open fifth

2012-01-02T17:29:00.000-05:00

A stunningly lovely song, with perfect harmony vocals by David Crosby, singing below the melody which is performed by his son (James Raymond).

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

2011-02-14T16:46:00.006-05:00

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I can see clearly now...

2009-08-27T15:32:00.009-04:00

solvitur ambulando

2009-05-06T11:43:00.002-04:00

One key to happiness: walk more.

David Hockney's recent paintings

2009-02-22T14:11:00.003-05:00

Snow

2009-02-05T17:54:00.002-05:00

February 3, 1852

from THIS DATE, FROM HENRY DAVID THOREAU'S JOURNAL by Henry David Thoreau

The landscape covered with snow, seen by moonlight from these Cliffs, encased in snowy armor two feet thick, gleaming in the moon and of spotless white. Who can believe that this is the habitable globe? The scenery is wholly arctic. Fair Haven Pond is a Baffin’s Bay. Man must have ascertained the limits of the winter before he ventured to withstand it and not migrate with the birds. No cultivated field, no house, no candle. All is as dreary as the shores of the Frozen Ocean. I can tell where there is wood and where open land for many miles in the horizon by the darkness of the former and whiteness of the latter. The trees, especially the young oaks covered with leaves, stand out distinctly in this bright light from contrast with the snow. It looks as if the snow and ice of the arctic world, traveling like a glacier, had crept down southward and overwhelmed and buried New England. And see if a man can think his summer thoughts now. But the evening star is preparing to set, and I will return. Floundering through snow, sometimes up to my middle.

Simple Gifts

2009-01-20T21:46:00.000-05:00

a new beginning - a renewal of hope

2009-01-20T12:56:00.002-05:00

'a big project coming up'

2009-01-05T16:22:00.012-05:00

Great dialogue from an interview between art critic Robert Hughes & artist David Hockney:

RH: Well there you go David you've got your work cut out once again.
DH: I've got a big project coming up ... and I'm looking forward to it.
RH: Yeah you've always got a big project coming up.
DH: Yeah I have...
((pause))
RH: It's called the world mate.
DH: Yes!
((they laugh together))

--o--

Existence

2009-01-05T12:04:00.021-05:00

January 5, 1857

"A man asked me the other night whether such and such persons were not as happy as anybody, being conscious, as I perceived, of much unhappiness himself and not aspiring to much more than an animal content. “Why!” said I, speaking to his condition, “the stones are happy, Concord River is happy, and I am happy too. When I took up a fragment of a walnut-shell this morning, I saw by its very grain and composition, its form and color, etc., that it was made for happiness. The most brutish and inanimate objects that are made suggest an everlasting and thorough satisfaction; they are the homes of content. Wood, earth, mould, etc., exist for joy. Do you think that Concord River would have continued to flow these millions of years by Clamshell Hill and round Hunt’s Island, if it had not been happy, - if it had been miserable in its channel, tired of existence, and cursing its maker and the hour that is sprang?”

In this journal entry by Henry Thoreau, he states something that approaches a theological insight -- [existence 'pours out' of love] -- as well as (not surprisingly) a poetical insight. When people look at Henry's portrait, they often see a dour looking man. I think that he was continually in love with the world, and was constantly amazed by its beauty.

As a 'secular contemplative', Henry's writings in his journals remind me deeply of Thomas Merton's journals. In one journal entry, Merton reports watching the sun rise, and suddenly being in awe of sheer existence. And this of course resonates with Ludwig Wittgenstein's remark --

"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. . . . it is this that is mystical." --Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6;44.

--o--

silver crystal

2009-01-04T18:16:00.002-05:00

4 January 2009

Beautiful sunny winter day. The upward reaching branches on the bare trees were glazed in clear crystal ice, which shone in the sun like gleaming silver.

***

Lawrence Weschler & David Hockney, on how we see

2009-01-03T17:42:00.016-05:00

This is a wonderful book, consisting largely of conversations between the writer Lawrence Weschler & the artist David Hockney. Through these dialogues they jointly explore aspects of the phenomenology of perception, and the ways in which various media (painting, drawing, photography), as well as improvements in optical technology (the camera obscura, and the camera lucida) literally change our sense of what looks 'normal' or 'real.'

Thus this book (with beautiful photos of Hockney's drawings, paintings, collages, etc.) is not simply a contribution to art criticism, but also to art history, and to the broader study of the technical, historical and cultural factors that shape representation. In this manner, this book contributes to some rather deep discussions in the realm of 'media ecologies,' as developed by Walter Ong.

If all the above makes the book seem like a dusty tome, forgive me. The book is - via its conversational structure - a delight and pleasure to read. The reader is made to feel present in the artist's Hollywood Hills studio, listening in on an amazing co-exploration.

'be faithful to your genius'

2008-12-20T11:52:00.002-05:00

"Say the thing with which you labor. It is a waste of time for the writer to use his talents merely. Be faithful to your genius. Write in the strain that interests you most. Consult not the popular taste."

Henry d. Thoreau

r.e.m. celebrates Obama's win, in concert in Santiago, Chile

2008-11-05T11:17:00.002-05:00

it's a new day...

2008-11-05T11:11:00.003-05:00

Speak, O muse, of the American Voice...

2008-10-31T20:27:00.017-04:00

Studs Terkel, R.I.P.

