January 28, 2025: "My Father Snoring," Art, "Convergence (a Pollock)"

It has been a long day full of not-so-welcome news.  I need something to make me chuckle a little bit.

This poem from Sharon Olds, while very serious, makes me laugh.  I shared a room with a brother who snored like a chainsaw . . . 

My Father Snoring

by: Sharon Olds

Deep in the night, I would hear it through the wall—
my father snoring, the great, dark
clotted mucus rising in his nose and
falling, like coils of seaweed a wave
brings in and takes back. The clogged roar
filled the house. Even down in the kitchen,
in the drawers, the knives and forks hummed with that
distant throbbing. But in my room
next to theirs, it was so loud
I could feel myself inside his body,
lifted on the knotted rope of his life
and lowered again, into the narrow
dark well, its amber walls
slick around my torso, the smell of bourbon
rich as sputum. He lay like a felled
beast all night and sounded his thick
buried stoppered call, like a cry for
help. And no one ever came:
there were none of his kind around there anywhere.

So, this afternoon at the library, I received an email from Arts Midwest, an organization that oversees, among other things, National Endowment for the Arts Big Read grants.  Ostensibly, the email said that all federal grants (including those from the NEA) have been put on "pause" until they are reviewed.

That means that drawing down funds from the $16,600 NEA Big Read grant that I was awarded for the library has been (temporarily, I hope) suspended until further notice.  

Now, the NEA Big Read will go on in March.  At the beginning of the year, fearing that something like this was coming down the pipeline, I drew down funds from the NEA to pay for a good portion of the scheduled events.  However, I will still be lacking around $5,000 of the promised grant until the "review" is completed.  (The library is currently working on a game plan to ensure the Big Read will happen in full.)

Art is essential to a free-thinking society.  Take away art and all that's left is propaganda.  And maybe Adam Sandler movies.

I'm not going to get all political here.  All I want to say is that we are living in dangerous times in the United States.  If you're a citizen of the United States, write your representatives in Congress, raise your voice, don't be silenced.  

Saint Marty wrote a Pollock tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Today is the birthday of painter Jackson Pollock.  Pollock was well-known for his drip paintings, where he would splash many colors of paint onto large canvases he had placed on the floor.  Write a poem inspired by this style of painting or by the wild style of a Pollock painting.  Maybe dribble words across the page or splatter one color throughout your poem.  Or write an ekphrastic poem (an ekphrastic poem describes, comments on, and/or dramatizes a work or works of visual art) about one of his paintings or a unique image you see in it.

NOTE (from playground.poetry.blog):  

The Pollok is a rather obscure and fairly eccentric poetry form invented by poet and art critic John Yau to pay tribute to the American abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock.  It is a fourteen-line poem with the rather unusual requirement that the first line must be a quotation by the artist.  The remaining thirteen lines consist strictly of words from Pollock's quote, the idea being to splatter words repeatedly on the page like he famously did with paint on his canvases . . . Interestingly, another one of the rules of writing a pollock is to break the rules any time you feel like it (much like Pollock did with his painting).  So it is more than permissible to substitute one of your favorite quotes by someone else for the Pollock quotation . . .

Convergence (a Pollock)

by: Martin Achatz

Each age finds its own technique.

Each technique finds age,

finds each its own

age.  Age each age,

technique each technique,

own each its.

Own age.  Own finds.

Own each technique.

Its, its, its, its own.

Age technique, tech each age.

Ow age!  Ech age!

In age find sage.

Teach ache.  Teach tech.

Fin.  Town.  Fin.  Age.  Fin.

November 20: "The Unfortunate Traveler," Vacation, Art

This is not going to be an angry post about the Felon in Chief.  Nor is it going to be about MAGA-hat-wearing mouth breathers.  I figure everyone needs a vacation from that circus.  (This statement doesn't mean, however, I will give up voicing my constant shock and disappointment over his idiotic cabinet appointments and outright lies.)

Billy Collins visits France . . . 

The Unfortunate Traveler

by: Billy Collins

Because I was off to France, I packed 

my camera along with my shaving kit, 

some colorful boxer shorts, and a sweater with a zipper, 

but every time I tried to take a picture 

of a bridge, a famous plaza,

or the bronze equestrian statue of a general, 

there was a woman standing in front of me 

taking a picture of the very same thing, 

or the odd pedestrian blocked my view, 

someone or something always getting between me 

and the flying buttress, the river boat, 

a bright café awning, an unexpected pillar. 

