Bill Withers, Rest In Peace.

Bill Withers has passed.

I learned this lesson of appreciation just days beyond the passing of greatness.

Jimmy Buffett, who I'm assuming you understand is abundantly more than just cheeseburgers and margaritas, schooled me ... HERE.

Thanks Luke.

Morrissey, "First of the Gang to Die"

Culture.

Behind the pathological need to grade students' every move, incessant surveillance is the worst part of education culture.

Kurt adds more.

Wagner, Lohengrin

Simon Rattle leads the Berlin Philharmonic in the Prelude ...

Isolated.

I am quite confident that humanity is born with its total intellectual capability already on inventory and that human beings do not add anything to any other human being in the way of faculties and capacities. What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed, so that by the time that most people are mature they have lost use of many of their innate capabilities. My long-time hope is that we may soon begin to realize what we are doing and may alter the “education” process in such a way as only to help the new life to demonstrate some of its very powerful innate capabilities.

The new life needs to be inspired with the realization that it has all kinds of new advantages that have been gained through great dedications of unknown, unsung heroes of intellectual exploration and great intuitively faithful integrities of men groping in the dark. Unless the new life is highly appreciative of those who have gone before, it won’t be able to take effective advantage of its heritage. It will not be as regenerated and inspired as it might be if it appreciated the comprehensive love invested in that heritage.

I am quite certain that some day we will take a subject such as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and with the “Einstein” of the subject and his colleagues working on it for a year, we will finally get it reduced down to what is “net” in the subject and enthusiastically approved by the “Einstein” who gave the original lecture. What is net will become communicated so well that any child can turn on a documentary device, a TV, and get the Einstein lucidity of thinking and get it quickly and firmly. I am quite sure that we are going to get research and development laboratories of education where the faculty will become producers of extraordinary moving-picture documentaries. That is going to be the big, new educational trend.

Einstein, when he wanted to study, didn’t sit in the middle of a school room. That is probably the poorest place he could have gone to study. When an individual is really thinking, he is tremendously isolated. He may manage to isolate himself in Grand Central Station, but it is despite the environment rather than because of it. The place to study is not in a school room.

Education will then be concerned primarily with exploring to discover not only more about the universe and its history but about what the universe is trying to do, about why man is part of it, and about how can, and may man best function in universal evolution.

Buckminster Fuller

Multiplies.

Mannion, Nature Rien Poortvliet, 2018

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

Sylvia Plath

Happy Birthday, Masekela

Hugh Masekela was born on this date in 1939.

With Dave Mathews Band, doing "Proudest Monkey" ...

Unaware.

He who is unaware of his ignorance will only be mislead by his knowledge.

Richard Whatley

Don't.

Safeguard.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, — solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Applauded.

Obsessive.

For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive. 

Donna Tartt, from The Secret History

Premiered.

Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3, "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs," Op. 36, premiered on this date in 1977.

Zofia Kilanowicz, soprano, performs with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Antoni Wit, conducting ...



An excellent album ...

Thank you, Rob.

Stand.

Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you don't believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art.

Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost.

Neil Gaiman

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Happy Birthday, Waters

Muddy Waters was born on this date in 1915.

"Mannish Boy" with The Stones ...

Bar.

These days, the fishing guides in Livingston, Montana, are extremely concerned about the care and upkeep of the lights on their drift-boat trailers. Anyone who has owned a boat and trailer is familiar with the ongoing battle: Electrical wiring systems installed on a piece of metal that you frequently dunk in the water are prone to failure. As guides, we abuse the hell out of these things, backing them down steep, rocky riverbanks and rattling them in high-speed runs down washboard roads. Going an entire season without a trailer-light issue is a minor miracle. And it seems as if at any given time there’s someone in the group who’s in the parking lot in the evening trying to figure out why his left taillight is flickering.

Having a trailer light out in Livingston in the middle of guide season is a major liability, so we look out for one another. One evening last year, I was returning from a long day trip to the Stillwater River, a two-hour drive, and it was nearing dark by the time I pulled off the highway. As I made my way through town, I got three text messages before I’d parked:

Light out! 

Trailer light out. 

Got a light out, dude!

The reason for the concern goes beyond guiding duties. Having flawlessly working trailer lights is also directly tied to our regular destination at day’s end, when a big neon martini glass flickers on and draws the parched and sunburned like moths. The Murray, the Blurry, the Slurry and, most often, simply the Bar.

