Friday, August 09, 2019
Writers talk about a favorite …
… 11 Famous Writers on the Genius and Influence of Shirley Jackson | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Better late …
… Nine Newly Discovered Proust Stories to Be Published | Smart News | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Anniversary …
… RTs Reviews and Marginalia : Philip Larkin — going on beyond the melancholy.
I am very fond of Larkin's Aubade.
"The good not done, the love not given, time / Torn off unused" is as good a description of sin as I can think of.
I am very fond of Larkin's Aubade.
"The good not done, the love not given, time / Torn off unused" is as good a description of sin as I can think of.
Then they're not Catholics …
… New survey: Only one-third of Catholics believe in Real Presence. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“About six-in-ten (63 percent) of the most observant Catholics - those who attend Mass at least once a week - accept the Church’s teaching about transubstantiation. Still, even among this most observant group of Catholics, roughly one-third (37 percent) don’t believe that the Communion bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ (including 23 percent who don’t know the Church’s teaching and 14 percent who know the Church’s teaching but don’t believe it). And among Catholics who do not attend Mass weekly, large majorities say they believe the bread and wine are symbolic and do not actually become the body and blood of Jesus,” the organization states.
The literal translation of what Jesus said in Aramaic when he blessed and broke the bread at the last supper is "This is me."
Guess Catholic education is worth the money. It was obviously much better back when it cost virtually nothing.
Hmm …
… Statistics Confirm Bleak Prospects For Local Print Newspapers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I just finished looking through this morning's edition of the paper I was employed at for 28 years. The only thing I read was the piece about the Phillies, and the one about the Eagles.For the rest, I understood that I should disapprove of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for doing what its title indicates it is supposed to do, that guns are the problem not people with problems (no mention that I saw of yesterday's stabbing spree in California).What I want from a newspaper is dispassionate reporting (which is hard to do). Just the facts, Ma'am. I'll make up own mind about them. But everybody these days seems to have gone into journalism in order to change the world.They don't seem to realize how much they and we would learn if they just tried to find out as much about things from as many different angles as possible."Democracy dies in darkness." "Community dies in darkness." Forget the slogans. Replace the bulbs.
Something to think on …
The motive, principle, and end of the religious life is to make an absolute gift of self to God in a self-forgetting love, to end one's own life in order to make room for God's life.
— Edith Stein, who died on this date (in Auschwitz) in 1942
Thursday, August 08, 2019
Begging to differ …
… Misrepresenting Woodstock | Power Line.
I don’t think I quite qualify as Woodstock generation. I turned 28 in 1969. I was born in 1941.WWII was on, but we weren’t in it yet. (By the end of the year we were.) But I was certainly hip enough to know what was going on in 1969. And I pretty much agree with this assessment.
In case you wondered …
… They Will Still Hate You Even If You Disarm.
I do not plan to disarm. I had guns — real ones, a 22 and a shotgun — when I was a kid.
Truth and beauty …
… Friedrich Schiller on Beauty and Aesthetics - Philosopher of the Month | OUPblog. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Schiller was disappointed with Kant’s theory which demoted beauty to a subjective quality and wanted to establish the objective concept of beauty.
‘Twas ever thus …
… Medievalists excited at parchment fragment of 'vagina monologue' | World news | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
In the poem, a virgin woman (junkfrouwe) argues in a free-flowing, often witty dialogue, with her speaking vulva (fud) about which of them is held in the higher regard by men.
Bicentenary news …
… Baltimore’s role in reviving Herman Melville (and his whale of a tale) - Baltimore Sun. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Whatever your view of Melville, Baltimore can take pride in helping rescue his reputation from near-obscurity a century ago. While we’ll always associate Melville with New York and New England, it was a Baltimore native who, on assignment for The Nation magazine, ignited the “Melville Revival” of the 1920s and prodded many of us eventually to consider him America’s greatest writer.
Conversation clubs …
… Always more to say | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Readers here will know of Leo Damrosch’s The Club, a superb account of the eponymous group of high achievers who met at the Turk’s Head Tavern, Gerrard Street, Soho, during the second half of the eighteenth century. Among others, the group included Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke, James Boswell, and, of course, Samuel Johnson. The requirement for membership was that one be good company.
