Uselessness.

Firchau, Drew, Pine Plantation, 2009

We shall never fully understand nature or ourselves, and certainly never respect it, until we dissociate the wild from the notion of usability - however innocent and harmless the use. For it is the general uselessness of so much of nature that lies at the root of our ancient hostility and indifference to it.  The evolution of human mentality has put us all in vitro now, behind the glass wall of our own ingenuity.  We lack trust in the present, this moment, this actual seeing, because our culture tells us to trust only the reported back, the publicly framed, the edited, the thing set in the clearly artistic or the clearly scientific angle of perspective.

John Fowles, from The Tree

Prevent.

How can I number the worlds to which the eye gives me entry? - the world of light, of colour, of shape, of shadow: of mathematical precision in the snowflake, the ice formation, the quartz crystal, the patterns of stamen and petal: of rhythm in the fluid curve and plunging line of the mountain faces. Why some blocks of stone, hacked into violent and tortured shapes, should so profoundly tranquillise the mind I do not know.

Perhaps the eye imposes its own rhythm on what is only a confusion: one has to look creatively to see this mass of rock as more than jag and pinnacle - as beauty. Else why did men for so many centuries think mountains repulsive? A certain kind of consciousness interacts with the mountain-forms to create this sense of beauty. Yet the forms must be there for the eye to see. And forms of a certain distinction: mere dollops won't do it.

It is, as with all creation, matter impregnated with mind: but the resultant issue is a living spirit, a glow in the consciousness, that perishes when the glow is dead. It is something snatched from non-being, that shadow which creeps in on us continuously and can be held off by continuous creative act. So, simply to look on anything, such as a mountain, with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being. Man has no other reason for his existence.

Nan Shepherd, who described her role at the Aberdeen College of Education as having the “heaven-appointed task of trying to prevent a few of the students who pass through our Institution from conforming altogether to the approved pattern," from The Living Mountain

Thank you, Rachel.

Spirit.

McCandless, Self-Portrait, 1992

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. 

The very basic core of a person's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

Christopher McCandless, A.K.A. Alexander Supertramp, last seen on this day in 1992

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Grant

In this sentiment no class of people can more heartily join than the soldier who submitted to the dangers, trials and hardships of the camp and the battle-field, on which ever side he may have fought. No class of people are more interested in guarding against a recurrence of those days. Let us then begin by guarding against every enemy threatening the perpetuity of free republican institutions. I do not bring into this assemblage politics, certainly not partisan politics; but it is a fair subject for our deliberation to consider what may be necessary to secure the prize for which they battled. In a republic like ours, where the citizen is the sovereign, and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign—the people—should possess intelligence. The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us as a free nation. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.

Ulysses S. Grant, born on this day in 1822, from his remarks made at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Army of the Tennessee, Des Moines, Iowa, 29 September 1875

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Hot Chocolate, "Confetti Day"

Frank & Bingo, "Well, Did You Evah?"

And.

Collins, Roquefort and Picholines, 2011

Slowly.

It was a quick walk to Lipp’s and every place I passed that my stomach noticed as quickly as my eyes made the walk an added pleasure. There were few people in the brasserie and when I sat down on a bench against the wall with the mirror in the back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer I asked for a distingue, the big glass mug that held a liter, and potato salad.

The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l’huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread with the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly.

Ernest Hemingway, from A Moveable Feast

Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, "Deiseal"

Control.

Personal authenticity, in the classical understanding of liberal-arts education, consists in self-mastery—in placing reason in control of desire. According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, learning promises liberation, but it is not liberation from demanding moral ideals and social norms, or liberation to act on our desires—it is, rather, liberation from slavery to those desires, from slavery to self.

Robert P. George

Merrier.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Done.

Done and done.

Thanks, Walker's Arms.

Bring.

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my Chariot of fire!

William Blake, from "Jerusalem"

Alert.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, from Olmstead v. U.S. (1928)

Handel, The Music for the Royal Fireworks (HWV 351)

The Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Richard Egarr, perform La Rejouissance and Menuets ...

Obeyed.

The alternative to power is law: law freely accepted and freely obeyed. Only by observing the rule of law – law that applies equally to the rich and poor, the powerful and powerless – do we escape the tragic cycle of freedom that begets conflict that leads to chaos, resulting in the use of force that generates tyranny, the freedom of the few and the enslavement of the many. God reveals Himself in the form of law, because law is the constitution of liberty. That is the moral shape of a society of freedom under the sovereignty of God.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, from Essays on Ethics

Acknowledge.

We were once a proper country and will be again.

Found flittering through the echo chamber …

No.

