Christmas Carol Charles Dickens

Dickens began writing his "Little Carol" in October, 1843 finishing it by the end of November in time to be published for Christmas with illustrations by John Leech. Feuding with his publishers, Dickens financed the publishing of the book himself, ordering lavish binding, gilt edging, and hand-colored illustrations and then setting the price at 5 shillings so that everyone could afford it. This combination resulted in disappointingly low profits despite high sales. In the first few days of its release the book sold six thousand copies and its popularity continued to grow. The first and best of his Christmas Books, A Christmas Carol has become a Christmas tradition and easily Dickens' best known book.

Visit This Great Dickens Website:
http://www.fidnet.com/~dap1955/dickens/carol.html
Read A Christmas Carol online:
http://www.stormfax.com/1dickens.htm

A Christmas Treat

The great, great grandson of Charles Dickens, Gerald Charles Dickens, shares with us a reading of A Christmas Carol.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1135265

New Window on the Inner Life of Albert Einstein

Einstein Letters Reveal Inner Thoughts NPR Feature Story

Newly released documents reveal Einstein's most intimate moments and deepest feelings.
The more than 3,500 pages of correspondence and photos between Albert Einstein and his two wives and children were released at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The release was made in accordance with the will of Albert Einstein's stepdaughter, Margot.


Michele Norris talks with Walter Isaacson, who wrote a piece in this week's Time magazine about the newly released letters.

Listen to the NPR Feature Story: Einstein Letters Reveal Inner Thoughts

Einstein In His Own Words Time Magazine Feature Story

Posted Friday, Jul. 7, 2006After 1915, Albert Einstein continued to rely on his good friend Heinrich Zangger, a professor of forensic medicine in Zurich, to serve as mediator between him and his estranged first wife, Mileva. These three letters to Zangger, published here for the first time, allow us to track Einstein's fitful relationship with his elder son, Hans Albert, and his anxiety about the health on his younger son, Eduard (Tete), whom historians believe was suffering from the early stages of schizophrenia.

To: Heinrich Zangger[Berlin,] 11 July [1916]Dear Friend,Your long letter, in which you informed me about how my boys are faring, pleased me very much, but it also filled me with a certain concern in one respect. Whenever my wife confided in any one of my friends, I almost always had to give him up for lost. ... So don't allow the slightest drop of venom into your subconsciousness. It would be such a pity on our fine relations. Surely not that I believed the woman would complain about me outright; it's a matter of indirect influence on the emotions, by which women so often get the better of us. My relations with the boys have frozen up completely again. Following an exceedingly nice Easter excursion, the subsequent days in Zurich brought on a complete chilling in a way that is not quite explicable to me. It's better if I keep my distance from them; I have to content myself with the knowledge that they are developing well. How much better off I am than countless others, who have lost their children in the war! Planck [physicist Max Planck, the father of quantum mechanics] also lost a son like that, the other one has been languishing in French captivity for almost 2 years. ... Concerning science, I'm only working on smaller things now, living a more contemplative life and appreciating the work of others. The general theory of relativity has now penetrated to the point where I can regard my task in this connection completed.

I shut my eyes as best I can to the insane goings-on in the world at large, having completely lost my social consciousness. How can anyone merge in such a social monstrosity if one is a decent person? A fleeting glance at the newspaper is enough to make one disgusted with our contemporaries. One can find solace only in certain individuals.
Cordial greetings, yours,Einstein

Read the rest of the story in Time Magazine

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder & the Inventor of the Spark Plug

Nikola Tesla

The creations of Nikola Tesla affect our everyday lives in ways that few other inventors can claim. He invented most of the technology for generating and transmitting electricity, as well as much of the technology behind radio. He invented spark plugs for the internal combustion engine, and a device that's the basis for an important element in picture-tube based TVs.

Yet today, his name is likely to conjure images of a mad scientist. Late in life, perhaps driven by obsessive-compulsive disorder, he boasted of death rays and limitless power, and tried to make contact with Mars.

