"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 May 2024

Star-Like.


FIREFL(YERS) in the GARDEN

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can’t sustain the part.

Robert Frost

What great memories.  Thank you, Zoë!

The Specials, "Rat Race"

New Order, "As It Is When It Was"

Treasures.

Wren, Newby Hall, 1695


On the following morning, the sun darted his beams from over the hills through the low lattice window. I rose at an early hour, and looked out between the branches of eglantine which overhung the casement. To my surprise Scott was already up and forth, seated on a fragment of stone, and chatting with the workmen employed on the new building. I had supposed, after the time he had wasted upon me yesterday, he would be closely occupied this morning, but he appeared like a man of leisure, who had nothing to do but bask in the sunshine and amuse himself.

I soon dressed myself and joined him. He talked about his proposed plans of Abbotsford; happy would it have been for him could he have contented himself with his delightful little vine-covered cottage, and the simple, yet hearty and hospitable style, in which he lived at the time of my visit. The great pile of Abbotsford, with the huge expense it entailed upon him, of servants, retainers, guests, and baronial style, was a drain upon his purse, a tax upon his exertions, and a weight upon his mind, that finally crushed him.

As yet, however, all was in embryo and perspective, and Scott pleased himself with picturing out his future residence, as he would one of the fanciful creations of his own romances. "It was one of his air castles," he said, "which he was reducing to solid stone and mortar." About the place were strewed various morsels from the ruins of Melrose Abbey, which were to be incorporated in his mansion. He had already constructed out of similar materials a kind of Gothic shrine over a spring, and had surmounted it by a small stone cross.

Among the relics from the Abbey which lay scattered before us, was a most quaint and antique little lion, either of red stone, or painted red, which hit my fancy. I forgot whose cognizance it was; but I shall never forget the delightful observations concerning old Melrose to which it accidentally gave rise. The Abbey was evidently a pile that called up all Scott's poetic and romantic feelings; and one to which he was enthusiastically attached by the most fanciful and delightful of his early associations. He spoke of it, I may say, with affection. "There is no telling," said he, "what treasures are hid in that glorious old pile. It is a famous place for antiquarian plunder; there are such rich bits of old time sculpture for the architect, and old time story for the poet. There is as rare picking in it as a Stilton cheese, and in the same taste—the mouldier the better."

Washington Irving, from "Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey"

Thanks to Walker's Arms for kindling this flame.

Augustus Pablo, "East of the River Nile/Java/Day Before the Riot"


What a glorious morning.

Strauss, Don Quixote, Op. 35

The Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, under the direction of François-Xavier Roth, perform ...


Experience.

Edward Espe Brown on the benefits of poor decisions ...


Throughout my whole life, my Dad said, "Rob, I'm not smarter than you, I just have more experience."

Sound.


The fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of the individual; it has also narrowed the relationship between one human being and another, which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of infinite possibilities and set down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothing happens.

For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don’t think we can deal with.

But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Number Eight of his Letters to a Young Poet

Happy Birthday, Uncle Walt


SONG of MYSELF, 47

I am the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own,
He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

The boy I love, the same becomes a man not through derived power, but in his own right,
Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear,
Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak,
Unrequited love or a slight cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts,
First-rate to ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play on the banjo,
Preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small-pox over all latherers,
And those well-tann'd to those that keep out of the sun.

I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
I follow you whoever you are from the present hour,
My words itch at your ears till you understand them.

I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up the time while I wait for a boat,
(It is you talking just as much as myself, I act as the tongue of you,
Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosen'd.)

I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house,
And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air.

If you would understand me go to the heights or water-shore,
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves a key,
The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.

No shutter'd room or school can commune with me,
But roughs and little children better than they.

The young mechanic is closest to me, he knows me well,
The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me with him all day,
The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of my voice,
In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with fishermen and seamen and love them.

The soldier camp'd or upon the march is mine,
On the night ere the pending battle many seek me, and I do not fail them,
On that solemn night (it may be their last) those that know me seek me.
My face rubs to the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket,
The driver thinking of me does not mind the jolt of his wagon,
The young mother and old mother comprehend me,
The girl and the wife rest the needle a moment and forget where they are,
They and all would resume what I have told them.

Walt Whitman, born on this day in 1819

Pierce.


