Wednesday, November 02, 2022
Tuesday, November 01, 2022
Place of pilgrimage …
… ‘This Is Where Mark Twain Is Buried” by Kathryn Olvera.
I’m fond of Twain, of course, but my literary pilgrimages were in honor of the New England Transcendentalists. When I first read Emerson’s “Self Reliance” one cold and sunny February morning, it seemed to me to be my own personal declaration of independence. So I have been to Emerson’s house, and Wakden Pond.
Interesting reading on the British past...
...The life and death of Richard III
...The life and legacy of Alfred the Great
Hmm …
… Poem of the week: Poetry for Supper by RS Thomas | Poetry | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Monday, October 31, 2022
Probably my favorite poet …
… Resurrecting John Keats | The Russell Kirk Center. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… We love Keats because, as Miller points out as she guides us through Keats’s poetry and life, he simultaneously embraced poetry as a rest from our restless lives while not removing the nitty-gritty reality of the muck and mud world we live in. Life is messy and complicated. Love is messy and complicated. Genius is messy and complicated. And Keats’s poetry and own life is messy and complicated. We find ourselves, our own hearts and souls, in its aspirations and disappointments, in the poetry Keats bequeathed to the world.
The music of his verse has always enchanted me.
Finding your way …
… Zealotry of Guerin: Poetry and Fiction by Christopher Guerin: The Map.
Note: I failed to post this on Saturday, as I usually do,
Sunday, October 30, 2022
Something to think on …
An attitude of permanent indignation signifies great mental poverty. Politics compels it votaries to take that line and you can see their minds growing more impoverished every day, from one burst of righteous indignation to the next.
— Paul Valery, born on this date in 1871
Saturday, October 29, 2022
Hmm …
… Carl Phillips on the Value of Silence for Writers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The dead don’t miss the world. They can’t. The dead don’t miss us.
Having never, to the best of my knowledge, been dead, I can’t say what the dead know or think.
Unfortunate anniversary …
… Infamous killer sent to New York prison’s electric chair.
Like Auberon Waugh, Evelyn’s son, I am opposed to capital punishment , for the simple reason that it is wrong to kill people.
Something to think on …
I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.
— Jean Giraudoux, born on this date in 1882
Friday, October 28, 2022
Blogging note …
I have to go shopping while Petra, Debbie’s aide for today is here. I’ll do some blogging when I get back.
Something to think on …
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.
— Evelyn Waugh, born on this date in 1903
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Sounds interesting enough to me …
… for me to have just pre-ordered the Kindle version: Bob Dylan's bonkers, misogynistic 'Philosophy of Modern Song' - Los Angeles Times.
Bob is five months older than I. I am surprised, sort of, that his experiences of women seem so unfortunate. The ladies still like me. But then I was raised by women (from earliest childhood I knew them up close and personal. And I saw how they thought and felt about each other). This review suggests that Bob is still Bob, telling the truth about his experience, which is neither yours nor mine, but has made for some wondrous songs.
Why everyone I know thinks my former employer is a joke …
… Philadelphia Inquirer staff shredded for saying Fetterman won debate with Oz: ‘Clown world in action'. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.(j
The Inquirer ought to admit to its readers that it just shills for the Democratic Party. Yeah, Fetterman — who never encountered a homicide suspect he didn’t love — is mentally competent. Then again, they probably think Joe Biden is. They ought to start hiring reporters, not people who just have journalism degrees
Yes, it does …
… The Church Needs Beauty | Maggie Gallagher | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Since Vatican II, the Church has largely ceased to play its historic role as commissioner of liturgical music. Sacred music composers have thus found that they are mostly asked to write for the concert stage. We risk losing something when two generations of composers are never given the opportunity to master the craft of writing for the liturgy, for the worship of God.
Something to think on …
Life always offers you a second chance. it's called tomorrow.
— Dylan Thomas, born on this date in 1914
Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Take a look at these …
… 20 Incredible Images from the British Photography Awards Shortlist. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Political laughs …
… Matt Pritchett Sketches Britain's Political Tragicomedy | City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
As long as there are flowers and children and birds in the world, have no fears: everything will be fine.
— Nikos Kazantzakis, who died on this date in 1957
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Words of wisdom …
… Bruce Charlton's Notions: Irony is weakness. (Hat tip, Dave lull.)
The chronically ironic are rarely serious.
Not a bad idea …
… TRY THIS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sister Maria D. Jackson, assigned to Our Lady of Pompeii, where my paternal grandparents were married in 1929, was a stranger to me. But my mind was on that childhood picture of the Devil, and I was anxious to start balancing the ledger of my actions. As we went from house to house, I was candid about the behavior that had brought me to her and took pains to let her know that the marriage had never been violent. Just a boatload of selfishness for which I wanted a do-over, itself a form of selfishness.
She reached into a pocket of her black skirts, took out a Rosary, and handed it to me.
“Here,” she said. “Try this.”
The Rosay seems to work for me. I say it every night at bedtrime.
RIP …
… Professor Katherine Duncan-Jones (1941-2022) - Somerville College Oxford. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.
— Henry Steele Commager, born on this date in 1902
Monday, October 24, 2022
In case you wondered …
… The Butcher’s Books: how did Tennyson write In Memoriam. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tennyson recorded quotations and memories associated with Hallam in long, thin blank books that butchers traditionally used to account for profits and losses; accordingly, these manuscripts became known as the Butcher’s Books. Their structure mirrored the form of the poem developing inside of them. By writing in short quatrains, Tennyson could linger on the empty spaces left between thoughts—the divisions that create a stanza. And while poetry performs its own acts of cutting—by dividing language into literary forms—Tennyson emphasized carving as a theme. The Butcher’s Books highlight how cutting (stanzas, for example), despite its violent connotations, proved to be generative: the butcher disassembles a carcass and transforms it into nourishment. Likewise, Tennyson arranged worn-out commonplaces to form a spiritually recuperative poem.
