Poetry by Sappho

The Moon

The stars about the lovely moon
Fade back and vanish very soon,
When, round and full, her silver face
Swims into sight, and lights all space.



Fragment 16, Some Say

Some say an army of horsemen or footmen or rowers
Is the most beautiful thing over the coal-black earth,
But I say it is that thing, whatever it is,
That one loves and desires.

All easy it is to make this clear to anyone,
For Helen, far surpassing all mortals in beauty,
Leaving behind the best of all men,
Departed, sailing for Troy --
And not at all did she remember
Parents, nor love of children,
But passion directed her....

Now my Anactoria too is gone, and
I would rather see her supple walk
And the bright sparkle of her face
Than all the chariots of Lydia
And foot-soldiers in arms.

----
Sappho was born between 630 BC and 612 BC on the small Isle of Lesbos in the town of Eresos. Although little is known about Sappho's life, educated guesses can be drawn from her writings. Sappho is said to have been the first published female poet and the first modern poet. She died in 570 BC.

Read Sappho's Biography.

Hands

The hands of Henry Brooks, an old Georgia slave

"Our small, soft hands blistered quickly at the start of each summer, but Daddy never let us wear gloves, which he considered a sign of weakness. After a few weeks of constant work, the bloody blisters gave way to hard-earned calluses that protected us from pain. Long after the fact, it occurred to me that was a metaphor for life -- blisters come before calluses, vulnerability before maturity - but not even the thickest of skins could have spared us the lash of Daddy's tongue. "I could do more with a teaspoon than you can do with a shovel," he snapped whenever we were shoveling dirt. "You worth less than a carload of dead men." He never praised us, just as he never hugged us. Whenever my grandmother urged him to tell us that we had done a good job, he replied, "That's their responsibility. Any job worth doing is worth doing right."

Clarence Thomas
My Grandfather's Son

The Immigration Question in 1891

A friend showed me a box of old area newspapers from as far backs as the 1890s -- newspapers from Hudson and River Falls, Wisconsin, the Twin Cities and a few other areas. There is some fascinating information in these papers and it is easy to see how much times have changed and how they have not changed.

For instance, immigration is huge debate in today's political debate. In 1891, the Wisconsin-Minnesota border country was a major stopping point for Scandinavian immigrants and other areas of Europe -- Germany, Ireland, Italy, France, etc.

One paper is from the May 27, 1891 edition of the North, a weekly newspaper published in Minneapolis every Wednesday and edited by Luth Jaeger, a Norwegian immigrant. According to is masthead, The North was "a weekly newspaper in the English language, devoted to the inculcation of American principles among the Scandinavian citizens of the United States." The goal of the paper was to Americanize Norwegian immigrants into the American way of life. It was published from 1889-1894.

Jaeger was a member of the Norwegian-American intelligentsia and he was nominated for Minnesota Secretary of State on the Democratic ticket on Sept. 14, 1886.

Below is photo of an ad from the newspaper that I took with my digital camera. Below the picture is a quote taken from the newspaper about the issue of immigration.



"The national life, as developed in the great port of entry - New York - is a huge crucible into which has been dumped in overwhelming masses the sweepings of European cities. The scum at the top, the dregs at the bottom, we wait with anxiety the slow process of national assimilation which shall fuse with the old Dutch and Anglo-Saxon stock, the stolid German, the mercurial Frenchman, and the fiery Celt, and, out of the compound, present the American nation of the future."