Sea Power, "Machineries of Joy"

Happy Birthday, Blaise Pascal

Quesnel, Pascal, 1691

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal, born on this day in 1623

Beauty.

Glory be to God for dappled things—

For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plow;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise Him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Opened.

Collier, John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, 1901

Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning — the confusion of instruction and education. We strain the memory instead of cultivating the mind. The children in our elementary schools are wearied by the mechanical act of writing, and the interminable intricacies of spelling; they are oppressed by columns of dates, by lists of kings and places, which convey 104no definite idea to their minds, and have no near relation to their daily wants and occupations; while in our public schools the same unfortunate results are produced by the weary monotony of Latin and Greek grammar. We ought to follow exactly the opposite course with children — to give them a wholesome variety of mental food, and endeavor to cultivate their tastes, rather than to fill their minds with dry facts. The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn. What does it matter if the pupil knows a little more or a little less? A boy who leaves school knowing much, but hating his lessons, will soon have forgotten almost all he ever learnt; while another who had acquired a thirst for knowledge, even if he had learnt little, would soon teach himself more than the first ever knew. Children are by nature eager for information. This ought to be encouraged. In fact, we may to a great extent trust to their instincts, and in that case they will do much to educate themselves. Too often, however, the acquirement of knowledge is placed before them in a form so irksome and fatiguing that all desire for information is choked, or even crushed out; so that our schools, in fact, become places for the discouragement of learning, and thus produce the very opposite effect from that at which we aim. In short, children should be trained to observe and to think, for in that way there would be opened out to them a source of the purest enjoyment for leisure hours, and the wisest judgment in the work of life.

John Lubbock, from "Education," found in his book The Pleasures of Life

Happy Birthday, Thomas Sully

Sully, Thomas Jefferson, 1824

Thomas Sully was born on this date in 1783.

 American Philosophical Society's presentation of A Final Image: The Thomas Sully Portrait of Thomas Jefferson

Telemann, Overture-Suite for Two Oboes, Two Horns, Strings and Continuo in D-Major, TWV 55:D21

Bremer Barockorchester performing ...

Purify.

Ray Bradbury on life and love ...

We keep cleansing the stream just as any impurity running downhill in a river by the time it travels nine miles is purified.   So the life of a man traveling to the sea, which is our inevitable death someday, purifies itself.  It must, because if you do not purify, these tensions remain in and turn in on yourself and destroy you.  The man who cannot laugh freely is a sick man.  The man who cannot cry and release tears in that direction, there's a sick man.  The man who cannot be violent through exercise, through sports, through acting out his violence in paper or painting or acting on a stage, is a sick man.

Lasts.

What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That's what lasts. That's what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better. A better state of one's feelings or simply the idea of a silence in one's self that allows one to think or to feel. Which to me is the same.

Susan Sontag, from her interview with Rolling Stone in 1979

Paul Weller, "Above the Clouds"

The Major Oak, Rest in Peace

The BBC is reporting the death of The Major Oak.

Lingers.

Manet, The Bench in the Garden of Versailles, 1881

TO ANY READER

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,

So you may see, if you will look

Through the windows of this book,

Another child, far, far away,

And in another garden, play.

But do not think you can at all,

By knocking on the window, call

That child to hear you. He intent

Is all on his play-business bent.

He does not hear; he will not look,

Nor yet be lured out of this book.

For, long ago, the truth to say,

He has grown up and gone away,

And it is but a child of air

That lingers in the garden there.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Study.

Copley, Mercy Otis Warren, 1763

The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and a deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted in the nature of man, that pants for distinction. This principle operates in every bosom, and when kept under the control of reason, and the influence of humanity, it produces the most benevolent effects. But when the checks of conscious are thrown aside, or the moral sense weakened by the sudden acquisition of wealth or power, humanity is obscured, and if a favorable coincidence of circumstances permits, this love of distinction often exhibits the most mortifying instances of profligacy, tyranny, and the wanton exercise of arbitrary sway. Thus when we look over the theatre of human action, scrutinize the windings of the heart, and survey the transactions of man from the earliest to the present period, it must be acknowledged that ambition and avarice are the leading springs which generally actuate the restless mind. From these primary sources of corruption have arisen all the rapine and confusion, the depredation, and ruin, that have spread distress over the face of the earth from the days of Nimrod to Cesar, and from Cesar to an arbitrary prince of the house of Brunswick.

