30 January 2008
Posted in Blog - 2008

> Originally from Blogspot's Ye Olde Blog by L.J. <

It's a new day, and I guess Amazon came to mind because books were on my mind. And I've just remembered a quote by Louisa May Alcott, who was, and is, one of my favorite writers of books for young people:

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead." --Louisa May Alcott

I think it's a lovely little inspirational saying. My favorite poet is Emily Dickinson, followed by...well, I guess A.E. Housman, W.H. Auden, and Robert Frost, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (just for the Idylls, really), William Blake, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are all in a dead heat for second place. And e.e. cummings. Oh, and A.A. Milne! Seriously! (That must come from my child-heart.) And Lewis Carroll! I think that one quatrain of his is worth hundreds from some of the others:

In the midst of the word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away -- - For the Snark was a Boojum, you see. --from The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits, by Lewis Carroll

I would love to write a short story titled "Not All Snarks Are Boojums." (Or maybe "All Snarks Are Boojums Under the Skin." Whatever. It just tickles me: the name and the poem.) And I think Lewis Carroll would have been tickled by "quarks," even if the name came fraom James Joyce. I honestly hope that something, someday, in quantum theory is named a "boojum."

Lisa