Monday, February 16, 2015
Interesting …
… Brrrrrrrr!
I notice that the coldest days occurred about 100 years apart, and that the two second-coldest days ever happened late in the 20th century.
I do try to be an optimist...
A Jew out for a walk in Paris (with video)
At a nearby cafe, fingers were pointed at us, and moments later two thugs were waiting for us on the street corner. They swore at me, yelled "Jew" and spat at me. "I think we've been made," the photographer whispered at me. Two youths were waiting for us on the next street corner, as they had apparently heard that a Jew was walking around their neighborhood. They made it clear to us that we had better get out of there, and we took their advice. "A few more minutes and this would have been a lynching," the bodyguard told me as we were getting into the car. "Leave this area right now." Is this what life is like for Paris' Jews? Is this what a Jew goes through, day in and day out, while walking to work or using public transportation? The majority of French Jews do not flaunt their religion, as the Jewish community leaders have urged them to wear hats as they walk to and from work, or go bareheaded. But what about nighttime? Well, Jews prefers to stay inside in the evening. It is safer at home
Hmm …
… Some Words from Sylvia Plath and Betty Friedan's Forgotten Sister - The Atlantic.
The sentiments in Johnson's essay echoed—or slightly prefigured—many of those captured in Betty Friedan’s explosive The Feminine Mystique, which was published more than five years later. But the same year Johnson’s essay appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Friedan, who was about a decade older, visited former classmates of her alma mater (also Smith College) for a 15th reunion survey. As she had suspected, when she peered beneath the suburban patina, Friedan found rampant, wordless dissatisfaction. Then, she referred to this unhappiness as “the problem that has no name.” It doesn’t take much to see the overlaps between Friedan’s writing and Johnson’s. Early in the The Feminine Mystique, Friedan laments how women “were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine, unhappy women who wanted to be poets or physicists or presidents.”My mother, having finished eighth grade at age 13, was immediately found work in a factory. She would work in factories for the next half-century. She once asked mewhy so many women had come think that having a job was liberating. She would have liked nothing more than to have been "just" a housewife.
The long defeat …
… Solidarity Hall | The first Christian film I ever saw. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
No one had warm fuzzies at Golgotha. The bad guys won. Yeah, sure, we can talk about how the Savior rose again on the third day, conquered sin and death and opened the doors for the faithful to enter Paradise. So what? Glory abounds, and we will rejoice in it; but the glory came after rejection by friends and neighbors, after temptation in the desert, after hunger, flogging, crucifixion, death. It came after defeat. In short: Christ went to Heaven by going through Hell (both literally and metaphorically).
Something to think on …
Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.
— Van Wyck Brooks, born on this date in 1886
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Tuesday night …
THE GREEN LINE CAFE
READING & INTERVIEW SERIES
PRESENTS:
A Poetry Reading by
THE OSAGE POETS including:
Nancy H. Mills, David Kertis,
Jennifer Hook, Donna Wolf-Palacio,
Amy Small-McKinney,
Janice E. McDermott,
Aldona Middlesworth,
Cassie MacDonald, Sekai’afua Zankel,
& Alina Macneal
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2015, 7 PM
HOSTED BY
LEONARD GONTAREK & LILLIAN DUNN
THE GREEN LINE CAFE IS LOCATED
AT 45TH & LOCUST STREETS
(Please note the address, there are
other Green Line Café locations.)
greenlinecafe.com
This Event Is Free
READING & INTERVIEW SERIES
PRESENTS:
A Poetry Reading by
THE OSAGE POETS including:
Nancy H. Mills, David Kertis,
Jennifer Hook, Donna Wolf-Palacio,
Amy Small-McKinney,
Janice E. McDermott,
Aldona Middlesworth,
Cassie MacDonald, Sekai’afua Zankel,
& Alina Macneal
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2015, 7 PM
HOSTED BY
LEONARD GONTAREK & LILLIAN DUNN
THE GREEN LINE CAFE IS LOCATED
AT 45TH & LOCUST STREETS
(Please note the address, there are
other Green Line Café locations.)
greenlinecafe.com
This Event Is Free
On the other hand, moral simplicity may be good...
