Undated - More Small Pieces of Paper

"On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the dawn of victory, sat down to wait - and waiting, died." William Lawrence (Used by Adlai Stevens in a campaign speech) 1922
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He who hesitates is lost.
(and so is the woman who doesn't)
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Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might.
(In London during the 2nd World War)
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The only moments of real, unsuperficial, sincere happiness that I experience are when I notice the activity of some element of nature - like the fall - chested robin perched in the ginko tree, or the two neat-collared English Sparrows hopping across the walk like children's toys, or the skittish grey squirrel frantically yet playfully burying something in the dark moist earth. All this I see through the newly washed window that looks out over the campus between Eads & Duncker and the Chapel beyond.
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As I sit here on my sun-warmed chair, as close to the open window as I can get, I smell again the smell of Florida. Now it has been years since my 1st experience in Florida, the time my sister and I flew down to spend Christmas vacation (with our good friends the Arch Jones', whom we always knew as Aunt Kate and Uncle Arch). In these ensuing years I have no doubt unconsciously elaborated my remembrances of Dunedin, Clearwater, Tampa, Sarasota, and St. Petersburgh, and perhaps there is no factual resemblance between the smell of a St. Louis spring & a Florida Christmas but time and time again something in the air recalled to me that time spent among the spanish moss, live oak trees, seagulls & sand. I don't know why that experience impressed me so, but I have never ceased to feel a touch of magical warmth when I remember the things we saw and the things we did. It might have been because that was my first trip out of the Middle West which fact might also account for the fact that Florida
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the bursting bundles at the ends of the tiny stalks all along the ginko branches had become even fuller & greener during this day.
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Reason has moons, but moons not hers
lie mirrored in the sea,
Confounding her astronomers
But, oh delighting me.
- Ralph Hodgson
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Infinity is where things happen that don't.
- Schoolboy
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You know, as we have said, that expressive words and superlative adj. have been so overused and so grossly misused that their original meaning has been lost or rather worn thin. They have become meaningless and ordinary. So words that come to my mind to express to you how much I love you seem too futile and to carry so little worth. But I believe that you in the depth of your understanding will take them for their true value, as I mean them, when I say I love you completely with all love and I shall continue to love you for all time.
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High up in the north in the land called Suithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles wide and a hundred miles high. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.
- Hendrick Van Loon
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The edge of the frost had receded with the shadow of the woods ahead of the warmth of the advancing sun rays.
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Heresy, yes - conspiracy, no
- Sidney Hook
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Schlesinger, Jr.
"cultural vigilantes" - driven by fear of Communism to stamp out all unorthodoxy
"ritualistic liberals" - driven by fear of repression to deny existence of Communist threat
Both groups flourish on each other's misapprehension and thin outcries have drowned out the voice of intelligence.
This results in competing spirals of hysteria that tower over us today.
from McCarthy on right to Nation on left.
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distinction between heresy & conspiracy - between unpopular ideas & subversive movements. If both groups grasped this distinction, 1st would stop punishing heresies as conspiracies & the rit. lib. might stop tolerating conspiracies as heresies.
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traditional tests of academic freedom & responsibility - professional competence and lawful behavior.
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It was one of the first cool days of this October & we hadn't even raised the windows until early afternoon. The sky was becoming October blue & the slanting sunlight accentuated the leaf colors; making the browns appear copper & bronze & gold. A small breeze squeezed through the slightly opened window & blew across my hands. My skin again felt the same awakening, the same refreshing sensation that I feel when first I wash my face in the morning - as though each pore is awakened from a stuffy sleep.
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This afternoon I was an uninvited spectator to one of the most wonderfully spirit-raising sights I ever have seen. I was sitting & gazing out the kitchen window at the group of plum trees in the yard. I was wondering the whys that caused them to bloom one at a time so that all 5 were in separate stages of flowering, completely unrelated to their respective sizes, the smallest being one of the first to have its branches sheathed in tight clusters of white foam/froth. My gaze was caught up in/by a swirl of pigeon wings, and as I watched, fascinated, I again felt a child's desire to become one of them. There must have been 20 of them flying, gliding & closely together. Turning slowly they would swiftly swoop 50 yards or more, skimming over & sometimes through the tops of the trees, only to bank around another turn, the first becoming the last and the last first in another swoop.