Monday, June 21, 2021
Something to think on …
Money may not buy happiness, but I'd rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.
— Françoise Sagan, born on this date in 1935
Hmm …
… Why antiracism zealots try to silence black voices like mine.
I am a descendant of slaves and a child of the Great Migration, but antiracists will tell you that I’m not really black. I suffer from internalized racism, they insist; I’m trying to “curry favor with white people.” They dismiss me and other black nonconformists as sellouts, traitors, or Uncle Toms who are “skinfolk, but not kinfolk.”
A scrapbook of scraps …
…Picking up the pieces by William Logan | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The essays are often beautifully lopsided—they never seem to know where they’re going, and they don’t leave many breadcrumbs for those following; yet she always seems to meet, or stumble upon, the right person to interview.
Sunday, June 20, 2021
Sounds like a good idea …
… We Need to Restore the Traditional Ways of Education: Marilyn Torley.
A “real education,” according to Torley, is meant to support the character development of each and every student.
Drawing a distinction …
… Patriotism versus Jingoism - Philosophy in Progress.
Like any virtue it is a means between two extremes. In this case, one of the extremes is excessive love of one's country, while the other is a deficiency of love for one's country. The patriot's love of his country is ordinate, within bounds.
Pretty low, it seems …
… zmkc: How Low Can We Go.
A normal reaction to the debacle Toobin found himself at the centre of would have been to feel the most unutterable shame - so intense that one would do everything in one's power to remove oneself from public life ever afterwards. Personally, I would probably have chosen to become a hermit henceforward. That would have been the approach of a civilised human to the sorry sequence of events.
In case you wondered …
… John McWhorter: YOU ARE NOT A RACIST TO CRITICIZE CRITICAL RACE THEORY. - It Bears Mentioning.
It is willfully blind to the complexity inherent to history, not to mention reality itself. Just as resonant a case could be made that America is founded on sexism, or classism – and the cases would be equally simplistic propaganda.
Saturday, June 19, 2021
Self-examination …
… Zealotry of Guerin: Poetry and Fiction by Christopher Guerin: Entity (Michael Antman), Sonnet #567.
A great painting, by the way.
Something to think on …
In difficult times carry something beautiful in your heart.
— Blaise Pascal, born on this date in 1623
Hmm …
… Daniel Elder, Scapegoat | The American Conservative.
Daniel Elder is a deep and discerning artist. These contemptible totalitarians who crushed this man’s career simply for saying arsonists are fools — they don’t realize it, but they are contributing to the hellacious backlash coming
Good for her …
… Chimamanda Adichie's new essay sparks debate online - CNN.
"We have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow," Adichie wrote.
Not your usual biography …
… The Melville Log, by Jay Ledya (1951). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Melville Log, however, remains — to my knowledge — the sole example of the DIY approach to biography. “In the making of this book,” Jay Leyda wrote in his introduction, “I have tried to hold to one main aim: to give each reader the opportunity to be his own biographer of Herman Melville, by providing him with the largest possible quantity of materials to build his own approach to this complex figure.”
Appreciation …
… The Critical Eye of Janet Malcolm | Helen Andrews | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Malcolm’s father was a neurologist and psychiatrist. Naturally enough, considering the consonance of the two professions, psychoanalysis was a constant presence in Malcolm’s journalism. Psychoanalysis holds that if you are thirty minutes late to your appointment with someone, it must be because your subconscious is harboring some hostility. What better training for a journalist’s eye for the telling detail?
Deep faith …
… Tolkien and Theology ~ The Imaginative Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Lord of the Rings, he noted in 1953 to a Jesuit friend, “is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” with the “religious element [ ] absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”[2] All his attempts at beauty, he admitted, came from his own understanding and love of the Blessed Virgin Mary as well as from his own mother, whom he considered a martyr and a saint.[3]Toward the end of his life, he wrestled with theological and philosophical issues in his larger mythology. He was concerned, especially, with the nature of the Fall, the possibility of the Incarnation, and the afterlife of his creatures within his own legendarium. These questions intrigued and consumed him as much as did the narrative of The Silmarillion.
Friday, June 18, 2021
Q&A …
… Timothy Murphy, Interview: Issue 18 - The Cortland Review.
Ashbery and Ammons strike me as frauds who hold their audiences in contempt. Isn't Ammons' great poem entitled "Garbage?' Ashbery goes off into this puzzling space which needs to be deconstructed and deciphered by the Helen Vendlers of the world, and I have no time for that whatsoever. The extraordinary thing about Set the Ploughshare Deep is that, to this day, it is being bought by the hunters and farmers for whom I wrote the book. I believe that the poet speaks for his tribeññit is a very old-fashioned ideal. I do not agree at all with the alienated intellectual creeping off into a cavern to pity himself like J. Alfred Prufrock.