The canopy of bygone bed sheets, where I discovered these books for the first time as a child, were a "thin place." They suspended the boundary between the world in which I lived and the world in which the characters of the books lived. To paraphrase Kristin Dombek, it’s not that I exactly believed in the universes created by Madeleine L’Engle, C.S. Lewis, or John Bellairs, “but I lived as if I did.”
...
Art is the reason, then, that God feels so much closer when I re-open a children’s book and feel a familiar world unfold, its threshold lapping forward with the invitation to live “as if I believed.”
When the Old Testament prophet Isaiah writes, “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near,” it’s not, for me, about finding God through good timing, but about seeking God in thin places. It’s not about chronos, or chronological time, but about kairos. Art is created in kairos — an indeterminate time, unbound by the clock, where God is ever present. When art is shared and experienced, that thin place erupts open again for the mind and heart of the believer.
"...arguably the best living American novelist" speaks!
But I get scared when Jonathan Franzen deigns to lecture on moral complexity:
"Most of what people read, if you go to the bookshelf in the airport convenience store and look at what’s there, even if it doesn’t have a YA on the spine, is YA in its moral simplicity. People don’t want moral complexity. Moral complexity is a luxury. You might be forced to read it in school, but a lot of people have hard lives. They come home at the end of the day, they feel they’ve been jerked around by the world yet again for another day. The last thing they want to do is read Alice Munro, who is always pointing toward the possibility that you’re not the heroic figure you think of yourself as, that you might be the very dubious figure that other people think of you as. That’s the last thing you’d want if you’ve had a hard day. You want to be told good people are good, bad people are bad, and love conquers all. And love is more important than money. You know, all these schmaltzy tropes. That’s exactly what you want if you’re having a hard life. Who am I to tell people that they need to have their noses rubbed in moral complexity?"And he pisses off Jen Weiner too.
Paging Brian Williams …
… Speak, Memory by Oliver Sacks | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There is, it seems, no mechanism in the mind or the brain for ensuring the truth, or at least the veridical character, of our recollections. We have no direct access to historical truth, and what we feel or assert to be true (as Helen Keller was in a very good position to note) depends as much on our imagination as our senses. There is no way by which the events of the world can be directly transmitted or recorded in our brains; they are experienced and constructed in a highly subjective way, which is different in every individual to begin with, and differently reinterpreted or reexperienced whenever they are recollected. (The neuroscientist Gerald M. Edelman often speaks of perceiving as “creating,” and remembering as “recreating” or “recategorizing.”) Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each other, and ourselves—the stories we continually recategorize and refine. Such subjectivity is built into the very nature of memory, and follows from its basis and mechanisms in the human brain. The wonder is that aberrations of a gross sort are relatively rare, and that, for the most part, our memories are relatively solid and reliable.
Fresh and distinctive …
… another review of Katie's book, along with an excerpt: Book Review: Slip of the Tongue - Arts - Utne Reader. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Have a look …
… at Daniel Kalder's Stalin documentary: BBC World Service - The Documentary, Digitising Stalin.
Q & A …
… The B-Side: Ben Yagoda on the Life of American Popular Music | Biography | Biographile. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
RIP……
… Former poet laureate Philip Levine, a champion of the working class, dies at 87 - Bookmarks. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat, but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress toward a victory.
— Alfred North Whitehead, born on this date in 1861
The power of choice …
… Dante in the dock: saved by his outrageous hope | The Book Haven.
…what does Dante tell us about our world that we do not recognize ourselves? Here’s my take: we live in a time and in a generation that thinks everything is negotiable, and that every psycho-spiritual lock can be jimmied. As W.H. Auden put it, we push away the notion that “the meaning of life [is] something more than a mad camp.” For us, there’s always a second, third, and fourth chance. It’s a strength – but it’s a weakness, too. Maybe that’s why we resist Dante. We don’t realize that some things are for keeps. There’s not always another day. Not all choices can be reversed with every change of heart – and no, our heart isn’t always in the right place. Words unsaid may remain forever unsaid. And perhaps no choice is trivial or innocent: it is the choices that bring us to ourselves, the choices that reveal and work as a fixative for our loves, our priorities, and our direction.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Fiction for adults …
… Paula Marantz Cohen: Making the Case for a Neglected Novel: ‘Marjorie Morningstar’ - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Wouk includes in the novel lengthy discussions between Marjorie and her friends about the meaning of life and the importance of art and money. Critics at the time found these passages silly and overlong; I found them fascinating. One of the shortcomings of “The Portrait of a Lady,” it seems to me, is that James never shows Isabel in sustained, substantive conversation; we have to take James’s word that she is exceptional. Wouk makes clear that Marjorie is not just beautiful; she is a thinking, articulate being.
