Pen Power

In the Saturday morning mailbox . . .

Today is the 159th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln in 1863, delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The brief two minute speech contained the lines below, still pertinent in our time, framing and reflecting our past and future in the present:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced . . .that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Today is poet Sharon Olds' birthday. Born on this date in San Francisco (1942).

"Whenever we give our pen some free will, we may surprise ourselves. All that wanting to seem normal in regular life, all that fitting in falls away in the face of one's own strange self on the page. [...] Writing or making anything — a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake — has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up."

-- Sharon Olds