Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Mutt and Jeff …
… Paul Davis On Crime: A Look At One Of The U.S. Navy's Largest Ships Alongside One Of The Smallest.
Blogging note …
I am in a hospital waiting room. Debbie is currently in recovery after a procedure. We had to be up at 5 a.m. and neither of us slept well last night. I’ll get around to blogging when we get back home.
Something to think on …
Courage is the antidote to danger.
— Erle Stanley Gardner, who died on this date in 1970
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Tracking the decline …
… Books About Next to Nothing | John Waters | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here (again thanks to Dave) is my review of Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain: The intricacies of love ensnarled by loyalty, war.
The art of writing, too, has undergone a metamorphosis. Once a way to engage with reality, it has become primarily a status-seeking activity. The idea of “being a writer” nowadays seems more important than learning a craft, perfecting a talent, or honing a worldview. The wannabe writer now offers himself to the ideological architects of the media and academe, providing fodder for their deterministic interventions in a discourse increasingly more about remaking the world than investigating it.I’m not familiar with the work of Laszlo Krasznahorkai or George Saunders, but I have read Michel Houellebecq and I agree with what Waters says about him. I would also cite Tan Twan Eng’s novels as being as good as novels have ever been.
Here (again thanks to Dave) is my review of Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain: The intricacies of love ensnarled by loyalty, war.
Worth heeding …
… Dr. Drew says coronavirus panic is 'destroying' businesses — and he wants the media to be held accountable - TheBlaze.
Holding the media accountable alone is a good idea. Much of today's media sucks.
Something to think on …
Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals — with no cure, except as a guillotine might be called a cure for dandruff.
— Clare Booth Luce, born on this date in 1903
Interesting and comprehensive …
…Tips for the Depressed | Online Only | n 1. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The stupidest, most exasperating piece of advice commonly offered to suffering people is also the truest and most comforting.
Mark thy calendar — again …
… 89th Annual Bryn Mawr-Wellesley Book Sale will be the largest ever - Planet Princeton. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
The organizers have decided o move it up one day because of potential school closings related to Covid-19.
The new schedule will be as follows:
Thursday, Mar. 12 — opening day, $25 admission
Friday, March 13 — Day 2 Open to public
Saturday, March 14— Day 3 Open to public
Sunday, March 15 — half-price day
Monday, March 16 — box day
Post bumped.
Hmm …
… SCIENCE AND FAITH: This Pioneer Of Neurosurgery Concluded Mind Isn’t Mere Matter. Why It Matters To All Of Us – HillFaith.
“He started his career as a materialist. He thought the whole mind came from the brain and he was just going to study it. And at the end of his career, 30 years later, he was a passionate dualist. He said that there is a part of the mind that is not from the brain. He had several lines of reasoning that convinced him of that.”
Listen in …
… Episode 365 – Ben Katchor – The Virtual Memories Show.
“A dairy restaurant feels to me like an urban, walled Garden of Eden, but it’s in this world, so it gets trapped in the doings of this world.”
Q&A …
… Word crimes? 'Weird Al Seriously' takes academic look at beloved parody musician | Music | bakersfield.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
He is a very nice guy. When I've interviewed other people, they seem distracted, they'll look at their cellphones and make calls. But (Yankovic) was fully engaged. He had never met me but he invited me to his home. He was wonderfully nice and really helpful with no strings. His band has been the same group since the beginning, which is really unusual and it's because they like to work with him.
Monday, March 09, 2020
Hmm …
… Why Modern Feminism Wants To Get Rid Of The Family — Evie Magazine.
“All will have to work.” Gee, where have I heard this recently? Oh yeah, a feminist who advocated that it should be illegal for women to be stay-at-home moms. Time and time again, women are shamed for choosing to excuse themselves from the workforce because they are financially supported by their husbands. Notice how the same shame isn’t inflicted on women who are financially dependent on the government or on sugar daddies.
How sweet
… Conservative Hispanic college student — daughter of former GOP congressman — threatened with violence after blasting socialism - TheBlaze.
Like it or not, today's self-styled progressives bear a striking resemblance to fascists. Of course, devout readers of the New York Times may well see things differently.
Something to think on …
I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.
