"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

31 March 2023

Glorious.


I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones -- the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.

Beryl Markham, from West with the Night

This is bullshit, of course, but interesting to consider.  

In any way, possible or impossible, real or imagined, keep going back to the fields and forests, streams and seas of the glorious past.  Gods live there.

Frank Sinatra, "Fly Me to the Moon"

We've heard "Fly Me to the Moon" enough to last ten lifetimes, but this swingin' version deserves a replay or two.

Quincy Jones at the wheel of the Count Basie Orchestra ...

Hang.

Released.


The Smiths released Louder than Bombs on this day in 1987.

"Panic" ...

Moss.

Wyeth, Stair Window, 1954


Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

Archibald MacLeish, from "Ars Poetica"

Spin.


Like a wheel, gonna spin it ...

Deep.

Whistler, Violet and Silver - The Deep Sea, 1893

Happy Birthday, Angus


Angus Young was born on this day in 1955.

AC⚡DC, "Whole Lotta Rosie" ...


And just like that, it's Friday.

Potential.


Lunch spells potential, whereas dinner is a full stop in the day. And what is breakfast, but a snack to tide you over while you think about lunch?

Fergus Henderson

30 March 2023

De Falla, La Vida Breve

Marianne Crebassa sings "Vivan los que rien" ...

Elvis Costello, "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes"

Released.


Pretenders released Extended Play on this day in 1981.

"Porcelain" ...

An excellent book ...

Nothing.

Stuart, John Adams, 1823


We should always remember, that a free Constitution of civil Government cannot be purchased at too dear a Rate; as there is nothing on this Side of the new Jerusalem, of equal Importance to Mankind.

John Adams, from a letter to Archibald Bullock, 1 July 1776

Byrd, Laudibus in Sanctis

Let melodious psalteries sing with fine string, 
Let joyful dance praise with nimble foot

VOCES8 perform ...

Happy Birthday, van Gogh

van Gogh, Pine Trees and Dandelions in the Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital, 1890


Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for that’s the real way to learn to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.

Vincent van Gogh, born on this day in 1853, from a letter to Theo van Gogh, January 1874

29 March 2023

Good.


You're the joke of the neighborhood
Why should you care if you're feelin' good?

Apartness.


Take away religion, take away philosophy, take away the higher aims of art, and you deprive ordinary people of the ways in which they can represent their apartness. Human nature, once something to live up to, becomes something to live down to instead. Biological reductionism nurtures this ‘living down’, which is why people so readily fall for it. It makes cynicism respectable and degeneracy chic. It abolishes our kind, and with it our kindness.

Asylum.

Chappel, Samuel Adams, 1862


Samuel Adams' "On American Independence," from August 1, 1776 ...
Courage, then, my countrymen! Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth, for civil and religious liberty? ...

Other nations have received their laws from conquerors; some are indebted for a constitution to the suffering of their ancestors through revolving centuries. The people of this country, alone, have formally and deliberately chosen a government for themselves, and with open and uninfluenced consent bound themselves into a social compact. Here no man proclaims his birth or wealth as a title to honorable distinction, or to sanctify ignorance and vice with the name of hereditary authority. He who has most zeal and ability to promote public felicity, let him be the servant of the public. This is the only line of distinction drawn by nature. Leave the bird of night to the obscurity for which nature intended him, and expect only from the eagle to brush the clouds with his wings and look boldly in the face of the sun.

Released.


Supertramp released Breakfast in America on this day in 1979.

One of the greatest songs ever, "Take the Long Way Home" ...

28 March 2023

Chopin, Nocturne Op.37, No.1 in G Minor

Alice Sara Ott performs ...

Defiantly.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Afternoon.

Sears, Afternoon Light, 2022

Released.


Led Zeppelin released Houses of the Holy on this day in 1973.

"The Song Remains the Same/Rain Song" ...

Inventory.

