Episode Notes

Coming to you from Whidbey Island, Washington this is 60 Seconds, your daily dose of hope, imagination, wisdom, stories, practical tips, and general riffing on this and that.

Many here might be too young to remember John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural.

Many here might be too young to remember that times then were not too different from now when it seems like a fool’s errand to want hope and optimism for the country.

This is what Robert Frost, the Poet Laureate of Vermont, recited from memory when the glaring winter sun and his aged eyes could not read the poem he had written for Kennedy’s Inauguration:

“The Gift Outright”

“The land was ours before we were the land’s

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England’s, still colonials,

Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,

Possessed by what we now no more possessed.

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright

(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)

To the land vaguely realizing westward,

But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

Such as she was, such as she would become.” [Robert Frost]

And while I did not say this, Mr. Frost changed the last line of his poem for Mr. Kennedy in that historic moment, as follows: “Such as she was, such as she would become, has become, and I – and for this occasion let me change that to – what she will become.”

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Production Team: Quarter Moon Story Arts
Music: Mer’s Waltz from Crossing the Waters by Steve Schuch & Night Heron Music
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