Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Release.

Mustard.

A gentleman does not have a ham sandwich without mustard.

Sir Winston Churchill, from Dinner with Churchill: Policymaking at the Dinner Table, Cita Stelzer

Wynton Marsalis Sextet, The Music of Sidney Bechet

It's sandwich time.

Paradise.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

Jorge Luis Borges

Notice.

My uncle Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard-educated life insurance salesman who lived at 5033 North Pennsylvania Street, taught me something very important. He said that when things were really going well we should be sure to notice it.

He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery, or fishing and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door.

Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

Kurt Vonnegut

Always.

van Gogh, Patch of Grass, 1887

It is a good thing in winter to be deep in the snow, in the autumn deep in the yellow leaves, in summer among the ripe corn, in spring amid the grass; it is a good thing to be always with the mowers and the peasant girls, in summer with a big sky overhead, in winter by the fireside, and to feel that it always has been and always will be so.

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to Theo van Gogh, June 1885

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Done.

Done and done.

Mac.

Jim Lauderdale, "Artificial Inelligence"

Thank goodness God still knows

More than it does so far ...

Anniversary.

Approaching the 30th anniversary of Northern Lights, the first in Sir Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials novels, The Independent visits Oxford to uncover the locations that gave rise to the stories of Lyra Silvertongue ...

In February 1355, two students started a brawl with the owner, because they were unhappy with the wine. It turned into a three-day riot that killed 90 people. 

Happy Birthday, T.H. White

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

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

Don't miss the BBC's 1959 profile of White.

Is he a schoolmaster gone native?

Happy Birthday, Patrick Henry

Rothermel, Patrick Henry before The Virginia House of Burgesses, 1851

It was in the midst of this magnificent debate, while he was descanting on the tyranny of the obnoxious Act, that he exclaimed, in a voice of thunder, and with the look of a god, “Caesar had his Brutus — Charles the first, his Cromwell — and George the third — ” ('Treason,' cried the Speaker — 'treason, treason,' echoed from every part of the House. — It was one of those trying moments which is decisive of character. — Henry faltered not an instant; but rising to a loftier attitude, and fixing on the Speaker an eye of the most determined fire, he finished his sentence with the firmest emphasis) “may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."

Patrick Henry, born on this day in 1736, from his speech given on this day in 1765

Happy Birthday, G.K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton was born on this day in 1874.  Some collected thoughts ...

There is a law written in the darkest of the Books of Life, and it is this: If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.

From The Napoleon of Notting Hill

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

From "On Reading"

Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front—

From The Man Who Was Thursday

Circling.

Ohio Stadium, on this night in 1988 ...

A soul in tension that's learning to fly

Condition grounded but determined to try

Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies

Tongue-tied and twisted, just an Earth-bound misfit, I ...

Legendary.

Thank you, H.

Hang.

They call me hanging Johnny,

Away, boys, away!

They say I hang for money!

So hang, boys, hang!

They say I hanged my mother,

Away, boys, away!

My sisters and my brothers

So hang, boys, hang!

They say I hanged my granny,

Away, boys, away!

I strung her up so canny

So hang, boys, hang!

They say I hung a copper,

Away, boys, away!

I gave him the long dropper

So hang, boys, hang!

I’d hang the mates and skippers,

Away, boys, away!

I’d hang 'em by their flippers

So hang, boys, hang!

A rope, a beam, a ladder,

Away, boys, away!

I’ll hang ye all together

So hang, boys, hang!

Hang 'em from the yardarm,

Away, boys, away!

Hang the sea and buy a pigfarm

So hang, boys, hang!

They say I hang for money,

Away, boys, away!

I hang because it’s funny

So hang, boys, hang!

They call me hanging Johnny,

Away, boys, away!

Ain’t never hanged nobody

So hang, boys, hang!

Traditional

With gratitude to Walker's Arms for the picture.

Clash.

Released.

Roxy Music released Avalon on this day in 1982.

The title track ...

De-Duplication.

The Bodleian Map Room on de-duplication ...

The Bodleian Library’s catalogues have a complicated history. New acquisitions are of course catalogued online and appear straight away on the online catalogue, SOLO. However, the collections have been acquired over the centuries and earlier records were made on index cards, in printed volumes and even as handwritten records. Over the years, these earlier records have been converted into online records, but the information is not always as comprehensive as it would be if we acquired the item now and catalogued it to modern standards.

So when we occasionally discover that we have two duplicate records for the same thing, and that it’s been in our collections for over 200 years, this isn’t particularly surprising and can usually be tidied up quickly. A recent case proved more intriguing ...

There's a long history of inverting the "A" ... 

Rameau, Suite in A Minor, RCT 5

Théo Ould performs the Gavotte et Six Doubles ...

Slowly.

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

The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes à l’huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly. When the pommes à l’huile were gone I ordered another serving and a cervelas. This was a sausage like a heavy, wide frankfurter split in two and covered with a special mustard sauce.