From a 1993 French documentary on Jim Harrison ... 

[T]he portrait of an author who draws a region and vice versa. Simultaneously, in small touches through the landscapes and people met over time and the seasons, is portrayed a portrait of a man who constantly questions the meaning of things and disengages the face of a country, its great spaces, its myths and its roots.  The look illuminates the country and makes the "inventory of places" ...

27 March 2023

Sacred.


Certainly work is not always required of man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness, the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected. Abraham, seated in his tent door in the heat of the day, would be to the philosophers of the nineteenth century an object for uplifted hands and pointed fingers. They would see in him only the indolent Arab, whom nothing but the foolish fancy that he saw his Maker in the distance, could rouse to run.

George MacDonald, from Wilfrid Cumbermede

Kurtastrophe, thanks for the nuns.

Peter Rowan, "In the Pines"

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Webster


Ben Webster was born on this day in 1909.

"Over the Rainbow" ...

Released.


David Gilmour released About Face on this day in 1984.

"Murder" ...

Learned.


As soon as I learned from my mother that there was a place called school that I must attend willy-nilly --- a place where you were obliged to think about matters prescribed by a "teacher," not about matters decided by yourself---I was appalled.

Sir Fred Hoyle

Van Morrison, "Dweller on the Threshold"

Honest.


I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words.

John Milton

Jethro Tull, "Skating Away on the Thin Ice of the New Day"

One day you'll wake up, in the present day
A million generations, removed from expectations
Of being who you really want to be ...


Humming away
Throughout day
Without an ounce of care

Humming away
Throughout the day
Listen closely -- if you dare

Thanks for the reminder, Kurt.  

Changed.


Trying to figure out when problems can be solved using current knowledge—and when they have to chart a new path instead ...
When problems are so far off the map that mathematicians can’t even imagine how to reach them, the challenge is more than coming up with a better boat — it’s coming up with a better map. If you don’t know where an island is located, no amount of ingenuity will get you there. But once you’ve located it, you might find a surprising route that will bring you to its shores.

This was the case with the most celebrated mathematical result of the 21st century — Grigori Perelman’s 2003 proof of the Poincaré conjecture, a problem about determining when a three-dimensional shape is equivalent to the three-dimensional sphere. The problem had stymied mathematicians for a century. Then in the early 1980s, William Thurston placed the Poincaré conjecture in a broader theoretical landscape — and from there, mathematicians began to discover new ways to approach it.

“I think one of the reasons we were stonewalled was not because we didn’t have the right techniques, but because the problem wasn’t put in the right conceptual framework,” McMullen said. “The changed question suggested the changed techniques.”

In other words, if a new map reveals a surprising sea route to your destination, it might occur to you to build a ship.

Yet there’s also no guarantee that a problem can be solved at all. For example, a certain conjecture suggests that the digits of pi are uniformly distributed, so the numbers 0-9 each appear with the same frequency overall. Experimental computations back up the conjecture, but mathematicians have no idea how to prove it — and they may never.

“There’s a very high probability that the conjecture is true, but its truth might be an accident that’s very hard to access by pure logic,” McMullen said.

Do.


The PONDS

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them --

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided --
and that one wears an orange blight --
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away --
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled --
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing --
that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

Mary Oliver

Attitude.


Punk rock isn’t something you grow out of.  Punk rock is like the Mafia, and once you’re made, you’re made.  Punk rock is not the clothes or the music. Punk rock is an attitude, the "don't-give-me-any-bullshit-'cause-I-can-see-right-through-to-the-heart-of-the situation'-attitude. Because I'm wise to the tricks of the world. We're sick of all the bullshit. Give us some truth.

Joe Strummer

Happy Birthday, Banks


Tony Banks was born on this day in 1950.

"Dance on a Volcano/Firth of Fifth" with Genesis ...

Positive.


