Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Punches not pulled …
… Maverick Philosopher: Paul Johnson on Political Correctness and Donald Trump. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
It is always the case that when the Christian looks back, he is looking at the forgiveness of sins.
— Karl Barth, born on this date in 1886
Monday, May 09, 2016
Take a look at this …
… Jeff Williams on Twitter: "Good Morning USA! The Twin Ports of Duluth Minnesota and Superior Wisconsin as they look while crossing Ontario. (Hat tip, Dave Lull, who is not visible in the picture.)
Existence and transcendence …
… The Writers' Almanac: Can Flannery O'Connor lead a reader out of confusion, despair, and blindness?
I have realized that I have become a very flawed reader. My understanding of words, phrases, and sentences has become damaged (just as my understanding of almost everything in life has become damaged) … Sometimes my thinking and understanding are quite clear. At other times I am baffled by the most ordinary things.
That's the way it happens if you get this far along in a lifetime. Just adapt to circumstances. We had no problem with that at the start, because it was all we could do. So, when we were toddlers, we made it up the stairs on hands and knees, because we sure in hell weren't ready to do it like the big folks. So you start accommodating to cognitive change. No, you can skip that Jeapardy appearance. Memory is often a fishing expedition — enjoy it, lots of surprises come that way. And a lot of it is just slowing down and noticing what's going on, which turns out to be a blessing, because this is the last act. Time now to take a good look at where we've been all these years.
Ministry of Truth …
… Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News.
In other words, Facebook’s news section operates like a traditional newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the institutional imperatives of the corporation. Imposing human editorial values onto the lists of topics an algorithm spits out is by no means a bad thing—but it is in stark contrast to the company’s claims that the trending module simply lists “topics that have recently become popular on Facebook.”The dishonesty — intellectual and otherwise — is telling. If one has confidence in one's viewpoint, one welcomes challenges to it.
Something to think on …
Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.
— José Ortega y Gasset, born on this date in 1883
Sunday, May 08, 2016
The last Transcendentalist …
… The Single Artificer | The Hudson Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… while the critical analysis of Stevens’ poems can get very tedious very fast, the poems themselves never feel repetitious, because they are, quite simply, magical. He repeatedly takes on the same topics, but each time he approaches them from a somewhat different direction, his language always masterfully fresh, his ideas consistently articulated in magnificently new and vivid ways, his argument about the supremacy of imagination invariably expressed by means of striking images drawn from the real, concrete world.I have long thought the Stevens is best explained as a descendant of Emerson who was a fan of Santayana.
Have a look …
… DAVID TOTHERO.
Debbie and I are privileged to have one of David's sculptures gracing our patio.
Bumped in case you missed it.
Debbie and I are privileged to have one of David's sculptures gracing our patio.
Bumped in case you missed it.
Interesting perspective …
… How poetry helps us understand mental illness | PBS NewsHour.
I believe that the use of lithium carbonate for treatment of bipolar disorder came about from a study that indicated that places where there was a shortage of lithium in the soil or water had high incidences of bipolar disorder. That would suggest that bipolar disorder is a physical illness with behavioral and psychological symptoms. Of course, maybe all "mental" illnesses are such.
Related: Stunning Photos Showing NYC Subway Cars Being Dumped Into the Ocean.
(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Better at poetry …
… Self-help tips on 'Manly Health' from Walt Whitman | Minnesota Public Radio News.
I like meat, but I like fruits and veggies, too.
More here: Finding the Poetry in Walt Whitman’s Newly Rediscovered Health Advice.
(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
I like meat, but I like fruits and veggies, too.
More here: Finding the Poetry in Walt Whitman’s Newly Rediscovered Health Advice.
(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Restoration …
… Hope springs eternal: project to save Alexander Pope’s secret grotto | Culture | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The reference in the deck to Pope as a Georgian poet is off by more than 150 years.
The reference in the deck to Pope as a Georgian poet is off by more than 150 years.
The sound of jazz …
… Can You Hear It? | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As a person who plays piano well enough to show some musical credentials, I was pleased to hear Gioia speak of "the metric structure" of jazz, which for the most part has consisted of units of four-beat bars, a meter persisting since the 1930s, whether in New Orleans, swing, or bebop. Here there is a clear analogy with the way a student should be introduced to poetry; that is, through listening to it rather than struggling to find out what it "really means." The authority on such listening is Robert Frost, who declared that the ear is "the only true writer and the only true reader" and proposed that "the possibilities for tune from the dramatic tones of meaning struck across the rigidity of a limited meter are endless."