Listen, O friend, to the thunderous roar of Shabd,
Which reverberates throughout the firmament.
Water, which becomes turbid by relishing the earth,
Gets cleansed of its impurities when filtered.
Waves of pure bliss emanate from the heart
When the moss that covers it is removed.

Hold the arrow, be still, stretch the bow taut,
Fix your aim sharp at the target, pierce the firmament.
The invisible world is contained within the human eye,
So say and describe all men of inner knowledge.
Behold the Brahmand within, through your astral eye.
When that eye is opened, everything stands revealed.

The soul in Sunn will hear resounding peals of Sound,
She will uncover and know the essence of Shabd.

They alone, O Tulsi, will know that perfect state,
Who have seen and experienced it themselves.

Tulsidas

30 May 2024

Queen, "Hammer to Fall"

Act.


I saw a stop sign, and it occurred to me that just as no one expects a stop sign to stop a car, I shouldn’t expect words to substitute for experience. That’s not their job, although words certainly can be misused in that way. The job of words is to direct us toward experience, to round out experience, to facilitate experience, and to give us ways to share at least pale shadows of that experience with those we love. And the job of words is to help us learn to be — and act — human.

Beyond.

Alberto Manguel on Borges and the impossibility of writing ...
It is a fact that the fundamental paradox of language is apparent in almost every culture.  In Islamic thought, the letters of the alphabet have an independent, divinely decreed will effected before pen is put to paper and over which the scribe has no control.  In the 16th century, Tulsidas, the greatest of Hindu poets, argued that the reality of fiction is always other than the reality of the material world world and overrides it.  In Zen Buddhism, the instantaneous illumination, or Sartori, is always both within and beyond the grasp of words. So, in all these cases, as of course in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the rightest impossibilities appear to be essentially two: to conceive properly and to put properly the concept into words.  The writer's craft is therefore twice constrained by the limits of imagination, which require faith to provide the evidence of things not seen, as St. Paul had it, and by the limits of language which require writers to rely on, what Coleridge called the willing suspension of disbelief, of their readers and listeners ...

Off.


Our skills and works are but tiny reflections of the wild world that is innately and loosely orderly. There is nothing like stepping away from the road and heading into a new part of the watershed. Not for the sake of newness, but for the sense of coming home to our whole terrain. "Off the trail" is another name for the Way, and sauntering off the trail is the practice of the wild. That is also where, paradoxically, we do our best work. But we need paths and trails and will always be maintaining them. You first must be on the path, before you can turn and walk into the wild.

Gary Snyder, from The Practice of the Wild

Intensity.


Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it. This may not be true but he had believed it to be true for a long time and this summer they had experienced happiness for a month now and, already, in the nights, he was lonely for it before it had ever gone away.

Ernest Hemingway, from Islands in the Stream

Good.

Hyde, The Four Voices of the Wind, n/d


SONG of NATURE

Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.

I hid in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;

And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.

I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew;

What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,
They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Or granite, marl, and shell.

But he, the man-child glorious,—
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide forever run?
Will never my winds go sleep in the west?
Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
And satellites have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades,
I weary of my robe of snow,
My leaves and my cascades;

I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is played;
What without him is summer's pomp,
Or winter’s frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day, and one of night,
And one of the salt sea-sand.

One in a Judaean manger,
And one by Avon stream,
One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.

I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o’er kings to rule;—
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again;
Seethe, fate! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.

Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones, and countless days.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ēriks Ešenvalds, "Stars"

Performed by the University of Pretoria Camerata, conducted by Dr. Michael Barrett ...

Aphanipoiesis.


Ari Weinzweig on aphanipoiesis ...
If we’re paying attention, awe and amazement appear. The experience is, I believe, what happens when a farmer walks into the field one day and is speechless with the beauty of it all. Or a band puts together a beyond-amazing set even though the musicians and the music are, on the surface, the same as they were the week before. As Bateson says, “It’s the unseen coalescence that brings about vitality.”

