The Sheepdogs, "Laid Back"

Believe.

What We Believe …

1. There is something NEW under the sun, every day, all over the world.

2. Around the corner is something that will SURPRISE the hell out of you.

3. Atlas Obscura is for people who still believe in DISCOVERY.

CONNECT

Happy birthday, Calvino.

Italo Calvino was born on this date in 1923.

Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust.

Italo Calvino, from If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Heart.

The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another. The child I once was read constantly and hardly spoke, because she was ambivalent about the merits of communication, about the risks of being mocked or punished or exposed. The idea of being understood and encouraged, of recognizing herself in another, of affirmation, had hardly occurred to her and neither had the idea that she had something to give others. So she read, taking in words in huge quantities, a children’s and then an adult’s novel a day for many years, seven books a week or so, gorging on books, fasting on speech, carrying piles of books home from the library.

Rebecca Solnit

CONNECT

New.

In an attempt to codify cloud vocabulary and aid in weather prediction, the World Meteorological Association (WMO) published the first International Cloud Atlas in 1896. The Atlas divides clouds into 10 genus, 26 species, and 31 varieties, and includes important tips for cloud identification as well as appropriately whimsical descriptions — cloud species range from praecipitatio, "to fall (down a precipice)" to castellanus, "a castle of a fortified town." Though many updates and new editions have been published since, no new cloud types have been added to the Atlas since cirrus intortus ("an entangled lock of hair") was added in 1951. Until now. 

CONNECT

Fervor.

How should we read? Slowly, with love, openness, and with our inner ear cocked. Then we should reread, reread, reread, and do so aloud as often as possible. As a boy of eight, I would walk about chanting Housman's and William Blake's lyrics to myself, and I still do, less frequently yet with undiminished fervor. Why should we engage in this apparently solitary activity? To increase our wit and imagination, our sense of intimacy -- in short, our entire consciousness -- and also to heal our pain. Until you become yourself, what benefit can you be to others.

Harold Bloom

Loves.

Ellis, Passaic Falls (detail), undated

The Falls of the Passaic

In a wild, tranquil vale, fringed with forests of green,

Where nature had fashion'd a soft, sylvan scene,

The retreat of the ring-dove, the haunt of the deer,

Passaic in silence roll'd gentle and clear.

No grandeur of prospect astonish'd the sight,

No abruptness sublime mingled awe with delight;

Here the wild flow'ret blossom'd, the elm proudly waved,

And pure was the current the green bank that laved.

But the spirit that ruled o'er the thick tangled wood,

And deep in its gloom fix'd his murky abode,

Who loved the wild scene that the whirlwinds deform,

And gloried in thunder, and lightning and storm;

All flush'd from the tumult of battle he came,

Where the red men encounter'd the children of flame,

While the noise of the war-whoop still rang in his ears,

And the fresh bleeding scalp as a trophy he bears:

With a glance of disgust he the landscape survey'd,

With its fragrant wild flowers, its wide-waving shade;--

Where Passaic meanders through margins of green,

So transparent its waters, its surface serene.

He rived the green hills, the wild woods he laid low;

He taught the pure stream in rough channels to flow;

He rent the rude rock, the steep precipice gave,

And hurl'd down the chasm the thundering wave.

Countless moons have since rolled in the long lapse of time--

Cultivation has softened those features sublime;

The axe of the white man has lighten'd the shade,

And dispell'd the deep gloom of the thicketed glade.

But the stranger still gazes with wondering eye,

On the rocks rudely torn, and groves mounted on high;

Still loves on the cliff's dizzy borders to roam,

Where the torrent leaps headlong embosom'd in foam.

Washington Irving

Left.

It was pretty cold for a Saturday in late May. It was about 50 degrees out, and everyone was wearing three layers. People had on their Cubs jackets, their Illinois jackets, their Northwestern jackets. A guy in front of me was wearing one of those psychoanalyst sweaters with the buttons and high collar, which I think is the official gear at the University of Chicago. Rain was likely any minute, and the Cubs were down 5-nothing in the fifth inning. We were having a blast, though, watching the game from deep left. Deep left. We weren’t even in the ballpark.

CONNECT

Inventions.

British Pathé has 10 amazing transport inventions.

Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, "Global a Go-Go"

World service bulletin from the nightshift D.J.

