Lived.

Hoof-Beats.

Wood, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, 1931

On this date, at this hour, in 1775, Paul Revere began his portion of the famous ride.

PAUL REVERE'S RIDE

Listen, my children, and you shall hear 
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, 
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; 
Hardly a man is now alive 
Who remembers that famous day and year. 

He said to his friend, "If the British march 
By land or sea from the town to-night, 
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch 
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,— 
One, if by land, and two, if by sea; 
And I on the opposite shore will be, 
Ready to ride and spread the alarm 
Through every Middlesex village and farm, 
For the country folk to be up and to arm." 
Then he said, "Good night!" and with muffled oar 
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, 
Just as the moon rose over the bay, 
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay 
The Somerset, British man-of-war; 
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar 
Across the moon like a prison bar, 
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified 
By its own reflection in the tide. 

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, 
Wanders and watches with eager ears, 
Till in the silence around him he hears 
The muster of men at the barrack door, 
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, 
And the measured tread of the grenadiers, 
Marching down to their boats on the shore. 

Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church, 
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread, 
To the belfry-chamber overhead, 
And startled the pigeons from their perch 
On the sombre rafters, that round him made 
Masses and moving shapes of shade, — 
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall, 
To the highest window in the wall, 
Where he paused to listen and look down 
A moment on the roofs of the town, 
And the moonlight flowing over all. 
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead, 
In their night-encampment on the hill, 
Wrapped in silence so deep and still 
That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, 
The watchful night-wind, as it went 
Creeping along from tent to tent, 
And seeming to whisper, "All is well!" 
A moment only he feels the spell 
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread 
Of the lonely belfry and the dead; 
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent 
On a shadowy something far away, 
Where the river widens to meet the bay, — 
A line of black that bends and floats 
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats. 

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, 
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride 
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. 
Now he patted his horse's side, 
Now gazed at the landscape far and near, 
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, 
And turned and tightened his saddle girth; 
But mostly he watched with eager search 
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, 
As it rose above the graves on the hill, 
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. 
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height 
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! 
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, 
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight 
A second lamp in the belfry burns! 
A hurry of hoofs in a village street, 
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, 
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark 
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet: 
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light, 
The fate of a nation was riding that night; 
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight, 
Kindled the land into flame with its heat. 
He has left the village and mounted the steep, 
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep, 
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides; 
And under the alders, that skirt its edge, 
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge, 
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides. 

It was twelve by the village clock, 
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town. 
He heard the crowing of the cock, 
And the barking of the farmer's dog, 
And felt the damp of the river fog, 
That rises after the sun goes down. 

It was one by the village clock, 
When he galloped into Lexington. 
He saw the gilded weathercock 
Swim in the moonlight as he passed, 
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare, 
Gaze at him with a spectral glare, 
As if they already stood aghast 
At the bloody work they would look upon. 

It was two by the village clock, 
When he came to the bridge in Concord town. 
He heard the bleating of the flock, 
And the twitter of birds among the trees, 
And felt the breath of the morning breeze 
Blowing over the meadows brown. 
And one was safe and asleep in his bed 
Who at the bridge would be first to fall, 
Who that day would be lying dead, 
Pierced by a British musket-ball. 

You know the rest. In the books you have read, 
How the British Regulars fired and fled, — 
How the farmers gave them ball for ball, 
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall, 
Chasing the red-coats down the lane, 
Then crossing the fields to emerge again 
Under the trees at the turn of the road, 
And only pausing to fire and load. 

So through the night rode Paul Revere; 
And so through the night went his cry of alarm 
To every Middlesex village and farm, — 
A cry of defiance and not of fear, 
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, 
And a word that shall echo forevermore! 
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past, 
Through all our history, to the last, 
In the hour of darkness and peril and need, 
The people will waken and listen to hear 
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed, 
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

CONNECT

Dr. William M. Fowler, Jr. lectures on the interesting relationship between the facts of Paul Revere's ride and the story told by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem ...

Recreates.

An excellent book ...

Professor David Hackett Fischer recreates Revere's ride in a 1998 Booknotes talk with Brian Lamb ... HERE

Dare.

