Teasers from today's
online New York Times:
| "In spite of ourselves We'll end up a'sittin' on a rainbow Against all odds Honey, we're the big door prize" Video at
Highline Ballroom |
In his honor, we may perhaps be justified in temporarily ignoring the wise saying "never assume."
From a defense of the dogma of the Assumption:
"On another level, the Assumption epitomizes the reconciliation of the material and spiritual world, as the human Mary enters 'body and soul to heavenly glory.' Carl Jung, the transpersonal psychologist, concluded that the doctrine of the Assumption reflected an acceptance of the physical world."
For other such reconciliations, see
But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds....
In memory of
Kenneth H. Bacon, dead at 64
on August 15th, 2009.
Bacon was an advocate for refugees.
"Even blue-blooded WASPs were refugees at one time; mine came over from England in 1630, fleeing debts for all I know," he said.
Bacon turned 64
last year on November 21.
From a story in the November 21
Chronicle of Higher Education
on a recent St. Olaf College
reading of Paradise Lost:
|
"Of man's first disobedience,
and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe.... A red apple made the rounds, |
"Do you like apples?"
-- Good Will Hunting
" ... to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint"
-- Four Quartets
The Timeless:
Time
(64 years,
and more):
| Today in History
Today is Saturday, Aug. 15, the 227th day of 2009. There are 138 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Aug. 15, 1945, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced to his subjects in a prerecorded radio address that Japan had accepted terms of surrender for ending World War II. On this date: In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain. |
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Quine:
"I really have nothing to add."
-- Quine, quoted
on this date in 1998.
An Honest Question:
"Did the Catholic Church just jump the shark by electing Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger? This is an honest question... not a slam."
-- Anonymous user at an online forum on April 19, 2005
A Munificent Answer:
No. That leap of faith was taken long before, on November 1, 1950. See the note below.
"The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 15 August.......has a double object: (1) the happy departure of Mary from this life; (2) the assumption of her body into heaven. It is the principal feast of the Blessed Virgin....
Note: By promulgating the Bull Munificentissimus Deus, 1 November, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared infallibly that the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was a dogma of the Catholic Faith."
Also on today's date (AP, Today in History)--
"In 1998, 29 people were killed by a car bomb that tore apart the center of Omagh, Northern Ireland; a splinter group calling itself the Real IRA claimed responsibility."
On the same day in 1998, The New York Times published Sarah Boxer's century-end summary:
Friday, August 14, 2009 @ 10:45 a.m.
"Amphitheater – George Kembel –
George Kembel is a co-founder and currently the executive director of the Stanford d.school, also known as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University...."
Background:
"Plattner is said to be the 11th richest man in Germany with an estimated fortune of 5 billion USD, according to Forbes....
Plattner is a major owner of the San Jose Sharks hockey team...."
|
|
VS. |
See also recent Log24 entries.
Kessler died of a wasp sting
on Monday, August 10, 2009.
Some philosophical background
for those who prefer Native American
religions to the Abrahamic religions
promoted at Chautauqua:
On the Gleaming Way,
by John Collier.
Chapter One:
"Native American Time."
Metaphor for Morphean morphosis,
Dreams that wake, transform, and die,
Calm and lucid this psychosis,
Joyce's nightmare in Escher's eye.
Text:
| The Shining, 1977, page 162: "A new headline, this one "The item on the next page |
Exegesis:
| April 10-- Good Friday-- See The Paradise of Childhood. Four months later-- Aug. 10-- "When he thought of the old man |
Related material from
this journal, July 30:
"In the room the women come and go"
-- Stephen King, The Shining:
"The Wasps' Nest"
Related material:
Actual Being
(Oct. 25, 2008)
and The Shining
(reissue, 1977 1st ed.),
page 162:
Union colonel Joshua Chamberlain, on the way to the battle at Gettysburg, remembers his boyhood.
"Maine... is silent and cold.
Maine in the winter: air is darker, the sky is a deeper dark. A darkness comes with winter that these Southern people don't know. Snow falls so much earlier and in the winter you can walk in a snowfield among bushes, and visitors don't know that the bushes are the tops of tall pines, and you're standing in thirty feet of snow. Visitors. Once long ago visitors in the dead of winter: a preacher preaching hell-fire. Scared the fool out of me. And I resented it and Pa said I was right.
Pa.
When he thought of the old man he could see him suddenly in a field in the spring, trying to move a gray boulder. He always knew instinctively the ones you could move, even though the greater part was buried in the earth, and he expected you to move the rock and not discuss it. A hard and silent man, an honest man, a noble man. Little humor but sometimes the door opened and you saw the warmth within a long way off, a certain sadness, a slow, remote, unfathomable quality as if the man wanted to be closer to the world but did not know how. Once Chamberlain had a speech memorized from Shakespeare and gave it proudly, the old man listening but not looking, and Chamberlain remembered it still: 'What a piece of work is man... in action how like an angel!' And the old man, grinning, had scratched his head and then said stiffly, 'Well, boy, if he's an angel, he's sure a murderin' angel.' And Chamberlain had gone on to school to make an oration on the subject: Man, the Killer Angel. And when the old man heard about it he was very proud, and Chamberlain felt very good remembering it."
-- Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels: A Novel of the Civil War
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