And the wheeling and the dealing
All takes up too much time
Check your better self baby
You'd better satisfy, satisfy your mind ...
17 January 2025
Always.
Those who do not move do not notice their chains. Freedom means always the freedom for one to think differently.
Rosa Luxemburg
Happy Birthday, Guarini
Guarini, Cappella della Sacra Sindone, 1694
Guarino Guarini was born on this day in 1624.
Lions in the Piazza describes Guarini's dome in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud ...
The chapel’s main entry-points take the Baroque passion for dramatic lighting to a whole new level. Guarini shifted the original floor plan to squeeze three circular vestibules around the outside. While one leads to the ducal palace, the others connect to the cathedral via stairways. By shrouding the stairs in darkness, Guarini forced pilgrims to act out their faith by ascending almost blindly. Emerging from the blackness, they would finally step amongst the golden stars circling the Shroud.
Stark black-and-white marble echoes the theme of light and dark, designed to evoke the suffering represented by the shroud. Instead of a hemisphere,Guarini presents a whole series of shapes piled on top of each other, culminating in what might be the world’s strangest dome. Amongst the many oddities of the chapel’s middle zone, Guarini created two kinds of surfaces: one with a complex network of stars and hexagons, and the other with crosses distorted to look like they are being stretched into a curve. The latter configuration was only possible with Guarini’s work in advanced geometry.
The “dome” is unlike any other structure in the world: six levels of hexagons, each composed of six arches, are stacked at alternating angles. By manipulating the proportions of each layer, Guarini created the illusion of a tunnel extending far beyond the building’s size. He enhanced the effect by using soft greys which mimic colors blurring in the distance, a trick he likely picked up from ancient Greek theories about perception.
Thank you, Dr. Wolner.
16 January 2025
Jim Harrison, "Lessons from a Raven Funeral"
Someone looked down from Babel's tower
And got the wrong idea
Ignoring the birds above him ...
Interest.
Interest, not happiness, is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.
Georgia O’Keeffe
15 January 2025
Better.
The world can get better but people don’t feel it – they can even feel like they’re going backwards – because once a problem is solved it’s replaced by a new one, often with the same level of anxiety, fear, and anger.A few things I keep in mind:
- In a way, the best definition of progress is when you’ve knocked out the major issues and are left dealing with lower, less-severe ones.
- Stress is an innovator. Nothing incentivizes like worry, so we should never want a world where people see everything as perfect.
- People are problem solvers. It’s a great characteristic and the source of all progress. But when solving problems is core to your identity, you occasionally see trouble where none exists.
- Being angry can be an intoxicating feeling. It offers a sense of moral superiority, because when you accuse others of causing problems, you’re implying that you are better than them. It feels great, and in a strange way some people love being pissed off.
- The dumber the disagreements, the better the world actually is.
Happy Birthday, King
I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. In struggling for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. Someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., born on this day in 1929
Whither leadership?
14 January 2025
Living.
Juan Mari Arzak has no bad days ...
It’s after noon, but he has just gotten out of bed. “I’m not very hungry yet. There was a lot of traveling yesterday,” says Arzak, who at 72, with his wispy white hair and his gentle demeanor, might seem like any grandfatherly figure on vacation and out of place among the hipsters who are here to blow it out like they’re starring in their own MTV videos. But this grandfather can teach the youngsters a thing or two about living it up.“Maybe just a little jamón,” he says when you’re seated for coffee. Straightaway, the chef at the hotel’s Traymore restaurant, which specializes in seafood, sends out a glistening plate of the finest Pata Negra, which appears nowhere on the menu. Then Arzak gets a hankering for gambas, instructing the waiter to make sure the kitchen doesn’t overcook them. The kitchen does one better, sending out a heap of fat, plain langostinos, just like he likes them. Arzak, whose famed restaurant in posh, seaside San Sebastián has held on to its three Michelin-star rating for a remarkable 26 years, dips a couple of the tails in fresh mayonnaise and sucks out a couple of heads before he realizes something else is missing.“Let’s drink vino tinto,” he says, and out comes the red wine.
13 January 2025
Inescapable.
We find that in the absence of demonstrable truth, the best we can do is to exercise the greatest diligence, humility, insight, intelligence, and industry in trying to arrive at the nearest values to truth. I hope, of course, to argue convincingly that having done this, we have an inescapable duty to seek to inculcate others with these values.
William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom
Vast.
Travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy, and it is good to know that, in the mental world at least, there are vast countries still very imperfectly explored.
Bertrand Russell
Inordinate.
To rise again - to be the same person that you were - you must have your memory perfectly fresh and present; for it is memory that makes your identity.
