Excellent.

An excellent album …

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Conscious.

The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us simply the natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as with think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it us utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse's mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that even the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it. We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And its low intensity---so much lower than that of daylight---makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvelous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again. 

Richard Adams, from Watership Down

Telling.

Rockwood, Herman Melville, 1885

For in this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the Great Art of Telling the Truth,—even though it be covertly, and by snatches.

Herman Melville, from "Hawthorne and His Mosses"

Unsuspected.

Keen, The Old Manse, Concord, Massachusetts, 1900

Happy the man who in a rainy day can betake himself to a huge garret, stored, like that of the Manse, with lumber that each generation has left behind it from a period before the Revolution. Our garret was an arched hall, dimly illuminated through small and dusty windows; it was but a twilight at the best; and there were nooks, or rather caverns, of deep obscurity, the secrets of which I never learned, being too reverent of their dust and cobwebs. The beams and rafters, roughly hewn and with strips of bark still on them, and the rude masonry of the chimneys, made the garret look wild and uncivilized, an aspect unlike what was seen elsewhere in the quiet and decorous old house. But on one side there was a little whitewashed apartment, which bore the traditionary title of the Saint’s Chamber, because holy men in their youth had slept, and studied, and prayed there. With its elevated retirement, its one window, its small fireplace, and its closet convenient for an oratory, it was the very spot where a young man might inspire himself with solemn enthusiasm and cherish saintly dreams. The occupants, at various epochs, had left brief records and ejaculations inscribed upon the walls. There, too, hung a tattered and shrivelled roll of canvas, which on inspection proved to be the forcibly wrought picture of a clergyman, in wig, band, and gown, holding a Bible in his hand. As I turned his face towards the light, he eyed me with an air of authority such as men of his profession seldom assume in our days. The original had been pastor of the parish more than a century ago, a friend of Whitefield, and almost his equal in fervid eloquence. I bowed before the effigy of the dignified divine, and felt as if I had now met face to face with the ghost by whom, as there was reason to apprehend, the Manse was haunted.

Houses of any antiquity in New England are so invariably possessed with spirits that the matter seems hardly worth alluding to. Our ghost used to heave deep sighs in a particular corner of the parlor, and sometimes rustled paper, as if he were turning over a sermon in the long upper entry,—where nevertheless he was invisible, in spite of the bright moonshine that fell through the eastern window. Not improbably he wished me to edit and publish a selection from a chest full of manuscript discourses that stood in the garret. Once, while Hillard and other friends sat talking with us in the twilight, there came a rustling noise as of a minister’s silk gown, sweeping through the very midst of the company, so closely as almost to brush against the chairs. Still there was nothing visible. A yet stranger business was that of a ghostly servant-maid, who used to be heard in the kitchen at deepest midnight, grinding coffee, cooking, ironing,—performing, in short, all kinds of domestic labor,—although no traces of anything accomplished could be detected the next morning. Some neglected duty of her servitude, some ill-starched ministerial band, disturbed the poor damsel in her grave and kept her at work without any wages.

But to return from this digression. A part of my predecessor’s library was stored in the garret,—no unfit receptacle indeed for such dreary trash as comprised the greater number of volumes. The old books would have been worth nothing at an auction. In this venerable garret, however, they possessed an interest, quite apart from their literary value, as heirlooms, many of which had been transmitted down through a series of consecrated hands from the days of the mighty Puritan divines. Autographs of famous names were to be seen in faded ink on some of their fly-leaves; and there were marginal observations or interpolated pages closely covered with manuscript in illegible shorthand, perhaps concealing matter of profound truth and wisdom. The world will never be the better for it. A few of the books were Latin folios, written by Catholic authors; others demolished Papistry, as with a sledge-hammer, in plain English. A dissertation on the Book of Job—which only Job himself could have had patience to read—filled at least a score of small, thick-set quartos, at the rate of two or three volumes to a chapter. Then there was a vast folio body of divinity,—too corpulent a body, it might be feared, to comprehend the spiritual element of religion. Volumes of this form dated back two hundred years or more, and were generally bound in black leather, exhibiting precisely such an appearance as we should attribute to books of enchantment. Others equally antique were of a size proper to be carried in the large waistcoat pockets of old times,—diminutive, but as black as their bulkier brethren, and abundantly interfused with Greek and Latin quotations. These little old volumes impressed me as if they had been intended for very large ones, but had been unfortunately blighted at an early stage of their growth.