So into the little door of the lens 

came not the kiosk or the altarpiece. 

No fresco or baptistry slipped by the quick shutter. 

Instead, my memories of that glorious summer 

of my youth are awakened now, 

like an ember fanned into brightness, 

by a shoulder, the back of a raincoat, 

a wide hat or towering hairdo— 

lost time miraculously recovered 

by the buttons on a gendarme’s coat 

and my favorite, 

the palm of that vigilant guard at the Louvre.

I hosted a concert at the library this evening.  A good musician friend of mine gathered three of his friends and put on a show.  I wasn't sure how many people to expect, since it was the middle of the week and the weather turned cold and rainy after dark.  (By the way, it's now snowing in my neck of the woods.)  

Well, I guess a lot of people needed a vacation from the insanity of the Felon in Chief, too.  Over 90 people attended.  We all sat, listened, sang along, whistled, clapped.  Just what the doctor ordered.

It was good medicine--the kind that may just get us through the next four or so years.  

Because that's what art can do--lift you up, make you feel less alone or scared or angry or sad.  Art brings people together--whether its music or words or painting or acting or telling jokes or juggling cotton balls.  Art doesn't care about what color your skin is, who you love, how you worship, or where you're from.

All that matters is that you're a human being with a beating heart.

Saint Marty was filled with hope this evening.

September 29: "Pornography," Mangled Glasses, Art

I'm often stirred or moved by works of art:  paintings and poems and songs and movies and books.  That is one of the functions of art--to inspire people to action.  To understand the confusing.  To love the unlovable.  To sing the unsingable.  Art is about celebrating the whole human experience.

Billy Collins celebrates a painting . . . 

Pornography

by: Billy Collins

In this sentimental painting of rustic life,

a rosy-cheeked fellow

in a broad hat and ballooning green pants

is twirling a peasant girl in a red frock

while a boy is playing a squeeze-box

near a turned-over barrel

upon which rest a knife, a jug, and small drinking glass.

Two men in rough jackets

are playing cards at a wooden table.

And in the background a woman in a bonnet

stands behind a half-open Dutch door

talking to a merchant or a beggar who is leaning on a cane.

This is all I need to inject me with desire,

to fill me with the urge to lie down with you,

or someone very much like you

on a cool marble floor or any fairly flat surface

as clouds go flying by

and the rustle of tall leafy trees

mixes with the notes of birdsong--

so clearly does the work speak to me of vanishing time,

obsolete musical instruments,

passing fancies, and the corpse

of the largely forgotten painter moldering

somewhere beneath the surface of present-day France.

This morning, I couldn't find my glasses.  I traced and retraced my steps.  Looked in all the usual places.  Then I looked in all the unusual places, including the refrigerator.  I was about to give up, but I decided to check by the couch one more time.  As I walked over to it, I felt something underneath my shoe bend and then break, and I looked down.

There were my glasses, mangled, with one temple snapped off.

I'm not ashamed to say I let fly from my mouth a long stream of obscenities.  Of the two pairs of glasses I own, my reading ones are necessary for me to function properly on a daily basis.  I can't even see my computer screen clearly without them.

So, what do my pulverized glasses have to do with celebrating the human experience through art?

Collins is moved to sexual excitement because of the painting by the forgotten painter moldering in his grave.  I was moved by Collins' poem to write a blog post about breaking my reading glasses.  There is really nothing in the painting that should make Collins randy, and there's not even a mention of eyeglasses in his stanzas.

Perhaps, after reading my words, you'll feel pulled to call your significant other and set up some afternoon delight.  Or maybe you'll be compelled to contact your eye doctor's office to make an appointment.  Art affects every person differently.  Where one person sees pornography, another sees love and passion.

Tonight, all Saint Marty sees is a new pair of glasses in his future.

August 7: "Carry," American English, Art

We all carry lots of things every day of our lives.  

If we get upset, we carry on.  If we're buying something, we cash and carry.  If we're angry, we may carry a grudge.  If we love singing, we  carry a tune.  On the opposite end, if singing is difficult for us, we can't carry a tune in a bucket.  If we're important, we carry more weight than other people.  If we meet people we know, we carry on conversations with them.  If we crush on people, we carry torches for them.  Since the Paris Olympics are going on, if we win something, we carry the day.  And if a U.S. Presidential candidate wins an election in a particular state, she carries the state.