Oh, I'm so impressed …
… 5 books Bill Gates recommends for your summer reading.
I'm supposed to give a damn about what a ric college dropout is reading? As for climate, he should read what Freeman Dyson had to say on the subject and check out The Chilling Stars by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder. His fashionable thinking fails to impress.
Something to think on …
Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.
— John Cheever, who died on this date in 1982
In case you wondered …
… Do we “live by bridges”? UCLA’s Thomas Harrison builds a persuasive case.
But the book also reminds us of metaphysical bridges: As-Sirāt (Arabic: الصراط aṣ-ṣirāṭ) is, according to Islam, the bridge all must cross on Judgment to enter Paradise. It is said that it is “thinner than a strand of hair and as sharp as the sharper than a sword.”
Thursday, June 17, 2021
In memory …
Farewell to a Dear Friend
In memory of Harold Boatrite
So. You are gone, and only simple thoughts
Persist: I miss you. That’s as simple as
It gets. So many years and passions shared.
So maybe I am also who I miss.
Pray for me, my friend. I trust we shall meet
Again in a far and better place than this.
Remembering …
… Late prairie poet Timothy Murphy's last collection prompts outpouring | INFORUM. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
But ultimately, Murphy experienced a dramatic “reversion” back to his faith, following a suicide attempt, thwarted by a call from a “college friend turned Benedictine monk.” Their friendship deepened after this, Syrdal says, with Murphy transitioning from “embittered, estranged Catholic, to ‘all in.’”
In case you wondered …
…Fyodor Dostoevsky: where to start with his literature. (Hat tip, Tim Davis.)
Something to think on …
To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again and once more, and over and over.
— John Hersey, born on this date in 1914
Paths of poetry …
… Roads taken: the Gloucestershire footpaths that were the making of Robert Frost | Walking holidays | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The idea of “less-travelled” trails has a particular appeal right now – and in late May we met just one dog walker in two days of hiking. Exploring the routes is easy thanks to the Windcross Paths Group, who maintain and signpost routes the poets are known to have walked. They publish guides to two circular routes – Poets’ Paths I and II – each about eight miles, and both now marked on the OS Landranger 149 and 162 maps.
Waves of branches …
… Colossal Deadwood Waves Crest in a Secluded Forest in Germany. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
“A wave is a periodic oscillation or one-time disturbance change in the state of a system,” Gläscher writes in the text accompanying The Second Wave. “A perceived object can generate impact in numerous ways. Is it standing still? Has it moved? Nothing is ever as it seems. Are appearances therefore deceptive? No, they are not necessarily deceptive, but they join me on a journey, wash over me, swirl through me, make me anxious, retreat, and then rush towards me all over again.
Q & A …
… The Style of Our Moment: A Conversation with William Logan - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.j)
I’m not sure what an “underhanded compliment” is. Damning with faint praise or praising with faint damns? I review books I react to — the great majority of modestly talented or mildly interesting books don’t provoke me enough for me to raise my pen. I’m more likely to review books I’m surprised and delighted by, however few, and poets who have been wildly overpraised. I’ll also review books about which I have mixed feelings — I reviewed a lot of John Ashbery, because my opinion so often wavered, like a spark gap between two electrodes.
Wednesday, June 16, 2021
The Hanoverians
I've continued my reading into eighteenth-century Britain with a history of the Hanoverian kings. As my guide, I selected the prodigious Jeremy Black, who's published widely on the period. Black is not, perhaps, my favorite historian, but for an introduction to the monarchs, he's provided a convincing account. Most surprising: when George I ascended the throne following the death of Queen Anne, 54 members of the extended Stuart family boasted better claims than he; and yet, they were Catholic, and the British crown had been limited to Protestant claimants from 1701. Another set of surprises: George I had visited Britain only once before ascending the throne in 1714 and spoke no English. He was raised a Lutheran, but "conformed," in Black's words, to Anglican doctrine. It's incredible, given all this, to imagine just how far afield the Hanoverian princes were before the turn of the eighteenth-century: and yet, they ruled until 1901. Indeed, it's sometimes forgotten that Victoria was the last of the Hanoverian line: William IV, after all, was her uncle. There's much to consider and appreciate about this overlooked period of British history, and I'm pleased to have a learned a bit more about the Hanoverian monarchs than the more familiar account of George III and the loss of the American colonies. Perhaps the nineteenth century next?
Blogging note …
I am about to take off for City Hall and the Register of Wills. Blogging will resume later.
