Invigorates.

If the October days were a cordial like the sub-acids of fruit, these are a tonic like the wine of iron. Drink deep or be careful how you taste this December vintage. The first sip may chill, but a full draught warms and invigorates. 

John Burroughs

Homeless.

Caravaggio, Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence, 1609

The HOUSE of CHRISTMAS

There fared a mother driven forth

Out of an inn to roam;

In the place where she was homeless

All men are at home.

The crazy stable close at hand,

With shaking timber and shifting sand,

Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand

Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,

And strangers under the sun,

And they lay on their heads in a foreign land

Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,

And chance and honour and high surprise,

But our homes are under miraculous skies

Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,

Where the beasts feed and foam;

Only where He was homeless

Are you and I at home;

We have hands that fashion and heads that know,

But our hearts we lost – how long ago!

In a place no chart nor ship can show

Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,

And strange the plain things are,

The earth is enough and the air is enough

For our wonder and our war;

But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings

And our peace is put in impossible things

Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings

Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening

Home shall men come,

To an older place than Eden

And a taller town than Rome.

To the end of the way of the wandering star,

To the things that cannot be and that are,

To the place where God was homeless

And all men are at home.

G.K. Chesterton

Ghosts.

PHANTOMS

Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves,

O flakes of snow,

For which, through naked trees, the winds

A-mourning go?

Or are ye angels, bearing home

The host unseen

Of truant spirits, to be clad

Again in green?

John Banister Tabb

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Peak.

EarthSky on the peak of the Geminid meteor showers tonight ...

New Order, "Age of Consent"

Hooky & The Light have a go ...

Daily.

I spied him on a park bench, my how happy he did seem

As contented as a sleeping man within a pleasant dream

So full of equanimity, so tranquil and refined

Obviously no distress disturbed his state of mind

His suit was made of finest wool; his shirt was starched and clean

His countenance reflected by shoes polished to a sheen

Who was this lordly gentleman who graced our neighborhood?

I did not seem to recognize him though I thought I should

For clearly he was someone I could envy and admire

Someone whose lavish lifestyle I could strive for and desire

If only I could take his place as God I wished I might

How high would then my spirits soar, oh what a pure delight.

Just then his nurses came toward him helping him to stand

As carefully they crossed the cobbles walking hand in hand

Only then I realized this gentleman was blind

Living in a land of darkness, physically confined

Yet how obtuse was my existence though I had my sight

I could not recognize my fortune, only saw my plight

How ironic that a blind man finally helped me see

The blessings and good fortune that have daily come to me.

Richard Lackman

Thanks to Walker's Arms for the view.

Happy Birthday, Gustave Flaubert

Giraud, Gustave Flaubert, 1856

What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows, and the lamp burning bright.  Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book, some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?  You forget everything. The hours slip by. You travel in your chair through centuries you seem to see before you, your thoughts are caught up in the story, dallying with the details or following the course of the plot, you enter into characters, so that it seems as if it were your own heart beating beneath their costumes. I'm absolutely removed from the world at such times.  The hours go by without me knowing it. Sitting there I'm wandering in countries I can see every detail of - I'm playing a role in the story I'm reading. I actually feel I'm the characters - I live and breathe with them.

Gustave Flaubert, born on this day in 1821

Happy Birthday, Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert Sinatra was born on this day in 

"For You" ...

Arise.

When it comes to taking the initiative against drudgery, we have to take the first step as though there were no God. There is no point in waiting for God to help us--He will not. But once we arise, immediately we find He is there.

Oswald Chambers, from My Utmost for His Highest

Thanks, Mum.

Jólabókaflóð.

The origins and evolution of Iceland's Jólabókaflóð ...

A healthy writing habit led to a culture of readers. Starting in the Middle Ages, Icelanders practiced something called the kvoldvaka (roughly, “night vigil”) in old farmsteads. During the long, dark, harsh winters, poor farmers huddled together in a single room in their turf houses to stay warm. “The kvoldvaka was the time between 6 and 10 p.m., roughly, when people would do their indoor work during the winter,” explains Alda Sigmundsdóttir, a writer and the founder of Little Books Publishing in Reykjavík. “They’d do their knitting, they’d make their tools, they’d work the wool—and during this session, there would be one person appointed to read to everyone else.”

