Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Flunked.

Morelodge, Wounded Knee, 1890

There's a danger in our lush society that the artist won't be taken seriously.  For people as a whole it's been a fabulous system, but it's shit on certain people and continues to do so.  I asked a group recently -- and they got very angry when I brought this up -- to try to explain to me the difference between apartheid and the Indian reservation system as it's been maintained by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  As far as I'm concerned, there isn't any.  I went around to a half-dozen reservations last year and if you think these Indians are any better off than the blacks in Soweto, you're full of shit.  Some people think we got their land fair and square because of the Dawes Act.  Well sure, but none of those Indians had M.B.A.s. Red Cloud had never been in a bank.  ReadMari Sandoz's book on Crazy Horse.  I visited the actual murder site and it was closed because of budget restrictions!  I was the only one there. All the tourists were over in the cavalry horse barns, which I wanted to get a bunch of Sioux to invade and torch.  Can't you see them -- a thousand mounted Sioux -- riding out of the hills to destroy Fort Robinson?  I think that's a magnificent idea.  I'd be glad to join up as a nickel-plated Indian for that one.  That area of our history is just ugly, ugly.  

I know this lawyer who worked for nine years as a volunteer at Pine Ridge.  One night about three A.M. -- we were drinking -- he took me downstairs.  Way back in the corner was a safe, and in the safe was a little pouch that belonged to this old woman.  In the pouch was was a stone that Crazy Horse had given to her mother, and this guy showed it to me, and he let me touch it.  It was such a strange thing.  You know, when the Sioux were being driven hither and yon by the Army until Crazy Horse's daughter died of pneumonia, he lay next to her on the burial platform for three days and three nights.  

Am I supposed to think that Ronald Reagan is as interesting as Crazy Horse, when he's not?  What does it serve us to take these people seriously and not listen to what Black Elk said?  And of course there's a grandeur in that area so hopelessly lost.  Think of being a Sioux and knowing that. I can't imagine anything more painful than being an American Indian.  It's a mystery to me how we could be so generous in defeat to the Japanese and the Germans, and yet so neglect and disregard the Indians. 

Our doom as a nation will be unveiled in the way we have treated the blacks and Indians, the entire Third World.  Washington is a flunked Passion Play.

Jim Harrison

Responsible.

EVERYONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SHAPING LIFE'S CIRCUMSTANCES INTO SUCCESS -- NO ONE CAN DO FOR YOU WHAT YOU NEGLECT TO DO FOR YOURSELF.

The whiteboard in Coach Harbaugh's office ...

Kindled.

Brownscombe, The First Thanksgiving, 1914

Last and not least, they cherished a great hope and inward zeal of laying good foundations, or at least making some ways toward it, for the propagation and advance of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in the remote parts of the world, even though they should be but stepping stones to others in the performance of so great a work.

Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise.

William Bradford

American Experience: The Pilgrims

Thanksgiving.

Ufer.

All of us up here in the water wonderland never forget that Ohio is still a four-letter word.

Bob Ufer

A documentary of longtime Meeechigan Football announcer, Bob Ufer, A Life in a Season (don't miss the artistic introduction by Mike Whorf) ...

Pursue.

Dabos, Thomas Paine, 1791

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles until death.

Thomas Paine

Unknown.

Attack each day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.

Jim Harbaugh

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Thank you, Kurt.

Yah.

Pause.

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

Guillaume Apollinaire

Responsibility.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry is own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Unshaken.

Copley, Samuel Adams, 1772

He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man. We must not conclude merely upon a man's haranguing upon liberty, and using the charming sound, that he is fit to be trusted with the liberties of his country. It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, -- to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves. It is not, I say, unfrequent to see such instances, though at the same time I esteem it a justice due to my country to say that it is not without shining examples of the contrary kind; - examples of men of a distinguished attachment to this same liberty I have been describing; whom no hopes could draw, no terrors could drive, from steadily pursuing, in their sphere, the true interests of their country; whose fidelity has been tried in the nicest and tenderest manner, and has been ever firm and unshaken. The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.

