Colin Hay, "Waterloo Sunset"

I love it when a cover is better than the original ...

Happy Birthday, Porter

Cole Porter was born on this day in 1891.

Lisa Stansfield, "Down in the Depths (On the 90th Floor)"

Laughing.

Hassell, Untitled, 2017

Guy de la Valdene remembers fishing with Harrison, Chatham, and McGuane ...

What I remember best about those decades was the laughter. Every time our group was together, we laughed and laughed, often to the point of hurting. Head-splitting, belly-heaving silliness at all times of day and night, in the boat, at the bar, during dinners, in Key West, in Montana, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in France. Everywhere and anywhere, we laughed and laughed and laughed, and I miss it.

CONNECT

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

SECRECY, or HOW to be INVISIBLE

Society does not understand the concept of unplanned time or non-planning.  You may be criticized, judged, or ridiculed for your activities.  This is best avoided altogether.

No one needs to know about your wanderings.  It is okay to have something that is just yours.

Your thoughts are powerful and need time to emerge without distractions.  This can only be done in solitary fashion.

Wandering is an ancient and powerful tool.  When you you wander you are connecting to a group of great thinkers who used this tool to further humankind and for good.  This path is not for everyone.  You are entrusted with the knowledge of its power and should only pass on this knowledge to others who are able to honor it.

Secrecy allows members to conduct research quietly and covertly.

She had the added sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown.

Virginia Woolf     

Keri Smith, from The Wander Society 

Learn.

Always in big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread.  It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. You are undertaking the first experience, not of the place, but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of our essential loneliness, nobody can discover the world for anybody else.  It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it becomes a common ground and a common bond, and we cease to be alone.

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home. 

Wendell Berry

Excellent.

Excellent albums ...

Trust.

THRESHOLDS

Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged. Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.

The beauty of nature insists on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of true arrival. Because nothing is abrupt, the beginning of spring nearly always catches us unawares. It is there before we see it; and then we can look nowhere without seeing it.

Change arrives in nature when time has ripened. There are no jagged transitions or crude discontinuities. This accounts for the sureness with which one season succeeds another. It is as though they were moving forward in a rhythm set from within a continuum.

To change is one of the great dreams of every heart – to change the limitations, the sameness, the banality, or the pain. So often we look back on patterns of behavior, the kind of decisions we make repeatedly and that have failed to serve us well, and we aim for a new and more successful path or way of living. But change is difficult for us. So often we opt to continue the old pattern, rather than risking the danger of difference. We are also often surprised by change that seems to arrive out of nowhere.

We find ourselves crossing some new threshold we had never anticipated. Like spring secretly at work within the heart of winter, below the surface of our lives huge changes are in fermentation. We never suspect a thing. Then when the grip of some long-enduring winter mentality begins to loosen, we find ourselves vulnerable to a flourish of possibility and we are suddenly negotiating the challenge of a threshold.

At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotions comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossing were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds; to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.

To acknowledge and cross a new threshold is always a challenge. It demands courage and also a sense of trust in whatever is emerging. This becomes essential when a threshold opens suddenly in front of you, one for which you had no preparation. This could be illness, suffering or loss. Because we are so engaged with the world, we usually forget how fragile life can be and how vulnerable we always are. It takes only a couple of seconds for a life to change irreversibly. Suddenly you stand on completely strange ground and a new course of life has to be embraced. Especially at such times we desperately need blessing and protection. You look back at the life you have lived up to a few hours before, and it suddenly seems so far away. Think for a moment how, across the world, someone’s life has just changed – irrevocably, permanently, and not necessarily for the better – and everything that was once so steady, so reliable, must now find a new way of unfolding.

Though we know one another’s names and recognize one another’s faces, we never know what destiny shapes each life. The script of individual destiny is secret; it is hidden behind and beneath the sequence of happenings that is continually unfolding for us. Each life is a mystery that is never finally available to the mind’s light or questions. That we are here is a huge affirmation; somehow life needed us and wanted us to be. To sense and trust this primeval acceptance can open a vast spring of trust within the heart. It can free us into a natural courage that casts out fear and opens up our lives to become voyages of discovery, creativity, and compassion. No threshold need be a threat, but rather an invitation and a promise.

