Hi tibs, Thank you for your concern. I know you are right. It is easy to get into trouble by printing something without permission, and sometimes it seems impossible to find the original publisher. This particular poem was written by my cousin. I am the executrix of her will and an heir to her small estate. Her poems were given to me before her death; I never thought to ask her for written permission to use them. May I give myself permission to use this one? This was never published, although many of her adult poems were - in magazines, in a newspaper in England, and in a (now defunct) column and a book edited by a columnist writing for the Chicago Tribune. I presumed that the material was old enough for it not to be a problem - but I just looked on the Internet and you are right. I remember when Sonny Bono was elected to Congress and worked to have the copyright laws changed. It certainly can lead to a lot of complications. When I publish the family genealogy, can I include any of her works? May I write them in a private letter to another person? I suspect that she would have been very pleased to have her poems read freely by anyone. One of the morals of the problem may be to stay good friends with your relatives. We're cool so far. I hope that your organization will not get stuck with a large fine. I'll bet that the guru is getting sued also.

It is about Left Wing Politics. Macdonough isn't a real person. The poem is part of a story by Kipling called "As Easy as A.B.C..", and Macdonough is an person referenced in the story, though not a character. In the poem Kipling was writing specifically about The Russian Revolution (that was just starting as he wrote it) the French Revolution and the Paris Commune (which pretty much foreshadowed how the Russian Revolution was going to come out), and Socialist revolution in general. Kipling's point (similar to the one he makes in THE GOD'S OF THE COPYBOOK HEADINGS) is that Social(ist) Revolution has been tried many times in human history, and it ALWAYS...ALWAYS winds up in terror, tyranny, starvation and tears. If you actually ever research the issue this is pretty obviously true. (Google up " Holodomor " and "Cultural Revolution" or "Year Zero" or "Gulag" or "Great Leap Forward" or "Maduro Diet"). The sad thing is, Kipling wrote this BEFORE most of the great tragedies brought about by Socialism happened... so it is more appropriate now than it was 100 years ago when he wrote it.

Try dmarie! They have poems about almost EVERYTHING! Here is a link that might be useful: Dmarie

Lisa: Try these www.dmarie.com and aspring to greatness at http://www.aspiring-community.com/index.html I hope these help. Alison Here is a link that might be useful: aspiring to greatness