Samuel Adams

Tom T. Hall, "Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine"

It's sandwich time.

Thanks.

Jethro Tull, "Back to the Family"

The Tallest Man on Earth, "I Won't Be Found"

Deep in the dust forgotten gathered 
I grow a diamond in my chest 
I make reflections as the moon shines on
Turn to a villain as I rest 

Well if I ever get to slumber 
Just like a mole deep in the ground 
Hell, I won't be found

Leatherstocking.

"Rocky Mountain Harry" Yount has been described as, "... a typical leatherstocking frontiersman. He was rough, tough, and intelligent." After building a winter cabin in the park in 1880, he became one of the first white men known to spend time on a year-round basis in Yellowstone. Independent and resourceful, able to subsist on his own without close supervision, and having a familiarity and knowledge of the natural processes surrounding him, Harry Yount has become an archetypal model for the National Park Ranger. Horace Albright, a founding father and the second Director of the National Park Service, wrote of Yount, "After that first winter alone, with only the geysers, the elk and the other animals for company, Harry Yount pointed out in a report that it was impossible for one man to patrol the park. He urged the formation of a ranger force. So Harry Yount is credited with being the father of the ranger service, as well as the first national park ranger.

CONNECT

The Pretenders, "Rosalee"

Hit.

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time-a tremendous whack.

Winston Churchill

Team.

The Team. The Team. The Team.

Unanimous.

Tom Seaver couldn't do it. Neither could Nolan Ryan nor Cal Ripken. Ty Cobb came up short, too.

Mariano Rivera?

Why not?

If baseball is ever going to have a unanimous Hall of Fame selection, Rivera ought to be it. This is his last challenge in baseball, the appropriate final touch to a 19-year career defined by greatness.

In 77 years of Hall of Fame balloting, no player has been named on every ballot. Seaver came the closest, getting the votes of 425 of 430 members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America who cast ballots (98.84 percent) in 1992.

Ryan made it onto 491 of 497 ballots (98.79 percent) in 1999, and Ripken, Cobb and George Brett all got better than 98 percent of the vote.

But no one has ever been unanimous.

Could Rivera be the first? Could someone come up with a reason for not voting for him?

CONNECT

Handel, Water Music Suite No. 2 in D Major, HWV 349

Hervé Niquet (I love that dude!) conducts Le Concert Spirituel ...

Undaunted.

Sounds to me like your daunted.  Say it again like you're undaunted ...

Seeking.

Hiking routes for humans range from game trails to the so-called high-volume industrial recreation super trails like the much touted and travelled Appalachian, Continental Divide and Pacific Crest hiking super highways, which are collectively called the “triple crown of long distance hiking.” They all have their place and uses. What may be practical for one popular region might be an abomination in a more remote area.

I’ve bushwhacked all my life, though as a writer, I can see the attractiveness of bagging one of those triple crowns: it’s a ready-to-go memoir with the mileage signs delineating the book’s structure. You could do it for a speed record or have mid-life crises along the way—making for a solid read.

The faint trials I bushwhack are less suitable for linear story telling and more a metaphor for tripping and exploring your way into the unknown, maybe during periods of seeking in your own life. All kinds of backcountry travel are appropriate at different stages of your life’s journey.

Doug Peacock

CONNECT

Coleman.

Happy birthday, Dorsey.

Tommy Dorsey was born on this day in 1905.

"Song of India"

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Endure.

Cultural Offering remembers this day in 1863.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. 

Abraham Lincoln, from his Gettysburg Address

Yes. We can and will endure.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Only.

You never heard the wind pass by.
The wind speaks of the wind only.

Fernando Pessoa

Valuably.

Just being able to say beautiful words, to put beautiful words together, is a way of moving through time and living your life and holding onto your life more valuably.