— Mickey Spillane, born on this date in 1918
Sunday, March 08, 2020
Listen in …
… Sarah Ruden: Getting Inside the Head of Paul & Jesus - Pete Enns. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A lost dimension …
… Regaining our spiritual commons – Mark Vernon.
… in the medieval period, estates and kingdoms were regarded fundamentally as entrusted patrimonies bestowed by heaven, not capital resources defined by law. It was a world “charged with the grandeur of God”, to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins, equally blessed and terrifying.
Something to think on …
Taking things from one source is plagiarism; taking things from several sources is research.
— John McPhee, who turns 89 today
Saturday, March 07, 2020
For your listening pleasure …
Maurice Ravel was born on this date in 1875. This is a wonderful work.
Seeing things clearly …
… On Poetry: Finding beauty, purity in feelings of bleakness | Lifestyles | record-eagle.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Here's the poem: Dover Beach.
It's a favorite of mine, too. The closing have always struck me as prophetic of what would happen in August 1914.
Here's the poem: Dover Beach.
It's a favorite of mine, too. The closing have always struck me as prophetic of what would happen in August 1914.
Hmm …
… On Loving Popes and Other Strangers, part 1 Maureen Mullarkey. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Emotions cannot be commanded. Injunctions to love our neighbor can only be directed to our will, not to our feelings. The will guides our choices, decisions, and our actions. We will ultimate good to all men: good in the next life, and in this one to the extent possible within circumstances. A moral disposition to invoke good to individuals in the here and now is burdened with contingencies, ensnared in dilemmas. The constraints of prudence and justice to which we are also commanded tug at responses to the divine dictate. Our single word love—a sweeping blob of a thing—is too indeterminate to justify the the range of human responses that make claims on it.
Perhaps this will help: Love (Theological Virtue). I was taught, starting in Catholic grade school, to distinguish between love and luv. And there's this: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Oh, and the Greek word for instinctual love is στοργή — storge, not sturge.
Oh, and the Greek word for instinctual love is στοργή — storge, not sturge.
Something to think on …
Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.
— Thomas Aquinas, who died on this date in 1274
Friday, March 06, 2020
RIP …
… McCoy Tyner, Piano Legend and John Coltrane Collaborator, Dead at 81 - Rolling Stone. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Good Lord …
… Shocking Video: Group Stomps 15-Year-Old Girl On Brooklyn Sidewalk – CBS New York.
Looks like they’re all guys. Beating up a girl.
Blogging note …
I have a luncheon engagement with a former colleague. Blogging will resume when. I return.
RIP …
… Farewell to Ernesto Cardenal: Poet, Revolutionary, Innovator and Mystic - Havana Times. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Ernesto Cardenal’s poetry moves amid themes of love, erotic passion, religion and science; between the mystic and the scientific. Cardenal, who was also a priest, embarks on an interior voyage to sing about the origin of the universe, its evolution, and the scientific knowledge that illuminates it.
A tiny epic …
… The Enduring Grace of the Trivial: On “The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice” - Los Angeles Review of Books.
It takes real poetic skill to parody a master so subtly that the result becomes mistaken for the poetry of the master himself at play. And now, in A. E. Stallings translation of the Batrachomyomachia, we have what seems a comparably ambitious and convincing re-creation of that ancient recreation.
Something to think on …
It took me a long time to understand that God is not the enemy of my enemies. God is not even the enemy of God's enemies.
— Martin Niemöller, who died on this date in 1984
Thursday, March 05, 2020
James Cain
It's not often that a novella or short story packs the emotional punch of a complete novel, but in the case of The Postman Always Rings Twice, James Cain has done just that. Postman is an exceptional work.
To begin, Cain gets the language of his characters just right: their dialogue is realistic, their diction accurate. He doesn't reach for too much, and he certainly doesn't intrude with unnecessary narration. Dialogue carries Postman: all the other scaffolding fades away.
But of course when Cain does interject -- when he describes place or time -- he achieves a superb balance: there's nothing extraneous here, there's nothing which diverts from the noir.
And this applies, I think, to the plot as well: Cain's constructed the perfect crime, and the perfect set of circumstances to frustrate it. Every turn has its opposite, every decision its counterpoint. Cain's characters, of course, cannot anticipate these, but they are revealed, it's a wonder they could have been missed.