Whatever comes, the great sacrament of life will remain faithful to us, blessing us always with visible signs of invisible grace. We merely need to trust.

John O'Donohue

Excellent.

Excellent albums ...

Itself.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing

Spring comes, and the grass grows

by itself

Basho

Happy Birthday, Scaggs

Boz Scaggs was born on this day in 1944.

"I Just Go" ...

Plenitude.

Marsans, Biblioteca, 1992

Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.

Gaston Bachelard

Simply Red, "Mellow My Mind"

I love it when a cover is better than the original.

Vivaldi, Andromeda Liberata

Lucile Richardot performs Sovente il Sole ...

Excellent.

Excellent books ...

Time.

All alone in the edge of the water

Hidin' out by the Sea of Cortez

With my sketch pads and Flairs

Tapes and battery spares

It's just no comprehendo to what everyone says

Time alone seemed to work well for faulkner

Time away seems to work for the kid

Life and ink they run out at the same time

Or so said my old friend the squid

Jimmy Buffett, from "If I Could Just Get It On Paper"

Hope.

Ray Davies, "I'm Not Like Everybody Else"

I won't take all that they hand me down

And make out a smile, though I wear a frown

And I'm not gonna take it all lying down

'Cause once I get started I go to town ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Mackintosh

Mackintosh, Queen's Cross Church, Maryhill, Glasgow, Scotland, 1899

Art is the Flower - Life is the Green Leaf. Let every artist strive to make his flower a beautiful living thing, something that will convince the world that there may be, there are, things more precious more beautiful - more lasting than life itself.  You must offer the flowers of the art that is in you - the symbols of all that is noble - and beautiful - and inspiring - flowers that will often change a colourless leaf - into an established and thoughtful thing. 

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, born on this day in 1868

Released.

Randy Travis released Storms of Life on this day in 1986.

The title track, one of the best songs ever written ...

Roxy Music, "Still Falls the Rain"

Happy Birthday, Trumbull

Trumbull, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill, 1775, 1786

John Trumbull was born on this day in 1756.

Crusade.

On this date in 1944, the D-Day invasion of Europe took place during World War II as Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France.

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS
ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE

Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is will trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!

Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Order of the Day

Enjoyment.

Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look.

They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good. 

Heroes do not want power over others.  Devoted though we must be to the conservation cause, I do not believe that any of us should give it all of our time or effort or heart.  Give what you can, but do not burn yourselves out -- or break your hearts.  Let us save at least half of our lives for the enjoyment of this wonderful world which still exists. Leave your dens, abandon your cars and walk out into the great mountains, the deserts, the forests, the seashores. 

Those treasures still belong to all of us. 

Enjoy them to the full, stretch your legs, expand your lungs, enliven your hearts -- long live the weeds and the wilderness yet!

 

Edward Abbey

coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwichespottedme atgingerbeerlemonadesodawater.

Rackham, Ratty's Riverside Picnic, 1940

It all seemed too good to be true. Hither and thither through the meadows he rambled busily, along the hedgerows, across the copses, finding everywhere birds building, flowers budding, leaves thrusting—everything happy, and progressive, and occupied. And instead of having an uneasy conscience pricking him and whispering “whitewash!” he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.

He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before—this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver—glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.

As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank opposite, just above the water’s edge, caught his eye, and dreamily he fell to considering what a nice snug dwelling-place it would make for an animal with few wants and fond of a bijou riverside residence, above flood level and remote from noise and dust. As he gazed, something bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart of it, vanished, then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could hardly be a star in such an unlikely situation; and it was too glittering and small for a glow-worm. Then, as he looked, it winked at him, and so declared itself to be an eye; and a small face began gradually to grow up round it, like a frame round a picture.

A brown little face, with whiskers.

A grave round face, with the same twinkle in its eye that had first attracted his notice.

Small neat ears and thick silky hair.

It was the Water Rat!

