Stay In Touch -Have I not proven to you that I Am in the saving sinners business? -Jesus
Friday, September 30, 2011
You've GOTTA read this!: Between Shades of Gray - Ruta Sepetys (Audio)
You've GOTTA read this!: Between Shades of Gray - Ruta Sepetys (Audio)
Excerpt.
Lina is a typical 15 year-old living in Lithuania in 1941.
Excerpt.
Lina is a typical 15 year-old living in Lithuania in 1941.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
First Known When Lost: "You Will Not Arrive But Pass Through"
First Known When Lost: "You Will Not Arrive But Pass Through"
Excerpt:
The Peninsula
When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all round the peninsula.
The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks so you will not arrive
But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you're in the dark again. Now recall
The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,
That rock where breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselves out into the fog
And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.
Seamus Heaney, Door into the Dark (Faber and Faber 1969).
Excerpt:
The Peninsula
When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all round the peninsula.
The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks so you will not arrive
But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you're in the dark again. Now recall
The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log,
That rock where breakers shredded into rags,
The leggy birds stilted on their own legs,
Islands riding themselves out into the fog
And drive back home, still with nothing to say
Except that now you will uncode all landscapes
By this: things founded clean on their own shapes,
Water and ground in their extremity.
Seamus Heaney, Door into the Dark (Faber and Faber 1969).
Cervantes and 'La Mancha'
Today is believed to be the birthday of the great Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. He was baptized on October 9, 1547 in the village of Alcalá de Henares, north of Madrid, and while the exact date of his birth is unrecorded, September 29 is the feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel. In those days it was customary for the Spanish to name a child for the feast day of his birth.
Cervantes’ masterpiece, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, published in two volumes in 1605 and 1615, gave birth to the modern novel. Gustave Flaubert once said, “I can trace all my origins back to the book I knew by heart before knowing how to read: Don Quixote.” It’s the story of a middle-aged landowner who becomes so absorbed in romantic tales of chivalry that he believes them to be true. In full flight from reason, Quixote enlists Sancho Panza to be his “squire” and sets out on a heroic quest to restore the age of chivalry. The story inspired a new adjective, “quixotic,” to describe the extravagantly idealistic....posted at Open Culture (really).
Cervantes’ masterpiece, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, published in two volumes in 1605 and 1615, gave birth to the modern novel. Gustave Flaubert once said, “I can trace all my origins back to the book I knew by heart before knowing how to read: Don Quixote.” It’s the story of a middle-aged landowner who becomes so absorbed in romantic tales of chivalry that he believes them to be true. In full flight from reason, Quixote enlists Sancho Panza to be his “squire” and sets out on a heroic quest to restore the age of chivalry. The story inspired a new adjective, “quixotic,” to describe the extravagantly idealistic....posted at Open Culture (really).
Once I Was A Clever Boy: An Hellenic perspective
Once I Was A Clever Boy: An Hellenic perspective
Excerpt:
Writing about Fr Blake reminds me to share this image which he had been sent and shared with his readers. Like him I found it amusing. Classicists, Historians and Theologians with doubtless appreciate it, and hopefully PPEists...:)
Excerpt:
Writing about Fr Blake reminds me to share this image which he had been sent and shared with his readers. Like him I found it amusing. Classicists, Historians and Theologians with doubtless appreciate it, and hopefully PPEists...:)
Quiet after despair | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/29/2011
Quiet after despair | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/29/2011
h/t Books, Inq
Excerpt:
Like Thoreau, author found solace in a cabin. By Art Carey, Inquirer Staff Writer
Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20110929_Quiet_after_despair.html#ixzz1ZMVOQCC0
Watch sports videos you won't find anywhere else
h/t Books, Inq
Excerpt:
Like Thoreau, author found solace in a cabin. By Art Carey, Inquirer Staff Writer
STONEHAM, Maine - Lou Ureneck discovered Henry David Thoreau when he was in high school. So smitten was he with Walden that he slipped the book between the covers of his algebra text so he could read it during class.
"He touched me deeply from an early age and shaped my sensibility. Until then, I didn't have a vocabulary and set of metaphors for thinking about nature."...
Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20110929_Quiet_after_despair.html#ixzz1ZMVOQCC0
Watch sports videos you won't find anywhere else
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Jon Stewart to Ron Paul: “The media has a real problem with your consistency.” | Hillbuzz | Conservative Political Analysis, Action & Humor | Kevin DuJan Editor
Jon Stewart to Ron Paul: “The media has a real problem with your consistency.” | Hillbuzz | Conservative Political Analysis, Action & Humor | Kevin DuJan Editor
Excerpt:
It’s a sad day in America when the most substantive, in-depth discussion with a Presidential candidate is conducted by a comedian on Comedy Central.
Excerpt:
It’s a sad day in America when the most substantive, in-depth discussion with a Presidential candidate is conducted by a comedian on Comedy Central.
Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor: Another Spin on the Subject of Seasons
Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor: Another Spin on the Subject of Seasons
Excerpt:
Autumn
by Roy Campbell (1901-57)
I love to see, when leaves depart,
The clear anatomy arrive,
Winter, the paragon of art,
That kills all forms of life and feeling
Save what is pure and will survive.
Already now the clanging chains
Of geese are harnessed to the moon:
Stripped are the great sun-clouding planes;
And the dark pines, their own revealing,
Let in the needles of the noon...
[I wonder how many today know about the Scotsman Roy Campbell's life. He has recently been a focus in the 'novel' that I am writing.]
Excerpt:
Autumn
by Roy Campbell (1901-57)
I love to see, when leaves depart,
The clear anatomy arrive,
Winter, the paragon of art,
That kills all forms of life and feeling
Save what is pure and will survive.
Already now the clanging chains
Of geese are harnessed to the moon:
Stripped are the great sun-clouding planes;
And the dark pines, their own revealing,
Let in the needles of the noon...
[I wonder how many today know about the Scotsman Roy Campbell's life. He has recently been a focus in the 'novel' that I am writing.]
Monday, September 26, 2011
Harvest Moon
Under the Harvest Moon [h/t Fred's Place]
Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses
When the fragrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
with a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
-- Carl Sandburg --
(Autumn--the season of memories . . .)
Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses
When the fragrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
with a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
-- Carl Sandburg --
(Autumn--the season of memories . . .)
On Genuine Literary Citizenship « BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
On Genuine Literary Citizenship « BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
Excerpt: h/t Books, Inq.
The better solution is, as a part of your daily work as a writer, support the communities you wish to be a part of, by reading books, writing reviews, promoting other writers or bookstores or whatever in your social networking. It’s a small but old truth, but the more you give, the more you will receive. And this isn’t any kind of slimy networking. This is every writer’s responsibility, and the writers who create the most buzz for the good work of others will find that same energy waiting for them, when their own excellent book finally comes out...
After studying 'tertulias' and 'third place' events and concepts I can only wholeheartedly agree.]
Excerpt: h/t Books, Inq.
The better solution is, as a part of your daily work as a writer, support the communities you wish to be a part of, by reading books, writing reviews, promoting other writers or bookstores or whatever in your social networking. It’s a small but old truth, but the more you give, the more you will receive. And this isn’t any kind of slimy networking. This is every writer’s responsibility, and the writers who create the most buzz for the good work of others will find that same energy waiting for them, when their own excellent book finally comes out...
After studying 'tertulias' and 'third place' events and concepts I can only wholeheartedly agree.]
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Excerpt:
One of the best-known pastoral poems in English is this proposal, filled with the most extravagant of promises.
THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle*
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
~ Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), English Elizabethan poet and dramatist
* kirtle – tunic-like woman's garment
The poem’s fame rests in part on the fact that so many poets have been tempted to write their own replies...
Excerpt:
One of the best-known pastoral poems in English is this proposal, filled with the most extravagant of promises.
THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
There I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle*
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
~ Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), English Elizabethan poet and dramatist
* kirtle – tunic-like woman's garment
The poem’s fame rests in part on the fact that so many poets have been tempted to write their own replies...
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Tea at Trianon: Female Veterans
Tea at Trianon: Female Veterans
Excerpt:
Tormented by combat and sexual trauma. It makes me angry to read about it...
Women, too, are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder as a result of the horrors they've seen. Coping with that, and with being a mother, poses problems of its own...
Excerpt:
Tormented by combat and sexual trauma. It makes me angry to read about it...
Women, too, are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder as a result of the horrors they've seen. Coping with that, and with being a mother, poses problems of its own...
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Before you Read the Plaque about Turner's “Slave Ship”
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Before you Read the Plaque about Turner's “Slave Ship”
Excerpt:
(The Slave Ship or Slavers Throwing Overboard the
Dead and Dying — Typhoon Coming On, by J. M. W. Turner,
1775-1851, English painter, watercolorist, and printmaker)
Captains of slave ships carrying people in chains from Africa across the Middle Passage into slavery in the New World would throw the sick and dying overboard. The captain and the owners could then collect insurance for the lost “cargo”; there was no compensation for the lives of human beings lost to illness...
Excerpt:
(The Slave Ship or Slavers Throwing Overboard the
Dead and Dying — Typhoon Coming On, by J. M. W. Turner,
1775-1851, English painter, watercolorist, and printmaker)
Captains of slave ships carrying people in chains from Africa across the Middle Passage into slavery in the New World would throw the sick and dying overboard. The captain and the owners could then collect insurance for the lost “cargo”; there was no compensation for the lives of human beings lost to illness...
Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Thought for the day ...
Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Thought for the day ...
Excerpt:
Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
- William Faulkner, born on this date in 1897
Excerpt:
Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
- William Faulkner, born on this date in 1897
Saturday, September 24, 2011
In the Wilds: Under the Wild Rose
Annie Dillard depicts herself relaxing on a tree trunk, enjoying a sunset, when suddenly she locks eyes with a wild weasel: "Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been ... Rebecca Kneale Gould, At Home in Nature-2005
“He disappeared. This was only last week, and already I don't remember what shattered the enchantment. I think I blinked,… and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splash-down into real life and the urgent current of instinct. He vanished under the wild rose.
I tell you I've been in that weasel's brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine. Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secret tapes-but the weasel and I both plugged into another tape simultaneously, for a sweet and shocking time. Can I help it if it was a blank?What goes on in his brain the rest of the time? What does a weasel think about? He won't say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose leaf, and blown.
I would like to learn, or remember, how to live… That is, I don't think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular--shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?--but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel's: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.
I missed my chance. I should have gone for the throat. I should have lunged for that streak of white under the weasel's chin and held on, held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life. We could live under the wild rose wild as weasels, mute and uncomprehending. I could very calmly go wild. I could live two days in the den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses. Down is a good place to go, where the mind is single. Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses… where every moment is a feast… Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?
We could, you know. ~Annie Dillard, ‘Living Like Weasels’
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Wuthering Expectations: A reading list for Brazil - To the victor, the potatoes!
Wuthering Expectations: A reading list for Brazil - To the victor, the potatoes!
Excerpt:
In 1880 or so, Machado de Assis experienced some sort of health crisis and became an entirely different writer. I do not know what happened, but his future fiction would be funnier, stranger, audacious, penetratingly ironic. Everything changed, or almost everything. This is the core set:
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (1881, also translated for some reason as Epitaph for a Small Winner)
The Psychiatrist (1882, a satirical novella)
Quincas Borbas (1891, also translated, because it describes the book well, as Philosopher or Dog)
Don Casmurro (1899)
Esau and Jacob (1904)
Counselor Ayres’ Memorial (1908)
....The one piece of Brazilian journalistic or historical writing that has caught my eye is Euclides da Cunha’s 1902 Rebellion in the Backlands or Backlands: The Canudo Campaign. An account of the suppression of a provincial rebellion is turned by Euclides into something more complex, much of the complexity coming from the elaborate language of the book. The style of the book has become as important as the subject. Please begin here at Caravanas de Recuerdos for a description and samples.
I was poking around the internet, trying to figure out if Euclides da Cunha should be referred to as “Cunha” or “da Cunha,” only to discover that everyone just calls him Euclides! All right then....
Excerpt:
In 1880 or so, Machado de Assis experienced some sort of health crisis and became an entirely different writer. I do not know what happened, but his future fiction would be funnier, stranger, audacious, penetratingly ironic. Everything changed, or almost everything. This is the core set:
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (1881, also translated for some reason as Epitaph for a Small Winner)
The Psychiatrist (1882, a satirical novella)
Quincas Borbas (1891, also translated, because it describes the book well, as Philosopher or Dog)
Don Casmurro (1899)
Esau and Jacob (1904)
Counselor Ayres’ Memorial (1908)
....The one piece of Brazilian journalistic or historical writing that has caught my eye is Euclides da Cunha’s 1902 Rebellion in the Backlands or Backlands: The Canudo Campaign. An account of the suppression of a provincial rebellion is turned by Euclides into something more complex, much of the complexity coming from the elaborate language of the book. The style of the book has become as important as the subject. Please begin here at Caravanas de Recuerdos for a description and samples.
I was poking around the internet, trying to figure out if Euclides da Cunha should be referred to as “Cunha” or “da Cunha,” only to discover that everyone just calls him Euclides! All right then....
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Hmmmm.......
This just struck me, that's all....
In recent posts I have contrasted morality with ontological, as well as existential, etc. h/t Glory to God...
In recent posts I have contrasted morality with ontological, as well as existential, etc. h/t Glory to God...Dolts, Dullards and Nincompoops
..."the number of dolts, dullards and nincompoops who represent us overseas is enough to make one weep." And she adds: "This really is a most unfortunate country." from "The Maias," Eça de Queirós
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Why We Must Struggle
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Why We Must Struggle
Excerpt:
Why must we struggle? asks the poet.
Anything of worth, including love, demands the best of us.
WHY WE MUST STRUGGLE
If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longest or name
what change costs us
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble
how loss activates
a latent double how
we can feed
as upon nectar
upon need?
~ Kay Ryan, born in 1945, American poet
Excerpt:
Why must we struggle? asks the poet.
Anything of worth, including love, demands the best of us.
WHY WE MUST STRUGGLE
If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longest or name
what change costs us
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble
how loss activates
a latent double how
we can feed
as upon nectar
upon need?
~ Kay Ryan, born in 1945, American poet
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
SHIRT OF FLAME: AM I MY GAY BROTHER'S KEEPER?
SHIRT OF FLAME: AM I MY GAY BROTHER'S KEEPER?
Excerpt:
[Great as usual.]
We're talking about Christ here. Christ who said "Healthy people don't need a doctor; sick people do." Christ, who said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Christ, who hung out with prostitutes, drunks, tax collectors, and I think it's safe to assume, a whole ton of people who were "sexually disordered."...
Excerpt:
[Great as usual.]
We're talking about Christ here. Christ who said "Healthy people don't need a doctor; sick people do." Christ, who said, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." Christ, who hung out with prostitutes, drunks, tax collectors, and I think it's safe to assume, a whole ton of people who were "sexually disordered."...
Monday, September 19, 2011
So I’m convinced your deepest problem is not the...
So I’m convinced your deepest problem is not the...
"So I’m convinced your deepest problem is not the cigarettes you smoke or the alcohol you drink in secret. It’s not the slander you speak and the gossip you cherish. It’s not the pornography you pleasure yourself with when no one’s looking. It’s not the baby you aborted; it’s not that you betrayed your brother, cheated on your bride, lied about the whole thing, and retaliated with murder [King Herod]. It’s not even that you slaughtered the Lamb and killed the Messiah. Your deepest problem is that somewhere deep down inside, you believe Jesus the Messiah rose from the dead just to kick your ass, when, in fact, He rose from the dead so you would believe all is forgiven. It is finished! Justice is accomplished. And the Father is pleading, “Come home, come home, come home!"
— Peter Hiett, quoted here. h/t Evetushnet.com
Sheila Cassidy
Craig G. Bartholomew, h/t the dormant blog Notes (Leo Wong):
From his inaugural address as the H. Evan Runner Professor of Philosophy at Redeemer University College, "For Such a Time as This: The Relevance of the Neo-Calvinist Tradition Today":
The practice of public theology will lead us into spiritual warfare and involve taking up the cross. And if we are to go this route then we need to ensure that we weigh the costs and have adequate resources. Several years ago I heard Sheila Cassidy speak in Cheltenham. A young Christian doctor, she went to serve in Chile. There she made the fatal mistake of treating a government opponent. She was arrested and tortured, torture which included electrical shocks to the genitals. In her talk in Cheltenham she made the point that we need images of God that are adequate to the journey of life..Sunday, September 18, 2011
the decline of the West « Elberry's Ghost
the decline of the West « Elberry's Ghost
Excerpt:
During our tandem we talked about the “decline of the West”. i told her about the shithead apprentices i taught in Kassel, whose only interests were horror/porn movies, computers, mobile phones, and cars. The West has been in decline for at least 100 years, before even the First World War: it is to do with the erasing of any extra-materialist (religious or otherwise) apprehension, the destruction of the sacred.
To be human is to impinge, however dimly, on that which is beyond the human – or beyond the material, the visible and known. Science has inculcated a false model of knowledge. Science can only deal with the empirical; its basis is repeatable scientific experiment, statistical analysis (which can only deal with probablities). Anything not subject to empirical observation & statistical analysis is invisible to science (at best, scientists can proffer impressionist, manifestly pseudo-scientific “explanations”), yet scientists in their indomitable arrogance are unable to admit their limits – this is not remarkable, for they are generally ignorant of philosophy or epistemology; they are mathematicians, knowing about as much of epistemology as my 19-year-old engineering apprentices. They are often ostensibly fuelled by hatred of Christianity, and its long history of persecutions & inhumanity, though one feels these scientists would be quite happy in Stalinist Russia, as long as they were on the winning side. Fundamentally, their visceral loathing of the now almost wholly discredited Christianity (where they seem lukewarm about real threats like Islam or China) may be competitive – that is, they are the new priests and so naturally set their sights on the old priests. They wish for power and for that they must discredit the old priesthood.
Although most people are incapable of really understanding religion or philosophy, the concepts seem to (somehow) filter into their lives. So now, whenever scientists discover that bananas cause cancer, or that cigarettes are good for the heart, etc., people accept this as they would once have accepted the priest’s sermon. This false mode of knowledge – that only the empirically observable exists, and everything else is a lie – has brutalised its subjects. For to be human is to have an extra-material fidelity, which one could call the imagination, in Wallace Stevens’ usage (could a scientist understand anything of Stevens?).