Doisneau, Punished Pupil, 1956

From Miriam E. Wilt’s 1965 essay, “In Teaching – The Right to Wonder” …

Let Our Lord the bell represent those thousands of "no's" we are always sprinkling around like salt on a fried egg.  Consider how many of them we might answer with a "Why not?" 

Never must we lose sight of those necessary conformities that reaffirm our rebellious humanity – never must we impose those restrictions that are meaningless. What a fine line must be drawn between the justifiable "no's" and the equally meaningful "Why noťs?"  Children have never been satisfied to accept the status quo. They are full of "Why's?" What happens to their right to wonder, to experiment, to dare to be wrong? How and why have so many of us lost our way so that "iťs always been done that way" has become our irreducible answer. We must not change just for the sake of changing, for to do that is just as suspect as blind acceptance of the concept "everybody's doing it."

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Enlighten.

Do the worm on Acropolis

Slamdance cosmopolis

Enlighten the populace ...

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Rameau, Suite en la Gavotte et six Doubles

 Natacha Kudritskaya performs ...

Paradise.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

Jorge Luis Borges

Schnittke, Suite in the Old Style

Andris Poga conducts the WDR Symphony Orchestra ...

Own.

Crashing head-on into the future

Won't even leave a dent

Just walk in like you own it

Remember, it ain't set in cement ...

Chappel, Samuel Adams, 1862

Your adversaries are composed of wretches who laugh at the rights of humanity, who turn religion into derision, and would, for higher wages, direct their swords against their leaders or their country. Go on, then, in your generous enterprise, with gratitude to Heaven for past, success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory.

Samuel Adams, from a speech given August 1, 1776

An excellent album ...

Breathing.

Monet, Morning Landscape, Giverny, 1888

A SPRING MORNING

The Spring comes in with all her hues and smells,

In freshness breathing over hills and dells;

O’er woods where May her gorgeous drapery flings,

And meads washed fragrant by their laughing springs.

Fresh are new opened flowers, untouched and free

From the bold rifling of the amorous bee.

The happy time of singing birds is come,

And Love’s lone pilgrimage now finds a home;

Among the mossy oaks now coos the dove,

And the hoarse crow finds softer notes for love.

The foxes play around their dens, and bark

In joy’s excess, ’mid woodland shadows dark.

The flowers join lips below; the leaves above;

And every sound that meets the ear is Love.

John Clare

Imagine.

Imagine a society with so much civic pride that it builds its water towers like this. pic.twitter.com/j0B4UohKNp

— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) April 15, 2023

Quality.

The result is rather typical of modern technology, an overall dullness of appearance so depressing that it must be overlaid with a veneer of "style" to make it acceptable. And that, to anyone who is sensitive to romantic Quality, just makes it all the worse. Now it's not just depressingly dull, it's also phony. Put the two together and you get a pretty accurate basic description of modern American technology: stylized cars and stylized outboard motors and stylized typewriters and stylized clothes. Stylized refrigerators filled with stylized food in stylized kitchens in stylized homes. Plastic stylized toys for stylized children, who at Christmas and birthdays are in style with their stylish parents. You have to be awfully stylish yourself not to get sick of it once in a while. It's the style that gets you; technological ugliness syruped over with romantic phoniness in an effort to produce beauty and profit by people who, though stylish, don't know where to start because no one has ever told them there's such a thing as Quality in this world and it's real, not style. Quality isn't something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.

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

Introduced.

The world was introduced to The Rolling Stones on this day in 1964.

Fast-forward 12 years to a new and improved lineup, featuring The Rock & Roll Rooster -- Side One, Track One ...

Colin Hay, "Wichita Lineman"

Legend.

Ossau-Iraty

• Legend has it that it was the first cheese ever made (Thanks Apollo)
• raw sheep's milk
• olives, olive oil, rustic honey, black pepper, dark fruit preserves, rustic bread
• Repeat as needed

Released.

Poco released Inamorata on this day in 1984.

Order some chicken nachos, listen to (and think about) "Days Gone By" ...

A long time ago Kurt introduced me to this excellent band.  Thank you.

Thanks.

Riches.

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Silence.

