The Jam, "Going Underground"

What you see is what you get

You've made your bed, you better lie in it

You choose your leaders and place your trust

As their lies wash you down and their promises rust ...

Just as terror, even in its pre-total, merely tyrannical form ruins all relationships between men, so the self-compulsion of ideological thinking ruins all relationships with reality. The preparation has succeeded when people have lost contact with their fellow men as well as the reality around them; for together with these contacts, men lose the capacity of both experience and thought. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, the reality of experience, and the distinction between true and false, the standards of thought, no longer exist.

Hannah Arendt, from Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, and Thoughts on Politics and Revolution

Himself.

It is easy to establish a society upon the foundation of rigid rules. It is easy to shape the kind of man who submits blindly and without protest to a master.  The real task is to succeed in setting man free by making him master of himself.

In place of affirming the rights of Man through individuals, we have begun to speak of the rights of the collectivity. This morality will explain clearly why the individual should sacrifice himself for the community. It will no longer explain, without verbal tricks, why a community should sacrifice itself for a single man.

 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, from Flight to Arras

Curiosities.

Osbourne, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885

Steve's pointing to Stevenson wisdom ...

Life is only a very dull and ill-directed theatre unless we have some interests in the piece; and to those who have neither art nor science, the world is a mere arrangement of colours, or a rough footway where they may very well break their shins.  It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities that any man continues to exist with even patience, that he is charmed by the look of things and people, and that he wakens every morning with a renewed appetite for work and pleasure.

Refinement.

Maestro, indeed.  Wisdom every minute ...

Question, question, question. Taste, taste, taste. Think, think, think. That's what cooking is all about. Is that where you can take it? Because I'm a classicist. I'm not a fantasist. I believe in those great classic marriages. Basel and tomato, madeira and mushroom, red wine and shallots. Keep it simple. We live in a world of refinement, not invention. It's as simple as that. And never forget. If you want to stray and do bizarre and peculiar combinations, then good luck.

Think about why you do things.

Commendable.

Wren, Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, 1668

In things to be seen at once, much variety makes confusion, another vice of beauty. In things that are not seen at once, and have no respect one to another, great variety is commendable, provided this variety transgress not the rules of optics and geometry. 

Christopher Wren

Mendelssohn, Piano Trio in D-Minor, Op. 11

The Aletheia Piano Trio performs the Finale ...

Conform.

A FOREST HYMN

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned

To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,

And spread the roof above them,—-ere he framed

The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,

Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,

And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks

And supplication. For his simple heart

Might not resist the sacred influences,

Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,

And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven

Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound

Of the invisible breath that swayed at once

All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed

His spirit with the thought of boundless power

And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why

Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect

God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore

Only among the crowd, and under roofs,

That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,

Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,

Offer one hymn—-thrice happy, if it find

Acceptance in His ear.

Father, thy hand

Hath reared these venerable columns, thou

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down

Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose

All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,

Budded, and shook their green leaves in the breeze,

And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow,

Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died

Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,

As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,

Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold

Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,

These winding aisles, of human pomp and pride

Report not. No fantastic carvings show

The boast of our vain race to change the form

Of thy fair works. But thou art here—-thou fill'st

The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds

That run along the summit of these trees

In music; thou art in the cooler breath

That from the inmost darkness of the place

Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,

The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee.

Here is continual worship;—-Nature, here,

In the tranquility that thou dost love,

Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around,

From perch to perch, the solitary bird

Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs,

Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots

Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale

Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left

Thyself without a witness, in these shades,

Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace

Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak—-

By whose immovable stem I stand and seem

Almost annihilated—-not a prince,

In all that proud old world beyond the deep,

E'er wore his crown as lofty as he

Wears the green coronal of leaves with which

Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root

Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare

Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower

With scented breath, and look so like a smile,

Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,

An emanation of the indwelling Life,

A visible token of the upholding Love,

That are the soul of this wide universe.

My heart is awed within me when I think

Of the great miracle that still goes on,

In silence, round me—-the perpetual work

Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed

Forever. Written on thy works I read

The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die—-but see again,

How on the faltering footsteps of decay

Youth presses——ever gay and beautiful youth

In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees

Wave not less proudly that their ancestors

Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost

One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,

After the flight of untold centuries,

The freshness of her far beginning lies

And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate

Of his arch enemy Death—-yea, seats himself

Upon the tyrant's throne—-the sepulchre,

And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe

Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth

From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves

Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave

Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived

The generation born with them, nor seemed

Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks

Around them;—-and there have been holy men

Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.

But let me often to these solitudes

Retire, and in thy presence reassure

My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink

And tremble and are still. Oh, God! when thou

Dost scare the world with falling thunderbolts, or fill,

With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods

And drowns the village; when, at thy call,

Uprises the great deep and throws himself

Upon the continent, and overwhelms

Its cities—-who forgets not, at the sight

Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,

His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?

Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face

Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath

Of the mad unchained elements to teach

Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,

In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,

And to the beautiful order of the works

Learn to conform the order of our lives.

William Cullen Bryant

Schumann, Waldszenen, Op. 82

Martin Helmchen performs the Vogel als Prophet ...

Opportunity.

The LANTERN and the WILDFLOWER 

If only I could give you

the gift of Adventure.

If only I could box her up

for you,

That big red bow on top,

glimmering.

But this cannot be.

Adventure is not

given or earned.

She is a breath that is prayed,

a force that is found,

found in the soul of everyone

and everything

But maybe, just maybe,

if I cannot box her up for you,

I can at least point you

in her direction.

Maybe, at least,

I can tell you where I saw her last,

what I prayed when I was alone,

waiting in a forest under the pine trees,

waiting for her to appear.

Maybe that will be

your Beginning.

You see, I didn’t learn for a long time.

For years, as soon as I began

searching,

hid behind fear,

all the while,

Adventure waiting for me

with a lantern and a wildflower.

All that time, I only wanted

pictures of her,

without knowing her presence,

her warmth,

her smell.

But when I met her,

I found myself.

When I prayed,

I found God.

If only I could teach you

not to be afraid.

If only I could tell you

that it’s okay if you don’t

have words left

to pray.

If only I could point you

towards that lantern

and that wildflower.

If only I could show you

the way to God.

But God cannot be given or earned.

No, God is found.

So, in that soul of yours,

there is the greatest opportunity.

You.

The world.

Breath and prayer embodied.

Everything sacred.

These things would never fit

into a box

with a big red bow on top,

glimmering.

Kaitlin Curtice

Schubert, Piano Quintet in A-Major, D. 667, "The Trout"

Members of the Vienna Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra perform the Variations movement ...

Conserving.

Conserving Alexander Calder's Red Lily Pads ...

Happy Birthday, Giorgio Vasari

Vasari, Self-Portrait, 1566

No one ever became excellent in any exercise whatsoever without beginning from his childhood to endure heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and other discomforts; wherefore those men are entirely deceived who think to be able, at their ease and with all the comforts of the world, to attain an honorable rank. It is not by sleeping but by waking and studying continually that progress is made.  It is greater vanity to pursue things more for their reputation than for what they really are, but these kinds of men can be found in any age, men who pay more attention to appearances than realities

Giorgio Vasari, born on this day in 1511, from Lives of the Artists

Dinnertime.

INTERVIEWER: I made the remark, and I don't think it's unfair to say, that in a sense, what Einstein gave to science, in the dimension of time, you've given to art, in the dimension of motion. 

CALDER: I don't know about that, but what would Einstein say? 

INTERVIEWER: Well, that's a very interesting point.  Well, now, how do you know when you're finished?

CALDER:  Uh, when it's dinnertime.

Enormity.

Chatham, July, 1987

Choose your heroes carefully, identifying those who were truly great and whose sensibilities you can relate to. Be contemptuous of notions like the one which holds that a drunk who routinely peed his pants while splashing paint all over the floor 50 years ago is an old master. Go back as far as you can in your discipline, remembering that very nearly 100 percent of everything produced in the arts in your time is pure shit. Never compare yourself to your contemporaries, but do mercilessly critique them, if only to yourself. Beware of all labels and -isms, tonalism, for example. There are no great paintings done in bright colors in the conventional sense of that term. As Camille Pissarro noted, “All painting is a matter of grays.” If you doubt this, study Goya, Rembrandt, da Vinci, and Titian, to mention only four. To see the exception, study Vermeer, and even he practices restraint to the point of pathos.