Ari Weinzweig on deep gratitude, positive energy, and working at the “one task” for 41 years ...
One of the people who mattered was a man by the name of Ashok Patel. Ashok died recently at the age of 85. I haven’t seen Ashok in ages—he bussed tables at the Deli in the 80s and into the early 90s—but I cried when I read his obituary last week. It lists working at Zingerman’s as one of the key points of life. Being included there, to be honest, means as much to me as a James Beard Award. I will never forget Ashok. Not because he was the greatest busser, but simply because he was himself, he worked hard, he cared, and was probably one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. Ashok Patel will not show up in the New York Times or make the network news. But here at Zingerman’s, he mattered. And Ashok believing that he mattered is, I believe, a big part of what makes the poetry of Zingerman’s what it is.

Donald Hall wrote that “One day, of course, no one will remember what I remember.” Which is most certainly true. We can, though, at least optimistically imagine what we would like others to recall long after we ourselves are gone. Hall, who graced the planet with his creative presence for 88 years, wrote this piece later in his life that I hope will be true for the ZCoB:
Here, among the thirty thousand days of a long life, a single day stands still: The sun shines, it is raining; we sleep, we make love, we plant a tree, we walk up and down eating lunch. 

Through a common employer, I had the honor to meet and learn from Ari many times in my former life in food service.  He's the most positive person I've ever met, which, I'm certain, is the biggest reason for his success.  

26 March 2023

Reduction.


Farnam Street's Mental Model: The Map is Not the Territory ...
The map of reality is not reality. Even the best maps are imperfect. That’s because they are reductions of what they represent. If a map were to represent the territory with perfect fidelity, it would no longer be a reduction and thus would no longer be useful to us. A map can also be a snapshot of a point in time, representing something that no longer exists. This is important to keep in mind as we think through problems and make better decisions.

Evidence.

Michelangelo, David, 1504


The truest evidence that any civilization ever leaves behind about itself is its art. Art never lies.

Waldemar Januszczak

Teachers ...
  1. Know your students.  Go the extra mile to understand them (you'll get older; they'll stay the same age).
  2. Understand your craft (it's not a science).
  3. Understand your subject (this never ends).
  4. Understand the stories (be a master storyteller).
  5. Don't lecture; it's not about you (ever).
  6. Provide means of inspiration (see number 1).
  7. Nurture investigation (control is an illusion; the best lessons are the unplanned ones)
  8. Ask more questions (of everything and everyone).
  9. Declare less (see number 5).
  10. Be transparent.

Colin Hay, "A Man Without a Name"

Dr. Richard Feynman, Take the World from Another Point of View

At 23:14, Feynman and Sir Fred Hoyle begin discussing ideas for arriving at what is versus what could be ...


I know what the condition is -- that he did whatever he did as far as he can go.

Pursuit.

Homer, Eight Bells, 1886


Lawrence Yeo's Framework for Knowledge ...If you learn something for the first time, does that make you knowledgeable?
When we treat knowledge as a verb, it creates a process that separates what we know from the ever-changing quality of how we know it ...

The sharp division in our political systems, the inability to determine what is truthful in our news cycles, the animus toward dialogue amongst opposing viewpoints, the failure in aligning our ethical norms — these are all the illegitimate children of misplaced certainty. Our obsession with knowledge has gotten us here, but we’ve discarded the quality of its pursuit in the process.
Further ...
This is what education is all about. When you take the time to spread your findings to people, you simultaneously create the opportunity for a revision in your thought process as well. This is the root behind the adage of “teaching being the best form of learning.”

Bryan Adams, "Kick Ass"

Attempt.

Michelangelo, David (detail), 1504


Long experience has taught me this about the state of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand things, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand, to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new.

Galileo Galilei

Struggle.


Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. 

The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Frederick Douglass

Exposed.

Michelangelo, David (detail), 1504


A principal of a Florida school has been forced to resign after a parent complained that sixth-grade students were exposed to pornography.


