Wanders.

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Great states with good constitutions develop when most people think of their duties and restrain their appetites. Great states sink toward their dissolution when most people think of their privileges and indulge their appetites freely.  This rule is as true for democracies as it is fro autocracies.  And no matter how admirable a constitution may look upon paper, it will be ineffectual unless the written constitution, the web of custom and convention, affirms an enduring moral order of obligation and personal responsibility.

The ruin or recovery of American constitutions, and the general future of of American politics, will be determined more by choices than by circumstances.  Here I have done no more than to suggest what some of those choices might be.  "Not to lose ourselves in  the infinite void of the conjectural world," Burke wrote near the end of his life in  the First Letter of the Regicide Peace, "our business is with what is likely to be affected for the better or worse by the wisdom or weakness of our plans."  To share the American political future through prudent and courageous choices is yet within the realm of possibility.  "I despair neither of the public fortune or of the public mind," Burke continued.  "There is much to be done undoubtedly, and much to be retrieved.  We must walk in new ways, or we can never encounter our enemy in his devious march.  We are not at an end of our struggle, nor near it.  Let us not deceive ourselves; we are at the beginning of great troubles.

Russell Kirk, from On America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776

Happy Birthday, Erik Satie

What is furnishing music? A pleasure! Furnishing music replaces waltzes and operas.  Do not be mistaken, it is something else! No more false music but musical furniture! Furnishing music completes your belongings, it allows for everything; it is worth gold; it is new; it does not disturb habits; it is not tiring; it does not run out; it is not boring. To adopt it is to do better! Listen at ease!  Talk! Move around! Don’t listen!  I beg you not to listen!

Erik Satie, born on this day in 1866

Grisel Petruchelli performs the first Gnossienne on the bandoneón ...

Happy Birthday, J.M.W. Turner

Turner, Study for Sea and Sky, Isle of Wight, 1827

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner, born on this day in 1775.

The Genius of Turner: Painting The Industrial Revolution ...

Golden

Put the golden biscuit in the basket ...

Attend.

Nicer.

Views of Quinlan Terry's home, Higham Hall ...

I don't think we can ignore the Modern Movement. But I wouldn't have minded at all if it hadn't happened. I think the world would be a much nicer place.

Quinlan Terry

Full.

It is the life of the crystal, the architect of the flake, the fire of the frost, the soul of the sunbeam. This crisp winter air is full of it. 

John Burroughs, from "Winter Sunshine"

Thanks to Walker's Arms for the view.  What a great site.

New.

Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unrest.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

Martha Graham

Demand.

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. 

Frederick Douglass, born this week in 1817, from a speech given on August 3, 1857

Happy Birthday, Mencken

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner, and wink your eye at some homely girl.

H.L. Mencken, born on this day in 1880.

Again.

A childish feeling, I admit, but, when we retire from the conventions of society and draw close to nature, we involuntarily become children: each attribute acquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes anew such as it was once and will surely be again.

Mikhail Lermontov

Guard.

Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1817

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

Justice Louis Brandeis, from Olmstead v. United States (1928)

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens 

CONNECT

Happy Birthday, Whitman

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Walt Whitman, born on this day in 1819.

Tolerate.

To think deeply in our culture is to grow angry and to anger others; and if you cannot tolerate this anger, you are wasting the time you spend thinking deeply. One of the rewards of deep thought is the hot glow of anger at discovering a wrong, but if anger is taboo, thought will starve to death.

Jules Henry

Hang.

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

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

For best results, listen to this ... UFO, "Making Moves"

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

Umberto Limongiello

Determined.

I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life. After innumerable failures I finally uncovered the principle for which I was searching, and I was astounded at its simplicity. I was still more astounded to discover the principle I had revealed not only beneficial in the construction of a mechanical hearing aid but it served as well as means of sending the sound of the voice over a wire. Another discovery which came out of my investigation was the fact that when a man gives his order to produce a definite result and stands by that order it seems to have the effect of giving him what might be termed a second sight which enables him to see right through ordinary problems. What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

Alexander Graham Bell

Learn.

Most people get it wrong, and so you learn not to talk about it.

Russell Chatham

CONNECT