"Carry" is one of those words in the English language that relies on context.  That's why I love writing poetry in English--the ability to use the language in ways that carry multiple interpretations.  If I tell you right now that I'm catty, that could mean that I'm wearing a costume and grooming my whiskers, or it could mean that I'm being petty and mean.  (Those disciples who know me well can probably guess which of those statements is true.)  Because of the melting-pot nature of the American English, it allows for a richness of meanings.

Billy Collins gets carried away in today's poem . . . 

Carry

by: Billy Collins

I want to carry you

and for you to carry me

the way voices are said to carry over water.

Just this morning on the shore,

I could hear two people talking quietly

in a rowboat on the far side of the lake.

They were talking about fishing,

then one changed the subject,

and, I swear, they began talking about you.

You see what I mean  In the first two lines, "carry" indicates a certain deep devotion between the speaker and the person to whom the poem is addressed.  Then we get that wonderful metaphor:  "the way voices are said to carry over water."  That use of "carry" connotes the ability of noises to resonate over the expanse of a lake or pond.  In short, it compares the love/affection expressed in the opening to the power of voices echoing and amplifying over space and time.  It's a powerful image, made possible by the versatility of the word at its center.  

Tonight, I hosted a jazz concert at the library.  It was a wonderful event, full of Coltrane and Monk and Cherry, plus some original tunes.  Talk about voices that carry through space and time.  Of course, this distance can change meaning.  Reading Robert Frost back in 1930 is a different experience than reading him in 2024.  Now, we recognize limitations and problematic elements that were not limiting or problematic when the poem was originally published.

Art is dynamic, whether you're talking painting or poeting or jazzing.  It doesn't remain fixed like a mountain.  Rather, it's fluid, like Lake Superior or the Mississippi River.  It keeps moving, shifting, creating new messages and understandings.  The beach that was present two years ago might get swallowed up by a storm surge.  That tree on the banks or shore might topple due to wind and erosion.  The geography changes, defines new coastlands and topography.

Saint Marty is now going to carry himself into the kitchen to find something to eat.

June 22: "Quickie Ekphrasis," Art, "Everyday Ekphrasis"

Billy Collins at tea time . . .

Quickie Ekphrasis

by: Billy Collins

I looked at a postcard

of Mount Rushmore

while I cooled my tea with a spoon

then I turned over

the postcard of Mount Rushmore

and bit into a buttered scone.

Art happens every minute of every day.  Ask any poet or painter or quilter or musician.  Sure, every once in a while, inspiration strikes and something new and beautiful is born.  However, if an artist (or poet or musician or fill-in-the-blank) always waits to be inspired before picking up a brush (or pen or violin or fill-in-the-blank), then there would be much less painting and poetry and punk in the world.  (Yes, punk music is an art.)

I have to confess that I don't really believe in inspiration.  My poems are usually written through struggle and stress, each one going through draft after draft.  The trick for me is practice.  I write all the time.  Even if I'm just running to the post office to mail a postcard, I take my journal and pen with me.  Because you never know when a poem will tap you on your shoulder.  You have to be ready.  All.  The.  Time.

And, as I said at the beginning of this post, we are surrounded by art every day.  We just have to train our eyes (or ears or bodies) to recognize it.  Once a person opens up to that recognition, it becomes much easier to write a new poem or paint a new landscape.

It has been raining since I woke up this morning.  It's cool tonight, with no stars or moon.  In short, not a day that inspires anything but naps and comfort food.  Yet, I managed to write this blog post and the poem below.  Through sheer stubbornness.

Saint Marty may write about the callous on his big toe tomorrow

Everyday Ekphrasis

by: Martin Achatz

Isn't every poem

an act of ekphrasis,

including this one

about my dog shitting

in my backyard

as rain turns the grass

into a pond Monet

would have painted?

January 29: Most Orderly and Peaceful, Many Jobs, Work for a Library

 Merton takes a trip to the library . . . 

When the summer came I sub-let the apartment on Perry Street to Seymour’s wife and went up-state, into the hills behind Olean. Lax’s brother-in-law had a cottage, on top of a hill, from which you could see miles over New York and Pennsylvania—miles of blue hill-tops and wooded ridges, miles of forest smudged here and there, in the dry weeks, with smoke, and gashed open, in the neighboring valley, by the lumbermen. All day and all night the silence of the wood was broken by the coughing of oil-pumps, and when you passed through the trees you could see long metal arms moving back and forth clumsily in the shadows of the glade, because the hills were full of oil. 

