Released.

The Rock & Roll Rooster released Now Look on this day in 1975.

Barbarians pullin' off "Breathe on Me" ...

Keith and the X-Pensive Winos, "Eileen"

Preserved.

 On this date, at this hour, in 1863, approximately 11,500 Confederates under James Longstreet's command stepped off from Seminary Ridge to begin Pickett's Charge against the center of George Meade's Union army on Cemetery Ridge.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago; or to anyone who ever sailed a skiff under a quilt sail, the moment in 1492 when somebody thought This is it: the absolute edge of no return, to turn back now and make home or sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world's roaring rim. 

William Faulkner, from Intruder in the Dust

The description of Pickett's Charge from Ken Burns', The Civil War ...

From Smithsonian Magazine ...

A little over ten years after the start of the Civil War, in July 1871, Gen. George Meade spoke to a reunion of Union Army veterans in Boston.

“Comrades of the Army of the Potomac,” he began, “The first thing I shall do, which we ought to do…is to return our thanks to the Great Being who, in His infinite mercy, has allowed us to be here, to enjoy the pleasures of this meeting, who has blessed us and spared us through all the dangers of the war.”

Reconciliation; unification; a re-examination of the whys and wherefores of the greatest conflict in American history: All of these would be themes of later Civil War reunions and observances, leading up to the current 150th commemoration. What those veterans celebrated in the first major anniversary of the war was the simple fact that they had made it through alive.

“There was a desire among soldiers on both sides to bring moral clarity and purpose to what they had just experienced,” says Peter Carmichael, director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. “We cannot forget that especially for Northern soldiers their celebration of Union meant something deep to them. They went to war to preserve the Union.”

CONNECT

Relax.

An excellent album ...

SUMMER'S CAULDRON

Drowning here in summer's cauldron

Under mats of flower lava

Please, don't pull me out

This is how I would want to go

Breathing in the boiling butter

Fruit of sweating golden Inca

Please, don't heed my shout

I'm relax in the undertow

When Miss Moon lays down

And Sir Sun stands up

Me, I'm found floating 'round and 'round

Like a bug in brandy in this big bronze cup

Drowning here in summer's cauldron

Trees are dancing drunk with nectar

Grass is waving underwater

Please, don't pull me out

This is how I would want to go

Insect bomber Buddhist droning

Copper chord of August's organ

Please, don't heed my shout

I'm relax in the undertow

When Miss Moon lays down (in her hilltop bed)

And Sir Sun stands up (raise his regal head)

Me, I'm found floating 'round and 'round

Like a bug in brandy in this big bronze cup

Drowning here in summer's cauldron

Andy Partridge

 

 Thanks, GRF III

Expediency.

With due expediency, Sir?

Becoming.

In 2006, a high school English teacher asked students to write to a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to replied and here is his response ...

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana. 

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow. 

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

Thanks, J.R. 

Happy Birthday, Fisher

Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they’ve lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat — and drink! — with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts. They should relish the accompanying drinks, whether they be ale from a botde on a hillside or the ripe bouquet of a Chambertin 1919 in a great crystal globe on finest damask.

M.F.K. Fisher, a fine Michigan girl, born on this day in 1908, from Serve It Forth

Technique.

Galstyan, Don't Look Back, 2023

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Thanks to Walker's Arms for the image.

Bonis, Soir et Matin, Op. 76

The Morgenstern Trio performs "Matin"...

Happy Birthday, Copley

Copley, Nicholas Boylston, 1767

John Singleton Copley was born on this day in 1738.

Dr. Jules Prown and Mark Hallett, present a discussion titled, "Graphic Encounters: John Singleton Copley and the World of Prints" ...

Just.

Just as two plus two is four and the sun rises in the morning ...

Steel Pulse, "Steppin' Out"

Decided.

Trumbull, Thomas Jefferson, 1788

Mr. Jefferson came into Congress, in June, 1775, and brought with him a reputation for literature, science, and a happy talent of composition. Writings of his were handed about, remarkable for the peculiar felicity of expression. Though a silent member in Congress, he was so prompt, frank, explicit, and decisive upon committees and in conversation, not even Samuel Adams was more so, that he soon seized upon my heart; and upon this occasion I gave him my vote, and did all in my power to procure the votes of others. I think he had one more vote than any other, and that placed him at the head of the committee. I had the next highest number, and that placed me the second. The committee met, discussed the subject, and then appointed Mr. Jefferson and me to make the draught, I suppose because we were the two first on the list.

