Unfortunately.

Unfortunately, these are no longer made.

It was a quiet early afternoon in the library, and we librarians were enjoying a rather raucous chat at the circulation desk.

Bingen, Caritas Abundat

Alexandra Polarczyk in St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle ...

Murmuring.

Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another.

Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.

Umberto Eco, from the postscript to The Name of the Rose

Intuition.

From 1974, James Day speaks with Professor Bradbury about imagination, his dislike of school, and, most importantly, not thinking ...

I've had a sign over my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, "Don't Think."  You must never think at the typewriter.  You must feel and then your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.  You collect up a lot of data, you do a lot of thinking away from your typewriter, but at the typewriter you should be living.  It should be a living experience, just as when I'm here with you.  

Speaking to you, you're popping all sorts of questions at me.  I don't have time to think about them.  I can react to them.  I try to say things that are meaningful and react to them.  If I stopped and thought too long, we'd both of us fall asleep and that can happen at the typewriter, too.  

The worst thing you do when you think is lie.  You can make up reasons that are not true for the things that you did.  What you're trying to do as a creative person is surprise yourself, find out who you really are.  Try not to lie.  Try to tell the truth all the time.  The only way to do this is by being very active and very emotional and get out of yourself, making lists of things that you hate and things that you love.  You write about these then intensely and when it's over, then you can think about it, then you can look at it.  Well, it works or it doesn't work, something's missing here.  Then, if something is missing, you go back and re-emotionalize that so it's all of a piece.    

But thinking is to be a corrective in our life, it's not supposed to be the center of our life.  Living is supposed to be the center of our life, Being is supposed to be the center with correctives around which hold us like the skin holds our our blood and our flesh in.   Our skin is not our way of life.  The way of our our living is the blood coming through our veins, the ability to sense and to feel and to know.  The intellect doesn't really help you very much there.  You should get on with the business of living.  

You rely heavily upon intuition, completely.  Everything of mine is intuitive.  All the poetry I've written, I couldn't possibly tell you how I did it.  I don't know anything about the rhythms or the schemes or the inner rhymes or any of this sort of thing.  It comes from 40 years of reading poetry and having heroes that i loved.  I love Shakespeare.  I don't intellectualize about him.  I love Gerard Manley Hopkins.  I don't intellectualize about him.   I love Dylan Thomas.  I don't know what the hell he's writing about half the time, but he sounds good, he rings well.  

I'll give you an example of this sort of thing.  I walked into my living room, oh, 20 years ago, when one of my daughters was about four years old.  A Dylan Thomas record was on the set and I thought that my wife had put the record on.  Come to find out, my four-year-old had put on his record.  I came into the room, she pointed to the record and said he knows what he's doing.  That's great!  See, that's not intellectualized, it's an emotional reaction.  If there is no feeling there cannot be great art. 

Boulanger, Psalm 129

Florian Helgath conducts the Bochum Symphony with Chorwerk Ruhr ...

129 

1 Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say:

2 Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have not prevailed against me.

3 The plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows.

4 The Lord is righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.

5 Let them all be confounded and turned back that hate Zion.

6 Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up:

7 Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom.

8 Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you: we bless you in the name of the Lord.

Hang.

'Tis the last Thursday cocktail hour of Summer Break.  The weekend begins now ...

"Hang care!" exclaimed he. "This is a delicious evening; the wine has a finer relish here than in the house, and the song is more exciting and melodious under the tranquil sky than in the close room, where the sound is stifled. Come, let us have a bacchanalian chant—let us, with old Sir Toby, make the welkin dance and rouse the night-owl with a catch! I am right merry. Pass the bottle, and tune your voices—a catch, a catch! The lights will be here anon."     

Charles Ollier, from "The Haunted Manor-House of Paddington" 

For best results, listen to this: The Kinks, "Around the Dial" ...

The euphony transformed me and inundated my soul in a roguish countenance, the likes of which I had know well in younger days. Such impishness soon drove out the complaints of the day. 

