Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

The SPECIALS, "Rat Race"

Nat King Cole, "Autumn Leaves"

Happy birthday, Monet

Monet, Branch of the Seine near Giverny, 1897

Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It's enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it. 

Claude Monet

Almost.

Machines that almost fall over ...

Happy birthday, Stevenson.

Robert Louis Stevenson was born on this day in 1850.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Mendelssohn, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Op. 27

Dennis Russell Davies conducts the Overture with the SWR Symphony Orchestra ...

Happy birthday, Rodin.

Auguste Rodin was born on this day in 1840.

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

The BBC's Omnibus documentary on Auguste Rodin ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Honoring.

Jamey Johnson, "This Land is Your Land"

Grateful.

A Veterans Day message from Jocko Willink ...

I am no longer envious of the awards I see on the chests of our military men and women. I am older now. I have been to war. I know that each little dangling piece of metal was paid for at great cost in blood and sacrifice. I know that many of those awards came in combination with fallen comrades. I know that for almost every decoration that adorns the chest of a service member, there are also mental and physical scars that will forever ache.

And yet America’s veterans hold their heads high. They fight on through the pain of loss and find new missions and continue to serve in our military or in the civilian sector. Older generations of veterans protected and then built our great nation. This current generation of veterans is doing the same.

The young boy I was didn’t understand war. How could I?

I’m a little older now. I see a little more. I know a little more. And I know that veterans sacrifice immensely.

I know that our nation’s servicemen and women put duty to country above themselves.

I know that they serve not for medals or glory – but for a cause greater than themselves: Freedom.

I know that when our nation called, they answered.

Generations of veterans have stepped up and held the line against evil in the world.

And to that, I am eternally grateful.

CONNECT

Ownership.

Jocko Willink received the Silver Star and Bronze Star for his service in the Iraq War. He was the commander of SEAL Team Three's Task Unit Bruiser during the Battle of Ramadi.

His TED Talk on Extreme Ownership ...

Honoring.

Rest in Peace, Fitz.

On this day and at this hour, the Great Lakes ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior with all 29 hands.

thinglink has an timeline map.

Historian Ric Mixter discusses the Edmund Fitzgerald investigations in a 2018 lecture ,,,

Big.

Yet.

Could I say what I think, could I express

My every hidden and too silent thought,

And bring my feelings, in perfection wrought,

To one unforced point of living stress; 

Could I breathe forth my soul, could I confess

The inmost secrets to my nature brought,

I might be great; yet none to me has taught,

A language well to figure my distress. 

Yet day and night to me new whispers bring, 

And night and day from me old whispers lake…

Oh for a word, one phrase in which to fling 

All that I think or feel and so to wake

The world, but I am dumb and cannot sing–

Dumb as you clouds before the thunders break.

Fernando Pessoa

Jamey Johnson, "Willin'"

WOO-HOO!  HAPPY FRIDAY!

Pardon the flute solo, but there's ol' "Cowboy" Eddie Long playin' steel  ...

Stacy.

Cultural Offering has an update on Navy Chief Petty Officer Kenton Stacy. 

Teach.

Bayer, Cygnus, 1603

Teach Me Your Mood, O Patient Stars
Teach me your mood, O patient stars!
Who climb each night the ancient sky,
Leaving on space no shade, no scars,
No trace of age, no fear to die.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Phil Collins, "The Roof is Leaking"

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

John Cougar, "Sugar Marie"

True.

If Twitter offendotrons manage to get Maybot and Co to sack Sir Roger Scruton from his new job advising Building Better, Building Beautiful on housing policy, you can safely stick a fork in British civil society. It’s done.

Years ago, he argued that ‘"once identified as right-wing you are beyond the pale of argument; your views are irrelevant, your character discredited, your presence in the world a mistake. You are not an opponent to be argued with, but a disease to be shunned." At the time it was hyperbole. Now it seems what Freddie deBoer calls "offence archaeologists," people determined to ‘"sniff out baddies doing bad things" by going through everything a person has ever said or written – are determined to make it true.

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MORE

Ineffable.

Homer, The Guide and Woodsman, 1889

HEART of the HILLS

If but for the span of a moment I swam in the aura of flame;
I caught the rapt secret of being clothed by the Ineffable Name.
And chastened with wonder and strengthened to meet life's beleaguering ills
I went, like a bondman unfettered, adown from the heart of the hills.

Clinton Scollard

Learn.

The poet, in the novelty of his images, is always the origin of language.  How much philosophers would learn, if they would consent to read the poets!

Gaston Bachelard

Relish.

It’s dark outside and you haven’t even left work. But! Grilled Kid Liver and Green Sauce awaits you at Bread and Wine tonight. With a glass of @stjohnwine Pinot Noir, perhaps... or a bottle, if you have a friend or a lover with whom to relish these long evenings.

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Courage.

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it's conformity.

Rollo May

Soldier.

It is the Soldier, not the minister
Who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer
Who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician
Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

Charles M. Province

Enthusiasm.

Linnell, Blake, 1823

Mere enthusiasm is the all in all.

Passion and expression are beauty itself.

William Blake

Within.

Immensity is within ourselves. It is attached to a sort of expansion of being that life curbs and caution arrests, but which starts again when we are alone. As soon as we become motionless, we are elsewhere; we are dreaming in a world that is immense. Indeed, immense is the movement of motionless man. It is one of the dynamic characteristics of quiet daydreaming.

Gaston Bachelard

Boccherini, Cello Concerto in D major, G. 479

Mstislav Rostropovich performs the Allegro with the Mito Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Seiji Ozawa ...