Mercy Otis Warren, from History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, Volume 1 and Volume 2

C.P.E. Bach, Sonata in D Major, Wq.137, H. 559

Stéphanie Houillon and Guido Balestracci play the violas while Paolo Corsi accompanies ...

Excellent.

An excellent movie.

You might think it's funny.  You might think he gets what's coming to him.  You might be wrong.

Sure.

Wyeth, N.C., Backcountry Militia on the Move, 1928

The Congress has likewise resolved that fifteen thousand men shall be supported at the expense of the continent; ten thousand at Massachusetts, and five thousand at New York; and that ten companies of riflemen be sent immediately; six from Pennsylvania, two from Maryland, and two from Virginia, consisting of sixty-eight privates in each company, to join our army at Boston. These are said to be all exquisite marksmen, and by means of the excellence of their firelocks, as well as their skill in the use of them, to send sure destruction to great distances.

John Adams, from a letter to Elbridge Gerry, 18 June 1775

Benefits.

Harold Bloom on reading's therapeutic benefits ...

Time is limited, you know, there is only so much time and there is so much to read that would really enhance your life.  It is, as I argue in this book, not only one of the most intense of all pleasures, but I think it is the most healing of all pleasures.  I think it is more profoundly therapeutic, and most of what is urged upon us as therapy, one does not of course argue with the antidepressant drugs or anti-schizophrenic drugs, they are essential, but when it comes to the various modes of talking therapy, even a spiritual therapy, I would urge a deep course of solitary reading of the books that most matter instead.

Brian Lamb interviewed Professor Bloom on the occasion of the publishing of his book, How to Read and Why ... HERE.  The best arguments for The Reading Life are presented there.

Happy Birthday, Gregg Rolie

Gregg Rolie was born on this day in 1947.

"Feelin' That Way" with Journey, including Ainsley Dunbar, before Jonathan Caine took over and musically neutered the band (just like he did with The Babys) .  

Yes, I'm still bitter.

Soothing.

Rackham, The River, 1940

Absorbed in the new life he was entering upon, intoxicated with the sparkle, the ripple, the scents and the sounds and the sunlight, he trailed a paw in the water and dreamed long waking dreams. The Water Rat, like the good little fellow he was, sculled steadily on and forbore to disturb him.

"I like your clothes awfully, old chap," he remarked after some half an hour or so had passed. "I'm going to get a black velvet smoking-suit myself some day, as soon as I can afford it."

"I beg your pardon," said the Mole, pulling himself together with an effort. "You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me. So—this—is—a—River!"

"The River," corrected the Rat.

"And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!"

"By it and with it and on it and in it," said the Rat. "It's brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It's my world, and I don't want any other. What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing. Lord! the times we've had together! Whether in winter or summer, spring or autumn, it's always got its fun and its excitements. When the floods are on in February, and my cellars and basement are brimming with drink that's no good to me, and the brown water runs by my best bedroom window; or again when it all drops away and shows patches of mud that smells like plum-cake, and the rushes and weed clog the channels, and I can potter about dry shod over most of the bed of it and find fresh food to eat, and things careless people have dropped out of boats!"

"But isn't it a bit dull at times?" the Mole ventured to ask. "Just you and the river, and no one else to pass a word with?"

"No one else to—well, I mustn't be hard on you," said the Rat with forbearance. "You're new to it, and of course you don't know. The bank is so crowded nowadays that many people are moving away altogether. O no, it isn't what it used to be, at all. Otters, king-fishers, dabchicks, moorhens, all of them about all day long and always wanting you to do something—as if a fellow had no business of his own to attend to!"

"What lies over there?" asked the Mole, waving a paw towards a background of woodland that darkly framed the water-meadows on one side of the river.

"That? O, that's just the Wild Wood," said the Rat shortly. "We don't go there very much, we river-bankers."

"Aren't they—aren't they very nice people in there?" said the Mole a trifle nervously.

"W-e-ll," replied the Rat, "let me see. The squirrels are all right. And the rabbits—some of 'em, but rabbits are a mixed lot. And then there's Badger, of course. He lives right in the heart of it; wouldn't live anywhere else, either, if you paid him to do it. Dear old Badger! Nobody interferes with him. They'd better not," he added significantly.

