Saturday, August 12, 2023
Friday, August 11, 2023
Endangered species …
… The Faith of Men of Letters - The Imaginative Conservative.
We are not hectored here by the pedantries and claptrap that easily identify the sham criticism that is written large in the academy and that eats away at the foundations of paideia. Rather, we are reminded of the central function of the man of letters in the modern world and that what he must do first is what he has always done: to “recreate for his age the image of man . . . [and] propagate standards by which other men may test that image, and distinguish the false from the true,” to use Allen Tate’s salient injunction. This injunction, it is sad to say, has been contravened by alien bands of critics—gang movements of the worst character and conduct—that have charged recklessly beyond the frontiers of criticism and have aspired to a decadence and nihilism of the most dangerous extreme. Such has been the arrogance and impiety of these anti-critics that the critical function has been severely abrogated. The results are dismal to an incalculable degree as we survey our literary and cultural scene, to find there the increasing absence of the man of letters. Intellectual and spiritual blight boldly proclaims the proliferation of the hollow men in the realm of what Eliot terms “leadership and letters.”
Coping with the dumbest generation …
… (11) Vivek Ramaswamy Channels Robert Heinlein, and Me.
… we want voters to be reasonably informed, and capable of mature judgment. (At present it looks as if a college education may often actually make them less capable of mature judgment).
Something to think on …
It is through the acceptance of a variety of aethetic and intellectual points of view that a culture is given breadth and density.
— Louise Bogan, born on this date in 1897
RIP …
… Robbie Robertson: presiding genius of the New Americana - Engelsberg ideas. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
‘It was like nothing we had ever heard,’ says a friend. After The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band and Cream’s Disraeli Gears, both in 1967, this was something unironic, unhippy-dippy and alarmingly serious.
Words, words, words …
…. Irregular gleanings and a last shot at Modern English usage | OUPblog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thursday, August 10, 2023
A perennial form
… A Scrappy Defense of the Novel - by John Wilson - Prufrock. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
The wildly heterogeneous nature of these books should serve as a reminder that accounts of “the novel,” even by gifted commentators, tend to be very partial—a cautionary note that’s underlined when I add that, early on, I read many novels in condensed form in the Reader’s Digest omnibus volumes we regularly received at home.
Something to think on …
There are no stronger fetters than those we forge for ourselves.
— Barry Unsworth, born on this date in 1930
Wednesday, August 09, 2023
Interesting discussion …
… Teilhard de Chardin, racism and eugenics: An exchange | America Magazine.
Thanks to my Jesuit mentor, Edward Gannon, S.J., I’ve read The Phenomenon of Man and The Mass on the World. (This would have been in the very early ‘60s, when the books first became well known.) I also discussed them with him. I never got the impression that Teilhard was in any way a racist or eugenicist. I’m sure Father Gannon didn’t either. Teilhard was a mystic. By the way, his name was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Prose poem …
My friend Katherine wrote this. I asked her for permission to post it here. I think it’s wonderful.
Ode to Glassware
by Katherine Miller
Right now your hands may be clutching one, your fingers may be clasped
around a stem, your palm may be damp with condensation from its iceyk
contents, you may have set it down on the table next to you or you may
be staring at a pile of them from last night's party. Glassware.
The wild world of endless choices, each with specific purpose, each
infinitesimally refined within its broader purpose.
Wanna have a beer? You can choose a frosty mug, a tall pilsner glass,
a pint (powerful choice), or a loud gaudy and very heavy beer stein of
the Oktoberfest variety that is made for swinging and singing. If
you’re in college or at a family reunion beer is always served in Solo
cups. Period.
Tom Standage wrote a book, The History of the World in 6 Glasses,
which chronicles world history through the development of beer, wine,
spirits, tea, coffee, and soda. Think of all the glassware! Our
choices are endless: some with memories, some passing as art, most
offering style and all enhancing the beverage: a thin rimmed crystal
wine glass with a perfectly weighted stem that feels sexy in your
fingertips, a coffee mug that your kid made in ceramics glass, a
stunningly crisp martini glass, a gold rimmed goblet, a tiny green
cut-glass juice glass, a hand blown artsy set of rocks glasses that
you bought on vacation and the perfect Coca-Cola shaped soda glass
styled with ice cubes and a straw (these glasses can also serve as ice
cream soda vessels when filled with Crystal Club Birch Beer and a
scoop of Bryers’ vanilla).