Along with the scientific onslaught, the humanities have been destroyed by race/gender/sex apparatchiks, English traditions have been largely eradicated by Nu Labour, and the family has likewise distintegrated (assisted by appropriate legislation). So in the West there is no longer any obvious extra-material object, to which one might give one’s fidelity – the only cause now is money. It is not surprising that the West is breeding no-good jihaddist boyos, violence, riots, destruction – for human beings require some extra-material (or “spiritual”) component, and this is no longer requitable by religion, by education, by tradition, except in highly isolated cases. Islam, while vile & bearded, has made no compromises with its essential nature (hatred & violence & savagery), and so it continues to command considerable support. Christianity, in watering itself down for the masses, has lost everything.
Without the sacred, humanity will devolve into a state of grunting bearded savagery, as we see in Islam...
Excerpt:
During our tandem we talked about the “decline of the West”. i told her about the shithead apprentices i taught in Kassel, whose only interests were horror/porn movies, computers, mobile phones, and cars. The West has been in decline for at least 100 years, before even the First World War: it is to do with the erasing of any extra-materialist (religious or otherwise) apprehension, the destruction of the sacred.
To be human is to impinge, however dimly, on that which is beyond the human – or beyond the material, the visible and known. Science has inculcated a false model of knowledge. Science can only deal with the empirical; its basis is repeatable scientific experiment, statistical analysis (which can only deal with probablities). Anything not subject to empirical observation & statistical analysis is invisible to science (at best, scientists can proffer impressionist, manifestly pseudo-scientific “explanations”), yet scientists in their indomitable arrogance are unable to admit their limits – this is not remarkable, for they are generally ignorant of philosophy or epistemology; they are mathematicians, knowing about as much of epistemology as my 19-year-old engineering apprentices. They are often ostensibly fuelled by hatred of Christianity, and its long history of persecutions & inhumanity, though one feels these scientists would be quite happy in Stalinist Russia, as long as they were on the winning side. Fundamentally, their visceral loathing of the now almost wholly discredited Christianity (where they seem lukewarm about real threats like Islam or China) may be competitive – that is, they are the new priests and so naturally set their sights on the old priests. They wish for power and for that they must discredit the old priesthood.
Although most people are incapable of really understanding religion or philosophy, the concepts seem to (somehow) filter into their lives. So now, whenever scientists discover that bananas cause cancer, or that cigarettes are good for the heart, etc., people accept this as they would once have accepted the priest’s sermon. This false mode of knowledge – that only the empirically observable exists, and everything else is a lie – has brutalised its subjects. For to be human is to have an extra-material fidelity, which one could call the imagination, in Wallace Stevens’ usage (could a scientist understand anything of Stevens?).
Along with the scientific onslaught, the humanities have been destroyed by race/gender/sex apparatchiks, English traditions have been largely eradicated by Nu Labour, and the family has likewise distintegrated (assisted by appropriate legislation). So in the West there is no longer any obvious extra-material object, to which one might give one’s fidelity – the only cause now is money. It is not surprising that the West is breeding no-good jihaddist boyos, violence, riots, destruction – for human beings require some extra-material (or “spiritual”) component, and this is no longer requitable by religion, by education, by tradition, except in highly isolated cases. Islam, while vile & bearded, has made no compromises with its essential nature (hatred & violence & savagery), and so it continues to command considerable support. Christianity, in watering itself down for the masses, has lost everything.
Without the sacred, humanity will devolve into a state of grunting bearded savagery, as we see in Islam...
Anecdotal Evidence: `What Matters Is the Beauty of the Attempt'
Anecdotal Evidence: `What Matters Is the Beauty of the Attempt'
Excerpt:
“In the old scores--and that has been enough.
Merely mechanical, sure, all artifice--
“But can that matter when it sounds like this?
What matters is the beauty of the attempt,
“The world for him being so far mostly dreamt.
Not that a lot, to tell the truth, has passed,
“Nothing to change our lives or that will last,
And not that we are awed, exactly; still,
“There is something to this beyond mere adult skill.
And if it moves but haltingly down its scales,
“It is the more moving just because it fails;
And is the lovelier because we know
“It has gone beyond itself, as great things go.” ~Donald Justice, “At the Young Composers' Concert”
...already knowing words fail him. There’s no human gift I envy more than musical performance. Words are a second-best substitute.
Excerpt:
“In the old scores--and that has been enough.
Merely mechanical, sure, all artifice--
“But can that matter when it sounds like this?
What matters is the beauty of the attempt,
“The world for him being so far mostly dreamt.
Not that a lot, to tell the truth, has passed,
“Nothing to change our lives or that will last,
And not that we are awed, exactly; still,
“There is something to this beyond mere adult skill.
And if it moves but haltingly down its scales,
“It is the more moving just because it fails;
And is the lovelier because we know
“It has gone beyond itself, as great things go.” ~Donald Justice, “At the Young Composers' Concert”
...already knowing words fail him. There’s no human gift I envy more than musical performance. Words are a second-best substitute.
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Chagall
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Chagall
Excerpt:
The good life, then, is at one and the same time the chief end or goal, both of each person and of the true civil society.
DO YOU SEE THE TOWN?
Do you see the town, how it rests over there,
whispering, it nestles in the cloak of night?
The moon pours her silvery silken stream
down upon it in magical splendor.
The gentle night wind wafts its breath from there,
so ghostly, a dying, gentle sound:
It cries in dreams, it breathes deeply and heavily,
it whispers, mysterious, alluringly frightened . . .
The dark town, it sleeps in my heart
with brilliance and fire, with painfully colored splendor:
But its reflection floats around you, flatters you,
Hushed to a whisper, gliding, through the night.
~ Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), Austrian poet
=======
My Note:
I have been re-reading posts from Marks in the Margin, whose blog sadly lies dormant. On stormy days I retreat to his blog archive and re-read them. As a lover of reading I absolutely love his posts. He wrote a lot about Powell's in Portland which led me to the suburban concept of 'Third Place." This has never really been a problem in the Old World just in the New.
When I was a university student everyone, students from all over the world, congregated at the nearby French cafe's outdoor patio. We just shoved the tables together! Sometimes two or three sat on the same chair. On any given day there might be more than thirty in our rousing conversations.
It was and is sadly not a common place activity in most U.S. areas. Somehow bowling alleys and clubs just don't replace it. It was a logical extension of the village in Europe. If we think of France or Spain that is what comes to mind. People from all walks of life, all ages, congregate at these 'tertulias.'
First Place? The home. Second Place? The work place. But Third Place in the U. S.? If I came into money I would 'post' one in every city and 'town.'
Excerpt:
The good life, then, is at one and the same time the chief end or goal, both of each person and of the true civil society.
DO YOU SEE THE TOWN?
Do you see the town, how it rests over there,
whispering, it nestles in the cloak of night?
The moon pours her silvery silken stream
down upon it in magical splendor.
The gentle night wind wafts its breath from there,
so ghostly, a dying, gentle sound:
It cries in dreams, it breathes deeply and heavily,
it whispers, mysterious, alluringly frightened . . .
The dark town, it sleeps in my heart
with brilliance and fire, with painfully colored splendor:
But its reflection floats around you, flatters you,
Hushed to a whisper, gliding, through the night.
~ Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), Austrian poet
=======
My Note:
I have been re-reading posts from Marks in the Margin, whose blog sadly lies dormant. On stormy days I retreat to his blog archive and re-read them. As a lover of reading I absolutely love his posts. He wrote a lot about Powell's in Portland which led me to the suburban concept of 'Third Place." This has never really been a problem in the Old World just in the New.
When I was a university student everyone, students from all over the world, congregated at the nearby French cafe's outdoor patio. We just shoved the tables together! Sometimes two or three sat on the same chair. On any given day there might be more than thirty in our rousing conversations.
It was and is sadly not a common place activity in most U.S. areas. Somehow bowling alleys and clubs just don't replace it. It was a logical extension of the village in Europe. If we think of France or Spain that is what comes to mind. People from all walks of life, all ages, congregate at these 'tertulias.'
First Place? The home. Second Place? The work place. But Third Place in the U. S.? If I came into money I would 'post' one in every city and 'town.'
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Eating Good in the Neighborhood
Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Eating Good in the Neighborhood
Excerpt:
On the grill at Easy Picken’s BBQ, in Harper, Texas. Alas, they don’t have a website, and are only open Fridays and weekends … but the grilled meats are sublime...
[Seeing this is my penance for the day. Oh, how I miss good ole Texas food, especially BBQ.]
Excerpt:
On the grill at Easy Picken’s BBQ, in Harper, Texas. Alas, they don’t have a website, and are only open Fridays and weekends … but the grilled meats are sublime...
[Seeing this is my penance for the day. Oh, how I miss good ole Texas food, especially BBQ.]
Marks in the Margin: Any Case
Marks in the Margin: Any Case
Excerpt:
October is National Poetry Month (in England--Patrick Kurp calls it the true Poetry Month) and as it draws to a close, I will post my annual poem by the Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska called Any Case, also sometimes titled Could Have.
