5/22/2026

 Friday, May 22, 2026

1950 Richard Strauss' "4 Last Songs" (4 letzte Lieder) premiered in London

2016  President Barack Obama arrived in Vietnam for a 3 day tour

2022 Report released on sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, the country's largest Protestant denomination, detailed 20 years of suppressing many allegations 

2024 Ireland, Norway, and Spain announced they will formally recognize a Palestinian state on 28 May, joining nine other European countries 

2025 DHS Secretary Kristi Noem ordered the termination of Harvard University's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, removing the institution's ability to enroll new international students and requiring current international students to transfer or lose their legal status.

In bed at 9:30, up at 4:15; 0425 146/73/53 101, 0440 125/72/52 205.0;  46/59/46 cloudy day, BEACH HAZARD CONDITION CONTINUES 

Morning meds at 6 a.m., and half-dose of Bisoprolol at 5:15a.m.

A long exchange with an old pal:

On Monday, May 18, 2026 at 04:49:59 PM CDT, Lawrence Anderson wrote:

  Read with some interest your discussion of favorite hymns. Having done K-8 at a Lutheran school, necessitated singing in church with the school choir around once/mo. for 8 years. Consequently, I was exposed to several hymns out of "The Lutheran Hymnal” (Northwestern Publishing House, 1941). Chapel every night at Northwestern Prep alternated between “All Praise to Thee My God This Night”, (First or Second Tune) and “Abide With Me”. Abide With Me had 8 verses so we only sang about 4. But my favorite verse always included was verse 5 in the TLH. Since we were all teenagers, it was apropos.

                           Thou on my head in early youth didst smile
                           And though rebellious and perverse,meanwhile
                           Thou hast not left me oft as I’ve left Thee
                           On to the close, oh Lord, abide with me!       s/f

On May 19, 2026, at 2:30 PM, Charles Clausen wrote:

As a general rule, I'm kind of turned off by hymns that speak in Elizabethan English, with "thee," "thou" for you, and didst" for did.  I make a big exception though for "How Great Thou Art," which always moves me.  Given my druthers, I'll always chose Black spirituals and C&W gospel music.  For some reason, I have a hard time picturing you as a choir boy, but you probably have a hard time picturing me as an altar boy, which I was regularly from 6th to 8th grade and irregularly even into my undergraduate college days. s/f

On Tuesday, May 19, 2026 at 02:38:04 PM CDT, Lawrence Anderson  wrote:

     I wasn’t exactly a choir boy. It’s not like this was a voluntary exercise. At Good Shepherd Lutheran School in West Allis the lower grades (1-4) sang in Church about every other month. Choir wasn’t hard because we were all in one room.  The “Upper Grades” (5-8, again, all in one room) sang about once/mo. Interestingly, my upper grade teacher, Miss Huth, is still alive at 105. Lives in Hurley and I went to see her last year. Lived in her regular apartment till she was 101. The 4 grades probably had around 40 kids. The woman had to be dedicated.   s/f

Charles Clausen To:  Lawrence Anderson. Fri, May 22 at 8:10 AM

At St. Leo Grammar School at 78th and Emerald Avenue on the south side of Chicago, we were also expected to sing as a group when we attended Catholic services together, masses or benedictions or Stations of the Cross.  Some of the lyrics, though, were in Latin which most of us did not understand.  However, we altar boys, hot shits, knew at least some Latin because we had to speak it when we served at mass.  The priest would start the mass with "Introibo ad altare Dei", meanng I go unto the altar of God, and we altar boys would respond, "Ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meum," meainng To God who gives joy to my youth.  It went on from there.  Tom St. John and I used to test each other on how much of the mass Latin we still remembered in our adulthood, which was quite a bit.  But the great unwashed who were not altar boys and knew no Latin, used to make fun of the Latin hymns, like turning the Tantum Ergo Sacramentum into Tantum Ergo makes your hair grow.  Very irreverent.  I still remember some of those Latin lyrics, like Genitori Genitoque / Laus et iubilatio, which is almost more spirit-deadening in English "To the Begetter and the Begotten/ Be praise and jubilation,"  Lyrics like these should make it easier to understand why I prefer Emmylou Harris singing "When He calls, I'm going to live with Jesus.  In His Kingdom, he welcomes everyone" and Mahalia Jackson singing "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands."  My Dad, who was raised Catholic never attended church after his experiences on Iwo Jima used to love to watch Mahalia Jackson's show on Chicago television.  I just watched the YouTube recording of Mahalia singing "Precious Lord" and it still makes the skin on my neck tingle and tears to well up in my eyes.  We held a memorial service of sorts at the law school for Ray J. Aiken after he died and I gave a eulogy, which I regret I no longer have a copy of.  What I remember vividly thought is that at his funeral, they sang Precious Lord, and I spoke in part about the contrast between Ray in his old age when he had a bad case of Alzheimer's, and his teaching days when he was so strong and vigorous, sometimes almost pugnacious, as in his youth when he a Golden Gloves boxer.  I was so moved by those lyrics "I am tired, I am weak, I am worn."  I've struggled with religious faith all my life, indeed at least since the sixth grade, and throughout even my churchgoing years as an adult, but I've never stopped being touched deep inside by good gospel music for which I guess I should say 'thank God.'

