[PEN-L:1202] Re: A Thought II

[valis <valis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Craven:
> To the Campus Community:
>
> In the spirit of our Campus-wide Abilities and in the spirit of the
> real "business" of Clark College--education--and two of the essential
                .........................................
>      Is it not time to throw off the shroud? Is it not time to speak
> out, to cry out, to fly, to test wings, to fall, and to laugh with
> joy over the divine bruises?
>
> Gerry Spence
> "Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century"


Good one, Jim; very stirring, very true.  I doubt its effect on
people of the bottom line, however, such as college administrators.
I have said things to bank officers that would have evoked fisticuffs
in anyone with so much as the balls of a jackrabbit, but all I ever
got was the brilliant flash of capped teeth, behind which was intoned
a silent mantra: The important thing is the money.
                                                               valis


    VERY well, you liberals,
    And navigators into realms intellectual,
    You sailors through heights imaginative,
    Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets,
    You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits,
    And Tennessee Claflin Shopes--
    You found with all your boasted wisdom
    How hard at the last it is
    To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms.
    While we, seekers of earth's treasures,
    Getters and hoarders of gold,
    Are self-contained, compact, harmonized,
    Even to the end.

Epitaph of Thomas Rhodes, banker,
in The Spoon River Anthology
   (Edgar Lee Masters, 1915)