This is indeed what faith in its purest form means, for faith is not an intellectual conclusion to the sifting of evidence following a quasi-scientific inquiry. In the epistle-writer’s paradox, it is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”; it is no more or less rigorous than atheism, in that both are assumptions that reflect the adherent’s pre-existing inclination, and require the acceptance of what can only be supposed. In the case of the religiously inclined, the resulting state of mind is one of trust, one that is open to mystery (an anathematic term to materialists), and one that does not object to practising a faith of which unknowing is the heart. The person who follows this path may find that, compared with others who take a more historically conventional approach, he believes more and more in less and less, but also that this progression represents an enhancement, not a diminution of faith.And there is this, from Jeremy Taylor: “No man can hinder our private addresses to God; every man can build a chapel in his breast, himself the priest, his heart the sacrifice, and the earth he treads on, the altar.“
Friday, August 31, 2018
Faith and doubt …
… The devout sceptic: hope for those of little faith | Standpoint. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hear, hear …
… What to do? : Essays in Idleness. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Of course, there's no glamour in any of that.
Prayer, penance, fasting, may seem fey suggestions in present circumstances. Instead, they are crucial. We must let God know that we side with Him against His persecutors, and that we recognize our own failures, not just other people’s sins. We must not ourselves succumb to the agnosticism that preaches the ineffectuality of prayer. Rather we must purify ourselves for the battle, and raise our prayer with the faith that moves mountains. To the conflict with a faithless enemy, personal faithlessness brings nothing. Live with disappointment, and not for it.
Of course, there's no glamour in any of that.
Phonies …
… Millennials aren’t taking offence. They’re hunting for victims | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Despite youth’s reputed belief in the importance of being earnest, the whole ID politics movement is emotionally disingenuous. When during that Evergreen foofaraw a rabid convocation of students cowed the college president into lowering his arms at the podium because they found his hand gestures ‘threatening’, those students didn’t feel jeopardised; they were dominating and emasculating a man supposedly in authority. The students cowering in ‘safe spaces’ don’t feel endangered; they’re claiming territory. In protecting the faux-helpless from noxious opinions via no-platforming, they’re exercising power. The experience of exercising power isn’t scary, except on the receiving end; it’s supremely gratifying. These people aren’t frightened. They want you to be frightened of them.And, like most bullies, they know who to pick on.
Something to think on …
The single fact of existing is already a true happiness.
— Blaise Cendrars, born on this date in 1887
Something to think on …
The education of even a small child, therefore, does not aim at preparing him for school, but for life.
— Maria Montessori, born on this date in 1870
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Blogging note …
I had hoped to do some blogging later today — and I have just posted a couple of things — but I am tired. I strolled about Center City today — as of old — but today it took a lot more out of me than it used to. Ah, these golden years! Until tomorrow …
Hmm …
… Damon Linker Leaves Catholicism | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, both Dreher and Linker were converts, which is a different way of being a Catholic than my own. I am a cradle Catholic. I did not reason myself into the faith. I also was raised in the faith — 16 years of Catholic education. I well know that ordination to the priesthood doesn't necessarily confer civility, let alone sanctity. But am I supposed to forget the priests who helped make me who I am, most especially my Jesuit mentor, Edward Gannon. S.J.? Why would it surprise anyone that the powers of darkness would have their sights set on the Church? And that they would often succeed in corrupting the Church's ministers, who are, after all, only fellow sinners. Are Dreher and Linker looking for a church whose members are all saints? Then they are on a fool's errand.
Well, both Dreher and Linker were converts, which is a different way of being a Catholic than my own. I am a cradle Catholic. I did not reason myself into the faith. I also was raised in the faith — 16 years of Catholic education. I well know that ordination to the priesthood doesn't necessarily confer civility, let alone sanctity. But am I supposed to forget the priests who helped make me who I am, most especially my Jesuit mentor, Edward Gannon. S.J.? Why would it surprise anyone that the powers of darkness would have their sights set on the Church? And that they would often succeed in corrupting the Church's ministers, who are, after all, only fellow sinners. Are Dreher and Linker looking for a church whose members are all saints? Then they are on a fool's errand.
Blogging note …
I have to leave for my annual eye examination. I have plenty of things to link to and comment on, but I first must read them carefully and I haven't time for that just now. I hope to get to it this afternoon. till then …
Something to think on …
Learning should be a joy and full of excitement. It is life's greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of the noble and the learned.
— Taylor Caldwell, who died on this date in 1985
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
City Scenes ...
3:55 p.m. - Outside a Wawa (a convenience store) in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia)
Me (handing dollar to guy who’s always there asking): “Here”
Him: ”Thank you baby”
(pause)
Him: “You ever go out with a black man?"
Well, maybe ...
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. said: “Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.”
From Tim
From Tim
Listen in …
… Episode 284 – Richard Kadrey – The Virtual Memories Show.
“The most creative people I know are the ones who figured it out for themselves.”