His view of how to do an interview --

“It isn’t an inquisition, it’s an exploration, usually an exploration into the past,” he once said, explaining his approach. “So I think the gentlest question is the best one, and the gentlest is, ‘And what happened then?"
P. S. Here's a wonderful tribute to Studs Terkel on NPR, with loads of clips of his interviews, including chats with Louis Armstrong, Bob Dylan, & Pete Seeger.

Sarah the Socialist?

2008-10-28T21:24:00.003-04:00

No comment -- from The New Yorker --

"For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist."

just being...

2008-10-25T17:00:00.005-04:00

Wild Geese

By Mary Oliver --

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

***

our furry companions

2008-10-17T13:08:00.013-04:00

Our furry companions have a deeper hold on our hearts than we ever realize, until we lose them. They quietly become part of the warp and weft of our daily worlds, til it is hard to say what life was like without them.

Though our pets cannot speak (or perhaps because they cannot speak) their quiet companionship, their incarnate love, is all the more precious.

The beauty of relationship is the momentary dropping away of 'you' & 'I', and the transitory delight of 'us-here-now'.

A monk, back in the middle ages, wrote this in tribute to his furry companion. I'll borrow it here, for my buddy --

Pangur ban --

"I and Pangur Ban my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light."

   -- Anon., (8th century)

This poem is attributed to a monk at the monastery of Carinthia. He was working on a copy of St. Paul's epistles, and wrote this in the midst of that copying work. The image of this monk, in the early middle ages, doing his writing and copying, and taking a break to record on paper his joy derived from his companion, is an image I want to hold on to, as I sit and "hunt words."

The New England Journal of Medicine - McCain's health plan is risky and will harm citizens

2008-10-16T12:13:00.009-04:00

Using the ancient medical adage -- 'First, do no harm,' The New England Journal of Medicine today points out numerous ways that the McCain health care plan will harm citizens' ability to have good health care at a reasonable cost.

"The choice facing health care professionals, like all Americans, is basic: Who deserves to be trusted with the stewardship of America's health care system? The McCain proposal violates the bedrock principle that major health policy reforms should first do no harm. It would risk the viability of employer-sponsored insurance and the welfare of chronically ill Americans in pell-mell pursuit of a radical vision of consumer-driven health care. Senator McCain's plan does not demonstrate the kind of judgment needed in a potential commander in chief of our health care system."

Deer in headlights

2008-10-15T22:55:00.002-04:00

When all you have left is hatred & anger...

2008-10-15T11:49:00.005-04:00

What is there left to say about a political party that does stuff like this?

"Sacramento County Republican leaders Tuesday took down offensive material on their official party Web site that sought to link Sen. Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden and encouraged people to "Waterboard Barack Obama" – material that offended even state GOP leaders.....".

Buckley leaves the National Review-- the right-wing purge continues

2008-10-14T18:50:00.009-04:00

The always interesting Christopher Buckley is the latest member of the Republican establishment to be 'purged' from the ever-more-loony right-wing. It's like a scene out of one of his own books.

"I seem to have picked an apt title for my Daily Beast column, or blog, or whatever it’s called: “What Fresh Hell.” My last posting (if that’s what it’s called) in which I endorsed Obama, has brought about a very heaping helping of fresh hell. In fact, I think it could accurately be called a tsunami.

The mail (as we used to call it in pre-cyber times) at the Beast has been running I’d say at about 7-to-1 in favor. This would seem to indicate that you (the Beast reader) are largely pro-Obama.

As for the mail flooding into National Review Online—that’s been running about, oh, 700-to-1 against. In fact, the only thing the Right can’t quite decide is whether I should be boiled in oil or just put up against the wall and shot. Lethal injection would be too painless.

I had gone out of my way in my Beast endorsement to say that I was not doing it in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column, because of the experience of my colleague, the lovely Kathleen Parker. Kathleen had written in NRO that she felt Sarah Palin was an embarrassment. (Hardly an alarmist view.) This brought 12,000 livid emails, among them a real charmer suggesting that Kathleen’s mother ought to have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a dumpster. I didn’t want to put NR in an awkward position.

Since my Obama endorsement, Kathleen and I have become BFFs and now trade incoming hate-mails. No one has yet suggested my dear old Mum should have aborted me, but it’s pretty darned angry out there in Right Wing Land. One editor at National Review—a friend of 30 years—emailed me that he thought my opinions “cretinous.” One thoughtful correspondent, who feels that I have “betrayed”—the b-word has been much used in all this—my father and the conservative movement generally, said he plans to devote the rest of his life to getting people to cancel their subscriptions to National Review. But there was one bright spot: To those who wrote me to demand, “Cancel my subscription,” I was able to quote the title of my father’s last book, a delicious compendium of his NR “Notes and Asides”: Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription...."

"To me it is like Halloween,... You get energized by eating all that candy at night but then you feel sick the next day."

2008-10-14T17:38:00.009-04:00

From the Huffington Post --

"Matthew Dowd, a prominent political consultant and chief strategist for George W. Bush's reelection campaign eviscerated John McCain on Tuesday for his choice of Sarah Palin as vice president.

Dowd proclaimed that, in his heart of hearts, McCain knew he put the country at risk with his VP choice and that he would "have to live" with that fact for the rest of his career.

"They didn't let John McCain pick the person he wanted to pick as VP," Dowd declared during the Time Warner Summit panel. "When Sarah Palin got picked instead of Joe Lieberman, which I fundamentally believed would have given John McCain the best opportunity in this race... as soon as he picked Palin, that whole ready versus not ready argument was not credible."