So Benjie, Lax’s brother-in-law, gave us this place, and let us live there, trusting more than he should have in our ability to live in a house for more than a week without partially destroying it. 

Lax and I and Rice moved in to the cottage, and looked around for places to put our typewriters. There was one big room with a huge stone fireplace and the works of Rabelais and a table which we presently ruined, feeding ourselves on it with hamburgers and canned beans and untold quarts of milk. There was a porch which looked out over the hills and where we eventually erected a trapeze. It was very pleasant to sit on the step of this porch, and look at the valley in the quiet evening, and play the drums. We had a pair of bongos, a Cuban double-drum, which is played two-handed and gives several different tones, depending where and how you hit it. 

In order to make sure we would have plenty of books, we went down to the library at St. Bonaventure’s College where this time, being baptized, I was no longer scared of the Friars. The librarian was Father Irenaeus, who looked up at us through his glasses and recognized Lax with ingenuous surprise. He always seemed to be surprised and glad to see everybody. Lax introduced us to him: “This is Ed Rice, this is Tom Merton.” 

“Ah! Mr. Rice.... Mr. Myrtle.” Father Irenaeus took us both in, with the eyes of a rather bookish child, and shook hands without embarrassment. 

“Merton,” said Lax, “Tom Merton.” 

“Yes, glad to know you, Mr. Myrtle,” said Father Irenaeus. 

“They were at Columbia too,” said Lax. “Ah, Columbia,” said Father Irenaeus. “I studied at the Columbia Library School,” and then he took us into his own library and with reckless trust abandoned all the shelves to us. It never occurred to him to place any limit upon the appetites of those who seemed to like books. If they wanted books, well, this was a library. He had plenty of books, that was what a library was for. You could take as many as you liked, and keep them until you were through: he was astonishingly free of red tape, this happy little Franciscan. When I got to know the Friars a little better, I found out that this trait was fairly universal. Those who love rigid and methodical systems have their life of penance all cut out for them if they enter the Franciscans, and especially if they become superiors. But as far as I know, Father Irenaeus has never been robbed of his books on a larger scale than any other librarian, and on the whole, the little library at St. Bonaventure’s was always one of the most orderly and peaceful I have ever seen. 

Presently we came out of the stacks with our arms full. 

“May we take all these, Father?” 

“Sure, sure, that’s fine, help yourself.” 

We signed a vague sort of a ticket, and shook hands. 

“Good-bye, Mr. Myrtle,” said the Friar, and stood in the open door and folded his hands as we started down the steps with our spoils. 

I still did not know that I had discovered a place where I was going to find out something about happiness. 

Merton feels at home in the library at St. Bonaventure's.  I think there are two reasons for this.  First, he is surrounded by books, which have always been his best companions throughout his young life.  Second, he is surrounded by Franciscan monks.  Merton, even at this early stage in his faith, finds some kind of inner happiness and peace interacting with religious community life.  Books and monks are the key.

I've worked many jobs in my life.  Plumber's apprentice.  Busboy.  Bookstore clerk and cashier.  Teacher.  Professor.  Pipe organist.  Worship leader.  Janitor.  Health information clerk.  Medical office manager.  I've loved certain things about all of these jobs.  Enjoyed some more than others.

Having this many occupations has been a necessity more than a choice.  You see, I'm a poet.  There aren't too many jobs out there for those of my ilk.  For some reason, nobody wants to pay me to sit in a quiet room all day long and poetize.  Those days probably died with Chaucer.  There aren't any rich patrons out there who want poets on their payroll.  So, therefore, throughout my lifetime, I have always held down many jobs at once.

Now, I work for a library.  And it is amazing.  I am surrounded by books all day long.  I work with people who are concerned about things like making take-home art kits for kids and adults; answering research questions on family genealogy, ordering collections or poetry for the shelves, scheduling musical concerts.  In a lot of ways, librarians are a lot like people in religious communities.  There's a shared sense of purpose.  Everyone is all about knowledge and learning and art and making the world a better place through language and beauty.

So, it has taken me close to 40 years, but I have found a work place that completely coincides with my own passions and interests.  

Nothing is ideal, of course.  I still have daily problems.  Still have to hold down several jobs to pay the bills.  My son is still struggling with school.  My wife, with mental health and addiction issues.  I still have bills that I don't know how I'm going to pay.  My sister Rose went home from the hospital a few days ago, but she still has severe health challenges.