I discovered the poem at the end of Julie Orringer’s remarkable novel The Invisible Bridge, an epic tale of three brothers trying to survive during the Holocaust in Hungary. It is a long novel that drew me in from the first sentence and would not let me out for a full 600 pages. The following passage occurs in the novel:
…the excruciating smallness, the pinpoint upon which every life is balanced. The scale might be tipped by the tiniest of things: the lice that carried typhus, the few thimblefuls of water that remained in a canteen, the dust of breadcrumbs in a pocket.
Any Case
It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Closer. Farther away.
It happened, but not to you...
Excerpt:
October is National Poetry Month (in England--Patrick Kurp calls it the true Poetry Month) and as it draws to a close, I will post my annual poem by the Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska called Any Case, also sometimes titled Could Have.
I discovered the poem at the end of Julie Orringer’s remarkable novel The Invisible Bridge, an epic tale of three brothers trying to survive during the Holocaust in Hungary. It is a long novel that drew me in from the first sentence and would not let me out for a full 600 pages. The following passage occurs in the novel:
…the excruciating smallness, the pinpoint upon which every life is balanced. The scale might be tipped by the tiniest of things: the lice that carried typhus, the few thimblefuls of water that remained in a canteen, the dust of breadcrumbs in a pocket.
Any Case
It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Closer. Farther away.
It happened, but not to you...
Friday, September 16, 2011
The Chimes: Dickens
“Lastly, and most of all. Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile…; does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity. And you have done that wrong!” ~Dickens, The Chimes, 1844
Never the Hope Itself by Gerry Hadden – Review | At Home With Books
Never the Hope Itself by Gerry Hadden – Review | At Home With Books
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
The second half of the book had a much smoother flow and I think a lot of this had to do with the fact that he fell in love, and so his accounts were told within the context of his budding relationship. The focus of his memoir at this point balances between the romance and his reporting on the political and economic conditions of certain countries.
I learned a lot of little tidbits from this book, but the thing that surprised me the most was the reaction of many Mexicans to September 11th: laughter and celebration. The author writes about going to bars and parties and everywhere he turned people were laughing and celebrating the downfall of the Americans. This was in stark contrast to the sympathy he experienced from citizens when he was in Columbia.
Never the Hope Itself will give you a brief view of the conditions in Central America, Mexico and Haiti as they were when Gerry Hadden was a reporter for NPR, and you will also get a good feel for what life is like for a foreign correspondent. He shares his own story and those of people from various lifestyles and environments – in their day-to-day lives and in times of crisis. It isn’t an in-depth analysis or history, but may whet your appetite to learn more about our neighbors to the south and the hardships that they face.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Missing Person by Patrick Modiano
Excerpt: h/t Books IQ...
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
The missing person in the title of Patrick Modiano's novel, winner of the Goncourt Prize for 1978, is
the detective himself. Guy Roland suffers from amnesia, the period of his life before launching his
career as a private investigator is almost a complete blank. Even his name and nationality are a mystery to him. Now after a career of solving other people's problems, he turns to his own.
The moment of crisis for Roland, when his past fell away, was—perhaps not surprisingly—during the period of Nazi occupation of France...Read more...
The missing person in the title of Patrick Modiano's novel, winner of the Goncourt Prize for 1978, is
the detective himself. Guy Roland suffers from amnesia, the period of his life before launching his
career as a private investigator is almost a complete blank. Even his name and nationality are a mystery to him. Now after a career of solving other people's problems, he turns to his own.
The moment of crisis for Roland, when his past fell away, was—perhaps not surprisingly—during the period of Nazi occupation of France...Read more...
IDLE SPECULATIONS: A Notable Encounter
IDLE SPECULATIONS: A Notable Encounter
Excerpt:
The description of the scene by Enobarbus in the play is one of the great speeches in English drama. It is pure poetry, appealing to all the senses of the listener`s imagination:
"When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up
his heart, upon the river of Cydnus ...
I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion--cloth-of-gold of tissue--
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature...
Excerpt:
The description of the scene by Enobarbus in the play is one of the great speeches in English drama. It is pure poetry, appealing to all the senses of the listener`s imagination:
"When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up
his heart, upon the river of Cydnus ...
I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion--cloth-of-gold of tissue--
O'er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature...
When told that there was never a man like Antony, Cleopatra replies:
"You lie, up to the hearing of the gods.But, if there be, or ever were, one such,It's past the size of dreaming; nature wants stuffTo vie strange forms with fancy; yet to imagineAn Antony were nature's piece 'gainst fancy,Condemning shadows quite."(V. Scene 2. 94-99)
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
You've GOTTA read this!: "Into That Darkness" by Gitta Sereny
You've GOTTA read this!: "Into That Darkness" by Gitta Sereny
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
There is a point in the book when it all starts to become clear. Even now, my heart is starting to race thinking about it. How the extermination of millions all started so small, with euthanizing invalids, and the rationalization by even priests that is was the humane thing to do. The list expanded to the mentally ill, and with the loose definition of what constituted "mentally ill", the list expanded further to include homosexuals, people with various diseases, and anyone else that just happened to piss off those in charge. Through the justification of each tiny step, and ultimately through the fear of ending up on the list, so many people like you and me stepped aside and let it all happen.
Ultimately, this book is about an examination of conscience...for Stangl, for everyone involved, and even ourselves. Would you and I have reacted any differently, had we witnessed these events? What is the value of a life? Are some worth more than others? These are not pleasant ponderings, and this book is not for the faint of heart. It is not an easy book to read, but I think every person on this earth should be required to read it.
Blazing Cat Fur: How British politicians broke Britain
Blazing Cat Fur: How British politicians broke Britain
Excerpt:
Postal workers refuse to deliver Bible recordings because the CDs are ‘offensive’
h/t JH, MiniCapt & Trupeers.
Excerpt:
Postal workers refuse to deliver Bible recordings because the CDs are ‘offensive’
h/t JH, MiniCapt & Trupeers.
Pentagon Budget Slashed, FDA Gets $2B Increase!
Pentagon Budget Slashed, FDA Gets $2B Increase!
Excerpt from Vision to America:
Dear Overtaxed and Overspent American,
When it comes to government waste, FDA is certainly doing its part. The agency’s 2011 requested budget of $4.03 billion was actually an increase of 23%, and as a matter of fact, the FDA's 2010 budget was $3.28 billion, which was 17.5% increase over the prior year's $2.79 billion allotment.
So over the past 2 years, a period when Americans have been suffering through the most trying of economic times and cutting the fat in our personal budgets, the FDA has increased its spending by a whopping 44%!
Now, in its latest power grab, FDA is trying to expand regulation over vitamins and supplements.
Recently, FDA issued “draft guidance” for complying with the New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) notification protocols contained in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) which was passed into a law in 1994. If fully implemented, this could ban all dietary supplements in the United States that were formulated after 1994....
===================
Note: I wonder how many people know about the FDA 'research factory' in Arkansas with its 'research' production of new 'birth control' chemicals...?
TLC Toddlers & Tiaras show Pretty Woman 3 year old prostitute | Hillbuzz | Conservative Political Analysis, Action & Humor | Kevin DuJan Editor
TLC Toddlers & Tiaras show Pretty Woman 3 year old prostitute | Hillbuzz | Conservative Political Analysis, Action & Humor | Kevin DuJan Editor
Excerpt:
Megan Fox is a homeschooling, suburban mom in Chicagoland who hosts “The Megan Fox Radio Show” and routinely investigates issues important to her, especially those involving children. Here she explores the disturbing recent trend involving the media’s normalization of child exploitation.
Excerpt:
Megan Fox is a homeschooling, suburban mom in Chicagoland who hosts “The Megan Fox Radio Show” and routinely investigates issues important to her, especially those involving children. Here she explores the disturbing recent trend involving the media’s normalization of child exploitation.
Monday, September 12, 2011
A Common Reader: The Little Tragedies
A Common Reader: The Little Tragedies
Excerpt:
here is a marvelous recording of the play that uses Alan's translation in a five-part YouTube series.
The other three pieces don't consistently achieve the same level as "Mozart and Salieri" but they do have plenty of enjoyable moments. "The Stone Guest" presents a version of the Don Juan legend. As Alan points out in his Afterword (an extremely helpful analysis of the stories) lust is not the driving force of Don Juan as he is "lured by the thrill of the chase" instead. Pushkin goes out of his way to highlight Don Juan's excitement in illicit pursuit. The 'stone guest' turns out to be the statue of a lover's husband who was murdered by Don Juan. Just as the statue's physique exaggerates the physical attributes of the dead husband, Don Juan's mythology has likewise grown over the years. Pushkin's enigmatic Don Juan reflects some of the expected parts of the myth but adds some interesting twists as well...
Excerpt:
here is a marvelous recording of the play that uses Alan's translation in a five-part YouTube series.
The other three pieces don't consistently achieve the same level as "Mozart and Salieri" but they do have plenty of enjoyable moments. "The Stone Guest" presents a version of the Don Juan legend. As Alan points out in his Afterword (an extremely helpful analysis of the stories) lust is not the driving force of Don Juan as he is "lured by the thrill of the chase" instead. Pushkin goes out of his way to highlight Don Juan's excitement in illicit pursuit. The 'stone guest' turns out to be the statue of a lover's husband who was murdered by Don Juan. Just as the statue's physique exaggerates the physical attributes of the dead husband, Don Juan's mythology has likewise grown over the years. Pushkin's enigmatic Don Juan reflects some of the expected parts of the myth but adds some interesting twists as well...