To all wavebands on earth

Reconnoiter on the kilohertz

This tune is going out to Marconi

To all corners of the globe

There ain't no hut in the Serengeti

Where my wavelengths do not probe

If a rocket went to Saturn

We sure hope a D.J. is on board

For some anti-gravity mixing

With two dub plates of U-Roy

Throwdown Stray Cat strut in Bulawayo, hey, Bulawayo

Buddy Rich in Burundi

Quadrophenia in Armenia

Armenia City In The Sky

Big Youth booming in Djkarta

Nina Simone over Sierra Leone

Wild sound of Joujouka in Nevada, hey, Joujouka

Everywhere, everywhere Bob's bringing it all back home

Yeah, I let the boogie-woogie rumble

In the back of Bangalore

I get complaints from Bondi Beach

What, no longboard surf hardcore

Oh, send the rock steady out to Freddy

Who juggles plates in Tsing Tao City

'Cause tonight Bo Diddley's in Finland Station, hey, Bo Diddley

Sun Ra's in Omaha

The Skatalites in New York City, hey, Skatalites

The Stooges rule over Habana

The Bhundu Boys rock Acapulco, hey, hey Bhundu Boys

Good hip hop in Islamabad

Ali Farke Toure's in Oaxaca, hey, Farke Toure

And Baaba Maal's all over Stalingrad

Yeah, while some are waking, some are sleeping

From Kamchatka to the Gabon

Above the trade wind, wingtips beating

We calling out for Ronnie and da-do Ron, Ron, Ron

We call the Cumbria to tumble

From the peak of the Himalayas

We send the funk into the jungle

To the last outpost of the bass player

Cultural mixing ...

Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat, Op. 73, "Emperor"

Alfred Brendel performs with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Kurt Massur ...

Allegro



Adagio un poco mosso



Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo

Happy birthday, Catton.

Bruce Catton was born on this date in 1899.

Go up along the eastern side of Lake Michigan, steer northeast when the land bends away at Point Betsie, and you come before long to Sleeping Bear Point–an incredible flat-topped sand dune rising five hundred feet above the level of the lake and going north for two miles or more. It looks out over the dark water and the islands that lie just offshore, and in the late afternoon the sunlight strikes it and the golden sand turns white, with a pink overlay when the light is just so, and little cloud shadows slide along its face, blue-gray as evening sets in. Sleeping Bear looks eternal, although it is not; this lake took its present shape no more than two or three thousand years ago, and Sleeping Bear is slowly drifting off to the east as the wind shifts its grains of sand, swirling them up one side and dropping them on the other; in a few centuries it will be very different, if indeed it is there at all. Yet if this is a reminder that this part of the earth is still being remodeled it is also a hint that the spirit back of the remodeling may be worth knowing. In the way this shining dune looks west toward the storms and the sunsets there is a profound serenity, an unworried affirmation that comes from seeing beyond time and mischance. A woman I know says that to look at the Sleeping Bear late in the day is to feel the same emotion that comes when you listen to Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, and she is entirely right. The message is the same. The only trouble is that you have to compose a planet, or great music, to say it persuasively. Maybe man–some men, anyway–was made in the image of God, after all.

Bruce Catton

Byrd, "O Salutaris Hostia"

Stile Antico and Fretwork perform …

Sentimental.

Life is sentimental. Why should I be cold and hard about it? That's the main content. The biggest thing in people's lives is their loves and dreams and visions.

Jim Harrison

Beethoven, Cello Sonata No. 3 In A Major, Op. 69

Jacqueline du Pré performs with Daniel Barenboim  …

Spiritual.

Sloane, Autumn Colors, 1975

Our heads are often bowed down with the material burdens of life, but we know that all through the ages thinking people have found time to look upward and to seek peace and solace in the panorama of weather. Emerson called the sky the daily bread of his eyes. Ruskin called it almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity. Lincoln said he could not imagine a man looking up at the sky and denying God. These spiritual qualities of weather frequently outweight the adverse influences that rain and snow have on our daily lives. 

Eric Sloane, from Eric Sloane's Weather Book

Rightfully.

Wyeth, Prevailing Wind, 1947

My aim is to escape from the medium with which I work. To leave no residue of technical mannerisms to stand between my expression and the observer. To seek freedom through significant form and design rather than through the diversion of so-called free and accidental brush handling. In short, to dissolve into clear air all impediments that might interrupt the flow of pure enjoyment. Not to exhibit craft, but rather to submerge it, and make it rightfully the handmaiden of beauty, power, and emotional content.

Andrew Wyeth

Remember.

Volkov, Early Morning, undated

Once on the brow of yonder Hill I stopped, 

While I was yet a School-boy (of what age

I cannot well remember, but the hour

I well remember though the year be gone), 

And with a sudden influx overcome

At sight of this seclusion, I forgot 

My haste – for hasty had my footsteps been, 

As boyish my pursuits – [and sighing said],

‘What happy fortune were it here to live!’

William Wordsworth, from "Home at Grasmere"

Enterprise.

A Coat

I made my song a coat


Covered with embroideries


Out of old mythologies


From heel to throat;


But the fools caught it,


Wore it in the world's eyes


As though they'd wrought it.