Some random and not-so-random thoughts as I finish Traveling Mercies, in no particular order.

(1) I'm wondering whether a large part of Anne Lamott's popularity comes from her offering her readers a modus vivendi for living with what Reinhold Niebuhr accurately calls "an impossible Christian ethic."  Niebuhr argues, irrefutable I think, that the ethic of Jesus is contrary to human nature which does not incline us to turn the other cheek when attacked, to love our enemies, or to forgive those who wrong us not once or twice, but seven times seventy.   Human nature inclines us to protect ourselves, to defend and preserve ourselves.    It's human nature that causes us, even Jimmy Carter, to look at others with lust in our heart, not the Devil.

(2) She is not afraid of saying or writing "fuck" and "shit" and "asshole" and their variants.  She acknowledges sleeping with her boyfriend though they are not married.  I note that she is a member of a mostly Black congregation of Presbyterians, and that she probably would not be accepted in a lot of more evangelical, fundamentalist congregations.  I wonder whether she has a lot of Southern Baptist readers and fans,  I wonder what Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would think of her kind of Christianity.

   

5/21/2026

 Thursday, May 21, 2026

1956 WITI TV channel 6 in Milwaukee began broadcasting

1964 The US began intelligence flights above Laos

\\1972 Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome was damaged by a vandal

1979 Dan White was convicted of the voluntary manslaughter of San Francisco mayor George Moscone and openly gay councilor Harvey Milk. The conviction on a lesser charge outraged the gay community and led to the White Night riots.

2025 Benjamin Netanyahu announcesd that the implementation of Donald Trump's plan to forcibly displace Gazan civilians is a condition for his government to end the war.

2025 More than a dozen governments condemned the Israeli military firing in the direction of a diplomatic delegation with representatives from 31 countries including Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay.   Canada, France, Italy, Spain, the UK, and Uruguay summoned their Israeli ambassadors over the incident in the occupied West Bank. Canada, the EU, and Turkey call for the launch of an official investigation.   Israel's Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that after the delegation "deviated from the approved route", Israeli soldiers fired "warning shots" to distance them away. 

In bed at just before 9, and up at 3:53.  0410 128/75/52 120 206.4; 47/29/51/42, Beach Hazard Warning again this morning, cloudy day.

Morning meds at 8 a.m, and half dose of Bisoprolol at 5:15 a.m.

Draft of a FB post for tomorrow:

Another Memorial Day weekend is rolling around, and once again I will make  what has become my annual visit to Milwaukee’s Wood National Cemetery.It’s a place I drove by on I-94 probably thousands of times never thinking about it—on my way to and from Madison, or Mayfair, or to or from fishing trips to Clam Lake.

It wasn’t until I was 75 years old—after I’d become a regular at the VA Medical Center next door—that I became a regular visitor to the national cemetery. Now I make a point of visiting every Memorial Day and every Veterans Day.

If you asked me why I do this,  I’m not sure how I would answer.  I don’t show up for the official ceremonies and speeches. They’re held too far from the parking areas and the nearest bathrooms for an old guy like me.

Perhaps I come because of the sense of kinship I feel with those buried there—the tens of thousands who share only that they served in America’s military and naval forces. Perhaps it’s the pleasure I take in seeing the small American flags uniformly placed in front of each of the thousands of white headstones. I’m touched by the fact that each flag is individually and respectfully placed by VA staff and many volunteers—and that they will remove them after the holiday until the next one.