Tesla was born 150 years today in Austria. He made his way to the United States, where he went to work for Thomas Edison. After the two had a falling out, Tesla built the basic technology for alternating current -- the form of power generation that we use today.

In the late 1800s, he moved to Colorado Springs, where he experimented with ways to transmit electricity through the air and ground. He created a device known as the Tesla coil, which produces big electric sparks. Tesla coils were part of the lab equipment in the original movie version of "Frankenstein."

During his experiments, Tesla detected electrical signals that he thought were messages from Mars. They weren't. But some scientists think they may have been natural radio waves from Jupiter. If so, then Nikola Tesla might deserve credit for another invention: radio astronomy. Script by Damond Benningfield

This story and more at: http://stardate.org/

First flight Test, Altitude 18,000 Feet; April 16, 1946

The German V-2 rocket, Hitler's "brain child" of World War II, is the grandfather of America's family of large missiles.

Based on findings made by America's Dr. Robert H. Goddard following World War I, the Germans hit a peak production of V-2's during 1944 and 1945 at Peenemunde, and terrorized Allied populations of Europe and England until the end of the war.

The German program started in early 1940, and the first V-2 was launched July 6, 1942. The third missile, launched in October 1942, flew 170 miles and was the first successful V-2 in flight.
Between August 1944 and February 1945, the Germans made some 3,000 rockets with a peak production of 30 missiles in one day. Hitler's production target was for 3,600 rockets in one year.

The Germans had an underground production plant in Nordhausen with a 900,000 square-foot production area. The plant was constructed in two parallel tunnels 500 feet apart, each a mile and a quarter long and cut completely through a mountain.

The main rocket assembly line started at one end of the first tunnel and missiles, moved along on rails, were finished and tested upon reaching the opposite end of the tunnel and were ready for delivery to launching sites.

The second tunnel was used for bringing in units and parts for subassembly lines which were 46 smaller tunnels cross-connecting at strategic points the two main missile arteries.
Subassemblies were channeled to tunnels and timed so that they reached the main assembly line at the time and place required. The total length of the entire tunnel-web was 18 miles.

United States Efforts Focus on White Sands

Operation PaperClip

Operation Paperclip was the codename under which the US intelligence and military services extricated scientists from Germany, during and after the final stages of World War II. The project was originally called Operation Overcast, and is sometimes also known as Project Paperclip.

May 6, 1937: Hindenburg lands in fiery explosion

Hindenburg Disaster
It was the largest airship ever built; over eight-hundred feet long from its nose to its massive tail fins. It was the height of luxury travel and carried over 2,656 people across the Atlantic from Germany to New York and Rio de Janeiro. It was the Hindenburg. In the space of 37 seconds the mighty zeppelin was destroyed in a fire that killed a third of its crew and passengers and left spectators crying in horror.

What caused this catastrophe? Was it negligence, sabotage, or as Hitler called it, "An act of God"?

The first successful dirigible (a balloon that has engines to control its horizontal movement) was built in France in 1852. Although other countries built these types of airships, the Germans quickly became the most advanced in this form of lighter-than-air technology. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a German businessman, built a fleet of experimental dirigibles. The type of airships Zeppelin built were spindle-shaped with a rigid internal steel structure (unlike the flexible bodied blimps common today). Inside the craft were large bags filled with gas that gave the ship its lift as well as catwalks to allow the crew to move back and forth inside the hull to service the airship. Beneath the craft was a gondola which carried the crew and passengers. By 1911 Zeooelin's airship LZ-10 (also known as the Schwaben) was in passenger service and would go onto make 218 flights carrying 1,553 passengers. Zeppelin became so well-known for this type of dirigible that his name soon became synonymous with that type of airship.

