"Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Arthur Cordell wrote: >> >> Some soothing thoughts for turbulent times... >> >From Edupage... >> >> ==================== >> >> The following words were found in Old St. Paul's Church, Baltimore, >> Maryland (dated 1692): >> >> Go placidly among the noise & haste, and remember what peace there may >> be in silence. [......] >Between 1958 and 1864, >I attended the "preparatory school" associated with Old St. Paul's >Church. >I can testify from personal experience that, at least at that time, >the philosophy of the above text did *not* guide the life of that >school. I have written a brief description of this experience >on my personal web site: > > http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/thoughts.html#Chapel > I'm just amazed that "Desiderata", this old chestnut, is still travelling around with this misattribution after all these years. The `poem' was written in about 1927 by Edward Somebodyorother, and was chanced upon by someone making up a leaflet for the Baltimore church, sometime in the late fifties or early sixties. Someone else, attending the church, snaffled a copy of the leaflet, which had the date of the founding of the church in its header, and ignoring the attribution at the bottom of the page, reproduced the poem on a poster with the credit quoted above. The actual copyright owner has been pursuing the error ever since, and the issue was quite publically clarified in the early seventies, when the errant poster was at the height of its popularity. Unfortunately, I guess a few million copies of the erroneous poster must be lying around in people's attics and garages, to perpetuate the confusion. [It was of course sufficiently popular in those days that it spawned a spoken-word-with-background-choir recording, and subsequent National Lampoon parody recording, which started out Go placidly amidst the noise and waste, and remember what peace there may be in owning a piece thereof... ] (just to clarify) -Pete Vincent