Every year, I verify here, alongside the intelligence of the mineral world and the animal kingdom, the proportional stupidity of the human race - the deculturated peasants and acculturated tourists, arrogant adults and children with their pretentious technical gadgetry and senseless chatter. All the other species are more docile and spiritual in their silence than this one.

Jean Baudrillard, from Fragments

Earthworks.

Dr. Brad Lepper, Senior Archaeologist for the Ohio History Connection’s World Heritage program, on the missing links to the Newark Earthworks' history ...

In 1775, Nicholas Cresswell encountered such a ceremonial leader while visiting the Delaware Indians of Coshocton. He wrote: “Saw an Indian Conjuror dressed in a Coat of Bearskin with a Visor mask made of wood, frightful enough to scare the Devil.”

Don't miss Dr. Lepper's fascinating explanation of the geographical-geometry of Ohio's prehistoric earthworks ...

Always.

SMALL BOAT SAILING

Jack London

I was born so long ago that I grew up before the era of gasoline. As a result, I am old-fashioned. I prefer a sail-boat to a motor- boat, and it is my belief that boat-sailing is a finer, more difficult, and sturdier art than running a motor. Gasoline engines are becoming fool-proof, and while it is unfair to say that any fool can run an engine, it is fair to say that almost any one can. Not so, when it comes to sailing a boat. More skill, more intelligence, and a vast deal more training are necessary. It is the finest training in the world for boy and youth and man. If the boy is very small, equip him with a small, comfortable skiff. He will do the rest. He won’t need to be taught. Shortly he will be setting a tiny leg-of-mutton and steering with an oar. Then he will begin to talk keels and centerboards and want to take his blankets out and stop aboard all night.

But don’t be afraid for him. He is bound to run risks and encounter accidents. Remember, there are accidents in the nursery as well as out on the water. More boys have died from hot-house culture than have died on boats large and small; and more boys have been made into strong and reliant men by boat-sailing than by lawn-croquet and dancing-school.

And once a sailor, always a sailor. The savor of the salt never stales. The sailor never grows so old that he does not care to go back for one more wrestling bout with wind and wave. I know it of myself. I have turned rancher, and live beyond sight of the sea. Yet I can stay away from it only so long. After several months have passed, I begin to grow restless. I find myself day-dreaming over incidents of the last cruise, or wondering if the striped bass are running on Wingo Slough, or eagerly reading the newspapers for reports of the first northern flights of ducks. And then, suddenly, there is a hurried pack of suit-cases and overhauling of gear, and we are off for Vallejo where the little Roamer lies, waiting, always waiting, for the skiff to come alongside, for the lighting of the fire in the galley-stove, for the pulling off of gaskets, the swinging up of the mainsail, and the rat-tat-tat of the reef-points, for the heaving short and the breaking out, and for the twirling of the wheel as she fills away and heads up Bay or down.

JACK LONDON

On Board Roamer,

Sonoma Creek,

April 15, 1911

Colin Hay, "Are You Looking at Me"

Telemann, Overture-Suite "La Bizarre" in G major, TWV 55:G2

Bremer Barockorchester performs the Sarabande ...

Moderation.

Harrison's Principles of Moderation

Quite some time ago I turned a corner with the emotion of wanting more consciousness. The following list had a wondrous, albeit slowly evolving, effect on my life. These are relatively mild pointers, though the consequences of ignoring them are as fatal as shooting yourself in the head in a curious time warp wherein the bullet takes many years to reach its inevitable target.

