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

Fascinating.

Kurt remembers the heady days in Coach Stevens' history class ...

Roosevelt Junior High School was fortunate enough to have Bob Stevens as an 8th grade history teacher. Mr. Stevens would spend each history period walking between the desks of students bringing to life the history of this country. Hands behind his back he would walk and tell the stories of the country.

Occasionally, he would grab the chalk and draw out a battle scheme on the chalkboard, supplementing the drawing with gory and fascinating details.

Several friends and I even decided to bring our own history books into class to “check” Mr. Stevens on his facts. No way could he just roll these details out without at least some exaggeration.

Imagine an 8th grade class with at least four young students feverishly flipping through a stack of books as the teacher told the lesson from memory.

My family moved to Ohio from Michigan in 1977.  On my first day of school at Roosevelt, I had the bright idea to wear a Michigan jersey to school. Coach Stevens noticed it within minutes. He picked me up (in my chair), carried me to his room, placed me in my chair atop his desk and proclaimed to his class, “Look what I found!”

Thirty years later, after a pretty drastic career change, I was blessed to spend time with him in his third-floor classroom as he mentored me through my student-teaching experience.

Through those Roosevelt years, Coach Stevens told amazing stories to engage his students, he maintained the highest standards to set an example for his students, and he carried himself in a way that I still remember today.  I knew he believed in me and all his students.  He was a model of what it was to be not just a good teacher, but a great man.  His sincerity and authenticity were such that you didn't want to let him down.  That responsibility was transformative to a young punk like me.

I’m beginning my twenty-second year as a teacher and there isn’t a day that goes by that doesn’t catch me feeling grateful that I was his student. What a fine teacher. What a great man.

Happy Birthday, William Butler Yeats

Coburn, W. B. Yeats, 1913

What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident? And are there not moods which need heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland for their expression, no less than this dilapidated earth? Nay, are there not moods which shall find no expression unless there be men who dare to mix heaven, hell, purgatory, and faeryland together, or even to set the heads of beasts to the bodies of men, or to thrust the souls of men into the heart of rocks? Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.

W.B. Yeats, born on this day in 1865, from The Celtic Twilight

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

David Hockney, Rest in Peace

Hockney, A Bigger Splash, 1967

David Hockney has passed.

Jerry Jeff Walker, "Quiet Faith of Man"

It's sandwich time.

State.

We may build many imitation Greek temples and we may buy them full of pictures, but there is something more—in fact the one thing more which really counts before we can be an art nation—we must get rid of this outside feeling of looking in on art. We must get on the inside and press out.

Art is simply a result of expression during right feeling. It’s a result of a grip on the fundamentals of nature, the spirit of life, the constructive force, the secret of growth, a real understanding of the relative importance of things, order, balance. Any material will do. After all, the object is not to make art, but to be in the wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don’t believe any real artist cares whether what he does is “art” or not. Who, after all, knows what is art? 

Robert Henri, from The Art Spirit

Happy Birthday, John Wetton

John Wetton was born on this day 1949.

"Cutting It Fine," with Asia ...

Good morning.

More.

C.P.E. Bach, Flute Concerto in D Minor, Wq 22

Anna Besson and Kore Orchestra perform the Un poco andante ...

Happy Birthday, John Constable

Constable, Cloud Study, 1822

Light – dews – breezes – bloom – and freshness; not one of which has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world. Painting is a science and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature. Why, then, may not a landscape be considered as a branch of natural philosophy, of which pictures are but experiments? We see nothing truly until we understand it.

John Constable, born on this day in 1776

Constable: A Country Rebel ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Wonder.

Loss is the tune of our age, hard to miss and hard to bear. Creatures, places and words disappear, day after day, year on year. But there has always been singing in the dark times -- and wonder is needed now more than ever.

Robert Macfarlane, from The Lost Spells

Jimmy Buffett, "Chanson pour les Petits Enfants"

Accompanied by Mr. Robot ...

Wonder.

Stories.

Jeff Gill on the archaeoastronomy of Alligator Mound ...

On a hilltop overlooking the valley within which sit the Newark Earthworks, there perches an earthwork over 200 feet long, an effigy of sorts with a name that is a mystery in its own right, and a one-time stone mound with stories all its own now missing, but hidden in plain sight nearby.

Graupner, Overture in G major for Viola d'Amore and Bassoon, GWV 460

It's the Ensemble Der Musikalische Garten dancing through the Chaconne ...

Happy Birthday, Gustave Courbet

Courbet, Cedar Tree at Hauteville, 1868

I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients.

Gustave Courbet, born on this day in 1819

Rusticated.

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Great states with good constitutions develop when most people think of their duties and restrain their appetites. Great states sink toward their dissolution when most people think of their privileges and indulge their appetites freely.  This rule is as true for democracies as it is fro autocracies.  And no matter how admirable a constitution may look upon paper, it will be ineffectual unless the written constitution, the web of custom and convention, affirms an enduring moral order of obligation and personal responsibility.

The ruin or recovery of American constitutions, and the general future of of American politics, will be determined more by choices than by circumstances.  Here I have done no more than to suggest what some of those choices might be.  "Not to lose ourselves in  the infinite void of the conjectural world," Burke wrote near the end of his life in  the First Letter of the Regicide Peace, "our business is with what is likely to be affected for the better or worse by the wisdom or weakness of our plans."  To share the American political future through prudent and courageous choices is yet within the realm of possibility.  "I despair neither of the public fortune or of the public mind," Burke continued.  "There is much to be done undoubtedly, and much to be retrieved.  We must walk in new ways, or we can never encounter our enemy in his devious march.  We are not at an end of our struggle, nor near it.  Let us not deceive ourselves; we are at the beginning of great troubles.

Russell Kirk, from On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Cole Porter

Cole Porter was born on this day in 1891.

The best interpreter of Porter's work takes "Night and Day" for a spin ...

Robert Greenidge, Rest in Peace

Robert Greenidge has passed.

Accompanying Jimmy Buffett on "Defying Gravity"...

Happy Birthday, Robert Schumann

Völlner, Robert Schumann, 1850

To poetry belongs the golden, decisive word. Other arts have accepted nature herself as arbiter, from whom they have borrowed their forms. Music is the orphan whose father and mother no one can determine, and it may well be that precisely in this mystery lies the source of its beauty.

Robert Schumann, born on this day in 1810

Vladimir Horowitz performs Träumerei from Kinderszenen, Op. 15 ...

Happy Birthday, Frank Lloyd Wright

Wright, Wright Home and Studio, Great Room, 1889

Our forefathers were not only brave. I believe they were right. I believe that what they meant was that every man born had equal right to grow from scratch by way of his own power unhindered to the highest expression of himself possible to him. This of course not antagonistic by sympathetic to the growth of all men as brothers. Free emulation not imitation of the "bravest and the best" is to be expected of him.

Uncommon he may and will and should become as inspiration to his fellows, not a reflection upon them, not to be resented but accepted--and in this lies the only condition of the common man's survival. So only is he intrinsic to democracy.

Persistently holding quality above quantity only as he attempts to live a superior life of his own, and to whatsoever degree in whatever case he finds it; this is his virtue in a democracy such as ours was designed to be.

Only this sense of proportion affords tranquility of spirit, in itself beauty, in either character of action. Nature is never other than serene even in a thunderstorm. The assumption of the "firm countenance, lips compressed" in denial or resentment is not known to her as it is known to civilization. Such negation by human countenance may be moral (civilization is inclined to morality) but even so not nature. Again exuberance is repose but never excess.

Frank Lloyd Wright, born on this day in 1867, from A Testament