But mostly I suppose I come because of the first eight years of my adulthood that I spent in service: four years in the Navy Reserves, followed by another four years on active duty in the Marines. More specifically, I come with memories of my third year of active duty in Vietnam—and of my fourth year, when my most onerous duty was being on-call every six days to notify next of kin of the death or wounding of their Marine. As that sixth day drew nearer—then inevitably arrived—I remember thinking I would rather be back in Vietnam than be the dreaded man in uniform knocking on the door of of those families with their Marine overseas.

This year, when I visit Wood, I’ll be thinking especially of two friends who died in that long war: my fellow Marine, Bill Mullen, who was shot down in his A-4 aircraft over Laos on April 29, 1966; and my Marquette NROTC friend, Jay Trembley, a Navy pilot who was shot down when his A-6 strayed over the border of China on August 21, 1967.

Bill’s A-4 didn’t stray over Laos—he was there as part of what was then a secret war in Laos. The government lied to his widow Barbara, telling her he was downed in Vietnam. It was only one of an unending torrent of lies our government told during that war. Jay’s remains were finally identified through DNA testing and repatriated to the United States in 2005 to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Bill Mullen’s remains were never recovered, and his wife had to pursue legal action to have him declared dead years later.

Bill and Jay were but two of more than 58,000 Americans who died in the tragedy that was Vietnam. Another 153,000 were wounded seriously enough to require hospitalization. Vietnamese casualties were almost beyond number—and those figures continue to grow today because of unexploded ordnance, Agent Orange “hot spots,” and other causes. Vietnam was followed by Afghanistan, then Iraq, and now Iran. Our leaders seem to never learn and to never stop lying and our service members—and their families—pay the highest costs.  Some are buried at Wood and the other national cemetery at Union Grove in Racine County, or elsewhere.  Others I see in the corridors and waiting rooms at the VA Medical Center.  Some are never seen.

It is Bill and Jay, and their families, and all the other American service men and women, and their families, that I  will remember and honor when I visit Wood this weekend.

An email I sent to Senator Ron Johnson this morning:

I hope you will do everything in your power to stop the so-called "settlement" between the IRS and the Trump family.  It is a huge theft of government, i.e., taxpayer-funded, money, almost $2 billion worth.  This is the most outregeous and corrupt rip-off in have seen in my almost 85 years of life.  Our services at the VA Medical Center in Milwaukee have been substantially reduced post-DOGE (e.g., my primary care "doc" is now a nurse practitioner rather than a doctor) while Trump and his children are ripping off the government, wasting a billion dollars on his Palace of  Versailles ballroom, and building a 25 story monument to himself to overshadow the nearby Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, which are as close as we come to sacred sites in the national capitol.  It's all corrupt, outrageous, and disgusting.

Opinion

The Editorial Board

There Has Never Been an Example of Presidential Corruption Like This

May 20, 2026

Has there ever been an episode of presidential corruption so blatant and threatening to constitutional order? Certainly not in modern times. President Trump’s Justice Department is using taxpayer money to create a $1.8 billion political slush fund. Ostensibly set up to compensate those who the department claims have “suffered weaponization and lawfare,” it will in fact reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.

The fund manages to combine three of Mr. Trump’s most alarming behaviors. One, it is an obvious form of corruption, coming from a president who has used his office to enrich himself, his family and his allies. Two, the fund continues his pattern of using the Justice Department as an enforcer to punish his perceived opponents and protect his friends and allies. Three, the fund is his latest attempt to rewrite history about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.

It is worth pausing to put the fund into the larger context of Mr. Trump’s political project: He is destroying pillars of American democracy to empower himself. He claims elections are legitimate only if he wins. He uses federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute his perceived enemies. He purges his party of officials who defy him. He describes members of the other party and civil society as traitors and enemies. He incentivizes his supporters to break the law on his behalf and rewards them when they do. He directs his allies to change election rules to keep his party in power.

Mr. Trump’s project has not yet succeeded, at least not fully. Many Americans — in the judicial system, in Congress, in state governments and elsewhere — continue to stand up for democracy and oppose his autocratic ambitions. By now, though, nobody should have illusions about what he is attempting to do.