Something to think on …
A Catholic may sin and sin as badly as anyone else, but no genuine Catholic ever denies he is a sinner. A Catholic wants his sins forgiven - not excused or sublimated.
— Fulton J. Sheen, born on this date in 1895
Saturday, May 07, 2016
Well worth getting to know …
… A Faithful Poet | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In the mid-1960s, Jennings began to suffer bouts of mental illness. In one of her unpublished poems, she writes of a stint in the hat factory: ‘Rest, rest,’ they cry / You might as well say ‘rest’ to a grasshopper. Her poems dealing with sickness and hospitals are some of her best. Unlike Sylvia Plath, she never mined illness for sensational effect; instead, illness called forth a kind of tender detachment from her, an attentive objectivity.
A Catholic …
… i. e., a sinner who knows he's one: Naughty Boy - Washington Free Beacon. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
By step .
… First Known When Lost: Walking.
… Have our souls been quickened so that we may watch television news shows on a daily basis? Is the purpose of our existence to vote in elections? Having emerged from eternity, and sensing that our time here is short, should we make a beeline to the nearest shopping mall?
Something to think on …
Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.
— Rabindranath Tagore, born on this date in 1861
Friday, May 06, 2016
Faith in practice …
… Spiritual IQ in a Secular Age | RealClearReligion.
Now, in an attempt to bridge research on spirituality with public awareness, Lisa Miller, professor and director of clinical psychology at Columbia University and director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, travels the country telling parents they owe it to their kids to nurture their innate spiritual abilities. Religiously aware adolescents who feel connected to a higher power are 40 percent less likely to abuse substances, 60 percent less likely to battle depression, and 80 percent less likely to engage in at-risk sexual behaviors.
Like cockroaches they can't be destroyed...
It's a curious irony that the champions of scientism are some of the most vocal advocates of change and progress yet they so rarely change or progress. They've said almost nothing new in over a century.
Friendship is good...or beautiful?
For Aristotle, true friendship was a virtue, and a flawless force for good in the world. In his new book On Friendship, Alexander Nehamas, a professor in the humanities at Princeton University, questions that idea. He thinks that friendship is not about morality at all, and that we value it not because it is always good, but because it is beautiful.
Not good …
… The State of Our Union - The American Interest.
But our deficit is not simply a spiritual and cultural problem. It is also an intellectual one. Democratic progressives remain locked into the assumptions and categories of 20th-century progressive thought. This involves things like the administrative state, the career civil service, the role of the upper middle class professional in limiting the tendency of both the plutocratic elite and the unthinking masses to wreck society by their short-sighted and selfish demands. The progressive professionals are no longer able to do that job as the plutocrats are too powerful and too clever for the regulators—and the masses are less and less willing to submit to the increasingly ineffectual tutelage of their self-appointed administrative and academic mentors and guardians.
Something to think on …
The first principle of child-rearing is to choose a good mother.
— Christian Morgenstern, born on this date in 1871
Thursday, May 05, 2016
Starting Saturday …
MAKING POEMS THAT LAST – May-June 2016
A POETRY WORKSHOP WITH LEONARD GONTAREK
While there’s no guarantee you’ll become the next Robert Frost, with the guidance of award-winning, prolific poet Leonard Gontarek, it’s at least a possibility. Encouraging students to explore as many avenues as possible and remove themselves from their work, he’ll help you find—then strengthen—your style and voice.
Philadelphia Weekly, Nicole Finkbiner
Reserve a place in the class via: gontarek9@earthlink.net
The workshop will include discussions of contemporary and international
poetry, translation, the students’ poetry, and the realities of publishing poetry.
Narrative, persona, political, homage, and confessional poetry will be
covered with a focus on what makes a poet’s voice original and their own.
Specific direction and assignments will be given, with attention
to the basic elements and forms of poetry.
Through invention students will build more accurate and textured work.
The workshop will be presented in seven 2-hour sessions,
Saturdays, 11 – 1:00 PM: May 7, 14, 21, June 4, 11, 18, 25.