If your memory be lost, how will you be the same man?
Why do mankind flatter themselves that they alone are gifted with a spiritual and immortal principle?
Perhaps from their inordinate vanity.
I am persuaded that if a peacock could speak he would boast of his soul, and would affirm that it inhabited his magnificent tail.
Will Durant, from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
Rejuvenation.
Sir Winston's ritual of rejuvenation ...
Tea was much more than a mere beverage for Winston Churchill; it was a ritual of rejuvenation. His days were famously demanding, filled with war councils, strategic planning, and speeches that rallied a nation. Amid this, tea served as a moment of calm, offering clarity and comfort. Churchill’s tea preferences reflected his character – bold yet balanced.The tea of choice for Churchill was often strong, traditional blends such as Earl Grey, English Breakfast, or Lapsang Souchong. The latter, a smoky Chinese tea, was particularly fitting for a man who appreciated bold flavors and complexity.
God-Speed.
Happy Plough Monday!
Let the wealthy and great live in splendor and state.
I envy them not, I declare it.
For I grow my own rams, my own ewes, my own lambs,
And I shear my own fleece and I wear it.
By plowing and sowing and reaping and mowing,
All nature provides me with plenty
With a cellar well stored and a plentiful board,
And my garden affords every dainty.
For here I am king. I can dance, drink and sing.
Let no one approach as a stranger.
I will hunt when it's quiet. Come on, let us try it!
Dull thinking drives anyone crazy.
I have lawns and bowers. I have fruits and flowers,
And the lark is my morning alarmer.
So you jolly boys now, here's god-speed the plow.
Long life and success to the farmer.
12 January 2025
Cesária Évora, "Nho Antone Escaderode"
Sing along if you know the words. If you don't, just hum ...
Introduced.
The world was introduced to Led Zeppelin on this day in 1969.
"Communication Breakdown"...
Affirm.
Arriving at the creek, I entered yet another dimension, one of quiet intimacy.
The water gurgled softly over shallow riffles, but more often glided silently past watercress-lined banks. Cottonwoods grew here, but the ground was protected and quieted by dense stands of willow and wild roses, home to many cottontail rabbits which were always silently appearing and disappearing.
The fishing itself was slow and deliberate, but best of all, it was solitary. While I was kneeling by the creek, half in it, half out of it, the rest of the world ceased to exist. It was a salve that mended the soul’s tears and abrasions.
As the years passed by, my familiarity with the creek itself grew, along with a more general appreciation of the landscape of the Northern Rockies. At some point in time, perhaps seven or eight years into it, I felt an easy familiarity with the creek, and my paintings were reflecting the spirit of their motifs with an increasing accuracy.
Some have argued that fishing is merely an escape from reality. My father used to tell me I had to get used to doing things I didn’t like because that was the definition of work. I didn’t believe it when he told it to me 35 years ago, and nothing since has caused me to change my mind. The dark, silent water flowing past waving tendrils of moss, sometimes revealing the olive-colored forms of trout, is haunting. We reach out to it with our fishing rods, and by connecting ourselves to living things, we affirm that we ourselves are alive, not just in our clumsy bodies, but in our hearts and souls.
Russell Chatham, from "The Center of Things"
Schubert, String Quintet in C, D. 956, Op.Posth 163
The Emerson Quartet & cellist David Finckel perform ...
Think.
The tyrant is always in danger of losing his hold upon the victim when the latter begins to think.
Horatio Alger Jr., born on this day in 1832
Excellence.
The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than "newness") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).
William F. Buckley Jr., from the National Review mission statement
Happy Birthday, London
I was born so long ago that I grew up before the era of gasoline. As a result, I am old-fashioned. I prefer a sail-boat to a motor- boat, and it is my belief that boat-sailing is a finer, more difficult, and sturdier art than running a motor. Gasoline engines are becoming fool-proof, and while it is unfair to say that any fool can run an engine, it is fair to say that almost any one can. Not so, when it comes to sailing a boat. More skill, more intelligence, and a vast deal more training are necessary. It is the finest training in the world for boy and youth and man. If the boy is very small, equip him with a small, comfortable skiff. He will do the rest. He won’t need to be taught. Shortly he will be setting a tiny leg-of-mutton and steering with an oar. Then he will begin to talk keels and centerboards and want to take his blankets out and stop aboard all night.
But don’t be afraid for him. He is bound to run risks and encounter accidents. Remember, there are accidents in the nursery as well as out on the water. More boys have died from hot-house culture than have died on boats large and small; and more boys have been made into strong and reliant men by boat-sailing than by lawn-croquet and dancing-school.
