… during a neurology fellowship in movement disorders, Pantelyat witnessed a more intriguing effect music seemed to have. He attended a West African drumming session in which Parkinson’s disease patients followed the rhythmic lead of an instructor. Afterward, Pantelyat heard the patients say they saw an improvement in their symptoms. This inspired him to conduct a six-week pilot study involving 10 Parkinson’s patients who took drumming lessons twice a week. At the conclusion, the patients reported an increase in mobility and greater quality of life compared to a control group. His paper on the study, published in the online journal Movement Disorders Clinical Practice, bore the title “DRUM-PD: The Use of a Drum Circle to Improve the Symptoms and Signs of Parkinson’s Disease.”
Saturday, November 07, 2020
Very interesting …
… The Well-Tempered Neurologist.
Hmm …
… A comedian has just solved "the world's most difficult literary puzzle." | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, this article says that he solved it, but what exactly is the proof?
Friday, November 06, 2020
Booth Tarkington
The Magnificent Ambersons -- Booth Tarkington's portrait of the American midwest at the turn of the twentieth century -- is just that: magnificent. I have to say, I can't remember the last novel I read that felt so complete, that contained equal measures of humor and profundity.
Ambersons is a novel in the tradition of The Rise and Fall of Silas Lapham, William Dean Howells's later nineteenth century account of one family's ascent -- followed by its decline. But Tarkington's book, I think, is more lasting: first, as I say, because it includes an effective degree of humor; and second, because it feels decidedly more modern. Ambersons takes us from the Civil War, to industrialism, and eventually to urbanism. The family which climbed the ladder, and which established itself in the 1870s, is different from the one which fell from that same ladder in the years before the First World War.
All of that said, there's a considerable space between Tarkington and Fitzgerald, say: the former is most certainly a product of the nineteenth century, and his prose, despite its ease, seems only recently to have been freed from the formality of that time. Tarkington's content, too, is of the later nineteenth century: automobiles, for instance, are regarded as the Internet was in 1990: something shiny and sinister, something with the potential to overwhelm. And overwhelm, of course, it does: the Amberson family is replaced by a revolution in economics, in development, and, most importantly, in technology. The landed aristocracy is no more.
When Eugene Morgan -- one of the novel's secondary characters -- communes with the ghost of his lost love, Isabel Amberson, he does so on behalf of a generation: he reaches back in time using telepathy and emotion. How quaint, Tarkington seems to imply: how powerless against the automobile. That scene -- of remembrance, but also of resolution -- is quite poignant: it's the end of one era, and the beginning of another. Tarkington presents it perfectly, and the result is a novel positioned just on the edge of modernity: just on the cusp of that shift in both life and literature.
Interesting mix …
… Looking for a spooky read? Here are Catholic horror books to keep you up at night. | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I just ordered the Kindle version of the Muriel Spark novel. I am very fond of Spark's writing.
Getting it across …
… Reflections on the Translation of Poetry > Samuel Hux. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… my easy-to-say (but hard-to-exemplify) Poetry Translation Manifesto: While doing no violation to the intellectual and emotional content of the original, the translator should make the linguistic imitation sound as close to the original as possible any way he or she can even if the imitation might look alien on the page; anything else is treason.
Something to think on …
The religious life begins when we discover that God is not a postulate of ethics, but the only adventure in which it is worth the trouble to risk ourselves.
— Don Colacho
Thursday, November 05, 2020
Cats’ meows …
… Kathryn Hughes - Hooked on a Feline | Literary Review | Issue 491. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Gee, I loved my cat Pandora (she’s buried in our garden, having made it to 22), but I wouldn’t base a metaphysic on her.
Phonies at play …
… Crime beat - Philadelphia Weekly.
Stories and images of looters in Philadelphia running out of stores with boxes of sneakers, electronics and other stolen items are getting national and international press and social media coverage. This is e mbarrassing.
Stories and images of police officers being punched, kicked, pelted with bricks and bottles, and even struck with a speeding vehicle, are also getting national and international press and social media coverage. This is infuriating.
Yes or no?
… Photography as an Art > Theodore Dalrymple. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I was drawn recently to the question of whether photography was truly an art by the purchase of rather a beautiful book of photographs of Mexico taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Paul Strand in the 1930s. It was the catalogue of an exhibition held in Paris in 2012 which had obviously failed to sell as many as were printed, because the price at which I bought it was much reduced. Irrespective of whether photography is truly an art, I shall return to it regularly for what remains of my life. I regret now that it is only comparatively recently that I have take an interest in photography, having in the past rather looked down on it as an activity or endeavour. By doing so, I wilfully denied myself a way of responding to the world: perhaps not the most important way, but valuable all the same.