JiTong Railway
JiTong Railway operates almost 600 miles of road in Inner Mongolia which was, until fully dieselized in 2005, the last mainline on Earth powered by large standard gauge steam locomotives (QJ 2-10-2) in freight and passenger service.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
First Known When Lost: "This Is How The Wind Shifts"
First Known When Lost: "This Is How The Wind Shifts"
Excerpt:
I place the following poem in the "sparer" category.
Which is not to say that I have ever made head or tail of it. But it sounds lovely. And I think I get the drift.
The Wind Shifts
This is how the wind shifts:
Like the thoughts of an old human,
Who still thinks eagerly
And despairingly.
The wind shifts like this:
Like a human without illusions,
Who still feels irrational things within her.
The wind shifts like this:
Like humans approaching proudly,
Like humans approaching angrily.
This is how the wind shifts:
Like a human, heavy and heavy,
Who does not care.
Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923).
Excerpt:
I place the following poem in the "sparer" category.
Which is not to say that I have ever made head or tail of it. But it sounds lovely. And I think I get the drift.
The Wind Shifts
This is how the wind shifts:
Like the thoughts of an old human,
Who still thinks eagerly
And despairingly.
The wind shifts like this:
Like a human without illusions,
Who still feels irrational things within her.
The wind shifts like this:
Like humans approaching proudly,
Like humans approaching angrily.
This is how the wind shifts:
Like a human, heavy and heavy,
Who does not care.
Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923).
First Known When Lost: Lists, Part One: "The Dearness Of Common Things"
First Known When Lost: Lists, Part One: "The Dearness Of Common Things"
Excerpt:
Link: Encounters
One comes across the strangest things in walks:
Fragments of abbey tithe barns fixed in modern,
With Dutch-sort houses, where the water baulks,
Weired up, and brick-kilns broken among fern;
Old troughs, great stone cisterns priests might have blessed
For mere liking, most worthy mounting-stones;
Black timber in red brick, surprisingly placed
Where hill-stone was looked for; and a manor's bones
Spied in the frame of some wisteria'd house;
And mill-falls and sedge-pools, and Saxon faces;
Stream sources happened upon in unlikely places;
And Roman-looking hills of small degree.
The surprise, the good in dignity of poplars
At a road's end, or the white Cotswold scars --
Sheets spread out spotless against the hazel-tree.
And toothless old men, bubbling over with jokes,
And deadly serious once the speaking finished.
Beauty is less, after all, than strange comical folks,
And the wonder of them never and never can become diminished.
Published in The London Mercury, Volume VI, Number 36 (October, 1922).
Common Things
The dearness of common things --
Beech wood, tea, plate-shelves,
And the whole family of crockery --
Wood-axes, blades, helves.
Ivory milk, earth's coffee,
The white face of books
And the touch, feel, smell of paper --
Latin's lovely looks.
Earth fine to handle;
The touch of clouds,
When the imagining arm leaps out to caress
Grey worsted or wool clouds.
Wool, rope, cloth, old pipes
Gone, warped in service;
And the one herb of tobacco,
The herb of grace, the censer weed,
Of whorled, blue, finger-traced curves.
Ivor Gurney, Selected Poems (edited by George Walter) (J. M. Dent 1996).
Excerpt:
Link: Encounters
One comes across the strangest things in walks:
Fragments of abbey tithe barns fixed in modern,
With Dutch-sort houses, where the water baulks,
Weired up, and brick-kilns broken among fern;
Old troughs, great stone cisterns priests might have blessed
For mere liking, most worthy mounting-stones;
Black timber in red brick, surprisingly placed
Where hill-stone was looked for; and a manor's bones
Spied in the frame of some wisteria'd house;
And mill-falls and sedge-pools, and Saxon faces;
Stream sources happened upon in unlikely places;
And Roman-looking hills of small degree.
The surprise, the good in dignity of poplars
At a road's end, or the white Cotswold scars --
Sheets spread out spotless against the hazel-tree.
And toothless old men, bubbling over with jokes,
And deadly serious once the speaking finished.
Beauty is less, after all, than strange comical folks,
And the wonder of them never and never can become diminished.
Published in The London Mercury, Volume VI, Number 36 (October, 1922).
Common Things
The dearness of common things --
Beech wood, tea, plate-shelves,
And the whole family of crockery --
Wood-axes, blades, helves.
Ivory milk, earth's coffee,
The white face of books
And the touch, feel, smell of paper --
Latin's lovely looks.
Earth fine to handle;
The touch of clouds,
When the imagining arm leaps out to caress
Grey worsted or wool clouds.
Wool, rope, cloth, old pipes
Gone, warped in service;
And the one herb of tobacco,
The herb of grace, the censer weed,
Of whorled, blue, finger-traced curves.
Ivor Gurney, Selected Poems (edited by George Walter) (J. M. Dent 1996).
Anecdotal Evidence: `These Vile Weeds Are Sown by Vile Men'
Anecdotal Evidence: `These Vile Weeds Are Sown by Vile Men'
Excerpt:
...On Sept. 22, 1859, Thoreau inspected the cellar of a house that had been pulled down the previous spring, to “see if any new or rare plants had sprung up in that place which had so long been covered from the light.” Among others he found Urtica urens (annual nettle), Anethum graveolens (dill) and Nicotiana tabacum (cultivated tobacco). He notes that “a curse seems to attach to any place which has long been inhabited by man.” In the newly exposed basement he finds “a crop of rank and noxious weeds, evidence of a certain unwholesome fertility.”...“You find henbane and Jamestown-weed and the like, in cellars,—such herbs as the witches are said to put into their caldron. It would fit that the tobacco plant should spring up on the housesite, aye on the grave, of almost every householder of Concord. These vile weeds are sown by vile men. When the house is gone they spring up in the corners of cellars where the cidercasks stood always on tap, for murder and all kindred vices will out. And that rank crowd which lines the gutter, where the wash of the dinner dishes flows, are but more distant parasites of the host. What obscene and poisonous weeds, think you, will mark the site of a Slave State?—what kind of Jamestown-weed?”
Less than a month after Thoreau wrote his journal entry, on Oct. 16, John Brown and his men raided the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry...
Excerpt:
...On Sept. 22, 1859, Thoreau inspected the cellar of a house that had been pulled down the previous spring, to “see if any new or rare plants had sprung up in that place which had so long been covered from the light.” Among others he found Urtica urens (annual nettle), Anethum graveolens (dill) and Nicotiana tabacum (cultivated tobacco). He notes that “a curse seems to attach to any place which has long been inhabited by man.” In the newly exposed basement he finds “a crop of rank and noxious weeds, evidence of a certain unwholesome fertility.”...“You find henbane and Jamestown-weed and the like, in cellars,—such herbs as the witches are said to put into their caldron. It would fit that the tobacco plant should spring up on the housesite, aye on the grave, of almost every householder of Concord. These vile weeds are sown by vile men. When the house is gone they spring up in the corners of cellars where the cidercasks stood always on tap, for murder and all kindred vices will out. And that rank crowd which lines the gutter, where the wash of the dinner dishes flows, are but more distant parasites of the host. What obscene and poisonous weeds, think you, will mark the site of a Slave State?—what kind of Jamestown-weed?”
Less than a month after Thoreau wrote his journal entry, on Oct. 16, John Brown and his men raided the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry...
Friday, September 9, 2011
Orwell's Picnic ~
Orwell's Picnic ~
Excerpt:
See those big guys carrying that dead priest out of the rubble of the Twin Towers? The firemen, cops and paramedics, right?
Apparently they're not invited to the 9-11 Memorial service. "Not enough room" for them.
Neither are any priests. [Father, pray for us.]
“It’s a civil ceremony.
My Response: I'll be watching to see if that is really true or not, Bloomberg.
Excerpt:
See those big guys carrying that dead priest out of the rubble of the Twin Towers? The firemen, cops and paramedics, right?
Apparently they're not invited to the 9-11 Memorial service. "Not enough room" for them.
Neither are any priests. [Father, pray for us.]
“It’s a civil ceremony.
My Response: I'll be watching to see if that is really true or not, Bloomberg.
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Heart! We will forget him!
A Poem A Day from the George Hail Library ~ Selected by Maria Horvath: Heart! We will forget him!
Excerpt:
You cannot reason your way out of heartbreak.
Heart! We will forget him!
You and I — tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave —
I will forget the light!
When you have done, pray tell me,
Then I, my thoughts, will dim.
Haste! ’lest while you’re lagging
I may remember him!
~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet
Excerpt:
You cannot reason your way out of heartbreak.
Heart! We will forget him!
You and I — tonight!
You may forget the warmth he gave —
I will forget the light!
When you have done, pray tell me,
Then I, my thoughts, will dim.
Haste! ’lest while you’re lagging
I may remember him!
~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet
Writing Assignment: The Smell Of And Taste Of Coffee
Writing Assignment: The Smell Of And Taste Of Coffee
Excerpt:
Your own senses are unique. You smell, taste, feel, hear, and see the world, not just from a distinctive point of view, but with tools that help you to perceive the world in a way that, while it might be similar to others’ perceptions, is not precisely identical. It’s your view of the world and that makes it interesting.