There's something transcendent in Postman. This is how a novella should be: a self-contained universe, a glimpse into a world. Cain did not cast a wide net, and the result is a story, strangely, with universal appeal. In Cain's precision are themes which stretch across populations and geographies. This is a great work of literature. This is how stories should be told.
An exhilarating book about graveyards …
… Nigeness: Silent Mansions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The author, as attentive to the wildlife around her as to the human life and death, celebrates the graveyard’s modern function as a nature reserve, though she has some qualms about the current fashion of ‘natural’ burial, especially when no marker is involved. Burial grounds of this kind no longer serve as ‘repositories of individual stories, places of random discovery. You wouldn’t come to them to study the past; here the past is consigned to the earth, and the earth is allowed to forget.’ If this is to be the future of burial, we should cherish our older graveyards all the more, as precious spaces where the living and the dead can silently commune.
This should be read by everybody …
… HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY | Edge.org.
As a scientist I do not have much faith in predictions. Science is organized unpredictability. The best scientists like to arrange things in an experiment to be as unpredictable as possible, and then they do the experiment to see what will happen. You might say that if something is predictable then it is not science. When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist. I am speaking as a story-teller, and my predictions are science-fiction rather than science. The predictions of science-fiction writers are notoriously inaccurate. Their purpose is to imagine what might happen rather than to describe what will happen. I will be telling stories that challenge the prevailing dogmas of today. The prevailing dogmas may be right, but they still need to be challenged. I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. Since I am heretic, I am accustomed to being in the minority. If I could persuade everyone to agree with me, I would not be a heretic.I linked to this in an earlier, but it seems so important that I wanted to single it out for attention.
Q&A …
… A Conversation with Poet David Ferry on the Occasion of His 96th Birthday | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Stevens, along with Frost, were my two biggest experiences, experiences for my listening ear at Amherst. I wrote my senior thesis about Stevens and I was elated about having done so. I wrote him a letter asking him about Whitman, even though I knew the answer, because I knew his lines about him. He wrote back and said something like, “Walt Whitman was the only writer back then whose writing wasn’t a book.” That is, he was what Stevens called “the latest freed man.” I wish I had the letter, but I lost it. I keep hearing all those lines of his that are entranced and entrancing: “Keep you, keep you, I am gone, O keep you as / My memory, is the mother of us all.”
May he rest in peace …
… Freeman Dyson: Humanist & Climate-Change Heretic | National Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY.
“My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models.” He went on, saying that the climate models “do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand.”Here is that Edge essay:
… HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY.
As a scientist I do not have much faith in predictions. Science is organized unpredictability. The best scientists like to arrange things in an experiment to be as unpredictable as possible, and then they do the experiment to see what will happen. You might say that if something is predictable then it is not science. When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist. I am speaking as a story-teller, and my predictions are science-fiction rather than science. The predictions of science-fiction writers are notoriously inaccurate. Their purpose is to imagine what might happen rather than to describe what will happen. I will be telling stories that challenge the prevailing dogmas of today. The prevailing dogmas may be right, but they still need to be challenged. I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. Since I am heretic, I am accustomed to being in the minority. If I could persuade everyone to agree with me, I would not be a heretic.Of course, if you place your faith in what you read in the MSM, you probably think you know better. Please tell us of your scientific accomplishments.
Something to think on …
Meditating on the nature and dignity of prayer can cause saying at least one thing to God: Lord, teach us to pray!
— Karl Rahner, born on this date in 1904
Wednesday, March 04, 2020
Complicated fellow …
… Beyond Eastrod : Hemingway (and yours truly) at the breaking point.
Sad that Tim may stop blogging, but personal matters can certainly trump blogging, as I have myself recently found.
Something to think on …
How much savage coarseness is concealed in refined, cultivated manners.
— Nikolai Gogol, who died on this date in 1852
Blogging note …
Debbie and I are at the hospital, but her procedure has been postponed. So we will be heading out to get some breakfast. Blogging will resume when we get home.
Tuesday, March 03, 2020
Cri de coeur
… Secret Histories – Indicative Mood. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I can assure Katie, who used to write a column for me when was the Inquirer's book editor, that she has no grounds for doubting herself or her talent.
