Friday, October 30, 2009

The Making of the President 1960 (2)

Theodore H. White. New York: Pocket Books, Inc. 1961/1962.


Why read it? The strategies used by John Kennedy and his associates and by Richard Nixon and other candidates in the presidential election of 1960.


Sample ideas:

“LBJ’s record as the guileful, unflustered Mr. Fix-It of the Democratic Senate majority….” p. 53.


“In their cluster about Lyndon B. Johnson, one could first notice that separation of generations which in both parties in 1960 was to range young against old.” p. 55.


“Stevenson’s attitude to politics has always seemed that of a man who believes love is the most ennobling of human emotions while the mechanics of sex are dirty and squalid.” p. 56.


“There is an axiom in politics that a candidacy for any office is not simply the expression of individual ambitions—any great candidacy is the gathering place of many men’s ambitions.” p. 57.


Sorenson had now been with Kennedy for seven years; his introspection, his reading, his elegant writing, had stimulated many of Kennedy’s finest thoughts and expressions.” p. 61.


“Meetings are good for information, said Sorenson…for exchanging information, for clearing the air…rarely the source of major decision.” p. 64.


“Within the Republican Party are combined a stream of the loftiest American idealism and a stream of the coarsest American greed…the good and the greedy.” p. 70.


“Today they [the Republicans] are regarded as the party of the right; yet this is the party that abolished slavery, wrote the first laws of civil service, passed the first antitrust, railway control, consumer-protective and conservation legislation and then led America, with enormous diplomatic skill, out into the posture of global leadership and responsibility….” p. 71.


“The personality and background of Nelson A. Rockefeller [Nixon’s] chief rival in the Republican Party, is entirely different…one of total security, total confidence, total cheeriness.” p. 79.


“Fundamentally, it was his [Nelson Rockefeller’s] opinion that the Eisenhower administration, which he had served, was drifting from crisis to crisis, was preparing its plans and managing matters of state on a month-to-month, year-to-year basis, while America’s position in the changing world required planning that reached from today over five years, over ten years, into the farthest foreseeable future.” p. 80.


To be continued.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

The Making of the President 1960 (1)

Theodore H. White. New York: Pocket Books, Inc. 1961/1962.


Why read it? The strategies used by John Kennedy and his associates and by Richard Nixon and other candidates in the presidential election of 1960.


Sample ideas:

“For to me, the central fact of politics has always been the quality of leadership under the pressure of great forces.” Author’s Note. vii.


“When he came again to greet the press and people, he would be the next President, close to no one.” p. 5.


“The general vote is an expression of national will, the only substitute for violence and blood; its verdict is to be defended as one defends civilization itself.” p. 11.


“He [JFK] remembered … his…. tour in Pennsylvania…a family group, dressed in black clothes, on a deserted country road—the father with a clothespin on his nose and the mother, as the candidate’s eye rested on her, suddenly sticking out her tongue at him.” p. 21.


“To become known, to be identifiable to voters in terms of their gut reactions, is perhaps the most expensive and necessary condition of American presidential politics.” p. 40.


“Fundamentally, though, for all the talk of expenses, money and sources, the Humphrey campaign depended not on money, but on the ideas and emotions that Humphrey could arouse, on his ability to communicate his crusader’s enthusiasm to the people of the nation directly.” p. 42.


“…while to those who did recognize his name [Symington] he was known as a single issue man, a specialist who knew defense and nothing else, and whom in that field was tagged ‘The Big Bomber Boy’…the Washington Post viewing him generally as a monomaniac on the subject of defense and a lightweight in all else.” p. 45.


“The root of the matter is that Symington’s effectiveness shows best in inverse proportion to the size of the group in which he gathers….. In groups of four, three, and two he can be brilliantly dominant.” p. 48.


Symington…an executive to the core, a man fascinated by the direction and proper organization of other men, he is a man excited by responsibility, one who likes to make things work. “ p. 48.