In those evening hours, children learned to tell, recite and read stories (teaching children to read, in fact, was required by both the church and the government). As Tomasson noted in “The Literacy of the Icelanders,” by the end of the grueling 18th century—when a smallpox epidemic killed as much as a third of the population and a volcanic eruption that lasted for eight months killed another fifth of the population and most of the livestock—nearly every surviving Icelander could read.

Prior to the 20th century, “Christmas gifts used to be something useful, such as clothes or extra food,” says librarian Ingibjörg Steinunn Sverrisdóttir at the National and University Library of Iceland. Modern, international conflict would usher in new holiday traditions.

The Jólabókaflóð traces back to Iceland’s transformation in World War II. In 1944, Iceland was a newly independent nation with a beleaguered wartime economy and 15,000 occupying Allied troops. “Because of the bad economy and depression, there were quotas or very strict restrictions on many things you could import,” says Heiðar Ingi Svansson, president of the Icelandic Publishers Association, an organization founded in 1889 that oversees the industry, promotes literature and awards annual literary prizes (announced each December and presented by the president of Iceland each January). “And that limited very much the selection of commodity goods that you could choose as Christmas gifts. But paper was one of the few commodities not rationed during the war—so paper was imported to produce books that were written and then printed in Iceland.” That fortuitous supply—and an infusion of occupation-related money—dovetailed beautifully with Icelanders’ literary leanings.

Thank you, Heather. 

Stickler.

Unknown, The Holly Tree, 1739

Jeeves was in the sitting-room messing about with holly, for we would soon be having Christmas at our throats and he is always a stickler for doing the right thing.

P.G. Wodehouse, from Jeeves and the Yuletide Spirit

Happy Birthday, Jim Harrison

The memory
is the not-quite-living museum of our lives.
Sometimes its doors are insufferably wide open
with black stars in a grey sky, and horses
clattering in and out, our dead animals resting here
and there but often willing to come to life again
to greet us, parents and brothers and sisters sit
at the August table laughing while they eat twelve
fresh vegetables from the garden. Rivers, creeks, lakes
over which birds funnel like massive schools of minnows.
In memory the clocks have drowned themselves, leaving
time to the life spans of trees. The world of our lives
comes unbidden as night.

Jim Harrison, born on this day in 1937

Day-Dreaming.

We comfort ourselves by reliving memories of protection. Something closed must retain our memories, while leaving them their original value as images. Memories of the outside world will never have the same tonality as those of home and, by recalling these memories, we add to our store of dreams; we are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost.

I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

Gaston Bachelard, from The Poetics of Space

Quest.

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

Get.

Invented.

Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realise the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realise it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented.

C.S. Lewis, from The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Others' Eyes

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

"The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" with Lahav Shani ...

Resolve.

Real.

Welcome.

Meadows, Merry Christmas, 1847

OLD CHRISTMAS RETURNED

All you that to feasting and mirth are inclined,

Come here is good news for to pleasure your mind,

Old Christmas is come for to keep open house,

He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse !

     Then come, boys, and welcome for diet the chief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

A long time together he hath been forgot,

They scarce could afford for to hang on the pot ;

Such miserly sneaking in England hath been,

As by our forefathers ne'er used to be seen ;

     But now he's returned, you shall have in brief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

The times were ne'er good since old Christmas was fled,

And all hospitality hath been so dead,

No mirth at our festivals late did appear,

They would scarcely part with a cup of March beer ;

     But now you shall have, for the ease of your grief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

The butler and baker, they now may be glad,

The times they are mended, though they have been bad;

The brewer, he likewise may be of good cheer,

He shall have good trading for ale and strong beer ;

     All trades shall be jolly, and have, for relief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

