A Time to Gather Stones Together
(Ecclesiastes 3:5)

Readings for Yom Kippur:

• "Stones," from Jewish Heritage Online Magazine
  
• "The Foundation Stone: The Center of Creation," from Jewish Heritage Online Magazine
  
• Many Dimensions, a novel by Charles Williams

Evariste Galois and 
The Rock That Changed Things

An article in the current New York Review of Books (dated Sept. 26) on Ursula K. Le Guin prompted me to search the Web this evening for information on a short story of hers I remembered liking.  I found the following in the journal of mathematician Peter Berman:

• A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula K. Le Guin, 1994:
  A book of short stories. Good, entertaining. I especially liked "The Rock That Changed Things.'' This story is set in a highly stratified society, one split between elite and enslaved populations. In this community, the most important art form is a type of mosaic made from rocks, whose patterns are read and interpreted by scholars from the elite group. The main character is a slave woman who discovers new patterns in the mosaics. The story is slightly over-the-top but elegant all the same.

I agree that the story is elegant (from a mathematician, a high compliment), so searched Berman's pages further, finding this:

A table of parallels

between The French Mathematician (a novel about Galois) and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. 

My own version of the Philosopher's Stone (the phrase used instead of "Sorcerer's Stone" in the British editions of Harry Potter) appears in my profile picture at top left; see also the picture of Plato's diamond figure in my main math website.  The mathematics of finite (or "Galois") fields plays a role in the underlying theory of this figure's hidden symmetries.  Since the perception of color plays a large role in the Le Guin story and since my version of Plato's diamond is obtained by coloring Plato's version, this particular "rock that changes things" might, I hope, inspire Berman to extend his table to include Le Guin's tale as well.

Even the mosaic theme is appropriate, this being the holiest of the Mosaic holy days.

Dr. Berman, G'mar Chatimah Tova.

God Is Her Co-Pilot

On the soundtrack album of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,"  Clint Eastwood advised us to "eliminate the negative."  As a sequel to the extremely negative note below, written at midnight on the night of September 13-14, 2002, the following is my best attempt, on this very dark night of the soul, to eliminate the negative.  

Some of us are old enough to recall that the beloved Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, died on September 14, 1982 -- exactly 20 years ago --  from injuries she suffered in a car accident the day before.  The following photo recalls happier days of driving the Riviera, in the 1955 film "To Catch a Thief."

This note's title, combined with the photo, suggests that I have a mystical vision of Cary Grant as God.  I can think of worse people to play God.  The best I can do tonight to eliminate the negative is transcribe  the remarks I made in a (paper) journal entry in 1997.  (By the way, I realize that ordinary people are just as important as movie stars, but the latter are more suitable for public discussion.)

In memoriam: Robert Mitchum and James Stewart 

Eternal Triangles (July 3, 1997)

Every civilization tells its own story about the relations between heaven and earth.  Some of the best stories -- those of Lao Tsu, the Greek poets, and Buddha -- are now almost 26 centuries old.  Some even older stories -- those told by the Jews -- have enabled our current civilization, led by Charlton Heston as God, to outlast Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.  However, recent claims of Absolute Truth for these stories (The Bible Code) are disturbing.  Perhaps it is time -- at least for Robert Mitchum and James Stewart -- to meet a kinder, gentler God.

I propose Cary Grant -- specifically, as seen in "The Grass is Greener" (1960) with Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, and in "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) with Stewart and Katharine Hepburn.  If we imagine Grant as God, then these films reveal a very old, always entertaining, and sometimes enlightening version of the Trinity:  God and Man as rivals for the Holy Spirit -- as played by Deborah, by Kate, and (in heaven) by Grace.  Such a spirit, at work in the real world, may have influenced two of this century's better Bibles:

1. 
   
   
   

   The Oxford Book of English Prose (1925, reprinted throught 1958), and
   
   
2. 
   
   
   

   "LIFE -- The 60th Anniversary Issue" (October 1996)

September 14:
Triumph of the Cross
and Death of
Princess Grace of Monaco

September 13 was the feast day of St. John Chrysostom. 

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"St. John Chrysostom more than once in his writings makes allusion to the adoration of the cross; one citation will suffice: 'Kings removing their diadems take up the cross, the symbol of their Saviour's death; on the purple, the cross; in their prayers, the cross; on their armour, the cross; on the holy table, the cross; throughout the universe, the cross. The cross shines brighter than the sun.'"