Something to think on …
Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.
— P. G. Wodehouse, who died on this date in 1975
Friday, February 13, 2015
Just a thought …
Suppose this is what Satan said to Eve: "The only thing you and Adam ever do is obey. You're servants. You never think about anything. You just do what comes to mind, which is always a cue from you-know-who. If you stopped and thought on your own about anything you would see right away that things don't have to be the way you-know-who says they should. After all, you're free to do as you like. Just because you-know-who has warned you against that doesn't mean he would ever prevent you from doing it. I'll say that for him."
A new form's first hit …
… Hooked on the Freewheeling Podcast ‘Serial’ - NYTimes.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
More than 50 shades …
… Erotica: Sex and poetry make the most arousing bedfellows - Telegraph. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Worrisome …
… the future of an illusion - bookforum.com / current issue. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
But it’s not just the distant past that Lieberman leaves unrecounted. He minimizes or entirely overlooks such unsavory recent chapters as the widespread diagnosis, against the criteria of the DSM, of bipolar disorder in the very young and their subsequent treatment with powerful (and untested in children) antipsychotic drugs—an episode that occasioned Senate hearings and front-page exposés. He never acknowledges that the “serotonin imbalance” that antidepressants supposedly rectify does not exist—or if it does, it has yet to be discovered—and his lock-and-key image belies the much less certain clinical reality, in which antidepressants are routinely prescribed for anxiety disorders, antipsychotics for mood disorders, and anti-anxiety drugs for a wide range of complaints—and all on a trial-and-error basis. He fails to mention that no new psychiatric medications have been discovered in the past quarter century, or that none of the newer ones have proved more effective than the drugs discovered in the 1950s (although some of them do have fewer side effects). And he vastly overestimates the current state of neuroscience, which is only beginning to unravel the mysteries of how the billions of neurons and trillions of connections among them turn into consciousness.
Something to think on …
Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.
— Georges Simenon, born on this date in 1903
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Just a thought …
If there is a loving God, then being good and kind makes sense. But if there isn't a loving God, being good and kind may still make sense, but not as much, and not the same sense.
Or scaling heights …
… zmkc: Inching Forward.
The video clip is both hilarious and heartwarmingly un-PC.
Oh, and have a look at Uluru.
The video clip is both hilarious and heartwarmingly un-PC.
Oh, and have a look at Uluru.
They aren't always …
… Why are poets' voices so insufferably annoying?
E.E. Cummings read his verse in a very formal way, with close attention to pitch. He had a good voice and a nice accent, and his readings were quite effective. Philip Larkin read his work well, I think, with no indication of the stammer that bothered him otherwise. But many poets don't have that great a voice and are not good public speakers. We still like to hear them read their work, if only out of curiosity.
E.E. Cummings read his verse in a very formal way, with close attention to pitch. He had a good voice and a nice accent, and his readings were quite effective. Philip Larkin read his work well, I think, with no indication of the stammer that bothered him otherwise. But many poets don't have that great a voice and are not good public speakers. We still like to hear them read their work, if only out of curiosity.
And the nominees are …
SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED FOR 2014
GUGGENHEIM-LEHRMAN PRIZE IN MILITARY HISTORY
Winner of the second annual prize will be named March 23 in
New York City ceremony
NEW YORK CITY—February 12, 2015—The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation announced today the shortlist of three books in contention for the second annual Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History. The winner of the $50,000 prize will be announced at a ceremony March 23 at the New-York Historical Society in New York City.
“The success of the Prize last year has tautened the judges’ antennae for extraordinary history-writing. Merely very, very good is not good enough,” said the chairman of the judging committee, Dr. Andrew Roberts.