Curious omission …
… The Bookshop movie and novel, by Penelope Fitzgerald, compared. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The mood in the film versus the book is set when Florence meets a local, Mr. Raven, one of the few villagers inclined to help her. In the movie, he’s a jolly ferryman who tosses her a rope to cleat off, which she catches with a look of faint puzzlement. In the book, he’s a vet in the salt marshes who calls her over to haul an old horse’s tongue out of the way so he can file the teeth sharp enough for it to chew.
Q&A …
… Dancing in the endzone: a rare interview with Clive James. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… The real mystery is not in the timing but in the disproportion between the subject you read about and the subject you write about. For example, I might be halfway through Anne Applebaum’s terrifying book Gulag and I suddenly find myself sketching out the opening stanza of a poem about dancing the tango in Buenos Aires. Later on, sometimes months later on, that opening stanza might become the closing stanza, but the process of getting the poem in the right order is nothing like as complex as the question of how you were reading about despair and were suddenly visited by the music of elation.
Appreciation …
… The Trouble You Promised: Reading Tracy K. Smith - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Smith’s reimaginings of authority are fundamentally intertwined with concerns about race, as well as about gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class, all of which she has explicitly addressed. She has given us a small Black girl as a poem’s authoritative center (reminiscent of Lucille Clifton’s “the earth is a living thing”); she has made the voices of victims of hate crimes echo from America’s most iconic monuments. Which is why I struggled somewhat with Smith’s remark, in an interview with The Adroit Journal, that it wasn’t until she wrote her memoir Ordinary Light (2015) that she realized “how much [she] needed to talk about race.” It’d been my sense that, implicitly and explicitly, she’d been talking about race for years.
Nabokov on literature
Lectures on Literature is a book of Nabokov’s lecture notes on novels and their authors from Mansfield Park and Jane Austen to Ulysses and James Joyce. It concludes with an appreciation of the creation of art as opposed to sharing cheap character emotions:
[My desire is to] make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author—the joys and difficulties of creation.We did not talk around books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter and if a person thinks he cannot evolve the capacity of pleasure in reading the great artists, then he should not read them at all. After all, there are other thrills in other domains: the thrill of pure science is just as pleasurable as the pleasure of pure art. The main thing is to experience that tingle in any department of thought or emotion. We are liable to miss the best of life if we do not know how to tingle, if we do not learn to hoist ourselves just a little higher than we generally are in order to sample the rarest and ripest fruit of art which human thought has to offer.
Something to think on …
Deep feeling doesn't make for good poetry. A way with language would be a bit of help.
— Thom Gunn, born n this date in 1929
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Generous to a fault …
… ‘Generous’ approach to replication confirms many high-profile social science findings | Science | AAAS. (Hat tip, Rich Lloret.)
In science, 62 percent is hardly something to cheer, since it means that more than a third were not confirmed.
Anniversary …
… 10 Great John Betjeman Poems Everyone Should Read | Interesting Literature. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
John Betjeman was born on this date in 1906.
Something to think on …
Why look for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born on this date in 1749
Monday, August 27, 2018
Hmm …
… American Tragedy | Nidra Poller | The Blogs. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This doesn't sound like the country I've travelled around in. The author of the piece may have grown up in Philly, but she seems to have lost touch with it. I lived in Germantown for 20 years. It's a big place. And yes, there's been an increase of violence lately in in East Germantown. West Germantown seems to be much as it's always been. I could also directed the guy to a good German restaurant right outside the city in Rockledge. There's a German deli there, too. And, as I was telling Dave, if he visited Wisconsin, he missed lutefisk country (out past Soldiers Grove).
Sounds to me as if this guy had an agenda.
This doesn't sound like the country I've travelled around in. The author of the piece may have grown up in Philly, but she seems to have lost touch with it. I lived in Germantown for 20 years. It's a big place. And yes, there's been an increase of violence lately in in East Germantown. West Germantown seems to be much as it's always been. I could also directed the guy to a good German restaurant right outside the city in Rockledge. There's a German deli there, too. And, as I was telling Dave, if he visited Wisconsin, he missed lutefisk country (out past Soldiers Grove).
Sounds to me as if this guy had an agenda.
Why am I not surprised …
… Author Dan Brown Gets Smacked Down by Physicist He Referenced in Novel | Faith.
He seems to have done more than just referenced him.
As summer nears its close …
… State Fair Fireworks, Labor Day by Maryann Corbett : American Life in Poetry. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
And much more …
… With Chanel and Hippies, “The Razor’s Edge” Defined “Chic” - GARAGE. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I have not seen the 1984 film version, but the 1946 version was nominated for four academy awards, with Anne Baxter winning for Best Supporting Actress. I have been told the novel was popular with GIs in World War II. It is a very good book, rater ahead of its time, actually.
Sound advice …
… The McCarrick Mess | RealClearReligion.
Before I broach the subject of how to do this, permit me to say a few words about unhelpful strategies being bandied about. A first one is indiscriminate scapegoating. The great philosopher René Girard taught us that when communities enter into crisis, people typically commence desperately to cast about for someone or some group to blame. In the catharsis of this indiscriminate accusation, they find a kind of release, an ersatz peace.