1. Drinking causes drinking. Heavy drinking causes heavy drinking. Light drinking causes light drinking.
2. The ability to check yourself moment by moment has been discussed at length by wise folks from the old Ch’an master of China all the way down to Ouspensky. This assumes a willingness to be conscious.
3. The reason to moderate is to avoid having to quit, thus losing a pleasure that’s been with us forever.
4. We don’t have much freedom in this life, and it is self-cruelty to surrender a piece of what we have because we can’t control our craving.
5. Measurement is all. A one-ounce shot delivers all the benefits of a three-ounce shot. A couple of the latter turn one into a spit-dribbler. Spit-dribblers frighten children and make everyone else nervous.
6. With any sedative there is a specific, roomy gap between smoothing-out and self-destruction. There is no self-destructiveness without the destruction of others. We are not alone.
7. Naturally there are special occasions. When you get older like me, it’s once a month, if that.
8. It’s hard to determine pathology in a society in which everything is pathological. The main content of our prayers should be for simple consciousness. The most important thing we can do is to find out what ails us and fix it. Often we need outside counsel, for clarity and to speed up the process. (I’ve had more than 20 years with my mind doctor).
9. A lot of overdrinking comes from feeling bad physically. One over-drinks to feel better in physiological terms. This can be avoided by vitamins, exercise, and a reasonable diet. Again, it’s a cycle: Overdrinking causes overdrinking because you feel bad.
10. Another source of the problem is the unreasonable expectations we get from others and ourselves. Unreasonable expectations can be removed by thinking them over. They can’t be “drownt” pure and simple. Everyone can’t get to the top, or even the middle.
11. Oddly enough, our main weapons in controlling drinking are humor and lightness. The judgment of others and self-judgment (stern) are both contraindicated. When we fuck up, we mentally beat ourselves up. It doesn’t work at all and has to be expunged. The reason to slow down is to feel better, and it works real good.
12. You begin by cutting it all by a third. After a few weeks you go down to a half. After that your soul will tell you, when you listen. Often it is simply a matter of one drink too many.
13. We need always to separate the problem of virtue from the problem of lack of control. Certain countries — France, for example — drink more alcohol but have fewer problems. This is partly due to the predominance of wine, which has less of a stun-gun effect on behavior, but also because drinking isn’t connected to virtue or nonvirtue. It is a practical problem. Drinking has to be strictly self-controlled the moment it negatively affects our character and behavior. 

R.E.M., "Perfect Circle"

Happy Birthday, Leonardo

Leonardo, Head of a Bear, 1480

Observe the light and consider its beauty. Blink your eye and look at it. That which you see was not there at first, and that which was there is there no more.

Leonardo da Vinci, born on this day in 1452

Springsteen.

Celebratory.

Bouguereau, La Jeunesse de Bacchus, 1884

Life is so short you want to remember all of it, bad and good.  It has occurred to me that I’m drawn to wine for the same reason that fishing and bird hunting have been lifelong obsessions. The pleasure is in the path, the search for something good; finding and drinking a fine, reasonably priced wine is similar to catching a trout in an unlikely eddy of a river, or a two grouse in the bag on a cold, rainy October morning -- it is celebratory rather than sedating, a nod to the realities of existence rather than an erasure.

Jim Harrison

Skatalites, "Dynamite"

Sacred.

From Peter S. Onuf and Annette Gordon-Reed's review of Jefferson's Spaces ...

Retreating behind his “wall of separation,” Jefferson refreshed his mind and spirit through reading, writing, and reflection. The space he reserved for himself was critical to the personal privacy he cherished after the death of his wife, Martha: this is where the independent, autonomous, self-governing individual cultivated his faculties and defined himself against and apart from the world. Yet, paradoxically, if contemporaries could not penetrate this space and know Jefferson intimately, modern students enjoy privileged access to the books he read and the vast correspondence that connected him to the “republic of letters.” This is where he fabricated the cut-and-paste “Jefferson Bible” and fashioned his idiosyncratic synthesis of Christian ethics and Scottish moral philosophy. It was as if the freedom of conscience that was foundational to republican government could be defined as a kind of inviolably sacred space, where the weary and beleaguered statesman could find a sanctuary.

Privacy was not an end in itself for Jefferson, but rather the threshold of the enlightened sociability routinely performed in Monticello’s public spaces. Jefferson crossed that threshold, returning to his company, according to the dictates of the clock: breakfast at 10 a.m., dinner at 3 or 4 p.m., walking in the gardens and grounds culminating in convivial moments in the parlor at the end of the day. This was the Monticello Jefferson imagined when he was away: “I now see our fireside formed into a groupe, no one member of which has a fibre in their composition which can ever produce any jarring or jealousies among us.”

Credentials.

Our credentials are that we are out there, in nature, when others are not, and that we are out there because we want to be, not because we have to or are paid to be. Our eyes solicit the traceries of spoors on the earth and birds in the sky; our spirits are conscious of ravens and long for the restitution of wolves and bears to the land. We are the wildlife thermometers, poking about in rivers and swamps, in the shadows of forest canopies, under the ashes of desert suns, and the force that drives us is our soul.