Sounds like required reading …
… America’s past as metaphor for today and tomorrow.
'It's a disjointed world, Liberty. No snug fit to the parts anymore. We are tumbling and tumbling into a great abyss, I fear, one with no bottom.'
Appreciation …
… Mariana Yampolsky: photographer, expat pioneer of road-tripping in Mexico. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
While we might not think of ourselves as such, we foreigners living and exploring Mexico are part of an inter-generational phenomenon, which has a long history and even unsung heroes.
One of these heroes is U.S.-born photographer Mariana Yampolsky, perhaps the most important documenter of folkloric Mexico of the mid and latter 20th century.
Take a look at these …
… Incredible Winners of 2020 Siena International Photography Awards. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Anniversary …
… Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born on this date in 1850.
Something to think on …
The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.
— Will Durant, born on this date in 1885
Wednesday, November 04, 2020
Not as we have been told …
… The Fall of a Sparrow by Ann Pasternak Slater, review — in defence of TS Eliot’s maligned wife, Vivien. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This book is a forensic and often ruthless — Eliot biographers are quoted mainly to be dismissed as rank fabulists — attempt to understand Vivien. It is the first time so much light has been thrown on this troubled character. Everybody has heard of Eliot’s “problem” wife, but few have tried to understand her in this depth and with such sympathetic insight into her impact on Eliot’s greatest poetry.
Scholarship and ghosts …
… NO THINKING. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is the fundamental unity between James the well-known writer of what we now call “horror” fiction and the reticent Cambridge don that is the starting point of Patrick J. Murphy’s fascinating study. For far too long, scholarship on James has been bifurcated between enthusiasts for all things spooky and professional medievalists and biblical scholars. This is why even in the beautifully produced and immaculately edited selection of his tales from Oxford University Press one searches in vain for the endnote informing the reader that the monster glimpsed by Dennison, first in an illustration and later in the flesh, in “Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook” is not a fanciful product of James’s imagination but a description lifted wholesale from a Zoology of the Invertebrata, a textbook published by his friend and colleague Arthur Shipley, with whom he had actually visited Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges
Something to think on …
Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
— Michael Crichton, who died on this date in 2008
Tuesday, November 03, 2020
Teller of truth …
… John Leo: A Journalist's Call to Accountability —Maureen Mullarkey. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In July the Spectator.US ran a polished reflection on the slide of the F-word from curse to commonplace. A latecomer, I thought. Surely someone had detected this slippage long before now. Sure enough, a quick check into Two Steps Ahead turned up “The F-Word Flows Like Ketchup.” In the early Nineties, Leo declared it “all around us now, like air pollution.” His perp-walk of F-addicts included even the The New Yorker, once “a hotbed of decorum and taste” but now “a victim of fashion, a breathless dowager slipping into her first punk miniskirt.”
For election day …
… Column: What Mark Twain said in the Buffalo Express about running for governor | Columnists | buffalonews.com. (Hat tip, Tim Davis.)
“Running for Governor” is barely known in the United States. Samuel Clemens was editor of the Buffalo Express when it was published. It is the story of his run for governor, as Mark Twain, in 1870 — well, fictional run, of course.
The dialogue’s the thing …
… THE BRITISH INTELLIGENCE BOOK CLUB IVY-COMPTON-BURNETT AN INTRODUCTION.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
No one, I think, would describe reading Ivy Compton-Burnett as easy. However, once you have plunged in, you gradually begin to get your bearings, and then the fun begins. For these novels are indeed – for all the seething tensions, vicious power struggles and murderous resentments – comedies. Comedies of the darkest hue – featuring all manner of dastardly deeds, up to and including murder – but comedies none the less. They might even make you laugh (they do me) – more with a shocked gasp than a hearty chuckle, but it’s laughter all the same. The comedy comes partly from the contrast between all that endlessly refined dialogue and the baseness and dark emotions that drive it, and partly from the author’s shameless use of the creakiest plot contrivances. But of course it’s pointless trying to analyse comedy – far better to dive in and read.
Together at last …
… Crime, Politics, and History: An Election Day 2020 Reader | CrimeReads. (Hat tip, Tim Davis.)
