Happy Birthday, Jones

Peale, C.W., John Paul Jones, 1783

Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come, sail with me.  I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way. 

John Paul Jones, born on this day in 1747

Affected.

Copley, Self-Portrait, 1783

From Dr. Prown's Wyeth Lecture in American Art at the National Gallery: "Friends and Rivals: Copley, West, Peale, Trumbull, and Stuart" ...

John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West were born in 1738; Charles Willson Peale, some two and one-half years later. Gilbert Stuart and John Trumbull, born in 1755 and 1756, respectively, belonged to the next generation. Their paths crossed and recrossed throughout their uniformly long lives. They formed friendships, influenced each other both through their art and personally, competed for clients, and eventually drifted apart, or, in the case of Copley and West, became bitter enemies. Jules David Prown focuses on the artists’ personal and professional encounters and interactions to tell the story of how they affected each other’s lives and work.

Limits.

Witold Rybczynski on the widening gap between traditional and the modern architecture ...

It turns out that there are advantages to reconnecting with history. Without the imperative to constantly innovate, which can lead to risky experimentation and construction failures, architects can rely on time-tested methods of construction, and traditional materials and details. The modern steel frames of the Nebraska State Capitol and the buildings of Rockefeller Center, for example, are clad in traditional limestone. Architects who are free to find inspiration in their predecessors and contemporaries produce buildings that not only work but also gain the affection of the general public: libraries and courthouses that don’t look like flashy casinos, academic buildings that cannot be mistaken for workaday office buildings, and places of worship that don’t resemble utilitarian industrial plants.

It would be inaccurate to say that people don’t like modern architecture. After more than a century, it’s an accepted feature of contemporary life, almost a tradition. Office workers expect their workplaces to be sleek; shoppers expect high-fashion boutiques and automobile showrooms to be minimalist exercises in bare concrete and industrial details; and museumgoers expect galleries to resemble artists’ lofts, and museum cafés to have chic furniture and Zen-like décor.

But there are limits ...

Enthusiast.

How is a taste in this beautiful art to be formed in our countrymen, unless we avail ourselves of every occasion when public buildings are to be erected, of presenting to them models for their study and imitation?...You see, I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile them to the rest of the world, and procure them its praise.

Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to James Madison, September 20, 1785

On.

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men, the conviction and the will to carry on.

Walter Lippman

Supplied.

Somer, The Right Honourable, The Viscount St Alban, PC, Lord High Chancellor of England, 1617

If any man think philosophy and universality to be idle studies, he doth not consider that all professions are from thence served and supplied.  And this I take to be a great cause that hath hindered the progression of learning, because these fundamental knowledges have been studied but in passage. 

Francis Bacon, from The Advancement of Learning

Health.

Execupundit examines signs of societal health.

I would add that there be spaces for the public display and performance of art, music, and literature.

Specificity.

One of the great failings of our culture is the nearly universal belief that there can be anything universal. We as a culture take the same approach to living in Phoenix as in Seattle as in Miami, to the detriment of all these landscapes. We turn wild trees to standardized two-by-fours. We turn living fish into fish sticks. But every fish is different from every other fish. Every student is different from every other student. Every place is different from every other place. If we are ever to hope to begin to live sustainably in place (which is the only way to live sustainably), we will have to remember that specificity is everything.

Derrick Jensen, from Walking on Water: Reading, Writing, and Revolution

Not-Understanding.

Sloane, Low Tide, 1979

What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours — that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grown-ups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn’t understand a thing about what they were doing.

And when you realize that their activities are shabby, that their vocations are petrified and no longer connected with life, why not then continue to look upon it all as a child would, as if you were looking at something unfamiliar, out of the depths of your own solitude, which is itself work and status and vocation? Why should you want to give up a child’s wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

Thanks to Walker's Arms for the image.

Boundaries.

Ari Weinzweig on the beauty of building boundaries ...

What all this got me wondering is how do we learn to build better, more holistic, caringly constructed boundaries that benefit both ourselves, and also those around us? What are the characteristics of an effective boundary? I can’t say I’ve arrived at definitive conclusions, but in the interest of shared learning and growth, I’ll share what I’ve got so far.

Reflecting on all this, I began to wonder where we learn about boundaries. I imagine that in some healthy family settings, someone sits down and teaches young people how to have them, but I don’t remember anything of the sort happening in my life. Best I can tell, I just sort of figured them out. I learned some unconsciously from my family growing up. Others, for better and/or for worse, I learned socially. And, perhaps more than any other way, I learned to build many of mine mostly by messing up—many a boundary, in my experience, was established only after something went badly wrong.

Taking a more positive, active, and mindful approach—the metaphorical corollary to working on dry stone walls—to boundary creation sure seems like it would help. 

