Obligations.

Our great modern Republic, may those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose.

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

If.

When I was a boy in the midwest I used to go out and look at the stars at night and wonder about them.

I guess every boy does that.

When I wasn't looking at the stars, I was running in the my old or my brand-new tennis shoes, on my way to swing in a tree, swim in a lake, or delve in the town library to read about dinosaurs or time machines.

I guess every boy has done that, too.

This is a book about those stars and those tennis shoes. Mainly about the stars, beacuse that is the way I grew up, getting more and more involved with rockets and space as I moved toward my twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years.

Not that I have forgotten the tennis shoes and their powerful magic, as you will see in the last story here, which I have included not because it concerns the future, but because it gives you some sort of idea of the kind of boy I was when I was looking at the stars and thinking of the years ahead.

Nor have I forgetten the dinosaurs that all boys love; they are here, too, along with a machine that travels back in time to step on a butterfly.

This is a book then by a boy who grew up in a small illinois town and lived to see the space age arrive, as he hoped and dreamt it would.

I dedicate these stories to all boys who wonder about the past, run swiftly in the present, and have high hopes for our future.

The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.

Ray Bradbury, from R is for Rocket

Strawberry.

Right about ... now.

Thanks, Kurt.

The English Beat, "Psychedelic Rockers"

Oasis.

The Reporting Project on Tannery Hill, a home that has stood atop a rise on Newark Granville Road for 220 years ...

He’s excited about living in this oasis surrounded by the village. Prieto has fond memories of spending summers there as a child, playing in the wooded lot and watching his grandmother bang out one of her columns on an old, manual typewriter.

“When she was typing, it sounded like machine-gun fire,” he said with a smile. 

He has big plans for the old place – to preserve as much as possible and return it to something close to its original look.

That means shoring up several foundational elements of the house – a split beam or two among the dozen or so of the old tree trunks that hold up the first floor and pushing a sagging brick wall on the southwest corner back into position.

While cutting down trees that had grown too close to the house, Prieto said he strategically left a large pine that he plans to use as a brace to push the front wall back into place – a wall made of bricks that were handmade on site 220 years ago.

Pomp.

Copley, John Adams, 1783

John Adams had the right idea ...

It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

There's not much chance that Adams could've expected our freedom to reach such heights as BÖC covering MC5 (Abigail might have), but he did ask for pomp, so Independence Week starts here and now as we, for the 250th time, "kick out the jams, brothers and sisters" ... 

The British blew a thirteen-colony lead.

Conservation.

Iron Mountain Daily News on the last Forest Service nursery producing trees in Eastern Region ...

Toumey Nursery is one of eight locations managed by the USFS to provide seedlings and seeds for United States destinations both within and without Forest Service jurisdiction. The other growers are Ashe Seed Extractory in Mississippi, C. E. Bessey Nursery in Nebraska, Placerville Nursery in California, Lucky Peak Nursery and Coeur d’Alene Nursery in Idaho, and J. Herbert Stone Nursery and Bend Seed Extractory in Oregon.

Six of the facilities are financed nurseries, while two are seed extractories. They serve to “provide locally adapted plants and seed for reforestation projects, provide an assured source of desirable species and stock types for restoring native ecosystems, and maintain the (USFS)’s position as a conservation leader,” states usda.gov.

Toumey Nursery, in particular, has multiple services. In fields, 66 acres are available for planting. Species grown are primarily red pine, jack pine, white pine, spruces, tamarack, cedars, hemlock, oaks, maples and birches, according to their website. About 4 million seedlings are shipped out each year, and at full capacity, the fields may grow up to 12 million seedlings at a time. Trees are usually between 1 and 3 years old at time of relocation, depending on species.

Trees rule.  So do birds.  Birds in trees rule. 

Happy Birthday, Colin Hay

Colin Hay was born on this day in 1953.

One of the greatest songs ever written, "Down By the Sea"...

Mac.

Peterson-Berger, Lawn Tennis, Op.16/3

Off.

The FLAG GOES BY

Hats off!

Along the street there comes

A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums,

A flash of color beneath the sky:

Hats off!

The flag is passing by!

Blue and crimson and white it shines

Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines.

Hats off! The colors before us fly

But more than the flag is passing by.

Sea-fights and land-fights, grim and great,

Fought to make and to save the State:

Weary marches and sinking ships;

Cheers of victory on dying lips;

Days of plenty and years of peace;

March of a strong land's swift increase;

Equal justice, right and law,

Stately honor and reverend awe;

Sign of a nation, great and strong

To ward her people from foreign wrong:

Pride and glory and honor, --all

Live in the colors to stand or fall.