Monday, November 02, 2020
Anniversary …
… Unquiet Adulthood: On John Updike's Rabbit, Run | Book Marks. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The book was published 60 years ago today. This is one of the first reviews. Can't say I liked the book very much myself. Which is not to say I wouldn't have given it a good review. Updike writes well and brings "Rabbit" very much to life. My problem was I couldn't stand "Rabbit."
November Reviews at North of Oxford …
… What Are the Chances? By Robert Scotellaro.
… I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood By Tiana Clark.
… Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed The World by Jonathan Bates.
… Lying Like Presidents, New & Selected Poems 2001-2019. Djelloul Marbrook.
… Inculpatory Evidence: The Covid 19 Poems by Eileen R. Tabios.
Something to think on …
Nothing appeals to intellectuals more than the feeling that they represent 'the people'. Nothing, as a rule, is further from the truth.
— Paul Johnson, born on this date in 1928
Sunday, November 01, 2020
Worth noting …
… The shame of the press | Media Myth Alert.
Matt Taibbi, who is perhaps the most searching critic these days of contemporary American media and their failings, noted recently that the “least curious people in the country right now appear to be the credentialed news media, a situation normally unique to tinpot authoritarian societies.”
Reporting is hard. Opining is easy, especially if you already subscribe to a point. Opinion grounded in reporting can actually prove worthwhile.
Our Athens …
…Miscellaneous Musings: Revisiting American Bloomsbury.
In a period of about twenty-five years in the middle of the nineteenth century, the American character was given its special shape and voice …
On the other hand …
… Weimar America's Journalistic Elites | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is time — it is past time — for the non-woke among us to take these people seriously when they say that words that hurt people’s feelings (well, certain people’s feelings) are equivalent to violence. The logical endpoint is to criminalize speech, and beyond that, criminalize the people who think the Bad Thoughts.
Much in what he says …
… American Weimar or American Hapsburg? | Spectator USA.
The bureaucracy in Washington DC — our Vienna, only without the boulevards, salons, musicians and writers — is a depraved and incompetent patronage system. The Hapsburg-style education system encourages its subjects to see themselves as members of national collectives, and also to resent the metropolis for not giving them their hyphenated rights. This too is a recipe for violent breakdown.
As the center gives way, anti-Judaism, which is the racialized inversion of Christian morality, emerges as the only common language of politics. Once, the intellectuals, clergymen and the mob told the Jews to go to Palestine. Now, the children of our semi-educated ruling caste gang up with black nationalists and Islamists tell the Jews to get out of Palestine. This is called progress.
Something to think on …
Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified, but any more extensive state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right.
— Robert Nozick, born on this date in 1938
As it happens, a good question …
… Why should The Strand survive?
As it happened, on my last trip The Strand had none of the books I was looking for. I wasn’t searching for any viciously right-wing tracts. The store had simply decided to go big and long on the ‘improving’ literature that it seeks to push on New Yorkers (Kendi, Coates, DiAngelo and all the rest) and it had done so at the expense of the variety and pluralism it once displayed. For instance near the front entrance on my last visit there stood a considerable quantity of the book (notorious to the readers of this publication) titled In Defense of Looting. Were I not on a guest in the country I should have picked up that whole steaming pile, walked out of the door and dumped them on the kerbside. For aside from believing that the author of that book should be taken at their word, it is quite something for a shop in a town that recently suffered an outbreak of looting to be prominently promoting a book which explains not only why ‘all cops are bastards’ but why the looting of other people’s businesses – businesses sometimes just as old and venerable as The Strand, incidentally – is not just fine but justified. Of course a store should stock a book. But what they push tells you where they stand.
Saturday, October 31, 2020
Hmm …
… Maverick Philosopher: Jack Kerouac: Religious Writer? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I, too, am a Kerouac fan, and think it best in the case to let him speak for himself.
In Satori in Paris he say thar what was needed was "a tale that's told for companionship and to teach something religious, of religious reverence, about real life, in this real world," not the "silence in the yards.” Specifically, as he says in but The Dharma Bums, "the roar of silence itself, which is a great Shhhh reminding you of something you've seemed to have forgotten in the stress of your days since birth."
Sounds pretty religious to me.
Immortal authors …
… All the Famous Writers Who Have Reportedly Come Back as Ghosts | CrimeReads. (Hat tip, Tim Davis.)
Fo and life …
… Zealotry of Guerin: Fog Run II (Alice Guerin), Sonnet #536.
Lovely photo. It reminds of times when I would walk through the woods to grade school and fog had turned the woods into a living mystery.
See also: The Julia and Alice Guerin Suite.
Something to think on …
If poetry does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree, then it better not come at all.
