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Dane Allred examines the "Abundance" of the universe in his list of "1001 Thanks"
Episodes
Tuesday Nov 23, 2010
Tuesday Nov 23, 2010
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Literature Out Loud
Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen
by O. Henry/ William Sydney Porter
There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives it to us. We hear some talk of the Puritans, but don't just remember who they were. Bet we can lick 'em, anyhow, if they try to land again. Plymouth Rocks? Well, that sounds more familiar. Lots of us have had to come down to hens since the Turkey Trust got its work in. But somebody in Washington is leaking out advance information to 'em about these Thanksgiving proclamations. The big city east of the cranberry bogs has made Thanksgiving Day an institution. The last Thursday in November is the only day in the year on which it recognizes the part of America lying across the ferries. It is the one day that is purely American. Yes, a day of celebration, exclusively American.
And now for the story which is to prove to you that we have traditions on this side of the ocean that are becoming older at a much rapider rate than those of England are--thanks to our git-up and enterprise.
Stuffy Pete took his seat on the third bench to the right as you enter Union Square from the east, at the walk opposite the fountain. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had taken his seat there promptly at 1 o'clock. For every time he had done so things had happened to him--Charles Dickensy things that swelled his waistcoat above his heart, and equally on the other side.
But to-day Stuffy Pete's appearance at the annual trysting place seemed to have been rather the result of habit than of the yearly hunger which, as the philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the poor at such extended intervals.
Certainly Pete was not hungry. He had just come from a feast that had left him of his powers barely those of respiration and locomotion. His eyes were like two pale gooseberries firmly imbedded in a swollen and gravy-smeared mask of putty. His breath came in short wheezes; a senatorial roll of adipose tissue denied a fashionable set to his upturned coat collar. Buttons that had been sewed upon his clothes by kind Salvation fingers a week before flew like popcorn; strewing the earth around him. Ragged he was, with a split shirt front open to the wishbone; but the November breeze, carrying fine snowflakes, brought him only a grateful coolness. For Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the caloric produced by a super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and ending with plum pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast turkey and baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice cream in the world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the world with after-dinner contempt.
The meal had been an unexpected one. He was passing a red brick mansion near the beginning of Fifth Avenue, in which lived two old ladies of ancient family and a reverence for traditions. They even denied the existence of New York, and believed that Thanksgiving Day was declared solely for Washington Square. One of their traditional habits was to station a servant at the postern gate with orders to admit the first hungry wayfarer that came along after the hour of noon had struck, and banquet him to a finish. Stuffy Pete happened to pass by on his way to the park, and the seneschals gathered him in and upheld the custom of the castle.
After Stuffy Pete had gazed straight before him for ten minutes he was conscious of a desire for a more varied field of vision. With a tremendous effort he moved his head slowly to the left. And then his eyes bulged out fearfully, and his breath ceased, and the rough-shod ends of his short legs wriggled and rustled on the gravel.
For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth Avenue toward his bench.
Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come there and found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the Old Gentleman was trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had found Stuffy there, and had led him to a restaurant and watched him eat a big dinner. They do those things in England unconsciously. But this is a young country, and nine years is not so bad. The Old Gentleman was a staunch American patriot, and considered himself a pioneer in American tradition. In order to become picturesque we must keep on doing one thing for a long time without ever letting it get away from us. Something like collecting the weekly dimes in industrial insurance. Or cleaning the streets.
The Old Gentleman moved, straight and stately, toward the Institution that he was rearing. Truly, the annual feeling of Stuffy Pete was nothing national in its character, such as the Magna Charta or jam for breakfast was in England. But it was a step. It was almost feudal. It showed, at least, that a Custom was not impossible to New Y--ahem!--America.
The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won't stay on your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year, and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane with the crooked handle.
As his established benefactor came up Stuffy wheezed and shuddered like some woman's over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him. He would have flown, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not have separated him from his bench. Well had the myrmidons of the two old ladies done their work.
"Good morning," said the Old Gentleman. "I am glad to perceive that the vicissitudes of another year have spared you to move in health about the beautiful world. For that blessing alone this day of thanksgiving is well proclaimed to each of us. If you will come with me, my man, I will provide you with a dinner that should make your physical being accord with the mental."
That is what the old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an Institution. Nothing could be compared with them except the Declaration of Independence. Always before they had been music in Stuffy's ears. But now he looked up at the Old Gentleman's face with tearful agony in his own. The fine snow almost sizzled when it fell upon his perspiring brow. But the Old Gentleman shivered a little and turned his back to the wind.
Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech rather sadly. He did not know that it was because he was wishing every time that he had a son to succeed him. A son who would come there after he was gone--a son who would stand proud and strong before some subsequent Stuffy, and say: "In memory of my father." Then it would be an Institution.
But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms in one of the decayed old family brownstone mansions in one of the quiet streets east of the park. In the winter he raised fuchsias in a little conservatory the size of a steamer trunk. In the spring he walked in the Easter parade. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse in the New Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, speaking of a butterfly, the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find some day. In the autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old Gentleman's occupations.
Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing and helpless in his own self-pity. The Old Gentleman's eyes were bright with the giving-pleasure. His face was getting more lined each year, but his little black necktie was in as jaunty a bow as ever, and the linen was beautiful and white, and his gray mustache was curled carefully at the ends. And then Stuffy made a noise that sounded like peas bubbling in a pot. Speech was intended; and as the Old Gentleman had heard the sounds nine times before, he rightly construed them into Stuffy's old formula of acceptance.
"Thankee, sir. I'll go with ye, and much obliged. I'm very hungry, sir."
The coma of repletion had not; prevented from entering Stuffy's mind the conviction that he was the basis of an Institution. His Thanksgiving appetite was not his own; it belonged by all the sacred rights of established custom, if not, by the actual Statute of Limitations, to this kind old gentleman who bad preempted it. True, America is free; but in order to establish tradition someone must be a repetend -- a repeating decimal. The heroes are not all heroes of steel and gold. See one here that wielded only weapons of iron, badly silvered, and tin.
The Old Gentleman led his annual protégé southward to the restaurant, and to the table where the feast had always occurred. They were recognized.
"Here comes de old guy," said a waiter, "Dat blows dat same bum to a meal every Thanksgiving."
The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl at his corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped the table with holiday food--and Stuffy, with a sigh that was mistaken for hunger's expression, raised knife and fork and carved for himself a crown of imperishable bay.
No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an enemy. Turkey, chops, soups, vegetables, pies, disappeared before him as fast as they could be served. Gorged nearly to the uttermost when he entered the restaurant, the smell of food had almost caused him to lose his honor as a gentleman, but he rallied like a true knight. He saw the look of beneficent happiness on the Old Gentleman's face--a happier look than even the fuchsias and the ornithoptera amphrisins had ever brought to it--and he had not the heart to see it wane.
In an hour Stuffy leaned back with a battle won. "Thankee kindly, sir," he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; "thankee kindly for a hearty meal." Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started toward the kitchen. A waiter turned him about like a top, and pointed him toward the door. The Old Gentleman carefully counted out $1.30 in silver change, leaving three nickels for the waiter.
They parted as they did each year at the door, the Old Gentleman going south, Stuffy north.
Around the first corner Stuffy turned, and stood for one minute. Then he seemed to puff out his rags as an owl puffs out his feathers, and fell to the sidewalk like a sun-stricken horse.
When the ambulance came the young surgeon and the driver cursed softly at his weight. There was no smell of whiskey to justify a transfer to the patrol wagon, so Stuffy and his two dinners went to the hospital. There they stretched him on a bed and began to test him for strange diseases, with the hope of getting a chance at some problem with the bare steel.
And lo! an hour later another ambulance brought the Old Gentleman. And they laid him on another bed and spoke of appendicitis, for he looked good for the bill.
But pretty soon one of the young doctors met one of the young nurses whose eyes he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases.
"That nice old gentleman over there, now," he said, "you wouldn't think that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I guess. He told me he hadn't eaten a thing for three days."
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
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Monday Nov 22, 2010
Monday Nov 22, 2010
Dane Allred’s Rules of Engagement
Kids is Kids
As positive as I try to be, there are times when I do have a bad attitude. I didn’t like hearing the word “grandpa” from a grandchild for the first time, but with a little work, I think I’m getting used to it. My mother especially liked calling me “grandpa” until I reminded her she was now a great-grandmother.
Even though my blood type is B positive, even though I teach in room A1, and even though I try to remember to sign my name with a little hidden plus sign underneath to remind me to be positive, I too can have a bad reaction once in a while. But that just gives me an opportunity to try and apply my “be the abundance” philosophy to myself. When I realized I was going to lose a Saturday recently for which I had planned other events, I got the chance to first react badly and feel cheated out of my plans. But when I calmed down and re-examined the situation, I realized I would be able to do much more good if I buckled down and helped out. I got to spend a Saturday with grandkids, they helped clean up a play area which they played in for hours, and I even got to do some of those things I had planned to otherwise do on that day. I even geared up my best attitude adjustment and did the dishes.
My daughter has just been blessed with the birth of two twin boys who are healthy, happy and back home from the hospital. Someone once said, “A baby is the universe’s opinion that this world should go on.” So twins give me a double boost of optimism for the future of this spinning blue marble. Someone out there wants us to keep trying.
Don Herold said it this way, “Babies are such a nice way to start people.” I don’t think there is a person alive who can’t wonder at the miracle of life when holding a newborn baby, and you ought to try holding two at the same time. It will give you a whole new attitude about your own problems. Groucho Marx illustrated this when he said, “My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.” Another anonymous speaker summarized having kids like this, “Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.”