Saying that Palin was a "net negative" on the ticket, he went on: "[McCain] knows, in his gut, that he put somebody unqualified on the ballot. He knows that in his gut, and when this race is over that is something he will have to live with... He put somebody unqualified on that ballot and he put the country at risk, he knows that."

The other panelists were surprised, a bit, by Dowd's bluntness. Not least because McCain's well-known campaign motto is "country first."

"No, I don't agree," said Mark McKinnon, a former McCain aide, after chiding Dowd for claiming particular insight into McCain's soul.

"Well," responded Dowd, "that's even more disturbing than my thought" -- the implication being that it would be truly frightening if McCain didn't know how bad Palin truly was.

Time columnist Joe Klein summed up what seemed to be the panel's Palin consensus.

"It was a gimmick," he said of the pick. "It was one of the most disastrous decisions I have seen in a presidential campaign since I've begun covering them."

Later in the session, Hilary Rosen, the Huffington Post's Washington editor at large, noted that the Palin pick had been successful in energizing the Republican base -- and McCain himself. But Dowd wasn't biting.

"To me it is like Halloween," he said. "You get energized by eating all that candy at night but then you feel sick the next day.""

Today's music lession: call and response

2008-10-11T16:10:00.001-04:00

Music is medicine, vol. xxxxviii

2008-10-11T15:34:00.001-04:00

Candidate plays with matches -- gets burned

2008-10-10T22:14:00.003-04:00

'Teach us how to care, and yet not care.' -- t. s. eliot

2008-10-10T17:17:00.001-04:00

Dove bars for stenographers

2008-10-10T14:28:00.010-04:00

Well put, Rick.

---

Rick Taylor Says:
October 9th, 2008 at 9:21 am
From Margaret Carlson’s book on the Bush Gore election:

“That makes food on the plane crucial. Like the army, the press travels on its stomach and in this regard, Gore was no match for Bush. Gore wanted the snaks to be environmentally and nutritionally correct, but somehow granola bars ended up giving way to Fruit Roll-Ups and the sandwiches came wrapped and looked long past their sell-by date. On a lucky day, someone would remember to buy supermarket doughnuts, By Contrast, a typical day of food on Air Bush . . . consisted of five meals with access to a sixth, if you count grazing at a cocktail buffet. Breakfast one was French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and fruit, followed by a midmorning breakfast of spinach-and-tomato omelets. Lunch one was grilled chicken and beef with mashed potatoes, and lunch two was mushrooms stuffed with crab, shrimp kebabs, and pizza. There were Dove Bars and designer water on demand, and a bathroom stocked like Martha Stewar’s guest suite. Dinner at seven (traveling with Bush was like being a retiree in Boca Raton, the early bird special followed by bed at nine) featured lobster ravioli, grilled vegetables, and fruit cobbler with ice cream.”

Yup. We’ve endured seven years of hell, needless war, the acceptance of torture, huge deficits, and a coming economic debacle because the press didn’t get it’s dove bars."

Brutally funny parody

2008-10-10T13:27:00.035-04:00

CBS reporter Dean Reynolds wrote a brutally funny parody the other day (at least, I think it was intended as such), casting himself as a foolish, self-centered, egotistical reporter (think 'Ted Baxter') who is blind to the larger issues in the presidential campaign, but can only see the matters that affect his own comfort and pleasure.

The parody is a bit heavy handed at points, especially when he attempts to make connections between how the Obama campaign's failure to coddle him could end up hurting the campaign (hmmm, how might that be? Journalistic pay-back?).

"Maybe none of this means much. Maybe a front-running campaign like Obama's that is focused solely on victory doesn't have the time to do the mundane things like print up schedules or attend to the needs of reporters.

But in politics, everything that goes around comes around."

As I say, that last bit fudges up the otherwise subtle humor of his parody. Still, in the midst of a campaign wherein the Republican candidates are whipping up anger and hatred toward Obama & the press, it is nice to see that Mr. Reynolds has kept his sense of humor intact. Maybe for a followup piece, Dean can write a story about the reporter who gets transferred from Obama's 'messy' plane, to a McCain rally.

Biden makes the point perfectly

2008-10-10T12:24:00.003-04:00

Garrison Keillor on the political race

2008-10-08T12:07:00.005-04:00

"It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas.

Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself -- one stink bomb after another, and now Gov. Palin.

She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for 40 grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?" And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics.

Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash. Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots."

Pouring fuel on fires of hate - the last refuge of scoundrels

2008-10-07T11:20:00.006-04:00

From the Washington Post --

...Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
McCain's swoon is largely out of his control, the result of an economic collapse that ignited new fears Monday when the Dow Jones industrial average closed below 10,000 for the first time in four years. That's why his lead in Florida polls, which once reached as high as 15 points, has turned into a three-point deficit.
But the campaign has reacted with recriminations (the St. Petersburg Times reported that the Florida Republican Party chairman, after questioning Palin's aptitude, was told that he couldn't fly on her plane) and now Palin's rage.
....
The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)
"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.
.....
At other times, she had troubles of her own, as when she spoke over the weekend of "our neighboring country of Afghanistan" or when she got choked up at the Clearwater rally, saying, "Some of your signs just make me wanna cry," without explaining which ones or why.

What a coincidence -- Sarah's speech makes me want to cry.

wisdom

2008-10-06T15:13:00.011-04:00

"Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless."