Hats off! Along the street there comes

A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums;

And loyal hearts are beating high:

Hats off! The flag is passing by!

Henry Holcomb Bennett

MacMillan, O Radiant Dawn

Apollo 5 ...

Happy Birthday, Giacomo Leopardi

Panichi, The Recanati Monument (detail), 1898

The INFINITE

This solitary hill has always been dear to me

And this hedge, which prevents me from seeing most of

The endless horizon.

But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts

Endless spaces beyond the hedge,

An all encompassing silence and a deeply profound quiet,

To the point that my heart is almost overwhelmed.

And when I hear the wind rustling through the trees

I compare its voice to the infinite silence.

And eternity occurs to me, and all the ages past,

And the present time, and its sound.

Amidst this immensity my thought drowns:

And to founder in this sea is sweet to me.

Giacomo Leopardi, born on this day in 1798

U2, "An Cat Dubh"

Happy Birthday, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Ramsay, Rousseau, 1766

Fresh air affects children’s constitutions, particularly in early years. It enters every pore of a soft and tender skin, it has a powerful effect on their young bodies. Its effects can never be destroyed. So I should not agree with those who take a country woman from her village and shut her up in one room in a town and her nursling with her. I would rather send him to breathe the fresh air of the country than the foul air of the town. He will take his new mother’s position, will live in her cottage, where his tutor will follow him. The reader will bear in mind that this tutor is not a paid servant, but the father’s friend. But if this friend cannot be found, if this transfer is not easy, if none of my advice can be followed, you will say to me, “What shall I do instead?” I have told you already—“Do what you are doing;” no advice is needed there.

Men are not made to be crowded together in ant-hills, but scattered over the earth to till it. The more they are massed together, the more corrupt they become. Disease and vice are the sure results of over-crowded cities. Of all creatures man is least fitted to live in herds. Huddled together like sheep, men would very soon die. Man’s breath is fatal to his fellows. This is literally as well as figuratively true.

Men are devoured by our towns. In a few generations the race dies out or becomes degenerate; it needs renewal, and it is always renewed from the country. Send your children to renew themselves, so to speak, send them to regain in the open fields the strength lost in the foul air of our crowded cities. Women hurry home that their children may be born in the town; they ought to do just the opposite, especially those who mean to nurse their own children. They would lose less than they think, and in more natural surroundings the pleasures associated by nature with maternal duties would soon destroy the taste for other delights.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born on this day in 1712, from Emile

Follow.

Sully, Life Study of The Marquis de Lafayette, 1825

I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can. I shall not speak much for fear of saying foolish things; I will risk still less for fear of doing them, for I am not disposed to abuse the confidence which they have deigned to show me. Such is the conduct which until now I have followed and will follow.

Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, from a letter to his father-in-law on December 4, 1776

Research shows that Lafayette and James Madison met on several occasions.  As the two traveled together from September to October 1784, Madison wrote to his father about the meeting ...

I fell in with the Marquis & had his company thus far.  He presses me much to fall into his plan, and I am not sure that I shall decline it. It will carry me farther than I had proposed, but I shall be rewarded by the pleasure of his company and the further opportunity of gratifying my curiosity.

Kurt points to the fact that both men understood and practiced the fact that the health of the republic depended on the moral and intellectual qualities of the people who sustained it. 

To be a bird among these men.

Whither leadership?

Keep.

Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up in your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory.

Jack London

Face.

We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.

William F. Buckley Jr., from The Jeweler's Eye

Billings, "Chester"

When men know not what to do, John, they ought not to do they know not what.

How extraordinary fortunate we were to have such human beings found this country.

What grateful Off’ring shall we bring?

What shall we render to the Lord?

Loud Halleluiahs let us Sing,

And praise his name on ev’ry Chord.

Every.

Now, you try every night ...

Happy Birthday, Peter Paul Rubens

Rubens, Venus, Cupid, Bacchus and Ceres, 1613

Peter Paul Rubens was born on this day in 1577.

Quiet.

Arthur Brooks: In a world of noisy narcissism, escape the cacophony ...

The increase in loud egos has coincided with declines in well-being. The rate of depression in the United States has risen to its highest level on record. Behavioral science offers a compelling thesis that may explain what we’re seeing, as a result of what has been termed the “self-reflection paradox.” An intense focus on self is an evolved trait, scientists suggest, because it confers competitive advantages in mating and survival. But research has also shown that to be so focused on self can be a primary source of unhappiness and maladjustment. So what appears to be happening is that we have developed culture and technology that together supercharge this primal drive of self-reflection—to such an unhealthy and unnatural extent that it has the paradoxical effect of ruining our lives.

