Quotable quotes: I was researching some quotes I love. Unfortunately, I know them when I hear them but to bring them up to memory sometimes is difficult. Still I thought I would place some I do remember on my blog simply because I love them.

One was given by Robert Kennedy told to a group of African Americans he met on his campaign trail for president in 1968 several months before his own death. He had just found out about the assassination of Martin Luther King and did not know how to break the horrific news to them. He tried to calm the crowd by trying to relay that he knew how they felt since he had a brother who was killed too. He knew that kind of grief. He quoted from one of the many classics he had read trying to understand his brother's death. He quoted from Aeschylus's play Agamemnon and said:

"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

The other I love was his quoting from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the Democratic National Convention, August 27, 1964 in remembering his brother Jack. He said:

"Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun."


I believe those quotes are simply gorgeous. Shakespeare, especially, one can say certainly had a way with words. Ah to be young again when memorizing things comes much more easily. So now I still try but my goodness there is just too much to know and not enough time in which to know it which is why I love Robert Frost's quote from the last stanza of his poem Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Frontline: Behind the Lines of the Taliban -- The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan: Despite the seemingly disgusting nature of this particular Frontline I think it captures just what we are dealing with in Afghanistan and god knows how many other places on earth as the utlra religious yet again show us the HEIGHTS and DEPTHS their behavior can reach AND sink.

No one BUT NO ONE can crow about their own religion or culture being immune as we see so evident in so many religious orthodoxies in our midst. We need only pay witness to Pope Benedict's utterly pathetic and anemic effort to deal with the MOST egregious behavioral sex abuse, usually of young boys, in the Church. We see it too in orthodoxies OF ALL SORTS including, I am disgusted and ashamed to say, a few I have only read about in the New York Times concerning the ultra orthodox Jewish sects in New York where again sex abuse often of young boys goes UNREPORTED only to be "dealt with" in secret by ONLY men, of course, from the particular sect involved. The foxes indeed guard the coop. It's NOT the children the religious elders care about. It is the shame heaped upon the institution itself which is their main concern. They do not realize that when these acts finally see light, as they now often do, the religious institution itself is the entity that is besmirched the most by its Herculean efforts to hide the abominable behavior.

Exposure of these INEXCUSABLE acts on ALL fronts is the ONLY thing that turns night into day as it sheds light on the crimes as the only disinfectant for their viral contaminant. When you ask for whom the bell tolls it most certainly tolls for ALL of us as when one becomes a victim, I believe, we all do. I suggest you either watch or tape Frontline as it has been taking us "Behind the Lines of the Taliban." Scroll down to see the link and previews of its content.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/?utm_campaign=Various&utm_medium=Bulletin&utm_source=Main