Flickering.

Wyeth, Bonfire, 1997

The flickering light from the hollow eyes,

That are carved in the pumpkins' shell,

Casts an eerie glow through the pumpkin patch

And lends to the trance-like spell,

Of the watcher who glimpses the dark, lithe shape,

That is crowned by the golden hair,

Of the mistress of all October imps,

Half clothed, but yet half bare,

For the slightest sign of a signal sent,

To determine his nightly fare,

And his breath burns, and his heart yearns,

And his fate accepts the dare.

James Walter Orr

Secret.

Out I went into the meadow, 

Where the moon was shining brightly, 

And the oak-tree’s lengthening shadows 

On the sloping sward did lean; 

For I longed to see the goblins, 

And the dainty-footed fairies, 

And the gnomes, who dwell in caverns, 

But come forth on Halloween. 

“All the spirits, good and evil, 

Fay and pixie, witch and wizard, 

On this night will sure be stirring," 

Thought I, as I walked along; 

“And if Puck, the merry wanderer, 

Or her majesty, Titania, 

Or that Mab who teases housewives 

If their housewifery be wrong, 

Should but condescend to meet me”— 

But my thoughts took sudden parting, 

For I saw, a few feet from me, 

Standing in the moonlight there, 

A quaint, roguish little figure, 

And I knew ‘twas Puck, the trickster, 

By the twinkle of his bright eyes 

Underneath his shaggy hair. 

Yet I felt no fear of Robin, 

Salutation brief he uttered, 

Laughed and touched me on the shoulder, 

And we lightly walked away; 

And I found that I was smaller, 

For the grasses brushed my elbows, 

And the asters seemed like oak-trees, 

With their trunks so tall and gray. 

Swiftly as the wind we traveled, 

Till we came unto a garden, 

Bright within a gloomy forest, 

Like a gem within the mine; 

And I saw, as we grew nearer, 

That the flowers so blue and golden 

Were but little men and women, 

Who amongst the green did shine. 

But ‘twas marvelous the resemblance 

Their bright figures bore to blossoms, 

As they smiled, and danced, and courtesied, 

Clad in yellow, pink and blue; 

That fair dame, my eyes were certain, 

Who among them moved so proudly, 

Was my moss-rose, while her ear-rings 

Sparkled like the morning dew. 

Here, too, danced my pinks and pansies, 

Smiling, gayly, as they used to 

When, like beaux bedecked and merry, 

They disported in the sun; 

There, with meek eyes, walked a lily, 

While the violets and snow-drops 

Tripped it with the lordly tulips: 

Truant blossoms, every one. 

Then spoke Robin to me, wondering: 

“These blithe fairies are the spirits 

Of the flowers which all the summer 

Bloom beneath its tender sky; 

When they feel the frosty fingers 

Of the autumn closing round them, 

They forsake their earthborn dwellings, 

Which to earth return and die, 

“As befits things which are mortal. 

But these spirits, who are deathless, 

Care not for the frosty autumn, 

Nor the winter long and keen; 

But, from field, and wood, and garden, 

When their summer’s tasks are finished, 

Gather here for dance and music, 

As of old, on Halloween.” 

Long, with Puck, I watched the revels, 

Till the gray light of the morning 

Dimmed the luster of Orion, 

Starry sentry overhead; 

And the fairies, at that warning, 

Ceased their riot, and the brightness 

Faded from the lonely forest, 

And I knew that they had fled. 

Ah, it ne’er can be forgotten, 

This strange night I learned the secret— 

That within each flower a busy 

Fairy lives and works unseen 

Seldom is ‘t to mortals granted 

To behold the elves and pixies, 

To behold the merry spirits, 

Who come forth on Halloween.

Arthur Peterson

Play.

... we'll watch the old gods play.

Revelry.

Wisdom.

A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.

Umberto Eco, from The Name of the Rose

My remarks were truly out of place ...

The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless.

Umberto Eco, from The Name of the Rose

It is because they often contain a wisdom that is different from ours ... 

Vanessa Werder's "The Name of the Rose: The Monastic, Labyrinthine Library, and Companion of Its Illustration in the Book and the Movie" ... HERE.

Home.

Corot, The Shepherd Under the Trees, Setting Sun, 1853

The modernist message, that art must show life as it is, suggests to many people that, if you aim for beauty, you will end up with kitsch. This is a mistake, however. Kitsch tells you how nice you are: it offers easy feelings on the cheap. Beauty tells you to stop thinking about yourself, and to wake up to the world of others. It says, look at this, listen to this, study this - for here is something more important than you. Kitsch is a means to cheap emotion; beauty is an end in itself. We reach beauty through setting our interests aside and letting the world dawn on us.

There are many ways of doing this, but art is undeniably the most important, since it presents us with the image of human life - our own life and all that life means to us - and asks us to look on it directly, not for what we can take from it but for what we can give to it. Through beauty art cleans the world of our self-obsession. Our human need for beauty is not something that could lack and still be fulfilled as people. It is a need arising from our moral nature. We can wander through this world, alienated, resentful, full of suspicion and distrust. Or we can find our home here, coming to rest in harmony with others and with ourselves. And the experience of beauty guides us along this second path: it tells us that we are at home in the world, that the world is already ordered in our perceptions as a place fit for the lives of beings like us. That is what we see in Corot’s landscapes, Cézanne’s apples, or Van Gogh’s unlaced boots.

Sir Roger Scruton, from Beauty

Sean Connery, Rest In Peace

Sean Connery has passed.

One ping only ...

Dancing.

Wyeth, Mischief Night, 1994

Mr. Macklin takes his knife 

And carves the yellow pumpkin face: 

Three holes bring eyes and nose to life, 

The mouth has thirteen teeth in place. 

Then Mr. Macklin just for fun 

Transfers the corn-cob pipe from his 

Wry mouth to Jack’s, and everyone 

Dies laughing! O what fun it is 

Till Mr. Macklin draws the shade 

And lights the candle in Jack’s skull. 

Then all the inside dark is made 

As spooky and as horrorful 

As Halloween, and creepy crawl 

The shadows on the tool-house floor, 

With Jack’s face dancing on the wall. 

O Mr. Macklin! where's the door?

David McCord

Chris Wall, "He Lives My Dream"

"Praise the" Lloyd Maines on pedal steel ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Marr

Johnny Marr was born on this day in 1963.

The Smiths, "What Difference Does It Make" ...

Blue.

GO BLUE!

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Costica Bradatan's reviews ... 

To be a respectable scholar today is to specialize in a well-defined, rather narrow subfield, and to stay away from generalist pronouncements. Someone once observed about Leo Strauss that his knowledge was so extraordinary, and covered so many fields, that his colleagues considered him incompetent. Indeed, a reputation for encyclopedism can ruin one’s career. The credo of today’s academic orthodoxy was formulated more than a century ago by Max Weber: “Limitation to specialized work, with a renunciation of the Faustian universality of man which it involves, is a condition of any valuable work in the modern world”. Ironically, Weber was a compulsively Faustian man himself, shuttling between history, law, sociology, philosophy and political theory, among other fields.

That we recognize ourselves in an ancient dispute pitting specialized knowledge against polymathy is no accident. As Peter Burke shows persuasively in The Polymath, the debate has always been part of the West’s self-representation, recurring and amplifying over the centuries, “always the same in essence yet always different in emphases and circumstances”. Whenever we oppose experts to amateurs, theory to practice, pure to applied knowledge, detail to the big picture, we partake in an argument that started in archaic Greece. Burke uses Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between “the fox”, who “knows many things”, and the “hedgehog”, who “knows one great thing”, to emphasize what it is fundamentally at stake.

What has kept the debate alive is that, just as the West has typically valued rigour and expertise, it has at the same time been awed by an ideal of universal knowledge. Heraclitus may have poked fun at the polymath Pythagoras, but his fellow Greeks revered a muse called Polymatheia. A good education in antiquity was enkyklios paideia (which gave us our “encyclopedia”), an ambitious project that demanded the student go through the whole circle of knowledge. Much of our own “liberal arts” education runs along similar lines. People during the Renaissance may have occasionally smiled at Leonardo da Vinci’s unrealistic projects, but they admired him all the same. They could not help recognizing in him the embodiment of an ideal that was only too dear to them, just as it is to us. Dr Faustus was meant to be a dark, repellant figure (“Doctor Fausto, that great sodomite and nigromancer”, noted the deputy Bürgermeister of Nuremberg, in 1532, as he denied the scholar entry to the city), yet he has become one of our paradigmatic heroes. When, about a hundred years ago, Oswald Spengler needed a name to describe what modern Western civilization was essentially about, he came up with the term “Faustian”. We have been calling polymaths names (“amateurs” and “frauds” and worse), and yet we’ve never wanted to be without them.

Polymathy has played such an important part in the West’s intellectual and cultural history that Burke can only afford to cover the past six centuries. He works with a list of 500 polymaths, ranging from Filippo Brunelleschi and Nicholas of Cusa to Umberto Eco, Oliver Sacks, Susan Sontag and Tzvetan Todorov. In the first part of the book, Burke discusses his polymaths chronologically, grouping them under a specific zeitgeist (“The Age of the ‘Renaissance Man’, 1400–1600”; “The Age of ‘Monsters of Erudition’, 1600–1700”; “The Age of the ‘Man of Letters’, 1700–1850”; “The Age of Territoriality, 1850–2000”). What Burke seeks to provide here, however, is more than a collection of individual portraits of polymaths, picturesque, inspiring or influential as they may have been. One of the book’s major ambitions is to describe “some intellectual and social trends and so to answer general questions about forms of social organization and climates of opinion that are favorable or unfavorable to polymathic endeavors”.