Where this grim trend will take our society I have no idea, but I do know that there are measures you can take to protect your well-being—short of checking out and moving to a Himalayan monastery. Unless that is actually what you want to do, then the secret to staying happy amid a culture of loud ego is to adopt for yourself the opposite strategy: cultivate a quiet ego.

Forward.

FORWARD!

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

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

BÖC, "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll'

Why.

Why not mashed potatoes on the other side?

Use.

CREDO

I would rather be ashes than dust!

I would rather that my spark should burn out

in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom

of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The function of man is to live, not to exist.

I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.

I shall use my time.

Jack London

Context.

Ari Weinzweig on having a clear point-of-view ...

As marketer and author Seth Godin reminds us, humility is key: “Having a point of view is different from always being correct. No one is always correct.” What I’m talking about here is a focused worldview—a cooked-down, concentrated version of your philosophy—not a catchy slogan. A point of view, to my point of view, is a deeply held, strongly believed-in perspective—a well-thought-out and well-articulated sense of what it is you do so differently from nearly any other business.

How do you know it’s working? One way is that your organization is hitting its bottom lines. Another is that you refer to it—along with mission, vision, and guiding principles—when you make decisions. Tad Hargrave says, “One of the surest ways to know your point of view is solid is when people you share it with are visibly relieved. They were lost but now are found. They were blind but now can see.”

A few weeks ago, I referenced the British painter Rose Wylie—now going on 92—who says clearly and directly, “Contrast gives life.” Contrast also offers context. And as Hargrave notes, “The world is drowning in content. What your clients crave is context.” What does he mean? Pick your industry—there’s no end to the examples. Every supermarket has olive oil now! And yet, below, I write about a newly arrived oil at the Deli. Does the world need it? No. Do I need it? No. But it’s REALLY good, and if I did my writing work reasonably well, you’ll understand why it’s so special and worth at least swinging by the Deli to taste. Having clarity on a point of view makes it infinitely easier to communicate what you care about—and why it matters to anyone other than your mother.  

Future.

The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.

Rudyard Kipling, from Captains Courageous

Thanks.

ODE on INTIMATIONS of IMMORTALITY from RECOLLECTIONS of EARLY CHILDHOOD

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight

                 To me did seem

            Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

             Turn wheresoe’er I may,

              By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

            The rainbow comes and goes,

            And lovely is the rose;

            The moon doth with delight

     Look round her when the heavens are bare;

            Waters on a starry night

            Are beautiful and fair;

     The sunshine is a glorious birth;

     But yet I know, where’er I go,

That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,

     And while the young lambs bound

            As to the tabor’s sound,

To me alone there came a thought of grief:

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

            And I again am strong.

The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,—

No more shall grief of mine the season wrong:

I hear the echoes through the mountains throng.

The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,

            And all the earth is gay;

                Land and sea

     Give themselves up to jollity,

            And with the heart of May

     Doth every beast keep holiday;—

                Thou child of joy,

Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy

        Shepherd-boy!

                 Ye blesséd Creatures, I have heard the call 

     Ye to each other make; I see

The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;

     My heart is at your festival,

       My head hath its coronal,

The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.

         O evil day! if I were sullen

         While Earth herself is adorning

              This sweet May-morning;

         And the children are culling

              On every side

         In a thousand valleys far and wide

         Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,

And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm:—

         I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!

         —But there’s a tree, of many, one,

A single field which I have look’d upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone:

              The pansy at my feet

              Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

          Hath had elsewhere its setting

               And cometh from afar;

          Not in entire forgetfulness,

          And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

               From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

               Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

               He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

     Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,

          And by the vision splendid

          Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,

And, even with something of a mother’s mind,

               And no unworthy aim,

          The homely nurse doth all she can

To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,

               Forget the glories he hath known,

And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,

A six years’ darling of a pigmy size!

See, where ’mid work of his own hand he lies,

Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses,

With light upon him from his father’s eyes!