Holiday glassware - definitely another Ode - is not to be relegated.
The Christmas glasses that come out once a year and ceremoniously host
the season's delight: eggnog, with fresh nutmeg grated to order. We
need you on that wall!
We live in a time of wellness thinking. We read about optimizing our
time, prioritizing our personal happiness, cleansing our intestinal
tracts, getting rid of clutter, eating seeds, pomegranate and arugula,
and finding joy in washing the dishes.
We make choices to optimize our every experience. My choice of
glassware is a choice for joy.
Open the cupboard containing coffee mugs or review the troops you have
hung on display hooks and there is meaning in each option: shape,
style, faded sayings, cups and saucers, metal thermals with lids,
gifts, school spirit impulse buys, glass mugs for fancy coffee drinks,
and the dominant breed in the ever expanding coffee mug genus, “where
the hell did this come from?”
So, to live a good life, as Socrates and I believe in living, smelling
the coffee brewing, shaking up an icy Cosmo after work, or pulling the
iced tea pitcher from the fridge on a summer afternoon begets the next
important choice. Inhale and ponder…leaded crystal or the Flinstone’s
jelly jar?
Well worth noting …
… Cowabunga, Hunga-Tonga | Power Line.
The media doesn’t know squat about science. And doesn’t want to bother learning.
Always rewarding …
… Musings on Flannery O’Connor and vision. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Flannery O’Connor is a strange, fascinating writer. Strange, because she has a weird way of seeing and depicting things, and I often find her elusive. Fascinating, as she has an imposing personality and an uncompromising, pitiless quality.
Remembering …
… A New York Priest & a Front Porch Historian: Thomas J. Shelley, In Memoriam ~ The Imaginative Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Still active even in his mid-eighties, by the time of his death, he had largely finished his final book, a treatment of his own doctoral dissertation director, the legendary John Tracy Ellis. It was released earlier this summer by Catholic University of America Press. He may have been an avuncular character, but there was nothing of the layabout in him.
Something to think on …
Poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of transferance.
— Philip Larkin, born on this date in 1922
Tuesday, August 08, 2023
RIP …
…Acclaimed director William Friedkin dies, but The Exorcist lives on - Catholic Herald. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Hmm …
… Dear Pulitzer Prizes: It’s Time to Recognize Literature by Noncitizens.
"We have a duty to ask what constitutes the literature of a nation."
Try checking the list of those who have won the Prix Goncourt. (True, the winner in 2021 is from Senegal, but Mohamed Mbougar Sarr writes in French, which the official language of Senegal.)
Something to think on …
Postmodernism entices us with the siren call of liberation and creativity, but it may be an invitation to intellectual and moral suicide.
— Gertrude Himmelfarb, born on this date in 1922
Monday, August 07, 2023
Mist interesting …
… 10 Biblical Names of God & Their Meaning Today.
I happen to that “I am Who Am” is one of the most profound phrases ever. I don’t believe it coukd have been made up.
This is wonderful …
… Morgan Wallen and Jason Aldean teamed up to set one record that left the woke mob fuming - Renewed Right.
I don’t think the Woke crowd realizes how many people hold them in contempt.
Hmm …
… Paul Davis On Crime: Federal Court Imposes Death Sentence For The Murderer In The Tree Of Life Synagogue Shooting.
I think it’s wrong to kill people, but this seems a worthy exception
Something to think on …
… Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love
— Rabindranath Tagore, who died on this date in 1942
Sunday, August 06, 2023
Something to think on …
Speak about Christ only when you are asked. But live so that people ask about Christ!
— Paul Claudel, born on this date in 1868
Saturday, August 05, 2023
Something to think on …
As poetry is the highest speech of man, it can not only accept and contain, but in the end express best everything in the world, or in himself, that he discovers. It will absorb and transmute, as it always has done, and glorify, all that we can know. This has always been, and always will be, poetry's office.
— Conrad Aiken, boen on this date in 1889
Sounds very interesting …
… A broadly catholic panorama for seriously Catholic readers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Unfortunately, thanks to ripening cataracts, I’ll have to wait until it’s available on Kindle.
Friday, August 04, 2023
Tracking the decline …
… Fired Christian biology professor files religious discrimination complaint | The College Fix.
If these kids know everything already, why are they in school?
Good question …
… Who Am I? - by William F. Vallicella.