I mopped up all the oil and all of the sauce with bread and drank the beer slowly until it began to lose its coldness and then I finished it and ordered a demi and watched it drawn. It seemed colder than the distingué and I drank half of it.

Ernest Hemingway, from A Moveable Feast

Happy Birthday, Walker Percy

Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.  The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

Walker Percy, born on this day in 1916, from The Moviegoer

Happy Birthday, Siouxsie Sioux

Siouxsie Sioux was born on this day in 1957.

"Lands End"...

Life.

Caillebotte, Still Life with Oysters, 1881

Grateful.

There is no neutrality between gratitude and ingratitude.  Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything. 

Thomas Merton, from Thoughts on Solitude

Memory.

President Reagan's Memorial Day remarks made during ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery, May 31, 1982 ...

I have no illusions about what little I can add now to the silent testimony of those who gave their lives willingly for their country. Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.

Yet, we must try to honor them -- not for their sake alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.

Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: the United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost; it imposes a burden. And just as they whom we commemorate were willing to sacrifice, so too must we -- in a less final, less heroic way -- be willing to give of ourselves ...

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

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

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

Whither leadership?

Released.

Donald Fagen released Kamakiriad on this day in 1993.

"Florida Room"...

Happy Birthday, Paul Weller

Paul Weller was born on this day in 1958.

"Above the Clouds"...

Experience.

My later experience has taught me two lessons: first, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred; second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticized.

Ulysses S. Grant, The Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant

Respect.

Since we're entering American-Flag-Paper-Napkin season ...

§8. Respect for flag

No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.

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

CONNECT

Know your role.

Always.

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

Ernest Hemingway

Happy Birthday, Thomas Hood

Unknown, Thomas Hood, n/d

SILENCE

There is a silence where hath been no sound,

   There is a silence where no sound may be,

   In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea,

Or in the wide desert where no life is found,

Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;

   No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently,

   But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,

That never spoke, over the idle ground:

But in green ruins, in the desolate walls

   Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,

Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls,

   And owls, that flit continually between,

Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,

There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.

Thomas Hood, born on this day in 1799

Vision.

From Lakota witness to the Ghost Dance ...

Before dancing, the ritual participants would enter a sweat lodge for purification. Then the worshippers, painted with sacred red pigment, would adorn themselves in a special costume which was believed to be a gift from the Father. The hallowed clothing was usually made of white cotton muslin cloth embellished with feathers and painted symbols seen in the wearers’ visions, as well as a prominent eagle figure. While many tribes of Plains Indians wore the ghost shirts and partook of the dance, only the Lakota believed that the clothing would protect them from the bullets of the white man -- an assertion that was made in response to the dancers feared intrusion by U.S. soldiers. This was an idea which agitated the government agents, who, rather than realizing the defensive nature of the ghost shirts, viewed them as symbols of aggression.

The actual dance was performed by all members joining hands to create a circle. In the center of the formation was a sacred tree, or symbol of a tree, decorated with religious offerings. Looking toward the sun, the dancers would do a shuffling, counter-clockwise side-step, chanting while they sang songs of resurrection. Gradually the tempo would be increased to a great beat of arousal. Some dances would continue for days until the participants "died," falling to the ground, rolling around and experiencing visions of a new land of hope and freedom from white people which was promised by the messiah. The dance often produced mass hypnosis in its transfixed participants, and thus, it became known as the Ghost Dance. Curious onlookers were prohibited, furthering the sense of mystery about the ritual and elevating the tension between the dancers, settlers, and soldiers.

They danced without rest, on and on...Occasionally someone thoroughly exhausted and dizzy fell unconscious into the center and lay there "dead"...After a while, many lay about in that condition. They were now "dead" and seeing their dear ones...The visions...ended the same way, like a chorus describing a great encampment of all the Dakotas who had ever died, where...there was no sorrow but only joy, where relatives thronged out with happy laughter...The people went on and on and could not stop, day or night, hoping...to get a vision of their own dead...And so I suppose the authorities did think they were crazy - but they were not. They were only terribly unhappy.

Robbie Robertson, from Music for the Native Americans

You don't stand a chance
Against my prayers.

Maybe.

The WITCH'S LIFE

When I was a child

there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.

All day she peered from her second story

window

from behind the wrinkled curtains

and sometimes she would open the window

and yell: Get out of my life!

She had hair like kelp

and a voice like a boulder.

I think of her sometimes now

and wonder if I am becoming her.

My shoes turn up like a jester's.

Clumps of my hair, as I write this,

curl up individually like toes.

I am shoveling the children out,

scoop after scoop.

Only my books anoint me,

and a few friends,

those who reach into my veins.

Maybe I am becoming a hermit,

opening the door for only

a few special animals?

Maybe my skull is too crowded

and it has no opening through which

to feed it soup?

Maybe I have plugged up my sockets

to keep the gods in?

Maybe, although my heart

is a kitten of butter,

I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.

Yes. It is the witch's life,

climbing the primordial climb,

a dream within a dream,

then sitting here

holding a basket of fire.