— John Keats, born on this date in 1795
Friday, October 30, 2020
Killer D. A.…
…Meet Larry Krasner, the Rogue Prosecutor Wreaking Havoc in Philadelphia.
Krasner was sworn in in January 2018. In 2018, there were 351 murders; 2019 there were 347 murders; and as of Oct. 28, there have been a whopping 404 murders, for a total of 1,102 murders, an average of 367 murders a year and counting.Oh, and there’s this:
Krasner, a career criminal defense and civil rights attorney, who had sued the Philadelphia Police Department dozens of times over the decades, ran to be Philadelphia’s district attorney and received almost $1.45 million in campaign spending from George Soros in the process.
Sweet …
… An Exercise in Love by Diane di Prima | Poetry Foundation. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.
Diane di Prima died on October 25 at 86.
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
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Sad, but true, and worrisome …
…Murder City - Philadelphia Weekly.
As of Oct. 27, there have been 400 homicides committed in Philadelphia. Contrast that with the 275 homicides committed at this point in 2019, as well as the total number of 356 homicides committed in 2019. One homicide is one too many, and 400 homicides are way too many.
Of cats and philosophy …
… John Gray: 'What can we learn from cats? Don't live in an imagined future' | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Gray believes that humans turned to philosophy principally out of anxiety, looking for some tranquillity in a chaotic and frightening world, telling themselves stories that might provide the illusion of calm. Cats, he suggests, wouldn’t recognise that need because they naturally revert to equilibrium whenever they’re not hungry or threatened. If cats were to give advice, it would be for
I think I learned much from my cat Pandora, whom I found as a kitten and had until her death at 22., though I would be hard-pressed to put it into words.
Hmm …
… Explosives Found in Van in Philadelphia, Curfew Imposed to Quell Riots: Reports.
The vehicle was found at Logan Circle in the Center City neighborhood, WPVI reported. Police told the outlet they recovered propane tanks, torches, and what may have been sticks of dynamite.
Logan Circle, for those unfamiliar with the city, is where the Library, the Cathedral, and the Academy of Natural Sciences are located. Not far away is the Art Museum and the Rodin Museum.
I did a search on The Inquirer's website, but found nothing about this — though it has obviously been on TV. There was this, however: Overnight curfew lifted in Philly as tensions over the police killing of Walter Wallace Jr. continue.
What an informative headline. An overnight curfew would tend to be lifted when night was over. I can't find anything on The Inquirer's site about this, either: US Economy Grew by Record 33.1 Percent in Third Quarter. A similar story is also in the Daily Mail. I'm sure The Inquirer will get around to it eventually.
Educating Patriots | City Journal
… Educating Patriots | City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hirsch’s scholarship rests on the hypothesis, validated by volumes of evidence from cognitive science, that language comprehension—particularly the ability to read with understanding—is not a discrete, transferable “skill,” like riding a bike, that can be learned, practiced, and mastered. Rather, it rests on a common base of knowledge, literary and cultural allusions, and idioms common to a nation’s “speech community.”
What’s really going on in Philly …
… Amid Rioting, Inky Mythologizes Walter Wallace Jr. As 'Family Man' | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial Blog. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
Wallace's lengthy rap sheet includes a 2019 arrest for kicking the windows and door panels of a police vehicle. In 2016, during a robbery, Wallace allegedly grabbed a woman by the neck, and according to the victim, held a gun to her head. In 2013, he violated a protection order filed by his mother by throwing water in her face, punching her in the face, and threatening to shoot her, according to court records shown on air by Blacher and NBC 10.
This is the same guy The Philadelphia Inquirer mythologized today as a "family man" who had "many mental health crises and encounters with police."
Something to think on …
The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.
— Jean Giraudoux, born on this date in 1883
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Hmm …
… The 10 Best Books of All Time Chosen By 125 Famous Authors . (Hat tip, Jon Caroulis.)
What about Moby Dick, Le grand Meaulnes, The Magic Mountain? I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
In case you wondered …
… How to Write a Sci-Fi Rock 'N' Roll Novel in Rhyming Couplets | Literary Hub. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tolkien for these days
… Bruce Charlton's Notions: The wisdom and discernment of Joseph Pearce. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As we watch our culture succumb to the power of Pride, we are witnessing the gollumizing of our brothers and sisters. Demanding the right to self-destructive addiction, they are shriveling into pathetic wrecks of the people they are meant to be, while simultaneously making a wreckage of the society in which they are living the wreckage of their lives.
