Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Lord Byron

Phillips, Lord Byron, 1814

STANZAS for MUSIC

There be none of Beauty's daughters

With a magic like thee;

And like music on the waters

Is thy sweet voice to me:

When, as if its sound were causing

The charmed ocean's pausing,

The waves lie still and gleaming,

And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:

And the midnight moon is weaving

Her bright chain o'er the deep;

Whose breast is gently heaving,

As an infant's asleep:

So the spirit bows before thee,

To listen and adore thee;

With a full but soft emotion,

Like the swell of Summer's ocean.

Lord George Gordon Byron, born on this day in 1788

Black Uhuru, "World is Africa"

Education.

It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from August 1914

Fighting.

The word impossible does not exist for me. I've got a lot of signal flags in my flag bag, but there is not a white one in there. I am going to keep fighting until the day I die - and might keep on fighting afterward ... depends on where I am.

Ted Turner

Happy Birthday, Lord Byron

Westall, Lord Byron, 1841

CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRMAGE

   There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
   There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
   There is society where none intrudes,
   By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
   I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
   From these our interviews, in which I steal
   From all I may be, or have been before,
   To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

   Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
   Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
   Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
   Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain
   The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
   A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
   When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
   He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

   His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields
   Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise
   And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
   For earth's destruction thou dost all despise,
   Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
   And send'st him, shivering in thy playful spray
   And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
   His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: —there let him lay.

Lord Byron, born on this date in 1788

End.

In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.

C.S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity

Released.

Jimmy Buffett released Havana Daydreamin' on this day in 1976.

"The Captain and The Kid"...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Introduced.

On this day in 1978, XTC was introduced to the world.

Side One, Track One ...

Kris Kristofferson, "They Killed Him/Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down"

With a dream of beauty that they could not burn away

Just another holy man who dared to make a stand ...

Happy Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

Edgar Allan Poe, born on this day in 1809, from "Eleonora"

Done.

Done and done.

Prevail.

Chappel, Samuel Adams, 1862

It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.

Samuel Adams

Civil.

Steve has Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" ...

 ...

In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.

Depends.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Umberto Eco

Disappear.

Back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming

He's found a book on magic in a garbage can

He looks at the pictures and stares up at the cracked ceiling

"At the count of three," he says, "I hope I can disappear"...

Happy Birthday, Daniel Webster

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.

Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.

Daniel Webster, born on this day in 1782

Truth.

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.

Umberto Eco

Deeply.

Happy Birthday, A.A. Milne

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.

A.A. Milne, born on this day in 1882

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Next.

I've seen the city

I took the next flight

For Borneo ...

Nostalgia.

Before MTV, imaginative music listeners often composed their own mental movies inspired by a track. The lyrics, melody, and deeply personal associations evoked vivid visuals for each person. Then came moonwalking and animated heartbreak, imagery that, like a musical earwig, locked in, seemingly for an eternity. For many, it replaced their own imagination. The director's vision became the "correct" one, and replaying the song often meant a review of the video running through the mind, as well.  Narrative videos imposed upon rather than expanding the imagination ("Sledgehammer"), reductive and literal-minded -- a great argument supporting live performance videos.

I was never a fan of the tyranny imposed by what I considered the standardized, highly-rotated visual narratives' intrusion on my deeply personal emotions and memories. I preferred instead the joyful musical nostalgia of rebellious runs through the night with a paper bag of shucked corn, car rides to concerts and skating rinks, and reminiscing about a girlfriend's perfume.

It's best that MTV be left in its proper place -- the dustbin of history.

Mozart.

Anne-Sophie Mutter and Lambert "Don't-Be-An" Orkis lift the morning with over two hours of Mozart sonatas ...

Chance.

I had no wish to take any determined route on that stroll; I attempted, rather, a maximum latitude of probabilities in order not to wear out expectation with an obligatory anticipation of a single one of them. I was able, within the imperfect limits of possibility, to walk, as they say, at random. I accepted, without any conscious prejudice but that of avoiding the wider avenues and streets, the most obscure invitations of chance.

Jorge Luis Borges, from A Personal Anthology

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Irreplaceable.

Colston Bassett Stilton is irreplaceable by artificial intelligence.

Lives.

Trottestam, Books, Ladders, 2025

The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more ...

In the dark, with the windows lit and the rows of books glittering, the library is a closed space, a universe of self-serving rules that pretend to replace or translate those of the shapeless universe beyond.

Alberto Manguel, from The Library at Night

Bach, Violin Partita No. 3 in E-Major, BWV 1006

Bolette Roed performs ...

Different.

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they're pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way—I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.

J.D. Salinger, from The Catcher in the Rye

Luka Bloom, "Beloved"

Guess.

Wyeth, N.C., Imagination, 1921

The alchemists have a saying: Tertium non datur, "The third is not given." That is, the transformation from one element into another, from waste matter into best gold is a mystery, not a formula. No one can predict what will form out of the tensions of opposites and effect a healing change between them. And so it is with the mind that moves from its prison to a free and vast plain without any movement at all. Something new has entered the process. We can only guess.

Jeanette Winterson, from "Orion"

Meeting.

Loth, Old Peasant Lighting a Pipe, 1660

"I wonder, old man, smelling of the wind,

Your face leathered, eyes glassy,

Blowing mist on weathered fingers --

Who am I meeting?"

Lighting his pipe 

With an ember from the fire, 

He whispered --

"I am Winter."

