#MelvilleMonday "I took the fairy-mountain's bearings […] and away I sailed, free voyager as an autumn leaf. Early dawn; and, sallying westward, I sowed the morning before me." - Herman Melville, The Piazza (1856) Mount Greylock, Berkshire County, Massachusetts (📷 National Park Service).

#MelvilleMonday "Browse, they did not—the enchanted never eat. At least, so says Don Quixote, that sagest sage that ever lived." - The Piazza (1856)

More snow today❄️ "If you walk through a grove of balsam trees You will notice that the young trees are silent; they are listening. But the old tall ones—especially the firs—are whispering." - Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

L'ENVOl, from Bar-Room Ballads by Robert W. Service (aka "The Bard of the Yukon") "I've come to know that storing health Is better far than storing wealth; That smug success has little worth Beside the simple joys of earth; [+] 🎨Northern Lights (1891) by Theodor Severin Kittelsen.

"And through it all, with a serenity and certitude that was terrifying, continued to rise the form of that monster of the ages, the Oligarchy." - Jack London, c. 1908

#TodaysPoem 🕊️ Each that we lose takes part of us; A crescent still abides, Which like the moon, some turbid night, Is summoned by the tides. - Emily Dickinson

"Times have changed since Christ's day. A rich man to-day who gives all he has to the poor is crazy. There is no discussion. Society has spoken." - Jack London, c. 1908

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 "We carry our fresh air with us, wherever we go. He who has it, has it anywhere — nothing can rob him of it." - Walt Whitman From my wife's walk:

"His spirit was too gentle. It had not been mighty enough to face the organized wolf-pack of society." - Jack London (Ch. XII, The Bishop) [+]

"You've merely got a foretaste of the Iron Heel." - Chapter X, The Vortex

Some relief today from the recent bitter cold... From my wife's walk:

#MelvilleMonday "And beauty is like piety—you cannot run and read it; tranquillity and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed." - Melville, The Piazza (1856) [+]

#MelvilleMonday For how, otherwise, could it have entered the builder's mind, that, upon the clearing being made, such a purple prospect would be his! — nothing less than Greylock, with all his hills about him, like Charlemagne among his peers. - The Piazza Mount Greylock, 1873, by Jesse Talbot.

#haiku #insomnia 🌜🕵🏻‍♂️ ~Three A.M. with Quinn Martin~ Wide ties, big iron too - Bill Conrad, Buddy Ebsen Polyester in baby blue

From the last snowstorm . . . angle of repose

When I drain life's glass Of all its rainbow gleams, The hapless plight of eternal night Shall be none too long for my dreams. - Jack London, c. 1908 [+]

@yoonkim.bsky.social : So kind of you.🫶

"In Soapy's opinion the Law was more benign than Philanthropy. […] As Cæsar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition." - O. Henry, c. 1904

Under a frosted canopy...gazing back in time From my wife's walk:

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 Most works are most beautiful without ornament. - Walt Whitman, c. 1855

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 "You know how I shy at problems, duties, consciences: you seem to like to trip me with your pertinent impertinences." - Whitman (to confidant and oral biographer, Horace Traubel)

"Your teeth are pulled, gentlemen. Your claws are trimmed. In the day you rise in your strength, toothless and clawless, you will be as harmless as an army of clams." - Jack London, c. 1908

#MelvilleMonday ⚡️ 'Sir,' said I, bowing politely, 'have I the honor of a visit from that illustrious god, Jupiter Tonans? So stood he in the Greek statue of old, grasping the lightning-bolt. If you be he, or his viceroy, I have to thank you for this noble storm you have brewed among our mountains.'

#MelvilleMonday 'Who has empowered you, you Tetzel, to peddle round your indulgences from divine ordinations? The hairs of our heads are numbered, and the days of our lives. […] 'Begone! move quickly! if quickly you can, you that shine forth into sight in moist times like the worm.'