"Why, who should interfere with him?" asked the Mole.

"Well, of course—there—are others," explained the Rat in a hesitating sort of way. "Weasels—and stoats—and foxes—and so on. They're all right in a way—I'm very good friends with them—pass the time of day when we meet, and all that—but they break out sometimes, there's no denying it, and then—well, you can't really trust them, and that's the fact."

The Mole knew well that it is quite against animal-etiquette to dwell on possible trouble ahead, or even to allude to it; so he dropped the subject.

"And beyond the Wild Wood again?" he asked; "where it's all blue and dim, and one sees what may be hills or perhaps they mayn't, and something like the smoke of towns, or is it only cloud-drift?"

"Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World," said the Rat. "And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me. I've never been there, and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all. Don't ever refer to it again, please. Now then! Here's our backwater at last, where we're going to lunch."

Leaving the main stream, they now passed into what seemed at first sight like a little landlocked lake. Green turf sloped down to either edge, brown snaky tree-roots gleamed below the surface of the quiet water, while ahead of them the silvery shoulder and foamy tumble of a weir, arm-in-arm with a restless dripping mill-wheel, that held up in its turn a grey-gabled mill-house, filled the air with a soothing murmur of sound, dull and smothery, yet with little clear voices speaking up cheerfully out of it at intervals. It was so very beautiful that the Mole could only hold up both fore-paws and gasp: "O my! O my! O my!"

Kenneth Grahame, from The Wind in the Willows

Released.

David Gilmour released his first solo album on this day in 1978.

"So Far Away"...

Exuberance.

van Bijlert, The Feast of the Gods, 1640

Complete and total exuberance.

No phones.

Weather.

In June 1944, the success of the greatest military invasion the world had ever seen depended on weather readings taken by one woman, Maureen Sweeney ...

Most.

van Gogh, Shoes, 1886

The PHILOSOPHER

I saw him sitting in his door,

—Trembling as old men do;

His house was old; his barn was old,

—And yet his eyes seemed new.

His eyes had seen three times my years

—And kept a twinkle still,

Though they had looked at birth and death

—And three graves on a hill.

“I will sit down with you,” I said,

—“And you will make me wise;

Tell me how you have kept the joy

—Still burning in your eyes.”

Then like an old-time orator

—Impressively he rose;

“I make the most of all that comes,

—The least of all that goes.”

The jingling rhythm of his words

—Echoes as old songs do,

Yet this had kept his eyes alight

—Till he was ninety-two.

Sara Teasdale

Speaking.

There were pools of light among the stacks, directly beneath the bulbs which Philip had switched on, but it was now with an unexpected fearfulness that he saw how the books stretched away into the darkness. They seemed to expand as soon as they reached the shadows, creating some dark world where there was no beginning and no end, no story, no meaning. And if you crossed the threshold into that world, you would be surrounded by words; you would crush them beneath your feet, you would knock against them with your head and arms, but if you tried to grasp them they would melt away. Philip did not dare turn his back upon these books. Not yet. It was almost, he thought, as if they had been speaking to each other while he slept.

Peter Ackroyd, from Chatterton

Haydn, Quartet in F-Major for Strings, Op. 50, No. 5, “The Dream”

Orion String Quartet performs ...

Wide-Eyed.

Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.  You won't understand anything about the imagination until you realise that it's not about making things up, it's about perception.  

Sir Philip Pullman, from The Golden Compass

The Bodelian Library provides a peak at Sir Philip's desk ...

Corelli, Concerto grosso Op. 6, No. 1 in D major

Enrico Onofri guides and performs with Camerata Bern ...

Happy Birthday, Sir George Frampton

Frampton, Peter Pan, 1912

Sir George Frampton was born on this day in 1860.

Cheap Trick, "I Can't Take It"

You'll want to order an extra side of ranch for the nachos ...

Glory.

Shepherd, George Washington, Esq., General and Commander in Chief of the Continental Army in America, 1775

The General does not mean to discourage the practice of bathing, whilst the weather is warm enough to continue it; but he expressly forbids, any persons doing it, at or near the Bridge in Cambridge, where it has been observed and complained of, that many Men, lost to all sense of decency and common modesty, are running about naked upon the Bridge, whilst Passengers, and even Ladies of the first fashion in the neighbourhood, are passing over it, as if they meant to glory in their shame: The Guards and Centries at the Bridge, are to put a stop to this practice for the future.