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Earth, Wind, & Fire, "Sing a Song"

Jethro Tull. "Nothing is Easy"

Abundance.

If you perceive the universe as being a universe of abundance, then it will be. If you think of the universe as one of scarcity, then it will be.  I always thought that there was enough of everything to go around - that there are enough ideas in the universe and enough nourishment.

Milton Glaser

Happy Birthday, Irving

Wilkie, Washington Irving in the Archives of Seville, 1828

Washington Irving was born on this date in 1783.

On the following morning, the sun darted his beams from over the hills through the low lattice window. I rose at an early hour, and looked out between the branches of eglantine which overhung the casement. To my surprise Scott was already up and forth, seated on a fragment of stone, and chatting with the workmen employed on the new building. I had supposed, after the time he had wasted upon me yesterday, he would be closely occupied this morning, but he appeared like a man of leisure, who had nothing to do but bask in the sunshine and amuse himself.

I soon dressed myself and joined him. He talked about his proposed plans of Abbotsford; happy would it have been for him could he have contented himself with his delightful little vine-covered cottage, and the simple, yet hearty and hospitable style, in which he lived at the time of my visit. The great pile of Abbotsford, with the huge expense it entailed upon him, of servants, retainers, guests, and baronial style, was a drain upon his purse, a tax upon his exertions, and a weight upon his mind, that finally crushed him.

As yet, however, all was in embryo and perspective, and Scott pleased himself with picturing out his future residence, as he would one of the fanciful creations of his own romances. “It was one of his air castles,” he said, “which he was reducing to solid stone and mortar.” About the place were strewed various morsels from the ruins of Melrose Abbey, which were to be incorporated in his mansion. He had already constructed out of similar materials a kind of Gothic shrine over a spring, and had surmounted it by a small stone cross.

Among the relics from the Abbey which lay scattered before us, was a most quaint and antique little lion, either of red stone, or painted red, which hit my fancy. I forgot whose cognizance it was; but I shall never forget the delightful observations concerning old Melrose to which it accidentally gave rise. The Abbey was evidently a pile that called up all Scott’s poetic and romantic feelings; and one to which he was enthusiastically attached by the most fanciful and delightful of his early associations. He spoke of it, I may say, with affection. “There is no telling,” said he, “what treasures are hid in that glorious old pile. It is a famous place for antiquarian plunder; there are such rich bits of old time sculpture for the architect, and old time story for the poet. There is as rare picking in it as a Stilton cheese, and in the same taste—the mouldier the better.”

Washington Irving, from "Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey"

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Three broadly defined elements of the learning experience support internal motivation and the persistence it enables. Internal motivation relies on learners having autonomy in their learning, a progressing sense of competence in their skills and knowledge, and the ability to learn in a concrete or “real world” context rather than in the abstract. These are mostly absent from classroom learning. Autonomy is rare, useful context is absent, and school’s means for affirming competence often feel so arbitrary as to be almost without use — and are sometimes actively demotivating.  Autonomy means that you follow your own path. You learn what you want to learn, when and how you want to learn it, for your own reasons. Your impetus to learn comes from within because you control the conditions of your learning rather than working within a structure that’s pre-made and inflexible.

The second thing you need to stick with learning independently is to set your own goals toward an increasing sense of competence. You need to create a feedback loop that confirms your work is worth it and keeps you moving forward. In school this is provided by advancing through the steps of the linear path within an individual class or a set curriculum, as well as from feedback from grades and praise.

The third thing that can make or break your ability to sustain internal motivation is to situate what you’re learning in a context that matters to you. In some cases, the context is a specific project you want to accomplish, which … also functions to support your sense of progress.

School is not designed to offer these three conditions; autonomy and context are sorely lacking in classrooms. School can provide a sense of increasing mastery, via grades and moving from introductory classes to harder ones. But a sense of true competence is harder to come by in a school environment.

Howard Rheingold interviews the author ...

Teacher payroll is the greatest expense in public education.  For that reason traditional classrooms will be obsolete by 2030.  The current remote learning culture is providing the perfect Petri dish for this experiment to become reality, probably sooner.

Simple Minds, "Alive and Kicking"

Try.

