Light.

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,

The howling dog by the door of the house,

The bat that lies in bed at noon,

All love to be out by the light of the moon.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Strauss, The Artist's Life, Op 316

Philippe Jordan conducts the Wiener Symphoniker.

For Professor Rilke ...

Power.

As usual, Steve's pointing to wisdom ...

But no human being can be trusted to keep his or her word when he or she has access to power—a power not available to opponents. 

Dr. Frankl would remind us ...

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.

What power is truly eluding you? 

Happy Birthday, Pappy Boyington

Colonel Gregory "Pappy" Boyington was born on this day in 1912.

From Arlington National Cemetery ...

A World War II fighter ace and Medal of Honor recipient, Col. "Pappy" Boyington (1912-1988) shot down a total of 28 Japanese aircraft during his wartime service. Initially in Army ROTC, he joined the Marine Corps in 1935. In August 1941, however, he resigned his Marine commission in order to join the Flying Tigers (1st American Volunteer Group), organized by Gen. Claire Chennault to assist the Chinese Air Force. Boyington rejoined the Marines in 1942 and commanded the "Black Sheep" squadron (Marine Fighting Squadron 214) in the South Pacific. On January 3, 1944, he was shot down, captured and then held in a Japanese prison camp for 20 months. Boyington's 1958 memoir, "Baa Baa Black Sheep," inspired the 1970s television series of the same name. 

Medal of Honor citation:

"For extraordinary heroism and valiant devotion to duty as commanding officer of Marine Fighting Squadron 214 in action against enemy Japanese forces in the Central Solomons area from 12 September 1943 to 3 January 1944. Consistently outnumbered throughout successive hazardous flights over heavily defended hostile territory, Maj. Boyington struck at the enemy with daring and courageous persistence, leading his squadron into combat with devastating results to Japanese shipping, shore installations, and aerial forces. Resolute in his efforts to inflict crippling damage on the enemy, Maj. Boyington led a formation of 24 fighters over Kahili on 17 October and, persistently circling the airdrome where 60 hostile aircraft were grounded, boldly challenged the Japanese to send up planes. Under his brilliant command, our fighters shot down 20 enemy craft in the ensuing action without the loss of a single ship. A superb airman and determined fighter against overwhelming odds, Maj. Boyington personally destroyed 26 of the many Japanese planes shot down by his squadron and, by his forceful leadership, developed the combat readiness in his command which was a distinctive factor in the Allied aerial achievements in this vitally strategic area."

What would Pappy Boyington have thought about blogging?  What about bloggers?

Happy Birthday, Rainer Maria Rilke

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.  Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.

Rainer Maria Rilke, born on this day in 1875, from Letters to a Young Poet

What would Rilke have thought about blogging?  What about bloggers?

Happy Birthday, Gilbert Stuart

Stuart, George Washington (unfinished), 1796

Gilbert Stuart was born on this date in 1755.

Ron Chernow, from George Washington ...

As a portraitist, the garrulous Stuart had perfected a technique to penetrate his subjects’ defenses. He would disarm them with a steady stream of personal anec­dotes and irreverent wit, hoping that this glib patter would coax them into self-revelation. In the taciturn George Washington, a man of granite self-control and a stranger to spontaneity, Gilbert Stuart met his match. From boyhood, Washington had struggled to master and conceal his deep emotions. When the wife of the Brit­ish ambassador later told him that his face showed pleasure at his forthcoming departure from the presidency, Washington grew indignant: “You are wrong. My countenance never yet betrayed my feelings!” He tried to govern his tongue as much as his face: “With me it has always been a maxim rather to let my designs ap­pear from my works than by my expressions.”

When Washington swept into his first session with Stuart, the artist was awe­struck by the tall, commanding president. Predictably, the more Stuart tried to pry open his secretive personality, the tighter the president clamped it shut. Stuart’s opening gambit backfired. “Now, sir,” Stuart instructed his sitter, “you must let me forget that you are General Washington and that I am Stuart, the painter.” To which Washington retorted drily that Mr. Stuart need not forget “who he is or who Gen­eral Washington is.”

A master at sizing people up, Washington must have cringed at Stuart’s facile bonhomie, not to mention his drinking, snuff taking, and ceaseless chatter. With Washington, trust had to be earned slowly, and he balked at instant familiarity with people. Instead of opening up with Stuart, he retreated behind his stolid mask. The scourge of artists, Washington knew how to turn himself into an impenetrable monument long before an obelisk arose in his honor in the nation’s capital.

As Washington sought to maintain his defenses, Stuart made the brilliant deci­sion to capture the subtle interplay between his outward calm and his intense hidden emotions, a tension that defined the man. He spied the extraordinary force of per­sonality lurking behind an extremely restrained facade. The mouth might be com­pressed, the parchment skin drawn tight over ungainly dentures, but Washington’s eyes still blazed from his craggy face. In the enduring image that Stuart captured and that ended up on the one-dollar bill—a magnificent statement of Washington’s moral stature and sublime, visionary nature—he also recorded something hard and suspicious in the wary eyes with their penetrating gaze and hooded lids.