Something to think on …
Both art and faith are dependent on imagination; both are ventures into the unknown.
— Denise Levertov, born on this date in 1923
Sunday, October 23, 2022
Happy birthday …
… The Remarkable Diaries of Composer Ned Rorem (Who Celebrates His 99th Birthday Today). (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The end result is a literary achievement unmatched by any other composer. In aggregate, the Rorem diaries are the most remarkable firsthand documentation we have of a musical life—surpassing those of Charles Burney, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten, or whomever else you care to cite. Not even Mozart’s voluminous letters can match the scope and depth of Rorem’s six decades of journaling. He operates on a larger sphere, up their with Pepys and Boswell and others at the pinnacle of the diary as a literary genre.
I met Ned once. He seemed to me a very nice person.
Something to thing on …
The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty
— Ned Rorem. Born on this date in 1923
Saturday, October 22, 2022
Hmm …
… more miscellaneous musings : Remembering a televised speech of extraordinary gravity.
I turned 21 on October 14, 1962. A couple of years later I started work in the field of arms control and disarmament. We were not as worried about these things as the media encouraged the population to be.
Densely allusive …
… Like Briefly Discovering You Are Sane - by Jeremy Noel-Tod. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Book of Baruch can feel indigestibly disagreeable, especially once it goes beyond the dazzling opening poems on London in the Blitz. But the loose rhymes that run through its end-stopped lines travel like cracks along a whip, and these are what I read it for..
i once introduced Geoffrey Hill at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. He seemed at first an odd combination of dour and drill —. a sourpuss with a sense of humor. But afterwards, in the green room, I told him that when I was reading about in order to give a reasonably intelligent introduction, I discovered that he and I had something personal in common. “Oh yeah, what’s that?” “We’re both the sons of policemen.”
“Really?” We started exchanging stories and when we went our separate ways, he turned to me and said, with a twinkle in his eye, “It really is a brotherhood, isn’t it?”
Something to think on …
A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.
— Doris Lessing, born on this date in 1919
Friday, October 21, 2022
Sadly true …
… The Present Desolation - The Catholic Thing.
… those who do look to the Church now look through time. The latest encyclical from the latest pope has not much influence or authority. It is unlikely to receive as much publicity as the opinion of the Magisterium in times past.
It is always useful to recall some wise words of Hilaire Belloc: "The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight."
I remind myself regularly that heard of the Church remains Jesus. The Pipe is only an administrative stand-in. I attend Mass, receive the sacraments, etc., and I pray, meditate. and try my best to live accordingly.I care little about the institutional Church. How, in so short a time, we could have from Pope St John Paul II to the current occupant of the Papal throne is a mystery to me, but I fear a telling one.
FYI …
… Orwell uncut: New Substack will serialize Orwell's writings | AP News. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to tink on …
The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.
— Usuka K. Le Guin, born on this date in 1929
Thursday, October 20, 2022
Wonderful…
… ‘My Daughter Sees a Starling on the Lawn’ and Other Poetry by Mark Anthony Signorelli. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
Only divine love bestows the keys of knowledge.
— Arthur Rimbaud, born on this date in 1854
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Something to think on …
Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.
— Lewis Mumford, born on this date in 1895
Hmm …
… The Hard Labor of Christian Apologetics - The Catholic Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Maybe something other than apologetics is needed. Consider the fromThe Cloud of Unknowing:
A man may know completely and ponder thoroughly every created thing and its works, yes, and God’s works, too, but not God himself. Thought cannot comprehend God. And so, I prefer to abandon all I can know, choosing rather to love him whom I cannot know.1 Though we cannot know him we can love him. By love he may be touched and embraced, never by thought. Of course, we do well at times to ponder God’s majesty or kindness for the insight these meditations may bring. But in the real contemplative work you must set all this aside and cover it over with a cloud of forgetting. Then let your loving desire, gracious and devout, step bravely and joyfully beyond it and reach out to pierce the darkness above.2 Yes, beat upon that thick cloud of unknowing with the dart of your loving desire and do not cease come what may.
Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Hmm …
… Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Maybe Mallon should have stuck with his stated subject — the epistolary novella. His view of the film is at odds with that the critics and audiences in 1957, when the film was released. It was a box office smash and a critical hit as well. The New York Times’s critic wrote that "This is largely Mr. Sinatra's show...he projects a distinctly bouncy likeable personality into an unusual role. And his rendition of the top tunes, notably "The Lady Is a Tramp" and "Small Hotel," gives added lustre to these indestructible standards."[
Worth knowing for sure …
… Top NIH director admits Boston lab that created new Covid strain did NOT clear research with agency | Daily Mail Online.
Exactly what was the reason behind this?
Q&A …
… TO BEAR THE WEIGHT OF LIFEm— An Interview with Dana Gioia. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Poetry is easiest to recognize if the lines are in meter. If I’m talking and I suddenly say, “It was many and many a year ago / In a kingdom by the sea, / That a maiden there lived whom you may know / By the name of Annabel Lee...,” you can recognize the exact point at which I’m going from ordinary speech into a ritual language.
Monday, October 17, 2022
Hmm …
… Berdyaev on the Moral Source of Atheism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I have long been an admirer of Berdyaev. He has been a major influence on my own thinking. And he is of course right that there are serious atheists. But they are a minority. Most atheists — Richard Dawkins comes to mind — are people practicing philosophy without a license. And yes, the faith of many believers is shallow.
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