Some of the sensible substances are generally admitted to be substances, so that we must look first among these. For it is an advantage to advance to that which is more knowable. For learning proceeds for all in this way -- through that which is less knowable by nature to that which is more knowable; and just as in conduct our task is to start from what is good for each and make what is without qualification good good for each, so it is our task to start from what is more knowable to oneself and make what is knowable by nature knowable to oneself. Now what is knowable and primary for particular sets of people is often knowable to a very small extent, and has little or nothing of reality. But yet one must start from that which is barely knowable but knowable to oneself, and try to know what is knowable without qualification, passing, as has been said, by way of those very things which one does know.

Aristotle

Introduction.

My introduction ...

to William F. Buckley Jr. was made by Kurt over Thanksgiving break, 1983.

From Nora Ephron's August 7, 1983 New York Times review ...

What Mr. Buckley has written is a contemporary version of the books written by first-generation Americans who came to this country as poor immigrants during the 19th century and flourished in retailing or whatever. Late in life, many of them wrote reflections that were privately published and that possess the innocent vulgarity and love of country that so often combine to make up the sensibility known as nouveau riche. These books work in their modest way because they are American fables, and that, I think, is what ''Overdrive'' is meant to be. A boy born to a small oil fortune grows up to be a man with three homes, five in help, a wife on the best-dressed list and the secure belief that even his preference in peanut butter will be of interest to his fans. His attitude toward life is so cheerful and good-natured - and what's more, he's right about the peanut butter - that it seems almost churlish to point out that it is possible to spend too much time in a limousine. The English used to say, give an Irishman a horse and he'll vote Tory, but never mind.

I would add that the pictures are interesting as well, and provided my first glimpse into what has, ever since, been my dream garage-study (and chair).

CORRECTION...

... it was Christmas break, 1983.

Bows.

He is not the man who, with aplomb, can fault the béarnaise sauce at Maxim’s before attending a concert at which he detects a musical solecism, returning to write an imperishable sonnet before preparing a lecture on civics that the next day will enthrall an auditorium. No: the renaissance man is, I think, someone who bows his head before the great unthreatened truths and, while admitting and even encouraging all advances in science, nevertheless knows enough to know that the computer does not now exist, nor ever shall, that has the power to repeal the basic formulas of civilization.

William F. Buckley Jr.

Know.

The more you know, the less you need.

Yvon Chouinard

Jethro Tull, "Teacher"

Arms.

We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone.

Patti Smith, from Just Kids

Isolation.

Ryan Ramsey captained the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Turbulent from 2008-11 ...

“Submariners are trained to deal with isolation, whereas the public aren’t,” he says. “For the general public, it’s a wicked problem that they’re trying to tame. “The first thing to do is get into a routine. It needs discipline. Do the same things in the same order every day. Make the weekends different. You have to differentiate time.”

This and more, HERE.

Accomplish.

Chris Hadfield says self-isolation is a lot like flying a spaceship ... "You’re part of a crew trying to accomplish an objective.”

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Weight.

WFB on Laugh In ...





It's very hard to stand up carrying the weight of what I know.

Instantly.

A Locrian who proposed any new law stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.

Edward Gibbon, from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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Jerk.

Few Caribbean dishes are as well-traveled, or as beloved, as Jamaican jerk, a humble meal of bone-in chicken or pork parts doused in a blend of spices and hot peppers, and cooked slowly over smoldering pimento wood branches. Peppered across the island, roadside jerk stands entice passersby with wafts of fragrant smoke rising from makeshift grills encased in sheets of tin siding. Supple, juicy, and crispy in spots where the meat has been charred by the fire, jerk is an integral part of Jamaica's economy too, with restaurants like the perpetually busy Scotchies or the relaxed Pepper's Jerk Center serving tourists and locals year-round. It's typically eaten with your hands alongside fried cornmeal "festivals" (dumplings), scorching-­hot Scotch bonnet pepper sauce, and cold beer.

Although jerk comes across as a leisurely beach food, it's actually a dish of resistance, born out of necessity and circumstance. The origins can be traced to the Maroons of the 17th century, a tribe of enslaved Africans who fled into the mountains of Jamaica's eastern Portland parish to escape Spanish-owned plantations. Here, the Maroons barbecued whole wild hogs, burying the meat in the earth to smother the smoke and keep the Spanish and British forces from discovering them. "They had to live off the land and find ways to survive," explains Suzanne Rousseau, co-­author, with her sister Michelle, of Provisions: The Roots of Caribbean Cooking.

