Elegy in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Grey

  http://abacus-es.net/share/class/greyselegy.mp3 Narrator: K. Titchenell THE curfew tolls the knell of parting day; The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea; The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where […]

Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg They say she’s alarmist; her science is wrong That the gloomier models were wrong all along But the scholarship’s lacking; one doubts what they cite Why they can’t even learn how to say her name right.

Overcoming Attachment

Overcoming Attachment Why send me a bloated great MS Word file Or a PDF picture with format and style To convey a few lines of text easily said Or an address or date I can keep in my head? An email’s text content is all that I need, No attachments that need a vast program […]

A Note to Greta Thunberg

We applaud your resolve when you sound the alarm And disparage the deeds that will cause our world harm When one sees how depravity took us so far It’s hard to believe how dimwitted we are! But despite noble efforts from scientists who research and conclude what what we really must do So much of […]

A Christmas Round

http://abacus-es.com/dt/xrnd.mp3 Now it’s Christmas Gone is the year What did I do in April Or midsummer’s day? Then as the leaves turned gold It slipped away

Cicero’s Library Garden

“A garden and a library!” That’s all we really need. The Roman statesman’s words ring true for most of us indeed But think back to the times of youth when slowly trudged the day And minutes seemed like hours and days when she was far away. A garden was scant solace then and books unread […]

X Times More Than

If you have twelve and I have three You have four times as much as me If I have four and you have two Do I have two times more than you? Is “X times more” “X times as much”? Well yes, it’s often meant that way But when it’s stated straight as such One […]

A Verse That Can’t Be Emailed: The Forbidden String: MEGA.NZ

You may well find that you cannot send an email containing this domain name! Recently found that emails sent were not arriving — no bounce, and eventually discovered that they were being tossed for containing a specific domain name, that of the cloud storage I use, which I cannot name lest this email go also […]

Rhetorical Devices used in the Amanda Gorman poem “The Hill We Climb”

Amanda Gorman poem “The Hill We Climb” Amanda Gorman followed President Biden’s inaugural address to deliver “The Hill We Climb,” echoing many of Biden’s platform planks in dense rhetoric. At 23, Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet ever.  PBS made a lesson plan out of it. Read the entire transcript of Gorman’s words and “The […]

Pangur Bán — An eighth century monk and his cat

Translated from the Irish by Robin Flower: ‘The scholar and His Cat, Pangur Bán’ I and Pangur Ban my cat, ‘Tis a like task we are at: Hunting mice is his delight, Hunting words I sit all night. Better far than praise of men ‘Tis to sit with book and pen; Pangur bears me no […]