Family In Rotary
Posted by Joe Benham
on Feb 02, 2016
Family in Rotary
Condolences go to Debbie Graxiola and our member Mike Graxiola, for the death of Debbie's father recently.
The annual clean-up of Town Creek is history, and our Rotary Club of Kerrville was involved in that "Service Above Self" activity. Our club member John Forister and members of our Interact student affiliate group were recognized for their work in collecting and bagging trash and brush out of that gully that runs through Kerrville.
Joseph Benham, Chairman, Family in Rotary
Joe was honored to be invited to deliver the "Immortal Memory Address" at the Robert Burns Dinner sponsored by the Scots of the Texas Hill Country
IMMORTAL MEMORY ADDRESS -- Kerrville TX -- Jan. 30, 2016
(First, let me remind you, Lads and Lassies. to keep your glasses
charged, because all of you will be invited shortly to join me in a toast
to the immortal Robert Burns).
To get us to that point of this evening, let me share with you just a
few of the many things that made -- and still make -- Robert Burns
worthy of being called "Immortal."
First, I can say without fear of serious contradiction that Robert
Burns is immortal in the world of letters.
Scholars -- the people who count and measure such things -- tell
us that only Shakespeare and the Holy Bible are quoted more often,
at least in English, than the farmer and poet from Ayrshire whom we
honor tonight.
Think about it with me, my friends! The Brownings, Byron, Frost,
Keats, Longfellow, Tennyson, Wordsworth, and so many others
whose works we studied in school -- and I hope still read for our
pleasure -- were, without question, great poets. Yet, Burns left more
enduring words than any save the Bard of Avon and those who wrote
the Bible under divine guidance and inspiration. .
If that surprises you, please consider these expressions, all found
in the writings of Robert Burns and all translated, where necessary,
into something akin to English as I believe that it is spoken today::
- Time and tide wait for no man.
- The best-laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry.
- But to see her was to love her, love but her, and love
forever.
- If there's another world, he lives in bliss; If there is none, he
made the best of this.
- The sweetest hours that e'er I spend are spent among the
lasses, O"
- Faint heart ne'er won a lady fair.
- Human bodies are such fools for all their colleges and
schools that when the real ills perplex them, they make
enough themselves to vex them.
- Man's inhumanity to man . . .
- An honest man's the noblest work of God.
- Oh, would some power the Giftie'd give us, to see ourselves
as others see us.
- Let us do or die.
And these, let me remind you respectfully, are only taken from the
verses that are so often spoken. They don't include the lyrics that
are sung the world over, and to which I'll come now.
Burns was so prolific in writing down words to be sung that his
publishers have accounted for 368 such pieces -- works that Burns
either wrote from scratch or modernized and adapted for more
modern use.
The most striking example of such a lyric is that with which these
dinners customarily are closed, Auld Lang Syne.
Since I don't "have the Gaelic," as they say in Celtic country, I
won't even try to quote the earlier lines from which Burns drew his
version; suffice to say that we're better off using those that are in
tonight's program.
The biographies of Burns that I located in preparation for tonight
were varied in some details, but they agreed that this man whom we
call Scotland's Favorite Son was a person of strong beliefs and of
vigorous likes and dislikes.
He believed in the virtues of hard work -- tilling the rocky, often
unyielding soil of the Scottish Highlands even when, like his father
before him and his brother working beside him, he knew that any
crops produced would be marginal at best. A good year was one in
which the land brought forth enough for the tenant farmers to pay the
rent to the landlord.
Burns was a patriot, devoted to the ideal of liberty not only for his
beloved Scotland, but for our own American colonies. He lived long
enough to see George Washington and John Adams elected as the
first two Presidents under our Constitution. I'm glad, by the way, that
there are two officers of the Sons of American Revolution at tonight's
dinner to help celebrate Burns's heritage.
Burns was by all accounts a man of enormous charm. Publication
of his Poems in the Scottish Dialect seems to have given him almost
instant celebrity and popularity among the well-to-do of Edinburgh,
Glasgow and other cities, and even in England -- even though much
of what he wrote had a vigorous Scottish nationalist theme.
It was, after all, Burns who wrote, "Farewell to the Highlands,
Farewell to the North, the Birthplace of valor, the Country of worth,"
and who equated English rule with "chains and slavery."
He liked women -- and women were drawn to him. Many of the
surviving letters by those who knew him and other publications from
his adult life -- during the years of his literary fame in particular -- hint
at flirtations and more serious romantic affairs involving prominent
ladies in Britain.
Burns is known to have fathered several children out of wedlock
during those years -- but authorities agree that those conquests were
among the servants of the society ladies rather than his hostesses.
The first such seduction, however, was in his own home, where the
child was born to the servant girl of Burns's own mother.
Following his marriage to Jean Armour, he also was the father of
legitimate children, the last of whom was born on the day that Burns
died in 1796.
Some authorities blame heavy drinking for Burns's untimely death,
but most ascribe it to the various jobs, including that of tax collector,
that forced him to ride cross-country in cold and driving rain, and to
work on the farm in that same weather..
Those trips and his continuing work in the fields as a tenant farmer
brought on chills that led to rheumatic fever -- an ailment with which I
became acquainted as a child. Fortunately, there was medication
with which to treat that ailment by the time I contracted it, but in what I
believe can only be labeled gross quackery, the doctor who treated
Burns ordered him taken to the nearest firth -- an inlet off of the
ocean -- and dunked in the frigid sea water.
Not surprisingly, it killed Robert Burns -- the poet who had written,
"O death, the poor man's dearest friend, The kindest and the best."
I want to end on a happier note, however, by sharing a story that's
attributed to Robert Burns's brother, Gilbert.
According to Gilbert, the brothers were leaning on the barnyard
fence watching the poultry, when they saw a young hen begin what
they, as farmers, recognized as moves intended to attract the prize
rooster of the flock. The rooster in turn showed considerable interest
in the hen -- until the hired man came into the yard and began
scattering grain among the fowls.
Instantly, the rooster lost all interest in the female and began
pecking away at the kernels of grain.
Robert reportedly turned to his brother and said emphatically,
"Gilbert, I hope that I never get that hungry!"
And apparently, he never did.
With that, will those who can do so please rise and join me in a
toast to the Immortal Robert Burns.
To Robert Burns.
Thank you.