Tuesday, November 11, 2008

A Timeless Epistle...

The following letter was written by my grandfather to his best friend on December 19, 1944. I share it because the words are as fresh and relevant today as the day they were written. Furthermore, the letter's conclusion was true then, as it is today, and always will be.

Dear Eli:

In these days of the glorification of imbecility and the enthronement of dishonesty, vindictiveness and chicanery as crowning qualities of moral dignity, Mary Louise and I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and the happiest New Year possible.

The long winter of our discontent is here. There is hardly a doubt that we shall witness and many of us experience strange and possibly harrowing convulsions in the years ahead. Out of the darkness, however, there is a light which still shines with undiminished brightness, a steady solid brightness --even in twenty years the whole motley array of political perverts, social saboteurs and schizophrenic straphangers in Washington together with their scattered helots, can really not do very much about the Ten Commandments and the eternal compensations which have always been the reward of decency.

Sincerely,

Sloane Graff

2 comments:

Jefferson said...

What a great note!

I love it.

BimBeau said...

Bullwinkle J. Moose said to Rocky the Flying Squirrel while ROLF, "No wonder the Republicans will not prevail in the long run - they have no connection with reality, only realty. To repudiate FDR with solipstry like this is a look at the future that is non-pariell in the annals of history. If yhey can't look at history and get 'it' right, how can they ever expect to deal with the future?"
You're a nice guy Sloane, but sometimes your squirrel is out of the cage. So is mine - mine's not AWOL; mine's gone to the 'men's room'.

Choice is too precious a concept to be left to chance.
ESSAYONS!!!!!!