“Given their choice, small politicians prefer as President a man who will bring votes to fatten their base, one whose radiant name guarantees them victory in their local contests.” p. 48.


To be continued.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Walden or, Life in the Woods (9).

Henry David Thoreau. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1854 (1985).


Why read it? The desire to live close to nature without dependence on material goods. Describes the changing seasons. Offers interesting reflections on modern life.


Quotes and Ideas.

“We need the tonic of wildness.” p. 575.


“Every man is the lord of a realm [his mind] beside which the earthly empire of the czar is but a petty state.” p. 578.


“I left the woods for as good reason as I went there: Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.” p. 579.


“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected….”. p. 580.


“If you have built castles in the air…put the foundations under them.” p. 580.


“…in this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a man’s writings admit of more than one interpretation.” p. 581.


“While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?” p. 581.


“Let everyone mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.” p. 581.


“Say what you have to say, not what you ought.” p. 583.


“However mean your life is, meet it and live it.” p. 583.


“The fault-finder will find faults even in Paradise.” p. 583.


“Things do not change; we change.” p. 583.


“Men are all on a committee…and hourly expect a speech from somebody.” p. 584.


“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” p. 587.


The End.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Walden or, Life in the Woods (8).

Henry David Thoreau. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1854 (1985).


Why read it? The desire to live close to nature without dependence on material goods. Describes the changing seasons. Offers interesting reflections on modern life.


Quotes and Ideas.

“…building castles in the air for which earth offered no worthy foundation.” p. 536.


“…for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl….” p. 540.


“I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. “ p. 541.


“The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.” p. 548.


“It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound.” p. 549.


“Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation.” p. 559.


“The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer.” p. 562.


“The first sparrow of spring: ….what at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions and all written revelations?” p. 569.


“…the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade….” p. 570.


“In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven.” p. 573.


To be continued.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Walden or, Life in the Woods (7).

Henry David Thoreau. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1854 (1985).


Why read it? The desire to live close to nature without dependence on material goods. Describes the changing seasons. Offers interesting reflections on modern life.


Quotes and Ideas.

“…for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly.” p. 475.


“Instead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees….” p. 483.


“[The young man] goes thither to the forest at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind.” p. 492.


“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy…that is your success.” p. 495.


“…who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?” p. 495.


“…work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable.” p. 498.


“You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.” p. 505.


“Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection.” p. 522.


“You can always see a face in the fire.” p. 524.


Fire as metaphor: “What but my hopes shot upward e’er so bright/ What but my fortunes sunk so low in night?” p. 525.


To be continued.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Walden or, Life in the Woods (6)

Henry David Thoreau. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1854 (1985).


Why read it? The desire to live close to nature without dependence on material goods. Describes the changing seasons. Offers interesting reflections on modern life.


Quotes and Ideas.

“He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child.” p. 439.


“…Plato’s definition of a man—a biped without feathers.” p. 441.


“Men of one idea….” p. 443.


“…if a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die….” p. 444.


“…reformers, the greatest bores of all….” p. 445.


“Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds?” p. 455.


“In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon traveling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest.” p. 462.


“A lake is earth’s eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” p. 471.


“In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror….” p. 473.


To be continued.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Walden or, Life in the Woods (5).

Henry David Thoreau. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1854 (1985).


Why read it? The desire to live close to nature without dependence on material goods. Describes the changing seasons. Offers interesting reflections on modern life.


Quotes and Ideas.

“…books…are as dull as their readers.” p. 408.


“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.” p. 408.


“I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans.” p. 411.


“…three-o’clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest.” p. 417.


“…all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.” p. 429.


“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it.” p. 429.


“We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.” p. 430.


“We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.” p. 430.


“…let me have a draught of undiluted morning air….” p. 432.


“If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other’s breath; but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all animal heat and moisture may have a chance to evaporate.” p. 435.


“He interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so happy withal; a well of good humor and contentment.” p. 438.


“In physical endurance and contentment, he was cousin to the pine and the rock.” p. 4339.


