100 years later

[Grahameeboy]

Did those murder figures include genocide of the Native north americans and the lynchings by the KKK

That was before 1907 (not sure about KKK)......but surely the Yanks would tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth...we do this in the name of God..blah blah?

[SPman]

Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.

So - what's changed there?

[Timber020]

With no progress since..

hey thats not fair, the bikes now have tassles and the riders dress like pirates.

[Hitcher]

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.


W H Auden, poet, was born 100 years ago this year.