Yet, professionally, I am in a better place than I've ever been.  I like sitting in my library office every day, figuring out how to shed some light into the universe with poetry, music, art, learning.  On Saturday mornings, I get to the library very early.  Usually, I'm the first person in the building.  I climb the stairs to my second-floor office.  I take off my jacket, turn on my computer.  Then I sit down, look out the window, and watch the sunrise.  Darkness giving way to the pink and orange bruise of day.

The world is an amazing place.  Full of small and large miracles.  Poems.  Icicles burning with dawn.  New medications that will hopefully help to control my sister Rose's seizures and prolong her time with us.  Vaccines to combat a worldwide pandemic.  Coworkers to laugh with.  Friends to speak with.  Family to love with.  

Books to read.

Saint Marty is a pretty lucky guy.  He just needs to be reminded every once in a while.

March 4: A Kind of Longing, Burning of Notre Dame, Love for a Friend

Merton falling in love with spires and steeples and stained glass . . .

"All the year round they live on bread and vegetables and bits of sausage," Father explained, "so now they don't want anything but meat."  And I supposed he had the right explanation.  But before the meal was half over, I got up from the table and staggered out into the air, and leaned against the wall of the barn, and watched the huge, belligerent geese parading up and down the barn-yard, dragging their tremendous overstuffed livers in the dirt, those livers which would soon be turned into the kind of pate de foie gras which even now made me sick.  

The feast lasted until late in the afternoon, and even when night fell some were still at it there in the barn.  But meanwhile the owner of the farm and Pierrot and Father and I had gone out to see an old abandoned chapel that stood on the property.  I wonder what it had been:  a shrine, a hermitage perhaps?  But now, in any case, it was in ruins.  And it had a beautiful thirteenth- or fourteenth-century window, empty of course of its glass.  Father bought the whole thing, with some of the money he had saved up from his last exhibition, and we eventually used the stones and the window and the door-arches and so on in building our house at St. Antonin.

By the time the summer of 1926 came around, we were well established in St. Antonin, although work on the house had not yet really begun.  By this time I had learned French, or all the French that a boy of eleven was expected to use in the ordinary course of his existence, and I remember how I had spent hours that winter reading books about all the other wonderful places there were in France.

Pop had sent us money, at Christmas, and we used some of it to buy a big expensive three volume set of books, full of pictures, called Le Pays de France.  And I shall never forget the fascination with which I studied it, and filled my mind with those cathedrals and ancient abbeys and those castles and towns and monuments of the culture that had so captivated my heart.

I remember how I looked at the ruins of Jumieges and Cluny, and wondered how those immense basilicas had looked in the days of their glory.  Then there was Chartres, with its two unequal spires; the long vast nave of Bourges, the soaring choir of Beauvais; the strange fat romanesque cathedral of Angouleme, and the white byzantine domes of Perigueux.  And I gazed upon the huddled buildings of the ancient Grande Chartreuse, crowded together in their solitary valley, with the high mountains loaded with firs, soaring up to their rocky summits on either side.  What kind of men had lived in those cells?  I cannot say that I wondered much about that, as I looked at the pictures.  I had no curiosity about monastic vocations or religious rules, but I know my heart was filled with a kind of longing to breathe the air of that lonely valley and to listen to its silence.  I wanted to be in all these places, which the pictures of Le Pays de France showed me: indeed, it was kind of a problem to me and an unconscious source of obscure and half- realized woe, that I could not be in all of them at once.

Reading this passage, I'm reminded of the day Notre Dame in Paris burned.  It was a place that had been on my bucket list.  One day, I told myself, I will walk into that place and be surrounded by almost 857 years of prayers and candles and art.  I remember imagining how it would smell--old wood mixed with incense mixed with wax mixed with something else.  Holiness?  Grace?  The ghosts of thousands and thousands of pilgrims?

Sadly, now, in my lifetime, I will never get that experience.  Notre Dame took 182 years to build.  It will probably take more years than I have left on this planet to restore it to something like its former glory.  I accept that.  Perhaps, one day, I will be able to stand outside what remains of Notre Dame in the future.  Maybe I'll still be able to smell the smoke and char of the fire.  See soot still clinging to the surrounding buildings.