It deserves subtler translation …
… How "Carpe Diem" Got Lost in Translation | JSTOR Daily. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I suspect that harvest is the best word.
Tackling a masterpiece …
… Jay Parini - Battle Lines | Literary Review | Issue 478. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There is nothing systematic about his book, which consists of bits and pieces, quotes from other authors, reflections on Sansom’s own life in relation to Auden’s, as well as fiercely intelligent readings of individual lines and stanzas. For me, the book’s best moments are when Sansom is most critical of Auden: ‘Auden had a tendency throughout his career to reflect upon and attempt to solve and explain problems using the simplifying logic of the child.’ That is bold but accurate, though it also points to a strength in Auden that has always struck me: his ability to speak in abstract terms in a way that seems memorable in part because it has a childlike simplicity, one that can seem naive but nevertheless strikes at truth, as in: ‘Hunger allows no choice/To the citizen or the police:/We must love one another or die.’
Good for them …
… Libraries are fighting to preserve your right to borrow e-books (opinion) - CNN. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Public libraries in the United States purchase a lot of e-books, and circulate e-books a lot. According to the Public Library Association, electronic material circulation in libraries has been expanding at a rate of 30% per year; and public libraries offered over 391 million e-books to their patrons in 2017. Those library users also buy books; over 60% of frequent library users have also bought a book written by an author they first discovered in a library, according to Pew. Libraries offer free display space for books in over 16,000 locations nationwide. Even Macmillan admits that "Library reads are currently 45% of our total digital book reads." But instead of finding a way to work with libraries on an equitable win-win solution, Macmillan implemented a new and confusing model and blamed libraries for being successful at encouraging people to read their books.Looks as if book publishers may be as dumb as newspaper owners.
A master …
… Jazz Profiles: Erroll Garner on Verve Jazz Masters. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“When Erroll Garner died early in 1977 at the age of 53, the British music magazine Jazz Journal noted what Art Tatum once had told Oscar Peterson. Tatum no doubt expected Peterson to succeed him as the reigning virtuoso of jazz piano. But after hearing Garner one night during a New York visit, according to the magazine, the Old Lion took his cub aside and warned him: "Beware of the little man." I don't know, of course, if that story is true. It does have the faint aroma of legend about it. But if it isn't true, it ought to be.
Something to think on …
The state incurs debts for politics, war, and other higher causes and 'progress'. . . . The assumption is that the future will honour this relationship in perpetuity. The state has learned from the merchants and industrialists how to exploit credit; it defies the nation ever to let it go into bankruptcy. Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.
— Jacob Burckhardt, who died on this date in 1897
Wednesday, August 07, 2019
Finding the time …
… RTs Reviews and Marginalia : Now I can do what I really want to do ....
I always find a good reason to do what I have to do, and I thank God for the opportunity.
Appreciation …
… InterLibrary Loan Will Change Your Life | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Although it has evolved since Rowell’s early days, InterLibrary Loan continues to be an essential resource—even in the digital era. It is comforting to delude ourselves that everything is available online, but there’s a wealth of significant material that remains only in print. The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), which maintains WorldCat, reported 280 million ILL requests since the organization began in 1967, including 6.9 million in 2018 alone. Last year’s top-requested titles included books by Tara Westover, Jordan Peterson, and Celeste Ng.
A useful reminder …
… America Is Not Rome. It Just Thinks It Is | by Tom Holland | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… At various points in American history, various reasons have been advanced to explain why the United States is bound to join the Roman Empire in oblivion. In 1919, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, The New York Times warned that the Huns and the Vandals were massing again. “The Roman Empire and its civilization were destroyed by barbarian hordes coming from the East—and it is from the east that comes the wind.” Thirty years earlier, visiting the abandoned Roman city at Baalbek in Lebanon, Brooks Adams—the great-grandson of John Adams—had been inspired by the spectacle of shattered greatness to dread that his own country’s gilded age was bound to end in similar ruin. In the decades before the Civil War, opponents of slavery repeatedly cited the fall of Rome as a warning of what might happen to a slave-owning society. In the 1830s, opponents of Andrew Jackson cast him as a dictator and a demagogue whose tyranny would inevitably bring the infant republic to share in the fate of the ancient empire. Present anxieties that Trump’s presidency portends America’s decline and fall are the contemporary expression of a tradition quite as venerable as the United States itself.It is always wise to take with a grain of salt the “lessons from history” advanced by partisan hacks of whatever stripe.