T. S. Eliot, East Coker, The Four Quartets.

An ambassador for Jazz music

2008-10-03T14:24:00.016-04:00

We had a delightful day in Central Wisc. yesterday. Wynton Marsalis, -- trumpet player, composer, band-leader extraordinaire -- was here on campus to teach some master classes on Jazz and improvisation. He and the Lincoln Center Jazz orchestra also played two brilliant concerts in town.

He is an exceptional educator, constantly telling very effective stories and firing out wonderful metaphors and analogies. He shared his wisdom with wit, fire and passion.

My personal favorite of the concert: Ellington's 'Single petal of a rose.' It was a tender sweet duet between a bass clarinet and piano, and it broke every heart in the hall.

P.S. You can get a small taste of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra by checking out Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio.

I'm convinced - give her the launch codes.

2008-09-26T23:15:00.004-04:00

See also Orange Crate Art on this car-accident of an interview.

Edvard Munch on our little exercise in democracy

2008-09-25T11:29:00.002-04:00

a summer treat

2008-08-21T16:28:00.004-04:00

a little treat for a summer day - bill evans & monica zetterlund...

sublime

2008-07-18T11:59:00.001-04:00

Happy birthday, Henry

2008-07-12T12:44:00.017-04:00

Today is Henry Thoreau's birthday. Rather than remark on his 'proto-environmental' writing, I want to briefly note that he was a wonderful literary stylist, with a sharp ear for the epigram. To wit:

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

... and one of my favorites ...

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

The other thing to note about Henry's writing and thought is that he was an early proponent of what we might call 'radical localism' - the notion that one can live truly and deeply by working to know one's locale. Wines are said to have properties imparted to them by the particular features of their home; Henry knew that - just like wine - we are permeated by the qualities of our own terroir. In this way he was a cousin to the Chesterton who wrote the napoleon of notting hill. In a sense he was also a cousin to contemporary 'psycho-geographers' such as Will Self.

The photo above is a dozen pencils made in Thoreau's pencil factory. Don't they look like some sticks of dynamite? Of course, in his hand they were.

Sam Phillips, providing 'music from above...'

2008-07-11T14:55:00.006-04:00

A summer treat -- more great new music from Sam Phillips.

Also, check out her 'desktop' concert from NPR.

* 'Music from above' is a reference to another great new song by Sam Phillips, 'Sister Rosetta goes before us.'

'Strange things are happening everyday
I hear the music up above my head
Though the sight of my heart has left me again
I hear music up above.'

rhythm & melody - universal language

2008-06-29T13:41:00.006-04:00

From today's New York Times --

"When Armstrong arrived in the Congo as part of a 1960 tour through Africa, drummers and dancers paraded him through the streets on a throne, a scene captured by a photograph in the exhibition. As late as 1971, when Ellington came to Moscow, an American diplomat wrote in his official report that crowds greeted the Duke as something akin to “a Second Coming.” One young Russian yelled, “We’ve been waiting for you for centuries!”
The stars were happy to play their parts in this pageant for hearts and minds, but not as puppets. After his Middle East tour Gillespie said with pride that it had been “powerfully effective against Red propaganda.” But when the State Department tried to brief him beforehand on how to answer questions about American race relations, he said: “I’ve got 300 years of briefing. I know what they’ve done to us, and I’m not going to make any excuses.”
Armstrong canceled a 1957 trip to Moscow after President Dwight D. Eisenhower refused to send federal troops to Little Rock, Ark., to enforce school-integration laws. “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell,” he said. “It’s getting so bad, a colored man hasn’t got any country.”
Administration officials feared that this broadside, especially from someone so genial as “Ambassador Satchmo,” would trigger a diplomatic disaster. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Attorney General Herbert Brownell that the situation in Arkansas was “ruining our foreign policy.” Two weeks later, facing pressure from many quarters, Eisenhower sent the National Guard to Arkansas. Armstrong praised the move and agreed to go on a concert tour of South America."

Time is an arrow

2008-03-28T09:00:00.003-04:00

From Henry Thoreau's journal -- March 28, 1859 --

Time will soon destroy the works of famous painters and sculptors, but the Indian arrowhead will balk his efforts and Eternity will have to come to his aid. They are not fossil bones, but, as it were, fossil thoughts, forever reminding me of the mind that shaped them. I would fain know that I am treading in the tracks of human game, - that I am on the trail of mind, - and these little reminders never fail to set me right. When I see these signs I know that the subtle spirits that made them are not far off, into whatever form transmuted. What if you do plow and hoe amid them, and swear that not one stone shall be left upon another? They are only the less like to break in that case. When you turn up one layer you bury another so much the more securely. They are at peace with rust. This arrow-headed character promises to outlast all others. The larger pestles and axes may, perchance, grow scarce and be broken, but the arrowhead shall, perhaps, never cease to wing its way through the ages to eternity. It was originally winged for but a short flight, but it still, to my mind’s eye, wings its way through the ages, bearing a message from the hand that shot it. Myriads of arrow-points lie sleeping in the skin of the revolving earth, while meteors revolve in space. The footprint, the mind-print of the oldest men.

Walker Percy & The Moviegoer

2008-01-24T13:54:00.000-05:00

This post is more of a promissory note, a reminder to myself to write more about the genius of Walker Percy's first novel, The Moviegoer.

First off, do not be deceived by the title; it is artful misdirection. The narrator is a keen observer of everyday life.