I have always been drawn to places of worship--Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Jewish, Quaker, Muslim.  I love that attempt by human beings to create something that somehow touches the face of the Divine.  The ornateness of cathedrals.  The spartan simplicity of meeting houses.  I think almost any artistic endeavor--whether its cathedral building or portrait painting or poem writing--is an act akin to praying.  Art is the way we grapple with the human condition in all of its beauty and ugliness.

I haven't written a new poem in a while.  Coincidentally (or not), my prayer life has dwindled to nonexistent, as well.  I feel out of touch with God right now.  Like God has stepped away and left me to struggle alone.  I know that's not true.  God doesn't do that.  However, over the past year or so, I've experienced quite a few dark nights of the soul.  Sometimes these nights can produce some good poems.  Other times, like now, I can barely string words together for a daily blog post.

Tonight, it feels like Notre Dame is burning again.  Worry has plagued me, and, when that happens, I don't accomplish a while lot.  Instead, I go to bed, pull the blankets over my head, and just . . . sleep.  It's the only time when my mind calms down.

No poems tonight.  Too tired.  The one act of cathedral building I can do--sending out some love and prayers for one of my best friends who lost her puppy of 13 years yesterday.

Saint Marty loves you, Missy.  Please know that.  See that love, like the candles of Notre Dame, filling your darkness with light.

July 7: The Curious Scarecrow, Art, Anne Frank

The candle in the hospital had gone out.  Poor old Edgar Derby had fallen asleep on the cot next to Billy's.  Billy was out of bed, groping along a wall, trying to find a way out because he had to take a leak so badly.

He suddenly found a door, which opened, let him reel out into the prison night.  Billy was loony with time-travel and morphine.  He delivered himself to a barbed-wire fence which snagged  him in a dozen places.  Billy tried to back away from it, but the barbs wouldn't let go.  So Billy did a silly little dance with the fence, taking a step this way, then that way, then returning to the beginning again.  

A Russian, himself out in the night to take a leak, saw Billy dancing--from the other side of the fence.  He came over to the curious scarecrow, tried to talk with it gently, asked it what country it was from.  The scarecrow paid no attention, went on dancing.  So the Russian undid the snags one by one, and the scarecrow danced off into the night again without a word of thanks.

The Russian waved to him, and called after him in Russian, "Good-bye."

An American meeting a Russian on German soil.  Hmmm.  Sounds familiar.  Seems that Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin today in Hamburg at the G20 Summit.  I haven't had much of an opportunity to listen to the news today, so I'm not sure what kind of embarrassment happened.  I'm sure Donald Trump opened his mouth and said something completely idiotic.  And I'm sure Putin sat or stood next to him, stone-faced, looking a little reptilian.

This is not going to be a political post.  I just found the parallels between the passage from Slaughterhouse and reality interesting.  It's strange how life imitates art and vice versa.  I often have moments like this.  Just finished reading The Handmaid's Tale, and Atwood's version of the future left me a little unsettled, considering everything that has been going on in Washington, D. C., over the last seven months.  A year ago, I would have said a totalitarian state was unimaginable in the United States.  I'm not quite so convinced now.

Art is, often, a reflection of its time.  Vonnegut wrote and published Slaughterhouse when America was eye-deep in Vietnam.  It's a book about war and violence and death and humankind's destructive nature.  However, the best art also transcends time.  To use Vonnegut's term, it becomes unstuck in time.  So, now, in 2017, Slaughterhouse seems just as relevant.  The Handmaid's Tale rings out a prophecy or warning.  Walden's call to civil disobedience and environmental consciousness speaks even more loudly as Donald Trump withdraws from the Paris Climate Accord.

Art is important.  It gives voice to things that aren't being said.  Things that should be said.  Writing a poem or novel, painting a portrait, composing a song--any creative endeavor--is an act of hope.  I put pen to paper because I believe in beauty and kindness and compassion and grace.  As Anne Frank said, "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." 

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for art.

April 21: President of the United States, Robert Hayden, "Frederick Douglass"

Quote from Donald Trump:  “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice."

Now, I am not going to talk about how abominably illiterate the current President of the United States is.  He doesn't know history or literature or art or government.  No, I'm not going to talk about that tonight.

Saint Marty is going to let a person who knows something about Frederick Douglass have the last word:

Frederick Douglass

by:  Robert Hayden

When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful

and terrible thing, needful to man as air,   

usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,   

when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,   

reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more   

than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:   

this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro   

beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world   

where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,   

this man, superb in love and logic, this man   

shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,   

not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,

but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives   

fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.