The holly and ivy about the walls wind,

And show that we ought to our neighbours be kind,

Inviting each other for pastime and sport,

And where we best fare, there we most do resort,

     We fail not for victuals, and that of the chief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

The cooks shall be busied, by day and by night,

In roasting and boiling, for taste and delight ;

Their senses in liquor that's nappy they'll steep,

Though they be afforded to have little sleep ;

     They still are employed for to dress us, in brief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

Although the cold weather doth hunger provoke,

'Tis a comfort to see how the chimneys do smoke ;

Provision is making for beer, ale, and wine,

For all that are willing or ready to dine ;

     Then haste to the kitchen, for diet the chief —

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

All travellers, as they do pass on their way,

At gentlemen's halls are invited to stay,

Themselves to refresh, and their horses to rest,

Since that he must be Old Christmas's guest ;

     Nay, the poor shall not wait, but have, for relief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

Now Mock-beggar Hall it no more shall stand empty,

But all shall be furnished with freedom and plenty ;

The hoarding old misers, who used to preserve

The gold in their coffers, and see the poor starve,

     Must now spread their tables, and give them, in brief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

The court, and the city, and country are glad

Old Christmas is come to cheer up the sad ;

Broad pieces and guineas about now shall fly,

And hundreds be losers by cogging a die,

     Whilst others are feasting with diet the chief

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

Those that have no coin at the cards for to play,

May sit by the fire and pass time away,

And drink of their moisture contented and free

" My honest good fellow, come here is to thee ! "

     And when they are hungry, full to their relief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

Young gallants and ladies shall foot it along,

Each room in the house to the music shall throng,

Whilst jolly carouses about they shall pass,

And each country swain trip about with his lass ;

     Meantime goes the caterer to fetch in the chief

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

The cooks and the scullion who toil in their frocks,

Their hopes do depend upon their Christmas-box ;

There are very few that do live on the earth

But enjoy at this time either profit or mirth ;

     Yea, those that are charged to find all relief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

Then well may we welcome Old Christmas to town,

Who brings us good cheer and liquor so brown,

To pass the cold winter away with delight,

We feast it all day, and we frolic all night ;

     Both hunger and cold we keep out with relief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

Then let all curmudgeons, who dote on their wealth,

And value their treasure much more than their health,

Go hang themselves up, if they will be so kind,

Old Christmas with them but small welcome shall find :

     They will not afford to themselves, without grief,

     Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.

Snow-Felted.

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dew-lapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs where the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house.

"What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?"

"No," Jack said, "Good King Wenceslas. I'll count three."

One, two, three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door.

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen...

Dylan Thomas, from A Child's Christmas in Wales

The author reads, here.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck was born on this day in 1920.

"Waltz Limp"...

Privilege.

Rockwell, Mistletoe, 1937

The origins of mistletoe tradition ...

The Druids started it. Mistletoe, a hemi-parasitic plant that grows on trees, has long been considered a cure-all with special properties: In the Aeneid, the hero brings a bough thought to be mistletoe—a symbol of vitality that remains green even in winter—to the underworld. But the earliest mention of mistletoe's romantic powers was by Roman natural historian Pliny the Elder, who scoffed at the Druids of the 1st Century A.D. for believing that "mistletoe, taken in drink, will impart fecundity to all animals that are barren." That romantic association was later expanded by the Norse myth about Baldur and his mother, Frigga, the goddess of love and marriage. According to legend, Frigga got all the plants and animals of the Earth to promise not to harm her son—except mistletoe. Loki, the god of mischief, took that opportunity to kill Baldur with a spear made of mistletoe. In some versions of the tale, Frigga's tears then turned into mistletoe berries, which brought Baldur back to life, prompting Frigga to declare mistletoe a symbol of love.

In his essay on Christmas Eve, Washington Irving vividly describes the proper setting ...