The books on the 2014 shortlist:
- The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China by Julia Lovell (Overlook Press)
- The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century by David Reynolds (W.W. Norton)
- Ring of Steel : Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I by Alexander Watson
(Basic Books)
“Our purpose in establishing this annual prize is to restore the serious pursuit of military history in research, scholarship, and writing—in recent times ignored by the American academic community. The historical illiteracy of the rising generations of college students current and recent is profoundly dangerous to their growth and participation as responsible citizens: war and violence are permanent staples of the human condition.” said Josiah Bunting III, president of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, which is providing part of the funding for the prize, and national chairman of the English Speaking Union.
The inaugural 2013 Prize was awarded this past March to Allen Guelzo for his bestselling book Gettysburg: The Last Invasion(Knopf).
The Foundation, established by Harry Guggenheim in 1929 to study the predisposing qualities that lead humankind to commit acts of "violence, domination and aggression," has always numbered the history of warfare among its primary research interests. In addition to the Foundation, funding for the prize is also being provided by Lewis E. Lehrman, co-founder of the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History, author, and champion of studies in American political and military history.
The judging panel for the prize comprises:
· Andrew Roberts, Ph.D., British historian and journalist, Committee Chair
· Charles F. Brower IV, Ph.D., Brigadier General, USA Retd, Henry King Burgwyn Professor of Military History, Virginia Military Institute
· Josiah Bunting III, President of the HF Guggenheim Foundation; Recording Secretary to the Committee
· Flora Fraser, author, Chair of the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography and founder of the Elizabeth Longford Grants for Historical Biography
· W. Patrick Lang, former head of Middle East, South Asian, and Counter-Terrorist affairs in the Defense Intelligence Agency
· Ralph Peters, Lt. Col., USA Retd, author and Fox News Strategic Analyst
· Sir Hew Strachan, Ph.D., Chichele Professor in the History of War, All Souls, Oxford University
Almost 100 books were submitted for consideration by publishers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The Prize will be awarded annually in recognition of the best book in the field of military history published in English during the previous calendar
Today's music …
Taylor is the fellow who narrates Fantasia. He was once quite a well-known figure, and his operas The King's Henchmen (with a libretto by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Peter Ibbetson have been performed at the Met more than those of any other American composer.
Something to think on …
A human act once set in motion flows on forever to the great account. Our deathlessness is in what we do, not in what we are.
— George Meredith, born on this date in 1828
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Come and get him …
… New Hampshire PD issues arrest warrant for Punxsutawney Phil.
All true Pennsylvanians will take steps to protect Phil. Don't mess with us, New Hampsters.
All true Pennsylvanians will take steps to protect Phil. Don't mess with us, New Hampsters.
Observation …
He hoped he was like the jasmine
In his room, scraggly with bland blossoms
Fragrant as paradise, those being so like
His casual kindness, his hope of redemption.
The persecution of Brian Williams …
The Brian Williams — what shall we call it — kerfuffle? This is a matter of imagination, and we all know that, privately at least, we all imagine things. Brian has gone public with that. He's come out. So the solution to the problem must be one that directly confronts imagination. So why not NBC Nightly News with … Walter Mitty … starring Brian Williams! Given the state of network news these days, no one would notice the difference, and it would be far more entertaining than what they have on offer now.
The dumbing down of Marquette …
… Free Speech and Ivory Towers - Bloomberg View.
The university seems not to have read through to the last line. It is trying to fire McAdams precisely because he exercised his academic and personal freedoms of thought, discourse, advocacy and action. I may not entirely approve of the way he exercised them, but that's beside the point -- no, actually, it's exactly the point. We don't need protections for speech that everyone approves of.Bear in mind I am the proud alumnus of a Jesuit school.
Today's music …
A strange and powerful work. I first heard it when I was in high school. It struck me at the time as the darkest music I had ever heard.
Man of mystery …
… Review: 'Selected Letters of Langston Hughes' a look into poet's soul - LA Times. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
For all his meticulous documenting, the Hughes we encounter in these letters remains, in a certain sense, an enigma: a figure who "shrugged off insults," who could skate around conflict, and even keep his head under the unblinking eye of HUAC investigation. "He seemed assured and optimistic when many other blacks were cynical and bitter," writes Rampersad. "When rebuffed ... chose to look ahead."Sounds pretty self-possessed to me.
Good to know …
… Cowboy Culture, Alive and Well - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Here's my take on the gathering from a few years back: There's poetry in them thar cowboys.
Here's my take on the gathering from a few years back: There's poetry in them thar cowboys.