With the swift insight of artistic genius, Stuart grew convinced that Washington was not the placid and composed figure he presented to the world. In the words of a mutual acquaintance, Stuart had insisted that “there are features in [Washington’s] face totally different from what he ever observed in that of any other human being; the sockets of the eyes, for instance, are larger than he ever met with before, and the upper part of the nose broader. All his features, [Stuart] observed, were indica­tive of the strongest and most ungovernable passions, and had he been born in the forests, it was his opinion that [Washington] would have been the fiercest man among the savage tribes.” The acquaintance confirmed that Washington’s intimates thought him “by nature a man of fierce and irritable disposition, but that, like Socrates, his judgment and great self-command have always made him appear a man of a different cast in the eyes of the world.

Excellent.

An excellent album …

Wilno.

Big.

I wish lunch could last forever

Make the whole day one big afternoon ...

Happy Birthday, Maria Callas

What is there in life if you do not work? There is only sensation, and there are only a few sensations— you cannot live on them. You can only live on work, by work, through work. How can you live with self-respect if you do not do things as well as lies in you?

Maria Callas, born on this day in 1923

Performing "Una voce poco fa", from Rossini's The Barber of Seville

Noiseless.

Chełmoński, Partridges in the Snow, 1891

THE FIRST SNOWFALL

The snow had begun in the gloaming,

   And busily all the night

Had been heaping field and highway

   With a silence deep and white.

Every pine and fir and hemlock

   Wore ermine too dear for an earl,

And the poorest twig on the elm-tree

   Was ridged inch deep with pearl.

From sheds new-roofed with Carrara

   Came Chanticleer's muffled crow,

The stiff rails were softened to swan's-down,

   And still fluttered down the snow.

I stood and watched by the window

   The noiseless work of the sky,

And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,

   Like brown leaves whirling by ...

James Russell Lowell, from "The First Snowfall"

Bing Crosby, "White Christmas"

Arrives.

Wyeth, Over the Hill, 1953

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet

Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind's masonry.

Out of an unseen quarry evermore

Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer

Curves his white bastions with projected roof

Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.

Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work

So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he

For number or proportion. Mockingly,

On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;

A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn;

Fills up the famer's lane from wall to wall,

Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate

A tapering turret overtops the work.

And when his hours are numbered, and the world

Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,

Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art

To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,

Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,

The frolic architecture of the snow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Alex de Grassi, "Midwestern Snow"

Steadying.

In our house, this evening marks the beginning of Welsh Rarebit season, an ancient and sacred rite.

WELSH RAREBIT

Ingredients

• A knob of butter
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tsp Coleman's mustard powder
• ½ tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 c Guinness
• A very long splash of Worcestershire sauce
• 1 lb. mature strong Cheddar, grated (Look for English farmhouse types such as Montgomery's, Keen's, Quicke's, or my favorite, Lincolnshire Poacher)
• 4 pieces of toast, preferably from homemade bread

Method

1. Melt the butter in a pan, stir in the flour, and let this cook together until it smells biscuity but is not browning. 
2. Add the mustard powder and cayenne pepper, stir in the Guinness and Worcestershire sauce, then gently melt in the cheese.
3. When it’s all of one consistency, remove from the heat, pour out into a shallow container and allow to set. Spread on toast thickly and place under the broiler. Eat when bubbling golden brown. 
4. This makes a splendid savoury at the end of your meal, washed down with a glass of Port, or as a steadying snack.

I highly recommend the addition of Nueske's Triple-Thick Butcher Cut bacon.

Repeat as needed.  Recipe courtesy of Fergus Henderson, from The Complete Nose to Tail

Thanks to Grandma Chenoweth.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Frank Sinatra, "Mistletoe and Holly"

Rather.

EPIGRAM 

You say their Pictures well Painted be, 

And yet they are Blockheads you all agree, 

Thank God, I never was sent to School 

To be Flogg’d into following the Stile of a Fool. 

The Errors of a Wise Man make your Rule 

Rather than the Perfections of a Fool.

William Blake

License.

Wyeth, N.C., Pirate Treasure, 1911

If, where the rules not far enough extend,

(Since rules were made but to promote their end)

Some lucky licence answer to the full

The intent proposed, that licence is a rule.

Alexander Pope

Sing.

Wyeth, N.C., Christmas Tree, Chadds Ford, 1922

DECEMBER

While snow the window-panes bedim,

The fire curls up a sunny charm,

Where, creaming o'er the pitcher's rim,

The flowering ale is set to warm;

Mirth, full of joy as summer bees,

Sits there, its pleasures to impart,

And children, 'tween their parent's knees,

Sing scraps of carols o'er by heart.

And some, to view the winter weathers,

Climb up the window-seat with glee,

Likening the snow to falling feathers,

In fancy infant ecstasy;

Laughing, with superstitious love,

O'er visions wild that youth supplies,

Of people pulling geese above,

And keeping Christmas in the skies.

As tho' the homestead trees were drest,

In lieu of snow, with dancing leaves,

As tho' the sun-dried martin's nest,

Instead of ickles, hung the eaves,

The children hail the happy day -

As if the snow were April's grass,

And pleas'd, as 'neath the warmth of May,

Sport o'er the water froze as glass.

John Clare