Parents won’t agree with what George Bernard Shaw said about children. He said, “There may be some doubt as to who are the best people to have in charge of children, but there is no doubt that parents are the worst.” Those of us who are now grandparents are just grateful we can send unruly children back to their parents. But when you are a parent, what can you do. It reminds me of another old saying, “Having children will turn you into your parents.” Most of those who have become parents can relate to this idea. The first time you hear those same words you used to hear your mother or father warn you with coming from your own mouth are very surprising moments. Just don’t make me turn this car around.
But we don’t have to lose our youthful outlook and optimism as we age. Just because we know more about the suffering and struggles of the world doesn’t mean we can’t keep working to make this a better place. But you may feel like John Wilmot, who once said, “Before I got married I had six theories about children. Now I have six children and no theories.” Maybe it’s time to invent a new theory about how this world can work.
Think about it this way. We can’t seem to get along, even though we are all related in one way or another. You could use the Adam and Eve story to illustrate the point, but really, there were so few people in the past that there is no way mathematically that we aren’t direct descendants of almost everyone who lived a couple of thousand years ago or more. We’re all related to Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, and Muhammed. If we are all consanguineous, or related by blood in one way or another, why can’t we get along? Maybe that is the answer. See that Cain and Abel story for details.
But think about it this way. If you have ever changed a diaper, you may have the perfect perspective on how to change the world. If it stinks, throw it out. If it needs changing, ignoring it won’t make the room smell sweeter. Instead of complaining about the problem, get up and do the work.
Just remember, if your parents didn't have any children, neither will you. If you don’t fix the problem, who will?
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
This is the entire episode of "Abundance" called "Increase" from Nov. 14.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Kids
Rugs rats seems like such an awful way
To refer to kids who like to play
Can’t be adolescent
Can be pre-pubescent
Seems they only stay kids for a day.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Help Thou Us Be Like Thee
Jesus Christ is my Lord
He helps me every day.
To him I work toward,
And to thee Lord I pray
Help thou us be like thee.
Jesus Christ paid the price
For sins I did commit.
I give up my greed and vice
My sins He will remit.
Help thou us be like thee.
Jesus Christ reigns supreme
He is the Son of God.
My soul he does redeem,
Though I am weak and flawed.
Help thou us be like thee.
Jesus Christ loves us all,
And for our sins he paid.
He raised us from the fall,
For this work we were made.
Help thou us be like thee.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Help Thou Us Be Like Thee
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Click here for a complete INDEX
Audio of this piece is available at the bottom of the post.Jesus is the Christ
The still small voice from God above
Speaks to my heart of his great love.
God speaks today to all who seek.
Who will approach him mild and meek.
God testifies of Jesus Christ,
Whose life was of infinite price.
His firstborn son and Holy One,
His life our salvation has won.
Christ asks we testify of Him,
Our memory of Him not grow dim,
Love him and follow his commands
To satisfy what God demands.
We covenant to do thy will
Help us this day our souls to heal
That we may once more see thy face
Once more enjoy thy heavenly grace.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Jesus is the Christ
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Click here for a complete INDEX
Audio of this piece is available at the bottom of the post.Christmas Symbols
The wealth of holiday symbols
Bring Christ to mind to me:
The Christmas wreath; eternal love,
God’s love which sets me free.
The candy canes hung on the tree;
Of shepherds faith remind.
The star which pointed to his birth
Leads us though we be blind.
The red of Christmas; like his blood.
The white; of purity.
The tree of green; eternal life.
Ornaments; his glory.
The bells ring out to guide us back
To Heavenly Father’s side.
Christ’s present is salvation’s gift;
With us he will abide.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
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Audio of this piece is available at the bottom of the post.The Atonement
When I am bound in sin
I stop and let him in
To clean my heart within
With his blood begin
To wash the sin away.
I can be pure today
For my sins he did pay
By his side I will stay
And all his words obey
To wash the sin away.
Bless me now to apply
The atonement to my
Weighty sins, Lord I cry
As thy kingdom draws nigh
And wash my sin away.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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The Complete Collection of
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Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Click here for a complete INDEX
Audio of this piece is available at the bottom of the post.Like Thee
I love the Lord and his great word,
He guides my life each day.
Help me to be my Lord like thee
Each moment Lord I pray.
Every day we look unto thee,
For inspiration’s guide.
Help us to be our Lord like thee
To return to thy side.
We sin deride, abolish pride,
Spread love’s tide far and wide.
Help us to be our Lord like thee
That true peace may abide.
We seek each day the better way
And strive to be like thee.
Help us to be our Lord like thee
That we may purer be.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Sunday Nov 21, 2010
Prayer of Thanks
I thank thee Lord for thy great care
In helping those in need.
Let me remember them in prayer
And in my every deed.
I have been blessed with peace sublime
While others strive with war.
I can enjoy the gifts of time
While some have time no more.
While those who cry for mercy still
Plead daily for thy grace,
I marvel at thy grace I feel,
And long to see thy face.
Oh bless us now with pure intent,
To hear that small, still voice.
We thank thee for all thou hast sent,
In which we do rejoice.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin