Anonymous, Kyrie

From The Old Hall Ladymass, performed by Trio Mediæval, accompanied by Catalina Vicens' organetto ...

Sneak.

Davis, Ethan Allen's Capture of Fort Ticonderoga, 1875

On this day in 1775, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys captured the British-held fortress at Ticonderoga, N.Y.

American Battlefield Trust has the details ...

During the American War for Independence, several engagements were fought at the five-pointed star-shaped Fort Ticonderoga. The most famous of these occurred on May 10, 1775, when Ethan Allen and his band of Green Mountain Boys, accompanied by Benedict Arnold, who held a commission from Massachusetts, silently rowed across Lake Champlain from present-day Vermont and stormed the fort in a swift, late-night sneak attack. 

Months later, George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, sent one of his officers, Colonel Henry Knox, to gather the artillery left at Ticonderoga and bring it to Boston. Knox organized the transfer of the heavy guns over frozen rivers and the snow-covered Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. Mounted on Dorchester Heights, the guns from Ticonderoga compelled the British to evacuate the city of Boston in March of 1776. 

The Ticonderoga episode of The Revolutionary War in Four Minutes ...

"No Quarter!", a 250th anniversary vignette of the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga ...

Preservation Hall Jazz Band, "Shake It and Break It"

Lead.

Lead, follow, ...

... or get out of the way.

Ted Turner

Jerry Jeff Walker, "Stoney"

Merciful Father, if we send you Chris Stapleton, Shooter Jennings, and Tyler Childers, can we have Scamp back?

Ol' Stoney was a liar, a bullshitter, ain't no doubt about it.

It was just the way he told things made you never want to doubt him

'Cause he kept you going when the road got rough

Brought you through the lean times by making it up ...

It's sandwich time.

Common.

It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program — on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off — than on any positive task. The contrast between the "we" and the "they," the common fight against those outside the group, seems to be an essential ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit together a group for common action. It is consequently always employed by those who seek, not merely support of a policy, but the unreserved allegiance of huge masses. 

Friedrich A. Hayek, from The Road to Serfdom

If.

If you're a human being, you won't get the jokes ...

Gary Snyder, Things to Do Around a Lookout

 ... Wrap up in a blanket in cold weather and just read. 

Happy Birthday, J.M. Barrie

How comely a thing is affliction borne cheerfully, which is not beyond the reach of the humblest of us. What is beauty? It is these hard-bitten men singing courage to you from their tent; it is the waves of their island home crooning of their deeds to you who are to follow them. Sometimes beauty boils over and them spirits are abroad. Ages may pass as we look or listen, for time is annihilated. There is a very old legend told to me by Nansen the explorer--I like well to be in the company of explorers--the legend of a monk who had wandered into the fields and a lark began to sing. He had never heard a lark before, and he stood there entranced until the bird and its song had become part of the heavens. Then he went back to the monastery and found there a doorkeeper whom he did not know and who did not know him. Other monks came, and they were all strangers to him. He told them he was Father Anselm, but that was no help. Finally they looked through the books of the monastery, and these revealed that there had been a Father Anselm there a hundred or more years before. Time had been blotted out while he listened to the lark.

That, I suppose, was a case of beauty boiling over, or a soul boiling over; perhaps the same thing. Then spirits walk.

J.M. Barrie, born on this day in 1860, from "Courage," the rectorial address delivered at St. Andrew's University, May 3, 1922.

Together.

FOR the CHILDREN

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

    stay together
        learn the flowers
                go light

Gary Snyder

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Gary Snyder

ON TOP

All this new stuff goes on top

turn it over, turn it over

wait and water down

from the dark bottom

turn it inside out

let it spread through

Sift down even.

Watch it sprout.

A mind like compost.

Gary Snyder, born on this day in 1930

Happy Birthday, Johannes Brahms

Study Bach, there you will find everything.

Johannes Brahms, born on this day in 1833

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conductsVienna Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a performance of the maestro's grand and glorious, Ein Deutsches Requiem, Op. 45.  

My introduction to Brahms came by way of this piece being played at a firepit in Naperville in August of 1989.  It stuck.  Thanks, Gayle.  Thank you, Annie.

Heady days.

Ted Turner, Rest in Peace

Ted Turner has passed.

Fair winds and following seas, skip.

Uselessness.

The Compton Oak ...

We shall never fully understand nature or ourselves, and certainly never respect it, until we dissociate the wild from the notion of usability - however innocent and harmless the use. For it is the general uselessness of so much of nature that lies at the root of our ancient hostility and indifference to it.

John Fowles, from The Tree

Put usefulness first, and you lose it. Put beauty first, and what you do will be useful forever.

Sir Roger Scruton, from Beauty: A Very Short Introduction

Everyone knows how useful usefulness is, but no one seems to know how useful uselessness is.  The carpenter scorns the massive, crooked oak: Its trunk is so distorted, no one can get a straight plank out of it.  It’s not a timber tree—there’s nothing it can be used for. That’s how it got to be that old.  A crooked tree lives its years in peace; a straight one is the first to be cut down.

Chuang Tzu, from Zhuangzi

Capacity.

People predestined to gourmandism are in general of medium height; they have round or square faces, bright eyes, small foreheads, short noses, full lips and rounded chins.  People to whom Nature has denied the capacity for such enjoyment, on the other hand, have long faces, noses, and eyes; no matter what their height, they seem to have a general air of elongation about them. They have flat dark hair, and above all lack healthy weight; it is undoubtedly they who invented trousers, to hide their thin shanks.

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, from The Physiology of Taste; Or, Transcendental Gastronomy by Brillat-Savarin

Something.

Away he ran, and for a moment he left the wind behind; but the wind blew a little faster, and overtook him, and they raced along together, like two wild things, till Bevis began to pant. Then down he sat on the turf and kicked up his heels and shouted, and the wind fanned his cheek and cooled him, and kissed his lips and stroked his hair, and caressed him and played with him, till up he jumped again and danced along, the wind always pushing him gently.

"You are a jolly old Wind," said Bevis, "I like you very much; but you must tell me a story, else we shall quarrel. I'm sure we shall."

"I will try," said the wind; "but I have forgotten all my stories, because the people never come to listen to me now."

"Why don't they come?" said Bevis.

"They are too busy," said the wind, sighing; "they are so very, very busy, just like you were with Kapchack and his treasure and the war, and all the rest of the business; they have so much to do, they have quite forsaken me."

"I will come to you," said Bevis; "do not be sorry. I will come and play with you."

"Yes, do," said the wind; "and drink me, dear, as much as ever you can. I shall make you strong. Now drink me."

Bevis stood still and drew in a long, long breath, drinking the wind till his chest was full and his heart beat quicker. Then he jumped and danced and shouted.

"There," said the wind, "see, how jolly I have made you. It was I who made you dance and sing, and run along the hill just now. Come up here, my darling Sir Bevis, and drink me as often as ever you can, and the more you drink of me the happier you will be, and the longer you will live. And people will look at you and say: 'How jolly he looks! Is he not nice? I wish I was like him.' And presently they will say: 'Where does he learn all these things?'

"For you must know, Bevis, my dear, that although I have forgotten my stories, yet they are all still there in my mind, and by-and-by, if you keep on drinking me I shall tell you all of them, and nobody will know how you learn it all. For I know more than the brook, because, you see, I travel about everywhere: and I know more than the trees; indeed, all they know I taught them myself. The sun is always telling me everything, and the stars whisper to me at night: the ocean roars at me: the earth whispers to me: just you lie down, Bevis love, upon the ground and listen."

So Bevis lay down on the grass, and heard the wind whispering in the tufts and bunches, and the earth under him answered, and asked the wind to stay and talk. But the wind said: "I have got Bevis to-day: come on, Bevis," and Bevis stood up and walked along.

"Besides all these things," said the wind, "I can remember everything that ever was. There never was anything that I cannot remember, and my mind is so clear that if you will but come up here and drink me, you will understand everything."

"Well then," said Bevis, "I will drink you—there, I have just had such a lot of you: now tell me this instant why the sun is up there, and is he very hot if you touch him, and which way does he go when he sinks beyond the wood, and who lives up there, and are they nice people, and who painted the sky?"

The wind laughed aloud, and said: "Bevis, my darling, you have not drunk half enough of me yet, else you would never ask such silly questions as that. Why, those are like the silly questions the people ask who live in the houses of the cities, and never feel me or taste me, or speak to me. And I have seen them looking through long tubes——"

"I know," said Bevis; "they are telescopes, and you look at the sun and the stars, and they tell you all about them."

"Pooh!" said the wind, "don't you believe such stuff and rubbish, my pet. How can they know anything about the sun who are never out in the sunshine, and never come up on the hills, or go into the wood? How can they know anything about the stars who never stopped on the hills, or on the sea all night? How can they know anything of such things who are shut up in houses, dear, where I cannot come in?

"Bevis, my love, if you want to know all about the sun, and the stars, and everything, make haste and come to me, and I will tell you, dear. In the morning, dear, get up as quick as you can, and drink me as I come down from the hill. In the day go up on the hill, dear, and drink me again, and stay there if you can till the stars shine out, and drink still more of me.

"And by-and-by you will understand all about the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the earth which is so beautiful, Bevis. It is so beautiful, you can hardly believe how beautiful it is. Do not listen, dear, not for one moment, to the stuff and rubbish they tell you down there in the houses where they will not let me come. If they say the earth is not beautiful, tell them they do not speak the truth. But it is not their fault, for they have never seen it, and as they have never drank me their eyes are closed, and their ears shut up tight. But every evening, dear, before you get into bed, do you go to your window—the same as you did the evening the owl went by—and lift the curtain and look up at the sky, and I shall be somewhere about, or else I shall be quiet in order that there may be no clouds, so that you may see the stars. In the morning, as I said before, rush out and drink me up.

"The more you drink of me, the more you will want, and the more I shall love you. Come up to me upon the hills, and your heart will never be heavy, but your eyes will be bright, and your step quick, and you will sing and shout——"

"So I will," said Bevis, "I will shout. Holloa!" and he ran up on to the top of the little round hill, to which they had now returned, and danced about on it as wild as could be.

"Dance away, dear," said the wind, much delighted. "Everybody dances who drinks me. The man in the hill there——"

"What man?" said Bevis, "and how did he get in the hill? just tell him I want to speak to him."

"Darling," said the wind, very quiet and softly, "he is dead, and he is in the little hill you are standing on, under your feet. At least, he was there once, but there is nothing of him there now. Still it is his place, and as he loved me, and I loved him, I come very often and sing here."

"When did he die?" said Bevis. "Did I ever see him?"

"He died about a minute ago, dear; just before you came up the hill. If you were to ask the people who live in the houses, where they will not let me in (they carefully shut out the sun too), they would tell you he died thousands of years ago; but they are foolish, very foolish. It was hardly so long ago as yesterday. Did not the brook tell you all about that?

"Now this man, and all his people, used to love me and drink me, as much as ever they could all day long and a great part of the night, and when they died they still wanted to be with me, and so they were all buried on the tops of the hills, and you will find these curious little mounds everywhere on the ridges, dear, where I blow along. There I come to them still, and sing through the long dry grass, and rush over the turf, and I bring the scent of the clover from the plain, and the bees come humming along upon me. The sun comes too, and the rain. But I am here most; the sun only shines by day, and the rain only comes now and then.

"But I am always here, day and night, winter and summer. Drink me as much as you will, you cannot drink me away; there is always just as much of me left. As I told you, the people who were buried in these little mounds used to drink me, and oh! how they raced along the turf, dear; there is nobody can run so fast now; and they leaped and danced, and sang and shouted. I loved them as I love you, my darling; there, sit down and rest on the thyme, dear, and I will stroke your hair and sing to you."

So Bevis sat down on the thyme, and the wind began to sing, so low and sweet and so strange an old song, that he closed his eyes and leaned on his arm on the turf. There were no words to the song, but Bevis understood it all, and it made him feel so happy. The great sun smiled upon him, the great earth bore him in her arms gently, the wind caressed him, singing all the while. Now Bevis knew what the wind meant; he felt with his soul out to the far-distant sun just as easily as he could feel with his hand to the bunch of grass beside him; he felt with his soul down through into the earth just as easily as he could touch the sward with his fingers. Something seemed to come to him out of the sunshine and the grass.

Richard Jefferies, from Wood Magic: A Fable

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Luther, Christ lag in Todtesbanden

Paula Bär Giese, soprano, and Hein Hof, organ, perform ...

Persistent.

Traditions tell us that the free and solitary self writes in order to overcome mortality. I think that the self, in its quest to be free and solitary, ultimately reads with one aim only: to confront greatness. That confrontation scarcely masks the desire to join greatness, which is the basis of the aesthetic experience once called the Sublime: the quest for a transcendence of limits. Our common fate is age, sickness, death, oblivion. Our common hope, tenuous but persistent, is for some version of survival.

Harold Bloom, from The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Released.

New Order released Power, Corruption, and Lies on this day in 1983.

"Your Silent Face"...

Ray Bradbury, "If Only We Had Taller Been"

Short man, large dream, I send my rockets forth between my ears,

Hoping an inch of good is worth a pound of years ...

Whitman.

It's all Whitman ...

Questioning.

Ari Weinzweig on questioning questions ...

It comes as no coincidence that the most creative people—the people I’ve learned the most from over the years—are those who are themselves asking better questions. One of them is On Being’s Krista Tippett, who has been doing this for decades now on her award-winning podcast, and who offers some great insights into the power and significance of asking better questions:

I also find a question to be a mighty form of words, and I have learned a few things about questions. I have learned that questions elicit answers in their likeness—that answers rise or fall to the questions they meet. We’ve all seen this. We’ve all experienced it. It’s very hard to respond to a combative question with anything but a combative answer. It’s almost impossible to transcend a simplistic question with anything but a simplistic answer. But the opposite is also true: it’s hard to resist a generous question. This is a skill that needs relearning.

Graupner, Overture in G-Major, GWV 460

The Musical Garden performs the Chaconne ...

Openings.

Freedom, in a poem, must mean freedom of meaning, the freedom to have a meaning of one’s own.  The strong word and stance issue only from a strict will, a will that dares the error of reading all of reality as a text, and all prior texts as openings for its own totalizing and unique interpretations.

Harold Bloom, from Poetry and Repression

Ever-Continuous.

Sargent, Villa Torina Fountain, 1907

Cultivate an ever-continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents. Store up in the mind without ceasing a continuous stream of observations from which to make selections later. Above all things get abroad, see the sunlight, and everything that is to be seen, the power of selection will follow. Be continually making mental notes, make them again and again, test what you remember by sketches until you have got them fixed. Do not be backward at using every device and making every experiment that ingenuity can devise, in order to attain that sense of completeness which nature so beautifully provides, always bearing in mind the limitations of the materials in which you work.

John Singer Sargent, from a letter to J.B. Manson in 1901

Argument.

In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

Sir Roger Scruton, from Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey

Whistles.

Spenser, The Shepherd's Calendar: May, 1579

THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: MAY

Come queen of months in company

Wi all thy merry minstrelsy

The restless cuckoo absent long

And twittering swallows chimney song

And hedge row crickets notes that run

From every bank that fronts the sun

And swathy bees about the grass

That stops wi every bloom they pass

And every minute every hour

Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower

And toil and childhoods humming joys

For there is music in the noise

The village childern mad for sport

In school times leisure ever short

That crick and catch the bouncing ball

And run along the church yard wall

Capt wi rude figured slabs whose claims

In times bad memory hath no names

Oft racing round the nookey church

Or calling ecchos in the porch

And jilting oer the weather cock

Viewing wi jealous eyes the clock

Oft leaping grave stones leaning hights

Uncheckt wi mellancholy sights

The green grass swelld in many a heap

Where kin and friends and parents sleep

Unthinking in their jovial cry

That time shall come when they shall lye

As lowly and as still as they

While other boys above them play

Heedless as they do now to know

The unconcious dust that lies below

The shepherd goes wi happy stride

Wi moms long shadow by his side

Down the dryd lanes neath blooming may

That once was over shoes in clay

While martins twitter neath his eves

Which he at early morning leaves

The driving boy beside his team

Will oer the may month beauty dream

And cock his hat and turn his eye

On flower and tree and deepning skye

And oft bursts loud in fits of song

And whistles as he reels along

Crack[ing] his whip in starts of joy

A happy dirty driving boy

The youth who leaves his corner stool

Betimes for neighbouring village school

While as a mark to urge him right

The church spires all the way in sight

Wi cheerings from his parents given

Starts neath the joyous smiles of heaven

And sawns wi many an idle stand

Wi bookbag swinging in his hand

And gazes as he passes bye

On every thing that meets his eye

Young lambs seem tempting him to play

Dancing and bleating in his way

Wi trembling tails and pointed ears

They follow him and loose their fears

He smiles upon their sunny faces

And feign woud join their happy races

The birds that sing on bush and tree

Seem chirping for his company

And all in fancys idle whim

Seem keeping holiday but him

He lolls upon each resting stile

To see the fields so sweetly smile

To see the wheat grow green and long

And list the weeders toiling song

Or short not[e] of the changing thrush

Above him in the white thorn bush

That oer the leaning stile bends low

Loaded wi mockery of snow

Mozzld wi many a lushing thread

Of crab tree blossoms delicate red

He often bends wi many a wish

Oer the brig rail to view the fish

Go sturting by in sunny gleams

And chucks in the eye dazzld streams

Crumbs from his pocket oft to watch

The swarming struttle come to catch

Them where they to the bottom sile

Sighing in fancys joy the while

Hes cautiond not to stand so nigh

By rosey milkmaid tripping bye

Where he admires wi fond delight

And longs to be there mute till night

He often ventures thro the day

At truant now and then to play

Rambling about the field and plain

Seeking larks nests in the grain

And picking flowers and boughs of may

To hurd awhile and throw away

Lurking neath bushes from the sight

Of tell tale eyes till schools noon night

Listing each hour for church clocks hum

To know the hour to wander home

That parents may not think him long

Nor dream of his rude doing wrong

Dreading thro the night wi dreaming pain

To meet his masters wand again

Each hedge is loaded thick wi green

And where the hedger late hath been

Tender shoots begin to grow

From the mossy stumps below

While sheep and cow that teaze the grain

will nip them to the root again

They lay their bill and mittens bye

And on to other labours hie

While wood men still on spring intrudes

And thins the shadow solitudes

Wi sharpend axes felling down

The oak trees budding into brown

Where as they crash upon the ground

A crowd of labourers gather round

And mix among the shadows dark

To rip the crackling staining bark

From off the tree and lay when done

The rolls in lares to meet the sun

Depriving yearly where they come

The green wood pecker of its home

That early in the spring began

Far from the sight of troubling man

And bord their round holes in each tree

In fancys sweet security

Till startld wi the woodmans noise

It wakes from all its dreaming joys

The blue bells too that thickly bloom

Where man was never feared to come

And smell smocks that from view retires

Mong rustling leaves and bowing briars

And stooping lilys of the valley

That comes wi shades and dews to dally

White beady drops on slender threads

Wi broad hood leaves above their heads

Like white robd maids in summer hours

Neath umberellas shunning showers

These neath the barkmens crushing treads

Oft perish in their blooming beds

Thus stript of boughs and bark in white

Their trunks shine in the mellow light

Beneath the green surviving trees

That wave above them in the breeze

And waking whispers slowly bends

As if they mournd their fallen friends

Each morning now the weeders meet

To cut the thistle from the wheat

And ruin in the sunny hours

Full many wild weeds of their flowers

Corn poppys that in crimson dwell

Calld 'head achs' from their sickly smell

And carlock yellow as the sun

That oer the may fields thickly run

And 'iron weed' content to share

The meanest spot that spring can spare

Een roads where danger hourly comes

Is not wi out its purple blooms

And leaves wi points like thistles round

Thickset that have no strength to wound

That shrink to childhoods eager hold

Like hair-and with its eye of gold

And scarlet starry points of flowers

Pimpernel dreading nights and showers

Oft calld 'the shepherds weather glass'

That sleep till suns have dyd the grass

Then wakes and spreads its creeping bloom

Till clouds or threatning shadows come

Then close it shuts to sleep again

Which weeders see and talk of rain

And boys that mark them shut so soon

will call them 'John go bed at noon

And fumitory too a name

That superstition holds to fame

Whose red and purple mottled flowers

Are cropt by maids in weeding hours

To boil in water milk and way1

For washes on an holiday

To make their beauty fair and sleak

And scour the tan from summers cheek

And simple small forget me not

Eyd wi a pinshead yellow spot

I'th'2 middle of its tender blue

That gains from poets notice due

These flowers the toil by crowds destroys

And robs them of their lowly joys

That met the may wi hopes as sweet

As those her suns in gardens meet

And oft the dame will feel inclind

As childhoods memory comes to mind

To turn her hook away and spare

The blooms it lovd to gather there

My wild field catalogue of flowers

Grows in my ryhmes as thick as showers

Tedious and long as they may be

To some, they never weary me

The wood and mead and field of grain

I coud hunt oer and oer again

And talk to every blossom wild

Fond as a parent to a child

And cull them in my childish joy

By swarms and swarms and never cloy

When their lank shades oer morning pearls

Shrink from their lengths to little girls

And like the clock hand pointing one

Is turnd and tells the morning gone

They leave their toils for dinners hour

Beneath some hedges bramble bower

And season sweet their savory meals

Wi joke and tale and merry peals

Of ancient tunes from happy tongues

While linnets join their fitful songs

Perchd oer their heads in frolic play

Among the tufts of motling may

The young girls whisper things of love

And from the old dames hearing move

Oft making 'love knotts' in the shade

Of blue green oat or wheaten blade

And trying simple charms and spells

That rural superstition tells

They pull the little blossom threads

From out the knapweeds button heads

And put the husk wi many a smile

In their white bosoms for awhile

Who if they guess aright the swain

That loves sweet fancys trys to gain

Tis said that ere its lain an hour

Twill blossom wi a second flower

And from her white breasts hankerchief

Bloom as they ne'er had lost a leaf

When signs appear that token wet

As they are neath the bushes met

The girls are glad wi hopes of play

And harping of the holiday

A hugh blue bird will often swim

Along the wheat when skys grow dim

Wi clouds-slow as the gales of spring

In motion wi dark shadowd wing

Beneath the coming storm it sails

And lonly chirps the wheat hid quails

That came to live wi spring again

And start when summer browns the grain

They start the young girls joys afloat

Wi 'wet my foot' its yearly note

So fancy doth the sound explain

And proves it oft a sign of rain

About the moor 'mong sheep and cow

The boy or old man wanders now

Hunting all day wi hopful pace

Each thick sown rushy thistly place

For plover eggs while oer them flye

The fearful birds wi teazing cry

Trying to lead their steps astray

And coying him another way

And be the weather chill or warm

Wi brown hats truckd beneath his arm

Holding each prize their search has won

They plod bare headed to the sun

Now dames oft bustle from their wheels

Wi childern scampering at their heels

To watch the bees that hang and swive

In clumps about each thronging hive

And flit and thicken in the light

While the old dame enjoys the sight

And raps the while their warming pans

A spell that superstition plans

To coax them in the garden bounds

As if they lovd the tinkling sounds

And oft one hears the dinning noise

Which dames believe each swarm decoys

Around each village day by day

Mingling in the warmth of may

Sweet scented herbs her skill contrives

To rub the bramble platted hives

Fennels thread leaves and crimpld balm

To scent the new house of the swarm

The thresher dull as winter days

And lost to all that spring displays

Still mid his barn dust forcd to stand

Swings his frail round wi weary hand

While oer his head shades thickly creep

And hides the blinking owl asleep

And bats in cobweb corners bred

Sharing till night their murky bed

The sunshine trickles on the floor

Thro every crevice of the door

And makes his barn where shadows dwell

As irksome as a prisoners cell

And as he seeks his daily meal

As schoolboys from their tasks will steal

ile often stands in fond delay

To see the daisy in his way

And wild weeds flowering on the wall

That will his childish sports recall

Of all the joys that came wi spring

The twirling top the marble ring

The gingling halfpence hussld up

At pitch and toss the eager stoop

To pick up heads, the smuggeld plays

Neath hovels upon sabbath days

When parson he is safe from view

And clerk sings amen in his pew

The sitting down when school was oer

Upon the threshold by his door

Picking from mallows sport to please

Each crumpld seed he calld a cheese

And hunting from the stackyard sod

The stinking hen banes belted pod

By youths vain fancys sweetly fed

Christning them his loaves of bread

He sees while rocking down the street

Wi weary hands and crimpling feet

Young childern at the self same games

And hears the self same simple names

Still floating on each happy tongue

Touchd wi the simple scene so strong

Tears almost start and many a sigh

Regrets the happiness gone bye

And in sweet natures holiday

His heart is sad while all is gay

How lovly now are lanes and balks

For toils and lovers sunday walks

The daisey and the buttercup

For which the laughing childern stoop

A hundred times throughout the day

In their rude ramping summer play

So thickly now the pasture crowds

In gold and silver sheeted clouds

As if the drops in april showers

Had woo'd the sun and swoond to flowers

The brook resumes its summer dresses

Purling neath grass and water cresses

And mint and flag leaf swording high

Their blooms to the unheeding eye

And taper bowbent hanging rushes

And horse tail childerns bottle brushes

And summer tracks about its brink

Is fresh again where cattle drink

And on its sunny bank the swain

Stretches his idle length again

Soon as the sun forgets the day

The moon looks down on the lovly may

And the little star his friend and guide

Travelling together side by side

And the seven stars and charleses wain1

Hangs smiling oer green woods agen

The heaven rekindles all alive

Wi light the may bees round the hive

Swarm not so thick in mornings eye

As stars do in the evening skye

All all are nestling in their joys

The flowers and birds and pasture boys

The firetail, long a stranger, comes

To his last summer haunts and homes

To hollow tree and crevisd wall

And in the grass the rails odd call

That featherd spirit stops the swain

To listen to his note again

And school boy still in vain retraces

The secrets of his hiding places

In the black thorns crowded cops~e1

Thro its varied turns and stops

The nightingale its ditty weaves

Hid in a multitude of leaves

The boy stops short to hear the strain

And 'sweet jug jug' he mocks again

The yellow hammer builds its nest

By banks where sun beams earliest rest

That drys the dews from off the grass

Shading it from all that pass

Save the rude boy wi ferret gaze

That hunts thro evry secret maze

He finds its pencild eggs agen

All streakd wi lines as if a pen

By natures freakish hand was took

To scrawl them over like a book

And from these many mozzling marks

The school boy names them 'writing larks'

Bum barrels twit on bush and tree

Scarse bigger then a bumble bee

And in a white thorns leafy rest

It builds its curious pudding-nest

Wi hole beside as if a mouse

Had built the little barrel house

Toiling full many a lining feather

And bits of grey tree moss together

Amid the noisey rooky park

Beneath the firdales branches dark

The little golden crested wren

Hangs up his glowing nest agen

And sticks it to the furry leaves

As martins theirs beneath the eaves

The old hens leave the roost betimes

And oer the garden pailing climbs

To scrat the gardens fresh turnd soil

And if unwatchd his crops to spoil

Oft cackling from the prison yard

To peck about the houseclose sward

Catching at butterflys and things

Ere they have time to try their wings

The cattle feels the breath of may

And kick and toss their heads in play

The ass beneath his bags of sand

Oft jerks the string from leaders hand

And on the road will eager stoop

To pick the sprouting thistle up

Oft answering on his weary way

Some distant neighbours sobbing bray

Dining the ears of driving boy

As if he felt a fit of joy

Wi in its pinfold circle left

Of all its company bereft

Starvd stock no longer noising round

Lone in the nooks of foddering ground

Each skeleton of lingering stack

By winters tempests beaten black

Nodds upon props or bolt upright

Stands swarthy in the summer light

And oer the green grass seems to lower

Like stump of old time wasted tower

All that in winter lookd for hay

Spread from their batterd haunts away

To pick the grass or lye at lare

Beneath the mild hedge shadows there

Sweet month that gives a welcome call

To toil and nature and to all

Yet one day mid thy many joys

Is dead to all its sport and noise

Old may day where's thy glorys gone

All fled and left thee every one

Thou comst to thy old haunts and homes

Unnoticd as a stranger comes

No flowers are pluckt to hail the now

Nor cotter seeks a single bough

The maids no more on thy sweet morn

Awake their thresholds to adorn

Wi dewey flowers-May locks new come

And princifeathers cluttering bloom

And blue bells from the woodland moss

And cowslip cucking balls to toss

Above the garlands swinging hight

Hang in the soft eves sober light

These maid and child did yearly pull

By many a folded apron full

But all is past the merry song

Of maidens hurrying along

To crown at eve the earliest cow

Is gone and dead and silent now

The laugh raisd at the mocking thorn

Tyd to the cows tail last that morn

The kerchief at arms length displayd

Held up by pairs of swain and maid

While others bolted underneath

Bawling loud wi panting breath

'Duck under water' as they ran

Alls ended as they ne'er began

While the new thing that took thy place

Wears faded smiles upon its face

And where enclosure has its birth

It spreads a mildew oer her mirth

The herd no longer one by one

Goes plodding on her morning way

And garlands lost and sports nigh gone

Leaves her like thee a common day

Yet summer smiles upon thee still

Wi natures sweet unalterd will

And at thy births unworshipd hours

Fills her green lap wi swarms of flowers

To crown thee still as thou hast been

Of spring and summer months the queen.

John Clare

Premiered.

Mozart, Score to the Overture of The Marriage of Figaro, 1786

Mozart premiered his opera The Marriage of Figaro on this day in 1786.

Anna Netrebko performs "Deh vieni non tardar" from Act Four.  Maestro Harnoncourt is leading the Vienna Philharmonic ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Roses.

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

J.M. Barrie, from "Courage: The Rectorial Address" at St. Andrew's University, May 3, 1922

Pleasure.

As I see it, the only pleasure of living is that every joke should be made, every thought expressed, every line of investigation, irrespective of its direction, pursued to the uttermost limits that human ingenuity, courage and understanding can take it. The moment that limits are set, then the flavor is gone.

Malcolm Muggeridge, from "America Needs a Punch"

Happy Birthday, Mary Wollstonecraft

Opie, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1804

It is easier to list modes of behaviour that are required or forbidden than to set reason to work; but once the mind has been stored with useful knowledge and strengthened by being used, the regulation of the behaviour may safely be left to its guidance without the aid of formal rules.  The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds.  These indolent beings naturally obey to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human.

Mary Wollstonecraft, born on this day in 1759, from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Infinite.

The Hoyt Library in Saginaw, Michigan was one of the infinite gifts of my youth ...

A POEM of GIFTS

May no one slight, with tears or a reproach,

This declaration of God’s mastery,

That, with sublime irony,

Gave me at once books and the night.