I know enough to know and also deeply appreciate that others will have experienced the huddle very differently than I did and that there’s great merit to their views as well. But for me, it was pretty magical. It’s possible that it might have even been what Nora Bateson calls aphanipoiesis. Bateson made up the term, because, as she says there was no word to describe it. It is, she says, “a new word for an aspect of a living process.” Aphanipoiesis, as she tells it, describes a “way in which life coalesces toward vitality in unseen ways.” The term is, itself, a coming together of two words: aphanis is from the Greek, meaning “obscured, unseen, unnoticed”; poiesis means “to bring forth, to make.” As I’ve begun to assimilate the idea of aphanipoesis, I’ve come to believe that while it's not impossible to see it, it does require us to look more deeply, to embrace complexity, context, and interrelatedness in ways that most of us have not been trained to do. A great deal of work often goes into keeping things from coming apart, but maybe we would be wise to work positively for the future believing that over time things will come together. 

AC⚡DC(-ish), "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)

Video from yesterday's performance in Seville ...


Good morning.

29 May 2024

Furs, "It Goes On"

Sing.

It should make your mouth sing, really.


Happy Birthday, Henry



The Library of Congress describes Patrick Henry's rousing 29th birthday, ...
On his twenty-ninth birthday, as a new member of Virginia’s House of Burgesses, Henry presented a series of resolutions: the Virginia Resolves on the Stamp Act External, which opposed Britain’s Stamp Act. The Resolves were adopted on May 30, 1765. He concluded his introduction of the Resolves with the fiery words “Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third—” when, it is reported, voices cried out, “Treason! treason!” “—and George the Third may profit by their example! If this be treason make the most of it." 

Not taking selfies holding his frappucino, not staring in the mirror at himself in his Fortnite onesie, not blowing doobage out of a battery-operated cancer-stick, no, Patrick Henry was publicly dedicating himself to self-evident truths, the pursuit of opportunity, and the superiority of republican government ... bruh.

Sting, The Wild, Wild Sea


Learn.


"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."

T.H. White, born on this day in 1906, from The Once and Future King

Thanks, Jess.

True.

Funny because it's true ...


Technique is the proof of your seriousness.  

Most people who don't care for tea (especially green tea) would benefit from understanding the proper techniques of brewing it.  The best tea you'll drink is made from loose leaf tea, but if a tea bag is used, for best results, prepare it properly.

Receiver.


We do have a deadening desire to reduce the mystery, the uncertainty of our lives…. 
We bind our lives in solid chains of forced connections that block and fixate us. …. 
Our sense of uncertainty and our need for security nail our world down. …. 
 
Each time we go out, the world is open and free;
 it offers itself so graciously to our hearts, to create something new and wholesome
 from it each day. It is a travesty of possibility and freedom to think
 we have no choice, that things are the way they are and that the one street,
 the one right way is all that is allotted to us. 
Certainty is a subtle destroyer.

We confine our mystery within the prison of routine and repetition. 
One of the most deadening forces of all is repetition. 
Your response to the invitation and edge of your life becomes reduced 
to a series of automatic reflexes. For example, you are so used to getting up
 in the morning and observing the morning rituals of washing and dressing.
 You are still somewhat sleepy, your mind is thinking of things you have to do
 in the day that lies ahead. You go through these first gestures of the morning
 often without even noticing that you are doing them. This is a disturbing
 little image, because it suggests that you live so much of your one life
with the same automatic blindness of adaptation.

… Habit is a strong invisible prison.
 Habits are styles of feeling, perception, 
or action that have now become second nature to us.
 A habit is a sure cell of predictability; it can close you off from the unknown,
 the new, and the unexpected. You were sent to the earth to become a receiver
 of the unknown. From ancient times, these gifts were prepared for you; 
now they come towards you across eternal distances. 
Their destination is the altar of your heart. 

John O’Donohue

Remembers.

Smith, Carl Sandburg, 1961


Bees and a honeycomb in the dried head of a horse in a pasture corner—a skull in the tall grass and a buzz and a buzz of the yellow honey-hunters.       

And I ask no better a winding sheet
                             (over the earth and under the sun.) 

Let the bees go honey-hunting with yellow blur of wings in the dome of my head, in the rumbling, singing arch of my skull.     

Let there be wings and yellow dust and the drone of dreams of honey—who loses and remembers?—who keeps and forgets? 

In a blue sheen of moon over the bones and under the hanging honeycomb the bees come home and the bees sleep.