Please note, there will be no class on May 28 – Memorial Day weekend.
Location: 4221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia.
The cost is 168 dollars for seven sessions.
Please contact Leonard Gontarek with interest: gontarek9@earthlink.net,
215.808.9507 – Independent workshops and manuscript editing available.
www.leafscape.org/
Leonard reading Altogether:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Leonard poem here:
http://www.backlashpress.com/
Leonard reading Promise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Leonard Gontarek is the author of five books of poems:
St. Genevieve Watching Over Paris, Van Morrison Can’t Find His Feet,
Zen For Beginners, Déjà Vu Diner, and He Looked Beyond My Faults
and Saw My Needs (Hanging Loose Press, 2013).
A new book is forthcoming in June, 2016*.
His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Field, Poet Lore,
Verse, Handsome, Fence, Blackbird, The Awl, Poetry Northwest,
and in the anthologies, The Best American Poetry, The Working Poet,
and Joyful Noise: American Spiritual Poetry. He has received five
Pushcart Prize nominations and twice received poetry fellowships
from the Pennsylvania Council On The Arts.
He was the 2011 Philadelphia Literary Death Match Champion.
He coordinates The Philadelphia Poetry Festival, Peace/Works: Poetry Readings
for Peace, and the Green Line Café Reading and Interview Series.
Since 2006 he has conducted 1000 poetry workshops in venues including,
The Moonstone Arts Center, Musehouse, The Kelly Writers House,
University City Arts League, Free Library of Philadelphia,
Mad Poets Society, Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership,
and a weekly Saturday workshop from his home in West Philadelphia.
In 2014 he created the first Philly Poetry Day. He was recipient of
the Philadelphia Writers Conference Community Service Award in 2014.
In 2015, his poem, 37 Photos From The Bridge, was a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges
MotionPoems project and the basis for the winning film from the Big Bridges poetry
film contest sponsored by MotionPoems and the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis.
*PLEASE COME AND CELEBRATE THE PUBLICATION OF LEONARD’S
NEW BOOK, TAKE YOUR HAND OUT OF MY POCKET, SHIVA,
AND THE PHILADELPHIA PREMIERE OF
14 PHOTOS FROM THE BRIDGE, THE AWARD-WINNING SHORT FILM
BASED ON HIS POEM.
FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 6 PM
PENN BOOKSTORE
3601 WALNUT STREET
PHILADELPHIA PA
(on the University of
Pennsylvania campus)
A POETRY WORKSHOP WITH LEONARD GONTAREK
While there’s no guarantee you’ll become the next Robert Frost, with the guidance of award-winning, prolific poet Leonard Gontarek, it’s at least a possibility. Encouraging students to explore as many avenues as possible and remove themselves from their work, he’ll help you find—then strengthen—your style and voice.
Philadelphia Weekly, Nicole Finkbiner
Reserve a place in the class via: gontarek9@earthlink.net
The workshop will include discussions of contemporary and international
poetry, translation, the students’ poetry, and the realities of publishing poetry.
Narrative, persona, political, homage, and confessional poetry will be
covered with a focus on what makes a poet’s voice original and their own.
Specific direction and assignments will be given, with attention
to the basic elements and forms of poetry.
Through invention students will build more accurate and textured work.
The workshop will be presented in seven 2-hour sessions,
Saturdays, 11 – 1:00 PM: May 7, 14, 21, June 4, 11, 18, 25.
Please note, there will be no class on May 28 – Memorial Day weekend.
Location: 4221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia.
The cost is 168 dollars for seven sessions.
Please contact Leonard Gontarek with interest: gontarek9@earthlink.net,
215.808.9507 – Independent workshops and manuscript editing available.
www.leafscape.org/
Leonard reading Altogether:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Leonard poem here:
http://www.backlashpress.com/
Leonard reading Promise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Leonard Gontarek is the author of five books of poems:
St. Genevieve Watching Over Paris, Van Morrison Can’t Find His Feet,
Zen For Beginners, Déjà Vu Diner, and He Looked Beyond My Faults
and Saw My Needs (Hanging Loose Press, 2013).
A new book is forthcoming in June, 2016*.
