05 January 2025
Scream.
Remember, when you make a run, to keep your hands and feet in it all times, then let out a scream and don't be afraid to give 'er!
Home.
Art moves us because it is beautiful, and it is beautiful in part because it means something. It can be meaningful without being beautiful; but to be beautiful it must be meaningful. Our need for beauty is not something that we could lack and still be fulfilled as people. It is a need arising from our metaphysical condition, as free individuals, seeking our place in a shared and public world. We can wander through this world, alienated, resentful, full of suspicion and distrust. Or we can find our home here, coming to rest in harmony with others and with ourselves. The experience of beauty guides us along this second path: it tells us that we are at home in the world, that the world is already ordered in our perceptions as a place fit for the lives of beings like us.
Sir Roger Scruton, born on this day in 1944, from his best book, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction
Keep reminding me.
Wassail.
On Twelfth Eve, in Devonshire, it is customary for the farmer to leave his warm fireside, accompanied by a band of rustics, with guns, blunderbusses, etc., presenting an appearance which at other times would be somewhat alarming. Thus armed, the band proceed to an adjoining orchard, where is selected one of the most fruitful and aged of the apple trees, grouping round which they stand and offer up their invocations in the following doggerel rhyme:
Here's to theeOld apple tree!Whence thou mayst bud,And whence thou mayst blow,And whence thou mayst bear,Apples enow:Hats full,Caps full,Bushels,bushels, sacks full,And my pockets full, too!Huzza! huzza!
The cider-jug is then passed around, and with many a hearty shout, the party fire off their guns, charged with powder only, amidst the branches.
London News, January 11, 1851
The National Trust on the hullabaloo in the orchard ...
Revellers typically visited local orchards and fruit trees, sang songs, made a hullabaloo (often by banging pots and pans) and were rewarded by the orchard’s grateful owner with some form of warm, spiced alcoholic drink from a communal wassail bowl or cup. Sometimes a topping of apple, known as "lamb's wool," would be added.
The WASSAIL
Give way, give way, ye gates, and win
An easy blessing to your bin
And basket, by our entering in.
May both with manchet stand replete;
Your larders, too, so hung with meat,
That though a thousand, thousand eat,
Yet, ere twelve moons shall whirl about
Their silv'ry spheres, there's none may doubt
But more's sent in than was served out.
Next, may your dairies prosper so,
As that your pans no ebb may know;
But if they do, the more to flow,
Like to a solemn sober stream,
Bank'd all with lilies, and the cream
Of sweetest cowslips filling them.
Then may your plants be press'd with fruit,
Nor bee or hive you have be mute,
But sweetly sounding like a lute.
Last, may your harrows, shares, and ploughs,
Your stacks, your stocks, your sweetest mows,
All prosper by your virgin-vows.
--Alas! we bless, but see none here,
That brings us either ale or beer;
In a dry-house all things are near.
Let's leave a longer time to wait,
Where rust and cobwebs bind the gate;
And all live here with needy fate;
Where chimneys do for ever weep
For want of warmth, and stomachs keep
With noise the servants' eyes from sleep.
It is in vain to sing, or stay
Our free feet here, but we'll away:
Yet to the Lares this we'll say:
'The time will come when you'll be sad,
'And reckon this for fortune bad.
Robert Herrick
Then here’s to the heartening wassail,
Wherever good fellows are found;
Be its master instead of its vassal, and order the glasses around.
Ogden Nash
TWELFTH NIGHT
Now, now the mirth comes
With the cake full of plums,
Where bean's the king of the sport here ;
Beside we must know,
The pea also
Must revel, as queen, in the court here.
Begin then to choose,
This night as ye use,
Who shall for the present delight here,
Be a king by the lot,
And who shall not
Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here.
Which known, let us make
Joy-sops with the cake ;
And let not a man then be seen here,
Who unurg'd will not drink
To the base from the brink
A health to the king and queen here.
Next crown a bowl full
With gentle lamb's wool :
Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,
With store of ale too ;
And thus ye must do
To make the wassail a swinger.
Give then to the king
And queen wassailing :
And though with ale ye be whet here,
Yet part from hence
As free from offence
As when ye innocent met here.