As we approached the house we heard the sound of music, and now and then a burst of laughter from one end of the building. This, Bracebridge said, must proceed from the servants' hall, where a great deal of revelry was permitted, and even encouraged, by the squire throughout the twelve days of Christmas, provided everything was done conformably to ancient usage. Here were kept up the old games of hoodman blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snap dragon; the Yule-clog and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe with its white berries hung up, to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids.  The mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases.

Back.

Wyeth, Christmas Card, n/d

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days, that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home! 

Charles Dickens, from Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, 1837

Preserve.

We had now come in full view of the old family mansion, partly thrown in deep shadow, and partly lit up by the cold moonshine. It was an irregular building of some magnitude, and seemed to be of the architecture of different periods. One wing was evidently very ancient, with heavy stone-shafted bow windows jutting out and overrun with ivy, from among the foliage of which the small diamond-shaped panes of glass glittered with the moonbeams. The rest of the house was in the French taste of Charles the Second's time, having been repaired and altered, as my friend told me, by one of his ancestors, who returned with that monarch at the Restoration. The grounds about the house were laid out in the old formal manner of artificial flower-beds, clipped shrubberies, raised terraces, and heavy stone balustrades, ornamented with urns, a leaden statue or two, and a jet of water. The old gentleman, I was told, was extremely careful to preserve this obsolete finery in all its original state. He admired this fashion in gardening; it had an air of magnificence, was courtly and noble, and befitting good old family style. The boasted imitation of nature in modern gardening had sprung up with modern republican notions, but did not suit a monarchical government; it smacked of the levelling system.—I could not help smiling at this introduction of politics into gardening, though I expressed some apprehension that I should find the old gentleman rather intolerant in his creed.—Frank assured me, however, that it was almost the only instance in which he had ever heard his father meddle with politics; and he believed that he had got this notion from a member of parliament who once passed a few weeks with him. The Squire was glad of any argument to defend his clipped yew-trees and formal terraces, which had been occasionally attacked by modern landscape-gardeners.

As we approached the house, we heard the sound of music, and now and then a burst of laughter from one end of the building. This, Bracebridge said, must proceed from the servants' hall, where a great deal of revelry was permitted, and even encouraged, by the Squire throughout the twelve days of Christmas, provided everything was done conformably to ancient usage. Here were kept up the old games of hoodman blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snapdragon: the Yule log and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe, with its white berries, hung up, to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids.

Washington Irving, from "Old Christmas"

Old-Fashioned.

Ben Maton guides us through the English countryside, moldy old piles, and ancient Christmas music ...

Advent I ...

Advent II ...

More "good old-fashioned escapism" ...

Strength.

Carol of the Bells

Michalina Malisz performs on the hurdy-gurdy ...

Excellent.

'Tis the season for these excellent books ...

When the midnight strikes in the belfry dark

And the white goose quakes at the fox’s bark

We saddle the horse that is hayless, oatless

Hoofless and pranceless, kickless and coatless

We canter off for a midnight prowl

Whoo-hoo-hoo, says the hook-eared owl.

Time and tide and buttered eggs wait for no man.

Thanks, Mum.

Released.

Bob Marley and The Wailers released LIVE! on this day in 1975.

"Trenchtown Rock" ...

In the summer on 1982, me and my buddy, Mike, began what would become a short-lived, but very educational tradition in traveling to Mackinac Island each July to watch the finish of Chicago to Mackinac sailboat race.

That first summer, we wandered the docks, pleasantly inebriated by the Holy Trinity of Mount Gay rum, rocketship yachts, and my first experience with reggae's skank.  It was on those docks that I was introduced to Bob Marley and the album I heard coming from the speakers on the deck of that boat was LIVE!  I'd never be the same.

World.

Elgie, Wind and Wuthering, 1976

And walk upon stranger roads than this one.

In a world I used to know before ...

Mozart, Requiem in D-Minor, K. 626

Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts the Concentus Musicus Wien and the Vienna State Opera Chorus featuring Rachel Yakar (soprano), Ortrun Wenkel (alto), Kurt Equiluz (tenor), Robert Holl (bass) ...

Rest in peace, Wolfie.

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.