…with my students.

New Yorker: An Inspirational Letter to My Students

Terrific piece; wonderful antidote to the “why do I have to” line of questioning.

Yesterday, President Bush quoted the first few sentences of the Gettysburg address:

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

I wish he had continued:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

When they begin proposing that libraries be closed in Philly, I’ll remember this article, particularly these two quotes:

I have been discussing libraries as places and in the current struggle to preserve public libraries not enough stress has been laid on the library as a place not just a facility. To a child living in high flats, say, where space is at a premium and peace and quiet not always easy to find, a library is a haven. But, saying that, a library needs to be handy and local; it shouldn’t require an expedition. Municipal authorities of all parties point to splendid new and scheduled central libraries as if this discharges them of their obligations. It doesn’t. For a child a library needs to be round the corner. And if we lose local libraries it is children who will suffer. Of the libraries I have mentioned the most important for me was that first one, the dark and unprepossessing Armley Junior Library. I had just learned to read. I needed books. Add computers to that requirement maybe but a child from a poor family is today in exactly the same boat.

Of the boys who worked in the reference library a surprising number must have turned out to be lawyers, and I can count at least eight of my contemporaries who sat at those tables in the 1950s who became judges. A school – and certainly a state or provincial school – would consider that something to boast about, but libraries are facilities; a library has no honours board and takes no credit for what its readers go on to do but, remembering myself at 19, on leave from the army and calling up the copies of Horizon to get me through the general paper in the Oxford scholarship, I feel as much a debt to that library as I do to my scho

So I’d been reading Colin a book from my childhood — Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World — and on the inside front cover was a bookplate. I didn’t recognize the handwriting of the person who’d written my name on this plate, but I liked the sketch of Don Quixote and the quote:

“The man who fights for his ideals is the man who is alive.”

Being a historiandork, I wanted to make sure that this was indeed the source of the quote so that I could, well, dorkily put it in my email footer. My researchgoogle search revealed two things:

one, lots of people like this quote enough to put it in their email footer, particularly people who write into various tech listservs.

two, this quote is ascribed to Miguel Cervantes but without documentation.

So I loaded up google books and searched a copy of Don Quixote. No luck for the exact quote. Google books through up a bunch of other folks who’d cited this quotation none of whom had offered documentation. Hmmm…to be continued.

Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?
Luke 12:25

“I don’t worry about nothing because worrying’s a waste of my time.”
Axl Rose, Mr. Brownstone

John Bennet, here.

Favorite Section:

All you big thinkers, please don’t try. As bards go, Bob’s a vatic. He just mumbles gibberish—at times quite tuneful gibberish—that somehow works its way into your bones, and into legal decisions. If you try to come up with a unified field theory about it, you sound like a dumbass.

“ideology makes it unnecessary for people to confront issues on their individual merits. One simply turns to the ideological vending machine, and out comes the prepared formulae.”

Daniel Bell

You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

I’d only heard this translation:

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

(This sort of thing the Wikipedia does very, very well.)