(Roughly) Daily

source: Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez

Tired of those monotonous meetings, those chattering conversations, the cacophony of the city?  Mask it all with SimplyNoise— a “flat sound” generator– and choose among white, pink or brown/red noise…

As we seek auditory Zen, we might open our ears selectively in the memory that it was on this date in 1858 that Abraham Lincoln gave his “House Divided” speech in Springfield, Illinois.  Playing off of a quote from the Bible (Matthew 12:25, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”), then Senatorial candidate Lincoln prophesied that

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

During the War of 1812, Abigail Adams had written a similar line in a letter from  to Mercy Otis Warren– a variation that in its way is as timely today as Lincoln’s:

…A house divided upon itself- and upon that foundation do our enemies build their hopes of subduing us.

Candidate Lincoln