Words Matter

PROLOGUE

Love is a common word, hackneyed, used over and over for everything but what the poets intended.

I could spend a happy morning

Seeing Roo,

I could spend a happy morning

Being Pooh.

For it doesn't seem to matter,

If I don't get any fatter

What I do.

For speechwriters, it's not about length, it's about words. Lou Gehrig moved 60,000 fans in Yankee Stadium to tears with this brief talk. The lesson is he spoke from the heart, the emotion was palpable. My guess is Lou Gehrig never took a creative writing class, but he sure could write.

"I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth..."

A.A. Milne’s wonderful dedication of this book to his Mother:  

“You gave me Christopher Robin, and then

 You breathed new life in Pooh.

Whatever of each has left my pen

 Goes homing back to you.

My book is ready, and comes to greet

 The mother it longs to see~

It would be my present to you my sweet,

 If it weren’t your gift to me.”

A.A. Milne

1928 Democratic National Convention, Houston Texas

"A Clear call comes to us today to fight anew under the Jeffersonian banner, with the Jacksonian sword, and in the Wilsonian spirit, and crashing the gates of privilege, make Jeffersonian democracy a living force again in the lives and homes of men"

Claude Bowers, keynote address.

"We Make Mistakes. We Kill Our Own."

Friends, Readers, Students of Rhetoric, Would-Be Orators: Lend Me Your Ears.

William Safire, 1997

The heavenly bodies go in curves because that is the natural way for them to go, and the whole Newtonian universe crumpled up and was succeeded by the Einstein universe.

I pity anyone who can't laugh. There must be something wrong with their religion or their lives.

..... I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility without the help and support of the woman I love..."

In May 1940, the fate of Western Europe hangs on British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who must decide whether to negotiate with Adolf Hitler or fight on knowing that it could mean a humiliating defeat for Britain and its empire. (Can you imagine making that decision?)

This brief pledge of assistance was delivered to the Massachusetts Congress in 1775

I know I have but the body of a weak and fickle woman; but I have the heart of a king....

On the occasion of his Nobel Prize for Literature , Stockholm 1950. Faulkner charges writers with their duty to help humanity prevail.

"Books are for use, not for show, you shouls own no book that you are afraid to mark-up..."

Branch Rickey discovers the quality that makes a ballplayer great

Napoleon Exhorts His Troops Against the Enemies of France

President John F. Kennedy, In His Inaugural Address, Takes Up The Torch For A New Generation.

On September 13, 1993, in the White House R,ose Garden, Israel's Prime Minister,  Yitzhak Rabin,  shook hands with his lifelong enemy.

If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower. The Nigerian writer, Ben Okri, impassioned poem on the horrific fire.

How does a place, not a person, become the protagonist, the main character in your story?

Listen and learn how a place can ingulf your iminagination.

John of The Cross expained it perfectly, that dark secret place where you live with your anxieties, fears, trials and errors that place where all great wrtiters go to find true creativity un-fettered by exposure.

Mark Matousick, award winning writer and memorist, says it best:

"When you tell the truth, your story changes.

When your story changes, your life is transformed."

Winnie The Pooh for all ages by A.A. Milne

I've been recording Pooh for my grandchildren, they love it, yours will too!

The first few paragraphs of a fictional account of my life as an economic development consultant in dangerous places.

Leo sings the blues

Sojourner Truth, an iconic abolitionist, and feminist delivered a speech in 1851 that would be as relevant today as it was then.

Her simple words powered women's rights and civil rights, words do matter, listen and learn why

William Safire has done a masrerful job assembling words that have changed the world in his seminal work: GREAT SPEECHES IN HISTORY.