Then the two animals stood and regarded each other cautiously.

“Hullo, Mole!” said the Water Rat.

“Hullo, Rat!” said the Mole.

“Would you like to come over?” enquired the Rat presently.

“Oh, its all very well to talk,” said the Mole, rather pettishly, he being new to a river and riverside life and its ways.

The Rat said nothing, but stooped and unfastened a rope and hauled on it; then lightly stepped into a little boat which the Mole had not observed. It was painted blue outside and white within, and was just the size for two animals; and the Mole’s whole heart went out to it at once, even though he did not yet fully understand its uses.

The Rat sculled smartly across and made fast. Then he held up his forepaw as the Mole stepped gingerly down. “Lean on that!” he said. “Now then, step lively!” and the Mole to his surprise and rapture found himself actually seated in the stern of a real boat.

“This has been a wonderful day!” said he, as the Rat shoved off and took to the sculls again. “Do you know, I’ve never been in a boat before in all my life.”

“What?” cried the Rat, open-mouthed: “Never been in a—you never—well I—what have you been doing, then?”

“Is it so nice as all that?” asked the Mole shyly, though he was quite prepared to believe it as he leant back in his seat and surveyed the cushions, the oars, the rowlocks, and all the fascinating fittings, and felt the boat sway lightly under him.

“Nice? It’s the only thing,” said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,” he went on dreamily: “messing—about—in—boats; messing——”

“Look ahead, Rat!” cried the Mole suddenly.

It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.

“—about in boats—or with boats,” the Rat went on composedly, picking himself up with a pleasant laugh. “In or out of ’em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not. Look here! If you’ve really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?”

The Mole waggled his toes from sheer happiness, spread his chest with a sigh of full contentment, and leaned back blissfully into the soft cushions. “What a day I’m having!” he said. “Let us start at once!”

“Hold hard a minute, then!” said the Rat. He looped the painter through a ring in his landing-stage, climbed up into his hole above, and after a short interval reappeared staggering under a fat, wicker luncheon-basket.

“Shove that under your feet,” he observed to the Mole, as he passed it down into the boat. Then he untied the painter and took the sculls again.

“What’s inside it?” asked the Mole, wriggling with curiosity.

“There’s cold chicken inside it,” replied the Rat briefly; “coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwichespottedme atgingerbeerlemonadesodawater——”

“O stop, stop,” cried the Mole in ecstacies: “This is too much!”

Kenneth Grahame, from The Wind in the Willows

It's sandwich time.

Ever.

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

William Stafford

Happy Birthday, Butler

Thankfully, Richard Butler was born on this day in 1956.

"Codeine" and "Wake Up" with Richard Fortus ...

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Accompanying the frontispiece ...

While it lasted, Block 31 housed up to five hundred children together with several prisoners appointed “counselors,” and in spite of the severe surveillance it possessed, against all expectations, a clandestine children’s library. The library was minuscule; it consisted of eight books, which included H.G. Wells’s A Short History of the World, a Russian school textbook and an analytical geometry text. Once or twice an inmate from another camp managed to smuggle in a new book, so that the number of holdings rose to nine or ten. At the end of each day, the books, together with other valuables such as medicines and bits of food, would be entrusted to one of the older girls, whose responsibility it was to hide them in a different place every night.

From The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel

Thank you, Nora.

Beethoven, Horn Sonata, Op.17

"As you see, of course," Dennis Brain performs, with Dennis Matthews accompanying ...

Mince.