Song, let them take it,


For there's more enterprise


In walking naked.

William Butler Yeats

Eclipse.

Animation of the October 8, 2014, total lunar eclipse, whereby the moon passes through the Earth’s shadow from west to east. The horizontal yellow line depicts the ecliptic. The nearby dim “star” is actually the planet Uranus, which may be visible through binoculars.

CONNECT

Hoping.

I had them organize a banquet when I paid off the mortgage, and it included a wild pig shipped from Florida, and also a large snapper, some enormous wild shrimp, and a Mariachi band, of course. I’m hoping in the future to travel around Mexico and hire housewives to cook me their favorite bean dishes.

CONNECT

Dancing.

It's Monday, October 6, 2014 … reason enough for dancing … 

WARNING! Turn the volume down -- turn your own music up.

Unterseeboot.

The German Unterseeboot, or U-boat, was a submarine that appeared seemingly out of nowhere to destroy both military and commercial ships. Despite their prevalence during WWI and WWII, only four U-boats exist today. Preserved as museum vessels, these "undersea boats" are the last reminders of the Battle of the Atlantic, and the thousands of men who died in these “Iron Coffins.”

UP PERISCOPE!

Find.

For Balazs Mikusi, a young Hungarian musicologist, it was the find of a lifetime. Leafing through folders of unidentified manuscripts at the National Szechenyi Library in Budapest recently, he came across four pages of what looked to him like Mozart’s handwriting. As he read through the music, he told Agence France-Presse, he realized that he had stumbled onto Mozart’s own score of the Piano Sonata in A, K.331 – one of the best-known Mozart sonatas because of its “Rondo alla Turca” finale.

CONNECT

Escape.

I am quite aware that we have just now light-heartedly expelled in imagination many excellent men who are largely, perhaps chiefly, responsible for the building of the temple of science; and in many cases our angel would find it a pretty ticklish job to decide. But of one thing I feel sure: if the types we have just expelled were the only types there were, the temple would never have come to be, any more than a forest can grow which consists of nothing but creepers. For these people any sphere of human activity will do, if it comes to a point; whether they become engineers, officers, tradesmen, or scientists depends on circumstances. Now let us have another look at those who have found favor with the angel. Most of them are somewhat odd, uncommunicative, solitary fellows, really less like each other, in spite of these common characteristics, than the hosts of the rejected. What has brought them to the temple? That is a difficult question and no single answer will cover it. To begin with, I believe with Schopenhauer that one of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought; this desire may be compared with the townsman's irresistible longing to escape from his noisy, cramped surroundings into the silence of high mountains, where the eye ranges freely through the still, pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity.

With this negative motive there goes a positive one. Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.

Albert Einstein

CONNECT

Everything.

How to be Perfect

Everything is perfect, dear friend.

                                                  —KEROUAC

Get some sleep.

Don't give advice.

Take care of your teeth and gums.

Don't be afraid of anything beyond your control. Don't be afraid, for

instance, that the building will collapse as you sleep, or that someone

you love will suddenly drop dead.

Eat an orange every morning.

Be friendly. It will help make you happy.

Raise your pulse rate to 120 beats per minute for 20 straight minutes

four or five times a week doing anything you enjoy.

Hope for everything. Expect nothing.

Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room

before you save the world. Then save the world.

Know that the desire to be perfect is probably the veiled expression

of another desire—to be loved, perhaps, or not to die.

Make eye contact with a tree.

Be skeptical about all opinions, but try to see some value in each of

them.

Dress in a way that pleases both you and those around you.

Do not speak quickly.

Learn something every day. (Dzien dobre!)

Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly.

Don't stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don't

forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm's length

and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass ball

collection.

Be loyal.

Wear comfortable shoes.

Design your activities so that they show a pleasing balance

and variety.

Be kind to old people, even when they are obnoxious. When you

become old, be kind to young people. Do not throw your cane at

them when they call you Grandpa. They are your grandchildren!

Live with an animal.

Do not spend too much time with large groups of people.

If you need help, ask for it.

Cultivate good posture until it becomes natural.

If someone murders your child, get a shotgun and blow his head off.

Plan your day so you never have to rush.

Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if you

have paid them, even if they do favors you don't want.

Do not waste money you could be giving to those who need it.

Expect society to be defective. Then weep when you find that it is far

more defective than you imagined.

When you borrow something, return it in an even better condition.

As much as possible, use wooden objects instead of plastic or metal

ones.

Look at that bird over there.

After dinner, wash the dishes.

Calm down.

Visit foreign countries, except those whose inhabitants have

expressed a desire to kill you.

Don't expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want to.

Meditate on the spiritual. Then go a little further, if you feel like it.

What is out (in) there?

Sing, every once in a while.

Be on time, but if you are late do not give a detailed and lengthy

excuse.