Umberto Limongiello

Stretch.

The poet only desires exhalation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head who splits.

G.K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy

Stillness.

Too many words cause exhaustion
In the mind or from the mouth
Better to abide in stillness

Lao Tzu

Always.

Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going.

Norton Juster, from The Phantom Tollbooth

Merula, Canzon La Lusignola

Giovanni Antonini sets the pace with Il Giardino Armonico ...

Behold.

We can’t crucify beauty without steadily walking into hell. Every time we walk the dog we are surrounded by hints of the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s a big thought to swim into. One of the ways we can practice being saintly is to notice that sort of grace.  The more we abide in it, the more folks around us start to notice. This is one of the attributes that used to define saints; you glimpse more of the Kingdom of Heaven around them. They are literally an eye-opener. A saint has had the saliva and dirt of the great druid Yeshua wipe the blindness from their eye. They behold.

Martin Shaw, from Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us

Study.

James Prosek wades the introspective waters of Izaak Walton in his documentary, The Complete Angler ...

When I'm on the small Connecticut brooks of my youth, I want to be innocent again. I think of sleepouts and thick pine forests, clear running water, garden worms, diminutive flies, and first kisses with a freckle-faced girl.  These are my best memories, along with days angling for wild trout.  The brook, with all its colors and sounds, is an education, a place where I can learn about myself and other creatures, as well. 

Without even realizing it, it is in my early years of fishing I began to follow Isaac Walton's first philosophy: study to be quiet. 

Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "Honeysuckle Rose"

Spirit.

Reflect that nothing merits admiration except the spirit, the impressiveness of which prevents it from being impressed by anything.

Seneca, from Letters from a Stoic

Those were heady days.

Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good"

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

The title cut ...

Happy Birthday, Joe Jackson

Joe Jackson was born on this day in 1954.

"I'm the Man"...

Liszt, Deux Légendes, S. 175

Ingrid Carbone performs No. 1, "St. Francis of Assisi: The Sermon to the Birds"...

Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "Love Me or Leave Me"

Routine.

Tom.

A long lost partner-in-crime.  We lived in Park Hall back in 1984.  Most nights he had a routine that I could easily get talked into:

1. Watch Letterman
2. Slap Idol's Rebel Yell on the hi-fi
3. Order pizza from Catfish Biff's
4. Get outside and skate the parking garage on 11th while we waited for our feast.

There were many nights when I noticed the eastern sky brightening as we made our way back to the dorm.

We were in that garage last time I saw Tom.

I got an email from him today and he was reminiscing about those heady days.

Here's to Tom and my long-lost Makaha ...

The South Campus Mix (put it in your Walkman Sport and run your headphone cord up through the back of your shirt)

1. Idol, "Blue Highways
2. Wall of Voodoo, "Lost Weekend"
3. Black Uhuru, "Darkness"
4. Furs, "Run and Run"
5. Killing Joke, "Let's All Go (To the Fire Dances)"
6. Steel Pulse, "Ravers" ... Woops outside your head
7. New Order, "Chosen Time"
8. The Specials, "It's Up to You"
9. The Police, "No Time this Time"
10. Birthday Party, "Zoo Music Girl"
11. Ronald Koal & The Trillionaires, "Destination Zero"
12. Adam & The Ants, "Antmusic" and "Killer in the Home"
13. Bunny Wailer, "Rootsman Skanking"
14. Third World, "1865 (96º In The Shade)"
15. English Beat, "Rotating Head"
16. INXS, "Old World New World"
17. The Cult, "Spirit Walker"
18. U2, "I Will Follow." "Out of Control," "Rejoice," and "Treasure"
19. Joy Division, "Disorder" and "Isolation"
20. Talking Heads, "Mind" and "What a Day That Was"
21. Bauhaus, "The Spy in the Cab" (still makes me laugh)
22. Clash, "Hitsville U.K.," "Police On My Back," "Sean Flynn," and "Ghetto Defendant"
23. Echo & The Bunnymen, "My Kingdom"

Don't forget to save a buck to get a gyro from Apollo's on the way back.