The rain pattered upon the roof and the sky gloomed through the dusty garret-windows while I burrowed among these venerable books in search of any living thought which should burn like a coal of fire or glow like an inextinguishable gem beneath the dead trumpery that had long hidden it. But I found no such treasure; all was dead alike; and I could not but muse deeply and wonderingly upon the humiliating fact that the works of man’s intellect decay like those of his hands. Thought grows mouldy. What was good and nourishing food for the spirits of one generation affords no sustenance for the next. Books of religion, however, cannot be considered a fair test of the enduring and vivacious properties of human thought, because such books so seldom really touch upon their ostensible subject, and have, therefore, so little business to be written at all. So long as an unlettered soul can attain to saving grace there would seem to be no deadly error in holding theological libraries to be accumulations of, for the most part, stupendous impertinence.

Many of the books had accrued in the latter years of the last clergyman’s lifetime. These threatened to be of even less interest than the elder works a century hence to any curious inquirer who should then rummage then as I was doing now. Volumes of the Liberal Preacher and Christian Examiner, occasional sermons, controversial pamphlets, tracts, and other productions of a like fugitive nature, took the place of the thick and heavy volumes of past time. In a physical point of view, there was much the same difference as between a feather and a lump of lead; but, intellectually regarded, the specific gravity of old and new was about upon a par. Both also were alike frigid. The elder books nevertheless seemed to have been earnestly written, and might be conceived to have possessed warmth at some former period; although, with the lapse of time, the heated masses had cooled down even to the freezing-point. The frigidity of the modern productions, on the other hand, was characteristic and inherent, and evidently had little to do with the writer’s qualities of mind and heart. In fine, of this whole dusty heap of literature I tossed aside all the sacred part, and felt myself none the less a Christian for eschewing it. There appeared no hope of either mounting to the better world on a Gothic staircase of ancient folios or of flying thither on the wings of a modern tract.

Nothing, strange to say, retained any sap except what had been written for the passing day and year, without the remotest pretension or idea of permanence. There were a few old newspapers, and still older almanacs, which reproduced to my mental eye the epochs when they had issued from the press with a distinctness that was altogether unaccountable. It was as if I had found bits of magic looking-glass among the books with the images of a vanished century in them. I turned my eyes towards the tattered picture above mentioned, and asked of the austere divine wherefore it was that he and his brethren, after the most painful rummaging and groping into their minds, had been able to produce nothing half so real as these newspaper scribblers and almanac-makers had thrown off in the effervescence of a moment. The portrait responded not; so I sought an answer for myself. It is the age itself that writes newspapers and almanacs, which therefore have a distinct purpose and meaning at the time, and a kind of intelligible truth for all times; whereas most other works—being written by men who, in the very act, set themselves apart from their age—are likely to possess little significance when new, and none at all when old. Genius, indeed, melts many ages into one, and thus effects something permanent, yet still with a similarity of office to that of the more ephemeral writer. A work of genius is but the newspaper of a century, or perchance of a hundred centuries.

Lightly as I have spoken of these old books, there yet lingers with me a superstitious reverence for literature of all kinds. A bound volume has a charm in my eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possess for the good Mussulman. He imagines that those wind-wafted records are perhaps hallowed by some sacred verse; and I, that every new book or antique one may contain the “open sesame,”—the spell to disclose treasures hidden in some unsuspected cave of Truth. Thus it was not without sadness that I turned away from the library of the Old Manse.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, from "The Old Manse"

Deeper.

Neal's Yard Dairy's respect for origins ...

“If you eat a nice piece of cheese, you can forget that you're having a human experience. It’s simple, it’s flavoured, it brings you pleasure,” Joe said. “Go a little bit deeper and you can see that this cheese is representative of something. Of a place. Of a farming system. Of people.” Stichelton's name forces you to go deeper – into history, authenticity, and raw milk cheese. 

Aware.

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 Star Rover

Outliers.

The Bodleian Map Room reminds us that when mapping imaginary lands, normal rules don't apply ...

This description, from the Oxford English Dictionary, is what we all imagine when we think of a map, and when we look at that map we expect to see a location, whether a detailed town plan or country, continent or world, somewhere that exists both in reality and on paper.

Despite all this there are some outliers in the map world, maps of places that only exist in the mind, maps of imaginary lands. 

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

I cast no shadow or reflection in the mirror now

I choose to shoot the breeze with trees and smile with skies

In search of wisdom so much wiser than my own ...

The Sheepdogs, "Keep Out of the Storm"

Introduced.

The world was introduced to The Psychedelic Furs on this day in 1980.

"We Love You"...

Happy Birthday, Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt was born on this day in 1944.

"I'll Be Here in the Morning"...

Small-Production.

Neal's Yard Dairy on the production of three relatively new, small-production Wensleydale cheeses called Stonebeck, Yoredale & Whin Yeats ...

Inexhaustible.

Sargent, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887

I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe.  The names, the shapes of the woodlands, the courses of the roads and rivers, the prehistoric footsteps of man still distinctly traceable up hill and down dale, the mills and the ruins, the ponds and the ferries, perhaps the standing tone or the Druidic Circle on the heath; here is an inexhaustible fund of interest for any man with eyes to see or twopence-worth of imagination to understand with!  No child but must remember laying his head in the grass, staring into the infinitesimal forest and seeing it grow populous with fairy armies.

Somewhat in this way, as I paused upon my map of Treasure Island, the future character of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods; and their brown faces and bright weapons peeped out upon me from unexpected quarters, as they passed to and fro, fighting and hunting treasure, on these few square inches of a flat projection.  The next thing I knew I had some papers before me and was writing out a list of chapters.  How often have I done so, and the thing gone no further! But there seemed elements of success about this enterprise. 

Robert Louis Stevenson, from "My First Book, Treasure Island"

Jimmy Buffett, "A Pirate Looks at Forty"

Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call,

Wanted to sail upon your waters

since I was three feet tall.

You've seen it all, you've seen it all.

Watch the men who rode you,

Switch from sails to steam.

And in your belly you hold the treasure

that few have ever seen, most of them dreams,

Most of them dreams.

Yes, I am a pirate two hundred years too late.

The cannons don't thunder there's nothin' to plunder

I'm an over forty victim of fate

Arriving too late, arriving too late ...

Short.

I like Michael Oakeshott's response when a young @sullydish told him that he intended to become a journalist: "I consider the need to know the news every day a form of mental disorder." https://t.co/Xseq00hR8y

— Charles Murray (@charlesmurray) March 3, 2026

Shadows.

The quality that we call beauty must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends ...

In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration. I do not ask that this be done everywhere, but perhaps we may be allowed at least one mansion where we can turn off the electric lights and see what it is like without them ...

We do not dislike everything that shines, but we do prefer a pensive lustre to a shallow brilliance, a murky light that, whether in a stone or an artifact, bespeaks a sheen of antiquity.  We do love things that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather, and we love the colours and the sheen that call to mind the past that made them.

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, from In Praise of Shadows

Tom T. Hall. "Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine"

I was sittin' in Miami pourin' blended whiskey down

When this old gray black gentleman was cleanin' up the lounge

There wasn't anyone around, 'cept this old man and me

The guy who ran the bar was watchin' Ironsides on TV

Uninvited, he sat down and opened up his mind

On old dogs and children and watermelon wine ...

It's sandwich time.

Protection.

On this day in 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act into law, making it the world's first national park ...

For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.

Thanks, Jess. 

Wild.