The fund’s existence is a story of political self-dealing. It is nominally the product of a flimsy personal lawsuit that Mr. Trump filed this year against the Internal Revenue Service, which he oversees, over the leaking of his tax returns during his first term. That lawsuit led to an absurd negotiation, in which the lawyers on one side worked for Mr. Trump the citizen and those on the other side worked for Mr. Trump the president.

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Adding to absurdity, the government lawyers reported to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, who previously worked as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. A federal judge in Miami helping to oversee the case, Kathleen Williams, pointed out that the two sides were not adversaries, which called into question the process. Even Mr. Trump acknowledged the situation shortly after filing the suit by saying, “I am supposed to work out a settlement with myself.”

Yet the talks proceeded because Mr. Trump’s Justice Department was in charge. Unsurprisingly, they led to a deal that was extremely favorable to him.

In exchange for the president’s dropping the suit against the I.R.S., both he and his supporters will receive government handouts. For Mr. Trump, the handout comes in the form of permission to have cheated on his taxes. The government has granted him and his family immunity from ongoing audits of his tax payments. He has a long history of using questionable accounting maneuvers, and the audits could have cost him more than $100 million, experts have said. Now they will cost him nothing.

For his supporters, the handouts will come from the slush fund. The Justice Department will tap a permanent stream of revenue that Congress created in 1956, known as the Judgment Fund, to settle lawsuits against the federal government. As Paul Figley, a former Justice Department official, noted, the new fund appears to be both legal and at odds with Congress’s intent. “It’s horrible policy,” Mr. Figley told The Times.

The department has allocated $1.8 billion for what it calls, in an Orwellian flourish, an Anti-Weaponization Fund and invited applications from people who have been targeted for “political, personal or ideological reasons.” Mr. Blanche — who holds his position as acting attorney general largely because of his willingness to use federal power in service of Mr. Trump’s personal whims — will appoint a five-member board, with congressional leaders given input on one of the five. Mr. Trump can fire any of the members at any time.

To understand who is likely to receive payments, look at who has previously received settlements from the Justice Department. Michael Flynn, who was briefly Mr. Trump’s national security adviser in 2017, received $1.25 million, even though he pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents. The family of Ashli Babbitt, who participated in the Jan. 6 riot, and whom federal agents shot as she and others approached the House floor, received nearly $5 million, even though investigators cleared the shooters of wrongdoing. The Trump administration is paying off people who committed violence and crimes, as long as they are Trump allies.

The fund’s timeline is the giveaway of how Mr. Trump plans to use it. The Justice Department said the fund would stop processing claims on Dec. 15, 2028, weeks before the president is to leave office, ensuring the money is distributed while he still holds the power to fire anyone who objects. The window is precisely the window of Mr. Trump’s authority.

Even some of Mr. Trump’s usual defenders are unhappy. Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, meekly said that he was “not a big fan” of the fund. Brian Morrissey, the Treasury Department’s general counsel, resigned within hours of the announcement, seven months after the Senate had confirmed him.

Providing payoffs is only part of the point. Another, according to Mr. Blanche, is “ensuring this never happens again.” What, exactly, is “this”? The evenhanded enforcement of the law.

The Trump administration has already fired federal agents who did their duties by investigating the president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Mr. Trump has issued blanket clemency to more than 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, some of whom may soon receive payments. His Justice Department secured an indictment of James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, on dubious charges as retribution for his role in the investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s Russia ties. The fund continues the effort to turn law enforcement into a tool of raw political power.

The fund also encourages future lawlessness on Mr. Trump’s behalf. It sends the message that he will use his power not only to shield people who break the law from accountability but also to shower benefits on them. Just as punishment is a deterrent, rewards are an incentive.

After President Richard Nixon’s abuses in the Watergate scandal, Congress and the executive branch built rules and traditions to ensure that federal agencies, especially the Justice Department, operated in the public interest, rather than that of the president. Mr. Trump has tried to break this system. Once he is gone, it will need to be rebuilt, and better than before. He has exposed and exploited its flaws and gaps. Unless they are filled, Mr. Trump’s corruption and perversion of justice risk becoming the norm.

In the meantime, Americans should be cleareyed about what the president is doing. He is taking their money and showering it on criminals.