Be a seeker of truth and beauty. Never be impressed by the price of anything. There are a few rich people who are smart and nice, but generally speaking, associate with the wealthy at your own risk. Read as much good, classic literature and poetry as you can. You need to be fluent in the world of verbal ideas and concepts to enhance and balance the essentially nonverbal ones you use in your work. Most writers, by the way, do not really believe in the specificity of the nonverbal language. You must. Along with literature, read biographies and autobiographies and don’t stick just to the visual arts. Include them all.  This is to learn how others handled their journey, bearing in mind you can’t emulate someone else’s. Travel serves to inform us of the enormity of the world, and lets us see and experience things we might never have known existed. This helps us have a sense of humility, which I believe is very important.

Russell Chatham, from "Motive Is Everything: A Conversation With Artist, Writer, Publisher, Sportsman, Gourmet Chef & Restaurateur," an interview with John A. Murray

Happy Birthday, Geddy Lee

Geddy Lee was born on this day in 1953.

"Headlong Flight"...

Kelley & Holmes, Friend, 1888

Shared.

WELCOME JOY

There is joy

in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook

each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle

that heats my coffee

each morning,

in the spoon and the chair

that cry "hello there, Anne"

each morning,

in the godhead of the table

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon

each morning.

All this is God,

right here in my pea-green house

each morning

and I mean,

though often forget,

to give thanks,

to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing

as the holy birds at the kitchen window

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,

dies young.

Anne Sexton

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

It seems to me this idea of going to school and then into business isn’t the natural way for a man to live, at least to my way of thinking. Don’t you see what most people are missing? Something which is fine and grand. Living like we do, I mean out in the open air. They’re getting farther and farther away from the natural life, nature and all that; they’re creating a world which is, oh, I don’t know, I can’t jaw properly, but you know what I mean.

B.B., from Brendon Chase

Brought.

Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it. Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.

Ernest Hemingway, from Conversations with Ernest Hemingway

Enhances.

There's always a secret ...

Every 15 minutes, the island releases an imperceptible spray of ash and dust that makes the soil rich in calcium, phosphorus, and potassium, which enhances the product.

Bliss.

I WANDERED LONELY as a CLOUD 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

Rebecca Dale and Tenebrae have a go ...

Enjoy.

Enjoy the day.

Nicest.

Belloc, Disclaimer, 1907

Learning.

Disney Imagineering designer Ray Kinman on the myth of talent ...

There was a period of my career where I really went through some serious burnout. I mean, world class burnout. It was only after I pulled out that I figured out what it was and that I started just trying to crank work out and it was about money. I was just trying to make money and I knew I could get away with not my best work and people couldn't tell.  

And so I started taking shortcuts and that kind of got to the point where I just got really depressed. I didn't like working and I don't know somehow I realized, oh! I stopped learning! I stopped pushing myself to that. That's what happened. So, I was able to regain momentum.

Everything I do, I'm trying to push it a little bit harder because it makes it interesting. It's fun.

Don't forget to get out and walk.

Sonorous.

Marie-Claude Chappuis, Luca Pianca, Vittorio Ghielmi perform a sonorous program of Lully, Lambert,de Visée, Monteclair, and Bataille ...

Read.

Reynolds, Samuel Johnson, n/d

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Samuel Johnson from Johnsonian Miscellanies, Vol. II

Alexander Calder, Work in Progress

Happy Birthday, Simon Kirke

Simon Kirke was born on this day in 1949.

"Burnin' Sky"...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

... to prioritize victory over rather than coexistence with the communist threat.

Released.

R.E.M. released Life's Rich Pageant on this day in 1986.

"I Believe"...

Sing.

Sosa, Lark, 2001

WITH the LARK

Night is for sorrow and dawn is for joy,

Chasing the troubles that fret and annoy;

Darkness for sighing and daylight for song,—

Cheery and chaste the strain, heartfelt and strong.

All the night through, though I moan in the dark,

I wake in the morning to sing with the lark.

Deep in the midnight the rain whips the leaves,

Softly and sadly the wood-spirit grieves.

But when the first hue of dawn tints the sky,

I shall shake out my wings like the birds and be dry;

And though, like the rain-drops, I grieved through the dark,

I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark.

On the high hills of heaven, some morning to be,

Where the rain shall not grieve thro’ the leaves of the tree,

There my heart will be glad for the pain I have known,

For my hand will be clasped in the hand of mine own;

And though life has been hard and death’s pathway been dark,

I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Simply.

A mobile has no utility and no meaning. It is simply beautiful. It has a great emotional effect if you understand it. Of course if it meant anything it would be easier to understand, but it would not be worthwhile.

Alexander Calder

Arise.

A FRAGMENT

Awake! arise! the hour is late!

  Angels are knocking at thy door!

They are in haste and cannot wait,

  And once departed come no more. 

Awake! arise! the athlete's arm

  Loses its strength by too much rest;

The fallow land, the untilled farm

  Produces only weeds at best. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfello

Burn.

LINES to a DON

Remote and ineffectual Don

That dared attack my Chesterton,

With that poor weapon, half-impelled,

Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,

Unworthy for a tilt with men--

Your quavering and corroded pen;

Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,

Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;

Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,

Don nervous, Don of crudities;

Don clerical, Don ordinary,

Don self-absorbed and solitary;

Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;

Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;

Don middle-class, Don sycophantic,

Don dull, Don brutish, Don pedantic;

Don hypocritical, Don bad,

Don furtive, Don three-quarters mad;

Don (since a man must make and end),

Don that shall never be my friend.

Don different from those regal Dons!

With hearts of gold and lungs of bronze,

Who shout and bang and roar and bawl

The Absolute across the hall,

Or sail in amply bellying gown

Enormous through the Sacred Town,

Bearing from College to their homes

Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;

Dons admirable! Dons of Might!

Uprising on my inward sight

Compact of ancient tales, and port

And sleep--and learning of a sort.

Dons English, worthy of the land;

Dons rooted; Dons that understand.

Good Dons perpetual that remain

A landmark, walling in the plain--

The horizon of my memories--

Like large and comfortable trees.

Don very much apart from these,

Thou scapegoat Don, thou Don devoted,

Don to thine own damnation quoted,

Perplexed to find thy trivial name

Reared in my verse to lasting shame.

Don dreadful, rasping Don and wearing,

Repulsive Don--Don past all bearing.

Don of the cold and doubtful breath,

Don despicable, Don of death;

Don nasty, skimpy, silent, level;

Don evil, Don that serves the devil.

Don ugly--that makes fifty lines.

There is a Canon which confines

A Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse

If written in Iambic Verse

To fifty lines. I never cut;

I far prefer to end it--but

Believe me I shall soon return.

My fires are banked, but still they burn

To write some more about the Don

That dared attack my Chesterton. 

Hilaire Belloc

Bloch, Three Scenes from Jewish Life

Steven Isserlis performs "Prayer" with Candida Thompson and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta ...

Haydn (1732–1809), Symphony No. 47 in G major, Hob. I:47, "Il Philosofo"

Giovanni Antonini's incredible ensemble, Il Giardino Armonico ...

Happy Birthday, Beatrix Potter

The place is changed now, and many familiar faces are gone, but the greatest change is myself. I was a child then, I had no idea what the world would be like. I wished to trust myself on the waters and the sea. Everything was romantic in my imagination. The woods were peopled by the mysterious good folk. The Lords and Ladies of the last century walked with me along the overgrown paths, and picked the old fashioned flowers among the box and rose hedges of the garden.

Beatrix Potter, born on this day in 1866, from The Journal of Beatrix Potter, 1881-1897

Released.

AC⚡DC released Highway to Hell on this day in 1979.

"If You Want Blood (You've Got It)" ...

Released.

John Cougar released John Cougar on this day in 1979.

Crown Lands, "Right Way Back"

Whatever happens, we have got the (whammy bar) and they have not. (3:34)

Hilaire Belloc-ish

Poetry

Calder, Vertical Foliage, 1941

To most people who look at a mobile, it's no more than a series of flat objects that move. To a few, though, it may be poetry.  When everything goes right, a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprise!

Alexander Calder

Contribute.

Buckminster Fuller's sixty-six-year experiment to document his existence ...

On one of those walks, in the autumn of 1927, he stopped at the edge of Lake Michigan. He calculated how long it would take to for him to grow hypothermic and drown. His life insurance would pay out, and his wife and daughters would be provided for. 

Standing on that shore at age 32, feeling like an absolute failure, suicide felt like the only responsible decision.

But as he stood there, on the precipice of ending his life, he felt briefly suspended above the ground, and he heard a voice in his head that said:

“From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”

The conviction he felt from that thought marked the beginning of a life dedicated to replicating this sense of certainty by documenting the certainty of his existence. 

He went home and told Anne that he was done making decisions based on how he felt. He called it committing egocide. Not suicide, the death of the body. Egocide, the death of the part of him that ran on feeling.

He said that he had to think, and would not utter a word until he knew what he truly thought. For two full years (or so he claimed) Fuller was silent. He filled five thousand pages with notes, in pursuit of the secret to success for the entire human race. 

Fuller decided to make his life an experiment “to find what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity.” 

Learned.

When I was three my mother snuck me in and out of movies two or three times a week. My first film was Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I suffered permanent curvature of the spine and of my imagination that day a long time ago in 1923. From that hour on, I knew a kindred and wonderfully grotesque compatriot of the dark when I saw one. I ran off to see all the Chaney films again and again to be deliciously frightened. The Phantom of the Opera stood astride my life with his scarlet cape. And when it wasn't the Phantom it was the terrible hand that gestured from behind the bookcase in The Cat and the Canary, bidding me to come find more darkness hid in books. 

I was in love, then, with monsters and skeletons and circuses and carnivals and dinosaurs and, at last, the red planet, Mars. 

From these primitive bricks I have built a life and a career. By my staying in love with all of these amazing things, all of the good things in my existence have come about. 

In other words, I was not embarrassed at circuses. Some people are. Circuses are loud, vulgar, and smell in the sun. By the time many people are fourteen or fifteen, they have been divested of their loves, their ancient and intuitive tastes, one by one, until when they reach maturity there is no fun left, no zest, no gusto, no flavor. Others have criticized, and they have criticized themselves, into embarrassment. When the circus pulls in at five of a dark cold summer morn, and the calliope sounds, they do not rise and run, they turn in their sleep, and life passes by.

I did rise and run. I learned that I was right and everyone else wrong when I was nine. Buck Rogers arrived on scene that year, and it was instant love. I collected the daily strips, and was madness maddened by them. Friends criticized. Friends made fun. I tore up the Buck Rogers strips. For a month I walked through my fourth-grade classes, stunned and empty. One day I burst into tears, wondering what devastation had happened to me. The answer was: Buck Rogers. He was gone, and life simply wasn't worth living. The next thought was: Those are not my friends, the ones who got me to tear the strips apart and so tear my own life down the middle; they are my enemies.

Ray Bradbury, from "Drunk, and In Charge of a Bicycle"

Biebl, Ave Maria

VOCES8 ...

Off.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman

Infinite.

Steve points to Rabbi Sacks and his thoughts on Tolstoy ...

Faith, he said is a force of life.  "If a man lives, then he must believe in something." If that something is finite, it will not ultimately satisfy him, since everything finite eventually perishes.  The only thing worth believing in is the infinite.  And, "Without faith it is impossible to live."

Lineage.

The ordinary miracle of existing ...

As each of us dwindles in size by comparison to the cosmic stretches of space and of time, our individual lives, our improbable existence becomes more and more important. With the understanding of my great good fortune, I also feel a sense of responsibility. But to whom, or to what, am I responsible? Not the universe, which is without mind. And not the huge number of human beings who could have been but never were. I can hardly be responsible to people who do not exist. I believe it is a responsibility to myself—to not waste my precious life.

Eight or nine years old. Riding my bike home in the dark.  No street lights.  Pedaling, I looked up ... and immediately stopped.  Stars beyond stars.  I felt so small but a part of that vastness.  I was alive!  

Even then, I remember my thoughts flooded with the link in the chain that I was a part of.  Family.  Those who came before.  My Mum made them a part of our family prayer a the start of every meal.  Lineage.  A chain is only as strong ...

Executed.

I do not believe I ever would have the courage to fight a duel. If any man should wrong me to the extent of my being willing to kill him, I would not be willing to give him the choice of weapons with which it should be done, and of the time, place and distance separating us, when I executed him.

Ulysses S. Grant, from Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant