PolyArchive

Declassified Soviet joke courtesy the CIA: A train bearing Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev stops suddenly when the tracks run out. Each leader applies his own, unique solution. Lenin gathers workers and peasants from miles around and exhorts them to build more track. Stalin shoots the train crew when the train still doesn’t move. […]

The Road Not Taken Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the […]

“Toasted bacon wrapped in tin trays, sonic dishwashers and fridges that appear from under the kitchen floor – this was how life was supposed to be 40 years ago. These pictures are from a 1962 book called 1975: And the Changes to Come by Arnold B. Barach. They predict what the world of the future […]

Clementine Churchill: A Life in Pictures Sonia Purnell From the publisher: Clementine Churchill: A Life in Pictures is a fully illustrated and abridged edition of Sonia Purnell’s acclaimed biography, First Lady, including over 100 stunning and rarely seen photographs. Without Winston Churchill’s inspiring leadership Britain could not have survived its darkest hour. Without his wife Clementine, however, he might […]

Leadership Insights Derived from the Dynamics of Collective Action: A Case Study of Movement Formation Derek Sivers’ TED talk on how to start a movement offers leadership lessons from a shirtless dancing guy. The video, spanning under three minutes, encapsulates the evolution of a movement and imparts valuable insights into effective leadership strategies. This analysis […]

Desiderata Max Ehrmann Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. […]

Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,        Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express        A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape        Of deities or mortals, or of both,                In Tempe or the […]

South Dakota’s may plausibly be considered the most genuinely innovative, most inspirationally forward-looking professional orchestra in the United States. It is also the happiest professional orchestra I know, and the most engaged. Fulfilling Theodore Thomas’s credo, it “shows the culture of the community.” Link: The American Scholar | Shostakovich in South Dakota A manifesto for […]

Wild Geese Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile […]

Seeing for a Moment Denise Levertov I thought I was growing wings— it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fire— it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things; facing my mirror—no longer young,        the news—always of death, […]

Let America Be America Again Langston Hughes (1901–1967) Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be […]

October Robert Frost O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild, Should waste them all. The crows above the forest call; To-morrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow, Make the day seem to us […]

Over at Jane Austen’s World, Rachel Dodge has been comparing how Austen’s novels use what have now become standard romance tropes. The end of the series is the Sense and Sensibility’s (double) love triangle. Jane Austen’s World | Jane Austen and Rom Coms: Sense and Sensibility (“Love Triangles”) — We often forget that Thomas Alva […]

Little Things Sharon Olds After she’s gone to camp, in the early evening I clear our girl’s breakfast dishes from the rosewood table, and find a dinky crystallized pool of maple syrup, the grains standing there, round, in the night, I rub it with my fingertip as if I could read it, this raised dot […]

Death of the Hat Billy Collins Once every man wore a hat. In the ashen newsreels, the avenues of cities are broad rivers flowing with hats. The ballparks swelled with thousands of straw hats, brims and bands, rows of men smoking and cheering in shirtsleeves. Hats were the law. They went without saying. You noticed […]