Absolution.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

Henry David Thoreau, from Walden

If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. 

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

Oscar Wilde, from The Picture of Dorian Gray

Authority.

I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else's. I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce.

Edward Abbey, from Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Haulin'.

Translated 9 and her crew haulin' the mail 'round the world (8:59) ...

Happy Birthday, Waite

John Waite was thankfully born on this day in 1952.

"Midnight Rendezvous," with Earl Slick accompanying ...

Wonder.

Bacon, Astronomical Diagrams, 1909

How is it they live in such harmony, the billions of stars, when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds?  Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.  Wonder is the desire of knowledge.

Thomas Aquinas

Paul Weller, "One Way Road"

Holy.

The Holy Trinity of Dogs ...

Solus ...

Remarkable.

[A] remarkable thing for a bunch of “rebels” to proclaim.

Aim.

Trumbull, George Washington and William Lee, 1780

The ways of Providence being inscrutable, and the justice of it not to be scanned by the shallow eye of humanity, nor to be counteracted by the utmost efforts of human power or wisdom, resignation, and as far as the strength of our reason and religion can carry us, a cheerful acquiescence to the Divine Will, is what we are to aim.

George Washington, from his letter to Colonel Bassett, Apr. 25, 1773

Unalienable.

In Congress, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
John Hancock
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcot
Matthew Thornton

Fortitude.

Charles C.W. Cooke on gratitude ...

That the Founders fought their war anyway was admirable. That the leading voices of their era had the presence of mind to hijack the American revolution and to codify a set of radical principles into a national charter was even more so. Indeed, we might today learn a great deal from a political culture that, per Burke, preferred to detect “ill principle” not by “actual grievance” but instead to “judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle” and to “augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.” And yet our celebration of their fortitude is rendered as folly if we forget that, for all that the rebels went through, they were not facing down evil in its purest form.

Affect.

Phelan, Walden Pond in November, Concord Massachusetts, 2009

Thoreau's experiment at Walden Pond began on this day in 1845.

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Henry David Thoreau, from Walden

Separate.

Provocative arguments made by the Journal of the American Revolution on the 27th grievance of the Declaration of Independence ...

The combination of “excited” used as a word of action, and “domestic insurrections amongst us,” inspires much debate. One must conclude that those who read those words would take them at face value, believing that without one the other could not occur. Most importantly, both the enslaved, who were not specifically identified in the grievance, and Indian Savages, had their rightfully-held grievances which would not be solved by any actions the Americans intended to undertake. Further, the grievances these two categories of people had were not with the British but with the Americans themselves; given time the insurrection the Americans feared was bound to happen regardless of any participation by the British.

The raw fact is that the protagonists for independence were not in the majority. The patriot leaders were faced with the challenge of indirectly controlling the actions of the population by controlling their attitudes and playing on their base fears. Nowhere but in a democracy must leaders marshal opinions when their position on various matters is not commonly and widely held. The control that the patriots exercised over the population was weak. Therefore, the use of propaganda was a primary necessity. Historian Philip Davidson describes it as a prerequisite to demanding action. Josiah Quincy understood that emotion, not reason, determined action. The creators of the Declaration needed to focus on crowd psychology and stoke it into a mob rule.

While the English amongst them might have gradually and ultimately arrived at the conclusion that separation from England was wholly necessary, the steady influx of non-English people made things more difficult. Indifferent to British policy and certainly having no sense of loyalty to the Crown, these Europeans created a divergence in institutions, customs, language, and interests. The question of slavery was complicated by the fact that the Quakers in particular were opposed to such practice. Despite such protestations, all Europeans, it could be agreed, would be regarded by both enslaved and savages alike as equal and complicit in any real or perceived damages incurred. The Revolution was at best the work of an aggressive minority. Samuel Adams would harp, “All are not dead; and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will enkindle it.” Yet his cousin John Adams along with Josiah Quincy warned of the “fatal effects of the policy of standing armies." They issued this warning at the annual commemoration of the Boston Massacre, and the trial in which John Adams and Quincy successfully defended the British soldiers that committed the atrocity. Here lies the problem with the Declaration of Independence. It serves to outline the several grievances of the Americans, yet introduces hypocrisy in its body and opens itself to challenge when filtered through logic and fact. Still, none of the grievances were without merit and at least some modicum of truth.

The deconstruction of the Declaration of Independence should require the reader to separate the grievances into two categories; those that addressed specific policy and governance, and those that manipulated and provoked the base fears and prejudices of the population. The 27th grievance falls into the latter category. Yet, as has been previously stated, enough truth lay in the charges for it to be considered with merit. The broadsides and papers of the time exacerbated and proclaimed all such instances to be representative examples of the behavior of the whole of the British army and its proxies.

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 ...