Act Three

The Rogue Speaks:

Now don't get all exited! I am not home. I am in New Orleans over night, and we are heading to Jekyll in the morning. I can't spend much time on my blog because Rod will be pissed, because we are on vacation. I could not resist checking out the Saturday Centus, however, and leaving a few words. Thank God there are only 15 to leave!! I tried to check my emails but can't figure out how to get on myquest!! So here is my entry for today. You'll have to stick with the same music because I have had one glass too many of wine, and would never be able to add the music I want, because I can't think of it! Here's my entry:

Before I die I want to live in New Orleans and explore this city. Do you think I will??

As usual, the prompt is in bold type. When I have access to another computer, I will check out your offerings!!!!

New Horizons

The Rogue Speaks:

Rod and I are leaving on vacation tomorrow, and since I don't have a laptop, I will be computerless until I get home. This means I will miss the Saturday Centus, and also miss commenting on all of the offerings for Alphabe-Thursday. I decided to do something a little different for this week's Alphabe-Thursday. I have so many wonderful bloggers on my side-bars, so in order to broaden your blogging horizons, I am asking that you pick one, and leave me a comment about it. You can also choose one from my links list if you like.

I always look at every entry for Saturday Centus and Alphabe-Thursday, and I have "met" some fascinating bloggers that way. I am sure you will as well! Below are a couple of photos of Jekyll Island, so you can see just why we are going there.





Since I have been known to go on tirades when it comes to politics, I would like to leave you with some interesting statistics about the people in Washington who were elected to serve their constituants. Nearly half of the members in Congress are millionaires, while only 1% of the rest of us have that kind of wealth.

The average income of a member of the house of representatives is over $700,000, and in the senate that number is over $2,000,000. No wonder congress is fighting over extending the tax cuts for everyone except them!! We pay our fair share of taxes. Why can't they??

It is time that the American voters look ahead to new horizons, to a country where the average citizen is treated fairly, and given the same advantages as the members of congress have. WE PAY THEIR SALARIES! Why should we be made to suffer because of their greed??? They are supposed to be representing US, and not looking out for their own selfish interests.

That's all for now. I am going to begin packing my golfing clothes, swimsuit, tooth brush, sunscreen, and my Kindle. When I return, I'll have my reading list! We are going to Jekyll Island, a national seashore off the Georgia coast. I wanted to show you a photo of our room there, but couldn't find one. Instead, here is a photo of the room we are leaving behind for a week or so.

How Time Flies!!!

The Rogue Speaks:


Remember when our school let out,
And the days were getting longer?
Now each day seems oh so short,
And for more time I hunger--
I’m not getting any younger!!



See! I told you! I said Jenny would spring something cruel on us! Hahahaha! She thought!!! But we KNOW her! Yes, we do! So we secretly prepared for her brutal attack on her loyal fans Shame on you, Jenny Matlock! You thought you had us, but noooooo! We didn't just fall off the turnip truck! If you will read the other offerings for this Saturday Centus, you will see that I am right!!


p.s. The music you hear is by Fredrick Chopin--it's the Minute Waltz!!!

M is for Moses--Grandma Moses!!

The Rogue Speaks:

I'll be you thought that Anna Mary (nee) Robertson was called Grandma Moses because she was old! Actually, Anna Mary, who was born in Greenwich, New York on Sept. 7, 1860, married Thomas Salmon Moses when she was 27 years old. She had grown up on a farm, and had been hired out as a farm worker when she was only 12. After she married, she worked side by side with her husband on their farm. The work was endless and hard, but she also managed to raise 5 children as well, and do a little embroidery on the side.

"Sugaring Off"


Her husband died in 1927, and due to arthritis, she could no longer embroider, so she took up oil painting in the 30's. She displayed her work in local stores, and at county fairs along with her pickles. An art collector, Louis Caldor happened to pass through town while on a summer trip and saw her work. He bought all she had.
"The Thunderstorm"

Caldor convinced MoMA to include her work in an exhibition in 1939, And Grandma became a star!! Actually, she didn't go by the name "Grandma Moses" until after a one-woman exhibition in 1940, What a Farm Wife Painted, when the name by which she is now known was added. It was fine with her, because she really was a grandma!!
"The Old Checkered Farmhouse in Winter"

Grandma Moses had always been a very thrifty woman, and was taken aback with the amount of money people paid for her oil paintings! Unlike so many of the artists I have covered in Alphabe-Thursday, the drunks, drug addicts, adulterers, the tortured souls who ate lead paint, Anna Mary Robertson Moses was exactly who she appeared to be--a farmer's wife who painted pictures. She lived to be 101!!!
"A Beautiful World"



Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday is such great fun for all of us. If you haven't joined in this fun, please do! Oh, and go read the other offerings!!