Anne Sexton

Happy Birthday, Mahal

Taj Mahal was born on this day in 1942.

"Lovin' in My Baby's Arms"...

Thanks, Jess.

Released.

Van Morrison released Magic Time on this day in 2005.

The title track ...

Shivers up and down my spine

It's a feeling so divine

Let me go back for a while

Got to go back for a while

To that magic time

Seas.

CORMORANTS

All afternoon the sea was a muddle of birds,

black and spiky,

long-necked, slippery.

Down they went

into the waters for the poor

blunt-headed silver

they live on, for a little while.

God, how did it ever come to you to

invent Time?

I dream at night

of the birds, of the beautiful, dark seas

they push through.

Mary Oliver

Adventurous.

Ari Weinzweig on the adventurous possibilities of leading while lost ...

Keep going. Feeling lost is not fun. I’m reminded every day now, though, that Archie never gave up. If he kept going while dealing with everything he had to overcome, I can get through, too!

This reminded me of the "teapot section in Edward Espe Brown's documentary How to Cook Your Life ... 

Soul-Making.

Brown, John Keats,1819

Let the fish philosophize the ice away from the Rivers in winter time and they shall be at continual play in the tepid delight of summer. Look at the Poles and at the sands of Africa, Whirlpools and volcanoes – Let men exterminate them and I will say that they may arrive at earthly Happiness –The point at which Man

may arrive is as far as the parallel state in inanimate nature and no further – For instance suppose a rose to have sensation, it blooms on a beautiful morning it enjoys itself – but there comes a cold wind, a hot sun – it can not escape it, it cannot destroy its annoyances – they are as native to the world as itself: no more can man be happy in spite, the worldly elements will prey upon his nature – The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is "a vale of tears" from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven – What a little circumscribe[d] straightened notion! Call the world if you Please ”The vale of Soul-making” Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) I say ‘Soul making’ Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence – There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions – but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself.  Intelligences are atoms of perception – they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God – how then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them – so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence?  How, but by the medium of a world like this? 

John Keats, from a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 14 February - 3 May 1819

Happy Birthday, Satie

Isn't a bookshop, to some extent, a temple to browsing? The books are before us; they invite us to rest in the caress of the finger and the gaze—we retreat into them, absorbed.

Erik Satie, born on this day in 1866, from A Mammal’s Notebook: The Writings of Erik Satie 

Simone Dinnerstein performs Gnossienne No. 3 ...

Strike.

Thank you, Kurt.

Truthful.

van Gogh, Window in the Bataille Restaurant, 1887

One must work long and hard to arrive at the truthful. What I want and set as my goal is damned difficult, and yet I don’t believe I’m aiming too high. 

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to Theo van Gogh, 21 July 1882

Discovery.

Lewis (Samuel), Clark, Harrison, Samuel, Bradford and Inskeep, A map of Lewis and Clark's track, across the western portion of North America from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean : by order of the executive of the United States in 1804, 1814

A closer look at this beauty is HERE.

The greatest camping trip ever began on this date in 1804 when Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and The Corps of Discovery left St. Louis for the Pacific Ocean.

We were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trod. The good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine, and these little vessels contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves. However, as the state of mind in which we are, generally gives the coloring to events, when the imagination is suffered to wander into futurity, the picture which now presented itself to me was a most pleasing one. Entertaining as I do the most confident hope of succeeding in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years, I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life. 

Meriwether Lewis

An interactive map is HERE.

Stephen Ambrose's masterful storytelling makes Ken Burns' documentary, Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery outstanding and inspiring ...

I was born at the wrong time.

Experience.

My experience has taught me two lessons: first, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred; second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticized.

Ulysses S. Grant

Mac,

John Denver, "The Eagle and The Hawk"

A favorite of Mum's that was on high-rotation on Van Wormer Road ...

Peace.

My Mum instilled in me an appreciation for books and reading, art, music, and stillness.  She taught me how to cook.

She lived the importance of faith and patience, skills I still aspire to.

 

A mother is the truest friend we have. When trials heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.

Washington Irving

Today I'll raise a small glass ("not too much") of Johnny Walker Red, and toast her smile, her compassion, and her loving encouragement and patience.

Psychedelic Furs, "Pulse"

See the dancer in there reeling

Paint the sky upon the ceiling ...

Into.

Tiepolo, Allegory of the Planets and Continents (detail), 1753

Dreams and fables I fashion; and even while I sketch and elaborate fables and dreams upon paper, I so enter into them that I weep and am offended at ills I invented. But am I wiser when art does not deceive me?

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Satie, Gymnopédie No. 1

Jean-Yves Thibaudet performs ...

See.

Van Gogh, Almond Blossom, 1890

What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest.

Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody.

This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.

Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge.  As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation.

By persistent I mean in the first place continued labor, but also not abandoning your approach because of what someone else says. I have hopes, brother, that in a few years, and even now already, you’ll gradually see things by me that will give you some recompense for your sacrifices.

Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to Theo van Gogh, 21 July 1882

Excellent.

An excellent album ...