October 29, 2006
-
For Halloween at Harvard
Decrease
(Readings for the
Halloween season)
In 1692 on July 31, at the time of the Salem witchcraft trials, Increase Mather reportedly "delivered a sermon... in Boston in which he posed the question...
'O what makes the difference between the devils in hell and the angels
of heaven?'"
Increase, the father of Cotton Mather, was president of Harvard from June 27, 1692, to Sept. 6, 1701. His name is memorialized by Harvard's Mather House.
From Log24 on Jan. 15, 2003:Locating Hell
"Noi siam venuti al loco ov' i' t'ho detto
che tu vedrai le genti dolorose
c'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto.""We have come to where
I warned you we would find
Those wretched souls
who no longer have
The intellectual benefits of the mind."From a Harvard student's weblog:
Heard in Mather I
hope you get gingivitis You want me to get oral cancer?! Goodnight
fartface Turd. Turd. Turd. Turd. Turd. Make your own waffles!! Blah
blah blah starcraft blah blah starcraft blah starcraft. It's da email
da email. And some blue hair! Oohoohoo Izod! 10 gigs! Yeah it smells
really bad. Only in the stairs though. Starcraft blah blah Starcraft
fartface. Yeah it's hard. You have to get a bunch of battle cruisers.
40 kills! So good! Oh ho ho grunt grunt squeal. I'm getting sick
again. You have a final tomorrow? In What?! Um I don't even know. Next
year we're draggin him there and sticking the needle in ourselves." ... one more line/ unravelling from the dark design/ spun by God and Cotton Mather"
-- Robert Lowell
To honor Harvard's Oct. 28 founding,
here are yesterday's numbers from
the state of Grace (Kelly, of Philadelphia):
Related material:
Log24 on 1/16,
and Hexagram 41,
Decrease
The Image
At the foot of the mountain, the lake:
The image of Decrease.
Thus the superior man controls his anger
And restrains his instincts.This suggests thoughts of
the novel Cold Mountain
(see yesterday morning)
and the following from
Log24 on St. Luke's Day
this year:
Established in 1916,
Montreat College
is a private,
Christian
college located in a
beautiful valley in the
Blue Ridge
Mountains
of North Carolina.
"The valley spirit never dies..."
See also St. Luke's Day, 2004,
as well as a journal entry
prompted by both
the ignorant religion
of Harvard's past
and the ignorant scientism
of Harvard's present--
Hitler's Still Point:
A Hate Speech for Harvard.This last may, of course, not
quite fit the description of
the superior man
controlling his anger
so wisely provided by
yesterday's lottery and
Hexagram 41.
Nobody's perfect.