He vested those lightless eyes

With guardianship of the city of books,

Even though they can read

But senseless passages in the library of dreams,

Where sunrises give way to zeal. The day

Lavishes them in vain with infinite books,

Toilsome like the manuscripts

That perished in Alexandria.

Of hunger and of thirst (or so goes the Greek legend)

A king once died amidst fountains and gardens;

Aimless and unrelenting I tire the confines

Of this blind vault of a slender library.

Encyclopedias, atlases, the East

And West, centuries, dynasties,

Symbols, the cosmos and cosmogonies,

Afford us the walls, albeit uselessly.

Slow by my shadow, I explore the

Hollow penumbra with a tottering crosier,

I, who imagined Paradise

Under the figment of a library.

Something unnamed, certainly not

Random fate, governs all this;

Somebody else has already received in hazy

Evenings the many books, and their shadow.

As I rove through the slow galleries,

I happen to feel with sacred horror that

I am the other, the dead one, who must have

Ambled his days past, in a similar vein.

Who between the two writes this poem of

A plural me albeit of just one shadow?

Who cares about the word convoking me

If the anathema is one and indivisible?

Groussac or Borges, I behold this dear

World both distorting and dying down

Into a pale, vague ash, all too

Similar to both slumber and oblivion.

Jorges Luis Borges

Happy Birthday, Ulysses S. Grant

In this sentiment no class of people can more heartily join than the soldier who submitted to the dangers, trials and hardships of the camp and the battle-field, on which ever side he may have fought. No class of people are more interested in guarding against a recurrence of those days. Let us then begin by guarding against every enemy threatening the perpetuity of free republican institutions. I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics; but it is a fair subject for our deliberation to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled. In a republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign, and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign—the people—should possess intelligence. The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.

Ulysses S. Grant, born on this day in 1822, from his remarks made at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Army of the Tennessee, Des Moines, Iowa, 29 September 1875

Josquin, Ave Maria, Virgo Serena

Stile Antico performs ...

Happy Birthday, Robert Penn Warren

TELL ME a STORY

[ A ]

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood

By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard

The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon

And the stars sparse. I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,

Therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward.

 

[ B ]

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,

Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,

But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

Robert Penn Warren, born on this day in 1905

Still.

You were trying to be hysterical

And I still ain't laughing ...

Amused.

Turner inspired a discussion today ...

Thanks, Kelton.

Outside.

No society in history has been able to survive without ritual or myth, but ours is the first which has needed such a dull, protracted, destructive, and expensive initiation into its myth. The contemporary world civilization is also the first one which has found it necessary to rationalize its fundamental initiation ritual in the name of education. We cannot begin a reform of education unless we first understand that neither individual learning nor social equality can be enhanced by the ritual of schooling. We cannot go beyond the consumer society unless we first understand that obligatory public schools inevitably reproduce such a society, no matter what is taught in them.

A second major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of learning under certain circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only insofar as school, in a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives.

Ivan Illich, from Deschooling Society

Happy Birthday, J.M.W. Turner

Turner, Study for Sea and Sky, Isle of Wight, 1827

I have no secret but hard work. This is a secret that many never learn, and they don't succeed because they don't learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing.  I know of no genius but the genius of hard work.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, born on this day in 1775.

The Genius of Turner: Painting The Industrial Revolution ...

Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare

Taylor, William Shakespeare, The Chandos Portrait, 1610

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, 

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; 

And as imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen 

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 

A local habitation and a name …

Such tricks hath strong imagination, 

That, if it would but apprehend some joy, 

It comprehends some bringer of that joy; 

Or in the night, imagining some fear, 

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

William Shakespeare, born on this day in 1564, dissected from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Whatever.

On April 23, 1635, the first public school in what would become the United States was established in Boston, Massachusetts.

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Immanuel Kant

Unknown, Kant, 1790

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! "Have courage to use your own reason!" -- that is the motto of enlightenment.

Immanuel Kant

God.

On April 22, 1864, Congress passed a law ...

All others pay cash.

Happy Birthday, John Muir

I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are steeped like tea; but, from the chafing of resiny branches against each other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles, the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the fragrance from these local sources there were traces of scents brought from afar. For this wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny waves, then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny gulches, and spreading itself in broad undulating currents over many a flower-enameled ridge of the coast mountains, then across the golden plains, up the purple foot-hills, and into these piney woods with the varied incense gathered by the way.

John Muir, born on this day in 1838, from "A Wind-Storm in the Forest"