FERGUS HENDERSON'S BEEF MINCE on TOAST

INGREDIENTS

Beef mince

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
• 1 medium leek, white and light green part only,  halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
• 1 medium carrot, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
• 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 pounds (910 g) ground (minced) chuck (20% fat)
• 2 canned whole plum tomatoes or ¼ cup (60 ml)  canned (tinned) chopped tomatoes
• ⅓ cup (30 g) rolled oats
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce1½ cups (355 ml) dry red wine
• ¼ to ½ cup (60 to 120 ml) chicken stock or broth  (optional)
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 

Toast

• Four 3/4 inch (2 cm) thick slices Pullman loaf or wheat bread
• 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) beef drippings or pan sauce from a roast (or softened butter, in a pinch)

INSTRUCTIONS

To make the beef mince: 

1. In a large skillet (frying pan), heat the oil over medium-high heat for 2 minutes. 
2. Reduce the heat to medium and add the onion, leek, carrot, and garlic and cook, stirring often, until the onion is soft, 5–6 minutes. 
3. Crumble the beef into the pan and stir to mix it into the vegetables and break up the meat. Cook, stirring often, until the beef loses its pink color, 8–10 minutes
4. Crush the whole tomatoes in your hand and over the pan. 
5. While stirring, add the oats, followed by the Worcestershire sauce, and finally the wine. 
6. The sauce should be loose and thick (like lava); if the sauce is too thick, add enough chicken stock to make it lava-like. 
7. Stir in the salt and pepper, reduce the heat to low, and cook, stirring occasionally and adding stock if the pan goes dry, until the mixture looks rich and creamy and the fat separates out from the meat and rests at the surface of the mince, 1½–2 hours.

To make the toast: 

1. If you used the broiler (grill) method, leave the broiler on. Otherwise, adjust an oven rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat the broiler to high. 
2. Spread the beef drippings over one side of each slice, then place the toast on a foil-lined baking sheet and broil until bubbling, 1–2 minutes. 
3. Serve with the mince spooned over the toast.

Thanks, Mum.

Rock.

"... using a spoon to tap out the beat of Queen’s 'We Will Rock You' on a china teacup."

CONNECT

Frank and Celeste, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"

Thanks, Mum.

Delighted.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.

Aristotle

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens 

CONNECT

Released.

The Kinks released one of the all-time-great live albums, One for the Road, on this day in 1980.

"Misfits" ...

Jimmy Buffett, "Everybody's Talkin'"

Gin.

And the Lord said “Let there be gin” and it was Gin O’Clock. 

CONNECT

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 ... Thin Lizzy, "Are You Ready"

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

The Police, "When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around"

Released.

Thin Lizzy released Live and Dangerous on this day in 1978.

"Rosalie" ...

Humble.

Pissarro, Setting Sun and Fog, Eragny, 1891

Blessed are those who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.

Camille Pissarro

Party.

Party on, Lilibet!

CONNECT

Thanks, Mum.

Trust.

A rule of law requires a shared allegiance, by which people entrust their collective destiny to sovereign institutions that can speak and decide in their name. This shared allegiance is not, as Rousseau and others argued, a contract among the living. It is a partnership between the living, the unborn and the dead – a continuous trust that no generation can pillage for its own advantage.

Sir Roger Scruton

CONNECT

Happy Birthday, Watts

Charlie Watts was born on this day in 1941.

Charlie's Quintet, featuring Bernard Taylor, "I've Got a Crush on You" ...

Happy Birthday, Elgar

Sir Edward Elgar was born on this day in 1857.

VOCE8 performs "Lux Aeterna" ...

Sycamore.

Inshaw, Sycamore Tree, 2019

Learned.

My brothers and I spent weeks with our grandparents by the sea where we learned so much more than it may have seemed. Not because we saw an actual shipwreck but because we saw the potential for it. Not because we actually found treasure but because we could feel the immanence of treasure at every seashore.  We fished for wishes and caught them; we swam to find mermaids and became them; and we dived for pearls and returned with a stick, a bit of litter, a coin or the makings of a joke. Pearls, in other words. We learned about tides and chance, storms and sun, the vicissitudes of what is lost and found, flotsam and jetsam, castaway luck, islands, sea-songs, rings, riddles and pledges. 

Jay Griffiths, from Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape

Tommy Dorsey, "Song of India"

Happy Birthday, Woody

Ronnie Wood was born on this day in 1947.

"Seven Days"

I love it when a cover is better than the original.

Manna, Lezzione Terza del Venerdi Santo for Soprano, Salterio and Basso Continuo

Miriam Feuersinger performs with Il Dolce Conforto ...