Today's Stichomancy for Fidel Castro

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ion by Plato:

ION: Yes, Socrates; but not in the same way as Homer.

SOCRATES: What, in a worse way?

ION: Yes, in a far worse.

SOCRATES: And Homer in a better way?

ION: He is incomparably better.

SOCRATES: And yet surely, my dear friend Ion, in a discussion about arithmetic, where many people are speaking, and one speaks better than the rest, there is somebody who can judge which of them is the good speaker?

ION: Yes.

SOCRATES: And he who judges of the good will be the same as he who judges of the bad speakers?

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne:

down--and to stay here is beyond me!"

The others looked upon him with horrified surprise. This fall of their chief pillar--this irrational passion in the practical man, suddenly barred out of his true sphere, the sphere of action-- shocked and daunted them. But it gave to another and unseen hearer the chance for which he had been waiting. Mac, on the striking of the brig, had crawled up the companion, and he now showed himself and spoke up.

"Captain Wicks," said he, "it's me that brought this trouble on the lot of ye. I'm sorry for ut, I ask all your pardons, and if there's any one can say 'I forgive ye,' it'll make my soul the

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith

The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Unconscious Comedians by Honore de Balzac:

see."

As the usher opened one side of the double door through which none but deputies, ministers, or messengers from the king are allowed to pass, Gazonal saw a man come out who seemed still young, although he was really forty-eight years old, and to whom the usher evidently indicated Leon de Lora.

"Ha! you here!" he exclaimed, shaking hands with both Bixiou and Lora. "Scamps! what are you doing in the sanctuary of the laws?"

"Parbleu! we've come to learn how to blague," said Bixiou. "We might get rusty if we didn't."

"Let us go into the garden," said the young man, not observing that