=============
The wonderful smell of Folger's coffee is what wakes me up each morning.
Excerpt:
Your own senses are unique. You smell, taste, feel, hear, and see the world, not just from a distinctive point of view, but with tools that help you to perceive the world in a way that, while it might be similar to others’ perceptions, is not precisely identical. It’s your view of the world and that makes it interesting.
=============
The wonderful smell of Folger's coffee is what wakes me up each morning.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Thought for the day ...
Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: Thought for the day ...
Excerpt:
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows. *- Siegfried Sassoon*, born on this date in 1886
Excerpt:
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows. *- Siegfried Sassoon*, born on this date in 1886
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
First Known When Lost: "Now It Is September And The Web Is Woven. The Web Is Woven And You Have To Wear It."
First Known When Lost: "Now It Is September And The Web Is Woven. The Web Is Woven And You Have To Wear It."
Excerpt:
Today's weather -- "what is there here but weather, what spirit/Have I except it comes from the sun?" -- brought it to mind.
The Dwarf
Now it is September and the web is woven.
The web is woven and you have to wear it.
The winter is made and you have to bear it,
The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind,
For all the thoughts of summer that go with it
In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags.
It is the mind that is woven, the mind that was jerked
And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.
It is all that you are, the final dwarf of you,
That is woven and woven and waiting to be worn,
Neither as mask nor as garment but as a being,
Torn from insipid summer, for the mirror of cold,
Sitting beside your lamp, there citron to nibble
And coffee dribble . . . Frost is in the stubble.
Wallace Stevens, Parts of a World (1942).
Excerpt:
Today's weather -- "what is there here but weather, what spirit/Have I except it comes from the sun?" -- brought it to mind.
The Dwarf
Now it is September and the web is woven.
The web is woven and you have to wear it.
The winter is made and you have to bear it,
The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind,
For all the thoughts of summer that go with it
In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags.
It is the mind that is woven, the mind that was jerked
And tufted in straggling thunder and shattered sun.
It is all that you are, the final dwarf of you,
That is woven and woven and waiting to be worn,
Neither as mask nor as garment but as a being,
Torn from insipid summer, for the mirror of cold,
Sitting beside your lamp, there citron to nibble
And coffee dribble . . . Frost is in the stubble.
Wallace Stevens, Parts of a World (1942).
You've GOTTA read this!: Not So Wordless Wednesday: Norway #9
You've GOTTA read this!: Not So Wordless Wednesday: Norway #9
My response: Another reason why slugs prefer Budweiser...in addition to the love of the 'fizz.'
My response: Another reason why slugs prefer Budweiser...in addition to the love of the 'fizz.'
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Monday, September 5, 2011
The Riveting Point
The duende would ‘scree’ us back to the choice between Isaac and Ishmael to ‘undo’ all that leads to Jerusalem on that fateful day when God could not die.
Dan Schneider on W.H. Auden, 9/11, & The World Trade Center
Dan Schneider on W.H. Auden, 9/11, & The World Trade Center
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
| he Twin Towers Canon (1) SOUTH TOWER Cured of humanity, the taller World Trade Center despises its creators, growing ever more dull in their reach for the sun, to cast upon it, its Light, which reveals, to its makers, a vision to benight even the wonder of children, drawn to the taller aspects of aspiration, those laid low by design or at least gray proficiency. This is a sure sign that what uses once modern merely fades to the center which thrives on uniqueness. So, this tower is taller than the north one? Both of them are incredibly dull in the afternoon. Has either, once, lit up the night like the Empire State? Has it ever given light to a young boy's design? When it is cast in this light no lecture on the intricacies of its design can rescue its reputation, which sinks as the night whispers its way westward, out from behind the Center which slowly grows lightward, from within. The day grows dull as the tower is left to its dreams. It is taller than its dreams. It is real. Reality is taller than dream. So what if it is uglier in daylight than Yamasaki's vision? No vision is as dull as that made to become part of another's design, or another’s fraction of dream, part of a center that cannot be comprehended. Much like this coy night Mankind hopes vaguely, yet dreads precisely. In the night all our dreams are leveled, only fear grows taller, like a goodbye a loved one cannot voice. The center sinks into its own peace, the low dudgeon of twilight, which ramifies its structure, as if by some design of a god of the inanimate, or something dull as the joys of big boys with their toys, or even dull as knowing the ultimate artificer of night is poetry- itself an artifice, a design of the anima that propels life through dream, taller than a child's, which are ever fading, as the light gives its last, a burst of orange, over the Center receding. It stands, a dull icon, in the taller canyons of cumulus clouds, which design the last light, outside the night's tower, disavowed of its center. | (2) NORTH TOWER We have lost ourselves to marvel, much as the skyline has lost its appeal to those beings below, smaller than the circle of night. Yet, entranced by its starlight they look ever upward, as I do to you, this night, as my eyes fill with a grandeur, an unequal pull, greater than these engineered Twin Towers. I enter this ardor that you inspire. And, as I enter my being- within I construct our own skyline, of transnebulous beauties, which can only lend pull to your presence. In this night only I grow smaller as your hair shadows the tower, the wind, making night sheer illusion, when its fluid is cast with the light, of Manhattan at night, all my depths become that light of love, a parabola that will arc and enter the dream of a boy floating wary above the night, which stood out starkly, a kind of immortal skyline, against eternity's blackness, never made smaller than the dream of love. Nothing is real. Nothing can pull as eternity, save you beauty, which I feel pull in my silence, full as the unblinking summer light which faded with the hours. It never grows smaller for your eyes are oxygen, your glance what can enter, and power this dance that ignites beyond the skyline where a scared star leaves its place in the immortal night, and rinses your eyes of their doubt. You see me, this night, for the first time, on this skyscraper. You feel the pull as I touch you with my words and fingers. The skyline recedes, as if a memory lost to the sharp light of the now, where something other than love can enter this joy which increases, and can never grow smaller, like the future, itself, which can never grow smaller, the murmurs of tomorrow, which gets us through this night, nothing but a part of our love, which can enter, and recede, with your kiss. You are that hope, which I pull on in the breeze of adventure, which dares to alight, on your being, as your eyes disavow the skyline, as the east meets morning. The skyline would grow smaller, without you, if our love were to pull, as the night, what kind of love could it light? Or a new love enter? |
Requiescat in pace [1972-2001]!
Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
A bit more alliteration & assonance lift the music, & we’ve come almost all the way back to the ‘real world’ after a 2 stanza aery. There is a reference to a famous WW1 quote by a British diplomat, Edward Grey, on 8/3/14, which stated ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our life time.’...
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.
A bit more alliteration & assonance lift the music, & we’ve come almost all the way back to the ‘real world’ after a 2 stanza aery. There is a reference to a famous WW1 quote by a British diplomat, Edward Grey, on 8/3/14, which stated ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our life time.’...
Read more...
Israel Matzav: Holocaust denial alive and well in Ukraine
Israel Matzav: Holocaust denial alive and well in Ukraine
Excerpt:
Tom Gross reports on the destruction of the ancient synagogue of Lemberg, Austria (later Lvov, Poland) to make way for a hotel in Lviv, Ukraine (yes, they're all the same place).
The synagogue was part of a UNESCO heritage site where thousands of Jews were murdered between 1941-44, but no one cares. Last week I watched as bulldozers began to demolish the adjacent remnants of what was once one of Europe's most beautiful synagogue complexes, the 16th-century Golden Rose in Lviv. Most of the rest of the synagogue was burned down, with Jews inside, by the Nazis in 1941.
During the war, 42 other synagogues were destroyed in Lviv, which from the middle ages to the 20th century was known by its Austrian (and Yiddish) name, Lemberg, and then called Lvov after the Soviets annexed it in 1945. The remnants of the Golden Rose are one of the few remaining vestiges of Jewish existence in Lviv, the majority of whose residents, in 1940, were Jewish.
It is not only morally wrong for bulldozers to drill through the last traces of this vibrant past without first giving the handful of remaining Jews here a chance to restore this site, or turn it into a place of memorial. It is legally wrong, too. Ukraine's own laws are designed to preserve such historic sites...
[As I have posted before, the Holocaust still remains an unprecedented evil, a cloud of shame that the society of mankind still refuses to deal with. Its effects are on-going. Those who deny it are liars and belong to the father of lies. God is love. God is truth. God loves life.]
Excerpt:
Tom Gross reports on the destruction of the ancient synagogue of Lemberg, Austria (later Lvov, Poland) to make way for a hotel in Lviv, Ukraine (yes, they're all the same place).
The synagogue was part of a UNESCO heritage site where thousands of Jews were murdered between 1941-44, but no one cares. Last week I watched as bulldozers began to demolish the adjacent remnants of what was once one of Europe's most beautiful synagogue complexes, the 16th-century Golden Rose in Lviv. Most of the rest of the synagogue was burned down, with Jews inside, by the Nazis in 1941.
During the war, 42 other synagogues were destroyed in Lviv, which from the middle ages to the 20th century was known by its Austrian (and Yiddish) name, Lemberg, and then called Lvov after the Soviets annexed it in 1945. The remnants of the Golden Rose are one of the few remaining vestiges of Jewish existence in Lviv, the majority of whose residents, in 1940, were Jewish.