Thanks to the popularity of bottled jerk seasonings such as Walkerswood and Grace brands, the flavors of jerk have become one of Jamaica’s most famous exports worldwide. But Suzanne believes the roots of the dish have been lost. “Jerk is not a seasoning; it’s a type of cooking,” Michelle says. “It’s like whole-hog barbecue [in the American South].” The singular combination of ingredients found on the island, and the technique of smoking with the leaves and branches of the pimento tree (also known as the allspice tree), are what make “jerking” so deeply connected to the island—so much so that it’s become a part of Jamaicans’ shared heritage. As Michelle says, “It’s truly tied to our identity.”

Jamaica-born chef Cheryl Smith—who serves jerk at her Brooklyn, New York, restaurant, Cheryl's Global Soul—says that even if it's not grilled over a smoldering pile of pimento logs, her version is still a tribute to the dish's history, and to the people of the island, past and present. "It's the ingenuity of Jamaicans," she says, "who figured out how to make something out of nothing. You've got some meat, some vegetables, some wood—and you've got a way to make a living."

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Isolation.

When I took part in the Vendee Globe, I spent three months at sea alone and on the Aviva Challenge I was alone at sea for six months. My home for that time was a 72-foot boat with very few creature comforts and nothing in the way of entertainment, apart from my karaoke skills.

Of course, I am well aware that my isolation was one of choice and for very different reasons than the situation we find ourselves in now due to coronavirus. However, in sharing the strategies and learnings from being alone for these long periods of time, I hope that they will resonate with people that find themselves in a situation that is unfamiliar and scary.

As mindful humans, we know we need to be physically isolated right now but that doesn’t mean we have to be mentally isolated. Human contact and support are important at all times but particularly in times of crisis or stress. Now, more than ever, we need to look out for each other.

My tips for dealing with isolation are ...

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Anything.

The government can’t do anything for you, except in proportion as it can do something to you.

William F. Buckley Jr.

Nice jacket.

Thank you, Kurt.

Premiered.

Unknown, Beethoven Symphony No. 1, first violin, 1804

Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21, premiered on this date in 1800.

Sir George Solti conducts the Chicago Symphony ...



The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library's Digital Collections has the manuscript in the hand of an unidentified copyist, on paper watermarked 1804, HERE.

Ellis Marsalis, Rest In Peace

Ellis Marsalis has passed.

Mr. Marsalis workin' things out with Dr. Billy Taylor (the YouTube equivalent of van Gogh and Gauguin talking painting) ...

"Swinging at the Haven" with his boys Delfeayo, trombone, Branford, saxophone, Wynton, trumpet, and Jason, drums ...

Johnson.

Happy Birthday, Harris

Emmylou Harris was born on this date in 1947.

"Luxury Liner" ...



"Two More Bottles of Wine" ...



"Pancho and Lefty" ...



An excellent album ...

LaLoosh.

Part-pitcher.

When readers received the April 1, 1985, issue of Sports Illustrated, they opened the magazine to read an article about a young, unknown New York Mets prospect who could throw a baseball 168 mph. The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch, written by journalist George Plimpton, detailed the mysterious lifestyle of the "part-pitcher, part-yogi" who played the French horn beautifully and looked like "Goofy in one of Walt Disney's cartoon classics" when he threw the ball. 

The fascinating story of Sidd Finch was all a hoax, an idea originally drummed up by SI's managing editor at the time, Mark Mulvoy, and perfectly executed by Plimpton. Part of what made the story so believable was the photographs of Sidd Finch, taken by SI photographer Lane Stewart, who recruited his friend, art teacher and occasional assistant Joe Berton to portray the fictional Sidd Finch character. 

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Wu-han.

Jethro Tull, "Cross-Eyed Mary"

ACϟDC, "Shot Down in Flames"

The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn't any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it's right. If it disturbs you it's wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

 

Velvet Revolver, "Fall to Pieces"

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

Douglas Adams, from The Salmon of Doubt

Happy Birthday, Onofri

Enrico Onofri was born on this date in 1967.

Performing Corelli's Сoncerti Grosso Op.6 No.4, in D major with Jordi Savall and his band of outlaws  ...

Repeat.

Richard Thompson, "Put It There, Pal"

Genius.

Genius.

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