Today, September 14, is the feast day of the Triumph of

The Cross:

"The primitive form of the cross seems to have been that of the so-called 'gamma' cross (crux gammata), better known to Orientalists and students of prehistoric archæology by its Sanskrit name, swastika." 

-- The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IV
Copyright © 1908
by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 1999
by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat.
Remy Lafort, Censor
Imprimatur.
+John M. Farley,
Archbishop of New York

Later writers might choose to omit the above sentence, published in 1908, but, as Pilate said, "Quod scripsi, scripsi."  For modern times, this quotation is perhaps best translated into German, the language of modern Pilates:

Was ich geschrieben habe,
habe ich geschrieben. 

It might well be accompanied by another translation from the same website, which renders the "Ora et labora" of St. Benedict as

Bete und arbeite!

and, indeed, by a classic quotation from twentieth-century German Christian thought:

ARBEIT MACHT FREI. 

Gate of Dachau

Meditation for Friday the 13th

The 1946 British film below (released as "Stairway to Heaven" in the U.S.) is one of my favorites.  I saw it as a child. Since costar Kim Hunter died this week (on 9/11), and since today is Friday the 13th, the following material seems relevant.

The doctor in "A Matter of Life and Death" addresses a heavenly court on behalf of his patient, R.A.F pilot David Niven:

In the film, David Niven is saved by mistake from a fated death and his doctor must argue to a heavenly court that he be allowed to live.

In a similar situation, I would want Dr. Alan McGlashan, a real-life psychiatrist, on my side.  For an excerpt from one of my favorite books, McGlashan's The Savage and Beautiful Country,

click here.

As Walker Percy has observed (see my Sept. 7 note, "The Boys from Uruguay"), a characteristic activity of human beings is what Percy called "symbol-mongering."  In honor of today's anniversary of the births of two R.A.F. fighter pilots,

Sir Peter Guy Wykeham-Barnes (b. 1915) and author

Roald Dahl (b. 1916),

here is one of the better symbols of the past century:

The circle is of course a universal symbol, and can be made to mean just about whatever one wants it to mean.  In keeping with Clint Eastwood's advice, in the soundtrack album for "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," to "accentuate the positive," here are some positive observations on a circle from the poet (and perhaps saint) Dante, who died on the night of September 13-14:

In the sun, Dante and Beatrice find themselves surrounded by a circle of souls famous for their wisdom on earth. They appear as splendid lights and precious jewels who dance and sing as they lovingly welcome two more into their company. Their love for God is kindled even more and grows as they find more individuals to love. Among the blessed souls are St. Thomas Aquinas and one of his intellectual “enemies”, Siger of Brabant, a brilliant philosopher at the University of Paris, some of whose teachings were condemned as heretical. Conflicts and divisions on earth are now forgotten and absorbed into a communal love song and dance “whose sweetness and harmony are unknown on earth and whose joy becomes one with eternity.”

Dante compares their dance and song to God’s bride on earth, the Church, when she answers the morning bells to rise from bed and “woo with matins song her Bridegroom’s love.” Some critics consider this passage the most “spiritually erotic” of all the one hundred cantos of the Comedy. It is the ending of Canto 10, verses 139-148.

-- Fr. James J. Collins, "The Spiritual Journey with Dante V," Priestly People October 1997

The above material on Dante is from the Servants of the Paraclete website.

For more on the Paraclete, see

The Left Hand of God.

See also the illustration in the note below.

ART WARS   September 12, 2002

John Frankenheimer's film "The Train" --

Und was fur ein Bild des Christentums 
ist dabei herausgekommen?

In memory of Kim Hunter,
who died on 9/11, 2002:

A transcription of a journal note from 1996...