In a brilliant sequence near the start of the novel, the narrator is walking down the street, just behind the actor William Holden, (who is evidently in New Orleans for a film shoot). As he strolls in the wake of Holden, the narrator observes the ripple effect of bystanders noticing that they're in the midst of a 'celebrity', and he further notes ways that their subtle reactions are reflexively constitutive of Holden's celebrity.

The novel just gets better from there, with reflections on 'the search' that every wakeful person is (or should be?) engaged in...

"The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair."

-- The Moviegoer, pg. 13.

A stunning contemporary choral piece

2008-01-12T11:29:00.000-05:00

I was driving home from work in the dark early evening of winter in upstate New York, with the radio on, when I heard this hauntingly beautiful choral piece. I arrived home, but had to sit in the car, engine off, radio on, to hear the last few chords of the song fading in the dusk. Thank you, Eric Whitacre, for that composition, and thank you, Polyphony, for a reverent performance of the piece.

Henry Thoreau has a blog

2008-01-10T15:04:00.000-05:00

Henry Thoreau has a blog. Well, actually he (or some kind soul) is simply posting entries from his wonderful journals.

Today's entry --

Jan. 10, 1854 -

What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, as the mountain chain differs in appearance, looking back the next day, from the aspect it wore when you were at its base, or generally, as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance.

Music for today's warm sunny weather

2008-01-09T12:57:00.001-05:00

For today's beautiful warm weather - very unusual for early January in the northeast U.S. - here's a little music from Brazil, by Caetano Veloso.

Veloso wrote this song while in an underground prison, jailed for political reasons in Brazil. He was in his cell, and saw a magazine photo of the earth ('Terra'), taken from outer space. From his underground cell, his imagination soared outside, and he wrote this love song to earth.

A rough translation of the first stanza of the song might be as follows -

When I found myself in prison, in a jail's cell,
That was when I first saw these photos
Where you are showed as a whole,
tough there, you weren't nude,
But yes covered with clouds.

Earth, Earth,
Even for the furthest,
The most erratic traveler
Who would ever forget about you?

As the song proceeds, the audience starts to sing along, in tender hushed voices, as if this were a communal prayer -- perhaps it is.

p.s. I originally linked to a 'youtube' clip, but it has disappeared, so instead I've linked to a great concert of his on the NPR music website. Enjoy.

Beautiful vocal harmonies - Kitka

2008-01-09T11:23:00.000-05:00

This song is called 'Otche Nash', and is from the Kitka cd titled Wintersongs.
A number of the songs on this cd feature the interesting harmonic intervals associated with Eastern European choral music.

a hopeful sign

2008-01-04T19:50:00.000-05:00

Every now and then, one reads something that gives real hope. If it is true that dependence on the automobile is one of the serious diseases of modern life, this might be the beginning of the cure.
In Europe, the notion is spreading that streets are for people, not just autos. As a result, cities are starting to design streets in ways that train drivers to share the road.

Walking & urban exploration

2007-12-31T15:50:00.000-05:00

Will Self has a new book out (titled, Psychogeography), and it looks quite interesting. It is largely a book about unusual walks. Not walks in unusual places, but walks in places so ordinary that they have become invisible to us. For example, he flew in to JFK airport, and decided to walk to NYC. He did the same thing in Chicago; flying in to O'Hare, he walked down to the loop (approx. 18 miles). Doing these sorts of walks, he sees places we normally don't see, or see only briefly through a car window.

In the movie 'Repo Man', one of the characters says --

"The more you drive, the less intelligent you become."

Will Self's book is a sketch of how to re-educate one's self.

Winter

2007-12-31T15:01:00.000-05:00

From the journals of Henry David Thoreau --

December 30, 1853

In winter even man is to a slight extent dormant, just as some animals are but partially awake, though not commonly classed with those that hibernate. The summer circulations are to some extent stopped; the range of his afternoon walk is somewhat narrower; he is more or less confined to the highway and wood-path; the weather oftener shuts him up in his burrow; he begins to feel the access of dormancy and to assume the spherical form of the marmot; the nights are longest; he is often satisfied if he only gets out to the post-office in the course of the day. The arctic voyagers are obliged to invent and willfully engage in active amusements to keep themselves awake and alive. Most men do not now extend their walks beyond the village street. Even our experience is something like wintering in the pack.

Oliver Sacks on 'Fresh Air' RE: music

2007-10-17T22:10:00.000-04:00

A great interview with Oliver Sacks, RE: the mind and music.

'the sleep of reason'

2007-09-17T12:02:00.000-04:00

From the New York Times today --

September 17, 2007

Music Scholar Barred From U.S., but No One Will Tell Her Why

By NINA BERNSTEIN

Nalini Ghuman, an up-and-coming musicologist and expert on the British composer Edward Elgar, was stopped at the San Francisco airport in August last year and, without explanation, told that she was no longer allowed to enter the United States.

Her case has become a cause célèbre among musicologists and the subject of a protest campaign by the American Musicological Society and by academic leaders like Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., where Ms. Ghuman was to have participated last month in the Bard Music Festival, showcasing Elgar’s music.

But the door has remained closed to Ms. Ghuman, an assistant professor at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who is British and who had lived, studied and worked in this country for 10 years before her abrupt exclusion.

The mystery of her case shows how difficult, if not impossible, it is to defend against such a decision once the secretive government process has been set in motion.

After a year of letters and inquiries, Ms. Ghuman and her Mills College lawyer have been unable to find out why her residency visa was suddenly revoked, or whether she was on some security watch list. Nor does she know whether her application for a new visa, pending since last October, is being stymied by the shadow of the same unspecified problem or mistake.