Just look at art.  Think and learn ... and keep looking at art.

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Telemann, Suite for Two Violins, "Gulliver's Travels," TWV 40:108

Jennifer Frautschi and Benjamin Beilman perform ...

Happy Birthday, Frost

Eisenstaedt, Robert Frost at His Desk, 1955


The SOUND of TREES

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by the day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

Robert Frost, born on this day in 1874.

A Lover's Quarrel with the World ...

25 March 2023

Forever.

Todd Snider's Jerry Jeff Forever tribute ...

Limited.


I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.

Ronald Reagan

Act.


It was she [Benoist’s Grandmother] who first taught me the meaning of noblesse oblige: viz., that belonging to the aristocracy does not consist in benefiting from more privileges than others or in having additional rights, but in imposing greater burdens upon one oneself, having a higher notion of one’s duties, feeling more responsible than others. Behaving in a noble manner, whatever class one comes from, means never being satisfied with oneself, never reasoning in terms of utility. It means the beauty of gratuitousness, of “useless” expenditure, the beau geste, the conviction that one could always have done better, that it is odious to boast of what one has done, that a man’s quality is tested by his ability to act contrary to his own interests whenever it becomes necessary.

Alain de Benoist

24 March 2023

Once.


The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

Thomas Paine

Debussy, Nuages

Alice Sara Ott and Francesco Tristano perform ...

Sardine.

Gabrielle Hamilton's Sardine Sandwich ...

Happy Birthday, Morris

Watts, William Morris, 1870


TAPESTRY TREES

Oak.

I am the Roof-tree and the Keel;
I bridge the seas for woe and weal.

Fir.

High o’er the lordly oak I stand,
And drive him on from land to land.

Ash.

I heft my brother’s iron bane;
I shaft the spear, and build the wain.

Yew.

Dark down the windy dale I grow,
The father of the fateful Bow.

Poplar.

The war-shaft and the milking-bowl
I make, and keep the hay-wain whole.

Olive.

The King I bless; the lamps I trim;
In my warm wave do fishes swim.

Apple-tree.

I bowed my head to Adam’s will;
The cups of toiling men I fill.

Vine.

I draw the blood from out the earth;
I store the sun for winter mirth.

Orange-tree.

Amidst the greenness of my night,
My odorous lamps hang round and bright.

Fig-tree.

I who am little among trees
In honey-making mate the bees.

Mulberry —tree.

Love’s lack hath dyed my berries red:
For Love’s attire my leaves are shed.

Pear-tree.

High o’er the mead-flowers’ hidden feet
I bear aloft my burden sweet.

Bay.

Look on my leafy boughs, the Crown
Of living song and dead renown!

William Morris, born on this day in 1834

22 March 2023

Enchanting.


The HAGLETS

By chapel bare, with walls sea-beat,
The lichened urns in wilds are lost
About a carved memorial stone
That shows, decayed and coral-mossed,
A form recumbent, swords at feet,
Trophies at head, and kelp for a winding-sheet.

I invoke thy ghost, neglected fane,
Washed by the waters’ long lament;
I adjure the recumbent effigy
To tell the cenotaph’s intent—
Reveal why fagotted swords are at feet,
Why trophies appear and weeds are the winding-sheet.

–––––––

By open ports the Admiral sits,
And shares repose with guns that tell
Of power that smote the arm’d Plate Fleet
Whose sinking flag-ship’s colors fell;
But over the Admiral floats in light
His squadron’s flag, the red-cross Flag of the White.
   The eddying waters whirl astern,
The prow, a seedsman, sows the spray;
With bellying sails and buckling spars
The black hull leaves a Milky Way;
Her timbers thrill, her batteries roll,
She revelling speeds exulting with pennon at pole,
   But ah, for standards captive trailed
For all their scutcheoned castles’ pride—
Castilian towers that dominate Spain,
Naples, and either Ind beside;
Those haughty towers, armorial ones,
Rue the salute from the Admiral’s dens of guns.