The Sign of Life

The Rogue Speaks:

While cutting the pasture in fall, he came upon what appeared to be a gravestone in the northwest corner. He saw no name engraved on it, so he decided it to be an old road sign. As he pulled the weeds away from the base, he saw that it was a sign, and the sign read,"Life is a gift. Live it well. The Afterlife is a gift to all who live life well."

“First the old letter, then the gate in the wall, and now this!” he thought out loud. “Have we bought some other-worldly place here? Or am I losing my mind?”


We're waiting. Yes, we are. We're waiting for the blogging world's sweetheart, Jenny Matlock, to spring it on us. Not today, however, but one Saturday when we least expect it. We will wake up, and the sun will be shining, and we will stumble to the computer with our morning coffee, and there it will be--THE PROMPT FROM HADES! And then we will hear the sound of laughter inside our heads--EVIL laughter--and it will say "Mmwwahahahahahaha! Gotcha!!"

So read the other offerings while there is still time, dear readers. Things could change!

Langston Hughes

The Rogue Speaks:

Do you know the work of Langston Hughes? His poems, prose, and plays were enormously important in the artistic contributions of black Americans during the Harlem Renaissance in the 20's.




Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902. His parents divorced when he was just a little boy, and his father moved to Mexico. Langston's mother remarried and left him to be raised by his grandmother. When he was 13, he moved to Lincoln, Illinois to live with his mother and step-father. It was there that Langston began writing poetry. After graduating from high school, Langston attended Columbia University for a year, and then took a year to travel. He later graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

In 1930, his first novel, Not Without Laughter, received the Harmon Gold Medla for Literature.

Hughes died of prostate cancer in 1967.

Please take a few moments to read the following poem by Langston Hughes. Even though it was written many, many years ago, there are aspects of this piece that could have been penned only last week.



LET AMERICA BE AMERICA AGAIN


Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!


O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!


The first selection of music you hear is by American composer, Aaron Copeland. The second is by another American composer, Samuel Barber.

Please go to Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday and read the other offerings.

This is My Peace

The Rogue Speaks:

Thanks to a post by Mari Sterling Wilbur, I have decided to expande my horizons and participate in Roy Durham's Poe-a-tree Blog Event. Roy has given the following prompt: You are standing at the shore, looking out at the sea--what are your thoughts? Of course, it needs to be a poem. Please display all the links below and and add your own to the list. Try to visit everyone who is participating, please.

Clara Garza http://jewelryboxdelights.blogspot.com/
Sue Larson http://suelarson.blogspot.com/
Melissa Tandoc http://www.grazieadio.blogspot.com/
Mari Sterling Wilbur http://www.mariscamera.blogspot.com/
Jan Neel http://jovanecatharticmusings.blogspot.com/
Megan Johnson http://starrlilly.blogspot.com/
Sulekkha Rawat http://sulekkha.blogspot.com/
Roy Durham http://royd-spiltmilk.blogspot.com/
Judie McEwen http://rogueartistsspeak.blogspot.com/





This my peace,
My solitude.
On this shore
I am renewed.
Nothing can
Touch me here.
The healing waters
Gather me up
And rock me
gently.
This is my peace.

America, The Beautiful

The Rogue Speaks:

"Oh, say can you see..." The first strains of the National Anthem rang out in the stadium, as Tim and his mother stood, waiting for the Little League Finals to begin. Tim had come to watch his little brother play second base for his team.

After the song had concluded, Tim asked, "Mom, why does our National Anthem have to be about war?"

"I've never really thought about that, Tim, but you're right! I’m afraid I don’t know.”

"I think that the song should be about the beauty of our country, like America The Beautiful.

“That’s a wonderful idea, Tim,” his mother replied.



I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Please check out Jenny's Saturday Centus and read the other wonderful offerings.