The sub-committee met. Jefferson proposed to me to make the draught. I said, I will not. You should do it. Oh! no. Why will you not? You ought to do it. I will not. Why? Reasons enough. What can be your reasons? Reason first—You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second—I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third—You can write ten times better than I can. “Well,” said Jefferson, “if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.” Very well. When you have drawn it up, we will have a meeting.

John Adams, from a letter to Timothy Pickering, August, 1822

Opposition.

Edward Espe Brown on thinking not-thinking ...

The capacity to think is an essential element of our lives. We need to plan, make decisions, and communicate.  The problem is not that we think but that we haven't had a truly new thought for most of our lifetime. In other words, our thinking is fixed ...

Rather than eliminate thinking, you could say that one of the basic skills to develop in meditation is to be able to hold and sustain contradictory thoughts—calming the impulse to eliminate the opposition. One obvious example has to do with sitting still. You want to sit still, so can you have the thought to move and go on sitting still? Or do you have to do what the thought says? 

A talk about the topic given to the Berkeley Zen Center community on February 12th, 2022 ...

When you attain realization he says you do not think, "Ah-ha! Realization!  Just as i expected realization does not take place according to your expectation and realization does not take place according to your conception ...

Mozart, Vesperae solennes de confessore

Víkingur Ólafsson performs his arrangement of the most beautiful piece of music ever written, "Laudate Dominum omnes gentes"...

Happy Birthday, Hesse

When in the next morning the time had come to start the day’s journey, Govinda said, not without hesitation, these words: “Before I’ll continue on my path, Siddhartha, permit me to ask one more question. Do you have a teaching? Do you have a faith or a knowledge you follow, which helps you to live and to do right?”

Quoth Siddhartha: “You know, my dear, that I already as a young man, in those days when we lived with the penitents in the forest, started to distrust teachers and teachings and to turn my back to them. I have stuck with this. Nevertheless, I have had many teachers since then. A beautiful courtesan has been my teacher for a long time, and a rich merchant was my teacher, and some gamblers with dice. Once, even a follower of Buddha, travelling on foot, has been my teacher; he sat with me when I had fallen asleep in the forest, on the pilgrimage. I’ve also learned from him, I’m also grateful to him, very grateful. But most of all, I have learned here from this river and from my predecessor, the ferryman Vasudeva. He was a very simple person, Vasudeva, he was no thinker, but he knew what is necessary just as well as Gotama, he was a perfect man, a saint.”

Govinda said: “Still, oh Siddhartha, you love a bit to mock people, as it seems to me. I believe in you and know that you haven’t followed a teacher. But haven’t you found something by yourself, though you’ve found no teachings, you still found certain thoughts, certain insights, which are your own and which help you to live? If you would like to tell me some of these, you would delight my heart.”

Quoth Siddhartha: “I’ve had thoughts, yes, and insight, again and again. Sometimes, for an hour or for an entire day, I have felt knowledge in me, as one would feel life in one’s heart. There have been many thoughts, but it would be hard for me to convey them to you. Look, my dear Govinda, this is one of my thoughts, which I have found: wisdom cannot be passed on. Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.”

“Are you kidding?” asked Govinda.

“I’m not kidding. I’m telling you what I’ve found. Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught. This was what I, even as a young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you’ll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true! That’s like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with words, it’s all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently, there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this, because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real. Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often again. And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception.”

Hermann Hesse, born on this day in 1877, from Siddhartha

Spirits.

Kunstler, The Hero of Little Round Top, n/d

The Battle of Little Round Top was fought in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on this day in 1863 ...

There is a way of losing that is finding. When soul over-masters sense. When the noble and divine self overcomes the lower self. When duty and honor and love immortal things bid the mortal perish. It is only when a man supremely gives that he supremely finds.  In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of soul.  Generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! The shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

The National Park Service looks at the site of the batlle, then and now. 

Ought.

Thompson, "The Resolution for Independence agreed to July 2, 1776", 1776

On this day in 1776, the Second Continental Congress passed the Lee Resolution stating "these United Colonies are, and of right, ought to be, Free and Independent States."

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Schneider

Fred Schneider was born on this day in 1951.

"Dance This Mess Around" ...

Chris Rea, "Working on It"

It's sandwich time.

Gettysburg.

The American Battlefield Trust looks at Tom Marchesani's newly launched application depicting troop movements of the Battle Of Gettysburg ...