Carl Sandburg

Happy Birthday, Chesterton


From time to time in human history, but especially in restless epochs like our own, a certain class of things appears.  In the old world they were called heresies. In the modern world they are called fads. Sometimes they are for a time useful; sometimes they are wholly mischievous. But they always consist of undue concentration upon some one truth or half-truth. Thus it is true to insist upon God’s knowledge, but heretical to insist on it as Calvin did at the expense of his Love; thus it is true to desire a simple life, but heretical to desire it at the expense of good feeling and good manners. The heretic (who is also the fanatic) is not a man who loves truth too much; no man can love truth too much.  The heretic is a man who loves his truth more than truth itself.  He prefers the half-truth that he has found to the whole truth which humanity has found. He does not like to see his own precious little paradox merely bound up with twenty truisms into the bundle of the wisdom of the world.

G.K. Chesterton, born on this day in 1874, from "On Reading"

28 May 2024

Determined.

Ohio Stadium, on this night in 1988 ...
A soul in tension that's learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I ...

Released.


Glenn Frey released No Fun Aloud on this day in 1982.

"Partytown" ...

Happy Birthday, Gibby


Kirk Gibson was born on this day in 1957.

Gibby goes big-fly against Goose Gossage in the 1984 World Series ...



Happy Birthday, Percy


Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now, I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.

Walker Percy, born on this day in 1916

Garden.

Holbein, the Younger, Portrait of Sir Thomas More, 1527


The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.

Sir Thomas More

Whole.


Allowing only ordinary ability and opportunity, we may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK! WORK! Not transient and fitful effort, but patient, enduring, honest, unremitting and indefatigable work into which the whole heart is put.  There is no royal road to perfection.

Frederick Douglass

Run.


You start dying slowly;
if you do not travel,
if you do not read,
If you do not listen to the sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly:
When you kill your self-esteem,
When you do not let others help you.

You start dying slowly;
If you become a slave of your habits,
Walking everyday on the same paths ...
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colours
Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.

You start dying slowly:
If you avoid to feel passion
And their turbulent emotions;
Those which make your eyes glisten
And your heart beat fast.

You start dying slowly:
If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain
If you do not go after a dream
If you do not allow yourself
At least once in your lifetime
To run away from sensible advice
Don't let yourself die slowly
Do not forget to be happy!

Pablo Neruda

27 May 2024

Greatest.

Caravaggio, Ecce Homo, 1609


Newly verified Caravaggio goes on display today in Madrid ...
Ecce Homo, which shows Roman governor Pontius Pilate presenting Christ to the people, is one of only about 60 known works by the Italian master - but it nearly escaped the attention of the wider art world, having initially been attributed to a lesser artist.

It was withdrawn from sale on the orders of the Spanish government in 2021, hours before it was due to be sold at auction for an opening price of €1,500 (£1,280).

Now, three years after that decisive intervention, the work is being exhibited for the first time since its true status was confirmed.

Earlier this month, the Prado said the painting was "without a doubt, a Caravaggio masterpiece", calling it "one of the greatest discoveries in the history of art".

Excellent.

An excellent book (and mindset) ...


Thanks to Steve for pointing me toward this.

Castle Howard and Brideshead: Fact, Fiction, and Inbetween

Castle Howard curator, Dr. Chris Ridgway presents ...

C.P.E. Bach, Cello Concerto in A Major, Wq 172

 Monika Leskovar performs with the Zagreb Soloists ...

Tenor.

Sargent, Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887


The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue? And, again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed through a lie. Truth to facts is not always truth to sentiment; and part of the truth, as often happens in answer to a question, may be the foulest calumny. A fact may be an exception; but the feeling is the law, and it is that which you must neither garble nor belie. The whole tenor of a conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate statement; the beginning and the end define and travesty the intermediate conversation. You never speak to God; you address a fellow-man, full of his own tempers; and to tell truth, rightly understood, is not to state the true facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not truth to letter, is the true veracity. To reconcile averted friends a Jesuitical discretion is often needful, not so much to gain a kind hearing as to communicate sober truth. 

Robert Louis Stevenson, from "Truth of Intercourse"

Farther.


Justice McNeil reviews Hemingway's Boat ...
Hemingway was the captain of his own boat. He went where he pleased; he avoided places he wanted to avoid. He could admire the beauty in something that was tragic simply because it was real. He could admire and appreciate that there was more than what he could immediately see and understand. He could feel indescribably that being on the Gulf, in Pilar, gave him a part of the great flow, the greater story. This story involved all those things, known and unknown, happy and not, that he admired and that inspired his writing. Part of understanding this indefinable feeling is to understand that a stream will always flow forwards. That implies that one can never go back. There was quite a lot in Hemingway’s life that he could not go back to.