The Kinks, "Last of the Steam Powered Trains"

Too.

In silence between writer and reader a memory of words and hands takes form.

We learn substance and worth through others’ eyes.

Cloth, flesh, ink, skin, paper, dust.

These are but material forms in which ideas dwell.

In the roar of a crowded shelf of books, desert sun and Arctic night, distant seas of thought awaken, mingle, and are still.

Minds meet where the reading hand grasps the void and inks its passage in empty margins.

Lost, forgotten, thumbed, split.

We beat the scars of patient decades and centuries’ dreams.

Whose hands will next hold me, I do not know.

The book, too, reads its readers in real time.

Henry Wessells, from The Private Life of Books

Happy Birthday, Ian Anderson

Ian Anderson was born on this day in 1947.

"The Secret Language of Birds"...

Yes, "Wonderous Stories"

Certain.

Remember.

Remember, though: don't think about it, just do it. 

Don't pause and be philosophical, 

... because from a philosophical standpoint, it's dreary.

Philip K. Dick, from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "Under a Blanket of Blue"

Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "Come Dance With Me"

Excellent.

Excellent albums ...

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

Rare.

The best books look like they've been run over by a truck, but they have to been run over by the right truck.  As a general matter, rare is rare for a reason and it's not because everybody in the world wants it.  Usually the people who appreciate something rare in the realm of books are just as rare as the the things themselves, usually.

Beirut, "The Rip Tide"

So the waves and I 

Found the rolling tide ...

Yes, "Wonderous Stories"

Inventing.

Children should be able to do their own experimenting and their own research. Teachers, of course, can guide them by providing appropriate materials, but the essential thing is that in order for a child to understand something, he must construct it himself, he must re-invent it. Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself will remain with him visibly.

Jean Piaget

Happy Birthday, Izaak Walton

Huysmans, Walton, 1672

Oh the gallant Fisher's life,

It is the best of any,

'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife,

And 'tis belov'd of many:

Other joyes

are but toyes,

only this

lawful is,

for our skill

breeds no ill,

but content and pleasure.

In a morning up we rise,

Ere Aurora's peeping,

Drink a cup to wash our eyes,

Leave the sluggard sleeping:

Then we go

to and fro,

with our knacks

at our backs,

to such streams

as the Thames,

if we have the leasure.

When we pleas to walk abroad

For our recreation,

In the fields is our abode,

Full of delectation.

Where in a brook

with a book,

or a Lake,

fish we take;

there we sit,

for a bit,

till we fish intangle.

Izaak Walton, born on this day in 1593

Live.

Borrell, Escaping the Critics, 1874

To live sincerely is to live your own life, not your father's life or your mother's life or your neighbor's life; to spend soul on large concerns, not to waste your life as a kind of human ant carrying around small burdens; and finally, to live sincerely is to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life," as Thoreau declares in Walden.  

That may require unsociability.  Thoreau noticed that at a certain age boys remain in shadows and corners of rooms, look a little wild, make up their minds about a given grown up in a second, and may come to supper or not.  Thoreau values that unsociability in both boys and girls.  But those moments soon disappear, replaced by an old anxiety to please.

Robert Bly, from The Winged Life: The Poetic Voice of Henry David Thoreau

Mahler, Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor

Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the Adagietto ...

Antidote.

Tyler VanderWeele from The Human Flourishing Program (hmmm) at the Institute of Quantitative Social Sciences of Harvard University (whew!) has an antidote to the echo chamber ...