Starting in 1914, the beginning of WWI, the Count's zeppelins were used to drop bombs on cities in a number of European countries. They made over fifty raids on London alone, dropping nearly 200 tons of explosives. As the war progressed, however, most of the German's zeppelin fleet was destroyed by British guns or aircraft. The gas that gave them their lift, hydrogen, was very flammable, and even a small bomb hitting a zeppelin could reduce it to ashes in just a few minutes.

After the war Germany again began building large airships. As part of war reparations the Germans built the ZR-3 Los Angeles for the U.S. Navy. In 1928 the Zeppelin Company built what was the most successful passenger dirigible of all time, the Graf Zeppelin.
The Graf Zeppelin was a hundred feet longer than any other airship ever built and stretched 776 feet from nose to tail fins. It was designed as a passenger liner to compete with the ocean liners crossing the Atlantic. With a maximum speed of 80 miles per hour, it cut the time it took to make the trip by more than two-thirds. The passenger cabin was outfitted with drapes and thick carpeting. Dinner was made by professional chefs and was served using silverware, crystal and fine china. Time magazine declared, "Certainly for trans-oceanic trips, the airship is the thing."

The Hindenburg Construction

Some of radio's greatest moments are when the actual event occurs live on the air or while a reporter is recording and the unexpected happens. One such event happened to reporter Herb Morrison on May 6th, 1937 in Lakehurst, New Jersey.

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith died this weekend at age 97

John Kenneth Galbraith, a Harvard economist and behind-the-scenes political adviser to Democratic presidents, died late Saturday of natural causes. He was 97.

Galbraith’s influence was felt far beyond economic circles. He thought across disciplines, Benjamin Freeman, a Harvard economics professor and friend of Galbraith's said, "Not just in the field (of economics), but broadening the discourse to encompass the world at large.''

This column by William F. Buckley Jr. appeared in the September 28, 2001, edition of National Review Online.

More About Galbraith

Conversations with History: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Empire State Building Celebrates 75 Years

Empire State Building Celebrates 75 Years

By Adam Phillips New York 1 May 2006


Human societies have always built great monuments to celebrate their values. The Egyptians had their pyramids. Medieval Europeans had their great cathedrals. For 20th century Americans, it was the skyscraper that best embodied the power and progress that defined their era.

Today, the undisputed king of American skyscrapers is the Empire State Building, the soaring Art Deco behemoth that opened its doors on May first, 1931, 75 years ago.

It is difficult to tell from the street at the base of the 381-meter tall Empire State Building how monumental a structure it really is. But you know it even before you ride its elevators to the top. In fact, as soon as you step inside the marble-clad lobby, with its Art Deco grillwork, fantastical chrome ornamentation and triumphalist artwork, it's clear this is a landmark, a building like no other in the world.

Lydia Ruth, the Empire State Building's public relations director, knows she has a world-famous treasure to work with. She points to the countless films in which it has played a leading role -- from King Kong to Sleepless in Seattle to An Affair to Remember, and Independence Day.

"When any movie or television show wants to say they are being filmed in New York and they do that establishing shot, they always show the Empire State Building," she says. "It's kind of like the spirit of New York."

In recent decades, the Empire State Building was eclipsed by the taller twin towers of the World Trade Center. After those towers were destroyed by terrorists in 2001, the Empire State Building was once again Manhattan's tallest spire. But the special quality of the building is about more than its height, or even its place in popular entertainment.

Ruth says she's just as impressed by the engineering, workmanship and sheer pluck that went into the building's construction. The Empire State Building was erected during the depths of the Great Depression, for most a time of gloom, not optimism and daring. Its construction was also a logistical tour de force that took a mere one year and 45 days to complete, a world record.

"I don't think you can get a piece of furniture made in a year and 45 days now," she says. "They actually installed a little rail line around the building to deliver the materials. We got marble from Italy; all the limestone came from one quarry in Indianapolis they still call the Empire State Building Quarry. They were good quality materials. There was no shoddy workmanship. And that's why I think it stands today as such a testament to engineering and people's ingenuity."