Unlike Bishop Barron, I was taught that Satan was a real spiritual person and certain experiences I have had have only served to reinforce that notion. I was also once asked to leave a gathering of professed Satanists for offending their religious sensibilities by finding the proceedings irresistibly hilarious. I certainly second Bishop Barron;s conclusion: "we should ask the heavenly powers to fight with us and for us. I might suggest especially calling upon the one who crushes the head of the serpent."
lol blogging patterns ...
Every so often I look at the sequence of posts I put up here in a meta level analysis. The three I put up this morning are all about anger type things ... hmmm, time for meditation maybe.
I heard this crap growing up too ...
One of the things I find fascinating in the Church's response to the allegations of abuse in PA dioceses is the attempt by some in the Church to claim the abusers are abusing because they are gay. It is fascinating and sad, and relies on horrendous bias against gay people. The post from one priest below is featured at the National Catholic Register's best blogs list:
DISCLAIMER: I am trans, not gay. If you don't know the difference: gay is who you like, trans is who you are :) The Church thinks we (trans people) are disordered too, but at least we aren't getting blamed for this.
And let’s be clear. This scandal is about HOMOSEXUALITY.
Some of these homosexual predators are, I think, possessed. Think about it. If you know anything about demonic activity, and this is something that lay people should not get too involved with, then you know that certain demons specialize in certain kinds of sins. They will attach themselves like spiritual lampreys to the souls of people who commit them and also to the places where the sins were committed. Once a demon gets hold, they claim the right to be there, until the layers of their connection are broken one by one. That’s what exorcism rites do: they break the legalistic claims of the Enemy to be there.
Homosexual sins are particularly grave and their demonic force is concomitantly vile. And these sins also involve the young or those who are subject to the authority or power of the predator. Millstones are not enough. If you wonder about the Lord and capital punishment, HE spoke of the millstone before the Church did.
That’s the supernatural side. There is also the natural side. It seems to me that men with these strong disordered inclinations don’t… how to put this… act like other men. They think differently, they work out differences differently. I know, I know. But that’s my sense of things. It’s hard to articulate.I think Satan and demons do exist but they speak here through the blogger and others who think like him.
DISCLAIMER: I am trans, not gay. If you don't know the difference: gay is who you like, trans is who you are :) The Church thinks we (trans people) are disordered too, but at least we aren't getting blamed for this.
Appreciation …
… Neil Simon (1927-2018): The King of Stage Comedy - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… I’ve come to feel in recent years that Mr. Simon’s best plays are worthy of revival—if they’re directed in a way that brings out their seriousness instead of going for too-easy laughs. Jenn Thompson’s 2012 off-Broadway revival of “Lost in Yonkers,” which she staged as a down-the-center family drama instead of leaning on the comedy, persuaded me that I’d been too quick to dismiss Mr. Simon as a voice from the distant past. Since then I’ve seen several equally compelling regional revivals of his work that bode well for its long-term prospects.
Glenn Greenwald pisses off both sides
“Yes, yes!” Greenwald said, emphatically, as he drove. Years after he began writing critically about expanded Presidential powers, “all these powers are now in the hands of Donald Trump,” he said. “Hegets to start wars. So I do get a sense that, O.K., people are going to finally understand that this model of the American Presidency—this omnipotence, this lack of checks and balances—is so dangerous. But the problem is they’re being told that the danger is endemic to Trump, and not to this broader systemic abuse that’s been created. And that’s why I’m so opposed to the attempt to depict Trump as the singular evil. It’s not just partial or incomplete—it’s counterproductive, it’s deceitful.”
Sidewalk rage
Some people may reject the idea that they need to change, still insisting that slow walkers are in the cultural or moral wrong. Those people will likely feel sidewalk rage all of their lives.
Something to think on …
Lies, fables and romances must needs be probable, but not the truth and foundation of our faith.
— Johann Georg Hamann, born on this date 1730
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Remembering …
… Paul Theroux: Memories of V. S. Naipaul.
… Alexander Waugh: V. S. Naipaul’s Lessons on Life, Literature, and Being Left Alone.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
And here is my review of Naipaul's novel Half a Life.
… Alexander Waugh: V. S. Naipaul’s Lessons on Life, Literature, and Being Left Alone.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
And here is my review of Naipaul's novel Half a Life.
summertime is lazy haiku time
Birds sing in the sun
and fly through trees and the sky
and their songs through me
Not quite dead …
… ‘Opera as Opera' Review: The Life in a Dead Art Form - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Why are there no great-voiced Tristans today? Mr. Osborne’s answer, incorporating early recordings not just of singers but of actors in several languages, references microphones and recording studios, changing styles of oratory and everyday speech, an unrefreshed repertoire, and newfangled performance priorities privileging directors’ prerogatives over those of singing actors.Directors should serve the work, not themselves. If they want to be creative, they should go write something.
Something to think on…
Only those who are capable of silliness can be called truly intelligent.
