Honorable Mention:

Multi-Dealer Mini Mall

Mary Jo Pfeiffer, Proprietor

789 W. Montrose Street

Clermont, Florida

352-243-9977

Oh, Beauty, passing beauty! sweetest Sweet!
How canst thou let me waste my youth in sighs;
I only ask to sit beside thy feet.
Thou knowest I dare not look into thine eyes,  Alfred Lord Tennyson

No not this anatomy….you’ve already checked him out a hundred times…..and Claire gets INDEPTH instructions….must be nice.

And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune gives the grace,
Or the feature, or the youth;
But the language and the truth,
With the ardor and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.
 Ben Johnson

Suggestion for a POSSIBLE ADVENTURE

202 N. Bend Park Rd

Route 1, Box 221

Cairo, WV 26337

Lodge, cabins, Campgrounds,

More than 72 miles of trails

305 acre Lake w/fishing piers

Hughes River and pond fishing

Canoe and kayak rentals

WIFI at Lodge and lodge lawn area

Organized hikes, campfires and entertainment

Picnicking

Playground equipment

Volleyball and tennis courts

Miniature golf

Equipment rentals

Swimming pool open weekends in summer.

And, when I pause, still groves among,
(Such loveliness is mine) a throng
Of nightingales awake and strain
Their souls into a quivering song  Sarojini Naidu

Men are handsome:  having an attractive, well-proportioned, and imposing appearance suggestive of health and strength; good-looking   http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/handsome

and while a woman can be called handsome it is generally used for the males of our species..

Beautiful:  having beauty; possessing qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about, etc.; delighting the senses or mind     http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/beautiful: is what woman are usually described or compared to.

So men are attractive, well-proportioned and give a suggestion of health and strength while women give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear and think about.  Men suggestive of good health, women delighting the senses….obviously men have been making up the language for a long time now.

Who can say
Why her eyes,
Those playmates of the hamlet where Beauty dwells,
Why her eyes smile that way ?    Majeed Amjad

This is a woman figurine (yeah a blind man could figure that out) from prehistory.   There are many such figurines often call fertility goddesses, but I have my own interpretation—maybe this was what an ideal woman looked like.  See woman then were fertility as men had no idea they contributed to pregnancy (and given the little they do in the 9 months of bringing a baby into this world, I sometimes wonder if they shouldn’t just get an honorable  mention instead of a full credit).  So women were then treated right and fed this well-curved creature that brought pleasure and new life….a win win situation for the men who claimed and protected them…and if it’s your job to provide for them (or somebody else might) then you want them to look well fed and cared for—hence the stone figure….probably some great hunter’s  main squeeze and his way of saying–hey look at what I got and how well fed she is.

So in Pre-history I’m presuming a beautiful woman was a plump, pregnant, pleasure-vessel that was worthy of caricatures.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
   So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
   But tell of days in goodness spent,  Lord Bryon

Then let’s move centuries ahead to the Renaissance in the 15th century

She has clothes on, but she is still plump but all else has gone askew:  men have taken control as they figured out that those few seconds of their release is required for woman to reproduce.  They have also become very controlling of those reproduction organs for it is very important that no one but them touch her…as that would confuse the blood lines (not to mention making them look foolish and out of control) and that just isn’t done.  Rich women are mostly chattels, with their dowry, family and bloodlines more important than anything except of course their ability to reproduce while remaining chaste to all but her legal spouse.  So even an ugly rich woman could and most probably would marry.

Look at England and Henry VIII who left the Catholic Church to marry one woman, then let his staff frame her so he could marry a third, by which he finally had a son (oh I forgot that part—having children was only good if there were one or more boy children), he did go through three more wives (the mother of his son died from the delivery, the next one was ugly and he annulled the union, the next was very young and probably did mess around on him and the last outlived him).

So now woman remained plump, and pregnant,  she had added protected and controlled, as well as faithful (if she wished to keep her children, her position and as we see in Henry’s 5th wife Katharine  Howard’s case her head.)

Oh but least I forget we’d added a new woman..the mistress–often  beautiful, witty and some times single.  She was often exclusive to her rich lover (who may have had many such women) but not always and her children when she was impregnated often were  given money, land and even awarded positions (Henry who in additions to all those wives had several mistresses–including a sister of one of his queens—He only acknowledged one child Henry Fitzroy the son of his mistress Elizabeth Blount, and  he did give him a dukedom.)   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Henry_VIII

” A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”   J.Keats

 And we all know what’s beautiful today….We now have no room for excess pounds and many of us see our self as fat and ugly when we might well have been attractive (wanta move to the renaissance?)many eons ago.  We are back to naked or nearly so and we are independent more so than even (both in income, bearing children–we can skip the sex completely–and pretty much else) but many of us on our own are barely make a living and men still make more money even in the same job.   We also live much longer and so have to live with menopause and what happens next as many of us can’t afford to retire.

So here we are almost naked again, but with a lot less to see and independent, only with child if we choose to or had a goof up moment….who meets the opposite sex on an impersonal organism called a computer and where they are using pictures that are 20 years old.   But yet we still have the same beautiful vs. handsome definition for us vs. them.  Please define progress.

 beautiful lady with eyes on fire,
That sparkle and laugh, that can smile and cry,
I love your eyes so clear and true.
Beautiful lady I adore you     Graham R. Bryan 

Your beauty extends into the heavens,
it goes on forever and never lessens.
Even when the clouds heighten
you are here and the world brightens.
You are like a fruit that constantly ripens
your beauty continues to grow no mater what happens.