It is not only morally wrong for bulldozers to drill through the last traces of this vibrant past without first giving the handful of remaining Jews here a chance to restore this site, or turn it into a place of memorial. It is legally wrong, too. Ukraine's own laws are designed to preserve such historic sites...
[As I have posted before, the Holocaust still remains an unprecedented evil, a cloud of shame that the society of mankind still refuses to deal with. Its effects are on-going. Those who deny it are liars and belong to the father of lies. God is love. God is truth. God loves life.]
A Wonderful World- Remembering 9-11-01 « Speak Without Interruption
A Wonderful World- Remembering 9-11-01 « Speak Without Interruption
Excerpt: [Fine.] h/t Books, Inq....
The heroes and victims who perished that day live in our souls, crying out to be
remembered. “The colors of the rainbow are so pretty in the sky, are also on the
faces of the people going by…and I think to myself, what a wonderful world…”
Remember them each and every day. Remember the families without sons and
daughters, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles. Remember who they are and who they
could have been. Remember, they are us. If you have forgotten, take a minute to look
into the sky and you will see them passing by and think to yourself what a
wonderful world it could have been.
* First published in Lit Writ Sure and various blogs since 2004.
**Part of a collection of prose and poetry titled BrokenShells and Hope
by G Emil Reutter.
Excerpt: [Fine.] h/t Books, Inq....
The heroes and victims who perished that day live in our souls, crying out to be
remembered. “The colors of the rainbow are so pretty in the sky, are also on the
faces of the people going by…and I think to myself, what a wonderful world…”
Remember them each and every day. Remember the families without sons and
daughters, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles. Remember who they are and who they
could have been. Remember, they are us. If you have forgotten, take a minute to look
into the sky and you will see them passing by and think to yourself what a
wonderful world it could have been.
* First published in Lit Writ Sure and various blogs since 2004.
**Part of a collection of prose and poetry titled BrokenShells and Hope
by G Emil Reutter.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Scrutiny Under the Lamp
Therefore his [Torrente's] diary, though undoubtedly helpful in studying his character, is peppered with several passages that require a certain scrutiny, or at least an ability to separate fact from fiction.’
At the same ‘diary site’:
The funeral is remembered in Wolfe’s poem, The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna. Here are the first two and the last two verses.
NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lanthorn dimly burning.
. . .
But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.
================================
NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lanthorn dimly burning.
. . .
But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.
================================
Perhaps literature is just this: the reflective internal dialogue and argumentation going on inside each one of us. I also like the reference to memory as the means of forgiveness and as another noted, as a gift from God.
We tend to think of forgiveness as that static instant where we say, “I forgive you,” but just as it takes months to heal from a broken bone, it may take much longer to heal from a broken heart or spirit. We understand that a man with a severed leg must undergo many transformations of how he deals with his world, physically, emotionally, psychologically, socially and spiritually.
However, as a culture we do not accord this same respectful understanding to those with the ‘invisible wounds.’ Rather the struggling individual, in almost every case, faces the pain and suffering of an additional unjust ‘stigma.’ This makes me intensely angry. It is because only that person who bravely ‘agrees’ to the sucking leech positivism is ‘rewarded’ with the vacuous, “Oh, you’re so brave and heroic to just let it go and move on.” If this were a Greek drama play there would be the aside here of “Whew, now we can move on.” And this in the face of grave injustice done by the perpetrator, who more often than not goes forward blithely harming others to the very end. The foundations of this stubborn stance is fear. Facing these things head on means having to deal with very unsettling issues inside every human being, every family and every social entity, including the church.
But we have to forgive! That does not ever mean we condone. It does not mean that the action should go unpunished, much less allowing the person to continue in the name of a false ‘peace.’ It does not mean that a person who demands justice is doing something wrong. Avoidance of these issues because they are painful and unsettling to our lives or some silly prestigious concept we hope sustains an empty status quo is as evil as the original act. It is moral cowardice and is reprehensible. Worse to me is that those who resist the truth and justice needed for redemptive healingare exhibiting the need of absolute entrenchment to ‘save face’ before their peers. Even worse many just aren’t interested because it takes up their time and energy.
There must be reparation and amendment for a harm done. No healing for all members of the community can take place without it. The victims’ relationship in community has been wounded or even destroyed. It is changed forever. The community in the name of truth and love must defend and help heal those victimized. How in the world can that occur if massive denial is the standard answer to such things. Get over it just doesn’t cut it no matter how pretty the sentimental slogans make it sound. Those most vehement for the ‘forget it and move on’ mode betray their stance in their nervous aversion to the truth. They truly are terrified of having to bear the stigma which actually does belong to the whole human family. For it must be asked, what in the human community has allowed this pain and suffering, and what can each ‘I’ do to prevent its occurrence again.
This particular aspect of culture today occurs along with the unwritten code of prioritizing sins. Of course, it depends upon which neighborhood one lives in as to which sin rates the highest on the ‘local list.’ Purposeful ignorance of these powerful lists of social etiquette cannot be excused either in these circles. It is the absurd, surreal ‘honor among thieves’ mentality.
Literature and the psychology lab by Gregory Currie - TLS
Literature and the psychology lab by Gregory Currie - TLS
A suggestion about how to read – treat it as an exercise in pretence
Excerpt:
Arguing for the ignorance and insularity of people in the arts and humanities, C. P. Snow noted that they rarely know much about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Unsurprisingly, the literary establishment was not shaken by this observation. Henry James’s fingertip examination of the psyche would not have been done better if the author had taken Physics 101, and the same can be said for the other literary illuminations of the human world. That is not the world of particles and waves, but of thoughts and feelings. It is not a world we understand through microscopes and accelerators but through ordinary, if highly focused and attentive, experience. The experience got, says James in the preface to The Princess Casamassima, by walking the London streets after dinner.
Perhaps Snow simply chose the wrong example. Focused on big science, he probably thought little of psychology, which did not then, and probably never will, have a second law, or even a first one. But things have been happening in cognitive psychology, and they may cause trouble for some who think the two-cultures attack has been seen off. What has been happening has no overarching theory or grand narrative to claim our allegiance, and much of its detail may not survive the next decade of theoretical reconfiguration. Still, there are hints of something radically at odds with how we ordinarily think about the mind. To the extent that literature is that ordinary picture writ large, embellished, deepened and refined, this research deserves the attention of those who produce, theorize or merely read what we uncomfortably call serious fiction.
Stop there, you may say. You are talking as if literature made claims about the mind...
A suggestion about how to read – treat it as an exercise in pretence
Excerpt:
Arguing for the ignorance and insularity of people in the arts and humanities, C. P. Snow noted that they rarely know much about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Unsurprisingly, the literary establishment was not shaken by this observation. Henry James’s fingertip examination of the psyche would not have been done better if the author had taken Physics 101, and the same can be said for the other literary illuminations of the human world. That is not the world of particles and waves, but of thoughts and feelings. It is not a world we understand through microscopes and accelerators but through ordinary, if highly focused and attentive, experience. The experience got, says James in the preface to The Princess Casamassima, by walking the London streets after dinner.
Perhaps Snow simply chose the wrong example. Focused on big science, he probably thought little of psychology, which did not then, and probably never will, have a second law, or even a first one. But things have been happening in cognitive psychology, and they may cause trouble for some who think the two-cultures attack has been seen off. What has been happening has no overarching theory or grand narrative to claim our allegiance, and much of its detail may not survive the next decade of theoretical reconfiguration. Still, there are hints of something radically at odds with how we ordinarily think about the mind. To the extent that literature is that ordinary picture writ large, embellished, deepened and refined, this research deserves the attention of those who produce, theorize or merely read what we uncomfortably call serious fiction.
Stop there, you may say. You are talking as if literature made claims about the mind...
Friday, September 2, 2011
Ally Yourself With Little Things III: Suppertime Sonnets: In Which Ants Show Their Colors And We Are Most Pleased
Suppertime Sonnets: In Which Ants Show Their Colors And We Are Most Pleased
Excerpt:
The insect world is full of wonders, true,
And beauty, and of things so passing strange
As make us wonder who is fooling who
(I know that should be "whom" but I must change
The case to fit the rhyme scheme sometimes). Take
These ants, who show we all are what we eat.
Three cheers to Dr. Babu (I can't make
A name like that up!), for his passing sweet...
Excerpt:
The insect world is full of wonders, true,
And beauty, and of things so passing strange
As make us wonder who is fooling who
(I know that should be "whom" but I must change
The case to fit the rhyme scheme sometimes). Take
These ants, who show we all are what we eat.
Three cheers to Dr. Babu (I can't make
A name like that up!), for his passing sweet...
Wuthering Expectations: By the dismal tarns and pools / Where dwell the Ghouls - Poe the poet
Wuthering Expectations: By the dismal tarns and pools / Where dwell the Ghouls - Poe the poet
Excerpt:
Poe would print an entire poem, or a selection of stanzas, and italicize the best parts. "Best" = most beautiful, and most original. For example:
By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains - near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp,-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
That's from Poe's "Dream-Land," magnificent and ludicrous. The italics identify my notion of which bits are best. ..
Excerpt:
Poe would print an entire poem, or a selection of stanzas, and italicize the best parts. "Best" = most beautiful, and most original. For example:
By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains - near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp,-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
That's from Poe's "Dream-Land," magnificent and ludicrous. The italics identify my notion of which bits are best. ..