— Christopher Isherwood, born on this date in 1904
Saturday, August 25, 2018
From comic to tragic …
… Take a Writer Like Him: My Complicated Love Affair with Kingsley Amis - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One of the lesser-known names on the list was Patrick Standish, the main male character in Take a Girl Like You, Kingsley Amis’s 1960 novel. In his era, of course, Amis was a near-ubiquitous man of letters who wrote novels as well as movie and restaurant reviews, poetry and criticism. He’s not nearly as widely read now, despite the New York Review of Books recently reissuing much of his catalogue. If people know Amis’s work, they tend to know his name-making first novel, 1954’s Lucky Jim, or perhaps The Old Devils, which won the Booker Prize in 1986. It’s a shame, because Take a Girl Like You is among his best—a great work of art, deeply moral and wonderfully realized. A lost classic.
Anniversary …
… Alcott's Anniversary — Review: 'Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of "Little Women" and Why It Still Matters' by Anne Boyd Rioux. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Anne Boyd Rioux clearly loves Little Women. Her joy in the book shines in chapter after chapter, and she has never gotten over, nor wanted to get over, the complete absorption of self she experienced when she first read the book as a girl. The trouble is she lacks the critical tools to turn that joy into an explanation for why the book succeeds—for why she disappeared into Little Women when she was young and why the text became an American classic, with Alcott ranking, Rioux argues, alongside Mark Twain as the foundation of a national literature.
A timely revival …
… The Evolution of Ross Macdonald | CrimeReads. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Macdonald revival comes at a propitious moment. With more than 6.7 million people currently under correctional supervision in the United States, a debate is raging about the fundamental equities of the criminal justice system. The conversation is more heated today than at any time since the 1960s, the era when Macdonald wrote his best works.Well, correctional supervision is one of the places for criminals to be.
Hmm …
… What the Classical devotees get wrong about modern music | Prospect Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
[Scruton's] essay on music and the moral life insists that to be non-judgmental is itself an act of judgment, and that listening to music is an inherently morally charged act, because it is a form of education for one’s feelings. This is why for him the essence of music’s importance lies in its expressivity. Expression in music matters “because it is a manifestation of the moral life, a way of inviting us to shape our sympathies in response to a character imagined in musical form.”It would be interesting to know what Scruton thinks of folk music, which has certainly had considerable influence on classical music.
Walking sore …
… Zealotry of Guerin: Man In a Smock (Gustave Caillebotte), Sonnet #419.
By the way, do yourself a favor and buy a copy of Christopher's book. These sonnets are great to have nearby, jut to pick up and read at random.
By the way, do yourself a favor and buy a copy of Christopher's book. These sonnets are great to have nearby, jut to pick up and read at random.
Something to think on …
All our science calculates with abstracted individual external marks, which do not touch the inner existence of any single thing.
— Johann Gottfried Herder, born on this date in 1744
Friday, August 24, 2018
Dimwit alert …
… Under Progressive Mayor Kenney, Philadelphia Has a Stabbing Problem | Trending.
Kenney grew up not far from where I live. I am assured that the people in his old neighborhood detest him. I can hardly blame them.
Nigeness: Creatures of Consensus
… Nigeness: Creatures of Consensus. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Nige got to Stephen Pentz’s post before I did. It is characteristically outstanding.
Nige got to Stephen Pentz’s post before I did. It is characteristically outstanding.
The world of the puritan is a clamorous, harsh, and distracting world. Moreover, I imagine that keeping up with the ever-expanding list of perceived injustices in that world, and then fashioning perceived solutions to those injustices, must be exhausting. I much prefer to remain a heretic.Me, too.
Blogging note …
I have to take Debbie to a dental appointment and then must be out and about for most of the day. Blogging will be spotty at best until later on.
A tender pair …
… Sleeping With the Chihuahua by Tami Haaland : American Life in Poetry. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Let's hope not …
… Do You Need to Be Naked to Truly Appreciate a Work of Art? We Joined a Nudist Museum Tour to Investigate | artnet News. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
It would certainly keep me from going, especially given that there are plenty of people in worse shape than I am.
'Twas ever thus …
… Aerial photos reveal the stark divide between rich and poor - BBC News. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
"For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good … "
Book sleuths …
… The Crack Squad of Librarians Who Track Down Half-Forgotten Books - Atlas Obscura. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
Think of this — that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
— A. S. Byatt, born on this date in 1936
Thursday, August 23, 2018
Missing its own point …
… Review: Sharp by Michelle Dean | Kristen Roupenian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Sharp is a book that hasn’t learnt the lesson it tries to impart. It is disconcerting to read a book that focuses on so many women who pushed intellectual boundaries, yet which stays so squarely within the confines of conventional wisdom when it comes to the writers it chooses to assess.
Another anniversary …
… Poem in the American Manner by Dorothy Parker | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Yesterday marked the 125th anniversary of Dorothy Psrker’s birth.
Sesquicentennial …
… The Circuit Judge by Edgar Lee Masters | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Lee Masters. This poem sounds a bit like sour grapes, given that Masters was himself a lawyer who probably stood before a circuit judge from time to time. Though he is associated, I suppose, with the Midwest, he died in Melrose Park, just outside of Philadelphia.
Something to think on …
There is the silence of age, too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it in words intelligible to those who have not lived the great range of life.
— Edgar Lee Masters, born on this date in 1868
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
In case you wondered …
… Why does the Left hate Tolkien? - UnHerd.
It’s interesting that some of Tolkien’s earliest fans were the hippies of late 60s and early 70s. Their enthusiasm came as quite a surprise to the crusty old professor, but there is in fact a place where the borders of traditional conservatism meet those of the pacificist, anarchical Left – because both share a distrust of over-centralised, overbearing power.
Ancient revisionist …
…When a Love Poet Writes an Epic: Catullus’s “Poem 64” - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Many ancient poets would have seen Theseus’ act of desertion as the necessary sacrifice of a hero. Catullus took the kind of revisionist view that perhaps feels more natural to us than it did to earlier readers. Theseus is the Lesbia to Catullus’s Ariadne. The princess suffers in a way that was all too familiar to the lovelorn poet. Ariadne has become “a stone sculpture of a bacchant.” She is frozen in frenzy. When she speaks, she rages. “With the kind of heart Theseus had when he left me,” she prays, “may he destroy himself and his family.” Theseus had promised his elderly father that he would raise white sails on his way home if he survived the labyrinth. He forgets. His father throws himself from the cliffs. Theseus, “Forgetful, ah.” So this was heroism.
Everlasting …
… William Blake’s eternal vision – Mark Vernon.
Christianity is at heart an awakening, a realisation, a perception. Guite read out these words: “I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination. Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more.”
Incompleteness …
… The Maker of the Maker of Middle-earth | Christianity Today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
But Christianity is distinctly out of fashion these days. It is consoling to many people to think it is not true.Tolkien’s granddaughter Joanna mentions that one of his fundamental values was “his profound belief in God.” Clyde Kilby, in an interview, remembered him as a “devout Catholic,” and his friend and fellow Inkling R. E. Havard wrote of “the depth of feeling” of his religious convictions, noting that these were “apparent … but never paraded.”If the exhibit had portrayed Tolkien’s faith this way, it would have shown a culture hungry for meaning what a fully integrated life looks like. Following Christ isn’t easy, and Tolkien wasn’t a Christian because it was a mere lifestyle choice. It was at the heart of who he was.
Hmm …
… The Rise of Conservative Art and Poetry | The Epoch Times. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Since one can enjoy both Braque and Fantin-Latour, it seems there is plenty of room for both traditional and non-traditional art. I suspect that's because the so-called non-traditional art works because it has simply found a different way of doing what all genuine art does.
The fruit of mutability …
… Three Loves in Autumn by Timothy Murphy | poetry - Able Muse. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
— Dorothy Parker, born on this date in 1893
Happy News!
Trying to keep up with the news might be aspirational, but these days, it can also be depressing. Between our impending ecological disaster, ever-rising racial and class tensions, sexual harassment accusations, and a government more suited for reality TV, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of terrible stuff out there. Google’s attempting to tackle this fatigue with a new tool for its Assistant that makes meaningful good news easier to find.
Designed to dole out a daily digest of positive stories simply, users can now just ask Google Assistant to “Tell me something good.”
Of course Google will then slice and dice your data and sell it to the pharma makers for targeted advertising: "Julie asked for happy news, do you want to send her an anti-depressant ad." ... lolol ... may you live in interesting times.
Designed to dole out a daily digest of positive stories simply, users can now just ask Google Assistant to “Tell me something good.”
Of course Google will then slice and dice your data and sell it to the pharma makers for targeted advertising: "Julie asked for happy news, do you want to send her an anti-depressant ad." ... lolol ... may you live in interesting times.
Because Science!
hmmm....laziness is good...
but our semi-ancestors weren't lazy!
A new large-data study of fossil and extant bivalves and gastropods in the Atlantic Ocean suggests laziness might be a fruitful strategy for survival of individuals, species and even communities of species. The results have just been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B by a research team based at the University of Kansas.
Looking at a period of roughly 5 million years from the mid-Pliocene to the present, the researchers analyzed 299 species' metabolic rates—or, the amount of energy the organisms need to live their daily lives—and found higher metabolic rates were a reliable predictor of extinction likelihood.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-evolution-favor-survival-laziest.html#jCp
but our semi-ancestors weren't lazy!
“The inference that laziness typifies Homo erectus and that such a failing might have hastened their extinction is moronic,” says Neil Roach, a biological anthropologist at Harvard University.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Let us pray for her …
… Wait, hope—and live | About Last Night.
For those of you who’ve been wondering, Mrs. T is in the intensive-care unit of a New Jersey hospital, and I’m at her side.
Hmm …
… Fire the Catholic Church. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here is what I wrote about an earlier phase of this ongoing scandal: Stop the bell, close the book, quench the candle ...
Another, broader point is that the geographical structure of dioceses made up of parish churches, which has never made sense in the United States, where our cities were built, as Brent Bozell once observed, around factories rather than churches or forts — is an artifact of Christendom.Actually, the neighborhoods, at least here in Philly, were built around the factories, too. I was baptized at St. Veronica's, an Irish parish, which was just a block away from Our Lady of Pompeii, the Italian parish (where I went to kindergarten). A few more blocks away was St. Henry's, the German church.
Here is what I wrote about an earlier phase of this ongoing scandal: Stop the bell, close the book, quench the candle ...
Hard to say …
… Am I charming? (Hat tip Dave Lull.)
