Deer encountered on our night walk. 15 Nov 2024.

 

'on exactitude in science' - J. Borges

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science

#measurement

#precision 

**** 

20 Oct 2024 - Autumn colors

 

Autumn, 15 Oct 2024.

 

Autumn colors - 12 Oct 2024

 

Guilty.

 

PFC Alexander Halkoski

Alexander Halkoski died pushing the Nazis out of Northern France, Aug. 7, 1944.

battle of Mortain, France

Donald Trump called people like Alexander "suckers & losers."

Donald Trump can go f*ck himself.

***

'Where did Chris go?' People as patterns....

 In the prior post, I have that really thought-provoking quotation from Manny Schegloff re: trying to focus on the patterns of interaction as opposed to the individuals in the interaction.  It took me a little while to remember this quotation from pages 4-5 of the 10th anniversary edition of Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, by Robert Pirsig.  There is a nice affinity - I think - between this quotation and Manny's point.  

In this quotation, Pirsig is talking about his son Chris, who was murdered in San Francisco.  Then Pirsig asks himself, once his son died, where did he go? 

“Where did Chris go? He had bought an airplane ticket that morning. He had a bank account, drawers full of clothes, and shelves full of books. He was a real, live person, occupying time and space on this planet, and now suddenly where was he gone to? Did he go up the stack at the crematorium? Was he in the little box of bones they handed back? Was he strumming a harp of gold on some overhead cloud? None of these answers made any sense.

It had to be asked: What was it I was so attached to? Is it just something in the imagination? When you have done time in a mental hospital, that is never a trivial question. If he wasn't just imaginary, then where did he go? Do real things just disappear like that? If they do, then the conservation laws of physics are in trouble. But if we stay with the laws of physics, then the Chris that disappeared was unreal. Round and round and round. He used to run off like that just to make me mad. Sooner or later he would always appear, but where would he appear now? After all, really, where did he go?

The loops eventually stopped at the realization that before it could be asked "Where did he go?" it must be asked "What is the 'he' that is gone?" There is an old cultural habit of thinking of people as primarily something material, as flesh and blood. As long as this idea held, there was no solution. The oxides of Chris's flesh and blood did, of course, go up the stack at the crematorium. But they weren't Chris.

What had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an object but a pattern, and that although the pattern included the flesh and blood of Chris, that was not all there was to it. The pattern was larger than Chris and myself, and related us in ways that neither of us understood completely and neither of us was in complete control of.

Now Chris's body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. But the larger pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the center of it, and that was what caused all the heartache. The pattern was looking for something to attach to and couldn’t find anything.”

***  

 In the prior post about Manny Schegloff, he quotes a brilliant book that is well worth reading.  I'll need to say more about this book down the road, I think.  

***  

 

 

Emanuel (Manny) Schegloff passed away yesterday.

 Yesterday a giant in the field of conversation analysis passed away.  Manny Schegloff, along with Harvey Sacks and Gail Jefferson, worked to create and develop the field of CA, from an enterprise located at UCLA & UC-Irvine, to an international and interdisciplinary research perspective.   There is too much to say about the breath and depth of his intellect, so instead for now I'll just offer some links to his work. 

https://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/schegloff/

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=I0RXKHYAAAAJ&hl=en

P. S.   I need to add here a rather brilliant segment from an interview with Manny, which really captures that depth and breadth of his genius.  From Prevignano, C., & Thibault, P. J. (Eds.). (2003). Discussing conversation analysis: The work of Emanuel A. Schegloff. John Benjamins Publishing, pg. 38. 

*** 

P. P. S.   Manny's comments, above, are now reminding me of a very poignant preface to an anniversary edition of Zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance by Robert Pirsig.   I'll find the quotation and add it here later on.   

John Rogers walks in and around London...

 John Rogers walks on YouTube

These walks and videos by John Rogers are a true delight.  A community of fans around the world checks in with him every Sunday evening to see where he's walked and what he has discovered.  

the memex method.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/ 

 As I have revived this blog from its ten year nap (!) maybe I'll now make use of it in a way similar to this.  

***

Attention.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. --Simone Weil, in a letter

reviving the occasional blog... re: 'know thyself.'

 RE: the injunction to 'know thyself.' 

"Knowing thyself does not mean knowing something very private, it means knowing oneself as a member of a community, knowing, that is, the things that obtain for one, which obtain for persons commonly. Heraclitus' fragments and Socrates certainly had such an intention; and they did not involve knowing something about one which was distinctive, or special, or private.

The moral order provides one with the things not only which properly affect, control one's behavior, but with the materials in terms of which one can come to know oneself, and in doing so, know anyone else, and in doing so, be accessible to others. Thence, the hopes that may be attached to the phrase, or the program, 'know thyself.'" 

----- (From Harvey Sacks' lectures, 1992:221).  

#Sacks

Dec 14, 2014, #3

Dec 14, 2014, #3

Dec. 14, 2014, #2

Dec. 14, 2014, #2

Dec. 14, 2014, #1.

Dec 14, 2014, #1.   

The Cultivation of Christmas Trees by T. S. Eliot.

The Cultivation of Christmas Trees  by T. S. Eliot.

There are several attitudes towards Christmas, 

Some of which we may disregard: 

The social, the torpid, the patently commercial, 

The rowdy (the pubs being open till midnight), 

And the childish – which is not that of the child 

For whom the candle is a star, and the gilded angel 

Spreading its wings at the summit of the tree 

Is not only a decoration, but an angel.

The child wonders at the Christmas Tree: 

Let him continue in the spirit of wonder 

At the Feast as an event not accepted as a pretext; 

So that the glittering rapture, the amazement 

Of the first-remembered Christmas Tree, 

So that the surprises, delight in new possessions 

(Each one with its peculiar and exciting smell), 

The expectation of the goose or turkey 

And the expected awe on its appearance,

So that the reverence and the gaiety 

May not be forgotten in later experience, 

In the bored habituation, the fatigue, the tedium, 

The awareness of death, the consciousness of failure, 

Or in the piety of the convert 

Which may be tainted with a self-conceit 

Displeasing to God and disrespectful to children 

(And here I remember also with gratitude 

St.Lucy, her carol, and her crown of fire):

So that before the end, the eightieth Christmas 

(By “eightieth” meaning whichever is last) 

The accumulated memories of annual emotion 

May be concentrated into a great joy 

Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion 

When fear came upon every soul: 

Because the beginning shall remind us of the end 

And the first coming of the second coming.

**** 

Dead man sings -- William Gibson

Dead man sings

David Byrne on the relationship of content and form in the arts

http://davidbyrne.com/content-dictates-form

Stanley Fish on language & meaning

Stanley Fish on language & meaning: 

"Before the words slide into their slots, they are just discrete items, pointing everywhere and nowhere. Once the words are nested in the places ‘ordained’ for them — ‘ordained’ is a wonderful word that points to the inexorable logic of syntactic structures — they are tied by ligatures of relationships to one another. They are subjects or objects or actions or descriptives or indications of manner, and as such they combine into... a meaning that one can contemplate, admire, reject, or refine.”

Stanley Fish, How to write a sentence (and how to read one), pg. 2 (Harper Press, 2011).