In a tearful telephone interview from her parents’ home in western Wales, Ms. Ghuman, 34, an Oxford graduate who earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, said she felt like a character in Kafka.

“I don’t know why it’s happened, what I’m accused of,” she said. “There’s no opportunity to defend myself. One is just completely powerless."....

***

The blessing of choral music

2007-09-07T16:20:00.000-04:00

Choral music, voices joined together in harmony & rhythm, is one of the most profoundly beautiful art forms. It is lovely to listen to (medicinal & healing, in many ways). It is even more wonderful to participate in. When it works, it feels as if the music is carrying one.

Here is a little bit from an interview with the chairperson of the UCLA Music dept., Roger Bourland, who also composes choral music. The whole interview is well worth reading.

VW: What is your view of the place of choirs and choral music in our society?

RB: In my opinion, choral music that speaks directly to as well as entertains and uplifts its listeners is the most successful. Music that is overly difficult and self-indulgent misses its mask. Choral music is unique in its ability to speak to the human spirit, and composers have an almost sacred responsibility to write for the human voice with great care and sensitivity. Great choral singing is the closest thing to the music of heaven that this planet has to offer.

[Pick of the week -- Stile Antico -- a great 'early music' vocal group].

Watch-dog journalists at work

2007-09-04T15:19:00.000-04:00

Stand back - dangerously hard-hitting journalistic inquiries ahead:

Couric: "In some way, does this hopefully in your view placate critics of the war on Capitol
Hill?"
Bush: "You know I don't know, Katie, it's a good question. I would certainly hope so. In other words, if we're able to redeploy at some point time, I would hope so."

Where does one begin to dig into Ms. Couric's question?

She asks her question from within the perspective of Bush, rather than from the perspective of those attempting some accounting of a horribly mistaken war. As such she acts less like a 'tribune of the people', and more like an apologist for power. This is not journalism. This is not news. Bad puppy - no treat!

The love of music

2007-08-24T20:30:00.000-04:00

From the Amazon.com description --

"Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people—from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome, who are hypermusical from birth; from people with “amusia,” to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds—for everything but music."

This looks to be quite a good book.

music and the mind

2007-08-18T15:01:00.000-04:00

Here is a nice interview with Oliver Sacks, talking about the centrality of music to our minds and lives. He has a book coming out this Autumn on the subject.

Bobby McFerrin is a wizard

2007-07-12T17:28:00.000-04:00

There is nothing quite as lovely, sacred, and sweet as people singing together in harmony. It is especially sacred and sweet when the people singing together are strangers in a concert hall, being conducted by the person they came to listen to. Bobby McFerrin, in this video clip, demonstrates why music, and harmony, are such amazing things.

Kurt Vonnegut said his own epitaph should be -- "The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music."

Amen brother, amen.

'a voice crying in the wilderness...'

2007-07-11T15:40:00.001-04:00

This is the most amazing interview I have ever seen.
Mr. Moore takes this opportunity to ask the interviewer some very important questions.

'welcome back my friends to the show that never ends...'

2007-07-11T15:11:00.000-04:00

"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush reopened the White House briefing room on Wednesday after an 11-month makeover, providing a sleek new high-tech stage for the theater and spin of presidential politics....".

A nice new shiny room, where people who pretend to ask questions talk with people who pretend to answer them.

"Aside from needing a helmet, flak jacket & armed guards, it really is getting better here"

2007-05-31T12:48:00.000-04:00

"The night before, 30 other soldiers crowded around [the soldier] with questions for the senator. He wrote them all down. At the top of his note card was the question he got from nearly every one of his fellow soldiers:
"When are we going to get out of here?""

"You put a gun in my hand And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther When the fast bullets fly."
-- B. Dylan

"I don't want to draw conclusions, I'll leave that to yourself
Maybe you're still walking, maybe you're still talking
But every time I hear the news that old feeling comes back on
We're neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the damn fools keep yelling to push on."

-- Pete Seeger

U. S. health care system very ill

2007-05-18T20:14:00.000-04:00

Another report confirming something that those of us who have worked in hospitals and clinics knew already, alas. The U.S. health care system is very ill.

"According to the report, total U.S. health care spending by government, employers, insurance and individuals averaged $6,102 per person in 2004 -- more than the average spent on individuals in every other country after adjusting for the local cost of living. The report's authors said that U.S. residents with below-average incomes were more likely than their counterparts in other countries to not have received needed care because of cost. In addition, the report found that Britain had the best system in "quality care, access, efficiency, equity and healthy lives" and that it spends less per person than the U.S. or Canada."

Perhaps it is time for us to realize what every other advanced industrial country in the world has figured out -- health care is not a consumer good, or a luxury -- it is instead a social resource. My health care can be the best and most expensive in the world, but if I walk down the street and encounter a person with TB, my health care will have to absorb that 'cost'. Thus my health is related to yours, and vice versa. It benefits my health for those in my community to also be healthy. How many social ills are generated by this foolish mentality that health care should be considered a consumer good?

many #42's this Sunday

2007-04-13T14:49:00.000-04:00

Strange, strange world. Just a few days after the Imus mayhem, we'll see the bright side of the distance our society has traveled to improve race relations.

This Sunday, numerous baseball players will be wearing #42 (a number that has officially been retired in honor of Jackie Robinson), in tribute to a man who broke the colour barrier in baseball, and helped our society grow up a little.