The progress of dehumanization …
… The Dying Art of Instruction in the Digital Classroom | by Tim Parks | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The idea of a relationship between teacher and class, professor and students, is consequently eroded. The student can rapidly check on his or her smartphone whether the professor is right, or indeed whether there isn’t some other authority offering an entirely different approach. With the erosion of that relationship goes the environment that nurtured it: the segregated space of the classroom where, for an hour or so, all attention was focused on a single person who brought all of his or her experience to the service of the group.
I remain grateful for having been blessed with several outstanding teachers, especially Miss Parkinson, Mother Holmes, and Father Gannon. I an who I am largely thanks to them.It is also worth remembering that information is not knowledge. Knowledge is information within its proper context.
Something to think on …
The problem is not how to wipe out all differences, but how to unite with all differences intact.
— Rabindranath Tagore, who died on this date in 1941
Tuesday, August 06, 2019
Listen in …
… Episode 331 – Liniers – The Virtual Memories Show.
“In my mind, I thought, ‘Maybe if I can get my comic strip to Uruguay, my father will believe this is a real job.’ I’d be an international success. Montevideo was as far as my imagination could go.”
Propaganda disguised as journalism …
… WHO HIRES THESE REPORTERS? THIS IS REALLY INCOMPETENT: “Washington Post Glibly Dismisses Mental Illness as Cause of Mass Shootings.”
Blogging note …
I have to take off to get some shots in my knees (artificial synovial fluid). Back whenever.
RIP …
… Toni Morrison, a giant of American letters, has died at 88. | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Strange siblings …
… The Weil Conjectures by Karen Olsson review – maths and mysticism | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
André was the abstract thinker, by now a well-known mathematician, whose parents had taken away his writing materials as a small child, only for him to scratch equations into a cement pavement with a rock instead. Simone was the worldly one, devoted to alleviating the suffering of others.
Hard to gauge …
… Orthodoxy and the Latin Mass | Audra Dugandzic | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I attended the Latin Mass as long as one was within a reasonable distance from my home. That is no longer the case.So I went back to my parish church and discovered thatFather Large, our pastor, gives excellent sermons bearing on how to live the faith. And I try to attend Mass every day. I am certainly the least among those who attend.
Acoustical panels …
Rus Bowden made these. The first is a photo of his friend Mary, who is a fine singer. The other is "a lens-baby shot of an electric guitar." Neat.
Something to think on …
The fittest survive. What is meant by the fittest? Not the strongest; not the cleverest — weakness and stupidity everywhere survive. There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive. 'Fitness,' then, is only another name for 'survival.' Darwinism: That survivors survive.
— Charles Fort, born on this date in 1874
Monday, August 05, 2019
Science …
… Physicists Overturn a 100-Year-Old Assumption on How Brain Cells Work.
This potentially new way of describing what's known as spatial summation could lead to a novel method of categorising neurons, one that sorts them based on how they compute incoming signals or how fine their resolution is, based on a particular direction.
The courage of sanctity …
…. A “tough guy” priest, in the gulag and beyond – Catholic World Report.
“For each of us, salvation means no more and no less than taking up daily the same cross of Christ. … What it means, in practice, is spelled out as always by the poor old body. It means getting up each morning and going to bed exhausted.It means the routine, not the spectacular.”I once spent a good part of an afternoon chatting over coffee with Father Ciszek.
Hmm …
… Taleb’s Call to Duel | Joshua P. Hochschild | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Taleb’s Twitter attack was a call to duel; the rude insult manifests the stakes of personal dignity. Lehmann understands this. In February, she quoted a passage about how in an honor culture insults are used to provoke a duel. She added: “Obviously @nntaleb’s Twitter feed is one of honor culture’s last holdouts.”