We are a nation of laws, not men.

This is the mentality of playground politics, seemingly just at the outset, but passionately metastasizing in demagoguery.  Legitimacy is found in the Constitution, not the passions of pantry pundits, and certainly not the leper with the most fingers.

John Adams reminds ...

The goal of politics is to promote happiness, and this depends on the structure of government.[T]he divine science of politicks is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government, which are generally institutions that last for many generations, there can be no employment more agreeable to a benevolent mind, than a research after the best…

Virtue is a key ingredient. If there is a form of government then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?

Pastor Martin Niemöller wrote a poem in 1946 ...

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 

First.

On this day in 1607, an expedition of English colonists went ashore at Cape Henry, Virginia, establishing the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere ...

The nine and twentieth day we set up a Crosse at Chesupioc Bay, and named the place Cape Henry.

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Now.

'Tis Spring and the weekend begins now ...

"Hang care!" exclaimed he. "This is a delicious evening; the wine has a finer relish here than in the house, and the song is more exciting and melodious under the tranquil sky than in the close room, where the sound is stifled. Come, let us have a bacchanalian chant—let us, with old Sir Toby, make the welkin dance and rouse the night-owl with a catch! I am right merry. Pass the bottle, and tune your voices—a catch, a catch! The lights will be here anon."   

Charles Ollier, from "The Haunted Manor-House of Paddington" 

For best results, listen to INXS ...

"The One Thing"

"Jan's Song"

"Spy of Love"

The euphony transformed me and inundated my soul in a roguish countenance, the likes of which I had know well in younger days. Such impishness soon drove out the complaints of the day. 

Umberto Limongiello

Sytems.

I say, "Get me some poets as managers." Poets are our original systems thinkers. They contemplate the world in which we live and feel obligated to interpret, and give expression to it in a way that makes the reader understand how that world runs. Poets, those unheralded systems thinkers, are our true digital thinkers. It is from their midst that I believe we will draw tomorrow's new business leaders.

Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Kardon

Intense.

Courbet, Self-Portrait with Dog, 1844

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

Happy Birthday, Martini

Crescimbeni, Portrait of Giovanni Battista Martini, n/d

Giovanni Battista Martini was born on this day in 1706.

Leonardo Carrieri plays the Organ Sonata, No. 5, Op. 2 ...

Happy Birthday, Warren

TELL ME a STORY

[ A ]

Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood

By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard

The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon

And the stars sparse. I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,

Therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward.

 

[ B ]

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,

Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,

But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

Robert Penn Warren, born on this day in 1905

Working.

All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block, and doctors don’t get doctor’s block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it? 

Sir Philip Pullman

Dale Watson, "Whiskey or God"

Eat.

Having bowed to the inevitability of the dictum that we must eat to live, we should ignore it and live to eat.

M.F.K. Fisher

Happy Birthday, Turner

Turner, Three Seascapes, 1827

I have no secret but hard work. This is a secret that many never learn, and they don't succeed because they don't learn it. Labor is the genius that changes the world from ugliness to beauty, and the great curse to a great blessing.

J. M. W. Turner, born on this day in 1775

Slights.

Steve's pointing to Emerson ...

To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.

Happy Birthday, Shakespeare

Chandler, Wm. Shakespeare, The Chandos Portrait, 1610

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

William Shakespeare, born on this day in 1564, from Act Five, Scene One of As You Like It

Thomas Dolby, "Flying North"

I'm drawn in like a moth

and I'm flying North again ...

Good morning.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Risk.

Longacre, after Peale, C.W., John Paul Jones, n/d

If fear is cultivated it will become stronger, if faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery.  It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win.

John Paul Jones

Fencing.

Finally, SnapFace vindicates itself …

Thanks, Jess.

Excellent.

An excellent album …

God.

On this day in 1864, Congress authorized the use of the phrase "In God We Trust" on U.S. coins.

Happy Birthday, Menuhin

Yehudi Menuhin was born on this day in 1916.

Performing Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216 with the Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française Chamber Orchestra ...

Happy Birthday, Kant

von Stägemann, Immanuel Kant, 1790

Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude!  Have courage to use your own reason! -- that is the motto of enlightenment.

Immanuel Kant, born on this day in 1724

Irises.

Rivoire, Irises, 1867

Excellent.

An excellent album …

Risen.

Francesca, The Resurrection of Christ, 1468

MATTHEW 28:5-8

5 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.

6 He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.

7 And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.

8 And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Inheritance.

The New Statesman on "leisure ethics" and the (gasp) shocking revelation of nihilism's vacuous impact on the soul ...