Ensigns and arms in trophy brave,
Braver for many a rent and scar,
The captor’s naval hall bedeck,
Spoil that insures an earldom’s star—
Toledoes great, grand draperies, too,
Spain’s steel and silk, and splendors from Peru.
   But crippled part in splintering fight,
The vanquished flying the victor’s flags,
With prize-crews, under convoy-guns,
Heavy the fleet from Opher drags—
The Admiral crowding sail ahead,
Foremost with news who foremost in conflict sped.
   But out from cloistral gallery dim,
In early night his glance is thrown;
He marks the vague reserve of heaven,
He feels the touch of ocean lone;
Then turns, in frame part undermined,
Nor notes the shadowing wings that fan behind.

There, peaked and gray, three haglets fly,
And follow, follow fast in wake
Where slides the cabin-lustre shy,
And sharks from man a glamour take,
Seething along the line of light
In lane that endless rules the war-ship’s flight.
    The sea-fowl here, whose hearts none know,
They followed late the flag-ship quelled,
(As now the victor one) and long
Above her gurgling grave, shrill held
With screams their wheeling rites—then sped
Direct in silence where the victor led.
    Now winds less fleet, but fairer, blow,
A ripple laps the coppered side,
While phosphor sparks make ocean gleam,
Like camps lit up in triumph wide;
With lights and tinkling cymbals meet
Acclaiming seas the advancing conqueror greet.

But who a flattering tide may trust,
Or favoring breeze, or aught in end?—
Careening under startling blasts
The sheeted towers of sails impend;
While, gathering bale, behind is bred
A livid storm-bow, like a rainbow dead.
    At trumpet-call the topmen spring;
And, urged by after-call in stress,
Yet other tribes of tars ascend
The rigging’s howling wilderness;
But ere yard-ends alert they win,
Hell rules in heaven with hurricane-fire and din.
    The spars, athwart at spiry height,
Like quaking Lima’s crosses rock;
Like bees the clustering sailors cling
Against the shrouds, or take the shock
Flat on the swept yard-arms aslant,
Dipped like the wheeling condor’s pinions gaunt.

A lull! and tongues of languid flame
Lick every boom, and lambent show
Electric ’gainst each face aloft;
The herds of clouds with bellowings go:
The black ship rears—beset—harassed,
Then plunges far with luminous antlers vast.
    In trim betimes they turn from land,
Some shivered sails and spars they stow;
One watch, dismissed, they troll the can,
While loud the billow thumps the bow—
Vies with the fist that smites the board,
Obstreperous at each reveller’s jovial word.
    Of royal oak by storms confirmed,
The tested hull her lineage shows:
Vainly the plungings whelm her prow—
She rallies, rears, she sturdier grows:
Each shot-hole plugged, each storm-sail home,
With batteries housed she rams the watery dome.

Dim seen adrift through driving scud,
The wan moon shows in plight forlorn;
Then, pinched in visage, fades and fades
Like to the faces drowned at morn,
When deeps engulfed the flag-ship’s crew,
And, shrilling round, the inscrutable haglets flew.
    And still they fly, nor now they cry,
But constant fan a second wake,
Unflagging pinions ply and ply,
Abreast their course intent they take;
Their silence marks a stable mood,
They patient keep their eager neighborhood.
    Plumed with a smoke, a confluent sea,
Heaved in a combing pyramid full,
Spent at its climax, in collapse
Down headlong thundering stuns the hull:
The trophy drops; but, reared again,
Shows Mars’ high-altar and contemns the main.