How can you take legitimate pride in what is merely an element of your facticity (in Sartre's Being and Nothingness sense of 'facticity.') You had to be born somewhere, to some pair of parents or other, of some race or other, of some sex, and so on. You're stuck with that. If you need to feel pride, feel pride in what you have done with your facticity, with what you have made of yourself, with the free accomplishments of yourself as a person, as an individual.
Tracking the decline …
… ‘Zero educational value’: Princeton courses promote prostitution, ‘hate’ of Israel.
A DePaul University philosophy professor said these classes will provide “zero education value,” when asked to comment on them, based on the course description and reading list.
“It just gives a lot of third rate professors a platform from which to indoctrinate students into left-wing ideologies,” Professor Jason Hill told The Fix via email. “They are a ruse for anti-Americanism, anti-individualism, and anti-capitalism.”
Philly’s despicable DA …
… Calling out Larry Krasner - by Ralph Cipriano - Big Trial.
How about you explain the crime rate, Larry. You’re either lying or transcendently incompetent.
In case you wondered …
… Why Read John Milton? - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Milt.on wasn’t my ideal author nor I his ideal reader. Regardless, ever since found him deep within the recesses of the Norton Anthology of British Literature, the bible-paper pages of which would absent-mindedly flip through during class, I’ve been singularly drawn to Milton, this man from a period so foreign to my own, whose faith is so alien to me. Since first encountering Milton, I’ve felt my relationship to the poet has somewhat mirrored that old story from Genesis, of Jacob wrestling an angel only to exit the encounter with a new name, except I keep reading Paradise Lost in hopes of discovering what that name might be.
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
Thursday, August 03, 2023
God bless her …
… 87-year-old Maine woman fights off home invader, feeds him - TheBlaze.
I turn 82 in October. I always carry a walking stick. I really know how to use it. Don’t mess with me,
Pretty neat shots …
… Best of the iPhone photography awards 2023 – in pictures. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden)
Something to think on …
For me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit.
— Ernie Pyle, born on this date in 1900
Wednesday, August 02, 2023
Authentic journalism …
… My Family Was Hunted by Nazis. But I Was Fired For ‘Defending Hitler.’.
What kind of journalist would I be if fear made me shy away from discussing my experience of viciousness masquerading as social justice? What would it say about my devotion to injustice if I remain silent when it is visited upon my family? This is not an abstract problem. I am now jobless, living in downtown Seattle, which is costly, and unable to help support my family, including my baby daughter. We can no longer afford our apartment, but neither can we afford the fee to break our lease.
A sound analysis …
… An Epistemic Crisis? - by Arnold Kling - In My Tribe.
The Blue team claims to be the good guys. But if you have to lie, then you are not the good guys. You cannot get on your high horse about “threats to democracy” and “misinformation” without facing up to the reputational damage caused by suppressing the lab leak hypothesis, the Hunter Biden laptop story, and the impact of race-based admissions to Harvard.
If journalists (I am one) would not simply read other journalist, but would go to science sites and medical sites they would have a better perspective. I used to be a medical editor and a science editor. I also worked for quite a few years in the field of arms control and disarmament. Within two weeks I was pretty sure Covid came out of the lab in Wuhan. I was also suspicoius of the vaccines, which were put together in an alarmingly short time. It usually between five and seven years for a vaccine to be approved. The mRNA vaccines target the immune system. My immune system has been bery bery good to me. I don’ t want to mess with it. The possibility, noted fairly early, of cardiomyopathy was especially to me because I happen to be in the top 1 percent of those likely to die of a heart attack. So I didn’t get vaxxed. I also didn’t get Covid. Thanks to wife being in and out of the hospital and rehabs at the time I was tested continually. Always negative. (People have that no self-respecting microbe would have anything to do with me. Which is fine by me.) But we must be skeptical about what today’s journalist report.
Sound advice …
… Super superconductors? Don't believe the hype - Engelsberg ideas. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The competitive enthusiasm to make these claims is understandable. Ambient temperature and pressure superconductivity would be a multi-trillion dollar breakthrough
Hear, hear …
… (11) Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone.
… the left is always promoting youth culture, notwithstanding that its leaders, from Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden to the likes of Noam Chomsky, are mostly so old. Leftist politics, as noted above, is something that the manipulative old sell to the gullible young. Hence leftists’ nonstop efforts to produce more gullible young people.
Something to think on …
There is a 'sanctity' involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
— James Baldwin, born on this date in 1924
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