Have the old Puritan scolds been vindicated? Perhaps, but only because they bequeathed us a self-fulfilling prophecy. A society so thoroughly steeped in the work ethic and committed to the pursuit of individual achievement cannot but fail to prepare its members for any other kinds of lives.

Yet solutions to the problem of leisure exist throughout our own wisdom tradition, which stresses the value of friendship (Epicurus), contemplation (Aristotle), and “other-regarding” public service (Cicero). These basic human goods have been severely eroded, producing an age of loneliness, inattention, and ginned-up tribalism; but each could be reclaimed with sufficient free time and a proper command over it. While there will always be demagogues, conspiracists, and cult leaders, they would have no purchase over a people who can find fulfilment in themselves.

Developing a healthy relationship with free time does not come naturally; it requires a leisure ethic, and like Aristotelian virtue, this probably needs to be cultivated from a young age. Only through deep, sustained habituation does one begin to distinguish between art and entertainment, lower and higher pleasures, titillation and the sublime. Those who would deny such distinctions cannot be dissuaded, because they belong to the uninitiated. They know not of what they speak.

Honing an appreciation for the more sustaining sources of self-fulfilment takes time and self-discipline, yet a vast industry exists to lure us from the primrose path. At some point, the purpose of education was no longer to create well-rounded citizens with rich inner lives, political discernment, and a capacity for spiritual or emotional self-sufficiency – as Dewey hoped. The motivation, instead, has been to sustain the economy’s stock of “human capital” in the face of constant technological change.

Just a few short years ago, everyone was advised to “learn to code,” regardless of where their real interests might lie. Yet now, we are told, this is one area where large language models already excel. Will some share of the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested into STEM be reallocated toward rescuing the humanities – the one set of disciplines whose value does not depend entirely on unforeseeable macroeconomic contingencies? We shouldn’t hold our breath.

Whatley continues pondering the obvious ...

American greatness has produced a society whose members know not what to do with the freedom and abundance that earlier generations secured. We are now witnessing the squandering of this inheritance, and it is even more idiotic and vulgar a spectacle than anyone would expect.

As a kid, I remember riding home in the car from my Great-Grandpa and Grandma Firchau's house after Sunday dinner, my Mum telling my sis and me nearly the same thing.

All afternoon I would watch and listen to four men that had secured America's freedom and abundance during their service in both theaters of World War II.  These men who regularly hugged me, scrubbed my head after telling me jokes, and gave me sips of their beer, sat next to me at meals, stood beside me in church, and let me steer their cars from their laps.  They were my family.  I was their family. They never spoke of it, but my Mum had told me the stories of the inheritance they ensured for us.

Somehow I missed it, though.  The increased debt I owe for being the first Firchau, going back as many generations as records allow, to not serve in the military, isn't lost on me. 

Impelled.

Remember always that you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.  We look for a younger generation that is going to be more American than we are. We are doing the best that we can and yet we can do better than that, we can do more than that, by inculcating in the boys and girls of this country today some of the underlying fundamentals, the reasons that brought our immigrant ancestors to this country, the reasons that impelled our Revolutionary ancestors to throw off a fascist yoke.

Frankin Delano Roosevelt, from his April 21, 1938 address to the Daughters of the American Revolution

Remember, kids, even old-timers pointing a smokewagon east from the Sierra Nevada should respect the flag code. 

Spirit.

Anchored host Jeremy Tate discusses friendship and fruitful disagreement with Robert George and Cornel West ...

Education is always a battlefield, spiritually, intellectually, politically, and because we're so politicized, we miss out on the movement of spirit. You remember Russell Kirk says in the very last chapter of Conservative Mind that conservatism is the regeneration of spirit and character -- of spirit and character with its morality and spirituality.  Once you accept that it's a whole new world with all kinds of different political conflict and ideological conflict, but it's character, it's integrity, it's honesty, it's decency, it's courage at the center and that's a different level of living.

An excellent book ...

Always.

HOW to READ ALL DAY

Always have a book with you.

Read while waiting.

Read while eating.

Read while exercising.

Read before bed.

Read before getting out of bed.

Read instead of updating FB.

Read instead of watching TV.

Read instead of cutting the grass. Read instead of weeding. Read instead of vacuuming.

Read while vacuuming.

Read what you want.

Read a book a friend wants you to read.

Read a book a bookseller swoons over.

Read a book loved by your local librarian.

Read with your cat. Dog. Book group. Friend. Child. Child of Friend. Friend of Child.

And when you need something new to read, no problem. The world is full of great books. You will never run out of books to read. Just time to read them. So make time and read.