I cannot recall ever having been called charming. The only evidence I have of my charm are the smiles and the laughter of family and friends and acquaintances, when I have been able to evoke them. The closest I have come in recent years to having an open avowal of my charm was the claim made by a publisher who invited me to a very expensive dinner at a now-defunct Chicago restaurant called Charlie Trotter’s. The morning after our dinner, he sent me an email saying that he was miffed by the fact that our conversation was so enjoyable that he couldn’t remember any of the wonderful food he had eaten the night before. A charming compliment, this, and one that suggests, now that I think about it, the publisher may well be more charming than I.My guess is that charm is in the eye of the charmed.
In praise of criticism …
… A Critic’s Ars Poetica - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The critic is a reader before he is a writer, a spirited lover of literature, and criticism is one important use to which he puts his reading and his love. To sit before literature in appreciation and awe, to want to have some hand in facilitating literature’s efficacy, to comprehend that literature is, in Kenneth Burke’s phrase, “equipment for living,” a means of enlargement and enhancement and understanding: these are the critic’s prerequisites. He is leashed to no theory, no ideology, no asphyxiating –ism. Like the poet and novelist, he is of no party. His sole loyalty, with Horace and Wilde, is to the duet of beauty and wisdom, to what is well made and usefully wise, to the defense of what is daring and the dismissal of what is not.
Listen in …
… Episode 283 – Robert Andrew Parker – The Virtual Memories Show.
“In recent years I’ve been intrigued by the idea of what Gregor Samsa’s dreams were like, before he woke up as an insect.”
Something to think on …
Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall a soul, except sin. God commands you to pray, but He forbids you to worry.
— Francis de Sales, born on this date in 1567
Monday, August 20, 2018
More than just a character …
… Remembering the brilliant, troubled Oscar Levant. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This month, Sony Classical is reissuing Levant’s recordings in a handsome, eight-disc box set. “Rhapsody in Blue: The Extraordinary Life of Oscar Levant” features a hardbound book with an illuminating essay by Michael Feinstein — the premier interpreter of the Great American Songbook and a friend of the Levant family — along with photos, handbills, newspaper clippings, studio notes and a discography.
and of course Eve ...
Sex, Helen of Troy and women in history and sex ...
Helen of Troy has been established as a primal whore, a deceiver – in a long line of sexually powerful women whose purpose is credited as being to bring down men, whose sex life is viewed as betrayal in pursuit of furtherment, perpetuating the ancient notion that female lust pollutes male intellect. To use the words of Jeffrey Toobin: ‘As is demonstrated by the history of scandal from Helen of Troy to Monica of Beverly Hills, sex has a way of befogging the higher intellectual faculties.’
Tracking the decline …
… 'Social justice warriors' are ruining engineering, prof warns.
I'd prefer that they concentrate on making sure that bridge being built doesn't fall down.Wichman goes on to highlight the “ambitious agenda” of Dr. Donna Riley, the recently appointed dean of Purdue’s engineering school, as an example of the extent of social justice “infiltration” at the school.According to her faculty page, Riley aims to “revise engineering curricula to be relevant to a fuller range of student experiences and career destination” by incorporating “concerns related to...social responsibility,” focusing on “de-centering Western civilization,” and “uncovering contributions of women and other underrepresented groups.”
So should everyone …
… George Pelecanos Knows Why Inmates Need Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Informed by the author’s own experience conducting reading and writing programs in prisons and jails, The Man takes readers into a D.C. jail, where 28-year-old Michael Hudson awaits trial for armed robbery. Anna Byrne, a young librarian, brings books into the jail and runs a regular book discussion group. She has earned the respect of the inmates, many of whom had never been exposed to books before. Under Byrne’s careful guidance, Hudson discovers an entire world that he didn’t realize was available to him. She gives him novels by John Steinbeck, Chris Offutt, and Elmore Leonard, which transport him to a world outside the confines of the jail’s walls, free of the shackles of race, economic background, and social status.Among my more useful functions in my retirement, I still arrange for shipments of books from The Inquirer to the Philadelphia prison system.
Big lives and small …
… thelalatheory – Notes on Books: Jan and Stevie. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Big lives are fascinating but so are small lives. And anyway, even those rare people who get to live big lives are also living out the small details in parallel. Everyone has relationships, habits, preferences, private sorrows and little pleasures. These things are always interesting, provided the person finds the right way to share them with you.
No need to feel put upun …
… The case for puns as the most elevated display of wit — Quartz. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“Despite its bad reputation, punning is, in fact, among the highest displays of wit. Indeed, puns point to the essence of all true wit—the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time,” Geary writes. “And the pun’s primacy is demonstrated by its strategic use in the oldest sacred stories, texts, and myths.”
Decline and fall …
… Blowing Up the Bert: The Outside Story | Front Porch Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
At this point my story becomes even more an outsider’s, because I can’t describe in any detail what the magazine did become. I stopped reading it. A conscientious reporter would rectify this situation and read the handful of issues, but I felt like someone had burned down my house. Put another way, reading the rebooted Bertram Review would be like attending the wedding of an old flame who dumped me. Shortly after the new editor was announced, I’d renewed my subscription, wanting to be a good sport and hoping for the best; but as each issue arrived I skimmed the contents and threw it away.