David Mason

CONNECT

Horror.

Thank you, Wrath of Gnon.

Telemann, Trio in A minor, TWV 42:a4

Performing the Largo are Tara Helen O'Connor, flute; Ida Kavafian, violin; Dane Johansen, cello; Paul O'Dette, theorbo; John GIbbons, harpsichord ...

Curious.

Pickering, Night and Sleep, 1878

The LAND of NOD

From Breakfast on through all the day

At home among my friends I stay,

But every night I go abroad

Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,

With none to tell me what to do--

All alone beside the streams

And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,

Both things to eat and things to see,

And many frightening sights abroad

Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,

I never can get back by day,

Nor can remember plain and clear

The curious music that I hear.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Bob Weir, "KC Moan"

Still.

SEVEN in the WOODS

Am I as old as I am?

Maybe not. Time is a mystery
that can tip us upside down.
Yesterday I was seven in the woods,
a bandage covering my blind eye,
in a bedroll Mother made me
so I could sleep out in the woods
far from people. A garter snake glided by
without noticing me. A chickadee
landed on my bare toe, so light
she wasn’t believable. The night
had been long and the treetops
thick with a trillion stars. Who
was I, half-blind on the forest floor
who was I at age seven? Sixty-eight
years later I can still inhabit that boy’s
body without thinking of the time between.
It is the burden of life to be many ages
without seeing the end of time.

Jim Harrison

Beat.

Mirror.

If a giant mirror orbited Earth at International Space Station distance ...

Happy birthday, Lightfoot.

Gordon Lightfoot was born on this day in 1938.

"Old Dan's Records"



It's sandwich time.

Undissected.

It is precisely the colouring, the atmosphere, the unclassifiable individual details of a story, and above all the general purport that informs with life the undissected bones of the plot, that really count.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Excellent.

An excellent mustard ...

Billy Joe Shaver, "Georgia on a Fast Train"

WOO-HOO! HAPPY FRIDAY!

Look.

A million thanks, Kurtastrophe.

Flourish.

Thus, the wise man deals with things through wu-wei and teaches through no-words.  The ten thousand things flourish without interruption. They grow by themselves, and no one possesses them. 

The highest attainment is wu-wei and is purposeless.

When wu-wei is done, nothing is left undone.

Lao-Tzu

CONNECT

Dance.

Unknown, Matisse Drawing with Bamboo Stick, 1931

I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

III

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
Wtih slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plentitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Dessication of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.

IV

Time and the bell have buried the day,
the black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world.

V

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always —
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.

T.S. Eliot

True.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

G.K. Chesterton

Jethro Tull, "Velvet Green"

Decided.

I've decided to make up my mind about nothing,
To assume the water mask,
To finish my life disguised as a creek, an eddy,
Joining at night the full sweet flow,
To absorb the sky,
To swallow the heat and cold,
The moon and the stars,
To swallow myself in ceaseless flow.

Jim Harrison

Thanks for the inspiration, Chris.

Happy birthday, O'Keeffe.

O'Keeffe, Ladder to the Moon, 1958

Georgia O'Keeffe was born on this day in 1887.

I feel that a real living form is the result of the individual’s effort to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown—where it has experienced something—felt something—it has not understood—and from that experience comes the desire to make the unknown—known. By unknown—I mean the thing that means so much to the person that wants to put it down—clarify something he feels but does not clearly understand—sometimes he partially knows why—sometimes he doesn’t—sometimes it is all working in the dark—but a working that must be done—Making the unknown—known—in terms of one’s medium is all-absorbing—if you stop to think of the form—as form you are lost—The artist’s form must be inevitable—You mustn’t even think you won’t succeed—Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you—catching crystallizing your simpler clearer version of life—only to see it turn stale compared to what you vaguely feel ahead—that you must always keep working to grasp—the form must take care of its self if you can keep your vision clear.

Georgia O'Keeffe