If Imus's verbal act was a manifestation of our negative impulses, this chorus of #42's on Sunday will be a silent & eloquent proclamation of our aspirations as a culture.

Garry Wills on Bush's 'faith based' government

2006-11-04T13:33:00.000-05:00

Garry Wills has (another) excellent discussion of politics and religion, in the current online version of the New York Review of Books. Here's a taste --

"There is a particular danger with a war that God commands. What if God should lose? That is unthinkable to the evangelicals. They cannot accept the idea of second-guessing God, and he was the one who led them into war. Thus, in 2006, when two thirds of the American people told pollsters that the war in Iraq was a mistake, the third of those still standing behind it were mainly evangelicals (who make up about one third of the population). It was a faith-based certitude."

Luckily for us in NY, he'll be coming to Albany to give a few talks in the near future.

R.I.P. Jane Jacobs: patron saint of the city

2006-04-26T13:22:00.000-04:00

Jane Jacobs died on tuesday of this week, at the age of 89. She devoted herself to saving what is good about vibrant, alive neighborhoods. She had a naturalist's eye, and her classic work, The death and life of great american cities, is still essential reading for understanding why cities work, when they do.

Stephen Johnson, in his book Emergence, as well as on his blog, talks quite eloquently about her influence on his thinking -- not just the content of his thinking, but the mind-set -- the compulsion to look for the interesting connections.

Eric Alterman had this to say about her --

"Ms. Jacobs was a one-woman argument for the role of the individual in history; the ability of someone using her brain, her heart, and her pen to say “we’re not going to take it” and to create and lead a creative community to wage that fight collectively. Solidarity without sentimentality can be a rare and beautiful thing and if you read her life’s story, perhaps you will be inspired by her example. I sure was."

In her memory, take a walk in your neighborhood, and think of the ways it works as a human ecology. How do the interconnections of your neighborhood feed the different parts of the whole? How alive is your neighborhood? What could help it be more alive?

RFK on the death of MLK

2006-04-11T10:39:00.001-04:00

When might we see his like again?

"My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly, to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. "

--RFK

Garry Wills reviews Taylor Branch on M. L. King

2006-03-23T12:51:00.000-05:00

In the current New York Review of Books, Garry Wills has a beautifully written, and powerfully insightful review of Taylor Branch's latest vol. on M. L. King. Near the end of the review, Wills highlights some of the ways our present experiences echo those of the late 1960's.

Wills also notes the numerous ways that King was mocked, villified, & attacked, on his long road to Memphis and his own Calvary. Then he asks this vital question --

"How did King survive all this? He would not have, if he had ever stooped to returning hate for hate with Hoover. That would have tripped him up without fail. King said, "I refuse to hate," and repeatedly told his allies that love was their only real weapon. That is the profound lesson in the power of nonviolence. Hate and violence are self-destructive. Whatever his other faults, fidelity to nonviolence was King's one towering virtue. He frequently expressed disappointment with others—with Johnson, with Hoover, with many of his own followers or putative friends, with the white power structure. But he did not poison himself with enmity. Even his depressions were self-punitive rather than accusatory. That is the astounding record of the man. He lived with constant threats to his life, subject to vicious racist calumnies, ridiculed by former allies, stalked by Hoover's agents, denounced by high government officials —yet he never lashed back with anger or violence...."

"Though Branch admires King's greatness, this is no great man history. It is, rather, a great men and women history. And the greatest were often the least. Branch knows that King could have done nothing if poor and excluded blacks had not had the courage to shake off their servitude. The ones who joined the boycotts, the marches, the registration drives, did it at risk to their jobs, their property, their lives. Lowndes County, with a majority of black residents, did not have a single black voter when the SCLC went in to encourage people to take up their freedom. The outnumbered whites had kept them under by fear and reprisals. It took great pride in themselves for the blacks to defy generations of repression. I remember what a farmer marching to Montgomery told one of the SCLC people. Asked whether he thought the marchers would be able to win in Montgomery, he said "We won when we started."

What does Spring sound like?

2006-03-05T16:33:00.000-05:00

What does Spring sound like? Like this.

(Photo: the sirens of Wrigley -- Ron Santo & Pat Hughes, the Voice of the Chicago Cubs).

Is it bad manners to tell the truth?

2006-02-08T12:41:00.000-05:00

Tucker Carlson apparently didn't like the way Rev. Lowery spoke at Mrs. King's funeral recently.
The Reverend, speaking of Mrs. King, said -

"She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar," Lowery said. "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew, and we knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."

Carlson said that those comments 'seemed like bad manners'.

So Rev. Lowery had to remind Tucker of some basic points.

CARLSON: It’s not hard to hear that [your remarks] and not draw the obvious conclusion that that’s an attack on President Bush, which of course is your right to do, and I think completely fair. But again, it seemed very uncomfortable to say something like that in a funeral with the president right there. It seemed like bad manners.

LOWERY: Well, I don’t think so. I certainly didn’t intend for it to be bad manners. I did intend for it to — to call attention to the fact that Mrs. King spoke truth to power. And here was an opportunity to demonstrate how she spoke truth to power about this war and about all wars.

And I think that, in the context of the faith, out of which the movement grows, we have always opposed war. We’ve always fought poverty. And we base our — our argument on — on the faith, on the fact that Jesus taught us. He identified with the poor. “I was hungry; you didn’t feed me. I was naked; you didn’t clothe me. I was in prison; you didn’t see about me.” He talked about war. He talked about he who lives by the sword.

