Erin Burnett

The above photo taken by me was, I just discovered, published on Wikipedia. The photo is of CNBC business correspondent Erin Burnett, who is seen in mid-discourse on Vanderbilt Avenue, midtown Manhattan, on St Patrick's Day, 2008, across the street from the HQ of Bear Stearns. That portentous day... Bear Stearns, a giant of investing and financial services, its shadow cast around the entire world, collapsed, bringing to the attention of the general public the first ominous clouds of this current financial crisis.

Seaplane ~ Bridge ~ New York

Bomb Power

I'd really like to read this new book by Garry Wills...

A Day Late

I don't have a romantic bone in my body, but even that's not quite true. In fact, we're all romantical, but life and love and losers let us down. So, a day late for Valentine's Day... here is that great love poem, which tells us that time is short, get your clothes off now.

To His Coy Mistress

By Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.