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,

Some fragment from his dream of human life,

Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;

          A wedding or a festival,

          A mourning or a funeral;

               And this hath now his heart,

          And unto this he frames his song:

               Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, or strife;

          But it will not be long

          Ere this be thrown aside,

          And with new joy and pride

The little actor cons another part;

Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’

With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,

That life brings with her in her equipage;

          As if his whole vocation

          Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

          Thy soul’s immensity;

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep

Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind,—

          Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

          On whom those truths rest

Which we are toiling all our lives to find,

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;

Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the day, a master o’er a slave,

A Presence which is not to be put by;

          To whom the grave

Is but a lonely bed, without the sense of sight

Of day or the warm light,

A place of thoughts where we in waiting lie;

Thou little child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height,

Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke

The years to bring the inevitable yoke,

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

And custom lie upon thee with a weight

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

          O joy! that in our embers

          Is something that doth live,

          That Nature yet remembers

          What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed

Perpetual benediction: not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest,

Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—

          —Not for these I raise

          The song of thanks and praise;

     But for those obstinate questionings

     Of sense and outward things,

     Fallings from us, vanishings,

     Blank misgivings of a creature

Moving about in worlds not realized, 

High instincts, before which our mortal nature 

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:

     But for those first affections,

     Those shadowy recollections,

          Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,

Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;

     Uphold us—cherish—and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being 

Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

               To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

               Nor man nor boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!

   Hence, in a season of calm weather

          Though inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

               Which brought us hither;

          Can in a moment travel thither—

And see the children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

          And let the young lambs bound

          As to the tabor’s sound!

     We, in thought, will join your throng,

          Ye that pipe and ye that play,

          Ye that through your hearts to-day

          Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

     Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

          We will grieve not, rather find

          Strength in what remains behind;

          In the primal sympathy

          Which having been must ever be;

          In the soothing thoughts that spring

          Out of human suffering;

          In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquish’d one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway;

I love the brooks which down their channels fret

Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born day

               Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

   Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

   Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

   To me the meanest flower that blows can give

   Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

William Wordsworth

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Process.

All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places. I have been aware of other persons in me. Oh, and trust me, so have you, my reader that is to be. Read back into your childhood, and this sense of awareness I speak of will be remembered as an experience of childhood. You were then not fixed, not crystallized. You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousness and an identity in the process of forming--ay, of forming and forgetting.

Jack London, from The Jacket

Introduced.

The world was introduced to Bad Company on this day in 1974.

Side One, Track One ...

Hungry.

You've got to feed 'em when they're hungry ...

Kes is one of the best movies I've ever seen.

Goodbye.

GOODBYE to TOLERANCE

Genial poets, pink-faced   

earnest wits—

you have given the world   

some choice morsels,

gobbets of language presented

as one presents T-bone steak

and Cherries Jubilee.   

Goodbye, goodbye,

                            I don’t care

if I never taste your fine food again,   

neutral fellows, seers of every side.   

Tolerance, what crimes

are committed in your name.

Denise Levertov

Happy Birthday, Robert Henri

Henri, In the Woods, 1890

The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

Robert Henri, born on this day in 1865

Exceed.

Scott, Pixies Dancing in a Ring by the Firelight, 1885

The National Trust has the traditions of Midsummer ...

A time when the normal laws of nature or divinity could be suspended, when spirits and fairies could contact humans, when humans could exceed the usual limitations of their world.

Alive.

A new documentary on Geogia O'Keeffe has been released ...

... the forces that keep us alive.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Mendelssohn, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Kurt Masur and the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig perform the Overture ...

Lulled.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:

There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, 

Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.

Oberon, from A Midsummer Nght's Dream, Act 2 Scene 1

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Kris Kristofferson

A true artist, a lyrical genius, and a faithful man of principle, Kris Kristofferson, was born on this day in 1936.

"The Best of All Possible Worlds," featuring the pedal-steel gun-slinging of Robby Turner ...

Robert Plant, "Carry Fire"

Dustsceawung.

There is a word in Old English which belongs wholly to that civilization - "dustsceawung," meaning contemplation of dust. It is a true image of the Anglo-Saxon mind, or at least an echo of that consciousness which considered transcience and loss to be part of the human estate; it was a world in which life was uncertain and the principal diety was fate or destiny or "wyrd."

Peter Ackroyd

Nothing.

There is nothing to replace the set of skills involved in painting and there will always be a thirst for good materials ...

Paul Weller, "Andromeda"

Happy Father's Day, Pop

Happy Father's Day to my Pop and blessings to all dads and their families on this very special day.

As a kid, I remember this poem tacked above my Dad's workbench ...

The Little Chap Who Follows Me

A careful man I want to be;

A little fellow follows me.

I do not dare to go astray

For fear he'll go the self same way.

I cannot once escape his eyes,

Whate'er he sees me do, he tries.

Like me he says he's going to be;

The little chap who follows me.

He thinks that I'm so very fine,

Believes in every word of mine.

The base in me he must not see;

The little chap who follows me.

I must remember as I go

Through summer's sun and winter's snow,

I'm building for the years to be;

The little chap who follows me.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Umberto Eco