Rebuilt it stands, the brag of arms,
Transferred in site—no thought of where
The sensitive needle keeps its place,
And starts, disturbed, a quiverer there;
The helmsman rubs the clouded glass—
Peers in, but lets the trembling portent pass.
    Let pass as well his shipmates do
(Whose dream of power no tremors jar)
Fears for the fleet convoyed astern:
"Our flag they fly, they share our star;
Spain’s galleons great in hull are stout:
Manned by our men—like us they’ll ride it out."
    Tonight’s the night that ends the week—
Ends day and week and month and year:
A fourfold imminent flickering time,
For now the midnight draws anear:
Eight bells! and passing-bells they be—
The Old year fades, the Old Year dies at sea.

He launched them well. But shall the New
Redeem the pledge the Old Year made,
Or prove a self-asserting heir?
But healthy hearts few qualms invade:
By shot-chests grouped in bays ’tween guns
The gossips chat, the grizzled, sea-beat ones.
    And boyish dreams some graybeards blab:
"To sea, my lads, we go no more
Who share the Acapulco prize;
We’ll all night in, and bang the door;
Our ingots red shall yield us bliss:
Lads, golden years begin to-night with this!"
    Released from deck, yet waiting call,
Glazed caps and coats baptized in storm,
A watch of Laced Sleeves round the board
Draw near in heart to keep them warm:
"Sweethearts and wives!" clink, clink, they meet,
And, quaffing, dip in wine their beards of sleet.

"Ay, let the star-light stay withdrawn,
So here her hearth-light memory fling,
So in this wine-light cheer be born,
And honor’s fellowship weld our ring—
Honor! our Admiral’s aim foretold:
A tomb or a trophy, and lo, ’t is a trophy and gold!"
   But he, a unit, sole in rank,
Apart needs keep his lonely state,
The sentry at his guarded door
Mute as by vault the sculptured Fate;
Belted he sits in drowsy light,
And, hatted, nods—the Admiral of the White.
    He dozes, aged with watches passed—
Years, years of pacing to and fro;
He dozes, nor attends the stir
In bullioned standards rustling low,
Nor minds the blades whose secret thrill
Perverts overhead the magnet’s Polar will:—

Less heeds the shadowing three that play
And follow, follow fast in wake,
Untiring wing and lidless eye—
Abreast their course intent they take;
Or sigh or sing, they hold for good
The unvarying flight and fixed inveterate mood.
    In dream at last his dozings merge,
In dream he reaps his victory’s fruit;
The Flags-o’-the-Blue, the Flags-o’-the-Red,
Dipped flags of his country’s fleets salute
His Flag-o’-the-White in harbor proud—
But why should it blench? Why turn to a painted shroud?
    The hungry seas they hound the hull,
The sharks they dog the haglets’ flight;
With one consent the winds, the waves
In hunt with fins and wings unite,
While drear the harps in cordage sound
Remindful wails for old Armadas drowned.

Ha—yonder! are they Northern Lights?
Or signals flashed to warn or ward?
Yea, signals lanced in breakers high;
But doom on warning follows hard:
While yet they veer in hope to shun,
They strike! and thumps of hull and heart are one.
    But beating hearts a drum-beat calls
And prompt the men to quarters go;
Discipline, curbing nature, rules—
Heroic makes who duty know:
They execute the trump’s command,
Or in peremptory places wait and stand.
    Yet cast about in blind amaze—
As through their watery shroud they peer:
"We tacked from land: then how betrayed?
Have currents swerved us—snared us here?"
None heed the blades that clash in place
Under lamps dashed down that lit the magnet’s case.

Ah, what may live, who mighty swim,
Or boat-crew reach that shore forbid,
Or cable span? Must victors drown—
Perish, even as the vanquished did?
Man keeps from man the stifled moan;
They shouldering stand, yet each in heart how lone.
    Some heaven invoke; but rings of reefs
Prayer and despair alike deride
In dance of breakers forked or peaked,
Pale maniacs of the maddened tide;
While, strenuous yet some end to earn,
The haglets spin, though now no more astern.
    Like shuttles hurrying in the looms
Aloft through rigging frayed they ply—
Cross and recross—weave and inweave,
Then lock the web with clinching cry
Over the seas on seas that clasp
The weltering wreck where gurgling ends the gasp.