The Empire State Building, of course, is also a busy workplace, filled with travel agencies and photo studios, barber shops, garment factories and other enterprises. More than 850 tenants employ over 9000 people.

The most senior occupant is Jack Broad, 96, of the Empire Diamond Company on the 76th floor. He moved in in July, 1931, two months after the building opened, and has seen its best times and its worst times. He vividly recalls the day in 1945 when a B-25 bomber got lost in a fog and crashed into the 79th floor.

"The building became a torch," he says. "The gasoline ran down the side of the building. As soon as it burned out, the building looked intact -- except the plane was still sticking into the building."

Like many of the Empire State Building's loyal tenants, Broad says he finds great joy in the daily contact with the building and its unique vistas. "On a clear day, I can see for a hundred miles. People say 'when are you gonna retire?' I answer 'when they plant me.'"

The talk of height has made this reporter eager for the view from the top -- one of the only places in New York where one cannot see the Empire State Building.

"It's spectacular to see the sights and be able to see the Statue of Liberty," says one American tourist. "It's pretty amazing," agrees a British visitor. "You've got the Chrysler Building and you've got Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, the financial district."

Another tourist nods, grinning. "It's breathtaking. It shows you how big the world really is!"

More New From Voice Of America
American LifePeople, Places & Issues in the News Across America

Twenty Years After the Chernobyl Accident

Statements of the Director General
by IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei

The April 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant remains a painful memory in the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who were most affected by the accident. In addition to the emergency rescue workers who died, thousands of children contracted thyroid cancer, and thousands of other individuals will eventually die of other cancers caused by the release of radiation. Vast areas of cropland, forests, rivers and urban centres were contaminated by environmental fallout. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from these affected areas - forced to leave behind their homes, possessions, and livelihoods - and resettled elsewhere, in a traumatic outcome that has had long-lasting psychological and social impacts.

The commemoration of the Chernobyl tragedy is taking place in many forums this month - in Minsk, in Kiev and in other locations.

At the IAEA, it might be said that we have been responding to the accident and its consequences for twenty years, in a number of ways: first, through a variety of programmes designed to help mitigate the environmental and health consequences of the accident; second, by analyzing the lessons of what went wrong to allow such an accident to occur at all; and third, by working to prevent any such accident from occurring in the future.

Building a strong and effective global nuclear safety regime is a central objective of our work. This requires effective international cooperation. The explosions that destroyed the Unit 4 reactor core, and discharged its contents in a cloud of radionuclides, made painfully clear that the safety risks associated with nuclear and radiological activities extend beyond national borders. International cooperation on nuclear safety matters - sharing information, setting clear safety standards, assisting with safety upgrades, and reviewing operational performance - has therefore become a hallmark of IAEA activity, particularly at a time when we are witnessing an expansion of nuclear power to meet increasing energy demands in many parts of the world.

In 2001, after taking note of the conflicting views on the results of the accident, I called for the creation of a Chernobyl Forum, inviting the world´s foremost scientific experts to conduct an exhaustive assessment of the health, environmental and social impacts of the accident. As with all IAEA programmes, we emphasized an impartial, fact based approach to the analysis of this difficult and highly charged topic. I was pleased that, after a long period of careful analysis, the parties involved - including the World Health Organization and seven other specialized United Nations agencies, as well as the Governments of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine - were able to achieve consensus on the set of authoritative reports that were issued last September.

But the Chernobyl Forum had another purpose as well. My hope was that, by giving clear, impartial answers about the accident and its effects, we would be able to focus more effectively on present and future needs. Better international cooperation on assistance to the people and regions affected by the accident. Smarter approaches to safe food production and effective health care. Enhanced investments in the people concerned, in ways that would give them control over their own livelihoods.
In short, it was my hope that, by answering questions about the past, we could restore a vision of a brighter future for the regions concerned. And that remains my hope.

