the odd shifts on defense, and Spokane defenseman, Jared Cowen, had a lot more ice time in the absence of Travis Hamonic, of the Moose Jaw Warriors.
Hamonic suffered a shoulder injury late in Canada's 6-1 semifinal win over Switzerland, and was unable to dress for the championship.
"We missed Hamonic, for sure," Canadian head coach Willie Desjardins said.
"He was one of our key defensemen, and certainly a guy we went to quite a bit."
Canada had 21 NHL draft picks, including 10 first-rounders, in a lineup with an average age of 19.4 years.
The hosts were slightly taller and heavier on average than their opponent, who featured 15 draft picks (five first-rounders) and had an average age of 18.5.
Canada had to settle for matching its record of five straight titles set between 1993 and 1997.
Eberle, who passed John Tavares as Canada's all-time leading goalscorer in the tournament, with 14, was named the tournament's top forward.
St Louis Blues defeneman, Alex Pietrangelo, earned the same honor for defensemen.
Total attendance for the tournament in Regina and Saskatoon was about 300,000, which was short of the record of 453,282 set last year in Ottawa.
Vancouver, which hosted games at GM Place and Pacific Coliseum in 2006, drew 374,353.
The 2011 world junior hockey championship will be held in Buffalo, N.Y., before returning to Canada in 2012, when it will be jointly hosted by Calgary and Edmonton.
Notes: Sweden hammered Switzerland 11-4 for the bronze medal Tuesday …
Canada is 27-6-3 all-time versus the U.S. at the world junior hockey championship …
Benjamin Conz of Switzlerand was named the tournament's best goalie.
Carlson and Stepan of the U.S. and Swiss forward Nino Niederreiter of the Portland Winter Hawks joined him on the all-star team …
Austria and Latvia were relegated to the world 'B' junior championship.
Sweden won the bronze, defeating the Swiss earlier in the day.
Mini 272...
***
Cyborg...
Christopher was aptly named, he discovered, when brought back to life following a horrendous motorcycle crash, explosion and fire, though at times he thought perhaps Lazarus would be more becoming, considering the alternative on an alien planet where his species was unknown.
To his delight, they'd used both shuttlecraft and motorbike parts in his reconstruction.
~2010 laughingwolf
*****
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