Worth paying attention to …
… in order to see if the media takes much note of it: Connor Betts, Ohio gunman, was Elizabeth Warren supporter - Washington Times.
After all, who remembers James T. Hodgkinson?
After all, who remembers James T. Hodgkinson?
A poem for these days …
… Enemies by Wendell Berry | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Wendell Berry turns 85 today. Happy birthday!
Hmm …
… Exile by Conrad Aiken | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Conrad Aiken — one of my favorite poets — was born on this date in 1889. Here is “Morning Song” from Senlin.
Wow …
… Poem of the week: Story's End by Kathleen Raine | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, that gets it down for sure.
Blogging note …
I have to take Debbie to her exercise class. So blogging will resume later this morning.
Listen in …
… The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale: Mark Abley on why poet Duncan Campbell Scott's reputation is in tatters.
Although E.K. Brown, a highly admired literary critic, once called poet and bureaucrat Duncan Campbell Scott "one of the chief masters of Canadian literature," Scott's reputation today lies in tatters.
Mark Abley in his fascinating biography Conversations with a Dead Man, The Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott, explains why.
Something to think on …
What keeps earth air breathable? Not oxygen alone. The earth is a freer place to breathe in, every time you love without calculating a return -- every time you make your drudgeries and routines still more inefficient by stopping to experience the shock of beauty wherever it unpredictably flickers.
— Peter Viereck, born on this date in 1916
Sunday, August 04, 2019
Appreciation …
… This Reader’s Digest Editor Was One Tough, Conservative Cookie | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Bill masterminded a 1978 bestseller entitled A Time for Truth that lucidly explained why political takeovers of the economy and American life were disasters for freedom and prosperity. That book was ghostwritten by Edith Efron and published under the name of former Ford administration official Bill Simon, and included a preface by Milton Friedman and a foreword by F.A. Hayek. The book relates how, when Simon was appointed as Energy Czar, President Nixon compared the power he was vesting in Simon with the power Hitler vested in Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments and War Production. (If only MSNBC had been around back then to sound the alarm!) The chapters on “Freedom vs. Dictatorship” and “The Road to Liberty” are as relevant now as when they were written and could be profitable reading for many Trump supporters.
Monumental profession …
… Her Majesty’s Sculptor Alexander Stoddart On Art, Truth, And Instagram. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I’m extremely primitive. My daughters think it’s hilarious, but I have an antipathy for technology. I think it’s all bad. Look at the faces of people like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg. They look like a bunch of architects. There’s something terrifying about them and their followers, they all have this knowing look.
Where do you fit in?
… 10 Habits One or More Book Readers Can Relate To | LetterPile. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Hmm …
… Language, Chance, and Science | The Russell Kirk Center. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
But McWhorter errs in assigning another cause of this profligate variety: “In fact, there is a coherent explanation.… That explanation is, quite simply, chance.” But “Chance” is not an explanation for anything: chance is the word we use for happenings we can’t explain. … Consider the opening toss before a football game, which determines who kicks off. Such tosses are governed by “chance” from the point of view of the players and referees involved. But whether the coin comes up heads or tails is, in fact, determined by the force and angle of the ref’s flip, the air resistance offered to the coin, the gusts of wind that impact it, the participants’ movements, and so on. If anyone involved could exactly determine the influence of all of those factors and could rapidly calculate them, they could say for sure whether the coin would land on heads or tails. It is the participants’ inability to do such calculations that makes the coin flip, from their point of view, chance, and a fair way to decide who kicks off. But “chance” is certainly not an explanation for why the coin landed as it did: it is an admission that the participants can’t explain it.
Well, I am pretty sure that McWhorter knew the meaning and implications of the word chance when he chose to use it. The reviewer does not refute his use of the term by elaborating on said meaning and implications. I assume the reviewer thinks what he says about a coin flip represents a coherent explanation of why the outcome of the coin flip is thought to be a matter of chance.
Something to think on …
The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation.
