Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Henry Miller
Something to think on …
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Something to think on …
I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing.
Monday, January 29, 2024
Something to think on …
Sunday, January 28, 2024
Hmm …
… About four-in-ten U.S. adults believe humanity is ‘living in the end times’.
It does feel that way sometimes.
A philosopher like no other …
… Seeing Both Sides: St. Thomas Aquinas. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There are no cheap shots or straw men in the Summa Theologica. Aquinas has no need of them; they would only corrupt what he is trying to do. When he debates the existence of God, he doesn’t cast aspersions on wicked atheists; he simply tries to make the strongest case for atheism before he gives his reasons for rejecting them and for affirming God’s existence. Thinking is complicated enough, without being further complicated by personalities – even one’s own personality
Something to think on …
Saturday, January 27, 2024
It’s even worse today …
I have fond memories from my college years, but I graduated 60:years ago.
Something to think on …
Friday, January 26, 2024
Something to think on …
I'll be a poet, and you'll be poetry.
— François Coppée, born on this date in 1842
Appreciation …
Thursday, January 25, 2024
Something to think on …
Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Tenebrous prose …
Translation, when present, is always an issue for the reader. The task of Fosse’s translator, Damion Searls, was easy in one sense, but dauntingly difficult in another, I would imagine. As a Norwegian translator myself, I was interested to examine the original text. In terms of sheer faithfulness, I have to say this is probably as accurate a translation as you’ll ever encounter. The book’s vocabulary, as already mentioned, is limited, and the same phrases repeat again and again. Literary effects are produced, not through subtle phrasing and word selection, but through multiple iterations.
Something to think on …
Tuesday, January 23, 2024
Something to think on …
Monday, January 22, 2024
This is pretty big …
What became clear within that Facebook group and in so many other quarters since Oct. 7 is that much of secular Judaism, in both the Reform and Conservative branches, had become overtly political and not really religiously based at all. For many Jews, their religious identity had become so intertwined with leftist politics that they couldn’t force a separation even when they themselves were being targeted with their own bad ideas.
Maybe we shouldn’t teach the Constitution anymore, either …
The amendment that reminds that we are an independent nation because we took up arms against the British Crown.
Nice guy …
His followers weren’t too nice either. They should all be remembered as world-class scumbags. Pol pot seems to have been especially awful. How do people become like that? Schoolyard creeps that most of us could have decked with one punch.
Very thoughtful …
My friend Katherine and I shared power attorney for a gay couple, who had stopped practicing gayness when they converted. I thinking the problem here is fidelity. Some people are gay. If they practicd fidelity to each other, I don’t see why, if they are faithful to each other, their relationship can’t be blessed. When Debbie and I married, we promised to be faithful to each other. Which I had recently to explain to a woman who, for some reason, finds me attractive. I would never break my marriage vows.
Something to think on …
Sunday, January 21, 2024
Surely there are funds to restore it …
… A Poet’s Legacy in Stone: Will Yeats’s Tower Survive? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Flannery O’Connor seems to have been fluent …
… Professor Ference has made a major contribution to O’Connor reading and study. In the final chapter, the author asserts, “I do not think it is an exaggeration to argue that the soul of O’Connor’s fiction is Thomism.” He adds, “If a student desires to understand what gives O’Connor’s narrative art life, he or she must study O’Connor’s Hillbilly Thomism.” While this might overstate the case, Ference makes as strong an argument as anyone has for its veracity.
Coping with snow …
… there’s an even bigger preparedness lesson in this week’s events: To protect yourself from power outages, bitch. Loudly and a lot.
Something to think on …
Art is thus materialized dream, separated from the ordinary consciousness of waking life.
— Pavel Florensky, born on this date in 1882
Saturday, January 20, 2024
Friday, January 19, 2024
The new Nazis …
… Violent mob attacks the last place you’d ever expect,
Let us be clear: this abhorrent display was not a protest; it was an act of intimidation, a calculated insult to the vulnerable and a stain on the conscience of those who participated.
Thursday, January 18, 2024
Outrage well deserved …
… Advocates Outraged That Feds Asked Banks to Search Customers’ ‘Religious Texts’ Purchases.
“This is beyond alarming,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins told The Epoch Times. “If we did a word search in history of the type of activities the Biden administration is engaged in, it would return words like ‘KGB,’ ’totalitarian,‘ ’repressive,’ ‘anti-democratic,’ and ‘grave threat to freedom.’”