Edens lost. This is a theme flowing through his life and through his work. In A Farewell to Arms, the lieutenant in Italy is thinking about a far-off Michigan, although it is never named as being so. This recalls Hemingway’s youth. A time when his family planned on making an Eden-like retreat in the Michigan woods. But this would never be, so he must return to it only in his imagination. Then there were the lost days of his youth, lost in the war. The happy days of his first marriage with Hadley, his only “true” and “pure” marriage. There were the days in Paris and the many friendships that he lost because of pride and ego. In his writing, trying to regain the Edens lost, Hemingway is caught somewhere between how he wished things to be and how he knew things were. But even so, he can’t go back. No one can.

If you can’t go back, is your only real alternative to go farther out? Perhaps that is how we ought to understand Pilar and Hemingway in the Gulf. Again, it all goes on and the sun also rises.

Greatness.

Jerk.


Saveur's guide to jerk ...
Few Caribbean dishes are as well-traveled, or as beloved, as Jamaican jerk, a humble meal of bone-in chicken or pork parts doused in a blend of spices and hot peppers, and cooked slowly over smoldering pimento wood branches. Peppered across the island, roadside jerk stands entice passersby with wafts of fragrant smoke rising from makeshift grills encased in sheets of tin siding. Supple, juicy, and crispy in spots where the meat has been charred by the fire, jerk is an integral part of Jamaica's economy too, with restaurants like the perpetually busy Scotchies or the relaxed Pepper's Jerk Center serving tourists and locals year-round. It's typically eaten with your hands alongside fried cornmeal "festivals" (dumplings), scorching-­hot Scotch bonnet pepper sauce, and cold beer.

We usually serve jerk with fried plantains and peas and rice.  The plantains are bias-sliced thinly, tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper.  I do these in a cast iron skillet on the grill.

The rice and peas are a must ...

Ingredients
  • 2 cans red kidney beans
  • 1 can coconut milk
  • 1 small white onion, chopped
  • 1 head garlic, crushed
  • 1 teaspoon fresh thyme
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 cups rice
  • 1 Scotch Bonnet pepper, whole
Preparation
  1. Saute onion, garlic, thyme in olive oil in a medium sauce pan.
  2. Drain beans; pour into two-quart measuring cup; add coconut milk and enough water to make 4 cups of liquid.
  3. Add liquid to sauce pan; boil.
  4. Add rice; stir; reduce heat, add pepper, and cook covered until rice is cooked.
  5. Remove pepper and serve.
I have been a fan of Walkerswood jerk seasoning for thirty years.  Recent study has made me a disciple of Grace based on its balanced, depth of flavor. 

Use bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs.-Ed.

Memory.

President Reagan's Memorial Day remarks made during ceremonies at Arlington Cemetery, May 31, 1982 ...
The willingness of some to give their lives so that others might live never fails to evoke in us a sense of wonder and mystery. One gets that feeling here on this hallowed ground, and I have known that same poignant feeling as I looked out across the rows of white crosses and Stars of David in Europe, in the Philippines, and the military cemeteries here in our own land. Each one marks the resting place of an American hero and, in my lifetime, the heroes of World War I, the Doughboys, the GI's of World War II or Korea or Vietnam. They span several generations of young Americans, all different and yet all alike, like the markers above their resting places, all alike in a truly meaningful way.

Winston Churchill said of those he knew in World War II they seemed to be the only young men who could laugh and fight at the same time. A great general in that war called them our secret weapon, "just the best darn kids in the world." Each died for a cause he considered more important than his own life. Well, they didn't volunteer to die; they volunteered to defend values for which men have always been willing to die if need be, the values which make up what we call civilization. And how they must have wished, in all the ugliness that war brings, that no other generation of young men to follow would have to undergo that same experience.

As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation. And let us also pledge to do our utmost to carry out what must have been their wish: that no other generation of young men will every have to share their experiences and repeat their sacrifice.

Memory.


DECORATION DAY

Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
  On this Field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
  Nor sentry's shot alarms! 

Ye have slept on the ground before,
  And started to your feet
At the cannon's sudden roar,
  Or the drum's redoubling beat. 