Robert Herrick
LAMB'S WOOL
Ingredients
- 1 liter traditional ale or traditional hard cider
- 1/2 liter cider
- 6 apples, peeled and cored
- 2 tbsp Calvados
- 1 nutmeg, freshly grated
- 1 tsp fresh ground ginger
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 120C
- Prepare the apples
- Core the 6 apples fully, getting rid of the pips. Lightly butter the baking tray. Sprinkle optional Calvados on apples. Place the apples on the baking tray about 6cm (2 inches) apart – they will swell up a little. Bake the apples at 120C for about an hour or so – so they become soft and pulpy and the skins are easy to peel away.
- In a large thick bottomed saucepan (which is quite tall to avoid splashes when whisking) add the sugar. Cover the sugar in a small amount of the ale (or cider) and mead and heat gently. Stir continuously until the sugar has dissolved.
- dd in the ground ginger and grate in the whole of the nutmeg. Stir, and keeping the pan on a gentle simmer, slowly add in all the rest of the ale (or cider). Leave for 10 minutes on a gentle heat as you deal with the apples.
- Take the baked apples out of the oven to cool slightly for 10 minutes – they should now be soft and pulpy.
- Break open the apples and scoop out the baked flesh into a bowl, discarding the skin. Then take a fork and mash this apple pulp up, while it is still warm, into a smooth purée with no lumps. Add the apple purée into the ale (or cider) lambswool, mixing it in with a whisk.
- Let the saucepan continue to warm everything through for thirty minutes, on a very gentle heat, until ready to drink. When warmed through use the whisk again for a couple of minutes (or use a stick blender) to briskly and vigorously froth the drink up and mix everything together.
- The apple and light froth will float to the surface, and depending on how much you have whisked it, the more it looks like lamb’s wool. Note: to traditionally froth drinks up they were normally poured continuously between two large serving jugs to get air into the drink.
- Ladle the hot Lambswool into heat-proof mugs or glasses and grate over some nutmeg, or pour the drink into a communal bowl (with several thick pieces of toast in the bottom) to pass around if wassailing.
FARMER'S WASSAIL
Ingredients
- 1 quart hard cider
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 5 or 6 pieces cracked ginger or 1 teaspoon powdered ginger
- 2 cups dark rum
- Juice and thinly pared rind of 1 lemon
- Sugar, to taste
- 2 slices toasted bread (if desired)
- 6 or 8 baked crab apples or 2 or 3 baked large apples
Instructions
- Heat ale in saucepan until just about to boil.
- Stir in spices, rum, lemon juice, slivered rind and sugar. Stir until sugar dissolves.
- Cover and simmer over low heat for 20 to 30 minutes. Do not boil at any time.
- Remove from heat and either pour into punch bowl or individual cups and add toast and apples.
WASSAILING the APPLE TREES
Worship.
David, Adoration of the Wise Men, 1515
The Wise Men Visit the Messiah
2 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Wise Men from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”
3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:
6 “‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’[b]”
7 Then Herod called the Wise Men secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”
9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.
The Escape to Egypt
13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, 15 where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.”[c]
16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Wise Men, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Wise Men. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18 “A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”[d]
The Return to Nazareth
19 After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt 20 and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”
21 So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, 23 and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.
To.
O to attract by more than attraction!
How it is I know not—yet behold! the something which
obeys none of the rest,
It is offensive, never defensive—yet how magnetic it draws.
O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies
undaunted!
To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can
stand!
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns
with perfect nonchalance!
To be indeed a God!
O to sail to sea in a ship!
To leave this steady unendurable land,
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks
and the houses,
To leave you O solid motionless land, and entering a
ship,
To sail and sail and sail!
Walt Whitman
Bach, Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen, BWV 65
Philippe Herreweghe conducts Collegium Vocale Gent ...
04 January 2025
Last.
Kurt has the bottom line ...
One day the last portrait of Rembrandt and the last bar of Mozart will have ceased to be — though possibly a colored canvas and a sheet of notes will remain — because the last eye and the last ear accessible to their message will have gone.Oswald Spengler
That is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Listen.
Beware, O wanderer, the road is walking too,
said Rilke one day to no one in particular
as good poets address the six directions.
If you can’t bow, you’re dead meat. You’ll break
like uncooked spaghetti. Listen to the gods.
They’re shouting in your ear every second.
Jim Harrison
Formative.
Copley, Henry Pelham (Boy with a Squirrel), 1765
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Harvard Magazine on the power of patience ...