Exist.

Ari Weinzweig on being aware of the invisible ...

Last week, I was fortunate enough to see a photocopy of a letter a local 10-year-old boy wrote to his cousin. This was not just an ordinary message from one young cousin to another who’s a year or two older and struggling, as so many are in the world today. This wonderful kid told his cousin how much she matters and how much he loves her in such a lovely way. I had tears in my eyes the whole time I was reading his letter. When 10-year-olds can write letters like that, then I know for sure that, regardless of what you might find in the financial pages of the Wall Street Journal, magic really does exist in the world. The problem is that most people miss it.

Happy Birthday, Benjamin Franklin

After Saint-Aubin, Cochin the Younger, Benjamin Franklin, 1777

He that would live in peace and at ease,

Must not speak all he knows, nor judge all he sees.

Benjamin Franklin, born on this day in 1706, from Poor Richard, 1736

Please, keep reminding me.

Wander.

Spitzweg, The Bookworm, 1850

Those who wander are always objects of suspicion and sometimes even of fear.

Peter Ackroyd, from Hawksmoor

Happy Birthday, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King

I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. In struggling for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns.  Someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., born on this day in 1929

Whither leadership?

Regularly.

Steve's going 4XL, regularly.

Exhibit A (my life changed the day I accepted this):

I've always found it hard to conform to the so-called standards.  Each time a teacher or an adult told me I shouldn't do this or that, I'd nod but let their words breeze past me.  I refused to believe there was only one path in life.

Hwang Bo-Reum

Smallest.

I once heard a story about a Buddhist monk who walked into a middle school classroom and as he entered the room, he didn't say a word but instead walked to the board and wrote this: 

EVERYONE WANTS TO SAVE THE WORLD, BUT NO ONE WANTS TO HELP MOM DO THE DISHES.

Everyone laughed. But then he went on to say this to the students:

Statistically, it's highly unlikely that any of you will ever have the opportunity to run into a burning building and rescue someone. But, in the smallest gesture of kindness -- a warm smile, holding the door for the person behind you, shoveling the driveway of the elderly person next door, doing the dishes for your mother -- you have committed an act of immeasurable profundity, because to each of us, our life is our universe.

May we each remember that we don’t need to feel responsible for saving the whole world, but that that through even the smallest acts of kindness, we can make a difference in our small world.

Edward Espe Brown, from the documentary, How to Cook Your Life

Vivaldi, Recorder Concerto in C major, RV 443

The Woodpecker Recorder Quartet performs the Allegro molto ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Done.

Thanks, Kurt

Decades.

1920s green here.

Thanks, Kurt.  Very telling.

Released.

Cocteau Twins released The Pink Opaque on this day in 1986.

"Wax and Wane"...

Thank you, Michelle.

Released.

April Wine released The Nature of the Beast on this day in 1981.

"All Over Town"...

Retired.

Detroit Red Wings great Sergei Fedorov's number 91 entered the rafters and his jersey was officially retired today ...

Hey, Hockeytown: A Letter from Sergei Fedorov ...

Those were heady days ...

Need.

I would have no need for the Memory Of Things past if those which were Present were more agreeable.

Peter Ackroyd, from Hawksmoor

Private.

The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.

Louis Brandeis

Happy Birthday, Jack London

I was born so long ago that I grew up before the era of gasoline. As a result, I am old-fashioned. I prefer a sail-boat to a motor- boat, and it is my belief that boat-sailing is a finer, more difficult, and sturdier art than running a motor. Gasoline engines are becoming fool-proof, and while it is unfair to say that any fool can run an engine, it is fair to say that almost any one can. Not so, when it comes to sailing a boat. More skill, more intelligence, and a vast deal more training are necessary. It is the finest training in the world for boy and youth and man. If the boy is very small, equip him with a small, comfortable skiff. He will do the rest. He won’t need to be taught. Shortly he will be setting a tiny leg-of-mutton and steering with an oar. Then he will begin to talk keels and centerboards and want to take his blankets out and stop aboard all night.

But don’t be afraid for him. He is bound to run risks and encounter accidents. Remember, there are accidents in the nursery as well as out on the water. More boys have died from hot-house culture than have died on boats large and small; and more boys have been made into strong and reliant men by boat-sailing than by lawn-croquet and dancing-school.

And once a sailor, always a sailor. The savor of the salt never stales. The sailor never grows so old that he does not care to go back for one more wrestling bout with wind and wave. I know it of myself. I have turned rancher, and live beyond sight of the sea. Yet I can stay away from it only so long. After several months have passed, I begin to grow restless. I find myself day-dreaming over incidents of the last cruise, or wondering if the striped bass are running on Wingo Slough, or eagerly reading the newspapers for reports of the first northern flights of ducks. And then, suddenly, there is a hurried pack of suit-cases and overhauling of gear, and we are off for Vallejo where the little Roamer lies, waiting, always waiting, for the skiff to come alongside, for the lighting of the fire in the galley-stove, for the pulling off of gaskets, the swinging up of the mainsail, and the rat-tat-tat of the reef-points, for the heaving short and the breaking out, and for the twirling of the wheel as she fills away and heads up Bay or down.

Jack London, born on this day in 1876, from "Small Boat Sailing"

Scaring the Children, "Two Djinn"

Beautiful.

On this day in 1805, President Thomas Jefferson signed an act of the United States Congress that made the most beautiful part of the planet the Michigan Territory.