George Washington, from his General Orders, 22 August 1775

Happy Birthday, David Hinds

David Hinds was born on this day in 1956.

"Roller Skates" with Steel Pulse ...

Introduced.

With the release of Unknown Pleasures, the world was introduced to Joy Division on this day in 1979.

"Shadowplay"...

Refuge.

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

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

Miracle.

“What are we?” he asked. 

“Why, we are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts. Creation turns in its abyss. We have bothered it, dreaming ourselves to shapes. The void is filled with slumbers; ten billion on a billion on a billion bombardments of light and material that know not themselves, that sleep moving and move but finally to make an eye and waken on themselves. Among so much that is flight and ignorance, we are the blind force that gropes like Lazarus from a billion-light-year tomb. We summon ourselves. We say, O Lazarus Life Force, truly come ye forth. So the Universe, a motion of deaths, fumbles to reach across Time to feel its own flesh and know it to be ours.”

Ray Bradbury, from The Halloween Tree

Appointed.

Sharp, George Washington, Commander in Chief of Ye Armies of Ye United States of America, 1780

George Washington was appointed head of the Continental Army on this day in 1775 ...

I shall hope that my undertaking of it, is designd to answer some good purpose—You might, and I suppose did perceive, from the Tenor of my letters, that I was apprehensive I could not avoid this appointment, as I did not even pretend ⟨t⟩o intimate when I should return—that was the case—it was utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment without exposing my Character to such censures as would have reflected dishonour upon myself, and given pain to my friends—this I am sure could not, and ought not to be pleasing to you, & must have lessend me considerably in my own esteem. I shall rely therefore, confidently, on that Providence which has heretofore preservd, & been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you in the fall—I shall feel no pain from the Toil, or the danger of the Campaign—My unhappiness will flow, from the uneasiness I know you will feel at being left alone—I therefore beg of you to summon your whole fortitude & Resolution, and pass your time as agreeably as possible—nothing will give me so much sincere satisfaction as to hear this, and to hear it from your own Pen.

George Washington, from a letter to Martha Washington, 18 June 1775

Happy Birthday, Edvard Greig

Edvard Greig was born on this day in 1843.

To the Spring, Op. 43, No. 6 ...

Happy Birthday, Vernor's

Vernor's first hit the shelves on this day in 1866.

Happy Birthday, Alan White

Alan White was born on this day in 1949.

"Hold On"...

Make-Up.

Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto.

Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Yap.

They say it's International Blogging Day ...

Keith & The Winos, "Yap Yap"

Great.

On this day in 1777, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the Stars and Stripes as the national flag.

With a great flag comes great responsibility, so here's a reminder of how to respectfully display and handle The Flag.

The Waterboys, "Mad as the Mist and Snow"

Waterboys Mike Scott and Steve Wickham blow through Yeats' "Mad as the Mist and Snow"...

Our minds are at their best this night

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Wanders.

Possibility.

Opgenhaffen, Untitled, 2010

A VISION

If we will have the wisdom to survive,

to stand like slow-growing trees

on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,

if we will make our seasons welcome here,

asking not too much of earth or heaven,

then a long time after we are dead

the lives our lives prepare will live

here, their houses strongly placed

upon the valley sides, fields and gardens

rich in the windows. The river will run

clear, as we never know it,

and over it, birdsong like a canopy.

On the levels of the hills will be

green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.

On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down

the old forest, an old forest will stand,

its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.

The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.

Families will be singing in the fields.

In their voices they will hear a music

risen out of the ground. They will take

nothing from the ground they will not return,

whatever the grief at parting. Memory,

native to this valley, will spread over it

like a grove, and memory will grow

into legend, legend into song, song

into sacrament. The abundance of this place,

the songs of its people and its birds,

will be health and wisdom and indwelling

light. This is no paradisal dream.

Its hardship is its possibility.

Wendell Berry

Thank you, Veerle.

Jorma Kaukonen, "There's a Bright Side Somewhere"

Vaster.

THINGS to THINK

Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door,
Think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time,
Or that it's been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

Robert Bly