In the thousands of years of human history that predated our current moment of instantaneous communication, the very fabric of human understanding was woven to some extent out of delay, belatedness, waiting. All objects were made of slow time in the way that Copley’s painting concretizes its own situation of delay. I think that if we want to teach history responsibly, we need to give students an opportunity to understand the formative values of time and delay. The teaching of history has long been understood as teaching students to imagine other times; now, it also requires that they understand different temporalities. So time is not just a negative space, a passive intermission to be overcome. It is a productive or formative force in itself.
Enviable.
Stuart, George Washington (Landsdowne Portrait), 1796
_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
The Citizens of America, placed in the most enviable condition, as the sole Lords and Proprietors of a vast tract of Continent, comprehending all the various Soils and Climates of the World and abounding with all the necessaries and conveniences of life, are now, by the late satisfactory pacification, acknowledged to be possessed of absolute freedom and Independancy—They are from this period to be considered as the Actors, on a most conspicuous Theatre, which seems to be peculiarly designated by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity, here they are not only surrounded with every thing which can contribute to the completion of private and domestic enjoyment, but Heaven has crowned all its other blessings by giving a fairer opportunity for political happiness, than any other Nation has ever been favored with—Nothing can illustrate these observations more forcibly than a recollection of the happy conjuncture of times and circumstances under which our Republic assumed its Rank among the Nations—the foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy Age of ignorance and superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of Mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period—The researches of the human Mind after social happiness have been carried to a great extent, the treasures of knowledge acquired by the labours of Philosophers, Sages and Legislators, through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the establishment of our forms of Government. The free cultivation of letters, the unbounded extension of Commerce, the progressive Refinement of manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and, above all, the pure and benign light of Revelation, have had a meliorating influence on Mankind and encreased the blessings of Society. At this Auspicious period the United States came into existence as a Nation, and if their Citizens should not be completely free & happy, the fault will be entirely their own.
Such is our situation, and such are our prospects: but nowithstanding the Cup of blessing is thus reached out to us, notwithstanding happiness is ours if we have a disposition to seize the occasion and make it our own, yet it appears to me there is an option still left to the United States of America; that it is in their choice and depends upon their conduct, whether they will be respectable and prosperous or contemptible and Miserable as a Nation. This is the time of their political probation: this is the moment when the eyes of the whole World are turned upon them—This is the moment to establish or ruin their National Character for ever—This is the favorable moment to give such a tone to our fœderal Government, as will enable it to answer the ends of its institution—or this may be the ill fated moment for relaxing the powers of the Union, annihilating the cement of the Confederation and exposing us to become the sport of European Politicks, which may play one State against another, to prevent their growing importance and to serve their own interested purposes; for according to the System of Policy the States shall adopt at this moment, they will stand or fall, and by their confirmation or lapse, it is yet to be decided whether the Revolution must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse: a blessing or a curse, not to the present Age alone, for with our fate will the destiny of unborn Millions be involved.
George Washington, from his "Circular to The States", 8 June 1783
Happy Birthday, Guthrie
Robin Guthrie was born on this day 1962.
Cocteau Twins, "Caroline's Fingers" (4:42) ...
More.
That music is as essential to the home as books or flowers, no one of this age will deny. Nearly every home has music in some form. But the lover of books has more than a shelf or two. He wants a library. The lover of flowers wants something more than a border. He wants a garden. And so, more and more lovers of music are installing in their homes the greatest musical instrument in the world, the pipe organ.
Retreats.
Canaletto, Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi, on the Grand Canal, Venice, 1750
The passions simmer and resimmer in solitude: the passionate being prepares his explosions and his exploits in this solitude. And all the spaces of our past moments of solitude, the spaces in which we have suffered from solitude, enjoyed, desired and compromised solitude, remain indelible within us, and precisely because the human being wants them to remain so. He knows instinctively that this space identified with his solitude is creative; that even when it is forever expunged from the present, when, henceforth, it is alien to all the promises of the future, even when we no longer have a garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we once loved a garret, once lived in an attic. We return to them in our night dreams. These retreats have the value of a shell.
Gaston Bachelard, from The Poetics of Space
Opposite.
“What is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution.”