We will not soon forget the Chernobyl accident. We will not forget the emergency workers who gave their lives. We will not forget the health and environmental consequences. And we should never forget the lessons we learned regarding nuclear safety and international cooperation. In remembering the Chernobyl accident, we should renew our determination to ensure that such a tragedy will not happen again.

But we must also remember the survivors, the individuals and communities who seek to move forward with their lives and the lives of their children. At this time of remembrance, they too deserve our attention and assistance, so that they will be able to move beyond the shadow of the Chernobyl accident and into a prosperous future.

Copyright 2003-2005, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: Official.Mail@iaea.org

IEA Additional Coverage

Pentecostalism Turns 100

One of the fastest growing Christian movements began 100 years ago this week in Los Angeles. Pentecostals from all over the world joined in the Azusa Street Centennial.

Billboard:
Krista Tippett, host: I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "A Spiritual Tidal Wave." We'll explore the origins and impact of Pentecostal Christianity from Azusa Street in Los Angeles, where this frontier faith was launched by an African-American preacher 100 years ago this month. Now, with a half billion followers, it is changing the face of religion and society worldwide. Pentecostalism claims the gifts of the spirit described in the Bible as sources of spiritual power to face the challenges of human life and a changing world.

Professor Cecil M. Robeck Jr.: Once you have been touched by God at such a deep level, right down to the tongue that you speak, and your ability to speak the language that you've been trained in all of your life leaves you, there is no turning back.

Ms. Tippett: This is Speaking of Faith. Stay with us. I'm Krista Tippett. One quarter of the world's Christians, over 500 million people, are Pentecostal. And their numbers are rising exponentially. Though Pentecostalism is often confused by outsiders with Fundamentalist Christianity, it is an historically distinct and spiritually different movement. We come to you this hour from Azusa Street in Los Angeles at the centennial celebration of the Pentecostal movement. This frontier faith is now sweeping the world in ways that its African-American founder, a son of slaves, could never have imagined.

From American Public Media, this is Speaking of Faith, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics and ideas. Today, "A Spiritual Tidal Wave: The Origins and Impact of Pentecostalism."

NPR Feature Story "A Spiritual Tidal Wave"

American desinger for Queens' 80th Birthday Cover

News Released: April 18, 2006
American designer for Queen’s 80th Birthday Cover

(PRLEAP.COM) Mandy Searles of Massachusetts, USA,has designed a first day cover for HM Queen Elizabeth’s 80th birthday Royal Mail stamp issue. The limited edition cover and its special postmark is being issued by Britain’s secret little post office at Bletchley Park Eight years ago 25-year-old Mandy set up one of the world’s most popular web sites on Queen Elizabeth and her family. She is also a talented graphic designer and has used those skills to provide the backdrop for the new stamps. As Mandy put it “It has been a joy to work with Bletchley Park in creating this first day cover. I thank them for giving me this chance to further express my admiration for the Queen, who is my inspiration for so many things in life”.

The double-sided cover design complements the stamp images showing Her Majesty at different stages of her life. The stamps will be cancelled for their first day of issue with a unique ER postmark. Only 1000 are planned for the issue. The hand prepared cover comes complete with a special greeting card insert and will be individually numbered. It is only available direct from Chapman and Mitchell Covers at Bletchley Park Post Office, The Mansion, Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes, MK3 6EB, UK. Tel: 01908 631797. Cover can be previewed in British Royalty section of cover gallery at the web site http://www.bletchleycovers.com/. Price £12.50 ($20 US) plus £1.50 ($2.50 US) post and packing.

EndsNote to Editors:Bletchley Park Post Office is based at Bletchley Park famous for the wartime enigma code breakers. It has been issuing first day covers since 1995 and uses the income to support its work at the park and with other charities. Web address www.bletchleycovers.com

Mandy Searles can be contacted through http://www.mandysroyalty.org/ a web site dedicated to the British Royal family.