Don't be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory.

Don't think that progress exists. It doesn't.

"Walk upstairs.

Do not practice cannibalism.

Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don't do

anything to make it impossible.

Take your phone off the hook at least twice a week.

Keep your windows clean.

Extirpate all traces of personal ambitiousness.

Don't use the word extirpate too often.

Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not possible, go

to another one.

If you feel tired, rest.

Grow something.

Do not wander through train stations muttering, "We're all going to

die!"

Count among your true friends people of various stations of life.

Appreciate simple pleasures, such as the pleasure of chewing, the

pleasure of warm water running down your back, the pleasure of a

cool breeze, the pleasure of falling asleep.

Do not exclaim, "Isn't technology wonderful!"

Learn how to stretch your muscles. Stretch them every day.

Don't be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel even

older. Which is depressing.

Do one thing at a time.

If you burn your finger, put it in cold water immediately. If you bang

your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for twenty

minutes. You will be surprised by the curative powers of coldness and

gravity.

Learn how to whistle at earsplitting volume.

Be calm in a crisis. The more critical the situation, the calmer you

should be.

Enjoy sex, but don't become obsessed with it. Except for brief periods

in your adolescence, youth, middle age, and old age.

Contemplate everything's opposite.

If you're struck with the fear that you've swum out too far in the

ocean, turn around and go back to the lifeboat.

Keep your childish self alive.

Answer letters promptly. Use attractive stamps, like the one with a

tornado on it.

Cry every once in a while, but only when alone. Then appreciate

how much better you feel. Don't be embarrassed about feeling better.

Do not inhale smoke.

Take a deep breath.

Do not smart off to a policeman.

Do not step off the curb until you can walk all the way across the

street. From the curb you can study the pedestrians who are trapped

in the middle of the crazed and roaring traffic.

Be good.

Walk down different streets.

Backwards.

Remember beauty, which exists, and truth, which does not. Notice

that the idea of truth is just as powerful as the idea of beauty.

Stay out of jail.

In later life, become a mystic.

Use Colgate toothpaste in the new Tartar Control formula.

Visit friends and acquaintances in the hospital. When you feel it is

time to leave, do so.

Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others.

Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time.

Read and reread great books.

Dig a hole with a shovel.

In winter, before you go to bed, humidify your bedroom.

Know that the only perfect things are a 300 game in bowling and a

27-batter, 27-out game in baseball.

Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to drink,

say, "Water, please."

Ask "Where is the loo?" but not "Where can I urinate?"

Be kind to physical objects.

Beginning at age forty, get a complete "physical" every few years

from a doctor you trust and feel comfortable with.

Don't read the newspaper more than once a year.

Learn how to say "hello," "thank you," and "chopsticks"

in Mandarin.

Belch and fart, but quietly.

Be especially cordial to foreigners.

See shadow puppet plays and imagine that you are one of the

characters. Or all of them.

Take out the trash.

Love life.

Use exact change.

When there's shooting in the street, don't go near the window.

Ron Padgett

"Easy."

On this day in 1954, Willie Mays made this "easy" catch in Game One of the World Series …

Happy birthday, Caravaggio.

Caravaggio, Bacchus, 1571

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was born on this date in 1571.

There was art before him and art after him, and they were not the same.

Robert Hughes

"Caravaggio," from Simon Schama's documentary, The Power of Art …

Vaudry de Saizenay, "Prélude"

Xavier Díaz-Latorre performs …

Perspective.

The circumstances of our lives may actually matter less to our happiness than the sense of control we feel over our lives.

Rory Sutherland's TED Talk on Perspective …

Life.

In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be the gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Neil Young, "Forever Young"

Toumani & Sidiki Diabaté, "Rachid Ouiguini"

Tinkering.

Gever Tulley uses engaging photos and footage to demonstrate the valuable lessons kids learn at his Tinkering School. When given tools, materials and guidance, these young imaginations run wild and creative problem-solving takes over to build unique boats, bridges and even a rollercoaster!

Beautiful.

Truly beautiful music consists in singing to the accompaniment of the viol.

Baldassare Castiglione, 1528 



CONNECT

New Order, "Ceremony"

Victoria, "O Magnum Mysterium"

Harry Christophers conducts The Sixteen …

Reflect.

From a small farmhouse in Leelanau County, Jim Harrison built one of America’s iconic literary lives. Harrison lived, wrote, hunted and fished in Leelanau County and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula until 2002 when he moved to Montana.  Now 76, and splitting time between Montana and Arizona, Harrison continues to write timeless and potent work. We asked fellow Northern Michigan author Jerry Dennis to catch up with Harrison, one of his original inspirations, to reflect on life present and past.

CONNECT

Kurt has another offering … here. Thanks, bud.