Friday, February 09, 2024
Something to think on …
Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.
— Anthony Hope, born on this date in 1863
Taking a close look …
… A journalist goes undercover to reveal the absurdity of the art scene. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Birthday girls …
… Alice Walker turns 80 today: The World We Want Is Us
… Amy Lowell would have turned 150:todat: The Precinct. Rochester..
(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Thursday, February 08, 2024
Something to think on …
Poets are like proverbs: you can always find one to contradict another.
— Jules Verne, born on this date in 1828
Appreciation …
… PREVIEW: C. S. Lewis and American Catholics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Two Catholic critics numbered among Lewis’s most enthusiastic American readers
The way things were …
… The Medieval Art of Medicine: A Poem - Medievalists.net. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Wednesday, February 07, 2024
Blogging note …
My wife, who is in a nursing home, has just been diagnosed with Covid. She has been vaxxed (so much for that). And she doesn’t seem to have the more worrisome symptoms. But I will resume blogging tomorrow.
Something to think on …
In order to thoroughly enjoy anything, one must feel the absence of it at times.
— Laura Ingalls Wilder, born on this date in 1867
Change of course …
… Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Four years of avoiding the void went by. But in 2017, I stumbled on a workaround: I would write poetry but in the service of a story
i still write lyric poetry. I may even some day publish a collection.
Tuesday, February 06, 2024
Very insightful …
… Theistic Religious Belief and What Inclines Me to It.
Here is my review of Mind and Cosmos: Atheist rebuts neo-Darwinism
Something to think on …
I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.
— François Truffaut, born on this date in 1932
Monday, February 05, 2024
Hmm …
… Elon Musk was told to go to REHAB by concerned friends amid fears his drug use was spiraling after Tesla boss snorted ketamine and drank 'molly water' | Daily Mail Online.
Whoever wrote this has never done Ecstasy. You don’t get high on Ecstasy (I haven’t done it in decades.) Ecstasy just makes yo think that everything is wonderful. If you could take it every day — you can’t, no effect the next day — the government would put it in the water. It’s like soma in Brave New World.
Sunday, February 04, 2024
Better late than never …
… ‘Ulysses,’ Acclaimed as the Greatest Novel of the Last Century, Could Be Just Hitting Its Stride (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The documentary, though, soars when it, like its subject, breaks the rules. “Ulysses” is a modernist monument that never feels like a tomb because its teeming and stream of consciousness prose jerks to high from low, puns to philosophy. The book is gridded along a classical axis — Bloom is an avatar of the famed Greek wanderer, and Joyce makes taverns the sites of Homeric grandeur. This cuckolded Irish half Jew is the hero the 20th century needed.
Where may we be heading?
… After Liberalism…Faith? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This book is a fascinating exploration of Gray’s thoughts on a post-liberal world. Given the style of the work, it is often hard to say when Gray is presenting “something interesting to think about” and when he is presenting “here’s what I think.” So often it is not clear whether to critique some notion as Gray’s own or not.
Something to think on
We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, born on this date in 1906
Saturday, February 03, 2024
Good for them …
… Farmers wage war on EU bureaucrats the right way - Washington Examiner.
Many years ago I worked for the federal government. I can honestly that my colleagues had the interests of the American public at heart. They weren’t trying to impose opinions fashionable among self-styled intellectuals.
Antiquated modernism …
… A Human World. (Hat tip, Dave lull.)
Architectural postmodernism appeared in the fifties and then, not long after, it was announced that modernism was dead. Great, except that it wasn’t, and it still isn’t.
Something to think on …
Just as the power of the sun is the only force in the natural universe that causes a plant to grow against gravity, so the grace of God is the only force in the spiritual universe that causes a person to grow against the gravity of their own ego.
— Simone Weil, born on this date in 1909
Friday, February 02, 2024
Cause for hope …
… A short history of Catholic-Anglican relations—and the last roadblocks to unity.
It would be wonderful if we reunite, especially if both use the Anglican Mass, which is much more beautiful than the pedestrian English Mass we Catholics have to endure. (Case in point: Here is how the English translation of the Mass in the missals I grew up with — when the Mass was in Latin — the Preface was rendered (in part) this way, “It is truly meet and just, right and availing unto salvation…” Now it is simply and prosaically “It is right and just.”
Include me out …
… Neuralink and Elon Musk's quest to own the future - Engelsberg ideas. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Pschological voyages …
… A Romantic two centuries late: ‘The Ghost Net’ by Alan Jenkins. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… A No-Nonsense Thérèse | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The writer should read Thérèse’s Story of a Soul. You can’t fake what she wrote. It is unique. And she only wrote it because she was told to by her Mother Superior, who I believe was her older sister. I have a laminated photo of her with a rosebud pressed in the lower right corner. It came from a Carmelite monastery. It was given to me by my friend and former colleague David O’Reilly, who was The Inquirer’s religion reporter. When he changed roles and became the New Jersey reporter, he offered it to me. It caught my eye immediately and is on the dresser across from where I sleep.
Christmas for misfits …
… Film Review: The Holdovers (15). By Harry Mount - The Oldie. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Appreciation …
… Johnny Cash: The life in lyrics by Johnny Cash and Mark Stielper | Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thursday, February 01, 2024
Another anti-Semitic dirtbag …
… Penn Lecturer Is Behind Grotesque Anti-Semitic Cartoons.
Maybe I shouldn’t call him an anti-Semite. I’m sure he likes Arabs. So I guess he just doesn’t like Jews.
Hmm …
… The Compelling Case Against the Existence of Hell | by Dan Foster | Backyard Church | Jan, 2024 | Medium.
I have no doubt that we must make amends for our sins, either here in this world or in the next. But the only reference I can recall Jesus making to that is “everlasting fire.” This seems to me to mean until the end of time. If hell is eternal, then it is coexistent with God, something I find hard to fathom. I suspect hell will cease to be when the world ends.
A poem …
At Rest
We lie here silent in the dark,
Unmoving and unmoved, for that is best.
Undesired, we desire nothing, and would be
At peace, were peace not something
To be desired, a presence distracting
From the absence we would enjoy,
Could we enjoy anything.
Do not ask us who we are,
Who cannot tell and do not care,
Content to be aware of being. No,
Not content. Say only: Undisturbed
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