— Mark W. (@DurhamWASP) January 4, 2025
Joseph de Maistre pic.twitter.com/PXL3Mh9KNS
Happy Birthday, Grimm
The true poet is like a man who is happy anywhere, in endless measure, if he is allowed to look at leaves and grass, to see the sun rise and set. The false poet travels abroad in strange countries and hopes to be uplifted by the mountains of Switzerland, the sky and sea of Italy. He comes to them and is dissatisfied. He is not as happy as the man who stays at home and sees the apple trees flower in spring, and hears the small birds singing among the branches.
Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm, born on this day in 1785
Happy Birthday, Pergolesi
Florimo, Pergolesi, 1874
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was born on this day in 1710.
Hana Beloglavec and Liz Ames perform the Sinfonia's, Allegro con brio ...
Happy Birthday, Rush
Sully, Benjamin Rush, 1812
Temperate, sincere, and intelligent inquiry and discussion are only to be dreaded by the advocates of error. The truth need not fear them.
Dr. Benjamin Rush, born on this day in 1746
03 January 2025
Happy Birthday, Tolkien
The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually - their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on - and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same - like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in!
J.R.R. Tolkien, born on this day in 1892, from The Two Towers
02 January 2025
Prize.
What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary -- property and position, all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life -- don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -- and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from The Gulag Archipelago
Conquer.
To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colors. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink or a cup of coffee, disguised as a triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still-just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naif, or a prig -- the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which is not quite in accordance with the technical rules of fair play: something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which "we" -- and at the word "we" you try not to blush for mere pleasure -something "we always do." And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man's face-that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face-turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude: it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.That is my first reason. Of all the passions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things. My second reason is this. The torture allotted to the Danaids in the classical underworld, that of attempting to fill sieves with water, is the symbol not of one vice but of all vices. It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.
Silent.
Delâtre, Night Scene with Church Steeple in Distance, 1877
I walked up and down, drinking in the beauty of the quiet earth and the changing sky. The night was absolutely silent. Nothing seemed to be abroad. There was no scurrying of rabbits, or twitter of the half-asleep birds. And though the clouds went sailing across the sky, the wind that drove them never came low enough to rustle the dead leaves in the woodland paths. Across the meadows I could see the church tower standing out black and grey against the sky.
E. Nesbit, from Man-Size in Marble
Magic.
Poortvliet, Deer in Landscape with Pheasant, n/d
There seemed to be a magic all round that fire of big logs quietly smouldering in the woods upon Autumn's discarded robe that lay brilliant there; and it was not the magic of Elfland, nor had Ziroonderel called it up with her wand: it was only a magic of the wood's very own.
Lord Dunsany, from The King of Elfland's Daughter
Uncover.
Ari Weinzweig on the opportunities of rereading ...
Many years ago, it dawned on me that reading was “listening on paper.” (Writing, to take it a bit further, is essentially “teaching on paper.”) Mitch’s invitation to Deep Listening reminded me of the power of rereading. Deep Understanding does not happen on the first read, the first listen, or the first reflection. I can only imagine how many times Peter Koestenbaum read his own source material, reflected, discussed, and wrote about the ideas included in his books before they went to print. All of which reminds me that one of the most effective paths to Deep Understanding might be revisiting writing that already resonated with us, looking for what more we can uncover. Rereading might be a good regimen to consider adopting. New understanding not only comes from new material, but equally often from experiencing familiar work with fresh eyes, months or even years later. What we see on the second read is almost never the same as it was on the first time through.
01 January 2025
Eye.
Larsen, A Blackbird, 1870
THIRTEEN WAYS of LOOKING at a BLACKBIRD
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Wallace Stevens
Handel, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato HWV 55
Amanda Forsythe, Thomas Cooley, and Voices of Music perform "As Steals the Morn" ...
Notice.
Murchison, Chesterton, 1915
Doubtless this division of time can be described as an artificiality; but doubtless also it can be described more correctly, as a great artificial thing ought always to be described – that is, as one of the great masterpieces of man. Man has, as I have urged in the case of religion, perceived with a tolerable accuracy his own needs. He has seen that we tend to tire of the most eternal splendours, and that a mark on our calendar, or a crash of bells at midnight maybe, reminds us that we have only recently been created. Let us make New Year resolutions, but not only resolutions to be good, but also resolutions to notice that we have feet, and thank them (with a courtly bow) for carrying us.
G.K. Chesterton, from Daily News, January 1, 1901
Happy Birthday, Salinger
J.D. Salinger, born on this day in 1910, from The Catcher in the Rye