A COLLECTION OF BOOKISH THOUGHTS

sharing my love of books with you

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Saturday, March 11

March 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Happy Saturday, my friends! It was a lovely day here, sunny and warm. My mother and I went to see a play called Outside Mullingar. It was an Irish romance story and involved two sets of neighbors, aging parents, and a dispute over a piece of land. The ending was especially sweet. If you have the opportunity to see Outside Mullingar, I highly recommend it.

Today’s tea is English Breakfast with a bit of milk and sugar. I’m planning to write a few more New Words posts and then try to finish an extra chapter of Lion in the White House, if I don’t get too distracted by Rumi. Have a great rest of your Saturday!

Idiosyncratic

March 11, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Idiosyncratic – of, characterized by, or resulting from idiosyncrasy

Idiosyncrasy – the temperament or mental constitution peculiar to a person or group; any personal peculiarity, mannerism, etc

“But politics suited [Theodore Roosevelt’s] temperament and ambition. It would fuel his abundant vitality and need to be on the go and make things happen. For a gentleman, his career choice was not idiosyncratic.”

Lion in the White House, Aida d. Donald

Acerbic

March 10, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Acerbic – sour, harsh, severe

“The acerbic Henry Adams described [Roosevelt] as pure act, something like a medieval and indescribable force.”

Lion in the White House, Aida D. Donald

Nascent

March 9, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Nascent – coming into being; being born; beginning to form, start, grow, or develop

“Though a historian in the making and a still-nascent politician, Roosevelt intuited that a politician must lead the people with an original set of principles, not just mirror those cobbled to the lowest common denominator.”

lion in the White house, Aida D. Donald

Simpatico

March 8, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Simpatico – congenital or like-minded; likeable

“When he was only twenty-eight years old, Roosevelt published his life of Benton, who served fifty years in Washington… Roosevelt thought the book evolved mainly from his “inner consciousness,” so simpatico was he with so many of Benton’s political trials.”

Lion in the White House, Aida D. Donald

Lament for the Poets: 1916, by Francis Ledwidge

March 7, 2023 / / 0 Comments 
I heard the Poor Old Woman say:
"At break of day the fowler came, 
And took my blackbirds from their songs
Who loved me well thro' shame and blame.

"No more from lovely distances
Their songs shall bless me mile by mile,
Nor to white Ashbourne call me down
To wear my crown another while.

"With bended flowers the angels mark
For the skylark the place they lie,
From there its little family
Shall dip their wings first in the sky.

"And when the first surprise of flight
Sweet songs excite, from the far dawn
Shall there come blackbirds loud with love,
Sweet echoes of the singers gone.

"But in the lonely hush of eve
Weeping I grieve the silent bills."
I heard the Poor Old Woman say
In Derry of the little hills.

("Lament for the Poets: 1916", by Francis Ledwidge, printed in Poems of the Irish People, 2016)

Theodore Roosevelt on Edith

March 6, 2023 / / 0 Comments

“[Roosevelt] wrote to his sister Coni at the time that Edith “was sweet in many different things … I don’t think even I had known how wonderfully good and unselfish she was; she is naturally reserved and finds it especially hard to express her feelings on paper.” In later years he wrote that Edith had made the “real happiness” in his life.”

Lion in the White House, Aida D. Donald

Theodore Roosevelt’s Tribute to Alice

March 6, 2023 / / 0 Comments

After only a few short years of marriage, Roosevelt’s first wife, Alice, died of kidney disease. She had just given birth to their first baby, Alice Lee, who was named for her mother. A year later, Roosevelt wrote this tribute to his dead wife:

“I … loved her as soon as I saw her sweet, fair young face … We spent three years of happiness such as rarely comes to a man or woman … Fair, pure, and joyous as a maiden; loving, tender, and happy as a young wife; when she had just become a mother, when her life seemed to be but just begun, and when the years seemed so bright before her – then by a strange and terrible fate, death came to her. And when my heart’s dearest died, the light went from my life forever.”

Theodore Roosevelt, as quoted in Lion in the White house, Aida D. Donald

Roosevelt on Legislators

March 5, 2023 / / 0 Comments

“For him the bedrock of politics was morality, and business practices that bilked citizens were immoral. Looking back at those times in his autobiography, Roosevelt wrote that ‘honesty … and decency … and administrative efficiency are the prime requisites for a legislator.'”

Lion in the White House, Aida D. Donald
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