Spenser, The Shepherd's Calendar: March, 1898

THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR: MARCH

March month of 'many weathers' wildly comes

In hail and snow and rain and threatning hums

And floods: while often at his cottage door

The shepherd stands to hear the distant roar

Loosd from the rushing mills and river locks

Wi thundering sound and over powering shocks

And headlong hurry thro the meadow brigs

Brushing the leaning sallows fingering twigs

In feathery foam and eddy hissing chase

Rolling a storm oertaken travellers pace

From bank to bank along the meadow leas

Spreading and shining like to little seas

While in the pale sunlight a watery brood

Of swopping white birds flock about the flood

Yet winter seems half weary of its toil

And round the ploughman on the elting soil

Will thread a minutes sunshine wild and warm

Thro the raggd places of the swimming storm

And oft the shepherd in his path will spye

The little daisey in the wet grass lye

That to the peeping sun enlivens gay

Like Labour smiling on an holiday

And where the stunt bank fronts the southern sky

By lanes or brooks where sunbeams love to lye

A cowslip peep will open faintly coy

Soon seen and gatherd by a wandering boy

A tale of spring around the distant haze

Seems muttering pleasures wi the lengthening days

Morn wakens mottld oft wi may day stains

And shower drops hang the grassy sprouting plains

And on the naked thorns of brassy hue

Drip glistning like a summer dream of dew

While from the hill side freshing forest drops

As one might walk upon their thickening tops

And buds wi young hopes promise seemly swells

Where woodman that in wild seclusion dwells

Wi chopping toil the coming spring decieves

Of many dancing shadows flowers and leaves

And in his pathway down the mossy wood

Crushes wi hasty feet full many a bud

Of early primrose yet if timely spied

Shelterd some old half rotten stump beside

The sight will cheer his solitery hour

And urge his feet to stride and save the flower

Muffld in baffles leathern coat and gloves

The hedger toils oft scaring rustling doves

From out the hedgrows who in hunger browze

The chockolate berrys on the ivy boughs

And flocking field fares speckld like the thrush

Picking the red awe from the sweeing bush

That come and go on winters chilling wing

And seem to share no sympathy wi spring

The stooping ditcher in the water stands

Letting the furrowd lakes from off the lands

Or splashing cleans the pasture brooks of mud

Where many a wild weed freshens into bud

And sprouting from the bottom purply green

The water cresses neath the wave is seen

Which the old woman gladly drags to land

Wi reaching long rake in her tottering hand

The ploughman mawls along the doughy sloughs

And often stop their songs to clean their ploughs

From teazing twitch that in the spongy soil

Clings round the colter terryfying toil

The sower striding oer his dirty way

Sinks anckle deep in pudgy sloughs and clay

And oer his heavy hopper stoutly leans

Strewing wi swinging arms the pattering beans

Which soon as aprils milder weather gleams

Will shoot up green between the furroed seams

The driving boy glad when his steps can trace

The swelling edding as a resting place

Slings from his clotted shoes the dirt around

And feign woud rest him on the solid ground

And sings when he can meet the parting green

Of rushy balks that bend the lands between

While close behind em struts the nauntling crow

And daws whose heads seem powderd oer wi snow

To seek the worms-and rooks a noisey guest

That on the wind rockd elms prepares her nest

On the fresh furrow often drops to pull

The twitching roots and gathering sticks and wool

Neath trees whose dead twigs litter to the wind

And gaps where stray sheep left their coats behind

While ground larks on a sweeing clump of rushes

Or on the top twigs of the oddling bushes

Chirp their 'cree creeing' note that sounds of spring

And sky larks meet the sun wi flittering wing

Soon as the morning opes its brightning eye

Large clouds of sturnels blacken thro the sky

From oizer holts about the rushy fen

And reedshaw borders by the river Nen

And wild geese regiments now agen repair

To the wet bosom of broad marshes there

In marching coloms and attention all

Listning and following their ringleaders call

The shepherd boy that hastens now and then

From hail and snow beneath his sheltering den

Of flags or file leavd sedges tyd in sheaves

Or stubble shocks oft as his eye percieves

Sun threads struck out wi momentery smiles

Wi fancy thoughts his lonliness beguiles

Thinking the struggling winter hourly bye

As down the edges of the distant sky

The hailstorm sweeps-and while he stops to strip

The stooping hedgbriar of its lingering hip

He hears the wild geese gabble oer his head

And pleasd wi fancys in his musings bred

He marks the figurd forms in which they flye

And pausing follows wi a wandering eye

Likening their curious march in curves or rows

To every letter which his memory knows

While far above the solitary crane

Swings lonly to unfrozen dykes again

Cranking a jarring mellancholy cry

Thro the wild journey of the cheerless sky

Full oft at early seasons mild and fair

March bids farewell wi garlands in her hair

Of hazzel tassles woodbines hairy sprout

And sloe and wild plumb blossoms peeping out

In thickset knotts of flowers preparing gay

For aprils reign a mockery of may

That soon will glisten on the earnest eye

Like snow white cloaths hung in the sun to drye

The old dame often stills her burring wheel

When the bright sun will thro the window steal

And gleam upon her face and dancing fall

In diamond shadows on the picturd wall

While the white butterflye as in amaze

Will settle on the glossy glass to gaze

And oddling bee oft patting passing bye

As if they care to tell her spring was nigh

And smiling glad to see such things once more

Up she will get and potter to the door

And look upon the trees beneath the eves

Sweet briar and ladslove swelling into leaves

And damsin trees thick notting into bloom

And goosberry blossoms on the bushes come

And stooping down oft views her garden beds

To see the spring flowers pricking out their heads

And from her apron strings she'll often pull

Her sissars out an early bunch to cull

For flower pots on the window board to stand

Where the old hour glass spins its thread of sand

And maids will often mark wi laughing eye

In elder where they hang their cloaths to drye

The sharp eyd robin hop from grain to grain

Singing its little summer notes again

As a sweet pledge of Spring the little lambs

Bleat in the varied weather round their dams

Or hugh molehill or roman mound behind

Like spots of snow lye shelterd from the wind

While the old yoes bold wi paternal cares

Looses their fears and every danger dares

Who if the shepherds dog but turns his eye

And stops behind a moment passing bye

Will stamp draw back and then their threats repeat

Urging defiance wi their stamping feet

And stung wi cares hopes cannot recconsile

They stamp and follow till he leaps a stile

Or skulking from their threats betakes to flight

And wi the master lessens out of sight

Clowns mark the threatning rage of march pass bye

And clouds wear thin and ragged in the sky

While wi less sudden and more lasting smiles

The growing sun their hopes of spring beguiles

Who often at its end remark wi pride

Days lengthen in their visits a 'cocks stride'

Dames clean their candlesticks and set them bye

Glad of the makeshift light that eves supply

The boy returning home at night from toil

Down lane and close oer footbrig gate and style1

Oft trembles into fear and stands to hark

The waking fox renew his short gruff bark

While badgers eccho their dread evening shrieks

And to his thrilling thoughts in terror speaks

And shepherds that wi in their hulks remain

Night after night upon the chilly plain

To watch the dropping lambs that at all hours

Come in the quaking blast like early flowers

Demanding all the shepherds care who find

Warm hedge side spots and take them from the wind

And round their necks in wary caution tyes

Long shreds of rags in red or purple dyes

Thats meant in danger as a safty spell

Like the old yoe that wears a tinkling bell

The sneaking foxes from his thefts to fright

That often seizes the young lambs at night

These when they in their nightly watchings hear

The badgers shrieks can hardly stifle fear

They list the noise from woodlands dark recess

Like helpless shrieking woman in distress

And oft as such fears fancying mystery

Believes the dismal yelling sounds to be

For superstition hath its thousand tales

To people all his midnight woods and vales

And the dread spot from whence the dismal noise

Mars the night musings of their dark employs

Owns its sad tale to realize their fear

At which their hearts in boyhood achd to hear

A maid at night by treacherous love decoyd

Was in that shrieking wood years past destroyd

She went twas said to meet the waiting swain

And home and friends ne'er saw her face again

Mid brakes and thorns that crowded round the dell

And matting weeds that had no tongues to tell

He murderd her alone at dead midnight

While the pale moon threw round her sickly light

And loud shrieks left the thickets slumbers deep

That only scard the little birds from sleep

When the pale murderers terror frowning eye

Told its dread errand that the maid shoud dye

Mid thick black thorns her secret grave was made

And there ere night the murderd girl was laid

When no one saw the deed but god and he

And moonlight sparkling thro the sleeping tree

Around-the red breast might at morning steel

There for the worm to meet his morning meal

In fresh turnd moulds that first beheld the sun

Nor knew the deed that dismal night had done

Such is the tale that superstition gives

And in her midnight memory ever lives

That makes the boy run by wi wild affright

And shepherds startle on their rounds at night

Now love teazd maidens from their droning wheel

At the red hour of sunset sliving steals

From scolding dames to meet their swains agen

Tho water checks their visits oer the plain

They slive where no one sees some wall behind

Or orchard apple trees that stops the wind

To talk about springs pleasures hoveing nigh

And happy rambles when the roads get dry

The insect world now sunbeams higher climb

Oft dream of spring and wake before their time

Blue flyes from straw stacks crawling scarce alive

And bees peep out on slabs before the hive

Stroaking their little legs across their wings

And venturing short flight where the snow drop hings

Its silver bell-and winter aconite

Wi buttercup like flowers that shut at night

And green leaf frilling round their cups of gold

Like tender maiden muffld from the cold

They sip and find their honey dreams are vain

And feebly hasten to their hives again

And butterflys by eager hopes undone

Glad as a child come out to greet the sun

Lost neath the shadow of a sudden shower

Nor left to see tomorrows April flower.