Ah, for the Plate-Fleet trophy now,
The victor’s voucher, flags and arms;
Never they’ll hang in Abbey old
And take Time’s dust with holier palms;
Nor less content, in liquid night,
Their captor sleeps—the Admiral of the White.

            Imbedded deep with shells
            And drifted treasure deep,
            Forever he sinks deeper in
            Unfathomable sleep—
            His cannon round him thrown,
            His sailors at his feet,
            The wizard sea enchanting them
            Where never haglets beat.

            On nights when meteors play
            And light the breakers dance,
            The Oreads from the caves
            With silvery elves advance;
            And up from ocean stream,
            And down from heaven far,
            The rays that blend in dream
            The abysm and the star.

Herman Melville

Sierra Ferrell

"Why Haven't You Loved Me Yet" ...


"Harvest Moon" ...


"Whispering Waltz" ...

Tested.


Overconfidence was risky in such a hostile environment, a mistake most often made by warriors who had never truly been tested.

Jocko Willink

21 March 2023

Franck, Panis Angelicus

Elīna Garanča performs with Staatskapelle Dresden, under the direction of Christoph Eschenbach ...

Explosive.

 Dali, Spring Explosive, 1965

Scorpions, "Big City Nights"

1990 ...


A quarter-century later (in HD so you won't miss any subtle nuance) ...

Govern.


The machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed.

Ivan Illich, from In the Mirror of the Past: Lectures and Addresses, 1978-1990

Continued.


So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.

Roald Dahl, from Matilda

Thank you, Sarah.

Arose.


ANCESTOR

It was a time when they were afraid of him.
My father, a bare man, a gypsy, a horse
with broken knees no one would shoot.
Then again, he was like the orange tree,
and young women plucked from him sweet fruit.
To meet him, you must be in the right place,
even his sons and daughter, we wondered
where was papa now and what was he doing.
He held the mystique of travelers
that pass your backyard and disappear into the trees.
Then, when you follow, you find nothing,
not a stir, not a twig displaced from its bough.
And then he would appear one night.
Half covered in shadows and half in light,
his voice quiet, absorbing our unspoken thoughts.
When his hands lay on the table at breakfast,
they were hands that had not fixed our crumbling home,
hands that had not taken us into them
and the fingers did not gently rub along our lips.
They were hands of a gypsy that filled our home   
with love and safety, for a moment;
with all the shambles of boards and empty stomachs,
they filled us because of the love in them.
Beyond the ordinary love, beyond the coordinated life,   
beyond the sponging of broken hearts,
came the untimely word, the fallen smile, the quiet tear,
that made us grow up quick and romantic.
Papa gave us something: when we paused from work,
my sister fourteen years old working the cotton fields,
my brother and I running like deer,
we would pause, because we had a papa no one could catch,
who spoke when he spoke and bragged and drank,
he bragged about us: he did not say we were smart,
nor did he say we were strong and were going to be rich someday.   
He said we were good. He held us up to the world for it to see,
three children that were good, who understood love in a quiet way,
who owned nothing but calloused hands and true freedom,
and that is how he made us: he offered us to the wind,
to the mountains, to the skies of autumn and spring.
He said, “Here are my children! Care for them!”
And he left again, going somewhere like a child
with a warrior’s heart, nothing could stop him.
My grandmother would look at him for a long time,
and then she would say nothing.
She chose to remain silent, praying each night,
guiding down like a root in the heart of earth,
clutching sunlight and rains to her ancient breast.
And I am the blossom of many nights.
A threefold blossom: my sister is as she is,
my brother is as he is, and I am as I am.
Through sacred ceremony of living, daily living,
arose three distinct hopes, three loves,
out of the long felt nights and days of yesterday.

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Thanks, Pop.