A subject she has been fascinated by from an early age.Media contact:
Terry Mitchell. Tel: +44 (0) 1604 781440Email; terry@ltmp.co.uk

100 Years After the San Francisco Quake

April 18 marks the centennial of one of America's greatest catastrophes, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.

The economic and cultural hub of the West, San Francisco was forever changed by the massive earthquake and resulting fires that struck early in the morning on April 18, 1906. One hundred years later, the city remembers the disaster and recovery.

NPR Feature Story

Freud & His Continued Significance

On his 150th birthday, the architect of therapeutic culture is an inescapable force.

Why Freud—modern history's most debunked doctor—captivates us even now.

By Jerry Adler
Newsweek

March 27, 2006 issue - We stand now at a critical moment in the history of our civilization, which is usually the case: beset by enemies who irrationally embrace their own destruction along with ours, our fate in the hands of leaders who make a virtue of avoiding reflection, our culture hijacked by charlatans who aren't nearly as depraved as they pretend in their best-selling memoirs. As we turn from the author sniveling on Oprah's couch, our gaze is caught by a familiar figure in the shadows, sardonic and grave, his brow furrowed in weariness. So, he seems to be saying, you would like this to be easy. You want to stick your head in a machine, to swallow a pill, to confess on television and be cured before the last commercial. But you don't even know what your disease is.

Yes, it's Sigmund Freud, still haunting us, a lifetime after he died in London in 1939, driven by the Nazis from his beloved Vienna.


Sigmund Freud may have died more than 60 years ago, but his impact is still significant. The March 27, 2006 issue of Newsweek features the psychoanalyst on the cover and takes a look at Freud's long shadow on Western culture.

As the feature article indicates, Freud may not be taken seriously as a scientist, but his theories and ideas have influenced literature, popular culture, and modern therapy. The article offers a good examination of why Freud is still a topic of conversation, even after many of his theories have been disputed or lambasted by critics.

Read the Full Newsweek article Freud in Our Midst
htt://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11904222/site/newsweek/

In Celebration of Samuel Beckett 1906-1989

In Celebration of Samuel Beckett 1906-1989 Novelist, Playwright, Poet, critic, Irishman

Mix a powerful imagination with a logic in absurdum, and the result will be either a paradox or an Irishman. If it is an Irishman, you will get the paradox into the bargain..." reads the presentation speech for Beckett's Nobel Prize in Literature. "Paradoxically, this has happened in 1969, a single award being addressed to one man, two languages and a third nation, itself divided."

As the centenary of Beckett's birth approaches this week, remembrances and performances of his work are under way. In addition to plays such as Godot, Krapp's Last Tape and Endgame, Beckett wrote novels, essays and poetry, as well.

Godot, considered an influential classic today, earned everything from apathy to anger when it debuted in 1953. The dialogue bounces back and forth between two tramps named Vladimir and Estragon, stuck waiting for the arrival of an M. Godot -- who, like God, will never appear. When Godot opened in London, the British Lord Chamberlain censored some of the lines for supposed vulgarity and blasphemy.

Follow the Link below to the NPR Feature: Beckett's Centenary:
Revisiting a LegacyBeckett's Centenary: Revisiting a Legacy

Waiting For Godot

Selected Quotes

Let's go. Yes, let's go. (They do not move). - Waiting for Godot

Nothing to be done. - Waiting for Godot

The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.- Waiting for Godot

Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the gravedigger puts on the forceps.- Waiting for Godot

Pozzo: I don't seem to be able . . . (long hesitation) to depart. Estragon: Such is life.- Waiting for Godot

Vladimir: Our Saviour. Two thieves. One is supposed to have been saved and the other (he searches for the contrary of saved) damned. Estragon: Saved from what?- Waiting for Godot

Estragon: What about hanging ourselves? Vladimir: Hmm. It'd give us an erection. Estragon: (highly excited). An erection!- Waiting for Godot

