Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature", especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life". When he died in...
> Sandburg's popular multivolume biography Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, 2 vols. (1926) and Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 4 vols. (1939) are collectively "the best-selling, most widely read, and most influential book[s] about Lincoln."
@CowperKettle did they say why? Chicago is known in the US as 'the Second city' because it was always 2nd behind NYC (population)
The only thing that seems similar between Chitown and Yekburg is that both are railroad centers to open up the frontier beyond. Does the Trans Siberian railway go through Y'town?
@Robusto I have been a couple of times in Chicago in the eighties but didn't stay long (stopovers to the West Coast). I remember the Loop, the Lake (great!) and a very high skyscraper. The city was nice. I was slightly disappointed not to meet Al Capone and not to see bootleggers killing each other in submachine guns shootings, but I understand that was asking too much.
A Walking Tour of the Shambles (Little Walks For Sightseers #16) (2002), written by Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe, is a novel in the form of a tour guide concerning a fictional part of Chicago called 'The Shambles'. It guides the reader through such non-existent landmarks as The House of Clocks (see the official website), Cereal House (home of the Terribly Strange Bed), and Gavagan's Irish Saloon. A collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe (cover by Gahan Wilson, with interior illustrations by Randy Broecker and Earl Geier), it was published with two different covers by the American Fantasy...
What's the point of executions anyway? Here, we're killing this guy that killed two other people. Why should it be convincing that there's any justice in the world?
Maybe it's just cathartic for some "at least I'm not that guy" people
> This year, Russian courts sentenced over 40% more Jehovah’s Witnesses (45) to prison than last year (32). This resulted in a peak of 115 men and women in prison at one time—the most since the 2017 Supreme Court ruling that effectively banned the Witnesses’ activities.
The Bradley Fighting Vehicle (BFV) is a tracked armoured fighting vehicle platform of the United States developed by FMC Corporation and manufactured by BAE Systems Land & Armaments, formerly United Defense. It is named after U.S. General Omar Bradley.
The Bradley is designed to transport infantry or scouts with armor protection, while providing covering fire to suppress enemy troops and armored vehicles. The several Bradley variants include the M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle and the M3 Bradley reconnaissance and infantry fighting vehicle. The M2 holds a crew of three (a commander, a gunner...
@CowperKettle that's christian science (which proscribes medical attention because you will get better if God willed it and trying to intervene is doubting God (or something like that)
Many children who want to live but who are essentially "sacrificed" by their parents by refusal to allow blood transfusion, which causes many otherwise-typical surgical operations to result in fatality.
I was quite shocked when in Strasbourg I read a plaque that said that something had been built by the 'culte catholique', but from the dictionary definition I cannot tell whether it is a polite synonym for religion. I'd appreciate an informed opinion.
To Dublin sounds in Russian like туда, блин (to there, blin), with blin being a very mild cuss, often used as a filler in speech, literaly meaning "pancake", an euphemism for a stronger swearword.
There was an ancient TV ad in which a guy says this phrase, and another asks "куда, блин?" (kuda, blin?) = "where, blin?", and the first one replies "туда, блин"
A frequently mentioned and important text in the Dune series is the Orange Catholic Bible. Having read the appendices for the first Dune, I understand why this book exists. However, I do not understand the naming of it. I would think that its name would reflect the combination of religions rather...
Yes. Looks like once you have tasted a drug, the craving will always be there, to some extent. So it's like catching a virus that is impossible to completely get rid of.
Like the HIV virus, which finds a niche to hide from the strongest anti-retrovirals.
Maybe if there was a way to avoid overdosage.
> “I didn't just have a problem with beer and cocaine,” he said. “I was an addictive personality, period. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day; I loved Listerine; I loved NyQuil; you name it. If it would change your consciousness, I was all for it.”
(Stephen King)
> By 1985, alcohol wasn't enough, and King began taking drugs. He remembered writing The Tommyknockers in 1986 with his heart sprinting and “cotton swabs stuck up [his] nose to stem the coke-induced bleeding.”
> Writing is necessary for my sanity. As a writer, I can externalize my fears and insecurities and night terrors on paper, which is what people pay shrinks a small fortune to do. In my case, they pay me for psychoanalyzing myself in print. And in the process, I’m able to “write myself sane,” as that fine poet Anne Sexton put it. . . .
Anne Sexton (born Anne Gray Harvey; November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Her poetry details her long battle with bipolar disorder, suicidal tendencies, and intimate details from her private life, including relationships with her husband and children, whom it was later alleged she physically and sexually assaulted.
== Early life and family ==
Anne Sexton was born Anne Gray Harvey in Newton, Massachusetts to Mary Gray (Staples) Harvey (1901–1959) and Ralph...
I should look up her poems then. I hope they rhyme.
> Within 12 years of writing her first sonnet, she was among the most honored poets in the U.S.: a Pulitzer Prize winner, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the first female member of the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
Does the Russian language lend itself to rhyme, or does it, like English, have to stumble along looking for illuminating rhymes and having to settle for the usual suspects?
@CowperKettle That's maybe the only thing Russia commands that you don't rebel against.
On a beach a great wind blew my auntie
And stripped her right down to her panties
A seaman walked by
And he said, "My oh my!
Today I'll be singing no shanties!"
> German Catholic leaders have shown new willingness to reconsider stances on hot-button issues such as homosexuality and celibacy — areas where Benedict sees church teaching as immutable.
But wait: I thought Jesus said "Whatsoever ye may bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." Meaning Popes can do whatever they want.
@Robusto Priestly celibacy was introduced by the Catholic Church after a thousand years or so mostly to help preserve the wealth of the church. They didn't want married priests to attempt to pass on church property to the priest's children. Even so there are many married priests today.
It certainly never did anything to stop nepotism, though. See the papal nephew, etc.
Protestantism was attractive to some because it didn't forbid marriage. Easier to become an Anglican than a Russian Catholic.
Or Eastern Orthodox.
To roll back the doctrine that Catholic priests must not marry would be both next to trivial and next to impossible all at once. All it takes is the Pope making the decree to go back to how it used to be. But this would almost certainly create a terrible schism and he doesn't want that to happen.
@tchrist Corruption in the Roman Catholic Church has been copiously noted over the millennia. Look at the selling of indulgences, for example. That was probably the main driving force in the Protestant reformation—except in the case of the Anglican church, which was due to Henry VIII not getting what he wanted from the Pope.
@tchrist You mean like the schism from Vatican II, which got rid of Latin? That has not been a deal-breaker. What is putting paid to Catholicism these days is pedophile priests.
The Anglican realignment is a movement among some Anglicans to align themselves under new or alternative oversight within or outside the Anglican Communion. This movement is primarily active in parts of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. Two of the major events that contributed to the movement were the 2002 decision of the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada to authorise a rite of blessing for same-sex unions, and the nomination of two openly gay priests in 2003 to become bishops. Jeffrey John, an openly gay priest with a long-time partner, was appointed...
Or the east-vs-west schism that produced a separate Eastern Orthodox branch.
Henry didn't accept that he must be "underneath" any other ruler.
He didn't like anybody being able to tell him what to do, especially some furriner.
He also wanted their riches.
He got rid of all the monasteries and took all that wealth.