In the past decades, there has been concern expressed over an increasing lack of intellectual or viewpoint diversity within academic settings. It is sometimes argued that our academic contexts are now too dominated by liberal or progressive perspectives, and thus that viewpoint diversity and the free exchange of ideas have been stifled. For example, one recent paper tracked the liberal-to-conservative faculty ratio as changing from 2.3-to-1 in 1989 to 5-to-1 in 2017 to 7-to-1 today. Attention to these matters has been given in psychology, in law, and more generally, along with the potential implications. Claims have been made that conservatives are being discriminated against, that the environment has become too hostile, and that a culture of self-censorship has become dominant. There is, of course, a political dimension to these matters, but also an intellectual dimension. If we are not engaging with others with different perspectives, it can become easier to exist in our own echo chambers; it can be more difficult to understand others, to come up with new ideas, and to find common ground.

Of course, what to do, if anything, about these matters, is complex. Academic disciplines pride themselves on their rigorous disciplinary standards and on their autonomy. Proposals to “force” viewpoint diversity can sometimes seem to compromise academic standards and the autonomy of academic institutions. In a paper recently published by the Human Flourishing Program, I put forward proposals to attempt to strengthen engagement with a diverse range of views while also preserving the scholarly standards and the relative autonomy of disciplines and departments. For example, instructors might try to ensure coverage of the range of views present in society, but also critically describe the best reasons for, and against, those views. If many people in society hold one view, and many others do not, then the strongest arguments for and against the view should be provided. Students can likewise, in essay writing or in debates, be asked to attempt to provide the strongest arguments for the positions they do not hold, before proceeding with their own positions or potential refutations. The scholastic practice of disputation—illustrated in, for example, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae—required one to present the strongest arguments of the opposing view first, and such approaches could also be employed within classrooms today.

Ari Weinzweig continues with what he calls, "taking the long view"...

In a world being trained by social media to be increasingly fixated on immediate gratification, a renewed focus on the long term has the potential for significant positive impacts. Author Peter Schwartz, whose 1991 book, The Art of the Long View, had a huge influence on me when I read it shortly after it came out, says,

If you look at your life as a tiny, yet influential part of history, then you can begin to know who you really are, and you will start to know that what you do professionally and how you impact the lives of others has more meaning. … We make our decisions about the future based on our own mental maps about how the world works. And we are very much prisoners of those mental maps. … How do we challenge those mental maps that we see about how people behave, how organizations work and how institutions evolve?

Pärt, Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten

Conductor Kent Nagano leads the Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra

Published.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Henry David Thoreau, from Walden, published on this day in 1854

Happy Birthday, Jean Piaget

The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done—men who are creative, inventive, and discoverers.

The second goal of education is to form minds which can be critical, can verify, and not accept everything they are offered. The great danger today is of slogans, collective opinions, ready-made trends of thought. We have to be able to resist individually, to criticize, to distinguish between what is proven and what is not.

So we need pupils who are active; who learn early to find out by themselves, partly by their own spontaneous activity and partly through material we set up for them, and who learn early to tell what is verifiable and what is simply the first idea to come to them.

Jean Piaget, born on this day in 1896, from Eleanor Duckworth's "Piaget rediscoved"

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Heady.

1981.

Sly & Robbie (It's often said that if you heard ten reggae songs, at least five of them would have Sly and Robbie on the record.)

The Wildcatetts weren't allowed do to a routine to this.

Grace, "Pull Up to the Bumper"...

Those were heady days.

Thanks, Shelli.

Don't.

Don’t immanentize the eschaton!

Happy Birthday, Charles Bulfinch

Bulfinch, Tontine Crescent, 1794

Charles Bulfinch was born on this day in 1763.

"Building Boston: The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch," a lecture presented by Joseph Cornish, architectural historian and director of Design Review of the Boston Landmarks Commission ...

Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 2 in E-Minor, Op. 27

Eivind Gullberg Jensen conducts the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra ...

Frank Sinatra, "She's Funny That Way"

Nice goin', dad ...

We were once a proper civilization.

Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "Baubles, Bangles And Beads"

More.

Put out more flags ...