Japanese Death Poetry has some beautiful examples of writing about the transience of life. This one is by Bokusui:
A parting word?
The melting snow
is odorless.Jisei nado
zansetsu ni ka mo
nakarikeri
…and, of course, my own translation:
Words to remember?
The snow that melts before you
leaves no aroma.
Willie Nelson in A Colbert Christmas sings of peace on earth. The graphics are excellent, as is his command of the lyrics:
What, no mention of biowillie (biodiesel)?
Feist’s rendition of “Please Be Patient…Due to Increased Prayer Amounts” is aslo amusing, especially the part where she explains that prayers will be taken in the order that they were received. Sadly, she does not reach the lyrical achievement of Nelson, but I think that is because of the format she was given. I wish (not pray, mind you) that Feist had been allowed more of her usual punchy rhythmic upbeat style instead of a syrupy formulaic hymnal, but I suspect Colbert was going for a different style of parody.
Thoughts from another year…
Personally, I always think of the holiday in terms of a President who wanted a united nation to rise above its years of discontent and discord in order to notice the bounty of good deeds done even under the duress of civil war — to recognize and therefore seek a common humanitarian purpose.
And from Oyate:
Myth #11: Thanksgiving is a happy time.
Fact: For many Indian people, “Thanksgiving” is a time of mourning, of remembering how a gift of generosity was rewarded by theft of land and seed corn, extermination of many from disease and gun, and near total destruction of many more from forced assimilation. As currently celebrated in this country, “Thanksgiving” is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.
Tragic, but on the other hand the holiday was meant by President Lincoln to be a time of coming together — for opposing parties even within the same family to sit around the table and feel whole again. It could be a perfect occasion to bury differences and celebrate common ground.
Marty Ottenheimer pointed out to me the other day that Carrots do not actually help vision. Rather, the story we often hear is a result of a rumor from WWII. ABC Science explains:
…if you don’t get enough carotenes or Vitamin A in your diet, eventually you will suffer problems in your vision. This was the basis of the myth started by the Royal Air Force, the RAF.
In the Battle of Britain, in 1940, the British fighter pilot, John Cunningham, became the first person to shoot down an enemy plane with the help of radar. In fact, in WW II, he was the RAF’s top-scoring night fighter pilot, with a total of 20 kills. Some pilots were better flying in daylight, while others, like Cunningham, were better at night. His nickname was “Cats’ Eyes”. The RAF put out the story in the British newspapers that he, and his fellow night pilots, owed their exceptional night vision to carrots. People believed this to the extent that they started growing and eating more carrots, so that they could better navigate at night during the blackouts that were compulsory during WW II.
But this story was a myth invented by the RAF to hide their use of radar, which was what really located the Luftwaffe bombers at night – not human carrot-assisted super-vision.
The punch-line is that German folklore already held that carrots would make eyes better. Susceptibility to fraud is usually rooted in pre-existing beliefs and prejudice.