His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Field, Poet Lore,
Verse, Handsome, Fence, Blackbird, The Awl, Poetry Northwest,
and in the anthologies, The Best American Poetry, The Working Poet,
and Joyful Noise: American Spiritual Poetry. He has received five
Pushcart Prize nominations and twice received poetry fellowships
from the Pennsylvania Council On The Arts.
He was the 2011 Philadelphia Literary Death Match Champion.
He coordinates The Philadelphia Poetry Festival, Peace/Works: Poetry Readings
for Peace, and the Green Line Café Reading and Interview Series.
Since 2006 he has conducted 1000 poetry workshops in venues including,
The Moonstone Arts Center, Musehouse, The Kelly Writers House,
University City Arts League, Free Library of Philadelphia,
Mad Poets Society, Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership,
and a weekly Saturday workshop from his home in West Philadelphia.
In 2014 he created the first Philly Poetry Day. He was recipient of
the Philadelphia Writers Conference Community Service Award in 2014.
In 2015, his poem, 37 Photos From The Bridge, was a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges
MotionPoems project and the basis for the winning film from the Big Bridges poetry
film contest sponsored by MotionPoems and the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis.
*PLEASE COME AND CELEBRATE THE PUBLICATION OF LEONARD’S
NEW BOOK, TAKE YOUR HAND OUT OF MY POCKET, SHIVA,
AND THE PHILADELPHIA PREMIERE OF
14 PHOTOS FROM THE BRIDGE, THE AWARD-WINNING SHORT FILM
BASED ON HIS POEM.
FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 6 PM
PENN BOOKSTORE
3601 WALNUT STREET
PHILADELPHIA PA
(on the University of
Pennsylvania campus)
Fiction restores Robert Frost to life …
… Poet Resurrected | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Raising questions …
… Marines Are Investigating the Identity of a Flag Raiser in the Iconic Iwo Jima Photo | Smart News | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
There was hug color reproduction of that photo in the first grade school I attended (I was born a couple of months before we entered the war — I know, sounds like ancient history).
There was hug color reproduction of that photo in the first grade school I attended (I was born a couple of months before we entered the war — I know, sounds like ancient history).
Interesting fellow …
… The Hilarious Conservative Pundit Parody Purveyor Speaks Out | The Daily Caller. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I’m a white Southern Evangelical, and I believe just about everything you would expect a white Southern Evangelical to believe—minus the part where support for the modern nation state of Israel is some sort of eschatological imperative. I believe righteousness exalteth a nation, which is to say I’m slightly more socially conservative than Bob Jones. And I’m somewhat pessimistic about prospect of worldwide peace, love, and tolerance in our lifetime, which colors a lot of my thinking on foreign policy. But I wouldn’t say I’m all that ideological, by which I mean I save my loyalty for God, country, and flesh-and-blood human beings rather than socio-political abstractions.Forgive me for referencing myself, but this reminds me of something I wrote in The Inquirer recently:
Trump may not be conservative enough for the staff of National Review. But neither are a good many people who routinely vote Republican. They are not ideologues. They do not spend their evenings reading Friedrich von Hayek or Milton Friedman. They love their country, work hard, pay their bills, and worry about their kids. Lots of them go to church on Sunday but are not especially missionary about their faith — unless pushed.Aquinas maintained that truth is the conformity of the mind to reality (intellect and thing, to be precise). For too many intellectuals truth is the conformity of reality to their ideas about reality.
Not what you may think …
… An allegory is not the same as a metaphor. In praise of the medieval literary tradition. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… as Lewis demonstrates in a long, virtuosic reading of Roman de la Rose, this is because they aren’t actually meant to be characters. Instead these people, the objects they handle, and the spaces they occupy all represent aspects of the self. Roman de la Rose describes the courtship of a noble maiden by a courtier. Like many allegories it is framed as a dream, a sign that we’ve entered into a psychological interior. The lover seeks the Garden of Love, where he meets such clashing figures as Mirth, Companionship, Pride, and Shame. The lady herself seems strangely dematerialized because, as Lewis observes, “her character is distributed among personifications.”
Something to think on …
The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.
— Søren Kierkegaard,born on this date in 1813
Wednesday, May 04, 2016
Appreciation …
… The Great Urban Legacy of Jane Jacobs | Reluctant Habits.
A brave woman by the name of Shirley Hayes, whose great efforts have often been overlooked by some historians, created the Committee to Save Washington Square Park. Jacobs, who was busy raising a family and writing articles for Architectural Forum, received one of Hayes’s flyers and, immediately recognizing the threat to city life, joined Hayes’s committee, wrote to Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri and Manhattan Borough President Robert Wagner, and vowed to do anything necessary to fight Moses. The two women bonded over their love of Greenwich Village. Jacobs was greatly impressed by Hayes’s refusal to compromise for a less obstructive roadway. Jacobs began talking with local shopkeepers and started to attend city meetings. And it soon became apparent that the only surefire way to save the park was to make the fight a full-time job.
I have no appropriate headline...
A sex toy found by a fisherman in a small Indonesian village was taken home, dressed up, and worshipped as an angel for weeks, the BBC reports, proving yet again that the world is a strange and wonderful place.
Illiberal education …
… I Was Disinvited on Campus - WSJ.
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been approached by conservative students after a lecture to a mostly liberal audience and thanked, almost surreptitiously, for coming to speak. They often offer an explanation for their relative silence during question periods when liberal students and faculty are firing away. “Being too outspoken would just make it more difficult,” a Wellesley student once told me. “You get to leave when you’re done. We have to live with these people until we graduate.”
End of the line …
… Bookslut’s Jessa Crispin on the decision to shut down the site. (Hat tip, Virginia Kerr.)
Hmm …
… The ''Cli-Fi-Scene": Lydia Millet on why ''cli-fi'' novels have a moral obligation to stand up and speak truth to a terribly distracted world.
That literature has a moral dimension is certainly true. But to identify that with activism is problematic. Art explores the subtleties and ambiguities involved in moral choice. For activists the choice has been made and there is no subtlety or ambiguity left to consider. So activist fiction is likely to devolve into mere propaganda, something we hardly need any more of.
Something to think on …
The triumphs of the warrior are bounded by the narrow theatre of his own age; but those of a Scott or a Shakspeare will be renewed with greater and greater lustre in ages yet unborn, when the victorious chieftain shall be forgotten, or shall live only in the song of the minstrel and the page of the chronicler.
— William H. Prescott, born on this date in 1796
RIP …
… Death of a Word Man - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In his various writings, Robert insisted on distinctions: between forcefully and forcibly, fortunately and fortuitously, tortured and tortuous, and many more. He could be death on academic locution and on the ungainly “in terms of,” the overused “scenario,” the misused “transpire,” the merely hideous “prioritize.”As well he should have. Of course, I was for many years a copy editor.
Hmm...
...Democracies end when they are too democratic
This is an age in which a woman might succeed a black man as president, but also one in which a member of the white working class has declining options to make a decent living. This is a time when gay people can be married in 50 states, even as working-class families are hanging by a thread. It’s a period in which we have become far more aware of the historic injustices that still haunt African-Americans and yet we treat the desperate plight of today’s white working class as an afterthought. And so late-stage capitalism is creating a righteous, revolutionary anger that late-stage democracy has precious little ability to moderate or constrain — and has actually helped exacerbate.
Tuesday, May 03, 2016
Miscellaneous Biblical Fact - make of it what you will
Of the 3,237 people named in the Bible, only 188 are women. Biblical Archaeology Review, Jan./Feb 2016 p. 61.
The times, they are a changing
I calculated how demographically similar each U.S. metropolitan area is to the U.S. overall, based on age, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity. The index equals 100 if a metro’s demographic mix were identical to that of the U.S. overall.Philadelphia is 9th. Lancaster Pa is the 2nd most like the 50's America "when the country was much whiter, younger and less-educated than today."
And lest we forget, "in 2014 there were more than 20 million children under 5 years old living in the U.S., and 50.2 percent of them were minorities."
Information, please …
… zmkc: What's the Story. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… I didn't come on here to wallow in regret for the past. No, I came on here to enunciate my latest theory which is that, if newspapers do disappear, it won't be because of the Internet; it will be because they don't do what they should do. They don't explain what's going on.
Success and failure …
… The Writers' Almanac: Encounters with Emily Dickinson - No. 11.
As in baseball, you win some, you lose some. The point is to have fun playing the game.