John Clare

Happy Birthday, Frédéric Chopin

When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.

Frédéric Chopin, born on this day in 1810

In 1978, Vladimir Horowitz performed a program of music at The White House (yes, The White House) that included Chopin's Waltz in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 64 ...

Sharper.

A man may say on one side, that to give the people the reins to entertain every man his own opinion, is to scatter and sow division, and, as it were, to lend a hand to augment it, there being no legal impediment or restraint to stop or hinder their career; but, on the other side, a man may also say, that to give the people the reins to entertain every man his own opinion, is to mollify and appease them by facility and toleration, and to dull the point which is whetted and made sharper by singularity, novelty, and difficulty.

Michel de Montaigne, from "On Freedom of Conscience"

Leveler.

I haven't got any special religion this morning. My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don't need any other god. Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians, with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds, project onto the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one. As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less aggressive than sedentary ones. 

There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a "leveler" on which the "fit" survive and stragglers fall by the wayside. The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The "dictators" of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the "gentlemen of the road." 

Bruce Chatwin, from The Songlines

Crazy Horse, "Country Home"

Jimmy Buffett, "Cowboy in the Jungle"

There’s a cowboy in the jungle

And he looks so out of place

With his shrimp skin boots and his cheap cheroots

And his skin as white as paste

Headin’ south to Paraguay

Where the gauchos sing and shout

Now he’s stuck in Portobelo

Since his money all ran out

So he hangs out with the sailors

Night and day they’re raisin’ hell

And his original destination’s just another

Story that he loves to tell

With no plans for the future

He still seems in control

From a bronco ride to a ten foot tide

He just had to learn to roll

Roll with the punches

Play all of his hunches

Made the best of whatever came his way

What he lacked in ambition

He made up with intuition

Plowing straight ahead come what may ...

Fizzing.

Utrillo, Landscape, Pierrefitte, 1907

It is a spring sun, intoxicating as young wine. I sit and dream. My thoughts escape from my head like the foam from a bottle of beer. They are light, and their fizzing amuses me. 

Anatole France, from Le crime de Sylvestre Bonnard

Oswald, "Polwart on the Green"

Le Cigale performs ...

Overthrow.

Steve points to reports of struggling movie-goers.

Remember what Cactus Ed taught us years and years ago ...

How to Overthrow the System: Brew your own beer; Kick in your TV. Kill your own beef, Build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Kurt. 

Happy Birthday, Michel de Montaigne

Unknown, Portrait de Montaigne au Chapeau, 1820

If we call prodigies or miracles whatever our reason cannot reach, how many of these appear continually before our eyes! Let us consider through what clouds and how gropingly we are led to the knowledge of most of the things that are right in our hands; assuredly we shall find that it is rather familiarity than knowledge that takes away their strangeness.  Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.

Michel de Montaigne, born on this day in 1533, from Essays, Book 1, chapter 23 

Les chapeaux, c'est important, les enfants.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Cloud.

The mist of a woody, grape-musty cloud on the tongue.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Robin Guthrie, "Monument"

Happy Birthday, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Cameron, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1868

I stood upon the hills, when heaven's wide arch

Was glorious with the sun's returning march,

And woods were brightened, and soft gales

Went forth to kiss the sun-clad vales.

The clouds were far beneath me; bathed in light,

They gathered mid-way round the wooded height,

And, in their fading glory, shone

Like hosts in battle overthrown.

As many a pinnacle, with shifting glance.

Through the gray mist thrust up its shattered lance,

And rocking on the cliff was left

The dark pine blasted, bare, and cleft.

The veil of cloud was lifted, and below

Glowed the rich valley, and the river's flow

Was darkened by the forest's shade,

Or glistened in the white cascade;

Where upward, in the mellow blush of day,

The noisy bittern wheeled his spiral way.

Henry Wadworth Longfellow, born on this day in 1807, from Sunrise on the Hills

Happy Birthday, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Renoir, The Farm at Les Collettes, Cagnes, 1914

They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it, and that it is inhabited by a nymph. 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born on this date in 1841

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Released.

Led Zeppelin released their best album, Physical Graffiti, on this day in 1975.

"The Rover/Sick Again" ...

Please.