— Walter Pater, born on this date in 1839
Saturday, August 03, 2019
Endangered species …
… These Photographs Capture Cuba’s Fading Cinema Culture | Travel | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
When the Cuban Revolution happened, a lot of cinema owners decided to leave the island. The government took over operating their businesses, but running that amount of cinemas was absolutely impossible, so the number of cinemas slowly decreased. The 19 that remain have been updated to today’s digital world, but many of the others have been abandoned or converted into community centers, places for the elderly and centers for kids. Unlike other countries where cinemas were destroyed to make space [for new buildings], in Cuba, because of the historic bubble and the fact that there was no money to be spent on [these projects], a lot of the old cinemas are left standing.
Fascinating …
… Embracing the Mysteries of a Trove of Hungarian Photos, Rescued From the Dustbin of History - Atlas Obscura. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
The rescued snapshots offer glimpses of ordinary moments, across a wide range of Hungarian life. One image shows four uniformly dressed young women from 1904 in a lush garden, leaning in and touching heads. Another depicts the festive solidarity of Hungarians attending a parade to celebrate their version of Labor Day, May 1, in 1957, complete with balloons and streamers. A more sobering scene shows us the cool gaze of a Soviet soldier in a wrecked Budapest during the last year of World War II.
Victim of a woke bishop …
… Chesterton’s Cause will not be opened | Catholic Herald. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Perhaps he should read this: Was G.K. Chesterton Anti-Semitic?
Bishop Peter Doyle said he took the decision due to the lack of a local cult, the lack of any “pattern of personal spirituality” in the life of the author, and “the issue of anti-Semitism”.
Perhaps he should read this: Was G.K. Chesterton Anti-Semitic?
The charge is usually made thoughtlessly or ignorantly. But in some cases it is made knowingly and deceitfully. It is a calumny against the man who said “The world owes God to the Jews,” and “I will die defending the last Jew in Europe,” who was sought out by Jewish leaders in his support for Zionism, a man who hated racism and racial theories and who fought for human dignity and always affirmed the brotherhood of all men.
History of the Irish Revolution
After finishing two longer novels, I've shifted my attention to history -- in particular, to an episode about which I knew surprisingly little: the Irish Revolution.
To learn more, I avoided academic histories of contemporary Ireland, and turned instead to Richard Killeen's Short History, which focuses on the period between 1912 and 1927. I must say -- I was pleased: Killeen's treatment is excellent. It's readable and accessible, but erudite and nuanced, too. He establishes a clear set of definitions around Republicanism and Unionism at the start, and later breaks the period into understandable segments. These include, for instance, the Easter Rising, the Revolution, and the Civil War.
About all of this -- and about the key figures on the Irish side of the political divide, especially -- I preciously little. But as I say, Killeen does an excellent job elucidating the themes which defined the era: the emergence of a Republican impulse is of paramount importance, but so are the governmental maneuverings which led to partition, and the confessional conflict which stirred throughout the 1920s.
I took from Killeen's history that the partition with which we are familiar today was perhaps the most unexpected outcome of the entire period: Ireland was to remain a British territory, or it was to become, of the course of a decade, a wholly independent state -- with Unionists in the north gradually coming to terms with a government based on Dublin. This, of course, never came to pass, and the result of that extension -- of that persistent statelet in the north -- has been intractable conflict, and regrettable spasms of violence.
If there's one critique I might offer of Killeen's history it's the ending: Killeen brings closure to the Revolution by focusing on the emergence of the Free State, and the victory of pro-Treaty groups. He stops the story in 1927. I did, though, wonder what comes next: because in 1927, the Free State was still beholden to the English crown. It was ten years later, I learned, that the Irish adopted a formal constitution, replacing the once that had been drafted in 1922 by way of negotiations with the British. And it was more than ten years after that, in 1949, that the Irish Republic itself was born, and that all remaining associations with the crown were severed.
This story, too, seems part of the revolutionary era, and I wish that Killeen had included it in his history. Despite the critique, I remain thankful for Killeen's analysis: it has inspired further reading.
Something to think on …
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.
