Increasing Your Odds for Survival in the Animal Kingdom

My three-year-old niece

Wants me to draw her favorite

Animal—a wolf—so I draw a wolf;

That’s nice, she says, and then asks me

To draw a boy and a girl,

So I draw a boy and a girl.

Looking at the pair and pursing her lips

In thought, she then asks me if I could please

Draw them holding swords, just in case

Her favorite is thinking

Nasty thoughts.

Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City

No lyric poetry here, just pure Ionian tragedy:

By Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, Newmark Press, N.Y., 1998 (Second reprint of Faber edition, London, 1972).

After reading the introduction and the closing chapter here, get the book and see for yourself how little has changed in the world of diplomacy.

Reprise

sun

rise,

re

mind

us

we

still

have

one

more

reprieve.

New Year's Day, 2011: Out with the Old, In with the New One(s)

Spring, 1984 at the fountain in the mountain village of Kefalovryssi, Messenias—about 40 minutes north of Meligalas: Eleni 22, Efiniki 3, and Tasso 1, the old man in the background departing the scene? Old enough to know what it was like to be that young.

Giving and Receiving The Gift of Poetry

"I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.”

—Antonio Porchia, Voices.

Thank you Annie for reminding us of those who left us in 2010.