Nina Sankovitch, author of American Rebels: How the Hancock, Adams, and Quincy Families Fanned the Flames of Revolution

Rise.

Pyle, The Fight on Lexington Common, April 19, 1775, 1898

The BATTLE of LEXINGTON

Now haste thee while the way is clear, Paul Revere!

Haste, Dawes! but haste thee not, O Sun!

To Lexington.

Then Devens looked and saw the light:

He got him forth into the night,

And watched alone on the river-shore,

And marked the British ferrying o'er.

John Parker! rub thine eyes and yawn:

But one o'clock and yet 'tis Dawn!

Quick, rub thine eyes and draw thy hose:

The Morning comes ere darkness goes,

Have forth and call the yeomen out,

For somewhere, somewhere close about

Full soon a Thing must come to be

Thine honest eyes shall stare to see

Full soon before thy patriot eyes

Freedom from out of a Wound shall rise.

Then haste ye, Prescott and Revere!

Bring all the men of Lincoln here;

Let Chelmsford, Littleton, Carlisle,

Let Acton, Bedford, hither file —

Oh hither file, and plainly see

Out of a wound leap Liberty.

Say, Woodman April! all in green,

Say, Robin April! hast thou seen

In all thy travel round the earth

Ever a morn of calmer birth?

But Morning's eye alone serene

Can gaze across yon village-green

To where the trooping British run

Through Lexington.

Good men in fustian, stand ye still;

The men in red come o'er the hill.

Lay down your arms, damned Rebels! cry

The men in red full haughtily.

But never a grounding gun is heard;

The men in fustian stand unstirred;

Dead calm, save maybe a wise bluebird

Puts in his little heavenly word.

O men in red! if ye but knew

The half as much as bluebirds do,

Now in this little tender calm

Each hand would out, and every palm

With patriot palm strike brotherhood's stroke

Or ere these lines of battle broke.

O men in red! if ye but knew

The least of the all that bluebirds do,

Now in this little godly calm

Yon voice might sing the Future's Psalm—

The Psalm of Love with the brotherly eyes

Who pardons and is very wise—

Yon voice that shouts, high-hoarse with ire,

Fire!

The redcoats fire, the homespuns fall:

The homespuns' anxious voices call,

Brother, art hurt? and Where hit, John?

And, Wipe this blood, and Men, come on,

And Neighbor, do but lift my head,

And Who is wounded? Who is dead?

Seven are killed. My God! my God!

Seven lie dead on the village sod.

Two Harringtons, Parker, Hadley, Brown,

Munroe and Porter,—these are down.

Nay, look! stout Harrington not yet dead!

He crooks his elbow, lifts his head.

He lies at the step of his own house-door;

He crawls and makes a path of gore.

The wife from the window hath seen, and rushed;

He hath reached the step, but the glood hath gushed;

He hath crawled to the step of his own house-door,

But his head hath dropped: he will crawl no more.

Clasp, Wife, and kiss, and lift the head:

Harrington lies at his door-step dead.

But, O ye Six that round him lay

And bloodied up that April day!

As Harrington fell, ye likewise fell—

At the door of the House wherein ye dwell;

As Harrington came, ye likewise came

And died at the door of your House of Fame.

Sidney Lanier

Burnt.

Wollen, The Battle of Lexington, 1910

The Journal of the American Revolution makes an argument for the first shot fired at Lexington Green ...

I shall observe here that the road before you go into Lexington is level for about 1000 yards. Here we saw shots fired to the right and left of us, but as we heard no whistling of balls, I concluded they were to alarm the body that was there of our approach. On coming within gun shot of the Village of Lexington a fellow from the corner of the road on the right hand cock’d his piece at me, burnt priming. I immediately called to Mr. Adair & party to observe this circumstance which they did. I acquainted Major Pitcairn of it immediately.  We still went on further when three shots were fired at us, which we did not return, & this is sacred truth as I hope for mercy these 3 shots were fired from the corner of a large house to the right of the Church when we came up to the main body which appeared to me to exceed 400 in & about the Village who were drawn up in a plane opposite to the Church, several officers called out to throw down your arms & you shall come to no harm, or words to that effect which they refused to do. Instantaneously the [British] gentlemen who were on horseback rode amongst them of which I was one, at which instant I heard Major Pitcairn’s voice call out ‘soldiers don’t fire, keep your ranks, form & surround them’, instantly some of the villains who got over a hedge fired at us which our men for the first time returned…

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Laid.

Mantegna, Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, 1490

MATTHEW 27:57-66

57 When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple:

58 He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered.

59 And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth,

60 And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.

61 And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.

62 Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,

63 Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again.

64 Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.

65 Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can.

66 So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.