But in this camp of Death
  No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
  No wound that bleeds and aches. 

All is repose and peace,
  Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
  It is the Truce of God! 

Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
  The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
  Your rest from danger free. 

Your silent tents of green
  We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
  The memory shall be ours. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Memory.


Ari Weinzweig on bridges to the past ...
In my case, the rye bread isn’t just a random selection. It gives me a small but meaningful way to hold on to a positive piece of my past, and strengthens my connection with my mother, her parents, grandparents, and though I’ll never know, probably many more generations before them too. While I can’t re-cross the bridge, I can still put this amazing rye bread in my toaster and on my table every day, and think about her and the world she and my grandparents came from.

I certainly grew up with it. It’s clearly been a low-key connection, solidly if silently in place, between my mother and me. Unlike many things that caused conflict, rye was a culinary link that we both liked, one without hugely difficult emotional baggage, no philosophical controversy over which we needed to disagree. It’s obviously much bigger than just bread. In a way, this is a culinary unveiling—the Jewish ceremony that takes place a year after the death when the tombstone is placed on the grave that had been, until then, unmarked. By putting this down on paper I guess I’m likely committing to mind and memory what I think of whenever I eat rye bread.

26 May 2024

Happy Birthday, Stephanie.


Stephanie Lynn Nicks was born on this day in 1948.

"Angel"

Opposites.

The 1984 French Open Final ...
McEnroe and Lendl had been swapping the world No 1 ranking for much of the past year but though the American held top spot as Roland-Garros began in 1984, he was not an overwhelming favourite for the title, thanks to his lack of love for the clay.

McEnroe had only played at Roland-Garros four times before, with two quarter-final runs his best efforts. By contrast, Lendl loved the mud and had already reached the final, in 1981, when he lost to Bjorn Borg in five sets.

But McEnroe had three reasons to believe this could be his year. First, he arrived at Roland-Garros unbeaten in 1984; second, he had beaten Lendl in their past four encounters, including twice on clay in the previous month. And third, because while he already owned five Grand Slam titles, Lendl was still chasing his first, having lost all four of his slam finals, leaving many to question whether he had the mental strength required.

Both men had reached the final for the loss of just one set; McEnroe to Jose Higueras in round four and Lendl to Andres Gomez, a future champion, at the same stage. Opposites in playing style and personality, it was no secret that the two men disliked each other ...

25 May 2024

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Respect.


§8. Respect for flag

No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.
  1. The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
  2. The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.
  3. The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.
  4. The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker's desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.
  5. The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.
  6. The flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling.
  7. The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
  8. The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
  9. The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.
  10. No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.
  11. The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning

Know your role.

Giants.

Adrian Vila documents the giants of La Mancha ...

Sieg, "The Secret of Secrets"

Performed by Eva Jornet ...

Where'er.

Muncha, Morning Star, 1902


The moonlight fades from flower and rose 
And the stars dim one by one; 
The tale is told, the song is sung, 
And the Fairy feast is done.
 
The night-wind rocks the sleeping flowers, 
And sings to them, soft and low.
 
The early birds erelong will wake: 
'T is time for the Elves to go.
 
O'er the sleeping earth we silently pass, 
Unseen by mortal eye, 
And send sweet dreams, as we lightly float 
Through the quiet moonlit sky;-- 
For the stars' soft eyes alone may see, 
And the flowers alone may know, 
The feasts we hold, the tales we tell; 
So't is time for the Elves to go.
 
From bird, and blossom, and bee, 
We learn the lessons they teach; 
And seek, by kindly deeds, to win 
A loving friend in each.
 
And though unseen on earth we dwell, 
Sweet voices whisper low, 
And gentle hearts most joyously greet 
The Elves where'er they go.
 
When next we meet in the Fairy dell, 
May the silver moon's soft light 
Shine then on faces gay as now, 
And Elfin hearts as light.
 
Now spread each wing, for the eastern sky 
With sunlight soon shall glow.
 
The morning star shall light us home: 
Farewell! for the Elves must go.

Louisa May Alcott

Sonia Wieder-Atherton, Jewish Prayer

Happy Birthday, Emerson


Mine are the night and morning,
The pits of air, the gulf of space,
The sportive sun, the gibbous moon,
The innumerable days.

I hid in the solar glory,
I am dumb in the pealing song,
I rest on the pitch of the torrent,
In slumber I am strong.