TO THE HESITATING PURCHASER

 If sailor tales to sailor tunes,

 Storm and adventure, heat and cold,

 If schooners, islands, and maroons,

 And buccaneers, and buried gold,

 And all the old romance, retold

 Exactly in the ancient way,

 Can please, as me they pleased of old,

 The wiser youngsters of today:

 --So be it, and fall on! If not,

 If studious youth no longer crave,

 His ancient appetites forgot,

 Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,

 Or Cooper of the wood and wave:

 So be it, also! And may I

 And all my pirates share the grave

 Where these and their creations lie!

Robert Louis Stevenson, from Treasure Island

Caerphilly.

Deep summer.

Finishing the last of dinner's accompanying glass of milk, then run as fast as possible through the neighborhood to get into the pick-up baseball game.

That flavor of milk that's still on the tongue ... that's Caerphilly.

Treasures.

On the following morning, the sun darted his beams from over the hills through the low lattice window. I rose at an early hour, and looked out between the branches of eglantine which overhung the casement. To my surprise Scott was already up and forth, seated on a fragment of stone, and chatting with the workmen employed on the new building. I had supposed, after the time he had wasted upon me yesterday, he would be closely occupied this morning, but he appeared like a man of leisure, who had nothing to do but bask in the sunshine and amuse himself.

I soon dressed myself and joined him. He talked about his proposed plans of Abbotsford; happy would it have been for him could he have contented himself with his delightful little vine-covered cottage, and the simple, yet hearty and hospitable style, in which he lived at the time of my visit. The great pile of Abbotsford, with the huge expense it entailed upon him, of servants, retainers, guests, and baronial style, was a drain upon his purse, a tax upon his exertions, and a weight upon his mind, that finally crushed him.

As yet, however, all was in embryo and perspective, and Scott pleased himself with picturing out his future residence, as he would one of the fanciful creations of his own romances. "It was one of his air castles," he said, "which he was reducing to solid stone and mortar." About the place were strewed various morsels from the ruins of Melrose Abbey, which were to be incorporated in his mansion. He had already constructed out of similar materials a kind of Gothic shrine over a spring, and had surmounted it by a small stone cross.

Among the relics from the Abbey which lay scattered before us, was a most quaint and antique little lion, either of red stone, or painted red, which hit my fancy. I forgot whose cognizance it was; but I shall never forget the delightful observations concerning old Melrose to which it accidentally gave rise. The Abbey was evidently a pile that called up all Scott's poetic and romantic feelings; and one to which he was enthusiastically attached by the most fanciful and delightful of his early associations. He spoke of it, I may say, with affection. "There is no telling," said he, "what treasures are hid in that glorious old pile. It is a famous place for antiquarian plunder; there are such rich bits of old time sculpture for the architect, and old time story for the poet. There is as rare picking in it as a Stilton cheese, and in the same taste—the mouldier the better."

Washington Irving, from "Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey"

Thanks to Walker's Arms for the image.

Happy Birthday, Winslow Homer

Homer, Adirondack Lake, 1892

A painter who begins and finishes indoors, that which is outdoors, misses a hundred little facts, a hundred little accidental effects of sunshine and shadow that can be reproduced only in the immediate presence of Nature. This making of studies and then taking them home is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.

Winslow Homer, born on this day in 1836

Jimmy Buffett, "Quietly Making Noise"

Oscar Wilde died in bed 
Several floors above my head 
Living well beyond his means 
In that crazy Paris scene 

Rain falls down in sheets so clear 
No one ever calls me here 
Traveling by my self these days 
I'm into jazz and felt berets 

Far from the that old eastern shore 
Searching for strange metaphors ...

Happy Birthday, George Frideric Handel

Denner, Handel, 1727

George Frideric Handel was born on this day in 1685.

Leo Duarte performs the first Allegro from the Oboe Concerto No. 3 in G minor (HWV 287) with members of The Academy of Ancient Music ...

Wrath.

The wrath of nature is real.

Mouton, La Malassise

Klaudyna Żołnierek performs the Sarabande ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Ever.

Happy Birthday, Edna St. Vincent Millay

Rinhart, Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1922

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on this date in 1892.

AFTERNOON on a HILL

I will be the gladdest thing

    Under the sun!

I will touch a hundred flowers

    And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds

    With quiet eyes,

Watch the wind bow down the grass,

    And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show

    Up from the town,

I will mark which must be mine,

    And then start down!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

America.

A kid with a runny nose and milk money danced up to the tiger and spit in his eye.

Looking for sports heroes?  Teach your kids about Jack O'Callahan: blue-collar, unsung leader.