Veteran's Day - 11th Day, 11th Month, 11th Hour
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Teddy Roosevelt
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." - Thomas Paine
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. - Abraham Lincoln
I'll finish with a letter that became famous in 1998, when it was quoted in Saving Private Ryan. Lincoln is a great hero of mine for many, many reasons. Major reasons include his courage, empathy, and resolve, and a minor reason is his mastery over the English language. This letter was in a book I loved in high school: 101 Famous Poems. It is NOT a poem, clearly, but the authors included it to represent one of the finest examples of writing in the language. Here it is:
Executive Mansion,Washington,November 21, 1864.
Mrs. Bixby,Boston, Massachusetts:
DEAR MADAM:
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." - Thomas Paine
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. - Dwight D. Eisenhower
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. - Abraham Lincoln
I'll finish with a letter that became famous in 1998, when it was quoted in Saving Private Ryan. Lincoln is a great hero of mine for many, many reasons. Major reasons include his courage, empathy, and resolve, and a minor reason is his mastery over the English language. This letter was in a book I loved in high school: 101 Famous Poems. It is NOT a poem, clearly, but the authors included it to represent one of the finest examples of writing in the language. Here it is:
Executive Mansion,Washington,November 21, 1864.
Mrs. Bixby,Boston, Massachusetts:
DEAR MADAM:
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln
posted by Chuck | 11:28 AM
2 Comments:
The quoted example of fine writing should serve to illustrate how far our standards of composition have fallen.
You, of course, know the vast amounts of writing through which I shuffle every day. Some of it is decent, some passable, and some is simply dreck of which the author should be ashamed. This isn't about papers written about womens' shoes. It's about me reading a dissertation abstract whose sentence structure, grammar, and breadth of vocabulary is no better than something I wrote in high school.
I won't even get into the shite one sees on the Internet. The day I use a lower case "i" to stand for the first-person point of view and "u" to signify "you" is the day I voluntarily commit myself to a mental institution.
I agree completely that the formality of the written word has become lax. In an effort to "equalize" everything, it is OK to treat an ostensibly professional written effort to communicate with the same laissez faire grammar we put into person to person contact. While it works in face to face conversation, it totally fails in using a piece of paper to transmit an idea (the single greatest invention in the history of mankind). The written language is a marvel and I love reading good writers. I know great writing is a special skill, but many people don't even practice the basic sentence structure and paragraph layout. The television lowered the standards and the computer absolved responsibility. I see stuff in internet media and TV news channels that make me cringe. And these are professional journalists. Very depressing.
We're bringing it BACK!!!!!
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