A way with words …
… 'Gossip,' and other words repurposed by Shakespeare - Columbia Journalism Review. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
An important book …
… Book Review: An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In this concise and provocative book, Lewis proposes an unconventional method for evaluating literature: to judge books by the ways in which they are read. “Let us try to discover how far it might be plausible to define a good book as a book which is read in one way,” he writes, “and a bad book as a book which is read in another.” It is an intriguing experiment that proves rewarding regardless of whether or not one agrees with Lewis’s conclusions, for it leads to a serious, intelligent, and insightful discourse on literature.- See more at: http://www.nwreview.com/reviews/an-experiment-in-criticism.html#full
Something to think on …
There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.
— Niccolo Machiavelli, born on this date in 1469
Monday, May 02, 2016
I used to devour Science Fiction...
I missed out on the "Golden Age" but Anderson, Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Dick, Ellison, Heinlein, Herbert, etc. etc. were all very much alive and producing. I recall the straightforward fiction of Asimov say was, even then, sort of in disfavor, whereas someone like Ellison was in critical favor. Pretty much the majority was involved with exploring liberal and outlandish ideas (maybe the drugs back then.) I still recall a short story written by [someone who I can't recall] with the premise being a device that would allow a person to live through another's eyes and thoughts. The denouement was something along the lines of the protagonist using the device and seeing the world through his girlfriend's eyes, and then I think she did the same thing in reverse -- saw the world through his eyes. Which was interesting back then (and now, when I think back.)
In any event, I never thought of science fiction as all that conservative -- even Asimov was fairly liberal politically if I recall rightly -- and I am surprised to see that there is such a fight over liberal and conservative in the science fiction world. Although I haven't read it for years so maybe the old liberal is the new conservative and the new liberal deals with sheep love or some such.
In any event, I never thought of science fiction as all that conservative -- even Asimov was fairly liberal politically if I recall rightly -- and I am surprised to see that there is such a fight over liberal and conservative in the science fiction world. Although I haven't read it for years so maybe the old liberal is the new conservative and the new liberal deals with sheep love or some such.
Fascinating...
Four men, four incomes:
The poverty line for a family of three is $20,090 a year. The median household income in America is $53,657. Politicians draw $250,000 as the line between the middle and upper classes. And the true starting point of real wealth remains a cool $1,000,000. We asked four more or less typical men, each of whom earns one of these incomes, to tell us about the lives they can afford.
The Age of Temerity …
… The Obamas Met British Royalty in Kensington Palace in a Room With an Awkward Painting – Tablet Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
I don’t know what I find funnier: the idea that a couple as erudite, educated, and powerful as the Obamas would be upset by a clearly anachronistic reference in a work of art dating to 1660, or how Will and Kate apparently thought, that while the word might be offensive, it was probably totally cool to have a picture of a little slave boy on the wall while the man to whom it belongs—a man who owes this and everything else he owns to the accident of birth—makes polite chitchat with the twice-elected, Nobel Peace Prize winning, African-American Leader of the Free World.
Q&A …
… Whose Words These Are (6): Ron Slate | Open Source with Christopher Lydon. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Did he or didn't he?
… that is the question: Declaration of Reasonable Doubt | Shakespeare Authorship Coalition at DoubtAboutWill.org. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dave has shaken me from my laziness and prompted me to look up J. B. Priestley's comment on those who doubt the man from Stratford wrote the plays. I remain too lazy to copy it all out (though may do so sometime later — I have a deadline to deal with today), but will quote one key passage:
Dave has shaken me from my laziness and prompted me to look up J. B. Priestley's comment on those who doubt the man from Stratford wrote the plays. I remain too lazy to copy it all out (though may do so sometime later — I have a deadline to deal with today), but will quote one key passage:
The authors of these strange claims make the same mistake as many Shakespearean scholars who tell us that he must have been at one time a soldier, sailor, lawyer, traveller in Italy, and so forth: they cannot grasp the simple fact that a highly imaginative and sharp-witted young man like Shakespeare, familiar with theatres and their various patrons, dodging in and out of London taverns, could soon pick up all the scraps of expert knowledge and professional jargon he needed for his plays. The astonishingly wide acquaintance and sympathy with all manner of folk, including yokels, watchmen, tapsters, peddlers, harlots, bawds,vbroken-down soldiers, that we find in these plays do not suggest that were written by a great aristocrat or a committee of earls and countesses.