Speculation …
… No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Using the quantum-corrected Raychaudhuri equation, Ali and Das derived quantum-corrected Friedmann equations, which describe the expansion and evolution of universe (including the Big Bang) within the context of general relativity. Although it's not a true theory of quantum gravity, the model does contain elements from both quantum theory and general relativity. Ali and Das also expect their results to hold even if and when a full theory of quantum gravity is formulated.A model positing a universe filled with a quantum fluid made up of hypothetical particles … Let's not pop the champagne just yet.
Indubitably …
… English: Out with the long | The Economist. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think the right word is what one wants, whether short or long.
I think the right word is what one wants, whether short or long.
Hmm …
…The book that rocked a nation: Another Look takes on James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Join us on March 5! | The Book Haven.
He claimed in the longer essay that white men project their fears and their longings onto African Americans. “The only way he can be released from the Negro’s tyrannical power over him is to consent, in effect, to become black himself, to become part of that suffering and dancing country that he now watches wistfully from the heights of his lonely power and, armed with spiritual traveller’s checks, visits surreptitiously after dark.”Sorry. I don't buy it.
Something to think on …
An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
— René Descartes, who died in this date in 1650
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Shameful …
… Stripping a Professor of Tenure Over a Blog Post - The Atlantic.
McAdams is somewhat clodish, Abbate is too sensitive a plant, and Holtz is a petty tyrant. Exactly why Abbate is free to insist on a position the Church opposes eludes me. She is free to argue for it, advocate it, or whatever. But who the hell gave her the authority to overturn an item in the Magisterium? Bear in mind, I think the state should be out of the marriage business. As for churches, it's up to them. The Catholic Church has its position on the matter. Don't like it, join another church.
McAdams is somewhat clodish, Abbate is too sensitive a plant, and Holtz is a petty tyrant. Exactly why Abbate is free to insist on a position the Church opposes eludes me. She is free to argue for it, advocate it, or whatever. But who the hell gave her the authority to overturn an item in the Magisterium? Bear in mind, I think the state should be out of the marriage business. As for churches, it's up to them. The Catholic Church has its position on the matter. Don't like it, join another church.
Defying Desegregation, Again
MOBILE, Ala. — On the day that same-sex unions became legal in Alabama, local officials in dozens of counties on Monday defied a federal judge’s decision and refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, casting the state into judicial chaos.
Advising the Pope
The pope must go to his own backyard and preach: to Berlin and Paris and London; must walk out into the center of Trafalgar Square, or some such place, and preach for his life and the life of Europe and Christianity and, ultimately, mankind. I understand that popes are not roving preachers; are not Franciscans, evangelicals, or preening curates in Trollope novels. But they are bishops, shepherds of the whole Christian flock; and a shepherd who sees this sort of catastrophe approach must do something. Worrying about the nuances of doctrine on homosexuality while Europe’s churches are converted one by one into restaurants and health-clubs and (who knows?) discount tire shops is a mistake.From the comments:
I don't understand this article at all. The Pope is ministering to a class, the poor, the meek, the persecuted, the people of the Sermon On The Mount, and you would rather have him minister to buildings instead? It seems to me he is doing exactly what Christ did and would have him do as leader of His Church. Bringing all together.Okay that is my comment.
Proust and the Bible …
… Anecdotal Evidence: `Sheer Enjoyment of the Literature'.
Reading the Bible as literature, I think, brings out the religion better than reading it for the religion.
Reading the Bible as literature, I think, brings out the religion better than reading it for the religion.
Maybe …
… The 12 Funniest Books Ever Written | Intercollegiate Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
No Peter De Vries?
No Peter De Vries?
Today's music …
This was actually commissioned by Diaghilev. And here is a piece about the composer by Terry Teachout: Gentleman composer. Carpenter's music could still be heard on the radio when I was a kid.
Bob at length …
… Bob Dylan Exclusive AARP The Magazine Interview (Long Form) - AARP. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
Look, you get older. Passion is a young man’s game, OK? Young people can be passionate. Older people gotta be more wise. I mean, you’re around awhile, you leave certain things to the young and you don’t try to act like you’re young. You could really hurt yourself.
Something to think on …
A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.
— Charles Lamb, born on this date in 1775
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)