Guy de la Valdene, from For a Handful of Feathers

Staggeringly.

Thomas Jefferson loved music ...

Jefferson, the third President of our beloved nation, was staggeringly curious and an intellectually superior polymath. He was also an accomplished violinist. He bought a pocket fiddle that accompanied him wherever he went. Jefferson was an active member of chamber music that played for the royal governor of Virginia, and he admired Corelli, Haydn, Gluck, Handel, Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Boccherini, Stamitz, Clementi, and J.C. Bach (youngest son of J.S. Bach). The 6,500 volumes of sheet music that Jefferson sold to the government formed the nucleus of the Library of Congress. In addition to work of the previously mentioned composers, his collection contained sheet music by lesser known composers as well, such as Padre Martini, Gaetano Pugnani, Ignaz Pleyel, and Italianized German composer, Johann Adolph Hasse.

Life.

Stamitz, Clarinet Concerto No.7 in E-flat major

Andreas Ottensamer performs the Rondeau with the Kammerakademie Potsdam ...

Happy Birthday, Jefferson

Sully, Thomas Jefferson, 1821

I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness.  If any body thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send them here. It is the best school in the universe to cure them of that folly. They will see here with their own eyes that these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of people. The omnipotence of their effect cannot be better proved than in this country particularly, where notwithstanding the finest soil upon earth, the finest climate under heaven, and a people of the most benevolent, the most gay, and amiable character of which the human form is susceptible, where such a people I say, surrounded by so many blessings from nature, are yet loaded with misery by kings, nobles and priests, and by them alone.  Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [tyranny, oppression, etc.] and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.

Thomas Jefferson, born on this day in 1743, from a letter to George Wythe, 13 August 1786

Happy Birthday, Sargeant

Will Sergeant was born on this day in 1958.

"Heads Will Roll" and "Gods will be Gods" with The Bunnymen ...

Colin Hay, "The Sea Of Always"

Gentler.

Unlike booze, good wine resonates so broadly it draws in the world that surrounds us. The effects of it are slow enough so that you can check yourself, an absolutely vital talent if you drink. As a Zen dictum says, you must find yourself where you already are and the effects of booze make this unlikely. Good wine increases the best aspects of camaraderie and sweetens the tongue for conversation. It softens the world's sharp edges in contrast to the blunting power of booze. In short, you don't become dumb at a blinding pace, and your mood swings from gentle to gentler.

Sir Roger Scruton, from I Drink, Therefore I Am

Profoundly.

There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular -- though profoundly mistaken -- definition of myth as falsehood.

Rollo May, from The Cry for Myth

INXS, "I Send a Message"

Tuneswept.

Modigliani, Portrait of Lunia Czechowska, 1916

I want to be a tuneswept fiddle string that feels the master melody, and snaps. 

Amedeo Modigliani

Laughter.

Chatham, The Author in His Skiff, n/d

Guy de la Valdene remembers The Fat Boys and trolling The Keys ...

Back in the days when the calendar and geography worked, Tom, Jim, Russell and I met and took advantage of the fact that we loved books and art and dogs and birds and fish and food and good-looking women. We fished and hunted and drank and cooked from one end of the country to the other for a quarter of a century, with Key West as a beacon of our sporting year. Now when we see each other, we remember what nonsense we used to get into and how even though we thought we did, we never got away with any of it.

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.

Practice.

With a little practice, you can walk like, talk just like me.

If that's what you want to do ...

Be.

Be careful what you get good at doing because you'll be doing it for the rest of your life.  When you are the one throwing the party every night, emptying the ashtrays, making sure the tonic is cold, the limes fresh, the shifts covered, the meat perfectly cooked and adequately rested, the customers carefree and the employees calm and confident, it will leave its marks. Someone has to stay in the kitchen and do the bones of the thing, to make sure it stands up, and if it’s you, so be it.

Gabrielle Hamilton, from Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef

Instead.

According to the post, organizers hid over 2,000 eggs and set up a designated area for 1- and 2-year-old children to look first, followed by 3- and 4-year-olds. After that, all kids could join in. However, organizers said participants did not follow instructions, and parents instead rushed to collect the eggs.