Is there no room for doubt, as the declaration linked to, asks? Well, there's always room for doubt. But no room was made for this doubt, as I pointed out earlier, until some 200 years after the Stratford fellow's death. That said, it is all very entertaining, and I suspect that "Shakespeare," whoever he was, would love it.
The importance of challenge …
… Constraints Can Be a Catalyst for Creativity — Pacific Standard. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.
— Novalis, born on this date in 1772
Sunday, May 01, 2016
Listen in …
… Episode 165 – Fred Kaplan w/#NJPoet’s Corner | Virtual Memories.
“I asked someone who had worked at Tailored Access Operations [the NSA’s black bag division], ‘I’m in your cubicle at work; what am I seeing?’ and he said, ‘I’m sitting at a monitor, and I’m typing code. And behind me is a supervisor, and behind him is a lawyer, and they’re taking down all of my keystrokes.'”
Clearing the record
… A Wronged Man | City Journal.
Time and again, what Leerhsen discovered through exhaustive research undermined the Cobb created by Stump, who didn’t source his work (“because he produced fiction,” as a contemporary said). Leerhsen could find no tangible evidence that Cobb hated blacks. On the contrary, he spoke in support of baseball’s integration when asked—and he wasn’t asked, as best Leerhsen can tell, until 1952. “The Negro should be accepted and not grudgingly but wholeheartedly,” Cobb said then. “The Negro has the right to compete in sports and who’s to say they have not?” On another occasion that year, he said: “No white man has the right to be less of a gentleman than a colored man. In my book, that goes not just for baseball but for all walks of life.” The virulent racist of legend, supposedly driven to derangement if even touched by a black man, attended Negro League games, threw out a first pitch, and often sat in the dugouts with black players. He came from a family of abolitionists. He endowed educational scholarships for students of all races.
In the beginning …
… The Writers' Almanac: When God began to create heaven and earth --
Methinks it best to regard even texts thought sacred as, well, texts — human constructs trying to express what must always remain beyond expression, but no less precious for that, since they enable us to encounter the mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
Hmm …
… 2 Shakespearean Actors Revive Debate Over The Bard's Identity : NPR. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
No one seems to have doubted that the fellow from Stratford wrote the plays until about 200 years after his death. That tells you something.
What is truth?
After the Fact - In the history of truth, a new chapter begins. ...[T]he history of truth is cockamamie, and lately it’s been getting cockamamier.
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be...
Especially about the family and society:
In 1992 I critiqued the panic over growing family diversity. My skepticism about the doomsayers has since been proven correct. Despite the continuing rise in unwed births since 1994, juvenile crime rates have fallen by 60 percent. Domestic violence is also down 60 percent. Parents today spend more time with their children than in 1965.
Inquirer reviews …
… E.O. Wilson's 'Half-Earth': A bold proposal to save biodiversity.
… 'Two If By Sea': A lot of drama, perhaps too much.
… '26 Songs in 30 Days': How Woody Guthrie wrote those great songs - for $266.
… 'Poisonous' reveals toxic teen Internet culture.
Wilson invokes multiple biblical references. He includes a lengthy quote of the passage in which God taunts Job, a startling section of the Bible that a rabbi friend described to me as one of the oldest pieces of extant nature writing. Unlike most science writers, he's plowed this field before: Ten years ago, he wrote a book addressed to clergy, pointedly questioning their absence in the fight to save creation.Well, since he thinks that religion "is dragging us down" and ought to be got rid of "for the sake of human progress" maybe we should take his Biblical appeals with a grain of salt.
… 'Two If By Sea': A lot of drama, perhaps too much.
… '26 Songs in 30 Days': How Woody Guthrie wrote those great songs - for $266.
… 'Poisonous' reveals toxic teen Internet culture.
"Curating Artisanal Words"
Our local radio station has music that is "curated." Tostitos has "Artisan" Recipes for its tortilla chips. I'm thinking Books Inq. should have the new slogan above.
And here's a review of Garner's Modern English Usage.
And here's a review of Garner's Modern English Usage.
Something to think on …
To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny.
— Joseph Addison, born on this date in 1672
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