Something to think on …
We have to build a better man before we can build a better society.
— Paul Tillich, born on this date in 1886
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Hmm …
… Thoughts on the Unthinkable: The Catholic Church Scandal | Trending.
Whenever one of these scandals erupts, there is talk of reform. But as long as the Catholic Church claims to have the power to forgive sins, it can't be reformed. The Church preaches that you can burn in Hell for any one of a thousand-odd actions that you or I would consider trivial, or for expressing doubt about any one of the Church's thousand-odd official tenets (for example, the doctrine, pronounced by Pope Pius XII in 1950, that the Virgin Mary, on her death, rose bodily into Heaven). Yet if you're a priest who rapes a kid and then owns up to it in the confessional and gets absolution, prepare to say hello to St. Peter.Not exactly. Pope Pius XII simply declared a belief that went back to the beginning of the Church to be a dogma. It was no great surprise to Catholics. As for the priest just granting absolution to another priest who confesses to molesting a child, that absolution would be valid only on the condition that the confessing priest turn himself into the police, since the sin he had committed was also a crime. When I was in high school, a little girl was raped and murdered in Mount Airy. The perp turned out to be a student at St. Joe’s Prep. He confessed his sin to a priest at the school, who told him he could only grant him conditional absolution because he had also committed a crime. The kid asked the priest if he would call the police for him. The priest went with the kid to the school office and did precisely that. The Church authorities who covered up these crimes put the institution before the faith it is meant to serve and in so doing themselves committed a grave sin, and probably a crime.
Something to think on …
Old age creeps on us ere we think it nigh.
— John Dryden, born on this date in 1631
In case you wondered …
… Why Human Speech Is Special | The Scientist Magazine.
What is clear about language … is that humans are unique among extant species in the animal kingdom. From the anatomy of our vocal tracts to the complexity of our brains to the multifarious cultures that depend on the sharing of detailed information, humans have evolved the ability to communicate like no other species on Earth.
Q&A …
… Farrukh Dhondy - Interview: V S Naipaul | Literary Review | Issue 331. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
[Among the Believers] got into a lot of trouble in places like Harvard and MIT. There are some very wise people in these places who, in their wisdom, had no need to go to a country to find out what was going on there. They already knew what was to be known.I can’t stress this strongly enough – everything I discovered and wrote was done for myself. I didn’t know what on earth I was doing at MIT, but I had accepted their invitation to speak about the book and I found they were very concerned about Iran. I remember talking about the Iranian love of blood. When a man fell bleeding in a religious demonstration, people went and dipped their hands and pieces of cloth in his blood. The people I was with refused to believe it. This couldn’t happen. Oh God! How wise they were!
The peril of anecdotal evidence …
… American Couple Believing 'Evil Is A Make-Believe Concept' Bike Through Territory Near Afghan Border. ISIS Stabs Them To Death. | Daily Wire.
Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own—it's easier to dismiss an opinion as abhorrent than strive to understand it. Badness exists, sure, but even that's quite rare.Words fail.
We're all stooges …
… He Knew the Reason We Fight | The Russell Kirk Center. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Girard resists simple disciplinary pigeonholing. He made contributions to literary criticism, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, history, sociology, biblical interpretation, and theology. He began his writing life as a literary critic. In his first book, the influential Deceit, Desire, and the Novel (1961), are detectable the earliest stirrings of mimetic theory. Girard looks at the novels of Stendhal, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and Proust, and concludes that the “great novelists reveal the imitative nature of desire.” We live with the myth of the sovereign self, dismissed by Girard as a “romantic lie.” The novelists systematically dismantle this cherished fiction, not in philosophical tracts but through storytelling. The protagonists, by pursuing their desires—wealth, love, social status—inevitably come into conflict with others having the same goals.
Saturday, August 18, 2018
Appreciation …
… Some Reflections on Bob Dylan's 'North Country Blues' - Mail Online - Peter Hitchens blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… ‘North Country Blues … contains in a few short verses a complete tragedy, fully understood by its heroine, who is surrounded by thousands of bleak square miles of freezing forest and lakes, with nowhere else to go and winter coming on, and so must stay where she is and face what is to come.
One of us …
… Nein.Quarterly: The #Faile Intellectual Goodwill Tour.
For context: A Historic Moment: Birth of the FIS - Bryan Appleyard.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For context: A Historic Moment: Birth of the FIS - Bryan Appleyard.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Living afoot …
… The Art of the Stroll | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Walking is a slow and porous experience. The words we use to describe it—meandering, sauntering, strolling—have their own leisurely and gentle cadence and suggest a sort of unhurried enjoyment. But to walk is also to be vulnerable: it forces us into physical interaction with surrounding streets, homes, and people. This can delay us, annoy us, even put us in danger. But it connects us to community in a way that cars never can.One of the disappointments for me, now that I am old, is that gimpy knees have made long walks pretty much a thing of the past, though I keep trying. Recently, I logged five miles on my pedometer.