To get to the bookshop Joe and I made the long, pleasant walk through our neighborhood to the one next to ours. Up hills and through the honest-to-goodness woods of the Wissahickon, a forest within the city of Philadelphia. Over a bridge on busy Henry Avenue that’s over 170 feet high, where you can stand and look at those woods below, bend over a bit and rest the side of your face on the stone barrier because it’s not high at all, which makes the bridge dangerous, tantalizing.This is not far from where I used to live in Germantown, though it is the nearby Walnust Lane Bridge that has racked up the suicides.
I can assure Katie, who used to write a column for me when was the Inquirer's book editor, that she has no grounds for doubting herself or her talent.
Q&A …
… Nightmares, Dreams, and God: The Millions Interviews Jeff Sharlet - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I believe in nightmares and dreams the way I believe in God—what matters most about stories, I think, is what people do with them, how they shape our lives. Whether they’re “real” or not matters, too—I’m a journalist, I love that creature we call “a fact”—but I’m moved by the great modernist poet Marianne Moore’s definition of poetry as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.” The stories we tell with those “real toads,” the facts, are the imaginary gardens in which we live. Night is a fact, but my experience of it, then and now, is the imaginary garden for which I’ve attempted to write a geography. In the book, I write that darkness isn’t the absence of light, it’s the presence of ink, the stuff from which letters and words and stories are made. I’m not such an insomniac anymore—making this book maybe cured me of that—but I still see night in those terms.
Hear, hear …
… Dear Stan: Your Newspaper Sucks | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
I could have also mentioned a couple of my other gripes, such as how dull and predictable the paper is, and how it always reads like it was written by a bunch of outsiders who live in the suburbs, or Mt. Airy. Or how the paper has nobody on the staff who's plugged into what's really going on in this town.
Something to think on …
In love there are no vacations. No such thing. Love has to be lived fully with its boredom and all that.
— Marguerite Duras, who died on this date in 1996
Listen in …
… Episode 364 – Stoya – The Virtual Memories Show.
“Coming from porn you deal with a small slice of human emotion: lust, arousal, maybe some basic things. It’s a lot like sketch comedy: it runs on stereotypes and tropes.”
Monday, March 02, 2020
For your listening pleasure …
There is much classical music that is both great and neglected, and much of it is American. This is one such piece. From now on, I plan on featuring such works regularly.
Hmm …
… ‘Unbelievers’ Review: Fearful, Faithless - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“Unbelievers” devotes itself to the watershed period between Martin Luther in the 1520s and Baruch Spinoza in the 1670s. To anyone reared on the myth that the culture of European Christendom was chiefly subverted by “reason” and “science,” Mr. Ryrie’s account will be bracingly unfamiliar. The Scientific Revolution plays no role in his book, for the excellent reason that virtually all of the pioneering natural scientists of the era were devoutly religious. Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton and their colleagues would have viewed the New Atheists as bombastic provocateurs. They certainly did not consider belief in God, the soul and the afterlife to be puerile delusions.
Tracking the decline …
… More Antisemitism at Duke University Press | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com.
Maybe it’s time for a BDS movement directed at certain institutions of allegedly higher learning.
Maybe it’s time for a BDS movement directed at certain institutions of allegedly higher learning.
Blogging note …
I have to do some errands this morning. So I won;t be blogging again until this afternoon.
Something to think on …
What do you mean, blindly? That baby is a very sentient creature… That baby sees the world with a completeness that you and I will never know again. His doors of perception have not yet been closed. He still experiences the moment he lives in.
— Tom Wolfe, born on this date in 1930
Sunday, March 01, 2020
Just so you know …
… A biochemist reviews the Trump administration's continuing response to COVID-19.
The media’s fear-mongering has the real effect of jeopardizing the welfare of millions of Americans, like my mother, who rely on their investments to pay for food, medicine, warmth, and other essentials.
Let us continue to pray …
… We got the Big Call | About Last Night. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is great news, now let’s pray all goes well.
This is great news, now let’s pray all goes well.
Hmm …
… The Overwritten Sentences of Garth Greenwell – Reluctant Habits.
Well, I’ve never read this guy — in fact, I had never heard of him — but this piece gives me plenty of good reasons not to bother.
Something to think on …
America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description.
— Ralph Ellison, born on this date in 1914
Saturday, February 29, 2020
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