And once a sailor, always a sailor. The savor of the salt never stales. The sailor never grows so old that he does not care to go back for one more wrestling bout with wind and wave. I know it of myself. I have turned rancher, and live beyond sight of the sea. Yet I can stay away from it only so long. After several months have passed, I begin to grow restless. I find myself day-dreaming over incidents of the last cruise, or wondering if the striped bass are running on Wingo Slough, or eagerly reading the newspapers for reports of the first northern flights of ducks. And then, suddenly, there is a hurried pack of suit-cases and overhauling of gear, and we are off for Vallejo where the little Roamer lies, waiting, always waiting, for the skiff to come alongside, for the lighting of the fire in the galley-stove, for the pulling off of gaskets, the swinging up of the mainsail, and the rat-tat-tat of the reef-points, for the heaving short and the breaking out, and for the twirling of the wheel as she fills away and heads up Bay or down.
Jack London, born on this day in 1876, from "Small Boat Sailing"
Impelled.
And closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call still sounding in the depths of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest and strange desires. It caused him to feel a vague, sweet gladness, and he was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not what. Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though it were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might dictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth smells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind fungus-covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-eared to all that moved and sounded about him. It might be, lying thus, that he hoped to surprise this call he could not understand. But he did not know why he did these various things. He was impelled to do them, and did not reason about them at all.
Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be lying in camp, dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would lift and his ears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring to his feet and dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the forest aisles and across the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched. He loved to run down dry watercourses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the woods. For a day at a time he would lie in the underbrush where he could watch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down. But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called--called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.
Jack London, from The Call of the Wild
11 January 2025
Itself.
St. JOHN Bourgogne Blanc: “an excellent breakfast wine” says Fergus.
— St. JOHN Wines (@stjohnwine) March 28, 2018
Us: “What breakfast dish would you eat with it?”
Fergus: “Oh, just on its own. It’s quite happy by itself” pic.twitter.com/6dHsLqcsaS
Exists.
I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
Kurt Vonnegut, from A Man Without a Country
All.
ARTS
It's better to start walking before you're born.
As with dancing you have to learn the steps first.
Stevens said technique is the proof of your seriousness,
though the grace of a Maserati is limited to itself.
There is a human wildness held beneath the skin
that finds all barriers brutishly unbearable.
I can't walk in the shoes cobbled for me.
They weren't devised by poets but by shoemakers.
Jim Harrison
Keeps.
The elk that you glimpse in the summer, those at the forest edge, are survivors of winter, only the strongest. You can't help imagining the still, frozen nights behind it, so cold that the slightest motion is monumental. I have found their bodies, half drifted over in snow, no sign of animal attack or injury. Just toppled over one night with ice working into their lungs. You wouldn't want to stand outside for more than a few minutes in that kind of weather. If you lived through only one of those winters the way this elk has, you would write books about it. You would become a shaman. You would be forever changed. That elk from the winter stands there on the summer evening, watching from beside the forest. It keeps its story to itself.
Craig Childs
Then.
swimming off into the ocean of air thinking
who am I that the gods and men have disappointed me?
You walk through doorways in the mind you can't walk out
then one day you discover that you've learned to fly.
From up here the water is still blue, the grass still green
and the wind that buoys me is 12 billion years old.
Jim Harrison, from "Bird's-Eye View"
Patience.
Francis Mallman's approach to no bad days ...
One of the most important ingredients of food is patience; with patience, you reach the most beautiful edges of the world.
Michigan.
On this day in 1805, President Thomas Jefferson signed an act of the United States Congress that made the most beautiful part of the planet the Michigan Territory.
10 January 2025
All.
De Saedeleer, Paysage à Etikhove, 1931
I love the jocund dance,
The softly breathing song,
Where innocent eyes do glance,
And where lisps the maiden's tongue.
I love the laughing vale,
I love the echoing hills,
Where mirth does never fail,
And the jolly swain laughs his fill.
I love the pleasant cot,
I love the innocent bow'r,
Where white and brown is our lot,
Or fruit in the midday hour.
I love the oaken seat,
Beneath the oaken tree,
Where all the old villagers meet,
And laugh our sports to see.
I love our neighbors all,
But Kitty, I better love thee;
And love them I ever shall;
But thou art all to me.
William Blake
Sure.
de Saedeleer, Winter on the River, 1906
WINTER TREES
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
William Carlos Williams
09 January 2025
Happy Birthday, Baez
Joan Baez was born on this day in 1941.
Judas Priest's treatment of "Diamonds and Rust"...
I love it when a cover is better than the original.
08 January 2025
Happy Birthday, Bowie
The truth is, of course, that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.
David Bowie, born on this day in 1947
"I Can't Read," with Tin Machine ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