Faith in these times …
… Contemporary Christian Fiction: The Example of Joshua Hren - Front Porch Republic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
…Joshua Hren’s In the Wine Press is a work that burrows into the unhappy mess that is postmillennial American Catholicism and does so with an honesty and seriousness that few writers have attempted or, for that matter, are capable of attempting.
Here's a review by Joshua Hren:
… Beha’s Capacity for God: Sophie Wilder Revisited. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)Something to think on …
We don't simply read books. We become them.
— Anatole Broyard, born on this date in 1920
Hmm …
… Peacefully and proactively dealing with election fraud - American Thinker.
… the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper. It is the citizens’ loyalty to that Constitution and the system built upon it that makes it work. After all, the old Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and most other dictatorships regularly have constitutions that promise freedoms and rights to their citizens that the governments ignore. Words on a paper mean nothing if the government is not bound by them and the citizens have no confidence in them.
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
One of the masters …
…15 Things To Know About Pianist Erroll Garner On His Centennial Birthday - JAZZIZ Magazine.
God, how I love Erroll Garner.
Tracking the decline …
… Pushing Through the Decadence. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Barzun shows how, from one perspective, the symptoms of decadence can be understood as resulting from the hypertrophy of those very traits that defined the West: primitivism, emancipation, self-consciousness, individualism, and so on. What appear as motors for cultural development can, when pursued ruthlessly and without regard to other virtues, degenerate into engines of decadence and decline. Barzun devoted the last sections of his book to showing how decadence has triumphed in various facets of modern life. There is, first of all, the spiritual paralysis that results from willing contradictory things. These days, Barzun observed, “any doctrine or program that claims the merit of going against common sense has presumption in its favor.”
Something to think on …
God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment. Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament.
— Evelyn Underhill, who died on this date in 1941
Monday, June 14, 2021
Something to think on …
When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.
— G. K. Chesterton, who died on this date in1936
Blogging note …
I must head out soon for Harold Boatrite’s funeral Mass. There will be a luncheon afterwards. So I won’t be blogging until much later in the day.
Sunday, June 13, 2021
Blogging note …
I have much to do today in connection my friend’s funeral tomorrow. Blogging will be spotty.
Something to think on …
Man is not a mind that thinks, but a being who knows other beings as true, who loves them as good and who enjoys them as beautiful. For all that which is, down to the humblest form of existence, exhibits the inseparable privileges of being, which are truth, goodness, and beauty.
— Étienne Gilson, born on this date in 1884
Hmm …
… Local News Coverage Is Declining — And That Could Be Bad For American Politics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Newspapers would be better off if they focused more on reporting and less on pushing an agenda. A range of opinions would also help.
Saturday, June 12, 2021
Rumors from the past …
… miscellaneous musings : So now we have another perspective: the 1621 project?
“Good history isn’t about studying “the good bits” and ignoring the rest; nor should it be the opposite, where everything is judged by anachronistic 21st-century standards. Good history involves context and empathy; it involves a recognition of the complexity and otherness of the past, plus an effort to understand bygone mentalities.”
History is the often-haphazard record of what has happened since homo sapiens started to go about its business.You have to get that down before you start theorizing. But you mustn't forget that it is only a record, one necessarily biased. Your theory is an account of your view of whatever it is you happen to be looking at. It too is necessarily biased.
Bravo …
… ‘Coriolanus’ Review: Hail the Reluctant Hero. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.
— Anne Frank, born on this date in 1929
Doing things her way …
… Lucie Elven — Ojai-geeky-too-LA: LA Non-Confidential — LRB 17 June 2021. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The dissonance produced by living in LA convinced her that the only limitation was the limit of one’s own magical thinking: ‘You can change the boundaries of heaven, just so long as you don’t really believe in it or anything that anyone tells you... It’s the frames which made some things important and some things forgotten. It’s all only frames from which the content arises.’
Travel plans …
… An older couple considers dying on their own terms in ‘Should We Stay or Should We Go’. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Shriver plays out the Wilkinsons’ alternatives from every angle, introducing a whole new wrinkle on their choices and their fates every time. In the process, she dabbles in family psychodrama, futuristic fantasy, “Cuckoo’s Nest” nightmares and utopian idylls.
Friday, June 11, 2021
Well, good …
… Bipartisan Antitrust Bills Would Break Up Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook | The Daily Wire.
YouTube Suspends Sen. Ron Johnson From Uploading Videos Over COVID-19, Hydroxychloroquine Claims.
That's what happens when hubris gets the better of you. Why should YouTube decide the rules of debate? See the following:
You'd think even billionaire doofuses could figure this out.
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