To be continued.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Walden or, Life in the Woods (4).

Henry David Thoreau. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1854 (1985).


Why read it? The desire to live close to nature without dependence on material goods. Describes the changing seasons. Offers interesting reflections on modern life.


Quotes and Ideas.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” p. 394.


“Our life is frittered away by detail.” p. 395.


“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?” p. 396.


“After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast.” p. 396.


“…all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.” p. 397.


“…news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth or twelve years beforehand with sufficient accuracy.” p. 397.


“For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?” p. 403.


“Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.” p. 403.


“…but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing.” p. 406.


“…for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading.” p. 406.


“…and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper.” p. 408.


To be continued.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Walden or, Life in the Woods (3)

Henry David Thoreau. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1854 (1985).


Why read it? The desire to live close to nature without dependence on material goods. Describes the changing seasons. Offers interesting reflections on modern life.


Quotes and Ideas.

“The whole of my winters as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study.” p. 377.


“For my greatest skill has been to want but little.” p. 377.


“…but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead.” p. 378.


“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life….” p. 381.


“For a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” p. 387.


“They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tching-Thang to the effect: ‘Renew thyself completely each day, do it again, and again, and forever again.’ ” p. 393.


“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.” p. 394.


“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.” p. 394.


To be continued.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Walden or, Life in the Wood (2).

Henry David Thoreau. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1854 (1985).


Why read it? The desire to live close to nature without dependence on material goods. Describes the changing seasons. Offers interesting reflections on modern life.


Quotes and Ideas.

“…unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.” p. 329.


“What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be a falsehood tomorrow.” p. 329.


“What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can.” p. 329.


“…life, an experiment….” p. 330.


“But man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what we can do by any precedents, so little has been tried.” p. 330.


“The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad….” p. 331.


“One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.” p. 331.


“Confucius said, ‘to know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.’ ”


“The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of food, shelter, clothing and fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and prospect of success.” p. 332.


“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” p. 334.


“And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him.” p. 349.


“They were pleasant spring days in which the winter of man’s discontent was thawing as well as the earth.” p. 355.


To be continued.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Walden or, Life in the Woods (1).

Henry David Thoreau. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1854 (1985).


Why read it? The desire to live close to nature without dependence on material goods. Describes the changing seasons. Offers interesting reflections on modern life.


Quotes and Ideas.

“I would not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.” p. 325.


“By seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed … laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal.” p. 327.


“He has no time to be anything but a machine.” p. 327.


“…making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day….” p. 328.


“It is hard to have a Southern overseer, it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave driver of yourself.” p. 328.


“What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines…his fate.” p. 329.


“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” p. 329.


“What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” p. 329.


To be continued.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Watchers at the Pond (Conclusion).

Franklin Russell. New York: Time Incorporated. 1961.


Why read it? Describes the changes in the pond during the cycle of the seasons.


Sample quotes and ideas:

“The forest, cleansed of its old and sick, preserved an ordered and stately aspect, which was a perfect expression of life amid continuous death. p. 225.


“On gusty days…the ducks banked against the marsh wind and made their approaches over the western end of the pond, precise and graceful, coming in very fast and rocking in a gust of wind, then suddenly beating back, dropping their legs, and hissing into the water in one smooth motion.” p. 227.


“In the final cycle of the year, ineffable melancholy, created by the contrast between life and lifelessness, spread over the pond.” p. 232.


“Dead nests straggled in their branches as silent manifestants of a surge of life now gone forever.” p. 232.


“The pond had burst open like an expansive blossom and had seeded and died and was now settling and rotting back into itself.” p. 232.


“Many stars were starkly white now, shining instead of twinkling, and they sparkled in the cold water.” p. 234.


“A wind came over the deepening ice, so cold it drove most living things into hiding.” p. 240.


Next: Walden.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Watchers at the Pond (4).

Franklin Russell. New York: Time Incorporated. 1961.


Why read it? Describes the changes in the pond during the cycle of the seasons.


