Saint's Day

Today is the birthday of Thomas More, an alleged Catholic saint, and the date of death of Dale Evans, Protestant saint.

As yesterday's note implies, we should not look to saints, or indeed to religion generally, for truth.  Those who mistake the stories of the Church or the Bible for truth have done, and continue to do, a great deal of harm in this world.  But those who seek, not truth, but values, in stories may sometimes be among the blessed — as Dale Evans certainly was, and as Thomas More, after centuries of atoning for his sins in Purgatory, may, by this time, be.

Let us pray that young Catholics (like the girl pictured at St. Thomas More Catholic School in Chapel Hill, N. C.) learn the proper uses of stories, as well as of more respectable intellectual disciplines.

Happy Waitangi Day

Today is Waitangi Day in New Zealand; 2:00 AM EST Feb. 6 in the USA is 8:00 PM Feb. 6 in New Zealand.

Today is also the birthday of Gigi Perreau, star of "Journey to the Center of Time," which at least one reviewer thought was the worst movie ever made.  These properties of Feb. 6 make it a suitable holiday to be observed at the newly opened Cullinane College in New Zealand.

For starters, students can review the five log24.net entries that end with a brief tribute to Gigi on January 22, 2003.  Also a tribute to Gigi, tonight's site music is "Song of Time," from "The Legend of Zelda."

These cultural activities seem appropriate for those who, in the Roman Catholic tradition, prefer stories to truth.

Release Date

From Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar —

• Novelist William S. Burroughs [of the Burroughs adding machine family], author of Naked Lunch, was born on this day in 1914.
  
• The Charlie Chaplin film "Modern Times" was released on this day in 1936.
  
• The adding machine employing depressible keys was patented on this day in 1850.

"It all adds up." — Saul Bellow, book title

"I see my light come shining
 From the west unto the east.
 Any day now, any day now,
 I shall be released."
     — Bob Dylan

5:10 AM Feb. 1 Judy Davis as Kali, or Time

9:00 AM Feb. 1 TIME

From Robert Morris's page on Hopkins (see note of Sunday, February 2 (Candlemas)):

"Inscape" was Gerard Manley Hopkins's term for a special connection between the world of natural events and processes and one's internal landscape--a frame of mind conveyed in his radical and singular poetry....

This is false, but suggestive.

Checked, corrected, and annotated

Feast of Saint Marianne

On this date in 1972, poet and Presbyterian saint Marianne Moore died in New York City.

For why she was a saint, see the excellent article by Samuel Terrien,

 "Marianne Moore: Poet of Secular Holiness,"

from Theology Today, Vol. 47, No. 4, January 1991, published by Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N. J.

Terrien quotes the following Moore poem:

Tonight's site music, though not played by Gieseking himself, is, in honor of Moore, the following work by Scarlatti from the Classical Music Archives:

Scarlatti's Sonata in E major, andante comodo  (Longo 23 = Kirkpatrick 380 = Pestelli 483) 

To purchase a recording of Gieseking playing this work,

click here.

Mark Hopkins Award

From Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar:

• "Mark Hopkins, U.S. educator, was born on this day in 1802.  He taught at Williams College....  President Garfield, one of his students, said that all that was needed for a college was Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other."

I have never encountered a mentor figure capable of holding down his end of a log in the manner of Mark Hopkins.  The closest I have come to such an encounter is with a book, The Practical Cogitator, by Charles P. Curtis and Ferris Greenslet.

This year's Mark Hopkins award for the closest approach to the log-sitting ideal goes to David Lavery, whose online commonplace book appears in the column at left.  Lavery, too, appreciates the work of Curtis and Greenslet, as his site indicates.

See also a quote from Lavery in today's New York Times.

Good News and Bad News

If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

— T. S. Eliot, beginning of
    Four Quartets

And there we were all in one place 
A generation lost in space

— American Pie, by Don McLean

"It's not a space shuttle
launch... it's sex."

Steering a Space-Plane

Head White House speechwriter Michael Gerson:

"In the last two weeks, I've been returning to Hopkins.  Even in the 'world's wildfire,' he asserts that 'this Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,/Is immortal diamond.' A comfort."
— Vanity Fair, May 2002, page 162

Yesterday's note, "Time and Eternity," supplies the "immortal diamond" part of this meditation.  For the "matchwood" part, see the cover of The New York Times Book Review of February 2 (Candlemas), 2003:

See also the Times's excerpt from Baker's first chapter,
about "steering a space-plane."

For the relationship of Hopkins to Eastern religions,
see "Out of Inscape," by Robert Morris.

Time and Eternity

Kali figure Shiva figure

Windmill Victory

Yesterday's meditation on St. Bridget suggests the above graphic summary of two rather important philosophical concepts. Representing Kali, or Time, is Judy Davis in "The New Age." Representing Shiva, or Eternity, is sword-saint Michioka Yoshinori-sensei.  The relationship between these two concepts is summarized very neatly by Heinrich Zimmer in his section on the Kalika Purana in The King and the Corpse.

The relationship is also represented graphically by the "whirl" of Time and the "diamond" of Eternity.

On this day in 1944, Mondrian died.  Echoes of the graphic whirl and diamond may be found (as shown above) in his "Red Mill" and "Victory Boogie-Woogie."