In an important sense, polymathy is boundlessness in action; it is part of the polymath’s job description to disregard disciplinary boundaries and conventions, labels and classifications. There is something rebellious and anti-establishment at the core of any polymathic project. That is why polymathy, as a cultural and historical phenomenon, is difficult to systematize and to study with any degree of thoroughness. How is one to map out an insurrection against, say, the dominion of maps? That makes Burke’s efforts all the more remarkable. 

CONNECT

Couperin, Les Baricades Mistérieuses

Francisco López performs ...

Done.

Done and done.

Happy Birthday, Vermeer

Vermeer, The Art of Painting, 1668

Jan Vermeer was born on this day in 1632.

Julie Fowlis, Òran an Ròin

Bless.

If you don't believe in Jesus, go to hell ... but, may the god of your choice bless you, also.

Billy Joe Shaver

Happy Birthday, Keats

John Keats was born on this day in 1795.

I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School—and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!

John Keats

Keats and "Negative Capability" ... HERE.

Couperin, Les Sylvains

Marina Belova performs ...

Horror-struck.

Quidor, The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane, 1858

From "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", found in the papers of the late Diedrich Knickerbocker ...

It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travels homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him the Tappan Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight, he could even hear the barking of the watchdog from the opposite shore of the Hudson; but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills—but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly in his bed.

All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate André, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was universally known by the name of Major André’s tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights, and doleful lamentations, told concerning it.

As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to whistle; he thought his whistle was answered; it was but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought he saw something white, hanging in the midst of the tree: he paused and ceased whistling but, on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan—his teeth chattered, and his knees smote against the saddle: it was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another, as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him.

About two hundred yards from the tree, a small brook crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and thickly-wooded glen, known by the name of Wiley’s Swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a bridge over this stream. On that side of the road where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial. It was at this identical spot that the unfortunate André was captured, and under the covert of those chestnuts and vines were the sturdy yeomen concealed who surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone after dark.

As he approached the stream, his heart began to thump; he summoned up, however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot: it was all in vain; his steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to the opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles and alder bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveller.

The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror. What was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late; and besides, what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind? Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents, “Who are you?” He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road. Though the night was dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be ascertained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions, and mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and waywardness.

Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind,—the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!—but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle! His terror rose to desperation; he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse’s head, in the eagerness of his flight.

Washington Irving, from The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon

CONNECT

Wandering.

The surprising value of a wandering mind ... HERE.

Billy Joe Shaver, "Try and Try Again"

WOO-HOO!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Read.

Careful.

Measure.

I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are, but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man.

Sun Bear, Chippewa

Sting.

Dance.

Frank Sinatra, "It Was a Very Good Year"

AC⚡DC, "Hells Bells"

The lamp is lit ...

Undissected.

It is precisely the colouring, the atmosphere, the unclassifiable individual details of a story, and above all the general purport that informs with life the undissected bones of the plot, that really count.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Happy Birthday, Waugh

Evelyn Waugh was born on this day in 1903.

The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life. These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.

Evelyn Waugh, from Brideshead Revisited

Nat "King" Cole, "Autumn Leaves

Awakened.

VARIATION on a THEME by RILKE

A certain day became a presence to me;

there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:

a being. And before it started to descend

from the height of noon, it leaned over

and struck my shoulder as if with

the flat of a sword, granting me

honor and a task. The day's blow

rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,

and what I heard was my whole self

saying and singing what it knew: I can.

Denise Levertov

Billy Joe Shaver, Rest In Peace

I heard from my friend Kurt today. He told me the sad news that Billy Joe Shaver has passed.

"Honky Tonk Heroes" ...

CORSICANA DAILY SUN

It seems like a hundred years 

Since I reached out to dry those tears

Streamin' down my grandma's face

When I told her goodbye

She helped me pack her old suit case

Then pushed my new straw hat in place

With that Corsicana daily sun shinin' bright for me

When that sweet smell of youth

Was mixed with Grandma's apple pie

Oh what I'd give for a slice of yesterday

When that warm light came

Splashin' cross those clovered fields of time

With that Corsicana daily sun shinin' bright for me

There ain't much that's left to tell,

'Cause boy I really went to hell

Seems like every things gone wrong

Since I left my home-town

Wish I was back there now, 

Mendin' fence and milkin' cows

With that Corsicana daily sun shinin' bright for me

Someday I'll find that clover bed 

I'll lay down my weary head

And watch them soft clouds drifting 

As they tease that country sun

I'll eat a chunk of grandma's pie,

And take a walk back in time

When that Corsicana daily sun was shinin' bright for me 

Billy Joe Shaver

Liberty.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s address on the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Statue of Liberty. October 28, 1936.