 

5/20/2026

 Wednesday, May 20, 2026

D+174/119

325  First ecumenical council of Christian bishops at Nicaea, Asia Minor

1969 US troop captured Hill 937/Hamburger Hill in Vietnam

1970 100,000 marched in NY supporting US policies in Vietnam

1980 710 families in Love Canal area of Niagara Falls, New York were evacuated due to the lingering effects of prior use as chemical waste disposal site

2017 President Donald Trump began his 1st foreign trip  to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

2025 The United Kingdom suspended negotiations on a new free trade agreement with Israel and summoned the Israeli ambassador amid the then-recent Israeli offensive in Gaza

In bed at 9, up at 4:15; 0430 151/68/E 130 205.2, 0445 126/74/54 110; 48/54/45.  SEVERE WEATHER ALERT; BEACH HAZARDS, Life-threatening waves 3 to 5 feet and dangerous currents expected from 7 pm to 10 am Thursday.

Morning meds at 8 a.m., and half-dose of Bisoprolol at 5:20 a.m.

"Barn Raising" is the heading of the chapter in Traveling Mercies in which Anne Lamott introduces her readers to her friends Sara  and Adam who have a two-year old daughter Olivia who has cystic fibrosis.

I know that sometimes these friends feel that they have been expelled from the ordinary world they lived in before and that they are now citizens of the Land of the Fucked.  They must live with the fact that their younger daughter has this disease that fills its victims' lungs with thick sludge that harbors infections. Two week hospital stays for nonstop IV antibiotics are common.  Adulthood is rare.  Twice a day, every day, her parents must pound her between the shoulder blades for forty-five minutes to dislodge the mucus from her lungs. . . . 

This is, I think, her introduction to the problem theologians and philopsophers call theodicy, or the problem of how to understand, and justify, a God who voluntarily created a world - and us - that is so full of evil and suffering.  How can a God who is supposedly simultaneously All-Good, All-Powerful, All-Knowing, and All-Just create innocent little Olivia with cystic fibrosis, along with countless other undeserved sufferings all over his world.  He's got the whole world in his hands, right?  His eye is on the sparrow, right?  Anne Lamott writes: 

I looked up at God, and thinking about Olivia, about how badly scarred her lungs are already, I said, "What on earth are you thinking?

She doesn't attempt to answer the question, at least not in this chapter, or in the first 170 pages of the book that I've read so far, but no one who has tried has done a very satisfactory job so far, and the list includes St. Augustine, St. Iranaeus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Karl Barth, and Rebbe Schneerson of Chabad Lubavitch.   I remember sitting at the kitchen table in Geri's cousin Sue's house during a visit several years ago and suggesting that it's easier to make the argument that God is a mean prick than it is to argue that S/He/It is an all-powerful and all-loving Father to our species.  Anne Lamott gave us a living example of the conundrum in the form of 2 year-old Olivia with cystic fibrosis.  There are millions, perhaps billions, of other examples all over the world.  The answer I learned in my Catholic education was that it's a mystery of Faith, like how what is bread and wine in one moment actually turns into human flesh and blood  when certain words are spoken by certain persons who have been ordained to accomplish the feat.

An observant Jew would, I suppose, tell me to read the Book of Job, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah.  "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, said the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9.   Anne Lamott is smart; she leaves the 'splainin' to the prophets instead of taking on the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Robert Sapolsky, and Christopher Hitchens.  Most Christians are wise enough not to wrack their brains trying to figure out stuff like this.  As my old pal Vicki Conti so wisely told me long ago, "It's a heart thing, Chuck, not a head thing."

I've watched a few of lamott's interviews and speeches on YouTube and she sings the same tunes in all the ones that I've watched.  I can see why she is so popular because she popularizes Christianity.   She is a kind of homespun, religious Will Rogers, or Herb Shriner, or non-cynical Mark Twain.  She expresses her personal participation in the religion in everyday terms from everyday life, especially in metaphors and similes that are clever and catchy, but again I find myself wondering what she really believes about this God about whom she writes so familiarly, and as important, what the belief is based on.  That said, I confess that I have shared some of the religious experiences she descibes.  For example, she wrote a book I haven't read yet, titled Help, Thanks, Wow in which she says those three words in the title are the most essential forms of prayer.  I agree with that and I've often been moved to engage in those very prayers.  I'm reminded, as I am so often, of the 4th and 5th stanzas of W. B. Yeats' poem Vacillation

IV

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

V

Although the summer Sunlight gild
Cloudy leafage of the sky,
Or wintry moonlight sink the field
In storm-scattered intricacy,
I cannot look thereon,
Responsibility so weighs me down.

Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.

The fourth stanza seems a form of prayer of thanksgiving and of awe and wonder, of "thanks" and "wow," while the fifth is a prayer of loneliness, desperation, of "help."  I've had all those feelings, sometimes all jumbled together almost simultaneously.  I suspect that religous instinct or impulse is in all of us.

I'm not sure why, but I find myself thinking of another old favorite poem of mine, one loaded with memories, The Marshes of Glynn, by Sydney Lanier.

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven

2With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven

3   Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs, --

4          Emerald twilights, --

5          Virginal shy lights,

6Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows,

7When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades

8Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods,

9Of the heavenly woods and glades,

10That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within

11The wide sea-marshes of Glynn; --

12Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire, --

13Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,

14Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves, --

15Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,

16Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,

17Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good; --

18O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine,

19While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine

20Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine:

21But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest,

22And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West,

23And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem

24Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream, --

25Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak,

26And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke

27   Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low,

28   And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know,

29   And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within,

30That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn

31Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore

32When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore,

33And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain

34Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain, --

35Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face

36   The vast sweet visage of space.

37To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,

38Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,

39   For a mete and a mark

40       To the forest-dark: --

41          So:

42Affable live-oak, leaning low, --

43Thus -- with your favor -- soft, with a reverent hand,

44(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)

45Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand

46On the firm-packed sand,

47         Free

48By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.

49   Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band

50   Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land.

51Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl

52As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows the firm sweet limbs of a girl.

53Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight,

54Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light.

55And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high?

56The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky!

57A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade,

58Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade,

59Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain,

60To the terminal blue of the main.

61Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea?

62   Somehow my soul seems suddenly free

63From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,

64By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.

65Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free

66Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!

67Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,

68Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won

69God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain

70And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.

71As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,

72Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:

73I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies

74In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies:

75By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod

76I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God:

77Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within

78The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.

79And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea

80Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be:

81Look how the grace of the sea doth go

82About and about through the intricate channels that flow

83      Here and there,

84          Everywhere,

85Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes,

86And the marsh is meshed with a million veins,

87That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow

88In the rose-and-silver evening glow.

89Farewell, my lord Sun!

90The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run

91'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir;

92Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr;

93Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run;

94And the sea and the marsh are one.

95How still the plains of the waters be!

96The tide is in his ecstasy.

97The tide is at his highest height:

98And it is night.

99And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep

100Roll in on the souls of men,

101But who will reveal to our waking ken

102The forms that swim and the shapes that creep

103Under the waters of sleep?

104And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in

105On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.

I first encountered this poem in the winter of 1964, when I attended air defense school at the Naval Air Station, Glynn County, outside of Brunswick, Georgia.  Legend had it that Lanier was inspired to write the poem, and perhaps wrote some of it, while sitting under a live oak tree between the outskirts of Brunswick and the tidal marshes that lie between the city and the barrier islands to the east of them: St. Simon Island, Sea Island, Jeckyll Island, etc..  The tree is still standing and is known as The Lanier Oak, but it's located in the median strip of U.S. 17 running from Savannah down to Jacksonville.

I get a bit nostalgic thinking of my two months or so training at NAS Glynco.  I had a good, though short-term friends while I was there, a Navy ensign named Andy Furlong, from New Jersey.  I was the only Marine in the training class, surrounded by a bunch of Navy ensigns.  We all lived in the BOQ and friendship formed fast, and ended even faster when the training ended and we dispersed throughout the world, wherever our orders took us.  I don't recall how it was that Andy and I became such good buddies, but we did.  I was into William Blake's prophetic poetry at the time and that may have had something to do with it, but in any event, we quickly became buddies and spent a lot of our off-time together, beachcombing on the islands, drinking, and schmoozing.  We were both newly-weds, living on O-1's skimpy pay, and I suppose a little anxious about what the future had in store for us.  I have warm memories of a futile trip to Okeefenokee Swamp with him, and a night drinking that with Andy telling our favorite waitress Susie at the Big Boy restaurant, "I smoked it.  I'll drink it.", declining her offer to replace his coffee that he had dropped a long cigarette ash into.