Something to think on …
Memory belongs to the imagination. Human memory is not like a computer which records things; it is part of the imaginative process, on the same terms as invention.
— Alain Robbe-Grillet, born on this date in 1922
Friday, August 17, 2018
Sayaka Murata
It's not often that I read contemporary fiction. And it's even less often, I concede, that I read outside the American or European canon. But Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman was reviewed twice by the New York Times and piqued my interest.
So I read the book this week: in three sittings. It's a short novel, probably better described as a novella. But I'll admit, it packs a certain punch. This isn't a perfect book: there were times I felt a longer, more developed narrative might have added necessary layers to the book's emotional landscape. But as I say: there's lots to like here, even if Murata focuses, by and large, on a single thread.
Convenience Store Woman is about just that: a thirty-six year-old woman working at a convenience store in Tokyo. The difficulty is that she's worked there, without interruption, for sixteen years. In a sense, she is the store, describing it at times as she might herself: its breathing, its rhythms, its vitality.
Working at any store, but particularly a convenience store, for so long comes with inevitable social judgement, and Murata writes convincingly of that dynamic: her central character -- Keiko Furukura -- is repeatedly reminded of the choice she must make: to marry, or to assume more meaningful work. She does neither, of course, and is cast as something "weird," as someone to be fixed.
In sparse, accessible prose, Murata succeeds in asking a number of profound questions. Among them: what is the relationship between life and work, and to what extent does work dictate happiness? Because if not happy, Furukura is at least content. And who's to say there's anything wrong with that?
Ultimately, I felt Convenience Store Woman might have continued further, or that its existing narrative might have been bolstered by way of more complexity (and a more detailed treatment of sexuality). But perhaps that's Murata's objective: to cast everything in a simple -- a deceptively simple -- light: to reveal small talk for what it is, and to present Murata for what she is: a worker content, despite society's attempts to belittle that achievement.
Faith as lived …
… and not just thought about: “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” — a book blog : How Flannery O’Connor found her art—and her God—in letters.
In a column I wrote awhile back for The Inquirer I had this to say about O'Connor's Prayer Journal:
In a column I wrote awhile back for The Inquirer I had this to say about O'Connor's Prayer Journal:
Relativism was not a problem for Flannery O'Connor, whose A Prayer Journal was written more than half a century ago, was never intended for publication, and is only 37 pages long (it has been published along with a facsimile of the pages of the copybook she wrote it in). Written in 1946 and 1947, between the ages of 20 and 22, when she attending writing workshops in Iowa City, it is an extraordinary testament of living faith, both religious and artistic, though the two seem to have been one for O'Connor:
Dear God, tonight … you have given me a story. Don't let me ever think … that I was anything but the instrument for Your story — just like the typewriter was mine. Please let the story, dear God, in its revisions, be made too clear for any false & low interpretation … . I wish you would take care of making it a sound story because I don't know how, just like I didn't know how to write it but it came."Dismiss this if you will. But only after reading Wise Blood.
Lost no longer, we hope …
… The Lost World of Weegee | commentary. (Hat tip, dave Lull.)
What set Weegee apart from his competitors was the sureness of his untutored eye, as well as the humane yet unsentimental way in which he portrayed his subjects. Coarse and vulgar in manner, he was nonetheless acutely sensitive to the pathos of the working-class world into which he had been born.
I-RON-Y
Archbishop Chaput recently threw me out of his church. We were scheduled to have a workshop at a local Catholic church on transgender people during the Pope’s visit, about sharing our life and challenges. The Archbishop saw the brochure, saw my face and decided our message, in my case how I have lived my life and met those challenges with love and belief in the Lord, was incompatible with the church’s teachings.
And here I thought I spent money unwisely ...
The billionaires and the guru:
Heirs to a generations-old business house once worth billions, the brothers have in the last six months seen a dramatic fall in their fortunes. They’ve had their public shareholdings seized by lenders. They’re under a criminal probe by financial authorities over 23 billion rupees missing from their listed companies. They owe $500 million over fraud allegations related to the 2008 sale of drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories. They’ve also lost the family mansion. Both deny any wrongdoing.
Thursday, August 16, 2018
Hmm …
… Geoffrey Hill, Prodigal by Garrick Davis | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Having spent a most interesting evening once with Geoffrey Hill, I suspect that he would agree with John Henry Newman — as I do myself — that faith means being capable of bearing doubt. It is a journey.
Having spent a most interesting evening once with Geoffrey Hill, I suspect that he would agree with John Henry Newman — as I do myself — that faith means being capable of bearing doubt. It is a journey.
Heartbreaking …
… Covering the Mirrors by Carol V. Davis : American Life in Poetry. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Have a look …
… Photos of the Week: Robot Cat, Purple Water, Tunnel of Love - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
At present …
… perhaps the least of their problems: An Appeal to the Cardinals of the Catholic Church | Various | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Disappointing …
… 'Chicago: A Novel' Book Review | National Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I would add Somerset Maugham, who I think is a major author, though many may not agree.I can think of only two major authors, Anton Chekhov and Thornton Wilder, who have been fully ambidextrous, producing plays and prose fiction of like quality (unless you count Samuel Beckett, whose novels are admired but not read).