No numbers have counted my tallies,
No tribes my house can fill,
I sit by the shining Fount of Life,
And pour the deluge still;

And ever by delicate powers
Gathering along the centuries
From race on race the rarest flowers,
My wreath shall nothing miss.

And many a thousand summers
My apples ripened well,
And light from meliorating stars
With firmer glory fell.

I wrote the past in characters
Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings
And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew;

What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.

Time and Thought were my surveyors,
They laid their courses well,
They boiled the sea, and baked the layers
Or granite, marl, and shell.

But he, the man-child glorious,—
Where tarries he the while?
The rainbow shines his harbinger,
The sunset gleams his smile.

My boreal lights leap upward,
Forthright my planets roll,
And still the man-child is not born,
The summit of the whole.

Must time and tide forever run?
Will never my winds go sleep in the west?
Will never my wheels which whirl the sun
And satellites have rest?

Too much of donning and doffing,
Too slow the rainbow fades,
I weary of my robe of snow,
My leaves and my cascades;

I tire of globes and races,
Too long the game is played;
What without him is summer's pomp,
Or winter’s frozen shade?

I travail in pain for him,
My creatures travail and wait;
His couriers come by squadrons,
He comes not to the gate.

Twice I have moulded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand,
Made one of day, and one of night,
And one of the salt sea-sand.

One in a Judaean manger,
And one by Avon stream,
One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe.

I moulded kings and saviours,
And bards o’er kings to rule;—
But fell the starry influence short,
The cup was never full.

Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more,
And mix the bowl again;
Seethe, fate! the ancient elements,
Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain.

Let war and trade and creeds and song
Blend, ripen race on race,
The sunburnt world a man shall breed
Of all the zones, and countless days.

No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new,
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, born on this day in 1803

24 May 2024

Terry Hall, "I Saw the Light"


I love it when a cover is better than the original.

Steel Pulse, "Biko's Kindred Lament"

The system ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Mac.

Non.

Done.

Done and done.

Buzzing.


Idle youth
Enslaved to everything,
By being too sensitive
I have wasted my life.
Ah! Let the time come
When hearts are enamoured.

I said to myself: let be,
And let no one see you:
Do without the promise
Of higher joys.
Let nothing delay you,
Majestic retirement.

I have endured so long
That I have forgotten everything;
Fear and suffering
Have flown to the skies.
And morbid thirst
Darkens my veins.

Thus the meadow
Given over to oblivion,
Grown up, and flowering
With frankincense and tares
To the wild buzzing
Of a hundred filthy flies.

Oh! the thousand bereavements
Of the poor soul
Which possesses only the image
Of Our Lady!
Can one pray
To the Virgin Mary?

Idle youth
Enslaved by everything,
By being too sensitive
I have wasted my life.
Ah! Let the time come
When hearts are enamoured!

Arthur Rimbaud

The Specials, "Too Hot"

22 May 2024

Happy Birthday, Cassatt

Cassatt, Lilacs in a Window, 1883


I believe that art should serve a purpose beyond mere aesthetics. It should challenge the viewer's perception and provoke thought.

Mary Cassatt, born on this day in 1844

Happy Birthday, Wagner


Whatever my passions demand of me, I become for the time being -- musician, poet, director, author, lecturer or anything else.

Richard Wagner, born on this day in 1813

Solti drives the bus in a masterful performance of the overture to The Flying Dutchman ...

Happy Birthday, Doyle


“My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave mental exaltation."

Arthur Conan Doyle, from The Sign of Four

21 May 2024

Happy Birthday, Rousseau

Rousseau, Surprised, 1891


Why did I paint a couch in the middle of the jungle?  Because one has a right to paint one's dreams.

Henri Rousseau, born on this day in 1844

Away.


Lost really has two disparate meanings. Losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing. There are objects and people that disappear from your sight or knowledge or possession; you lose a bracelet, a friend, the key. You still know where you are. Everything is familiar except that there is one item less, one missing element. Or you get lost, in which case the world has become larger than your knowledge of it. Either way, there is a loss of control. Imagine yourself streaming through time shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names. This is what the view looks like if you take a rear-facing seat on the train. Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in an onrushing experience. It peels off like skin from a molting snake.

Rebecca Solnit, from A Field Guide to Getting Lost