These words I offer to you gentlemen as have found such comfort, respect, peace, and adventure in the company of such fine ladies as are these, our gracious and honorable courtesans.  Stop for a moment to congratulate yourselves for your kindness and respect toward these outstanding women.

I offer this post in gratitude to you fine fellows.  Setting aside the vagrancies of the church, the winds of political convenience, and the anonymity of pop culture, I would take this opportunity to thank you all for your kind consideration, your respect, and most of all, your sense of community.  As a company of men, you contribute much more to the common good than you may be aware.  Thanks for helping to keep our courtesans safe, thanks for moving our community forward, and thanks for your part in keeping alive those simple traditions of love so selflessly laid at our feet over countless generations , a tradition . Such intimate expressions of human kindness are gifts to treasure.

Best of the season to you all,

Chico Maine



To Some Ladies

WHAT though while the wonders of nature exploring,
I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend;
Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring,
Bless Cynthia’s face, the enthusiast’s friend:

Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes,
With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove;
Mark the clear tumbling crystal, its passionate gushes,
Its spray that the wild flower kindly bedews.

Why linger you so, the wild labyrinth strolling?
Why breathless, unable your bliss to declare?
Ah! you list to the nightingale’s tender condoling,
Responsive to sylphs, in the moon beamy air.

’Tis morn, and the flowers with dew are yet drooping,
I see you are treading the verge of the sea:
And now! ah, I see it - you just now are stooping
To pick up the keep-sake intended for me.

If a cherub, on pinions of silver descending,
Had brought me a gem from the fret-work of heaven;
And smiles, with his star-cheering voice sweetly blending,
The blessings of Tighe had melodiously given;

It had not created a warmer emotion
han the present, fair nymphs, I was blest with from you
Than the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean
Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw.

For, indeed, ’tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure,
And blissful is he who such happiness finds,)
To possess but a span of the hour of leisure,
In elegant, pure, and aerial minds.

John Keats, 1817

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