Or bitter seas, or winds that mde them wise.

There is a dream upon them evermore;

   And there be some who say that sunk ships rise

To seek familiar harbors in the night,

   Blowing like mists, their spectral sails alight."

New Year

How burn the stars unchanging in the midnight skies,

As on the earth the old year dies!

Like leaves before the storm, so haste our lives away;

Eternal God, to Thee we pray.

For all Thy mercies past we lift our hearts in praise,

Thy care that crowned our fleeting days;

Our follies and our sins, O Lord, remember not,

Lost hours when we Thy love forgot.

From age to age Thy love endures; Thou art our God.

Send now Thy flaming truth abroad,

That with the New Year’s dawning right may conquer wrong

Grief yield to joy, and tears to song!

John J. Moment (b. 1875

On April 19, 1836, the people of Concord completed a monument to the "ëmbattled few" who stood "by the rude bridge that arched the flood" and helped pave the way for our freedom. One reading Emerson’s "Concord Hymn", memorializing the event, would be amazed at the similarity of the mindset of that time to that of the people of Berlin 170 years later on that Saturday at Riverside Park when the Berlin Veterans Foundation dedicated their cenotaph. The two concluding stanzas bring to life his words:

‘’On this green bank, by this soft stream,

We set today a votive stone;

That memory may their deed redeem,

When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

"Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, and leave their children free,

Bid Time and Nature gently spare

the shaft we raise to them and thee.’’

For those my unbaptized rhymes,

Writ in my wild, unhallowed times;

For every sentence, clause and word

That's not inlaid with Thee, my Lord,

Forgive me, God, and blot each line

Out of my book that is not Thine.

But if, 'mongst all, Thou find ést here one

Worthy (of) Thy benediction;

That one of all the rest shall be

The glory of my work and me.

Äfterwards"could very well be an Epitaph if so desired, but another reason for posting it is because the month of May is mentioned. If the former use is selected, there is one word to be explained, and that is Postern---an early name for Garden Gate. Ok, then, in Robert Louis Sevenson’s words: "This be the verse you ‘grave for me"

Another significance of the day is Law Day observed by the Law Profession in honor of presumed justice for all.

We hope that May Day in Russia does not have the same connotation it had in the past.  They are having a hard time in convincing anyone that things have chaned for the better.

And it was not enough to dub the department as the Weather Center which was too calm-sounding, someone came up with the term "Storm Center" even though the occurrence of storms comes to our attention a small percentage of the time.

Then it's a matter of who airs first. There's First Forecast, whether it's the first time in the broadcast, or second or fourth. Then another brags Forecast First, again, whether it's the first time around or the second, etc. It doesn't matter if it comes on at 4 PM or 6 or 9.

Then it's your weather forecast. It doesn't matter whether you have the equipment and software and graphics, it's your forecast. The fact remains that it is their forecast. We have nothing to do with developing the forecast; they have the equipment, the software and the graphics, but it's is always your forecast. And then, in their grandly pontifical voice, proclaim "Berlin, your temperature is 50 degrees." Here's your forecast, never theirs who have labored over it for perhaps a half-hour or so. And then when their technology allows them to attune the forecast to your own particular neighborhood, then it's "My Personal Forecast".

They never have enough to say to fill their allotted portion of the broadcast. They have to call on additional words to help them fill the time. It's never "the wind is moving in" or "it's windy" but the wind is moving on in, "there are windy conditions". It's never "it's dry" but "we are having dry conditions". Two further time-eating, word-proliferating expressions: "this point in time" and "your neck of the woods".

There's a store in Alaska sporting a big glass window. In the middle of it is a square delineated by a frame of duck-tape. You look through the square and see the outside, and the current weather. The legend below the square states "Today's Weather". Oh for such simpler times.

Where To Bury A Dog

There are various places within which a dog may be buried. We are thinking now of a setter, whose coat was flame in the sunshine, and who, so far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought. This setter is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the cherry strews petals on the green lawn of his grave. Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub of the garden, is an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavorous bone, or lifted head to challenge some strange intruder. These are good places, in life or in death. Yet it is a small matter, and it touches sentiment more than anything else.

For if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, questing, asking, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where that dog sleeps at long and at last. On a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream he knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pasture land, where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained, and nothing lost -- if memory lives. But there is one best place to bury a dog. One place that is best of all.

If you bury him in this spot, the secret of which you must already have, he will come to you when you call -- come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again. And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel they should not growl at him, nor resent his coming, for he is yours and he belongs there.

People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper pitched too fine for mere audition, people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them then, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and which is well worth the knowing.

The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.

by Ben Hur Lampman