Happy Birthday, Erasmus

Holbein, The Younger, Erasnus of Rotterdam, 1532

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus was born on this day in 1466.

I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.

Erasmus

Dedicated.

On this day in 1886, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated.

We are not here today to bow before the representation of a fierce and warlike god, filled with wrath and vengeance, but we joyously contemplate instead our own deity keeping watch and ward before the open gates of America, and greater than all that have been celebrated in ancient song. Instead of grasping in her hand thunderbolts of terror and of death, she holds aloft the light which illumines the way to man’s enfranchisement. We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected. Willing votaries will constantly keep alive its fires, and these shall gleam upon the shores of our sister republic in the East. Reflected thence, and joined with answering rays, a stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man’s oppression, until liberty enlightens the world.

Grover Cleveland, from his dedication speech

Scorpions, "Can't Live Without You"

Happy Birthday, Chatham

Russell Chatham was born on this day in 1939.

November Evening, 2010

From "The Great Duck Misunderstanding" ...

Before long, rice and sauce cover the table.  Lemon wedges lie scattered about.  French bread is torn loose.  Each bite of rare, juicy meat is a new thrill, wild duck being something like a cross between filet mignon and fresh deer heart, only with more flavor than either.

 Our wine glasses become increasingly grease-smeared as we pick up each carcass and suck down to the bare bone and gristle.  We carelessly gulp the fancy vintages.  Our shirt fronts are ruined.  Juice and blood run from elbows on to knees and the floor.  The room is blurred. We belch, fart, laugh, and groan.

 As the carnage winds down I think about my date and wonder if it’s too late, but the face of the clock refuses to come into focus.  I find a mirror and what I see there can only be described as soiled.

CONNECT

Wind.

Wyeth, Apples, Study before Picking, 1942

To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air.  What is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet.  Some of these apples might be labeled, “To be eaten in the wind.” It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.  The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past.  It is a fruit which will probably become extinct in New England.  I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples.  Ah, poor soul, there are many pleasures which you will not know!  The end of it all will be that we shall be compelled to look for our apples in a barrel.

Henry David Thoreau

Devotion.

We must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.

Theodore Roosevelt, from his Inaugural Address, March 1905

Happy Birthday, Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt was born on this day in 1858.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

Hoarsely.

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

Henry James

Scarecrow.

Disney's 1963 movie, Dr. Syn, Alias The Scarecrow, adapted from the Russell Thorndike novels ...

Happy Birthday, Jabs

Mathias Jabs was born on this day in 1955.

Scorpions, "Lovedrive" ...

Happy Birthday, Tipton

Glenn Tipton was born on this day in 1948.

Priest, "Grinder" ...

Happy Birthday, Anderson

Jon Anderson was born on this day in 1944.

Yes, "Going for the One" ...

Know.

Dad's senior year in high school ...

Crispy air and azure skies,

High above, a white cloud flies,

Bright as newly fallen snow.

Oh the joy to those who know October!

Colors bright on bush and tree.

Over the weedy swamp, we see

A veil of purple and brown and gold.

Thy beauty words have never told. October!

Scolding sparrows on the lawn,

Rabbits frisking home at dawn,

Pheasants midst the sheaves of grain,

All in harmony acclaim, October!

Brown earth freshly turned by plow,

Apples shine on bended bough,

Bins o'erflowed with oats and wheat,

And satisfaction reigns complete. October!

Radiant joy is everywhere.

Spirits in tune to the spicy air,

Thrill in the glory of each day.

Life's worth living when we say, October!

Joseph Pullman Porter

Arrow-heads.

The sweet calm sunshine of October, now

    Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mold

The purple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough

    drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold.

William Cullen Bryant

Done.

Done and done.

Geophysical.

Silvestrov, "The Messenger"

Hélène Grimaud performs ...

More.

Jerry Jeff Walker, "Desperados Waiting for a Train"

Thanks, Jackie Jack.

Adjustments.

In almost every public position in life compromises must be made.  The great man is he who makes the minor adjustments—without dishonor—that permit the great issues or important matters to be carried to proper completion.

General George C. Marshall

Jerry Jeff Walker, "Pickup Truck Song"

Goin' for the coastin' record ...

Fun.

Usually.

Jerry Jeff Walker, Rest In Peace

 Jerry Jeff Walker has passed.

"Contrary to Ordinary" ...

Damn it.

Jethro Tull, "Songs from the Wood"

Let me bring you all things refined:

Galliards and lute songs served in chilling ale ...

Glasses.