Oneiric.

Great images have both a history and a prehistory; they are always a blend of memory and legend, with the result that we never experience an image directly. Indeed, every great image has an unfathomable oneiric depth to which the personal past adds special color. Consequently it is not until late in life that we really revere an image, when we discover that its roots plunge well beyond the history that is fixed in our memories. In the realm of absolute imagination, we remain young late in life. But we must lose our earthly Paradise in order to actually live in it, to experience it in the reality of its images, in the absolute sublimation that transcends all passion. 

Nobody knows that in reading we are re-living our temptations to be a poet. All readers who have a certain passion for reading, nurture and repress, through reading, the desire to become a writer.  In this admiration, which goes beyond the passivity of contemplative attitudes, the joy of reading appears to be the reflection of the joy of writing, as though the reader were the writer's ghost.

Gaston Bachelard

Beliefs.

In 1982, Ari Weinzweig, co-founded Zingerman’s Delicatessen with a $20,000 bank loan and a Russian History degree from the University of Michigan. He opened the doors with two employees and a small selection of specialty foods and exceptional sandwiches. Today, Zingerman’s Delicatessen is a nationally renowned food icon and the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses has grown to 10 businesses with over 750 employees and over $55 million in annual revenue.

Ari discusses his latest book, The Power of Beliefs in Business, which is a 600-page culmination of three years of research and reflection on how beliefs are at the core of everything we do and how what we believe will significantly alter our outcomes of success or failure. Ari discusses the secret to great sandwiches, how to cultivate hope in business, forming positive beliefs and the growing pains of the customer service industry. 

Happy birthday, Bryant.

William Cullen Bryant was born on this day in 1794.

Spirit that breathest through my lattice, thou 
That cool’st the twilight of the sultry day, 
Gratefully flows thy freshness round my brow: 
Thou hast been out upon the deep at play, 
Riding all day the wild blue waves till now, 
Roughening their crests, and scattering high their spray 
And swelling the white sail. I welcome thee 
To the scorched land, thou wanderer of the sea! 

Nor I alone—a thousand blossoms round 
Inhale thee in the fulness of delight; 
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound 
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night; 
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound, 
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight. 
Go forth into the gathering shade; go forth, 
God’s blessing breathed upon the fainting earth! 

Go, rock the little wood-bird in his nest, 
Curl the still waters, bright with stars, and rouse 
The wide old wood from his majestic rest, 
Summoning from the innumerable boughs 
The strange, deep harmonies that haunt his breast: 
Pleasant shall be thy way where meekly bows. 
The shutting flower, and darkling waters pass, 
And where the o’ershadowing branches sweep the grass. 

The faint old man shall lean his silver head 
To feel thee; thou shalt kiss the child asleep, 
And dry the moistened curls that overspread 
His temples, while his breathing grows more deep: 
And they who stand about the sick man’s bed, 
Shall joy to listen to thy distant sweep, 
And softly part his curtains to allow 
Thy visit, grateful to his burning brow. 

Go—but the circle of eternal change, 
Which is the life of nature, shall restore, 
With sounds and scents from all thy mighty range 
Thee to thy birthplace of the deep once more; 
Sweet odours in the sea-air, sweet and strange, 
Shall tell the home-sick mariner of the shore; 
And, listening to thy murmur, he shall deem 
He hears the rustling leaf and running stream.

William Cullen Bryant

Boccherini, Trio Op. 34, No. 5 in C, G. 105

La Ritirata performs the Largo and Allegro Vivo ...

Happy birthday, Carracci.

Carracci, Man Drinking, 1583

Annibale Carracci was born on this day in 1560.

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Maddux  ... the last hero-worthy pro athlete?

Thanks, Kurt. 

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Extraordinary.

Having escaped so many pits of death whereinto we have seen so many other men to fall, we should acknowledge that so extraordinary a fortune as that which has hitherto kept us above ground beyond the ordinary term of life is not likely to continue long.

Michel de Montaigne

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Sweet.

van Gogh, Avenue of Poplars near Nuenen in Autumn, 1884

BINSEY POPLARS

felled 1879

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled, 
  Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, 
  All felled, felled, are all felled; 
    Of a fresh and following folded rank 
                Not spared, not one 
                That dandled a sandalled 
         Shadow that swam or sank 
On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank. 
         
  O if we but knew what we do 
         When we delve or hew — 
     Hack and rack the growing green! 
          Since country is so tender 
     To touch, her being só slender, 
     That, like this sleek and seeing ball 
     But a prick will make no eye at all, 
     Where we, even where we mean 
                 To mend her we end her, 
            When we hew or delve: 
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been. 
  Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve 
     Strokes of havoc unselve 
           The sweet especial scene, 
     Rural scene, a rural scene, 
     Sweet especial rural scene. 

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Mediocrity.

There is no benefit to mediocrity.

Harold Bloom

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Happy birthday, Chardin.

Chardin, A Green Neck Duck with a Seville Orange, 1730

Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin was born on this day in 1699.

You can be sure that most of the high positions in the country would be empty if one were admitted only after an examination as severe as the one we painters must pass. 

Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin

Led Zeppelin, "Achilles' Last Stand"

Ceiling.

Michelangelo, Libyan Sybil, 1511

Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel were first exhibited to the public on this day in 1512.

NOVA's The Sistine Restored ...

Understanding.

Those around me persist in not understanding that I have never been able to live in a real world of people and things.

Claude Debussy

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Thank you, Rachel.

Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, "Fanfare for the Common Man"