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go? Estragon: Yes, let's go. They do not move.- Waiting for Godot

We are all born mad. Some remain so.- Waiting for Godot

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!- Waiting for Godot

But that is not the question. Why are we here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come.- Waiting for Godot

To-morrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of to-day?- Waiting for Godot

. . .in all that what truth will there be? Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. (He listens.) But habit is a great deadener.- Waiting for Godot

We wait. We are bored. (He throws up his hand.) No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. . .In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness!- Waiting for Godot


For Full Text of Wating for Godot Follow The Link Below:
Samuel Beckett Dublin Ireland - Waiting for Godot

Sloane Coffin Dies at 81; Fought for Civil Rights and Against a War

William Sloan Coffin in His Own words:

"Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword" Let's start by recognizing that there is a fundamental, unacceptability about unpleasant truth. We all shield ourselves against its wounding accuracy. Not only do we do this as individuals, but we do this as a people, as a nation. Twenty-seven hundred years ago, as some of you may remember, not because you were there, but because you read the Bible, the priest Amaziah said of the prophet Amos, "...the land is not able to bear all his words."

Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, "'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace." and why Jesus said, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34 NIV)

Full text of this sermon can be found at the following link:
http://www.30goodminutes.org/csec/sermon/coffin_3519.htm

"The Glory of God is a human being fully alive." Irenaeus

The Rev. COFFIN: I'd just as soon live a little bit longer. But when you are 80, you can't complain. Joy in this world comes from self-fulfillment. Joy is a more profound experience than mere happiness. When you feel a sense of undeserved integrity because you think you're in the right fight -- against segregation, against the war in Vietnam, against the stupid and cruel discrimination against gays and lesbians -- these are the right fights, I feel very deeply. And the sense of self-fulfillment which comes from being in the right fight is a wonderful thing.

I remain hopeful. The opposite of hope is despair -- not pessimism, despair. And as a very convinced Christian, I say to myself, "Come on, Coffin. If Christ never allowed his soul to be cornered with despair, and his was the greatest miscarriage of justice maybe in the world, who the hell am I to say I'm going to despair a bit?"

When you get older, friendship obviously runs deeper and deeper. And, I would add, nature gets more interesting the nearer you get to joining it, and also more beautiful. I can sit on the front porch here and watch the sun coming in through the maple leaves. You know, God is good.

Interview with Rev. William Sloan Coffin from Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, August 2004: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week752/profile.html

In our time all it takes for evil to flourish is for a few good men to be a little wrong and have a great deal of power, and for the vast majority of their fellow citizens to remain indifferent." — In the Yale Alumni magazine in 1967

The U.S. government should have vowed "...to see justice done, but by the force of law only, never by the law of force." — After September 11, 2001

"We yearned for a revolution of imagination and compassion that would oppose the very aggressiveness and antagonism that characterized the actions of both Nixon and the Weathermen. We were convinced nonviolence was more revolutionary than violence" — referring to the organizers of the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam

"Without love violence will change the world; it will change it into a more violent one." — June 1968

"It's too bad that one has to conceive of sports as being the only arena where risks are, [for] all of life is risk exercise. That's the only way to live more freely, and more interestingly."

"The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love."

"Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality." — to the Yale Class of 1968 35th reunion, May 2003

"Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat."

Books
· Letters to a Young Doubter, Westminster John Knox Press, July 2005, ISBN 0664229298 (review and article from CommonDreams.org)

· Credo, Westminster John Knox Press, December 2003, ISBN 0664227074

· The Heart Is a Little to the Left: Essays on Public Morality, Dartmouth College, 1st edition, October 1999, ISBN 0874519586

· The Courage to Love, sermons, Harper & Row, c1982, ISBN 0060615087

· Once to Every Man: A Memoir, autobiography, Athenaeum Press, 1977, ISBN 0689108117