The heart of the matter …
… Mystery of the Trinity | Peter J. Leithart | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Getting the relation of transcendence and immanence right is a critical issue. Christians agree God is both transcendent and immanent, but the relation can be misconstrued. “False transcendence” sees transcendence and immanence as contraries; God is inaccessible and absolutely unknowable. “False immanence” also views the two as contradictory, claiming that an accessible God cannot be transcendent. A Christian view denies that transcendence and immanence are in tension; rather, they imply each other. God can be present in every time and place only if he transcends the limits of time and space. Thus, God isn’t immanent in spite of being transcendent, but immanent because he’s transcendent.
That last sentence is worth pondering.
How the West was won …
… Blood and thunder in 19th century America.
Elected in 1844, Polk, as argued by author Hampton Sides, was the most effective and least corrupt president in U.S. history, although Polk was entirely lacking in charm, grace, elegance, and wit. With respect to Polk's effectiveness, though, he had a single-minded determination to expand his country's territorial dominance so that the United States stretched from the Atlantic to Pacific Oceans; moreover, the president was convinced that the nation must expand from the already established northern border (with Canada) to as far south and west as possible - going beyond the recently acquiredTexas so that the United States could also claim the territories we now know as New Mexico, Arizona, and California. This would require a remarkable strategy and relentless tactics. Certainly Mexico would not cede its territories without a fight, and the Native Americans would - as officials in Washington saw it - have to be dealt with forcefully.
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
In case you wondered …
… What's the Science Behind Reading? | Book Riot.
With all these fantastic benefits to your health, there’s a whole host of reasons why you need to read that book instead of whatever else you’re supposed to be doing. Reading is also good for the soul, and it is one of the most effective escapist methods when the world gets hard. It also gives you a massive jumping-off point for talking to new and different people. You also have a whole community to engage with when you feel lonely. If none of your friends have read that book yet, you can guarantee someone online has. Reading is a key to other people.
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Our town …
… PHILADELPHIA AND THE NEW "TOLERANCE". (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Three years ago, CSS served 130 families superbly with a staff of ten. Today, despite the city’s punitive actions, 18 foster families have stayed with CSS, which can now afford only one staffer. The burden of the city’s trumpeted concern for equity and tolerance is being borne by real children who need safe and healthy foster homes; good foster parents eager to serve; and an excellent social service ministry blackballed simply because of the religious convictions that inspire and guide it.
In the meantime: National Guard Mobilized in Philadelphia After Night of Riots, Protests.
Since 1952, Philadelphia has been a one-party city. The first of the Democratic mayors — Joseph Clark, Richardson Dilworth — were quite good. So were some of the later ones — Jim Tate, Frank Rizzo (yes, actually), Ed Rendell, and John Street. But single-party rule is bad in the long run. The incumbent is a moron and his predecessor wasn't so hot either.
As time goes by …
… Anecdotal Evidence: 'As Life Runs On, the Road Grows Strange'.
(Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… How Jonathan Swift dealt with growing old: Swift Resolutions.
Reading during Covid …
… Dr. Rieux, Meet Dr. Fauci | Mass Review.
In the summer of 2020, seventeen Drexel University students, many of them international students, Zoomed into my Great Works class to explore Albert Camus’s The Plague. The students found themselves amazed at how eerily this World War Two allegory paralleled our own struggle with Covid-19. Many characters in the novel endure quarantine, exile, and the pain of separation from loved ones, and so did a number of my students.
Kantian sleuthing …
… Kant’s rational analyses of crimes and punishments.
… the indefatigable believer in Kant's intellectual approach to rational analysis leads authorities (and readers) to the inescapable truth.
Indeed …
… People must have the right to mock Muhammad - spiked.
People must have the right to mock whomever they want.
Monday, October 26, 2020
Vocation vs. day job …
… The Clandestine Poet | The Russell Kirk Center. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What a wonderfully accurate self-image, the clandestine poet! The principal job of the Office of the Revisor of Statutes is the compilation of the state’s official statutory code. Creating that code goes hand in hand with keeping quiet about political subjects; one could lose the job for being considered a partisan of any kind. The poet had to pose as tight-lipped civil servant; anything she said about public affairs for all those years had to be veiled, or “in code.”
I doubt if she had to “pose” at all. I would guess she understood perfectly well why, given her job, she had to keep her politics to herself.
Nice to know who the neo-Nazis really are …
… Antifa Mob Attacks Jews for Trump Caravan in New York.