"Bush once joked that he picked Sununu because his surname rhymed with "deep doo-doo." -- Dan Goodgame, Time magazine, May 21, 1990	For a time, Sununu wrote stories and poems for children. Concord lawyer Ned Helms recalls that when his wife fell ill, Sununu gave her a book of poems that he said he enjoyed, by Sylvia Plath.
Do do that voodoo that you do so well. One summer when I played in a small stock company, after the last curtain had come down we would clear the stage and then put on records of Viennese waltzes. We'd dance wildly, joyfully... -- Madeleine L'Engle, Victoria Magazine, November 1995	We're arranging to have the children baptized on Sunday afternoon, March 25, by the way. Although I honestly dislike, or rather, scorn the rector. I told you about his ghastly H-bomb sermon, didn't I, where he said this was the happy prospect of the Second Coming and how lucky we Christians were compared to the stupid pacifists and humanists and "educated pagans" who feared being incinerated, etc., etc. I have not been to church since. I felt it was a sin to support such insanity even by my presence. -- Sylvia Plath, March 12, 1962. Amen.
[The bathroom door opens and Stella comes out. Blanche continues talking to Mitch.] Oh! Have you finished? Wait -- I'll turn on the radio. [She turns the knobs on the radio and it begins to play "Wien, Wien, nur du allein." Blanche waltzes to the music with romantic gestures. Mitch is delighted and moves in awkward imitation like a dancing bear. Stanley stalks fiercely through the portieres into the bedroom. He crosses to the small white radio and snatches it off the table. With a shouted oath, he tosses the instrument out the window.]	Colby's nickname among some of his subordinates at CIA is said to be "The Bookkeeper."
Alabama plans female chain gangs Friday, April 26, 1996, story: MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- The Montgomery prison system is preparing to snap shackles around the ankles of women prisoners, creating female chain gangs in the state that revived male leg-iron crews last year.	I will try to finish my novel and a second book of poems by Christmas. I think I'll be a pretty good novelist, very funny -- my stuff makes me laugh and laugh, and if I can laugh now it must be hellishly funny stuff. -- Sylvia Plath, October 12, 1962
	An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew, A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. 1962 --- Everybody's doin' a brand new dance now; I know you're gonna like it if you give it a chance now... So come on, c'mon, and do the locomotion with me!

Double Cross

From the New York Times obituaries of 9/11, 2002:

"Henri Rol-Tanguy, one of France's most decorated Resistance heroes, who organized the popular uprising against the German occupation of Paris... died Sunday [Sept. 8, 2002]. He was 94."

Sunday was V-day in Malta.  See my log24.net notes below:

The Maltese Cross,
The Maltese V,
A Birthday Song, and
The Boys from Uruguay.

For another sort of victory, see my log24.net note of August 24,

Cruciatus in Crucem.

The Cruciatus note describes what might be called the "Red" cross, or Croix de Guerre.  The Maltese Cross note describes a cross more properly associated with intelligence than with courage.  (Both qualities are, of course, needed... courage and a brain, as well as a heart.)  More from the Rol-Tanguy obituary:

"From 1964 to 1987, he was a member of the central committee of the French Communist Party... Mr. Rol-Tanguy received most of France's medals of valor, including the Croix de Guerre and the Grand-Croix de la Légion de l'Honneur."

The following quotations are not without relevance.

Ernest Hemingway:

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.

Rick Blaine:

We'll always have Paris.

Here's looking at you, kid.

Doonesbury, morning of
9/11, 2001:

The Sound of Hanging Rock

On this date, director Robert Wise was born in Winchester, Indiana.   Credits include

"Born to Kill,"
"I Want to Live," and
"The Sound of Music." 

"Director Robert Wise suggests that we all share a collective dark side." -- Robert Weston

According to various Web sources, 

• On this date in 1964, Rod Stewart records his first song, "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl."
  

  Good morning little schoolgirl
  Good morning little schoolgirl
  Can I come home with
  Can I come home with you
  Tell your mama and your papa
  I once was a schoolboy too

  
  
• On this date in 1965, The Byrds begin recording "Turn! Turn! Turn!" 
  

  A time of war, a time of peace
  A time of love, a time of hate
  A time you may embrace
  A time to refrain from embracing

  
  
• 
  

  On this date in 1966, Neal Diamond sings his first chart song, "Cherry Cherry."

  Tell your mamma, girl, I can't stay long
  We got things we gotta catch up on
  Mmmm, you know
  You know what I'm sayin'

With the exception of The Byrds, the above music seems to reflect the spirit of Pan, a god discussed in my September 9 notes below.

For a perhaps more accurate rendition of the spirit of Pan, see the classic Australian film

Picnic at Hanging Rock.

"From the opening shot of Hanging Rock, lovingly framed by cinematographer Russell Boyd, accompanied by the strains of the pan flute played by Gheorghe Zamfir, the film sets its elegant, restrained tone...."