A poem …
For the Spotted Owl
By Jennifer Knox
...a poem on the controversy wherein the legal protection offered by the Endangered Species Act of 1973 failed to protect the endangered northern spotted owl because many jobs were at stake in the lumber and paper industries of the Pacific northwestern United States.
A stained-glass window shines between each branch.
Tall spires rise to candelabras of stars,
And all is well where the spotted owl flies.
You with the heart on your sleeve, what do you think-
Shall we let the spotted owl and all of nature be?
Who are we to stand in the way of progress?
Explain to me a spider web strung with dew-
Each drop catching the colors of a rainbow,
And all is well where the spotted owl flies.
Consider pine-green mist, where the selfish
Giant takes down trees wherever he goes.
Who are we to stand in the way of progress?
I spy through the keyhole of my cement jungle
A holy land where beauty abounds.
All is well where the spotted owl flies.
Let's all go into that final sunset
And let the spotted owl and all of nature be.
Who are we to stand in the way of progress?
All is well where the spotted owl flies
Alwas a good idea …
Something to think on …
— Jacob Bronowski, born on this date in1908
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Appalling …
Exactly when …
Re-education is what the old Soviet Union used to subject dissenters to.Thought proceeds better when different viewpoints are discussed in dialogue (see Plato and Aristotle). Canada deserves all the mockery it gets for this.
Something to think on …
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
Cosmological news …
Something to think on …
Monday, January 15, 2024
Something to think on …
Sunday, January 14, 2024
A wise msn indeed …
In his insightful introduction to this recently published volume of Guardini’s works entitled The World and the Person: And Other Writings, Robert Royal describes him as a profoundly influential figure, notable as he “combines the academic rigor of the heyday of German intellectual life with the gentler human qualities of Italian culture.” His influence has seeped into the twenty-first century through no less than Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, both of whom studied Guardini’s thought as doctoral students.
Something to think on …
Saturday, January 13, 2024
Remembering Rabelais …
“[. . .] there must be a reciprocal relationship between our high culture and our low. High culture does not come from nothing. Rather, it alchemizes over time from a vast swamp of low culture in which a community is working out, in some form or another, the problem of the body, of what it means to be a human, to exist as an eternal soul in a flatulent, flabby, fleshy shell, a shell that (somehow) God promises will be with us in Heaven
Something to think on …
Friday, January 12, 2024
Indeed …
How can anyone reasonably be expected to trust scientific evidence when the entire system is so heavily biased in one political direction? Even unbiased studies that happen to have finding that just coincidentally coincide the progressive orthodoxy are going to be questioned simply because there’s no grounds for trusting that particular study in light of the heavy bias evidence elsewhere.
Fear and mindfulness …
My strong suspicion is that the West’s “mental health crisis” is really a spiritual health crisis. Our prevailing secular, materialist ideology denies our true identity as God’s children, made in His own image and likeness. We see ourselves as trousered apes and meat computers. Our media and technology cause us to disscociate from our environment: the people, plants, animals, and objects all around us. We’re cut off from our fellow creatures—from Creation. We dissociate ourselves from Reality and collapse into subjectity, becoming easy prey to those fears which the Evil One plants within us.
Blogging note …
I got a lte start this morning and must go out for my morning walk. Blogging will resume later on.
Something to think on …
Thursday, January 11, 2024
Something to think upon …
You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don't dream about.
— William James, botr on this date in 1842
Quite a guy …
Wednesday, January 10, 2024
Appreciation …
The first quality that blows your hair back in any of Carr’s novels is so fundamental that it’s easy to take it for granted: beyond the plotting or the puzzling, beyond the mystery itself, first and foremost the man is just one hell of a writer. Like walking into a well-put-together room, when you’re in the hands of a good writer you can just feel it. His prose is genteel without being fussy, brisk but rich, funny while keeping your feet in the dirt, and all of it woven with that effortless breeze of step that we as readers recognize and happily fall in behind.
Something to think on …
Tuesday, January 09, 2024
Monday, January 08, 2024
Pathetic …
… Park Service To Remove Statue of William Penn From Philadelphia Park, Replace It With More ‘Inclusive’ Displays. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
No matter that he founded the city.