You can always tell a neo-Nazi: They hate Jews. Please don’t tell me these people only hate Jews who like Trump.
Hmm …
… D. H. Lawrence, Arch-Heretic | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“If Lawrence remains a great writer today,” Dyer opines,
that is due in no small part because his enduring freshness and force is found in the travel books, in poems that were scarcely even poems, and in the scatter of his essays. For Lawrence the novel, “the one bright book of life,” was the supreme test; that’s what he staked his life on. But many of his gifts were best displayed elsewhere.
I have heard that Lawrence's plays, which were ignored during his lifetime, have gained a certain popularity in Britain. I think he could be a fine fiction writer, but was best, like John O'Hara, with the novella and short story. "The Rocking Horse Winner" is wonderful. I think Studies in Classical American Literature us a masterpiece. And if Mr. Dyer thinks Lawrence's poems are scarcely poems, what must he think of Whitman, "the great poet [who] has meant so much to me," as Lawrence put it?
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
Here’s an idea …
… Bring back small high schools | Spectator USA. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… the COVID-induced fear of large indoor gatherings may force a salutary breakdown of American schools into more manageable and recognizably human forms which are constructed on a scale in which each kid matters. In the words of political scientist Frank Bryan, author of Real Democracy and one of seven members of the graduating class of 1959 at Newbury High School in Vermont, ‘Keep it small. The basketball isn’t good, but everybody gets to play.’
The grade school I attended from fourth through eighth grade was quite small by today’s standards — my memory is guessing about 20, 25 kids per class — but staffed by the Religious of the Sacred Heart, ladies who were quite cultured. Mother Holmes, my sixth grade teacher, was one of the most important people in my life. I was blessed to reconnect with her via email toward the end of her life. (I should also mention Miss Parkinson, my fourth grade teacher.) These were people who encouraged us kids to make the long trek into the city and visit the Art Museum, the Rodin Museum, the Academy of Natural Sciences. I owe them so much.
Sunday, October 25, 2020
The dumbest generation …
… Did You Know? The Ignorance of College Graduates.
According to a 2013 study, fewer than 5 percent of college students knew the following: that Thomas Jefferson’s home is named “Monticello;” the name of the author of Brave New World; and that Madam Curie discovered radium or that Mozart wrote Don Giovanni. Additionally, compared with students in 1980, far fewer students knew that Paris is the capital of France.
Q&A …
… Ghosts Who Walk Among Us: The Millions Interviews Claire Cronin - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
While working on the book over several years, I also became more attuned to uncanny experiences and weird synchronicities. By the time I finished it, I found I was more of a believer in the mysterious and supernatural than when I began, which was not the outcome I expected.
I think my experience of the spiritual world has always been one of awe, fear, and dread: the “tremendum” in Rudolf Ottos’s definition of the numinous as “mysterium tremendum et fascinans.” It wasn’t ghosts and demons that most frightened me while writing; I was haunted by God.
Appreciation during a time of plague …
… Killing time with Agatha Christie by Anthony Daniels | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A static, changeless world never existed, but after a certain age, at least, many of us like to imagine that it once did, by contrast with our restless, dissatisfied, jangling world in which nothing is solid, predictable, or lasting, and everything beautiful (we think) is in the process of being destroyed. Of course, such a vision will not appeal to those who do not believe that present mirth hath present laughter, and believe instead that what’s to come is sure to be better; when they turn to murder books, they want something grittier, more truthful to reality, and possibly even more sordid. If squalor be the root of crime, give me excess of it.
What a wonderful paragraph. Of course, you have to know your Shakespeare.
Something to think on …
You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.
— John Berryman, born on this date in 1914
Come one, come all …
… Get your free Economics in One Lesson book | Mises Institute. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Saturday, October 24, 2020
RIP …
… Viola Smith, pioneering swing and big band drummer, dies aged 107 | Music | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… Jeffrey Toobin and the m-word: Let’s be honest about what makes this scandal so scandalous.
According to a 2016 survey, 95% of men and 81% of women in America have masturbated. Yet in the same poll, over half of respondents said they felt uncomfortable talking about it.
And maybe the rest were lying. But taking matters in hand in private is a little different from doing same during a zoom call. The good professor needs to find a better way to spend his time than defending this creep.
Not good …
… Detained Chinese Poet 'Under Pressure to Confess' in Yunnan. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
As the Hong Kong protester put it, “Don’t trust China … China is asshole.”
Squirrels ham it up …
… Photographer Captures the Playful Personalities of Curious Red Squirrels. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
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