Tag: Robert Frost

All the difference

| by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

       Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

       I took the one less traveled by,

       And that has made all the difference.

 

Robert Frost’s verse may be a bit profound for my two chance meetings today, but it comes to mind nonetheless.

I try to swim at least twice each week when I’m in Annapolis.

I was going to swim tonight but looked at my schedule and realized that was not possible. So at 7:40 a.m., not my preferred time, I headed to the Anne Arundel County pool.

Whom did I run into there? Senate President Bill Ferguson.

We briefly discussed an issue of concern to both of us.

At lunch time, I thought about a restaurant on West Street but decided to go to a place on Maryland Avenue instead.

On the way, I bumped into a member of Mayor Young’s staff.

He joined me for lunch. We discussed the same issue of concern as this morning.

We’ll find out whether these meetings, as Frost wrote, “made all the difference.”

A fence for another purpose

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2018 Legislative Diary | No Comments

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote Robert Frost.

A fence, in the budget bill, is another matter.

Maryland’s budget system gives great power to the Governor.

But the legislature can fence off money by saying that the Governor can spend a certain allocation only for a specific purpose.

Including a specific recreation center.

Governor Hogan’s budget includes Program Open Space money for Baltimore City.

A House Appropriations Committee amendment provides that $3.7 million of this appropriation shall be allocated for seven park or recreation center projects.

One of them is the Mary E. Rodman Recreation Center in the Allendale community, near Edmondson Av. and Hilton St.

The Rec Center is next door to the Mary E. Rodman Elementary School, which will be fully renovated as part of the 21st Century School Program.

Senator Nathaniel Oaks, community leader Wanda Wallace, and I came up with the idea of upgrading the Rec Center after attending a meeting about the renovation of the school.

This appropriation must still be approved by the State Senate, but I will work hard to make sure that it is.

Power intoxicates and it corrupts

| by delsandy | Sandy's 2017 Legislative Diary | No Comments

“Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him,” former Bush administration official Eliot Cohen wrote in The Atlantic.

President Kennedy said the same thing – almost.

“When power intoxicates, poetry restores sobriety,” read the draft of his speech for the groundbreaking of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College in October 1963.

The President edited that sentence to read, “When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”

How do I know?

The full text of the speech, with Kennedy’s hand-written changes to Arthur Schlesinger’s draft, was on display at the Kennedy Library in Boston. I asked Kathleen Kennedy Townsend for a copy. It now hangs on my office wall.

As a student at Amherst, I studied in the Robert Frost Library.

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