— P. D. James, born on this date in 1920
Friday, August 02, 2019
FYI …
… The Greatest Baseball Novel Ever Written: Ring Lardner's You Know Me Al. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The meditative quality of baseball, underscored by its lack of a clock, offers opportunities for brooding and oft-accidental epiphanies, which was perfect both for Lardner and for the oafish Keefe. When critics praise You Know Me Al, though, they tend to focus on Lardner's virtuosic rendering of a baseball player's patois. Virginia Woolf, in a review, figured this must have taken forever for him to get right, even if what he was displaying was just a well-attuned ear conditioned over many years of clubhouse comings and goings. She held him up as the best prose writer in America, even if she maintained that his "language is not English."
Anniversary …
… Staggerlee wonders by James Baldwin | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
James Baldwin was born on this date in 1924.
Friendship …
… My Travels with Oliver Sacks | by Lowell Handler | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books.
Oliver’s 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat had just become a best-seller when I first contacted him. I’d read the book, which included Sacks’s study of a drummer with Tourette’s syndrome, with great interest. At the time, Oliver lived on City Island and his number was listed in the phone book. I called him up, and he answered. I explained, “I’m the only one who’s photographing people with Tourette’s, and you’re the only one writing about it. And I have Tourette’s. Let’s get together.” He agreed.
Belated happy birthday
… Misgivings by Herman Melville | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Herman Melville was born 200 years ago yesterday.
Finding our bearings …
… Our Socialist Moment by Helen Andrews | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One reason America is having a socialist moment is that our working class is in terrible condition, battered by the twin forces of economic globalization and mass immigration. In a tragic irony, at the very moment in the 1990s when politicians had to decide how to confront these challenges, the parties of the working class were captured by neoliberal triangulators like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, whose loyalties were to the meritocratic elite. The liberal parties of the Western democracies were supposed to be the most powerful vehicles in human history for the political power of the common man. Instead, those parties now represent the interests of “woke capital,” that is, corporations that are equally committed to unfettered markets and liberal social causes and don’t hesitate to use their power under the former to enforce the latter.
Something to think on …
American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
— James Baldwin, born on this date in 1924
Thursday, August 01, 2019
Hmm …
… Database of 7 million syllabi pulls back the curtain on higher ed. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“Higher education’s kind of a black box. You approach it with a grasp of the reputations of the institutions you’re interested in. But other than what can be a very arbitrary experience browsing around a university website, there’s no real way to know what the contents of that education will look like,” Karaganis said.
Recommended …
… Nigeness: An Integrated Man.
As well as being a thoroughly convincing portrayal of erotic obsession, An Integrated Man offers one of the best evocations I've ever read of an English summer, with all its vagaries of weather and mood. Strachey has a sharp eye, an artist's eye, and her descriptions are often arresting.
Buzz …
…Gjertrud Schnackenberg on the sound of poetry and the “unaging, perpetual chant” of bees | The Book Haven.
Poetry’s sympathetic vibration is like a buzzing tuning fork that awakens a nearby tuning fork to its own buzzing, or like a detonation in the street outside that inspires a door inside to pop open, or like the kung-note struck by the lute-tuner in ancient China to provoke a nearby lute-string to sound its own kung-note – or like the reverberations of the big bang still resounding and vibrating throughout all that exists: we live in a vast sound-universe, which is, mercifully, largely inaudible to us, but nonetheless oscillating everywhere, from superstrings to supernova.
RIP …
… Remembering Vivian Paley (1929–2019) | The Chicago Blog | The Chicago Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Not what you may have heard…
… Hayek's Tragic Capitalism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hayek’s case for free enterprise doesn’t fit any of the usual simplistic stereotypes. He not only explicitly and persistently rejected laissez-faire, but could write as eloquently about the moral downside of capitalism and the emotional attractions of socialism as any left-winger. In an era in which—young socialist chic notwithstanding—global capitalism appears to have swept all before it, it is the triumphalist defenders of the free market rather than its critics who have the most to learn from Hayek’s cautious, nuanced apologia.
Appreciation …
… An Old-Time Singer-Songwriter - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, as a longtime Blossom Dearie fan, I certainly know "I'm Hip."
Well, as a longtime Blossom Dearie fan, I certainly know "I'm Hip."
Something to think on …
The most valuable writers are those in whom we find not themselves, or ourselves, or the fugitive era of their lifetimes, but the common vision of all times.
— Paul Horgan born on this date in 1903
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