So I’m comfortable with the fact that I was reflecting on Mrs. King’s tenacity against war, her determination to witness against war and to speak truth to power.

wordless bonds of affection

2006-01-22T14:27:00.000-05:00

A friend's cat died recently, and makes me reflect on the wordless bonds of affection between me and my buddy. She can't speak with me, but there are many ways that we communicate with each other. Her simple quiet presence is its own reminder not to get lost in one's own thoughts about the past or the future.

People have, for quite a long time, treasured the companionship of these little characters. Indeed, in the margins of a manuscript he was copying roughly 1200 years ago, one Irish monk jotted down a poem in tribute to his cat.

So, in honor of my friend's cat, and mine, this tribute, written by that anonymous 9th Century Irish monk --

Pangur Ban

I and Pangur Ban, my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men,
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see,
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
Oh how glad is Pangur then!
Oh, what gladness do I prove,
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban -- my cat -- and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

Garry Wills on President Carter, Politics, & Religion

2006-01-21T14:01:00.000-05:00

Garry Wills continues to amaze me. Trained as a Classicist, he is quite skilled at breaking open texts for the benefit of those of us who don't read Greek, and whose Latin consists of rusty recalled bits of the Catholic Mass.

In his current essay in the New York Review of Books, Wills makes an argument for a morally infused politics that is not reactionary or regressive.

Here is Wills, talking about President Carter's new book --

"He proves that a devout Christian does not need to be a fundamentalist or fanatic, any more than a patriotic American has to be punative, narrow, and self-righteous. He defends the separation of church and state because he sees with nuanced precision the interactions of faith, morality, politics and pragmatism. That is a combination that once was not rare, but is becoming more so. We need a voice from the not-so-distant past, and this quiet voice strikes just the right notes."

modes of scientific communication; modes of scientific community

2006-01-06T17:25:00.000-05:00

Fascinating article in Nature, wherein the utility, vs. possible dangers of scientists' blogs are discussed. One of the interesting tensions in this piece is the one between those who are aware of, (or have faith in) the ways that social networks can act as a filter and sort out the good from the bad, and other folks. The key quotation in the piece, for me at least, is this:

"'In many areas of biology there's roughly a 1 in 3 chance one of your reviewers just won't like your point of view,'... If that were to happen to a Biology Direct paper, it would still be published. But anyone could read the naysayer's comment."

This article is a nice example of the growing pains science is going through, as we learn that the community (communities?) of science have emergent, self-organizing features, just like other social communities.

happy birthday, Umberto

2006-01-05T11:43:00.000-05:00

Today is Umberto Eco's birthday. As a scholar, he is known for his work on semiotics, and the aesthetics of the middle ages. Of course, he is much more widely known as a novelist and essayist. To celebrate his birthday, here is one nice morsel from his masterpiece, The Name of the Rose.

"For what I saw at the abbey then (and will now recount) caused me to think that often inquisitors create heretics. And not only in the sense that they imagine heretics where these do not exist, but also that inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven to share in it, in their hatred for the judges. Truly, a circle conceived by the Devil. God preserve us."
-- The Name of the Rose, First Day, Sext

vocal harmony, & harmony as such

2006-01-01T16:15:00.000-05:00

"But harmony of earth is Heaven-made,
Heaven-making, is promise and is prayer,
A little song to keep us unafraid,
An earthly music magnified in air."

--Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir.

This Holiday season I was fortunate enough to get to travel to my hometown, & sing with some of the dearest and most talented folks I know (Voce, a small choral group at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, in Milwaukee, WI).

There are few things as enjoyable as singing choral music with others. You have the physical sensation of sending your voice forth, but if you hear yourself, you really only do so as a single thread wound round with others, blending, making a sound quite beyond the sum of its parts.

It is said that in Iceland, everyone belongs to two or three choirs. Imagine friends' voices, intertwined breaths rising like steam in the dark icy air.
It makes sense that in Iceland, and Eastern Europe, choral music is so, so good.
(Nota bene: Some of the sweetest holiday music I've heard recently is by Kitka, on their cd 'Wintersongs.')

Having the chance to see dear friends, and to sing with them, in the mid-point of Winter, is something more than a treat. It is the sort of thing that can only be captured by a word like 'blessing', or 'grace' -- a gift whose measure is beyond one's reasonable ability to earn.

on hope

2005-12-19T13:39:00.000-05:00

Hope is a thread between us in the present, and the 'hoped-for' in the future. This thread is a good thing, even if the 'hoped-for' is delayed, deferred, or denied.

Sometimes, even when confronted with hard evidence that the hoped-for is unlikely, we hold on to that thread. Is this rational? If not, is that bad?

Perhaps this thread, trailing off into the future, connects us not just to the hoped-for, but to other things as well. All of our threads, braids of braids, converge on the future. Converging, they must touch other threads. Maybe the tug I feel is another's hope growing. Maybe it's someone's hope fading. Maybe, the hoped-for is a way that we learn to feel the movements in the thread.

c. w. mills - intellectual craftsmanship

2005-12-17T16:30:00.000-05:00

If C. W. Mills was alive today he would certainly have a blog, and it would be a very public journal of his work-in-progress. His classic essay 'on intellectual craftsmanship' is still very much worth reading.

the moon at the window

2005-12-17T14:54:00.000-05:00

The thief left it behind:
the moon
at my window.