Sample quotes and ideas:

“The lightning burned through the air and created a huge vacuum, into which the vapor-packed air hurtled…created an explosion that rocked the earth, and the concussion fled along the line of the lightning strike and ended with a crackle far beyond the marsh.” p. 179.


“Some unknown constellation of events in the upper air had started turbulence whirling in a gigantic circle, and, and unaccountably this whirling suddenly tightened, pulling itself into a funnel of air that screamed so loudly it drowned the noise of thunder.” p. 180.


“Death was a process of reduction and bacteria were the prime reducers.” p. 193.


“The red-tailed hawk knew exactly where each surging column of air rose from the ground, and he moved from updraft to updraft, coasting steadily lower between each lift, then rising high again.” p. 199.


[What makes the sky blue?] “Each space of air the size of a robin’s egg contained more than a million of these particles, and they were filters that reduced the sun’s heat and cut out the reds, violets, and greens of light from space, allowing only the dominant color of blue to reach the pond.” p. 201.


“Later that day…male flying ants fell steadily from the sky, dying and dead…their lives…ended the moment they mated with the flying females….” p. 203.


“…more than ten thousand blue jays flooded past the pond: their massed flight…overwhelming, as though a single creature of unbelievable size had exploded into sight.” p. 209.


“The next day, another twenty thousand crows passed, and forty thousand the next day, and twenty thousand the next day, and then fifteen thousand and thirty thousand and fifty thousand, and black columns of birds stretched almost unbroken from horizon to horizon.” p. 210.


To be concluded.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Watchers at the Pond (3)

Franklin Russell. New York: Time Incorporated. 1961.


Why read it? Describes the changes in the pond during the cycle of the seasons.


Sample quotes and ideas:

“The moon was now enormously white, creating filigreed light patterns that shone through the overhead leaf cover.” p. 158.


“The bursting green Volvox, the budding youngsters of the hydras, the endless division of amoebae and paramecia, all produced uncountable millions of new lives each day.” p. 162.


“The forest hummed softly with a legion of wings.” p. 169.


“The lungs of the pond were the leaves.” p. 170.


“Billions of leaves hung, rustled, whispered, gleamed and flickered.” p. 170.


“…thousands of breathing valves, or stomata, through which the leaf inhaled carbon dioxide and exhaled oxygen.” p. 171.


“The unwanted substance of this activity, oxygen, flooded over the pond and into the lungs and lives of all creatures in an invisible shower of water expelled by the leaves.” p. 171.


“In one summer, the trees would release more water than was contained in the pond.” p. 171.


“The pond’s surface was flatly gray, and its trees were stilled, waiting for the rain…no bird called; no life stirred.” p. 175.


To be continued.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Watchers at the Pond (2)

Franklin Russell. New York: Time Incorporated. 1961.


Why read it? Describes the changes in the pond during the cycle of the seasons.


Sample quotes and ideas:

“The differences between plant and animal among this microlife were incomprehensible and contradictory and seemed to indicate only one fact: the origins of this life went back to a creature that was neither plant or animal.” p. 85.


“The red-tailed hawk: His scream in the hot sky gripped the senses, and the vertical fall of his body terrified the forest.” p. 87.


“The hunters could easily misjudge the dynamic instinct to live of their defenseless prey.” p. 95.


“All pond creatures had particular enemies who perpetually haunted their lives.” p. 103.


“In an hour, one bladderwort caught five hundred thousand creatures.” p. 111.


“The worm gulped down the rotifer, and the frog swallowed the worm; the kingfisher killed the frog, and the hunt passed endlessly from creature to creature.” p. 114.


“In death there was life.” p. 116.


“The bat calls bounced off all flying insects and the reflected sounds informed the bats of distance, directions and speeds.” p. 156.


“The bats’ crazy zigzagging flight branched from mosquito to moth in blind destruction of flying life.” p. 156.


“The bats lived in an almost completely dark world of echo.” p. 156.


To be continued.