#SundaySentence 🕊️ "I'm too young to live on memories." - Bernard Malamud, c. 1943

"Power will be the arbiter, as it always has been the arbiter. It is a struggle of classes. Just as your class dragged down the old feudal nobility, so shall it be dragged down by my class, the working class." - Jack London, The Iron Heel (1908)

"He smelled frankly of fish, which he loved to eat, and although he was missing a few teeth, his presence was not displeasing, because of an amiable manner curiously contrasted with mournful eyes." - Bernard Malamud, The Magic Barrel (1954)

There's a new world somewhere They call the promised land And I'll be there someday If you will hold my hand... - Tom Springfield "I'll Never Find Another You" by The Seekers, recorded in 1964 at Abbey Road Studios, London. Written and produced by Tom Springfield (brother of Dusty Springfield).

"We know, and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you. Your hearts are hard as your heels with which you tread upon the faces of the poor." - Jack London, 1908 (main protagonist Ernest Everhard, replying to the oligarch) 2/2

"We will grind you revolutionists down under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain." - Jack London, c. 1908 (one of the oligarchs speaking) 1/2

Enjoying the thaw... From my wife's walk today:

"'Do not prettify me: include all the hells and damns,' Whitman instructed Traubel. "And when Traubel read back to Whitman some of what he'd transcribed, […] Whitman replied with satisfaction, 'You do the thing just as I should wish it to be done.' "He had found his very own Boswell." [+]

"Here was a poet of the people for the people, without pretension or pomp, who wrote in a verse form that captured everyday speech, both its fluency and its clank." - Brenda Wineapple, Introduction to Walt Whitman Speaks [+]

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 Each of us inevitable, Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth, Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth, Each of us here as divinely as any is here. - Walt Whitman, c. 1856 [+]

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 "Can any sound man believe in a patriotism that means America alone?" - Walt Whitman, c.1890

"There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief." - Edmund Burke, 1791

Morning is a picture again / With snow-puffed branches / Out of the wind... - Hilda Conkling (from Snow Morning, c. 1917) [+] From my wife's walk yesterday...

From my window...yesterday's flurries.

#MelvilleMonday "For not the beggar chattering at the corner pines more after bread than the vain heart after compliment. The rich in their craving glut, as the poor in their craving want, we have with us always." - Herman Melville, c. 1855

A beautiful little story...

#SundaySentence "I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that even now is beginning to fall across the land; call it the shadow of an oligarchy, if you will." - Jack London, c. 1908

"The people of that age were phrase slaves. There was a magic in words greater than the conjurer's art. So befuddled and chaotic were their minds that the utterance of a single word could negative the generalizations of a lifetime of serious research and thought." - Jack London, c. 1908

In these troubled times...

"Our boasted civilization is based upon blood, soaked in blood, and neither you nor I nor any of us can escape the scarlet stain. […] His blood had not been paid for in order that a larger dividend might be paid." - Jack London, 1908

"They are superficial casuists. […] One of the pleasant and axiomatic fictions they have created is that they are superior to the rest of mankind in wisdom and efficiency. Therefrom comes their sanction to manage the bread and butter of the rest of mankind." - Jack London, c. 1908

Well might I mourn that He was gone, Whose light I hail'd when first it shone, When, breaking forth as nature's own, It showed my youth How Verse may build a princely throne On humble truth. - William Wordsworth AT THE GRAVE OF BURNS, 1803 h/t @lcodonnell.bsky.social 🕯️🫶

#WhitmanWednesday 🌾 "In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection." - Walt Whitman, c. 1892

🕊️ "It's very, very simple: It's the love of people. Add to that, two simple ideals: The freedom of each individual, and the equal importance of each individual, and you have the principle upon which I've based all my films." - Frank Capra

"These, then, were the cool captains of industry and lords of society, these snarling, growling savages in evening clothes." - Jack London, c. 1908

#MelvilleMonday "We may have civilized bodies and yet barbarous souls. We are blind to the real sights of this world; deaf to its voice; and dead to its death." - Herman Melville, Redburn (1849)