Wuthering Expectations: There is poison in its sweetness – José de Alencar’s Iracema, a Brazilian classic, I am told
Wuthering Expectations: There is poison in its sweetness – José de Alencar’s Iracema, a Brazilian classic, I am told
Excerpt:
...there’s something more interesting going on. Alencar builds the allegory right into the language....
Excerpt:
...there’s something more interesting going on. Alencar builds the allegory right into the language....
Anecdotal Evidence: `That Brown-Bagged Bottle, Pride'
Anecdotal Evidence: `That Brown-Bagged Bottle, Pride'
Excerpt:
His cardboard sign was terse: “Homeless Vet.” The real pitch was his demeanor – cocked head and steady, passive-aggressive gaze. It said: “I’m like you. How can you resist?”
I resisted. Bill Vallicella has covered this thoroughly, but still I feel unsettled. I’m not cheap. My instincts tell me to help a friend or deserving stranger. However, I’m suspicious not only of the beggar but of myself...
.......................
My Note: Until the past three years I would say that this particular view of the facet of light hitting the truth diamond would be mine. From the moment the homeless black woman rested her head on my shoulder in St. Patrick's Cathedral and sighed, I can only relate that I am forever changed. I wrote about the incident in my post, St. Patrick's Church, earlier. The Poor Christ shadows all of us, all the time, especially in these times of hardship. The saints have always known this. Take St. Faustina. Christ came to her, you know---a Sister of MERCY---in the form of a poor beggar hungry. She took him in and fed him. Christ then appeared to her, pleased. He had been the beggar.
I had a negative experience with a beggar in Dallas but I understood why he did what he did. Who are we to 'demand' social etiquette from those in such wild loneliness, fear and pain? So what if that one beggar might take advantage of us? Maybe he or she was flinging all they had out there just to get one scrap that day. Remember Lazarus?
We are 'suspicious not only of the beggar but of' ourselves because in an instant that beggar can be us and that makes us terribly afraid. I was again sharply reminded of this in Spokane when I was confronted by Timothy on the steps of the locked Church. I can only say that I have since been cloaked in a kinship with him that is hard not only to confront but to accept and understand. I just know Timothy at that moment was Jesus.
It was his birthday and he wanted to go home to see his ill mother. I knew that her prayers had sent me to that locked Church that morning. I had never been there before. Just at that moment? I fed him, comforted him, hugged him and listened to his longing to be loved and accepted, such affairs of the heart we take so much for granted. His face was swollen from beatings the night before. He shivered from sleeping on the concrete floor of the shelter. He was hungry because he had not eaten in three days. He had no money. He had gone to the only place left holding a tiny thread of hope---the steps of Christ's Church. It is spiritually daunting to realize and live in a moment when "He came unto His own and they received Him not." I was no saint then, no better. Perhaps for a little while I allowed the Holy Spirit to whirlwind me across the frightening line we draw in order to embrace, to care about a ravaged human being quietly whimpering, yet screaming, to be held by his mother again. A mother whose prayers wrapped my ravaged soul, too.
That frightening line is the convenient scapegoatism that I abhor and fight with such passion. We all live in the same city. There is no difference between us. Most people reject that true fact. I learned long ago that all of us exist at the Foot of the Cross because there Christ sees each of us as we really are inside and out.
Our Church says to us: "When one suffers in the Body of Christ, we all suffer." That must give us pause and remind us that Christ commands us to love one another. ["A new commandment I give you. Love one another as I have loved you."] We are 'to comfort the suffering!' 'Go, learn what this means! I desire MERCY not sacrifice! I am humble and meek of Heart. Yes HE is. Timothy reached over and comforted me.
Excerpt:
His cardboard sign was terse: “Homeless Vet.” The real pitch was his demeanor – cocked head and steady, passive-aggressive gaze. It said: “I’m like you. How can you resist?”
I resisted. Bill Vallicella has covered this thoroughly, but still I feel unsettled. I’m not cheap. My instincts tell me to help a friend or deserving stranger. However, I’m suspicious not only of the beggar but of myself...
.......................
My Note: Until the past three years I would say that this particular view of the facet of light hitting the truth diamond would be mine. From the moment the homeless black woman rested her head on my shoulder in St. Patrick's Cathedral and sighed, I can only relate that I am forever changed. I wrote about the incident in my post, St. Patrick's Church, earlier. The Poor Christ shadows all of us, all the time, especially in these times of hardship. The saints have always known this. Take St. Faustina. Christ came to her, you know---a Sister of MERCY---in the form of a poor beggar hungry. She took him in and fed him. Christ then appeared to her, pleased. He had been the beggar.
I had a negative experience with a beggar in Dallas but I understood why he did what he did. Who are we to 'demand' social etiquette from those in such wild loneliness, fear and pain? So what if that one beggar might take advantage of us? Maybe he or she was flinging all they had out there just to get one scrap that day. Remember Lazarus?
We are 'suspicious not only of the beggar but of' ourselves because in an instant that beggar can be us and that makes us terribly afraid. I was again sharply reminded of this in Spokane when I was confronted by Timothy on the steps of the locked Church. I can only say that I have since been cloaked in a kinship with him that is hard not only to confront but to accept and understand. I just know Timothy at that moment was Jesus.
It was his birthday and he wanted to go home to see his ill mother. I knew that her prayers had sent me to that locked Church that morning. I had never been there before. Just at that moment? I fed him, comforted him, hugged him and listened to his longing to be loved and accepted, such affairs of the heart we take so much for granted. His face was swollen from beatings the night before. He shivered from sleeping on the concrete floor of the shelter. He was hungry because he had not eaten in three days. He had no money. He had gone to the only place left holding a tiny thread of hope---the steps of Christ's Church. It is spiritually daunting to realize and live in a moment when "He came unto His own and they received Him not." I was no saint then, no better. Perhaps for a little while I allowed the Holy Spirit to whirlwind me across the frightening line we draw in order to embrace, to care about a ravaged human being quietly whimpering, yet screaming, to be held by his mother again. A mother whose prayers wrapped my ravaged soul, too.
That frightening line is the convenient scapegoatism that I abhor and fight with such passion. We all live in the same city. There is no difference between us. Most people reject that true fact. I learned long ago that all of us exist at the Foot of the Cross because there Christ sees each of us as we really are inside and out.
Our Church says to us: "When one suffers in the Body of Christ, we all suffer." That must give us pause and remind us that Christ commands us to love one another. ["A new commandment I give you. Love one another as I have loved you."] We are 'to comfort the suffering!' 'Go, learn what this means! I desire MERCY not sacrifice! I am humble and meek of Heart. Yes HE is. Timothy reached over and comforted me.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
SHIRT OF FLAME: POETICS OF MINIATURE: JOSEPH CORNELL'S BOXES
SHIRT OF FLAME: POETICS OF MINIATURE: JOSEPH CORNELL'S BOXES
Excerpt:
This idea of making connections, of reuniting things that have been lost or separated from each other is dear to my heart. In the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus says "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.' [Luke 15: 4-6].
In fact, however, most people would be glad to let the rogue sheep go. The hell with him if he insists on wandering off. Only someone who has felt him- or herself to be lost, only someone who has suffered the terrible exile of feeling cut off from the herd, would so yearn to find, and bring back home, the one lost sheep.
[Definitely dear to my heart.]
Excerpt:
This idea of making connections, of reuniting things that have been lost or separated from each other is dear to my heart. In the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus says "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.' [Luke 15: 4-6].
In fact, however, most people would be glad to let the rogue sheep go. The hell with him if he insists on wandering off. Only someone who has felt him- or herself to be lost, only someone who has suffered the terrible exile of feeling cut off from the herd, would so yearn to find, and bring back home, the one lost sheep.
[Definitely dear to my heart.]
GalliaWatch: Oran - A Paradise Lost
Excerpt:
This bittersweet video shows the decline of the city of Oran in Algeria, the setting for Albert Camus' great novel The Plague, and home to many thousands of Frenchmen and other Europeans for over a century. Colonization was not to last and ended in unspeakable brutality, but for some the memories of what life was like in Oran give them solace.
The first image in this video is an old photo of the city, possibly from a postcard. It then moves to more current views and asks "Why?" The final image is of a cheerful well-kept street, with the words "Pourquoi pas cela?" ("Why not this?"). Then a word of thanks to someone named Edgar for showing that the old neighborhoods of Oran are dying inexorably...
The first image in this video is an old photo of the city, possibly from a postcard. It then moves to more current views and asks "Why?" The final image is of a cheerful well-kept street, with the words "Pourquoi pas cela?" ("Why not this?"). Then a word of thanks to someone named Edgar for showing that the old neighborhoods of Oran are dying inexorably...
Intimate Relationships
One psychiatrist noted the increasing social shift away from relating to others as people. This is a networking, hook-up generation. He bemoans the increasing ”psychiatric view of symptoms as reflections of neurons and chemicals suggests that we may be in a social withdrawal from being able to face and bear the pain of human experience… i.e., being in authentic relationships with other people. Shifting away from the area that psychoanalysis has so carefully developed of listening to others with disciplined empathy runs the risk of losing the embedded set of values about the significance of the individual life.” ~Edward Shapiro, M. D.
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